“Bear!” Tad yelled, shouldering past Eric and charging up the path at a dead run.
Eric’s heart was pounding so hard he could barely breathe, let alone speak, but his horror at being left alone in the dark with whatever was hidden in the brush overcame the terror that was all but paralyzing him. “Kent?” he finally managed to squeal, no longer even able to see his friend. “You still there? Don’t leave me!”
“Let’s just get out of here,” Kent called back over his shoulder, his voice trembling almost as badly as Eric’s. “Come on!” He broke into a run, cursed loudly as his foot caught on something and he nearly lost his balance, then caught himself and once more bolted into the blackness. Eric followed, stumbling after Kent and Tad, low-hanging branches slashing at his face, and brush catching at his clothes like claws trying to snatch him away into the night.
He could hear the predator clearly now, crashing through the brush off to the left. He could almost smell it, almost feel its fetid breath on the back of his neck as it charged toward him.
The bushes thrashed right beside him.
In another second it would be too late — the creature would be upon him, cutting him off even from the help of Kent and Tad.
Panicked, Eric leaped forward, racing through the darkness. He could feel the beast behind him, feel it rising up, poised on its hind legs, lashing out to smash him to the ground with a massive clawed paw. He could feel its fangs sinking into his flesh, feel it tearing at him, gnawing on his very bones. A howl of terror rose out of his throat, and then he’d caught up with Kent and Tad, and all three of them were flying through the woods, the lumbering, crashing beast following close behind.
Then, with no warning at all, they burst from the woods onto the road, and dead ahead of them was the floodlit entrance to The Pines.
And as suddenly as they were out of the woods, the crashing of the beast stopped.
Silence — a silence so heavy that Eric could actually feel it — dropped over the night.
“Wh-Where is it?” Tad Sparks stammered, gasping for breath. “Where’d it—”
His words ended abruptly as a rock hit him hard on the side.
“What the—” he began again, but his words were cut off once more, this time by the sound of laughter as Adam Mosler, Ellis Langstrom, and Chris McIvens emerged from the edge of the woods.
Mosler threw another rock, forcing Eric to dodge away. “Oooh, it’s a bear,” he said, his voice a mocking singsong.
“Don’t leave me,” Chris squealed, pitching his own voice into a girlish register and pitching a third rock that hit the pavement at Kent’s feet.
“What a bunch of fags,” Ellis sneered.
Eric felt his face burning, and out of the corner of his eye he could see Kent’s hands clenching into fists. “Let’s just get out of here,” he said softly enough that only Kent and Tad could hear him. “Ignore them.” He grabbed Tad and they walked quickly down the road toward home.
A moment later Kent reluctantly followed, but his fury was still palpable as he caught up with Eric and Tad. “I’m going to freakin’ kill that bastard,” he grated, his breath still rasping from his charge through the woods.
“Maybe we should tell somebody about them,” Tad said. “One of us could have really been hurt back there!”
“And if we report them,” Eric instantly responded, “all that will happen is that my mom will make me go back to Evanston. Let’s just leave it alone, okay?”
“Not okay,” Kent shot back, kicking a rock out of the road. “I
Tad snickered. “You gotta admit,” he said when Kent glared at him, “they really had us going.”
“Yeah?” Kent growled. “Well, maybe you think it’s funny, but I don’t!”
Eric eyed Kent, whose eyes were almost glowing with anger, even in the darkness. “Come on, Kent — lighten up. What good’s it gonna do to stay mad? Tad’s right — they made us look like idiots.”
“He’s right that someone really could have gotten hurt, too,” Kent said, balling his fists again. “And I’m not going to get mad — I’m going to get even!”
Five minutes later Eric was back at Pinecrest. He stood by the front door for a moment, checking his breathing and trying to shrug away the last tendrils of the fear that had gripped him only a few minutes ago. When he was sure neither his breathing nor his expression would give away what had just happened, he finally went inside and found his mother and sister watching a movie.
A Disney movie.
The house still smelled like chocolate chip cookies.
A small fire was glowing on the hearth, even though the evening was warm.
The draperies were drawn against the darkness outside, and as he settled into the big easy chair, the last of his terror faded away.
Outside, hidden in the darkness, the old skiff with the crude wooden cross on its prow moved silently away from the shore and headed out across the dark water.
Chapter 16
THE STRANGE TINGLING sensation began the moment Eric stepped into the storeroom. It started in his fingertips, but spread quickly through his whole body as he and Kent pulled the heavy plywood away from the doorway to the hidden room. As he crossed the threshold, his mind as well as his body was suddenly filled with unfamiliar stimuli. Every one of his senses seemed sharpened, and he felt imbued with an energy he’d never experienced outside this tiny room.
An energy that filled him not only with excitement, but with disorientation as well.
Disorientation, and dread.
It was as if a force had gripped him, gripped him so tightly that he could not only feel it, but hear it, too. From somewhere far away, vague voices were again whispering darkly at the edges of his consciousness.
As the force tightened its grip on him, one small part of his mind told him to resist it, to back away before it was too late. Yet even as this small inner voice spoke to him, the voice of the force whispered its siren song, and instead of turning to escape back into the bright light of the summer morning, he moved deeper into the darkness of the room.
He and Kent lit the lanterns and peered around the chamber almost as if expecting the answers to Phantom Lake’s mysteries to be spread before them on parchment scrolls or etched on the walls like some modern Rosetta stone. Eric had known they’d be back in the room the moment he awoke that morning; he’d felt its pull like some sort of fate or predestination, and after breakfast, when his mother left for a crafts fair with Marci, Tad and Kent had arrived.
With no need of a single word being spoken, they had gone directly to the carriage house to find some answers.
“Darby specialized in serial killers,” Kent said, gazing around the room at all the dusty boxes and strange half-broken objects. “So if he really managed to buy Jack the Ripper’s scalpels—”
All their eyes turned to the medical bag that still sat on top of the three-legged Formica table, and Eric could feel the strange energy that suffused the room increase as they focused on the dark object with its macabre contents.
“I’m not touching that thing,” Tad breathed, his voice sounding oddly strangled.
Eric, though, moved forward and gently — almost reverently — picked it up and set it on a bookshelf.
“So if that really was Jack the Ripper’s bag,” Kent went on, “maybe the rest of the stuff in here belonged to serial killers, too.” He moved to an old wooden lateral filing cabinet and tugged on one of its long, warped drawers. It didn’t budge, held fast either by the warping of the wood or the lock.
“Maybe that’s the difference between the stuff in this hidden room and the stuff out there in the storeroom,” Eric mused.
“This room wasn’t just hidden,” Tad said, his hands drawn almost against his will to the ornate scrollwork
