Read Online The Witch of the Wood by Michael Aronovitz - Free Book Online Page B

You’ll learn to play the system and we’ll call it delicate genius.
    A voice slipped into his mind.
    Rudolph Christopher Barnes, come in please.
    Rudy shuddered, palmed his ears hard. Felt like a spider web floating along the regions of his mind, sticking to the ridges.
    “That you, Wolfie?”
    Beret Lady glanced over casually and noticed he had no ear-to-phone hookup. She pushed her cart away hard then, actually nipping the corner of his, her sneakers squeaking on the smooth shiny floor. Her fat ass looked no better in retreat then it had from the side.
    “The same,” Wolfie said, voice itching, teasing, all sticky silk. “I’m getting bored here all by myself.”
    “Right. Got it,” Rudy said sort of into his collar. His face had gone scarlet, and it wasn’t because it looked as if he were talking to himself like a mental patient. Just how many literal and ethical laws had he broken, leaving that child by himself in the house? And worse, had he really a choice?
    He navigated his way to the self-checkout lanes, jumped in front of an old guy rolling his dentures around in his mouth, and started beeping barcodes as quickly as he could. He swallowed hard, tasting copper.
    What he going to come home to, anyway?
    He bagged up quick and shoddy, pondering these last three questions and trying to discern which of the answers scared him the most.

    Rudy reached to the passenger seat to make what would be the first of multiple trips inside with the plastic bags of groceries and everything else. He hoped that when he finally lugged up the boxes containing the particle board for the baby bureau in the big oblong crates no one would question why he’d bought particle boards for a baby bureau, or the two cases that made up the changing station, or the glider, or the new lamp with stars and moons on the shade.
    The mess out on Maple Grove Avenue had been cleaned up already, and the only reminder was an arc of residue on the asphalt where Sam’s head had struck down. From the car just now it had looked shadowed, still damp on the glistening street, and from the puddles in the gutter, Rudy had figured the EMTs or the police had had some kind of portable pressure washer.
    Gorge rose up in the back of Rudy’s throat, and he almost threw up right there in the car. He couldn’t do this. A man had died. And what had been a distracted sort of passing fear in the grocery store was now coming back to him in glorious Technicolor; Rudy had left a baby all by himself in a dark apartment where there were about a thousand and one things that could hurt him. Just how advanced was this kid, and in how many subject areas? Just because he could talk and “promise gifts” didn’t mean his other facets of intelligence had fully developed.
    For God’s sake, Rudy hadn’t locked up his poisons, and they were waiting there for Wolfie under the kitchen sink, all skulls and crossbones and danger flags and other various icons and logos that any kid would find nifty just for the colors. If the kid could speak he could probably read warning labels, but would he? For sure? And the iron, oh God, the iron—no more than a heavy steel arrowhead right there in the living room closet, lurking at the edge of the top shelf, cord possibly dangling down just waiting for a good pull. There were electrical outlets all over the place, sharp edges and corners, knives in the drawers, medicines on the shelves, and the toolbox was out.
    Rudy got out and slammed the car door a bit too hard, bringing the bags around with the momentum and clacking some of the Gerber jars loud enough to indicate he might have cracked them. The wind came across and made his eyes tear up. He folded himself into it, head down, and once inside, his shoes made gritty echoes on the stair grids.
    Wolfie would be curled up dead on the floor by the radiator, face blackened, lips blue, throat mottled and stretched to the shape of the bottle of White-Out he’d tried to swallow. That, or he’d be