Katherine's Prophecy Page 10

  She instinctively brought her hand down to where his was and touched his fingers as they moved deftly inside of her. The motion was smooth and graceful as his fingers plunged deep inside for a moment, then withdrew long enough to caress her gently just inside. She began thrusting her pelvis upward in rhythm—slowly at first, then faster and faster as she drew nearer and nearer to climax. Ted’s fingers began working faster in response, and more vigorously with each thrust. She wanted to open her eyes now; to look into his eyes just before she came, but she didn’t. Instead, she continued writhing in total bliss, reveling in the almost maddening sensation of orgasm.

  As she came, she heard him breathe harder and harder. She felt his free hand move to the nape of her neck then slide slowly down her back. She sat forward in the tub a little, to allow his magical hand to move more freely along her backside. His hands felt monstrously large and leathery as they slid forward between her arms and engulfed her breasts . . .

  Emily opened her eyes in horror. She looked down at the huge, gnarled hands on her breasts and screamed as she whipped her head around to see whose arms were encompassing her body.

  Emily screamed again.

  It was her father . . . or so she thought. What she saw was a decrepit old man with rotting, leathery skin and sunken pale blue eyes who resembled her father . . . had he lived to be a century or two old.

  “My little girl has grown up quite a bit, I see!” he wheezed in a rheumatic, singsong voice. “But I hope she doesn’t think she’s too old to let her Daddy scrub her back for her—you’re still my little girl, you know!”

  Emily howled and tried to break free. But her father was much too strong for her, in spite of his feeble appearance. She grasped his hands and tried to pull them off of her, but to no avail. She dug her fingernails into his flesh and to her horror, streams of blood oozed out and trickled into the bath water in snakelike trails of crimson. Behind her, she could hear her father laughing hysterically.

  “You can’t get away from me, sweetheart, and you never will! I’ll bet when they buried me you thought you’d be rid of me forever, didn’t you? But you were wrong, weren’t you? Daddy will always be around to take care of his little girl!”

  It was at this moment that Emily spotted the near-empty glass of scotch sitting on the edge of the tub.

  This isn’t a dream! she thought.

  She looked down at herself . . .

  Her legs were long and slender. There was a dense patch of hair between her legs. Her breasts felt big and fully developed in her father’s hands.

  I’m not a little girl!

  Emily quickly glanced around the bathroom. She saw the white terry cloth robe hanging on the towel bar where she’d slung it only moments ago. On the sink lay her wristwatch, next to the ceramic toothbrush holder where she’d placed it just before she’d started the water running. She glanced out the window—it was dark out, with a full moon looming high in the sky.

  This is now and this is real! she realized in horror.

  Her father removed one of his hands from her breast and reached for the bar of soap lying in its holder. Then he plunged both hands into the water directly in front of her and began vigorously lathering up with the soap; leaning his head on her shoulder from behind. His face was so close to hers that she could feel his hot, rancid breath puffing in her ear. A sickening chill shot up her spine as she sat totally defenseless, riveted with fear.

  “Daddy’s going to give you a good scrubbing this time, honey. You know what they say; ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness!’” he whispered in her ear. “Just relax, honey. And enjoy! It’s not everyone who gets this kind of royal treatment, you know!”

  Her father’s hands, covered in a thick foamy lather, moved toward her. Then, with an alarming gentleness, he began applying the frothy white goo all over her chest. Emily could feel her heart racing madly as she began hyperventilating furiously.

  “There now . . . Doesn’t that feel good? Daddy’s going to make his little girl squeaky-clean all over,” he wheezed.

  His mouth was pressed firmly against her ear as he spoke. Emily saw the hair on her arms stand straight out as her father’s enormous slippery hands traveled all over her. Her mind was at a gallop, trying to figure a way to free herself.

  His lips kissed her neck lightly as his hands plunged back into the water long enough to work up another lather. When his hands returned to her breasts, she flinched; but he didn’t seem to notice. His breathing became faster and raspier as he nibbled on her shoulder and continued fondling her breasts, seemingly oblivious to her constant squirming and staccato gasps for breath.

  What can I do? she thought desperately.

  Her father began licking her neck and shoulders with his sandpaper-like tongue as his hands traveled purposefully down between her legs. Then she felt a huge finger beginning to probe her inside as another hand slid in under and pinched her bottom, causing her to jerk violently in protest.

  Must do something! she thought . . .

  Suddenly, she had an idea. It was her only chance.

  With all the composure she could muster, Emily said in a remarkably controlled voice: “Daddy, my back needs scrubbed, too. You’ve barely touched it.”

  “Why of course, precious! I knew you’d start enjoying this once you let yourself relax,” he replied thickly, his breath coming out in huffs and puffs.

  Emily held her breath as she waited for him to remove his hands. She glanced down at herself anxiously and could see her heart practically beating out of her chest. Her father finally took his hands away and started groping in the bath water for the bar of soap—his fingers frequently prodding her flesh in various places as he did so. He had always used that same ploy whenever he’d bathed her as a child, she recalled with a shiver.

  Her father eventually retrieved the soap and began lathering up his arthritic hands while Emily forced herself to remain still. She felt him back off from her a little as he brought his hands up and rested them on her shoulders.

  Now! she thought.

  With all her strength, Emily gripped the sides of the bathtub and shot straight up. She heard the sharp cracking sound of his jaw as the top of her head slammed full force into his chin. Her father let out a grotesque howl of pain as Emily saw something red and fleshy fall down past her eyes and land with a plop in the bath water. Horrified, she looked down . . .

  It was his tongue.

  The impact had made him bite off his tongue!

  On impulse, Emily spun her head around and stared at her father. He’d fallen back into the wall and was now flat on his back on the floor, writhing in pain. Emily gasped in horror at what else she saw. His naked body was splattered from head to toe with his own blood. He started screaming at her unintelligibly—like a deaf mute—as his eyes stared coldly at her with the unmistakable desire to kill.

  Emily shook off the urge to vomit and sprung out of the bathtub in a flash, knocking the glass of scotch to the floor with her foot. She ran past him and headed for the door then fumbled with the doorknob frantically. It refused to turn in her slippery hands. She felt her father’s hand grasp her by the ankle and pull her toward him. As she wrestled with the doorknob, Emily looked down at where his huge hand encircled her tiny ankle like a clamp. Then, with all her might, she stomped down on his forearm with her other foot. But instead of letting go, her father laughed maniacally and tightened his grip on her even more. Then he rolled onto his side and was just about to grab her with his other hand when Emily finally got the doorknob to turn.

  She swung the bathroom door hard to the right and watched as it smashed into her father’s head with a resounding thud. He screamed in agony and released his grip on her. In a second, Emily was out in the hallway running down the stairs.

  She was halfway down when she heard Cassie’s growls coming from the bathroom. She stopped running instantaneously but lost her balance and ended up tumbling down the remainder of the stairs on her side, landing on her back.

  �
��Cassie!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.

  She could hear Cassie’s barks echoing off the bathroom walls into the hallway. Then she heard her father cursing at her puppy in a vehement rage.

  Emily was struggling to get herself up off the floor when she suddenly heard a sharp cracking sound come from the bathroom. Cassie fell silent.

  Her face went bone-white . . . He had killed her puppy!

  She sprung up onto her feet. Her side hurt like mad and she glimpsed down at the huge bruise just below her rib cage before tearing back up the stairs. She was no longer concerned with what her father might do to her—if he’d killed the one and only thing in her life that he hadn’t yet destroyed, then she was going to see that he paid for it before he murdered her as well.

  Tears were streaming down Emily’s face when she reached the top of the stairs and staggered down the hallway toward the bathroom. She stood by the doorway and shut her eyes for a moment before looking inside, fearful of what she’d see.

  Emily opened her eyes.

  The bathroom was empty.

  There were no signs of Cassie or her father. No blood, nothing. Just an empty bathroom . . .

  She stood there bewildered and felt her heart skip a beat.

  Was she losing her mind? Had she imagined all of this?

  Then why was she standing there in the hallway naked, dripping wet from head to toe?

  And where was Cassie . . ?

  Suddenly, she saw the door to her father’s bedroom down the hall move. It creaked on its hinges until it was fully open and came to a dead stop, revealing nothing but pitch darkness beyond it.

  Emily stood there riveted with fear and stared at the doorway expectantly; thinking that at any moment her father would come out of the darkness carrying Cassie’s limp body in his arms. She waited several minutes, her heart pounding and her hands trembling. But nothing happened.

  “Cassie?” she called cautiously.

  Not a sound, except for the pounding of her heart.

  She remained there another moment or so then crept back into the bathroom. Grabbing her bathrobe from the towel rack and throwing it over her shoulders, she stepped out into the hallway and stared at the door again, gathering up her nerve. Then she started tiptoeing down the hall toward the door.

  When she reached her father’s bedroom, Emily peered into the darkness and saw absolutely nothing. Leaning a shoulder against the threshold, she timidly stuck her hand inside and ran it along the wall in search of the light switch. She found it and flicked it up, but nothing happened.

  Just then, she heard a rustling sound coming from inside. It seemed to have come from the far right-hand corner of the room.

  “Cassie, is that you?” Emily implored, her voice cracking in fear.

  There was no response.

  “Come out, girl! I know you’re in there. Please don’t make Mommy have to come in there to get you!”

  By now her eyes had adjusted somewhat to the darkness of the room. Directly across from her she could barely make out the dim glow of the moon shining through the drapes of a window. Below the window, she could see the outline of the headboard to her father’s bed in the weak light.

  “This is ridiculous!” she muttered to herself in a vain effort to allay her fright. “I’ve never been afraid of the dark before. I’m coming in to get you, Cassie, since you won’t come out to me.”

  She heard the rustling sound again.

  “C’mon, girl! You get yourself out here right this second or you’re going to be in big trouble!”

  She suddenly heard a whimper. It was definitely Cassie, she concluded, but Cassie was injured and couldn’t make it out on her own.

  “I’m sorry, girl. I didn’t realize that you were hurt. Mommy’s coming in to get you.”

  Again, she heard a whimper.

  Emily stepped warily into the room and stood for a moment. She looked to her right and saw nothing but darkness and the faint outline of another window in the far corner. Using the window as her only means of perspective, she crept slowly toward it, taking one tentative step at a time. After three or four steps, her knee ran into something hard—the corner of her father’s bed, she guessed. She stepped to her right to avoid it then moved another couple of steps forward until she felt the texture of the oriental throw rug under her feet, which she knew was located in the area between the bed and her father’s dresser.

  “Cassie?” Emily called, her mouth bone-dry.

  She heard a whimper coming from her left.

  Her father’s bed. Cassie must be lying on it.

  Emily turned to her left and groped in the darkness as she headed toward the bed. In a couple of steps she felt the wooden frame and began running her hands along the quilted bedspread in search of her puppy.

  “Where are you, Cas—”

  A hand suddenly grabbed her arm.

  “Ah-ha! Got you!” a man’s voice cried out, pulling her onto the bed. He quickly pounced on top of her, pinning her down on her back.

  Emily screamed. In the dim light afforded by the window behind the bed, she could just make out the outline of a man leaning over her, his face only inches from her own. She could smell his breath, a mixture of bile and raw sewage, and his body reeked of wet, smoking embers. Had she not been so terror-stricken, she would have vomited.

  “Who are you?” Emily asked, her voice trembling. “What do you want of me?”

  “Questions, questions!” the stranger snarled, his breath hot and putrid in her face. “Very well, let’s make this fun—a riddle, perhaps! Yes, that will do! Let me see . . . All right, I have one!”

  Who do you know, in your wisdom so true,

  Who could sire a daughter, granddaughter, too?

  Who could be both a father and grandfather, too

  To one in the same—great-grandfather, too?

  The stranger recited the riddle as though it were a nursery rhyme; delivering it with an odd and vaguely familiar singsong voice. Afterwards, he began howling hoots of laughter, sending chills down Emily’s spine.

  John Hoffman! she thought in horror. The Devil himself!

  But what was even more frightening than his mere presence was what the riddle implied.

  “Cat got your tongue?” he taunted, his razor-sharp fingernails digging deeper into the flesh of her arms.

  Emily lay motionless, her heart beating madly in her chest. Her mind, dazed and a blur of confusion, was racing frantically.

  What did the riddle mean?

  “Speak to me child!” he commanded, tightening the grip on her arms.

  Emily’s voice was little more than a whisper. “You’re my great-grandfather, John Hoffman?”

  He drew his face even closer to hers. For the first time, she could make out his features—the same rough skin and piercing eyes she’d seen in his portrait at Grandpa Warren’s.

  “A-ha! But I’m more than merely your great-grandfather, child, now aren’t I?” he asked menacingly.

  “What do you mean?” Emily asked warily.

  “Why, you already know most of the story, my child, so don’t act so naive. I won’t stand for such insolence! Now tell me, who was your grandmother Katherine’s real father, eh?”

  Emily swallowed hard. “C-Clem Porter?”

  John Hoffman let out a huge bellowing laugh. “Clem Porter? Hell, he couldn’t have sired a child any further than he could piss! Clem was a fucking gelding, for lack of a better word. A eunuch! No, my child. It was I who sowed the seed that begot your grandmother. Just as it was I who sowed the seed which begot my granddaughter.”

  Granddaughter? Emily thought. She’d heard nothing about him having a granddaughter. Katherine had given birth to only one child—her father. And clearly, Grandpa Warren had been his father. John Hoffman had long been dead and buried by then . . .

  So what was he doing here, now?

  God, please let this be a dream!

  “Well, my child? Have you figured it out yet?” he sputtered in her face.r />
  Emily felt herself go faint. All she wanted was to wake up now to find that this had all been one horrible nightmare.

  John Hoffman tightened his grip on her.

  “I—I’m confused,” Emily stammered.

  “Confused, you say? Why, I’m very disappointed with you, my child. And to think that you’re a Hoffman, too! Very disappointed, indeed, I am.”

  Emily fell silent, unable to speak.

  “Perhaps you can’t solve the riddle because you’re afraid to. That’s what I think. You know the truth, yet you can’t deal with the truth—so you refuse to acknowledge it. But all you have to do, child, is merely take a good, hard look at yourself. Look at the life you’ve led. Hasn’t been too rosy, eh? And you know why your life has been so miserable, now don’t you? Because you feel you’ve been cursed from the very beginning; and now that you’ve just about put all the pieces together, you realize that what you’ve feared to be true all along is indeed quite true after all. A-ha! The truth sometimes hurts, but you can’t run away from it now, can you?”

  Emily started sobbing in fear and confusion.

  “You’re weak, child. Makes me ashamed that you’re a Hoffman, it does. Face the truth, my child! It’s time to pay the piper. Don’t be so goddamned weak!”

  Emily was in hysterics.

  “You are my daughter, child! The child that my dear daughter Katherine lost. The child that my son thought would be his, but really was mine. They wouldn’t listen to me—they defied me! Katherine would have given birth had she listened to me and not married Warren. But they both paid the price for their insubordination, young fools that they were. They ended up producing your idiotic father instead. A-ha! What a poor excuse for a human being he turned out to be! But I got back at them for what they did. Your father was merely a pawn in a much bigger game than he could ever imagine. He fathered that child I lost so long ago, but it was my seed he cast. And that child happens to be you—my daughter, my granddaughter, great-granddaughter, too!”