The Dark Ones Read Online Free PDF

cylinder removed. Another time, way out there, he found a small cluster of ramshackle dwellings that looked barely large enough to have housed actual human beings, but the things he found there—ancient pots and pans, shattered plates, and so on—indicated otherwise.
    The house was his latest and greatest discovery. It wasn’t as deep into the woods as the slave shacks, but was significantly farther down from Wheaton Hills on the other side of Weakley Lane. The house wasn’t very big, a typical one-story old ranch. It was in an advanced state of disrepair. Its windows were boarded up and heavy bolts with padlocks were secured across the front and back doors. A narrow, wildly overgrown path leading to Weakley Lane had clearly once functioned as a driveway. A broken-down old Buick Special sat on blocks in a clearing in front of the house.
    But it wasn’t the isolation or symptoms of neglect that made the house spooky.
    It just felt somehow . . . wrong .
    Something in the atmosphere seemed to shift anytime you stepped into the small clearing. The very ground seemed tainted. It felt like a place where something had gone wrong long ago. It was a place of rot and decay. Of death.
    So, of course, it had appealed to all of them instantly.
    He certainly wasn’t surprised that Natasha had mentioned it now.
    “You want to go there.”
    A statement, not a question.
    She came closer to him, reached for his hands, clasped them. “I don’t just want to go to the house, Mark.”
    He swallowed with difficulty. “Y-yeah?”
    “I want to go inside.”
    He frowned. “But—”
    “We’ll break in.”
    Her lips grazed his neck, slid across his throat. Mark clenched her hands tighter. “Break . . . in?”
    “Uh huh.” She lifted her head and kissed a corner of his chin. “And when we get inside, we’ll . . . well . . .”
    He forced his mouth open and sucked in a great breath. “Yeah?”
    “I want you to fuck me in that house, Mark.”
    “God . . .”
    She tugged at his hand, silently urging him to come with her.
    He did not resist.

S IX

    Ransom, Tennessee
Hollis House

    December 6, 1984

    She was bleeding.
    Christ, but she was bleeding. Little spurts of red jetted from the ragged gash in her scalp. Norman Campbell wasn’t a doctor, but he figured you didn’t need to be one to know that couldn’t be good. Holy hell, she was either dying or well on her way to it if he didn’t do something about it—and soon.
    How had it all gone so wrong so fast?
    The call had come in at a little after noon, barely an hour ago. It was pure dumb luck he’d even been there at the time. Norman was president of Ransom Lumber & Supply. The Big Boss Man. He had a couple dozen employees working for him in the company he’d inherited from his own father nine years earlier, after the old man kicked off following a botched bypass operation. On a normal day, he wouldn’t be anywhere near the office between the hours of eleven and two. Those were the hours when he would gather with a couple of the other local fat cats for a “business lunch” at the Jackson Steakhouse. Their “business” typically consisted of smoking cigars, drinking whiskey, and telling raunchy stories. And maybe a little flirting with one of the cute waitresses. Norman had been to bed with one or two of the little honeys, bet your ass.
    Point was, he should be there right now. Maybe laughing it up with the fellas over the latest tall tales of lewd ladies and close calls with cuckolded husbands (some of which were even true). Or having a halfway serious conversation with Mayor Harper about some ideas for local property development. For damn sure, he should have three or more stiff whiskey drinks in him by now.
    He could use a goddamn drink.
    Louella Hollis rolled onto her back and reached a trembling hand toward him. He watched a thick trickle of blood spill down her forehead and fork into two thinner crimson streams at the bridge of her nose. The blood began to pool in the