Offspring

by Jack Ketchum

  Besides, that question could only rarely get through. The pounding continued, the awestruck selfish self screaming for help, searching for a way out.

  What are they going to do? To me.

  Before, as they crossed the field of grass from the house, she had allowed herself—only once—to turn around and look behind her. The tall woman was gone. So was the man, and one or two of the children. She did not know where they had gone and could not even speculate where because of what she did see.

  An incredibly dirty boy with a clouded eye.

  And the girl with the skin.

  The boy carried a pair of arms severed below the shoulder blades. He carried them like firewood.

  David’s arms.

  His wedding ring and wristwatch.

  The girl with the skin and the feathers in her hair and the diamond ring that swung back and forth from around her neck carried his legs.

  Holding on to his feet. One leg slung over each shoulder.

  Ahead of her, the naked teenage girl carried the yellow plastic mop bucket Amy kept in the cabinet beneath the sink. She could not see its contents.

  She would not imagine them.

  She had almost slipped away just then, she could feel the warm invitation of the cocoon that meant to surround her and protect her, she could feel it sliding gently over her mind—beginning there, sensibly enough, before going on to the rest of her.

  But the question had come too, just as automatically, just as unbidden—What about me? What are they going to do? And what can I do? They were all one question, and somehow from that time to this the question had come into conflict with the cocoon and defeated it, tearing it away from her until no filament was left at all.

  She felt rage so deep in her blood for what they had done to David she barely knew it was there—it was part of her now—and a terrible fear, but mostly she felt the pounding, driving question.

  Her mind was clear. Her body knew each moment that she lived through. Saw, heard, smelled everything.

  Crickets, pine, the pinprick stars.

  She was glad of the clarity, even glad of the hurtful breeze across her legs. It gave the legs awareness. And strength.

  Whether it was a good thing or not, whether it would help her survive, did not occur to her. She was her body now.

  Her body and her question.

  “It’s this way, Mom . . . I think. I’m pretty sure.”

  He knew how uncertain he sounded.

  He couldn’t help it. It all looked so different at night, even with the moon. And besides, they were running from somebody. He was frightened—and frightened got him confused. And confused got him so mad at himself that he wanted to cry.

  But she didn’t get exasperated or scold him or anything. She was patient, following right behind.

  “It’s all right, Luke,” she said. “Just keep looking. We’ll find it.”

  He wasn’t even sure that the treehouse was a good idea but she seemed to think so—that it might be at least—and that pleased him. There was even some excitement mixed with the frightened feeling because it was like he was the man now, doing things that she was trusting him to do. Doing something.

  They’d come through the brush and he’d got lucky coming up this time, avoiding most of the stickers, and the only time she’d scolded him was when he stepped on one and hollered and she told him to be quiet—and then, more calmly, said he had to be quiet because they didn’t know where the people were or how far back. There was something in her voice. Something so serious it sort of got to him. So that even if he hadn’t realized that she was barefoot too with just her thin dress on, no more dressed than he was in his pajamas, he wouldn’t have cried out after that for anything.

  Though he wanted to. The stickers hurt.

  But now there were only mosses and pine needles underfoot. They were coming up over the top of the hill where he thought he’d stood that afternoon and saw the treehouse. He was pretty sure. The treehouse should have been just up top of the next hill. But he stood and looked in every direction and then he looked again and he couldn’t see it. No dark platform anywhere. He couldn’t see it and he kept hearing monsters creeping up over the hill behind him.

  “Up here?” she whispered. “Where?”

  Melissa made a gurgling sound. What if they heard her? What if he’d gone over three hills today instead of just two? What if he was all screwed up? He wanted to cry again.

  “Somewhere . . .” He was starting to cry. No!

  What if he’d come up over the other side?

  There had been a clearing below, to his . . . left . . . just past the tall grass by the house and the scrubby woods.

  He looked down to his left. He had a clear view. In the moonlight he could see, and there was nothing like a clearing down there. Nor directly below, either.

  But there! There it was! To his right! He’d made a sort of half circle, because they were running and it was dark. So instead of coming straight up he’d circled right—and that was why there weren’t so many sticker bushes up that way.

  “Over here!” he said.

  He ran across the top of the hill and saw it outlined against the sky, higher up somehow than he remembered it—but maybe that was the dark too. The dark was tricky.

  “See it?” He pointed. “Come on. Over here!”

  “Careful!” she whispered.

  But he was already racing down the hill and then up, he could see well enough, and he jumped the stickers and got to the base of the tree and waited for her there, triumphant.

  People never look up, Claire thought. That’s what they say. If you want to hide something, hide it up.

  She was betting their lives on a piece of folk wisdom.

  But the car keys were in her pocketbook on the kitchen table. There was no getting out of there. There was only hiding.

  This is better, anyway, she thought, than stumbling through the woods at night with an eight-year-old boy and a baby. She’d have tried the road but they’d have been visible for a quarter of a mile on the road in the moonlight and they’d have had to go around the house in order to get there.

  They were in the house, and she wasn’t going near it again unless she had to.

  The treehouse seemed their best hope.

  It had the advantage that you could see the house lights below, over the hills and through the trees. It was far away but you could see them. If anybody came along, any cars, they’d know that and then they could come down again.

  She was praying for that, and not without reason. Running across the field through the grass she’d seen a car pull in. She’d stopped Luke for a moment in the middle of the field, thinking that this was a rescue. Thinking it almost had to be.

  Then she heard the car screech down the road again.

  Steven? Maybe. He was due.

  Whoever it was he had gotten away from them, she was almost certain of that, the car had whined off into the distance, and she could only think that the first thing anyone would do would be to get to the police and get there fast to report this.

  “Lie down,” she whispered. “Lie right here in the center. I think the platform’s wide enough so that nobody can see us from down below. Try not to move much.”

  Luke did as she asked.

  Holding Melissa, who had finally fallen back to sleep again—the night was warm and comfortable, thank god—Claire did the same.

  She stared up, blocking out the sounds and pictures that raged through her memory.

  Even now, even on this night, the stars were a comfort to her. If she tried—and she did try—she could picture children lying out here on truly peaceful nights, away from the adult world, imagining.

  She wondered what Luke was thinking, what he was seeing in the stars.

  Amy had said that a doctor and his wife had owned the house before them and that they’d had at least two children. The doctor’s wife had been living with one of them since her husband died. So the treehouse probably belonged to them. Claire’s
age now, or older.

  She thought of Amy. Heard her screams. She pushed at the sound. Pushed it away.

  If worse came to worse they could stay up here till morning, then head out to the road. If the house looked quiet.

  Completely quiet.

  We’re all right, she thought. We’ll be fine.

  The only problem, the only reason her hands wouldn’t quite stop shaking was that she felt so isolated here. They were so isolated.

  Almost . . . trapped.

  There was only one way down.

  She remembered something and felt a sudden chill.

  When she was a girl she had an uncle who owned a dairy farm in upstate New York. Her uncle was a big thick brawny man, well over six feet tall. He had a cruel streak when it came to children and a nasty sense of humor. He was the kind of man who, if you were a girl, would hug you and rub your cheek with his two-day growth of beard until you cried, or if you were a boy he’d want to shake hands with you so he could squeeze your knuckles together, to the same effect.

  Claire was nine or ten and her brother Adam about twelve when her uncle proposed a coon hunt one night. Her father was a city boy, bred in Boston. He had never hunted coon and he agreed. Girls, of course, were excluded. But Adam could go.

  He’d said later that it sounded exciting—running through the dark woods after a pack of dogs baying in the distance. And it was exciting, he said. Right up to the time the dogs treed the coon and his uncle handed him the .22 rifle and said shoot.

  Her brother was a good shot. He had a .22 of his own and practiced at the local rifle range. He looked at the coon about fifteen feet away huddled terrified and exhausted like a big ball of fur stuck immobile where the limb of the tree met the tree trunk—an easy shot for somebody not half as good as Adam was—while the hounds went crazy trying to jump up and pull him out of there, jaws snapping, slobber flying.

  Her brother looked at the coon and said no.

  His uncle laughed and looked at him and said why? you afraid you can’t hit him? and her brother said no, he could hit him all right, anybody could hit him.

  His uncle said yeah? in the head? between the eyes? and her brother said yes. He just didn’t want to. It was execution, he told her later, not hunting. He had looked to his father for support but he guessed that his father just saw this as some sort of rural rite of passage you just had to go through and his father was having no part of it, taking no sides at all.

  His uncle saw that. So he smiled and said tell you what. You go ahead shoot him like you say you can, right between the eyes. Either that or I shoot him in the shoulder and let the dogs have a damn good night of it. He’ll fall either way. You choose.

  Her brother shot. And never hunted again.

  Many years later her uncle died of cancer, died painfully, and she called her brother with the news.

  Neither one of them was the least bit sorry.

  But she remembered that story now, vivid and terrible as when he told it.

  She felt it.

  She was the raccoon. In the silence of the night she could almost hear the dogs in the distance.

  Up here, if they found them, they were helpless.

  People don’t look up, she thought.

  Melissa was sleeping now, but what if she woke and cried?

  She felt as though she’d awakened from a drunk to find she’d done something horrible.

  That it was stupid, stupid to be here.

  There was the urgent need to get down at once, on land, where they could run. It was almost physical, a kind of sudden vertigo.

  But go down to what? Where was safe? There were supposedly neighbors a mile and a half away or so, but in which direction?

  “Mom?” Luke whispered.

  She shushed him.

  “Mom? You hear that?”

  And then she did hear it, not far, the sound of a woman crying softly, a woman under exertion. She knew that voice, knew immediately who it was and felt a surge of happiness to know she was still alive, that and a dark fear of what was to come for her and them, linked together like birth and death. She heard soft footfalls too now and someone scuffling through the brush.

  She turned to Luke and slid her finger to her lips. He nodded.

  They waited.

  The sounds seemed to drift like ghosts, taking forever to reach them, freezing her blood as someone giggled and passed to the right of the platform just below her head.

  If there was to be any hope for Amy she had to know where they were going, in which direction. She wanted desperately to see.

  Yet there was no way she could raise her head. She felt paralyzed—even as the sounds drew slowly away. She was afraid the slightest move might wake Melissa. The slightest waking cooing sound, its echo in the still night air.

  She was the raccoon now. Immobile. Sudden death made flesh in the pack below.

  It was all she could do to whisper.

  “See where they go!” she said.

  Luke turned, raised himself slightly on one elbow. She saw his eyes locate them and follow.

  When he settled back again his eyes were wide.

  “That was Amy, Mom,” he whispered. “They had Amy!”

  “I know,” she said. “And it’s up to us to keep Melissa safe for her and get help for her as soon as we can.”

  “Can’t we help her now?” he said. “They might hurt her, Mom.”

  And she was proud of him—not for his courage because that was just a boy’s courage, foolish and immortal. But for his decency, his caring. She realized she was blinking back tears.

  “How many did you see?” she said.

  He thought about it, counted them out on his fingers.

  “Five,” he said. “Not counting Amy.”

  “Was there a man? A big man?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then we can’t go. Oh god! Not yet. He’s still around here somewhere.”

  “But Mom . . .”

  “We can’t, Luke. I love Amy. You know I do. I love her . . . very much. But we can’t.”

  And it will do none of us any good if you start to cry, she thought.

  Still she not only knew what the raccoon felt, she finally knew something of what her brother was feeling too and understood his hatred ever after for people who were willing to put you in places like this, places where nothing you do could possibly be right or generous or life giving, and knew she was right never to have mourned her uncle’s passing.

  10:17 P.M.

  “Halbard, for godsakes! It’s Halbard!”

  “That’d be David Halbard,” said the cop. “Scrub Point Road. I’ll call it in.”

  The name had come back to him almost as soon as he started thinking about something else.

  Thinking about what he was into here, particularly.

  They hadn’t gotten far. Up until this last bend in the road he could still see his battered car through the rear window.

  Maybe it was the sheriff’s New York accent that brought his situation home. Or maybe it was the whiskey the fat guy handed him that stopped the shakes long enough for him to think. But here he was with three cops—he assumed the fat guy beside him was a cop, though he didn’t look like one. He looked too old, for one thing—and he was carrying scotch whiskey. But he assumed he was.

  Three cops.

  And there he was, sitting in the backseat with the old guy. Three fucking policemen.

  Shit!

  He didn’t know which scared him most—going back there or being stuck with three cops doing it.

  “Okay,” he said. “Look. You know where you’re going now, right? How ‘bout just letting me off. I really don’t want to go back there. Jesus christ, I don’t.”

  The sheriff took his finger off the call button.

  “You’ve had a bad shock, Mr. Carey. We know that. When I call this in I’ll call for an ambulance too, get some paramedics out here for you. Believe me, you’re a whole lot better off with us.”

  “Hey, I’m fin
e now, really. I remembered the name, didn’t I? I can walk back to the car and . . .”

  “Your car’s a mess, Mr. Carey. The only place it’s going is the garage. We’ll take care of it in the morning.”

  “I could just wait there, then. I honestly don’t want to . . .”

  “I appreciate your feelings. But I’m calling this in now. You’ll be fine, Mr. Carey, I promise you.”

  Case closed, thought Steven. Cops. Shit. He felt the old cop’s eyes on him. Like he was some sort of freak.

  He saw the woman with the ax smashing through the windshield. He saw Marion fat and naked on her bed, her tongue hanging out like a slice of liver, the hairdryer cord sunk deep into her neck.

  “. . . Halbard place on Scrub Point Road,” the sheriff was saying.

  “You’re where?” said the dispatcher.

  “Route Six, just past the mall.”

  “Closest we got is car twelve-o up at Horse Neck Lane. I’ll get them on it.”

  “Okay. And call everybody else off house-to-house and get them up here. We may have to go looking.”

  “Will do.”

  “And get me an ambulance. Lacerations, possible shock. Victim is Mr. Steven Douglas Carey, Connecticut license number M oh nine seven two, one five one eight four, one one three five three. Better make that two ambulances. You don’t know what we’ll find out here. Over.”

  “You got it. Over.”

  He didn’t like the cop giving his name. Why did they have to give his name? He guessed it was routine. But he was getting a feeling about this. Like the car was shrinking, the front seat pressing up against his knees, the cop beside him subtly closer. It was bullshit. He felt it anyway.

  He recognized things along the road now and saw that he’d come in this way, then had driven back blindly, not knowing where the hell he was going, just getting out of there, right along the same route. There was the broken-down tractor parked in the ditch, leaning precariously. And the roadside ad for Jim Beam whiskey. Both of them looking lonely against open empty fields beyond.