What Reviewers Are Saying....
"What a page turner! This is my second book I've read from Clayton E. Spriggs (The other being 'Johnson Road', another thriller) and like that one, the author kept my attention from beginning to end with the creepy, small town atmosphere and descriptive scenes and unique characters."
(5 stars) C. Middleton, Indie Book Reviewers
"'Billy' is an awesome psychological thriller that is also a suspenseful horror. It's a pretty fast read, and written very well and very descriptively. The characters were all very interesting... and I felt sorry for Billy. Even though the story starts off with him, it shifts to the perspective of the detective Nick Vizier who returns to find some missing persons." (4 stars) L. Clarke, Indie Book Reviewers
"'Billy' by Clayton E. Spriggs is very suspenseful and descriptive and disturbingly creepy, in a good way. This author has a way with writing stories! This is the second of his books I've read, and they both have a distinctive feel where the people are the true horror, and we are never really sure what is going on..."
(4 stars) T. Parks, Indie Book Reviewers
"'Billy' kept my attention from the beginning and continually invited me to know more. The Cajun culture infused with the conversations helped to define the characters and the story in a new way. 'Billy' is fresh
with its creativity as well as being easy to read. Frightening, creative, and making it fun for me to be scared."
(4 stars) A. Johnson, Indie Book Reviewers
"I think what I liked best was that it just felt so dang real...that to me is what makes it almost so scary. The way Mr. Spriggs writes... we can see the swamp, hear the insects, see the horrible face of Billy, smell the decay... but all that pales as you continually wonder 'what is going on? The characters are all nicely developed and are strong contributors to the story. It is not predictable, and the ending wraps up well. A solid effort and recommend for fans of horror and mystery."
(5 stars) L..Messing, Indie Book Reviewers
BILLY
A Tale Of
Unrelenting Terror
By
Clayton E. Spriggs
This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and situations in this book are purely fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 Clayton E. Spriggs
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Penn Mill Publishing.
Slidell, Louisiana
www.pennmillpub.com
ISBN: 978-0-9861211-5-9
------------------------------
For Jennifer,
my beautiful Cajun queen
---------------------------------------
Man is the cruelest animal.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
EXCERPTS
Johnson Road Prologue
The Dissector Prologue
PART ONE
THE ST. PIERRES
Chapter One
Bebette
“Don’t just stand dere, couyon; get some water berling!”
Dorcelia St. Pierre didn’t suffer fools, even when the offending party was her husband. She could see her daughter was in agony, and the dimwitted patriarch of the family was doing nothing but getting in the way.
“You watch how you talk to me, woman. I’ll not be trifled with in my own house.”
The big, ugly oaf shot his wife a dangerous glance that she understood too well. Dorcelia knew her husband was cruel and could be violent when provoked, but she’d had enough. It was beyond repulsive what the sick bastard had done to his own daughter that brought them this shame, but the girl was in a perilous state.
“Ooooooohhh! Aaaaaagh!” the child shrieked in agony as she writhed in pain on the sweat-soaked sheets.
Her cries echoed off the bare cypress walls in the confined space of the back bedroom, competing with the clamor of the rainstorm that rumbled against the tin roof overhead.
“You need to go get Doc Besson before sumptin’ bad happens,” Dorcelia implored her husband in vain.
She knew the old fool wouldn’t budge. He’d embarrassed the family with his unspeakable sin, and he’d do everything in his power to distance himself from the crime. Even the life of his only daughter didn’t hold weight against his misguided sense of pride and instinct for self-preservation.
“You know ‘taint happenin’, woman,” Poppie belligerently replied. “De rain be comin’ down strong for hours now. No way to get help now even if I were inclined to do so.”
Poppie St. Pierre knew his wife well enough to know she was all talk. She stood silently by when he did those regretful things in a drunken, lustful state, and she now shared in the guilt. It was the girl’s own mother that forbade any discussion of the matter, as if silence might retroactively undo the transgression or prevent its reoccurrence. She’d been proven wrong on both counts.
“Eeeeeehhh!” the girl screamed between labored breaths.
“Dis be on your head, capon!” Dorcelia spat back at her husband as she turned to tend to her afflicted child.
“You shut dat door. Fait pas une esquandal! You slow down dat racket,” Poppie shouted as he turned his back on the women with righteous indignation.
How dare she call him a coward under the roof he provided for her comfort! Damn woman’s got a slappin’ comin’ her way, he thought, as he walked away and unsuccessfully attempted to put his daughter’s screams of agony out of his mind.
Dorcelia slammed the wooden door at her husband’s back and tended to her daughter’s needs. She was no midwife, but she’d had enough children of her own to guide her. Dorcelia took her daughter’s hand, feeling the child’s grip squeeze tightly. With her free hand she stroked the sweat from the girl’s forehead and tried to soothe her as best as she could.
“Dere, dere, cher, shhhhh. It’s gonna be alright. Momma’s here.”
“I’m scared, Momma,” the girl cried.
“I know, Lillian. You gonna be fine. Jus’ listen to me and do da best you can, and I’ll pull you tru dis.”
The girl nodded and started to breathe heavily as the torturous clawing in her gut resumed. Dorcelia pried her hand free of her daughter’s grip and positioned herself at the foot of the bed in preparation for the imminent arrival of the family’s newest member. She could see that her daughter was close now, and Dorcelia found herself as afraid as her daughter. She hid her feelings for the sake of her f
rightened child and swallowed hard.
“It’s almost time, cher. You gonna have to push when I tell you and breathe when I tell you. It’s gonna hurt sometin’ awful, I ain’t gonna lie to ya, but you gonna get tru it, I promise.”
“Aaaaaaahhhhhh!” Lillian screamed and twisted on the bed as the baby inside of her tried to push itself out of her womb and into the waiting arms of a cruel world.
“Oooooooowwwww!”
“Push! Push!”
“Eeeeeeeehhhhhh!”
“Breathe now, child.”
Dorcelia could see that Lillian was ignoring her instructions. The girl’s face was turning red from the exertion as she bore down trying to expel the offending item from her body and the agonizing pain with it.
“Breathe, Lillian, breathe!”
A splatter of blood sprayed into Dorcelia’s face, and she recoiled in disgust. Peering down between her daughter’s legs, she saw the baby’s head emerge with force, then its slippery shoulders coming out one at a time. Dorcelia took a deep breath and grabbed hold of the newborn to help guide it out.
She almost dropped the child in horror when it suddenly pushed out on its own in a violent fury, ripping a ragged gash in its mother’s body and spraying more blood around the room in its wake. Suppressing the sensation of nausea, Dorcelia held onto the wriggling baby in her arms and glanced up toward her silent daughter.
“Oo ye yi!” Dorcelia cried.
Lillian’s face was forever frozen in agony, the last sensation she was to know in her short, sad life. The girl’s eyes stared blankly toward the heavens, while her limp body lay in a pool of blood on the dirty sheets. Her once ruddy complexion was now a ghostly white, contrasting with the blue lips of her repulsive grin.
Dorcelia’s tears ran down her face as she cried in silence, her voice not able to reach the depth of her mourning. The wriggling ball of flesh in her arms broke her trance, and she glanced down at the baby she held. The child was covered in blood and amniotic fluid. Dorcelia grabbed the cleanest piece of cloth near her and began to wipe away the sticky mess and inspect the newborn. She could tell right away something was horribly wrong as she peered down into the baby’s face.
“Bwwaaa aaa aaa!” the infant cried, spitting saliva and more blood into Dorcelia’s face.
Dorcelia retched with disgust at the sight of the deformed baby in her arms. Its eyes were a reddish color, reminding Dorcelia of the blood that surrounded her. The baby’s face was misshapen, and it resembled one of the vile creatures that inhabited the swamp more than it did a human being. His hips and legs were out of place, resembling those of a frog. The webbing around the baby’s toes and its thick, discolored skin added to the child’s reptilian appearance. She counted six claw-like fingers and toes on the revolting beast’s appendages, which the devoutly Catholic woman took as a confirmation of God’s condemnation of her husband’s unforgivable sin and her own apathy to her only daughter’s plight.
“My God, woman!” Poppie exclaimed as he burst through the door. “What is dat terrible noise? You scaring da chirren.”
Poppie froze in horror at the unexpected sight before him. His daughter’s contorted body lay lifeless on the blood-soaked sheets, and the vision of his wife reluctantly cradling what appeared to be nothing short of a monster in her outstretched arms made him stop short.
“Qui c’est q’ca? What is dat?”
“Dis be your doin’, Grand Beede’. God has sent his judgment for your sin.”
“Oo ye yi! It be a little monster. A bebette!” Poppie exclaimed with shame and horror.
He glanced toward the lifeless body of his daughter stretched out on the bed. “Lillian, what you done to us, peeshwank?”
“Don’t be blamin’ da girl or da baby. It your doin’. You be da only monster here,” Dorcelia replied accusingly.
“Bwaaa waaaa bwaaa,” the newborn cried.
Poppie was at a loss for words. He looked down at the deformed creature in his wife’s arms with disgust before turning away in silence.
He knew his wife was right. The creature was a curse from God for his unspeakable sin. He refused to acknowledge that it was merely a baby. If he admitted that to himself, he would be forced to concede that it was his child. He was the monster’s father.
No, he refused to do that. It wasn’t a baby at all; it was a curse. It was an unholy creature, a demon child, a little monster. The Cajuns had a name for such a beast – bebette
Chapter Two
Billy
“Bwaaaa baaa aaa,” the infant cried, its mournful screams ignored by the others in the small cabin.
“I can’t take dat caterwaulin’ no more,” Poppie shouted above the din.
Dorcelia turned from her household duties and reluctantly walked over to the crying child. Once in her arms, the baby’s screams became less fierce as he pressed his misshapen face into his grandmother’s chest. Dorcelia never quite got over her feelings of disgust at the child’s distorted appearance, but suppressed her misgivings for the sake of her family’s tranquility.
Ever since the boy’s birth and his mother’s subsequent demise, turmoil had reigned in the household. The child’s beastly appearance only heightened his unwelcome arrival into the family. His very presence was believed to be a punishment from God for the sins that created him.
The boy’s mother, only a child herself, had not survived long enough to witness what she had wrought. Dorcelia was eternally grateful her daughter had been spared this knowledge. She felt that the girl had already suffered enough in her short life.
“Bwaaa baaa aaa,” the infant’s pitiful cries echoed around the room.
“That bebette sounds like da Devil himself,” Poppie continued in his rant. “Should’ve buried him with his mama.”
“Mais, jamais d’la vie! Don’t you ever talk about my poor child like dat again, you bon rien!” Dorcelia shot back. “Dat peeshwank done no t’ing wrong. It was you brought shame on us. Now my beautiful baby girl lay hidden in dem swamps forever, wit’ no one to know she ever lived.”
“She better off and you know it, woman!” Poppie shot back at his increasingly belligerent wife. “She played a part in dat shame, same as you. Don’t be playin’ all holy now, bonne a rienne. Girl in a better place now; no one gonna find her where she at. At least she can rest in peace, not like da rest of us with that demon child at our feet.”
“Bwaaa baaa baaa!” the little child screamed in response to the increasing tension around him.
“It sounds like a goat,” Justin interjected in an attempt to disrupt his parents' ensuing melee.
“A demented, evil goat,” T-Roy added with a grin.
Justin and T-Roy were the remaining children in the St. Pierre household. T-Roy was the oldest and the most like his daddy. A bully in the making and ignorant to boot, T-Roy idolized the patriarch of the clan and had every indication of becoming just like him. Once grown, it was only assumed he would have a swamp cabin of his own tucked away amongst the cypress trees, complete with a wife and offspring he could abuse to his heart’s content. Justin was the younger of the two and kept quiet most of the time, with the rare exceptions when he should have remained silent the most.
The two brothers performed their sadistic father’s every command without question. This included wrapping the bloody corpse of their older sister in an old sheet and assisting in her secret burial deep in the swamp.
The burial place was as secluded as could be – a creepy location only fit for demonic spirits and ghostly entities that haunt the netherworld. An old, overgrown plantation that had sunk into the surrounding marshland long before the Civil War, Lost Bayou Plantation was almost unrecognizable as a man-made structure after being swallowed up by the stagnant waters and ravaged by the relenting passage of time. It was doubtful even the few inhabitants of the secluded region knew of its existence, which made it the perfect place to bury the family’s deepest and darkest secrets.
To the few outsiders who even knew of Lillian’s
existence, her absence could be explained without further inquiry. The entire clan just refused to discuss it, with the only exception being a vague suggestion of sinful promiscuity on the girl’s part and subsequent banishment to live with distant relatives. Of course, these insinuations only fueled rumors of an unwanted pregnancy and involvement with an unnamed male companion, with whom she’d run off. The silence about the girl’s whereabouts which the St. Pierre household practiced surely pointed to a shameful outcome and successfully squashed anyone from pressing the matter further.
“Bwaaaa aaaa aaaa!”
“Oooo yee! Shut dat t’ing up!” Poppie started in again. “It gives me da freesons.”
“Zeerahb, that t’ing is disgusting,” T-Roy added.
“He’s not a t’ing; he’s a child,” Dorcelia corrected them. “Your child, bon rien.”
“You watch now, woman, before I pass a slap at your sassy mouth,” Poppie spat back at his wife. “It’s not a child; it a monster – spawn of Satan. I make no claim to it. You listen to me. We need to put it out in da swamp and let da Devil take it back to da hell it come from.”
“You do no t’ing of the kind. God himself pass punishment on da lot of us for Lillian. We gonna bear dis cross, or He doom us all forever to dat hell you goin’ on about.”
“We end up in dat hell already wit dat t’ing here. It gonna grow and den what? Little monster gonna be a big monster, and we all gonna regret it.”
“Bwaaaa aaaa aaaaa!”
“Ech! Dat goat child give me da mal au couer! I’m gonna ‘tro up,” T-Roy joked.
“Dat ‘goat child’ is your brother, T,” Dorcelia turned her gaze to her eldest.
“It ain’t no St. Pierre,” Poppie exclaimed. “I ain’t givin’ dat t’ing my name.”
“It ain’t got a name at all,” Justin observed.
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