The Shadows: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

below, there were several of my notebooks. The ones I’d used to write down my faltering attempts at stories as a teenager.
    Among other things.
    I picked up the notebook nearest the top, then opened it and read the beginning of the first entry.
    I am in the dark market.
    A flurry of memories erupted suddenly, like birds startled from a tree.
    James, sitting on the jungle gym that day.
    The knock on the door later.
    The thought I’d had so often:
    You have to do something about Charlie.
    I put the notebook down, shivering slightly despite the heat of theday. When Sally had called me earlier that week, told me about my mother’s accident, and asked if I was able to come back here, I had not answered immediately, because the idea of returning to Gritten filled me with horror. But I had done my best to persuade myself the past was gone. That there was no need to think about what had happened here. That I would be safe after all these years.
    And I had been wrong.
    Because more memories were arriving now, dark and angry, and I realized that however much I wanted to be done with the past, what mattered was whether the past was done with me. And as I listened to the ominous thud of silence in the house behind me, the foreboding I’d had all day moved closer to the dread I remembered feeling twenty-five years ago.
    Something awful was going to happen.

FOUR
BEFORE
    It was early October, a few weeks into our first term at Gritten Park School. That day we had rugby. James and I got changed at the main building with the rest of the class, and then trooped off through the cobbled streets to the playing field. I remember the air was icy on my thighs, and the way my breath misted the air. All around us, the click of cleats on the road was harsh and sharp.
    I glanced at James, who was walking beside me with the air of a condemned man. He was watching the larger boys ahead with a wary eye. While the two of us had assimilated as quietly into the background of our new school as possible, James had been a target for bullies from day one. I did my best to protect him when we were together, but I couldn’t be with him all the time, and the rugby field felt like open season. A place where violence was not only tolerated but actively encouraged.
    The teacher—Mr. Goodbold—was swaggering among the boys ahead, bantering with the favored. The man seemed little more than an older, larger version of the school bullies. There was the same angrily shaved head and solid physicality, the same resentment at the world and barely concealed contempt for the softer, more sensitive kids. On a few occasions I had seen him walking his bulldog aroundGritten, both of them moving with the same hunched, muscular rhythm.
    We reached the road and had to wait at the traffic lights as cars hurtled dangerously around the corner. I winced at the blasts of air as they shot past. From the speed some of them went, there was no guarantee they’d stop for a red light in time.
    I leaned in to whisper to James.
    “It’s like every part of this experience is designed to kill us.”
    He didn’t smile.
    Once we were safely across the road, Goodbold led us down the field. At the far end, a teaching assistant was wrestling with a tangled net of rugby balls. The sky stretching overhead seemed gray and endless.
    “Two groups!”
    Goodbold spread his arms, somehow managing to separate his favorite pupils from the rest of us.
    “You lot along this line. Organize yourselves by height.”
    He led the larger boys across the field, and we all looked at each other and began shuffling around. I was a good head taller than James, and so ended up a distance away along the line. The assistant handed me a ball. Across the field, Goodbold organized the other side so that the tallest boy in that group was opposite the smallest of ours.
    “When I blow this,” he bellowed, holding up a whistle, “you will attempt to get your ball to the other side. Your opponent will try to stop you.