Every muscle in Patricia’s body snapped into action. Her hands flew up to protect her face. She opened her mouth to scream. Then the screaming dissolved into laughter and she looked past her hands and saw Leland, LJ, their oldest, Greer, and Tiger sitting around the long dinner table halfway across the room, their backs to her, all laughing. Greer was the only one facing Patricia.
She caught sight of Patricia and stopped laughing. LJ and Tiger spun around.
“Ohmygosh,” Greer said. “How’d you get in?”
A Monopoly board sat in the middle of the table. Slick wasn’t there.
“Patricia?” Leland said, standing, genuinely baffled, trying to smile.
“Don’t get up,” she said. “Slick called and I thought she was home.”
“She’s upstairs,” Leland said.
“I’ll just pop right up,” Patricia said. “Keep playing.”
She left the room before they could say anything and went up the carpeted stairs fast. In the upstairs hall she didn’t have a clue which way to go. The door to the master bedroom sat ajar. The bedroom light was off but the master bathroom light was on. Patricia walked in.
“Slick?” she called softly.
The shower curtain rattled and Patricia looked down and saw Slick lying in the tub, her lipstick smeared, her mascara running down her face in trails, her hair sticking out in clumps. Her skirt had been torn and she only wore one dangling sand dollar earring.
Everything between them evaporated and Patricia knelt by the bathtub.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I didn’t make a sound,” Slick rasped, eyes wide with panic.
Her mouth moved soundlessly, straining to form words. Her hands opened and closed.
“Slick?” Patricia repeated. “What happened?”
“I didn’t…,” Slick began, then licked her lips and tried again. “I didn’t make a sound.”
“We need to call the ambulance,” Patricia said, standing up. “I’ll go get Leland.”
“I…,” Slick said, and it trailed off to a whisper. “I didn’t…”
Patricia walked to the bathroom door and heard hollow flailing in the tub behind her, and then Slick rasped, “No!”
Patricia turned around. Slick gripped the edge of the tub with both hands, knuckles white, shaking her head, her single sand dollar earring flopping from side to side.
“They can’t know,” she said.
“You’re hurt,” Patricia said.
“They can’t know,” Slick repeated.
“Slick!” Leland called from downstairs. “Everything all right?”
Slick locked eyes with Patricia and slowly shook her head back and forth. Patricia eased out into the bedroom, eyes still on Slick.
“We’re fine,” she called back.
“Slick?” Leland said, and from his voice Patricia could tell he was coming up the stairs.
Slick shook her head harder. Patricia held out one hand, then raced to the hall and headed off Leland at the top of the stairs.
“What’s happening?” he asked, stopping two steps below her.
“She’s ill,” Patricia said. “I’ll sit with her and make sure she’s okay. She didn’t want to break up your party.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Leland said. “You didn’t need to come all this way. We’re right downstairs.”
He tried to take a step but Patricia moved to block him.
“Leland,” she said, smiling. “Slick wants you to have fun with the children tonight. It’s important to her that they have…Christian associations with Halloween. Let me handle this.”
“I want to see how she is,” he said, sliding one hand up the banister, letting her know he was going to go right through her if necessary.
“Leland.” She dropped her voice low. “It’s a female problem.”
She wasn’t sure what a female problem meant to Leland, but his body sagged.
“All right,” he said. “But if she’s really not well, you’ll tell me?”
“Of course,” Patricia said. “Go back to the kids.”
He turned and went back downstairs. She waited until he passed into the addition, and then sprinted back to the bathroom. Slick hadn’t moved. Patricia knelt beside the tub, leaned forward, and got her arms around Slick. She stood, pulling Slick up with her, amazed at how weak her legs were. She helped her out of the tub, one foot at a time.
“They can’t know,” Slick said.
“I didn’t say a word,” Patricia said.
She took off Slick’s one earring and laid it on the bathroom counter.
“The other one’ll turn up,” she reassured her.
Patricia locked the bathroom door, then pulled Slick’s sweater over her head and unfastened her brassiere. Slick’s breasts were small and pale and the way she was hunched over, the way her ribs stuck out, the way her breasts hung lifeless, she reminded Patricia of a plucked chicken.
She sat Slick down on the toilet and put her fingers in the waist of her skirt. It was torn down the back so there was no need to unzip it. The tear went right through the suede, not down the seam. Patricia didn’t know what was strong enough to do that.
As she started to pull off her skirt, Slick recoiled, pulling her hands up over her groin.
“What’s wrong?” Patricia asked. “Slick, what’s wrong?”
Slick shook her head back and forth, and Patricia’s heart hitched. She focused on keeping her voice steady and slow.
“Show me,” she insisted, but Slick shook her head faster. “Slick?”
“They can’t know,” Slick moaned.
She took Slick’s thin wrists and pulled them away. Slick resisted at first, then went slack. Patricia pulled her skirt down. Slick’s panties were torn. She pulled them off, lifting Slick’s buttocks. Slick clamped her thighs closed.
“Slick,” Patricia said, using her nurse’s voice. “I need to see.”
She pried Slick’s knees apart. At first, Patricia didn’t know what was coming through Slick’s sparse, blond pubic hair, and then she saw Slick’s abdominal muscles convulse and a runnel of black jelly oozed out of her vagina. It smelled rank, like something lying rotten on the side of the road in summer. And it kept coming, an endless ooze of fetid slime pooling in a quivering black puddle on the toilet seat lid.
“Slick?” Patricia asked. “What happened?”
Slick met her eyes, tears trembling along her lower lids, and she looked so haunted that Patricia leaned forward and embraced her. Slick stayed stiff in her arms.
“I didn’t make a sound,” Slick insisted.
Patricia sprayed enough air freshener in the bathroom to make her eyes burn, and then she ran the shower. She took off her blouse and helped Slick back into the tub, holding her under the hot, strong spray. She cleaned the makeup off Slick’s face with a washcloth, rubbing until Slick’s skin turned pink, then used as much soap as she could to clean between Slick’s legs.
“Bear down,” she told Slick over the spray. “Like you’re going to the bathroom.”
She saw the last remaining black drops fall into the water, stretch into tendrils, and swirl down the drain. She used an entire bottle of St. Ives shampoo to wash Slick’s hair, and when they were finished the bathroom smelled steamy and floral. She dried herself and put her top back on while Slick stood naked and shivering, and then she wrapped Slick in her robe and tucked her into bed. She put a glass of water on her bedside table.
“Now,” she told Slick, “I need you to tell me what happened.”
Slick looked up at her with wide eyes.
“Talk to me, Slick,” Patricia said.
“If he did this to me,” Slick whispered, “what’s he going to do to you?”
“Who?” Patricia asked.
“James Harris.”
C
HAPTER 33
“I prayed over your photograph,” Slick whispered. “I sat with those clippings and your photograph, and I prayed for guidance. That man put so much money into Gracious Cay, and he made himself Leland’s friend, and he came to church with my family, but I saw that picture, and read those clippings, and I didn’t know what to do. That photograph is him. You look at it and you know.”
Her chin started to shake, and a single teardrop streaked fast down one cheek, shining silver in the light of the bedside lamp.
“I called him in Tampa,” Slick said. “I thought that was what God wanted me to do. I thought that if he knew I had these clippings and the photograph he would be scared and I could get him to leave the Old Village. I was a fool. I tried to threaten him. I told him that if he didn’t leave right away, I would show everyone the photograph and the clippings.”
“Did he know it was me, Slick?” Patricia asked.
Slick shot her eyes to the glass of water and Patricia handed it to her. She took two loud gulps and handed it back, then squeezed her eyes shut and nodded.
“I’m sorry,” Slick said. “I’m so sorry. I called him yesterday morning and told him you were going into his house. I said you’d find whatever he was hiding. I told him his only choice was to never come back. I told him he could let me know where he went and I’d mail him his checks when Gracious Cay returned on its investment, but he had to leave from Tampa and never come back. I thought he wanted money, Patricia. I thought he cared about his reputation. I told him the photo and clippings were my insurance so he could never come back. I thought you’d be so happy I’d solved this. I was full of pride.”
Without warning, Slick slapped herself in the face. Patricia grabbed for her hand, missed, and Slick hit herself again. Patricia caught her hand this time.
“Pride goeth,” Slick hissed, eyes furious, face white. “The church didn’t want to do my Reformation Party, so we kept the kids home tonight to have family time. We were playing Monopoly, Tiger and LJ weren’t fighting for once, and I was about to put a hotel on Park Place. It all felt so safe. I got up to be excused, and I took my money with me because I pretended I thought Leland would steal it if I left it behind. The kids loved that. I came upstairs to use the bathroom because the downstairs toilet keeps running.”
She looked around the room, reassuring herself the door was closed, the windows were shut, the curtains were drawn. She struggled to get her hands free and Patricia gripped her wrists harder.
“My Bible,” Slick said.
Patricia saw it on the bedside table and handed it to her. Slick clutched her Bible to her chest like a teddy bear. It took her a minute before she could speak again.
“He must have come in the upstairs window and waited for me,” Slick said. “I didn’t know what happened. I was walking down the hall and then I was facedown on the carpet, and something heavy sat on my back, pressing me down, and a voice in my ear said if I made a sound, a single solitary sound he would…who is he? He said he would kill my entire family. Who is he, Patricia?”
“He’s worse than we can imagine,” Patricia said.
“I thought my back would break. It hurt so much.” Slick put a hand to her lips and pressed her fingers against them, hard. Her forehead broke into deep furrows. “I’ve never been with anyone except Leland.”
She gripped her Bible in both hands and closed her eyes. Her lips moved silently in prayer for a moment before she started talking again. Her voice was little more than a whisper.
“My Monopoly money went all over the carpet when he hit me,” she said. “And I just kept looking at that orange five-hundred-dollar bill in front of my nose. That’s what I focused on the entire time. And he kept telling me not to make a sound, and I didn’t make a sound, but I was so scared one of them would come looking for me that I wanted him to finish so he would leave. I just wanted it to be over. That’s why I didn’t fight. And he did. He finished inside me.”
Slick clutched her Bible so hard her knuckles turned red and white and her face crumpled. Patricia hated herself for asking the next question but she had to know.
“The picture?” she asked. “The clippings?”
“He made me tell him where they were,” Slick said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. My pride. My stupid, stupid pride.”
“It’s not your fault,” Patricia said.
“I thought I could do this alone,” Slick said. “I thought I was stronger than him. But none of us are.”
The tips of Slick’s bangs were wet with sweat. Her cheeks shook. She inhaled sharply.
“Where does it hurt?” Patricia asked.
“My privates,” Slick said.
Patricia lifted the duvet. There was a dark stain on the robe over Slick’s groin.
“We need to get you to a hospital,” Patricia said.
“He’ll kill them if I tell,” Slick said.
“Slick…,” Patricia began.
“He’ll kill them,” Slick said. “Please. He will.”
“We don’t know what he did to you,” Patricia said.
“If I’m still bleeding in the morning, I’ll go,” Slick said. “But I can’t call an ambulance. What if he’s outside watching? What if he’s waiting to see what I do? Please, Patricia, don’t let him hurt my babies.”
Patricia went and got a warm washcloth and cleaned Slick as best she could, found some pads beneath the sink, and helped her into a nightgown. Downstairs, she took Leland aside.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Is she okay?”
“She’s having bad cramps,” Patricia said. “But she says she’ll be fine tomorrow. You may want to sleep in the guest room, though. She needs some privacy.”
Leland put a hand on Patricia’s shoulder and looked into her eyes.
“I’m sorry I bit your head off earlier,” he said. “But I don’t know what I’d do if anything ever happened to Slick.”
Outside, it was still and dark. The candle on the porch had burned out and all the Creekside trick-or-treaters must have long since gone home. Patricia walked briskly around the side of the house and threw Slick’s underwear, robe, and ruined clothes into the trash, stuffing them all the way down under the bags. Then she ran to the Volvo and locked all the doors behind her. Slick was right. He might still be outside.
Once she had the car moving she felt safer and the anger rose up inside her, making her skin feel too tight. Her movements felt rushed and hurried. She couldn’t contain herself. She needed to be somewhere else.
She needed to see James Harris.
She wanted to stand in front of him and accuse him of what he’d done. It was the only place to be that felt like it made any sense to her right now. She drove carefully through Creekside, using all her self-control to make wide circles around the few remaining trick-or-treaters, and then she was on Johnnie Dodds and she put the pedal to the floor.
In the Old Village she slowed again. The streets were almost empty. Burned-out jack-o’-lanterns sat on front porches. A cold wind whistled through her Volvo’s air-conditioning vents. She stopped at the corner of Pitt and McCants. The Cantwells’ front yard was empty, all its lights dark. As she turned toward James Harris’s house the wind set the corpses hanging from their trees twisting, following her, reaching for her with their bandaged arms as she drove past.
The massive, malignant lump of James Harris’s house loomed on her left, and Patricia thought about his dark attic with its suitcase containing the lonely corpse of Francine. She thought about the wild, hunted look in Slick’s eyes. She remembered what Slick had hissed:
If he did this to me, what’s he going to do to you?
She needed to know where her children were, right that minute. The overwhelming need to know they were safe flooded her body and sent her flying home.
She pulled into the driveway and ran to the front door. One jack-o’-lantern had
burned out and someone had smashed the other one against their front steps. She slipped in its slime as she raced up her porch steps. She opened the door and ran to the sun porch. Korey wasn’t there. She raced upstairs and threw open Korey’s bedroom door.
“What?” Korey shouted from where she sat, cross-legged on her bed, hunched over a copy of SPIN.
She was safe. Patricia didn’t say a word. She ran into Blue’s room. Empty.
She checked every room downstairs, even the dark garage room, but Blue was still out. She felt frantic. She checked that the back door was locked, she grabbed her car keys, but what if she went out looking for him, and he came home? And how could she leave Korey alone with James Harris out there?
She had to call Carter. He needed to come home. Two of them could deal with this. She jumped at the noise of the front door opening and ran to the hall. Blue was just closing it behind him.
She grabbed him and pressed him to her body. He froze for a moment, then squirmed out of her arms.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m just glad you’re safe,” she said. “Where were you?”
“I was at Jim’s,” he said. It took her a moment to process.
“Where?” she asked.
“At Jim’s,” he said, defensively. “Jim Harris’s house. Why?”
“Blue,” she said. “It is very important you tell me the truth right now. Where have you been all evening?”
“At. Jim’s. House,” Blue repeated. “With Jim. Why do you care?”
“And he was there?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“All night?”
“Yes!”
“Did he leave at any point, or was he out of your sight for even a single minute?” she asked.
“Only when a trick-or-treater rang the bell,” Blue said. “Wait, why?”
“I need you to be honest with me,” she said. “What time did you go over there?”
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires Page 29
