The Turtle Boy: Peregrine's Tale (2 page)

Peregrine had done everything he could
think of to cheer her up, but nothing worked. As the days passed
and The Man didn't return, her face grew so tight and pinched he
gave up trying to make her smile for fear it would split like an
overripe melon.

The chair creaked again and his heart
leapt. He leaned closer, listening for the reassuring sound of her
breathing, then gently, gently, pressed his ear to her
chest.

When he didn't hear the slightest
sound, he almost screamed, but before the horror could claw its way
out, a dull thud sounded and he lunged forward, forgetting his
concern for his mother's foot in favor of confirming what he hoped
and prayed he'd heard.

Thudump
.

He smiled.

Thudump
.

Allowed himself to breathe.

Thudump
.

"Mom?" he whispered and drew back to
look into her wan face.

She was no longer watching
the wall. Her eyes had found him. He was almost overwhelmed with
relief.
She's alive
.

"Mom?"

Her eyes were still glassy, but at
least she'd shown some sign that she could see him. She was not a
ghost, after all.

"Mom?" he said again, wishing more
than anything that she would answer, even if only to tell him to
shut up. "Can you hear me?"

But to his disappointment, she
frowned, just a little, and her gaze returned to the
wall.

I should call a
doctor
, Peregrine realized.
She's sick. There's something wrong with her. Why
won't she talk?

Although she hadn't spoken much at all
after The Man walked out, she had at least moved and said a word
here and there to him. She had continued to make him breakfast
every morning, even though he could tell she didn't want
to.

Secretly, he was glad The Man was
gone. He remembered waking in his bed one night with the
realization that it had been weeks since he'd last heard voices
coming through the wall from his mother's bedroom. No voices, no
booming laughter, no crying, no tortured squeaking of the bed, or
moans, or animal grunting. Just quiet. Peregrine liked that just
fine. He wouldn't be so tired in the mornings anymore after being
kept awake by those godawful sounds; he wouldn't have to lie awake
at night staring at the shadows the moon cast through the trees,
wondering what peculiar things his mother and The Man were doing in
her room. Wondering if The Man was hurting her. He wouldn't have to
wait in bed in the mornings until he heard the sound of The Man's
car starting up.

No, he didn't miss The Man
at
all
. He'd rarely
set eyes on him, but the glimpses he'd caught had been enough—a
bearish man who wore large overcoats that only served to make him
seem even bigger; hair long, dark and unruly; spade-shaped face
with coal-dark eyes glaring out above a bulbous nose and worm-like
lips.

But mostly it was the smell of him
that bothered the boy. Whenever The Man showed up, the house filled
with a sickly sweet smell so pungent Peregrine had to sleep with
his face buried in the pillow. Even after the man was gone, the
smell would linger for days afterward, as if there were dead
flowers somewhere inside the walls.

Peregrine had learned not to ask about
his mother's "guest" after his one and only inquiry had inspired
her to knock out his two front teeth and chip a third with the edge
of a frying pan.

His father was gone, and now The Man
was gone too. He only had the faintest recollection of what his
father had been like, but he missed him, if only because he had to
have been better, and kinder, than the monster his mother had let
into their house.

He tried to feel sorry for her, but it
was difficult. He hated what the monster's absence was doing to his
mother, but was overjoyed and relieved that The Man was gone.
Whenever that dead flower smell choked the house, it frightened
him. The Man's oily shadow, slithering across the stair steps as if
coming to get him, frightened him even more. He didn't care if he
never saw him again.

Then an awful thought occurred to him:
What if the only way he would ever get his mother back to herself
was if The Man came back? What if the doctor called round, shook
his head, clucked his tongue and suggested the only remedy was to
fetch The Man at once. Then her mother's visitor might never leave,
and that was too awful a possibility to contemplate. He could
almost smell that terrible stench already, eager to be let back
inside.

A bubbling whine in his stomach
reminded him he had yet to eat, and after a final, longing look at
his mother, he sighed and went to fix himself some toast. He
released the arm of the chair and it heaved forward with an odd
clattering sound. He looked in time to see an empty whiskey bottle
spinning away from his mother's feet, and watched as it came to
rest pointing toward the window, like the needle of a compass
following the direction of his mother's gaze.

Peregrine frowned and went to fetch
the bottle. He couldn't remember ever seeing his mother drink
liquor before. Perhaps The Man had left it behind.

As he slipped his hand around the
bottle, there was another noise. Behind him. A scraping sound he
couldn't immediately identify. He straightened, bottle in hand and
turned.

A creak.

He jolted and almost dropped
the bottle, then felt the tension drain from his body. A smile
warmed his face. The rocking chair creaked again, settling back on
its runners. His mother was awake,
proper
awake, and standing up, if a
little unsteadily. It bothered him that she was still staring at
the wall, though. He tried again to locate the object of her
fascination but saw nothing but flaking paint and their cheap old
clock, keeping time with his heart.

"Mom…you scared me," he said, reaching
out a hand in case she needed to steady herself. Her lips parted
with a dry rasping sound. She continued to sway, as if she was
still in synch with the movement of the rocking chair. Peregrine
moved closer. He wasn't sure he could do anything if she did fall
over, but it was only right to try.

And then she did speak, though it took
Peregrine a moment to decipher what she'd said.

Her voice was faint, little more than
a whisper, so much so that at first, he thought it was the wind
he'd heard fluttering through the gutters. But her mouth had moved
to shape the words and there could be no mistaking they were
hers.

She said: "He didn't want
you."

Her eyes widened, as if she'd just
realized something. Peregrine didn't think it possible for her skin
to get any whiter than it was already, but it did. She was now so
pale her eyes were like splotches of dark ink on a white sheet of
paper.

Peregrine was confused. He'd seen
drunk people before—in all the times they'd visited Uncle Marty in
Indiana, he'd never once seen the old man sober—and wanted to
believe his mother had simply had too much to drink, and that was
why she was acting so weird, and saying things that made no
sense.

But though young, he was no
fool. He knew what her words
might
mean, and tried hard not to think about
it.

She turned her head, just a fraction
of an inch, and her eyes moved. Any joy or relief Peregrine might
have felt at this was immediately obliterated by the cold fury he
saw in them. Her hatred radiated out toward him, an almost palpable
thing, hazing the air between them. She sucked in a deep,
shuddering breath, and it emerged in a soft groan.

"Mom…what is it?"

"He didn't want you," she repeated,
this time louder.

"Who?"

"'Him or me,' he said, and guess…who I
chose?"

Peregrine was about to ask her to
stop, tell her that she was frightening him, but an icy needle of
realization slid into his brain and stole the breath from his
lungs.

His mother blamed him for making The
Man go away. He didn't think that fair at all, but knew it meant
he'd be black and blue by bedtime. All because of that
foul-smelling giant with the crawling shadow.

He made her choose between
us
. He was grimly satisfied that his hatred
of The Man had been justified, but the fear overruled it. There was
something in his mother's eyes he'd never seen before, and it made
him want to run from her. But before he could move, his mother's
left hand rose. He was now able to see what the scraping sound had
been and it made every hair on his body stand to
attention.

It was the long cast iron poker that
had always hung on its hook by the fireplace. His mother's knuckles
were white around its faux bronze handle. She held it as if it were
a sword, the business end whitened by ash and wavering in the air
between them.

"'Children are like houses'
he told me, 'You can always leave 'em and get yourself a new one if
the old one starts to stink'." Tears spilled down her cheeks.
Peregrine wished he could believe they were for him. "He wanted me
to send you away so we could be together, so I could be happy. And
don't you think that's only fair? Your father left me here alone,
with nothing but bills and no money, no fucking
life!
How is that fair, huh? That I
have to spend my whole life cooped up in here with you while the
rest of the world gets to live their dreams and ambitions. Tell me,
Peregrine…how is that
fair?
"

Peregrine shook his head, wishing now
that she'd stayed in her trance. He knew protesting and pleading
was useless. When she lost her temper she would talk and beat him
at the same time, her efforts increasing if he tried to wriggle
away or apologize for whatever had incited her fury. This was no
ordinary temper though. He had never seen such alien hatred in his
mother's eyes and it terrified him. Helpless, he stood frozen, legs
trembling, while above the house the sky bellowed and white light
seared the windows.

She was steady for a moment,
momentarily distracted by the burgeoning storm, then her gaze
flitted back to Peregrine, and she smiled.

It was the most hideous thing he'd
ever seen. He had done nothing wrong and yet in a heartbeat his
mother had become a monster, just like The Man. He wanted to know
where his mother had gone, the mother who'd joked with him over
breakfast for years, hugged him and protected him…and loved him. He
wondered if that's what The Man had been doing to his mother at
night—poisoning her somehow. For there was no love in the eyes of
the woman towering over him now.

"Mom…" he whispered.

"But I turned him down," she said,
still smiling that terrible smile, "I let another man walk out of
my life with my dreams in his pocket."

"Please…"

"But you know something,
Peregrine.
You're
not going to leave with anything of mine. Nothing."

It seemed the air grew heavy then, as
she took an uneven step forward, the weight of the poker conspiring
with gravity to drag her to the floor. Peregrine felt a cold streak
of despair freeze the flesh between his shoulder blades and he
began to sob.

It was a mistake.

"Don't you cry, Peregrine," his mother
said and in the next flash of lightning, her smile was gone, pulled
back into an inhuman snarl that heralded her killing blow. "Don't
you fucking dare cry!" She steadied herself and raised the weapon
over her head.

"Please Mommy…"

For a split second, Peregrine thought
he saw a flicker of doubt cross his mother's face, but then it was
gone and he knew by the way her body tensed that she was preparing
to hit him. He braced himself for unimaginable pain, perhaps the
last he would ever feel.

There was a whoosh as the poker came
down and Peregrine wailed, hands raised to ward off the blow.
Thunder rolled boulders across the roof. The wind buffeted the
house. Instinct forced him to dodge the arc of her strike and he
staggered back a few steps, hands still in front of him as if will
alone could make a metal shield of his fingers.

"Don't…"

She shrieked and drew her arm back,
eyes so wide he could only see the whites and in that moment, he
realized his mother was truly gone. The lightning made a witch of
her, a foul, snarling thing straight out of a Grimm Fairy
Tale.

"Trust me, Peregrine. It will be
better for us both when you're gone."

She swung the poker at his head but
this time he didn't wait for it. Despite the terror that made his
limbs feel full of lead, he broke for the door, phantom pain
already punching icy holes in his skull. But all he felt was the
poker cut the air; all he heard was his mother's enraged cry; and
then he was colliding painfully with the kitchen table, spinning,
then once more running, the short path to the front door reeling
away from him as it might in dreams and nightmares.

The poker whooshed again and connected
with something that shattered on impact. Peregrine did not stop or
look back to see what had taken the blow meant for him. He fumbled
at the door handle with panicked fingers. It wouldn't open. Behind
him, his mother's breath whistled through her nose and the sound
drew closer.