Draw the Dark by Ilsa J. Bick Read Free Book Online Page A

should let go, and then the boy’s body took over. At the precisely right instant, my/his hands loosened, and we/he rocketed for the floor. The hay rushed for my/his face and

    then the sweet scent of alfalfa envelops me, and I’m floundering for the surface, laughing and sputtering out stalks of hay.
    Pavel’s beaming. “Wow, that was great! Come on, let’s do it again!”
    Pavel’s right and now I’m glad I invited Pavel, even though Mama’s not happy because while the war’s over, we’ve still got rationing and there’s only so much laundry soap. I glance at the farmhouse and spy the two chimneys, and there is my own sweet mother shaking a rug from the upstairs window, and I’m happy because it’s summer and school’s out and the Germans don’t matter.
    But then I look east. There, straight ahead, is the town: the familiar smokestacks, the clock tower, the high spire of the old Lutheran
Kirke
, and that stark gold cross winking in the sun. I can see the onion dome too, a deep lapis surmounted by tinier echoes of the main dome. As always, it reminds me of Mama’s nesting matryoshka dolls. You know the ones I mean? You open one and inside there’s a smaller one and on and on until the last doll is no bigger than the nail of your little finger. That’s what the White Lady’s dome reminds me of.
    (Who?)
    My body flinches. That last thought . . . it isn’t mine. That’s not me. There’s someone else in my mind and

    I—me, Christian—I feel the boy tense as if he’s suddenly aware that I am there, staring through his eyes, and he must look awful because his friend, Pavel, suddenly frowns. “David, you okay? What is it? You look sick.”
    “I . . .” I’m dizzy and I reel, my hand shooting out to clutch at a beam before I can topple to the floor so far below.
    “Whoa!” Pavel’s hauling back on my arm, and we’re both stumbling away from the edge. “Whoa, you’re gonna get us killed.”
    “Sorry.” I sense the boy twisting around in his mind, as if he’s trying to see into a dark corner. I turn to Pavel. “Don’t you see him?”
    “See who?” Pavel frowns, looks over his shoulder, and then back. He looks more frightened now than simply concerned; his dark eyes have gotten very big. “David, you better lie down. You don’t look so good.”
    “No, no, he’s here,” I say, stupidly, “don’t you see him?” Only I’m staring at a dark place where there’s
    (ME)
    somebody staring, and then Pavel says something, but I don’t hear him and neither does David because there’s a sudden roar; the muttering swells and then

VI

    Another growl of engine roar, a burst of crow chatter, and I jerked awake, my arms and legs spazzing so much I almost rolled right out of the open door. Gasping, I crabbed back, the heels of my hands snagging on splinters. The air was filled with a guttural rumbling like thunder only much louder. Confused, I inched back, glanced out, and got my second bad shock of the day.
    “Hey, Killer!” Straddling his bike, Karl Dekker lounged in black leather and matching Docs. A cigarette was glued to his lower lip, and a red and black do-rag hugged his scalp. He didn’t look any different than he did when he’d dropped out a year ago: mean and wiry, a sandrat with big knots of muscle from working the foundry.
    If there was a person born mean, that was Karl Dekker. He’d singled me out ever since Uncle Hank busted up Dekker’s dad’s chop shop. The first time Uncle Hank did that was when we were in the third grade. Dekker’s dad went to prison for nine months. I remember how bad I felt, how I tried to make it up to Dekker on the playground one afternoon. I woke up in an emergency room with stitches in my scalp and Aunt Jean trying not to cry.
    Eventually, Dekker’s dad made one too many mistakes, not only the chop shop (like three times), but he was a drunk and beat Karl. So that’s when the social workers sent Dekker to live in boys’ town for a while. Karl