The Turtle Boy (6 page)

"I want to go with
you."

Shrugging on his jacket, his
father shook his head. "It'll only agitate him further."

"But you said he should
apologize to me too, remember? You can ask him to apologize to me
if I'm with you and I'd feel safer with you there."

His father studied him for a moment,
then a small smile creased his lips as he dropped to his haunches
and drew Timmy close. He hugged him hard and the boy felt a
comforting warmth radiating from his father, mingled with the smell
of aftershave.

"Timmy," he said softly, "I
love you. You have no idea how hurt I am by what Wayne said to you.
If I had been there I'd probably have punched his lights out, so
I'm glad I wasn't. Nobody has any right to speak to you like that
and I don't want you to ever take any of it to heart. Wayne
Marshall is a sick man, and a coward. Remember that. Your Mom and I
love you more than anything in this world and we're proud of you.
That's all you need to know."

He rose to his feet. The
movement seemed blurry and strange through the tears in Timmy's
eyes. "
Please
,"
Timmy whispered, but his father was already walking toward the
door.

CHAPTER TEN

An hour passed.

Timmy sat in front of the television
with Kim silent by his side.

His father had still not come home and
the worry made him sick to his stomach. His inner voice chastised
him for letting his father go alone, but he quelled it with forced
reassurance.

And then the power went out, darkness
thick and suffocating descending around them. Kim gasped and
grabbed his arm hard enough to hurt. He winced but did not ask her
to release him. He welcomed the contact.

His mother arrived downstairs following
a candle she had cupped with one slender hand. The yellow light
made her face seem younger, less haunted, and the smile she wore
was as radiant as the flame she set on the coffee table before
them.

"Don't touch that or you'll
burn yourself, if not the whole house," she told them. "I'll set up
some more candles so we can see what we're doing. I don't like the
idea of losing you in the dark."

Although she said it with
humor, the phrase stuck with Timmy.
Losing
you in the dark
. Was that what had happened
to his father? Had he been lost in the dark? He was now more afraid
than he could ever remember. Even more afraid than when he'd seen
The Turtle Boy. He struggled to keep from trembling, something he
was determined not to let happen. At least not while Kim was
touching him.

"When's Dad coming home?" he
asked, and saw his mother stiffen.

"Soon," she replied. "He's
probably managed to calm Mr. Marshall down and they're discussing
things man to man." She didn't sound like she believed it. "Wayne
probably broke out the beers and the two of them are sitting out
the storm and having a fine time." She laughed then, a sound forced
and devoid of hope. Timmy shivered.

"Why don't you call and make
sure?" he asked.

She sighed. "All
right."

He watched her, dread stuck like a bone
in his throat as she picked up the phone and stared for a moment at
the shadows parrying with the light. After a few moments she
clucked her tongue and hung up.

"The phone's out," she told
him.

Thunder blasted against the walls,
making them all jump and Kim let out a little squeal of
fright.

Mom sighed and set about placing pools
of amber light around the kitchen. They made twitching shadows and
nervous silhouettes of the furniture.

"I hope he's okay," Timmy
mumbled and Kim scooted closer. She was now close enough for him to
feel her breath on his face. It was not an unpleasant
feeling.

"He'll be fine," she said.
"He's a big tough guy. Much bigger than Mr. Marshall. I bet if they
got into a fight, your dad would knock him out in a
second."

Timmy grinned. "You think
so?"

"Sure!"

"Yeah, you're right. I bet
he'd even knock some of his teeth out."

"Probably all of them. He
wouldn't be so scary without those big white choppers of
his."

They both laughed and, as if
the sound had drawn her, his mother appeared beside them and
perched herself on the arm of the sofa. "You two going to be all
right?"

They nodded.

"Good. I think I'm going to
go see what's keeping your father. Kim, if you want to come with
me, I'll walk you home. It's not too far and you can borrow an
umbrella if you like. I'm sure your mother is worried about
you."

Timmy's throat constricted,
his skin feeling raw and cold at the idea of being left alone while
his mother and Kim ventured into Mr. Marshall's house.

What would he do if they
left him and never came back? What would he do if they left him
alone and Mr. Marshall came looking for him? What if he lost
them
all
in the
dark?

"Okay, Mrs. Quinn," said
Kim. She sounded as if leaving was the last thing she wanted to do.
She stood and Timmy opened his mouth to speak but nothing
emerged.

"Guess I'll see you
tomorrow?" she said, with a look he couldn't read in the
candlelight.

He tried to make out her eyes but the
gloom had filled them with shadows.

"I'll go with you," he
blurted, scrambling to his feet. He looked at his mother. "Mom, can
I go too? I don't want to be by myself." He felt no shame at
admitting this in front of Kim.

"No, Timmy. I want you to
stay here. We won't be long."

"That's what Dad said and
he
has
been gone
long!" Timmy said. "Please, let me go with you. This house gives me
the creeps. I don't want to be here alone while you and Dad are
over there with Mr. Marshall. He scares me."

Again his mother sighed but
he was already encouraged by the resignation in her expression. "Go
on then, get your coat."

He raced to the mudroom and returned
with a light blue windbreaker.

"You may need something
heavier than that," his mother pointed out. "What happened to your
gray one?"

"Ripped."

Timmy started moving toward the door.
He waited while his mother cocooned Kim in one of her overcoats.
She emerged looking chagrinned, lost inside the folds of a coat far
too big for her. Timmy suppressed a laugh and then his mother
handed them each an umbrella. They clustered by the sliding glass
door, looking out at a blackness broken only by small rectangles of
yellow light, and listened to the crackling roar of a storm not yet
matured.

"How come the neighbors have
got power and we don't?" Timmy asked.

"It happens that way
sometimes. The lightning must have hit the transformer box on the
side of our house. Let's go. Stay close to me," his mother said,
and tugged the door aside.

They filed into the raging
night, huddling against the needle spray of the rain. The wind
thudded into them with insistent hands, attempting to drive them
back; the air was filled with the scent of smoke and saturated
earth. With the door closed and locked behind them, they bowed
their heads and walked side by side to Wayne Marshall's
house.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Despite their fears – and
Timmy was in no doubt now that they all shared the same ones – Mr.
Marshall's porch was a welcome oasis from the storm. Timmy
shuddered at the cold drops that trickled down his neck. Kim
shivered, her hair hanging in sodden clumps like leaking shadows
over the moon of her face. They snapped their umbrellas closed and
his mother trotted up the three short steps to the front
door.

It was already open.

His mother turned back to them, her
face gaunt as she hurried them down from the porch and back into
the rain.

"What is it?" Timmy asked,
shouting to be heard above the shrieking wind. Sheets of icy rain
lashed his face. Kim gave him a frightened look he figured probably
mirrored his own. All he had seen as the door swung open had been a
dark hall, broken at the end by the fluorescent glare from the
kitchen. He was sure no one had been sitting at the
table.

"Nothing," his mother called
back. "Nothing at all. But I don't think they're here!"

Timmy felt as if his head
had been dunked in ice water. His teeth clicked and an involuntary
shiver coursed through him. Over their heads, a plastic lighthouse
struggled valiantly to keep its wind chimes from tearing loose. The
resultant muddle of jingles unsettled him. Mr. Marshall's weather
vane groaned as it swung wildly from south to north and back again,
adding to the discordant harmony of the turbulent night.

"Then where are they?" Kim
shouted, her arms crossed and buried beneath the coat as she danced
from foot to foot.

But Timmy knew the answer.

"The pond," he said. His
mother turned toward him and put a hand to her ear.

"The pond," he repeated.
Another chill capered down his spine, like a flow of icy
water.

"That's absurd," she said.
"Why would they go back there? Especially on a night like
this!"

Timmy shook his head, but in
the wind he heard his father:
I think the
reason Mr. Marshall is so mad is because he's seen it
too.

It occurred to him then that
The Turtle Boy – Darryl, or whoever he was – had come to Myers Pond
not for Timmy, or Pete, or any of them. He had come for Mr.
Marshall. And Mr. Marshall had been acting so strange, so angry
because The Turtle Boy was tormenting him,
frightening
him.

But why?

It didn't make sense and the
more he pondered it, the less likely it seemed. All he was sure of
in that moment, standing in the pouring rain outside Mr. Marshall's
house with the nervous white faces of his mother and Kim fixed on
him, was that for whatever the reason, the men had gone to Myers
Pond.

"I'm going to call the
police," his mother said, already mounting the steps. "You two wait
here and yell if you see them coming."

With that, she disappeared into the
house, the door easing closed behind her.

Timmy turned.

"Hey!" Kim called and he
looked back at her. She was a huddled mass of shadows, only a
trembling lower lip visible through her hair. "Where are you
going?"

"To the pond. I think Mr.
Marshall is going to try to hurt my father. If we wait for the
police it might be too late."

"But what are you going to
do? You're just a kid! You can't stop a grown-up if he wants to do
something bad. Especially a
crazy
grown-up!"

Timmy shook his head. If Mr.
Marshall intended to hurt his father, he at least had to
try
to stop it. Chances
were he'd end up getting hurt in the process, but that didn't
matter. He remembered his father reading to him, hugging him in the
kitchen and telling him he loved him. He remembered riding his
father's shoulders through the cornfields and feeling like the king
of the world atop a throne. He remembered the disappointment of
being in his first school play without his father present, only to
see him creep to a seat next to his mother halfway through. He
remembered the nightmares, the dreams in which he lost his father.
He remembered the fear, the horror at being left alone without his
father to live with the ghost of his mother.

No.

He would try. It was all he could do
and just maybe it would make a difference. Determined, he stalked
through the curtains of rain, flinching when the sky cracked above
his head. He squinted through the temporary moonlight of the
lightning, the mud sucking against the soles of his
shoes.

"Timmy, wait!" Kim cried and
he faltered at the far side of the house.

After a moment, he called to
her: "Just tell my Mom where I'm going and not to
worry."

"You idiot, of course she'll
worry!"

"Just tell her!"

"Tell her yourself," Kim
shouted, the hurt in her voice ringing over the raging
wind.

He walked on until the ground hardened
and stones rolled beneath his shoes. In a flash of lightning that
sent stars waltzing across his field of vision, he saw the gravel
winding ahead of him, emerging like a pale tongue from the black
mouth of the weaving trees. Then the shade of night dropped once
more and he was blinded, walking on a path from memory.

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.