Adam's Woods by Greg Walker Read Free Book Online Page B

that, but had never understood why someone would kill Adam.
     
    Killing was nothing new, Cain slaying Abel and rolling on from there, but at least there were generally understandable catalysts, even normal ambitions and emotions extrapolated and taken to the extreme; possession of a woman, power, money, jealousy, hatred, even love. And then there was war, the grandest murderer of them all, started usually over a piece of land that in a hundred years anyone who fought for the right to plant their flag there would be fertilizing its soil, if not already. But killing children, aside from perhaps a severe mental illness, didn’t make sense to Eric at all; simply terrible business, abhorrent to anyone with even the most rudimentary moral compass.
     
    Sometimes he feared that there was a hell waiting for him. But other times he prayed it was so - his own soul be damned - to ensure the infinite roasting of the vilest humans that walked the earth, with the child-killers front and center. In these moment’s he hoped Adam’s murderer dead from a method as painful as possible, and now spinning slowly on an eternal spit over eternal flames.
     
    “Oh, I forgot to mention this, Eric. The bed in your old bedroom is actually your old bed. I guess it’s just been left here through the successive owners...not that there were that many.” He heard Mary’s voice and it took a moment to place it.
     
    “Eric?”
     
    He rounded the corner at the top of the stairs and stepped into his old bedroom, and sure enough the bed sat just where it did in the corner, the only piece of furniture, the only piece of anything, in the room. His father, a furniture maker, had left it and other items he could build, so that their flight would end in as new of a land as possible. But he had never expected to find it still here. It felt surreal, like it had been waiting for him. And with glee and foreboding he knew he would sleep there, probably with his feet dangling out over the end.
     
    He focused on Mary, took in her slightly bemused, slightly concerned expression, and said, “I’m sorry, Mary. Being back in here, it’s like one of those old sitcoms, where all the stuff is piled up inside a closet. When I walked through the door, I opened up that closet and got caught in the avalanche. It’s just taking me some time to dig my way out while looking at all the cool stuff I forgot I had.”
     
    “What a neat description. So vivid. I have to admit I like that better than the one you wrote where the guy gets his head ripped off in all its gory detail.”
     
    “So you really did read my books, although you’d have to be more specific about which head you’re talking about.”
     
    “ Ugh. I think I’m done with that subject,” she said with a grimace, but winked to indicate she wasn’t as put off as she pretended. “But sitcoms. Now that you brought those up, I can’t help but remember what we used to watch, before some crazy lady with eight kids going shopping and getting a haircut qualified as entertainment. How about Family Ties and Growing Pains?”
     
    “Diff’rent Strokes...Happy Days,” he countered.
     
    They launched into a discussion of television’s glory days, which segued into a full-blown review of the eighties in general, and somewhere between leg warmers and White Lion he told her that he would be buying the house.
     
    Entranced with Mary and looking forward to more of her company, he followed the truck with the magnets out of Lincoln Corners en route to Drake City for lunch. She planned to get the ball rolling on the paperwork that afternoon. Eric would write a check for the whole amount, which would speed up the process.
     
    “I don’t think I’ve ever sold a house that was paid in full,” she had said, maybe with a little awe in her voice, and Eric savored the little thrill that came with impressing the girl he grew up with. Tiny village boy makes good...or something like that.
     
    The scant fifteen-minute