If You Go Down to the Woods by Seth C. Adams

Author:Seth C. Adams
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008280246
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2018-01-19T05:00:00+00:00

3.

We’d finished our little club conference atop Lookout Mountain with Jim, Tara, and Bobby going back to the Connolly yard to see to some preparations. Sarah, Bandit and I headed home in the off-chance that we were being watched. We didn’t want the Collector to get suspicious or anything if he was the one doing the watching.

Jim had pointed out the fact that the Collector could have been watching us up on Lookout Mountain during our whole talk, and that maybe he saw us boost onto the upright stone and peer into the recess there. That when we left he’d come out of hiding, find the money, and that would be that.

When Jim said this, we all stopped what we were doing, even Bandit, as if he sensed the direness and inherent threat of Jim’s words, and stood and looked around at the trees around and below us. I watched for the slightest shake of a branch; listened for the slightest snap or pop of crushing footfalls; saw and heard nothing but the forest. No one else did either.

There was nothing else we could do but proceed as we had planned. Either the Collector was watching us and now knew where the money was, or he’d concluded last night that it had been hidden somewhere far away and discreet, and was confident in his promise of violence to see the money brought to him.

The Outsiders’ Club silently parted ways at the edge of the woods, without a goodbye or even a wave, as if the task we were about demanded solemnity rather than joviality. I was actually appreciative of my sister’s presence, along with my dog’s.

The weight I felt pushing on me seemed too heavy to bear alone.

* * *

Now, you’d think a missing body, a buttload of money, and a creepy guy in a fedora and coat calling himself the Collector threatening to kill you and your sister, would be enough for God or Fate or whatever ran the universe to put on one kid’s plate at any given time. But you’d be wrong, because apparently God’s got a mean streak or Fate was a neglected stepchild and is working out issues or something.

When Sarah and I arrived home we were greeted by the following scene: our dad in the yard face to face with the lumberjack-Sasquatch, Mr. Templeton. The way Bobby’s father stood, legs firmly set and arms crossed at his chest, and the close proximity with which our father planted himself before the bull-like man, made it clear that this wasn’t an impromptu PTA meeting.

The tension in the air was like a substance you could reach out and touch. We were in the driveway, Dad and Mr. Templeton a short distance away in the green summer grass of our yard, and though I knew Dad had seen us approach, he never once let his eyes drift away from the larger man in front of him.

I’d forgotten how truly huge Bobby’s dad was. He was a mountain sprouted legs.

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