The Turtle Boy: Peregrine's Tale Read Online Free PDF Page B

staggered to a halt and
looked pleadingly at his father. At length, the sorrow left his
face, replaced by a flush of anger, "You're not my father, are you?
No more than she's my mother anymore."
    His father smiled. "Get it done.
You'll have all eternity to ask her to forgive you when she's by
our side."
    Will she really come
back? Peregrine felt sick, and wondered
what would happen if he just tossed the poker away and ran. Somehow
he didn't think he'd get very far.
    The breeze tossed leaves at
the house and smacked them against the window. Clouds obscured the
sun and shadows crawled through the woods. When Peregrine raised
his face, the crowd of ghosts had formed a circle around the house.
Around him . A
gathering of tangible figures, a phantasmagoria of flesh and blood
men, women, and children, all of them unified by the expressions of
undiluted contempt they wore. Torn faces, broken bones and ruptured
skin—a display of shattered things. They seethed and their hate
kept him from running; the threat in their eyes kept him from
trying.
    This is the right thing to
do , he told himself. I know it is, I feel it, even if I don't want it to
be.
    "Do it, boy."
    Peregrine made one final, feeble
effort to wake from the nightmare, but when he opened his eyes and
saw the wet leaves beneath his shoes and the open door before him,
he glanced down at the poker, tightened his grip on the cold
handle, and entered the house.
     
     

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    She was in her room, sleeping, just as
his father had said. Her mouth was open. She sucked in great big
breaths that scratched at her throat and made her snoring sound
like the last choking gasps of a dying woman. Her hands were across
her chest, fingers twitching as her dreams took sharp turns. A
graying spray of auburn hair all but occluded the
pillow.
    Peregrine stood by the bed,
watching her. I can't do this. She's my
mother. I love her . This was not the woman
who had tried to kill him, not the woman who had blamed him for her
misery. This was his mother as he knew her, albeit without the
noxious stench of whiskey that shared her room. This was how he'd
found her whenever the nightmares had propelled him from his
bedroom and into hers, with a plea on his lips for protection from
the demons still stalking him. And yet this was the worst nightmare
he'd ever had and it seemed there would be no waking from it. And
here she was in her bed, but it wasn't the same, no matter how much
he wanted it to be. The reality of what he was doing here came
crashing down and a loud sob escaped him.
    "I'm sorry," he whispered, his
mother's form melting and shattering as tears filled his eyes. "I'm
so sorry."
    Something eclipsed the daylight,
painting shadows on the walls. Fearful, Peregrine looked away from
his mother, to her window, with its floral drapes and painted
frame, to the dreadful aspect of his father's mutilated face
pressed against the glass.
    "See her," he said, his eyes so black
they looked like pools of oil. "See her for what she is." Then the
darkness clambered from his eyes in an explosion of tendrils,
penetrating the glass without shattering it and climbing the walls,
spreading outward, consuming the light at a frightening speed. The
room darkened quickly, as if the curtains had been hastily drawn.
Peregrine began to back away, his pulse quickening, breath rapid as
he raised the poker to ward off whatever might lunge at him from
the sepia-toned gloom. And he was certain something would. His skin
crawled as the sensation of a million watching eyes flooded over
him. His father seemed to grow and stretch until he'd filled the
window, still spinning out oily black threads that had all but
devoured the light in the room. Abruptly the air turned cold,
licking Peregrine's skin with icy tongues. Overhead, the light bulb
shattered. The pieces took impossible time in falling.
    Rasping, hitching breath drew his gaze
downward. To the bed.
    To his mother, or what she
had once been before the shadows had