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

get static. Sometimes the static's like thoughts, but I'm not thinking them. So they must come from other people. I never thought much about it because I've always had static in my head, even when I was a baby, as far back as I can remember.
    I never told anyone before. I’ve been afraid to. I know other people can’t do this. They'd think I'm crazy or bad moon loony and I don't think I am. I figure maybe it comes from God or something, a way to help protect me maybe. I don’t know really. I might know when I’m grown and understand these things better.
    Anyway, after Crow took the drug, I started getting his thoughts all jumbled, mixed up with bright colors and long drawn out music sounds that sounded like guitars holding a note a long time. I knew about how he got drugs in prison and how Heddy wasn't any better, she drank whiskey, kept a pint bottle in her purse, and she took it like medicine. She was a lush , he thought, but it didn’t bother him.
    That's when I slid next to Mama and tried to tell her in a whisper that we were in really bad trouble now. It would have been awful enough if Crow and Heddy were using us and the car to get away and they might let us go soon. But when I found out how much time they spent dreaming inside their heads with drugs and whiskey, I knew we might be stuck with them. They needed help. They couldn't do it without someone to lean on. They weren’t getting away with Crow’s escape all on their own, they weren’t strong enough.
    I don’t think even Crow and Heddy understood how weak they were without us around. It was like once we were with them, our fear fed them. Not to mention that if they ran into law trouble how better off they were with a policeman and his family for hostages. Cops will do anything for another cop, anything. They knew that. It wasn’t unlucky at all, them running into us, the way Heddy said at first. They knew it was lucky, really. We were like solid gold to them.
    When I tried to tell Mama in some way she'd understand me, Crow reached out his hand and patted me on the head the way you pat dogs. I heard him say, "Good kid, good kid."
    But that's not all. He was thinking, I don’t want to hurt you, just be a good kid.
    He didn't want me to tell Mama what I knew. I even knew about the nasty stuff, the sex stuff he did behind bars so he could keep from being knifed or hit over the head when he was sleeping in his bunk. He used the word “nigger” in his head, a word my Mama told me never ever to say. Anytime I hear someone use that word it makes me want to scrunch up my shoulders and find a corner to go hide in, ashamed I can be in the same room with someone who calls a black person that word. It makes me want to say the same thing my Mama told me. “Skin color is an accident. If you’d been born black would you want white people calling you a name like that? Would you?”
    But I knew Crow had been calling them that a long time, probably all his life. He didn’t know any better, no one had taught him anything.
    I looked at him next to me with his eyes closed and his head against the seat and I knew if I said much about what I knew was in his head to Mama, he'd get really mad. He would hurt me. I'd have to keep most of my thoughts--and Crow’s thoughts--to myself. If I talked about it, he'd know.
    See, they were both ready to hurt us, but Crow was the one who scared me the most in the beginning. Later, it would be Heddy. It’s like the longer we were with them, the truer we could see them, the more we knew about the danger we were in.
    He'd seen people hurt in prison and he'd done some of that hurting. He'd been put in Leavenworth for trying to kill a man with a pool stick. He'd gotten mad over a bet and broke the stick over the other man's head, then stuck the broken end into the man's stomach. He pulled it out and started kicking the man in the head. He'd have killed him if some other men hadn't pulled him off.
    I know this because during the time we were