A Boy in the Woods Read Online Free PDF

not mad, she’s just worried about you.” Harold spoke calmly.
    The boy didn’t move, he kept his back to Harold, his hooded head bowed to the pile of rocks at his feet.
    “It’s okay, I know what it’s like. I had a lot of bad stuff happen to me when I was your age. I ran away from home too.” A painful ache swelled in Harold’s chest and grew into a panic. He stumbled a step back and tried to push a buried memory away, tried to push it back down in the dirt. That one memory he never wanted to deal with. That one moment from his childhood that had caused him to get hung up on Chapter 7. Writing and rewriting Chapter 7 for more than twenty years.
    Light flurries floated down from the tangle of bare branches. “You should come back with me, to my car, I’ll give you a–” Harold choked as he looked down at the pile of rocks. In the heap of fist sized boulders was a scrap of white fabric.
    “No,” he shuddered.
    He fell to his knees and started pulling rocks off the pile. “No, no, no...” he cried, tearing at the pile until he uncovered the decaying body of the boy. “Oh my god...” He clawed at his chest, “I did it... I did it...”
    He turned and looked up at the boy standing over him, but instead saw a different version of himself. Sober, clean cut and freshly shaven. He was dressed neatly in a cardigan sweater over a button down shirt. He spoke with a grin to the pile, “I guess there’s no use in pretending Harold.” He bent over and picked up a rock to toss on the pile.

Harold drove west along county highway C in South Dakota. For the past month he had wandered the back roads of the northern plains completely clean and sober. He was looking for an out of the way place where he could get some work done on his book. Up ahead a young boy in a dirty blue jacket was walking by himself along the side of the road. Harold pulled up alongside and rolled down his window with a smile.
    “Need a ride?”