What Befalls the Children: Book 4 in the Troop of Shadows Series

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

  “Pops is alive in the cabin, Mama. I know it. Maybe Mister Ray too, and definitely Mister Fergus. We have to rescue them.”

  “That is not happening. Adults are expendable. You three are not. Now let’s go. Otis, you okay to lead or do you want the rear?”

  Something was off. Serena Jo would never ask a subordinate for his preference during a scouting mission. She only ever dictated.

  Willadean studied the man then. Otis was quiet and easy to overlook, the Harlan version of the twin brothers. After Everett had been murdered, he talked even less.

  The man’s jaw tightened. “I’m not leaving. I’m going to kill that bitch.”

  “Otis, be reasonable. You’re the walking wounded and we can’t take a chance with the kids. Let’s go back home and regroup. We’ll come up with a plan.”

  Otis didn’t bother replying. He simply turned his back on the small group and took off in the direction Willadean and the boys had just come from.

  “Damn it,” Mama muttered, watching him walk away.

  Willadean pounced on the opportunity. She took Mama’s hand and arranged her face in that irresistible expression that worked well on most adults. “He’s the best tracker and the best shooter. We’re probably safer with him than going by ourselves to the village. Pops doesn’t have much time. The witch is going to kill him. Otis has an extra gun in his pack...he always does. Give that to me, and I’ll keep us kids safe. You know I can shoot. I scored top of the under-thirteens at the range.”

  Mama’s eyes narrowed, just like Pops’ did when Willa taught him a new word. It usually meant she was thinking hard about something.

  “Another reason to act now is the witch is tired and hurt. I saw her injecting herself with something called butorphanol. Saw it on the label. She started slurring right after. She’s got a bullet wound in her shoulder and some broken fingers. Now is the time, Mama. She’s only going to get better and when she does, it won’t end well for Pops.”

  Mama loved Pops, but she loved her children fiercely. Willa knew that. Proper framing of the danger was critical now. That’s why she didn’t tell her about the second injection right before Mister Ray had started pounding on the door. The label on that bottle said epinephrine. She hadn’t heard of butorphanol, but she knew all about epinephrine from a suspense thriller she’d read. It worked like a long-lasting jolt of adrenaline.

  “We’ll be extra careful. And we’ll be safer if we catch up with Otis before he gets too far away. The witch could be hiding, waiting for Otis to walk by. She might follow us instead. She’s real smart, Mama, like you. Isn’t that what you would do?”

  Willa saw the moment Serena Jo made the decision.

  “Stay behind me every second. Tight line, no more than two feet apart. Got it? And you’re not getting a gun, Willa. It’s one thing to hit a target during practice and quite another during a chaotic situation when your heart is pounding like crazy. Let’s go. No talking.”

  Willa took a position directly behind Mama. She watched the long khaki-covered legs stride through the tall grass, navigating thorny, grasping vines like they were made of warm butter. Someday, Willa would have legs that long and would glide through life like a backwoods ballerina.

  Otis had covered a lot of ground while Willa had been working Mama. It took twenty minutes to catch him. When they did, he was standing next to a corpse, casually contemplating it.

  Then the corpse lifted its head off the ground.

  The foursome joined Otis, who barely seemed to register their presence. Mama squatted next to Mister Ray — the corpse — then mutely began unbuttoning the blood-stained shirt, exposing the damage from the witch’s bullet. When her fingers pressed around the seeping hole, a hiss of air escaped the deathly pale lips. She tilted her head backward and gazed up at the sky for a few seconds. Willa knew then the prognosis was bleak.

  Mama brushed a sweaty lock of dark hair from the man’s brow. His eyes fluttered open. A shaky hand lifted a few inches off the ground. Three of his fingers pressed together and circled about — the universal sign language for writing. She reached into her satchel and withdrew a stub of a pencil and a weathered notepad, the one she used to jot down notes about running the holler. She flipped to a clean sheet and handed both items to Mister Ray.

  The blood-stained fingers could barely grasp the pencil stub, but he scrawled some hen scratches. Willa leaned over Mama’s shoulder to read them: 7-9-3-7-4-2-0. Then Mister Ray dropped the pencil and grabbed Mama’s hand, willing her with his eyes to bend down closer. Serena Jo did, tucking an errant strand of hair behind her ear so she could hear the whispered words.

  Willa didn’t know what the man said, but she saw Mama give one of her curt head shakes, the one that said, No way in hell is that happening. Mister Ray let out a small groan, lifted his other hand, and cupped the back of Mama’s head, forcing her ear right up against his lips.

  A full minute passed. To her left, Otis shuffled his feet, eager to get back to witch-tracking. Willa turned the other way, only to see tears gliding down Cricket’s face. She wanted to ask him in the superior voice she used for cry-baby behavior if his tears were for the dying man or for the loss of future candy deliveries. She wanted to, but she couldn’t because of the painful lump in her throat. Harlan stood apart, silent and enigmatic. Nobody could do silent and enigmatic like Harlan.

  Finally Mama leaned back. Mister Ray’s chest had stopped rising and falling. She closed his eyelids, placed both hands on his motionless ribcage, then stood and faced the group. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes looked as hard and bright as polished marbles.

  Willa knew what those marbles meant: the witch was in for a world of hurt.

  Otis reached down for the rifle next to the dead man, then handed it to Willa, watching Serena Jo’s face the entire time. “This is similar to the one she’s used on the range. Not much of a kick. She can handle it, and she’s less likely to kill one of us with it than with a handgun.”

  Surprisingly, Mama didn’t argue. She gave him a nod, then said, “Willa, if I see you pointing that thing within a ten-foot radius of your brother, I’ll wear out your backside. I mean it, too.”

  Willa swallowed, hard. Mama had never spanked her in her life. “I won’t.”

  “Let’s go, then. Otis, you first, then Willa, Harlan, and Cricket. I’ll bring up the rear. Ears and hands from now on.”

  That was Mama-speak for no talking, which was fine with Willa. She still had that painful lump in her throat after glancing back at Mister Ray.

  Chapter 23

  Fergus

  “Ah, clever,” Fergus whispered. The basement door had slammed open again, and just before Lizzy shut it, he’d caught a glimpse of something on the stairs.

  A motorcycle helmet.

  That’s why his scythen hadn’t been pinging just before her basement entrances. She’d figured out a rudimentary barrier. Whether it actually had any effect, which seemed unlikely, or her belief in it created a placebo, was a mystery he would ponder and perhaps test later. At the moment, he must focus on the dangerous woman on the other side of the cage.

  “You seem perkier than the last time I saw you,” Fergus said, noting the tiny black dots of her pupils, the opposite of how they normally appeared.

  “Ray is dead,” she said in a deadpan voice.

  Fergus ignored the sudden lack of oxygen in his lungs. “He was a good man, Lizzy. Shame on you.”

  “A good man wouldn’t have kept me caged for months. A good man would have either killed me or freed me. Instead, he condemned me to purgatory.”

  “And yet you figured out a way to roam about the warehouse whenever you liked. You could have left, but you didn’t. In the meantime, he kept you safe, clean, and fed. Yes, an absolute monster, that Ray.”

  “Why would a creature such as myself worry about the nature of my victims? You think I care whether he was a good man or a bad man?”

  “Actually, I do,” Fergus replied, warming to the notion that had been fli
tting about in his brain for a while now. “I think that’s why you didn’t kill him all those times you had the chance. I think that’s why you chose only certain victims from the village. Skeeter, elucidate us on the nature of the two people Lizzy crucified. What were they like? Good folks or bad folks, would you say?”

  Skeeter fixed him with an unblinking stare — an unspoken message. The old man had caught on to the stalling ploy. “Oh, tweren’t much good about either of ‘em. Everett was useful, in his own way. Strong, good hunter, but a rascal. Liked to force himself on the young women when he thought nobody was looking. Get ‘em up against a tree or in a dark corner and rub his crotch against ‘em. Everett the Perverett. That’s what people called him when him or his brother weren’t around.”

  “And what about the young woman?” Fergus prompted, with a quick glance at Lizzy. She seemed captivated by the conversation. Had she not realized she’d been selecting victims who may have deserved punishment? The notion was intriguing. She’d probably been using her inherent, untrained scythen for years to sort the wheat from the chaff.

  “Adelaide? She weren’t no peach. Willa told me she caught her torturing animals in the woods. Didn’t have no friends. Kept to herself. A real smart-aleck even when folks’d try to be nice to her. Sorry to say, I don’t think a single tear was shed when we found her in the tree.”

  “See, Lizzy? You targeted victims worthy of your particular brand of justice. That’s why killing Ray bothers you. I can see it in your face, and I can sense it too.”

  “Shut up,” she said, snapping out of her mesmerized state and storming past the cage toward the rolling cabinet. She slid one of the drawers open. “Let’s start the show.”

  From his vantage, Fergus saw items that belonged in a hospital, the type used to pry apart ribs and saw open craniums.

  “Can you guess my former profession?” she asked, displaying a gleaming device that might be used to trim errant hedges. The too-wide leer had returned. “I was a medical examiner. Not only do I possess all the tools and skills necessary to inflict exquisite pain, I have the pharmaceuticals required to keep my subjects from passing out and missing all the fun.”

  She spun, facing the old man now. A syringe appeared in the injured fingers. She stabbed Skeeter with the needle.

  “It’s a heady cocktail containing a small amount of a neural muscular blocker to keep you from squirming too much, and epinephrine. You’ll be awake and pliable while you experience the worst pain of your life. Then I’ll move on to you...Fergusss.”

  He’d never heard her speak his name before. It sounded like Golem pining for his Preciousss.

  A few moments later, Skeeter’s head fell back against the cinderblock wall. A slit of glacial blue remained visible between the drooping eyelids.

  “Tell me, old man,” Lizzy said in a conversational tone, “besides Ray, who was with you?”

  “Nobody. Just me and him,” Skeeter muttered.

  “Don’t insult my intelligence.” She grabbed one of his shackled hands, extending it to the limit of the chain, then inserted a pinky finger between stainless steel blades. “Who was with you? The blond woman?”

  “Answer don’t change. Don’t matter how many fingers you snip off.”

  “You say that now. Experience has taught me people are more forthcoming after the first one.”

  Lizzy sheared the pinky finger off at the first knuckle. Blood flowed from the stub, saturating the cot’s blanket in a rapidly expanding circle.

  Skeeter watched the process, slack-faced but eyes alert. His gaze followed the severed appendage’s journey to the concrete floor without a blink. The old man’s body didn’t flinch when the finger came off. Skeeter looked like he might be watching a TV show rather than experiencing the events in the flesh.

  Thankfully, Lizzy didn’t seem to notice the lack of reaction. Perhaps the combination of drugs that coursed through her own system, revealed by those tiny pupils, had rendered her less observant.

  “Now, let’s try that again. Who else was with you?”

  Skeeter merely chuckled in response. Fergus smiled.

  “Maybe we’ll cut to the chase and go right to the thumb,” Lizzy hissed.

  Fergus’s scythen pinged: Lizzy’s painkiller was wearing off. Would that make her more or less dangerous? Ironically, as long as she didn’t kill the old man, it didn’t matter. He could hold out longer than her. The torturer becomes the tortured. Fergus was picking up on Skeeter’s scythen output as well as Lizzy’s. While her pain escalated, the old man merely felt impatient.

  How long is this crazy gal gonna keep going?

  The problem, Fergus knew, would be blood loss. Just because he couldn’t feel pain didn’t mean he could survive exsanguination.

  “Lizzy, have you considered it was just Skeeter and Ray?” Fergus said. “It’s a fact that torture is ineffective at extracting information. He’ll just tell you what you want to hear to make you stop.”

  Fergus winked at Skeeter behind Lizzy’s back. A corner of the old man’s mouth twitched.

  Lizzy snatched at another finger, thankfully not the thumb. Fergus noticed the narrow gold band for the first time. Since he’d been in the holler, Fergus had never heard about Skeeter’s wife...Serena Jo’s mother, grandmother to the remarkable twins.

  “Married man, are you?” Lizzy said. “Wonder how your wife would feel about a husband with no fingers? It’s a rhetorical question. You won’t be getting out of here alive.”

  Skeeter’s eyes opened fully. “You keep that word out of your mouth, demon.”

  Uh oh. Lizzy had revealed a weakness.

  She giggled; it sounded off-kilter, even for her.

  “Demon? How quaint. You know, I was like you once. Ignorant, poor, superstitious. It’s amazing what leaving rural Appalachia and getting an education will do for a person.”

  Skeeter merely blinked in response. He knew all about that subject. His own daughter had done it.

  “You do realize demons don’t exist,” she said, then gave a small grunt when she snipped off the ring finger’s tip.

  After a two-second delay, Skeeter groaned. Anyone who hadn’t spent time with the man would have heard pain in that groan. It reminded Fergus of Willadean’s sweet-innocent-child act in the basement — believable only to an audience who didn’t know the actor.

  “Who was with you besides Ray?”

  “Go to hell, demon.”

  Lizzy let Skeeter’s shackled, bloody hand fall to the cot. She whirled, facing Fergus. “Enjoying the show? I like to make these events last as long as possible, but I fear time is critical. If you can make him talk, now would be a good time to do so.”

  Fergus gazed into Lizzy’s eyes.

  The color of witch poison!

  He heard Willadean’s voice, but not with his scythen. It was just something the creative little girl would have said. He looked beyond Lizzy to Skeeter. The bald head moved from left to right one time.

  I got this, little feller. You just keep stalling her as long as you can. Help is gonna come...eventually.

  That wasn’t his imagination. Skeeter possessed remarkable control of his scythen. Not at the level of Cthor-Vangt inhabitants, but still impressive. He’d probably been practicing it his entire life, perhaps not even knowing how exceptional he was.

  Lizzy turned away again. This time she wasn’t slow and methodical when she sheared off the index finger at its base.

  Skeeter groaned, quicker to react this time. The genetic gift that kept him from fully experiencing pain would qualify him for a place at Cthor-Vangt, but Fergus knew Skeeter would never leave the holler. The Whitaker family’s instincts to keep the gene isolated within their kinfolk would override the appeal of all that Cthor-Vangt could offer. Besides, family was everything to this man.

  He needed to get out of the cage while Skeeter still had a few fingers left. A glossy magazine image, picked up in his memory palace, presented an idea for addressing the handcuffs. He needed privacy and tim
e to attempt the escape mechanics. Locating the neural pathways — not traveled since escaping a metal box back in Florida — required absolute concentration.

  “Lizzy,” he said in his most reasonable sounding voice. “You’re in pain. I can hear it in your voice. You know what pain does to one’s decision-making ability?”

  “Of course I know!”

  “Then be smart. Give yourself a break. Take another dose of whatever pain medicine you have upstairs. You won’t extract information when you’re not thinking clearly. Trust me. He may look like a hillbilly, and he is, but he’s a tough old coot. You’re using a sledgehammer approach instead of a scalpel. That’s sloppy work and you know it.”

  The scalpel analogy hit first...hard. Then sloppy knocked it out of the park. As an educated medical professional and a high-functioning serial killer, what insult could be worse?

  She spun again, a whirling dervish of frustration and agony, tossed the stainless steel implement into the rolling cabinet, then stormed out of the basement.

  “We don’t have long,” Fergus said when the door closed.

  “What you got in mind?”

  “Vacating this cage.”

  “Well, get on with it while I still have enough fingers left to wipe my ass.”

  He closed his eyes. “’Fore we left to come lookin’ for you and Willa, we went by my daughter’s U-Haul. That young woman is one smart cookie, as you know. She brung all kinda things when she left Knoxville. Most of it we’ve put to good use, but some of it we ain’t.”

  “If you don’t mind, Skeeter, I’m trying to concentrate. These handcuffs are more challenging than I’m used to.”

  “Yeah, I knew you weren’t no professor. Maybe you’re into that...what do ya call it? M and Ms?”

  Fergus sighed, annoyed. “That’s S and M...sadism and masochism. Anyway, I need complete quiet for a few minutes, please.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to just use a key? I brung three different types, just in case.”

  Fergus leaped off the bench. “Why the hell didn’t you say something sooner?”