Adrift 2: Sundown by K.R. Griffiths Read Free Book Online Page A

light, and blinked as his eyes adjusted and the shadows evaporated.
    Nothing.
    The barn looked empty, because it was empty. Of people, at any rate. Yet there was one significant addition to the old building’s interior, and Barry’s eyes fell upon it immediately.
    Right in the centre of the barn, somebody had dug a large hole. A good three feet in diameter, at least.
    What the hell?
    Barry stepped forward slowly, and his jaw slackened. Even from several yards away, it was impossible to miss the truth: the hole hadn’t been dug at all. Tell-tale furrows were cut into the dirt floor, as if the hole had been created by fingers or paws, not by a shovel. It looked more like something had tunnelled its way out of the earth.
    Like a mole the size of a damn horse , Barry thought, and let out a nervous snort.
    He fished his keys from his pocket. His keyring held a penlight, and he flicked it on and leaned into the hole slowly, half-afraid that something would leap out at him. He held his breath as the light played over a passage that appeared endless, swallowed entirely by the blackness beyond the feeble illumination provided by the tiny bulb.
    For several long seconds, Barry’s mind played devious tricks on him, and he felt a crawling certainty that something was lurking there, just beyond the cone of light, watching him hungrily; something that would at any moment streak toward him on all fours, snarling and—
    There was nothing.
    No movement in the strange tunnel beyond the shivering shadows cast by the light Barry held in fingers which had begun to tremble, as if they possessed some knowledge of the situation that his slow-moving mind did not.
    Barry grimaced, and told his raging nerves sternly to calm the hell down.
    Whatever the tunnel had been created by, it was clearly empty now.
    Because it’s already out there, you idiot. It tunnelled out of the ground, and now it’s out there in the darkness, watching you; getting closer…
    Barry’s brow knitted as his thoughts began to race forward, taking on a lurching life of their own.
    It?
    That was a troubling development: Barry was not a man given to flights of fancy. When his mind suddenly conjured up images of bizarre creatures rising from the ground like zombies; like some bad horror movie had been made real in the ground beneath his property, he felt a nervous laugh building. The notion was ridiculous, of course.
    Yet he had caught a glimpse of something out there in the rain, just for a moment. Something that walked upright, like a man.
    He suddenly felt terribly exposed in the middle of the barn, and he spun to face the open door, tensing his muscles in readiness, certain that whatever he had seen out there would be charging toward him; some horror that had crawled out of the earth…
    Beyond the gaping barn door, all he saw was darkness and rain.
    He stepped outside warily, leaving the lights in the barn blazing, and swept his penlight in a wide arc. The farm buildings looked still, but the light wasn’t powerful enough to be certain. Barry forced himself to focus, concentrating on listening, trying to sift through the ceaseless sound of the rain falling and the incessant whine of the wind. For a moment, he thought he heard footsteps coming toward him, and he sighed in relief when he realised it was the sound of his own pulse, hammering in his ears.
    In the distant darkness, he heard a faint thud.
    The front door?
    Did I lock it?
    Barry’s muscles called a time out, and he stood there for several moments, frozen. He tried to tell himself that he was alone; just him and the rain. His tired mind was playing tricks on him, that was all. It was nothing.
    But it wasn’t nothing. Barry knew that on a fundamental level, like some long-forgotten animal instinct had suddenly awoken and screamed for his attention. The darkness felt wrong. Dangerous.
    He took a couple of steps toward the distant farmhouse, set on fetching the shotgun and a powerful flashlight, and his breath