Kealan Burke - The Turtle Boy

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.

“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.