The Pricker Boy

Whinnem, Reade Scott

The Pricker Boy

Genre: horror


He was human once, or so they say.

There’s something lurking in the woods just beyond the Widow’s Stone. Stucks Cumberland has seen it—a boy with skin that’s as gray as dead bark, covered head to toe in thorns.
It seems impossible. But then, nothing about this summer is as it should be. Stucks’s best friend, Pete, has grown sullen and abusive. Ronnie wears long sleeves despite the heat, self-conscious about the scar that reminds everyone of a day they’d like to forget. Vivek’s jokes seem increasingly desperate, and Emily is stirring feelings in Stucks that he doesn’t know what to do with.
And through it all the Pricker Boy is out there, watching them from the edge of the woods. At least, Stucks thinks that’s what’s happening. But it’s hard to concentrate with all the buzzing—the relentless buzzing that started in the trees and is now crawling around the surface of his brain....