Final Scream

by Lisa Jackson

  Sunny had grabbed a rag, but she was small and all she succeeded in doing was spreading the milk in wider circles.

  “Damn it, girl, you’re just as bad as your ma.” He walked to the porch and found a rag mop. “Now start over,” he said, throwing the mop at her. She barely caught the long wooden handle in her small fingers. “And do it right. You cost me a bundle today, let me tell you.”

  Sunny’s stomach trembled. She pushed the mop, but the strings were dry and the milk seeped everywhere, running under the table and along the old scratched baseboards.

  “Don’t you know nothin’?” Isaac yelled, cursing idiot daughters.

  “Papa, I’m trying.” Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “Well, try harder!” He drank from his glass, draining the amber liquid, and the look on his face was pure hatred. “I should never have married her, you know. But she was knocked up and I thought you were a boy.” His lips curled into a sneer. “Instead you were a girl, and a useless one at that. Can’t even mop a floor. Well, you’d better get used to it, Sunny, ’cause it’s all you’re ever gonna be good for. Women’s work. Squaw labor. Jesus, I was a fool to marry her!” He tossed back his drink, and Sunny bit her lip to keep tears from raining from her eyes. Never had her father spoken so roughly to her. Many times he’d cursed his wife for being so beautiful, for tricking him into marriage, for being barren when it came to having more children. Sunny had heard their arguments, how he claimed that she’d wanted it before they were married, and how she’d screamed that he’d raped her and only married her to keep her father from cutting out his heart.

  The arguments were ugly and vicious. Sunny had quivered in her small bed, holding her hands over her ears, feeling as if she were the cause of all the pain in the house. Her father hadn’t wanted her, and her mother, though she loved her daughter, had been forced to live with a man she loathed.

  Swallowing against the horrid lump in her throat, Sunny pushed the mop again, and her father laughed at her futile efforts, that wicked, ugly laugh he used whenever Mama tried to defy him. “You are useless,” he said, shaking his head as the cat hopped down from the windowsill and began lapping the edges of the river of milk. Isaac muttered a curse and kicked hard.

  “Don’t!” Sunny yelled.

  With a shrieking meow the tabby went flying, sailing over the table to thud against the wall. Hissing and growling, it slid to safety behind the wheezing refrigerator.

  Isaac turned back to his daughter, who had dropped the mop to run after her pet. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Kitty—”

  He grabbed at the collar of her dress. “It’ll be fine,” he growled, his breath hot with whiskey and smoke. “Now you just do what you’re told and clean this mess, or I’ll have to take a strap to you, ya hear?”

  “No!” she cried and his smile twisted even more.

  Sunny tried to scramble away, but her bare feet slipped on the wet linoleum. Her father didn’t let go. Still holding her by the collar with one fist, he began to slowly unbuckle his belt.

  “No! Papa, no!” Sunny cried.

  “It’s time you learned your place around here. Turn around!”

  She shivered and tears filled her eyes. “Please, don’t—”

  “Believe me, girl, this will hurt me more than it does you.” He slid the belt through his pants and Sunny noticed his eyes, dark and burning with an unholy light, spittle collected beneath his ragged moustache, and then…in a sudden vision, she saw him falling to the ground and clutching at his chest, his eyes rolling up in his head, his skin turning blue, and her mother standing over him, never bothering to reach for the phone, though he was gasping for breath and cursing her and telling her to call an ambulance. The vision was so clear that she forgot where she was until she felt the first bite of the belt slap hard against her rump. She screamed loudly as the vision faded in a ripple of pain. Her knees gave out, but he jerked her to her feet.

  “Don’t hit me!”

  The belt bit through her shorts again. Pain ripped through her buttocks. “Papa, don’t!” she screamed and sobbed and begged, but still he held her.

  “Now you seem to be gettin’ it!”

  He raised up his right hand again, but stopped in midair when the screen door opened and banged hard against the wall. Lily, carrying a bucket of beans from the garden in one hand, a butcher knife in the other, glowered at him. Rage burned in her cheeks. Fury glowed in her dark eyes.

  “Let her go,” Lily ordered, her lips barely moving, her nostrils quivering in repressed violence.

  He snorted. “You don’t scare me!”

  “Let her go.” Lily’s lips flattened and she glared at him with a hatred so intense that Sunny inwardly shrank away from both her parents though her father still held her so tightly she could barely breathe.

  “She defied me. I’m just teaching her to obey.”

  “And I’m going to teach you not to hurt her ever again.”

  He laughed and his grip eased a little. Sunny squirmed, her feet gaining purchase. She twisted away from her father but slipped, falling facedown into the sticky mess.

  Isaac’s anger centered on his wife. “You’re gonna pay for this!”

  “What you do to me has nothing to do with her.” Lily’s pail slid to the floor, rolling and spilling long beans onto the already dirty floor, but the tanned fingers surrounding the knife never loosened their deathlike grip.

  “I’ll kill you.” His lips curved into an evil smile “Then what will she do, eh?” He hooked a thumb at his daughter. “She’ll have to take over for you, won’t she? Do the squaw work around here. I’ll marry myself a nice white woman, a young one who’ll do what I say and give me sons, and your kid, she’ll be our little slave.”

  Lily placed her other hand around the knife, curling her long fingers over the bone handle, and a blank look came over her face. She began saying things—over and over—chanting words that Sunny didn’t understand, and the smirk on Isaac’s face faded. He stepped backward, dropping his belt as the strange litany continued. The buckle banged against the floor.

  Sunny’s hand snaked forward and she grabbed the horrid strap of old leather.

  “Don’t you put no curse on me,” he sputtered, backing away from his wife and stumbling against a chair.

  The chanting continued, soft and low, but endless, rolling like thunder over the far hills.

  “For the love of Mary! Woman, what are you doing to me?” As if struck by a force that couldn’t be seen, Isaac jerked backward. His legs wobbled. With a horrid gasp, he clutched at his chest. “Oh, God,” he whispered. “Sweet Jesus, she’s crazy. Save me.” His knees buckled and he fell to the milky floor, his face turning blue, his hand over his heart. “Call an ambulance!” he sputtered, but the chanting continued and Lily stepped forward, through the spilled milk, crushing the beans with her bare feet, the knife still held aloft, the intonation rhythmic and endless.

  “Sunny—help me!” her father cried. “Damn you, help me!”

  She couldn’t stand there and watch him die. She ran to the phone and dialed for help. “My pa’s dying,” she screamed into the phone. “Please! Help us!” She was sobbing, her words garbled. “My pa’s dying.”

  Lily didn’t move to stop her, nor aid her, just watched as her husband struggled for his life.

  “You did this,” he cried. “You cursed me!”

  By the time the volunteers from the fire department arrived in the red ambulance with its shrieking siren and flashing lights, Isaac was dead. No one could bring him back to life.

  “He knew he had a weak heart,” Lily said calmly, not even pretending grief as she held Sunny tightly, “but he was very upset today, he lost a cow and calf. When he came into the house, he became angry with Sunny for spilling a pail of milk—I was out in the garden at the time, picking beans, and he had the attack. We called immediately, but there was no way to revive him.”

  “Is that what happened?” a tall, thin man smoking
a cigarette asked Sunny. Still crying, Sunny nodded, knowing that she was lying, knowing that God would probably strike her dead or make it so she couldn’t talk ever again, but lying because she knew the men would send her mother to jail and she’d be all alone.

  Lily’s story never changed, and Isaac Roshak was laid to rest in the family plot three days later. But Sunny had never forgotten how powerful her mother had been, and from that point forward she’d held new respect for her visions, for the vials of powder in her mother’s closet, and for her own Cherokee and Gypsy heritage. Because she knew, without a doubt, that her mother had killed her father—as surely as if she’d plunged that wicked knife through his failing heart.

  Now, some forty-odd years later, as she stood in the sweltering trailer with only a small fan to move the hot air, she gazed through the windows to the heat shimmering against the trees.

  Her heart pumped a little faster, her blood circulating to pound near her temples. She reached for the back of a chair to steady herself, and the vision she hadn’t been able to see for Belva came clear to her.

  But it wasn’t a glimpse of Belva’s daughter or failing crops; it was much more personal. And chilling.

  The image before Sunny’s eyes was of her own sons, naked as the day they were born. Their skin shimmered in the heat as they stood on a ledge of sheer granite cliffs, the path at their bare feet much too narrow to walk upon.

  Yet they moved. Slowly. Rocks and stones falling into the dark, bottomless abyss below them. They constantly tried to find higher ground, to scale the rocky precipice, their fingers clawing, their hands and feet bloody, their bodies covered in dirt and sweat as they strained, helping each other, inching upward to a darkness they couldn’t see, a danger that lurked…waiting.

  Sunny’s heart froze.

  “Don’t!” she tried to cry, but her voice was silent, her warning a whisper that they couldn’t hear. Ever upward they moved, trying to scale the treacherous precipice, and the clouds above them turned dark and stormy, swirling with malevolence.

  The ledge became mere inches and still they strained, reaching up, hands nearly reaching the crest.

  The earth shuddered. Violently.

  The darkness swirled angrily above them. Growing near, a faceless shadow that was death itself.

  Sunny’s heart stopped.

  She saw herself, on the other side of the crevice, trying to call to them, to warn them, but her voice was silent. Impotent.

  Fear screamed through her; her heart pounded in dread. Be careful! Climb down! But her voice was stilled, and she could only watch in mounting horror as their fingers scrabbled against the sheer cliff and their bloody toes tried to grip, slid, knocking away dirt and sand as they tried desperately—vainly—to gain purchase.

  No, oh, God, no!

  Muscles strained. They shouted to each other. Ignored her and the blackness that blocked the sun.

  Help them. Please, please keep them safe, she silently prayed to whatever deity would listen.

  The earth moved, the cliff shattered, the nightlike darkness became a whirling vortex of smoke. Coughing, she watched in horror as her boys fell, tumbling and screaming, arms and legs flailing as the darkness splintered into a blistering burst of flames.

  Screams reverberated through her mind, and her sons, dark silhouettes against a backdrop of hot, hungry fire, disappeared before her.

  “No!” her own voice echoed around her. She blinked and the vision disappeared, scattering away from the hot little trailer, but the sweat and fear still lingered. Her insides seemed to melt and she fell, gasping, into a kitchen chair. She couldn’t shake the image that her children—her precious sons—would soon meet their ruin.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d seen this same terrifying image; the premonition had started appearing two weeks ago, creeping into her sleep, breaking out of her subconscious.

  She checked the old calendar—the free one she’d been given from Al’s Garage—that hung on the wall near the refrigerator. Running her finger along the appointments and cancellations, she finally stopped on the fourth, the day of her first vision—the very day after Brig had taken the job with Rex Buchanan.

  Four

  “What’re you doin’ in here?”

  At the sound of Brig’s voice, Cassidy nearly dropped the comb that she was dragging through Remmington’s knotted mane. The colt snorted, rolling his eyes as he tossed his head.

  “What does it look like?” she asked, feeling heat sear up her cheeks. She glanced over her shoulder and stared into eyes that seemed to smolder in the half-light of the stable.

  “Botherin’ the horse.”

  “He needs to be groomed,” she replied tartly, then winced when she recognized the sound of a spoiled little rich girl’s voice. Her voice. “I, uh, thought it would be a good idea.”

  “I thought you didn’t want a show pony.”

  “I don’t.”

  “But you think he gives a good goddamn whether his mane and tail lay straight?” He snorted and shook his head. “Hell, all he cares about is throwin’ you out of the saddle, tryin’ to take a nip out of my arm, and mountin’ those mares up in the south paddock. You should see him show off for the ladies.” His smile was crooked and cynical, his voice low with a sexy drawl. “Kinda reminds me of Jed Baker and Bobby Alonzo anytime your sister’s around.” With a knowing grin, Brig climbed up the metal rungs of the ladder to the hayloft. Within seconds bales of hay tumbled to the concrete floor.

  Cassidy didn’t want to be reminded of her half sister. For nearly two weeks she’d remembered Angie and Felicity’s conversation by the pool, and she’d watched as Angie had set her plan into motion. It bothered her how Angie had begun hanging around the stable, talking and smiling at Brig as he worked, laughing with him, turning on the charm. Cassidy wanted to believe that Brig was just being polite to the boss’s daughter, but it was more than that. He, like every other male in Prosperity, responded to Angie. Male to female. It wouldn’t take long before he and she were making out and…the image of their two bodies, slick with sweat, panting and heaving, flitted through Cassidy’s mind.

  A sour taste rose in the back of her throat.

  Brig didn’t bother with the ladder, just swung down from the haymow and landed lightly on his booted feet.

  “What about you?” she asked as he pulled out a pocket knife, leaned over and slit the twine that held the bale together.

  “What about me what?”

  “The way you act around Angie.”

  He snorted as he stepped over another bale and sliced through the twine. The bale split, sending up a tiny cloud of dust. “I don’t ‘act’ around anyone, Cass. You should know that by now.”

  It rankled her how he shortened her name. Like she was just one of the hands. Or a kid. “Sure you do. Every guy does.”

  “Well, I’m not just like every guy, am I?” He clucked his tongue and, straddling the broken bale, stared up at her. His gaze touched hers and held, causing the back of her mouth to turn to dust. His slow-spreading smile was downright nasty. “You think I’ve got the hots for your sister?”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “But that’s what you meant.” Making a sound of disgust in his throat, he clicked his knife shut. “Women,” he muttered under his breath as he grabbed a pitchfork hanging on the wall and began pronging hay into the mangers.

  Dropping the currycomb and brush into a bucket, she climbed over the top of the stall gate as Remmington began picking at the hay Brig had shaken into his stall. Brig didn’t stop working, just kept forking split bale after split bale into the open mangers. Cassidy watched him walk—saunter, really, along the row of feeding bins. She noticed the way his thighs and butt tightened beneath his sun-bleached Levi’s as he stopped, bent over, cut the twine, then tossed hay into the stalls. A restless man, he never seemed to stop moving, and her heart fluttered stupidly whenever he looked her way. Not that he did very often.

  She waited, hanging around until he was
finished and walked back to the door. “All done with him?” Brig asked, nodding toward Remmington’s stall as he hung the pitchfork on its hook. “No bows or ribbons?”

  Anger surged through her, but she managed to hang on to her temper. “Not today. Maybe Sunday.”

  He laughed as they stepped outside, where the summer sun was hanging lazily over the ridge of mountains to the west, and yellow jackets and wasps hovered at the spilled water near the trough. The day was without a breath of wind, and Cassidy’s clothes felt sticky and damp from the heat.

  “You should be able to ride your horse soon,” Brig said as he reached into his pocket for his cigarettes. “I think I told you before, I like to take it slow.”

  “Slow?”

  “So as not to break his spirit.” Shaking out a Camel, he eyed the lowering sun, then jabbed the cigarette into the corner of his mouth.

  “I want to ride him now.”

  Striking a match on the bottom of his boot, he said, “Be patient.”

  “He’s mine.”

  “Haven’t you heard that patience is a virtue?” With a half-smile, he lit up and stared at her through the thin veil of smoke. “Or is that the problem—that you’re not into being virtuous?”

  Again his eyes held hers and she felt her stomach turn over. “I just want to ride my horse.”

  “It’ll happen. In time.”

  “I can’t wait forever.”

  “Two weeks isn’t forever.” He sighed heavily and plucked a piece of tobacco from his tongue. “You know, Cass, the best things in life are worth waiting for. At least that’s what my old man used to say before he took off. I never knew him, but Chase, he did, and he keeps spouting off these words of wisdom from a guy who decided he didn’t want to stick around and take care of his kids and wife.” He frowned as he drew hard on his cigarette, and lines etched between his black eyebrows. He stared at a solitary fir tree in a corner of the paddock, but Cassidy suspected he was miles away, thinking back to a childhood filled with poverty and pain. “Personally, I think anything Frank McKenzie said was a pile of shit, but Chase, he seems to think our father was God.” He chuckled without a trace of mirth. “Chase, he’s the optimist. Has an idea that someday he’ll be rich as your old man. Own himself a house bigger than yours. Can you imagine?”