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

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СКАЧАТЬ search his parents’ medicine cabinet. The man told Reggie to be back as soon as possible in the morning with them.

      Reggie nodded again and started down the ladder. Then he paused and poked his head back up.

      ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

      ‘Ivan,’ the killer said.

      ‘I’m Reggie,’ he said.

      The man nodded in his direction.

      ‘Good to meet you, Reggie,’ he said.

      ‘Are we friends?’ he asked.

      The man smiled that same sad smile for the third time.

      ‘I guess we are at that,’ he said. ‘Now get along to bed.’

      Reggie gave a little wave and descended the ladder. He jumped down the last few steps and turned back towards home.

      The distance and darkness from the woods to the house seemed immense; shadows everywhere where things could hide. Yet he wasn’t frightened at all. He felt as if there was something watching his back. Something protecting him. Something that killed and wasn’t afraid of hell and didn’t answer to anyone.

      In fact, the walk back was quite peaceful.

      2.

      Reggie awoke rested and energetic. He ate his breakfast fast and enthusiastically and this seemed to please his mom. He told her the pancakes were great and swallowed them down with a large glass of orange juice. This made her smile.

      Dropping his dishes into the sink, he told her he was thinking of riding into town. This seemed to make her even happier.

      ‘It’s good for you to get out and do things,’ she said. ‘You’ve been holed up in this place too long.’

      No doubt she assumed a trip to the comic book or video game store was his destination. Reggie said nothing to make her think otherwise. He just smiled back and walked out of the kitchen.

      Upstairs, he showered, dressed, then left the house, wheeling his bike out of the garage for the first time in months. He checked the tyres, hopped on, and was soon down the road and turning onto the highway. The desert road twisted downwards, a serpentine thing, and the town out there ahead of him, miniscule but growing. Like a toy model magically rising to human dimensions.

      A mile down the road he saw the sirens, flashing red and blue.

      To either side of the highway desert fields stretched to the horizon in great white expanses. Sparse cacti and trees and bushes dotted the bone-white stretches like stragglers of a great migration. Periodically, ditches and arroyos dipped the surface like moon craters. Men and women in police department blue and sheriff’s department tan spread out to either side of the highway, moving further from the road and deeper into the fields. Some lingered by the shoulders of the road and leaned against open patrol car doors and spoke into radios.

      A young deputy flagged him with a wave when Reggie rode near and he braked in front of the man. Reggie squinted in the morning sunlight and visored his eyes with a hand to look up at the deputy.

      ‘How’s it going, kid?’ the deputy asked. He chewed gum or tobacco like cud as he spoke, and hooked his thumbs in his belt like a movie marshal swaggering into town.

      ‘Fine, officer,’ Reggie said, being respectful as his parents had raised him to be.

      ‘Where you off to?’ the deputy asked, not really looking at Reggie as he asked the question. He looked this way and that to either side of the highway, like he wanted to be out there with the others, and not on the sidelines directing bicycle traffic.

      ‘Town,’ Reggie said. ‘It’s summer break.’

      ‘Yeah,’ the deputy said, turned and spat a large black wad, ‘well, just be careful.’

      ‘What happened?’ Reggie asked, following the deputy’s lead and turning and looking out into the barren desert fields where others were fanning out, checking ditches, peering behind pathetic gnarled trees and rocks.

      The deputy looked at Reggie for the first time. A hint of a smile touched the corners of his mouth.

      ‘There’s a dangerous man out there,’ he said, not doing a good job at keeping the amusement from his tone. ‘A really bad, dangerous man.’

      ‘That so?’ Reggie asked, trying to sound interested and worried at the same time.

      ‘That’s so,’ the deputy said, grinning.

      ‘What’d he do?’ Reggie asked.

      The deputy looked to either side again and then leaned in confidentially, as if he was sharing a secret. He motioned Reggie forward and Reggie pushed the bike closer with his feet on the ground.

      The deputy cupped a hand conspiratorially around his mouth.

      ‘He raped and killed a woman and killed her kid,’ he whispered.

      Reggie didn’t say anything.

      ‘You know what rape is, kid?’ the deputy said, speaking above a whisper now, but not by much.

      Reggie nodded.

      ‘Do you really?’ the deputy said, cocking his head a bit like he didn’t believe Reggie. ‘Because I don’t think you really do unless you’ve seen the results.’

      Reggie shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

      ‘We’ve got pictures,’ the deputy said.

      Reggie didn’t know what to say.

      ‘Of the crime scene,’ the deputy elaborated. ‘I can show you, if you want.’

      Reggie started pedalling again, steering around the deputy.

      ‘I’ve gotta go,’ Reggie said, his heart beating fast.

      ‘Stay on the road where people can see you!’ the deputy called after him.

      The asphalt rolled along under him, the town drawing closer. The laughter behind him grew vague and distant and was gone. Leaving Reggie alone with his thoughts of pictures of raped women and dead children.

      ***

      He chained his bike in front of the drugstore and walked in, the whoosh of the air conditioning meeting him in a cool wave. Brilliant white and sterile walls and floor made the place seem dreamlike. As he passed by the checkout area a clerk waved to him and said hi and Reggie said hi back and moved deeper into the store.

      He found the pharmacy and drug aisles towards the back. A line mostly of old people stood in front of the window, behind which clerks in white lab coats browsed shelves for bottles and passed them over to the old people.

      Walking past, Reggie peered down an aisle where a teenaged boy a couple years older than him was trying to СКАЧАТЬ