Red - Jack Ketchum [54]
~ * ~
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.
Insane. Stupid. Miss Raton knew already.
So are you going to do this or not? she thinks.
Yes, you are. And damn the consequences. If she fucking kills you it might just be a relief.
She takes a deep breath and reaches up.
~ * ~
The Woman is free. She shakes her arms and hands which throb with pain as the heat of blood flows into them. She girl stands motionless before her like an animal in the wild which would wish to make itself invisible. But the girl is no animal in the wild. For a single moment the girl is able to meet her gaze.
~ * ~
Then the woman’s hand darts suddenly out as though to punch or stab her in the belly — no, in the womb, in that most secret part of her, the part of her which has been violated by her father night after night, over and over so that she sees herself sobbing in her bed, sees herself sweating beneath him, and fearful that Darleen will wake she hears the bed creaking, she feels herself holding her breath against the smell of him, the stink of him, the woman’s hand