Hide and Seek Read Free Page A

Harmon's. But it still left us with nothing to do. Workt had stripped the Crouch place and refinished it, and for a coupl< years a retired doctor and his wife had lived there, civilize presumably, tamed it. So that now, even though the old man was longer there and the house lay empty, it was just another house the woods. Nothing you'd want to visit.
     
    It had amused us, though, back then when we were kids, the next few years Dead River had its very own haunted hoi Somewhere to go to scare yourself on Halloween. That was befc the doctor came in.
     
    Teenage folklore being what it is, our stories about Ben and Mary
    They were really dead, for one thing. Their ghosts had frightened workmen cleaning up the basement. They could be heard calling dogs on foggy, rainy nights. Some of these yarns I started myself, before I outgrew them.
     
    My favorite turned on the disappearance itself.
     
    According to this one the eviction never happened. The truth was that the dogs had turned on Ben and Mary and eaten them. Every scrap.
    Bones and all. I liked that story. I think Rafferty made it up. I kept remembering all those lost, dazed eyes.
     
    I thought the dogs deserved their revenge.
     

I think I told them about Ben and Mary two or three days after we met, no more. By then Casey and I were thinking about becoming lovers.
     
    That first afternoon in the bar I had all I could do to keep small talk running and keep my hands off her. I'm not stupid. There are girls you push and girls you don't. And there are some who only want you if they can see no particular need in you, who want to know you're calm enough and tough enough to live with or without them. Girls like Casey want calm and confidence. You did not have to be a genius to see that rushing her would mean a long walk home alone.
     
    So I sat on my hands and tried to keep it nice and easy, willing but not eager. I walked home alone anyway.
     
    I was coming back from the diner on the corner that same night when I saw them drive by in the white Chevy. All three of them waved at me, laughing. But the car didn't stop.
     
    I figured that was that.
     
    The conversation in the bar had been innocuous, probably too innocuous, and now I was the local horse's ass.
     
    Not so.
     
    They stopped by the lumberyard at lunchtime the next day.
     

around for another set of chocks, I damn near took her head off with the lift blades. If the manager had seen her there that close to me I'd have lostthejobthen and there, (turned thethingoff and climbed off it.
     
    "They fire you for disemboweling a customer."
     
    "What customer? I'm your cousin from New Paltz. Your aunt my mother-is over at the house and probably she's dying. Her last wish is to see her sister and her favorite nephew. You've got the day off. It's all fixed. I didn't even have to ask for it."
     
    "Huh?"
     
    "He said I could tell you just to go home for the day."
     
    "You assume a lot, you know that?"
     
    "Sure I do. You mad at me?"
     
    The way she asked me, it was a serious question, nothing coy about it.
    If I thought she'd gone too far, then she wanted to know. I liked that. Even though I had the feeling that my answer was not going to make or break her afternoon either way.
     
    "I'm not mad. It's too hot for this stuff anyway. Let's go."
     
    We walked through the store and I said thanks to Mr. McGregor, and I was glad he was with a customer just then, because I could see Kim and Steven right out front sitting in the Chevy, waiting for us with the top down. A suspicious-looking bunch of New Paltz cousins.
     
    "Clan Thomas, Steven Lynch and Kimberley Palmer."
     
    "Kimberley."
     
    She wiped her hand on her shorts, a nervous, birdlike movement. Then she held it out to me and I took it. It was tiny and delicate, and very smooth and dry.
     
    Steven smiled at me and nodded and gave me a slightly too-firm handshake. We got into the car. It was a tight squeeze. I glanced back over my shoulder at Mr. McGregor.
     
    "Could