CHAPTER TWELVE
Daylight.
Impossible and warm.
Mind numbing in its reality but most certainly there.
Eyes wide, Timmy stumbled and almost fell from the rain-swept night into a summer day.
But as he felt the sun start to warm his face, he knew it was real. The grass was dry against his ankles, the sky above the pond a stark, heavenly blue that bore no hint of rain. It was as if he’d stepped from real life onto a movie set, onto an authentic reproduction of Myers Pond on a summer day.
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.
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
“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
