by Edward Lee
(II)
Wilfrud and Ethel Hild were the clan’s dowsers. But it wasn’t water they sought; nor did they hold any forked branches for divining rods.
They’d shed their handmade clothes—for nakedness better solicited the spirits of the Earth—and stood now as pale stick figures painted ghostly white by the moon. Wilfrud’s gut looked sucked-in beneath the ribs, Ethel’s breasts losing some plumpness. Divining required a three-day fast, and they’d been divining a lot lately—hence the emaciation. Their eyes looked huge in thin faces—huge in the trance they put upon themselves.
“A minute or two more,” Everd Stanherd intoned from the side. “It takes time for the ashes to reach their blood.”
Wilfrud and Ethel had been dowsers since early childhood, and now, fifty years later, they’d honed their skills—which some would call sorceries—to expertise.
No, no forked branches. Instead they’d slit the belly of a newborn snake, eviscerated it, and then burned its threadlike innards in a brass censer, along with dried coneflower petals, sweetbriar oil, and some fabric from one of the girls’ tops—something well-worn and close to the heart.
The others watched from moonlit trees as Wilfrud and Ethel then ate the ashes out of the censer to begin the trance. Some wore stone pendants about their necks, while others wore lao pouches, and still more wore crude crosses fashioned from animal bones or dried vine cuttings. They all looked on silently in their inexplicable faith.
They walked nude through the woods. The others followed. No one spoke.
A while later, they stopped in a small clearing near , the river and pointed down.
Everd was the sawon, the keeper of the clan’s heritage—and its magic. His voice croaked in the dark, his wife, Marthe, beside him. “Dig here, men. You can see the upturned earth.”
It was obviously a makeshift grave they all surrounded now. The younger men quickly wielded their shovels, routed and emptied the sad mound. Their women watched from the trees, some sobbing. It didn’t take long before the pallid body was hauled out.
Marthe clutched her husband’s arm and burst into tears. The monster didn’t even kill her first, Everd thought, shielding his wife’s eyes. The young girl’s fingers were locked in an upward clench. She’d been trying to unearth herself when she’d finally smothered. A monster, yes, a monster. The wheat bands around both death-white thighs confirmed what she’d been doing. Another one had gone astray, prostituting herself for extra money instead of living by the clean, honest way of the clan. And Cynabelle’s dead. Another one dead. Murdered by that monster.
“At least it’ll stop now.” Wilfrud’s sorrowful words crept through the dark. “Now that you’ve taken care of the soulless bastard.”
“I pray so, my friend.”
They hadn’t found all of the others who’d gone missing over the past few months, and perhaps Chief Sutter was right in his suggestion that they’d simply left town for a chance at a better life. But not all of them. The dowsers had found four others buried like this. The men murdered, and women raped and murdered. Everd would not leave them to graves like this. They’d rebury them on clan land, in earth consecrated by Everd himself.
“I pray so,” he repeated, “but I fear not.”
“I won’t hear it, Everd!” Ethel nearly cried out at the remark. She was coming out of the trance. “Dwayne’s dead now. He hated us, but now he’s dead! There’s no reason for more of us to wind up”—she shivered when she looked at poor Cindy’s body—"like this.”
“We fear there is, dear.” Marthe spoke up in her smoke-light voice. “It’s that Felps man. Everd has foreseen this.”
The sawon nodded. They all paused in a moment of silence as the others lifted Cindy’s body and began to take it back to the property. “He wants this land, so he’s having us killed. People are doing this for him, for money.”
“For what purpose? Miss Judy would never sell the land out from under us.”
“She would if we weren’t here. She would if we all left. If more of us continue to disappear, if more of us are found murdered, then our people will get scared. And they will leave.”
No one argued with that.
“We must tell the constable.”
“That violates our own laws, and he wouldn’t do much to help us anyway. I haven’t even let on to Chief Sutter what I know. I let him believe that I think the missing ones left on their own accord. We take care of our own, Wilfrud; it’s our law, and it has been since longer than we can conceive. We will never go to outsiders. We will always take care of our own.”
At least Wilfrud seemed satisfied with what he said next. “And we can thank heaven and earth that you took care of Dwayne. . . .”
(III)
It appeared to be the makings of a great dream—no, a fantastic dream. Chief Sutter, behind the wheel of the town cruiser, was on routine patrol, ever diligent in his oath to protect and serve. The cruiser prowled through dark, Agan’s Point backstreets as the moon followed over treetops and the cicadas thrummed. Ever vigilant, he kept his eyes peeled for suspicious persons and signs of foul play. Police work was a thankless job, but Sutter was proud to have it. Who knew, for instance, that he was out here on the job right now? As Agan’s Point residents slept soundly in their beds, they could sleep ever more soundly with Chief Sutter maintaining watch over their safety in these wee hours of the night.
Even at this early juncture, the dream was proving to be damn good. Why? Because as he drove, his right hand regularly reached over to the passenger seat to withdraw a piece of his wife’s homemade fried chicken, which, as he recalled, was the best he’d ever eaten. She hadn’t actually prepared this favorite of his for many years, electing instead to tell him, “I feel like fried chicken tonight, honey, so why don’t you bring home a twenty-piece bucket from KFC on your way home from work?” But that was irrelevant here. This was a dream. This was not reality.
He ate the drumsticks first, peeling away the crunchy, delectable skin, then sucking the meat off the bone.
That was when he saw the girl.
Looks like a woman in distress, he noted, and properly switched on his flashing Visibar. She emerged from the darkness at the bend in the road ahead, a short woman with a curvaceous figure, raven-haired. Looks like she’s wearin’ a white bikini, Chief Sutter reasoned. And . . .
His eyes widened.
And she looks to be quite possibly the best-lookin’ gal I have set my eyes on in quite a spell!
Deeply tanned legs, belly, and arms. And a bosom . . .
Jiminy fuckin’ Christmas . . .
The bosom satcheled high in the big white bra looked about big enough to lay Thanksgiving dinner out on.
At the end of the headlights, she began to wave.
That was when Chief Sutter became aware of a serious discrepancy in his previous assumption as to her apparel. Was that really a white bikini she was wearing, or . . .
He squinted harder.
An exciting darkness seemed to lay triangularly at the crotch of the white bottoms, and as for the top: large, dark circles were centered . . .
And the final realization:
That ain’t no fuckin’ bikini! Those are tan lines!
The approaching woman wore no bikini at all. In fact, she wore nothing whatsoever.
What to do now? the chief asked himself. An errant rub to his crotch alerted him to a rising turgidity. The woman was obviously a Squatter; he could tell by the short stature and mussy black hair, and, of course, that—
Jiminy Christmas, Sutter thought again.
—and that jaw-dropping, one hundred percent perfect body
Sutter was thrown for a disturbing loop. Looks like I’ll have to arrest this gal for public nek-it-ness, I suppose. What the hell’s she doin’ walkin’ ‘round here at this time of night bare-assed?
His libido and human sexual responses in general didn’t ponder an answer to his question. She traipsed around the car, the headlights glaring over every perfect detail, b
reasts gently jogging, and then she—
Oh, Mother of God!
—she leaned over the passenger-side window and shot Chief Sutter a giant, sultry smile.
“Evenin’, there, Mr. Chief!”
“Huh-huh-howdy,” he stammered.
“What’cha doin’?”
"Ruh-ruh-ruh-routine patrol, miss.”
The Southern twang blended with that indefinable Squatter accent enriched her voice to something dark and syrupy and most definitely sexual. “Well, me, I’se just out fer a walk.”
Without being asked, then, she opened the passenger door and plopped her exquisite rump right on the seat. Chief Sutter did not raise an objection.
She grinned shyly at him in the dash lights. “Can I tell ya something, Mr. Chief?”
Sutter’s mouth opened but no response seemed possible. The mere sight of her body choked him up, circumventing any possibility of reply.
Her eyes looked dreamy, green gems filled with bright-blue chips that seemed to glow. “Just somethin’ about officers a’ the law, and the uniform ‘n’ all . . .” She sighed. “Just gets me all flustered. Cain’t really even say why.”
More proof that this was a dream. In Sutter’s forty years of police work—and forty years of obesity—no woman had ever voiced this cliché to him. And no woman this attractive had ever given him any kind of notice as overt as this. Still speechless, he felt his eyes struggle to stay in one place: her crotch, her tight belly, her bodacious breasts. Eventually the breasts won out as those dark pink jutting nipples bigger than silver dollars began to hypnotize him as surely as a mesmerist’s pendulum.
The voice oozed further. “Yeah, Mr. Chief. You fellas in uniform . . . ‘specially big, strong ones like you . . . git me so hot I cain’t rightly sit still. . . .”
Current as fierce as electricity speared through him when her hand—soft as a little bird but unduly hot—found his knee, then began to inch up higher on his leg. The humid night air hanging in the car drew the sweat out of her skin; soon her nakedness was shining, her breasts and belly aglaze. This pinpoint image of glimmering flesh, compounded by the sensation of her hand creeping toward his groin, made Chief Sutter feel as though his small and almost always flaccid penis had magically transformed into something the size and stiffness of a summer squash. It strained against his police trousers in an absolutely thrilling agony.
Now her voice seemed desperate with need. “Mr. Chief, ya turn me on so much I’se just goin’ crazy! Let’s git’cher pants hitched down—” She was almost in tears now. “If I don’t have ya right now, I swear I’ll just die!” And then her hands slipped up to his belt, her slick breasts bobbing, sweat visibly dripping off the points of the nipples.
Sexual malfeasance be damned! Chief Sutter made no effort to stop her.
“You can do me right in this here car.” She was panting. “I’se about to git off just thinkin’ about it!”
Oh, my, Chief Sutter thought as he ground his teeth.
His pants were down, his knees quivering. The girl came very close to gasping when she looked down, and when Chief Sutter looked down himself, he, too, came very close to gasping.
Where did that fuckin’ log come from? he asked either the universe, God, or fate. The knobbed baton of flesh that throbbed up in his lap was at least three times larger than the actual member nature had tacked onto him. And then he remembered, with a cunning smile: That’s right. This is a dream.
And what a grand dream it was, when the girl crawled forward in the seat.
She spoke quickly now, in words that were scalded by desire. “Guess ya don’t remember me, huh, Mr. Chief? Just a bit ago?”
“Huh?”
“Them bad men in the funny truck who wanted ta do bad things ta me? You mussed ‘em up right fierce.”
Then somehow, through her words, an awareness snapped. The Squatter gal in the road today. The chick that black guy and the hippie were tryin’ to sell crystal meth to . . .
“I’se so grateful to you fer protectin’ me, Mr. Chief, and I’se gonna show you just how grateful right now,” she promised, and began to lift her leg over, to bring herself crotch-to-crotch with him in the front seat—
Oh, yeah, he thought, what a great fuckin’ dream!
Then she froze. Her excited expression wilted. A second later she withdrew and sat back on the passenger side.
“What’s wrong?” Sutter nearly bellowed.
Her breasts and shoulders slumped when she let out a long, frustrated breath. “Dang it, Mr. Chief! I’se forgot. . . .”
“Forgot what?” Chief Sutter shouted.
“We cain’t do this.”
“Why?”
“Cos I’se only fifteen years old, like I told ya today. You’re a police officer ‘n’ I’m a minor.” She shook her head, smiling innocently. “It was silly a’ me ta even think this.” And then she opened the door and began to get out of the car.
Sutter’s lips twisted up into queer shape as he tried to form words for his objection. Finally, he managed to bark out, “Wait a minute, honey! We can! It don’t matter that you’re a minor because this is just a dream!”
She looked back into the car, magnificent breasts swaying. “Aw, no, Mr. Chief. It’d still be immoral ‘cos you’d feel really bad about it once ya woke up.”
“No, I wouldn’t!” he assured her.
“Oh, yeah, I’m sure ya would, ‘n’ I cain’t have that It’d make me feel guilty.”
Sutter shouted again, “You can’t feel guilty! You’re just an image in a dream! My dream!”
“Naw, naw, still wouldn’t be right,” she said. Her face perked up. “But I’ll tell ya what! You just wait three years when I’m eighteen and then have this dream again! We’ll have a fine time! I promise!”
And then she closed the door.
Sutter lay back in the seat, on the verge of tears. What a fuckin’ ripoff. . . .
She came around the other side for one last tease. Perfect legs parted, her perfect elbows planted on the edge of his open window, perfect breasts still swaying, still shining from all that desiring sweat. “But lemme give ya a peck on the cheek, okay?” she said. “I’se pretty dang sure that ain’t against the law.”
Well, it was better than nothing, wasn’t it?
She leaned over further, bringing her head into the car, and just as she would kiss him on the cheek—
Whup . . .
—her head fell off her shoulders and landed in Chief Sutter’s lap.
A sound screamed through his head like a jet turbine, and suddenly he was falling through darkness, and after what seemed hours of falling, falling, falling—
—he awoke in a tumult on his bed.
Oh, God . . .
His heart thunked in his chest; he thought of an old engine trying to restart. His eyes hurt as he stared after the nightmare, and the inside of his mouth tasted rancid. What a ripoff, he thought again. Why should his subconscious produce such a dream, such intense erotic images, only to leave him unfulfilled?
He winced.
Unfulfilled and with a severed head in his lap.
The entirety of his bulk flinched at a hideous noise. He rolled over in bed and noticed the even larger bulk lying beside him. June always slept naked. Her blubbery belly and breasts vibrated through each cycle of that awful noise-her snoring. Sutter looked at her aghast in the moonlight. Is that my wife or did someone dump three hundred pounds of vanilla pudding in my bed and put a wig on it? This new image only doubled the cruelty of the dream: first the Squatter girl and her perfect image of sexual beauty, then this pale pile of human lard that he would spend the rest of his life with.
Suddenly all the unfulfillment of his life landed on him at once. Over-the-hill, up to my neck in debt, and married to that, he realized.
This was it. This was his life, staring him in the face in all its irrevocable truth.
He actually could’ve cried. The bed jostled like a small earthquake when he slid off and stood up, pas
ty, belly sticking out under hairy man-tits, forty-eight-waist boxer shorts bunched up his ass. Comfort food was the only ticket to cure this grim hour of the wolf, so he trudged out of the noisy bedroom to the kitchen.
He clumped through the darkness, and finally a smile found his mouth. Nice and cool, he reminded himself. At least I have air-conditioning, and yesterday I didn’t. The brand-new unit was doing its job on the summer heat, purring away. He’d thought about it and thought about it, and he’d finally come to the honest decision that taking that dope money off those scumbags represented no infringement on his sense of professional ethics. It was just drug money. If I’d turned it into the county sheriff’s, they would’ve confiscated it. One thing to feel good about was better than nothing. He’d done his job beyond the call of duty, and . . .
And I got a little perk, he rationalized. Ain’t no harm in that.
The refrigerator light flooded the kitchen when he opened the door. A little less dejected than before, he pulled out a fat Boston cream pie that June had picked up at the grocery store and cut himself a sizable slice, but before he could take his first sloppy bite . . .
He smirked in the dark.
Snippets of the dream swept around his mind’s eyes like a flock of birds. The girl’s stunning, earthy, sweat-glistening beauty unfolding before him and then—
Whup . . .
Her head falling off right into his lap.
I must be really fucked-up in the head to have a dream like that, he considered. Why in God’s name would I dream something like that?
Her head falling off.
Her head . . .
Heads, he thought.
It couldn’t help but remind him: Dwayne Parker’s funeral was tomorrow. The most bizarre death his little town had ever seen.
He knew about the rumors. The EMTs had run their mouths, and probably so had some folks down at the county morgue. Can’t say that I blame them. Who could see something like that and not mention it to anyone?
At least they were just rumors at this point, and he hoped they’d fade away after Dwayne’s ashes were cast to the four winds. Even minus the head—which still had not been found—there’d been no doubt as to positive identity. The tattoos were right, the clothes were right, and the ID in the wallet was right. Two days later the fingerprints came back from NCIC, and they were Dwayne Parker’s. The death certificate had read: Anomalous death-COD: Decapitation via smooth transection of levator scapulae muscular process and #5 & 6 cervical vertebrae. Mode of transection as yet undetermined and curious.
