Dark Tides Read Online Free Page B

vegetation. The boys fanned out and prowled forwards like soldiers stalking an enemy hideout, stamping over twigs and fallen branches and rotting logs. Rachel grabbed my sleeve and dragged me after them. She found my hand and gave it a quick squeeze and I thought I knew why. There was a peculiar hush now that we were sheltered from the wind and the sudden stillness was disconcerting. It felt as if we’d stumbled upon a place that was waiting for something to happen. Something bad, maybe.
    ‘OK, stop.’
    Callum had led us to a large pine in the middle of the woods. Someone had built a shelter next to it by leaning cut branches against the broad trunk. He cast his torch around, lingering on a ring of stones where a campfire had once been lit. He turned slowly and pointed the torch beam into our faces like he was taking a register.
    ‘Show me your blindfolds.’
    We held them out for him to see. He’d passed them to us back in the car. They were sleepmasks, really – the type some people might use on a long-distance flight.
    ‘Good. Now go and pick a tree. But remember, you mustn’t be too close together.’ He placed the torch beneath his chin, firing the beam up at his mask, as if he was about to tell us a ghost story. ‘I’ll be watching you to begin with. I’ll know if you cheat.’
    We looked at one another. Then David shrugged and turned away and the rest of us did likewise, spreading out as we blundered off into the black.
    I listened to the crump of the soft ground and the snap of fallen twigs. Soon, the noises of the others started to fade until my ragged breathing, the creaking tree limbs and the distant rush of the wind were all that I could hear.
    I stretched my arms out in front of me, feeling my way. I tripped over a thick root and almost fell. The fingers of my right hand brushed bark and I reached sideways, grasping for a tree and coiling my arms around the trunk.
    I straightened and pressed my spine against the gnarled bark.
    The light of Callum’s torch winked in the distant gloom.
    ‘All found one?’
    The others shouted back, confident and eager. I swallowed thickly and shouted too, but my ‘yes’ came out shrill and sharp, lingering in the twitchy dark.
    ‘Put your blindfolds on. I’m putting mine on now, too.’
    I raised my blindfold and fitted it clumsily to my eyes. I could smell some kind of perfume on the fabric. Maybe the mask had been worn before. Maybe it belonged to Callum’s mother, who had a whole collection of sleepmasks to wear at night. I guessed that was possible. It seemed like something a mum might do – although I was hardly an authority on that.
    ‘Remember. No talking.’
    ‘Tell yourself that,’ Scott shouted in his screechy falsetto.
    ‘Seriously. Anyone who talks after me pays the forfeit. No noises, OK? I’m going to start my watch in just a second. Twenty minutes. Nobody moves. Nobody talks. Nobody removes their blindfold. If any of you cheat or quit, you pay the forfeit. Everyone ready?’
    There was silence. Stillness.
    ‘OK. Time starts now.’
    I heard a low beep.
    Then nothing more.
    The silence built. The stillness, too.
    There was something foul-smelling close to me. Animal waste, maybe. Or some kind of bog. I was starting to think that I’d selected my tree pretty poorly. There had to be better smelling trees around.
    I strained my ears and listened hard, trying to figure out if any of the others were close by. At first there was just the wind up above, the low hiss of the far-off surf and the rapid beat of my heart. Then I heard a snort somewhere off to my right, followed by a giggle away to my left. One of the boys, then Rachel.
    ‘No cheating,’ Callum yelled, and I was pretty sure from the sound of his voice that he hadn’t moved from where I’d last seen him.
    ‘So- rry ,’ Rachel replied.
    ‘Do it again and you pay the forfeit. I mean it.’
    I had no idea what the forfeit was. I hadn’t been told. But in so many ways, it was irrelevant