Dark Rivers of the Heart

past, over and done with a long time ago. Nothing here and now is worth being scared of."
        The dog scratched at the door, unconvinced.
        "Should I let him out?" Ellie wondered.
        "No. He'll just realize it's night outside and start scratching to get back in."
        Again directing the flashlight at the file-room door, Spencer knew that his own inner turmoil must be the source of the dog's fear. Rocky was always acutely sensitive to his moods. Spencer strove to calm himself After all, what he had said to the dog was true: The aura of evil that clung to these walls was the residue of a horror from the past, and there was nothing here and now to fear.
        On the other hand, what was true for the dog was not as true for Spencer. He still lived partly in the past, held fast by the dark asphalt of memory. In fact, he was gripped even more fiercely by what he could not quite remember than by what he could recall so clearly; his self-denied recollections formed the deepest tar pit of all. The events of sixteen years ago could not harm Rocky, but for Spencer, they had the real potential to snare, engulf, and destroy him.
        He began to tell Ellie about the night of the owl, the rainbow, and the knife. The sound of his own voice scared him. Each word seemed like a link in one of those chain drives by which any roller coaster was hauled inexorably up the first hill on its track and by which a gondola with a gargoyle masthead was pulled into the ghost-filled darkness of a fun house.
        Chain drives worked only in one direction, and once the journey had begun, even if a section of track had collapsed ahead or an all-consuming fire had broken out in the deepest chamber of the fun house, there was no backing up.
        "That summer, and for many summers before it, I slept without air-conditioning in my bedroom. The house had a hot-water, radiant-heat system that was quiet in the winter, and that was okay. But I was bothered by the hiss and whistle of cold air being forced through the vanes in the vent grille, the hum of the compressor echoing along the ductwork… No, 'bothered' isn't the word. It scared me. I was afraid that the noise of the air conditioner would mask some sound in the night… a sound that I'd better be able to hear and respond to … or die."
        "What sound?" Ellie asked.
        "I didn't know. It was just a fear, a childish thing. Or so I thought at the time. I was embarrassed by it. But that's why my window was open, why I heard the cry. I tried to tell myself it was only an owl or an owl's prey, far off in the night. But… it was so desperate, so thin and full of fear… so human…"
        More swiftly than when he had been confessing to strangers in barrooms and to the dog, he recounted his journey on that July night: out of the silent house, across the summer lawn with its faux frost of moonlight, to the corner of the barn and the visitation of the owl, to the van where the stench of urine rose from the open back door, and into the hall where they now stood together.
        "And then I opened the door to the file room," he said.
        He opened it once more and crossed the threshold.
        Ellie followed him.
        In the dark hallway from which the two of them had come, Rocky still whined and scratched at the back door, trying to get out.
        Spencer played the beam of the flashlight around the file room.
        'The long worktable was gone, as were the two chairs. The row of file cabinets had been removed as well.
        The knotty-pine cupboards sill filled the far end of the room from floor to ceiling and corner to corner. They featured three pairs of tall, narrow doors.
        He pointed the beam of light at the center doors and said, "They were standing open, and a strange faint light was coming out of them from inside the cabinet, where there weren't any lights." He heard a new note of strain in his voice. "My heart was knocking so hard it shook my arms. I fisted my hands and held them at my sides, struggling to control myself.
        I wanted to run, just turn and run back to bed and forget it all."
        He was talking about how he had felt then, in the long ago, but he could as easily have been speaking of the present.
        He opened the center pair of knotty-pine doors. The unused hinges squeaked. He shone the light into the cabinet and panned it across empty shelves.
        "Four latches hold the back wall in