Offspring

by Jack Ketchum

  He had hunted these brambles many times at night and most often he was successful. They formed a thicket on top the cliff high above and to the right of the cave—well away from the easier, more traveled path the others took. But the others were not the hunter Rabbit was. They had never troubled to find this place.

  He had brought Eartheater and the Girl here once, but neither could be content just to sit and watch and wait. They had made fun of him, of his grin, of his patient crouch. They made so much noise that no game would dare appear, not even a stupid squirrel. He had waited all night long after they left and returned with nothing.

  He wouldn’t make the mistake of asking them again.

  He remembered that he could not ask Eartheater again, not even if he wanted to. Her body lay a few yards behind him hidden in the bushes beside the trail. He had been here for a while watching the rabbit, though he had only intended to stop for a moment just to see what was here, and he had not wanted the stink of death to frighten any game nearby so he had left it there, covered by sticks and tall grass to cut the scent. He knew it was much later now but he had little sense of time and the rabbit was near.

  He felt immensely happy here amid the berries and their cane-like, thorny stems, smelling the woods smell and the rabbit’s hide, his feet dug into the earth and his weight distributed between hands and feet to give him balance and the fastest possible lunge. He knew exactly how far his spring would take him, in which direction the brambles would get in his way, and in which direction they would impede the leap of the rabbit. He knew the firmness of the ground, where it was soft and where it was stony, and waited for the rabbit to arrive at exactly the spot that was most to his advantage. These variables were not considered, they were calculated plus or minus in the flesh—in the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands, in his eye and ear. They ran in his blood.

  And the moment was almost on him when the rabbit started, nose twitching as it sniffed the air, and the boy heard behind him faraway heavy footfalls along the path, and heard a man panting. He knew from the sounds that it was not one of his kind. He remembered Eartheater’s body in the brush and heard the man stop for a long moment and knew that he had found her. Knew that he had delayed here far too long.

  He saw the legs of the man pass by as he searched the path near the cliff and as the rabbit ran off deep into the brambles.

  He heard him stop at the very edge of the cliff and then return to retrace his steps. He smelled the man and recalled the smell, knew it for the smell of death because he had killed the man only a while ago with his knife.

  And yet he walked.

  He huddled shaking in the thicket, a Rabbit in truth now for the very first time, shuddering, frozen in fear, while the ghost went slowly down the mountain.

  Through waves of throbbing pain Claire watched the tall scarred woman kneel down to Steven and search his eyes, studying him, her head tilted like an animal’s, inquisitive.

  Like a cat’s.

  She was aware of the twins and the boy with the clouded eye looking to the man for instructions, anxious for permission, probably, to go on kicking her and beating her again. She was aware of their mouths and what was in them. Very aware. But the man was watching Steven too, ignoring them.

  She was aware of Amy crying.

  She saw a roach crawl to the top of one of the rocks banking the fire and fall in, overcome by heat, crackling.

  But mostly she was aware of the woman.

  She could feel something in this woman that was missing in the others. She sensed it powerfully. A thoroughly dangerous oneness, a wholeness with what she was, like a tiger or panther feeding—a total concentration of energy that was completely of the animal, intent and undistractible.

  The woman leaned close.

  She saw that Steven could not even meet her eyes.

  “The baby,” she said.

  There was ferocity in the question. There was blood. Claire felt it like a cold blast of wind.

  Steven looked puzzled.

  “Hers,” said the woman quietly. She pointed to the back of the cave.

  And now he understood.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  And she could see that not knowing scared him.

  She watched him look away from the woman, considering, and then after a while look back at her. Not once did the woman’s eyes blink or waver, though Steven’s roamed the walls, the fire, the ceiling, lingered for a moment on the twin boys and the one with the clouded eye, and even—however briefly—on Claire. But now when they returned to the woman Claire knew he had arrived at something, at some decision, he could meet the woman’s gaze now, if only for a moment.

  She had seen that look before.

  And she didn’t know which of them—Steven or the woman—was more to be feared.

  He glanced at the boys again. At their smiling open mouths.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I think you can find out.”

  He looked at Claire.

  “She doesn’t like,” he said, “to be bitten.”

  12:25 A.M.

  Claire stared at him in shock.

  The man had been her husband.

  They had made love night after night and it had been good, once, she had believed it was good.

  They had made a baby together, had considered having another.

  They had skied in Vermont and weekended at the shore.

  She doesn’t like to be bitten.

  Claire heard the words. It was still nearly impossible to believe he’d said them—dead calm and dead serious, as though it were not her life and maybe Luke’s he was talking about, as though he were simply making a suggestion to a client who had a certain problem and this was the solution which, after due consideration of the variables, he’d come up with.

  He nodded toward the boys. “You have all you need,” he said, “right here.”

  So this is who you are, thought Claire.

  Beneath the panic, she hated him.

  You know too much, damn you. About me, about the situation. And you have no soul. You will betray anything.

  He knew that Luke was out there somewhere, the only one they hadn’t found yet.

  He knew that Claire would never have abandoned Amy’s baby.

  So the baby was with Luke. And probably, Claire knew where.

  He was suggesting that they find Melissa through Luke, and Luke through her. He was suggesting pain. That pain would result in betrayal.

  Of his son.

  She doesn’t like to be bitten.

  Simple fact.

  Almost ludicrous.

  And true enough about Claire in its mundane, everyday way to be almost elemental, almost monstrous.

  She didn’t like to be tickled either god knows or touched on the soles of her feet or the taste of raw onions or rainy winter days or the smell of whiskey or of gasoline at the pump. These were just facts about her. Items in the catalog of her personality. Amy knew them. David knew them. Luke knew them.

  Yet this one went deeper, drew on a confidence shared with him and few others that in some ways defined the physical limits of her power over fear, and her moral courage in the face of it.

  It was not onions or whiskey. It was horror. It went to the heart of her knowledge of herself. And he had given it over as casually as if he’d been asked about the color of her hair.

  Who is worse? she thought. Which one? The man who reveals the secret or the woman who would use it against her? Because she had no doubt that the woman would use it. The woman was staring at the boys—and the boys had reminded Steven in the first place.

  They had kicked her but their feet were bare thank god because there was pain but the damage was not too bad, not compared to the man’s pain where she had kicked him, and he had rolled off the floor and groaned, telling them to stop.

  They obeyed, walking away from her to the side of the cave, the boy with the clouded eye rummaging through a pile and handing to the others two sets of jagged teeth c
ut roughly from the sides of soda cans and keeping one for himself, placing it in his mouth so that the rounded rim of the can slid up between his lips and upper gums and the sharp teeth pointed down.

  They had stood over her, mouths open, the tang of aluminum making them drool down over their chins. Waiting. For the man to allow them.

  The woman stood in front of her and reached for her, hauled her to her feet as easily as though she were an empty sack, her rough hands abrasive beneath her arms, stood her up and pushed her against the wall.

  “Say,” she said.

  The eyes bored into her, the breath raw as old meat, the smooth scar livid against her gray pallor.

  The man stood behind her in the shadows. Smiling.

  His teeth too. Rotted brown and black and filed to sharp points.

  The children moved closer.

  She felt the room begin to spin, her pores opening and the smell of her own sweat coming off her all at once and her stomach turned, it was as though she had drunk too much, she was going to be sick all over the woman and then the woman would kill her and maybe that was for the best, she wouldn’t have to tell, she wouldn’t have to say.

  “Say,” the woman repeated.

  She saw teeth and fire and the bright scar, and for a moment couldn’t have told her if she’d wanted to. The room slid into white light and the wet surface of a dimly lit suburban Boston street when she was ten years old. It was dusk and she was visiting her cousin Barbara and they and her cousin’s friends were playing hide-and-seek and she was it and she had found the others but she couldn’t find Barbara so she crawled under the cyclone fence to the neighbors’ yard where the bushes against the fence made it shadowy and scary, a good place for her cousin to hide, being careful not to dirty her short dress, but Barbara wasn’t there either so she turned to go under the fence again because she didn’t like being there in the shadows, when a dog appeared from around the side of the house, a big dog, old and black, and she could tell by looking at him standing there that he was going to bite. There was something in his eyes.

  She had heard that an animal would attack if you moved so she didn’t, she stood still, hoping it would just go away but the animal held her with its stare—there was something wrong with its eyes, a thin ugly film like the whites of eggs—and by the time the dog moved, trotting over to her, never letting go of her with its eyes, crazy looking, not like the eyes of any dog she’d ever seen, she was shaking and she had to go pee and the dog just stopped in front of her. Opened its mouth. And took the flesh of the front of her naked thigh into its warm wet jaws. Slowly, deliberately.

  And bit down.

  She half screamed and half cried and she couldn’t help it, her leg moved back a little. The dog bit deeper, and there was blood rolling down her leg, a single warm stream.

  The dog looked up into her eyes. Growled.

  And bit harder.

  She knew she was looking into the face of evil then, into the face and eyes of madness, of something that enjoyed her pain more than anything else its life could offer, and she wet herself and whimpered and suddenly a man’s voice thundered off the porch and the dog let go and ran, and she ran, screaming—and when she got to the house and told her mother, her mother wanted her to go back to confront the man with what the dog had done but she was still too scared and she couldn’t, her mother had to go get the man to show him.

  The man was old. He was stooped and small. Much too small to have such a loud mean voice that would scare the dog that way. But then they heard the man later, shouting, something smashing against the walls, and the dog yelping wildly.

  “Say,” said the woman.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I swear I don’t.”

  The woman looked at Steven. He shook his head.

  The woman’s hands tightened on her arms, the jagged nails digging in.

  “All right. The house. I told Luke to go back to the house if anything . . . if anything happened to me. To take Melissa with him and go back to the house right away.”

  Steven smiled. He knows me too well, she thought, goddamn him. He could always tell.

  “The truth, Claire,” he said. “Go on. Tell her.”

  I can’t do this, she thought.

  There was only one place where she thought Luke might be and that was the treehouse. It was just as possible he wasn’t there—he could be anywhere, even safe by now—but if there was one place more likely than any other it was the treehouse. He’d found it. He’d felt secure enough there to show her so they could hide.

  I can’t do this, she thought. I can’t risk it. I can’t let them know.

  The woman saw her refusal, read her clearly, put the palm of her hand against her breastbone and slammed her against the wall. The woman’s hands went to her shoulders, bunching the fabric of the wide neck of her dress in her hands, and tore it off her shoulders. She reached down for Claire’s wrists and dragged her in front of the fire and threw her down again, the skin of her hands and knees scraping off on the hard stone floor, her naked breasts suddenly cold against its clammy touch.

  The woman stepped over her, put her foot in the small of her back and tore away the cotton briefs.

  Hands grasped her arms and legs and rolled her over.

  Hands held her, spread her arms and legs wide and she fought them but she was weak, faces with Halloween fangs leaned over her and she looked into those faces at those fangs and was suddenly as weak as the dog had made her so very long ago, she cried and screamed and no one stopped her but no one comforted her either as her mother had comforted her and the faces leaned down, slowly, mouths opening, leaning closer, and she felt the first flesh tearing in the hot mouth of the boy with the clouded eye holding her ankle, felt them sear into her calf and saw that the girl was holding her other ankle and that she too had teeth now, and then felt the slow incisions on each side of her in the tender webbing of flesh that joined shoulder to breast above each armpit before the girl’s teeth sank into her thigh above her knee, the flaming pain from all four points scorching up and through her.

  She felt their tongues lap and the cool spill of saliva and blood, and heard them swallow.

  She screamed and thrashed her head as the jaws worked side to side.

  She screamed for Steven. She screamed for god. She did not know what she screamed.

  And then there was only the man—the man and her terrible sudden impossible knowledge of what he meant to do as she looked down over her body and felt his hands grip her thighs and pull himself toward her through her open legs, using her own bruised flesh as purchase, crawling along on his belly as slowly as a snake gliding toward her, his mouth open wide, saliva dripping from his teeth and head lowering, the humid heat of his breath over her as he sought her inches away.

  I’m sorry, Luke, she thought. I’m not going to tell them but I’m not going to be here for you either, anymore. I’m sorry, I’m very sorry.

  She closed her eyes as the mouth descended.

  They met at the base of the cliff—and Peters was just coming off the rock face into the sand thinking the legs are the first to go when the girl stepped out from behind the brush, the police-issue .38 pointed at him, and he took it in.

  He wobbled and stumbled but he took it in.

  The girl had no experience with a gun; she held it in front of her straight-arm like a kid in the general direction of his body, aiming at mass, not target. She was certain to jerk the trigger and keep on jerking it, and that was what she did.

  So that the stumble worked for him—the stumble was a goddamn blessing. He hit his knees and righted himself and took the position as the first bullet kicked sand and seashells to the left of him and fired as the second bullet whizzed past his head. The third went straight to the stars because his own shot had taken her in the chest by then, and the girl went down not four feet away from him and got right up again like some cardboard duck in a shooting gallery but she’d lost control of the trigger, her finger was trying to find it when he fir
ed point-blank into her chest again and put her down.

  The gun sailed away into the sand. Peters got to his feet and walked over.

  He looked down at her and shook his head.

  Because it was the same as eleven years ago in away.

  Faced with the kind of slaughter the like of which he’d never seen or ever dreamed of seeing, it still wasn’t so much the killing that got to him—except for the boy, because the boy was his fault, his problem—as it was knowing who and what these people were. Like some other species entirely, one that had evolved along parallel lines maybe, but whose ancestors in the Pleistocene or whenever the hell they’d done their evolving were not his ancestors or those of anybody he’d ever heard of, had taken a turn that was impossible for him to understand. He knew it wasn’t true, that there were guys like Manson and Bundy out there too. But he had never met them either, and if he lived to be a hundred he would never understand.

  He would never understand.

  He watched her lying there, the last of her life draining out into the sand, her pale hands quivering, moving up over her body until her fingers found the entrance wounds beneath the dirty, bloody shirt.

  And then weakly, probing.

  And the goddamn girl was smiling.

  Second Stolen lay bathed in the warm wet pleasure that was pain.

  She remembered, long ago, a man who was dressed very much like this man who stood over her now, who was heavy like this man. And more dimly, she remembered the woman who was his mate. A thin worn face in contrast to the man’s heavy face, with eyes that were mild and perhaps a little distracted, a little hurt and empty, but were not at all like the man’s pig eyes, who did not have the man’s heavy calloused hands, the hands that probed and beat her.

  She smiled, remembering how she had escaped the man, how the Woman had come into her room in the night and taken her.