being eaten away by acid. Her scratched, scraped fingers burned, and
the gouged palm of her right hand throbbed. Both of her forearms had
been scored repeatedly by the thing’s sharp fingernails.
Each upper arm was marked by five, ugly, oozing punctures.
She wept. Not just because of the physical pain. Because of the
anguish, the stress, the fear. With tears she was able to wash away
much of her tension and at least a small measure of her heavy burden of
guilt.
–I’m a murderer.
–No. It was just an animal.
–It was my child.
–Not a child. A thing. A curse.
She was still arguing with herself, still trying to find a comfortable
set of rationalizations that would allow her to live with what she had
done, when the trailer door flew open and Conrad came inside,
backlighted by a strobe-flutter of lightning. He was wearing a plastic
raincoat, streaming water, his thick black hair was soaked, and strands
of it were plastered across his broad forehead. Wind rushed in at his
heels and, like a big dog, circled the room, sniffing inquisitively at
everything.
Raw, throat-tightening fear gripped Ellen again.
Conrad pulled the door shut. Turning, he saw her sitting on the floor
with her back against the wall, her blouse torn, her arms and hands
bleeding.
She tried to explain why she had killed the child. But she couldn’t
speak. Her mouth moved, but nothing came out of it except a dry,
frightening rasping.
Conrad’s intensely blue eyes looked puzzled for a moment. Then his
gaze traveled from Ellen to the bloody, crumpled child that was on the
floor a few feet from her.
His powerful hands curled into large, hard fists. No,” he said softly,
disbelievingly. “No . . . no . . . no . . .”
He moved slowly toward the small corpse.
Ellen looked up at him with growing trepidation.
Stunned, Conrad knelt beside the dead creature and stared at it for
what seemed like an eternity. Then tears began to track down his
cheeks. Ellen had never seen him cry before. Finally he lifted the
limp body and held it close.
The childthing’s bright blood dripped onto the plastic raincoat.
“My baby, my little baby, my sweet little boy,” Conrad crooned.
“My boy . . .
my son . . . what’s happened to you? What did she do to you? What
did she do?”
Ellen’s burgeoning fear gave her new strength, though not much.
Bracing herself against the wall with one hand, she got to her feet.
Her legs were shaky, her knees felt as if they would buckle if she
dared take even one step.
Conrad heard her move. He looked back at her.
“I . . . I had to do it,” she said shakily.
His blue eyes were cold.
“It attacked me,” she said.
Conrad put down the body. Gently. Tenderly.
He isn’t going to be that tender with me, Ellen thought.
“Please, Conrad. Please understand.”
He stood and approached her.
She wanted to run. She couldn’t.
You killed Victor,” Conrad said thickly.
He had given the child-thing a name–Victor Martin Straker–which
seemed ludicrous to Ellen. More than ludicrous. Dangerous. If you
started calling it by name, you started thinking of it as a human
baby.
And it wasn’t human. It wasn’t, damn it. It was evil.
You couldn’t let your guard down for a moment when you were around it,
sentiment made you vulnerable. She refused to call it Victor. And she
even refused to admit that it had a sexual identity. It wasn’t a
little boy. It was a little beast.
“Why? Why did you kill my Victor?” “It attacked me,” she said
again.
“Look at me!” She held up her bleeding hands and arms. “Look what it
did to me.”
The grief on Conrad’s face had given way to an expression of blackest
hatred.
“You tried to kill him, and he fought back in self-defense.”
“No. It was awful. Horrible. It clawed me. It tried to tear out my
throat. It tried to–” “Shut up,” he said between clenched teeth.
“Conrad, you know it was violent. It scratched you sometimes. If
you’ll just face the truth, if you’ll just look into your heart, you’ll