Read Online The Border Part Eight by Amy Cross - Free Book Online Page B

Lucy told him. “She takes it very seriously, she’s a lot better than him.”
    “By which you mean she doesn’t blame everything on passing vagrants?”
    Lucy smiled. “Bowley’s a pretty boring town. It’s not like when there were all those murders when I was a kid.”
    “Good.” He slung the shotgun over his shoulder. “There’s nothing wrong with a bit of boring now and again. You should remember that when you head off to college in some big city. There’s no reason to…” He paused, and then he sighed. “Ah, who am I kidding? You’re a teenager. You’re gonna make all the usual mistakes that teenagers make, and maybe you’ll even invent some new ones. At least you won’t have a place like the Border bubbling away beneath your feet, ready to swallow you up.”
    “What is the Border?” she asked.
    “A dark place that isn’t going to cause any more problems. I’m nearly at the lowest level, I have to be. If it goes much deeper, I’m gonna end up in…” He caught himself just in time. “Listen, I have to get going, but tell Jane I’ll stick to the usual arrangement, okay? Thank her for the stuff she brought, and tell her… Well, tell her I appreciate it, and tell her she should try to relax a little. Has she met anyone else since Jack died?”
    Lucy shook her head.
    “Try to get her to go on a date with someone,” he continued, heading toward the door in the corner. “Life has to move on.”
    “Are you just going back down there?” she asked.
    “I sure as hell am.”
    “And when will you come back up?”
    “In a year.”
    “But then you’ll go down again?”
    “The job’s done when it’s done,” he replied, with the cases and tupperware pots in his arms as he opened the door and stepped through into the darkness. After staring down the steps for a moment, he turned back to Lucy and smiled. “Say hi to your Mom for me. Tell her I miss her, tell her you bumped into me or something, but don’t tell her where I am or what I’m doing. And tell her to dump that Bob asshole. Sorry, kid, but your father’s a loser. If I ever get done with the Border, I’m gonna come back up and chase that S.O.B. right out of town.”
    She smiled.
    “Be seeing you,” he added, turning and heading down the steps. “Have fun at college! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”
    She paused, before hurrying over to the doorway and looking down. For a moment, she saw Ben’s shadow on the wall as he disappeared into the Border. She wanted to go after him, to just get a glimpse at the place, and after a moment she made her way down the first few steps and then leaned forward, peering around the corner. She could hear Ben whistling in the distance as he made his way down to the next level, but all she could see was a bare, red-walled room with bullet holes peppered across several of the surfaces.
    Fighting the temptation to go further, she turned and headed back up into the office. Once she’d pushed the door shut, she could no longer hear Ben whistling.
    ***
    “Hey.”
    “Hey.” Looking up from where she was sitting on the steps in the cold night air, Jane saw Lucy emerging from the building.
    “He said to say thanks,” Lucy continued, taking a seat next to her. “He said he’d stick to the same routine or something like that, whatever it means.”
    Jane nodded. “I figured.”
    “It’s not true, is it?” Lucy asked. “I mean, it can’t be! There can’t be this place underneath Bowley that just keeps going down forever, with more and more levels. If it was true, what would he even be finding down there? People?”
    “I don’t know,” Jane replied. “I stopped asking a while ago. He never told me much anyway.”
    “It’s not right,” Lucy continued. “Uncle Ben’s such a nice guy. I mean, I know he can seem kinda weird sometimes, and I know Uncle Jack used to have some pretty bad things to say about him, but I don’t believe any of it. I think Ben’s cool, and I hate to think of him