Boy on the Edge by Fridrik Erlings Read Free Book Online Page A

to save mankind from the devil. So Henry had imagined that the devil was really evil and everybody should hate him. But now he had been told that the devil was thrown out of heaven because he loved God more than anything. So who was the evil one? The one who threw him out of heaven, or the one who only wanted to have a friend?
    The voice of Reverend Oswald had become quiet in his mind, and all the angry words had dispersed among the birds in the cliffs. All that was left was the emptiness of his own soul.
    Was it because he felt pitiful, like the archangel turned devil? Longing for a friend, just like that lonely creature in hell? Henry wondered if God would ever send him an angel with some comforting words. But he doubted that would ever happen. Why should the Lord bother with him?
    Sitting on the edge of the cliffs, he could see the huge freighters disappearing over the horizon; the long, drawn-out bellow from their foghorns echoed across the vast ocean. It was a sound of regret. It stirred something inside of him and made him sad. Then he thought about his mom.
    He remembered the day he’d sat on the bus at the station, the government official sitting beside him, constantly trying to make conversation with him. Henry had just stared out the window, waiting for Mom to bid him farewell. But Mom didn’t show up, and the bus slowly began to move.
    It had been raining so hard that day. As he peered through the raindrops he suddenly saw her standing in the parking lot, her right arm in a cast. She had wrapped a plastic bag around the cast so it wouldn’t get wet. When she saw he had noticed her, she raised her other hand and waved. The man beside him asked if he wasn’t going to wave back. But Henry neither wanted to look nor wave. And yet he couldn’t take his eyes off her; she was so vulnerable in the cold, with a hat on, dressed in her old coat and wearing her winter boots in the pouring rain.
    When the bus finally moved off she started to run beside it, right under the window where he sat. She had waved and sobbed. His mom, who had always taught him that crying made no difference, that crying didn’t make things any better, that it was useless to cry. He’d learned that from her. And then she had cried in the broad daylight. And it made him terribly angry.
    Once the bus turned out of the parking lot, she stopped running. He could see her in the large side mirror; the plastic bag had blown off and was dancing around her. She grew smaller and smaller until the bus turned again and her image disappeared.
    There had been so many hard days, so many bad men; how he had longed to become big and strong so that he could protect her. He had dreams of the two of them, happy and carefree somewhere, with a proper bedroom each, with proper food on the table. But they were always on the move and the houses were gray and small and the happy days never came. And when he had finally become strong enough to protect her, he had hurt her.
    Somehow, one way or another, everything had been his fault.
    The roaring fury of the ocean beneath him echoed in his thoughts:
Your fault! Your fault! Your fault!
    He jumped to his feet and shouted, “No!”
    Huge boulders, rocks, and stones of all sizes were strewn around him on the edge of the cliff, thrown up by the powerful waves over the ages. He grabbed one with both hands, raised it high above his head, and threw it over the edge. The birds below swung to the sides as the black rock fell straight into their midst, falling until it disappeared into the frothing waves far below. He found another rock, much too heavy for him to lift, but he could roll it toward the edge if he used all his strength. So he did. His anger made him powerful; his stubby fingers dug themselves into the rock as he pushed.
    He roared at the top of his lungs as it plunged over the edge, exploding into a huge wave as it rolled in. He couldn’t stop but limped hurriedly toward another rock, even bigger than the last one. With