Just a few more strokes of the oars and he would be there.
Yet when Pinecrest came into view, Logan sensed that something was different.
Something had changed.
Then, as he shipped the oars to let the boat drift silently, he saw them.
Three boys.
Three boys sitting on the front lawn.
But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was the house.
The house was different.
As the dog tensed in the bow, the old man dipped the oars once more and turned the boat so the cross mounted in the bow stood between him and the looming stone structures that were Pinecrest.
What was going on?
Had Dr. Darby come back?
No — that was impossible — it couldn’t happen!
Could the house have been sold? Were people moving in?
These boys, maybe?
But that could never happen, either.
He couldn’t let it happen.
Nobody could ever live here again.
Using the oars so gently there was no sound at all, Logan slipped the boat closer to shore, careful every foot of the way to keep the big wooden cross between himself and the old estate.
The dog sensed his apprehension and shifted restlessly on his nest of rags.
“Easy,” Logan whispered. “It’s okay. We just have to figure out what to do. That’s all. Just figure it out.”
He peered through the failing light as the three boys rose from the lawn, dusted off their pants, and started toward the house. A moment later they were gone, disappearing toward the driveway. Soundlessly, Logan moved forward until the bow of the boat touched the shore.
He could feel it now — someone was coming to live in the house.
And it was as if the house itself were excited.
As if the evil knew it was about to be released once more.
Logan crossed himself and backed away with the oars, keeping the cross in the bow between himself and Pinecrest until the entire property began fading into the gathering night then finally disappeared behind the point around which he had come only a few minutes ago.
“It’s all going to start up again,” he whispered, as much to himself as to the dog.
Falling silent, he turned the skiff toward home and rowed into the dark of the night.
Chapter 4
THE DAY HAD finally arrived, and after the first excitement of leaving Evanston behind for the summer died away, and the first three of the six hours it took to drive to Phantom Lake passed, a silence had fallen over the Brewsters.
Merrill was paging through what she thought of as her mental worry book, examining each item, assessing its current threat level. In the privacy of her own mind, she rarely lowered a level, while publicly she did her best never to admit they existed at all.
Did her best, but usually failed.
Still, for today at least, the calm of the rolling Wisconsin farmland was lulling her a bit, and none of the current worries seemed overwhelming.
If she’d left the iron on — had she turned it on at all? — Marguerite would turn it off and put it away.
If she’d forgotten sunscreen, there would be a store in Phantom Lake where she could buy some.
If she’d failed to pay a bill, Dan would take care of it when he got home.
If she forgot to pack — What? What could she have possibly forgotten to pack? The LX470 was filled to the brim with suitcases, pet carriers, blow-up water toys, kids, and…
She tried not to think about Dan, who sat beside her, driving — that he’d be gone all week every week.
In the backseat directly behind her mother, Marci was counting animals. She’d already decided Wisconsin was the best place she’d ever seen, and had spent the first hours trying to make up her mind whether to marry a farmer when she grew up or have her own farm, which would be filled with cows and horses and pigs, and no brothers at all. But then, as the farms began to give way to wilderness and she caught glimpses of deer — and even what she was sure was a wolf, though Eric said it was just a dog — she decided maybe she’d be a forest ranger instead and live in a log cabin in the woods, with wild animals coming to eat every day.
Finally, she turned around to check on Tippy and Moxie, and found both of them sleeping happily in their carriers, Moxie burrowed deep into the towels in his cage, and Tippy sprawled out on top of her own nest.
Satisfied that the cat and dog were doing fine, she went back to her count, adding one more deer and a squirrel to her list, and trying to decide if the dead possum they’d passed a little while ago counted.
Eric, next to Marci, was listening to his iPod, tapping out rhythms on his knees, anticipating the summer with far more excitement than he would admit to anyone, let alone his parents and sister. When the trip began a few hours ago, the sun had already been too hot, the heaviness of the air telling him the afternoon was going to be miserable. If it was already that hot and sticky just in June, what was August going to be like? But he wasn’t going to be there in August, so what did it matter?
He was going to be in northern Wisconsin, in a house on Phantom Lake, with his best friends only a few hundred yards away, spending every single day swimming and fishing and waterskiing and hiking.
About the time they reached the halfway point, black clouds began rolling in from the west. The highway was already thick with SUVs and big pickup trucks pulling boats and camping trailers, and Dan Brewster unconsciously sat up a little straighter in the driver’s seat, took a tighter grip on the steering wheel, and hoped his wife wouldn’t notice the deteriorating weather.
A couple of heavy raindrops splatted onto the windshield, and Dan shot Merrill a quick glance. Sure enough, she’d noticed.
Merrill pretended she hadn’t seen Dan’s quick glance at her, but of course she had. And of course just the few drops of rain that hit the car had started a whole new page in the worry book.
Dan flicked on the wipers. “Looks like we’re in for a little weather,” he said. He took another quick glance at Merrill, then spoke again, doing his best to inject as much optimism into his voice as he could summon, given that every car coming toward them had not only their wipers on, but their headlights as well. “Probably just a squall — won’t last more than a couple minutes.”
The sky grew darker.
As Dan slowed and turned on his own headlights, he could feel Merrill struggling not to say anything, and began laying mental odds on how long she would be able to hold out. Given the blinding mist all the SUVs with their boats and trailers were throwing at the windshield, it wouldn’t be long.
Merrill gazed out her side window, determined to concentrate on the scenery around her rather than the increasingly threatening sky above her, but then a bolt of lightning seared the sky, thunder clapped right behind it, and the clouds seemed to open up. Dan switched the wipers to full speed, but they couldn’t keep up with the torrent of rain, and suddenly the road ahead was nothing more than a blur of red taillights.
“Maybe we should stop,” Merrill said.
“Wow,” Eric said from the backseat. “Almost thirty seconds since it started raining. I didn’t think you’d be
