Darkness Creeping Read Online Free PDF

ground a few times to keep from having my head taken off. I’m actually getting winded running my diagonal across the field, which never happens in these games.
    As they play, I begin to notice a definite difference in style between the two teams. The Red team is good. That is to say, each player is phenomenal—but each player is also a ball-hog. There’s no passing, everyone wants to be a star, and they fight one another for the ball. More than once I call a penalty on Red players for pushing—and usually it’s their own teammates who they push.
    As for the Blues, they’re not quite as skilled as the Reds individually. None of them are standout players, but they make up for it with expert teamwork. It’s a treat to watch the way they pass and dribble, moving the ball downfield. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The problem is, no matter how good their teamwork, there’s always some Red ball-hog who steals it away, and brings it back toward the Blue goal.
    As I watch them play, I find myself doing something that a ref is never supposed to do. I find myself rooting for one team over the other.

    “Danielle, I want to go home.”
    “So go,” I tell Cody. But for once I want him to stay. Not to punish him, but because I’ve started to feel so alone out there on the field, having him there gives me a little bit of comfort. Of course I won’t tell him that. It’s the end of the first quarter. There’s no score—but there will be soon. The Red team seems to keep getting angrier, and the angrier they get, the better they play. It’s only a matter of time before they start scoring.
    “I want you to go, too,” he says. “I want us both to go. Tell them you can’t stay. Call off the game. Let’s just go!”
    “You know I can’t do that!”
    Then he gets quiet. “There’s something . . . wrong with them. Can’t you feel it?”
    “I don’t feel a thing,” I tell him, but that’s a lie. The feeling is as heavy as the clouds that have begun gathering in the sky. It was a clear day when the game began, but now there are huge cumulus clouds hanging overhead, looking as heavy as anvils. “Let’s just get through this,” I tell him. “It’s just one game.”
    “Look at the grass!” he says.
    “Huh?”
    “Just look at it, and then tell me you don’t want to get out of here!”
    I look at him like he’s crazy—an expression that I’ve got pretty well mastered when it comes to Cody—then I blow the whistle and call the teams back for the second quarter.
    As I jog out onto the field, I can’t help but notice the grass, because now the thought of it is stuck in my head, thanks to Cody. I wish I hadn’t looked . . . because now I can see that all the yellow patches on the field are in the shape of small, seven-year-old footprints.
    Six minutes into the second quarter, a Red player with hair almost as red as his shirt trips a Blue player and sends him flying five feet, at the exact moment Alastor kicks the ball into the goal. The Reds start cheering. Technically I saw the trip and the goal at the same time. Arguably the goal could count. It’s completely in my discretion whether or not to call it back—and if it were any other game, I’d warn the tripper, and give the team their goal. But this isn’t any other game. I blow my whistle.
    “Tripping!” I call. “No goal!”
    All the Reds instantly cry out in disbelief, throwing their hands up into the air and looking at me with their terrible eyes. Up above I hear distant thunder volleying in the clouds. On the sidelines I can see Cody shaking his head at me, silently begging me to give them their goal, but I’m not a wimp like him. I stand by my calls.
    The kid with red hair storms up to me. “I didn’t trip him!” he shouts. “It was an accident!”
    “No goal!” I say again.
    “Troian!” the coach shouts. “Don’t talk back to the ref!”
    Troian storms off, but Alastor is there to take up where he left off.
    “You’re