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her
eyes.
    "End it."
    "I can't."
    "You want her to suffer?"
    His mother whimpered and arched her
back, head snapping from side to side. She seemed to be squirming
her way beneath the blankets, and when finally her struggling
ceased, only her eyes could be seen above the sheet. Her chest rose
and feel with impossible speed.
    "I want to go."
    "She's still breathing," said his
father.
    Sobbing, Peregrine looked at the bed.
His father was right. She was not yet dead.
    "Make it stop," he pleaded.
    "Only you can do that. And the longer
you delay, the more agony she'll have to endure. She deserves every
breath of pain, but if you don't wish to see it, then put her out
of her misery. Bring her to us."
    Do it , said the voice inside, that sneering voice he had apparently
acquired on stepping foot into the horrible new world. Do it and get it over with. Your life won't
properly begin until you do.
    With a scream of utter helplessness,
rage and sorrow, he took a single step closer to the bed, brought
the poker over his head in a two-handed grip, and closed his
eyes.
    Before the killing blow was
struck, he heard his mother whisper, in a voice not her own. "There were turtles the size of Buicks in there.
Snapping, snappity-snap."
     
     

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    He sat on a fallen log
beside his father, watching the house burn. Soot and ash had made a
dark mask of his face. The tracks of his tears were all that
allowed a glimpse of the grieving boy beneath. But something had
changed, had been forced to change inside him. He felt it growing in his
belly, a black mass sprouting tendrils like those he'd seen
spilling from his father's eyes. It promised a reprieve from the
hurt, an escape from the pain, if he only let it consume
him.
    Something inside the house crackled
and fell, and a tongue of red-yellow flame exploded from the door,
sending a wave of heat rolling toward them. The breeze fanned the
flames, coaxing them higher, until the house was lost within a
fiery cage. His father didn't move, but Peregrine narrowed his eyes
and raised a hand to shield his face. As he did so, he caught sight
of something tumbling and leaping across the yard toward him. It
wrapped around his right ankle and fluttered like a trapped
bird.
    It was the newspaper he'd seen on the
kitchen table this morning.
    This morning. It felt like a lifetime
ago.
    He picked up the paper and numbly
scanned the pages, not looking for anything but feeling as though
he was supposed to. Most of the paper had been lost, or burned, but
on the inside page of what remained, Peregrine's eyes halted on a
headline:
     
    11-YEAR-OLD BOY RESURRECTS THE DEAD,
SOLVES MURDER!
     
    Dirty light crept across the shadowy
wasteland the past few hours had made of his mind. He looked at the
grainy picture of the smiling boy—
    Let him run let him go let
him get away —and read the story.
    I've seen him.
    When he was done, he looked up at the
inferno, the heat now so intense his clothes were starting to
scorch him, and stood.
    "I want to know why I'm here, why this
is happening to me," he said. For the first time his father offered
a smile that even his mangled mouth couldn't spoil.
    "It's happening because it's supposed
to," his father replied.
    Peregrine showed him the crumpled
soot-stained newspaper page. With one trembling finger, he
indicated the smiling child. "And I want to know who this
is."
    "That," his father replied, "is your
brother."
     
     
     

     
     
     
    # # #
    ABOUT THE AUTHOR
     
    Kealan Patrick Burke is the
Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The
Turtle Boy , The
Hides , Vessels , Kin , Midlisters , Master of the Moors , Ravenous Ghosts , The Number 121 to Pennsylvania &
Others , Currency of
Souls , Seldom Seen
in August , and Jack
& Jill .
     
    Visit him on the web at:
http://www.kealanpatrickburke.com or
http://kealanpatrick.wordpress.com.
     
     
    Other Titles by Kealan Patrick
Burke
     
    The
Turtle Boy
    The
Hides
    Vessels
    Midlisters
    Seldom Seen in August
    Ravenous