Dark Hollow by Brian Keene Read Free Book Online Page A

about the same time as I’d heard Merle and Paul.
    I mowed on autopilot, pushing the lawn mower up and down the yard in neat rows. Insects jumped out of my way, and the first dandelions of spring disappeared beneath the blades. The smell of fresh-cut grass hung thick in the air, and a cool breeze tickled my face, but I couldn’t enjoy either of them. The lawn mower’s handle vibrated under my palms, but I barely felt it. My thoughts were elsewhere. I pictured Shelly, naked and on her knees, and then pushed the image from my mind. I was hard again.
    I’d completed three loops and was beginning my fourth when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I jumped. My hands slipped off the safety bar, and the lawn mower dutifully turned itself off.
    I spun around, heart pounding, and Merle stood behind me. He was laughing, and his beer belly shook like bread dough.
    “Sorry, Adam,” he apologized when he got his breath back. His meaty face was beet red. “Didn’t mean to give you a heart attack.”
    “Looks like you’re about to have one yourself,” I said. “Maybe laughter isn’t the best medicine for you.”
    A year earlier Merle had a stent put into his heart, right after his divorce was finalized. It was his second heart attack in as many years. He’d suffered the first one when his wife, Peggy, told him that she was leaving him for her tae kwon do instructor. The guy was twenty years younger than Merle.
    Smiling in spite of the scare he’d given me, I wiped my sweaty brow with the back of my hand.
    “If I die now,” Merle joked, “then I won’t have to pay any more alimony.”
    Merle Laughman lived two houses to the left of us. He was a big, jovial man in his early fifties. He loved to eat, loved to drink, and especially loved to laugh. Given his last name, that was pretty appropriate. He sold antiques out of his home, which doubled as a store because of the zoning laws on Main Street. Years ago the borough had decided to turn our tiny downtown section into an antique row, and now many of the homes were also storefronts. Tara and I had considered doing this ourselves, maybe opening a used bookstore, but we’d never seriously followed up on the idea. In addition to his antique store he had a wood shop out back where he crafted furniture. A little loud, and always ready with an opinion or a joke, but Merle was a good guy, and a great neighbor.
    Between Merle’s home and ours was a house that had been converted into apartments, one upstairs and one below. Cory Peters lived in the downstairs apartment. He was a nice enough kid, early twenties, tall and skinny, with leftover acne from his teenage years, as well as a fashion penchant for backward ball caps and letting his jeans fall off his ass. He’d dropped out of college and now worked in the local Wal-Mart’s produce department, where he got us all a discount on our groceries. Cory played too many video games and owned all of the James Bond movies on DVD. He also had the worst fake British accent in the history of the world.
    Cliff Swanson lived above him. Cliff was a twice-divorced and now hard-core bachelor in his early forties. He worked at a furniture plant in Baltimore and rode his Harley to work when the weather was nice. Cliff kept the bike in our garage because his landlord didn’t provide storage space on the property. Cliff had a ponytail that made me jealous, a sex life I envied, and a sullen loneliness about him that made me glad for everything I did have. Sometimes I wondered which was better, but I guess it was just subjective.
    Then there was Dale Haubner, who lived in the house to the right of us. He was a retired engineer in his early seventies who was always trying to give me story ideas. Tara and I had pretty much adopted him and his wife, Claudine, as surrogate parents. I mowed Dale’s lawn in the summer and shoveled his sidewalk in the winter. Dale and Claudine gave us vegetables from their garden and kept an eye on Tara and Big Steve when I was