Tread Softly

chair.

Scott handed a drink to her, and they both sat down. 'I dig your outfit,' he said.

'Does it flatter my contusions?'

The bruises were yellow-green blotches on the tanned skin of her shoulders and breasts and arms. The teeth marks were darker than the discolored skin surrounding them. Looking at them brought back the horrible night — finding her motionless in the tent, the dread when he didn't know whether she was alive or.

'Do you have to stare?'

'Can't help myself,' he said, managing a smile. 'You're damn near naked.'

'You're staring at the bruises.'

'Nope, at your full, firm breasts.'

She laughed and took a sip of her drink, shutting her eyes as her face tilted toward the sun.

'I talked to Julie. She's inviting Nick over to have dinner with us.'

'Oh, that'll be nice.'

'Even nicer that they're going out tonight. Now, if I can just get Tanya to take Benny to a movie or something. '

'Do you think that'd be a good idea?'

'Sure. We'd have the house to ourselves for a few hours.'

'He might be better off staying home.'

'Ah, you don't want to be alone with me.'

'I'm serious, Scott. He went through a hellish experience this morning. If I were him, I wouldn't want to go out tonight. I'd want to stay here safe with my dad.'

'Yeah, I guess I shouldn't push it. With you here, he wouldn't want to leave anyway. In fact, when he found out you'd be coming over, he almost didn't go to the library.' Scott raised his hand, forefinger and thumb a quarter inch apart. 'He was that close to staying home. If I'd just — '

Karen shook her head, stopping him. 'There are always those ifs when something goes wrong. We can't blame ourselves. It's just a bunch of little choices that don't mean anything till the shit hits the fan, and then you look back and see how you got there. And you find a whole string of ifs going back forever.'

'I suppose. But if Benny'd stayed home this morning — '

'He wouldn't have needed to go looking for a witch-

craft book at all if we'd never gone camping. And we wouldn't have gone if you and I hadn't met.'

'There's an if I'd hate to change,' Scott said.

She smiled at him. 'Me, too. But you've got to admit it's one of the links in the chain. If we hadn't met, Benny wouldn't have been attacked this morning.'

You wouldn't have been beaten and raped, he thought. From the somber look on Karen's face, he wondered if she were thinking the same thing. If we'd never met.

Frowning, she took a drink. Scott watched a drop of water fall from her glass, splash the glossy skin of her chest, and roll down between her breasts. She wiped it away. 'Anyhow,' she said, 'it gets slightly ridiculous when you think about it too much. The ifs are endless.'

'I suppose so,' Scott admitted. 'So, have you come up with any marvelous theories about what happened to Benny?'

'I thought of something. He said the lights went out a second after the hand grabbed him. Unless we want to accept magic as the explanation, there must've been another person involved — someone to turn off the lights while the other attacked him.'

'I wonder if it might've been a practical joke,' Scott said. 'A couple of students figuring it'd be a kick to throw a scare into him. After he ran off, they hid themselves somewhere.'

'That still doesn't explain the finger.'

'Well, if it didn't actually break off. Benny must've been in a panic, disoriented. He could've just bent it back, maybe even broken it, but only imagined it came off.'

'He sounded pretty sure.'

Scott sighed. 'I just don't — ' He heard a door slide open behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Julie step out. She walked forward, frowning down at the concrete deck. She'd left the door open, but she seemed lost in thought, troubled, so Scott didn't tell her to shut it. She turned a deck chair toward him and Karen, and sat down without speaking.

'What is it?' Scott asked.

'I called Nick,' she said in a distracted, barely audible voice. She was hunched over, elbows braced on the armrests of her chair, staring down with half-shut eyes.

'Can't he make it?' Scott asked.

'Maybe. He's not sure. He's. gotta stay home with Heather. His dad's at the hospital.'

'Flash? My God, what happened to him?'

Julie shook her head. 'Not him. They got a call, and he went over. It's Alice and Rose.' She looked up at Scott with confusion in her eyes. 'They were attacked by a dog. This morning. It was supposed to be dead, I guess. Alice hit it with the car, and she was driving it to a vet's to have it. taken care of. Then it attacked them. I guess it bit them.'

'Jesus,' Karen muttered.

'How bad are they?' Scott asked.

'Nick said they're operating on his mom's hand. It got her worse than Rose. They're in pretty good shape, I guess, except for bites on their hands and arms. Nick said they'd probably be home this afternoon.'

'Alice is in surgery?'

'Just for her hand. Some tendons or muscles or something have to be fixed.'

'Well. ' Sighing, Scott gazed at the shiny surface of his drink. 'Thank God it's nothing worse.'

Julie rubbed her face with both hands, and leaned back in her chair as if exhausted. 'Maybe Benny's right,' she mumbled.

'It's just coincidence, honey.'

'Is it?'

'Of course. Come on, you don't actually believe that a curse — '

'I don't want to believe it,' she said in a tired voice. 'But Benny, and now this.'

'I admit it's a bit weird, both things happening the same day, but it's just a freakish coincidence.'

'Two is a coincidence,' Karen said, frowning down at her Bloody Mary. 'Three is… I nearly died last night.'

Scott gazed at her, stunned.

'I realize accidents happen all the time, people falling in the bathtub, but I've never done it before. Oh, I've slipped a couple of times, but last night I took a real header. If Meg hadn't pulled me out when she did…' Karen smiled crookedly. She stirred her drink with a forefinger, the cubes clinking on the sides of the glass. 'I was out cold under the water when she found me. A couple more minutes…' She shrugged a bare shoulder. 'I wonder if they really put a tag on your big toe. It seems so ludicrous, doesn't it? I suppose they do. Who's gonna object, right?'

'My God, Karen.'

'Are you all right?' Julie asked.

'Well, I'm here to tell the tale. Yeah, I'm okay.' Looking at Scott, she raised her eyebrows. 'What do you think?'

He felt dazed. He could think of nothing to say. He shook his head.

'Coincidence or the curse?' she prodded.

'I… I just don't know.'

'She said she'd get us,' Julie muttered.

'On the bright side,' Karen said, 'at least nobody's been seriously hurt or killed.'

'Not yet.'

'Look,' Scott said, 'curse or no curse, sometimes you have bad luck and accidents. These things just happen. We'll only make matters worse if we start thinking that woman's causing it all.'

'But what if she is?' Julie asked. 'What if this is just the beginning?'