Stutter Creek Read Online Free PDF Page A

toyed with the damp fringe of hair sticking out from under the edge of his cap. As she watched, a drop of moisture slid to the end of his upturned nose and hung there for what seemed an eternity. When it fell onto his upper lip, he didn’t even seem to notice.
    Squeezing her eyes shut, Beth took a deep breath, opened them, and then leaned over to manually roll down the window—but he had disappeared. From behind her came the lights of an eighteen-wheeler.
    Had she really seen a boy? She leaned over as far as possible with the stick shift digging into her side, but she couldn’t see any tracks. The snow was too thin and patchy.
    The truck’s headlights lit up her rearview mirror. They grew larger and larger as she watched, like twin orbs caught in the glass. She reached down and felt the little knob below the steering wheel to make certain her emergency flashers were still on. She was certain that would get the truck to stop. Then they could search the bar ditch together—no child should be alone on the highway. Perhaps someone was hurt down there. Maybe their car slid off in the ditch or something.
    But the truck driver blew one short note on his air horn, and then he roared past and was gone. The lights outlining his trailer looked like a carnival.
    Beth was stunned. Now what? Get out and search by myself? Intuition said no. There was something altogether wrong about a child that appeared and disappeared like an apparition. Perhaps he hadn’t been there at all, her mind whispered. Hadn’t the lady in the grief group suffered hallucinations? Could I have been that distraught?
    She rolled the window up and locked both doors. Icy fear gripped her. She looked all around, but there were no cars, no houses, nothing. Why would the boy have gone away if he needed help? Surely he knew she would help him . What if someone is hurt? Or what if he was being kidnapped and he’d briefly gotten loose? Or what if it was a trap? Last year she’d seen an MSN article about a man who had put a baby carrier beside the road in an attempt to lure women into stopping.
    She pulled out her cell phone and checked for a signal.
    No service.
    Not surprising this close to the mountains.
    Suddenly, Beth made a decision. She rammed the gearshift lever into first and stepped on the gas. Fishtailing back onto the road, she shifted up to second, and then third, keeping her eyes trained on the highway ahead. She knew the boy was no longer there, but what if he appeared while she was moving? What if he was somehow hanging onto the car like that old urban legend about the killer with a hook? What if he appeared while she was driving ?
    She thought if that happened, it might be the end. It would send her right over the edge of sanity into the cavern of insanity. One hand crept back up to her face. She was afraid the boy wasn’t human. His face had seemed so pale, almost translucent. A little phantom.
    No, no, no. It was her mind . It was playing tricks on her. That had to be it.
    Staring straight ahead, she pressed the gas harder and harder, shifting up into fourth without even thinking, years of experience guiding her.
    Beth began to feel like an idiot, a complete, dyed-in-the-wool idiot. Did I fall asleep while driving? Did I pass out? Maybe Dalton was wrong; maybe I’m stark raving mad! She drove on, running on instinct and adrenalin, terrified that she’d seen a real boy, even more terrified that she hadn’t.
    Finally, her rational mind began to reassert itself. There is no way that was a ghost, and I’m not crazy, just emotional.
    Common sense kept talking. What if the boy was real? What if he was lost, or had been in some sort of accident? What if one of those things accounted for the unearthly glow of his pale skin and the flat, shineless cast of his eye? What if he was really there and she was leaving him to die?
    Dad, she thought, I sure wish you were here.
    She scoured the sides of the road for some clue, or at least a sign of some