Dark Tides Read Online Free Page A

he asked, in a hammy, mock-horror voice.
    I thought about it. Truth was, I was a little afraid. I didn’t really know these boys. I was a long way from home. It was getting late. Nobody knew I was here. And Callum’s attentions, mixed with the vodka, were distracting Rachel. She seemed less and less concerned about me with every passing moment. Maybe this was a trick, after all. Maybe Rachel had duped me into coming, like some kind of lamb to a hormonal slaughter. These boys might want to do anything to me. And perhaps Rachel didn’t care about that kind of thing. But I did.
    I shrank back towards Mark, then flinched.
    ‘I guess it depends on the dare.’
    Scott was enjoying this now. He was almost bouncing with excitement. ‘You really want to know? There’s no backing out once you hear it. There’s a forfeit. Those are the rules.’
    ‘Just get on with it,’ Mark grumbled. ‘You’re freaking her out.’
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Tell me.’
    But I didn’t want to hear it. Not really. And now I wish I never had.

Chapter Four
    We walked along the shingle beach, tramping across fine sand and pebbles, picking our way between driftwood and seaweed. I hugged my arms around myself as the wind slammed against me. I could feel the cold in my lips, my ears. It was dark but a waning moon was visible through a break in the clouds, casting the beach and the ocean in a faint lunar shimmer. Callum was carrying a torch that he’d removed from one of the zipped pockets on his combat trousers. The narrow beam jolted with his movements, flaring off a dented oil drum and an old plastic water container.
    The sea was raging. It was wild. High tide. A major swell. The blue-black waters roiled and undulated, surf frothing and crashing against the shore. I glanced out as far as I could see and pictured myself alone out there, drowning, waving desperately to shore. I imagined my legs cramping, the frigid waters surging up, deep currents tugging at my ankles. I stared for so long, eyes watering, that I could nearly believe it was true. Could almost glimpse the pale streak of a hand signalling back at me.
    I looked away. Tramped on. There wasn’t much talking. It was too cold, the walk too arduous, our feet sinking down with every step. I guess it didn’t help that the sea was so loud. The few times I tried to say something to Rachel she didn’t react. Maybe the wind snatched my words from me. Maybe I hadn’t said anything at all.
    We walked for perhaps half a mile before Callum led us away from the shore towards the broad dunes running along behind the beach. I floundered to the top of a sandy drift and looked back towards the car park and way beyond it to the lighthouse at the Point of Ayre. The lantern rotated and the milky beam spun out to sea, winking off the oily waters, fading away into the endless dark.
    ‘See the trees?’
    Callum was the only one still wearing a mask. I guessed the hooded cowl was keeping him warm, or maybe he was relishing the effect of his costume – the stark white plastic against the blackness all around made it appear as if his head was floating.
    Beyond the flat grasslands I could just make out a dark, scrambled blur. I peered harder. The wooded area wasn’t large, perhaps no bigger than the playground at school. Maybe two hundred trees, hemmed in tight.
    I didn’t like what I was seeing. It didn’t feel right to me at all. But the others started moving and I moved with them, plunging into a hollow among the dunes.
    We hiked across the sandy grass, carpeted with moss and lichen and mounds of gorse, pocked with rabbit holes and sand pits, until we reached the isolated wood. The trees were pines. It looked as if they’d been planted in lines many years ago and had grown up in a rough grid of wayward rows and columns, branches tangling overhead.
    I ducked beneath the outer trees on to a soft mulch of loose earth and fallen pine cones and needles. The dank air smelled of wet timber and decaying