Read Online Dagon by Fred Chappell - Free Book Online

“My God,” she said. “Look at your wrist. It looks horrible. Just look at your poor wrist.”
    He was totally ashamed; dropped his injured hand into the water, hid it behind his naked left thigh. “It’s nothing,” he said.
    â€œIt’s not nothing. It’s all torn up. Here, let me see it. We’re going to have to do something about that. It looks just awful.”
    â€œIt’s all right, it’s nothing.”
    She searched his face with the cool gray gaze. It felt like a spray of cold water on him. He discovered that he wanted to cower away from her stare; now she had the goods on him, now she knew his whole guilt. She stepped carefully away from him and around and set the cup and saucer atop the cistern of the toilet. Then she came back, sat on the tub edge. “It’s not all right. How can you say that? It’s raw and bleeding.…Here.” She reached for the wrist, but he jerked it away, behind his back.
    â€œNo,” he said.
    She straightened herself, shook water from her gleaming plump hand. She began to talk slowly, in a quiet voice. “Peter, what is it? What’s been wrong with you lately? What hap­pened up there in that attic?”
    He shook his head. “Nothing; nothing hap­pened. I was just being silly, messing around with those chains.”
    â€œThat’s not right.” She too shook her head, setting the blond strands atwitch. “I’ve never seen you like that. I’ve never seen anyone like that.” She rubbed her eyes with her forearm. “I hope I never see anybody in such a state again.”
    She was merciless. He waited, but finally had to speak. “There’s nothing wrong. I just got too curious about the chains. Like the monkeys you were talking about. There’s not much that can happen to a fellow alone in an attic, after all.” And now he felt that he was betraying her, be­traying both of them. But, really, wasn’t it merely a harmless lie designed to shelter her feelings?
    â€œOh, that’s not right, that’s not right at all.” Verge of exasperation. “You know it’s not like that.…Because it’s been going on too long. There’s been something wrong with you ever since we got to the farm.”
    â€œWhat’s that? What are you talking about?” A question meant to embarrass her, to force her to describe behavior for which there was no good description; thus, to draw from her an accusation because of the lack of concrete­ness. Perhaps an accusation was what he most wanted….
    She skirted the trap as easily as a plump dowa­ger, lifting her hem demurely, would avoid a puddle. She looked at his dampening forehead. “I don’t think this place is healthy for you, I know it’s not. I don’t think we ever should have come here.”
    Now he knew he was on safer ground, but he didn’t feel any more confident. “That’s pretty silly, don’t you think? I mean, really; it sounds like something out of a horror story or a Bela Lugosi movie or something….It doesn’t really mean anything, does it?”
    She rose slowly (but she was angry) and began walking up and down, taking precise military strides like a man. How often it had seemed to Peter that she was a man, maybe more male in the way it counted than he….“Don’t you do that,” she said. Baldly warning tone. “Don’t you patronize me. Don’t say to me, 1 mean , really . You’re not the kind to patronize, you don’t have the weight. And you know me too well. You know I don’t talk just to be talking.”
    â€œI didn’t mean it that way. Of course I didn’t. But you’ll have to admit, the way you, put it, it does seem sort of silly and made-up.”
    â€œNo, it doesn’t.” She was behind him now, standing still. Her voice was tight and even. “But you’ve made up your mind not