78. Heading In

That evening I realize just how attached I’ve grown to the dog Jocelyn named Midnight. My family never had an animal growing up, so this was my first dog. And while maybe I always imagined it would be nice to have a big one, maybe a golden retriever or a strong Lab or even a German shepherd like my uncle’s, it didn’t take me long to fall in love with the little black Shih Tzu.

Maybe because I fell in love with her owner.

Midnight isn’t just a dog, however. She isn’t just this little companion that has been a bright spot (even if she’s pitch black) in a dark world. She stands for this wonderful thing I didn’t know I was looking for when I first arrived at Harrington High.

This wonderful thing that Jocelyn found before I did.

Hope.

I don’t really know what I’ll do if something happens to Midnight. If I can’t find her down below. If that creature ends up …

Stop it.

Mom knows something is wrong, but I don’t tell her what. She just assumes it has to do with everything else going on. The overall blah of being here. Midnight is such an easy dog to take care of that Mom doesn’t even know she’s missing.

I get a backpack that belongs to Uncle Robert and load it with stuff I might need. I wish I still had that gun I once used on Wade, but it’s long gone, just like he is. I have a knife that I’ll carry in my pocket. My flashlight will be in my hand. I stuff a jacket, an extra set of batteries, and a digging tool that one would use in the garden into the backpack. I’m not really sure what I’ll use that last thing for. I mean—if the ground caves in I don’t exactly think I’ll be digging myself out with a tiny shovel used for flowerpots.

I grab a bag of chips, then make myself a sandwich. Mom just assumes I’m still hungry from dinner. You know, like most seventeen-year-old boys tend to be. She doesn’t see me slip the sandwich into a plastic baggie as if I’m going on a picnic or a school field trip.

She makes a little small talk as we’re watching television, but I don’t really talk back. It’s an art to talk with someone but really not say anything. But I can’t stop thinking of the dog that may or may not be lost somewhere in the tunnels.

Gus might be lying. He might have already done something to her.

“Where’s Midnight?” Mom eventually asks.

She’s usually lying right next to me on the couch like some guard dog that resembles a chocolate-covered donut.

I don’t want to lie to Mom. I’ve lied—no, make that we’ve lied enough to each other.

“I don’t know,” I say.

And I don’t.

I’m just not telling her that I have to go down to the tunnels and look for her.

Mom doesn’t seem worried, since I’m not. We start watching one of those Friday night news shows about a man who murdered his family. Mom changes the channel, and on that show they’re talking about a woman suspected of killing her baby.

“I’m going to bed,” Mom eventually says, in a way that says I’m so tired of this dark and dreary world.

“Good night,” I say.

She tells me good night back, and for once I really, truly hope that those words mean something.

I can’t exactly head into Mom’s bathroom and then disappear down the ladder into the tunnels. That entrance has been boarded up for a while, and it seems we haven’t been visited recently. I’m not sure why, but I don’t care.

The less I have to think about those tunnels, the better.

But now I head back to the creepy little cabin that in so many ways was the start of everything. The start of the realization that I had moved somewhere really bad, and that things were only going to get worse.

It’s cool but not cold. I’m wearing a sweatshirt and jeans and can feel my steady breathing as I walk uphill. The cabin looks just like before—small and abandoned and left to rot in these woods. My flashlight scans the empty windows that remind me of empty eye sockets—

Stop it.

It doesn’t look like anything has changed since I was last here. No remodeling by one of those television shows that brings in the semi and gets the town to make a dream home for a poor, helpless family.

“We made this into a special black well just for you, Chrisssssssss!”

I’m already a bit freaked out, and my nerves are making me think crazy thoughts. And this is all before I’m even down in the tunnel.

I step inside the cabin and see the torn floor in the center, the hole looking just like it did the first time I stepped over decaying wood and fell through to hit a dirt bottom.

My flashlight finds the bed next to the wall, the one with the shackles next to it.

I think of what Pastor Marsh told me about the Solitaire family in France.

They weren’t real vampires, of course. But they acted the part. They really were just monsters. They would slip inside people’s home and rape the women and kill the men. Selectively, of course. To make sure they ruled with fear.

A bed with shackles in a tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere suddenly makes sense.

This wasn’t some little place a family lived once. It was where someone was imprisoned.

I think of Mom screaming that something was coming into her room in the middle of the night.

Are demons physical beings? Or do they have to inhabit someone in order to get around?

I’ve tried reading up on demons in the Bible, but I haven’t gotten a lot of information. It seems like most of my “knowledge” is from movies like The Exorcist and Paranormal Activity, and I don’t think they should be regarded as the definitive truth.

Can demons rip people out of their beds?

I don’t know.

I think there’s a lot—a lot—that we don’t know about the spiritual side of things. That maybe we’ll never know.

That I don’t ever really want to know.

I shiver and then remember the extra few things I packed away for this little late-night journey.

They’re there for when I need them.

I find a little comfort in that.

I soon find the rungs of the ladder going down into the cold, gaping hole. I head down carefully, not wanting to fall again and knock myself out.

For a moment, I stand at the entrance of the round tunnel. Whoever carved these tunnels out did a lot of work. And I know they’re all around the town.

I exhale, then clear my throat.

“Midnight?” I call out.

It’s just a few minutes after twelve. I’m doing exactly what I was supposed to do.

A gasp of cool air seems to come from the mouth of the tunnel. As if it’s daring me to enter. I wait for a few minutes to see if I hear anything. But there’s nothing. Nothing but cold silence.

“Okay,” I say out loud.

I don’t know if it’s okay to pray for missing dogs, but I know it’s okay to pray. So I pray for Midnight. And myself.

And then I follow my narrow beam of light into the pitch black.