Page 77 of Going Home in the Dark

The amigos each had a gurney to lie upon. It was very nice to be there, resting together.

They closed their eyes.

Something cool parted their lips, like a spoon of ice cream. It felt refreshing going down the throat.

Time passed.

Although they were not aware that they all woke at 3:10 a.m., they did indeed, each in his or her own home, own bed. Snow streamed through the darkness, past the windows.

On waking, each smiled, remembering the Thanksgiving together. Rebecca, Ernie, Bobby, and Spencer—friends forever. Family.

For months after that, Rebecca dreamed of being filthy and somehow contaminated. One night, she was slogging through a muddy river, muddy fields. The next night, she was in a rat- and roach-infested hotel where everything was soiled, grimy. No matter what the dream, she was always desperate to find her way home and get clean, but she couldn’t escape where she was, and there was no home to get to.

Ernie dreamed that someone was trying to control him and take his life in strange directions that he didn’t want to go. Sometimes it was the man who sold hot dogs called “dead dogs” downtown during the Month of Halloween, at other times Pastor Larry. Often he was in the Liberty Park pavilion on a summer night, when the swing band was performing. The bandleader, Björn something, had Britta’s head instead of his own and wanted to dance with him. Ernie loved swing, but the music of Björn’s big band was discordant and scary, so Ernie needed to write new music; in some dreams Garth Brooks taught him how, but in other dreams it was Johnny Cash.

Spencer dreamed of strange, disturbing shapes; behind his back, they were crawling around and up to no good. Night after night, he attempted to describe them to everyone from Venus Porifera to the president of the United States, but everyone said that he was making no sense, that he should draw them, but he couldn’t draw. He dreamed of taking lessons in drawing, but they were dreams of anxiety and frustration in which he always flunked the class.

Bobby dreamed of writing term papers and then novels while eating boiled potatoes with the Pinchbecks. He also dreamed someone was after him, a person who frequently had no head, but when the guy did have a head, he had tentacles instead of arms; the only way to avoid this creature was to keep on the move—city to city, state to state, country to country.

In time, those dreams faded away for all of them, and sleep was filled with other adventures.

They became fifteen years old and sophomores. Then sixteen and juniors. Seventeen and seniors. Year by year, grade by grade, the four of them grew closer, until it seemed as though they had always been together.

When their desires and careers took Spencer, Bobby, and Rebecca to far-flung places, they remained in touch with one another and with Ernie back in Maple Grove. They called one another frequently, visited one another, planned vacations during which they gathered at this resort or that resort, but always together. Eventually they enjoyed video contact through Zoom.

The poet Coleridge wrote, “Friendship is a sheltering tree,” and Charles Dickens wrote, “The wing of friendship never moults a feather,” and neither of those wise gentlemen was full of shit.

44A Visit with the Pastor

As the three amigos sat in the Genesis that was parked in the courthouse lot, the revelation of events they had experienced on that long-ago Thanksgiving seemed to take hours to recount. Though as noted earlier, a mysterious mind of immense power transmitted it to the amigos in just three minutes. More precisely, it required two minutes and fifty-four seconds.

Spencer, Rebecca, and Bobby needed twice that long to recover from the impact of what they had been made to remember and to share their reactions to it. Then they needed another three minutes—more precisely two minutes and forty-nine seconds—to steel themselves for a visit with Pastor Larry.

So much had happened on this second day of their return to Maple Grove that it seemed night should have fallen again. However, night had not fallen, and it wouldnotfall until remaining events needed it to do so. The sun backlighted scattered clouds in the west, transforming them into golden galleons sailing on a cobalt sea—not literally, but metaphorically.

However, if the five-hour ordeal on Harriet Nelson Lane had not sapped their energy to the point of exhaustion, nothing would. They exited the SUV and gathered in front of it and stared south, toward the rectory, dramatically sunlit from their right, shadows falling to the left, Rebecca looking as determinedas Heather Ashmont, Bobby looking stalwart, Spencer with his hat. They fearlessly crossed the street, not bothering to use the crosswalk at the end of the block.

After arriving alive on the south side of Winkler Street, they ascended the steps of the rectory, crossed the front porch, and considered the doorbell. The time had passed for using the lock-release gun, for breaking and entering, for a stealthy room-to-room search for evidence. In their crusade to recover their lost past and discover how to save Ernie from eternal suspended animation or worse, they now needed to take bold action, and quickly. Because they were not comfortable with interrogation techniques that drew blood and caused extreme pain, they would have to torture Pastor Larry with spoons, get him drunk on sacramental wine, tickle him mercilessly, or find some other way to make him talk.

The most formidable obstacle to the successful achievement of their goal was, of course, Hornfly. They could not be certain that the creature would disrupt their plan, though the likelihood of it was high. Should the beast appear, determined to fulfill the promise to destroy them, their only hope seemed to be somehow to induce the monster to eat Pastor Larry first, giving them time to escape the house.

With considerable courage, Bobby rang the doorbell. This does not mean that his courage was greater than that of either Rebecca or Spencer. Not a minim of difference would be found in the measurement and comparison of their courage. Bobby was the one to press the bell push only because he was nearest to it, and he beat the others when they all reached simultaneously.

Smiling his dreamy smile, the good reverend opened the door at once, as if he had been standing at it with his hand on the knob. “Come in, come in. All are welcome here.”

This smelled like a trap, but the amigos could neither saySorry, wrong addressas they beat it off the porch nor claim to know a lot more about Jesus than he did, not when they lacked supporting pamphlets.

They stepped into the foyer, and Pastor Larry closed the door, which seemed to make a sound like a three-thousand-pound bank-vault door slamming shut against its architrave. “Why don’t you young people come with me to the parlor?”

The parlor was stuffed full of heavy Victorian sofas and armchairs with crocheted antimacassars on the arms and backs. The lamps featured silk shades with tassels; the tables that held them were covered in tasseled and embroidered cloths. Flowered wallpaper. Draperies as heavy as theater curtains. Displayed throughout were fine porcelains of animals and prominent figures from the Bible. In a house with a parlor of this kind, it seemed the doorbell should have been answered by an elderly woman in orthopedic shoes, a granny dress, and shawl.

To be able to sit on a William Morris sofa covered in midnight-blue mohair, Rebecca and Bobby rearranged a collection of decorative pillows, while Spencer selected an armchair.

“Would anyone like a refreshment?” Pastor Larry asked. “Coffee, tea, hot chocolate? They’re always having hot chocolate in movies on the Hallmark Channel. I so enjoy the Hallmark Channel.”

The amigos politely declined a refreshment.

The reverend settled in an armchair. He smiled at them, and they found themselves smiling in return. Events were not proceeding in any fashion they had imagined.

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