Are You Afraid of the Dark?. Seth Adams C.

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      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.

      2.

      He charged into the house, passing the kitchen in a blur where his mom stood over the sink, the water running and dishes clinking together.

      ‘What’re you up to?’ her voice bellowed after him as he ran down the hall to the bathroom. The cupboard doors under the sink opened on squeaky hinges, making him wince.

      ‘Just playing!’ he yelled back at her.

      The water continued to run in the kitchen. He was safe for the moment and let his breath out. He grabbed the hydrogen peroxide, sterile pads, aspirin, and gauze from the First Aid kit and shut the cupboard again.

      He flashed by the kitchen as fast as the first time, back to the front door and out.

      ‘Be back for dinner!’ she called after him.

      ‘Okay!’ he hollered back, already dashing across the yard towards the garage.

      Inside he found the old sled leaning against one wall, unused for years, still where his dad had last put it. Reggie found a length of rope also, knotted it around the steering grips of the sled, looped the other end around his shoulder, and hefted the sled across his back.

      Peroxide, pads, aspirin bottle, and gauze bundled and rolled in the hem of his shirt, sled over his shoulder, he started back down the dirt road towards the near and yet oh-so-distant woods and the gut shot man awaiting him.

      3.

      The man had awakened while he’d been gone, and pulled his gun on Reggie as Reggie skid to a halt a couple yards away. The man had crawled a good ways from where Reggie had left him, speckled blood trail dotting the leaves and dirt behind him like a snail’s slime tracks.

      He stared at Reggie uncomprehendingly, like he was seeing an alien creature. The hand holding the pistol trembled slightly, weak, but also uncertainly, like an epileptic appendage.

      ‘I didn’t call the police,’ Reggie said, wondering why he hadn’t as he stood there looking into the barrel of the gun. It seemed deep and wide. A chasm of endless depth.

      Calling the police was what you did when you saw someone with a gun. Calling an ambulance was what you did when you came across someone injured. He’d done neither.

      Reggie thought of his dad sprawled in similar fashion, pressing his hands against a similar wound, and almost turned back then and there. It was a short run to the house, and he could be on the phone in minutes, the police and ambulance here almost as fast.

      Then Reggie thought of the man’s admonition, and the gun aimed at his face. Even injured, squinting and gasping through the pain, the man’s face was intense. Focused. His eyes a bright arctic blue.

      The man fell back again, looking up, his gun arm flopping to the ground like a reeled-in fish flopping its last breaths.

      ‘I brought First Aid stuff,’ Reggie said, stepping tentatively closer to the man.

      Flapping fish-arm coming back to life, the man waved him over. Reggie didn’t like it when the pistol briefly pointed his way again with the waving. He thought of the gun going off, accidentally or otherwise, and blood coming out of him like it was from the man.

      Or maybe getting hit in the face by the bullet and his head exploding.

      Would he feel it? he wondered. Would he feel himself die?

      He knelt again by the man, unrolling his shirt like a strip of carpet and the peroxide, sterile pads, gauze, and aspirin fell out in a clutter. The man rolled over, groaning, to stare at the stuff. Then he looked up at Reggie; blinked slowly again like a man in deep, leisurely thought.

      ‘I’ll need … your help …’ the man said, whispering.

      Reggie nodded.

      ‘You took … the money …’ the man moaned. ‘Means … we’ve got an arrangement …’

      Reggie nodded. That word – arrangement – stayed with him.

      ‘It won’t be … pretty …’ the man rasped.

      Reggie paused this time, looking at the man’s bloodied middle. He thought of biology class and what was inside people. He remembered the videos they’d watched and the views given by the cameras. The pink and raw things inside everyone.

      Slowly, he nodded again.

      ‘Then let’s get this … over with …’ the man said, and the hand holding the wound disappeared in the other side of his jacket, coming back out with a switchblade. A flick of his wrist, and four inches of wicked blade glimmered back sunlight like a jewel.

      4.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ