Speaking in Bones (34 page)

Eight treads brought me to a small open space with a concrete floor. My tiny blue-white oval slid over a water heater and a breaker panel, then landed on a door.

Deep breath. I stepped forward and turned the knob. Locked. I set the Maglite on the fuse box and began with the keys. Bingo.
Numero uno
.

Blood drumming like rain on tin, I pushed open the door.

The room was large enough to accommodate a single bed, a nightstand, a dresser, and a heavy oak chair. Through a doorless opening directly opposite I could see into a tiny bath. A crucifix hung on one wall. A space heater glowed red on the floor in one corner.

The nightstand was outfitted with a single lamp, its low-wattage bulb struggling but not quite up to the task. The chair was outfitted with leather-belt ligatures on the armrests and front legs.

A young woman sat cross-legged on the bed, arms pressing her thighs to her chest. Her face was down, her forehead tight to her knees. A slice of white ran across her scalp, a jagged part separating her hair into two blond braids.

The woman spoke without looking up. Maybe to me.

“Why is this happening?” Muffled. Familiar.

I was confused. Then the woman raised huge green eyes to mine.

The world contracted into a pinpoint of time and space. Nothing existed beyond the face and the chair with its hideous belts.

Impossible.

I didn’t know if I was breathing or not. If my heart was beating. If my hand, still flat to the door, was attached to my body.

“Are you here to help him?”

The timorous question hit my ears like a train roaring through a tunnel. The ugly truth slammed home. The fear dissolved, leaving nothing but a cold ball of rage in my gut.

When I answered, my voice sounded disembodied. Far away, as though coming from someone else.

“No, Cora. I’m here to help you.”

I
t took several more seconds for my mind to fully assimilate. To rearrange the puzzle pieces I’d so carefully joined.

Cora Teague was alive. Captive. The victim of zealots.

“Go away.”

“I’m here to help you, Cora,” I repeated myself.

“It’s bad.”

“No.”

“I’m bad.”

“That isn’t true.”

“You’ll make them come.” The soft little voice pierced me like a blade to the gut. It was the terrified girl on the key chain recorder.

“I’m going to take you away from this place,” I said.

Nothing.

“Is Susan Grace here?”

“Who?”

“Susan Grace Gulley, Mason’s sister.”

“Oh, no. Oh, no.” Almost a moan.

“Are you alone?”

“I’m always alone. I have to be alone.”

“We’re going now.”

“Going where?” An edge of panic. “Home?”

“Not if you don’t want to go there.”

“What’s that noise?” Cora crushed her legs more tightly to her chest.

I listened. From above came the renewed din of canine fury. Only then did it register that the dogs had briefly fallen silent.

“It’s all right.”

“You shouldn’t be here.” She blinked, and a tear trickled down her cheek. “You scare me.”

I realized I was braced, knees flexed, weight on the balls of my feet. Acknowledging that my posture might seem threatening, I straightened and stepped into the room.

“Cora. Listen to me.”

“I’m afraid.”

“Where are your shoes?” Calm, masking the turmoil churning inside me.

Cora didn’t answer.

“Do you have a jacket? A sweater?”

Her eyes flicked to the dresser, back to me, wide with alarm. And something else. An emotion so intense I felt chilled to the core.

“I’ll get it,” I said.

“No! No!”

I stepped to the bed and placed a hand on her shoulder. She recoiled as though burned with a poker.

“Father G will never hurt you again,” I said gently.

“Oh, God.” Again her forehead dropped to her knees. “They’re coming.”

“No one is coming.” Knowing my words were untrue. Hoke would be anxious. Snarly Hair would hear the dogs. Or discover Owen Lee’s key chain missing.

“I can’t ever leave.” Almost inaudible.

“Don’t be frightened.”

“They come when I’m frightened. I’m frightened when they come.” Spoken with a singsong lilt, as though chanting or praying.

I crossed to the dresser. Jammed the flash into my waistband and opened a drawer. Socks and undies. I bent to open another.

“Stop!”

My heart catapulted into my throat.

I whirled, expecting to see a Browning pointed at my chest.

There was no one in the doorway. No one in the room but Cora and me.

“Cora?”

The only response was the sound of agitated breathing. Cora had withdrawn so far into the corner I could no longer see her feet.

“Go away!” So loud it seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere.

Dear God! I hadn’t checked the bath!

On reflex, I slammed my back to the wall and slid to the doorway. Blood pounding in my ears, I yanked out my flash and aimed the beam into the dark little space. Saw nothing but a toilet, sink, and makeshift shower.

“Be gone!” At my back.

I whipped my head around, shoulders still flat to the wall.

The wretched lighting was transforming Cora’s body into a grotesque tableau of angles and shadows. Her chin was up and twisted sideways so hard the ligaments in her neck stretched taut as boards. Her fingers, tight on the quilt, looked like bone without flesh.

Sweet Jesus! Was she having a seizure? I scanned for an object I could safely place between her teeth. Saw nothing appropriate. I was heading into the bath when another shrieked command froze me in place.

“Leave!”

Impossible! An adrenaline-induced audio hallucination. Yet there was no mistaking. It was the third voice on the recording. And it was coming from the corner.

Mind struggling to make sense, I inched toward the bed.

“Takarodj el!”
Spit with such force it practically blew my cap off.

Not wanting to see, unable to look away, I aimed the Maglite at Cora. The beam lit her pale oval face, lips stretched in a rigor sneer, eyes shining with something dark and menacing. A sensation deep inside me lurched and staggered.

Easy!

I assessed. Cora’s body was tense, but not in spasm.

More data bytes toggled. My last conversation with Ramsey. Depersonalization disorder. Dissociative personality disorder. Panicky questions from Saffron Brice. Which one, Mommy? Which one?

Saffron wasn’t asking which home Cora might visit. She was asking which Cora.

In that instant I realized the magnitude of my error.

“We are going.” Shrugging out of my jacket. “Now.”

“You will die,” bellowed the girl in a deep bass. It was eerie to hear a man’s voice coming from such a delicate mouth.

“I’m not leaving without you, Cora.”

“I’m not Cora.”

I had no idea how to deal with depersonalization or dissociation. Or whatever the sweet fuck this was. Confront? Cajole? Commend?

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Elizabeth.”

“Go away, Elizabeth. I want to talk to Cora.”

“No one tells me what to do.”

“Go away and let me see Cora.”

“I act as I please.”

“Do you kill as you please?” Knowing priests view exorcism as battle, my adrenaline-pumped brain chose confrontation.

The leering grin lifted on one side.

“You killed Mason.”

“No loss. Meddlesome Mason.”

“Why?”

“He convinced the little cow to tell the world.”

“To record what was happening to her.”

“She’s pathetic. I protect her.”

“You dismembered Mason’s body and tossed it on the mountain.”

“Others do my bidding. I have the power.”

“You have only what Cora allows you.”

“Demon power.”

“Only a coward kills children.”

At that, Cora’s head began to corkscrew wildly. Her braids flew and saliva winged across her cheeks in silvery streams.

“Cora’s brother Eli. River Brice.”

The contortions grew more violent. Fearing injury, I shoved a pillow behind her head and quickly hopped back.

Several seconds of wild movement, then Cora’s chin leveled and the emerald eyes bore into mine. In them I saw pure malevolence. Spawned not by some dark presence in her soul. Spawned by a catastrophe in her brain.

Yet Cora believed the demon inside her was real. I had to get her away from this place. Away from Hoke’s destructive psychopathology.

“I don’t believe in demons,” I pressed on.

Cora hawked spit and hurled it in my direction. Missed.

“Not even a good imitation.”

Cora’s pupils rolled back, leaving a glistening white crescent low in each orbit.

“You are a caricature.” My palms were sweaty, my mouth dry. I swallowed. “A bad performance of what Father G expects you to be.”

Cora’s fingers hyperextended, then contracted into claws on the quilt.

“Let me talk to Cora.”

“Eriggy el!”

“Cora.”

“Cora is weak.”

“You don’t exist. Cora created you.”

“The cow is too stupid to create anything.”

“Come away with me.” Confrontation wasn’t working. I tried coaxing. “You can explain who you are.”

“Elizabeth Báthory.”

“There’s no need to shout, Elizabeth Báthory.” I knew the name. From where? My memory cells were far too wired to help. “We’ll go where it’s warmer.”

“Hagyjàl békén!”

As I turned to snatch my jacket from the floor, I saw the comforter shift. Still, I was a heartbeat too late. Cora was off the bed and on me before I could react.

Twisting my right arm high behind my back, she shoved me forward and down. My cap flew and my forehead slammed the concrete. Pain exploded in my skull.

I saw black. Then a million tiny points of light.

My nose and mouth were mashed shut. My teeth were cutting the insides of my lips. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. I tasted blood.

As I struggled for air and coherence, a knee smashed down on my spine. Lungs burning, I struck out and back with both feet and my one free elbow. Though I’m strong, I was no match for Cora.

“Halj meg!”

I strained my neck in a frenzied attempt to lift my head. To free my air passages. Failed. Cora had me pinned.

It seemed like hours. In reality, it was probably less than a minute. I finally managed to shift one shoulder enough to rotate my chin. My cheek landed in blood pooling on the concrete. My blood. I feared I would retch.

“Cora.” I gasped.

Her body tensed. Then her fingers grabbed and twisted my hair. She yanked my head up, then smashed it down hard.

“Elizabeth.”

I felt her weight shift, then Cora’s breath hot and moist on my ear.

“Slut.”

“You’re hurting me.”

“Filthy bitch!”

“No. No more.”

“Whore!”

She jerked my head high. My neck vertebrae screamed. A flat-palm shove and my left temple slammed the concrete. She mashed down on my right temple with more force than I would have thought possible from someone her size. Something crunched in my jaw.

The tiny white lights winked.

Then the blackness won out.

—

I woke to a scene that made no sense.

Cora was in the big oak chair, one wrist and one ankle strapped to the wood. Hoke lay crumpled on the floor, eyes closed, a crucifix jutting at a deadly angle from beneath his Roman collar.

The memories after that are shredded images spliced together with yawning gaps in between. The incomplete puzzle as hellish multisensory nightmare.

I remember the dogs braying in fury. Hoke’s blood snaking the concrete to mingle with mine. Cora, wild-eyed, clawing at the leather-belt ligatures.

I recall an agitated male voice drifting down from above. Fragments of a one-sided conversation. “…done it again.” “No!” “I’ll hide her and I’ll cover for her when she’s hostage to the serpent. But…” “No…” “…Lord God commands thou shalt not kill.”

I retain the image of a man standing over me, all bone and muscle and dangerous scowl. The smell of his rubber-soled hiking boots.

I know I asked about Susan Grace.

I know I tried to rise but couldn’t.

In my mind I hear the boom of a door slamming tin. Feet pounding down stairs. Men’s voices shouting.

I see Ramsey holding a gun two-handed on Owen Lee Teague. Slidell’s face close to mine.

I feel fingers probing my hair. Soft fabric wiping my face. Hands lifting my body.

The rest of that night is a huge blank containing very few pieces. A fuzzy wool blanket tickling my chin. A wobbly ride with stars overhead and straps on my chest and thighs. Flashing red lights. The back of an ambulance. A wailing siren.

Thinking.

Thinking what?

Thinking nothing at all.