The Turtle Boy

CHAPTER TWELVE

Daylight.

Impossible and warm.

Mind numbing in its reality but most certainly there.

Eyes wide, Timmy stumbled and almost fell from the rain-swept night into a summer day.

This can’t be happening. This isn’t real.

But as he felt the sun start to warm his face, he knew it was real. The grass was dry against his ankles, the sky above the pond a stark, heavenly blue that bore no hint of rain. It was as if he’d stepped from real life onto a movie set, onto an authentic reproduction of Myers Pond on a summer day.

Timmy moved slowly, as if in a dream. Frogs croaked and toads belched in the reeds while dragonflies whirred over the unbroken surface of the water. Birds chirped and whistled, trilled and cawed and rustled in the trees. He glimpsed the rump of a deer, cotton-white tail twitching as it wandered away from the pond.

With his neck already aching from trying to take in all this magic at once, Timmy looked down to the bank where he had seen The Turtle Boy on that first day in another world. And there he was.

Darryl.

But not the scabrous, grotesque creature he and Pete had seen. No, this boy was smiling, fresh-faced and healthy, his skin pale but unmarked, devoid of weeping wounds and bites. His hair was parted neatly and shone in the midday sun, his gray trousers unsullied, the crease down the middle crisp and unruffled. His black t-shirt looked worn but not old. He did not seem to notice he was no longer alone, so intent was he in dipping his ankle into the cool water. Timmy watched as that ankle rose, expecting to see a glistening red wound, but the skin remained unbroken, unblemished. Pure. This, Timmy realized, was who The Turtle Boy had been before he’d changed into the malevolent, seething figure of decay and disease they’d found on the bank that day. This was Darryl before whatever had corrupted him had compelled him to feed himself to the turtles.

“Who are you?” Timmy asked softly, but received no reply. Darryl continued to smile his knowing smile, continued to dip his smooth ankle into the calm waters.

“Why are you here?” Timmy demanded. For the first time he noticed the small red notebook sitting next to the boy. He was almost tempted to reach down and grab the book, to read it, to search for the answers he could not get from the boy on the bank. But he didn’t. Couldn’t. For as the resolve swelled in him to do that very thing, he heard the gentle swish of grass being crumpled underfoot as someone approached from the opposite side of the rise.

Mom, Timmy thought with a sigh of relief, and wondered if she too would see this miraculous pocket of daylight and calm where there should be a storm.

But it wasn’t his mother.

The man who came striding over the rise was longhaired and thickly built, his faded denim jeans ripped across the knees and trailing threads. He wore battered tan loafers, comfortable looking but tired and dying. A v-shaped patch of tangled black chest hair sprouted from the open neck of the man’s navy shirt. He looked normal, except for one horrifying detail.

He had no face.

Beneath the brim of a dark blue baseball cap, there was nothing but a blank oval that twitched and shifted as if made of liquid. The flesh-colored surface darkened in places as if plagued by the memory of bruises and now and again, the suggestion of features—a dark eye, the twist of a smile—surfaced from the swimming skin. But otherwise, it was unfinished, a doll’s face left to melt in the sun.

Timmy opened his mouth to speak, but the stranger spoke first, his words jovial and clear despite the absence of a mouth. “Hey there!” he said pleasantly. “You’re Jodie’s kid, right?”

Timmy frowned and backed up a step as the man continued to approach him. Darryl didn’t seem perturbed by the faceless man, leading Timmy to believe they were not seeing the same thing.

“Yes. Who are you?” said a young voice behind Timmy, and he turned to see Darryl looking at him…no, not at him…looking through him to the stranger. Stricken, but feeling as though he had intruded on a conversation not meant for him, he stepped away so he could watch this bizarre interaction.

The stranger’s eyes resolved themselves from the shimmering mass of his face— so blue they were almost white—then gone again. “I’m a friend of your uncle’s. We’re practically best friends!”

“Really?” said Darryl, sounding dubious.

“Sure. We chug a few beers every Friday night. Game of poker every other Thursday.” He stepped forward until his shadow sprawled across the boy. “You ever play poker?”

“Yes, sir. Once. My daddy taught me before he left us.”

The stranger nodded his sympathy. “Shit, that’s hard. I feel for you kid. Really I do. Can’t be easy waitin’ on a daddy that might not ever come back.”

Darryl’s eyes clouded with pain. “Yes, sir.”

“Hey, c’mon,” the man said, hunkering down next to the boy. “Don’t be so down. If he didn’t hang around, that’s his loss, right? Besides, you got people—good people—looking out for you right here.”

“Like who, sir?”

“Well, let’s see…” The stranger’s awful blank face turned to look out over the water at trees so green they were almost luminescent beneath the sun. “Well, me for one.”

Darryl shrugged. “But I don’t know you.”

“Ah that’s okay. I didn’t know you either. Least until now. Heck, we’re practically best friends now, right?”

“You smell like beer,” Darryl said, a quaver in his voice.

Though it was not there for him to see, Timmy sensed the stranger’s smile fade. He couldn’t understand why Darryl or the man couldn’t see him and why Darryl wasn’t seeing the man’s face, or lack of one. Were they ghosts? If so, then what did that make the version of Darryl they had seen on the bank with the pieces missing?

“Yeah, I knocked back a few before I came over. So what? One of these days you’ll be tipping beers like your old man, I’m willing to bet.”

“My daddy doesn’t drink. At least he didn’t while he was with us. He said it was evil.”

“Well, shit and sugar fairies boy, your old man sounds like a real party animal.” He threw his head back and laughed. It wasn’t a kind sound, the echo even less so.

He reached into his shirt pocket and produced a crumpled cigarette. He set about straightening it, then paused and held it out to the boy seated next to him. “You want a puff?”

Darryl shook his head and reached for his notebook. He was obviously preparing to make a hasty exit. The stranger stopped him with a gesture, a dirty fingernail aimed at the little red square in the grass between them. “What’s this? A diary?”

“No sir.” Darryl made to retrieve the notebook but the man snatched it up and switched it to the hand farther away from the boy.

“What have we here?” With one hand he flipped through the pages with a soiled thumb, his other hand snapping open a Zippo lighter and bringing the flame to the tip of the crooked cigarette, jammed low between lips that weren’t there.

Darryl looked crestfallen and stared at his submerged ankle as he muttered, “It’s a story.”

“A story, eh? Like a war story?”

“No. A love story.”

“Aw shit!” the man said, coughing around his cigarette and chuckling. “You a little fairy boy?”

Darryl shrugged. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Sure you do. You like boys?”

“Yes, sir. Some of them.”

The man slapped his knee, knocking the ash from his cigarette into the water. “Shit, I knew it!”

It was clear by the expression on the boy’s face that he didn’t know just what it was the man ‘knew’ and wanted to leave so bad it hurt. Timmy, still paralyzed by disbelief at where and how and possibly when he had found himself, felt a pang of sorrow for the boy and wished the stranger would leave him alone.

But the man stayed where he was and flipped a lock of chestnut-colored hair from the ghost of his eyes as his laugh grew hoarse, then died. “I knew a fairy boy like you once,” he said. A mouth appeared in the skin-mask as he attempted to blow a smoke ring but only managed a mangled S before the breeze snatched it away. “Couple of years ago back in college. He was like you, you know. Dressed real nice, spoke real good. Had no time for anyone he thought beneath him, if you’ll excuse the pun, which meant pretty much everybody was beneath the sonofabitch. That cocksucker didn’t get to me though. No sir. I fixed his goddamn wagon real good.”

“I’d better go. Can I have my book?” Darryl withdrew his foot from the water. He braced his hands beneath him to lever himself up and that’s when it happened.

Just as Darryl began to rise, the man, in one smoothly executed move, clenched the fist holding the cigarette and swept his arm hard beneath the boy’s hands, dropping him hard on his back. Timmy heard the whoosh of the boy’s breath as he lay confused and frightened. He saw the bobbing of the boy’s Adam’s apple as the fear registered. And then the man rose, his shadow once again draping itself over Darryl.

“Stop it! Leave him alone!” Timmy roared, but he felt as if he was locked inside a glass cage.

“Now why’d you have to go and get all impolite on me, huh? Weren’t we having a good little chat, just the two of us? No women, no bitching, no bills, no bullshit. Just you and me having a fine time.” His ‘face’ darkened. “What would your daddy think if he knew what you are? Or does he know? Are you queer because of him? Is that it? Shit, that’s terrible. I mean, I feel sorry for you, man. I really do. No kid should have to deal with that shit. I mean, my father got drunk one time and tried to—”

Darryl ran. It happened that fast. One minute he was on his back, trembling like an upturned crab, and the next he was on his feet and running toward the trees.

And the stranger fell on him. To Timmy it seemed as if the man had hardly moved and yet he was there, lying across the area of flattened grass Darryl had occupied only a moment before, both hands wrapped around the boy’s ankle, the cigarette forgotten and smoldering between them.

“Let me go!” Darryl cried and clawed at the grass. “Please, let me go!”

The stranger grunted and tugged the boy back toward him, flipped him over and struck him once across the face with his fist. It was enough. Darryl’s cries faded to a whine, tears streaming down his face and scissoring through the dirt smudged there.

The man shuffled forward and sat down on the boy’s legs, trapping him. Darryl regarded him with animal panic, subdued only by the threat of further violence.

“Aw Jesus,” the stranger said as twin trails of blood began to run from the boy’s nostrils. “Aw Jesus,” he repeated, grabbing fistfuls of his long hair and tugging hard. “Look what you did. Look what you did,” he said, over and over as if it was a spell to ward off consequences. “Look what you did. You’re bleeding. You’ll tell. You’ll run and tell and they’ll throw me in jail. All because you couldn’t just be polite and sit and listen. No, you tried to run. You tried to run away and look what you did!”

“Please,” Darryl sobbed beneath him.

A few feet away, Timmy wept too. He wanted to help, wanted to make this stop, somehow prevent what was going to happen because he knew, just knew in his heart and soul what was going to happen next.

He screamed then and looked away, knowing the scream wasn’t entirely his own, aware his own vocalized pain was drowning out the anguished cry of the boy on the bank. Timmy saw the man’s hands settling on both sides of the boy’s neck and looked away. He moaned and fell to his knees on the edges of a killer’s shadow as a sound like dry twigs snapping told him Darryl was dead.

An eternity passed before he looked up again. The killer stood there sobbing into his fist, but only for a moment. He quickly composed himself and set about tugging old rocks from where they had stood untouched for many years. He carried them to the inert body lying sprawled on the bank and stuffed the biggest ones under the boy’s shirt and down his trousers. After wrenching Darryl’s shirt into a crude knot to hold the rocks, he grabbed the boy’s legs around the ankles. Darryl’s head lolled sickeningly, the sightless eyes finding Timmy for the first time. Timmy felt sick, this new world of sunshine and murder seen through tears as he watched the killer step back into the water, the man’s face swirling. He dragged the boy’s body into the pond, held it in his arms for a moment, the water lapping at his waist, then let go and watched it sink, watched as bubbles broke the surface and the ripples fled.

Timmy wiped a sleeve across his eyes and sobbed, the tears hot with rage and horror. His temples throbbed. It hurt to think, to see, to bear witness to something so appallingly brutal. He knew he would never be the same again.

He looked up in time to see the stranger clambering onto the bank, his jeans darkened by the water, streams trickling from beneath the cuffs. He was weeping mud-colored tears, muttering beneath his breath, cussing and batting at the air over his head as he slipped and fell, then hurried to his feet. He almost forgot the book, but then turned and scooped it up and jammed it into his inside pocket. He looked around and, for one soul-freezing moment, his gaze found Timmy’s but then continued to scan the surrounding area for signs that he’d been seen or that someone had heard the boy. Satisfied that he was alone, he cast one final glance back at the water before heading back toward the rise, his head bowed.

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.

“Goddamn 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.