Read In the Dark of the Night for Free Online

was, Ellis would talk them out of it. So now he and Chris knocked their fists together in a gesture of solidarity—if not actual conspiracy—and went back to work, Chris to the greenhouse, and Adam to cleaning up the yard so it could be mowed.
    But now both boys felt an energy about the work that hadn’t been there before.
    They’d clean this place up, all right. But that wasn’t all they’d do.

    “Y A READY, BOY?”
    The words came out of the old man’s mouth as little more than an indistinct whisper. Not that it mattered; the old dog’s ears had failed three years ago. There wasn’t anyone else to talk to, though, so the old man just kept on talking to the dog. Not that there was much to say, either, since the old man’s mind had become almost as indistinct as his voice. Nowadays, he only remembered the important things. His name for instance.
    Logan.
    He still knew his name was Logan, and he knew he had a first name, too. Or at least he’d had one a long time ago, before the bad times.
    Now, as the sun began to drop toward the horizon, Logan gently lifted the bony old Labrador and settled him carefully onto a pile of rags in the bottom of the boat near the bow, where the dog could rest his head on the gunwale next to the rough wooden cross Logan had mounted on the boat’s bow sometime in the past. If anybody had asked Logan why the cross was there, he wouldn’t have been able to say. “Following Jesus,” he’d probably have mumbled. “Can’t be too careful, can you?” Nobody, however, had ever asked, and even if they had, they wouldn’t have paid much attention to his answer.
    Except the dog. The dog always listened, and the dog always understood. “Good boy,” Logan sighed as he transferred the weight of the animal from his arms to the floorboards of the skiff.
    Sensing more than hearing the sound of his master’s voice, the dog managed a thump of his tail as Logan stepped into the boat and used an oar to push off from the shore. As the boat drifted through the cattails and marsh grasses that choked this part of the lake, the dog managed to sit up, his grizzled muzzle lifting so he could fill his nostrils with what little breeze there was.
    Logan used one of the oars to pole the boat quietly from its hiding place in the tangle of growth out into the open water thirty yards away.
    The dog’s head swiveled, his nose pointing directly across the lake toward the small town nestled on the opposite shore, and an eager whine bubbled up from his throat. “Not today, boy,” Logan whispered. “We’re just watching tonight. Just watching…just making sure.”
    The dog turned its all but totally blind eyes toward his master’s voice, and a warm wave of affection—affection mixed with sadness—broke over Logan. The dog wasn’t going to be around much longer, and Logan was pretty sure that when the dog died, he’d die, too.
    He could keep watch for only so long.
    He and the dog could protect things for only so long, and after that someone else would have to keep watch.
    But who?
    Nobody else knew what he knew.
    Nobody else had lived what he had.
    Nobody else understood the way things really were.
    Nobody.
    Nobody but him.
    Logan rowed quietly as the setting sun painted the sky a shade of red that made him think of the hell he was certain waited for him on the day he died, and the pines turned to skeletal silhouettes that looked like fingers reaching desperately for salvation.
    A salvation that Logan knew was far beyond his reach.
    Turning away from the hopelessness of the sky, he pulled slowly on the oars, keeping close to the shoreline as the rowboat cut silently through the water. He could hear the faint putting of idling outboard motors drifting across the lake, and knew that people were still on the water, especially fishermen.
    At dusk, though, the chances of his being seen were slim.
    The inlet stream was choked with spawning ciscoes, flipping and slapping on the water, and Logan brought his