by Edward Lee
Dang! Whats wrong with me? I ben thinkin so hard about the flaws in that blasted Dee copy, I must uv lost all my sense! Shouldnt never have sent Sary to Obsorns by herself, not aftur she say how they razz her that last time n try to fuck her. I best go there myself right now—
Seven
In a manner close to childlike, Sary fairly skipped her way towards Osborn’s General Store, which—even when not considering the ignoble character of most of its patrons—was a mercantile establishment she’d never cared for. No negativity, however, wielded the power to vandalize her current disposition, (one which could only be construed as one of unbridled gaiety). Not even the present surroundings could inhibit her; generally, when she traversed the more remote areas (especially those in proximity to Sentinel Hill) she always had her cause for trepidation. The aforesaid hill, for that matter, rose westerly of the path she now scurried along at this precise moment: it and the straggly, rock-strewn meadows fringed by the distant line of unnaturally contorted trees had frequently imparted to her a kind of skulking dread, as though such inanimate things were valuating her with sentient aversion.
Not this day, though.
I only juss met Wilbur today and I’se already gettin’ good feelin’s for him. Ain’t never met no one nicer’n him...
She walked round the rest of Sentinel Hill’s brush-hummocked elevation. She whistled a tune—“Yes, We Have No Bananas”—then offered a cheerful wave to a group of overalled denizens lounging higher among a nearby hill’s rock-strewn rise. No response was made to her gesture, just blank, decrepit stares, but Sary didn’t care. Why, ya bunch’a old toads, she thought. But I hope yew all have a good day anyways!
The road—more a trail than a genuine road—straightened through the next meadow, Dunwich Village hulking haggardly in the distance. Sweeps of uncut hay shivered about her, though she perceived not even a wisp of wind. Then...
Is that...a person?
The thing that she first connoted as a bent scarecrow soon turned out to be a person indeed. No apprehension retarded her gait as she proceeded, yet as she did so the figure’s details advanced in clarity. A man, shaven-headed, stood beside a lone tree, nearly as if awaiting her. He wore a long-tailed black coat, a white shirt with bow tie, black slacks and leather shoes, but though the apparel clearly had been fine in days agone, they were now quite tattered and threadbare. He stood with the aid of a cane which seemed topped by some flying creature, and though Sary had never been to a moving-picture show, she remembered the time her mother had taken her to Innsmouth on the bus: when the smoke-spewing vehicle had passed through Kingsport it had slowed at an intersection. This pause had given Sary time to glimpse a moving-picture theater, whose marquee had read NOSFERATU and had sported an advertisement poster featuring the quite scary visage whose most salient features were a thin face and bald head, large receded eyes, and cheeks so gaunt they appeared as if in shadow. It was this image she immediately affixed to this waiting person. Closer, she detected the reason for his cane: a severely curvatured spine; then more eccentric facial details came to her heed. Sary possessed no creative alacrity whatever, yet an onlooker who did might describe the man overall as cadaveresque, and with a cast of eye (blue eyes they were) that suggested an accursed affinity of misanthropic revelation. At alternate moments he seemed somnambulant, as though not aware of her approach at all, yet other moments he seemed vibrantly notified of all in his range of sight and even beyond. It was then that Sary took note of sinister artwork on his hands and neck, a process she’d heard of called tattooing. Lastly, and most shockingly, the road-stander harbored a metal ring through his nose, akin to the rings implanted to lead cattle or horses.
But when he at last addressed her directly with his foggy blue eyes, his general aspect of negativity evanesced to something rather the opposite. A precipitant smile, in fact, struck her as humanitarian.
In the most archaic Yankee dialect she’d heard in some time, he voiced, “Young gull, greetin’s ta ye on this acme of a day. A day of wonders, be this, aye?”
Sary considered the uncharacteristic words, then realized the bald man was correct. “Has been for me, yeah.” She blinked, remembering Wilbur’s mention of a bald man. “Say, are yew that Kyler man Wilbur tell me ‘bout?”
“‘Tis true,” the voice creaked in reply. “I espied him not long ago.”
“He tell me yew’re a fortune-teller...”
The man seemed to stand atilt. “Cahn’t say I am, cahn’t say I en’t. But heer’s suthin’ I cahn say: eff’n it’s Osborn’s whar you be a-headin’...” but then the remainder of the remark retroceded like something lost in smoke.
Sary didn’t care for the man’s elliptical words, nor in the way his brow cocked; she tried to return a skeptical facial gesture and adjoin it with a similar tone. “Oh, so yew’re tellin’ me I’m in the way fer a bad time in thar?”
Kyler’s head gleamed in the sun. “Mebbe at fust. Thing abaout auguries, like many setch bodements, is they hev a fancy ta change jest as a man’s heart cahn change.”
“I dun’t know what yew’re talkin’ ‘baout,” Sary said, amused. She planned to return to her trek forthwith, but the road-stander hastened to add:
“Mebbe I ought come with ye—”
“Naw, no thanks—”
“—while ye be in thar a-fetchin’ yew’re rock candy. ‘Tis of sorts a devoir’a mine—a duty, I mean ta say—ta give a jest’n proper warnin’, so’s a man’s heart hev a chance to change...”
Sary had already stopped and turned. It was not the mention of a warning which caused her to halt, nor any of what she didn’t understand, but instead...
Haow’d he know I’m goin’ ta buy rock candy?
The question gave her a motive to add credulity to the man’s repute. ‘Sides, he a friend of Wilbur’s. “Wal, sure,” she invited. “Yew can come along if ya want...”
Very few minutes had elapsed before the duo approached Osborn’s. Even with his cane-assisted limp, his pace was difficult for Sary to keep up with. Not once did she catch his eyes straying to her physique, and this was an observation that relieved her.
“Thar it be,” he intoned minutes later, but Sary had scarcely heard him, for the sudden launch of a whippoorwill from a brown, desolate stand of bushes gave her a disruptive start.
“Could be a bad omen, could be good,” Kyler reflected more under his breath.
Sary dismissed the comment, not quite positive what an omen was. Instead, she watched the queer general store seem to grow twice as large with each forward step—queer inasmuch as it occupied the sagging wood-plank shell of the old Congregational Church which she’d heard had been standing for a long time, since before something called the “Revolution” that took place in a time when men wore three-cornered hats. When the building’s looming shadow cloaked them both, even the open air behind them affected an unnaturally darkened hue.
Kyler chuckled waveringly. “Haow’s that fer a omen?” he said, indicating with his eyes the store’s most conspicuous feature: the broken steeple of the House of God this place used to be in days bygone.
Sary twitched at an unanticipated chill but made no reply.
Kyler held the creaking door for her, and they entered
A proverbial cracker barrel sat in the room’s front, though Sary had never dared take a cracker—even when making a purchase—since the first time years ago when she’d tried. Tobias, the dismal stick of an old man who tended the counter, had railed, “Get yew’re dutty whore hand aout’a them crackers! We dun’t care to et nuthin’ that’s ben touched by hands which’s ben corn-fingerin’ fellas and jerkin’ their dutty peters!” and then one of the Langs—God knew which one, for a plethora of them had been born—swatted the back of her head. In fact, Sary braved an entrance to this drear, shelf-crammed place only when an unavoidable necessity arose. Many of the churlish loafers who frequented the store had done business with Sary, and not one of them had ever offered a kind word, while most had talked her p
rice down, knowing full well the extremes of her poverty.
“Wal, jest look what fall off the shit wagon’n roll in my store!” cracked the gaunt, whisker-chinned Tobias.
“Ee-yuh!” the Lang man joined in. “It be the hoo-er!”
“Stew Face!” blurted Henry Wheeler, the fence-post digger whose great belly seemed draped over his belt like a lard-satchel. “And look who be with her! The cripple with the balt head!”
All of the men wore rope belts, hand-stitched boots, and clothes whose blemishes had been constantly corrected by make-shift patches. Stains were rife on these clothes; and had Sary commanded a sense of smell, she might’ve suspected that the denizens’ apparel was washed even less than those who wore it. Amid the cramped room sat a card table bearing several illicit liquor bottles, along with evidence of gambling. In a corner was a typical tin water pail sufficing for a spittoon; Sary took uneasy note that its contents of expectorant was half an inch from overflowing.
Tobias leaned over the counter, his high voice aggravating as an unlubricated caster. “Hey, cripple, why’n’t yew clip-clop thet thar cane aout’a heer rut naow, and yorself’n yor whore with it?”
“Ef ye insist,” Kyler calmly replied, “but haow much sense be made aout’a runnin’ off payin’ customers, on accaount I dun’t espy much in the way’a business heer,” and then the man produced a quarter. “A wrap’a licorice is whut I fancy.”
Tobias glared, but then resigned. He was as poor as most in these regions; any currency seeking emigration into his proprietorship would not be turned away. Crabbed hands begrudgingly filled a sheet of store paper with said licorice, then wrapped it up.
“Thar’s yew’re blammed licorice, cripple,” Tobias declared, his adam’s apple bobbing on his old, thin neck. “Naow git aout.”
“Ee-yuh,” laughed the girthy Wheeler. “Go’n tell more fortunes.”
Kyler tucked his parcel under his arm. “Nay, see, my friend heer got business as well...”
Tobias and his ramshackle associates all turned hateful glares to Sary.
Even before this, Sary was conscious of assessments being made of her; the hateful glares also possessed more than a small amount of lust as those blood-shot eyes roved her body. One man—the Lang—openly dandled his crotch.
Tobias yelled, waving a bone-thin hand. “Only kind’a business she do is fuckin’ and suckin’! She dun’t got no cash money!”
“Aw, but I got me some m—” Sary began, yet the owner’s outburst would not license the completion of her statement.
“I run a ‘spectable operation heer, and I wun’t hev no whorin’ fer goods!”
Wheeler’s brow rose, then he too rubbed his crotch while his eyes narrowed on Sary’s form. “Holt on a sec, Tobe. Mebbe we oughta dew some thinkin’ on this. Can’t hut ta give Stew Face a smidge’a food long as she put a fuckin’ on us fust—”
“Ee-yuh,” added Lang. Did a tiny spot of wetness darken his crude trousers as his hand continued to knead his genital region? “Jess the look’a this ‘un got my pecker all riled up. And haow ‘baout them tits shewin through thet shiny dress?”
Wheeler nodded with a grin, remarked, “Let’s see thet cut on her tew,” then briefly raised the hem of Sary’s diaphanous gown with a yardstick, the action of which briefly flashed the mound of plush, dark hair between her legs.
Wheeler and Lang whistled.
“Thar some meat fer the dogs!”
“An’ my dog’s a-barkin’!”
With a half-shriek, Sary jumped at the start, then righted the gown.
This visual treat seemed to ameliorate Tobias’ previous condemnation. He, too, caressed his crotch. “Fuh-got jess what a looker she be onct ya git past thet roadkill face...”
“Thought yew’d change yer mind, Tobe.” Lang made a dismissive laugh. “The pussy on this bitch could put hardwood on a pack’a faggots.”
A leering pause caused Sary to shrink; the ill-feeling in her gut gave her a clear impression what was taking place, and it was an impression with which she was all too accustomed. They dun’t even keer that I got money... By now, erections of various dimensions showed through the pants of the rapists-to-be—even the crackly Tobias, who must’ve exceeded the age of seventy. “Ee-yuh. Naow’s ye all mention it, it been a while sinct my dick had itself a good spit!”
“Any livin’ minute this cunt ain’t full’a cum be a blammed cryin’ shame!”
“And we’ll be a-fillin’, brother! We’ll be a-fillin’ it!”
“Gonna get me some shit on my stick too. Mebbe a buttful’a my jism’ll make this dutty tramp think twice afore she shew her mess of a face in heer agin!”
Sary was no stranger to such less-than-stately verbal regards, just as she was no stranger to rape. Often, she’d simply resign to it, for resignation tended to minify the physical damage which often played chaperon to resistance. Today, however...
She’d had enough. She made to bolt, but—
“Whar yew goin’, gravy boat?” Wheeler’s cumbrous form moved with unexpected quickness—right toward Sary—in a manner that left no secret of his intent. The exclamation “Nooo—!” was all poor Sary had time to issue before Wheeler had girded her with his porcine arms. The remainder of her objection was interrupted by the vising of her throat in the crook of the man’s elbow; this action produced an immediate reduction of the blood-flow to her brain. Wheeler’s other arm wrapped about her abdomen.
Consternation and outrage tried in earnest to break through the force being so brutally administered against her, yet in an instant, her vision dimmed. Her consciousness took on a lolling buoyancy, even as her feet flew off the floor and she was lain roughly on the card table and divorced of her gown...
At once, her body raved.
“It be only fit thet I warn ye,” Kyler intoned, yet before he could give more voice—
CLACK!
The Lang man kicked the soothsayer’s cane out. Down Kyler went, to the dusty wood floor.
All I wanted was some rock candy, Sary thought through her fading sentience, but look what I get instead... She lay in a torpid daze, and she could see only as if through soiled gauze. As much as she wanted to fight and flee, her muscles made only the most feeble responses to her will. She couldn’t move, no, but she could feel, and what she felt was the reality of her physical body being metamorphosed into a smorgasbord of touch-fodder for deviants. Rough hands splayed over her quivering skin, squeezing, kneading, pinching, plucking. Fingers burrowed into her sex, a thumb prodded her anus. Her private hair was stroked adoringly, then abruptly yanked and twisted. Soon it was more than hands she felt molesting her; it was raw, hardening genitals. One penile shaft pap-pap-papped! against her lips; another, slicked with spit, was pressed between her breasts and drawn in and out after one of the demented toughs straddled her. A third—Tobias’ she would later presume—was squeezed between her feet. Eventually mouths sucked her nipples to numbness; someone may have bitten her inside the thigh.
The visual “gauze” betrayed only the most inchoate blots of darkness, but at least she believed her overall range of vision was ever-so-slowly regaining clarity.
Words seemed echoic.
“This gull’s body got my dick jumpin’ like bullfrog on a skillet! En’t no way better ta get a tickle in yer blood and some feist in her joint like mussin’ a whore up jess fer the hell of it!”
“Bet her pussy’s had more cock in it than I’ve had hole cutters in the ever-lovin’ graound!”
“I’ll be a-breakin’ my eggs on these tits, ee-yuh, but not afore I fuck this pussy like I’se charnin’ buttuh!”
When Wheeler pinched her clitoris and twisted, Sary’s hips flinched, and she managed to mutter, “Eat shit, fat man...”
Wheeler chortled. “Wal naow, Stew Face, jess fer sayin’ that I’ll make damn sure you be eatin’ shit ahf-tuh I’m done tarnin’ yer cunt inside-aout with my pecker!”
Cackling exploded; Sary moaned. Her consciousness, indeed, was returning,
but she suspected this return would take place only after the definitive act of rape had commenced; she knew, likewise, that pleading with the men, or offering them her dollar bill as a dissuasion, would prove a profitless endeavor indeed.
Kyler’s voice sounded from a lower angle, surprisingly quiescent. “I warned ye onct, I’ll warn ye again, fellas. Yew’ll regret whut it be ye’re fixin’ ta do...”
Wheeler’s voice: “Thet balt-headed gimp’s pipin’ up again.”
And Tobias: “Shut yer maouth, cripple, lest ye want it filled with what’s in thet spit-can!”
“Mebbe he’d like ta trade thet cane in fer a wheelchar...”
Sary was able to lean slightly up, and found her vision clearing enough to see one blurred shape spreading her legs. Then—
Clunk!
Her head was slammed back down. A now fully hardened penis was seeking entry to her mouth. Sary had recouped enough coherence to yearn, Gawd, I wish I had my front teeth, but still could scarcely move. After a pause, the pasty, foreskinned corona pulled back, then fingers dug past her lips. Her mouth was pried open.
“Luke? What’cha fixin’ ta dew?”
“Piss in her maouth, a’course.”
“Why ya wanna dew thet?”
A chuckle. “Aw, Tobe, thet ain’t the question. The question’s why not?”
Then came a roar of laughter.
The denizen who’d spread her legs was beginning to mount her, when—