In the Tall Grass Read Online Free Page A

left them, walked away from the car and left them, and never come back, and never—
    Take hold, Calvin. If not for yourself, for your sister.
    “I will,” he promised his father. “I will.”
    He stripped the snarls of tough greenery from his ankles and shins, barely feeling the little cuts the grass had inflicted. He stood.
    “Becky, where are you?”
    Nothing for a long time—long enough for his heart to abandon his chest and rise into his throat. Then, incredibly distant: “Here! Cal, what should we do? We’re lost!”
    He closed his eyes again, briefly. That’s the kid’s line. Then he thought: Le kid, c’est moi. It was almost funny.
    “We keep calling,” he said, moving toward where her voice had come from. “We keep calling until we’re together again.”
    “But I’m so thirsty!” She sounded closer now, but Cal didn’t trust that. No, no, no.
    “Me too,” he said. “But we’re going to get out of this, Beck. We just have to keep our heads.” That he had already losthis—a little, only a little—was one thing he’d never tell her. She had never told him the name of the boy who knocked her up, after all, and that made them sort of even. A secret for her, now one for him.
    “What about the kid?”
    Ah, Christ, now she was fading again. He was so scared that the truth popped out with absolutely no trouble at all, and at top volume.
    “Fuck the kid, Becky! This is about us now!”
    •  •  •
    Directions melted in the tall grass, and time melted as well: a Dalí world with Kansas stereo. They chased each other’s voices like weary children too stubborn to give up their game of tag and come in for dinner. Sometimes Becky sounded close; sometimes she sounded far; he never once saw her. Occasionally the kid yelled for someone to help him, once so close that Cal sprang into the grass with his hands outstretched to snare him before he could get away, but there was no kid. Only a crow with its head and one wing torn off.
    There is no morning or night here, Cal thought, only eternal afternoon . But even as this idea occurred to him, he saw that the blue of the sky was deepening and the squelchy ground beneath his sodden feet was growing dim.
    If we had shadows, they’d be getting long and we might use them to move in the same direction, at least, he thought, but they hadno shadows. Not in the tall grass. He looked at his watch and wasn’t surprised to see it had stopped even though it was a self-winder. The grass had stopped it. He felt sure of it. Some malignant vibe in the grass; some paranormal Fringe shit.
    It was half past nothing when Becky began to sob.
    “Beck? Beck? ”
    “I have to rest, Cal. I have to sit down. I’m so thirsty. And I’ve been having cramps.”
    “Contractions?”
    “I guess so. Oh God, what if I have a miscarriage out here in this fucking field?”
    “Just sit where you are,” he said. “They’ll pass.”
    “Thanks, doc, I’ll—” Nothing. Then she began screaming. “Get away from me! Get away! DON’T TOUCH ME!”
    Cal, now too tired to run, ran anyway.
    •  •  •
    Even in her shock and terror, Becky knew who the madman had to be when he brushed aside the grass and stood before her. He was wearing tourist clothes—Dockers and mud-clotted Bass Weejuns. The real giveaway, however, was his T-shirt. Although smeared with mud and a dark maroon crust that was almost certainly blood, she could see the ball of spaghetti-like string and knew what was printed above it— world’s largest ball of twine, cawker city, kansas . Didn’t she have a shirt just like it neatly folded in her suitcase?
    The kid’s dad. In the mud- and grass-smeared flesh.
    “Get away from me!” She leaped to her feet, hands cradling her belly. “Get away! DON’T TOUCH ME!”
    Dad grinned. His cheeks were stubbly, his lips red. “Calm down. Want to get out? It’s easy.”
    She stared at him, openmouthed. Cal was shouting, but for the moment she paid no attention.
    “If