Eyes of the Predator (5 page)

Across the Georgia line, the
countryside was dark. On a section of deserted highway, he spotted what he was
looking for.

The old wooden church with a dirt
parking lot looked perfect. Surrounded by trees on all sides but the road
frontage, it was dark and secluded. Not likely that any churchgoers would be
around this time of night. Churches were usually deserted when the flock wasn’t
there praying or singing, or doing whatever it is the flock does.

 The area was transitional
between the busy city and the remote backcountry of northern Florida and
southern Georgia. The little wooden structure had probably been there for
seventy-five years. It had no parking lot lights, and the rear could not be
seen from the road. The car glided around to the rear of the old building with
its lights off. Yes, just what he was looking for. The hunger growled within.
It was time to feed.

This project had started so
quickly, he had had no time to scout around for the spot. But then, he had
always been lucky this way. And he was smart, at least he thought he was smart,
and able to adapt to circumstances. But most of all, he trusted his instincts
and ability to sense danger. This spot felt safe, and he was hungry.

The wheels of the car crunched
the gravel as it came to a stop behind the church at the far end of the lot. He
put the knife to her throat again.

“I’ll be right with you,
sweetheart,” he said holding his face so close his lips touched her cheek as he
spoke. She shivered at the movement of his lips against her soft skin. He knew
she could smell his breath.

Opening the driver’s door, he
walked around to the passenger side, chuckling a little as he walked to the
rear and then around. Closer to go around the front, he thought to himself. He
found the irony amusing, that he was like everyone else in this little
eccentricity. Curious.

Stopping for a moment, he
breathed deeply. The night air was thick, humid, and pungent with the smell of
vegetation and life. Buzzing, chirping, and humming from a billion insects and
frogs filled his ears. Life rustled in the trees and scurried and slithered
along the ground. It was all around him, and he was part of it. Glancing at the
car, he could see that the trembling girl was not. He exulted in the life
swarming around him and filling him. She only awaited the fate he had selected
her for…and for her. She was no longer part of the life teeming and swirling
around in the night.

It was a curious thing to see her
through the spotted car glass, isolated and separated from the life. He was
part of it, the life. She was…something else. Separate, different, alien. Her
separateness and isolation and difference excited him. It made him powerful.

Jerking the passenger door open,
he slit the plastic tie holding her wrists to the door’s armrest with a quick
motion. She almost fell out onto the ground as it released.

“You hear that?”

The old man hunched over in his
rocking chair on the front porch of the old house and squinted, as if that
would sharpen his hearing. Light filtered out through the curtains of the
living room behind him. The window was open and moths fluttered against the
screen.

“What?” The equally old woman was
sitting a few feet to his left in an identical wooden porch chair. Focusing on
the cross-stitch embroidery she was working on in her lap, her peripheral
vision picked up the side-to-side movements of his head as he tried to pick up
the sound again. It was distracting, so she dropped her work in her lap and
turned her head and asked more sharply, “What?”

“Nothin’,” the old man said leaning
back in his chair. “Thought I heard something through the woods, over by the
A.M.E. Church. Must have been nothin’.”

“Maybe you should walk over and
check around,” the old woman said. “You usually hear pretty good for an old
man.”

A wheezy soft laugh escaped the
old man. “Right, maybe I should.” He reached over and patted her thin knee.

“Old man, huh. Where’d you learn
to talk like that?”

“From you I reckon,” she looked
over at her husband whose hands were bracing on the arms of the chair to push
himself up. “You thinkin’ you’re not old?”

He chuckled and shifted a little,
as if trying to get up the energy to rise from the chair.

“Young buck would be more right,”
he said, rising stiffly from the chair and shuffling his feet in a little jig
to show his wife how spry he still was.

Her response was a shake of the
head and a short, “Go on now. See what’s going on through those woods.”

“Why, yes, ma’am. I’ll do just
that. Wouldn’t want nothin’ to happen over at the church. I ain’t never been a
church person and don’t suppose I ever will be, but still, I don’t need any
more points against me with the old man upstairs if something was wrong over
there, and me just sittin’ here passing time with an old woman.”

“What makes you think you get any
points at all out of this? It was my idea for you to check it out. You are
forgetful, old man.”

“Well,
old girl,
I guess
you could say I identified the problem and organized the expedition. That ought
to be worth somethin’,” he drawled back with a smile.

The screen door banged as he
walked into the house and through it to the kitchen. A minute later, the door
banged again.

“Think you’re makin’ enough
noise? Not likely you’re gonna sneak up on anyone with all that door bangin’
goin’ on.”

“What makes you think I’m trying
to sneak up on
anyone
? I want them long gone by the time I get there. No
need to be overly ambitious or under cautious about such things.” He smiled at
his wife, still seated in her chair.

He clicked on the flashlight and
shined it across the yard toward the tree line. The batteries were old, the
light dim and yellow.

“Better hurry,” she encouraged
him. “Not much light left in them batteries.”

“Yep. I better get movin’.”

When he was half way across the
yard, an uneasiness bubbled slightly inside her and she called out from the
porch, “You take the gun?”

He turned, and reaching behind,
the old man pulled the .38 Smith and Wesson, two-inch barrel revolver from his
back pocket. He held it up for her to see as he walked toward the trees.

He smiled again as he jerked the
girl roughly to her feet. The knife was at her throat. His body pressed hard
against her forcing her against the side of the car.

“Don’t make a sound, sweetheart.
Do you understand?” The grin was still on his face.

She nodded slowly, trembling.

“We’re gonna have a little fun.
Then I’ll take you somewhere and drop you off. You can find your way home.
Right?”

Again, the slow, trembling nod.

He glanced around and saw no
lights through the trees surrounding the church. Just woods and dark. Reaching
into the car, he retrieved a roll of duct tape he had conveniently placed under
the passenger seat. No need to worry about being spotted now.

With a quick motion, he circled
the girl’s face with the tape sealing off her mouth and any possible sound she
might make other than the soft, muted whimpers she was trying to control. Her
fear and pathetic effort not to make any sound as he had instructed sent a
thrill through his loins.

Roughly, he jerked her away from
the door and pushed her towards the front of the car.  With one hand, he
grabbed the back of her neck and pushed her over onto the hood of the car,
banging her face against the metal. He knew she could feel the heat of the
engine radiating through the hood onto her face.

The knife went down the back of
her pants slicing through them and the panties beneath. She gasped as the cold
steel continued down between the cheeks of her buttocks and rested there for a
moment. A shudder ran through the man as he leaned against her, and she sobbed
more heavily.

Stepping back, he looked at her
pale skin just visible in the dark. Her bare, trembling white buttocks gave off
a ghostly luminescence. Opening his pants, he moved back to her. This time, she
would have screamed had she been able.

It only took a couple of
minutes—painful, terrifying minutes for the girl. After, he stood quietly in
the dark, leaning against her still trembling body. The powerful heat and force
of his attack on the girl faded into a satisfied warmth. It was not the
afterglow of a pleasant sexual encounter. It was the desperate relief of
drinking after a trek through the desert without water. This had been the
appetizer for what was to come. Soon, he would experience the belt loosening
feeling of feasting after a long fast.

 He could feel her trembling
in fear against him and he drank in that which he had missed and needed so
much. Leaning against her, he savored the feeling and her terror.

“Maybe we should just call the
sheriff,” she called after him. “You might be too old to go traipsing through
the woods in the dark.”

“I’ll be alright old girl. Most
likely just a raccoon pulling on the old back screen door, or some youngsters
looking for a place to park” he called back. And now he was determined to check
things out and show his woman that after sixty odd years of marriage, he was
still a man. Maybe an old shriveled up man, he chuckled to himself, but a man
nonetheless.

At the tree line, the old man
stopped for a moment looking for the small path that led about a hundred yards
through the woods to the back of the old church. Finding the entrance, he threw
one backward glance at his wife, still sitting on the porch. She watched him,
and then conscious of his glance, looked back down at her cross-stitch work.

He scanned the ground ahead with
the flashlight. Most anything out would scurry away as he approached, and there
wouldn’t be any gators here. No water nearby. But snakes…there were lots of
them, and they tended to lie on the paths at night in the cool air. They weren’t
very active at nighttime, even in this warm climate. But they could get
downright mean if you stepped on one in the dark. He was careful as he walked.
He didn’t like snakes.

Emerging from the woods, he
clicked the flashlight off and stood quietly at the edge, trying to blend in
with the tree line. Without the light, he would be nearly invisible from a few
feet away.

He could make out the church
across the rear gravel lot. Nothing seemed out of sorts and he could see no
one. Walking as softly as he could through the gravel, he went to the back of
the church building. The crunching sound his shoes made in the rocks caused him
to wince at every step. Clicking the light on for a few seconds, he could see
no signs of prying on the back door.

He walked around to the front of
the church, trying to stay in the narrow patch of grass surrounding the
building so that his steps were muffled. The windows seemed intact. At the
large double wooden front doors, he checked again with the flashlight for any
signs of a break-in. There were none. The two large, wooden doors revealed
chipped and peeling white paint, but no signs of prying or other damage. He
stepped from the church’s front porch.

Crossing the gravel lot to the
road, he could not make out anything unusual. No way to tell if anyone had
pulled into the lot. The gravel didn’t hold tracks, and he wouldn’t know what
to look for if it did.

Shining the light around from the
driveway of the church, he could see nothing unusual. The light sparkled
brightly back at him from the reflectors marking the centerline of the road in
front. No traffic, but that was not unusual here. In fact, any traffic would
have been unusual this time of night. Something scurried in the brush across
the road. Probably a possum, or maybe an armadillo.

Okay, so much for his adventure.
Time to get back to his porch and his chair. Turning, he circled around to the
rear of the church and the path leading through the woods to the old house.

Stopping at the edge of the
woods, the old man scanned the building and lot one more time. The air was
becoming thicker and damper as the night came on. A mist seemed to rise from
the ground enveloping the base of the church, like something from a spook
movie, he thought. An involuntary shiver crawled up his back.

Silly old fool, his wife would
say, and she would be right, he thought. Enough. Definitely time to get back to
the front porch. He turned and clicked the flashlight on as he swung around and
started to step gingerly back into the trees. The dim, yellow beam of light
reflected off something about a hundred feet away, and he stopped in his
tracks. 

Squinting, he could make out that
it was a car backed up against the woods, almost hidden by them at the rear
corner edge of the lot. It looked like an older car and dull in the beam of the
flashlight. The type of car someone from around here would drive.

Peering intently at the ground
for snakes, alert to anything that slithered, the old man thought for a moment
about going back into the woods and the comfort of his porch chair. An old car
left in a parking lot in these parts wasn’t all that unusual. In fact, it was
pretty common. Probably one of the church goers broke down on Sunday, or some
kids laid down in the seat waiting for him to leave. That thought tweaked his
curiosity.

He stepped back onto the gravel
and walked along the edge of the woods towards the car. The shadows of the
trees made the corner of the lot where the car sat much darker so that he
hadn’t noticed it as he walked from the woods. He had been focused on the
church building. He still wouldn’t have noticed it if the flashlight hadn’t
reflected dimly off the car’s glass as he swung around.