by Jack Ketchum
“You accusing me?”
“No, I…”
Get out of here, she thought. There’s something seriously wrong with this guy. She stood up. So did he.
“You saying that? Are you?”
She held her ground. Short of sprinting for the door there was nothing else she could do. Besides, this guy was beginning to piss her off, too.
“I said nothing of the sort, Mr. Cleek.”
“In my own home. You accuse me.”
He was right in her face now — way into her space — and his voice had gone eerily soft.
“Right here in my own home,” he said.
“I did not. I never said…”
But I didn’t have to, did I? she thought. You said it for me. You fucked your own daughter, you bastard, you sick piece of shit. You fucked her and got her pregnant and now I‘ve stuck it to you, haven‘t I? You miserable sack of…
She never saw it coming.
~ * ~
But Peg did.
Peg saw her father strike a woman for the second time that night.
Open-handed this time but with no less power and right across the side of her head. So that one moment Miss Raton was standing there in front of her and the next she was on the floor, her head striking the antique pie safe so hard it rattled the plates inside. She saw her teacher’s eyelids flutter once and then close.
“Jesus, daddy! What did you…?”
“Shut up, Peggy. This is all your own damn fault, you little bitch. Get out of here! Go out to the barn. Go get me some rope!”
“Rope? What are you going to do with rope?”
“Go! Now!”
“No!”
“I’ll go,” said her brother.
She heard the front door slam. Her father was glaring at her. Her father wanted to hit her too.
“Get out of my sight,” he said. “You brought this on. You and that sweet little cunt of yours. Go help your mother.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Darlin’ hid.
Darlin’ — Darleen, her name was Darleen — was hiding. She hid behind her sister’s bed because her sister’s bed was safe and heard loud voices and things going thump and she could feel bees buzzing up through the floorboards, she could feel bears coming out from the dark of the woods, there were black crows at the windows wanting to get in.
What she could do was ball herself up tight and kiss her knees. She could blink a hundred times and count them one by one.
That way she wouldn’t cry.
She would count her blinks and kisses and wouldn’t cry.
TWENTY-NINE
Genevieve Raton awoke at the end of a rope tied to her wrists. Being hauled across the yard on her belly by a madman.
She saw floodlights above a barn with its doors open. She felt hard earth and wet patchy grass. Heard dogs barking. Her arms felt like they were tearing out of her shoulder sockets. She saw the boy walking along beside her, grinning.
She turned on her hip to try to get to her feet but he was pulling her along too fast and she fell back down again, landed chin first. She tasted blood. Felt a hot pain score the inside of her cheek.
“Cleek!”
She was spitting blood at him. He didn’t even turn to look. Just kept dragging her. She tumbled side to side, scraping herself hip to hip.
“Cleek!”
She saw Peg run to him from somewhere behind her, Peggy pulling at his arm, trying to stop him.
“Daddy! Stop, please! You can’t do this! She’s my teacher, daddy. She’s my…”
“Friend? That what you were going to say? Your friend comes here to expose you for the little whore you are?”
She managed to get over on her ass, dug in with her feet like some rodeo cowboy and jerked at the rope. For a moment he lost his balance. Then he jerked back and she was on her belly again.
They were nearly to the barn.
“Daddy, you can’t…”
He grabbed his daughter’s arm and flung her to the ground. Hauled the rope the last few feet and lashed his end to the barn’s door handle. Then he walked over to Peg, stunned, cowering beneath him in the dirt.
“Daddy, you can’t,“ he said. “You can’t. You can’t! I have fucking had it with you can’t and the women in this family! Your mother, your idiot sister, you!”
Genevieve got up on one knee. Then to her feet.
“Please,” she said. “Just let me go. I won’t tell anyone about this, I promise.”
Her voice sounded hoarse and distant to her.
Behind her Brian rapped her in the head with a stick. She hadn’t seen the stick. It fucking hurt.
“Shut up, lady,” he said.
“No, make that all women,” said Cleek. He was on a tear now. “I have had it with all you goddamn bitches. You’re leeches, every one of you! You suck a man dry. A man works like a dog every day and you suck him dry!”
He reached down and grabbed the neck of Peg’s sweatshirt and yanked her to her feet. Then he had the shirt in both hands, shaking her. Peg was flailing at him.
She was not about to watch him beating up on his own daughter.
“Stop this!” she said. “Stop this right now!” And this time her voice was clear.
Brian rapped her in the ear. She almost went down again but managed only to stumble. She turned to go after him but he danced away laughing.
“You little fucker!”
She felt blood trickle down her neck to her collar.
Peg screamed. Cleek had his hand up under her sweatshirt clutching at her breast. Peg was trying to pull his hand away. He only clutched harder.
“Cleek! Damn you, Cleek!”
She turned to see if Brian was planning on whacking her again. He just smiled. The little snake.
“Cleek!”
He paid her no attention. He was focused on his daughter’s breast.
“You know what you’re good for, Peg? “ he said. “You ridiculous whining bitches are good for one thing and one thing only and half the time you’re miserable at that. You think I don’t know who you are? You think I don’t? You’re no better than that thing in there. That thing in the cellar. That’s where all of you belong. Every last cunting one of you!”
She had time to think, what thing in the cellar? and then he threw Peg down again — she was all knees and elbows, hitting hard — and started pulling on the rope, hauling her toward the open barn doors. She tried pulling back but it was useless. He was much too strong and much too furious. She could hear the dogs inside in a frenzy now. Something was happening out here and the dogs wanted in on it.
“Come on, Brian,” he said. “This one we handle right away.”
THIRTY
Her father’s words dripped poison in her ears. That’s where all of you belong. Every last cunting one of you.
She hung up the phone. The police said they were on their way. They were out in the middle of nowhere though. It would take them half an hour to get from town to her house if she was lucky. Her breast throbbed. Her ears rang.
Every last cunting one of you.
Am I next, daddy? Am I?
Momma? Me? Darlin’? In what order?
She was crying, sobbing.
The dogs were barking like crazy. She couldn’t imagine what was going on out there or maybe she could imagine and didn’t want to.
“No more,” she said. “This has got to stop. Not any more…”
She took the keys off the support beam and ran past her mother’s prone body to the hallway and out the back door.
~ * ~
Belle awoke to what she thought was probably at least one broken rib and the sight of her daughter’s legs flashing by. She tried to speak but couldn’t. She tried to sit but all she could immediately do was to get up on one elbow and try to breathe and ease the dizzy feeling. Everything hurt. Her head and ribs most of all — but everything.
She tried again. This time she was able to straighten her arm. There was a damp washcloth on the floor beside her and
she used it on her face against the dizziness. It helped.
“Momma? I counted to a hundred. I didn’t know what to do after that. Where is everybody? What’s happening to the doggies?”
Darlin’ stood hunched in the doorway, eyes wide, clearly scared.
But she was right. The dogs were going nuts outside.
She didn’t want her little girl to see her like this and it was painful as hell but she managed to sit and then slowly, to stand.
“Come here,” she said. “Come here, hon.”
Darlin’ rushed to her and flung her arms around her waist.
Her ribs screamed.
“Easy,” she said, “Please, honey. Go easy.”
~ * ~
Brian slammed the double doors.
His father dragged Rat-on to the dog cage and tied her off to a link. The dogs were just on the other side, gnashing, frothing, barking up a storm, lunging at her through the wire fencing. Rat-on kept going no no no trying to keep her distance and at the same time loosen the knot at her wrists. But his father knew his knots.
“Hose!” his father said. “Nozzle it down, son. I want ‘em mean.”
Had he fed the dogs today? Unh-unh. No, he hadn’t.
So they would already be mean.
But he cranked the water and twisted the nozzle down to a single heavy stream which he sprayed half on George, Lily and Agnes and half on Rat-on. She kept trying to protect her face. He drenched her.
The cold water made her nipples hard.
Nice.
“Get ‘em back,” his father said.
So he concentrated on the dogs. Mama Agnes retreated to the doghouse. Growling, snarling at them. Fuck Mama Agnes. Lily and George fled to the back of the cage.
“You keep those two back there.”
“Please,” Rat-on said. “Stop this. I swear I won’t say anything. None of this ever happened, okay?”
She was pleading. He liked that.
His father didn’t seem to give a shit one way or the other. He simply untied the rope from the link, opened the cage door and dragged her short-leashed to the doghouse and pushed her down in front of it. Agnes snarled. Not at Rat-on but at his father. So his father did what he always did. Snarled right back at her and made as though to give the dog the back of his hand. Which she had felt plenty of times ever since she was a pup. She backed off, barking.
His dad threw the cage door shut.
~ * ~
Genevieve watched the dog. Watched the dog watching her. The look in its eyes scared hell out of her. The look was practically feral, as though the dog were a wolf in the wild and not some domesticated animal in a cage.
On the other side of the cage the boy still had his hose on the other two. But not on this one.
This one was stalking her. Slowly closing in.
She knew she could not take her eyes off the dog for a moment. If she did it was going to attack. But what she could do was to try to inch crabwise away, get her back against the doghouse — maybe even get inside the doghouse where she’d be protected on three sides at least. And from there she could maybe kick the damn thing until it went away.
So that was what she did.
Oh, bad choice she heard Cleek say. Can you say anopthalmia?
But by then it was too late.
THIRTY ONE
The Woman is with them, out there with the dogs. She hears their animal spirit, something in them yet untamed. It soothes her, this wildness. It reminds her that tooth and claw is the nature of the world and the nature of each beast in it. That nothing in the wild dies without great loss and gain. That no kind of beast was ever meant to live in cages. Or damp dark places such as this one.
She hears keys at the door and a moment later it opens.
The girl rapidly descends. Turns on the light. Then pauses breathless to look at her.
Behind her she can hear the dogs’ violent voices more clearly now. On the girl she smells fear. Fear and something else. Anger perhaps. Yes. And protectiveness. The girl is protecting someone. Perhaps the baby inside her.
Protecting the baby from her? She poses no threat. Not as she is.
But then the girl does the most astonishing thing. The Woman could never have expected it.
She steps over to her, gazes once into her face and then bends down and begins unscrewing the restraint on her left ankle.
THIRTY TWO
The child had been alive for nearly ten years but knew nothing of time. She was female but knew nothing of that either.
The child knew only the doghouse and the occasional venture outside to steal food from the others who were not hairless like her — she had huddled with them against the cold, slept with them curled around her, listened to their breathing which was not like her own — or to void herself or exercise her limbs.
For the child the world was always dark. Several shades of dark but always so.
She could smell herself. She could smell the others. So that she knew she was different from them but in what way she couldn’t tell exactly except that she was hairless and they were not and they seemed to have no ability to grasp at things and hold them the way she did. Her teeth were long but theirs were longer. The pads on their feet were tougher. They were long and lean and she was thick and squat.
These things aside, they were family.
So that when she heard their rage and outrage it became hers too — and she braced herself against the wood behind her and waited for the shapes and shades of darkness to change from dark to darker. Which meant movement. Intrusion.
Perhaps the hand that stung.
~ * ~
She heard a low growl behind her and realized her mistake, that there were not three dogs in here but four, yet there was no time nor any way for her fix that because the dog outside was inching closer and closer, Genevieve hoping against hope that a growl was all she was in for and when the thing inside the doghouse leapt out at her roaring — the thing that had no eyes but only empty eye sockets, its skin like dirty melted pink wax, human, yes, but built like some kind of pit bull — when the child-thing sunk its teeth into the flesh between her neck and shoulder and its yellow cracked claws into her arms all she could do was to reach back with her roped hands and try to pull it off her and scream and scream.
~ * ~
“Brian! Hose Agnes!” his father was shouting and so he did, Brian having a fine old time here, catching the dog full in the face, backing her off and listening to Rat-on scream.
“Okay, sis,” he yelled, “let’s see what you got!”
~ * ~
Inside the house Belle heard the screaming and so did her daughter and Darleen wouldn’t let go of her, she was holding on for dear life and Belle’s ribs were doing their own screaming. Finally she pushed her away and held her at arms’ length.
“Darlin’? Baby? I want you to go back to your room right now. Lock the door and don’t come out. Don’t come out unless it’s momma or Peggy, okay?”
She was squirming in Belle’s grip, tears running down her face.
“Noooo…I want to stay here…with you…”
“You can’t, honey. Now do as I say. It’s really, really important. Okay?”
She let go of her and turned her around and gave her a little push. Darlin’ ran for the stairs.
Then she turned too to find out just what the fuck was going on.
~ * ~
The child-thing was tearing at her, ripping at her back with its fingernails, tearing through her clothing to the naked flesh beneath and she heard herself mindlessly saying get away get away get away and pushing at it and whipping around so that finally she landed on top of it, heard the whoosh of air out of its lungs and smelled its awful breath full in her face but it let go of her and for a moment she was free.
She turned and scuttled back until she hit the chain-link cage and realized that all that flailing had done one good thing at least, she had some play in the rope that bound her — her left wrist was coming free. She tugged on it,
clawed at it. She tried to stand but there seemed to be no strength in her legs. The child-thing was slinking toward her just as the dog had done. It was growling. Then barking at her. Some shrill approximation of a bark anyway.
You’re not a dog, she thought, you’re human.
And somehow it was all the worse for that.
She tried to stand again and fell and pulled at the rope. Her face was wet. She realized she was crying and that was when the child-thing leapt forward and sunk its teeth into her ankle. She felt bones break inside and shrieked and lurched forward, felt adrenaline rush through her like a hot burning liquor and suddenly her left hand was free of the rope and she slashed at the thing and clawed where its eye should be — the empty socket — and the child screamed a child’s shocked scream and its hands went to its face. Then it shook its head like a wet dog and leapt again, blood and spittle flying.
It clawed down the length of her belly and gripped there deep. And no dog could do that. No dog could reach into her and grip there and haul itself the length of her while its other hand clawed into her breast to pull itself up further and the last thing she heard before its teeth found her neck was the father saying turn it off, son and knew that to be endgame — the end of Genevieve Raton and the last thing she thought was — Dorothy.
Brian turned the water off and looked at his father. His father simply stood there, arms at his sides, expressionless.
Then he watched the dogs go at her.
THIRTY THREE
The Woman hears it all. The screams, the voices of the dogs, the voice that is like a dog’s but is not a dog’s and which briefly puzzles her. But what puzzles her most is this girl who has freed her legs and then her left wrist. Who touches her gently and yet is very afraid.
The girl reaches up to the Woman’s right wrist and then draws back her hands. Her hands are trembling. The girl is afraid to release her completely.
The girl has good reason.
~ * ~
I must be out of my mind, she thinks. But is anyone in their right mind here? Certainly not her father or her brother and she has serious doubts about a mother who has gone along with all this — not only this woman in front of her but her sister and her own rape and pregnancy. Hiding her pregnancy. When the time comes you’ll go to Aunt Joan’s she said. No one need ever know.