by David Wood
By the time they'd downed a few beers, a half a rack of ribs, and the crunchiest, greasiest onion rings he'd ever eaten, he had managed to put Cassie out of his mind. Jazy wanted to know everything about him, his life, and the problems with his father. She laughed at all the right places and kept touching his arm in a familiar way. She adored the idea that he was a musician and made him promise to play for her soon. When her hand crept down to his lap, he knew it was time to leave. He left enough cash on the table to cover their check plus a generous tip, and followed her out the door, his eyes only drifting from her hips long enough to see two young men grin and give him the thumbs-up.
He smiled as he closed the door. Maybe things were finally looking up for him.
Chapter 13
“This is it.” Grant ushered Jazy inside the cabin, closed the door behind them, and locked it, vowing that any Stallard who interrupted them would pay in blood.
“Not bad,” she said, looking around. “I've never been up to this part of the mountain. It's nice and quiet here away from town.” She turned and draped her arms around his neck. “Very romantic.”
He drew her close and pressed his lips to hers. They fell onto the old couch, arms and legs entwined. He ran his hands up and down her body, half his mind refusing to give up thoughts of Cassie and the other half marveling at Jazy's fine curves. That second half quickly won out and he pulled the t-shirt off over her head. Passion lent them urgency and it was no time before they were both naked and thoughts of any kind beyond the carnal found no further purchase in Grant's beer-buzzed brain. He forced himself to take his time, let all his frustrations and concerns boil away in an unquenched furnace of desire.
By the end they had migrated to the rug in front of the big fireplace. Grant wanted to get up and light it, but their bodies were still hot and glistened with a fine sheen of sweat, and he was reluctant to remove Jazy's head from his chest, or her leg from where it lay hooked over his. She ran a finger in gentle swirls over his belly, sending pleasant shivers through his body.
“You wanna take me away for a few days?” she asked dreamily.
Grant frowned. That seemed like a strange and sudden request. “Take you away?”
“Sure. You know, go somewhere fun and exciting. I know I have to work my own way out of this shitty town, but maybe you and I could take a few days, you know? We can have some more fun like this, and maybe I'll get some ideas for my escape plan.” She brushed his earlobe with her soft lips, making him shudder with pleasure.
He tried to ignore the urge that was already stirring again inside of him, and focused on the moment and her request. He wanted to say something along the lines of I hardly know you, why would we go away together? but given what they had just done, that seemed like the wrong way to go. “I dunno, I have a still lot to sort out here,” he said. “Maybe we could, you know, just hang out around here, and maybe go away in a week or so once I've got everything straightened out?”
She pushed herself up onto one elbow, and stretched, displaying her figure to full effect. Her hazel eyes, suddenly flinty, gazed at him through a curtain of tousled hair. “I got me the wanderlust.” She whispered the last word like an incantation. “I want to be spontaneous. Let's go right now! The cabin will still be here when we get back.”
He reluctantly tore his gaze away from her amazing breasts. “Right now?”
“Yeah! Let's get in that hot car of yours and just go somewhere. It don't have to be anywhere fancy. I just want to go.”
Grant laughed to cover a sudden unease. Guilty thoughts of Cassie flitted through his mind and Jazy's strange insistence on going away raised uncomfortable suspicions. From the corner of his eye he saw his shirt draped over the arm of the sofa and the material of the top pocket shifted and bucked. He winced and pulled Jazy in for a kiss before she could notice. As they moved apart again, he rolled her over to his other side to put her back to the hideous dismembered finger and brushed back her hair. “I'm too beat to drive anywhere right now,” he said. “Why don't we talk about it again in the morning?”
She pouted, but nodded. “Sure. But what are you gonna do to keep me entertained till morning?” She sat up, straddled his hips and put her palms on his chest. She shifted back and forth, eyes alive with a mischievous gleam.
Grant refused to give a moment's notice to the thoughts tumbling over each other in his mind and reached up for her again.
The dawn pushed shadows from the bedroom. They had retreated to the comforts of the bed at some very late hour of the night. Or early morning depending how one measured such things. Grant watched Jazy sleeping, half-covered by the sheets. She was one gorgeous girl, but the cold and sober light of day brought with it troubling concerns.
He slipped from the bed, careful not to rouse her, and tiptoed out into the front room. He began searching through boxes and it wasn't long before he pulled out a small paperback volume. Ancient Mysticism in Appalachia by Professor Charles McKenzie. His mind buzzed as he imagined his father checking the book out of the library. He thought of the horrible leatherbound volume the Stallards had stolen. The blackened finger they had missed. Coupled with this book, his own concerns and Cassie's nightmares, not to mention McKenzie's violent death, everything about Wallen's Gap took on a darker hue. And something else, something that had been bothering the edges of his conscious mind for a while that he couldn’t ignore. His father's death. He remembered what the waitress in the diner had said just a few days ago, even though it seemed like a lifetime. So young for a heart attack.
There was no family history of heart disease that Grant knew of and his father had never been a smoker, or a particularly heavy drinker. By the time Grant had arrived in Wallen's Gap, the local doctor had already made the official announcements and the memorial service was for a man already cremated. Grant's hands began to tremble. His father had definitely been a part of this Kaletherex group, but had he perhaps found things he didn't like? Had he learned things he shouldn't have? Had he perhaps not died of a heart attack at all?
Grant shook his head, rubbed one hand back over his hair. This town had him so confused, so many things made no sense. Or seemed to be far more complicated than they needed to be. Was he losing his mind? His thoughts fell to Cassie again and a burning guilt rose up from his gut. He had been so ready to believe Jazy the day before, but now even that seemed unreal. Was checking the book out of the library one of the last things his father had done?
He opened it up and began looking through the table of contents. There were chapters on all kinds of Appalachian myths and legends, but towards the end of the book was a chapter entitled, Cults and Secret Societies of Appalachia. Grant swallowed, nerves cooling his spine. He turned to the chapter and began scanning the sub-headings. He got to one that made him gasp, The Banishing of Kaletherex.
“You okay, sweetie?”
Grant jumped, dropped the book in his lap. Jazy stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame wearing nothing but one of his t-shirts. With the morning light behind her, she was hotter than ever. “Yeah, fine,” he said, hoping she didn't notice the tremor in his voice.
“What's that you're reading?”
“Oh, just going through some of dad's stuff, you know. Trying to decide what to keep, what to throw away or give to charity.”
“Uh-huh.” She rang her tongue slowly over her lips. “So, what about that idea of you and me going away for a few days?”
The nerves and unspent energy that were making Grant twitchy didn’t dissipate. “You seem pretty anxious to go away right now.”
A flash of annoyance darkened her eyes for a moment, then it was gone. She smiled and peeled the t-shirt off, stood before him unashamedly, and amazingly, naked. “We can put the trip off for an hour or two if you want breakfast,” she said.
Grant stared at her for a long time, trying to ignore his body’s insistent and obvious desires. He tore his eyes away. “I can't, not right now.”
Her voice was suddenly hard, angry. “Are y
ou serious?”
He refused to look up at her again, but stood and gathered his discarded clothes from the night before, began pulling them on. “I'm really sorry, Jazy, I'd love to take off with you, but I just have to... You know, I have to...” This was wrong. Everything here was all wrong.
“Have to what?” Her tone was cold.
“I have so much stuff to do with my dad's things.” He stuffed the paperback book into the back pocket of his jeans, dragged on his shirt. The finger in the top pocket twitched and writhed momentarily.
Jazy stalked past him, collected her own clothes from the floor. As she dressed she said, “I can't believe you're turning me down.” Something in her eyes scared him. A deep, abiding hatred seemed to have sprung up from nowhere and burned into him relentlessly.
He felt the need to reassure her, if only to not make any more of an enemy here. “I'm not turning you down, Jazy, really. I just have so many things on my mind. Let me get some stuff sorted out today and we can come back here later and...”
“Take me back to town, Grant.”
He reached for her. “Come on, Jazy, don't be...”
She slapped his hand away. “Take me back to town.”
A glacier had descended between them and Grant knew it was pointless to try to do anything about it. “Okay.”
They drove back down to Wallen's Gap in icy silence. The book pressed uncomfortably into Grant's backside, but he didn't want to move it anywhere that Jazy might see it. The finger in his pocket jerked and twitched occasionally. When they reached the main street, he drove slowly, wondering what to do, what to say. He pulled up at a T-junction and Jazy opened the door and got out.
“Hey!” he called after her, stunned. “Hey, Jazy, come on.”
She walked away without a word or a backward glance.
Chapter 14
Grant walked into the Cup Of Joe diner, feeling thoroughly bemused. He needed coffee and time to think. What exactly had happened this morning? His suspicions grew on each other like mold on old bread, hideous and consuming. More than ever he wanted to get into his car and drive away, far from Wallen's Gap, and never look back. But it seemed that Jazy had been determined to make him do just that and he couldn't help wondering why. Her mood, her disposition toward him, had changed so quickly and so dramatically. Over his confusion, his guilt sat heavier than anything else. He couldn't get thoughts of Cassie from his mind and felt as though he’d let her down. But he didn't know what to do. The finger in his shirt pocket writhed almost constantly and he couldn't bring himself to look at that either. It felt as much a danger as it might be a help, and how the hell could a disembodied finger keep moving around anyway? For some reason, though, it was important to keep it with him, though he had no idea why. Surely he was losing his mind, hallucinating, imagining conspiracies everywhere.
On the counter were various candies for sale. One was a tin of small, round breath mints. He forced a smile to man behind the counter as he bought a tin, even though the man looked at him like he was a giant walking turd that was smearing up the diner by its presence alone. Grant went directly from the counter into the bathroom and tipped the contents of the small tin into the garbage bin. He took the finger from his shirt pocket, refusing to even look at it, and pushed it into the tin, which he jammed deep into the hip pocket of his jeans. He wanted to throw the hideous thing away, but something compelled him to keep it. Even though it darkened the edges of his mind, laid a stain on his very soul, he couldn't get rid of it, couldn't even leave it behind somewhere. He had to keep it with him, even if he had no explanation why. At least now he wouldn't constantly feel its horrible movements.
He pulled the book from his back pocket, thumbed through to the chapter on the banishing of Kaletherex. He read the first few paragraphs, standing in the coolness of the bathroom. It talked of a man who had moved to Wallen's Gap when it was little more than a camp, and how that man had uncovered the activity of a very nasty group of people praising a thing called Kaletherex. A daemon the book said. Grant paused, shook his head. A demon?
He read on.
The man who arrived in Wallen's Gap was appalled at the things this group did in the name of the daemon Kaletherex. He vowed to put an end to their deviant ministry, even if it killed him. This chapter is the best account of this legend I could put together, collected from various members of the Wallen's Gap community, though I should point out that getting any information at all was not easy. The people of this remote mountain town are distrustful of outsiders and reluctant to share any knowledge of this old myth. Most claim to have never even heard of it. But a few bits and pieces of information began to surface and I was able to put together this account, of how that weary traveler took on and supposedly banished the demon Kaletherex. That man's name was Josiah Brunswick and this, to the best of my ability, is his story.
Grant stopped reading the old professor's words, his blood turning to icicles in his veins. Josiah Brunswick? Like Cassie Brunswick? Was it even vaguely possible they were related? In a town like this, it was highly unlikely that two unrelated families would shard the same surname. He needed to learn more about this and quickly. He stuffed the book back into his pocket and headed out into the diner. He needed a big coffee while he sat and read the rest of the account.
He pushed open the bathroom door and stepped out, and something hard struck him across the cheek. With a cry of pain and surprise, he fell to one knee, his vision blurred.
“You just can't take any kind of hint, can ya?” Jesse Stallard said, and kicked him in the ribs.
Pain blossoming through his chest Grant hurled himself at Jesse, and caught him on the chin with a hard right cross. Jesse staggered back and Grant bore him to the ground. But, before he could do any damage, Jed and Cliff were on top of him. He struggled to break loose as they hauled him to his feet, but the two were strong, and held his arms in twin vise grips. Jesse kicked him in the groin and Grant's knees gave way. Next he knew, the three brothers set to punching and kicking him as he curled up in a ball and tried to shield himself from the worst of the blows. He caught sight of the diner's owner standing by the front door, one hand on the lock as he watched the street outside.
“Help me!” Grant croaked, but the man didn't even turn to look.
The blows became distant and the pain a dull roar all over his body as consciousness receded. In a dark haze, he was dimly aware of being lifted, and felt the cold air of outside wash over him before the hard, rutted metal floor of a pick-up truck rose to meet him with a jarring impact.
Everything hurt. He swam in and out of awareness as the truck roared to life and pulled away. There was nothing else in the back with him and he slid left and right as they drove, banging into the metal sides with dull thumps and grunts of pain. Was he going to die now? Thoughts of throwing himself from the truck, heedless of further injury, rose in his mind. Anything was better than lying here awaiting his fate.
He braced himself to rise despite the pain in every part of him, pushed himself to hands and knees. Something hit him in the jaw and he fell sideways, stunned again. Through a haze of pain and semi-consciousness he saw Cliff Stallard sitting on the side of the pick-up, hanging onto the roof-mounted hunting lights with one hand, leering down at him. Cliff raised his boot again and Grant gave up and let the darkness in. His last thought was that he had let Cassie down and would never get the chance to save her, to help her away from Wallen's Gap.
Chapter 15
Cassie looked down at Grant with an expression of deepest regret. She reached down to touch his battered face, and he flinched away. She frowned and her expression grew dark.
And then her hair darkened. And her eyes.
It was Jazy looking down on him.
“I told you we should go away together. Now look what's happened to you.”
He tried to answer but could only manage a dull moan. He hurt all over.
“Aw, does it hurt?” Her words were sympathetic, but cold pleasure gleamed in her eyes.
“Here, I'll kiss you where it hurts.”
She leaned in close, and her face... rippled. Her hair fell out and her skin turned gray and scaly. Her teeth sharpened into yellow fangs, and her face elongated into a snout.
Grant thrashed about as the thing that had been Jazy drew closer. He wanted to fight it off, but his arms were like lead.
“What's wrong?” the creature hissed. “Don't you think I'm pretty?”
He watched in horror as it flicked out its tongue and licked him across the forehead.
“No!” He screamed and sat up.
“Settle yourself down, son. You ain't in no condition to be leaping about like that.” Strong hands pushed him onto his back. He wanted to resist but his body failed him. He lay back and felt a cold cloth pressed to his forehead. “That's right. Just relax. You're safe here.” The smoky voice was familiar, though he couldn't place it just yet.
“Where am I?” he rasped, scarcely recognizing his own voice. His throat felt like sandpaper and he hurt all over.
“You're at my house. Somebody done messed you up and dumped you in the creek.”
Grant blinked to clear his vision and looked at the speaker. The room was dark, with only a sliver of light through the doorway to illuminate it. As his eyes adjusted, he recognized the man.
“Amos?”
“That's me. You're lucky me and my grandson was out catching crawdads when you come tumbling into the water. Whoever done it knew just where the deep place was. You'd have drowned long before you was conscious.”
“The Stallards,” he croaked.
“I ain't surprised. You didn't really think you could go tooling around town with Jed's girl and them not do something about it?”