The Child Eater Read Online Free Page B

okay.”
    There was one game he played over and over, though every time he played it he thought how dumb it was, and, well, nerdy, and when he mentioned it to other kids at school they all claimed they’d never heard of it, which made him think no one wanted to admit playing it. The game involved a pair of squirrels, a gray and a red, trying to get out of a maze. You could move them together or separately, though Jack waspretty sure both had to escape in order to win. The fact is, he never actually did win, the squirrels never got out. Because there was a trick. Every now and then a door in the maze would open and a gray-faced man in a black suit would jump out and bite off the head of one of the squirrels. Dead. Game over. Try again.
    Sometimes when Jack lost he would panic, and he would start the game again right away, desperate, for no reason he could understand, to try once more to save the squirrels.
    Jack made sure not to tell his parents about the squirrel game, and how much he played it, for fear they might take away his Nintendo. But his parents seemed hardly even to notice how much time he spent playing his games.
    One night his mother surprised him with a chocolate layer cake after dinner. A single candle burned in the middle. “Congratulations,” Mom said, while Dad grinned at Jack’s confusion. Mom said, “Last night was a whole month without any nightmares.”
    “Now that’s something to celebrate,” Mr. Wisdom said. He held up his glass of Diet Coke and waited for his wife and son to do the same. “To Jack!” he said as they clinked glasses. “More normal than normal.” Jack wanted to run away, but he didn’t want to let down his folks, so he made sure to smile and thank them and say something nice about the cake.
    After dinner he was looking out of the window while he dried the dishes, and he noticed a pair of squirrels in the backyard. There was nothing strange about them. The place was full of squirrels, and chipmunks, and occasional deer, but these were a gray and a red, like in the game, and they didn’t dart back and forth, they just stood on their hind legs, facing each other, as if they were having a conversation. “I’ll be right back,” Jack said, and put down the towel.
    Outside he didn’t know what to do, so he just stood there and watched them. It startled him when they appeared to watch him back. They turned to stand side by side, and then they looked up at him. Though he knew it was crazy to think these actual squirrels could have anything to do with the game, and almost as crazy to talk to them, he said, “I’m sorry I can’t seem to win. To get you out of the maze.” The squirrels looked at him. “I’ll keep trying.” Then, feeling really dumb, and ashamed, as if he’d let down his dad in some way, he went back inside and finished drying the dishes.
    A few days later, a girl in Jack’s class, Tori Atkinson, disappeared. The police came and talked to all the kids, and all the other parents held a meeting to demand that something be done and complain that their kids weren’t protected. After the meeting, Jack’s mom and dad told him he couldn’t go out alone “for a while.” Jack didn’t mind. Now that he’d stopped visiting the woods there really wasn’t any place he wanted to go. For a couple of weeks a policeman stood guard outside the school all day, but when nothing more happened, they sent him somewhere else.
    Jack didn’t know Tori very well. The fact is, Jack didn’t really know anyone well, but Tori was the kind of kid who stuck to herself, didn’t join any groups or say much in class. She was never found, and after six months her parents sold the house and moved away.
    One day in gym class, when Jack was ten, he hit a home run. Jack wasn’t a disaster as a baseball player—he was never one of the last kids to be picked by the team captains—but nor was he a home-run hitter. It felt so good to hear the cheers, even if they sounded a little shocked.