“We haven’t followed you anywhere. We were here first. You don’t like it, tough.”
“We’re not leaving,” Bert told him. “We’re staying exactly where we are—and I’m sure you know where that is. We saw you looking at the girls from those rocks by the shore. Now here’s the thing. Stay away. Don’t come anywhere near our camp, or else.”
“Oooo, I’m trembling,” Luke said. “I’m so scared I just don’t know what to do.”
Jase sneered. “I don’t know what your problem is. You come in here like gangbusters, calling us names, telling us to get out of here, threatening us. Where do you get off, huh? We didn’t do shit to you. Sure, we took a look when those two were swimming. Why not? It’s a public lake. They want to go swimming, we got every right to watch. So we watched, so what? I tell you, the view wasn’t all that terrific. As for staying away from your camp, you can bet on it. Give me one good reason why we’d want to go near your camp.”
“They probably think we want to molest them,” Luke said.
“Wishful thinking,” Jase said.
Wally, staring at the ground, chuckled.
“Just stay away,” Bert said. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“You stay away from us. We’re not interested. You gals get the hots, you’ll just have to settle for him.” He looked at Rick. “I’m sure he’d be glad to ...”
“Shut your face,” Rick snapped.
He felt a tug on his arm. “Come on,” Bert said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Yeah,” Jase said. “Take him away before he loses his temper and hurts me.” ·
Rick stepped backward as Bert pulled him. Bonnie turned away from the boys. Andrea, still facing them, slipped her knife out of its sheath and pointed it at Jase. “I’m gonna be watching for you shitheads,” she said, then turned around.
They walked toward the shoreline path.
The boys began taunting them from a distance.
“Oooooo,” from Luke.
“Now they’re threatening us with weapons,”Jase said. “We oughta get the cops on them.”
“What cops?” Wally asked.
“That’s right, there ain’t no cops out here.”
“Oh, dear!” Luke blurted. “Who, oh who, shall save us from this tribe of paranoid Amazons? Are we damned? Is this all she wrote? And me without a will!”
“Hey,” Wally said, “you should’ve shown them your dick.”
“Wally’s getting brave,” Rick muttered.
“They wouldn’t have known what it was,” Luke said. “Anyway, I didn’t want to turn on that fag who’s with them.”
Rick looked over his shoulder. The trees were in his way.
“What a bunch of crotch lice,” Andrea said.
“Keep your voice down,” Bonnie told her.
“They can’t hear me.”
“How many dykes does it take to screw a fag?” Wally’s voice. Yelling.
“I don’t know, how many?” Luke.
“The guy’s a wit,” Rick said.
Bert, walking beside him on the path, suddenly stopped and turned around. She glared toward the trees concealing the boys’ camp. Suddenly, she shouted, “I gave you my mosquito repellent, you fat tub of lard!”
Rick looked at her, amazed.
“Well, I did,” she said. A comer of her mouth turned up. Rick patted her rump.
They heard nothing more from the boys as they hiked back to camp.
“Is something the matter?” Jerry asked.
What could possibly be the matter? Gillian thought. I’ve just spent last night and today in the house of a rapist, a psycho, a homicidal maniac.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“You seem a little distant.”
She forced a smile and waved across the patio table at him. “I’m all right here. No more than, oh, four feet away.”
“Didn’t like the dinner?” he asked.
“It was awful. That’s why I gobbled it down like a sow.”
“Are you saying it was swill?”
Gillian laughed softly.
In spite of his little joke, Jerry still looked concerned. “Is it something I did?”
“No. For heaven’s sake. You’ve been great..”
“If you’re still upset about this afternoon... It.
“It’s not that. So I lost my pants in your pool? Big deal, huh? Yeah. Cripes.” She picked up her mai-tai and drank the last of it. “It’s Fredrick Holden.”
“Who?”
Gillian realized that she had slipped. Maybe it’s Freudian, she thought. Maybe I want to tell him the truth, the whole truth. And what would he think of me then? The girl’s a lunatic who gets her jollies playing Goldilocks.
“Uncle Fredrick,” she said. “I’ve found some things that have me worried.”
“That’s right, you mentioned this afternoon about his gruesome taste in books.”
“It’s more than just books. I had some time to kill before coming over and thought I’d take a look at one of his video tapes. I put one in his VCR. It was supposed to be The Howling. That’s what the case said. It turned out to be some kind of sicko sado-masochistic shit called Torture Slave. I just watched a minute of it. The thing was vile. I mean, I’ve seen a few porno movies in my time. But this was different. This was like something they don’t carry at the corner video shop. I did some snooping, and he’s got a whole bunch of movies like that. They’re all hidden inside cases for stuff like Star Wars and E.T.”
“How well do you know your Uncle Fredrick?” Jerry asked. He sounded worried.
“Not very well,” Gillian said, surprised and glad that he hadn’t made any jokes about wishing she had brought the tape along with her.
“Has he ever tried anything with you?”
She shook her head.
“It seems pretty odd that he would ask you to house-sit for him. He must’ve known that you might look at some of his videos. They weren’t hidden? They were right out in plain sight?”
“On the shelves in his den.”
“Apparently, he didn’t care if you looked at them. Maybe he
“Why would he want that?”
“I’d hate to speculate. I mean, he’s your uncle.”
Sure he is, Gillian thought.
“How long is he supposed to be away on this trip of his?”
“He told me he’d come back Thursday,” Gillian said.
Jerry frowned at her. “I think it might be a good idea for you to get out of there. I think you should leave right away, go back to your own apartment and stay away from the guy.”
“Trying to get rid of me?” Gillian asked.
“I’m serious. If those films are as bad as you say, he isn’t just a normal horny guy who enjoys skin flicks. And the fact that he left them out for you to see ... I don’t like it. I don’t think you should stay in his house. He might be planning to come back early, and ... and I don’t think you should be there when he does.”
And Jerry doesn’t even know about the scrapbook, she thought. Just the movies are enough to make him fear for my safety. Tell him about the scrapbook ...
