The Bottoms Read Online Free

a wide step over the missing slat toward the next one. I made it, but the bridge shook and I heard Tom scream.
    I glanced over my shoulder as she dropped the shotgun and grabbed at the cable. The shotgun fell a long ways and hung between the two lower cables. The bridge swung violently, threw me against one of the cables, then to the other side. I thought I was a goner for sure.
    When the bridge slowed, I lowered to one knee on the slat, pivoted, and looked at Tom. “Easy,” I said.
    “I’m too scared to let go,” Tom said.
    “You got to, and you got to get the gun.”
    It was a long time before Tom finally bent over and picked up the gun. After a bit of heavy breathing, we started on again. That was when we heard the noise down below and saw the thing.
    It was moving along the bank on the opposite side, down near the water, under the bridge. You couldn’t see it good, because it was outside of the moonlight, in the shadows. Its head was huge and there was something like horns on it and the rest of it was dark as a coal bin. It leaned a little forward, as if trying to get a good look at us, and I could see the whites of its eyes and chalky teeth shining in the moonlight. It made a high keening noise, like a huge wood rat being slowly crushed to death. It made the noise twice and went silent.
    “Jesus, Harry,” Tom said. “It’s the Goat Man. What do we do?”
    I thought about going back. That way we’d be across the river from it, but then again, we’d have all that woods to travel through, and for miles. And if it crossed over somewhere, we’d have it tracking us again, because I felt certain that’s what had been following us in the brambles.
    If we went on across, we’d be above it, on the higher bank, and it wouldn’t be that far to the Preacher’s Road. The Goat Man didn’t go as far as the road. That was his quitting place. He was trapped here in the woods and along the banks of the Sabine.
    “We got to go on,” I said. I took one more look at those white eyes and teeth, and started pushing on across. The bridge swung, but I had more motivation now. I was moving pretty good, and so was Tom.
    When we were near to the other side, I looked down, but I couldn’t see the Goat Man anymore. I didn’t know if it was the angle or if it had gone on. I kept thinking when I got to the other side he would be there, waiting.
    But when we got to the other side there was only the trail that split the deep woods. It stood out in the moonlight and there was no one or nothing on it.
    We started down the trail. Toby was heavy and I was trying not to jar him too much, but I was so frightened I wasn’t doing that good a job. He whimpered some.
    After we’d gone on a good distance, the trail turned into shadow where the limbs from trees reached out and hid it from the moonlight and seemed to hold the ground in a kind of dark hug.
    “I reckon if it’s gonna jump us,” I said, “that’d be the place.”
    “Then let’s don’t go there.”
    “You want to go back across the bridge?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Then we got to go on. We don’t know if he might have followed.”
    “Did you see those horns on his head?”
    “I seen somethin’. I think what we oughta do, least till we get through that bend in the trail there, is swap. You carry Toby and let me carry the shotgun.”
    “I like the shotgun.”
    “Yeah, but I can shoot it without it knocking me down. And I got the shells.”
    Tom considered this. “Okay,” she said.
    She put the shotgun on the ground and I gave her Toby. I picked up the gun and we started around the dark curve in the trail.
    When we were in deep shadow nothing leaped out on us, but as we neared the moonlit part of the trail we heard movement in the woods. The same sort of movement we had heard back in the brambles. Something was pacing us again.
    We reached the moonlit part of the trail and felt better. But there really wasn’t any reason for it. It was just a way of feeling.