In the Dark of the Night

But it hadn’t been real, he told himself. It had only been a dream.

Yet even as he silently reassured himself, he could almost feel the cold steel of the scalpel in his right hand.

But it had only been a dream, he told himself once more. It couldn’t have been real, any of it.

Could it?

Chapter 13

THE SMELL FROM the kitchen greeted Eric as he opened his bedroom door. He stood at the top of the stairs, rubbing his eyes, listening to his parents talking with his sister as they made breakfast.

A breakfast of waffles.

His stomach rumbled just at the thought, and he headed down to heed its call.

“’Morning, sleepyhead,” his mother said as he came into the kitchen.

“’Morning.” He kissed her on the cheek.

“Please, Daddy?” Marci was pleading in the dining room. “Can’t we look for Tippy now?”

“This place is paradise for a cat, honey,” Eric’s father replied. “She just went hunting last night, that’s all. She’ll be back. Cats always come back.”

“What’s going on?” Eric tipped his head toward the dining room as he poured himself a glass of orange juice.

Merrill handed him a plate of waffles, hot off the iron. “Tippy didn’t come home last night.”

Eric carried the plate to the dining room, where the morning sun streamed in through the big windows. At the foot of the lawn, the lake appeared to be paved with sparkling diamonds, and ski boats were already out taking advantage of the perfect morning.

In an hour, he thought, he would be out there, too, fishing with Kent and Tad.

“Tippy comes in every morning for breakfast,” Marci pronounced, clearly on the verge of tears. “What if she got lost? What if she’s on her way back to our house in Evanston?”

“If she’s not here by lunchtime, we’ll go look for her,” Dan said. “Okay?” He took the plate of waffles from Eric and forked two of them onto his plate. “Hey, sport. Great morning, huh?”

Eric grunted a greeting as he took a chair.

“I can’t believe there was a waffle iron here,” Merrill said as she came in with the coffeepot, refilled Dan’s cup, and then set it on the table. “What a treat.”

“Do you have to go back today, Daddy?” Marci asked.

“Yep, tomorrow’s a workday. The float plane’s coming to pick us up this afternoon.”

“This afternoon?” Marci echoed, her eyes now glistening with tears. “You said you were going to help me look for Tippy!”

“And we’ll find her,” Dan reassured her. “And if she’s not back by the time I have to leave, Eric will help you look.” He fixed Eric with a look that Eric knew would brook no argument. “Right, Eric?”

“Sure,” Eric said, pouring warm syrup on his waffles. He didn’t want to wander around in the woods calling the cat all day, but he knew there was no point in trying to get out of it, either.

By the time he had consumed two waffles and refused a third, Marci was already outside, calling Tippy. His father kissed his mother’s cheek, dropped his napkin next to his plate, and sighed heavily.

“Guess I’d better get out there and give Marci a hand,” he said, looking longingly at the thick Sunday paper that was lying untouched on a sideboard.

Merrill shrugged sympathetically, picked up two empty plates, took them to the kitchen and started loading the dishwasher.

Eric finished his juice, then took the remaining plates to the kitchen and gave them to his mother. In exchange, she handed him a white plastic bag of garbage. “Please?”

“No problem.” Eric took the bag out the back door and around to the side of the house, where a steel trash container with a bear-proof lid housed two big garbage cans.

He lifted one of the covers, then stopped short.

All the shop rags — at least a dozen of them — lay on top of the trash from last night.

Had his dad cleaned up the boathouse and thrown away all the rags they’d used while working on the motor?

But his father had told him to clean up the boathouse. And why would he throw the rags away? He never threw anything away, not even a broken TV that had been in the garage in Evanston for as long as Eric could remember. And the rags were still good — they’d looked practically brand new when he found them last week, even though they’d been in the boathouse for years.

Frowning, Eric put the bag of trash on the ground and picked up one of the rags. There was some kind of dark stain on it, but it didn’t look like oil. He pulled out more of the rags.

They were all stiff and sort of a dark brown. Whatever had been cleaned up with it had dried.

But they could still be washed, and the way the motor was acting, he was pretty sure he was going to need them.

Eric reached deeper into the barrel and came up with a wad of others, all stuck together.

He pulled them apart.

In the center was what looked like a fresh piece of liver, and his stomach churned as he realized what the rags were covered with.

Blood!

Every one of the rags was soaked with blood.

Feeling his breakfast rise in his gorge, Eric dropped the lot back into the can, put the garbage bag his mother had given him on top, then replaced the cover and closed the lid.

Without thinking, he wiped his hands on his pants.

And suddenly the dream came back to him full force.

The dream in which he’d been standing over a young girl.

A young girl whose belly he’d ripped open.

His bloody hands were deep inside her, the scalpel cool and smooth to his touch.

But what did that have to do with these bloody rags?

Nothing.

It was just a dream.

Right?

No.

Somehow, in some way he didn’t understand, these rags had something to do with his dream.

With him.

And with the scalpels in the carriage house.

Eric looked at his hands again. They were clean. No blood.

And there was no way he could have been anywhere but in his bed all night long.

So somebody else had put these bloody rags in here.

Somebody else had wrapped them around the piece of liver, or whatever it was.

His first impulse was to tell his father.

Maybe this was somebody’s idea of a joke.

It wasn’t very funny.

“Tippy!” Marci’s voice came to him from the woods on the far side of the carriage house. “Tippy, come here.”

And then the bloody rags and their disgusting contents assumed a brand new meaning.

And he knew this wasn’t something he’d tell his father. This wasn’t something he’d tell anybody.

He walked quickly back into the house to wash his hands.

KENT STAPLED A copy of Marci’s flyer to a pole by the pavilion, a pole that looked like it