Ghost Boy Read Online Free PDF Page A

least the boy’s here,” he said. “Doesn’t seem any worse for wear.”
    â€œHe
claims
he was fishing,” said Mrs. Beesley. She pulled off the shoes and arranged them beside the chair. “He
claims
he was down at the Rattlesnake.”
    â€œIn this heat? And the sun like a blowtorch?”
    Mrs. Beesley nodded. “He claims he was
fishing
,” she said again. “But he came home with a ticket to the circus. He came home not half an hour ago, all
het up
about going to the circus.”
    Harold stood and watched as they talked about him, the boy who wasn’t there.
    â€œI know a thing or two about circuses,” said Walter Beesley. “And they’re dens of evil, that’s what they are.” Walter held the glass of iced tea against his forehead. “They’re the haunts of Gypsies.”
    â€œYou tell him,” said Mrs. Beesley.
    Walter rolled the glass back and forth across his brow. “I know a thing or two about Gypsies. And there’s nothing good to be said in that department.” He flexed his toes in his thin black socks. “No, I think the circus is not a fit place for a boy like you. A gullible boy.”
    Harold felt very small. He felt too small to answer.
    Mrs. Beesley glared at him. Her fat white fingers kneaded at Walter’s feet. “You hear that?” she said. “Your father’s made a decision.”
    â€œAnd stay out of the sun,” said Walter. He shook a thin finger at Harold. “A boy like you, you’re different from the others. The sun will kill you, don’t you know that? It’ll burn you like old, dry grass. It’ll make a blind man of you before you’re twenty-one.”
    Mrs. Beesley smiled. “You see?” she crowed. “There’ll be no more fishing. No more
gallivanting
across the countryside.”
    Harold felt smaller and smaller and smaller.
    â€œI’ve tried,” said Walter Beesley. “Lord knows how much I’ve tried.” He turned his eyes to the ceiling. “I’d hoped to interest you in philately, in books and accounting, in pursuits more apt for a boy like you. I know a thing or two about albinos, and I’ll tell you this: They spend their lives inside. They don’t go traipsing around the country.”
    Harold thought of the Cannibal King.
On his first world tour
.
    â€œYou’re not a normal boy,” said Walter Beesley. “You’re not like the others, who can go off playing for hour after hour. You’re—” He raised his voice. “Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
    Harold turned his head away, looking sideways at his stepfather to keep his vision focused.
    â€œLook at me!” shouted Walter.
    â€œI can’t,” Harold cried, and fled to his room.
    From the window there he watched the sun go down. He saw the smears of color changing and looked forward to the darkness. He liked the shadows more than light, the coolness more than heat. What Walter had told him was true; the sun did terrible things to his skin and made his eyes burn with unbearable pain.
    The shadows thickened and filled around him. The huge, flat horizon of the prairies turned to purple and then to black. And Harold sat in a silence so oppressive that he heard the ticking of the clock in the room below his own and the squeaking of the hinges in Walter Beesley’s rickety folding table.
    He stared through the window, over the roof of the station, and saw the circus big top glowing with light. Then, so very faint that they were hardly there, came the first wheezy notes of the calliope. It was a cheerful song, whistled the way his father would have whistled it among the shelves of Kline and Sons. The music swelled and filled the air, and a swarm of fireflies rose from the garden, twinkling in the hoot and shriek of the song. And then the people started passing, streaming down to Batsford’s field, and he watched them