The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig

Author:Chuck Wendig [Wendig, Chuck]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473586826
Google: yYALEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2021-07-19T23:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

The dark felt total and true—less an open space where no light reached and more a physical object with weight and presence.

It was not sufficient to simply walk through the tunnel, but rather it felt necessary to push through it, into the dark, for Nate to urge himself forward every step of the way. The dark was so oppressive, it seemed to swallow the beam of his flashlight. It reminded Nate in a way of pushing through that storm—it felt like it was working against him.

With every step, his worry deepened. Anxiety scrabbled around his head like a box of starving rats emptied into his skull. Turn around, he thought. Go home. Jed was right. We don’t have to do this.

Nausea curdled his stomach.

His skin felt hot, cold, and pricked with pins-and-needles numbness.

He wasn’t sure he could breathe right, and then he was thinking about breathing, which made breathing even harder.

A smell hit him: the rank, ruinous odor of something dead. He flashed the beam around, tried to find what was making that smell.

Nothing.

He kept going. Deeper, deeper.

All the while he was trying to imagine, what would they see here? What even was this? Something was off. That much he could tell. This was a weak spot; he could feel its thinness, as if reality here had all the tension and toughness of off-brand Kleenex. Like he could reach out and peel away the skin and watch the world bleed.

The ground, too, though asphalt, felt oddly…soft. Almost spongy underneath his feet.

“Jed?” he asked. “You feeling that?”

But no answer came.

“Buddy,” he said again, swinging the flashlight beam behind him—

Only to find that Jed wasn’t with him.

But back at the entrance, framed by the moonlight and faced by the dark, stood a silhouette. Shoulders slumped. Chin dipped.

The hackles on Nate’s neck bristled. Something was wrong.

“Jed,” he called, more commandingly this time. He turned all the way around and started walking back toward the entrance.

The figure at the mouth of the tunnel raised an arm—

Nate heard the telltale click of a revolver’s hammer drawing back. It echoed through the tunnel, along the stones.

Cla-click.

“I need you to stay there, Nate,” Jed croaked. His voice trembled with fear, or regret, or maybe both in concert. “Don’t come any farther, now. Or I’ll shoot. I will, I swear.”

“Jed, I need you to put the gun down.”

“Can’t, Nate. Can’t.”

Nate held up both hands in surrender, and he turned off the flashlight beam. (Best not to make himself a target.) “You wanna tell me what’s going on? I know things have been a little strange recently—but I’m here if you wanna talk.” Nate was sincere about this. But he was also formulating a plan. He had his own gun in his holster. He wasn’t fast enough to win some kind of cowboy battle—Draw, pardner, his brain said, as if trying to be funny—but if he juked right, into the dark, hunkering down? Jed wouldn’t be able to track him well. Maybe. Maybe. Christ, it was a risk, though.

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