The Turtle Boy (9 page)

The third body filled Timmy
with a wave of grief he was afraid would never leave him. Every
time he stared up at his bedroom ceiling; every time he glanced at
a comic book or thought about the red clay in Patterson's field, he
saw Pete's face.

Pete had never made it to summer camp.
His body had shown signs of chronic physical abuse, culminating in
a broken neck sustained—according to the evidence obtained from the
Marshall house—from a fall against the edge of a marble fireplace.
It was assumed Wayne Marshall had killed his son by accident, in a
fit of alcohol-fueled rage.

Panicked, Wayne decided to
dump his son's body in the pond (perhaps so he could claim later
that the boy had run away) and was readying himself to do so when
Timmy's father arrived on the scene.

"I just stood looking at
him," Timmy's father said. "I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
Wayne, with Pete in his arms…I didn't want to believe he was dead,
couldn't believe Wayne would kill his own son. I watched him lay
the boy down on the grass. That's when he pulled the gun on me.
That's when I saw his eyes and knew he was lost. Jesus, I should
have
known
, should
have done something sooner."

Timmy only smiled through
the tears when he thought of what Darryl's turtles might have done
to Wayne Marshall.

Wayne Marshall, the faceless man Timmy
had seen at the pond, murdering his nephew and leaving him beneath
the water to feed the turtles.

The visitors came and went,
attempted to soothe Timmy with words he couldn't hear and through
it all, through the mindless passage of feverish recollection and
the debilitating agony of loss, The Turtle Boy's words returned to
him again and again, nagging at him and begging to be decoded: You
don't know who did it.
When you do,
remember what you saw and let it change you.

Maybe he deserves to
die.

Three weeks later, they
filled in the pond. They'd been trying for years but somehow
mechanical difficulties had always kept them away. Timmy thought he
now knew what had caused those problems.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Summer ended, and as per the rules of
the seasons in Ohio, there was no subtle ushering out of the
warmth; the weather dropped in temperature and the earth darkened
on the very day the calendar page turned.

Spurning all attempts his father made
at trying to come up with something fun for them to do on what
might be the last Saturday of good weather for quite some time,
Timmy took a walk.

Fall was already setting up camp on the
horizon, prospecting for leaves to burn and painting the sky with
colors from a bruised pallet.

He wanted to forget, but knew that
would never happen.

There were three reasons why the fear
would always be with him, dogging his every step and making
stalkers out of the slightest shadows.

First, the reporters. In the
months since Pete's and Mr. Marshall's deaths, the newspapers had
played up the ghost angle, delighting in the idea that an
eleven-year-old boy had helped solve a murder through an alleged
conference with the dead. There were phone calls, insistent and
irritating, from jocular voices proclaiming their entitlement to
Timmy's story.

They were ignored.

But this only led to
speculation, and Timmy's face ended up in the local newspapers,
topped with giant bold lettering that read:

11-YEAR-OLD BOY RESURRECTS THE DEAD,
SOLVES MURDER!

Then the curiosity seekers
started showing up, some of them from the media, most of them just
regular folk. Their neediness frightened the boy.
We just want to touch him
,
they said. Others wept and begged his mother to
let the boy see if he can bring my little
Davey/Suzy/Alex/Ricky/Sheri back
. And they
were still coming to the house, though not as much as they had in
the beginning.

The second reason was that even if
Timmy managed to dismiss the calls, the desperate pleas of
strangers, the newspaper reports and the occasional mention of his
name on the television, there were still the nightmares. Vivid,
brutal and unflinching. In his dreams, he saw everything, all the
things he had been able to look away from in real life. All the
things he had been able to run from.

Every night, he drowned and
ended up behind what Darryl had called 'The Curtain.' In the waking
hours, the name stayed with him, conjuring images in Timmy's mind
of a tattered black veil drawn wide across a crumbling stage. He
imagined a whole host of the dead crouching behind it, waiting for
their chance to come back, to find their own killers. And perhaps
they would. Perhaps also they would only be successful if they had
someone to draw strength from, as Timmy was sure Darryl Gaines had
drawn strength from him and Pete.

Or perhaps it was over.

Believing that required the most
effort.

Because the final reason,
the last barrier stopping him from releasing the dread and shaking
off the skeins of clambering horror was the recollection of
something else The Turtle Boy had said:
You
don't know who did it. When you do, remember what you saw and let
it change you
. He had mulled over this
every day and every night since the discovery of the bodies. It
would have been simpler to forget had he not realized something
about the murders, something that came back to him weeks
later—Wayne Marshall was Darryl's uncle. The story had it that
Darryl had been visiting his uncle and that's why he was there in
the first place. But Timmy had been there, however it had happened,
standing on the bank of the pond when the big man had come
strolling over the rise. Among the things he'd said had
been:
I'm a friend of your uncle's. We're
practically best friends!
Which meant
Darryl's murderer had not been his uncle.

But every time it got this
far in Timmy's head, heavy black pain descended like a caul over
him and he had to stop and think of nothing until it went away. It
was too much. Maybe in the years to come it would make sense. For
now, it would hang like an old coat in a closet, always there but
seldom worn.

Maybe he deserves to
die
.

His walk took him back to
the pond, to where bulldozers stood like slumbering monsters next
to a smoothened oval of dirt. They'd drained the pond and ripped
away the banks. The telltale signs of man were everywhere now, the
animals quiet. Despite his relief at having the dark water gone,
Timmy couldn't help the twinge of sadness he felt at having the
good memories buried beneath that hard-packed dirt, too. All around
him the land was changing, becoming unfamiliar.

He sighed, dug his hands in his pockets
and walked on, unsure where he was heading until he was standing
staring down at the railroad tracks. A cold breeze ran invisible
fingers across his skin and he shivered. A quick glance in both
directions showed the tracks were deserted. No trains, no funny
tireless cars with flashing yellow beacons.

School would begin soon, and he hoped
it would be the distraction he needed from the crawling sensation
he had been forced to live with, the sense of always being watched,
of never being alone.

It'll pass,
son
, his father had told him,
I promise
.

Timmy prayed that was true.

Because even now, with not a soul
around, he could feel it: a slight thrumming, as of a train coming,
the air growing colder still, the sky appearing to brood and twist,
the hiss of the wind through the tall grass on either side of the
rails.

And a droning, faint at
first.

A droning. Growing.

Like a machine. Or an
engine.

Pete's voice then,
disgruntled, whispering on the wind:
They
were stupid to ride that close to the train anyway.

Not an engine.

Muscles stiffening, Timmy drew his
hands out of his pockets, held his hands by his sides. He felt his
knees bend slightly and knew his body had decided to run, seemingly
commanded by the small fraction of unpanicked mind that remained.
He looked to the right. Nothing but empty track, winding off out of
sight around a bramble-edged bend.

He looked to the left.

The wind rose, carrying the stench of
death to him and he felt his heart hammer against his ribcage. A
child, limping, trying to prevent himself from toppling over, all
his energy focused on keeping the mangled dirt bike—and
himself—upright.

I wish that kid hadn't been
killed up there
.

The bike, sputtered,
growled, whined. Or perhaps it was Danny Richards making the awful
sounds—Timmy couldn't tell.

The child's bisected mouth
dropped open, teeth missing, as he lurched forward, the weight of
the bike threatening to drag him down and Timmy bolted, ran for his
life. The wind followed him, drowning out his own screams,
thwarting his attempts to deafen the mournful wail coming from the
stitched-together boy hobbling along the railroad
tracks.

"
Where's my sissssssterrrrrr?
"

Timmy stopped for breath by the memory
of the pond. He could still see the boy, a distant figure lurching
along the tracks—a pale, bruised shape against the dark green
grass.

Something's wrong,
something's broken
. Timmy knew it then as
if it had been delivered in a hammer-strike blow to the side of his
head. He sobbed at the realization that the They Darryl had
mentioned, the They who would show him what he needed to learn,
were the dead. He would see them now. Again and again.

Everywhere.

And there was a truth he had
missed, a truth he was not yet ready—not yet able—to figure out on
his own. All that was left were questions:

Why did he want to hurt
Dad?

Why did he ask me if I'd die
for him?

Why did he say maybe he
deserved to die?

As he straightened, struggling not to
weep at the thought of what might yet lay ahead of him, he flinched
so hard his neck cracked, a cold sheet of pain spreading over his
skull.

A voice that might have been the
breeze.

A whisper that might have been the
trees.

And a face that peered over his right
shoulder, grinning.

Timmy choked on a scream.

"
Mine, now
," said Mr.
Marshall.

# # #

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The Turtle Boy is merely the
first in a series of stories featuring Timmy Quinn. Other completed
sequels are a short novel,
The
Hides
, a novella entitled
Vessels
, and a novelette
entitled
The Turtle Boy: Peregrine's
Tale
. You can find
The Hides
and
Vessels
on
Smashwords
, with
Peregrine's Tale
to
follow.

I am currently working on
the final book, a full length novel entitled
Nemesis
. More news on that as it
develops.

It should also be noted that
all the locations in the preceding story and its sequel
The Hides
are very
real.

And so are the turtles.

Kealan Patrick Burke

Columbus, Ohio

December 2010

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born and raised in
Dungarvan, Ireland, Kealan Patrick Burke is an award-winning author
described as "a newcomer worth watching" (
Publishers Weekly
) and "one of the
most original authors in contemporary horror" (
Booklist
).

Some of his works include
the novels KIN, MASTER OF THE MOORS, CURRENCY OF SOULS and THE
HIDES, the novellas THE TURTLE BOY (Bram Stoker Award Winner,
2004), VESSELS, MIDLISTERS, and JACK & JILL, and the
collections RAVENOUS GHOSTS and THE NUMBER 121 TO PENNSYLVANIA
& OTHERS (Bram Stoker Award-Nominee, 2009).

Kealan also edited the
anthologies: TAVERNS OF THE DEAD (starred review,
Publishers Weekly
),
BRIMSTONE TURNPIKE, QUIETLY NOW (International Horror Guild Award
Nominee, 2004), the charity anthology TALES FROM THE GOREZONE and
NIGHT VISIONS 12 (starred review,
Publishers Weekly
, British Fantasy
Award & International Horror Guild Award nominee).

A movie based on his short
story "Peekers", directed by Mark Steensland screened at a variety
of international film festivals and won a number of awards. You can
view the film at the author's website.

As actor, Burke played the
male lead in Greg Lamberson's film SLIME CITY MASSACRE, the
long-awaited sequel to the cult classic SLIME CITY, which will be
released on DVD, Blu-ray, and Video On Demand in 2011.