Offspring by Jack Ketchum Read Free Book Online Page B

and see how it went.
    The tree had grown at an incline, leaning slightly, so his climb wasn’t hard. He didn’t look down, just up to see if the next board above him seemed safe. There was one toward the top that was cracked at one end from the nail on over so he tugged on it to see if it would pull free. It didn’t. He kept going.
    Soon he was up.
    There were four posts supporting a railing that went all the way around the platform at what looked like about waist level for him. He grabbed one of the posts and shook it. It wobbled a little, but it was pretty sturdy.
    He looked for breaks in the platform flooring. There were leaves scattered around so he couldn’t see it all, but what he could see didn’t discourage him.
    He hauled himself onto the platform.
    He stood and squinted into the sunlight.
    It was like being at the top of the world.
    From here you could see all the way through the woods to David’s house. He was a little surprised at how far away it was, how far he’d come. He raisedthe binoculars to see if he could spot David or Mr. Campbell but he couldn’t, there were too many trees.
    He looked down. And that surprised him too.
    He really was way up there.
    For some reason looking
out
was a whole lot better than looking down so that was what he did. He walked carefully to the other side of the platform, testing each step. The boards held. Through the trees the sky seemed to glint at him. He raised the binoculars again. He was amazed.
    From here you could see the sea
.
    And now that he thought about it, you could smell it, too. Something salty and seaweedy coming toward him on the breeze. It reminded him somehow of the breath of a cat. Nice, but a little rotten.
    It reminded him of the day his dad had taken him to Sandwich. They’d spent most of the day in a bar with a friend of his. Business, his dad had said—though it didn’t sound like business. But then later in the day he’d let him go alone down to the ocean, to the rocks there, and look for crabs in the water. Maybe that was when they talked about business, he didn’t know. He’d seen a couple of crabs he liked watching and when his father came to get him he didn’t want to leave.
    He cried. His dad had walked away from him.
    He wondered how far away the ocean was from here. You couldn’t tell exactly.
    Thinking of his dad made him angry and sad the way it always seemed to do, a funny lonely feeling that made him want to punch or kick something. Like there was nobody around anywhere but him, justhim, whether he was up in a treehouse really completely alone or sitting at his desk at school with his teacher and all the other kids around. And having to have that feeling, it wasn’t fair at all. He knew he wasn’t
really
alone. He knew it was dumb because his mom was always there, he had Ed and Tommy, he had friends, but there was still this stupid alone feeling and he still wanted to kick or hit something.
    He didn’t dare kick anything up here but maybe some leaves. Kicking a bunch of leaves wouldn’t do him any good. But he did it anyway.
    And something rattled across the platform.
    Something white.
    He squatted and sifted through the leaves.
    Bones!
    He didn’t know what kind but they were bones, all right. Small, most of them, about the size of the bones of the model Tyrannosaurus that sat on his desk at home. Just a little dirty from being under the leaves, with some little red ants crawling over them.
    He brushed away the ants. He collected the bones carefully one at a time and put them in his pocket. He got a pocketful.
    He’d ask David what they were. David would know. Or Mr. Campbell.
    Awesome!
    What a neat place!
His
place. His
secret
place.
    He grabbed the post and started down the ladder.
    And got two steps down when something shook the tree above him.
    He felt it on the ladder. A trembling in the tree itself. He froze there. Looking up.
    A branch was swaying above the treehouse, maybe ten feet up. He couldn’t see anything