by John Saul
Edna Bloomfield gazed up at them, her eyes moving from Eric to Kent to Tad, then back to Eric, and Eric could almost see the gears turning in her head as she appraised them and decided how much—if anything—to tell them. Finally, she leaned back in her chair, took off her glasses, and let them hang on a chain around her neck. “Well,” she said, her voice rising slightly, “you boys seem to have happened onto the only two mysteries of Phantom Lake.” She clucked her tongue sympathetically. “That poor girl.” Now her voice dropped again, and she leaned forward, glancing in both directions as if to be certain nobody but the three boys was listening. “She was murdered, you know.”
“Murdered?” Tad echoed. “But there was nothing about that in the paper. At least nothing we could find.”
“This is a small town,” Edna Bloomfield said. “We rely on tourism.” She glanced around once more, and her voice dropped still further. “So sometimes everything doesn’t get into the paper. But everyone knows she was strangled, even if Gerry Hofstetter at the paper didn’t publish anything. And who can blame him? He didn’t want to scare people. And why hurt the town? After all, it isn’t like one of our people did it.”
“Then who did?” Tad asked.
Edna Bloomfield waved her hand at the question as if it were a pesky fly. “Well, I’m sure I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows. Some reporter from Milwaukee came and poked around, trying to make everyone think it was one of those killers you hear so much about these days.”
An image of Old Man Logan and his strange boat with the cross mounted in the bow suddenly rose in Tad Sparks’s mind.
Miss Bloomfield put the index cards aside and leaned closer to the boys. “I heard he even suggested our nice Dr. Darby might have done it, just because he used to work with those killers at the hospital down in Madison. But none of us ever believed that, of course. Dr. Darby was such a fine man. He was a patron of this library, you know. Always in here, working on his research.”
“What kind of research?” Eric asked.
“Well, his specialty, of course,” Edna Bloomfield replied, as if Eric should have known. “Those terrible killers—what do they call them?” She glanced around distractedly, as if expecting to find the words she was looking for tucked away in some far corner of the library, then brightened as she found them. “Serial killers! Yes, that was it. My goodness—he used to come in every week, it seems like, always looking for new books about the psychology of murderers and all that sort of thing. Of course, I tried to buy all of them since he was so generous to our library, but it seemed I could never keep up. He always knew of one I didn’t have, and oh how I’d scramble to get it for him. Now, of course, he’d get them all on the Internet, but back then…”
Her voice trailed off and she seemed to disappear into another world. Then she straightened up in her chair, and when she spoke again, her voice was much brighter. “I always liked Dr. Darby. I considered him to be Phantom Lake’s only genuine eligible bachelor. He was very nice and very well-respected. He had a fine mind.” She took a deep breath, replaced her glasses on her nose, and smiled up at the boys. “But he’s gone, and we’ll probably never find out what happened to him, will we?”
As she picked up her cards and began shuffling through them once again, Eric saw a sadness replace the smile in her eyes.
THE LAST OF the twilight faded quickly as Kent walked off the road onto a path that seemed to plunge directly into the densest part of the woods. In moments the forest had closed around him like a shroud, and a veil of fog seemed to have come out of nowhere. Even though he was only a few steps ahead of Eric, Eric still found himself barely able to see the other boy’s back as they made their way along what both Kent and Tad had insisted was a shortcut home. Squinting hard, Eric kept his eyes on the ground to avoid the roots, rocks, and thick mulch of rotted leaves that it seemed were conspiring to trip him. The path appeared to be little more than a game trail, one so seldom used and so overgrown that even the animals seemed to have abandoned it.
Soon the darkness obscured even the path, and now Eric had to rely on the sound of Kent’s footsteps in front of him—and Tad’s behind him—to keep him on the trail.
His mother was going to be furious that he wasn’t home yet.
Worse, she’d be worried, and once she started worrying, there’d be no stopping her. “Maybe we should have taken the boat to town,” he said.
Before either Kent or Tad could say anything, a twig snapped.
Eric froze, and a second later Tad’s hand closed on his shoulder, startling him so badly he whirled around, ready to defend himself.
“Did you hear that?” Tad whispered. “Someone’s behind us!”
Unbidden—and unwanted—images rose in Eric’s mind, and for a moment he was caught once more in the dream he’d had only a few nights earlier, when he was prowling through the same kind of darkness and mist that surrounded him now. He tried to force the memory down, but even as he reminded himself that he was only a few hundred yards from home, something in his memory kept trying to drag him back to the streets of London.
London, and Jack the Ripper.
“There’s nobody there,” Kent said, his low, confident voice staving off the panic that had nearly overwhelmed Eric. “Just keep going.” Then Kent increased his pace, leaving Eric to try to keep up, stumbling along in the dark, Tad close behind him.
But a few seconds later another sound came out of the darkness, this time from the other side of the path, and all the images Eric had banished came flooding back. Now Tippy’s torn body floated in the night, and he could almost see bloodstained blades glinting in the darkness.
And what about the girl they’d read about only a few hours ago, who’d drowned in the lake?
If she’d really drowned at all.
What if the rumors were true?
What if someone had killed her?
And what if he was still out there?
What if he’d seen them in the library, and knew what they were doing?
Another twig snapped, closer this time.
From a few yards behind, Eric heard Tad utter a tiny yelp, and a second later Tad’s hand clamped onto Eric’s biceps so hard it sent a spasm of pain right down to his fingertips.
“Something’s out there,” Tad whispered. “It’s—” Before he could finish, a low growl came from their right, instantly followed by a violent thrashing in the brush.
“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 hate those guys.”
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.
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 on the lamp base that still sat on the broken table. “The doorway was bricked up, so Darby must not have wanted anybody to know about this stuff.”
Kent shook his head. “If he really didn’t want anyone to find it, why didn’t he destroy it?” He grasped the handles of the stuck drawer again, preparing for a final assault. “I have this weird feeling he left all this for someone to find. And we found it.”
“Fate,” Eric breathed, not even conscious that he’d spoken the word aloud.
Kent put his weight into a massive tug on the drawer. It held for a second or two, then the front panel split as the lock gave way. Kent staggered, then regained his balance and looked inside the now gaping drawer. “Okay,” he said, reaching inside and pulling out a long, thin object wrapped in bubble wrap. “What do you suppose this is?” Before anyone could reply, he peeled away the tape, then unwound the bubble wrap. He held the object up, and all three of the boys recognized it immediately.
“The missing table leg,” Eric said. “Weird! Why wrap it up like that?”
“And why lock it in a file drawer?” Tad Sparks added.
“Maybe he just never had a chance to finish putting it together,” Kent said. “Here. Hold the table up while I move these boxes.”
Eric took hold of the table, and instantly the flow of energy increased, as if the table itself were vibrating with some kind of excitement.
Kent slid away the two crates that held up the corner of the table and crouched low to fit the leg. “It just screws into a bracket,” he said. “Hold the table up a little higher.”
With Eric lifting the corner, Tad steadied the heavy lamp base so it wouldn’t fall.
A moment later the leg was attached and the table stood whole.
Eric felt a tingle in his scalp as the dark energy in the room—and in his mind and body—rose hi
gher. As if guided by some unseen hand, he opened the ledger and flipped its pages back to the entry for the table.
He turned the book so Tad and Kent could again read the entry.
7/11 acq table (#36) frm JD est. sale Milwaukee. $10,350. Bargain.
As the words penetrated, Tad leaned against the table, his palms pressed against the Formica surface.
It felt oddly warm to his touch, as if some kind of energy were flowing directly from it into his hands. The energy seemed to heighten his senses, and suddenly he felt as if he could almost make out exactly what the voices that had been murmuring on the fringes of his consciousness were saying.
Almost, but not quite.
Tad’s gaze shifted to the two crates that Kent had moved out from under the table, and as it did, the voices seemed to encourage him.
It was as if they wanted him to open those crates.
But something inside Tad didn’t want to open them. Indeed, he didn’t want to know anything more about what else might be in this room.
He didn’t want to have anything more to do with it.
Most of all, he didn’t want to have any more nightmares.
Yet despite his instincts, Tad found himself moving toward the crates, following the pull of the energy, obeying the urging of the voices.
The voices murmured their approval.
He lifted the lid on the top crate.
Nothing but Styrofoam peanuts.
He scooped them away, reluctant to plunge his hand into the depths of the crate. But slowly, almost against his own will, his hand disappeared into the pool of packing material, and he felt himself groping carefully around inside.
His fingers touched something smooth and cylindrical. He pulled it out, shedding packing peanuts all over the floor. “Look at this,” he said, gazing at the object as if his eyes must be deceiving him. “It’s just a roll of trash bags.”
“Trash bags?” Eric looked at the roll of black bags in Tad’s hand, then stepped over to the ledger, which was still open on the table. “Is there anything else in there?”