Are You Afraid of the Dark?. Seth C. Adams
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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 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.
5.
His hands in his jeans pockets