by phuc
"I got out just for you, Kathy. That's all I've been living for, to come back for you."
Uncle Sammy looked down at her from the foot of the stripped bed. His eyes, tiny raven pinpoints, drank up her stark nakedness. She felt the gaze as surely she'd felt his hands, and his semen on her, for all that time so many years ago. The gaze destroyed her; it buried her deep in the past, in the grave dirt of memory.
He stood gaunt in the cheap, soil colored suit. He looked starved, his face merely skin stretched tight over his skull. Pasty dark curls stuck to his balding pate, and his mouth ticked like two worms pressed together, a nervous slash of flesh. "I have something," he said. " a present."
The more Kathleen tried to squirm away, the more securely her dream paresis lashed her down.
Her skin crawled like a coat of insects when Sammy raised the gift to the moonlight. His slim, long fingered hands held the cigar box, just one of many things booked as evidence at his trial.
He opened the lid to show her its contents, not pornographic snapshots of children, but the fat triangle headed snake. Its dry reptilian skin glistened, and its head emerged, the threadlike tongue flicking...
Then Sammy upended the box, evicting the snake onto the bed.
Kathleen's joints fused as she tremored. Her throat sealed shut against her scream, which imploded in her chest. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't close her eyes.
The snake hissed. It was huge, and its girth pulsated. Kathleen felt the pointed tip of its head running sleekly up her calf, then up her thigh.
Uncle Sammy smiled.
"We're the same," whispered her companion.
Suddenly a cold weight was pressed into Kathleen's hand.
"Embrace your hatred."
The snake slithered closer. Kathleen turned her head to see that the object placed in her hand was The snake's head nudged into her sex.
a gun.
The snake began to burrow.
"Almost," Uncle Sammy whispered. "Almost. Alm "
Kathleen shuddering, revolted unto death raised the gun. "Here," Uncle Sammy celebrated.
Kathleen pulled the trigger.
The report clapped like thunder.
Then came a flash like lightning.
"Yes!" whispered the abbess.
Uncle Sammy caught the slug high in the chest. He was knocked down like a hinged duck in a shooting gallery.
The snake retreated
"Finish."
Kathleen rose, lambent now, bright fleshed in her release. Uncle Sammy lay flat on his back. The twist of flesh that was his mouth squirmed. She stepped over him. Hot smoke made a halo about her head. The halo glowed. She calmly straddled Sammy's stomach.
"It's Sleepytime, Kathy," the voice grated under her. Black blood throbbed from the chest wound.
"There are special secret things that uncles and little girls are supposed to do. That's why God made uncles, Kathy, to show little girls the special secret things."
The clammy hands groped up. Like desperate claws, they kneaded her breasts, pinched at her nipples.
"Uncle Sammy will take real good care of you while your dad's away," he promised.
Kathleen leaned over. She whispered into his drained face: "You sick...worthless...piece of...shit."
Then she pressed the gun barrel to his nostril, her thumb on the hammer grid.
"Almost," she said.
Her thumb began to slide back the hammer
"Almost."
further
"Alm "
the hammer clicked back.
"Here," she said.
Very gently, she pulled the trigger.
First came the tiny click, then the mammoth crack and concussion. White light erupted about Sammy's face, and then the contents of his head not brains but maggots splattered out the back of his skull.
The corpse simmered, steaming. Soon its substance slipped away with the steam, until nothing remained for her to straddle but bones and a dry broken skull.
The snake, too, had given up all its flesh. Only a frail, tiny boned skeleton remained on the bed, utterly harmless to her or to anyone. Kathleen stood up now, the gun smoking in her hand.
Through a haze of grit, she stared at her companion. The abyss like face gazed back from the corner of the room. It seemed to be happy, it seemed to approve. In moments the figure began to revert back into the darkness that had created it the darkness of Kathleen Shade's mind but before it could disappear altogether, its skittery whisper drifted up a final time:
"You're free."
What scared her most, when she awoke, was that her bedroom was the same scenario of the nightmare; for a moment, Kathleen even thought she might still be dreaming. Moonlight bathed the room in lucent slants, just like the dream. She lay naked in an ichor of sweat...
Just like the dream, she thought.
The clock glowed in luminous digits; it was just past three in the morning. You're free, the killer figure in the dream had said. Free, she thought. She felt anything but free; instead, she felt enslaved by every aspect of her life. The dream, she knew, was merely her subconscious trying to purge her of her past: trying to kill the memory of Uncle Sammy. Kill, she baldly thought. The radio shrink had used the same word. Kill. In your fantasies, in your mind, the shrink had postulated, kill him.
All that Kathleen had killed, instead, was another night's sleep.
Sweating, she put on her robe. She switched lights on out to her work desk, and sat huddled in the chair, groggy yet not tired. The nightmare, as always, left a bad taste in her brain. Distraction, she pondered. Atop the typewriter lay the photocopies of the killer's latest account. Manburger, came the dismal recollection. But she'd only read half the submission; there was one more chapter to read. "Might as well look at it now," she mumbled to the air. She squinted in the glare of desklight and turned to the unread chapter...
CHAPTER FIVE
MORE CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
One time when your mother was still alive she told you about sick people. "There's lot of sick people around," she said to you. "Like Daddy...he's a sick person, and the people he brings to the house sometimes, they're all sick people." You didn't understand then, you were only about 10, but then your mother said, "Lots of people like to do sick things to other people." Then she injected heroin into the preferred vein in her foot. "You should always remember this. Most people are here to hurt other people, to take advantage of them, to fool them and lie to them. Like your Daddy. He fooled me. I had a good career with the electric company before I met him. But he got me strung out. He turned me into a..." A little tear came into your mother's eye, and you ask, "Then why did you get married?" "We're not married, honey," your mother answered. "He just uses me, like he uses you. I know what he does to you in the other room. I know he makes you watch when his friends do things to me. I love it when he goes away. I love it when he's not here..." Then your mother falls into the familiar stupor. It's quiet now. Daddy's not home.
Sometimes he disappears for weeks at a time. You like it when he's gone. The only problem is when he disappears sometimes he doesn't leave enough heroin for your mother. "You're going to be gone a week?" your mother once complained. You were listening from the room, looking at The Cross, right after Daddy had finished with you. "This isn't enough skag to get me through a week!" your mother yelled. Then Daddy said, "Go on the street for it. That's what your pussy's for." Once they argued about you. "How can you let your own daughter be exposed to all this?"
your mother said. "You've turned me into a junkie! You bring those awful people here all the time! You rape her, for God's sake, and you let those other animals rape her! How can you do this to your own daughter?" "She probably ain't even mine," Daddy said back. "Probably a load of spunk from one of your tricks. Ain't no way that fucked up kid's mine." Then he hit her hard in the face. "Always whining, always complaining. If it weren't for me you'd be taking it up the ass for 50 cents a pop." "But this is my house, this is my life! Don't you care about anything
?" your mother sobbed back. Daddy hit her in the face again and left with his suitcase. Sometimes he calls up when he's away. "Some of my friends are coming over to the house tonight. They're important friends, so tell your mother to take care of them." You knew what that meant. Lots of times when they were finished doing things to your mother, they'd come into your bedroom and they'd take you into Daddy's Room, and then they'd do things to you, too, but that was all right because all you had to do was lay there and look at The Cross in The Window, and that would make the pain go away. It gets bad again, though, when Daddy comes back home. You wonder where he goes all the time. Lots of times before he leaves you hear him saying things to your mother like "I'm going up to Jersey on another skip, I'll be gone about a week" or "I'll be staying at my brother's between runs." Once your mother replied, "Jesus Christ, what would your brother say if he knew what you really did for a living?" And "Do you do the same thing to his daughter that you do to your own?" "Just shut the fuck up and mind your own business," Daddy replied. "I gotta stay on my brother's good side, so he'll cash out my shares when the old man kicks off.
When my brother's out of town, I look after his kid. I got her programmed just fine, just like that weird little retard of yours. Kids are all the same."
Kathleen stared at the paper. The words seeped into her like dark stains.
This couldn't be...
going up to Jersey staying at my brother's between runs so he'll cash out my shares when my brother's out of town, I look after his kid
Kathleen squinted through vertigo.
do you do the same thing to his daughter that you do to your own?
So now you know that Daddy does the same things to other children that he does to you. He's never mean to you, like the way some of his friends are, and like the way he and his friends are mean to your mother. He always takes you into the other room and turns off the light. He does it to you from behind, and he whispers things to you, and all you can see while he's doing it is The Cross in The Window with the big light on it. And he always says the same thing, every time, jerking off on you. He always says "Almost, almost " then he grabs your hand and makes you take hold of it and he says "Here."
Each word sunk like a nail into coffin wood; Kathleen was being interred. Tears welled, blurring the typescript. The words seemed to permute the paper until they were no longer words at all, but glyphic scrawlings etched in black blood.
Uncle Sammy, she thought.
Daddy.
Spence would make nothing of this she hadn't told him enough details of Sammy's molestations.
Nevertheless, this was exactly what Spence had been seeking all along. What had he called it?
The nascent?
This was the nascent, right here in here hands.
Her thoughts went into a slow slide like a near death experience. She thought of the harrowing fact: Kathleen and the killer had been molested by the same man. She thought of her cruxing nightmare, and the faceless nightly words of the radio shrink. She thought of Maxwell and his dead love for her. She thought of the sad letters from her readers every month and all the energy that that sadness must possess. She thought of false prophets and broken dreams and lies. She thought of disease, despair, and deceit, of abortion, estrangement, and adultery and incest and crack dealers and stillborn babies and terrorists and war and hate. She thought of devils. She thought of death.
And then she knew, as quickly as if a bullet had struck her right between the eyes.
Yes, Kathleen thought.
She knew exactly what she was going to do.
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Chapter 33
(I)
"What does Daddy do?" she asked her mother once.
"He makes movies, honey."
"Movies? You mean like That Darn Cat and 101 Dalmatians?"
"No, honey. He makes movies of sick people doing sick things to other people. He makes most of them in New Jersey because that's where all the camera stuff is, and the police aren't as dangerous up there because the people Daddy works for pay the police to leave them alone. Then Daddy brings the movies back here. That's why he's gone a lot of the time. And sometimes he has to stay at other places when other kinds of police are onto them. They make movies of men doing bad things to little boys and girls."
She was so young at the time she didn't understand what her mother meant.
What kind of bad things?
Like the things Daddy did to her in Daddy's Room?
She could never understand why people would want to make movies of people doing bad things.
She remembers one night when some of Daddy's friends came to the house. She was 14 or 15
then, and she was beginning to realize that the friends Daddy brought to the house were the people he made the movies for. They'd say things like "How was the skip? Any heat?" "Word is we lay low awhile the feds just bagged one of Vinchetti's stock mules down in San Angelo."
"Christ, we never had heat like this when Carter was president. Fuckin' Reagan." "Everything'll be going video soon. Makes our job a thousand times easier." "Vinchetti's guys taking care of the equipment?" "Let's see those dupes, Sammy boy." Daddy's friends always brought money to the house. Daddy put it in cigar boxes he kept in the closet with the mirror. When she was younger, Daddy's friends would sometimes bring film projectors, and they'd always say things about
"dupes" and "checking the dupes," and when she got older they'd bring over VCRs that looked different from the ones in the catalogs. They came over to watch the movies that Daddy brought back from New Jersey. One night they were all in Daddy's Room watching the movies while Daddy counted money, and she snuck into the bedroom. Her mother was unconscious because Daddy's friends had raped her earlier and then she'd injected heroin. She snuck past her mother and went into the closet where the mirror was and she could see Daddy and his friends watching the movies.
She could see the movies.
Skinny women wearing sunglasses, doing things with animals.
Men tying women up and hanging them by their arms.
Men holding women down.
Burning them with cigarettes.
Sticking pins into their breasts.
Then more movies.
Men doing things to children.
Sometimes Daddy was one of the men.
She saw him doing the same things to the other children that he did to her in Daddy's Room.
She never told anyone.
Since she was very little, like four or five, Daddy would tell her about the special secret things, a secret from God, and if she ever told anyone about the special things, then that would be like bad luck, and something very bad would happen to her mother.
She dropped out of school in 10th grade because she couldn't concentrate, and she'd missed so many days.
When she was 18 she got a job at the Wagon Wheel which was like a little convenience store.
When she was 19, her mother died.
One night two of Daddy's movie friends came over.
"Hey, Rocco, can you believe it? Sammy hot shotted his own wife!"
"She wasn't my wife," Daddy said. "Just squeeze. Just a safe place to shack up between runs."
"Yeah," another man said. "Plus that cute kid you been plugging for the last 15 years." The man laughed. "Ain't that right, Binnie? So, Sammy, why'd you hot shot your wife?"
"I told you assholes, she wasn't my wife. She was beat, freaking out. I turned her out on skag the first week I met her, got her on the street. Decent cash between runs, but you know junkies. I think she was getting ready to spin so I tricked up her last bang with ant poison. Dumped her dead ass way back in the woods out near Mitchellville. It'll be 10 years before somebody finds her."
"Yeah, Sam, but what about the kid? She's gettin' old now, ain't she? Nineteen, 20 she looks to me. What's to keep her from spinning to the feds?"
"You kidding?" Daddy said. "She's a retard, she's half catatonic most of the time, hardly ever talks, stares at the wall all day. Fucked up b
rain, you know. Her mother was shooting up three times a day when she was pregnant. She'll never spin. Shit, she doesn't know her ass from a hole in the ground."
She'd heard them saying these things one night when she walked home from the Wagon Wheel.
One of the windows was open and before she came in, she heard it all.
Daddy had killed her mother.
But her mother came into her room every night anyway.
And told her things.