Chapter 56
Hank gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckled cramped, shooting pain through the tendons in his hands.
They’re coming down everywhere, he seethed. All the walls, they’re crashing down all around me! He cursed God for revealing all he sought to conceal. from those who judged him, from those who hated him, and from those who never forgave him.
My wife.
Amy didn’t answer the phone when he called her. It worried him, especially after talking to Joe.
My daughter.
Hank pressed down on the accelerator and made a wide turn onto Tatum Avenue. Dust and grime flew from beneath his tires as he swerved into his driveway. He nearly crashed through the wall of the shed as he sped to the carport, his tires screeching.
Not gonna have these damn ghosts haunt us no more. Gonna shove ‘em all back in the grave. Bury ‘em but good.
Killing the engine, he stumbled out of his truck, climbed the back steps, and barreled through the kitchen door.
Dust motes drifted lazily in the dim, scarlet stream of sunlight spilling into the dusky room through the window over the cluttered sink.
“Amy!” Hank shouted after slamming the door. “Where you at, girl?” With his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides, he stomped across the foot-worn linoleum and into the hallway.
The buckling floorboards groaned beneath his heavy gait like the undead rising ghoulishly from the graveyard of his mind, reaching for him with claws laced in gray brain matter, eager to rip him apart piece by bloody piece.
Amy didn’t answer his call, which pissed him off something fierce. A dreary light streamed out of her room, which was odd, since she always kept that damn door shut, protecting her precious privacy, the purple-walled bubble of her room.
He charged in without prelude and found her curled up in her unmade bed like a baby with her back to the door. Her hair spilled down her pillow like a golden waterfall.
Breathing heavily, Hank cast a massive shadow over her tiny frame, which quivered like a frightened rabbit’s engulfed in the menacing shade of a ravenous wolf.
Amy still wore her school uniform with her pleated skirt hitched up her thigh, revealing cotton underwear covered with cherries.
Catching a whiff of something forbidden, Hank felt familiar demons creep out from the darkness of his subconscious. They whispered in his father’s voice,
“sweet succulent fruit. . .”
No. He cast those demons out long ago. He wasn’t his father.
“Turn around,” he growled through gritted teeth, pushing those unnatural urges back. “We’re gonna have us a talk about that damn grandfather of yours.”
Amy obeyed him. The sight of her face as she brushed back her hair was like a knife stabbing straight through his heart, sobering him, banishing the ghosts and demons.
Black makeup oozed from her red, puffy eyes and streamed down her cheeks, marring her adorable little features.
A massive wave of pity crashed hard into Hank’s chest when he saw the object clutched to her chest: a framed photograph of her and her mother. The look she gave him plunged that knife in his heart deeper. It was the stunned expression of the betrayed blended with an awed gaze of terror. What the hell did that Barrett bastard tell her?
In a small quivering voice, Amy said, “Why didn’t you ever tell me, Daddy?”
Feeling the fire of his anger simmering down to glowing embers, Hank gathered his senses and said, “tell you what?”
Dropping her chestnut-brown eyes, Amy set the picture frame on her bedside table, sat up in bed and reached for a manila folder lying at his feet. “This,” she said.
Puzzled, Hank took the folder, opened it and scanned the front page. He felt an icy twinge of fear despite the heat of his rising furor. “Your grandfather gave you this?”
“He dropped it off for me at the school office.”
Hank’s hands trembled as he flipped through the pages. He couldn’t believe what he was reading.
His past, the brutal darkness of his childhood, the sins of his father, all here in black and white.
And that bastard Richard Barrett snuck it to his daughter.
“Did you read this?”
When he glanced at Amy their eyes met. She nodded and looked away.
His rage shattering the glass ceiling of his resolve, Hank flung the document across the room. It slammed against the wall and slapped to the floor. He swung his fist. His knuckles connected with the wall directly over his daughter’s head.
Amy shrank back, staring at him with shaky trepidation, her hands raised defensively.
Hank backed away and kicked the bureau. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He had to calm down. Running an unsteady hand through his long hair, he took a moment to rein himself in as the room spun around like a top.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Amy said, her voice meek in the swirling darkness.
Hank opened his eyes.
Amy rocked back and forth in bed with her arms around her legs and her chin on her knees. Fresh tears streamed from his baby’s frightened eyes.
Hank glanced over at the window as shadows gathered and twilight filtered into the room, inviting the ghosts back to taunt his fragile sanity.
He needed a drink, badly.
“Come on,” he grumbled, turning calmly away from his daughter. “Let’s go in the kitchen and talk about this.”
Chapter 57
Amy climbed out of bed and cautiously followed her father to the kitchen, where he produced a bottle of Jack Daniels from the cupboard over the stove and collapsed in his chair at the table.
“Sit down,” he said, unscrewing the cap, raising the bottle to his lips, and taking a few good gulps of the amber liquid.
Watching him, Amy eased down in her seat.
“I never wanted you to know about that part of my life,” he said. “Your mother didn’t know. I wish I could forget.”
Amy shuddered, thinking about what she read in that file, about a man named Jim Snow and a twisted religion based on incest and enslavement.
“We’re all captured.”
It was beginning to make sense to her.
“It started with my sister, Hannah. My old man had a sick obsession with her. He didn’t like that she was so independent, rebellious… promiscuous.”
Amy stared at her hands folded in her lap and thought about her nightmare last night: about Jim Snow, and the things he did to his daughter. “He raped her.”
Hank drew a heavy sigh and whispered, “Jesus Christ.”
Amy lifted her eyes. She saw her father toss back another large gulp of whiskey. She really wished he wouldn’t do that, but understood why he felt he had to.
Hank placed the bottle down, licked his upper lip and said, “Yeah, he did. But that ain’t the beginning of it. You see, my father was never right in the head. My mom didn’t find that out until it was too late. He suffered from delusions. He even had his own brand of religion, his own church, or cult. He called them the Sons of Adam, the few followers he had.”
Amy nodded her head, watching her father as he stroked his beard. She could tell it was difficult for him to share this, but she was glad he finally was.
“There were about six of ‘em, all backwoods redneck types. Men who believed women were the source of mankind’s misery, since it was Eve who had tempted Adam to eat the apple that led to their exile from Eden.”
It sounded all too incredible coming from his mouth. Amy could hardly believe it. “They hated women?”
“Yeah,” Hank said. “The old man even had his own Bible. He wrote in it that women were responsible for the downfall of man and had to be punished for that. The ones they couldn’t keep in line were to be sacrificed as atonement to God. He hoped that one day His mercy would rain down on them and paradise would be restored. It was like an act of cleansing, ridding the world of independent, rebellious, and disobedient women.”
“So, they couldn’t keep Hannah in line?”
“No. They couldn’t brainwash her into slavery like they did the others. They couldn’t do that to Mom either. What they could do was torture, abuse, and keep them locked in cages when they spoke against the religion or tried to escape the compound.”
“The compound?”
“An old secluded campsite deep in the woods in North Azalea County. It’s since been demolished.”
Still thinking about her nightmare, Amy said, “What did they make you do?”
Hank took a quick swig from the near-empty bottle and said, “They tried to convert me. All the boys at the camp were trained to be soldiers of God, Sons of Adam, with a mission to work for the restoration of paradise. And the women, who were all called Eve, were to be servants and slaves, routinely beaten and raped for real or imagined sins.”
Amy winced. “They made you do that?”
“They tried but I wanted no part of it. I wanted us all to get the hell out,” he said, his eyes hazy and distant. “One night, I woke your grandma and Hannah and we tried make a run for it. But they nabbed Hannah. She went back for the baby.”
Amy blinked, astonished. “The baby?”
“Her son… Ned.”
Amy cringed. She felt sick. “Who was the father?”
Hank sighed. “Bubba Ray Busby. He was the first of my father’s converts. Hannah was promised to him.”
“Promised?” Amy said, the identity the nightmare man, the groom with the unhappy bride, coming to light.
“Hannah dated Bubba Ray in high school. He was a friend of the family. Dad gave Hannah to him at the age of eighteen when we were forced to move to that compound. She was forced to be his wife. Bubba Ray was not a good guy, but he was like a son to Dad. The son he never had.”
Amy wanted to ask her father if Jim ever made him do anything to Hannah, if he ever—
“Dad’s insanity took complete control at that point, too. He moved his congregation to the outskirts of town, away from the laws of civil society, and planned a mission to bring the world back to Eden.”
“What happened after you escaped?”
Hank downed a large gulp of whiskey before continuing. His eyes were glazing over. “We got a hold of the Sheriff’s Office and told them the whole story. Several units were dispatched to the area. There was one helluva gunfight when the cops arrived. My old man never made it out. He was shot down in a storm of bullets. But Bubba Ray escaped with Ned. Nobody ever found them. I don’t know what became of them.”
Befuddled by the information, Amy asked, “How were you and Grandma able to keep all that a secret?”
“We got in touch with Keith Foster, her brother, who was also a criminal prosecutor. He made sure our names were kept out of the police reports and by extension the media. We moved in this here house soon after and struggled to move on with life.”
“Why haven’t I ever met Keith?”
“He died from a stroke a few years before you were born. You would’ve liked him. I did. Was like a father to me. Anyway, I met your mother years later.”
Hearing about her mother, Amy wiped away a tear.
“You see,” her father continued. “I never thought a girl like her would be into someone like me. She was my world.”
Hank stared through Amy like glass. She had a feeling that, mentally, he was no longer in the room.
“So I lied about my family history,” he said. “Mom backed me up, too. When we got married, though, I remembered what my father told me once. He said that if I were ever to have a daughter that she would be arranged to wed Bubba’s firstborn son. It was a blood debt.”
The revelation made Amy feel ten times sicker than she had before sitting down to hear her father’s story, but everything began to fall into place.
Her mother’s killer, her father’s role, a debt.
“I’m here to collect.”
“He was there for me, wasn’t he?” Amy asked. “He wanted to give me to his son, my cousin. Bubba Ray was Mom’s killer.”
Hank drained the last of the bottle and set it down. “It was always in the back of my mind that he’d come back, try to do something to my family. So, I kept on looking over my shoulder. Kept constant surveillance. Never let you or your mother out of my sight. It’s why I was always so hard on you as a kid. It’s why I’m still am. Paranoia can lead to hurting the ones you love. Guess in the end I became my father.”
Hand pressed to her stomach, Amy said, “Was he her killer?”
Hank dropped his eyes, hesitated, then said, “no, Bubba Ray Busby wasn’t the man who killed your mother. It was someone else”
Amy fought to keep down the rising vomit as tears welled in her eyes. “No? Then who?”
“A guy I played poker with once. Steve Goodwin. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was a convicted child rapist.”
Feeling like she had been punched in the gut, Amy bolted from the kitchen table, knocked over her chair, and threw up in the sink.
Chapter 58
Ashley smelled like honeysuckle.
Zero wanted a taste.