The Turtle Boy: Peregrine's Tale by Kealan Patrick Burke Read Free Book Online Page A

drawer only
accessible via ancient chants and an ornate brass key secreted
under the floorboards of a crumbling church atop an eldritch hill
somewhere in Providence, Rhode Island, but rather a section from
what was intended to be the novel Brethren , a composite of The Turtle Boy , The Hides , and Vessels , which I aborted
in favor of doing Nemesis , and ending the
series.
    I then transplanted this
section into Nemesis to use as my start-off point—the introduction of Peregrine,
Tim Quinn's enemy. But it didn't fit. It felt off, somehow, and I
realized it belonged in The Turtle
Boy , if I had known when I wrote that book
that it was going to be the first of four. As it's too late to
change what's already in print, and because I know the wait
for Nemesis is
going to be a long one, I decided to do Peregrine's story as a neat
little complement to The Turtle
Boy . Call it a special bonus for those
who've followed the series thus far, or just for those who
read The Turtle Boy and want a little something extra.
    Tim Quinn's universe has many strands.
In the future I may pick up some more and see where they lead, but
the one you're about to read is a major one, and it is my absolute
pleasure to share it with you here.
    — Kealan Patrick
Burke
     
     

CHAPTER ONE
    1979
     
    His name was Perry Griffin,
but before he'd learned the proper way to pronounce it, he'd simply
run it together into one word: Per-grin, which as the years went by
mutated into Peregrine in the mouths of all who repeated it. Annoyed at first by what
he considered a ridiculous title, it wasn't until he realized what
the name meant that he stopped trying to dissuade people from using
it. An awkward child, he found the image of the bird of prey that
came to mind whenever someone addressed him to be somewhat
bolstering, and more than a little cool. The christening of this
new name, then, officially took place on his eighth birthday, when
his mother presented him with his cake. Amid the twisted turrets of
icing was a picture of a falcon in flight, its body skewered by
dripping birthday candles, talons bared as it prepared to snatch
its meal. Written in white icing across the cake was: HAPPY
BIRTHDAY PEREGRINE. From then on, only the teachers at his school
would insist on using his birth name. Everyone else used Peregrine,
which the boy discovered meant "traveler," and though his ambitions
of seeing beyond the woods in which he lived had not yet graduated
beyond a mild curiosity, it would not be long before he was forced
to live up to his name.
     
     

CHAPTER TWO
     
    Peregrine didn't believe in ghosts,
but only because he had never seen one. He heard the stories, of
course, and sometimes lay awake attributing the chorus of
night-sounds below his window to the wanderings of the dead, but
always in the morning he would feel silly. The dead stayed dead, he
knew. His mother had told him so and she had no reason to lie. The
topic was occasionally broached in their house, but seldom
discussed in-depth because for Peregrine, thinking about ghosts
forced him to think of death, and that was infinitely more
terrifying than anything that he might hear rustling around in the
dark. So far as he knew, there was no proof that ghosts existed
anywhere outside the realm of the campfire, but the reality of
death could not be denied. It was a shadow the sun would never
chase away, and the awesome inevitability of it terrified the boy
to the core of his being.
    Despite his convictions, however, he
awoke one gloomy overcast morning to find a ghost sitting in the
kitchen.
    At least he assumed she was a ghost,
for she would not look at him, but continued to stare at a point
somewhere east of the window overlooking the woods. When he spoke
to her, she did not answer, and after a prolonged moment of
indecision, Peregrine went to his mother's side and shook her. She
was cold. Still she did not move, or acknowledge his presence. She
just stared, her rocking chair frozen in mid-swing by the