Wicked Angel Read Online Free PDF Page A

insisted Kathy. Her face was quite pink.
    “Yes, yes,” said her sister. “I think we’re all making a fuss—”
    Then Mark said in a lashing voice like the crack of a whip. “Get that boy, Kathy! Do you hear me? I want him down here at once. He’s out of hand now. I’ve been warning you about this, and now it’s happened. Now that he’s acted like a devil, he’s going to be punished like a devil, and he’s going to get the first thrashing of his life. And from me!”
    But Angelo suddenly materialized behind his mother, a beautiful tall boy with an engaging wide smile and big innocent eyes. “Here I am, Daddy,” he said, and lifted his truly angelic face up to his father. Mark dropped Alice’s hands. Involuntarily he stepped back a pace. “Did you call me, Daddy?” Angelo asked with much of Kathy’s sweetness in his childish voice.
    Kathy caught him against her skirts, and put her arm about his shoulders. There was something vicious glinting in her eyes as she stared, not at Mark, but at Alice.
    “He’s just a baby!” she said. “Alicia, you must have said something terrible—”
    But Mark put his hands on his knees and bent his legs and faced his son. His features were stern and fixed. He said, “Angelo, why did you do this?”
    “I didn’t!” screamed Angelo suddenly. “I didn’t, I didn’t!” And he buried his face against his mother’s skirts and beat her arms with clenched fists. “I hate her, I hate her, I hate her!”
    “There, you see,” said Kathy, in a significant tone. “Oh, dear, now he’s perspiring and shaking. He’ll be sick all night.”
    “Son,” repeated Mark, but Angelo howled. Alice tucked her purse under her arm, and looked at the door despairingly. But Mark stood between her and flight. She said, “I wish you wouldn’t be—like this. It doesn’t matter. Children do all sorts of things. I’m a teacher, and I know.”
    “He’s been overstimulated, overexcited!” said Kathy. “Feel his forehead, Mark, and his neck. All wet and hot. Perhaps he has a fever.”
    “She stim-late me, she ‘cite me!” shrieked Angelo, from the protection of his mother’s arms.
    Mark stretched out his arm and plucked his son from his mother. He swung the boy to face him, while Angelo, still screaming, held out his arms to Kathy for succor. Then Mark seized his shoulders and shook him violently, and Kathy uttered a wild, loud cry as if assaulted, and grasped one of the small and flailing arms. Her face was suddenly white and sweating, her eyes leaping in their sockets, her mouth open. She tugged at Angelo’s arm, trying to release him from Mark’s grasp.
    “Don’t you dare, don’t you dare!” she panted savagely. “Don’t you dare touch him, Mark Saint! Let go of him! He’ll have a convulsion! You’ll kill him, I tell you, you’ll kill him!”
    Alice leaned against the wall and shut her eyes and felt sick. Then she heard two hard cracks, almost like shots, one after another, over the screaming of mother and son. And now only Kathy was screaming. Alice opened her eyes.
    Kathy was lifting the boy in her arms. Her opened mouth emitted senseless whine after whine and her eyes were dazed and distended. Angelo’s cheeks were reddening darkly, but he was silent. He was touching his face, tentatively, and staring without a blink at his father, whose hand was still lifted after the blows.
    Then Alice fled, throwing open the door and running down the walk to her little, old car down the street near the curb. She ran as from a most dreadful sight; her heart pounded with speed and pain.

CHAPTER TWO
    Alice Knowles came out into a fine spring snow, like drifting sand. It was cool and refreshing against her tired face. She was almost the last teacher to leave the school; a few children were screaming in the adjacent playgrounds, and the sound of their voices was like the scrape of steel against her eardrums. She was so very tired! She had once asked an older teacher, who was