Ronin Boys by Jonathan Forrest

Author:Jonathan Forrest [Forrest, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781462066865
Publisher: iUniverse
Published: 2012-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

VILE LITTLE THINGS

Prologue

The boy awoke. He was wet with perspiration. He always was when he woke up. Always. He sat up on the hammock, rubbed his eyes, and blew his nose of snot. The hammock rocked softly. He had been crying in his sleep again, and the memory of the dreams—the nightmares—came back to him. He closed his eyes and awaited the headache. Sometimes it came; sometimes it didn’t. On this morning, blessedly, it didn’t.

He sighed. A relieved sigh. Then he got up.

The library was quiet, as it always was in the morning when he awoke. He was standing in an aisle between waist-high bookshelves. Alone. The hammock stretching between shelves. Around him, the tops of the shelves collected dust. He hadn’t cleaned in some time. He hadn’t had the energy—the care.

He walked barefoot a few steps along the carpeted floor and pulled a random book from one of the shelves. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.

A children’s book. But then, they were all children’s books.

He flipped the book open to a random page, read from it, and shut the book with a snap. He placed the book back where he found it and took a deep breath.

The air was musty. Damp.

He turned to the windows that lined the far wall and noticed, for the first time, just how gloomy it was outside, even for morning. It must have rained in the night. The light filtering in through the windows was barely light at all—gray and hazy—but it was enough. Enough to let him see his way. Not that he needed light to find his way here. He could do so in the dark. He had many times. In fact, there were times he might have preferred it, although not today. Today, he wanted light, bright-bright light, to chase away the night. To chase away the nightmares.

He continued down the aisle to its end and walked past the librarian’s desk. He pushed through the wide double doors of the children’s room and out into the main hall.

Here it was darker. But it didn’t matter. He walked along the hall and then began to make his way down the twirling staircase that brought him to the main lobby—the adult section.

Here, the taller shelves of books hid at bay what little light came from the windows. The boy continued on past shelf after shelf until he could clearly hear the sounds of the miniature fountain and the little man-made pond that rested at the library’s center. The water bubbled and babbled, and he made his way around it to its far end, where he came to a large, overstuffed chair.

He sat.

He reached out and brought light to the darkness with the aid of a lantern resting on a small table. Beside the lantern there lay a well-leafed paperback. He picked it up, opened it to where he had left off, and began to read. He hadn’t gotten far when the voice spoke to him.

“Lord of the Flies again?”

The boy didn’t look up.

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