Summer of Night

SEVENTEEN

On Wednesday, June fifteenth, after he'd done his paper route and before he went to St. Malachy's to help Father C. say Mass, Mike went under the house.

The morning light was rich, the sun already high enough to build shadows under the elms and peach trees in the yard, when Mike pried off the metal access panel to the crawlspace. Everybody else he knew had basements. Well, he thought, everybody else I know has indoor plumbing, too.

He'd brought his Boy Scout flashlight and now he shone it into the low space. Cobwebs. Dirt floor. Pipes, the dark wood two-by-fours under the floor. More cobwebs. The space was barely eighteen inches high and it smelled of old cat urine and fresh soil.

There were more spiderwebs than cobwebs. Mike tried to avoid the solid, massy, milky webs he knew meant black widows as he crawled and wiggled toward the front of the house. He had to pass under his parents' room and the short hall to get there. The darkness seemed to stretch on forever, the faint light from the opening behind him fading. In a sudden panic, Mike wriggled around until he could see the rectangle of sunlight, making sure that he could find his way out. The opening looked very far away. Mike continued forward.

When he figured that he had to be under the parlor-he could see the stone foundation three yards ahead-Mike stopped, turned on his side, and panted. His right arm was touching a wooden cross brace under the floor; his left hand was tangled in spiderwebs. Dust rose around him, getting in his hair and making him blink. The powdery stuff floated in the narrow flashlight beam.

Geez, I'm going to be in great shape to help Father C. serve Mass, he thought.

Mike wiggled left, the flashlight beam finding the north wall fifteen feet away. The stone looked black. What the hell-What the heck was he looking for? Mike squirmed and began moving in a circle, checking the dirt for signs of its being disturbed.

It was hard to tell. The stone and dirt floor had been gouged by weather and pawed by generations of the O'Rourke cats as well as other animals seeking shelter here. A few dried cat turds littered the area.

It was a cat or skunk, thought Mike with a mental sigh of relief. Then he saw the hole.

At first it was just another shadow, but its blackness did not diminish with the flashlight beam playing across it. Mike wondered if it was a circle of dark plastic, some tarp or something his dad had left down here. He wiggled four feet closer and stopped.

It was a hole, perfectly round, perhaps twenty inches across. Mike could have gone down it headfirst if he'd wanted to. He did not want to.

He could smell it. Mike blinked away his revulsion and moved his head closer. The stench came out of the tunnel like a breeze from a charnel house.

Mike lifted a stone and tossed it into the hole. No noise.

Panting slightly, his heart pounding so loudly he was sure that Memo could hear it through the floor, he raised his flashlight to the two-by-fours, thrust it forward, and tried to shine a light down the hole.

At first he thought the walls of the tunnel were red clay, but then he saw the ribbed walls, like blood-red cartilage, like the inside of some creature's gut. Like the tunnel in the cemetery shed.

Mike backed away, kicking up a cloud of dust in his retreat, plowing through spiderwebs and cat turds in his panicked flight. For an instant, turning, he lost the rectangle of light and was sure that something had sealed the entrance.

No, there it is.

Mike crawled on his elbows and knees, batting his head against two-by-fours, feeling the webs on his face and not caring. The flashlight was half under his body now, illuminating nothing. Mike thought that he saw more tunnel openings a few yards to his left, under the kitchen, but he didn't crawl that way to find out.

A shape moved into the crawlspace opening, blocking the light. Mike could see two arms, legs with what might be puttees.

He rolled onto his side, lifting the iron bar. The shape crawled half into the opening, blocking the light.

"Mikey?" It was his sister Kathleen's voice, soft, pure, innocent in its slow way. "Mikey, Mom says that you have to get going if you're going to get to church."

Mike half-collapsed in the moist dirt. His right arm was shaking. "OK, Kathy, move back out so I can get through."

The shadow unblocked the entrance.

Heart actually aching from its exertion, Mike clambered through and out. He sealed the panel, pounding the nails through the top of the tin rectangle.

"Gee, you're a mess, Mikey," said Kathleen, smiling at him.

Mike looked down. He was covered with gray dust and cobwebs. His elbows were bleeding. He could taste the mud on his face. Impulsively, he hugged his sister. She hugged him back, apparently not caring at all if she got dirty too.

More than forty people showed up for the "private'' memorial service at Peoria's Howell Mortuary. Duane thought that the Old Man seemed almost disappointed by the turnout, as if he had wanted to keep his brother's final services to himself. But the notice in the Peoria paper and the few phone calls the Old Man had made brought people from as far away as Chicago and Boston. Several of Uncle Art's co-workers at the Caterpillar plant showed up, and one of them wept openly during the brief service.

There was no minister present-Uncle Art had held fast to the family tradition of being militantly agnostic-but short eulogies were given by several people: the co-worker who had cried and who cried again during his talk, their cousin Carol who had flown in from Chicago and who had to return that evening, and an attractive, middle-aged woman from Peoria named Delores Stephens whom the Old Man had introduced as "a friend of Uncle Art's." Duane wondered how long she and Uncle Art had been lovers.

Finally the Old Man had spoken: Duane found it a powerfully moving eulogy-there was no talk of an afterlife or rewards for a life well spent, only the grieved tones of a brother's loss leavened by a description of a personality bowing to no false icons but dedicated to treating other people decently and well. The Old Man ended by reading Shakespeare-Uncle Art's favorite writer-and although Duane expected "And flights of angels bear thee to thy rest ..." knowing that Uncle Art would have appreciated the irony, what he heard was a song. The Old Man's voice threatened to break several times, but he kept going, his voice strengthening by the strange ending:

There were sobs in the chapel. The Old Man had recited the verse without notes or book, and now he lowered his head and returned to his seat.

Someone in the curtain-covered alcove began playing an organ. Slowly, in small clusters or singly, the small group dispersed. Cousin Carol and a few others waited, chatting with the Old Man, patting Duane on the head. The buttoned collar and tie felt alien to him; he imagined Uncle Art stepping into the chapel and saying, "For heaven's sakes, kiddo, take off that silly thing. Ties are for accountants and politicians."

Finally, only Duane and the Old Man remained. Together they went down into the basement of the mortuary, where the powerful crematory furnace was, to watch as Uncle Art was consigned to the flames.

Mike waited until Father C. had invited him over to the rectory to eat their usual post-Communion breakfast of coffee and bagels before talking about the thing in the crawlspace.

Mike had never seen a bagel before Father Cavanaugh started serving them to the few reliable altar boys three years earlier. Now he was an expert, spreading lox or cream cheese with abandon. It had taken awhile to convince the priest that it was all right for an eleven-year-old to drink coffee; like calling the diocese car the Popemobile, it was a secret the two kept between them.

Mike munched on the bagel and wondered how to phrase his question: Father C, I'm having a little problem with a sort of dead soldier tunneling under my house and trying to get at my grandma. Does the Church have anything that might help?

Finally he said, "Father, do you believe in Evil?"

"Evil?" said the dark priest, looking up from his paper. "You mean evil in the abstract?"

"I don't know what that means," said Mike. He often felt stupid around Father C.

"Evil as an entity or force separate from the works of man?" asked the priest. "Or do, you mean evil like this?" He held up a photo in the paper.

Mike looked. It was a picture of some guy named Eichmann who was a prisoner in a place called Israel. Mike didn't know anything about that. "I guess I mean the separate kind," he said.

Father Cavanaugh folded the paper. "Ahh, the ancient question of evil incarnate. Well, you know the Church's teachings."

Mike blushed but shook his head.

"Tut, tut," said the priest, obviously teasing now. "You're going to have to resume your catechism lessons, Michael."

Mike nodded. "Yeah, but what does the Church say about evil?"

Father Cavanaugh removed a pack of Marlboros from the pocket of his work shirt, shook a cigarette free, and lit up. He picked a bit of tobacco off his tongue. His voice turned serious. "Well, you know that the Church recognizes the existence of evil as an independent force . . ."He glanced at Mike's incomprehending stare. "Satan, for instance. The devil."

"Oh, yeah." Mike remembered the smell coming up out of the tunnels. Satan. Suddenly the whole thing seemed a little silly.

"Aquinas and other theologians have dealt with the problem of evil for centuries, trying to understand how it can be a separate force while the dominion of the Trinity can be the all-powerful, unchallenged force Scripture says that it is. The answers are mostly unsatisfactory, but certainly the dogma of the Church tells us to believe that evil has its own dominion, its own agents . . . Are you following this, Michael?"

"Yeah, sort of." Mike wasn't quite sure. "So there can be ... evil powers sort of like angels?"

Father Cavanaugh sighed. "Well, we're getting into some medieval mind-sets here, aren't we, Michael? But, yes, essentially, that's what the tradition of the Church teaches."

"What kind of evil powers, Father?"

The priest tapped his long fingers against his cheek. "What kind? Well, we'd have demons, of course. And incubi. And succubi. And Dante categorizes whole families and species of demons, wonderful creatures with names like Draghig-nazzo-which would mean 'like a large dragon,' and Barbar-iccia, 'the curly-bearded one,' and Graffiacarie, 'he who scratches dogs,' and . . ."

"Who's Dante?" interrupted Mike, excited at the prospect of someone living around here who would be an expert in such things.

Father C. sighed again and stubbed his cigarette out. "I forgot that we were depending upon the educational system here in the seventh circle of desolation. Dante, Michael, is a poet who lived and died some six centuries ago. I'm afraid I digressed from the substance of our discussion."

Mike finished his coffee, brought the mug to the sink, and carefully washed it. "Do these things . . . these demons . . . do they hurt people?"

Father Cavanaugh frowned at him. "We're talking about the intellectual creations of people who lived in an ignorant time, Michael. When people were ill, they blamed it on demons. Their only medicine was attaching leeches ..."

"Bloodsuckers?" Mike was shocked.

"Yes. Demons were blamed for illness, mental retardation ..." He paused, possibly remembering that his altar boy's sister was retarded. "Apoplexy, bad weather, mental illness . . . anything that they couldn't explain. And there was very little that they could explain."

Mike turned back to the table. "But do you think these things existed . . . exist? Do they still go after people?"

Father Cavanaugh folded his arms. "I think the Church has given us some wonderful theology, Michael. But think of the Church as a giant steam shovel searching the river bottom for gold. It brings up a lot of gold, but there has to be some muck and refuse from all that scooping."

Mike frowned. He hated it when Father C. got into comparisons like that. The priest called them metaphors; Mike called it dodging the question. "Do they exist?"

Father Cavanaugh opened his hands, palms up. "Possibly not in the literal sense, Michael. Certainly in the figurative."

"If they did exist," persisted Mike, "would Church stuff stop them the way it does vampires in the movies?"

The priest smiled slightly. "Church stuff?"

"You know . . . crosses, the Host, Holy Water . . . stuff like that."

Father C. raised his dark eyebrows as if he were being teased. Mike, waiting for the answer, did not notice.

"Of course," said the priest. "If all that. . . Church stuff . . . works on vampires, it would have to work on demons. Wouldn't it?"

Mike nodded. He decided that he'd learned enough for now; Father C. would think he was daffy if he started talking about the Soldier after all this stuff about demons and vampires. Father C. invited Mike to a "bachelor dinner" at the rectory on Friday, something he did about once a month, but Mike had to decline. Dale had invited him out to Uncle Henry's farm on Friday to search for the Bootleggers' Cave they'd been hunting for since he'd first met the Stewart family. Mike suspected that there was no Bootleggers' Cave, but he always enjoyed playing in Uncle Henry's fields. Plus, dinner at Dale's Uncle Henry's always meant great food-even if Mike couldn't eat the steak on Friday-with lots of vegetables fresh from the garden.

Mike said his good-byes, found his bike, and pedaled like mad for home, wanting to get the yard mowed and all the other household chores done by early afternoon so he could play. Passing Old Central, he remembered that Jim Harlen had been home for several days and realized with a pang of guilt that he and the other guys hadn't stopped by to see him yet. That thought led to the memory that today was Duane's uncle's funeral in Peoria.

The thought of death made Mike think of Memo, possibly home alone this time of day, except for Kathleen of course.

Mike pedaled faster, past the school, toward home. * * *

Dale called Duane McBride on Wednesday evening, but the conversation was short and painful. Duane sounded tired beyond imagining and Dale's expressions of sympathy embarrassed them both. Dale told the other boy about Friday night's get-together at Uncle Henry's and pressed him until Duane said that he would try to be there. Dale went up to bed depressed.

"Do you think the thing's still under the bed?" whispered Lawrence an hour later. They'd left the night-light on.

"We checked," Dale whispered back. "You saw nothing's there." Lawrence had insisted on holding hands. Dale had compromised by allowing his little brother to hang on to the sleeve of his pajamas.

"But we saw it . . ."

"Mom says we saw a shadow or something."

Lawrence made a rude sound. "Was it a shadow that pushed against the door?"

Dale felt a chill. He remembered the insistent, unrelenting pressure of the closet door pushing against him. Whatever had been in there had refused to stay closed in. "Whatever it is," he whispered, hearing the edge in his own voice, "it's gone now."

"No, it isn't." Lawrence's voice was barely audible.

"How do you know?"

"I just do."

"Well, then, where is it?"

"Waiting."

"Where?" Dale looked across the short gap of the bed and saw his brother staring at him. Without his glasses, Lawrence's eyes looked very large and dark.

"It's still under the bed," his brother whispered sleepily. He closed his eyes. Dale allowed him to hold his hand rather than his sleeve. "It's waiting," mumbled Lawrence, drifting off to sleep.

Dale looked at the ten-inch gap they'd left when they shoved their beds closer. They'd wanted to push the beds together, but their mother said it was too hard to vacuum when they were that way. Ten inches was easy enough to reach across, small enough that nothing huge could come up at them.

But an arm could. A hand with claws. Maybe a head on a long neck.

Dale shivered again. This was silly. Mom was right, they'd imagined this thing the way they'd imagined the mummy's footsteps a couple of years ago. Or the UFO coming to get them.

But we didn't see those other things.

Dale closed his eyes. But a final thought before drifting off brought him awake again, blinking, staring down into the dark between the beds below where his exposed hand still touched Lawrence's.

Damn. If our beds are this close, then it can get under mine without me seeing. It could raise those black legs on both sides of our beds and get both of us at once.

Lawrence was snoring softly, drooling a bit onto his Roy Rogers pillowcase. Dale stared at the far wall, counting the spars and masts on the ships repeated in the wallpaper there. He tried not to breathe too loudly. The better to listen. The better to hear something if it made a sound before it struck,