Chapter 83
Hannah knelt eye-level with her brother, who wiped tears from his eyes, smearing blood on his face. “I forgive you, Henry,” she said. “I only wish you can forgive yourself.”
“I can’t.” Hank didn’t want to look at her, the ghost dressed in a brilliant white gown with golden-blond hair spilling down bare shoulders. “I’ve tried.”
“I know you have.” She placed a hand beneath his chin. Her touch tingled like tiny ice chips in his beard. “Look at me,” she said, lifting his chin.
Reluctantly, Hank met Hannah’s deep brown eyes, and choked back a sob.
Her eyes reflected the sorrow coiled around his heart.
“You did everything you could. I love you. Now let me go. You’ve been holding on to me for far too long.”
Hank lowered his eyes and stared at the floor. “Why did you have to go back for him?”
“He was my son. I couldn’t abandon my child.”
“But they caught you.”
“It was a risk I was willing to take. You have a daughter. You know what it’s like. You always go back for your child, no matter how dangerous it might be.”
Hank closed his eyes. A tear slid down his cheek. “I wish you could have known her. She’s my pride and joy.”
“She’s a beautiful girl.”
“Like her mother.” He opened his eyes and looked at his sister. “Like you.”
“You need to let me go. For your sake, if not for hers.”
“But I can’t. I have to know. Am I like our father?”
Hannah shook her head. “I know the love you have for your daughter. You are nothing like him. You could never be.”
Turning his head, he said shamefully, “I committed incest.”
“No,” Hannah said sharply. “You didn’t.”
“He made me hurt you.”
“And I said I forgive you.”
“But what about Amy?”
Silence followed. Hank looked at his sister, who said sadly, “You can’t do anything for her now.”
Chapter 84
Adam struck Eve in the face. She hit the earthen floor like a brittle bag of bones, whimpering.
He kicked her in the gut with the toe of his boot. “I’m going to enjoy this.” He slipped her skirt down her legs.
Eve struggled to breathe. “Please,” she gasped. “No.”
Rolling her on her back. Adam straddled her. He ripped open her blouse. The buttons popped off and flung in the air. He licked his lips like a ravenous wolf. With his knife, he sliced through her bra straps. He fondled her naked breasts.
His erection hurt.
Eve groaned. There was no more fight in her. She was exhausted, helpless. Adam stripped her down to her socks, and the silver necklace with the heart-shaped locket she wore around her neck “Wicked whore,” he said with a snarl, “you no longer need this trinket.” He grabbed hold of the locket. “No jewel can beautify your sin against God.” He wrenched the necklace from her neck and tossed it aside.
Eve whimpered pathetically.
“Time for business,” he said, reaching for the rope.
Chapter 85
He opened his eyes.
Am I dying?
He brought his hand up from his stomach. It was covered in blood.
Am I dead?
The pain was unbearable. He felt himself going weak.
Must be close.
Twilight gathered at the fringe of his vision. Shadows crept out from all corners of the woods.
Layne was still strapped in the driver seat of the Pathfinder, feeling the life drain slowly from his body.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t save her.
I’m no hero.
Feeling himself slipping into oblivion, his vision darkened.
Please let there be a Heaven.
He thought he heard someone either singing or screaming, but it was too faint and far away to know for sure.
I don’t want to go to Hell.
Layne stared blankly through the windshield, seeing nothing but his life dragging by.
He saw a woman with a long, flowing mane of strawberry blond hair. Her eyes were large, dark, and expressive.
Mom?
She turned and walked away.
Was that you?
He hadn’t seen her in so long. Why did she have to leave him after the divorce? Why couldn’t she love him? Why did she reject him? Why did all the women he loved reject him?
First his mother, then Marianne, and now Amy. What was wrong with him?
I’m unlovable. I’m diseased.
I’m damaged.
Layne closed his eyes. He had no energy for self-pity. He barely had enough energy to think, to breathe.
Only enough to die.
But he felt something within him that refused. Something ghoulish digging its way from somewhere deep in the bowels of his damaged soul.
Something ugly, deadly, and corrupt with sin.
In the sixth grade, he read Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. From that novel came the line: “Thus it came about that, where Jekyll perhaps might have succumbed, Hyde rose to the importance of the moment.”
Layne didn’t know why he remembered that, of all things, as he sat slumped in his seatbelt, waiting for death to arrive.
It was the last thought that ran through his brain before it shut down for good.
Chapter 86
“Why can’t I?”
Hannah couldn’t answer. Her time with the living ran out. She told him it would happen. She was granted only so long.
“Where is she?” Hank got to his feet and glanced around the empty room. He saw the overturn chair in the corner near Amy’s bookcase. He saw the broken mirror, which meant only bad luck. He felt he had his share.
I’ve paid, damn it. I’ve paid a lot!
He saw the shards of glass and remembered the pain in his knuckles. He saw the old photograph on the floor. It fluttered in a draft that came from nowhere.
Hannah? Was that you?
He picked it up, stared into the empty eyes of Bubba Ray Busby, and felt a light click on in his head.
“You always go back for your child.”
He knew where Amy might be.
But he didn’t think he’d get there on time. So he hurried to the kitchen, snatched the phone, and dialed the number he knew by heart.
“I think I know where Amy is,” he told Joe. “And who is with her. I need you to drive to Gulfcrest. No, I’m serious. I’ll be right behind you. Get an ambulance over there, too.”
Chapter 87
After Adam tied Eve tightly to the tree, he unzipped his pants and grabbed hold of his penis, which had grown to great lengths. “Oh, sweet agony,” he groaned, jerking his hand up and down his rigid cock, eyes rolling back in ecstasy. He swaggered over to Eve. “Never felt so good.”
He felt Eve stiffen as he humped her leg. She whined in his ear. “I haven’t done this with the others, the decoys,” he said. “But my Pappy tells me you’re special. You belong to me, and I can do whatever I please with you.”
He branded her, and stained her with his seed. “It ain’t a sin. It’s natural. God is pleased with the work I’m doing. He told me so.” Adam nibbled Eve’s earlobe.
She shuddered.
He zipped his pants and reached for a green pinecone.
“But I’ve yet to complete the ritual.”
Chapter 88
Zero opened his eyes.
I’m not dead.
He looked down at the stab wound in his stomach, and smiled.
I’m alive.
He breathed in the pine-scented air.
He smelled blood.
It awakened a hunger for ultra-violence, for inflicting pain and fear, for causing death.
Oh, I can’t wait to do it!
It was his dying wish.
Chapter 89
Amy thought she knew about pain.
She had no idea.
The times as a child when her father beat her; the night she slit her wrist; the night her mother died. None of that was as bad as what was happening to her now. As Ned thrust the pine cone in that sacred place between her legs, nothing was worse.
So she did what she always did when bad things happened to her: she sought sanctuary in darkness and slipped into herself. No longer able to scream or cry, she closed her eyes and found her happy place.
She found her mother, the goddess captured no more.
Her beautiful wings unbound and unfurled. Amy watched her as she soared high in the sky above the trees with her colorful feathers licking the sweet autumn air.
She smiled up at the freed goddess, even as the pain ripped through her body like a hungry chain saw, raping her of innocence and beauty.
With the goddess, she was not bound to some tree. Ropes did not eat at the flesh around her wrists and ankles. A bad man did not do bad things to her like all the other men had in her life.
“We are all captured.”
Not anymore. Here in her sanctuary, Amy was safe.
Amy was free.
Chapter 90
Adam pulled the bloody pine cone out of the serpent’s nest located between Eve’s trembling thighs and thrust it back in.
Over and over again, he punished her for what she did to mankind: for damning them to a flawed, sinful existence. But Eve stopped screaming, and he was drained. The ritual was no longer exciting to him. The game had grown old, and his penis grown flaccid. He withdrew the bloody pinecone.
“Open your eyes,” he demanded.
Eve did.
Through her tears, he could see there was nothing left of her.
“Have you atoned for your sin? Do you feel your punishment was due?”
She only stared blankly into the twilight with a look of loss and abandon. She didn’t answer.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “The time for reckoning is nigh.”
He dropped the pinecone and picked up his knife. Breathing heavily, he said, “this is it. Paradise shall be restored once the earth swallows your blood, in acceptance of the sacrifice.”
Adam grabbed Eve by a clump of hair and thrust her head back against the tree. He looked into her dead eyes and leaned in for a kiss.
But her lips were pressed tightly together, and they tasted bitter and cold to his tongue.
“That’s all right,” he said, pressing the knife up to her throat. “Your kiss is death, and you die now.”
Chapter 91
When Zero jumped from the Pathfinder, he winced in pain.
Someone had stabbed him, and his wound hurt like hell.
He wished he knew who had done it so he could return the favor before he finally bled to death. Looking down at the wound, he noticed a knife in a blanket of pine-straw.
Ah, my favorite tool of the trade.
He picked it up, inspected the blade, and recognized it as the one he used to skin that fat piggy boy a few nights ago. He never forgot a knife.
He remembered how the boy squealed as he peeled the flesh from his bones like bacon, and cooked the strips in a roaring fire. He remembered how he tasted, that fat piggy boy.
Very porky.
But Zero wasn’t hungry. He just wanted to have a little fun.
Gripping the knife, Zero stepped around to the driver side of the Mercedes Benz the Pathfinder had rear-ended and peeked at the dead girl inside.
Looks like she would’ve been fun to play with. A pity she’s already dead.
He turned away and scanned his surroundings.
In the not-too-far distance, a scarecrow of a man held a knife up to the throat of a naked girl bound to a tree.
That game looks exciting.
Zero wondered if the scarecrow man was the person who stabbed him.
He decided to go tap his shoulder and ask.
Chapter 92
Before Adam could slice the thirsty blade across Eve’s throat, the sound of a snapped twig caused him to perk up his ears.
“Excuse me, sir.”
Adam whipped around and beheld that meddling teenage boy he’d stabbed in the stomach. Oddly, the kid walked casually over to him as if nothing unusual were happening.