Read Someone Is Bleeding for Free Online Page A

those things. Nothing really but a big black maze. You wander through it, down inclines, turning corners, searching for an exit—all in a blackness that’s complete and abysmal. This sounds pointless, I guess. Until you take a girl. A lot of loafers hang around there. They wait for unescorted girls to go in.
    I don’t know what it was that made me nervous from the start. Maybe it was Peggy. She seemed to be driving herself, daring herself not to be afraid. Her laughter was forced and her hand in mine shook and was wet with perspiration. She kept tugging.
    “Come on, Davie, let’s find our way out.”
    “What did we come in for?”
    “To find our way out.”
    “Progress,” I said.
    The place was like a coal mine. I couldn’t see a thing. It had a dank, rotting odor too. that place. The smell of uncleaned spaces and water-logged wood and the vague, left-over smell of thousands of phantom bodies who had come in to get out.
    And there were sounds. Giggles. Little shrieks of deliberate fright. Or were they deliberate? Peggy’s breath was fast, erratic. Her laughter was too breathless.
    “Babe, what did we come in here for?” I said.
    “Come on, it’s fun, it’s fun.”
    “Some fun.”
    She kept pulling me, and I held on tight, moving through the blackness that was filled with clumping and shuffling of feet. And more shrieks and giggles. And the sound of our breathing. Unnaturally loud.
    “This is scary,” Peggy said, “isn’t it?”
    We touched walls, bumped down inclines, pressed together in the dark.
    “Excuse me,” I said. It sounded inane.
    “All right,” came the Phantom reply In a voice that had more fright than elation in it now.
    “How do you get out of here?” I said, trying to get rid of the rising uneasiness in me.
    “You just wander and finally you come out,” she said.
    Silence. Except for feet shuffling and her breathing and my breathing. Shuffling along in the dark. With the rising sense that we weren’t alone. I don’t mean the other people in the black maze. I mean somebody with us.
    The next thing I remember, the last thing for a while, was a sudden blinding beam of light behind us. A rushing sound behind me. And me whirling around into the eye-closing light. Then feeling two big hands grab my throat, strong arms spinning me, now in blackness again. A heavy knee driving into my back, and something hard crashing down on my skull.
    And though it was dark, for me it got darker. I felt myself hit the floor and start falling into night.
    But not before, on my knees and almost gone, I heard Peggy scream out in mortal terror.
    * * *
    Somebody was slapping my face.
    I twisted my head away and groaned. Sounds trickled back into my brain. I opened my eyes.
    I was still on the pier, half-stretched out on the walk, propped up against a wooden fence. A crowd was watching me with that alien and heartless curiosity that crowds have for stretched-out victims of any kind. I heard a voice saying, “It’s nothing folks, he just fainted. Don’t congregate, please. Don’t get the police on me, thank you kindly, I appreciate it. Nothing at all folks, just fainted that’s all, he just fainted.”
    “Peggy!”
    I struggled up, suddenly remembering her. The pain in my skull almost put me out again. I fell back on one elbow.
    “Take it easy, boy,” said the man with the cigar in his mouth, the loud sport shirt, “Just fainted, folks. Don’t congregate, please don’t congregate.”
    He looked at me. “How’s the head?” he asked.
    “Where is she?” I asked. I grabbed his arm, fighting off the dizziness. “She’s not still in there, is she?”
    “ Now, now,” he said, “take it easy.”
    ”Is she!”
    “No, no, no, no, nobody’s in there now. It’s cleared out. Stop yelling please. You want the police to come down?”
    “Did you see her leave?” I asked.
    “I didn’t,” said the man, still looking around. “Somebody said they did.”
    “Alone, was she alone?” I slumped against