Read Online Ask the Dark by Henry Turner - Free Book Online Page B

it.
    Then suddenly I thought, I want to see that man . . .
    Meaning I want to spy on him, follow him around, see what the hell he’s up to.
    I was out of bed in a second and out the window even faster, climbing down the fire escape and walking crost the yard to the alley.
    Th’night was dark and it was just a few minutes before I come near Simon Hooper’s. I’d run all the way and got short of breath and doubled up awhile panting, then when I was ready I went through Hooper’s yard and over the board fence to the house next door. I was in the front yard and nothing had changed. Porch was empty. No lights anywheres. And no sound, neither.
    I went alongside and the window I’d looked in was covered now, same as the others, with black plastic, piece of a tarp, or just a trash bag. I felt a little bad ’cause I was hoping to see something, but there was nothing.
    Then I went around back and stopped dead.
    A car was parked there on the grass of the yard. Same car I’d seen Skugger in, blue Ranchero.
    I went up to it. Tried the doors but they was locked. Looked inside, and I seen this man don’t never clean his car, ’cause there a big mess of trash and cans on the floor, and on top it all Skugger’s goofball hat, long one with the pompom at the end.
    I was thinking to leave but I stopped.
    A car’s here, I thought. So a man’s here too.
    I looked around a sec, and then I went over to the board fence. Here, out back, there’s a big old gnarled tree in that fence, I mean the fence comes up to both sides of it with the tree right in the middle. And nailed on the tree is these wood steps, pieces of two-by-four sawed about a foot wide nailed up by some boy who lived here long ago. I tried’m and they held tight, so I climbed.
    When I was up in the tree with the leaves all round me I found the tree fort. I’d seen it before in daytime, just an old rotty thing of worn planks, and I’d never thought to go up it till now. What I did was climb on and spread myself out facedown, over a place where the planks was busted, looking down at the car in the yard.
    I felt cold up there, wind was blowing over me. I don’t know how long it took. Hour, maybe. But soon after that I heard a lock turning there on the back porch, and the door opened.
    A man come out. But he didn’t turn the light on. Not the house light in the room he was coming from, or the porch light outside. He stood for a minute, looking around, then he closed the door real quiet and come down the back porch steps and went to the fence, walking slow. At the fence he unlocked a lock, gave a shove, and the whole middle of the fence swung open into the alley behind. Then he got in the car and started it, but he didn’t turn the lights on. He backed out real slow, and when he was in the alley he got out and closed the gate and then got back in the car and drove away, driving up the alley and never turning his lights on far as I could see.
    I stayed in that tree ten more minutes, long enough to know he weren’t coming right back.
    I hadn’t seen him good. Couldn’t say who he was. Was too damn dark. Must be the same man who come in the room that night, but I couldn’t tell for sure, ’cause down there in the yard with no lights on I’d only seen the shape of’m. From how he walked he was all thick and dumpy. Big, too.
    Was it the man in the car today?
    Maybe.
    If he was, and knowing who Skugger was, I figured he’s the man who gets’m the drugs, all that pot and them pills Skugger sells to his friends.
    But why’s he sneaking around in there, not turning on the lights?
    I’m still looking at the house.
    What’s he hiding in there? I’m thinkin’.
    I was getting close to something, and the closer I got, the more my other worries went away. What is it? What is it? Questions burned in my head. And right then they burned so hot I think I’d’f give all the money I made that summer just to know.

Chapter Thirteen
    I couldn’t think about it too much