In The Dark The Watcher – Brian Freeman

The Blatnik offered no pedestrian walkway, only a gravel-strewn shoulder and a three-foot concrete barrier. Leave your car at the height of the span, get out, and take a three-second journey to neverland. Stride had seen the bridge from both sides, helping untangle wrecks on the highway in the fog and sailing under the bridge in Coast Guard boats as they trolled for bodies.

To him, the bridge meant death. He drove fast in the left lane, crossing under the blue steel arch of the bridge and descending into the decay of northern Superior. He made his way off the highway onto Tower Avenue, driving past shuttered storefronts, where the main street was a ghost town. The two cities were known as the Twin Ports, but Superior was the poor sister, its population declining, its economy staggered by industrial decline. No one made money here. No one built houses. Everyone looked for work and staved off the wolf at the door.

Stride drove south, past the citys small retail strip into the low, empty land. He turned onto a dirt road that led across a series of railroad tracks. The home that Rikke and Finn Mathisen shared was on a two-acre lot at the end of the developed land, where the road ended in waste and fields. The grass on the square lot was long. Oak trees yawned over the three- story Victorian house. Blue paint chipped away from the siding.

He parked his Expedition across the street and got out. He was immediately adjacent to an unguarded railroad crossing, where nothing but a white X marked the tracks. Tilting poles of telephone wires paralleled the railway. Stride could see a train rumbling between houses a quarter mile away. Its whistle blasted through the quiet in several staccato bursts. When it stopped, he noticed the calmer noise of wind chimes tinging from the Mathisen porch. It was nearly eight oclock on Thursday evening. On sunny summer nights, there would be more than an hour of light left, but the clouds overhead were thick and gray, making the dusk look like night.

A steady breeze blew dust off the dirt roads.

When I arrived home near midnight, I could still hear the whistle and pop of fireworks in the neighborhood. The slashing rain had finally diminished to drizzle and fog, and the streets were alive with illegal celebrations. Starbursts opened like hazy flowers over the trees. Sparklers hissed. Bottle rockets screamed. The summer night smelled like candy and burnt-out matches as I stood in the yard and watched the rainbow of lights around me. In the next block, I heard kids whooping as if they were bloodthirsty Indians.

I felt wet and wild myself. When I looked up, I saw that Lauras upstairs window was dark. There were no signs of life. I crept into our house through the screen door and tracked damp, bare footsteps across the kitchen floor. I was quiet. I didnt want my father to hear me and ask me questions about where I had been and what I had done tonight. My mouth could lie, but not my face. If he saw me, he would ask me about Laura, too.

Where was she? Who was she with? I didnt want to risk a repeat of last night. Dad and Laura. Bitter argument. I took the stairs two at a time, bolted into my bedroom, and locked the door behind me. I felt dreamy. Maybe this was what it was like to be on drugs.

Without turning on the lights, I peeled off my soaked clothes down to my dirty skin. My thighs were bruised and sore. I was sticky down there, where some of it had leaked out. My body ached inside, but it was a good ache. A first-time ache. My independence day. Oh, God, the pill! I couldnt forget that, not tonight. I rummaged through my underwear drawer and found the pink plastic container I kept hidden in the back. I thought about taking two, just to be sure, but that was stupid.

I also thought about throwing open my bedroom window and shouting to the world: CINDY STARR IS NOT A VIRGIN! Really stupid. I pulled on clean panties, jumped into my pajama bottoms, and slipped a Fleetwood Mac T-shirt over my head. I didnt take a shower or brush my teeth. I lay down on top of the blankets with my eyes wide open. No way I was going to sleep tonight. I was too full of Jonny. I had dropped him off at his house after we left the park.

His mother was waiting up for him. She doesnt like me, but I know what shes been through since she lost Jonnys dad. It was that way with my dad, three years ago, when my mom died.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: b4fb8cab7d5b30ef
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,306,353 bytes (1.246 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 462
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 551.98 minutes
• Total Words: 110,395
• Total Characters: 587,968
• Average Words per Page: 238.95
• Average Characters per Page: 1272.66

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