Chapter 7
The feelings that Kathi Palmer had experienced on that sunny day behind the junked automobiles when she was fourteen were nothing compared to those that burned within her almost perpetually two years later. She believed that she was losing her mind. Those vague, pointless feelings-Uncle Teddy's rambling, cryptic monologues that hinted of ancestral sin and an evil in the blood-the changes in her body, the blossoming of her breasts, the fuller furring of her crotch-there was no one she could turn to for help, no one who could answer her questions.
Her old experience with Edith had raised more questions than it had answered, questions that continued to plague her. Was she really part boy? Is that why she had that swollen thing at the top of her slit? Did she exude a unique odor of fishiness that constituted the Curse of the Sculthorpes? And ancient Mrs. Ermold, muttering her way through the dark galleries and ancestor-haunted halls-did she know what had made Uncle Teddy the dark, handsome, brooding recluse that he was today?
As one might suspect from all this, Kathi read a lot of Gothic novels at this stage in her development.
At least she'd learned one valuable lesson from Edith: that those unfocused yearnings could brought to a boil by rubbing her cunt. Sometimes she even achieved release from her tensions by doing this. Sometimes the release was even spectacular.
Uncle Teddy burst into her room one night armed with pistol and flashlight.
"What's wrong?" he cried.
"Huh?" Kathi asked, only her eyes showing above the sheet.
"You screamed. It was awful, a long, drawn-out wail, like you were being murdered," said Teddy with a shudder.
"Gee. Did I?"
"Certainly did. Scared the pants off me," he said, and then he blushed, apparently at his own choice of metaphor.
He gestured aimlessly with his pistol. He had turned on the light when he'd entered, and now he saw her red pajamas in a crumpled wad at the foot of her bed. He skittered a nervous glance across her eyes, conscious that she was naked beneath the sheet, every rosy, delicious, teenage inch of her.
"It's cold. You'll catch cold," he said.
"I'm hot," she said, hoping he wouldn't pick up her pajamas and notice that the crotch was soaked; then, perversely, hoping he would.
He was afraid to look at her, but he did. "Yes," he said. "You're perspiring." He inched forward until he could touch her forehead, then backed off, the old fingertip-on-the-griddle trick he'd perfected. "You're feverish. I guess you had a nightmare. That was why you screamed."
"I guess that must have been it," Kathi said, staring at the spot on his robe where his wiener was hidden and wondering what it looked like. She just couldn't picture him with a hot dog between his legs.
His eyes flickered down nervously, making sure his robe was tied. "An odd smell in here," he said. "Do you notice it?"
"Smell? Like what?"
Teddy sniffed. "Seaweed." He noted her narrowed eyes, her flaring nostrils. "Nothing personal, sweetie. The room needs airing, that's all. I'll have Mrs. Ermold look into it."
She wanted to say that she wanted him to look into it, maybe even poke around in it with his wiener, but her courage failed her.
"Should I call the doctor?" he asked.
"What for?"
"Your fever. Whatever. Do you feel all right?"
"I don't have a fever, I'm just hot," she said, and she undulated to rub her itchy backside on the bottom sheet. Teddy went pale. "Uncle Teddy?"
"Yes, sweetheart?"
"Does the doctor always make a girl take off her bra when he does her with the stethoscope? Or is it just me?"
"I don't know. I wouldn't know. I don't know about that. He does, does he? When?"
"Every time I go there. Remember, the last time I went it was for a splinter in my foot, and he made me take off my bra so he could do me with a stethoscope. He did it for about fifteen minutes. When I asked him why, he just said that you could never tell in these cases, and he didn't go to Harvard Medical School for nothing, you know. Very snotty. Then his stethoscope wasn't working, or something, so he put his ear right here-" she pointed between her breasts, a gesture that made the sweaty sheet cling tightly on either side of her nubile, her eminently nubile boobs, and nearly gave poor Teddy heart failure-"and listened to my chest with his ear. Only he was breathing so loudly I don't know how he could hear anything."
"The son of a bitch! And I put him up for the Country Club! Goddammit, I'm calling him right now!"
"Don't, Uncle Teddy! He's a doctor, after all, so he must know what he's doing. If you listened to my chest, could you tell if I was sick?"
"God, no!" Teddy gasped. "Well, if you're all right, that is, I'll be running along, and ... good night."
"Wait. Please. Don't go. Sit on the bed with me."
"No, I ... it's late. In the morning, I have to...." His voice trailed off, for he had nothing to do in the morning, or any other morning.
"I had a nightmare, Uncle Teddy. I'm frightened."
Teddy had never learned how to say no, even when his best judgment demanded it, to his delicious niece. He perched gingerly on the edge of the bed. She promptly bounced over beside him, pretending to cover herself decorously while she molded the sheet to her body like a second skin. She noticed that he was sweating now, too, even though he'd told her it was cold.
"Let me tell you about my nightmare," she said. She hadn't had any nightmare, of course: she'd screamed inadvertently in the grip of a monumental orgasm while playing with herself, but she remembered one recent dream that ought to give him something to think about, especially if she embellished it.
"In the dream I was climbing this endless stairway made out of glass. I looked up and I couldn't see anything but flight after flight, all confusing with reflections and prisms and everything. Then when I looked down I saw the same thing, and I also saw that I was naked, I mean I didn't have a stitch on my body, Uncle Teddy, it was all bare. My breasts were naked, and my belly was naked, and-"
"Yes, yes," he croaked, "you don't have to .., go on like...."
"No, I have to tell you. See, I looked down, and I didn't have my bra on, or my panties, so the part down here with the hair on it, that was naked, too. And my legs were naked. But I was wearing high-heeled shoes, that's the funny part, because I've never worn them. And I noticed that they made my legs look nicer, for some reason, because when my foot was arched like this-" here she demonstrated by thrusting her naked leg out from beneath the sheet beside Teddy's thigh and arching her foot "-it seemed to make my calves firmer, and-does it?"
"Please, you'll catch cold, get under the covers, for God's sake!" Teddy gasped.
"Anyway," she said, snuggling closer as she recovered her magnificent leg, "the walls of the stairway were transparent, too. Outside I could see only fog, moving in slow swirls. No, it wasn't fog, it was liquid, sort of like a sticky white cream. What do you suppose that could be?"
"I don't know, it's your dream."
"Yes. Well, I told myself to wake up, and I heard my voice clearly, echoing in the stairwell, only I didn't wake up, and that scared me.
"Then I got scared even more, because something moved outside, in that liquid. It slid down past the stair where I was standing. Did I tell you I was all naked? Yes, well, there I was, all bare-naked, and this big thing like a giant hot dog came sliding down past the glass, like a great big serpent. It ignored me, and I guess it was blind, because it didn't have any eyes in its head, only a little hole in the middle, like a teeny weeny mouth.
"Well, the creamy stuff had sort of cleared up, and I could see way, way down, to the slimy bottom of the sea, or whatever it was. The bottom was covered with fleshy-looking red flowers. Each flower had two thick red petals, with like a slit down the middle, and they were surrounded with leaves that were dark reddish-brown in color, only the leaves looked more like hair than anything else. Can you picture them?"
"Clearly," Teddy croaked, clawing at his eyes.
"Well, the big hot-dog thing, it slid right down toward one of these flowers with the slit in it, and it pushed inside it. I mean, the slit opened up, and this big cylindrical thing slid right into it, until it was completely swallowed up. What do you suppose this dream means, Uncle Teddy?"
"I have no idea," said Teddy, who had gone to Harvard.
"Hold my hand. I'm getting scared again," she said, seizing it before he could object and holding it in his lap. "Where was I? Yes. Well, I was scared, so I ran on up the stairs, all naked in my high heels. There was just no end to those stairs! Then it got hard to breathe, because the air smelled heavy and musky and I don't know, sort of like cod liver oil, or seaweed.
"Then the stairway ended against this oval-shaped door that was covered with a furry rug. It's funny, the furry rug was the same color as my own hair, sort of a dark reddish-brown. At least I hoped this was a door, but I couldn't figure out how to open it. Then I pushed against the middle of it, and it was real soft, sort of rubbery, and a kind of slit opened right down the middle of it. Wasn't that a funny kind of door?"
"Funny," Teddy gargled.
"Well, it was hard to push this slit open, but I did. The walls sort of had the consistency of oysters, and this was where that smell was coming from, like seaweed, and when I stuck my head inside I saw a damp, red tunnel that curved away into darkness. The air inside the tunnel was thick and damp and hot.
"Well, you can imagine how scared I was. You wouldn't want to go inside something like that, would you? Would you, Uncle Teddy?"
He shook his head in violent negation and covered his eyes. She squeezed his hand and moved it further into his lap.
"Well, I didn't know what to do. I was frightened of the stairway, but the tunnel seemed even worse, so I turned to go back down the stairs. Then I heard these noises, far below me. It sounded like voices-no, it was the gurgle of water rising inside the stairway, only it wasn't water, I knew it was that white creamy stuff. And mingled with this was a sucky, squishy noise, kind of rhythmic, that sounded like ... suck ... or ... fup ... or like something in between them ... suck ... suck ... suck ... fup ... fup ... fup ... suck ... fup ... fuck ... fuck-"
"Wait a minute! What?" Teddy demanded, turning a panicked gaze on her.
"Oh, I got my tongue twisted up. That's not a word, is it, fuck! No, I didn't think so. But that's just what the noise sounded like, it sounded like fuck. Well, I just screamed. Maybe that's what you heard, I don't know. I was sorry I did, because those sounds got closer, and came faster, they sounded like the thing had heard me and was positively eager to get at me, making these fuck-fuck-fuck noises."
"Sweetheart," Teddy said, and paused to clear his throat before resuming: "Sweetheart, that's not a real word, not really, but it's not really a nice word for a little girl to say, not really."
"What? Fuck? Why not?" asked Kathi with a look of round-eyed innocence that would have curled the toenails of a plaster saint. "If it's not even a word, what can be wrong with saying it?"
"It's ... it's not a polite word, that's what I meant."
"What does it mean?"
"It means something that's not nice to talk about ... it means a certain ... physical ... having to do with the body ... in a way that ... crude people use it," said Teddy, surprising her by giving her the closest thing she'd ever heard to a straight answer out of him on the subject.
"Well, I won't say fuck if you don't want me to say fuck, Uncle Teddy. I always try to please you, and if it offends you to hear me say fuck, then, well, I just won't say fuck anymore. You can bet that's the last time you'll ever hear me say fuck. Only I wish you'd tell me what fuck means, so I won't ever forget and go around saying fuck by accident."
"Stop saying fuck!" Teddy screamed.
"I told you, I wasn't going to say fuck anymore. What does fuck mean?"
"You wouldn't understand. You're too young."
"I'm sixteen years old."
"Yes, and you're still below the junior high school level of achievement, according to Mr. Owen," he said, attacking her from an unfair direction, she thought. "You're too young."
"Mr. Owen is a wimp."
"That's not a nice word."
"Is it as bad as fuck!"
"I told you, stop saying that."
"You said it. You said fuck, just a minute ago."
"You-the sheet-" he cried.
Gesturing to emphasize her last remark, Kathi had let the sheet drop to her waist, baring her phantasmagorical knockers to her uncle's horrified gaze. He tried to pull it back up for her, since she made no move to do so, and he tried to do it with his eyes closed. She took the opportunity to let her hand graze, as if by accident, the bulge she'd noticed in his lap. All she could tell was that it was very hard, not at all like a hot dog, more like a Genoa salami. She permitted herself to be decorously redraped while Teddy squirmed away from her touch, trying to give the illusion as he did so that no touch had occurred and that he was not trying to squirm away from the nonexistent touch.
"You should put your jammies on, darling."
"Jammies," she sneered, knowing that he was using the word in an effort to escape back to her childhood.
"Well, anyway, you have to go to sleep now, sweetie. It's very, very late. Mr. Owen will want you to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning for your lessons."
"Mr. Owen has dates with boys."
Teddy had a coughing fit.
"He tells me about them, he tells me how he took Dennis to the restaurant, or Roger to the theater, or Lester to the museum. It makes me sick. If he can have dates with boys, why can't I?"
"That's not dates, that's friends going places together and it has nothing to do with you, because you're too young. Now, it's time to go to sleep."
"I haven't told you about my nightmare. I'm still scared."
Teddy shot her a haggard, red-eyed look that seemed to be a plea for mercy. But he patted her hand, edging it away from his lap as he did so, and nodded for her to go on.
"Where was I? I remember. This giant thing, like a big salami, it had gotten into the stairwell and it was chasing me. It had heard me scream. So I squeezed inside the cave. It was very, very tight, but the walls gave when I pushed them. They were all covered with this slimy stuff that smelled like seaweed, and pretty soon my whole body was all covered with it. I told you that I was bare-naked, didn't I? The tunnel was so narrow and tight that I had to crawl.
"Then this is the horrible part, I had to crawl very slowly, and I knew the thing was gaining on me. Then I felt something touch my behind. My behind was all bare. I screamed, because I knew that the hot-dog thing had caught up with me and was nudging against my bare-naked behind. Wasn't that awful?"
Teddy nodded, his face a twisted mask of agony, and he refused to meet her inquiring stare.
"I couldn't really turn around. I had to turn over and lie on my back so I could see it. It was squeezing the red walls of the cave wide apart, filling them with its big, round head, like a big ball with a teeny weeny mouth in it. I kicked at it with my high heels, but it just kept on coming and pushing me deeper into the cave.
"I was crying-no not crying, sort of moaning, actually, going, 'oh, oh, oh, oooh,' like that, and this thing kept following me and nudging me deeper. I fell, and I knew that it was going to crush me, so I clawed at it, tugging myself upward and holding onto its head. My bare belly was pressed right against the toothless little mouth in the thing's face. I felt the mouth oozing out some kind of white cream that flowed down my naked legs to mix with the fishy-smelling ooze on the floor of the cave.
"I had to hold the thing with my bare legs and my arms and mold my naked body right against it in order to avoid being ground beneath it. But as I rode it inward, hugging it like that, I began to feel different about the whole thing. I thought the thing was going to be cold and clammy, but it wasn't at all, it made me all warm and nice-feeling. Sliding in like that, with the tight walls stroking my naked body, gave me a delicious sensation. Then I did a funny thing. I pressed my lips right down on the monster's head and kissed it. Can you imagine that?"
"I thought this was supposed to be a nightmare."
"Well, it was, before. That must have been when you heard me scream."
"Then you're all right now, sweetie, right?"
"Yes, but I want to tell you the rest of my dream."
"Please. It's too late. And I have to go to the bathroom."
"Whenever anything ever gets interesting around here, you have to go to the bathroom."
Teddy winced. "Don't talk nonsense. Good night, dear girl."
"Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite," Kathi said, flashing a wicked flicker of white thigh as she bounced herself under the covers.
She went promptly to sleep and dreamed of lambs and lollipops and of a talking dog named Bob who persuaded her to run away with him on his motorcycle and join the circus. They went instead to Spain where they witnessed a colorful Horrida del Burros, aswarm with flamboyant piccolos, dashing matterhorns, fearless stevedores, all of them executing flawless graceful veronicas and betties, with an occasional archie thrown in.
Several times during the night she floated half way up from slumber and was dimly aware of Uncle Teddy's groans emanating from the bathroom. She wondered sleepily what he could be doing in there for so long.