Quick as a snake, she took Tracy by the wrist. Then the child was safe beside her, Clarke's free arm protectively around her shoulder.
Tracy howled.
"What the hell…" The monster was reaching for the lightstick beside the cot. Fine. Let him have light enough to see the tables, turning…
The cabin flared, blinding her for a moment before her eyecaps adjusted. Gordon was rising from the cot. Clarke raised the billy. "Don't you fucking move."
"Daddy!" Tracy cried.
The monster spread his hands, placating, buying time. "Lenie—listen, I don't know what you want—"
"Really?" She'd never felt so strong in her whole life. "I sure as shit know what you want."
He shook his head. "Listen, just let Tracy go, okay? Whatever it is, there's no need to involve her—"
Clarke stepped forward; Tracy bumped along at her side, whimpering. "No need to involve her? It's a little late for that, asshole.It'sway too fucking late."
The monster stopped still for a second. Then, slowly, as if in dawning awareness: "What do you—do you think I—"
Clarke laughed. "Good one."
"You don't think—"
Tracy pulled. "Daddy, help!"
Clarke held on. "It's okay, Tracy. He can't hurt you."
The monster took a step forward. "It's okay, Lima-bean. She just doesn't underst—"
"Shut up! Shut the fuck up!"
He stepped back, hands up, palms front. "Okay, okay—just don't—"
"I understand, asshole. I understand way fucking better than you think."
"That's crazy, Lenie. Just look at her, why don't you? Is it me she's scared of? Is she acting like she wants to be rescued? Use your eyes! What in God's name made you think—"
"You think I don't know? You think I don't remember how it feels, when you don't know any better? You think because you've brainwashed your own daughter into thinking this is normal that I'm going to—"
"I never touched her!"
Tracy twisted free and ran. Clarke, off-balance, reached after her.
Suddenly Gordon was in the way.
"You goddamned psycho," he snarled, and hit her in the face.
Something cracked, deep at the base of her jaw. She staggered. Salty warmth flooded her mouth. In a moment there'd be pain.
But now there was only a sudden, paralyzing fear, resurrected from the dawn of time.
No, she thought. You're stronger than him. You're stronger than he everwas, you don't have to put up with his vile shit one instant longer. You're going to teach him a lesson he won't everfucking forget just jam him in the belly and watch him expl—
"Lenie, no!" Tracy cried. Clarke glanced aside, distracted.
A mountain smashed against the side of her head. Somehow the billy wasn't in her hand any more; it was following some crazy parabola through a world spinning uncontrollably sideways. The rough wooden planking of the cabin floor drove splinters into Clarke's face. Off in some unfathomably distant part of the world, a child was screaming Daddy…
"Daddy," Clarke mumbled through pulpy lips. It had been so many years, but he was back at last. And nothing had really changed after all.
It was my own damn fault, she thought dully. I was just asking for it.
If she could only have one moment to live again, she knew, she'd get it right. She'd hang on the billy this time, she'd make him pay like that cop in West Bend I got himall right, his whole middle just a big cloud of chunky soup, nothing left but a raw bleeding backbone holding two ends together and he's not gonna be throwing his weight around after that, what little weight there is left hahaha…
But that was then. This was now, and a big rough hand on her shoulder was flipping her onto her back. "You twisted piece of shit!" the monster roared. "You lay a hand on my daughter and I'll fucking kill you!" He dragged her off the floor and slammed her against the wall. His daughter was crying somewhere in the background, his own daughter but of course he didn't care about that he only wanted…
She squirmed and twisted and the next blow glanced off her shoulder and suddenly she was free, the open door was right in front of her and all that safe darkness on the other side, monsters can't see in the dark but I can—
Something tripped her and she went down again but she didn't stop, she just scuttled out the door like a crab with half its legs gone, while Daddy bellowed and crashed close on her heels.
Her hand, pushing off against the ground, touched something—
The billyit flew all the way out here I've got it now I can show him—
— but she didn't. She just grabbed it and ran, vomiting with fear and her own cowardice, she ran into a welcoming night where everything was bright silver and gray under the moon. She ran to the lake and she didn't even remember to seal her face flap until the whole world was spray and icewater.
Straight down, clawing the water as though it, too, were an enemy. It was mere moments before the bottom came into view, it was only a lake after all and it wasn’t deep enough, it wasn't far enough, Daddy would just stroll down to the shore and reach down with his hands…
She beat against the substrate. Waterlogged detritus billowed around her. She attacked the rock for days, for years, while some distant part of her shook its head at her own stupidity.
Eventually she lost even the strength to panic.
I can't stay here.
Her jaw felt stiff and swollen in its socket.
I've got the edge in the dark, at least. He won't leave the cabin before daybreak.
Something smooth and artificial lay nearby, its outlines hazed by distance and resettled sediment. The billy. She must have dropped it when she sealed her hood. She slipped it back into its sheath.
Not that it did me any good lasttime…
She pushed off the bottom.
There'd been an old topographic map tacked up on one wall of the cabin, she remembered. It had shown other cabins dotted intermittently along some forestry patrol route. Probably empty most of the time. There was one up north along—what had it been called—Nigel Creek. She could get away, she could leave the monster far behind
— and Tracy—
Oh, God. Tracy.
She broke the surface.
Her knapsack lay on the shore where she'd left it. The cabin squatted at the far end of the clearing, its door shut tight. The lights were on inside; curtains had been drawn on the window, but the glow leaking around them would be obvious even without eyecaps.
She crawled from the lake. A dozen kinds of pain welcomed her return to gravity. She ignored them, keeping her eyes on the window. She was too far away to see the edge of the curtain pulling back, just enough to afford a view to some hidden eye. She saw it anyway.
Tracy was in there.
Lenie Clarke had not rescued her. Lenie Clarke had barely gotten away herself, and Tracy—Tracy still belonged to Gordon.
Help her.