The Turtle Boy (7 page)

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.