by Bryan Smith
“The real deal, right? Not one of those hokum merchants they got now.”
Garner nodded. “As you say, the real deal. He helped me summon a demon. Again, the real deal, straight from one of the inner circles of hell. This demon agreed to help me, at the expense of my soul.”
Hoke shook his head. “Goddamn, you are hard-core. Your fucking soul, man. Shit.”
“Yes.”
Garner’s dark eyes had a faraway glint for a moment. Hoke supposed he was staring into the distant past. He tried to imagine what it must have been like for the guy, the real Garner, the human. Tried to see himself in his shoes and contemplating that decision. But he just couldn’t do it. It wouldn’t have happened. He was just too damned selfish. Or maybe it was a combination of selfish and lazy. Sure, he would’ve exacted some kind of revenge, but it would have been more along the lines of lying in wait for the bastards with a rifle somewhere and ambushing their murdering asses. Something simple like that, and sure as hell nothing as bat-shit insane as going down to N’awlins to find a witch doctor and raise a goddamn demon. Holy shit.
Garner was looking at him again and seemed to sense his thoughts. “I loved my wife and daughter more than I can express to you. More than life itself. Giving up my soul to have the kind of revenge I desired was nothing.”
“Okay.”
Nothing, my scrawny white ass.
“The deal was sealed in a bath of hellfire. It seared every inch of my flesh and spirit. And when it was done, I was part demon, and my soul was no longer mine. I’ll surrender it soon after my eventual descent to Satan’s domain.”
“Yeah? When’s that gonna be?”
“Sooner than I’d like.”
“Well, we all gotta go sometime, I guess.”
Garner smiled. “It’s why I need a mortal vessel. The effects of the hellfire that changed me are beginning to ebb, and when it fades entirely, so will I. However, I can stave off my demise indefinitely by inhabiting a succession of human bodies. Beginning with you.”
“Ain’t I a lucky motherfucker?”
Garner didn’t say anything this time, just kept smiling.
It made Hoke nervous as all get-out, but what could he do?
“Well…anyway…”
“Are you ready to see Gladys now?”
“I don’t know if ready is the right word. Ain’t like I’ve got a choice in the matter. And you still haven’t told me why we’re seeing her.”
“Gladys Kincher rode roughshod over the rest of her clan. Wasn’t the usual way of things in those days, but the usual way of things has always been somewhat skewed in Hopkins Bend. She gave the orders that doomed my wife and daughter. I wanted her suffering to be exquisitely immense and long lasting. I’ve used the abilities granted me to prolong her life force. The blight began with her. She had babies that weren’t right. They were missing fingers and eyes.”
Hoke whistled. “Like your daughter.”
“Like my daughter.”
“But you didn’t stop there. The shit wrong with these fuckers is way beyond missing digits and eyeballs.”
“My need for revenge could not have been satisfied with a mere eye for an eye. I wished to ruin their clan forever.”
Hoke thought of ol’ Pus Eye leering at him from the tractor seat. “Well, all I can say to that is, mission fucking accomplished, bro. I have never laid eyes on a more ruined bunch of motherfuckers in my entire fucking life.”
“It gives me great pleasure to hear you say that. It reaffirms my belief that my mission here has reached its proper conclusion. Now that I have ruined them, I must end them. And then I can leave this blighted place once and for all.”
“And how are you gonna end them?”
Garner went to the front door and wrapped a hand around the doorknob. “Come. See.”
Hoke cast a surreptitious glance at the woods surrounding the Kincher property and gave fleeting consideration to making a run for it. But it was pointless. The goddamn demon—half-demon, what-the-fuck-ever—would haul him back in a heartbeat, and he’d be right back in the same position. Seemed like a lot of fuss and bother to no good end. Why waste his fucking breath?
Yep, I’m a lazy sumbitch.
He heaved a sigh and reluctantly climbed the steps to the porch.
Garner laughed.
There was something insidious and unsettling in the sound. He again considered a run for it. Garner clamped a hand around one of his wrists and held him fast. “You’re going nowhere.”
Hoke winced as the bones in his wrist creaked. “Okay, okay. Shit, you’re gonna twist my fucking hand off. What use would I be as a vessel then?”
More of that demented laughter in lieu of an actual reply.
Garner opened the door and drew Hoke inside after him. He pulled him through a dimly lit foyer and into a living room furnished with pieces that looked as though they’d been salvaged from a pile of Goodwill rejects. An uncomfortable-looking sofa with wooden legs and hideous print upholstery. A rickety green recliner that looked as if it would collapse if anyone weighing more than a buck fifty ever sat in it. A fucking ottoman. Brittle-looking end tables and lamps with holes in the shades. But the decor was the least unsettling aspect of what he saw upon entering the room. The prize for most unsettling went to the array of Kincher freaks who all stood up at their arrival. An about equal number of men and women. Some with big, bulbous heads. A few with more fingers or limbs than anyone really needed. One had a hump so pronounced it forced him to stand stooped over at the waist all the time. Others had faces mashed up and twisted enough to give any sideshow geek the motherfucking heebie-jeebies. But he was almost used to the freakish appearance of the Kinchers by now. This wasn’t what bothered him.
It was the fact that they were all naked.
Yeah, that bothered him.
Hoke groaned.
He felt light-headed and began to sway on his feet. “Ah, shit.”
Garner strengthened his grip on his wrist and kept him upright. “You see, friend, in order to use you as a vessel, I have to weaken your mind.”
Hoke felt pretty weak already.
Hell, he felt like puking.
The Kinchers were coming toward him, moving in close to form a solid circle of deformed flesh around him. He saw things he didn’t want to see. One woman had a diseased-looking third breast down around her armpit. One of the men had a thick, enormous schlong that hung nearly to the floor—except that now it was stiffening and rising from the floor.
Oh, God…
Hoke was all too aware of his own nudity. He would love nothing more than a barrier of clothes between himself and all these fucking freaks. Scratch that. He’d love nothing more than about ten thousand miles between himself and Garner and these goddamn monstrosities. But he was beginning to understand why Garner had deprived him of his duds. It had been with this very moment in mind all along.
They were closer now.
Closer by the second.
Then their hands were on him, pawing at him.
Garner laughed yet again, relinquished his grip on his wrist, and pushed his way out of the circle. Hoke tried to follow, but the circle closed, and he felt the warm, sweaty press of all that wrong flesh. He whimpered, and tears spilled from his eyes. They grunted and snorted like rutting pigs, made stupid moaning sounds like movie zombies. Their hands roamed over every inch of his flesh. Then he felt their mouths on him, their tongues describing wet, sticky trails of saliva up and down the length of his body. A mouth closed around his cock and began to suck with great enthusiasm. To his horror, Hoke felt it begin to stiffen. He hoped that was a broad sucking him off, then realized it hardly goddamn mattered at this point. He closed his eyes and prayed again for divine deliverance.
Again, it didn’t come.
He opened his eyes again when he realized they were in motion. Hoke glanced over his shoulder and saw Garner trailing along behind them, a truly demonic grin stretched wide across his red face.
The half-demon
laughed. “I feel rather confident this will break you.”
Hoke mewled like a baby. “Why?”
They were in a narrow hallway now, moving toward Hoke had no earthly fucking idea where. Garner casually lit another cigarette with maddening deliberation. “To assume control of your body, to enter your mind, you must be broken. Your consciousness ravaged and destroyed. You have to be driven insane.”
The mass of flesh abruptly stopped moving. Hoke twisted his head around and saw that they had reached the end of the hallway.
There was a closed door.
A few of the Kinchers were fumbling with the doorknob.
Hoke’s heart beat a mad rhythm against his chest wall. It felt as if it would blow apart at any moment. He wasn’t sure what awaited him on the other side of that door, but his gut told him it was worse beyond anything he could imagine.
The door opened.
He saw bright light and filth-enslimed walls.
An ungodly stench rolled out.
The hands on him pushed him forward, shoved him through the circle of flesh into the room, where he got his first look at Gladys Kincher.
Hoke screamed.
Garner’s mocking laughter echoed in the hallway.
Hoke screamed again.
The other Kinchers followed him into the room and the door slammed shut.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The girl’s wide, terrified eyes stared a desperate plea at her. Muffled whimpers were audible from behind the gag of wadded-up panties and duct tape. She was maybe a shade over five feet tall and probably weighed a hundred pounds in her clothes, which she wasn’t wearing at the moment. Her face was pale but lovely, her jawline a delicate, graceful curve of tender white flesh. Longish, straight black hair brushed bony shoulders. She had a slender neck. An Audrey Hepburn neck. Her collarbone defined itself starkly against the pale skin every time she breathed in through her nose. She was a genuinely beautiful young girl, probably no more than nineteen.
“Stick it in her neck.”
Megan didn’t hesitate.
She slammed the ice pick into the girl’s throat and yanked it out. Blood spurted from the hole. A bit of the initial gout splashed Megan’s bare chest. The girl’s jaw worked pitifully as she struggled to speak through the gag and the blood filling her throat. Her head went up and down and her body bucked as her cuffed hands strained against the shower nozzle overhead. The way her face contorted and her eyes bugged out made Megan think of a fish flopping around on the deck of a boat. Megan watched the girl’s blood spill down the front of her body and drip into the tub. She knew she should feel sick, overcome with shame, but she did not.
Not with the cold barrel of that .45 pressed against the back of her head.
She didn’t want to be doing this.
But she didn’t want to die even more.
Madeline, her new minder, the one wielding the gun, leaned close, placed a hand on her waist. Her voice dropped to a huskier register as she said, “Stick it in her eye.”
Some part of her still wanted to go into movie-heroine mode. Do a quick spin about and knock the gun from the cunt’s hand with a judo chop. Then jab the bloody ice pick into her throat. Into her goddamn eye. Snap off some dark quip as her adversary hit the ground and died like a pig. But she knew it wasn’t a real option. She couldn’t save the girl. Not now. And any gesture of defiance could result in her own death.
Fuck that noise.
She adjusted her grip on the ice pick and rammed it into the girl’s left eye, driving it in hard, angling it upward into the brain. Her stomach did a violent roll, but she gritted her teeth and choked back a tide of nausea as she focused on driving the ice pick farther in. Blood and some other viscous fluid oozed over her hand. The girl’s body twitched violently a few times and went still. Megan eased the ice pick out of the bloody socket and dropped it in the tub. She flicked her wrist and thick droplets of blood splattered the body.
Madeline slapped Megan’s ass. “Good job, new girl. You may have a real future here.”
Megan stepped aside as a bald, burly man moved past her, reached into the shower, and unlocked the cuff attached to the shower nozzle. He then lifted the body up and out of the tub as easily as she’d lift a pillow. Another man unfurled a sheet of plastic on the tile floor, and the burly guy set the limp body on the plastic with surprising gentleness. He then retrieved the bloody ice pick from the shower and shoved it into a back pocket of his jeans. The men rolled the body up and carried it out.
Megan was amazed.
The whole exercise in bloody murder had taken maybe five minutes.
She flinched as Madeline placed the tip of a finger on her left breast and wiped a bit of blood off her still-trembling flesh. The woman put the finger between her lips and sucked the blood into her mouth. She moved the finger in and out, making soft noises as she mimed fellatio. Megan gritted her teeth again, fought back the grimace that wanted to form. She was still in a delicate situation. To understate to the nth fucking degree. It would not do to show disgust at this stage of things.
“I think you’re my new favorite, Megan. I really do.”
Megan forced a smile. “Thank you.”
“I shit you not. I’ve seen a lot of new girls break in situations like that. Just so you know, I wouldn’t have killed you if you hadn’t been able to do it. Not after doling out almost five grand of Preston money for your sweet ass.”
Megan felt sick.
Madeline’s eyes glittered with amusement. “That’s right. If you’d decided you couldn’t go through with it for moral reasons or some shit like that, you’d still be here anyway. But you looked inside yourself and decided you were perfectly okay with trading another girl’s life for a guarantee of your own safety. I like that. With a mentality like that, you’ll not only survive at the Sin Den, you’ll thrive. You’re a cutthroat bitch, just like me.”
“Why did you…want me to kill that girl?”
Madeline shrugged. “Every once in a while we need to make an example of someone. Sonia tried to escape. She got as far as the parking lot. Which would have been okay if word hadn’t gotten out, but all the other girls knew about it, so she had to go.”
“What did you say her name was?”
Madeline frowned. “Sonia. Why should that matter to you?”
Megan thought of the name etched into the wall of that little holding room and the accompanying desperate note. She wouldn’t be calling the number she’d memorized after all. What could she say? Hello, this is your daughter’s murderer…
She shook her head. “It doesn’t. Not really. I just wanted to know the name of the girl I killed.”
Madeline smiled again. “To personalize it—I get it. Makes her a real human being, not just a piece of meat you cut up. And makes it harder to rationalize what you did as anything other than pure murder.” She chuckled. “Damn, I like you.”
Megan made herself say it: “Thanks. I…like you, too.”
Madeline laughed. “Oh, I doubt you mean that.” She winked. “Yet.”
Megan had no idea what that meant. The weird eye wink or the yet part of her statement. So she made herself smile again and didn’t say anything.
Madeline looked her up and down. “You are a mess. Get in the shower and clean yourself off. We’ll talk more out in my office.”
She left.
Alone at last, Megan started shaking all over. Soft, nervous laughter bubbled out of her. The sound bothered the still-sane part of her psyche, but she was helpless to suppress it. Earlier today she’d been on her way to a big music festival with her boyfriend. A guy she really adored. Life was good. And normal. Now, a scant few hours later, she was looking at a future as a sex slave-stripper. It was like something out of some sleazy grindhouse movie of the seventies. But it was her real life and therefore not funny at all.
So she stopped laughing.
She turned and stepped into the tub, oblivious of the blood pooled around the drain until she stepped in it. She crin
ged and moved back a step, succeeding only in smearing the blood across a wider section of the tub bottom. She heaved a disgusted sigh and closed the shower curtain. Then she twisted the knobs and stepped into the water spray jetting from the nozzle. The cool water made her gasp as it struck her skin. She fiddled with the knobs again to adjust the temperature. She let the water sluice the blood off her chest and then dipped her head under the spray to get her hair wet. She closed her eyes and stayed there for several moments, enjoying the soothing feel of the rushing water on her flesh.
Then she opened her eyes and saw that there was still a bit of red caked around the drain. But it was slowly breaking up and moving through the dark holes in the metal. She watched what remained of the blood she’d spilled swirl away and felt a sick fascination. It was like watching Sonia herself disappear all over again. She tried to make herself feel the self-disgust she knew should be there, but it was like trying to signal someone on Mars with a ham radio. It was like Madeline had said. She was a cutthroat bitch. She cared only about her own safety, ultimately. That would make her a sociopath, which was not a thing she would ever have believed about herself prior to today. But maybe she was being too hard on herself. Perhaps she was temporarily incapable of being moved or shocked by violence in the wake of what she’d seen that insane sheriff do to one of his deputies.
No.
She couldn’t let herself off that easily. Sure, that was a part of it. But Madeline’s take on the matter was on the money. Megan found she couldn’t deny it at all. Moreover, she would do it again, if put in the same position.
Without hesitation.
The hot water turned lukewarm, and finally she cut it off. She stepped out of the tub, dried off with a towel she pulled from a nearby rack, and wrapped the towel around her body. She braced herself for what was ahead and ventured back into the office.