The Turtle Boy Read Free Page A

line twisted slightly
at the end to make it appear as if it was smiling – his father's
touch. The shell was enormous, segmented into hexagonal shapes and
much more swollen than he imagined they were in real life. Was it
something like this, then, that had been chewing on Darryl's ankle?
The thought brought a shudder of revulsion rippling through him and
he pulled the sheets closer to his chin. It couldn't have been.
Even a kid as crazy-looking as Darryl couldn't have done such a
thing without it hurting him. Perhaps the boy had been injured and
was merely soaking his wound in the pond when they found him.
Perhaps it had all been a trick, a bit of mischief they had fallen
for, hook line and sinker. That made much more sense, and yet he
still didn't believe it. The cold knot in his throat remained and
when his father read to him of Digory's and Polly's escape from
Charn and their arrival – with the queen in tow – at the mysterious
pools in the Wood between the Worlds, he wondered if they had seen
a boy there, sitting on the bank of one of those pools, his feet
dipped in the water.
    "Dad?"
    His father's eyebrows rose
above his thick spectacles. "What is it?"
    Timmy looked at him for a
long time, struggling to frame the words so they wouldn't sound
foolish, but almost all of it sounded ridiculous. Eventually he
sighed and said: "I was at the pond today."
    "I know. Your mother told
me. She tugged a few ticks off you too, I believe. Nasty little
buggers, aren't they?"
    Timmy nodded. "I saw someone
down there." He cleared his throat. "A boy."
    "Oh yeah? A friend of
yours?"
    "No. I've never seen this
kid before. He was dirty and smelly and his head was a funny shape.
Weird eyes, too."
    The eyebrows lowered.
"'Weird' how?"
    "I-I don't know. They had no
color, just really dark."
    "What was he doing down
there?"
    "Just sitting there," Timmy
said softly, avoiding his father's eyes.
    "Did he say anything to
you?"
    After a moment of careful
thought, Timmy nodded. "He said he was feeding the turtles." There
was silence then, except for the hum of the fan.
    Timmy's father set the book
down beside him on the bed and crossed his arms. "And was he?" he
said at last, as if annoyed that Timmy hadn't already filled in
that gap in the story.
    "I don't know. There was a
piece of his foot missing and he was—"
    His father sighed and waved
a hand. "Okay, okay. I get it. Ghost story time, huh?" He stood up
and Timmy quickly scooted himself into a sitting position, his eyes
wide with interest.
    "You think he was a ghost?"
he asked, as his father smirked down at him.
    "Well isn't that how the
story is supposed to go? Did you turn back when you were leaving
only to find the boy had mysteriously vanished?"
    Timmy slowly shook his head.
"We didn't look back. We were afraid to."
    His father's smile held but
seemed glued there by doubt. "There's no such thing as ghosts,
Timmy. Only ghost stories. The living have enough to worry about these days
without the dead coming back to complicate things. Now you get some
rest."
    He carefully stepped around
his Coke and leaned in to give Timmy a kiss on the cheek.
Ordinarily, the acrid stench of his father's cologne bothered him,
but tonight it was a familiar smell, a smell he knew was real, and
unthreatening.
    "Good night,
Dad."
    "Good night, kiddo. I'll see
you in the morning." He walked, Coke in hand, to the door. "Have
sweet dreams now, you hear me? Don't go wasting any more time and
energy on ghosts and goblins. Nothing in the dark you can't see in
the daylight. Remember that."
    Timmy smiled weakly. "I
will. Thanks."
    His father nodded and closed the door,
but just as the boy had resigned himself to solitude and all the
fanciful and awful ponderings that would be birthed within it, the
door opened again and his father poked his head in.
    "One more thing."
    "Yeah?"
    "I don't want you going back
to the pond for a while. You know, just in case there are some odd
folk hanging around down there."
    "Okay."
    "Good