Read Online Hide and Seek by Jack Ketchum - Free Book Online Page A

never won anyway. You wondered why he bothered.
     
    But he sat, and he finished his drink. And then stalked off, without a word or a smile for any of us. I turned to Kimberley.
     
    "Are you going to get more of this tonight? Maybe you ought to come along with us."
     
    "No, he'll be fine. He'll walk it off now. Besides, I'm the one who wants to hear the band, remember?"
     
    Casey was expected home for dinner. So I ate alone at the diner, something very rubbery they had the guts to call steak, and then drove out to her place around seven in the pickup. I turned off the ignition and waited. I didn't like going inside unless I had to. The few times I had, Casey's mother had been very uncomfortable. I had the distinct sense that she thought her daughter was slumming. She was a fluttery, mousy thing, and I didn't like her much. Casey's looks came from her father. As for him, he made me uncomfortable.
     
    The street was so quiet you could almost feel the dusk turn to dark around you like a slag of fog descending. I heard crickets, and somebody dropped a pan a few doors down. I heard kids shouting somewhere out of sight down the block, playing some ga me or other, and a mother's voice calling one of them home for dinner.
     
    Casey was late.
     
    After a while I heard voices raised inside their house. I'd never had the illusion that they were a happy family. On the other hand, I'd never heard them fighting, either.
     

I checked my watch. Ten minutes after seven. The movie started at eight. It would take us half an hour to drive to Trescott. It was going to be tight, but we'd still have a little leeway.
     
    (waited. I didn't mind waiting. There was no temptation to turn on the radio. I'd always liked the evening quiet of Dead River. It was one thing the town had to offer, a kind of gentle cooling of the spirit that comes along with the cooling of the land. The summer nights were almost worth the winter nights, when you suffered, housebound, through the cold. You could almost feel the stars come out, without seeing them.
     
    I was eased back, sitting low in the seat, dreaming.
     
    I jumped when I heard the door slam.
     
    There was no light on in front of the house, so it was hard to see her face at first as she came toward the car, but I could tell from something in her walk, in the way she moved, that she was upset. Her movements were always so controlled and confident, made up of loose and well-toned muscle. But now, I saw a rough abruptness about her that I wasn't used to. She pulled the door open on the passenger side.
     
    "Drive."
     
    She launched herself into the seat. Her voice seemed thicker, angry.
     
    "Yes. I don't care. Anywhere. Fuck it!"
     
    I think she took a good five years off the life of my car door. My ears rattled in tandem with the window. I started the car.
     
    "Easy."
     
    She turned to me, and something took a dive in the pit of my stomach.
    Those lovely pale eyes gleamed at me. I'd never seen her cry before. I started to reach for her, to comfort her.
     
    "Please!"
     
    She was begging.
     
    Casey, begging. I couldn't quite believe it at first.
     
    I did what she asked. I drove.
     
    "What's up?"
     
    "Please just drive."
     
    "You still want the movie?"
     

I'll don't know where we went.
     
    The outskirts of town for a while, then up and down the main
    I tried to get her to talk about it, but she shut me up with a look so painful that I kept my own eyes fixed to the road ahead after that and gave her the long quiet that was clearly all she wanted from me and all I had to give. I felt her body shaking gently and knew she was crying.
    It astonished me that anything could happen in that colorless, moneyed, lifeless household that could possibly make her cry. It astonished me that she should cry at all, I think. The command was gone, the toughness melted away, and beside me was a woman like any other. And even though I liked that toughness and that command, I realized I'd been waiting a longtime