The Turtle Boy (8 page)

After a moment, Timmy got to his feet
and moved toward the bank. A dewdrop of blood glistened on the
sun-baked grass. A hush fell over the pond, so noticeable that
Timmy looked up at the sky. A raindrop smacked him on the forehead
and he jumped, startled.

Something in the pond made a sucking
sound and his gaze snapped down to where the surface of the water
was starting to heave.

The air hummed. There came a
noise like the sea heard in a conch shell and the hair rose on
Timmy's arms. Lightning fractured the sky and normality returned
with a sound like heavy sheets of glass shattering. The boy
staggered back a step. The rushing sound grew louder.

And then day exploded in one deafening
scream into night. And rain.

Timmy tottered forward. The rain
hammered against his skull, soaking him. He almost lost his
footing. He regained his balance and squinted into the thick dark.
In the distance, someone called his name. Lightning strobed again;
the shadows crouched around the pond flinched. Another cry, from
somewhere behind him.

He turned and a figure rose
up in front of him. "It's all your fault," Mr. Marshall sobbed. He
drew back his fist and a darkness darker than night itself swept
itself on wings of sudden pain into Timmy's eyes and he felt the
ground pull away from him. A moment of nothingness in which he
almost convinced himself he had dreamed it all, despite the stars
that coruscated behind his eyelids, and then an immense cold
shocked him back into reality. He thrashed his arms and felt them
move far too slowly for the weight of his panic. An attempt to
scream earned him nothing but a mouthful of choking water and he
gagged, convulsed and tried to scream again.
Oh God help me I can't swim!
His mind
felt as if it too were filling with water and suddenly he ceased
struggling, his throat closing, halting its fight against the dirty
tide flowing through it. His heart thudded. One more breath. Water.
Then a blanket of soothing whispers, a sheet of warmth draped over
him and he no longer felt the pain of his lungs burning. It was as
if he was feeling the pain in a separate body, a body he could
ignore if he chose to.

And ignore it he did as he
sank and drifted on waves of peace that carried him away. Until a
sharp pain drove the resignation from his brain and his leg
twitched, spasmed, and he was jerked from the panacea of death's
reverie. His eyes fluttered open. Darkness, but darkness he could
feel between his fingers. Another bite and his heart kicked. Agony.
Water. Something was gnawing on his foot. A self-preserving panic
like liquid fire swelled in him and he kicked, struggled, pushed
himself up to where the water moved with purpose and rhythm,
shifting to the sound of the storm.

More pain, needling between his toes,
and his head broke water, panic rattling his skull as he drew a
breath and went under once more. He struggled against the heaving
water, his tongue numb, cottoned by the acrid taste of the fetid
depths. The water fell below his neck and he sucked greedily at the
air, aware for the first time that the storm vied for dominance
with the sounds of human violence. Men yelled, women screamed and
someone called his name.

This time he stayed above water, his
frantic paddling halting abruptly when his foot connected with
something hard, something unmoving. He could stand and did so
falteringly, his chest full of red-hot needles as the water shifted
around him, trying to reclaim him. It rushed from his stomach, his
lungs, his mind and he vomited, vomited until he felt as if his
head would explode, then he staggered in the storm-induced current,
his face raised to the rain.

A splash behind him. Timmy turned,
blinking away tears, rain, pond water and trying to focus on
something other than his own lingering blindness and trembling
bones.

The Turtle Boy stood before him,
unaffected by the tumultuous heaving of the water. He looked as he
had when Pete and Timmy had found him, his face mottled and
decayed. He wore a coat now and the coat moved. Timmy stepped back,
the bank so preciously close and yet so far away.

"You saw it," Darryl
croaked, the shoulders of his coat sprouting small heads that
sniffed the air before withdrawing. "You stepped behind The Curtain
and you saw what he did."

Somehow Timmy could hear him over the
storm, over the churning of the water, though Darryl did not raise
his voice to compete with them. He nodded, not trusting his
voice.

"You don't know who did it.
When you do, remember what you saw and let it change you. There is
only time to let one of them pay for his crimes
tonight."

"I don't understand!" Timmy
felt dizzy, sick; he wanted to be home and warm, away from the
madness this night had become, if it was really night at
all.

"You will.
They'll
explain it to
you."

"Who?"

"People like me. The people
on The Stage."

Darryl swept past him and in
the transient noon of lightning, he saw the coat was fashioned from
a legion of huge, ugly turtles, their shells conjoined like a
carapace around the boy's chest and back. Wizened beaks rose and
fell, worm-like tongues testing the air as Darryl carried them
toward the bank and the figures who fought upon it.

From here, Timmy could see
his mother and Kim, huddled at the top of the rise, his mother's
hand over Kim's face to keep her from seeing something. He followed
their gaze to the two men wrestling each other in the
dark.

Dad!
Possessed by new resolve that numbed the flaring pain in his
feet and the throbbing in his chest and throat, he thrashed to the
bank and reached it the same time Darryl did. They both climbed
over, both paused as the storm illuminated the sight of Wayne
Marshall punching Timmy's father in the face—

Just like he punched Darryl
before he killed him

—and stooped to retrieve
something he'd dropped as the other man reeled back. Over the
cannon roar of thunder, Timmy heard his mother scream his name and
resisted the urge to look in her direction as he slipped, slid and
flailed and finally tumbled to the ground between her and where his
father was straightening and bracing himself for a bullet from the
weapon in Wayne Marshall's hand.

In the storm-light, Mr.
Marshall grinned a death's head rictus, his skin pebbled with rain.
He raised the gun. Timmy's father cradled his head in his arms and
backed away.

Mr. Marshall pulled the
trigger.

And nothing happened.

He jerked back his hand and
roared at the gun, fury rippling through him. "
No, fuck you, NO!
"

He thrust the gun out, aimed
it at Timmy's father's head and pulled the trigger.

Nothing.

Again and again and again, nothing but
a series of dry snapping sounds.

"God
damn
you!"

"No!" Timmy yelled, then
realized it hadn't come from his stricken throat at all. It was
Darryl and his cry had not been one of protest. It had been a
command.

And it was heeded.

The ground beneath Timmy's
hands moved, separated into ragged patches of moving darkness,
slick and repulsive against his skin. He jerked back and rose
unsteadily, eyes fixed on the moving earth, waiting for the
lightning to show him what he already knew.

The turtles. An army of them. All
monstrous, all ancient. And all moving toward where his father had
his arms held out to ward off the bullet that must surely be on its
way.

"Timmy…son, stay back," he
said, risking a quick glance at his son. "Just stay
there."

"Dad!" This time Timmy knew
from the pitiful croak that it was indeed his own voice.

He ran, halted, drowning again but in
fear, confusion and the agony of uncertainty as the creatures
Doctor Myers had introduced to his pond all those years ago trudged
slowly but purposefully toward their prey.

"Darryl," Timmy cried,
scorching his throat with the effort to be heard. Darryl looked
toward him, the coat slowly shrugging itself off to join its
brethren. "Darryl, please! Make them stop!"

Another shadow rose from the
pond.

Timmy felt a nightmarish
wave of disbelief wash over him. Even after all he'd been through,
was
still
going
through, he felt his mind tugging in far too many directions at
once.

But there was not enough time to dwell
on it.

He looked away from the new shadow and
ran, skidding to the ground before his father. Darryl turned to
look at him.

The turtles slowed.

"You'd die for your father?"
Darryl asked, his voice little more than a gurgle.

"Yes!" Timmy screamed,
without hesitation. "Yes! Leave him alone!"

"Why?"

"Because I
love
him. He's the best
father in the world and I love him. You can't take him away from
me.
Please!
"

"Maybe he deserves to
die."

"Don't
say
that. He doesn't! I
swear
he
doesn't!"

The storm itself seemed to hold its
breath as Darryl stared and the impatience of the turtle army
stretched the air taut.

A gentle pulse of lightning broke the
stasis.

Darryl turned to regard the
shadow standing in the water next to him. Pointing to Mr. Marshall,
he asked the same question: "Would
you
die for
him?
"

Even Mr. Marshall seemed intent on the
answer the shadow would give.

But it said nothing. Instead, it gave a
gentle shake of its head.

"No!" Wayne cried as Darryl
turned back to face him.

Slowly, Timmy's father
lowered his hands and after a moment in which he realized Wayne
Marshall's attention was elsewhere, he moved away into the shadows
of the pines, his face a pale blur of horror as he saw what had his
neighbor's attention.

Darryl turned back to watch
the turtles advance. The first of them found Mr. Marshall's leg and
after a moment of stunned disgust, he aimed his pistol downward and
in his panic, tried the weapon again.

This time the gun fired.

A deafening roar and the gun
let loose a round that took most of Mr. Marshall's foot away with
it. He shrieked and dropped to the ground, then realized his folly
and scuttled backward on his hands. The dark tide moved steadily
forward.

Timmy's father burst from
his hiding place and ran the long way around the pond, through the
pines, the marsh and along the high bank until he appeared through
the weeds on the far side of the rise. His wife released Kim at
last and ran to him.

Multi-colored lights lit the sky in the
distance, back near the houses. Timmy guessed the police had
arrived and were now searching for the woman who had summoned them.
He silently begged them to hurry.

A guttural scream was all that could be
heard from the shadows as the tide of turtles progressed ever
onward and engulfed their victim.

A single flicker of lightning lit the
face of the shadow in the water and Timmy felt a jolt of
shock.

The dead and bloated face
staring back at him was Pete's.

Oh God…

Someone grabbed Timmy's
shoulder and spun him roughly around. He looked up into the
frightened face of his father, noticed his swollen eye and crushed
nose, and almost wept again, but there was no time. The sirens were
growing louder, drowning out the shrieks and snapping sounds from
beneath the pines. Timmy let himself be led and almost didn't feel
Kim's hand slipping into his own. He smiled at her but it was an
empty gesture. There was nothing to be cheerful about and, head
afire with unanswered questions, he looked over his shoulder as
they descended the rise as one huddled, broken mass. Pete was gone.
The earth still crawled and among the seething shadows The Turtle
Boy stood, unsmiling in his victory.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Timmy slept for days
afterward, speaking only to his parents and Kim and occasionally a
police officer who tried his best to look positive. Timmy saw the
horror in the man's eyes, a horror that began on a warm sunny
morning at the start of summer.

What he learned, he learned from his
father, the papers and Kim who in turn had heard it from her own
parents—apparently too shocked to be discreet in their
gossiping.

They had pulled three bodies
out of the pond. One was a young boy, little more than a skeleton
cocooned in algae. According to the medical examiner's report, he
had been there for some time and had died as a result of a broken
neck, sustained it was assumed, by a fall from an old tire swing
that had hung for a brief time above the pond back in the late
seventies. They had identified the body as Darryl Gaines, nephew of
the second decedent, Wayne Marshall. Apparently, Marshall's nephew
had visited him back in 1967 while his mother was being treated for
drug abuse. Marshall was drinking in his backyard with friends and
poking fun at the boy (according to Geoff Keeler, an ex-buddy of
Wayne's) and the kid had run off in a sulk. They'd never seen him
again. Divers had searched the pond and come up empty ("apart from
some big turtles" one of them stated on the news,
obviously relishing the attention of the camera). Shortly after,
Darryl's mother, Joanne Gaines was institutionalized. She committed
suicide a month later.