Tread Softly

by Richard Laymon

  " 'Open sesame'?"

  " 'Pumpernickel.' Close enough." She raised her head. "What are you wearing?"

  "Not much."

  "So I gather. Jeez, get in here." She lifted the cover of her sleeping bag, and Scott crawled in. She snuggled against him. Her lips brushed his as she said, "How nice of you to join me."

  "Very thoughtful of Julie to sleep outside."

  "Yes." They kissed. Karen flinched as he slid a cold hand under her sweatshirt. She pushed her tongue into his mouth. She touched the band of his shorts, slipped her hand in, and caressed his buttocks.

  She sighed when he touched her breast. He stroked its smoothness, filled his hand with it, gently squeezed. She sucked a trembling breath as his thumb pressed her nipple. Then she pulled off her sweatshirt. She was bare and warm and sleek to the waist. She squirmed, rubbing herself against him.

  His erect penis felt trapped in his tight shorts. She freed it. Her fingers curled around it, slid down the length of it and up again. Scott moaned as the sensation threatened to break his control. He moved lower, easing out of her hand. His mouth went to her breast. He kissed the rigid nipple, tasting the slight tang of salt on her skin.

  Karen rolled onto her back, and he tongued her other breast while his hand roamed down the velvety skin of her belly. He plucked at the drawstring of her sweatpants, opening the bow. He slid his hand down. He felt the soft coils of hair. Her thighs parted to make room. She was warm and slick. Her breath became ragged. She clenched his hair, forcing his mouth hard against her breast as she raised her knees and writhed under his sliding fingers. "Oh, God," she gasped. "Oh, my God."

  He took his hand away. She let go of his hair, and he rolled aside. While she struggled out of her pants, he shoved his shorts down and tugged them off. Then he was on top of Karen, thrusting his tongue into her mouth, squeezing a breast, pushing into her. She sheathed him, tight and slippery. She whimpered as he slid in deep. "Hurt?" he whispered.

  "Oh, Jesus!"

  "Is that a yes?"

  "No," she gasped. "It's a no." She dug her fingers into his buttocks, pulled, and shuddered as he pushed the rest of the way in.

  A few endless moments of mad lunging, burying himself in her dark hugging warmth, in her and enclosed by her and part of her; she strained against him for a deeper joining as if she ached for him to penetrate a secret place just out of reach. Scott sought that place. He plunged for it. He rammed for it. Just beyond him and now he couldn't hold back. He pumped, spurting into her, and knew that his fluid was finding that secret place, making that connection, joining them. Karen quaked under him. Then she held him motionless and tight.

  Chapter Ten__________

  Keep on going," Ettie muttered. "Don't you stop here."

  Dropping to her rump, she scooted down the steep side of the boulder she'd been standing on. The granite felt like hot sandpaper through her dress. She pushed off, fell a short distance into a nook among the rocks, and stretched out flat on an uptilted slab. From there, she watched the hikers stride up the distant trail.

  They were heading up toward Carver Pass. Three of them. This far off, they were no more than tiny shapes. Something about the way they walked made Ettie suspect they were girls, but she could only be sure about one; the figure of that one made it obvious.

  The person in the lead, who wore a cowboy hat, stopped and turned around, waiting for the others to catch up.

  "No," Ettie whispered when the leader pointed down at the lake.

  The three stood close together on the trail, gesturing and nodding, apparently discussing the matter. Then the one in the cowboy hat started down the steep path toward the lake. The other two followed.

  "Damnation," Ettie muttered.

  Squirming forward on the sun-baked granite, she spotted Merle. He was far below, seated on his favorite rock, fishing. With a high outcropping to his right, he was hidden from the intruders, at least for now. They would need to come halfway up the opposite shore to notice

  Merle in his recess. By then, he was sure to hear their voices and take cover.

  "You better behave, boy," she said. "You better just leave 'em be, or I'll skin you."

  Before yesterday, there hadn't been much cause to worry on Merle's account. Folks had come down every now and again to rest by the lake, explore it, take a swim, or do some fishing, but Merle always stayed out of sight and left them alone. He'd even behaved the few times campers stayed the night. None of the overnight people had been pretty young women, though, until that last. Easy enough to behave when there's no temptation. But the first pretty girl comes along, he rapes her and kills her and lays it on the Master.

  I offered 'em down.

  Bullsquat.

  Ettie turned her gaze to the hikers. They were already at the bottom of the slope, walking single file along the lake-shore. They were heading toward the area where Merle had buried the bodies. With its trees and shade, it stood out like an oasis in the desolate basin. No one came down without settling there.

  A fine place to plant those folks, Ettie thought. We oughta dig them up and stick them someplace out of the way.

  Sure enough, the three hikers stopped in the shadows and swung off their packs. One red pack was lowered within a yard of the graves.

  As they opened their packs, Ettie heard them talking and laughing. From the sounds of their voices, she was sure that all three were girls.

  Merle must hear them, too. She looked toward the boulder where he'd been sitting. He was on his feet, leaning out, trying to see around the jut of rock. He stood motionless for a few moments, then leaped across the narrow band of water, set down his fishing pole, and scrambled up the slope. Near the top, he crouched low, then raised his head enough to see over.

  Only the width of the lake separated him from the girls.

  That couldn't be more than a hundred feet, Ettie figured. Merle could swim the distance in half a minute, if he had a mind to.

  "You just let 'em be," Ettie whispered.

  She looked at the girls. They were sitting close together on rocks, passing a couple of small bags back and forth, eating the contents.

  Stopped for lunch, Ettie thought. She hoped that was all, that they would finish up quickly and be on their way.

  The one in the cowboy hat, who sat with her back to Ettie, took off her checkered blouse. The straps of her bra were white against her tanned skin. She stood up and stretched, as if she liked how the breeze felt. Bending over, she set her hat on a rock. She rubbed her short brown hair, then turned away from the other two girls and walked to the shore. There, she knelt and flipped a hand through the water.

  Ettie looked for Merle. He was gone.

  The girl returned to her friends. Moving her hat off the rock, she sat down again and began to untie a boot.

  "Oh, you fool," Ettie muttered. She studied the opposite shore, but still couldn't see Merle.

  One of the other girls, a skinny thing in jeans and a faded blue shirt, got up and stuffed a bag into her pack. Then she took off her shirt. Her breasts were small mounds, white except for their dark tips.

  "Oh, Merle, Merle." The temptation would be too much for him.

  She considered rushing down to the girls, yelling and trying to scare them away. That might ruin everything, though. They'd be sure to tell someone — maybe a ranger — about the wild woman who chased them off. A spell might take care of that, but why take chances? A good spell's hard to call down, and you can't always count on one to take care of business.

  Be better off to find Merle and stop him before he did something foolish.

  She looked at the girls. The one who'd tested the water was on her feet, pulling down her shorts. The buxom one had her T-shirt off, and was reaching behind her back to unhook her bra. The skinny one sat right where Merle had planted the bodies, and tugged off her boots.

  Ettie still couldn't spot Merle. She guessed he was across the lake from the girls, spying on them, probably hard as a club by now and going crazy.


  She scurried across the slope, staying low. She squeezed through crevices, slid down steep slabs on her rump, ducked behind every rock cluster offering any concealment, making her way slowly across the end of the lake. When she paused to catch her breath, she found all three girls stark naked. The one in the lead was knee-deep in the lake, walking backward, urging her friends to come in. The skinny one eased in a foot and jerked it out quickly. The other squatted down, breasts bulging against her knees, and tried the water with her hand.

  Ettie left the sheltering rocks. The area ahead was a barren slab of granite that angled slightly downward. It offered no protection. If the girls happened to look toward the end of the lake, they would see her crossing. She squirmed along on her belly, watching them.

  The girl in the lake had started to swim. The one crouched on the bank was scooping up water and rubbing it on her shoulders and breasts as if to get used to its cold. The skinny one, cringing and hugging herself, was wading in slowly. None of them so much as glanced in Ettie's direction.

  She reached the end of the open space without being seen, and crawled behind a rock. She peered over its top. The small inlet where Merle had been fishing was no more than thirty feet away. Plenty of shelter between here and there. As quickly as she could, she rushed down to it. From the recessed shore, the girls were out of sight. She heard splashing and voices, then a sudden outcry that knotted her stomach before she recognized it as a shriek of laughter.

  They're having a great time, stupid bitches. If they knew . . .

  She hopped across the water on stepping stones, and crouched at the base of the outcropping. Merle's abandoned fishing pole lay against the rocks in front of her, a shriveled bit of beef jerky on its hook.

  Ettie worked her way up the slope, then peered over the top, first at the swimmers, then at the rocks along the bank. From this height, she expected to see Merle crouched behind a boulder.

  She didn't see Merle. But she saw his scattered clothes.

  A movement caught her eye. To the left. In the water. Just below a jutting clump of rocks. All she saw, at first, were rings, rippling outward as if a stone had been tossed in. Then there was the pale blur of a body sliding along beneath the surface.

  Rage seized Ettie. She wanted to scream and yank Merle from the water. The fool! The fool!

  She scrambled to the top of the outcropping and stood up straight. The first girl was floating on her back, arms out to the sides, her wet breasts shiny in the sunlight, her matted pubic hair glistening as she kicked closer and closer to the long, gliding form of Merle. The boy couldn't be more than a few inches below the surface, but he hadn't come up for air, yet, and none of the girls knew he was there.

  "You!" Ettie shouted. "Girls!"

  Three wet, astonished faces snapped toward her.

  "Get out! There's snakes! Poison snakes. Water moccasins!"

  Two of the girls screamed and started splashing for shore even while Ettie yelled. The third, the one who'd started it all by leading her friends down to the lake, trod water and looked around. "I don't see any," she called.

  "There!" Ettie snatched up a stone and hurled it. The girl turned to her right as it smacked the water. Not far to her left, Merle's head broke the surface. "Right there! See it?" His head turned toward Ettie, then quickly submerged.

  He knows he's found out, she thought. Sure enough, the pale blur of his body turned beneath the water and started back.

  "Tracy!" called one of the girls.

  "Come on, Tracy," yelled the other. "Let's get out of here!"

  Both girls stood on the far shore, cowering and clutching themselves, trying to hide their nakedness from the intruder as they yelled to their friend.

  Tracy frowned up at Ettie. "You're some kind of a nut," she said. Then she swam casually across the lake.

  Merle, still underwater, reached the cluster of rocks where he'd started. His head popped up. "Stay down," Ettie snapped.

  The girl waded ashore on the far side. Before rushing to join her friends, she thrust her middle finger at Ettie.

  "Mom?" Merle sounded pathetic.

  "Stay down. I'll tell you when to come out."

  He waited, only his head out of the water, while Ettie watched the girls get into their clothes, swing their packs on, and start toward the far end of the lake. "Okay now?" he asked.

  "No. Stay where you are."

  The trio, often glancing back, reached the footpath and started striding toward the main trail. Ettie turned away. She climbed down the rocks, snapped the baited hook off the line, and picked up the springy stick Merle used as a fishing rod.

  She carried it up the slope. When the girls were out of sight, she stepped down and walked along the shore to where Merle was waiting. "Okay," she said. "You can come out now."

  "You gotta look away."

  "Get out!"

  He sighed. "Yes, ma'am." He stood in the waist-deep water and waded ashore, both hands cupped over his groin.

  "You haven't got no sense at all, boy."

  "The Master, He — "

  "Don't you go laying it on the Master! Weren't nothing but your pecker wanted those girls. Bend over."

  "Ettie, please."

  "Do what I say." He bent over, and she swung the fishing pole hard against his rump. Crying out, he clutched his buttocks. "Move your hands." He was sobbing. As his hands dropped away, Ettie saw a red stripe across his skin. Her throat constricted, and Merle went blurry as tears filled her eyes. She drew back the switch to strike again, but instead of swinging, she threw it down. "Go on and get dressed," she said in a shaky voice. "And don't you ever do nothing like that again, or you'll be the sorriest man that ever walked on two legs."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  Ettie walked away.

  Chapter Eleven__________

  Hey, look!" Julie's arm swung up, and she pointed.

  Nick gazed up the shadowy trail. Off to the side, he saw a small cleared area between two trees. It was a patch of raised ground, roughly rectangular, enclosed by a border of small stones. A weathered plank of wood tilted from the earth at its far end.

  "A grave," Julie whispered.

  "Naw."

  "Sure looks like one."

  Leaning into the straps of his heavy pack, Nick hurried toward the mound. Julie stayed close to his side. He was nervous and excited, as if they were the first ever to discover this forbidden site. He stopped at its foot. The hump of ground was roughly the size of a small man. Words had been carved into the wooden marker. His eyes followed them as Julie read aloud in a hushed voice: " 'Beneath this earth lies Digby Bolles. Poor man ran out of Dr. Scholl's.' "

  Nick felt a mixture of relief and disappointment. "It's a joke," he said.

  "I guess so."

  "Somebody went to a lot of trouble for a practical joke."

  "Some people do," Julie said, and gave him an amused look. "Doreeeen," she called softly. "Audreeee."

  Nick nodded. He thought of their brief, wild run behind the tents, the screams of the twins, how daring he'd felt through the whole experience. Running in only his T-shirt and shorts, Julie close to him in the dark. The way he'd wanted to grab her and pull her tight against him, and kiss her.

  "We'll have to do that again sometime," she said.

  "We'd catch hell," he told her. "I wouldn't mind, though."

  "Whatcha got there?" Dad called from behind. He was trudging up the trail with Mom at his side. The girls were a short distance back.

  "A grave," Julie said.

  "No kidding? Not a real grave?"

  "Have a look," Nick said. He and Julie stepped aside to make room for them.

  "Holy Toledo," Dad said.

  "Who is it?" asked Rose, pushing forward.

  "A poor guy named Digby Bolles."

  Mom read the epitaph aloud.

  Heather wrinkled her nose. "Who's Dr. Scholl?"

  "It's not a who. It's a brand of foot powder."

  "And the guy died when he ran out?"

  "No, h
oney. It's just a joke. Nobody's buried here."

  "We oughta get a snapshot of this," Dad said. He swung down his pack. While he opened a side pocket, Rose and Heather stared at the plot of ground.

  "Someone's there, all right," Rose said.

  "How do you know?"

  "I just know."

  "A grave," Benny gasped, arriving out of breath.

  "Mom says it's not really," Heather told him.

  He frowned as he read the inscription. Then he grinned. "Hey, that's neat."

  "I better use the flash," Dad said. "All these shadows. Want to make sure the saying comes out." Everyone moved out of his way. He crouched at the foot of the mound. The flash cube made a quick burst of silvery light.

  "What's all the excitement?" Scott asked. He was striding up the trail, Karen close beside him.

  "It's Digby's grave," Benny explained.

  They walked over to it. Karen read the verse aloud, and laughed softly. "That's a shame."

  "He should've been more careful," Scott said.

  Benny looked up at him. "What do you think's down there?"

  "Digby Bolles."

  "I mean really."

  Julie glanced at Nick. Her eyebrows went up and down. She turned to her father. "What-say we dig it up and find out?"

  "What-say we don't?"

  "Come on, aren't you curious?"

  Half grinning, he said, "Noooo."

  "What about you, Karen?"

  "I think we should let him rest in peace."

  "Now, let's stop all this talk," Mom said. "It's scaring the girls. We all know there's nobody buried here."

  "Yes, there is," Rose told her.

  "See what I mean? It's just somebody's rotten idea of a joke."

  "We've got a lot of ground to cover," Dad said. "I say we haul ass."

  "Arnold!"

  "Why don't you guys go on ahead?" Julie suggested. "I'll catch up later."

  "Julie . . ."

  "Why not? What'll it hurt? I'll put everything back just the way it is."

  "What are you hoping to find?" Scott asked.

  She smiled mysteriously. "Answers."

  "Oh, for heaven's sake," Mom muttered. "Nothing's there."

  Dad was smiling, obviously pulling for Julie. "Wouldn't hurt to know for sure, though."