Fishing in Brains for an Eye with Teeth (Thirteen Tales of Terror) (7 page)

The pain brought out the sassiness in her.  Wincing, she told him, “It’s too late for that.”

After a moment of silence, Brown Overalls said, “It was Pete Proctor that hit ya.”  He met Talytha’s eyes in the rearview mirror.  “Trust me when I tell ya, he’s gonna pay
dearly
for that.”

The Doc said, “Amen, brother.”

The Sheriff shook his head and grumbled under his breath, “Fucking demon from Hell, my hairy white ass!”

Talytha realized she was wearing a bandage wrapped around her head.  She reached up to feel her aching skull and the doctor said, “Don’t touch it.  You don’t want to start it bleeding again.”

Talytha rasped, “How do you know my name?”

The Sheriff recited, “Talytha Tomeka Taylor, age twenty-four, sister of Maleeka, daughter of Terrence and Betty.  Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois.  So far, still not married, and you have no kids, but you do have a pet ferret named Cassio.  Right?”

Suddenly, she couldn’t stop panting.  There was so little air at the moment, she wouldn’t give up any of it to form words. 

The Sheriff growled, “Just shut the fuck up until we get there, okay?”  He shot a furious glance back over his shoulder.  “You too, Doc.”

The car was buffeted by another strong blast of wind.  God seemed to be trying to blow them off the road.  Talytha hoped He succeeded.  She didn’t want to meet whoever was waiting at the end of this drive.

Silently, she began to pray.

When more strong gusts hit the car, Doc exclaimed, “Goddamn!  Keep this thing on the road, will ya?”

Brown Overalls snapped, “
You
wanna drive?”

The door had no handle; there was no way she could jump out even if she wanted to (and she really didn’t want to, considering how badly her head hurt).  Talytha looked out the window.  She saw nothing but darkness and trees.  They were cruising through a forest.

A distant flash shuddered across the sky.

“How bad is it supposed to get?” asked Brown Overalls.

“Bad,” said the Sheriff.  “I saw the Doppler on TV right before I left.  Everything west of here is lit up for miles.”

Talytha couldn’t believe they were talking about the weather.  Dizzy, she leaned over, until her head was almost on her knees.  She rode like this for the last five minutes of the journey and didn’t see the church from her window.

Eventually the Sheriff’s car came to a stop.

Talytha’s head was still down.  If she had sand to bury it in, she would have done so gleefully.

The men in the front of the car opened their doors to get out.  A blast of muggy air rushed in. 

A moment later, the doors in back were opened.  Brusquely, Talytha was told to, “Get out.”

She raised her head and looked up at the Sheriff.  She didn’t know what possessed her to say, “Nice town you got here, man.  Do you treat all tourists like this or am I getting special treatment because I’m black?”

The Sheriff slapped her across the face.  “I
told
you not to give me any shit!”

Crying, a red handprint rising on her cheek, her head throbbing, Talytha shrieked, “
Fuck you
!”

The Sheriff shook his head.  “Just like your sister.  Full of
attitude
.”  He drew his gun.  “All right, Sweetheart.  I’m not
about
to mess with you.”  A blast of wind hit the Sheriff so hard, he momentarily staggered.  She noticed he hadn’t bothered putting on a hat.  Loudly, he informed her, “If you run, I swear to God, I’ll shoot you.”

Spit flew from her mouth as she snapped back, “What?  You wanna end up like Pete?”  She was bluffing.  She wasn’t even totally certain Pete was Green-cap but she
thought
he was and it sounded like Pete might have gotten into trouble for hurting Talytha.

Whatever the case, the bluff seemed to work.  The Sheriff’s eyes narrowed almost to the point of nonexistence.  Looking worried, he took a couple of steps back from the automobile.  His expression then turned stony, just before he pointed his pistol and yelled, “Get the FUCK out of the car!”

She did as he demanded.  She got out of the cruiser. 

She found herself in a parking lot, with thirty or more parked cars.  The wind howled in the high branches of the trees surrounding this isolated place.

When Talytha turned around and saw the church, pain and fear were both briefly obliterated by unbounded revulsion.

Talytha was raised Baptist.  Unless she was deathly ill, every Sunday until she was eighteen years old, she was expected to be in church with the rest of her family.  She never sang in the church choir like Maleeka or taught a Sunday school class like her mom but she did consider herself to be a devout Christian.

When Talytha Taylor saw the church sitting on the hill hidden in the forest outside Paintersville, she was shocked to her very soul.

A simple pillbox of a structure, the one-story rectangular building had a gabled cupola on the roof and atop that was the most perverted thing Talytha had ever seen.  The steeple had been replaced by a gigantic phallus, complete with a gargantuan set of testicles.  Thirteen feet tall, the wooden penis had been painted Caucasian flesh color and was topped like a mushroom instead of a cross.

It was absolutely obscene.

As was the rest of the church. 

She imagined it must have been painted white at some point in the past, with maybe hunter green shutters, but now the building was glossy black with scarlet-colored shutters.  The front door of the church had been painted bright red and mounted above the entrance were two huge erect dildos, crossing each other, as if they were swords.

And all across the outside walls of the chapel, Talytha could see portraits of nude people engaged in various sex acts.

Her first thought was,
It’s Satanic
.  She considered the possibility that these men who abducted her were devil worshipers.  But as she was herded toward the building— wincing into the wind— Doc, the Sheriff and Brown Overalls all behind her— she realized there were no pentagrams or swastikas on the church. 

It was more like a temple devoted to Dionysus than Lucifer.

The closer she got to the chapel, the more unnerving details she saw.  Like the depiction of a man fornicating with a sheep, one so realistic Talytha could see hairs on the man’s naked ass and slobber drooling from the muzzle of the ewe.  Elsewhere she saw two naked men engaged in sodomy.  Beside them was the painting of two elderly men having sex with a young girl.  The entire structure was heaped with naked bodies, displaying a perverted painted orgy that was so realistic, she would have sworn she could see some of the participants squirming.

The Sheriff stepped up beside Talytha, saying, “My portrait is around back, if you wanna see what I’m packing.”  He grabbed his crotch with the hand not holding his gun.

Overalls said to the Sheriff, “I swear to God, you enjoy this shit.”

The Sheriff shrugged.  “When in Rome....”

All around them, trees swayed and shook and hissed and clattered from the continual blasts of fast winds.

“Come on,” said Overalls, giving Talytha a shove.

The moment the doors to the church were opened, Talytha heard Sean Kingston performing
Beautiful Girls
and she wondered if this hellhole was some kind of brothel.

“Go on,” demanded the Sheriff, poking her painfully in the back with his pistol.

Stumbling up three small steps, she crossed the threshold.

Behind Sean Kingston’s damnations, Talytha heard the sound of weeping.

Pushed and prodded across a small lobby, Taliltha entered the sanctuary.

The church could accommodate two hundred people but there were only about seventy or eighty people here tonight.  There were three aisles, two columns of ten pews, and each pew was able to seat ten people.  As Talytha was driven down the middle aisle, a murmur shuffled through the congregation.  Numerous people turned around to view her entrance.

She only saw the good citizens of Paintersville with her peripheral vision.  Her attention was focused on the naked man on the raised stage where the pulpit should be.

Her first view of the Painter was his bare ass.  She raised her eyes, looking at the back of his head, his bushy black mane.  Paintbrushes in both hands, he seemed to be both making art and directing the music, waving his arms in wild flourishes.  Talytha could see a painting just now taking shape in front of him, the portrait of an infant. 

To the left of the easel was a boombox on a pedestal.  To the right of the easel was the crib where the Painter’s subject lay sleeping.

When the Painter suddenly stopped directing with one hand and clasped it in front of him, onto the woman’s head— only then did Talytha realize he was currently receiving fellatio.  Talytha caught just a glimpse of the middle-aged woman giving the Painter a blowjob.

Like an automated reaction to this scene, Talytha turned without thinking, intent on fleeing.

She found the Sheriff’s gun hanging in the air three inches away from the end of her nose.

The bald brute calmly said, “Don’t even
think
about it.”

With that desperate look in his eyes that Talytha remembered so well from their first encounter, Overalls Guy grabbed her, spun her around, and gave her a hard shove.  She staggered forward, twisted her ankle, felt a stab of pain there, and fell.

Her head throbbed.

Talytha began to cry.

Sobbing women cried louder in sympathy for her.

“Get up!”

She hugged the floor, bawling, hurting, frightened out of her wits.

“Get the fuck up, bitch!”  A new injury was added to her pains as she was kicked in the butt.

When she didn’t get up, Overalls and the Sheriff each grabbed an arm and pulled her to her feet.  She was manhandled forward.

For the first time, she looked closely at the congregation and was startled and frightened yet again.  The people here had been segregated, men to the left, women to the right, with the elderly in the back and the teenagers up front.  She saw no small children.  Virtually everyone was dressed in their Sunday finest, in suits and elegant dresses, but in the front two pews on the right were ten young ladies who were all completely nude.  The naked women were crying, hiding their faces in their hands, and generally looking embarrassed, ashamed, and distraught.  One beautiful brunette with enormous breasts had such a red face, she looked like she had a rash.

And then Talytha saw familiar faces— both women from the store.  They were sitting with a third woman who was dressed like a widow and was crying harder than anyone.  Whereas most people were now looking at Talytha, this woman was looking at the Painter, ringing her hands, rocking back and forth, wailing.

Talytha thought she now understood why the woman in the general store was bawling earlier tonight.  All three of these women were probably related to the poor woman being forced to perform fellatio.

Talytha never considered the possibility they might be the sister, aunt, and grandmother of the infant baby being christened tonight in paint.

She just happened to glance left and saw a young man— probably fifteen or sixteen— dressed in a suit and tie, with his fly undone and his erection out, openly masturbating as he looked across the aisle at the naked babes.

Aloud, with more volume than she intended, Talytha blurted out, “What kind of place is this?”

The Painter heard her and stopped his wild gesturing.  His back still to Talytha, he first put down his paintbrushes, and then reached over to turn off the music on the boombox.  Finally, he used both hands to pull the lady’s head away from his crotch, her mouth coming off his dick with a wet plop. 

The captor turned around to face his prisoners.

Talytha’s first impression was,
He’s nothing special
.  The Painter was tall, lanky, and furry, with a wild tangle of hair.  His bright blue eyes sparkled with lively mischief.  He had a short rat-brown beard, probably, Talytha thought, in an effort to look Christ-like.  But there was nothing
charismatic
about this man.  She shook her hurting head, wondering,
Is this really the guy who’s terrorizing all these people?
  This
is the ‘demon from hell?
’

There was nothing devilish about him at all.  His penis wasn’t even all that impressive. The thin hard-on he was sporting was probably no more than five inches long, six at best.

When he saw Talytha, the Painter immediately clasped a hand to his chest and said, “Oh my heavens!  Aren’t
you
a sight for sore eyes!”

Talytha noticed a tattoo over the Painter’s left breast, one of a flaming heart.  Hair had grown over the tattoo but the bright red ink showed through.

The Painter turned his head slightly and bellowed, “LUMMOX!  GET OUT HERE!” He shook his head.  “This is embarrassing.  Of all times for him to need to go to the little minion’s room.”

Talytha was acutely aware of the men still standing beside and behind her.  Fleeing wasn’t an option.  Her terror rose again and made her bold.  “So you’re the evil madman who’s terrorized this entire town, huh?”  Contemptuously, she snipped, “You don’t look all that much to me.”

Several people gasped, including at least one person from the men’s side.  Much of the weeping had subsided.  Everyone’s attention was focused on Talytha and the Painter.

For a full minute, the Painter just stood there, expressionless.  Then, without warning, he burst into laughter.  He shook a paint-stained finger at her, saying, “You are
definitely
like your sister.  Am I going to have as much trouble with you as I did with her?”

“Where is she!”  Talytha shrieked, “What have you done with her?”

“Meleeka?”  The Painter smiled wickedly, his eyes fixed solidly on Talytha.  “She’s fine.  She’s hanging on my bedroom wall right now.”  He tittered.

Talytha and Maleeka often went to horror movies and screamed together when someone was killed.  She’d seen a lot of slasher films in her life, including every
Saw
movie, and when the Painter talked about Maleeka hanging on a wall, Talytha immediately pictured her sister mounted by way of a bloody meat-hook plunged through her belly.  She shuddered, putting her hands up before her eyes, as if she could shield herself from her own imagination.  She tried finding refuge in the fact that he also said, ‘she’s fine.’