Richard Laymon - Tread Softly

Tanya, looking embarrassed, stood up and brushed off the seat of her shorts. "I'll see how Benny's doing."

"Thanks." When she was gone, Scott turned to Karen. "I shouldn't have lost my temper like that."

"Happens to the best of us. God knows, it was mild compared to some of my tirades at school. I've been known to go totally berserk."

Feeling better, Scott turned his chair to face her. She was leaning back, bare legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles, one hand curled around the glass resting on her belly. The front of the oversized, faded blue shirt she wore over her swimsuit had a patch of darkness from the glass's moisture.

"You deal with teenaged kids all the time," he said. "What do you make of my two?"

"I'd say, for starters, that Julie's scared, probably very upset about what happened to Benny."

"Has a funny way of showing it."

"The sarcasm's just a defense mechanism. She seems to use it all the time when she has trouble facing things. I don't think she's callous or insensitive. If anything, maybe she cares too much. The sarcasm's like a safety valve for her."

"All right. I'll give you an A for that one. She's always been that way, hiding behind it. Just gets hard to take sometimes."

"Look on the bright side — at least she doesn't go hysterical."

"I guess that's a blessing, of sorts. Okay. What about Benny?"

"I'd say he's extremely imaginative and sensitive, and handling the situation remarkably well. I'd be a total basket case if I'd gone through what he did. So would most people. They'd freak out totally."

"Do you think it really happened?"

"Yes."

"All of it?"

"Yes."

"How do you explain — "

She shook her head. "I can't explain any of it. That's why I would've freaked out if it'd happened to me. I think Benny's fortunate, in a way, that he can blame the curse. It gives him a frame of reference that lets him deal with it. In terms of curses and magic, anything can happen, nothing is illogical."

"You don't believe in that stuff?"

"The important thing is that Benny does. It's part of his reality. So this business in the library makes sense to him. Otherwise, God knows how he might've reacted."

"Look, we don't believe in that nonsense. I don't, anyway. How am I supposed to figure out what happened?"

Karen grinned mischievously. "Just keep telling yourself there's got to be a logical explanation. Write it fifty times on the blackboard."

"What do you think?"

"There's got to be a logical explanation."

"Like what?"

"Damned if I know."

Scott laughed. "You're a lot of help."

She drained the last of her Bloody Mary.

"Refill?" Scott asked.

"Sure. Why not? While you're gone, maybe I can dream up a theory."

"Try," he said. "Try very hard. I would appreciate a good, solid, down-to-earth explanation."

"Right. I'll work on it."

He took Karen's glass. Bending over her, he kissed her gently on the lips. Then he went into the house. Instead of turning toward the kitchen, he walked down the hall to Julie's room. Her door was open. She was lying on her bed under a Bruce Springsteen poster, staring at the ceiling, wearing her earphones. When she saw him enter, she pulled off the headset. "Hey," Scott said, "I'm sorry I yelled at you."

She answered with a shrug.

"I guess we're all kind of edgy."

"It's okay," she muttered.

"Why don't you give Nick a call, see if he'd like to come over early and have dinner with us? Say around five? I'll be doing steaks on the barbecue."

"Okay," she said, smiling slightly. "That'd be nice. I'll check with him."

"Fine."

In the kitchen, Scott took an extra steak from the freezer. Then he prepared the Bloody Marys. He carried them outside. After the air conditioning of the house, the hot sun felt good. Karen was standing, taking off her shirt as he walked up behind her. She wore the same skimpy black swimsuit she'd taken camping. Except for crisscrossing straps, her back was bare to the waist.

"Ready for a dip?" Scott asked.

She grinned over her shoulder at him. "Ready for a sip," she said. She draped her shirt over the back of the chair.

Scott handed a drink to her, and they both sat down. "I dig your outfit," he said.

"Does it flatter my contusions?"

The bruises were yellow-green blotches on the tanned skin of her shoulders and breasts and arms. The teeth marks were darker than the discolored skin surrounding them. Looking at them brought back the horrible night — finding her motionless in the tent, the dread when he didn't know whether she was alive or.

"Do you have to stare?"

"Can't help myself," he said, managing a smile. "You're damn near naked."

"You're staring at the bruises."

"Nope, at your full, firm breasts."

She laughed and took a sip of her drink, shutting her eyes as her face tilted toward the sun.

"I talked to Julie. She's inviting Nick over to have dinner with us."

"Oh, that'll be nice."

"Even nicer that they're going out tonight. Now, if I can just get Tanya to take Benny to a movie or something. "

"Do you think that'd be a good idea?"

"Sure. We'd have the house to ourselves for a few hours."

"He might be better off staying home."

"Ah, you don't want to be alone with me."

"I'm serious, Scott. He went through a hellish experience this morning. If I were him, I wouldn't want to go out tonight. I'd want to stay here safe with my dad."

"Yeah, I guess I shouldn't push it. With you here, he wouldn't want to leave anyway. In fact, when he found out you'd be coming over, he almost didn't go to the library." Scott raised his hand, forefinger and thumb a quarter inch apart. "He was that close to staying home. If I'd just — "

Karen shook her head, stopping him. "There are always those ifs when something goes wrong. We can't blame ourselves. It's just a bunch of little choices that don't mean anything till the shit hits the fan, and then you look back and see how you got there. And you find a whole string of ifs going back forever."

"I suppose. But if Benny'd stayed home this morning — "

"He wouldn't have needed to go looking for a witch-

craft book at all if we'd never gone camping. And we wouldn't have gone if you and I hadn't met."

"There's an if I'd hate to change," Scott said.

She smiled at him. "Me, too. But you've got to admit it's one of the links in the chain. If we hadn't met, Benny wouldn't have been attacked this morning."

You wouldn't have been beaten and raped, he thought. From the somber look on Karen's face, he wondered if she were thinking the same thing. If we'd never met.

Frowning, she took a drink. Scott watched a drop of water fall from her glass, splash the glossy skin of her chest, and roll down between her breasts. She wiped it away. "Anyhow," she said, "it gets slightly ridiculous when you think about it too much. The ifs are endless."

"I suppose so," Scott admitted. "So, have you come up with any marvelous theories about what happened to Benny?"

"I thought of something. He said the lights went out a second after the hand grabbed him. Unless we want to accept magic as the explanation, there must've been another person involved — someone to turn off the lights while the other attacked him."

"I wonder if it might've been a practical joke," Scott said. "A couple of students figuring it'd be a kick to throw a scare into him. After he ran off, they hid themselves somewhere."

"That still doesn't explain the finger."

"Well, if it didn't actually break off. Benny must've been in a panic, disoriented. He could've just bent it back, maybe even broken it, but only imagined it came off."

"He sounded pretty sure."

Scott sighed. "I just don't — " He heard a door slide open behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Julie step out. She walked forward, frowning down at the concrete deck. She'd left the door open, but she seemed lost in thought, troubled, so Scott didn't tell her to shut it. She turned a deck chair toward him and Karen, and sat down without speaking.