Offspring

by Jack Ketchum

  Into her trap.

  Above her the children moved farther on the branches, ready to drop.

  The Woman and First Stolen began to climb.

  9:40 P.M.

  Steven finally found the turnoff onto Scrub Point Road the third time he passed it. It was hard as hell reading maps in the dark—he wasn’t lying to the hitchhiker about that, he wasn’t much good at maps in the first place. All the same he knew he’d overshot it when he wasn’t in Dead River anymore, he was in Lubec, and then he turned around and overshot it again and hadn’t known he’d screwed up till Trescott.

  Anyway, here it was. Puking little sign you could miss in the fucking daylight.

  At first the road was macadam but that didn’t last long—it turned to dirt in a matter of minutes and he had to go slowly, worrying about how the Mercedes was taking the bumps. There were a lot of bumps.

  You paid this much money for a car, you wanted to take care of it.

  So it was slow. But Claire wasn’t going anywhere. Claire could wait.

  He thought about Claire—about screwing Claire, specifically—and felt the beginnings of a hard-on poke around in his tailored pants.

  It had been a while.

  It was funny how knowing that she’d divorced him made him want her all of a sudden. He hadn’t wanted her much the entire year before she threw him out. Of course part of that was the drinking. You’d drink a little and get a hard-on and want some, and then you’d drink some more and it wasn’t worth the trouble. You always paid for screwing your own wife anyway. Long ago he’d decided that. A woman thinks she’s loved, needed, she takes advantage. It was better to hang out with the boys at the Plaza bar and pick up a stray now and then.

  It wasn’t that Claire wasn’t desirable. Hell, most of the women he did pick up over the years weren’t nearly in her class. But they had the advantage of being easy. You could fuck them and then forget it. While Claire came with all her baggage packed and ready. You fucked her one night, you’re expected to take care of the kid the next—while she enrolls in some asshole night school or something. And then it’s one night a week, and then two. And pretty soon your life isn’t yours anymore.

  Even Marion was easier, and Marion had made demands of her own. He laughed. He still had some of the scars to prove it.

  He remembered Claire’s goddamn body, though. A sleek, long-limbed body.

  The woman was a racehorse. Tits and ass exactly the right size—even after Luke was born—and skin so smooth and soft you could just curl up and die.

  She wouldn’t want to fuck him at first, he knew. She was probably still mad at him. That was all right. She’d come around. She always had. And if she didn’t come around he’d fuck her anyway.

  Screw the restraining order. What was she going to do? Call the police on Luke’s dad?

  It might even be better if she resisted. He pictured pinning her to the bed, ripping off her clothes, holding her wrists down and sticking it to her. She was strong but he was a whole lot stronger, six foot two and not flabby—the handball saw to that—and he out-weighed the bitch by a hundred pounds.

  He could use his teeth on her.

  Claire had never liked biting.

  His hard-on was serious now and he wondered if he shouldn’t have fucked the hitchhiker after all as he cruised the narrow dirt road, his shocks taking a beating, his high-beams on, looking for the house that lay somewhere ahead of him in the gray shades of night.

  9:41 P.M.

  David was the first one out of his chair but Amy was right behind him, going to the door, the sound of someone in terrible trouble out there—a woman’s voice, scared, hurting—and he’d already reached the door and was pulling it open before she remembered that just hours ago the sheriff’s office had warned them to hold anyone off at gunpoint if they had to, not just Steven but anybody who was new to them, but by then it was too late, because the shock of the girl’s condition wiped away every impulse but the one to help her and get help fast.

  She was just a teenage girl.

  The door opened and she collapsed across the threshold—or would have if David hadn’t grabbed her and held on. Together they helped her inside.

  You hardly knew where to touch her.

  She looked as though she’d been horsewhipped, beaten for days.

  Some of her wounds were scabbing but many more were fresh and deep.

  She felt a sudden fear at who or what lay out there in the dark beyond that open door.

  She was immediately aware of Claire beside her.

  “Claire. The door,” she said.

  Claire closed it, locked it. “I’ll phone the police,” she said.

  “The number’s on a card over the telephone.”

  “Jesus,” said David. He was easing her into a chair.

  There were marks on her breasts, her tender inner thighs—everywhere.

  “You’re all right now,” Amy said. “I’ll get a blanket for you and a pan and some water and we’ll clean you up, all right?”

  The girl nodded, gasping for breath as though she’d been running a long way for a long time and couldn’t speak.

  Amy passed Claire in the kitchen, dialing, reading the card. She hurried past the staircase to her bedroom and pulled the blanket off the foot of the bed.

  She checked Melissa in her crib. Sleeping. She returned to the study.

  “Can you talk? Can you tell me what happened?” David was kneeling, asking her.

  The girl just shook her head. She looked like she was about to cry.

  “I can’t get them,” said Claire. Then suddenly her eyes went wide.

  “My god,” she said. “There’s no dial tone.”

  Amy looked from Claire to David. Their eyes met and she knew he was frightened too as the girl leaned forward, her pale arms rising. Embracing him.

  Like ripe fruit the children dropped silently from the trees around them as the Woman and First Stolen pulled themselves over the rail to the deck and moved toward the sliding glass doors, watching the people inside—all their attention focused on Second Stolen huddled trembling in the chair and none on the doors, even as the Woman reached out to touch the cool smooth panel of glass and then its metal edge, the door hissing like a blacksnake as she slid it open.

  “Mom?”

  Luke stood at the top of the stairs, looking somehow thinner and more vulnerable in his pajamas than she’d seen him in years, and Claire suddenly thought, There’s a baby in this house, though she didn’t know why she should think that. She cradled the receiver that she was still holding for some reason and took one step toward him up the stairs, because he had started down.

  She didn’t want that. She felt some deep insistent knowledge that told her to keep him right where he was.

  She heard Amy gasp and David’s startled cry, and Luke did too—the sounds stopped him openmouthed on the stairs, and Claire’s first thought was for Luke and her second was for the baby who had tugged on her finger this afternoon. She ran to Amy’s bedroom and scooped her up, the baby instantly awake, startled and staring up at her, while behind her Amy screamed and things were bumping, breaking, falling, some stop-time wind of destruction swirling at her heels as she ran to Luke and shoved him in his room.

  Second Stolen reached for the man and drew herself up, her breasts pressed flat against him. She almost laughed. The man did not know what to do with his hands. They fluttered over her back like frightened birds.

  The man was afraid of hurting her. He did not know what to make of her embrace.

  She listened for the door, heard it slide open and knew the others were inside.

  She felt a wild communion with them compounded of blood and hate, not knowing that in part the hatred was for them—for the whippings, for First Stolen’s use of her, for a life stolen which she could never truly miss but which lingered dimly still somewhere far beyond her waking consciousness—and not caring, because this was life now, this hunger, this blood beating in the veins of the man who held he
r.

  She felt rather than saw them enter the room and then heard the man’s woman gasp.

  She was staring at the sliding doors. At them. At her people.

  She pulled him tight to her. And bit down.

  At the very last moment the man resisted, pulled away, and instead of the soft flesh of his neck her teeth found only bone but that was all right too, she knew she would have him anyway and bit down harder, grinding her teeth into the collarbone, working her way into him, her eyeteeth sinking into the back of the bone, tasting the salt drool of blood and swallowing as he screamed and took her head in his hands, trying to push her, shake her away.

  But the man was soft. Not strong.

  Her teeth hooked the back of the bone. She pulled.

  At the same time she let go, using his weight.

  There was a sound like a tree limb snapping as the man fell to the floor, screaming and clutching the splintered halves of bone pressed together pale and bloody glistening wet outside his body.

  Second Stolen looked up and saw Eartheater and Rabbit beside her. The others were busy with the woman.

  All except First Stolen, who was turning the corner toward the stairs, going for the child. His ax in one hand, claw hammer in the other.

  Eartheater and Rabbit were looking at her, waiting. Rabbit was grinning.

  She heard the man’s woman shriek.

  “Mine,” she said and bent down over him.

  He saw a glimpse of her upside down from the floor, of Amy, his wife, his partner, the flesh he knew so well that it was almost his flesh though his own real flesh was screaming now, burning, throbbing so thateach new heartbeat was something to live through, to stay conscious through, to get beyond and by, Amy being hauled back into the kitchen by three filthy boys in rags and a ratty-haired girl in some sort of cracked, pale yellow (impossible)

  skin. Amy struggling, screaming, while the woman (their mother? a family? No.) while the woman followed, pointed to the sink with a hunting knife. And the others dragged her forward.

  He saw this and in that instant tried to feel his way into Amy’s mind, to reach into her and pour out strength and hope to her even though he himself had no strength, the pain had drained it, but to reach out and somehow protect her, armor her with the huge grateful armor of his love. He felt for her, but she wasn’t there. She was alone, cut off from him by some terrible black wall of fear.

  In the moment before the bright new pain burst like suns before his eyes, he had never felt so lonely.

  Amy was in the computer.

  The nightmare images played themselves over even as they continued. She was inside the moment and somewhere behind it at the same time, exactly like viewing split screen on the computer, eyes darting back and forth between the old text and the new.

  In either place, what she saw was insane.

  The girl reaching up to embrace him, something new and cunning on her face as suddenly there was somebody in the room, seeing them there coming through the door, children, a woman with a checked shirt and a man carrying an ax, the children carrying knives and hatchets and hammers and one of them, the smallest girl, what looked like a garden trowel and they were on her now, two twin boys at her right arm, a boy and girl at her left, dragging her back to the kitchen sink, strong, so that she struggled hard and kicked but they dragged her anyway, they pulled her away from David bleeding on the carpet next to his desk and the girl had bitten him, torn him, she saw the bone crack sharp and bloody up through the skin.

  Pulling her away from him, out of David’s sight lines. So she could not see what they were doing to him anymore and—

  Melissa! Where was Melissa? Where were Claire and Luke and Melissa and . . . the man with the ax!

  The woman was scarred, horribly scarred, taller than any woman she had ever known. She was the first one she had seen coming at her holding the knife now while she felt the rim of the sink slam hard against her back, aware that her robe was open and she was exposed to them except for the bra and panties, and then there were cords in the woman’s hand, leather cords and she was tying them to her wrists, a grim almost solemn look on her face, tying them too tight, cutting deep, hurting her, the children letting go, the woman turning her around so that the rim of the sink dug into her belly and pulling back the cords first left then right and tying them to the hot and cold taps on the sink while the children jerked her legs out from under her, jamming the edge of sink into her ribs below her breasts so that her ribs and bound wrists supported her weight, not her legs, they were spreading her legs and tying them to the legs of the kitchen table behind her and she screamed and screamed, twisting, jerking at the cords, and suddenly there was a rag in her mouth and duct tape shoved roughly over her lips and she couldn’t scream, she could hardly even breathe.

  She heard pounding from upstairs and knew suddenly where the man with the ax had gone and began to cry. Melissa. Her baby. Claire. Her friend Claire holding her, Amy sobbing over Danny, her first real boyfriend, in the freshmen dorm in college, her arm soft and strong around her as she sobbed as though her heart would break and David.

  Oh god David.

  Don’t cry, she thought. You’ll suffocate if you do. You’ll die.

  She heard his tortured scream and then more pounding upstairs and a crash of something falling.

  The girl was wearing a skin, she had seen that too right away and now she saw what it was.

  The skin was human.

  She saw the cracked yellow breasts, the darker nipples. As the girl smiled down at her with filthy yellow teeth and placed Amy’s bright new aluminum lobster pot in the sink below her, and then adjusted it.

  Right beneath her neck.

  Even as Claire locked the door behind her she knew it wouldn’t hold. She heard David scream, Amy saying no no no and sobbing.

  Melissa was crying.

  Leading them straight to this room.

  Luke stood silent, his face colorless, looking at her. Reading her fear. What’s happening? What do we do?

  “Hold Melissa,” she said and thrust her into his arms. The baby stopped crying for a moment and then began again.

  She tried not to hear the sounds downstairs.

  She tried not to hear or think of Amy.

  She went to the window, threw it open and looked down. The bound pile of framing lumber was just below, maybe three feet high by four feet wide. From the window to the pile looked to be a drop of ten feet. Maybe twelve.

  She could think of nothing to do but try.

  “Mommy . . . ?”

  She put her finger to her lips.

  She listened. Someone was on the stairs now. Taking his time.

  “Luke,” she whispered. “There are people in this house. They want to hurt us, and Melissa. We have to go out the window. We have to hide.”

  He glanced at the window and he was beginning to cry, trying hard to hold it in. The crying was the real thing now.

  “Mommy? I’m . . .”

  “I know you’re scared. It’s okay to be scared. But we have to be brave and I’ll help you. Don’t worry. Put Melissa on the bed and climb up here on the dresser.”

  She heard the footsteps again. At the top of the stairs.

  Close now.

  Luke did as he was told. So gentle with the baby she felt a sudden pang of love for him so powerful it hurt.

  “Okay, now hang your legs out the window. Sit on the windowsill and give me your arms.”

  Tears were rolling down his cheeks but he trusted her, he did as she asked and she took his wrists and leaned over the dresser and started to lower him down.

  “Mom!” She could hear the panic.

  And the footsteps in the hall now.

  “I’m going to hold you until you’re all the way out the window, do you understand? Then I’m going to let go and it won’t be that far because there’s a big pile of wood down there and you’ll fall on that. You’ll be fine. Be a big boy now. When you fall, try to remember to bend your legs a little, okay?
”

  Luke nodded. His wrists were cold and sweaty.

  She reached out across the dresser until her feet were off the floor, her weight sufficient to balance them, inched out farther until she could see over the rim of the windowsill to the pile below and until his legs stopped swaying.

  Could she do this? Could he? Could she possibly let him go? For a boy—and not an especially athletic boy—ten feet was a terribly long way down.

  She saw him, neck broken, sprawled across the pile.

  For a moment she wanted desperately to haul him back in again, bring him back through the window and hold him close and hug him until this all went away and they were together again alone and there was no night and not even Steven to harm them.

  Melissa was silent.

  Downstairs Amy screamed.

  Someone was trying the door.

  You have to, she thought.

  “Bend your knees, Luke,” she said, sounding calmer than she had imagined she could possibly sound, so calm it shocked her. For him. “I love you and I’ll be right behind you. On three, okay? One. Two.”

  She felt his hands grip her wrists hard once and then relax again.

  “Three!”

  She willed her fingers open and felt him drop away, and even as the ax splintered the door behind her, watched him plummet down with sudden sickening speed and hit and roll, nearly off the pile but not quite, not quite thank god, just G.I. Joe getting shot again, and then joyfully saw him stand.

  She turned for Melissa and this time saw as well as heard the ax come through the door, prying the wood apart enough so that she caught a glimpse of him, a big man naked to the waist and covered with what looked like a layer of grease, grinning, teeth like tiny blackened points, like fangs.

  She tore Luke’s comforter off the bed and wrapped it around Amy’s baby as the ax came through again, the man laughing, watching her through the slit in the door and then suddenly realizing what she was going to do, getting the idea now as she pulled herself up on the dresser and over to the windowsill.