by John Saul
Trusted him as Dr. Darby had trusted him.
And he had failed.
“Sorry,” he muttered, his head hanging as he took off his jacket. Even the energy to talk had been drained from him, and all he could do was repeat the single word. “Sorry.”
He hung the jacket on a nail and lay down on his bed.
The old dog went to his bed and collapsed with a groan.
But the crow jumped from his perch, hopped up a series of boxes to the jacket, and pecked at the pocket.
“Go, crow,” Logan said, and waved an exhausted hand at it.
But the crow was insistent, and as Logan watched, it burrowed its head deep inside the jacket’s pocket and emerged a moment later, a bloody chunk of meat clutched in its beak.
The meat fell to the floor, and the crow jumped to the ground and began pecking at it.
The old dog hauled himself to his wobbly legs and made his way over to the meal.
“Good,” Logan whispered as he watched the two broken creatures rip and tear at the scrap. But then, as the meat slowly disappeared into the animals’ mouths, questions began to drift through the mists in his mind.
He had no memory of scavenging that night.
He hadn’t even been to town.
Then where had he gotten meat?
Didn’t matter. The dog and the crow were fed.
And the fullness in his gut told him he, too, had eaten not long ago, even though he didn’t remember that, either.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said, this time uttering the thought out loud.
He closed his eyes and let sleep overtake him.
RUSTY RUSTON FIXED Adam Mosler with his meanest, most authoritative stare, the one that never failed to work on recalcitrant teenagers. Though Adam was a troublemaker, Rusty didn’t think he was a bad kid, and he was pretty sure the stare would get the truth out of him. The thing was, Adam seemed utterly unfazed by being called to his office, and he certainly hadn’t crumpled under any of his intimidation techniques. So either he was telling the truth about the last time he saw Ellis or he was so jaded by his father, who took the meaning of the word “mean” to a level Rusty could barely even imagine, that the stare truly didn’t bother him at all.
Still, he had to take a final shot at it. “So tell me one more time what Ellis said when he walked away,” he growled, doing his best to make his voice sound as threatening as possible.
Adam’s sigh told Ruston he’d succeeded only in boring the boy, and Mosler’s shrug was actually dismissive. “I’ve already told you a million times.”
“Tell me once more,” Ruston said, “and then you can go.”
Adam rolled his eyes impatiently, but began the recitation one more time. “Ellis was drunk. Said he hated this town, and everybody in it. Said he was leaving and we’d never see him again. Then he left.”
“Left for where?”
“Seemed like he was walking toward town.” Adam hesitated, then: “But I don’t really know—I was busy with Cherie.”
Ruston leaned tiredly back in his chair. This was exactly the same story Cherie Stevens had already told him, except that of course Adam wasn’t mentioning the part where she’d brushed him off. “Okay,” he said. “You can go.”
Adam stood up. “You want to know what I think?” he asked. Ruston shook his head, but Adam went on anyway. “You should talk to those summer kids out at Pinecrest.”
“And why should I do that?” Ruston asked, once again fixing Adam Mosler with the stare. Almost to his own surprise, this time it worked; Mosler actually flushed slightly.
“Well, some of us were having a little fun with them the other night,” he said, some of the bravado fading from his voice. “And they didn’t like it.”
“What do you mean, ‘fun’?”
Mosler spread his hands dismissively. “They were walking through the woods and we made bear sounds and scared them.”
“That’s all?” Ruston asked, his eyes boring into Adam now. “You just made noises? Nothing else? Nothing at all?”
Mosler’s blush deepened. “All right, maybe we tossed a rock or two. But it’s not like we hurt them.”
“But you figure maybe it made them mad enough to jump Ellis Langstrom?”
“Hey, I didn’t say they did anything,” Adam replied. “All’s I said was you should talk to them.”
“I will,” Ruston assured him. “And I’ll also ask them exactly what happened the other night, and you’d better hope their story matches yours.” As Adam started toward the door, Ruston said, “I don’t want to hear any more about you hassling the summer people, Mosler, and you need to hear me good about this. I’m not going to put up with it. Not even once more. I’ll bust you for criminal mischief, and you can spend some time in juvie hall down in Irma. That sound like fun?”
Adam shook his head, but didn’t look too worried.
“Go,” Ruston sighed, waving Mosler out of his office, and wishing he hadn’t heard about Eric Brewster and his friends. The last thing he wanted to do was go out to Pinecrest and scare the summer visitors with a story about a missing kid. But now he had no choice—Ellis was definitely missing, and he had to follow up on Adam’s story. And he had to do it gently, without getting the visitors, the town, or especially the mayor, riled up. He was going to have to muster a whole boatload of tact for this one.
HALF AN HOUR later—at precisely ten o’clock, which would mean he would be interrupting neither breakfast nor lunch—Ruston turned his cruiser up the long Pinecrest driveway, silently rehearsing the questions he wanted to ask Eric Brewster and consciously bringing a pleasant expression to his face.
He walked up to the front door and rang the bell, and no more than fifteen seconds later Merrill answered.
Remembering their last encounter, where the sight of him in a uniform made her think that something had happened to her husband, Rusty offered her a smile and asked to see Eric. “He’s not in trouble—I just heard a story about some of the town kids hassling him and his friends the other night and wanted to check it out.”
Though Merrill’s expression tightened slightly, she invited him in and led him to the dining room, where Ruston realized there was one meal he’d forgotten about: brunch. Gathered around the dining table were not only Eric and his little sister, but two other boys his age, and two women who he assumed were their mothers. He also assumed that the boys had been with Eric the other night, when Adam said he and his own friends tried to scare them in the woods.
Merrill made a quick series of introductions, then waited expectantly. Picking up his cue, Ruston got directly to the point, but decided to direct his first words to all three of the boys and see what happened. “I heard some of the boys in town tried to give you guys a scare in the woods the other night.”
Three pairs of eyes darted toward one another, then Eric nodded. “Something like that, yes.”
“All three of you?” He indicated the two other boys with a nod of his head.
Eric nodded.
“Anything come of that?”
“Do you mean did we kick their butts?” Kent asked.
Ellen glared at her son. “Kent!”
The sheriff, though, smiled at the three boys. “Basically, yes, that’s what I’m asking. And I’m not saying you’re in trouble if you did, either. From what I’ve already heard, it sounds like they had it coming to them.”
“Well, we didn’t,” Kent said, “but we should have.”
“You didn’t come all the way out here just to ask my son if he was in a fight,” Merrill Brewster said. “Something else is going on, isn’t it?”
Ruston shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other, but saw no point in not telling them what they were bound to hear within a few hours anyway. “Ellis Langstrom has been missing since night before last.”
Tad Sparks paled and slumped in his chair.
“Ellis Langstrom?” Ashley Sparks breathed, her face as pale as her son’s. “Carol Langstrom’s son?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ruston said.
“Oh, dear, that’s terrible.” Ashley said, sinking into one of the empty chairs at the table. “Poor Carol. I’d better call her.” She looked back up at the sheriff. “Where is he? I mean, what happened to him?”
“That’s what I’m trying to determine.”
“Well, we sure didn’t have anything to do with it,” Kent said.
“All that happened was that they were trying to scare us the other night in the woods,” Eric explained. “You know—cracking twigs, and growls and moans and all that kind of stuff. And it worked—we got spooked and they got their laugh. But that was it—it was nothing, really.” He looked at his mother, who was frowning at him as if there must be something he wasn’t talking about. “Really. Nothing happened at all!”
Kent turned to the sheriff. “And if I was gonna make someone disappear, it’d be Adam Mosler, not Langstrom.”
“Kent!”
Ellen Newell looked like she might slap her son, and Ruston quickly smiled at her. “Some of our kids can get kind of frisky in the summer. School’s out and they don’t get much supervision from their folks.”
Tad was still slumped in his chair, staring into space. Nothing about either his posture or expression suggested guilt. In fact, he looked more scared than anything else, and none of the boys showed any obvious cuts or bruises on their faces or their hands. At least not the kind they would have had if they’d gotten into a fight with Adam Mosler and Chris McIvens, and he was sure that Kent Newell’s remark about going after Mosler rather than Ellis Langstrom was absolutely true. Ellis might have gone along with Mosler’s harassment, but if it came down to a fight, Ellis was far more likely to run than stand. Which, in Ruston’s book anyway, at least made him smarter than his two friends.
“Well, I guess that’s it for now, then,” he said. “If you hear or see anything, give the office a call, okay?”
“Of course,” Merrill said. She walked the sheriff out the door to the edge of the porch, then put a halting hand on his arm. When she spoke, he could hear the fear in her voice. “You don’t think an animal did something to him? I mean…” Her voice trailed off, her eyes shifted to a spot near the woods, and after a second or two she spoke again, though her words were barely audible. “I was just thinking about our cat.”
He followed her gaze to a makeshift cross over a little plot of cleared earth near the garage, and a shiver ran the length of his spine as he remembered the way the cat had been ripped open, gutted, and left on his doorstep.
Surely there couldn’t be any connection between that and—
He cut the thought short, unwilling to complete it. “I think some kind of animal got your cat,” he said quietly, “but between you and me, I still think Ellis took off for Madison or Chicago or someplace. I’m pretty sure his mother will hear from him within a few days.”
Merrill shook her head sadly. “Every mother’s nightmare. I’m not sure I could stand it at all.”
“Sorry to have bothered you,” Ruston said. “Try to enjoy your day, okay? I’m sure everything’s going to be just fine, and you can be proud that your boy and his friends were big enough to just ignore Mosler’s crowd. I wish we had more kids around here like yours.”
Merrill managed a smile and stepped back to the doorway, staying there until he had driven out of the driveway. He could still see her in his rearview mirror as he made the turn toward the highway.
There was a woman, he decided, who worried too much. Today, though, he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe she wasn’t right to worry.
What if the same thing that had happened to the Brewsters’ cat had, indeed, happened to Ellis Langstrom?
Rusty Ruston didn’t even want to think about it.
TAD SPARKS PEERED uncertainly around the small clearing. It looked sort of like the one where Moxie had found the heavy stick the day before yesterday, but so had the two others they’d already explored in the hour since they escaped from their mothers. But he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to find the stick or not.
“It’s got to be here somewhere,” he heard Kent Newell say. “I know it was right around here. It was under a—”
“That’s the third time you’ve said that,” Tad cut in sourly. “We all know it was under a bush, but all the bushes look alike.” He turned to Eric. “You sure you just dropped it, or did you throw it?”
Eric shrugged. “I thought I dropped it, but now I’m not sure.”
“Even if we find it, what are we going to do with it?”
Kent looked at Tad as if he was an idiot. “Tell the sheriff, of course. I mean, what if someone used it to kill that kid?”
“Doesn’t it seem like maybe if we were going to do that we should have done it the day before yesterday?” Tad countered.
“Well, it doesn’t matter anyway, because it’s not here.” Kent sighed. “Who knows? Maybe a bear found it and started gnawing on it or something.”
“Or whoever left it here came back for it,” Eric suggested. “And even if we found it, so what? I mean, it’s not like the sheriff even said someone killed that kid—”
“Can we talk about something else?” Tad broke in as the memory of his nightmare—the nightmare in which he himself had killed someone—rose up in his mind.
“How about the room?” Kent asked, and saw a flicker of fear in Tad’s eyes. “You know, the one you won’t go into anymore?” When Tad’s face reddened, he took another jab: “The one you’re too chicken to go into?”
“What about it?” Tad asked, trying to keep his voice casual, but not quite succeeding.
“Remember the lamp we found in there?”
Tad tried to shrug, but again didn’t quite succeed. “Yeah, I remember.”
“You should see the lamp shade that goes on it.”
Tad knew Kent was baiting him, and part of him wanted to simply ignore it. But there was another part of him, too, which was suddenly far stronger. “You found it?” he breathed. “You really found the lamp shade?”
Kent nodded.
“Where is it?”
“Where do you think it is?” Kent countered.
“What does it look like?”
Kent and Eric looked at each other as if deciding whether to tell him, but then a strange, puzzled look came into Eric’s eyes. “I can’t really remember,” he said, his voice so soft it was almost a whisper. “That’s weird.”
“It was—” And now Kent, too, looked uncertain. “I can’t remember, either. All I remember is that I never saw anything like it before. It was—” He shook his head, and Tad could see him groping for the right word. “It was amazing.”
As Kent spoke the words, Tad felt his resolve never to go back into that room crumble. He was going to go back into that room after all, even though the mere thought of it made his heart pound and filled his mouth with cotton.
“Okay,” he breathed. “Let’s go.”
KENT LED THE way into the carriage house, then helped Eric move the sheet of plywood, while Tad hung back in the storeroom, gazing at the darkness beyond the hidden doorway. Deep in his gut, he knew he’d come to some kind of point of no return, and now as he stood gazing into the depths of the room, a small voice inside him still cried out, pleading with him not to cross that threshold—not to step into the darkness—again.
As he hesitated, Kent and Eric stepped into the hidden chamber. But instead of lighting the lanterns, Kent turned back, an odd smile curling the corners of his mouth, his eyes fixed on Tad’s. “Look at this,” he said.
He turned the switch on the lamp and an amber glow suffused the room. But it wasn’t merely a glow—no, it was far more than a gentle light that emanated from the lamp.
It was as if the lamp had illuminated a whole new dimension within the chamber.
As if guided by an unseen force, Tad stepped into the room and moved closer to the lamp.
He reached out and tentatively touched its shade.
And as he did, he heard the familia
r chorus of murmuring voices.
He was back.
Back in the hidden room.
The voices sounded almost as warm as the soft light of the lamp felt, and finally that single voice deep inside him that had warned him away from this place fell utterly silent.
He was where he belonged.
The voices wanted him here.
Why? Why did they want him here?
He looked up at Kent and Eric, and once more stroked the lamp shade, this time almost caressing it. “This feels like leather,” he murmured, his voice sounding loud and foreign in the small room.
Eric shrugged, barely hearing Tad’s voice as he looked at the room in the soft glow of the lamplight. But it wasn’t just the light that made it different from the last time he’d been here. “It’s all of us,” he whispered, almost to himself. “It feels different with all of us here.” Moving as if in a trance—or as if he were being directed by some unseen force—Eric dropped down and sat on the floor by a stack of books, opening one of them.
Kent, too, felt the subtle difference the light—or Tad’s presence—had made. He began moving slowly among the boxes as if searching for something, but neither knowing nor wanting to know exactly what he sought.
But he would know it when he found it.
Tad finally lifted his fingertips from the lamp shade and, like Eric and Kent, gazed around the room. The soft amber light seemed to focus on something in one of the far corners.
A box.
A long box, white, like the kind flower shops used for roses.
It didn’t seem to fit in this room full of old, dusty things.
As Tad approached it, the voices grew louder, and though there were no words—at least none that he could understand—Tad knew they were guiding him.
They wanted him to go to the box.
Why? Why do they want me to have the box?
He touched the box, and one of the voices seemed to rise above the others.
Gently, he picked it up and brought it to the table.
He moved the ledger, still open to the page where the purchase of the lamp shade was recorded, to one side.