A Bat in the Belfry by Sarah Graves Read Free Book Online Page B

played sports and went deer hunting, many with their own guns. They regarded David as merely another variety of prey animal.
    Hanging with Bogie—and by extension, with a crew of butt-ugly, thuggish mutts just like him, all led by the repulsive but weirdly charismatic Harvey Spratt—kept David safe.
    “Hey, Dweeb !” Bogie yelled, circling on the bike, heedless of the lights coming on in the dark houses all around. “Dweeb, hop on!” Bogie reached back and patted the rack behind the bike’s seat demandingly while at the same time he attempted to circle around again under the streetlamp.
    Bogie was especially wired tonight for some reason, but at least he wore clean clothes for once. Thinking this, David got to his feet just as a man in pajamas came angrily out of one of the houses. Hopping with fury under his porch light, he yelled what men like that always did: “Hey, you kids!”
    Bogie laughed wildly. “Hey, you kids!” he cackled. “Yah!” But then the bike’s tire hit a pothole and he swerved out of control, careening into a barberry thicket that marked the lot line between two yards.
    Jesus . Bounding off the porch, David shot into the alley behind the house where Bogie had crashed. The place they’d stolen the bike from—Bogie picking open the garage door lock with a tool that resembled a dentist’s instrument, as easily as if he’d held a key—was vacant, the summer people who tenanted it gone home for the season.
    But all the other nearby houses belonged to locals, year-round Eastport residents. Many of them were probably calling the police right this minute. “Bogie!” David whispered urgently, crouching to peer into the thorny thicket.
    No answer, and for a moment David felt relieved. Around him the only sound was the faint rustling of dried vegetation in the summer people’s perennial gardens, the pale globes of hydrangea blooms like ghostly heads hanging against a picket fence. But then a stream of curses sputtered out of the gloom and Bogie appeared, the porkpie hat he always wore jammed down crookedly and his lip oozing blood.
    “Come on,” he snarled, grabbing David by his jacket collar. Out in the street now, the householders were gathering purposefully; this wasn’t Bogie Kopmeir’s first visit to the neighborhood, apparently.
    A door slammed; a car started. A cell phone jangled out a mechanized tune, and then—horror of horrors—a dog barked.
    A big dog. “Move it, Dweeb! You wanna get us caught?”
    Bogie was short, but he was built like a fireplug, and he was strong. Fast, too; gasping, David let himself be half dragged and half shoved up the alley behind the houses until the stabbing of flashlight beams and the voices of angry men had faded.
    Finally they reached the cemetery, scuttling in among the mossy old gravestones where the silence was complete. David fell exhausted against one of them, not even caring that only a few feet below, human bones moldered. If he’d had his way, he’d have been down there with them, he told himself miserably.
    God, what kind of a life was this? Beat up by one bunch of cretins or bossed around by another even stupider bunch. Meanwhile, the school’s anti-bullying program kept yammering about how they should all just be nicer to one another.
    Yeah, nicer , like that was going to—
    “Dweeb.”
    Suddenly Bogie Kopmeier’s thick, stubby-fingered hand was at David’s throat, choking him while pinning his head back against a century-old carved granite angel’s unyielding wing.
    “Freakin’ fag,” Bogie spat. “Why’d you run away, huh?”
    His breath stank of cigarettes and unbrushed teeth. David jerked his head to the side. “Didn’t,” he gagged out past Bogie’s merciless stranglehold. “You told me to …”
    But there was no reasoning with Bogie. He gave David’s throat a sharp shove, slamming David’s head against one of the angel wing’s pointy-ended stone feathers. If it had pierced his skull and killed him, he’d have