His hand slowly slid along the polished banister as he made his way up the staircase. Her scent grew stronger the closer he came to the second floor landing.
He began to salivate, to pant. Feeling his dick grow hard, he wondered what it was like to pluck the flower of a retard.
He was about to find out.
“What the hell did I tell you about touching my bourbon?”
Zero paused in the darkness. The stench of rotten fruit wafted up toward from him twelve feet below. He turned his head.
Kelley stood in the light from the front hall, her hands on her hips, glaring at him. “Don’t lie to me, either. A whole bottle of Maker’s Mark, missing from the kitchen.”
Zero didn’t like the smell of her. He never did. “Your cunt reeks of dead fish,” he growled.
With a gasp, Kelley staggered back. Her eyes widened. “What did you just say to me?”
Zero continued up the stairs. “I said shove some soap up your twat, you filthy tramp.”
There was another shocked gasp, followed shortly by the sound of footsteps ascending after him. Zero turned his head in time to be slapped hard in the face.
“How dare you speak to me like that, you little bastard! I wish your father wasn’t away on business. If he heard what you just said it’d spike his blood pressure to unknown heights!”
Zero touched his face. The blow stung. He glowered at Kelley who stood before him with righteous indignation.
She struck him again, harder. “What do you have to say for yourself, boy?”
“Bitch,” Zero seethed. “I’ll take my time killing you. But first,” he planted his hands on her breasts, and shoved, “down you go.”
It happened in slow motion— Kelley’s shocked face, her balance lost, her arms pin-wheeling in the air.
Zero smiled as he watched her tumble down the stairs. He heard a crack when her head hit the bottom. His smile widened. “What a mighty big fall.”
He examined her lying sprawled on the floor and wondered if he killed her already. “Oops.” He waited for her to move but she never budged. “Kelley, Kelley. How unfortunate. I had such big plans for you.”
His laughter echoed in the stairwell.
“L-Layne?”
Zero’s ears perked up. The smell of honeysuckle filled the air. “Oh, yes.” He spun around, hungry and expectant.
When his eyes took in the sight of ten-year-old Ashley in her little white nightgown, her curly black hair spilling down her shoulders, his erection returned. “Ooh, yes!”
Chapter 59
Ashley tried to speak but couldn’t find her voice.
That happened a lot, especially when she was frightened. She took a step back, looking from her mommy, lying motionless on the floor, to her brother whose eyes were big, black, and shiny.
“Don’t be afraid, lil’ honeysuckle,” Layne said soothingly. “I ain’t gonna hurt ya.” His voice sounded funny, and his smile looked scary. But not as scary as his eyes.
They looked like the bogeyman’s eyes.
“Brudder wouldn’t ever hurt baby sister,” he said.
Layne’s the bogeyman!
Terror gripped Ashley’s heart. She turned to run for her room but Layne grabbed her by the hair and wrenched her back. She opened her mouth to scream but nothing would come out.
“I just wanna play.” His hand slithered like a snake up her nightgown. He wiped away a tear. “Mmm, lil’ sister. We’re gonna have some fun tonight.”
Chapter 60
God was on his side.
Of that Adam was sure. For not only did he obtain a ride after his car broke down but the old man from whom he took it had a picture of Eve in his wallet.
It was an old school photo taken of her when she looked to be about twelve-years-old. It also had the name Amy Snow on the back along with the date it was taken.
It was all too perfect to be mere coincidence. The old fart must’ve been her grandfather.
The Hand of God is guiding the way, Adam thought as he reached the town limits of Pine Run. The signs couldn’t be clearer. It is only a matter of time.
Now he only had to find her, and he knew that wouldn’t be difficult in a town as small as Pine Run. He just had to start looking. The best place to start was the high school.
But first, he needed nourishment. It’s been days since he had last eaten and thankfully the old man he killed had a good bit of cash in his wallet.
As night fell, Adam pulled into the gravel parking lot of the first establishment he came upon. It was an old hole-in-the-wall called Eddie’s Bar and Grill set back in a shady alcove of oak trees cloaked in Spanish moss. It didn’t look too crowded.
But it sure as hell looked sinful.
Adam parked between a rundown Chevy and a late-model Harley Davidson, killed the engine, and climbed out of the car.
The air was cool and heavy with the aroma of burning leaves and death, of late October and ghosts. A halogen lamp affixed to the decrepit eaves of the weathered building hummed along to the nocturnal music of crickets and cicadas.
A chilly breeze passed through like a phantom in limbo. Shadows danced along the rocks that crunched beneath Adam’s boots.
He sauntered to the front entrance of Eddie’s and shoved the heavy door open.
Inside the smoky gloom he took a barstool, flagged down the bartender and ordered a cheeseburger with a side of fries and a glass of orange juice.
The bartender raised an eyebrow. “Orange juice?”
He smiled at the old man’s puzzled expression.
He thinks I’m crazy.
Adam almost giggled. “Yes,” he said. “Orange juice, please.”
“That’s a first.” The bartender squinted his eyes. “Not sure I’ve seen you before. You new around here?”
“I’m just passing through,” Adam said. “Been on the road for a while.”
“Don’t want to drink and drive, huh?”
Adam shook his head. “Alcohol serves as a distraction. It throws you off course and puts your guard down”
“Guess that makes since. Where ya headed?”
“To Paradise. Whenever I find her.”
The bartender snickered. “I hear ya. Reckon I’ve been searchin’ for her, too. Searchin’ a long time.”
“I just bet you have,” Adam said with a wink.
“What’s your name, if you don’t mind me askin’?”
“Not at all. Name’s Ned. But my friends call me Adam.”
The bartender nodded and smiled. “Well, I’ll grab you an orange juice, Adam.”
“Thank you, kindly.”
When the bartender slipped into the kitchen, Adam glanced around the dimly lit room.
There was nothing too special about it. Just another backwoods honky-tonk with a rough-looking clientele, a pool table, dartboard, and a jukebox dishing out rock n’ roll classics. It was like any other country barroom.
It made him think about his Pappy who loved the bar-scene. Adam was sure that Pappy watched him from Heaven, smiling down with pride as his boy carried on the mission of the righteous, the chosen.
I won’t let you down, Pap.
An old country tune played on the jukebox. It was a song about God and duty to one’s country and fellow man.
It was about Adam, and what he was called to do.
Fill his quota and hunt down the serpent’s whore, the queen seductress, the root of all woe…
. . . and restore paradise to a world plagued with sin ever since a weak-willed woman was seduced by a talking serpent and ate of a forbidden fruit.
Adam turned around as the bartender came out of the kitchen with his food. Adam wondered if this could very well could be his last supper.
If it be your will.
He’d been waiting for this moment since he first heard the voice of The Father a year ago, shortly after his Pappy’s heart attack.
Wating to carry out the mission to restore the lost.
He bit into his cheeseburger and thought of
Paradise.
Tomorrow, October 31, was the day he would bring it all back.
Your will be done.
Chapter 61
Lying in bed, Amy peered into the darkness. With her frazzled mind, she tried to rationalize all her father said about the man who killed her mother.
Steve Goodwin was an unregistered sex offender who had done time for raping a twelve-year-old girl. She was one of many he robbed of innocence.
Only Hank didn’t know that the night the monster joined a poker game he hosted while his wife, who would’ve never allowed such a game in her house while her little girl was asleep down the hall, was working the nightshift at Memorial Hospital.
Amy remembered how her father used to boast how there was nobody better at poker than him, but he met his match in Steve Goodwin, the stranger in the house.
Goodwin had seen pictures of Amy in the living room and made the comment that, after beating the unbeatable then, he’d take Hank’s daughter instead of his money.
Hank tossed him out of the house for saying that, but Goodwin promised he’d be back to collect what he was owed.
“You come back here again,” Hank had warned, “and I’ll shove a pistol down your throat and blow a hole through your crotch, understand?”
But apparently he hadn’t. A few months later, Goodwin returned for his winnings.
“I knew it was him the whole time,” Hank confessed to Amy. “It took me a while to hunt him down, but when I did I gave him my own brand of justice. And nobody missed him. No friends, no family. He had none. He was forgotten as soon as gone.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Amy demanded through a veil of tears. “Why did you lie to me all this time?”
“Because I didn’t want you to see me as the bad guy,” Hank said. “I got away with killing a man, but I ain’t proud of it. Never have been. Guilt’s been eatin’ me alive ever since.”
Amy closed her eyes and clutched her stomach. The aching would not go away. Tonight’s revelations weighed down on her hard. It was all too much for her to handle at once.
“Sorry, peanut,” he said. “I let both of you down. Please forgive me.”
In time she might be able to forgive him, but she wished more than anything that she could forget. But, that seemed like it was going to be impossible.
And what if Goodwin didn’t do it? What if it was Bubba Ray Busby all along?
The thought that her father murdered an innocent man made her shudder.
And what about the hauntings? What about the ghost— Hannah. She was telling Amy that the Nightmare Man was coming back for her— coming to collect.
Amy didn’t believe Steve Goodwin was the Nightmare Man. It had to be Bubba Ray Busby, the man Hannah was forced to marry. But what happened to him? What became of his son?
Amy closed her eyes again. She could hear the TV in the living room. Her father was watching a wrestling match.
After revealing his secrets, Hank had slunk into the living room, collapsed into his chair and remained there ever since. He never said another word. He didn’t even ask about dinner.
Amy didn’t bother about dinner either. She wasn’t at all hungry.
So after a hot shower she laid down in bed, turned out the light, and counted the family skeletons until she succumbed to sleep…
She dreamed she was being chased in the woods by a shadowy figure holding a sharp, silver blade gleaming in the moonlight leaking through the pine boughs above.
A ghostly voice called for her to run and not look back. He said he was gaining on her, and there’d be nothing she could do to save herself once he had her.
But of course Amy looked back. She lost her footing and tumbled hard to the earthen floor.
A hand snatched her by the hair, wrenched her to her feet, and pressed the hungry knife against her throat.
“Too late,” the voice whispered once the cold blade cut deep into her flesh.
Amy woke up with a jolt wrapped in a heavy blanket of darkness.
“He’s already here.”
Chapter 62
“Did what I thought was best,” Hank told his dead wife. “So why don’t you go back to the grave. Rest in peace, already!”
But the ghost didn’t budge. As midnight struck, ushering in All Hallows Eve, the night the dead walk the earth, she stood by the recliner— dressed in the white cotton nightgown in which she had died— glaring down at her husband with accusing eyes just as she did every day of Hank’s life.
“And you!” He whipped his head around to the dead man with the gapping bullet hole in his skull. “I know it was you! Don’t care what you say! I know it was you!”
Hank picked up the empty whiskey bottle from the floor and threw it at the phantom that vanished once the glass shattered against the wall. “I know it was you!”