“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.
22
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