Read Online Dark Mountain by Richard Laymon - Free Book Online Page B

calling out to them. ‘Hey you guys!’ she yelled. ‘I was kidding! Come on back!’ But they didn’t come back.
    “Sandy sat by the campfire. Only a glow remained, by now, and she was cold. ‘Come on,’ she finally called. ‘Enough is enough.’ But Audrey and Doreen still didn’t return.
    “At last, she left the campsite and walked into the dark woods, calling out for her friends. With each step, she half expected the girls to leap out at her screaming, to pay her back for the scare. But they didn’t. She kept searching, wandering farther and farther from the camp.
    “Finally, she spotted them in a moonlit clearing. They stood motionless as she hurried toward them. ‘What’re you doing way out here?’ she asked. They didn’t answer. They didn’t speak a word. When she reached them, she stared. She began to whimper.
    “The two figures wore the clothes of Doreen and Audrey, but the arms and legs were made of sticks. They were scarecrows with heads of bloody fur.”
    “Yuck,” Rose muttered.
    “Somehow, Sandy found her way back to the camp. She sat by the dead fire. The wind moaned around her. She stared into the darkness. She waited and waited. Audrey and Doreen never returned.”
    “Never?” Benny asked.
    “Never. Some hikers wandered into camp a couple of days later and found Sandy still sitting there, her wide eyes gazing into the woods as if looking for her lost friends.”
    “What
did
happen?” Nick asked. “To Audrey and Doreen?”
    “Search parties looked everywhere for them. They were never found. Nobody will ever know what became of them after they ran out into the woods that night. Maybe it’s best that way.”
    There was silence. Heather peered over her shoulder. Rose leaned closer to the fire.
    “On that cheerful note,” Flash said, “I think it’s about time to call it a night.”

C HAPTER N INE
    “Hey,” Nick said. “I’m gonna sleep under the stars to night. You want to?”
    “That’d be neat. I’ll have to ask Dad first.” Turning around, Julie spotted him with Karen and Benny. The three were heading away from the campsite, apparently on their way to the stream. “Wait up!” she called, and ran after them. She quickly caught up with her father. “Can I sleep outside to night?” she asked.
    “Do you have a choice?”
    “I mean by the fire. Instead of in the tent. Nick’s gonna sleep out, too.”
    “Just the two of you?”
    “I don’t know.” She sighed. “Jeez, Dad, we’re not gonna
do
anything. I hardly even know the guy.”
    “I wasn’t thinking about that. Now that you mention it, though…”
    “
Dad
.”
    He laughed softly. “No, it’s fine with me.”
    “Great!” She whirled away and rushed to tell Nick. She found him crouching over his backpack, pulling out his sleeping bag. “It’s okay,” she told him.
    “Fantastic.”
    “Meet you by the fire.”
    Well away from the campsite, in the woods beyond her tent, she brushed her teeth and washed her face using water from her plastic bottle. As she capped the bottle, she heard a quiet crunching sound. Not far away. A footstep?Holding her breath, she stared through the trees. She saw only black trunks, bushes, a few dim clusters of stone.
    Nobody’s there, she told herself.
    Still, she felt exposed standing in a bright patch of moonlight. With a sidestep, she moved into the dark. She listened. She heard only the breeze in the treetops, the quiet lapping sound of the lake, a few indistinct voices from the camp.
    “Damn story,” she muttered. Karen’s story, and nothing more, was responsible for her jitters. “Wasn’t even scary,” she said.
    But as she lowered her pants and squatted, she scanned the darkness. Ridiculous. Dumb story. She was a jerk to let it bother her.
    Here I am, a jerk. Staring into the woods like a fool, half expecting Audrey and Doreen to dash by. Dumb.
    She stared and shivered. This was taking forever. Why the hell had she drunk so much coffee?
    Finally, she finished.