A heavy object.
A heavy, rusty object.
Hefting the axe head in his hand for a moment, he gazed at it almost as if he wasn’t certain what it was.
Then he set it on the table.
Then Kent, instead of taking the hacksaw apart to return the blade to the drawer in which he’d originally found it, was opening boxes, as if searching for something.
Tad opened the ledger on the table and slowly turned the pages as if reviewing everything they’d read before. When he was near the end of the book, he stopped.
At that same moment, Kent stopped roaming the room. He was facing an ancient wooden filing cabinet.
As Tad gazed down at the entry in the ledger, Kent stooped down and closed his fingers on the handle of the filing cabinet’s bottom drawer.
Eric heard the chorus of voices grow louder, taking on a note of excitement.
He moved closer to the table and looked over Tad’s shoulder so that he, too, could read the entry Tad had found.
5/11 acq L B axe (#114) frm Prince Bros Fall River.
$24,550. Excellent cond.
Kent slowly drew the file drawer open and reached inside, his fingers closing on an elongated object wrapped in newspaper. He lifted it out of the drawer, stood up, and moved to the table. Setting it down, he carefully — almost reverently — began stripping away the yellowed wrapping.
A moment later a wooden axe handle lay before them on the old Formica-topped table.
It glowed in the amber light, almost sparkled, as if surrounded by a force they could see.
And a single voice — a woman’s voice — seemed to emerge from the chorus.
The voice sounded happy.
Happy, and excited.
For a long time the boys gazed down at the axe head and its handle, still separated by almost a foot. The light from the lamp shimmered, and the air itself felt charged with a strange energy.
“It’s done,” Eric finally breathed, his voice echoing softly.
As Tad and Kent nodded, Eric reached out to the ledger, but before he touched its pages, the other two boys’ hands had joined his own and together they turned to the last page.
Upon it was written Hector Darby’s last words:
I pray that some day someone stronger will finish what I have begun.
“Let’s go,” Eric breathed, backing away a step, but leaving the ledger open on the table. “We’re finished.”
As Eric extinguished the lantern, the lamp went out as if of its own volition.
The three boys moved through the small door.
Eric and Kent drew the plywood back over the opening.
And in the darkness of the once more hidden room, the axe head and its handle began to vibrate as if they felt their proximity.
The table trembled.
The scalpels rattled softly in their bag.
The lamp flickered on once more.
The voices rose in chorus.
And slowly, forces within the tiny chamber began their work.
As if guided by an unseen hand, the metal axe head moved toward the wooden handle.
They aligned themselves and moved still closer.
They touched, and the handle slid into the socket on the head.
The axe lay complete.
The trembling ceased.
The light extinguished.
All, at last, was ready.
Chapter 30
LOGAN HAD FELT danger in the air even before he opened his eyes that morning.
The dog was restless in his bed, moving stiffly, shifting position, groaning and sighing.
The crow hopped endlessly around the perimeter of the cabin as if searching for something, but whatever it sought remained eternally elusive.
The animals, Logan knew, shared the air of imminent disaster that hung over the cabin, making it difficult even to breathe, let alone to think.
All morning that sense of danger — of something unseen creeping closer and closer — grew and expanded and gained strength, until at last Logan could remain in the cabin no more.
He needed to get outside, to escape the confines of the tiny structure, to elude the oppressive weight before it crushed him. As he pulled the door open, the old dog struggled to its feet, panting heavily, and followed him out the door and down the well-worn path toward the lake.
Logan paused by the dead tree that had stood by the path for as long as he’d been here. Now and then over the years he had thought about cutting it down for firewood, but always changed his mind before even nicking its silvered limbs with the blade of an axe or saw.
Best to respect the dead.
He knocked three times on the ancient tree’s trunk.
He felt a little safer then, as he always did after tapping the tree. Still, even in the morning air he felt the menace lurking just out of sight and out of hearing.
He moved more quickly down the path, then cut away from it entirely, thrashing through the brush until he found what he was looking for.
His breath gave out as he found his goal, and he sank low to the ground for a moment to wait for his panting to ease and for the dog to catch up.
And as he waited, he gazed up at the tree by which he crouched. It was the tree at whose base he’d trapped his first raccoon, so long ago he’d lost track of the years that had passed. But he’d marked the tree by leaving a souvenir after he’d skinned and dressed the ’coon. He’d placed the animal’s skull in the main crotch of the tree, certain that the spirit of the raccoon would watch over him if he didn’t bury it in the cold earth, and that it would warn him of trouble before it found him.
As the years had gone by, the skull had weathered and whitened. It had been his totem, and somehow every other creature of the forest understood that.
Until this morning.
This morning, the skull was gone.
Maybe he was wrong!
Maybe it was still there!
Rising once more to his full height, Logan reached up to the place where the skull had rested, but his fingers touched only leaves and dirt.
He scrabbled brush away from the base of the tree, but knew even as he searched that it was useless.
The skull was gone.
It had deserted him. It had seen the trouble coming and left.
“Bad,” he whispered, laying his hand on the old dog’s head as it nuzzled against him. “Real bad…” His voice trailed off as he tried to think.
Which way to go?
What to do?
And then he heard it.
The sound of men coming for him.
It was a long way off yet, coming from somewhere on the far side of the lake, but there was no mistaking it.
A boat.
A boat with men.
Men coming for him.
“He told me,” Logan whispered to the ancient dog. “Dr. Darby said the men would come. He said they’d come, but they wouldn’t understand, and they’d send me away again.”
Now Logan peered up at the scraps of blue sky that glinted between the treetops. “What do I do?” he whispered.
But there was no reply.
At his feet, the dog stirred, a low growl rising in its throat, and it swung its head around so its sightless eyes fixed on the boat that was now clearly visible to Logan and drawing steadily closer.
Abandoning the tree that no longer held his totem, Logan made his way back to the path. From behind, the drone of the approaching boat’s outboard drove him onward, and by the time he came to the cabin, he’d far outpaced the dog.
He threw open the door and began to reach for the things he’d need.
A blanket.
Three stale rolls he’d found in the Dumpster behind the bakery. He broke up two of them and threw them to the floor for the crow and the dog, and the mice that he knew, by the tiny droppings they left, crept in when he was gone.