In the Dark of the Night (32 page)

“Forty.”

The single word echoed in Eric’s mind, but then, as the last glowing embers fell from the sky, silence finally fell over him, too.

The voices vanished.

Then, very slowly, the sounds of reality returned.

All around him, Eric heard people howling and screaming, but this time it wasn’t because of the fireworks from above.

Now it was because of the horror they were discovering all around them.

But inside, all was still quiet.

No more voices shouted in his head.

He looked down at his hands, still clinging to the bloody axe.

His legs began to tremble.

He took one stumbling step toward Tad and Kent, but his legs wouldn’t work, and he sank to the ground, every ounce of his strength drained away, every scrap of energy gone.

He barely felt the quilt his mother wrapped around his shoulders, barely noticed as someone took the axe from his hands.

“It’s okay,” he heard someone say as he took a ragged breath and struggled against the terrible exhaustion that held him in its grip. “You did the right thing. He would’ve killed us all.”

The night began to close around him, and for a moment Eric continued to struggle against the gathering darkness, but then he gave in and let himself fall into the embrace of sleep.

Tonight, no bad dreams would come.

E
RIC BREWSTER MADE
a right turn off the highway, following the sign for Phantom Lake. Though it had been only five years since he, Kent Newell, and Tad Sparks had been up here, nothing looked the same.

Or at least it didn’t look the way he remembered it.

Last time he’d been up this far north, it had been with his parents and his sister, and they’d been intending to spend the whole summer at the lake.

Instead it had been barely two weeks.

Two weeks that were still, even after five years, etched in his memory as vividly as if they had happened only a week ago.

Except that even though the memories were vivid, he still wasn’t exactly sure what had really happened.

“Just three more miles,” he announced, breaking the silence that had hung in the car for the last hour—an hour during which, Eric was sure, Kent and Tad had been as involved with their memories as he had been with his own. Yet so far none of them had even mentioned the real reason they were here, just as they had maintained a near silence about those two weeks through their last year of high school and the four years of college that had followed.

The same near silence had hung not only over the three boys, but over Eric’s family as well. That Fourth of July had been hardest for Marci. For more than a year she had awakened almost every night with nightmares about a wild-eyed man with a flowing beard coming after her with an axe, waking the whole family with her screams. But eventually the nightmares lost their power, and she hadn’t even mentioned one in the last few months.

His mother, on the other hand, was still trying to overcome the terror those two weeks had instilled in her, and even now refused to leave the shelter of their home in Evanston for even a single night.

Nor would she talk about what had happened, covering her ears if anyone even mentioned Phantom Lake.

But now, as Eric, Kent, and Tad drew closer to the lake, the atmosphere in the car changed. Kent and Tad both sat up and began looking out the windows, putting their memories behind them, at least for a few minutes.

Tad leaned forward between the two front seats. “Remember Cherie?” he asked.

“Of course I remember her,” Eric said, almost too quickly.

“That’s probably why he was so hot to come on this trip,” Kent said, knowing even as he said it that Cherie Stevens had nothing at all to do with them coming up here.

“Did you two stay in touch?” Tad asked.

“She called me a couple of times,” Eric said. “But after that…” His voice trailed off as he searched the landscape for something that looked familiar, but saw nothing.

It had been too brief a time, too long ago.

“She’s probably married to that dweeb and has five kids,” Kent said.

“Adam Mosler,” Eric breathed.

“Yeah,” Tad said. “Adam Mosler. God, what a jerk. Suppose she still works at that ice cream shop? And what do you bet Mosler’s working at the gas station?”

Eric shrugged as he maneuvered the car into the bend that would feed them directly onto Main Street. “We’re about to find out.”

But as they came out of the bend and the village appeared before them, nothing looked any more familiar than it had when they’d gotten off the highway a few minutes ago.

The Phantom Lake they had expected to see had vanished.

Vanished almost without a trace.

The buildings were still there, of course, but they looked nothing like they had five years earlier.

At least half of them were boarded up, and even those that weren’t had a weather-beaten, unkempt look to them. Paint was peeling, exposing graying wood beneath, and what awnings were still in place were sagging, torn, or both.

In spite of the warm summer day, there were no crowds of tourists wandering the streets.

No one wandering the sidewalks with an ice cream cone in one hand and shopping bags in the other.

No blankets on the pavilion lawn.

No picnicking families on vacation.

No children splashing in the water, no one waterskiing.

The marina held only a couple of fishing boats, both of which looked as worn and tired as the village itself; all the other slips were vacant.

A sodden mass of trash lay mounded against the base of the pavilion.

Unconsciously, Eric slowed to the pace of a funeral cortege as they crept along the deserted street.

“There’s the ice cream shop,” Tad said softly, pointing. “Or at least that’s where it was.”

Sheets of plywood now covered the plate glass windows, and the peeling sign hung askew.

In the next block, they spotted another sign on another vanished business, one that had faded even more than that of the ice cream shop, but was still barely legible:

CAROL’S ANTIQUES

“Jesus,” Kent breathed. “What the hell happened to this place?” Yet even as he asked, he was fairly sure he knew the answer.

The same thing that had happened to them had happened to the town. Except the three of them had been able to leave right away.

The rest of the town had not.

“I wonder how long it took?” Tad asked, knowing that all three of them were holding the same thought, just as they had since childhood.

“I don’t know,” Eric replied. “But I know who could tell us. If she’s still here.” A few seconds later he turned into the library parking lot, where only one car sat by itself.

Less than a minute later they pulled the library door open and went inside, their footsteps echoing in the silent building.

The librarian’s nameplate still read
MISS EDNA BLOOMFIELD,
just as it had five years ago, but no one sat at the desk.

“Hello?” Kent called.

A small voice came out from between massive shelves of books: “I’m here!” Then Miss Bloomfield herself appeared, patting her hair nervously. She was exactly the same as Eric remembered her, but even older and tinier. She hurried toward her desk, rubbing her hands briskly as she sat down. After adjusting the single pencil that sat on the desk, she looked up at the three young men. “Oh, my goodness! We don’t often get patrons anymore. I tend to talk to myself, so I didn’t hear you come in.”

“We were wondering if maybe you could tell us exactly what happened here,” Kent asked. He glanced at Tad and Eric, but when neither of them said anything, he spoke again. “Our families used to come here when we were kids, and now—” He hesitated, but found no better way to say it. “It looks like the town’s been deserted.”

Edna Bloomfield sagged visibly in her chair, and when she replied, she didn’t quite meet their eyes. “It was something that happened about five years ago.” She shook her head sadly, took a deep breath, then went on, but now her voice was barely audible. “Twenty-four people were killed,” she whispered. “And I don’t know how many more were hurt. It was terrible…just terrible.” Finally, she managed to look directly at them. “The town never recovered. First the tourists stopped coming—I mean they just stopped, overnight—and the people started moving away.”

“The crazy guy,” Eric murmured almost to himself. “The one with the axe.”

Miss Bloomfield’s head bobbed and she bit her lip. Then she took another breath, straightened herself in her chair, and folded her hands on the desk. “It was a horrible thing,” she said. “But I’m an optimist, and always have been. The town will come back to life. All things have their cycles.”

All things have their cycles.

The thought sent an icy shiver down Eric’s spine. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a question came from his lips. “Whatever happened to the axe? Do you know?”

Kent and Tad glanced at each other uneasily.

“Now, why would you want to know that?” Miss Bloomfield replied, but before Eric could formulate a reply, she leaned forward as if to confide some kind of secret. “But it’s the strangest thing! The axe simply disappeared.” She spread her hands wide, as if still barely able to believe it. “Right out of the sheriff’s office. One day it was there, the next day it wasn’t.” She shook her head, her expression turning sorrowful. “Sheriff Ruston lost his job over it, of course. It was quite the scandal. And, I guess that was the beginning of the end, really. The thought of that terrible axe still being out there somewhere…” Edna Bloomfield’s voice trailed off, and she shuddered as if a draft had just chilled her.

“But you stayed,” Tad said.

“I wouldn’t know where else to go,” the ancient librarian replied. “I suppose when I die, they’ll close this old place, at least until Phantom Lake picks up again.”

“What about Cherie—” Kent Newell began, then faltered and looked to Eric for her last name.

“Stevens,” Eric said.

“Did you know Cherie Stevens?” Miss Bloomberg asked, brightening.

All three nodded.

“The last I heard of Cherie, she and her husband had moved to Minocqua. Now, what was the name of that nice young man she married? Not that terrible Mosler boy, thank heaven. I always thought he was trouble. If you ask me, I’ve always thought he must have had something to do with…”

As Edna Bloomberg prattled on, Eric wandered away, knowing deep inside himself that whatever Adam Mosler had done over the years, he’d had nothing to do with what happened that night.

Kent Newell and Tad Sparks thanked the librarian and slipped out, joining Eric on the front porch. Edna Bloomberg’s voice could still be heard until the heavy library doors swung closed behind them.

Eric’s arms felt like lead as they got back in the car. Suddenly, he wished he’d never suggested this trip; it would have been better at least to remember the town as the beautiful place it had once been before that awful Fourth of July when everything changed. And yet even as he wished he hadn’t come, he knew the trip wasn’t over yet.

He still had to at least try to find out what had happened all those years ago when he and Kent and Tad were plagued by nightmares that turned out not to be illusions at all, but twisted refractions of things that had actually happened.

But how had they happened?

What had caused them?

“What now?” Tad asked. “And where are we going to stay? I don’t think there’s even a motel here anymore.”

“Let’s at least go out to The Pines and take a look around,” Kent suggested. “I bet it’s still the same. Then we can get a room down in Eagle River or someplace.”

Eric took a deep breath and started the car. Going out to The Pines—no, going out to Pinecrest—was what this trip was all about anyway. Though they hadn’t talked about it—not directly anyway—all of them had known that was why they had come all the way up here: to try to make sense of something that he—that
all
of them—only vaguely remembered. But if he didn’t remember those things—if he didn’t close that particular chapter—it would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Perhaps it was different for his friends, he thought. Tad was headed for graduate school at Northwestern next year, and Kent was taking a research job in Salt Lake City. But he hadn’t quite decided on the next step of his future yet, and he knew why.

There were things he had to put to rest before he could go on.

Steeling himself against the heaviness that threatened to paralyze his arms, he steered the car out of town.

T
HE ENTRANCE SIGN
to The Pines was overgrown with weeds and green with moss, its carved letters barely legible. As Eric drove slowly down the long lane, they could see that a few of the houses—a very few—had been kept up, but the rest looked as if they’d been abandoned for years.

Kent and Tad said nothing as they passed the summer homes that had been so inviting only five years ago but now crouched in the forest, empty and sad. The farther they drove, the deeper the melancholy that hung over the area imbued the car, and when they finally came to the gates at the head of the long Pinecrest driveway, Eric almost changed his mind about turning in. Yet going back to Pinecrest wasn’t something he—or any of them—could avoid. Whatever lay at the end of the drive, he had to come to grips with it.

Had to know.

Had to remember everything that had happened, or dismiss what memories he had as nothing more than the dreams they seemed to be.

“What are you waiting for?” Kent asked, and nudged Eric’s arm.

Eric turned into the driveway and drove to the house.

It stood as solid and as foreboding as the first time he’d seen it, but even with the first look, he knew there had been no one living in the house for years. The lawn was choked with weeds, and long-dead branches still lay where they had fallen years earlier. The wind had piled leaves against the front door; the fountain was choked with a vile-looking muck.

Despite the warmth of the summer day, the house and grounds felt dark and cold.

Eric parked the car and the three of them got out, their eyes going instantly to the old carriage house.

“Remember the nightmares we used to have up here?” Tad said in a voice so quiet that his words were almost lost.

Kent nodded and began walking toward the carriage house, and without a word, Tad followed.

Eric hesitated a moment, his gaze shifting toward the edge of the woods where a handmade cross still tilted over Tippy’s tiny grave, then he, too, started toward the old brick building.