Read Online Turn to Stone by Brian Freeman - Free Book Online Page B

and an old charcoal grill.
    “What is this place?” Stride asked.
    “Percy liked to come here. Sometimes I followed him.”
    “Why?”
    The boy wiped his nose, which had begun to drip. “I don’t know. I was curious about him. What he did. Why he did it.”
    “Did Percy know you followed him?”
    “Yeah, he caught me outside the camper once. He knew who I was. He wasn’t mad or anything. We talked for a long time.”
    “What did you talk about?”
    “Stuff.”
    “Your dad?” Stride asked.
    Mike shook his head. “No, we didn’t talk about him. I never talk about him.”
    “Did Percy say why he came here?”
    “He said the camper belonged to a friend of his. A friend who died. They used to come out here to hunt, but Percy said he didn’t hunt anymore. I liked that. I don’t think you should hunt anything. Anyway, he said he came out here to think about his friend and—”
    “And what?” Stride asked.
    “To pray.” Mike looked up at him. “Do you pray?”
    “Sometimes.”
    “Percy said that prayer makes God stronger, but I think he was wrong. Bad usually wins, doesn’t it?”
    “Not necessarily,” Stride replied. “Not when good people try to stop it.”
    “I wish I could believe that, but I don’t.” Mike shook his head and shivered. He crushed his cigarette in the snow. The evergreens stared down at them like giants. “You really don’t feel it, huh?”
    “Feel what?” he asked again.
    “The cold.”
    Stride shrugged. “Yeah, it’s cold.”
    “Not just that. It’s more than that. I mean, like, just a second ago, didn’t you hear someone laughing?”
    “No.”
    “I did. Clear as anything. I told Percy about it once, and he said I should listen really hard, because I could hear things other people didn’t. He said it was a gift, but it doesn’t feel like that to me.”
    Stride studied Mike’s face and saw a boy who was lost. He’s a little weird , Sophie had said. That was easy to understand. Your father does something terrible and is killed for it. The rest of the world looks at you and wonders if you sprang from the same seed and if you’re bound for the same path. Maybe you start to wonder about it yourself. Stride saw a smart kid, a sensitive kid, who was afraid of what he would become.
    “Why did you want me to follow you here, Mike?” Stride asked.
    “I needed to tell somebody,” the boy replied, rubbing his blue eyes. “I know why Percy did it.”
    “You do? Why?”
    Mike swallowed hard and glanced behind them at the empty, overgrown trail. His face twitched. “Two weeks ago, I came out here. I was looking for Percy. I walked down here, and the door to the camper was open, but he wasn’t inside. I thought about shouting his name, but—I don’t know—something made me stop. I didn’t want him to know I was here.”
    Stride waited. When a long stretch of silence passed, he said: “What happened next?”
    “I heard noises in the woods beyond the camper. There’s no trail there. I didn’t know what it was. It could have been a bear or something. I thought about ducking inside, but I didn’t. I ran back here. Right here where we are now. I squeezed down into the trees where I was invisible, and I watched.”
    “What did you see?”
    “It was Percy,” Mike said. “He looked—I don’t know how he looked. Destroyed. Empty. Like his life was over. I’ve never seen anyone look like that. I mean, that’s how you look when you put a gun to your head.”
    Stride waited. The boy continued.
    “Percy went back inside the cabin and closed the door. I don’t even know why I waited. I should have left, but I didn’t. He must have been in there for an hour, but finally, the door opened again, and he left. He walked right by me. He couldn’t have been more than six feet away, but he didn’t see me. He had a big plastic garbage bag in his arms, and his face—he was crying. Sobbing. I saw him. He was—he was—”
    “What?” Stride asked softly.
    “He was