In the Dark of the Night (13 page)

“What do you mean, ‘if’?” Kent flared. “We already broke in—all we’re doing now is finding out what that stuff is. And if we leave now,” he added, “we can get another look inside that room before our folks get home.”

“I don’t want my dad to catch us in there,” Eric said. “So let’s pay a little better attention to the time, okay?” And even as he spoke the words, Eric knew he wasn’t going to brick the secret room back up. Instead, he’d just agreed to go back into it tonight, and his excitement was starting to grow.

“There’s something in there,” Kent said softly. “Something big. Something important.”

Tad flagged down the waitress to bring a box for the leftover pizza, and a few minutes later they were out of the pizza parlor and halfway down the block, heading for the sporting goods store. But before they came to it, Eric stopped in front of the ice cream shop. Inside, Cherie Stevens was behind the counter, loading a sugar cone with ice cream the same shade of pink as her apron.

“You guys go get the lanterns,” Eric said. “Come back for me.”

“Aw come on, Eric,” Kent protested. “Not now!”

“I’m just going to say hello,” Eric said. “Go get the lanterns.” And before either of them could protest any further, he pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The cool interior was filled with the sweet scent of ice cream and toasted cones. Cherie looked up and smiled at him as she finished with the couple at the counter. The only other people in the shop were a woman and a little boy who sat at one of the small round tables, eating dishes of ice cream. Eric walked up to the counter, suddenly feeling as if he were six years old. Instead of looking at Cherie, he found himself staring at the variously colored squares of fudge that were laid out in the case.

“Hi,” Cherie said.

“Hi.” Eric tried to look up, and failed. Now his heart was pounding even harder than when he’d been in the secret room that afternoon. Except that this afternoon it had been exciting. Now he just felt like an idiot. “I—I think I’d like some fudge,” he stammered. “Is it good?” Is it good? he echoed silently to himself. Bigger idiot!

“It really is. Want a taste?”

Eric managed to nod, and pointed at a dark chocolate slab that was studded with nuts.

Cherie sliced off a bite and handed Eric a square of wax paper with the taste of fudge on it. “I’ll take a hunk of that,” he said.

Cherie’s brow rose. “You haven’t even tasted it yet.”

Eric felt himself blushing. “Don’t need to. You said it’s good.”

Cherie rolled her eyes, but smiled. “How much do you want?”

Eric shrugged.

Cherie sliced off a chunk, wrapped it up, and put it into a little white bag. “On the house,” she whispered as she handed it to him. “What are you doing later?”

“I’m going to—I’ve got to do some—” He fell silent for a moment, then: “Hey, do you know anything about Hector Darby?”

“Dr. Darby?” Cherie replied, and Eric nodded. “Sure.” She wiped her hands on a white cloth and leaned in against the counter. “He used to own Pinecrest.”

Eric nodded again. “Yeah, I know.”

“So what do you want to know about him?”

The bell on the door dinged, and Eric saw Cherie’s eyes flick to the door, then back to him, disappointment clear in her expression. “Uhoh,” she whispered, then stood up straight. “Hi, Kayla. Hi, Chris.”

“Hey, Cherie,” Kayla Banks said.

Eric turned to see a pretty brunette about his own age, holding hands with a tall, skinny kid. Then he recalled that the skinny kid had been with Adam Mosler his first day in town, when he and Marci were walking Moxie.

Eric held up the white bag. “Thanks,” he said, turning around to leave. But just before he reached the door, it opened and Adam Mosler himself walked in.

“’Bye, Eric,” Cherie called. “See you at the dance Friday night.”

Eric’s heart skipped a beat, but his gut knotted as he saw the expression Cherie’s words brought to Adam Mosler’s eyes. Then he decided he’d had enough of Adam Mosler. “I’ll be there,” he called back over his shoulder.

And Mosler walked right into him, bumping him hard with his chest, knocking him against a table, which tipped over onto a couple of chairs, then crashed to the floor.

The woman with the little boy looked up in alarm.

Wishing that he’d just kept his mouth shut and ducked past Mosler, Eric apologized to the woman and quickly picked up the fallen furniture.

Meanwhile, Adam Mosler regarded him with an evil sneer. “Oh, gee, excuse me all to hell,” he said, his tone emphasizing the sarcasm of his words.

Eric saw Kent Newell and Tad Sparks walking up outside, carrying plastic bags from the sporting goods store, and he knew it would be better to get past Mosler before Kent decided to get involved. “Apology accepted,” he muttered to Adam, and pushed the door open.

Too late. “Was that guy hassling you again?” Kent demanded. “I can kick his ass, you know. And I can do it right now.”

“No. Let’s just go.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure,” Eric said. “Let’s just not get into anything now, okay?” Before Kent could argue, Eric relieved him of the pizza box and started toward the dinghy dock at the marina.

Kent glanced back at Adam Mosler once more, but then turned and followed Eric and Tad to the dock. Though part of him wanted to punch Adam Mosler’s lights out, another, far stronger, part of him wanted to get back into the secret room hidden in the carriage house at Pinecrest.

Already, Kent thought he could hear voices whispering to him.

Voices that wanted something.

But what?

Soon, he was sure, he would know.

All of them would know.

T
HE TINGLING SENSATION
began to come over Kent even before he’d stepped through the door into the hidden room, and by the time he actually followed Eric and Tad over the threshold, every nerve in his body seemed to be vibrating with an energy he’d never felt before. He set the lantern on the desk, pumped it up, then carefully lit it with a wooden match from the box they’d found in the kitchen. As he adjusted the flow of fuel, the orange flame around the mantle disappeared as the mantle itself began to emit a blinding white light that banished the shadows from most of the room.

A few seconds later Tad set the second lantern on the old three-legged table, lit it, adjusted the flame, then straightened up as the new lantern washed away what few shadows were left. Yet even though the room was now flooded with bright light, its feeling hadn’t changed at all, and Tad shivered as a sense of anticipation flooded over him.

Something was about to happen.

He could
feel
it.

His eyes fixed on the ledger that still lay on the table, open to Hector Darby’s final entry, and as he gazed at the thick tome, Tad felt as if he could almost hear Darby’s voice whispering inside his head. “It feels so weird in here,” he breathed. “It’s like I’m on a roller coaster that’s almost at the top. Know how that feels?”

Kent Newell barely glanced at him, but Eric nodded. “Like you sort of wish you hadn’t gotten on in the first place, but you don’t really want to stop, either.”

“So what do we do?” Kent asked. “Where do we start?”

Eric’s eyes focused on the ledger. “Let’s see if we can match any of the stuff in the room to what he wrote in the book.” He rested his hand on the Formica surface of the broken table. “See if there’s anything in there about this thing.”

“How’m I supposed to know what I’m looking for?” Kent asked as he turned back the pages of the old ledger. “I can’t even figure out what half of these things mean, and even if I find a table, how’re we going to know it’s the right one?”

Eric moved around the table, then bent down to look at its underside. Taped to the inside of the table’s frame, he found a small tag. Pulling it loose, he stood up and held the tag so the light of one of the lanterns fell full on it. “It’s from Plainfield,” he said. “It’s got some numbers on it, but I don’t know what they mean.”

“Let me see,” Tad said. He peered closely at the tag, then: “It’s an auction tag. I’ve been to some with my mom. They put these tags on everything. The number just means which lot it was at the auction.”

“Well, here’s something from Plainfield,” Kent said, poring over the ledger. “But it still doesn’t make any sense.”

Eric and Tad moved toward Kent, flanking him on either side and peering over his shoulder at the entry in the ledger:

7/11 acq table (#36) frm est. sale Milwaukee $10,350. Bargain.

“Ten thousand dollars?” Tad said. “That can’t be for this. It’s gotta be for something else. Is that right?”

“Gotta be that table,” Eric said. “Same—what did you call it?—lot number? Thirty-six is what’s on the tag.”

Kent reread the line, following it along with his finger. “That’s nuts,” he said. “Old Darby must have been some kind of wacko.”

Eric went back to the scarred Formica table and ran his hands over its surface, feeling not only the cracks and chips, but something else as well.

A faint tingling feeling, the same feeling he got from the ledger when he first found it on the bookshelf. Almost like electricity flowing from the table into his fingers. He stood perfectly still, savoring the odd sensation until Tad’s voice broke through his reverie.

“What about this doctor’s bag?” Tad said, and Eric finally moved away from the table and started pulling the drawers of the old Victorian desk open one by one as Kent thumbed through the ledger.

“Here it is,” Kent said, pointing to a single line in the middle of one of the pages so Tad could read it as well.

1/5 acq phys valise complete frm J. Stackworth, GBR £34,670. Beauty.

“I don’t get it,” Tad said. He picked up the leather valise and shook it upside down.

Nothing came out.

“He wouldn’t have used something this expensive himself, would he?”

“He was a shrink,” Kent said. “They don’t even carry bags, do they? Besides, this one’s got to be at least a hundred years old. And it’s all beat up. What would make it worth that kind of money?”

“Wait a second,” Eric said from behind them. “What’s this?” He set a small bundle on the table. It was wrapped in layers of black oilcloth and tied with twine so rotten that it broke apart as he put the bundle down. “It was in the bottom drawer of the desk.”

“Open it up,” Kent said.

Eric looked up at him for a long moment, and Kent thought he saw a flicker of something in Eric’s eyes. Then, very slowly, Eric began to unroll the small bundle.

When he unfolded the last layer, a complete set of surgical instruments lay exposed, which, in contrast to the scuffed and battered bag on the table, lay shining and glinting in the lamplight as if they were brand new.

Kent picked up a scalpel, feeling its heft and balance. The curved blade flashed like a mirror in the light.

“Look at this old shot needle,” Tad said, picking up a metal hypodermic casing, still with the enormous slant-ended needle attached. He touched it to the end of his finger.

“Be careful with that,” Kent said.

“There’s all kinds of stuff here,” Eric said, picking up first a retractor, then a spreader. There was a whole array of instruments, as if someone had put together an entire surgical kit. As he touched each of them, Eric felt the same flow of energy that had come from the table on which the instruments now lay.

“What’s this?” Tad asked, reaching for a small bit of something brown and dried.

“No!” Eric said, and hit his hand away. “Leave it alone. And give me back the hypo. And the scalpel. They need to all be kept together.” He looked over at the valise, which now seemed to have a glow emanating from it. “They need to be back inside the bag.”

Tad pushed the leather valise across the table to him, and as Tad and Kent watched, Eric very gently, one by one, placed the instruments inside it.

When he was finished, Eric closed the bag and snapped the catch, but his eyes remained fixed on it.

“You okay?” Kent asked after several seconds had passed.

Eric finally looked up at the other boys and smiled. “I feel great,” he said.

Outside, Moxie began barking.

“Jeez,” Eric said with a shiver. “Moxie’s out. What time is it?”

Kent looked at his watch, then looked at it again.

Once again they had lost track of the time.

“It’s five to eleven,” he said, his voice hollow.

“Oh, man,” Eric said. “My parents are home.”

Quickly, they doused the lanterns, pulled the plywood back into place across the doorway, and left the carriage house. Eric led them around the back of the structure and along the edge of the woods, so when they finally walked up the lawn, it would look to his parents as if they were coming up from the lake.

His mother was silhouetted in the kitchen light as she held the door open for his father, who carried a sleeping Marci in from the car.

“It’s eleven o’clock,” she whispered loudly as the boys came up to the house. “Time for you to come in the house, Eric, and time for Kent and Tad to go home.”

Eric nodded a good-bye to Kent and Tad, who took off toward the lakefront trail that would take them to their houses, then stepped into the bright light of the kitchen. He didn’t want to talk to his mother, but neither did he want her to wonder if he’d been out drinking by going too quickly up to his room. He compromised by moving to the refrigerator and fishing out a Coke.

“What’d you three do tonight?” Merrill asked.

“Not much. Went into town for pizza. Hung out.”

“You missed a good dinner at the club.”

Eric shrugged. “It’s okay,” he said, picking up the Coke and taking a sip. “I’m pretty tired.”

Merrill Brewster smiled at her son. “It’s late. Why don’t you go on up to bed?”

“Yeah,” Eric agreed, moving toward the door. “Think I will.”

Eric walked quickly and quietly up the stairs and closed the door to his room. He didn’t want to wake up Marci, nor did he want to talk with his father. He just wanted to think about what he and Kent and Tad had found in the hidden room.

Junk—what looked like absolutely worthless junk—had been bought for unbelievably high prices, prices he could barely even imagine.