Scare Tactics by John Farris Read Free Book Online Page A

Grimacing, she stooped to rub the anklebone and, in the midst of this movement, saw something, like a partially shielded flashlight beam in the pine woods beside the drive. But it came and went so fast she couldn’t be positive what it was. Just a wink from a strong light.
    Was somebody out there?
    Oh, Jesus, Taryn thought, and she groped for the tire iron. When she had it she stood with her back to the gate, knees together, staring at the woods, breathing through her mouth, a habit carried over from childhood when she was unhappy or overwrought. But there was nothing more to see. Nobody drove by on the pike. She glanced down at the L.C.D. display of her watch.
    Twenty minutes to four.
    Only one dark hour to go, then the sky would begin to lighten and there would be southbound traffic, early birds on their way to the Perimeter to work, she’d get a ride home ...
    Taryn tucked the tire iron under one arm and pulled at the heavy rusted chain that held the gates together, cringing at the noise she made but desperate to be inside, not just standing there with the moon full in her face, casting a smudge of shadow against the fence boards, the faded remnants of old movie posters pasted there.
    Eastwood, Redford. Those were some real men. She regretted the impulse that had prompted her to go out with Nealy Bazemore, even if they were related on his wife’s side. All along she’d planned to go right home after the George Strait concert, although she was well aware of what that cuss Nealy had on his mind, but then something happened like it always happened, she couldn’t help kissing him, and after the kiss she’d thought, Well, just this one time, even if he is a married man ... shit! Now look. Stranded at the damn *Star-Light* with—
    With nothing. Stop it. Nothing and nobody’s here, you’re all by yourself and it’s maybe a little more than an hour to sunup, so stop! Just stop scaring yourself.
    Straining, Taryn shoved open the heavy gates, slipped into the drive-in, paused for a few moments, trembling from exertion, then put all of her weight into closing the gates behind her.
    There.
    She felt better right away, at home here and oddly nostalgic as she looked around at the acres of hard-packed clay in front of the single screen, which was dilapidated after more than four years of neglect, shot full of holes in a few places from kids using it for rifle practice. But she remembered how the screen had looked in the theatre’s heyday, with huge misty images playing over it, films she hadn’t paid all that much attention to except for Rocky and First Blood —when Stallone was featured at the *Star-Light* Drive-In she was there to see the movie, period. There had been in-car speakers once, but they were long gone, only a squat forest of iron pipes set in cement remained. To her right was the low building that once housed the projection booth and refreshment stand. The neon had been removed from above the long counter, the iron grill was down and probably locked. She assumed the projection booth was locked up too, but her tire iron would get her in.
    As she headed for the building Taryn smiled, thinking about the time she and Jaymie Walraven had laced Becky Pratt’s strawberry Frostee with Milk of Magnesia, getting back at Becky for putting caterpillars in Jaymie’s popcorn— caterpillars, gross! She couldn’t remember which of them had come up with the idea to spray-paint Lost my cherry to Hilda Berry on Steve Webley’s car while he and Hilda were bare-assed in the back seat. But the worst, absolutely the grossest, thing that had ever been perpetrated at the *Star-Light*—
    Taryn came to a dead stop, freezing from the roots of her hair down to the small of her back.
    The door of the projection booth a dozen feet away was not locked, as she had anticipated. Because the door was opening, even as she stood there gawking like a ninny at it. Creaking just a little on its hinges. Opening slowly, so slowly—
    She was off