The Turtle Boy: Peregrine's Tale (3 page)

He wrenched at the door handle once,
twice, and again but it wouldn't budge. He pounded desperately at
the wood. Weeping uncontrollably, snot dribbling from his nose, he
shook his head, denying the cruel reality he had suddenly found
himself thrust into, and punched the door hard enough to crack his
knuckles. The pain brought a new wave of sobs and he almost gave
up, almost sagged to the floor to await a punishment he didn't
deserve.

"Wait there, Peregrine," his mother
commanded, her breathing like a bellows in the small room. "I'm
going to fix it."

She was behind him, he heard her thump
against the kitchen table, only a few feet away.

"Wait for me. I'll make it better.
John will come back. You'll see."

John. The Man. The Devil.

"You'll see," she said again, and now
she was towering over him.

"Please," he whimpered and almost felt
the air strain as she hefted the poker again.

"Hush now," she soothed.

She locks the door, he realized then
and his chest almost exploded with hope. Every night she locks the
door. In his panic, he had forgotten.

He lunged forward.

The poker whipped through the
air.

He fumbled, grabbed, snapped back the
lock and pulled.

The door opened, but not before the
wicked iron thudded against his back, almost crippling him. He
screamed. Fireworks erupted before his eyes and liquid flame raced
up his spine. For a fleeting instant, he wondered if she'd killed
him, if the floating, dizzying sensation meant he was now a ghost.
He staggered, collided with the door, forcing it to close. The
darkening light of morning recoiled from the jamb.

Peregrine choked on his own cries,
then forced himself to stand. The muscles in his back sang with
agony. Needles danced across the skin. It felt as if a cannonball
had been shot into him, but despite the torture of standing, he
managed it. Knew he had to. He was not yet dead. There was still a
chance to get away.

"You're making this harder than it
needs to be…"

Her words were muffled, as if his ears
had been stuffed with cotton.

His hands, trembling so badly he
missed the doorknob twice and ended up scrabbling at the lock,
finally found purchase and he tugged with all the strength he had
left.

Daylight, tainted by the storm, seeped
in again and this time he lurched forward, blindly, hands
outstretched to grab freedom, even as stars peppered his vision.
The pain raged, tried to drag him to the ground.

Outraged screams trailed him as he
blundered out into the rain. The sky boiled black and silver, the
clouds churning. Thunder crackled and split the heavens.

Peregrine stumbled on.

CHAPTER THREE

Peregrine stumbled across the yard,
collided with the fender of his mother's Buick, then quickly made
for the woods that stood patiently on the borders of the property.
Thick limbs of spruce tried to slow his passage, but he fought
through them until the air around him grew denser and the light
faded. When he paused and took in his surroundings, he could see
nothing but trees, some dead and fallen, most standing tall and
creaking in the wind.

A fresh wave of fear flooded through
him. He had been in the woods a thousand times, but never when the
light was seeping from the day. Never when a storm was shredding
the sky over the trees, and never to escape death at the hands of
his own mother. He bent a hand back to knead the throbbing at the
base of his spine, recalling as he did so the time he'd asked his
mother why Uncle Marty walked around with one arm permanently
crooked behind his back.

Spine
trouble
, she'd told him.

As he trudged his way through the
trees, picking his way over deadwood and avoiding critter holes, he
thought he finally understood the pain Uncle Marty had had to live
with. He wondered if that was the reason the old man drank so
much.

The sky thrust a spear of lightning
and cracked the earth somewhere up ahead. The furor made Peregrine
hunker down, his arms clasped protectively around his head. He was
still crying, but the tears were near their end, his eyes swollen
and sore. A startled bird fluttered from the brush and took to the
air, quickly vanishing into the storm.

Why is she doing this to
me?
Peregrine thought, miserably. Already
he wanted to go home. He liked the woods when it was light, but now
that the light was almost gone, the place looked almost as hostile
as his own home had become. In all likelihood there might be worse
things waiting for him out here. It also occurred to him that if he
wandered too far and it got dark, he might get lost and die out
here anyway, so he continued on until he was far enough away from
the house, but not so far that he couldn't find his way back if he
needed to, found a rotted stump, and sat. His back protested by
tugging the muscles tight, pain thrumming along his spine. He
winced.

Thunder rumbled; the rain sizzled down
around him.

How could she choose him
over me?

Confusion buzzed within him as he
stared at the carpet of twigs, pine needles, and moss beneath his
feet. Cold droplets weighed down the leaves of a walnut tree close
by and he watched them dripping.

It was The Man's fault, The Man who
had turned his mother against him.

"John," he said aloud, as if it were a
curse word.

He imagined
John
now, stalking around
the corner of the house. His mother would drop the poker and run to
him, joy on her face, her arms wide to receive her guest. She would
shower him with affection and bring him inside out of the storm,
maybe for some hot soup and some dry clothes. A warm bed. And when
he asked what had happened with Peregrine, his mother would smile
and shrug and tell him:
Spine
trouble
.

An involuntary moan slid
from Peregrine's mouth. His shivering intensified, but there was
rage there now, shaking him from the inside out.
She doesn't want me. She doesn't
care
.

Amid the fury, he tried desperately to
latch onto a memory of better times, but his head was pounding, the
shivering making his teeth click together. All the good times
seemed forced and contrived now. Every kind word, every kiss on the
cheek, every promise…all lies, all an act. His mother had been
stringing him along…using him until her knight came along to take
her away to better things. He snorted laughter then, and the sound
of it was so alarming, he flinched and huddled in on
himself.

No, you've got it wrong.
She's just a little sick, that's all. She needs
help
.

Maybe that was true, but it didn't
change the fact that she was trying to kill him. If he tried to
tackle the twelve-mile walk into town, she'd only have to take the
car and she'd have caught up to him in minutes. The only other
option was to wait it out in the darkening woods with the storm
forcing the trees to dance around him.

He didn't think it possible for the
rain to get any heavier, but it did, and when it pelted his scalp
hard enough to sting, he stood, sodden and trembling and screamed
at the trees, at the house beyond, and at the evil, wicked woman
who'd pretended to be his mother all these years:

"I don't care if you kill
me! You don't love me anyway! You only love
him
."

Thunder responded and it
made the forest seem full of ravenous creatures, their dark bellies
roiling with hunger. Lightning splashed its cobalt shadow over the
trees. Peregrine, fists clenched, teeth gritted, turned to his left
and walked on, away from the house and deeper into the woods. He
ignored the pain in his back, though now it seemed as if the last
flash of lightning had set it aflame. Nevertheless, thoughts of
escape helped him maintain the pace. He was still afraid, still
weeping. He felt betrayed and unsure. He wanted to go home, to open
the door and find his mother sitting by the fire, mad only with
worry, and looking just like she had in the old days. Before
John
came. Peregrine would
tell her he'd gotten lost in the woods and fallen asleep, and she
would scold him, but with love in her eyes. She would cry, her skin
soft, her perfume untainted by alcohol as she drew him into her
embrace. Then she would carry him upstairs to sit with him until
the storm moved on. The thought almost stopped him in his tracks.
The hope was so strong he wondered if, as in some of the stories
he'd read, a wish could really come true if you wanted it badly
enough.

Heartsick, he moved on. Real life was
nothing like that. In real life, mothers pretended to love their
children and beat them for no reason. Sometimes, they even tried to
kill them.

"Peregrine."

He stopped dead. Every muscle grew
taut.

Imagination
, he told himself.
I imagined it. There's no one here but
me
.

Overhead, the trees swished like ocean
waves in the wind, while those with bare branches tapped gnarled
knuckles together. The sky sounded as if it would come tumbling
down around him.

He turned.

"Mom?"

She was standing behind
him.

His most recent imaginings made him
relieved to see her, even though wet and shivering, she looked more
like a witch now than ever before. Her hair hung in her face, the
lightning revealing only a bone-white curve of cheek. She twitched,
rain sluicing down her arms, her nightdress drenched so that he
could see the bare flesh beneath.

He wanted to throw his arms
around her, despite how she had hurt him, despite the certainty
that she didn't love him and never had. Despite her betrayal. But
he couldn't see her eyes through the sodden mop of her hair, and
was sure if he could, they'd be filled with lightning.
She's gone
, he knew, and
felt the last vestiges of hope flee on the wind.

At last he convinced himself
to turn and run, to keep going on until he reached town, and
safety, but when he turned, her bony white hand clamped down like a
steel claw—a
falcon's
claw—on his shoulder. He spun back to face her, intending to
thrash and kick and bite his way free. And stopped.

She was holding the poker
above her head. He'd waited too long. Now, she drew her hand back
further still and muttered something the storm made difficult to
hear. He wanted to believe it was
I love
you
. But it sounded more like
Hush Now
.

His heart and soul ran and cleared the
forest screaming, but his body stood and wept. Any minute now he
would wake up, he knew he would.

The air crackled and for a moment
seemed to shimmer, as if made of water. He watched it, weeping, as
the storm exploded through the woods.

The poker came down.

Then all fell quiet in Peregrine's
world as he died at his mother's feet.

CHAPTER FOUR

Peregrine opened his eyes and fire
filled them, sudden agony chasing away the words he dreamt had been
whispered in his ear. And over the pain that shrieked at him now,
he thought that maybe there had been a boy in his dream, a child
his own age, who had been afraid of something. His fear had been
palpable. Peregrine tried to recall more but a solid bar of pain
clamped down between his eyes and he whimpered, rolled onto his
side and was numbly aware of cold water seeping through his shirt.
The rest of his dream floated away like a kite in the wind, still
tethered but too far away to reach. For now, the relentless agony
held court and he brought his hands to his temples and squeezed. A
gentle breeze tousled his hair as he tried to raise his head. His
brain ignited; he winced and coughed dark shadows onto the mossy
carpet beneath him while his bones tried to initiate a dance the
chaperone of pain denied.

Then, abruptly, there was a voice, and
it dragged him out of his disorientation.

"She's gone."

With great effort, Peregrine turned
his head. The first thing he noticed was the sunlight, which fell
in lazy honey-colored streams and seemed not at all normal. The air
itself was thicker, darker than it should have been and appeared to
move with a subtle fluid-like grace. Now and again something would
ripple through it, like fish moving beneath the water, and it would
distort the world around it. But however unusual these things were
to the boy's pained eyes, when he tilted his head and looked up at
the canopy of trees above him, he saw that up there, it was much
worse.

The pines had been stripped of leaves,
their trunks aged, and now they craned forward to regard him, their
boles warped and twisted, infested with shadows which ran like oil
from the bark. Branches wound downward with spindly fingers, each
one resembling a hand that had been charred and broken. Every one
of them seemed to be struggling to reach him. Thick slimy roots had
been frozen while flailing from gaping maws in the floor of the
woods, the leaves around them black.