Poisoned Soil: A Supernatural Thriller (5 page)

“Shit!” Jesse exclaimed as he turned and saw Felipe barreling at the three of them, his eyes deranged and his intentions clear. Felipe’s momentum slammed his body into Terry and pummeled him into the ground. Wild with uncontrollable rage, Felipe tore into Terry with all he had, looking to inflict pain on his taller adversary. Jesse and Shane, momentarily shell-shocked, stood by dumbfounded. Jesse came to his senses, ran and grabbed a 2x4 leaning against the shack, and slammed Felipe in the head, but not before he had bitten half of Terry’s ear off.

“OH GOD!” Terry exclaimed, realizing at once that he could only fully hear his scream from one ear. “Jesus Fucking Christ, what happened? What the fuck happened to my ear?”

Jesse leaned down to look at Terry’s ear. “Holy crap,” he said, as he wiped the blood from Terry’s ear on his jacket sleeve. “Looks like Mike Tyson done got a hold of you!”

Felipe rolled on the ground, dazed and moaning. Terry moved his bloody hand around the right side of his head and felt his ear in disbelief. “He bit my right ear off. Damn it, kill that sumbitch too!”

“NO!” Jesse barked. “Blake said what we’re here to do. He wants that big un killed and that’s it. For now.”

“But he bit my ear off!”

Jesse thought for a moment. “Well...I s’pose we ought to learn him some manners then.”

Felipe was helpless and barely on the verge of consciousness as Shane and Jesse rolled him face up. Jesse straddled him and looked at Terry while Shane helped hold Felipe in check. “Hand me your Bowie knife,” Jesse said to Terry.

Terry had one hand to his ear, covered in blood. Ashamed of how much squealing he had done, he calmed himself enough to hand his knife to Jesse, who took the knife, flipped it upside down and held it in a hammer grip with the steely tip facing down. Without hesitation, Jesse put the tip of the knife on Felipe’s forehead immediately over his left eye and drew a diagonal slit to the underside of his right eye. Felipe screamed in agony and tried to bolt upright.

“Hold him,” Jesse commanded to Shane before returning his attention to Felipe. “I ain’t done with you yet, boy.” He then put the knife above the right eye and drew a diagonal slit to the underside of the left eye, forming a gruesome, bloody X right between Felipe’s eyes. Blood spurted out onto Jesse’s hands and blue jacket.

“Let that be a reminder to you, you black sumbitch. You tussle with any of us again I’ll put a bullet right there,” Jesse said as he touched the tip of the knife to the wound’s intersection between Felipe’s eyes. Felipe panted, his eyes were wide with fear. He was terrified to keep them open but even more afraid to close them. Isabella paced with disbelief inside the cage, not knowing what to do. Eduardo’s dead eyes staring at her from her feet, Felipe beaten, screaming and tortured and poor Oz...

No!
Isabella thought to herself as she saw Ozzie move. Panic had spurred him out of hiding, now standing out in the open fifty yards away, looking straight at the captors.
Please Ozzie, PLEASE, don’t move
!

Ozzie looked around and shuffled his feet clumsily the way someone would do with two left feet. He was unsure of what was happening or what he should do.
The Monsters
, Ozzie thought.
They ARE monsters! They’re trying to eat us just like they said they would!

Isabella shrieked as loud as she could and rammed the cage violently, doing anything to get the men’s attention off of Ozzie. Her maternal force knocked some of the fence clips off and partially dislodged the top of the cage. Jesse got to his feet, grabbed his 2 x 4, walloped the side of the cage, and drove Isabella back. Ozzie couldn’t stand his mother being attacked, so he charged forward ten yards before fear stopped him cold.

With the shock of the bite subsided somewhat Terry said, “Looks like the little ’un wants some too. I’ll teach him a lesson myself.”

“We ain’t got no time for that,” Jesse shouted, but Terry was already off. Jesse let it go, figuring Terry had probably earned a little revenge of his own. Terry ran straight at Ozzie, screaming and wailing and trying to terrify him. It worked.

Terrified, Ozzie turned and bolted, running only fifteen yards back before he came to the corner of a tightly strung electric fence that was higher than he could ever jump. Ozzie turned right and sprinted along the back fence. Terry gave chase and stayed close, but Ozzie was fast. By now it had become entertaining for Jesse and Shane, who ran along just to see what happened. Ozzie concentrated on fleeing and not on where he was running. It wasn’t until the last few yards that Ozzie realized the danger he had put himself in. He skidded to a stop mere feet before the rear corner and looked back to see Terry closing fast. Jesse and Shane moved in, on each side of Terry, to block Ozzie’s path, forming a horseshoe in front of Ozzie with the fenced corner immediately behind him.

“Ha, ha, ha...got yourself in a pickle, don’t cha?” Terry’s mood had improved considerably. He eyed Ozzie as he slowly reached for his Bowie knife, taking a step closer in unison with Jesse and Shane as if they were tethered. Terry moved within six feet of Ozzie and waved the knife at him. Ozzie blinked and had something of a flashback when he saw the knife.

Terry’s patience expired. He stretched out like a baseball player diving head first into second base as he dove for Ozzie. Ozzie backed up until he was inches from the fence. Terry grabbed a leg and tried to hold on tight, but Ozzie squirmed from his grip and jumped two feet away. Terry got back to his feet, held the knife in his right hand and swiped it at Ozzie.

Ozzie stared at Terry’s hands, shuffled his feet and waited. Terry faked a swing of the knife and, instead, reached with his left hand to grab Ozzie by his head to pull him down. Ozzie panicked and reacted like a frightened dog, snapping and biting until he crunched through two of Terry’s fingers on his left hand, drawing a mouthful of blood. The knife fell from Terry’s hand to the ground and he stood straight up, screaming in agonizing pain.

With both sides blocked, Ozzie saw an opening to dive right between Terry’s legs and started for it. Jesse read Ozzie’s intentions and sprinted toward the same spot, hoping to block Ozzie’s exit, but he tripped on a root just before he dove. Instead of diving, he stumbled for a couple of steps before crashing into Terry’s knees, his arms tackling Terry as they draped around him for support. Terry was thrown forward and fell right onto the second wire of the high-voltage fence, his weight pressing it to the ground.

Later, Ozzie would try unsuccessfully to recollect what happened in the next eight seconds. The last thing he would be able to recall was being trapped in the corner paralyzed by fear. What Ozzie couldn’t remember was that, for a brief instant, Terry’s body created a three-foot high opening in the fence. The sound of the fence shocking Terry like a Louisiana mosquito zapper added to Ozzie’s terror and thrust his body into motion. As if guided by a mysterious force (probably raw fear), Ozzie jumped and landed squarely on Terry’s back as he lay across the fence and vaulted onto the other side, rolling in the leaves as he landed.

Shane sprinted to Terry’s aid, grabbing his feet and yanking him off the fence and taking a strong shock in the process.

“JESUS!” Shane shouted as he tried to shake the pain out of his hands.

Terry rolled on the ground in excruciating pain, semi-conscious with a large part of an ear missing, two crushed and broken fingers and skin crawling with electricity. Jesse stood up just as Ozzie got to his feet on the other side. For a fleeting second, he and Ozzie regarded one another, confused, as each tried to get his bearings. The perspective was as it should be, a fence separating captor and prisoner, but the roles were reversed. Ozzie scampered down the fence line back in the direction of his home, calling his mother. Jesse realized the gravity of the situation and the personal repercussions if Blake found out he was the one that let Ozzie get away.

“GODDAMIT!” Jesse shouted. “Shit, he’s out!”

There was no way through the electric fence, so Jesse ran toward the entrance with Shane in close pursuit. He swung open the gate and forcefully kicked Isabella out to the ground. Shane added a kick for good measure for all the trouble her family had caused.

“Leave him alone!” Isabella screamed in the language of her Spanish ancestors as she grimaced with pain. She managed to get to her feet and hobble to the back of the fence where Ozzie stood on the other side. Jesse got to the shut off switch, slammed the handle down and watched the light go from red to green.

“RUN, Ozzie, just RUN!” Isabella instructed Ozzie.

“Mom, NO!” Ozzie replied. “NO! I want to stay with you!”

Ozzie and Isabella stood face-to-face, inches from one another, but unable to touch for the first time in their lives. In that moment, Isabella realized how
lucky
she had been to be imprisoned all this time with Ozzie. Now they endured the worst kind of imprisonment either had ever suffered, the pain of being so close but denied from being together. With the fence off, Jesse and Shane had made their way back in and were coming up behind Isabella. She pushed her own fears aside.

“Listen, Ozzie,” Isabella continued. “We don’t have much time. Just RUN. Get as far away from here as you can. As far away from these people as you can, and never turn back. They killed your father and they want to hurt you, Ozzie!” Ozzie had only a second to read the fear in his mother’s eyes before Jesse’s rapidly approaching head loomed over hers. He saw the pure evil, the vicious hatred in the black depths of his eyes. Isabella turned and ran back to Felipe, hoping both to comfort him and to free Ozzie by doing the most gut-wrenching thing she had ever done, turn her back on him.

Sprinting down the fence line, Ozzie searched for a way in, having no way of knowing that the fence had been turned off. He looked back to see that the men were now on his side of the fence and chasing him. Racing down the back line, he continued past his encampment and along the back side of adjacent paddocks. The commotion from Ozzie’s paddock had brought everyone out. Faces that had been there all along, that Ozzie had rarely seen, watched him run freely in the woods with two men chasing and yelling.

Ozzie could find no way back in. He stopped at the top of the ring of encampments for an instant when he saw a prisoner with bright red hair. In his entire life, Ozzie had never seen such a thing. Everyone he had ever seen had black hair. Unaware that Ozzie was being pursued, red-headed Tammy approached her side of the fence to introduce herself as Ozzie stared into her chestnut brown eyes.

“There he is!” Jesse shouted. The scream broke Ozzie’s gaze and he jerked his head around to see the men running his way. Realizing he couldn’t get past the men to his mother, he turned his head and looked into the thick, unfamiliar brush and trees that covered a steep mountainside. He desperately wanted to be back safely
inside
the fence with Isabella, but fear propelled him in the opposite direction.

With nowhere left to run, he stormed away from his mother up a steep bank in the direction of Rabun Bald.

Chapter 5

Blake fumbled with the radio, trying to pick up a decent classic rock station as he drove south from Clayton through Tallulah Gorge. He stopped when the dial landed on 97.1 and the sound of “Hells Bells” filled the cab in his truck. Blake’s mood improved instantly, as it always did when he heard AC/DC.

Devil’s music my ass
, Blake thought. Angus did an interview with “Hit Parader” magazine and said “he becomes possessed when he gets on stage,” and the religious purists had taken that literally. “See? He admits being possessed,” they claimed.

What a crock
, Blake thought.
That’s when church stopped making any sense to me when they said stupid shit like
"you can’t listen to AC/DC or you can’t listen to Led Zeppelin because Robert Plant said he couldn’t remember penning the words to “Stairway to Heaven”, so he must have been possessed.”
Hell, let ’em have How Great Thou Art, I’ll take Metallica!

Blake just shook his head, laughed and thumped the steering wheel.
This is just what I need, good old rock and roll therapy
, he thought.
Got the next hour to myself with nothing but blue skies, puffy clouds chasing the cold front, and kick-ass tunes
. He rolled down his window, cranked up the volume, and let his hand ride the wind as Blake did “the worm” all the way to Athens.

***

At 3:54 p.m. Blake pulled into the parking lot at The Federal, Athens’ most distinguished restaurant. The glass facade on the exterior contrasted sharply with the earthy brick construction of its surroundings. Athens was, after all, a college town and showcased little of the glassy glamour and glitz like those the architects pumped out hurriedly in Atlanta.
That’s probably what attracted Nick Vegas to open his first restaurant in Athens
, Blake thought.
Say what you want about his ruthless tactics, he was a shrewd businessman. Had Nick opened The Federal in Atlanta, it would have been good, but just another good Atlanta restaurant, nothing special. Put the same place in Athens and you’ve got something folks in both Athens and Atlanta will talk about.
And that attention is what Nick wanted more than anything.