The Painted Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page B

him as he moved.
    Finally, on the tenth time Henry stood on the overturned bucket on the snowy concrete slab and looked through the kitchen window, he saw exactly what he was waiting for: Ms. Winslow shaking her hand at the television screen, doing her best to urge a contestant on the game show toward the correct answer.
    Henry jumped off the bucket and ran across the yard. He shoved through the barren bushes under the big tree at the edge of their property and a wave of ice and snow rained down on him. He didn’t care if he got wet. The sight beyond his yard took his breath away. The woods were even more beautiful than he expected: everything white and pristine. He realized no one, not even an animal, had been through the area since the snow stopped. He felt like he was the first human explorer to find an undiscovered land.
    Henry gazed up at the icicles hanging from the tree branches; they glowed bright white in the cool winter sunlight. The whole world was like that: radiant and vibrant and picturesque.
    Soon, though, the peace was broken as Henry went bounding along the deer trails, his index finger extended to form the shape of a gun. He was a top-secret soldier on a topsecret mission behind enemy lines in a topsecret war. His cover had been blown, and he was on the run, firing over his shoulder, picking off his pursuers with frightening accuracy. Bullets whizzed past him and he ducked and rolled through the snow, firing and hitting one bad guy and then another and another. When he spotted an elite enemy sniper perched in a tree, Henry dove and fired from the hip. The bad guy screamed, spun, and fell through the branches, sending a cascade of ice and snow crashing to the ground with a roar like thunder.
    When Henry played the Top Secret Soldier game or his Cops and Robbers game or any of the Win The Big Game games, he could see everything as clearly as if the people were really real: the soldiers, the spies; the cops, the robbers; his teammates and even the crazed fans in the stands.
    Henry had sort of assumed everyone else could conjure up playmates, too, but he was starting to have his doubts. The kids at school played the normal games together during recess, while he sat alone and imagined crazy new games he could play all by himself in his head. His adventures were as real as any story his father read to him at bedtime or anything Henry saw on television, but recently he told his father this and his old man laughed and said:
    My boy, you’re never going to run out of imagination.
Henry didn’t know what that meant, and from the way his mother looked at him after he talked about his imaginary worlds, he had the feeling he shouldn’t tell anyone else. Doing so might not be such a hot idea. If he was the only one who could make up things and have them seem so real, telling people was probably just asking for trouble. He saw how the kids at school who were “different” were treated, and he was happy to just be left alone when he consider the alternative.
Henry was still sprinting through the woods, pushing branches to the side, and it wasn’t too long before he burst through another thick grove of icy bushes, sending frozen chunks of snow flying everywhere. He stopped dead in his tracks, stunned by the beautiful sight he had stumbled upon: the hidden clearing in the thickest part of the woods.
Henry had been here before, but he was surprised to see the snow had been blown against the big oak tree, the one with the dilapidated tree house. In fact, the snow had piled up in such a way that Henry was certain he could reach the lowest branch—which meant he could finally discover what was hidden in the dark confines of the tree house placed firmly in the high branches.
THE PRESENT (5)
Burns and Bumps and Bruises
W

hen Henry awakens on the kitchen
    floor, the linoleum is ice-cold under his body. Before he understands how badly his right hand is burned, before he can comprehend what the stickiness under his left hand