Strange Seed by Stephen Mark Rainey Page B

gift.”   Another shrug.    “You should be flattered, I guess.”
    Rachel attempted a smile.   “He gives me more credit than I deserve.   He makes me feel like I can’t help but disappoint him.   If I do have some sort of gift, it’s certainly not very dependable.”
    “What do you mean?”
    She averted her eyes.   “I don’t know. I guess it’s just a matter of knowing something one moment, then forgetting it the next.”
    “’Something’?”
    She smiled a little.   “That’s the best I can do.   I can’t tell you what I don’t know.   Sorry.”
    Paul raised his eyebrows—confusion mixed with gentle admonishment.   He felt, Rachel was sure, that she was hiding something from him.
    “Uh-huh,” he said.   “This is all getting very cryptic, isn’t it?   Never mind.   Lumas”—he nodded toward the bedroom—“thinks he’s dying, as I told you.   And he may be right, for all I know.   So anything he says I guess we can chalk up to that…”
    “Do you think he’s dying, Paul?”
    “How should I know?   Am I a doctor?   No.   But he’s been coughing up blood—you saw that.”   She grimaced.   “It might be tuberculosis, maybe an ulcer—“   He turned his head sharply to the left, his gaze on the darkened bedroom doorway, and put his hands on the arms of the chair, as if preparing to stand.   “Hank?” he called.   “Stay in bed, for God’s sake!   You’re in no condition…”   He stood, grabbed the kerosene lamp from the table beside the chair, and held it out so its light fell dimly into the bedroom.   He saw that Lumas was sitting up on the bed.   “Hank, lie down—you need to rest.”   Lumas stood very slowly, right hand to his stomach, the other hand against the bedpost.
    “For Christ’s sake!” Paul muttered.   Out of the corner of his eye he saw slight movement on the couch.   He looked.   The child’s eyes had opened.
    Lumas appeared in the bedroom doorway, his right hand still clutching his stomach.   “Hank,” Paul said, “please…go back to bed; you’re a sick man.”   He took a few quick steps toward Lumas, stopped, and saw to his left that the child had thrown the blanket to the floor.   “Rachel,”—he glanced at her—“cover him, would you?”   Rachel nodded, stood, went over to the couch, stooped over, picked up the blanket.
    “Leave him be, Missus!” Lumas demanded.  
    Rachel looked up at him, then questioningly at Paul, who said, “Cover him, Rachel.”
    “I said leave him be!” Lumas shouted.   A hint of violence had been added to the overwhelming power of his voice.
    Rachel nervously straightened the blanket and looked confusedly at her husband.   “Paul?”
    “For Christ’s sake, cover him, Rachel!”
    Lumas’s movements were impossibly quick.   In a second he was above the child, and, in the next second, his huge hands had encircled the child’s throat.   For an instant, from opposite vantage points, Paul and Rachel watched a trembling, surrealistic tableau—blue veins bulging on the back of Lumas’s hands, and the firm muscles and arteries of the child’s neck bulging above them.
    Then Paul, lantern still in his right hand, threw his left arm around Lumas’s throat and pulled.   “Jesus Christ, Hank!” he hissed.   “Let go, let go!”   But the older man’s strength was immense.   Paul held the lantern out for Rachel; she dropped the blanket and took the lantern.   Paul threw his freed arm around Lumas’s chest, planted his feet firmly on the floor, and pulled hard.   “Rachel!” he shouted.   “His hands, get his hands!”   But before Rachel could act, Paul broke the man’s grip on the child and the two of them—Paul and Lumas—fell backward to the floor.
    In the moment’s silence that followed, Paul knew that one of his ribs had been cracked or broken.   A lower rib, he guessed—his sudden, panicked breathing was agony.   “Rachel,” he moaned, “get him off!”