Read Online In the Dark of the Night by John Saul - Free Book Online

which wasn’t nearly as big as the one in this room, but was just the right size for her. And she liked her bedspread, and her heart-shaped pillow, and the bird feeder that hung in the oak tree outside her bedroom window. Her room at home was
hers,
and this wasn’t. This was someone else’s room. Someone old.
    And she hated it.
    She knew she’d never get used to it.
    Setting Moxie on the floor, she started casting around in her mind for some way not to have to sleep there.
    Maybe she could sleep with her mom when her dad went back to Evanston for the week.
    And maybe she could go back home with him and just come up on weekends, too.
    Or maybe—
    A movement in the reflected image of the lake in the mirror over the dresser against the far wall caught her eye, and Marci turned back to the window itself. Something
was
moving out there, barely visible through the tops of the trees, almost out of sight.
    She shifted her gaze to the boathouse, but Eric was still inside.
    Then she saw an old rowboat creep slowly into view, with something standing straight upright at its front end. As she watched, the boat slowly turned until it was pointing straight at the house, and now Marci could see that the thing in front was a big cross, like the one on top of the steeple of the Methodist church where she went to Sunday school. And sitting behind the cross, holding the oars, was an old man with a long beard.
    And he was staring right at her.
    Marci held still for a second or two as the man’s eyes seemed to bore right inside her, then she wheeled around and ran toward the stairs, already yelling. “Mom! Mom!”
    Merrill met her at the bottom of the stairs, and as Marci flew into her mother’s arms, the tears that had been building up since she first saw this horrible house finally spilled over.
    “There’s a man outside in a boat. A boat with a big cross in it! And he was staring at me.”
    Merrill hugged her daughter and smoothed her hair. “A boat with a cross?” she asked, then turned and looked through the living room and its picture window, down the front lawn to the water.
    She could see nothing but a ski boat speeding across the far side of the lake. “Honey, what are you talking about?”
    “I hate it here!” Marci wailed. “I want to go home!”
    Merrill knelt down and put her arms around the sobbing child. “It’s just going to take some getting used to,” she said. “We’re going to have a wonderful summer, you’ll see.” Sitting on the stairs, she pulled Marci close. “We’re going to have a barbecue tonight, then Daddy will build a campfire and we’ll toast marshmallows and make s’mores. That’ll be fun, won’t it?” Marci sniffled, then nodded, her face still buried in her mother’s shoulder. “And tomorrow we’ll go to town and do something even more fun. Girl stuff.”
    Marci’s sobs slowed and turned to hiccups.
    “Okay?”
    Marci nodded.
    “You want to help me set the table?”
    Marci nodded again.
    The crisis over, Merrill kissed her daughter on the forehead and dried the tears from her cheeks, and a moment later Moxie, who had followed Marci down the stairs, jumped up into Marci’s lap and licked her face.
    “That’s my girl,” Merrill said, taking her hand and leading her toward the dining room and the kitchen beyond.
    Just before she passed through the dining room door she glanced once more through the living room window, but everything seemed normal, just as before.
    A boat with a cross? What on earth could Marci have been talking about? But whatever it was, it was gone now.
    Or had never been there at all.

C HERIE STEVENS RINSED out the sticky bar towel after wiping down the tables in the ice cream shop for the last time and was about to hang it on the faucet to dry when she heard the ding of the door chime.
    She’d forgotten to lock the door, and now another customer was coming in. But when she saw who it was, the frown she’d been preparing morphed into something that wasn’t