The Road To Deliverance

by James, Harper

She slapped at her butt a couple times before he got any ideas about doing it for her. No, that wasn’t right. He already had the ideas, she just beat him to it.

  ‘I’d have done that for you.’

  She showed him her teeth, hoped it looked like a death mask. Thank you but no thank you.

  ‘You broke down, Miss?’

  She nodded, pointed to the flat tire.

  ‘I’ve got a flat. I was trying to fix it and fell into the road.’

  His eyebrows went up in surprise. But it was something other than surprise in the heavily-lidded eyes themselves, something that made her mouth dry.

  ‘You on your own, Miss?’

  It might have been an innocent question. A sexist innocent question perhaps—why else would a woman be changing a wheel if she had a man to do it for her?

  Somehow it didn’t feel right.

  They walked over to take a closer look.

  ‘Well, how bad can it be?’ The smile on his face grew wider. ‘It’s only flat on the bottom.’

  He laughed, showing her a mouthful of bad teeth, sharing with her a reminder of what he’d had for his dinner. She joined in to keep him happy, the sound setting her teeth on edge.

  ‘I’ll soon have it fixed for you, Miss.’

  He moved his car so his lights illuminated her wheel. Then he retrieved the lug wrench from where she’d dropped it. He fitted it back on the lug, loosened it off without any effort at all, moved on to the next one. She stared at his hands as he worked. They made her skin crawl. His fingers were long and bony, the nails dirty. The back of his hand was covered with tattoos, the sort that looked as if he’d done them himself. In prison. She was glad she couldn’t make out what they were, shuddered as she imagined hands like that invading her body. And they say there’s someone for everyone. No way.

  She stood back, watched as he finished loosening the lugs. Held out her hand towards the wrench.

  ‘I’ll hold that for you.’

  ‘That’s okay. You don’t want to get your hands dirty.’

  He kept hold of it as he got the jack out of the trunk. He laid the wrench on the ground beside him on the side away from her, made a particular point of doing so.

  ‘You can sit in my car if you like, Miss. It’s warmer in there.’

  ‘It’s okay. I’m not cold.’

  He stopped what he was doing. Stared at her. At her breasts. That stare curdled her blood.

  ‘Whatever.’ He snickered to himself, licked his thin lips. ‘You looked to me like you were cold, that’s all.’

  She knew exactly what he was talking about. She was only too aware of the effect the cold night air was having on her. Despite that, there was no way she was getting in his car. She snuck a surreptitious look at it anyway to memorize his license plate number. The interior was completely black even though the door was open. Either the dome light was broken or he’d deliberately disabled it. Then she saw something that made her pulse quicken. Exhaust fumes on the breeze, drifting through the beams of his lights. He’d left the engine running. She wrapped her arms around herself, slapped her sides.

  Don’t overdo it.

  ‘Actually, I am a bit chilly.’

  ‘Go ahead. I couldn’t help noticing that’s a very thin top you’ve got on for this time of year. Almost like you’ve not got anything on at all.’

  He glanced at his car, body stiffening. He stood up, walked with her towards it. ‘Oops. Don’t want to waste gas.’ He leaned in quickly through the driver’s door, pulled the key out of the ignition. ‘Gotta think of the planet too.’

  ‘Your battery will go flat if you leave the lights on.’

  She caught a hint of desperation in her voice, knew he’d heard it too.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s new. This won’t take long.’

  Her heart sank. Now she had to get in. If she turned around and walked away with him, he’d know what she’d been thinking. She sat down on the edge of the passenger seat with her legs out of the car.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  She screamed, legs exploding into life under her, powering her upwards into the hard metal door frame at the sound of the small voice from the back seat. The impact stunned her, knocked her back into the car. She landed heavily in the seat, a spring jabbing into her through the worn upholstery. If the battery was new, it was the only thing that was.

  A small hand touched her shoulder. She twisted violently in her seat, saw a tiny old woman dressed all in black, almost lost in the big back seat.

  ‘I’m sorry, child. I didn’t mean to scare you.’

  Sarah fell back into the seat, let her head flop backwards. She closed her eyes, tried to get some air into her chest. It was like a horse was sitting on her. The old woman’s hand touched her cheek. She threw herself forward, her skin crawling.

  ‘I’m blind. I cain’t see you.’

  And that makes it okay to paw my face does it?

  ‘Give me your hand, child.’

  The woman’s voice was still small, a faint tremor in it. Despite that, Sarah felt it compelling her. There was no way to refuse. She stretched out her hand between the seats. The old woman took it in hers, ran her fingers over the soft, warm flesh, savoring it.

  ‘You’ve got beautiful skin, child.’ She lifted Sarah’s hand to her nose. ‘Smells real nice, too. Nicer than Jacob. And some of those others.’

  ‘I’ve got a flat,’ Sarah said, not knowing how to respond to a comment like that, desperate to say something, anything to take her mind off the feel of the old woman’s probing fingers.

  Any second now the old hag would want to lick her too. She supposed biting wasn’t far behind.

  ‘Jacob will soon have it fixed for you. He’s good with his hands.’

  Sarah got a mental picture of Jacob’s hands. The long, bony fingers, the dirty nails, the tattoos. She didn’t want to think what hands and fingers like that were good at doing.

  She tried to pull her hand away. The old woman’s fingers dug in harder at first, refused to release their grip. Without warning she let go. Sarah almost cracked the windshield with her elbow, she drew her arm back so fast.

  ‘You go talk to Jacob, now. Keep him company. He’s a good boy, he don’t mean no harm. He cain’t hep himself, sometimes, that’s all.’ She gave a small, self-deprecating laugh. ‘You don’t want to talk to some old blind woman. Jacob likes to talk with pretty young things like you. He don’t get much opportunity these days, on account of caring for me.’

  Sarah couldn’t decide what was worse. Jacob, who liked talking—and doing who knows what else—to pretty young things like her, or the old woman, and risk another, more thorough exploration from those gnarled fingers.

  She got out the car, a whispered God bless to see her on her way. The words made her shudder more than anything else the woman had said.

  Jacob had a smirk on his face when she got back to her car.

  ‘Sounds like you met mother.’

  He’d done it deliberately, not told her she was in the back. The light worked just fine too when he wanted it to.

  ‘Do you mind if I watch?’ She gave him her best helpless girly simper. ‘You look like you really know what you’re doing. I might learn something.’

  He shrugged, went back to work. He began to whistle tunelessly, the melody unidentifiable, unrecognizable as it slipped through his bad teeth. Something about it unnerved her, this horrible sound desecrating the quiet of the night. She wanted to scream at him to stop. The alternative was worse—talking to him. His mother’s words wouldn’t give her any peace.

  Jacob likes to talk with pretty young things like you.

  He stopped whistling and she knew God hated her, despite the old woman’s parting God bless.

  ‘Where are you headed, Miss?’

  She couldn’t think straight. And if he called her Miss one more time, she was just going to take off running down the road.

  ‘I’m on my way home.’

  He nodded to himself as he jacked up t
he car.

  ‘You live around here, Miss?’

  She didn’t know what to say. The truth?

  No, I’m miles from home stuck in the middle of nowhere—and, by the way, nobody knows where I am.

  ‘Yes. Not far.’

  ‘Yeah, us too. We live in Wolf Springs. Out near Crescent lake. It’s real nice. Got a big old house. What about you?’

  It was the question she’d been dreading. Was he trying to catch her out? Was there even anywhere called Wolf Springs around here? Her mouth opened and closed without anything coming out. His mouth curled up in a smug gotcha grin.

  A double beep from Cole’s phone on the passenger seat saved her from digging herself further into a hole.

  ‘Excuse me. I’ve been expecting an urgent message.’

  She dashed around to the other side of the car, grabbed the phone. She didn’t want to look. Even so, it had to be better than being stuck talking to creepy Jacob. She opened the text.

  Don’t want you getting a bum STEER on what’s gonna happen.

  What the hell was that about? And why was the word steer capitalized?

  There was another image, of course. You don’t need to look she told herself. It’s only an excuse to get away from Jacob.

  She looked anyway. Couldn’t help herself.

  She let out a startled gasp, her hand clamped over her mouth as she stared at it. Jay again, arms still suspended from the meat hook. A close-up this time. Shirt unbuttoned, hanging loosely open. Framing the muscular stomach of a man who looks after himself. And on it, right above the waistband of his jeans, a tattoo. A pair of horns, a horseshoe between them.

  Except it wasn’t a tattoo. Because tattoos aren’t red and angry. Tattoos don’t make you imagine you can smell burning meat. Or flesh.

  It was a cattle brand.

  There was something else. Something scrawled across his stomach, right above the brand. It looked as if it had been drawn with a finger dipped in blood. Just three letters.

  KKK

  What? Her mind was spinning, awash with impossible thoughts. Surely that couldn’t be Ku Klux Klan. If Jay was black it might make sense. Or was it that whoever had him thought he was a member—

  ‘Something wrong, Miss?’

  She jumped. She’d almost forgotten he was there. His leering face stared at her over the roof of the car. Thank God he couldn’t see the photo from where he was. She didn’t want to give him any ideas. Any more ideas. If she’d ever met anyone who might be a Klan member, Jacob was that man.

  ‘No . . . I’m fine,’ she said, the tremor in her voice proof of the lie.

  She looked away quickly, pretended to read the text until he bent down again, his face disappearing from sight. He pulled off the wheel, rolled it around to the trunk.

  ‘You sure you’re okay, Miss?’ He heaved the spare out of the trunk, wheeled it towards the front. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  No, just somebody soon to be one—because of me.

  And the way things were going she was about to get her comeuppance—divine retribution delivered at the hands of Jacob, a good boy who cared for his ageing mother, didn’t get out much as a result, but still found the time to rape a young woman every now and then.

  They were both quiet as he fitted the spare then jacked the car back down to the ground. Maybe he was thinking about what might happen next. She sure as hell was. She glanced at all the junk on the back seat, tried to see if there was anything to use as a weapon if he tried anything.

  Immediately a pang of guilt pierced her. All he’d done so far was stop for a stranger in the middle of the night to change their wheel for them. Perhaps his mother had been asleep in the back and he’d disabled the light so as not to wake her when he got out. It was the sort of thing her dad or one of her brothers would do.

  Except he was nothing like her dad or her brothers.

  And his mother was blind.

  He was almost done. She watched him lift the wheel with the flat into the trunk like it was made of air. She didn’t know what she wanted. She didn’t want him to finish. That’s when she’d find out what he was really like. But she desperately wanted to get back on the road, back to Cole. Try to make amends.

  Nothing on the back seat was going to help her. Jacob had the lug wrench, the only thing that might have been any good, in his hand. He fitted it back in its place. Closed the trunk firmly. The solid clunk resonated in the pit of her stomach. The only potential weapon safely out of the way.

  ‘All done.’

  His voice sounded like the whispered words of an executioner to a condemned man as he fussed with the hood over his head. He wiped his hands on his pants. They looked like he did that a lot.

  ‘Thank you so much. I’d never have managed on my own.’

  She didn’t know what to do. She ran her hand over her face, feeling as if the sky itself was closing in on her.

  It wasn’t my fault.

  She was standing by the passenger door. He was next to the trunk. Should she go around the back and risk him grabbing her? Or around the front which would tell him she was expecting him to try something? Climb through the middle, perhaps?

  She needn’t have worried. It wasn’t her call anyway.

  He took a step towards her. Smiled, a gray, wintry affair like a blight on every living thing.

  ‘Always happy to lend a hand. Especially to a pretty young girl all on her own.’

  She didn’t like the emphasis he put on all on her own.

  She took a half step backwards. The smile widened on his lips until it looked like a knife slash across his face. The game was on. She wanted to scream at him:

  Your mother’s waiting in your car over there, you disgusting creature.

  He took another step forward. Then craned his head, squinted. What the hell was he doing? Then it clicked. He was trying to see what was on the phone in her hand. The image of Jay strung up was still center stage.

  ‘Oh, my.’ He shook his head, swallowed thickly. ‘The things you young people get up to. Mother would tan my hide for something like that.’

  She turned the screen away from him. It was too late, the damage was done. His tone told her that it didn’t matter what she did or didn’t do from now on, because nothing could save her from him.

  A sudden gust of wind came out of nowhere. Caught the long greasy strands of hair combed across the baldness on the top of his head. He slapped them back down angrily.

  ‘You’ve got dirt on your clothes. You missed it before.’ He ran his eyes up and down her as if she was a piece of meat hanging from a hook, not Jay. ‘Let me brush it off for you. You don’t want to make your seats all dirty.’

  His eyes were all over her breasts.

  What part of my breasts do you think is going to be touching the seats?

  The answer made something die inside her.

  All of them when he forces you face down onto the back seat, his bony hand gripping the back of your neck.

  He was so close she saw the grime in the wrinkles around his eyes, smelled the grease in his hair, the dirt under his nails. His fetid breath washed over her face, made her clamp her lips tightly shut lest she taste it on her tongue, like kissing a drunk who’d thrown up in an alley.

  In her hand, Cole’s phone was about to crack from her grip. He put out his hand, brushed her breast lightly. Left a dirty smear of axle grease. She felt his strength in his touch, his rage, his capacity to inflict pain and hurt, the old testament spitefulness that drove him. A shudder shook her whole body. Her stomach heaved. Still her limbs refused to respond.

  ‘Oops, silly me. I put more dirt on than I knocked off. Let me try that again—’

  The ring of Cole’s phone shattered the silence.

  They both jumped.

  Her legs came back to life. She stepped backwards, glanced down at the screen. At that moment she’d have happily talked to Jay’s abductors, anything other than the touch of Jacob’s hands on her body. It wasn’t any number C
ole had in his contacts.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Sarah?’

  She wanted to cry at the sound of Cole’s voice.

  She looked up into Jacob’s face, eyes lit with pure hatred, the intensity of it rocking her on her heels.

  See, I’m not alone. You better get the hell out of here.

  He wasn’t going anywhere.

  She gasped as he casually slapped the phone out of her grip with one hand, the other reaching for her throat.

  Chapter 26

  COLE HEARD A sharp gasp. Then a noise like the phone dropped in the dirt.

  ‘Hello?’ No answer. ‘Sarah?’

  Muffled cries in the background. A man’s voice. Shouting, not quite sane.

  Bitch.

  A loud slap rang out. And another cry that was half gasp, half sob.

  What the hell was going on?

  Stupid. It was obvious what was going on. But where? And why?

  Then Sarah’s voice:

  Get your filthy hands off me you disgusting pervert.

  There was a pitiful yelp of pain. A man this time. Only one thing causes a man to utter a noise as godforsaken as that. Then more sounds. Something banged hard against sheet metal, a low groan.

  Everything went quiet for an excruciating moment.

  ‘Cole?’

  Her voice was shaking as she heaved in great lungsful of air. It didn’t disguise the grim satisfaction behind it, the sound of a person discovering a new and unimagined side to themselves.

  ‘I’m here. What’s happening?’

  You dirty bitch rang out from behind her. Then a different sound altogether, one that made him think of shoe leather hitting a person’s face.

  ‘I haven’t got time. Call me in five minutes.’

  The phone went dead.

  They were the longest five minutes of his life—and they were only three anyway—before he called back.

  ‘I am so sorry.’ Her voice sounded so forlorn it made the back of his eyes prick.

  ‘It’s not your fault. What happened? Are you okay?’

  She was on the verge of tears, trying hard to hold it together.

  ‘I got a flat and I was trying to change the wheel and the lugs were so tight and I fell in the road and banged my head and almost got run down by this creepy guy who changed it for me and then started trying to rape me—’