Suffer the Children (31 page)

“Come to the table,” Elizabeth said softly, beckoning
Jimmy Tyler to leave the security of the cavern wall and join the cat at the strange table. He shook his head.

“Come to the table,” Elizabeth repeated, her voice becoming menacing. Jimmy Tyler pulled his knees up to his chest, and tightened his grip on Kathy Burton’s hand.

Elizabeth moved toward him, and her hand drew back to strike him. Just before the blow was delivered, Jimmy scuttled away from Kathy and crouched, shivering, on one of the small rocks.

Elizabeth turned to Kathy.

“You too,” she ordered. Kathy didn’t move, but her eyes flickered open a little, and her mouth worked as if she was trying to speak.

“Now,” Elizabeth demanded. This time the blow fell, and Jimmy Tyler cringed at the sound of the sharp slap against Kathy’s face. Still Kathy didn’t move. Instead, a small gurgling sound escaped her lips.

Elizabeth glared down at the inert child for a moment, then began dragging her toward the center of the cavern by her feet. Weakly Kathy Burton tried to kick loose, but Elizabeth’s grasp was firm. In seconds Elizabeth was setting Kathy on the third stool. When she stepped away Kathy slumped back to the floor, and Elizabeth kicked her.

“Sit up when you’re at the table,” she snapped. Kathy seemed to become slightly conscious of what was going on, and managed to pull herself upright “That’s nice,” Elizabeth said. She stepped back and looked over the strange tableau.

“Now,” she said. “Kathy, you’re the mother. And Jimmy’s the father. And Cecil is your baby. Your crazy baby. Feed your baby, Mother.”

Kathy sat quietly, barely able to keep herself upright.

“I said to feed your baby!” Elizabeth demanded. When Kathy still made no move toward the cat, Elizabeth raised her fist and brought it down hard on
Kathy’s back, driving her face first into the center of the table. “You do what I tell you,” Elizabeth snarled through her teeth.

“K Mother can’t feed the baby, you do it,” Elizabeth said to Jimmy. He looked at her, puzzled, trying to figure out what he was supposed to do. He saw her fist closing again, and decided the best thing to do was to pretend. He quickly mimed putting a bottle in the baby’s mouth.

“She’s too old for a bottle,” Elizabeth hissed. “She eats real food.”

Jimmy quickly pretended to pick up a spoon and shovel some food toward the cat.

“Talk to her,” Elizabeth commanded. “Talk to your baby.”

Jimmy froze for a moment, then found his tongue.

“Nice baby,” he said. “Here’s some nice food for the nice baby.”

“Her name’s Sarah!”
Elizabeth screamed. “Don’t you even know your baby’s name? What kind of a father are you?”

“Sarah,” Jimmy repeated quickly. “Here’s some food for nice little Sarah.”

He continued pretending to shove food into the dead cat’s mouth, and kept babbling at it, not knowing what he was saying but being careful to call the cat Sarah every few seconds.

“She doesn’t answer, does she?” Elizabeth said softly. Jimmy shook his head.

“Do you know why she doesn’t answer?” Elizabeth asked smoothly.

Jimmy shook his head again.

“Because she’s crazy!”
Elizabeth screamed. “But children are supposed to answer when they’re spoken to, aren’t they?”

Jimmy nodded dumbly.

“Then she’s a bad child,” Elizabeth said. “She’s crazy
and she’s bad. Punish her.” Jimmy didn’t move. “
Punish her!”

His eyes fixed on Elizabeth, and on the hand that was flexing rhythmically into a fist Jimmy slowly picked up the dead cat The head tumbled from the body and rolled into the shadows. Shuddering, he put the corpse over his knee and began spanking it.

Elizabeth smiled.

Kathy still huddled over the table, cradling her head in her arms, and she must have moved slightly, for Elizabeth’s attention was suddenly drawn to her.

“Don’t sleep at the table,” she said menacingly. Jimmy, afraid that Kathy was about to receive another of Elizabeth’s terrible blows, reached out to shake her.

“Don’t touch her,” Elizabeth commanded. “You don’t like to touch Mother, do you? She wants you to touch her, but you don’t like to. We know what you like, don’t we?” She leered at the little boy, who stared at her in bewilderment.

“You like the baby, don’t you? We know you like the baby better than you like Mother, don’t we?” And suddenly her voice rose, and the cavern was filled to overflowing with the sound of her words.

“Well, if that’s what you want, that’s what you can have!”

Elizabeth leaped on Jimmy, and began pulling at his clothes. He struggled, but he was too weak from hunger and fear to fight very hard. Soon, before he had a chance to realize what was happening, Elizabeth had stripped his clothes from him and flung them in a corner. Naked, he huddled on the floor of the cavern.

Elizabeth picked up the torso of the dead cat.

“This is what you want, isn’t it?” she hissed. “You want your baby, don’t you?”

And she fell on Jimmy Tyler, forcing the rotting flesh of the dead cat against his crotch, mumbling incoherently that if he wanted it so badly, here it was.

Jimmy Tyler’s helpless sobbing mixed with Elizabeth’s ramblings, filled the cave. He didn’t understand what was happening to him.

Kathy Burton, the strange sounds penetrating her fogged mind, looked up and watched the vile scene that was transpiring in front of her. She couldn’t grasp it at first, couldn’t sort it all out into anything that made sense. Then her mind cleared a little more and she realized what was happening. She looked on in horror as Elizabeth continued in her efforts to force Jimmy Tyler to copulate with the corpse.

Kathy Burton screamed, and with the last of her reserves of strength she pulled herself to her feet and moved toward the spot where Elizabeth struggled with Jimmy Tyler.

“Don’t,” she croaked. “Please, Elizabeth, don’t.”

Elizabeth wheeled, and Kathy wished she hadn’t tried to interfere. She began backing away, the light in Elizabeth’s eyes driving her backward until she reached the wall of the cavern. Her terror grew as she saw Elizabeth pick up a rock from the floor of the cavern. She felt the strength suddenly ebbing from her body when Elizabeth raised the stone over her head, and she began collapsing to the cavern floor as Elizabeth brought the rock downward.

For Kathy Burton, the horror was over.

An hour later Rose Conger found her older daughter emerging from the shower.

“I was just going to tell you that if you wanted a shower before dinner, you should get started. I see I’m too late.”

Elizabeth nodded and smiled at her mother. Rose smiled back, and silently thanked God for sending her Elizabeth. Without Elizabeth, she didn’t know how she would manage.

“Will you bring Sarah down with you?” she said.

“Sure,” Elizabeth replied. “As soon as I get dressed.”

*    *    *

In the cave, Jimmy Tyler lay where Elizabeth had left him, too weak and too confused even to try to find his clothes. He lay shivering, naked in the darkness.

Rose lay stiffly in bed later that night, listening to the rain pound on the roof, her thoughts as turbulent as the weather outside. She could hear nothing from Jack’s inert form beside her, but she sensed that he wasn’t asleep.

“There’s something about that portrait, isn’t there?” she said finally. Jack snapped on the lamp by his side of the bed and raised himself up on one elbow.

“Do you feel it too?” he asked.

“No,” Rose said flatly. “I don’t. But all evening long you sat and stared at it. What is it about it? It’s as if you’re trying to see something in it.”

Jack lay back down again and stared at the ceiling.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “It just seems like—like the portrait should look more like Sarah than like Elizabeth.”

“Sarah? Why Sarah?”

“Nothing I can put my finger on. Just a feeling. I keep thinking about what Dr. Belter told us. About the little girl who was supposed to have been killed. I keep getting the feeling that the picture must be of that girl.”

“What does that have to do with Sarah?” Rose’s voice was sharper now, as if she was guarding herself against what was to come.

“I remembered today. I remembered it all. Rose, that day a year ago. I almost killed Sarah.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t,” Jack said miserably. “I wanted something else.”

“Something else?”

“I wanted to rape her,” Jack said quietly. He waited for a response from Rose, and when there was none he went on. “I don’t have the vaguest idea of what it was all about, but today, when I was bringing Sarah back in from the rain, I looked up and saw Elizabeth watching me. And then, suddenly, I remembered it all. I remembered being in the woods, and watching Sarah crawl under a bush. And suddenly I wanted her. Sexually. Don’t ask me to explain why—I don’t know. It was the most awful thing I’ve ever felt in my life. I felt like I was someone else, but I was still myself. It was like I was being made to do something, or want to do something, that I didn’t want to do. And then an awful feeling came over me that … that Sarah was seducing me.”

Rose sat up. “Seducing you?” she demanded. “Seducing you? My God, Jack, she was only ten years old!”

“I didn’t say she
was
seducing me. I said I
felt
like she was. And so I started beating her. I really wanted to kill her. Oh, Jesus, Rose, it was awful.” The pain of memory swept over him once more, and he began crying softly. Rose, failing to understand what had happened to him, her own feelings in turmoil, searched for something to say.

“What’s all this got to do with the portrait downstairs?” she asked finally.

“I’m not sure,” Jack muttered. “When I look at that portrait I get the strange feeling that what happened to Sarah a year ago, happened to that girl a long time ago.”

“And that, I suppose, takes you off the hook, doesn’t it?” Rose said icily. “Suddenly, instead of being the aggressor you’re the victim? My God, Jack.”

Jack cringed at her words, but Rose plunged on.

“And what about today? Were you a victim again
today? Did some strange force come over you again today? Were you not yourself again today?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I saw it today, Jack. I saw it all And I was ashamed that Carl and Barbara Stevens saw it too.”

Jack sat up and stared at his wife. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“I’m talking about you out there in the field with Sarah. I’m not sure which was worse, watching her charging across the field, screaming, or watching you rescue her. You were vicious, Jack. It wasn’t like you were helping her. It looked like you were attacking her! It was like it was all happening all over again.”

Jack sat up, his eyes blazing. “Are you out of your mind? Today was nothing like a year ago. Nothing at all. For one thing, I was stone sober today.”

Rose frowned. “Maybe you don’t have to be drunk,” she said. “Maybe something more serious is wrong with you.”

Something snapped inside Jack, and he grabbed Rose by the shoulders and pinned her down to the bed.

“We’ll see who I can rape,” he snarled, and as Rose lay back limply, as if he weren’t worth fighting against, his rage grew. He grabbed at her nightdress and tore it from her body. Still she lay there, taunting him with her passiveness. He hurled himself on her and tried desperately to mount her.

And he couldn’t.

Now she began squirming under him, and for a moment he wasn’t sure whether she was trying to free herself or help him.

“You can’t do it, can you?” her mocking voice came from beneath him, slightly muffled by his chest “Only little girls? Well, I’m not a little girl, Jack. I’m a woman, a real woman. Now get off me.” She pushed up against him, and once more he tried to thrust himself inside her. Again he failed.

Then the struggle began in earnest, and Rose suddenly
became frightened by what might happen to her. She redoubled her efforts, and finally succeeded in freeing herself. She scrambled from the bed and turned to face him. His eyes blazing, his anger still growing, he stared at her, and Rose was frightened. She felt she knew what Sarah must have experienced in the woods that day so long ago. She reached out to pick up an ashtray from the table by the bed.

“Don’t come near me,” she screamed. “I swear, Jack, if you so much as lay a finger on me, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Jack thundered. “You’ll kill me? Do you really think I care?” He was standing now, and the bed separated them. Both of them were shouting, neither hearing the other. And then, when they both paused for a breath, they heard it Someone was tapping at their door. They stared at each other, stricken. The children.

But it was Mrs. Goodrich’s voice out in the hall. “Are you all right?” she was saying. “Land sakes, you’re waking up the whole house.”

There was a silence; then Rose spoke. “It’s all right, Mrs. Goodrich,” she called softly. “I’m sorry we disturbed you. We were just—just talking about something.”

“Some people like to sleep at night,” Mrs. Goodrich said. They heard her retreating back toward the staircase, her footsteps heavy as she plodded down.

“I suppose the children heard it all, too,” Rose complained.

“Don’t try to blame it on me,” Jack said. “You might try listening to me once in a while, instead of accusing me.”

“You’re never responsible, are you?” Rose said, making an effort to keep her voice down. “You’ll never take the responsibility for anything, will you?”

“Yes,” Jack said. “I will. But not for everything, Rose. Not for everything.” He began dressing.

“Where are you going?” Rose demanded.

“You don’t need to know,” Jack said. Then he smiled cruelly. “I’ll take the responsibility for where I’m going. And I’ll take the responsibility for what I’m going to do.”

He left her standing next to the bed in her torn nightgown, and she hadn’t moved when she heard his car roar off down the driveway two minutes later. Only when the noise of the car had faded did she sink back down to the bed. Shakily she reached for a cigarette and lit it. The smoke, sucked deeply into her lungs, seemed to calm her.