In the Dark of the Night

Now, as he crouched in the boat that was itself hidden in the shadows of the pines on the shore, he tried not to listen to the whispers.

Tried to resist the calling.

His heart pounded in his chest as he tried to decide what to do.

Almost against his own will, he stepped out of the boat and edged up toward the old carriage house, keeping to the fringe of the woods.

And as he moved, the voices in his head began to rise.

The whisperings became a cacophony of noise inside his head, each voice vying for his attention, each of them whispering what he must do.

But on one thing, all of them agreed: he must go through the door into the back room, through the door that had been hidden for so many years.

The door that should never be opened again.

As if to turn away from the voices themselves, Logan turned away from the old carriage house, and his eyes fixed on the red glow of the dying coals in the fire pit. And as he stared at it, an idea began to form in his mind.

He started toward the fire pit, the voices protesting with every step, but he ignored them until he was near the glowing coals.

A few feet from the pit itself he found a can of charcoal starting fluid and a box of matches.

The voices in his head rose as he picked them up.

He forced himself to ignore the voices, steeled himself against the hard knot of fear gnawing at his belly.

The voices grew louder, clearer.

“Come to us.”

A strangled whimper of protest bubbled in his throat.

“We know what you want.”

“You know what we want.”

Logan tried to close his mind to them, tried to concentrate only on the structure that lay a few paces ahead now, and the objects in his hands.

The objects that could be his salvation if only he could find the strength to disobey the voices.

“Remember how good it felt to have your fingers around her throat?”

Logan tried to focus his mind on nothing more than emptying the can in his left hand onto the evil structure, then setting it ablaze with the matches that were all but crushed by the pressure in the fingers of his right hand.

“You can feel it, can’t you? You’re feeling it even now.”

He was at the door of the carriage house.

“Come in. See if all is as it should be. Make sure our treasures are safe.”

The voices were nearly overpowering now, and Logan felt what little courage he’d summoned begin to fail.

What could it hurt? And it had been so long since he’d been inside the room.

Dropping the matches, he reached for the doorknob.

His fingers were no more than a fraction of an inch from the cold metal when a tiny spark of reason flared in his mind for the briefest of moments.

Dropping the can of lighter fluid, Logan turned and fled, shambling away into the darkness of the night.

Only when he was back in his boat and it was slicing once more through the smooth waters of Phantom Lake, did he dare to take a deep breath and finally look back at Pinecrest.

For now, at least, he and everyone else was safe.

But for how long?

• • •

TAD SPARKS FILLED the top drawer of the bureau with his underwear and socks, closed the drawer, and dropped his finally empty duffel bag on the floor of the closet. Flopping onto the bed, he looked out the open window at the lake. The water seemed almost to be glowing from deep beneath its surface rather than merely reflecting the light of the moon.

He’d forgotten how silent it was here at night, and how loud the frogs sounded when they broke the stillness with their calls.

Then another sound broke the silence: his father’s voice calling from downstairs. “Tad!”

Tad slid off the bed and went to the top of the narrow stairs. “What?”

“Did you roll up the windows in the car and lock it?”

He couldn’t remember. “Coming.” He took the stairs two at a time, and headed through the living room where his father was watching a baseball game while his mother knitted a sweater Tad secretly hoped wasn’t intended for him.

“Might rain,” his dad said, barely glancing away from the TV screen.

“Okay.” Tad grabbed the keys from the little table by the front door and went out into the night.

The sky was clear and the canopy of stars hung so low that it seemed he could reach up and touch them.

No way was it going to rain.

Not that it mattered. Better to just do as his father asked than try to argue, since arguing had never worked. Besides, even if it didn’t rain, a raccoon could get into the car, and then his dad would really be mad.

The car was next to the house, and for a moment Tad considered putting it in the garage, but then thought better of it — the garage door was narrow, and he didn’t want to think about what his father would say if the car got even a single scratch. Better just to roll up the windows and lock it. His father could move it into the garage tomorrow.

Tad slid into the driver’s seat, inserted the key in the ignition, turned it to activate the electrical system, and was about to close the windows when he heard something.

A faint but rhythmic squeaking noise.

Frowning, he got out of the car and listened closely.

The sound seemed to be coming from the lake.

Oars?

Was someone out on the lake at night, rowing?

The moon was now paving a silvery pathway on the lake, which shimmered with ripples. A moment later the silhouette of a man rowing a boat slid into the bright moonlight.

The boat turned slightly, and Tad saw what looked like a giant crucifix rising from its prow.

But it couldn’t be — it had to be something else. A trick of the light.

Something that just looked like a crucifix.

He reached in through the window and flicked on the headlights.

The boat was closer to shore than it appeared in the moonlight, and as the headlights flashed out of the darkness, the man rowing the boat turned, staring into the light like a deer caught on the highway at night.

He was dressed in what seemed to be rags, with long hair and an even longer beard, and though he froze for an instant, he immediately came back to life, sinking his oars deep into the water and pulling hard so the boat turned away and Tad was staring at his back.

But even though the man’s face had vanished, the memory of it was etched clearly in Tad’s mind. The man looked like one of the crazy homeless people he’d seen in Chicago plenty of times.

The kind of man who was never seen at all in Evanston.

So what was somebody like that doing in Phantom Lake, let alone this part of the lake?

And why would he have a wooden crucifix on the bow of his boat?

Leaving the headlights on, Tad ran a few steps toward the house. “Dad!”

Though the window he could see his father, who was still watching TV. He went to the front door. “Dad, there’s a really weird guy out on the lake.”

Finally, his father turned away from the screen. “What do you mean, out on the lake? It’s almost nine