The Dark Ones Read Free Page A

upper-middle-class families from larger cities. Many of these newcomers wind up in sparkling new Wheaton Hills. Their offspring are predictably bored by their new surroundings. There is nothing to do. No movie theaters. No malls. Most adjust and find new ways to have fun and fill time. These are the regular kids. All-Americans. Preppies. Jocks. Geeks. And the just plain average kids existing between the stereotypes.
    Then there are the Dark Ones.
    It is their name. The label they have chosen for themselves.
    The Dark Ones come out at night .
    They do not fit easily into any of the usual categories. They are not part of the cool crowd, but the cool kids know to be wary of them. Say you’re one of the cool crowd. A star quarterback or head cheerleader. Everyone adores you. You get everything you want, most of the time, and everything is easy. As one of the privileged ones, you sort of see yourself as royalty, a king or queen, and the other students are your subjects. The unlovely ones are peasants and you treat them fittingly, as royalty would in medieval times. They exist only for your occasional amusement, and it is fun to mess with them once in a while.
    The Dark Ones come out at night .
    You live in Wheaton Hills.
    But they live there, too. Maybe the adults don’t notice, but you’ve seen that slogan and you remember it. And you know them. Not to talk to, but you know them. You share classes with some of them. They always sit in the back, wearing those dark sunglasses the teachers have given up telling them to take off. Strangely, you see them there more often than in the neighborhood. You do see them at home sometimes, just not during the day. Just now and then when you’re feeling restless at night and you get up to take a peek out your bedroom window. You stand there and you watch the empty street, and everything is utterly still, the way any small-town neighborhood should be as the hour passes midnight. But you keep watching, waiting, knowing they will come. And they do, eventually they always do. Sometimes alone. Other times in groups of two or three. Slipping like shadows through the night, clad in black as always, somehow always avoiding the direct glare of the streetlights. It freaks you out. It unsettles you. You would never admit it to your friends, but they really sort of frighten you. It’s a shameful thing. There aren’t that many of them. Your crowd outnumbers them by a large margin. Many of your friends are athletes. Large and physically powerful.
    But it’s true. You’re afraid of them, and you can admit it to yourself.
    Here in the dark. Alone.
    The Dark Ones come out at night .
    Trip a geek in the hallway between periods and maybe you get to laugh at a quivering pile of terrified blubber scrambling to pick up the textbooks you’ve knocked out of his arms. But if you decide to tangle with a member of this other set of misfits, you won’t be laughing for long. If you’re lucky, you’ll only wind up with a black eye. But you might not be lucky. You might be like the jock who was stomped half to death in the parking lot one morning before school. A handful of incidents like this have taught the bullies to steer clear of the Dark Ones. And yet there is an ongoing tension, a slowly simmering potential for violence. There is talk. Hallway gossip. A fight is coming. A war. Some of your friends are fed up with the intimidation.
    But it’s so hard to get around just how damn creepy and weird they are.
    The Dark Ones come out at night .
    Every night.
    Tonight.
    Now .
    I’ll kill him .
    This is what Mark Bell thought as he stared up at the dark ceiling in his bedroom. Every now and then he glanced at the muted television atop his dresser, where a South Park episode was playing on Comedy Central, but mostly his mind was occupied with the fury he felt.
    I’ll really do it. I’ll slit that motherfucker’s throat from ear to ear if he ever says that shit about her again .
    Pushed far enough, he could