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Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Seth C. Adams
Perfect for fans of Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Ray Bradbury You never know what’s lurking out of sight… Dealing with the tragic death of his father, 14-year-old Reggie finds the isolation of the woods near his house comforting. Until one day, a man – stumbling, bleeding, clearly distressed – emerges from the shadows. Reggie hides the man in his treehouse, and helps the stranger recover. Each with stories to share, soon the pair form a strange friendship. But then Reggie learns that his new friend is a ruthless contract killer. And when the killer decides to make a break over the Mexican border, with law enforcement in hot pursuit, Reggie must decide whether to honor the bond with his newfound father figure, or betray it and bring a brutal murderer to justice… A powerful, emotional, thrilling rollercoaster of a read from the author of If You Go Down to the Woods
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
SETH C. ADAMS
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Killer Reads
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Adam Contreras 2019
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover illustrations © Shutterstock.com (http://shutterstock.com)
Adam Contreras asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © August 2019 ISBN: 9780008347673
Version: 2019-06-21
For Mom and Dad. Always. None of this would be happening if not for your unwavering love and support.
Table of Contents
Cover (#u00d73d44-8fc7-547d-9e34-c65e1d632865)
Title Page (#u0e3c42f2-1b74-5692-ad23-65be4480b066)
Copyright (#u127c18c9-6e10-564a-9e73-a6f635a89b90)
Dedication (#u763fd504-b485-50bc-b1c0-5862df67864f)
Chapter One (#u11678a83-50ac-54e9-a175-0236ef1796c8)
Chapter Two (#u9cbc71a0-0068-58a3-9735-4b9ab491850d)
Chapter Three (#u00f3bc6b-9abf-5ef2-8a2c-626bf6ccffae)
Chapter Four (#ube84e46c-8c24-5503-a023-aa368b0f2456)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading … (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Seth C. Adams (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_08178adc-34e7-534d-8385-e2f57a9caf13)
1.
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.
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.
