Darkness Rising (The East Salem Trilogy) (24 page)

He smiled and then produced the handheld infrared camera from his pocket and flipped up the screen.

“What in the world is that?”

“Energy audit. This camera detects heat. Or cold.”

He stepped back out onto the enclosed porch, opened the door, and quickly scanned the road behind him. Nothing unusual.

“Why do you have it?” she said when he returned to the kitchen. “I don’t need an energy audit.”

“Yes, you do,” he said. “Last winter your heating bills were through the roof. Which was also where all your heat was going.”

“Last winter was the coldest in years,” she said, still puzzled by his sudden appearance. He left her in the kitchen to quickly scan the living room and the den, and when he pointed it at the ceiling, the images were normal. He returned to the kitchen.

Aunt Ruth was ready for an explanation. “What in the world?”

He put his finger to his lips to shush her. He pointed the scanner at her and saw how beautifully she radiated warmth, a finding he knew was as true figuratively as it was literally. But when he moved the scanner slightly to her left, he saw it—a massive dark blue outline with blurred edges, just on the other side of the kitchen’s back wall. His pulse quickened. He gestured for his aunt to come see what his screen was showing him.

“So how are the Thanksgiving plans coming?” he said as she leaned in to look at the screen. Her expression grew more puzzled when she saw the blue shadow on her wall.

“What is—?”

Tommy shushed her again, then made a “keep it coming” gesture with his free hand to get her to keep talking as he approached the wall to take a closer reading.

“Thanksgiving plans are coming along fine,” she said. “I made the strawberry-rhubarb pie tonight. That’s your favorite, isn’t it?”

Tommy put his hand to the wall. It was ice cold.

He noticed that on his aunt’s refrigerator she kept a magnetic whiteboard and a marker for reminders. It read, in his aunt’s perfect cursive,
Pick up turkey from Bredeson’s
. He took the whiteboard from the refrigerator, where it was surrounded by family photographs and artwork the children from the library had drawn for her, erased her message, and wrote:
There is something outside the house
.

She gestured to ask what it was.

Wendigo

She took the pen from him.

Ha ha. Seriously
.

“I talked to Dani, and she said she could make the corn bread,” he said, writing:
Seriously. We are in danger
.

“That would be lovely,” Aunt Ruth said. “I was going to make the cranberry sauce you like.”

You are scaring me!!!
she wrote.

I’m scared too

“I was thinking of inviting Charlie,” Tommy said, raising his voice when he said the name. “I want to say, ‘Hey, Charlie—we could use your help right about now.’”

Who is Charlie?
she wrote.

Angel

She added a question mark:
Angel?

He erased the question mark and wrote:
Angel! Will explain later
.

“How many people are you expecting?” he said, taking a large carving knife from the wooden cutlery holder. He opened the door to her broom closet, looking for something else they could use as a weapon. Nothing.

“About a dozen,” she said. Tommy crouched low and scuttled across the floor, out of view of whatever might be standing outside the window, and opened the cabinet doors below the sink. Again, nothing.

“I was thinking that there are going to be children here,” he said. “I don’t suppose you keep any weapons in the house, do you? We want to make sure there isn’t anything dangerous that little kids might get their hands on.”

“What would a librarian be doing with weapons in her house?” she said, moving to her coat closet, where she reached in and grabbed a twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun. She reached into the closet a second time, grabbed a handful of shells, chambered four shells, and flicked off the safety.

“Whatever happened to that bird gun your grandfather used to hunt ducks with?” she asked as she handed him the gun.

“I don’t know,” Tommy said. He watched with surprise as his aunt reached back into the closet and pulled out a .45 caliber Colt automatic.

“You know how your grandfather loved guns. Did you know I once dated a policeman?” she said, filling her apron pockets with extra clips. “He used to take me shooting at the target range in Danbury. I quite enjoyed it.”

“Are you kidding me?” Tommy said.

“What other stereotypes about librarians would you like me to debunk?” she said, expertly cocking the pistol.

Tommy tried to think. Escape wasn’t an option, and standing to fight was not a good idea either. He said a quick prayer but readied the shotgun all the same.

Then the lights went out.

“What happened?” he said.

“Oh, the wind is always knocking the trees down around here,” she said. She reached into the closet for a flashlight, but when she turned it on, Tommy covered the beam with his hand and whispered, “No lights!” She turned it off.

Using the scanner, he saw that the thing outside the house was moving. He followed the blue image as it began to slowly circle the house. He kept the shotgun pointed where the scanner told him the demon was. His aunt stayed behind him, holding her weapon with two hands in a way that showed she knew what she was doing.

They backed into the living room and paused as the large silhouette stopped on the other side of the front door. Tommy watched the doorknob turn as it glowed on his screen, bluer and bluer. Then it stopped turning, and the shape began to move again. It was now standing outside the picture window.

Tommy opened up on the demon, firing four thundering shotgun blasts through the glass as fast as he could, shattering the window and splintering
the frame. His aunt opened fire a split second after he did, flames spitting from the muzzle of her pistol to make the room flash with light a dozen times.

Tommy reloaded quickly, grabbing shells from his coat pocket, and then moved to the window to scan outside the house.

The screen read blank. The demon was gone. For now.

Aunt Ruth turned on her flashlight to survey the room.

“Maybe we should have Thanksgiving at my house this year?” Tommy said.

“Maybe we should,” his aunt said. “Do you think we hurt it?”

“I don’t know,” Tommy replied. “I think it’s more afraid of attracting attention. You’ll be safer at my house. I just hope it’s not headed that way.”

20.

Tommy’s cell phone rang on the way to his house at the wheel of his Aunt Ruth’s car. He’d retrieve his motorcycle tomorrow, when he met the glass repairman at her house.

The director of the wolf sanctuary was on the other end, asking him again for the location of the deer carcass he’d reported. When Tommy told her, the woman said they’d scoured the exact area he’d described and found nothing.

“Maybe someone from the county or the local police already picked it up,” he suggested.

“I’ve already checked with everyone I could think of. No one’s seen it.”

“Maybe some of the local wild wolves got to it first,” Tommy joked.

When the director told him that the man she’d sent had indeed seen tracks in the dirt on the shoulder of the road, but nothing he could identify, Tommy told her to make sure the gates were locked, because you never knew what might be lurking in the shadows.

She laughed. He didn’t.

Tommy carried his aunt’s bags into his kitchen, re-armed his security system, and then put her things in his father’s room.

When he returned, he watched with a mix of awe and admiration as she tended to her weapons, checked the safeties, reloaded, wiped them
down thoroughly with a soft dish towel, and set them carefully on the food island. All the way to Tommy’s house, she’d listened as he told her how the investigation into Amos Kasden and the murder of Julie Leonard had led them down a path that was, to say the least, unexpected, but one that was clearer with each passing day. She asked questions when she didn’t understand something, but not for a moment did she express any doubt as to his interpretation of events. As he had parked her car in the courtyard, he asked her if she thought he was crazy to be talking about chasing demons.

“Thomas,” she said, “when I was younger, I was like most young people—I thought I knew all the answers. Then I thought I knew the questions but not the answers. I stopped going to church for a few years when I realized I didn’t even know the questions. But I came back when I realized that even if I didn’t know the questions or the answers, Jesus does, and he’d give them to me when I needed them. I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you’d be foolish not to believe what you believe.”

She was puzzled, though, by one thing: why had Abbie suggested that she, Ruth, was “the boy’s best chance”?

“I can look things up in books, but anybody can do that,” she said. “Why would she single me out? Assuming Ben was right in the first place.”

“Ben knows things,” Tommy said. “I’m not sure how, but he does.”

He’d set his aunt’s key chain on the food island, next to the strawberryrhubarb pie she’d had the presence of mind to grab in case she couldn’t get back into her kitchen before Thanksgiving. She promised to make Tommy his favorite, pecan pie, and a traditional pumpkin too, if she had time tomorrow.

He held up the smallest key. “What’s this one?”

“That’s to the gun chest.”

“Gun chest?” Tommy said. “You mean there’re more?”

“The policeman was a collector,” she said. “He had no one to leave his collection to when he passed on. He thought I might appreciate them.” She
raised her hand to cut off the question on Tommy’s lips. “Don’t ask. You didn’t know him. It was some time ago. I’ve moved on.”

“Okay then,” Tommy said, returning to the key chain. “How about this one? This looks a hundred years old.”

“Library attic. It’s probably older. As far as I know, it’s the same key and the same lock they put in when the library was built 183 years ago.”

“What’s in the attic?”

“A lot of dusty old books,” she said. “Town records. The figurines from the crèche we used to put out front at Christmas before the government said it wasn’t allowed. Old newspapers. Now that I think of it, Abigail used to spend quite a bit of time up there before she went to the nursing home.”

“Doing what?”

“Research. I didn’t pry. A lot of old people come to the library just because they’re lonely. Though she didn’t mind being alone. I always told her I’d be happy to fetch whatever she needed and bring it downstairs for her, but she said it would be easier if she just stayed up there and didn’t make anybody run up and down the stairs. I worried about her on those stairs, but you know how spry she was. She had her own little desk in the corner.”

“What kind of research?”

“Town historical stuff, I think. I’m not really sure.”

“Can we go have a look tomorrow?”

“We can if Leon has remembered to change the lightbulbs.”

“I’ll change the lightbulbs,” Tommy said. “I think your hunch was right. Abbie knew you were more than just someone who could look things up in books.”

His security system alerted him to a visitor at the gate. When he checked the video monitor, he saw Carl’s face.

Tommy pressed the intercom. “Come on in.”

“I can’t. The keypad isn’t working.”

Tommy remembered that he’d changed the code, just in case, and gave him the new one.

Carl’s arrival in the courtyard triggered Tommy’s motion-sensoractivated floodlights. He had a large duffel bag thrown across the back of his bike, strapped to the black touring bag he’d slipped over the sissy bar.

Tommy turned from the window to see Ruth scowling at him. “You really need to stop this matchmaking,” she said. “I can take care of myself.”

“More than I would have guessed,” Tommy said, eyeing the guns on the food island. “But I’m not matchmaking. I asked Carl to come over to help keep an eye on things. I don’t think it’s safe for any of us to fall asleep without someone on watch. Once I get you all settled in, I’m going to go get Dani.”

“If we’re going to the mattresses, I’m going to need supplies to make spaghetti.”

“Going to the mattresses?” Tommy said. “Where’d you learn to talk like that?”

“Isn’t that what they called it in
The Godfather
?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Tommy said, shaking his head.

Tommy was happy to see his friend, knowing that three heads were better than two. Once he could be sure Dani was safe in his house, it would be five heads better than three, because she was smart enough to count twice.

As Tommy opened the back door for Carl, Ruth got up, saying she needed to go to her room to freshen up, and darted out of the room.

“Glad you could make it,” Tommy told Carl. “Let me take that and throw it in the guestroom. You get a nap in?”

“I wish,” Carl said.

Tommy knew that after losing his daughter, Carl had been treated for depression, had even undergone electroshock therapy. He claimed that the only thing that really helped him was to ride his motorcycle, because he found he could pray while he rode in a way he couldn’t when he was in a quiet place alone with his thoughts. Tommy noticed a scab on the back of Carl’s right hand and redness, as if he’d been scratching himself. Where his
hair was thin on top, his scalp looked flaky as well. Dani was the mental health expert. He wondered what she’d think.