DARK THRILLERS-A Box Set of Suspense Novels Read Online Free PDF

have gone near on the street. He knew outside the street punks and even some of the middleclass dopes were getting deep into heroin. He’d tried that too, but it made him so damn groggy he couldn’t even make mealtime, couldn’t finish sentences when he tried to talk, and he slept so deeply he thought he’d died. Finally, he'd settled on crank--crystal meth--as a preferred choice because it really shook him out of his skin. He didn't want to get sedated or sick or horny. He wanted to fly away, baby. Turn into pure color and rock and roll to pure sound waves. He wanted to jitter and jangle like a wind chime in a hurricane. Goddamn right!
    He saw everything clearly, moved like there was a train connected to his ass that pushed him into the future.
    One out of ten times he might have the shakes so bad he couldn’t tie his own shoes. It was nearly worth it. If he got too jazzed, too spaced, he went to Mod Squad and got him to keep an eye on him so the Keys didn’t haul him down to isolation or the prison infirmary.
    He felt the music from an old Aretha Franklin's blues tune smoothly boring through the back of the leather seat where his head rested. It entered the tangle of his long black hair, sinuously twining between the individual shafts, snaking over the pimply skin of his skull, and then SHA-ZAM! It was in his head, lazily stirring the brain cells into soup, alphabet music soup.
    Heddy's voice echoed from a canyon. "You have to do that shit when I'm driving? Crow?"
    He couldn't tell her how much her question amused him. He had to do this shit, yes, he did, he had to. When she drove or when she didn't, when the sun shined and when the sky poured, when the earth turned and when it decided to stop. Didn't she know any damn thing? Besides, he didn't want to hear any prissy lectures from a woman who sipped Jim Beam like it was soda water. She stayed half-crocked from morning till night. You couldn't tell unless you got right up in her face and smelled it on her breath. Heddy held her liquor better than any man he’d ever known. Of course, Heddy was a lush, no doubt about it, but did he bug her about it? Fuck no.
    He heard whispers and opened his eyes to just a slit. He saw the little girl next to him, whispering to her mother. He reached out one impossibly long arm that ended in a ham-like hand that was much too large to belong to him, and patted her on the top of the head. Good kid, good kid, don't do anything rash, kid, or I have to hurt you.
    She couldn't hear his thoughts, of course. And if she could, she'd never make them out from the streams of pale violet and stark red colors that wove like ribbons around, over, and between the tumbling words...Good...kid...Good... kid...bam, she-zam, thank you, ma’am, ain’t this a lovely world?
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    I guess I have to tell you the truth. There is something funny about how I know what grown ups are thinking. I said it's just from looking in their eyes, but I’m afraid that’s a little story, like a white lie. It's more than that--how I hear thoughts.
    Like in the car that first day. After Crow sucked the drug up his nose, I got all confused listening into his thoughts. I don't know how to explain it...
    It's like the radio. You know how you're listening to the radio, maybe it’s a ballgame? Then some static comes over the station and another station bleeds into it and you hear a song or some commercial for toothpaste or something? That's how it is. I'd never even told my Mama about it until Crow and Heddy took us off. I guess I have to tell you because that's how some of the things happened the way they did.
    Mr. Hawkins sat forward in his seat and leaned on the desk. He blew smoke at the ceiling before saying, "We've had to use psychics before."
    You believe in them, I asked him?
    "Oh, I don't know. They've helped out a time or two."
    Well, I don't know what a psychic is, I said. I thought they told fortunes in booths at the fair and I can’t tell fortunes. All I know is I