Read The Green Man for Free Online

from the window and, with a glance back in her direction, took hold of a bundle buggy by his side and walked quickly away.
    Charles!
she cried somewhere deep inside her. Hurrying through the shop, she fumbled open the door and looked desperately down the street. He was not there. The gapin time that had delivered him to her had closed, leaving only a bewildered old woman staring down an empty street, with an ache in her heart and a fear in her bones she had not felt for many years.
    “Hello, Emily.” It was Gigi from the bakery next door, sweeping the sidewalk in front of her shop. “Lovely day, isn’t it? Summer will be here before you know it.”
    “Yes,” said Emily. “Lovely.” She rearranged some of the sun-bleached books in the shallow bargain bins out front, flipped the sign in the door, and retreated back into the shop.
    Outside, the Green Man hung from his perch above the street. The carved leaves that curled from the vines spilling from his mouth shivered lightly in the breeze, and his ancient all-seeing eyes watched a boy with a bundle buggy turn hurriedly down a side street and disappear.
    Inside, Emily switched on the lights in the shop. She went to the desk, sat down, and took a small bottle of pills from her sweater pocket. Shaking one of the tiny pills into her palm, she tucked it under her tongue. The vice around her chest loosened slowly as the pill went to work.
    She glanced up at the calendar on the wall beside the desk and felt the dark wing of fear brush her cheek as it flew by.

8
    W hen O came downstairs into the shop, she noticed the smell of cigarette smoke. Aunt Emily was sitting at the desk.
    “I was thinking I might do that shopping now,” she said. Her aunt looked up at her with wide, startled eyes.
    “Are you feeling all right?” said O. “You look a little – I don’t know – spooked.”
    “Just lost in thought,” said her aunt, with a weak attempt at a smile.
    “I was wondering if you had a bundle buggy – for the shopping?”
    “A bundle buggy? Yes, there’s a buggy out back.”
    “Are you sure you’re okay?”
    “I’m fine. Did you find the money?”
    “Yes, I took some from the tin on the fridge.”
    “It’s probably easier to take the buggy out the back way rather than try to bring it through the shop.”
    “Fine. I shouldn’t be long.”
    “Be careful,” her aunt called after her.
    It was one of those things her father would automatically say when she was leaving the house, but coming from Aunt Emily, it took on a slightly different tone – as if there might actually
be
things to be careful about.
    Beyond the desk, a partition divided the shop in two – the larger room out front and, behind it, a second, smaller room. Here, too, the walls were lined with bookcases, and boxes were ranged along the floor at their base.
    The room was large enough to accommodate an old stuffed couch, a tattered armchair, and a small wooden table covered in coffee rings. A number of folding chairs were nestled together against the back wall, on a small raised platform covered in worn carpeting. O wondered what they could be for.
    The room seemed to be one of Psycho’s haunts. Cat hair clung to the dark fabric of the couch, and the upholstery along one side of the armchair had been raked by claws. Under the table were a bowl of water and a dish of dried food; a litter box was tucked between two boxes of books, just inside the doorway. There was no sign of Psycho.
    “I can’t seem to see that buggy,” called O after a quick look around the room.
    “It must be on the porch – through that red door in the corner,” called Aunt Emily.
    The ramshackle wooden porch had been added on to the original building. It was crammed with flattenedcardboard boxes, some parceled together with string, but most apparently pitched in at random. The buggy hung from a nail on the wall alongside an ancient ladder. O waded through the sea of boxes and lifted it down.
    She wrestled open the bolt