Read Online A Child Is Missing by David Stout - Free Book Online

through thick patches of woods, and down a wooded hill, until he came out on the winding dirt road. The road was a little wider than a logging trail, but it got little more traffic than that.
    He hated shopping trips, so he always figured his needs so that he had to make a trip only once every several weeks. Now, his backpack was heavy with cans of meat and fruit, a bag of flour, coffee, potatoes, batteries. And whiskey; he always bought whiskey.
    When he was at a place in the road where the hills were high on one side and a gulley sloped sharply away on the other, the weight of sadness fell on him. Maybe it was because he was tired, or perhaps it was the gloom. Whatever. The sadness came on him, and his eyes filled with tears.
    He stopped, adjusted the straps on his pack, felt the deepening cold in his nostrils. Tonight he would drink whiskey, as much as it took to go to sleep. He would put away his supplies in the morning.
    If the cabin he and Jo had built had not burned, Jo would still be alive. Wouldn’t she? They hadn’t done that much in heavy drugs. Yes, Jo would still be alive.
    â€œNo. No, no, no, no.” He was startled by his own voice; yes, it was on him, the sadness. He hoped the rest of it wouldn’t come—the screams, the voices calling to him for help, the voices he heard in his dreams.
    Faster, faster. He left the road, went down a leaf-choked gulley where it was even darker. He sobbed again, loathed himself for it, was glad a rushing stream masked his sounds.
    Jo was gone, forever, with their unborn child. He cried for them, cried for himself. Only the hills and trees would know.
    He pushed forward. It was getting too dark to see, but he knew the way by heart.
    He heard a sound. God, no, don’t let it be the voices again. Jo was dead, their child dead, their life together dead.
    The boy Jo was carrying would be a young man now. (Somehow, the hermit knew that the child had been a boy.) Would his son have liked living in the woods? Would Jo have changed?
    There was a low, cold wind. It shifted slightly, bringing the sound of the rushing brook closer to him. It was then that he heard the sound.
    â€œMommy … Daddy…”
    The hermit put his hands over his ears, shut his eyes as hard as he could to dam up the tears. He didn’t remember ever hearing the ghost voices this clearly before. When he felt the wind shift, he took his hands away from his ears and opened his eyes. The wind, that was it. The wind had made the noises. He was not crazy.
    His dog barked. The hermit could tell from the sound that Wolf was a couple hundred yards back, at a different bend in the stream.
    â€œWolf!”
    The dog was silent; the hermit listened for the sound of the dog running after him. Nothing.
    Wolf must have flushed a rabbit, the hermit thought.
    â€œWolf!” the hermit shouted louder, to be heard over the stream. “Damn you, Wolf.” The dog could hear him, he knew. There was almost nothing the dog didn’t hear.
    The wind shifted slightly again, making the sound of the stream a little louder. He heard another noise, or thought he did. It was almost a low moan. Then the wind changed yet again, and the sound was gone. He was relieved; he had heard enough ghost voices.
    â€œWolf.” He heard the dog tromping through the snowy brush. “Good, Wolf. Okay.”
    The dog was next to him now, and panting. Trying to tell him something?
    â€œAll right, Wolf. Come on.”
    The hermit took the flashlight from his deep pocket, shined it into the darkness to be sure he was headed where he thought.
    The dog yelped, whined.
    â€œNo. No time to play, Wolf.”
    The hermit smelled fresh dirt. Shining the light down at the dog, he saw that the animal’s front paws were dark and wet.
    â€œDamn you, Wolf. You would have to dig.” The hermit was tired and didn’t want to have to clean mud out of the cabin from Wolf’s paws. All he wanted to do in the cabin