Free Hide and Seek by Jack Ketchum Page B

rattling a round downstairs in the kitchen. I guess he was drinking some more. But I couldn't sleep. I'd get close and then I'd drift back and I'd hear him again.
     
    "How can I say this? I... wanted him to come in. I used to think I'd willed him there. He was so obviously, so terribly unhappy. And I
    I watched the tears come, watched her fight them to submission before they could take hold of her again.
     
    "... and I loved him. He was my father. He'd never harmed me.
     
    "I heard his footsteps on the stairs and then the door opened and then he was next to me on the bed, and he was making these sounds and he smelled of whiskey. The smell was bad and the sounds were bad, like someone hurt and frightened. His hands felt so much bigger than I thought they would.
     
    "He stroked my hair and my cheek. He put his hand on my breast. I was wearing pyjamas. He pulled the bottoms off me. I was sea red, the way he looked. I asked him to stop. I told him I was sorry, like a little girl who'd been bad. "I'm sorry," I said, over and over. I was crying by then. But he kept on touching me. He wasn't hurting me but I was scared, really scared, and I started yelling for him to

stop and yelling that I'd tell, I'd tell my mother, and over and over saying I was sorry
     
    "So then Jimmie came into the room. Rubbing his eyes. Adumb little kid, eight years old, half-asleep, wondering what all the commotion's about. And there's my father with his pants half-off, and there's his sister bare-assed in bed with Daddy's hand between her legs, and there's blood ... all over the sheets, all over my legs. Blood I've just seen for the first time now.
     
    "He ran out of there so fast it scared me worse than I already was, and my father, I remember he just groaned like I'd hurt him bad or something, only it was worse than that, an awful shuddery sound. But he rolled off me. And I... I went after Jimmie.
     
    "We had a little dog. Just a mutt. He was Jimmie's dog but everybody loved him. And we had a staircase in the house just like the one in this one. And the hall was dark. Jimmie ... he didn't see the dog lying by the stairs. I ran for him but he went down ... and the rest is all just sounds for me. The dog yelping. My father screaming behind me. Jimmie falling down the stairs. And then something loud and wet like if you dropped a ... melon. I guess passed out.
     
    "Jimmie died in a coma. My mother knew everything by then. We got rid of the dog. You just couldn't have him around anymore. My father was sober for about a year, all told-"
     
    She leaned back hard against the seat, exhausted.
     
    I watched her awhile, saying nothing, wondering if she was more comprehensible to me now, wondering if it helped anything.
     
    She was silent for a moment, and then she laughed. In the laugh you could see how some of the toughness was made.
     
    "Just now my father, who I suppose has had a couple martinis, had the temerity to put his hands on my shoulders and kiss me on
    She looked at me and her eyes held that same indifferent cruelty I'd seen that day at the beach, looking down at Steven from that rock, naked and terrible.
     

"He doesn't touch me. Not ever. I touch him if I feel like it, but nothing else is acceptable. And every time he forgets that, I make him pay. Every time."
     
    I knew a girl once who was rumored to have slept with her father. A local girl. She was a pinched, starved little thing with frightened eyes who held her books tight to her chest and ran on spindly legs from class like something vast and evil was always in pursuit. Sitting next to me now was the opposite of her, tempered maybe in the same waters but unbroken, raw and splendid with physical health and power. This one had turned the tables, pursuing the pursuer with a ferocity that probably would have amazed that other girl, but that she would have understood thoroughly.
     
    I wondered, though. I'd met the man. To me he was just ashadow.
    Insubstantial, insignificant. And I