The Child: Episode 1
Meeting the Child
I first met the child when he was perhaps seven or eight. If I had known then what I know now, I would have kept walking and left him to die in that ditch.
The trees were already denuded of leaves, the leaf-lookers long since gone. Today was an unusually warm late October day, about 50 degrees, but tonight it was expected to drop below freezing. He wouldn’t have survived.
I was on my way back from spending my birthday weekend with my girlfriend in Manchester, New Hampshire. Jen knew I didn’t want a party, so we kept things small — just the two of us.
She runs a tour company for campers, hikers, and canoers who want to get away from city life and spend some time in the state’s gorgeous White Mountains. I teach Russian at Middlebury College. My students call me Professor Mack, but my full name is Mark Mack.
About three quarters of the way back to Middlebury along Route 7, the three Diet Cokes I had drunk wanted out. With urgency, I pulled off the road, walked toward a cluster of nearby trees, and saw the boy in the ditch.
He wasn’t moving.
He lay face down. Brown dust covered his blond hair. He wore a white t-shirt, blue jeans, and blue Keds sneakers.
A cloud of crows cawed from the tree tops, as if announcing that the child would soon be carrion.
I kneeled beside the boy, and, like I’d seen people do in movies a thousand times, pressed my fingers to the side of his neck, not knowing where the pulse was, but figuring that my fingers would automatically find the right place, as if pulse-taking was instinctive. I couldn’t judge the quality of his heart, but it was beating.
I turned him over and asked, “Are you okay?” Several freckles dotted his cheeks. His eyes stayed shut and his lips didn’t quiver even in the slightest. I shook his shoulder, but there was no response. I could feel his body’s warmth through the shirt, which I took as a good sign. I gently raised his eyelids, another trick I’d learned from movies. His pupils contracted as the midday light bathed them, which I also assumed was a good sign.
I ran my hand along his head, feeling for any bumps. I found none. There was no blood, just an unconscious boy.
Another try, I thought. This time I vigorously shook his leg. His lips parted, and in a drowsy voice, the boy said, “Galinder.” His eyes were still shut and his breathing was the slow, steady kind of somebody who’s in a slumberous space between dreams. I would have been uncertain about what he said, except for the fact that he repeated the word three more times.
Galinder
Galinder
Galinder
I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket and pressed the first of those three digits, 9–1–1.
The boy’s eyes snapped open. He inhaled a fast breath that sounded like he’d just surfaced after swimming the length of a swimming pool underwater. His hand shot to my wrist, and he held me in a painful, vice-like grip. With his other hand, he snatched my phone and threw it into the woods. It spun as it hurtled toward a tree, ending its flight with a loud smack. I began to stand, but he held me in place.
“I need to get my phone,” I said.
I could see where the iPhone landed, but not if the phone had been destroyed.
“I want to call you an ambulance.” I offered him a smile. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
The boy propped himself up and sat on crossed legs. He shook his head like he was a dog drying off.
“You need an ambulance.”
I pried his fingers off my wrist and stood.
I dropped back down when I saw a wolf hovering over my phone, its mouth open and teeth bared. It wore an expression of fierce anger. Its amber eyes locked on mine.
The wolf snarled, then howled. The crows took flight.
I looked back at the boy. His blue eyes momentarily flashed amber.
“No ambulance?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“We’ll go to my car?”
He nodded.
CHOOSE YOUR NEXT MOVE:
Drive the boy to the hospital.
— OR —