Richard Laymon - Tread Softly

Keep on going," Ettie muttered. "Don't you stop here."

Dropping to her rump, she scooted down the steep side of the boulder she'd been standing on. The granite felt like hot sandpaper through her dress. She pushed off, fell a short distance into a nook among the rocks, and stretched out flat on an uptilted slab. From there, she watched the hikers stride up the distant trail.

They were heading up toward Carver Pass. Three of them. This far off, they were no more than tiny shapes. Something about the way they walked made Ettie suspect they were girls, but she could only be sure about one; the figure of that one made it obvious.

The person in the lead, who wore a cowboy hat, stopped and turned around, waiting for the others to catch up.

"No," Ettie whispered when the leader pointed down at the lake.

The three stood close together on the trail, gesturing and nodding, apparently discussing the matter. Then the one in the cowboy hat started down the steep path toward the lake. The other two followed.

"Damnation," Ettie muttered.

Squirming forward on the sun-baked granite, she spotted Merle. He was far below, seated on his favorite rock, fishing. With a high outcropping to his right, he was hidden from the intruders, at least for now. They would need to come halfway up the opposite shore to notice

Merle in his recess. By then, he was sure to hear their voices and take cover.

"You better behave, boy," she said. "You better just leave 'em be, or I'll skin you."

Before yesterday, there hadn't been much cause to worry on Merle's account. Folks had come down every now and again to rest by the lake, explore it, take a swim, or do some fishing, but Merle always stayed out of sight and left them alone. He'd even behaved the few times campers stayed the night. None of the overnight people had been pretty young women, though, until that last. Easy enough to behave when there's no temptation. But the first pretty girl comes along, he rapes her and kills her and lays it on the Master.

I offered 'em down.

Bullsquat.

Ettie turned her gaze to the hikers. They were already at the bottom of the slope, walking single file along the lake-shore. They were heading toward the area where Merle had buried the bodies. With its trees and shade, it stood out like an oasis in the desolate basin. No one came down without settling there.

A fine place to plant those folks, Ettie thought. We oughta dig them up and stick them someplace out of the way.

Sure enough, the three hikers stopped in the shadows and swung off their packs. One red pack was lowered within a yard of the graves.

As they opened their packs, Ettie heard them talking and laughing. From the sounds of their voices, she was sure that all three were girls.

Merle must hear them, too. She looked toward the boulder where he'd been sitting. He was on his feet, leaning out, trying to see around the jut of rock. He stood motionless for a few moments, then leaped across the narrow band of water, set down his fishing pole, and scrambled up the slope. Near the top, he crouched low, then raised his head enough to see over.

Only the width of the lake separated him from the girls.

That couldn't be more than a hundred feet, Ettie figured. Merle could swim the distance in half a minute, if he had a mind to.

"You just let 'em be," Ettie whispered.

She looked at the girls. They were sitting close together on rocks, passing a couple of small bags back and forth, eating the contents.

Stopped for lunch, Ettie thought. She hoped that was all, that they would finish up quickly and be on their way.

The one in the cowboy hat, who sat with her back to Ettie, took off her checkered blouse. The straps of her bra were white against her tanned skin. She stood up and stretched, as if she liked how the breeze felt. Bending over, she set her hat on a rock. She rubbed her short brown hair, then turned away from the other two girls and walked to the shore. There, she knelt and flipped a hand through the water.

Ettie looked for Merle. He was gone.

The girl returned to her friends. Moving her hat off the rock, she sat down again and began to untie a boot.

"Oh, you fool," Ettie muttered. She studied the opposite shore, but still couldn't see Merle.

One of the other girls, a skinny thing in jeans and a faded blue shirt, got up and stuffed a bag into her pack. Then she took off her shirt. Her breasts were small mounds, white except for their dark tips.

"Oh, Merle, Merle." The temptation would be too much for him.

She considered rushing down to the girls, yelling and trying to scare them away. That might ruin everything, though. They'd be sure to tell someone — maybe a ranger — about the wild woman who chased them off. A spell might take care of that, but why take chances? A good spell's hard to call down, and you can't always count on one to take care of business.

Be better off to find Merle and stop him before he did something foolish.

She looked at the girls. The one who'd tested the water was on her feet, pulling down her shorts. The buxom one had her T-shirt off, and was reaching behind her back to unhook her bra. The skinny one sat right where Merle had planted the bodies, and tugged off her boots.

Ettie still couldn't spot Merle. She guessed he was across the lake from the girls, spying on them, probably hard as a club by now and going crazy.

She scurried across the slope, staying low. She squeezed through crevices, slid down steep slabs on her rump, ducked behind every rock cluster offering any concealment, making her way slowly across the end of the lake. When she paused to catch her breath, she found all three girls stark naked. The one in the lead was knee-deep in the lake, walking backward, urging her friends to come in. The skinny one eased in a foot and jerked it out quickly. The other squatted down, breasts bulging against her knees, and tried the water with her hand.

Ettie left the sheltering rocks. The area ahead was a barren slab of granite that angled slightly downward. It offered no protection. If the girls happened to look toward the end of the lake, they would see her crossing. She squirmed along on her belly, watching them.

The girl in the lake had started to swim. The one crouched on the bank was scooping up water and rubbing it on her shoulders and breasts as if to get used to its cold. The skinny one, cringing and hugging herself, was wading in slowly. None of them so much as glanced in Ettie's direction.

She reached the end of the open space without being seen, and crawled behind a rock. She peered over its top. The small inlet where Merle had been fishing was no more than thirty feet away. Plenty of shelter between here and there. As quickly as she could, she rushed down to it. From the recessed shore, the girls were out of sight. She heard splashing and voices, then a sudden outcry that knotted her stomach before she recognized it as a shriek of laughter.

They're having a great time, stupid bitches. If they knew.

She hopped across the water on stepping stones, and crouched at the base of the outcropping. Merle's abandoned fishing pole lay against the rocks in front of her, a shriveled bit of beef jerky on its hook.

Ettie worked her way up the slope, then peered over the top, first at the swimmers, then at the rocks along the bank. From this height, she expected to see Merle crouched behind a boulder.

She didn't see Merle. But she saw his scattered clothes.

A movement caught her eye. To the left. In the water. Just below a jutting clump of rocks. All she saw, at first, were rings, rippling outward as if a stone had been tossed in. Then there was the pale blur of a body sliding along beneath the surface.

Rage seized Ettie. She wanted to scream and yank Merle from the water. The fool! The fool!