Читать книгу Are You Afraid of the Dark? - Seth C. Adams - Страница 6

The whisper-rustle of the grass and trees preceded him, like the conspiratorial murmurings of a gathering mob. Then the bloodied man appeared through the low-hanging branches and thick shrubbery, as if birthed from the trembling foliage.

He stopped when he saw Reggie. His hands pressed to his stomach where the blood soaked through. The scarlet blotch, thick and wet, made Reggie think of an ink stain spreading through the fabric of a nice starched dress shirt.

The man’s face was sweaty and pale. His breath was laboured, but he seemed otherwise calm and serene. Not as if he were bleeding to death, but rather as if he’d just entered a room at a party where he was a distinguished guest.

The man tried a smile; grimaced, stumbled.

Reggie set down the stick he’d been carrying and dropped the rock he’d been launching at wasp nests like a missile. He jogged over to the tall man.

The bloodied man staggered against a stout pine, leaned against it, slid down to a sitting position like a morning runner taking a break on a park bench. Reggie knelt down to offer the man what help he could. It was what you did when someone was in trouble and needed help.

The man stopped him with an upraised hand.

‘No ambulance …’ he coughed. ‘No police …’

He reached into his jacket for something. The effort was too great. He toppled over on his side; rolled over on his back. Looked up into the sky. Blinking, staring up as if at something grand and imposing.

The dusk-red sun shone off the blood in bright daggers of light, so that it seemed almost an astronomical phenomenon. Something caught by Hubble for science textbooks.

Then the man’s eyes closed slowly, like window shutters pulled shut, and his breathing slowed also, the chest moving up and down steadily like a billows coming to rest. It was then it dawned on Reggie that this was serious shit.

He leaned over to pull the man’s jacket open. Saw the bundle of money his hand was resting near in one pocket. As well as the shoulder holster strapped to the man’s side, and the obsidian-black surface of the pistol there.

Reggie wondered which of the two – money or gun – the man had intended to grab.

He took the money, pocketed it, looked around him.

The trees, tall and silent. Summer birds twitting and fluttering from perch to perch. No others watching, only the quiet earth.

He ran home as fast as his legs had ever carried him.