Читать книгу Are You Afraid of the Dark? - Seth C. Adams - Страница 9

When it was done there was more blood, all over the place: on the forest floor, on the man, on Reggie’s hands. Sticky and wet and slick. The dug-out bullet, dimpled and ruined, lay discarded nearby, gleaming with the wetness.

The man was delirious with the pain and effort, moaning, trembling, falling in and out of consciousness like a restless baby.

Parking the sled next to him, Reggie push-rolled the man onto it, his body shaking and straining with the work. The man was heavy and solid. It was like manoeuvring a sack of concrete, bulky and unwieldy.

It was evening when he started to pull the sled and its bloodied burden.

His mom would be wondering where he was. Stewing in irritation and maybe a pinch of worry. She might yell at him; shake her finger at him in scolding.

She might even cry.

She’d been like that since his dad had died.

The runners of the sled slid along the forest floor with surprising ease once he got moving. The layer of pine needles provided a rolling surface that eased the progress as Reggie tugged with the ropes looped over either shoulder. Knowing the woods well, he chose the most even, unobstructed path, avoiding creek beds, rocky areas, and fallen trees.

The tree house was about a football field’s distance from home, where the woods bordered his family’s property. He’d helped his dad build it a few years ago. Reggie still thought of the summer days cutting and measuring the wood boards; nailing the ladder to the trunk of the oak; passing supplies up and down. The sun bright and high and beating down on them. Pepsis and sandwiches in the shade; man and boy shirtless and smiling. Watching the becoming of the thing above them; the floor and the walls and then the roof. The pounding of the hammers and the buzz of the saws like a music of sorts, hypnotic and calming.

Reggie pulled the sled beside the oak. The tree house above put them in deeper shadow than natural from the early evening. The man seemed almost to disappear dimensionally, only his shoes sticking out from the shadow, so that Reggie had to kneel to see him more clearly.

‘I’ll be back later,’ Reggie whispered, though it would take a full shout for his mom to hear him at this distance.

He recalled the man’s words before he’d passed out again.

It’ll need … stitches, he’d muttered, staring from the bloody, crumpled bullet in his left hand, to the puckered wound in his stomach, dribbling blood like a lazy volcano.

There was nothing to be done about that just now, Reggie thought.

It was dinnertime and his mom was waiting.