Devil's Oven

by Laura Benedict

  A thought flashed through her head: If she survived this, she would make sure Ivy Luttrell paid for what she had done to her. Bud wouldn’t hesitate to kill Ivy if Lila told him.

  The doorframe split, knocking the door—hinges attached—into the room so that it lay like a ramp onto the bed. He stood in the doorway, still smiling, obviously pleased with himself.

  It was too late to get out.

  His arms spread wide as though he would embrace her. He ran up the door, stooping so his head wouldn’t scrape against the ceiling.

  Lila dove for the floor, trying to get underneath the bed. If she could make it to the other side of it, she might get out the door before he caught her. But she wasn’t fast enough, and he was on her. He grabbed her legs with a sound that might have been laughter and tried to pull her back. He mostly got hold of the too-large sweatpants and they began to slide down her legs. She dug her nails into the carpet to hold on, and felt the pants begin to peel off as he got a better grip on her.

  She kicked and closed her eyes and screamed, loud and long. Surely Ivy would hear her. Ivy would take pity on her. How could one woman let something like this happen to another woman? What had she ever done to Ivy Luttrell? Dull, sad Ivy Luttrell, who’d had such tragedy in her own life. It was inconceivable.

  When she opened her eyes, she found herself facing the back wall behind the bed. In the space between the nightstand and the bed, she saw the pointed tip of the walking stick she had seen, but not registered, when Ivy brought her into the room. She kicked at the man that much harder and gained an inch or so of ground. When she grabbed for the stick, it fell over. Her mouth was full of dust from underneath the bed, but she ignored it, and enjoyed the brief surge of hope she felt as her hand wrapped around the solid shaft of wood.

  She didn’t struggle when he grabbed her again, but held firmly on to the stick.

  • • •

  As a child, Lila had spent all the time she could in the woods, and had often gone camping with the scout troop run by her third-grade teacher, Mrs. Jarvis. She had loved riding along the mountain’s muddy tracks in the Jeeps and pickup trucks belonging to boys in her circle of friends, sneaking beer from the refrigerator in her grandfather’s basement and drinking it beside one of the rocky streams far off the road. They sat on the rocks, scaring the crap out of each other at dusk with stories about the murders on the mountain, the people who had gone hunting or walking in the deepest part of the forest, never to be seen again. One of her favorite stories was of the man who had married and killed six different wives. He just dug the first grave wider each time he put a body in, so that the women all lay in a companionable row.

  And Tripp. She had made love to Tripp on a blanket in his backyard beneath the pine trees, with the stars peeking through the distant branches.

  The mountain is all wrong now.

  As she stood on the back deck of the trailer, looking up the trail that led into the trees, she knew she would never go onto the mountain again if she could help it. Tripp had taken most of her love for it the moment he had looked at her like he didn’t know her, when he had seen that girl’s face in hers. That animal, the one who had tried to kill both her body and soul, had destroyed the rest. Both had come from the mountain. What kind of place was Devil’s Oven that it could bring both happiness and terror into her life? Into the lives of everyone around her? She had been born so close to it and yet she hadn’t known.

  Ivy has known.

  She knew she couldn’t stay at the trailer. The man lay stunned in the bedroom, the walking stick jabbed into his throat, but he was still moving. He would be looking for her again.

  Turning her back on the woods, she began to run down the hill toward the house.

  Ivy! She would kill Ivy with her own hands.

  When she was almost to the porch, she slowed and stopped. There was no way she could face Ivy alone. She was too weak. There would be time later. Lila Tucker had it all over pathetic Ivy Luttrell. Always had. Always would.

  She pulled the sweater more closely around her and began to run again, past the darkened house and toward the highway.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  “A gun’s not going to help us,” Jolene said. She couldn’t make Bud understand. “He’s not alive. Not like you are.” I’m not even alive, not really.

  “Bullshit,” Bud said. He pulled the little car as far as he could into the gravel edging the driveway. He cut the lights, hoping they wouldn’t be seen by anyone who might be watching the house. “Dwight said he killed him once. So he can be killed again. Right?” He paused. “Jesus, that sounds insane.”

  Getting Bud out of jail had left her drained. Even if she had the chance to confront the creature, she didn’t know if she could do anything to stop him. Bud had told her what Dwight had said, that Anthony had come to confront Bud about the money he owed, and Dwight had killed him, cut him into pieces, and buried him on the mountain. What neither Bud nor Dwight knew, or could ever know, was that it had been Ivy’s fault, Ivy’s passion, Ivy’s need that had resurrected him. Now this Anthony’s resurrected self was carrying out whatever plan had been in his brain when Dwight had first killed him. His rage was focused on Bud and anyone close to Bud—Claude, Danelle, Lila. Surely Bud was next.

  Had Thora just gotten in the way? Jolene refused to believe Ivy killed her. Thora had probably done something to make Anthony angry. Willful Thora, who always had to be right. Just like her father, Byron.

  “I don’t want you to wait here by yourself,” Bud said.

  Jolene saw the compassion in Bud’s eyes. It didn’t matter that he had been grievously hurt by Lila, or that he was willing to kill to get her back. Nothing would change that part of him.

  “I’ll be okay here,” she said. “You just have to hurry. If he has her…”

  “No. Come with me,” he said.

  • • •

  No one was watching Bud and Lila’s house, but the police had left most of the interior doors ajar, and drawers and cabinets standing open, their contents ravaged. Bud didn’t stop to look or comment, but motioned for Jolene to follow him up the back stairs. The house itself didn’t have an aura, but the fog of death hung about it, a cloying sadness through which Jolene found it hard to move. When they reached the upper hallway, she felt it streaming over her, welling up from downstairs, where Danelle had died.

  “Let me check my closet,” Bud whispered. “I’ve got a flashlight in there, and the safe. I’ll get us coats, too.”

  Jolene nodded. She waited in the doorway of the bedroom, but found herself standing on tiptoe, trying to look—not too closely—over the railing.

  “This is where they found her,” she whispered.

  Bud didn’t answer. He had disappeared into his bedroom.

  Jolene walked to the railing. She had never been in a house like this. It was like a palace in a storybook. The carpet beneath her feet was thick, a luminescent shade of pearl. Large paintings framed in textured gilt covered the expanse of the opposite wall, which rose to the second floor. It was too dark to see their details, but she had an impression of thick forests, idyllic blue skies, and richly dressed women. Near the bottom, a single, upturned light shone on a portrait of Lila herself, her hair tamed into a loose chignon at the back of her head, with just a few teasing curls hinting at the richness of her hair. Around her neck was a necklace of dark stones and diamonds. She held an emerald green drape to her chest, and one alabaster leg peeked from beneath it. From where she stood, Jolene couldn’t get a good look at Lila’s expression, but she knew her face well enough. It would be a smug, teasing look, because this was Lila’s fantasy.

  Jolene tried not to hate Lila for what she had done to Bud by making a fool of him with Tripp. She tried not to hate anyone, but it was hard to avoid with Lila. Lila had wasted herself. She had wasted Bud.

  Still, she didn’t deserve to die.

  The moonlight from the massive window above the front door, along with the small amount of light from t
he bulb below the painting, was enough to illuminate the shadows on the checkered marble floor. Some of the white squares near the center bore amorphous stains punctuated by pieces of reflective tape, no doubt put there by the police. But one white square showed a perfect handprint.

  Danelle’s handprint. The woman Bud had always mentioned so casually, the woman who made his food and did his laundry and kept Lila from feeling too much like a housewife. Poor Danelle. It was Danelle’s pain that filled the house and made Jolene’s throat feel tight.

  She started to call out to Bud, to ask him to hurry. Then she saw movement on the floor.

  Jolene watched in silence as the handprint lifted, detaching itself from the marble. The thumb and C-shape of the palm and the splotches made by the fingertips thickened and joined together, becoming a solid, breathing blackness. It was a hand, flexing and turning itself. The surrounding stains pulsed with life, and slipped across the floor to join the hand, knitting together faster and faster until they made a definable shape: the featureless body of a woman, shining and liquid black, like oil. Earth’s blood. Jolene took a step backward, but found she couldn’t look away. The figure pushed itself up onto its knees and looked from side to side like a ponderous animal unsure of its surroundings. Then it raised what might have been its face to Jolene.

  She felt its pleading. Its pain.

  It stretched out a lumpish hand to Jolene, just as Jolene had reached out to be free of the earth that was swallowing her so many years ago. The earth offered her shelter and safety, a safety she now knew was more of a hell. Now she was the witness, just as the crow had been hers.

  “I can’t help you,” she whispered. “I can’t.”

  The figure’s need pierced her. It crawled across the floor, making tortuous progress toward the stairs. Jolene couldn’t help but be drawn to it. She knew that she and the thing reaching out to her weren’t so different. But she couldn’t give it what life she had left. She had to save it for Ivy.

  Jolene understood this was all her doing. She was the one who had run. She was the one who had seen the colors of death around her mother, and she had done nothing. Her father, her baby brother—innocents—had died because she hadn’t warned them. She hadn’t acknowledged or fought the evil that had consumed them. Evil that had lived beneath their feet, even in the roots of the trees. Only she had been given the gift of seeing it, but she had done nothing.

  She’d been given a second chance, with Thora and Ivy. But she had run again, when the evil consumed Byron, Thora and Ivy’s father. She had abandoned them, too.

  It happened so fast. I was afraid.

  She stepped down a single stair. The wraith’s hand reached for her.

  If she couldn’t save Lila or Ivy, maybe it was right for her to give what she had left to the fearsome thing at her feet. If she gave herself willingly, without running away, without hiding, she might be absolved. Released.

  Doing well by doing good. Something Byron had liked to say.

  True death. It has to be better than the endless dark, the absence of time and touch. Waiting. Over thirty years had passed since she had come down off Devil’s Oven the first time. The wait had seemed momentary and eternal all at once. But she hadn’t been able to breathe inside the mountain. She couldn’t go back to that purgatory, that gritty nothingness. She couldn’t do it a third time.

  “They drilled into my safe, but I’ve got another…” Bud was behind her. “My god, get back!”

  He grabbed her around the waist and dragged her away from the top of the stairs. The thing below let out a mournful cry that sank into her skin, tore at her heart. She tried to fight Bud off, but he just kept repeating her name, over and over again, trying to get her away.

  Bud managed to get her down the back stairs. She had stopped struggling, and he half-carried her into his study and pushed her into a chair. He was out of breath, his forehead covered in perspiration.

  “Stop,” he said. “Just stop.”

  Jolene’s head dropped forward, her hair falling into her face. I’m so tired. The weight of her failure settled over her, crushing her.

  Bud lifted her chin with one of his enormous hands. He bent down to look closely at her.

  “Jolene,” he said. “I don’t know what’s happening here, but you can’t give up. You have to help me find Lila. You’re the only one who can help me.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “Just leave me here. I can’t do anything.”

  “I gave you a chance,” he said. “I trusted you. I don’t know what you can do, but whatever it is, you have to do it. Don’t let Lila die. I’m begging you.”

  He didn’t wait for her answer, but crawled beneath his desk. After a few seconds, he backed out again.

  “We’re good to go,” he said, showing her the gun he had taken from underneath the desk. Then he pushed aside the front of the sheepskin jacket he had changed into and secured the gun in the rear waistband of his pants. “They drilled out my safe and took every other gun I own like I’m some kind of criminal. Bastards.”

  He picked up the matching woman’s coat he had brought downstairs, and pulled Jolene to her feet. “This’ll be a little big on you, but it’ll keep you warm.” He helped her into it, and she didn’t resist. They went back to Charity’s car.

  • • •

  “We need to get to Ivy’s.” Jolene’s voice was weak.

  She leaned back in the passenger seat and closed her eyes. “They’ll be looking for you,” she said. She had drunk the can of energy drink he pulled from the fridge, but it had only wet her mouth and made her shiver.

  “Can’t help that,” he said.

  She felt the car speed up. “I need you to pray or find us some good luck or something right away,” Bud said.

  She opened her eyes. They were approaching the club, its parking lot blazing with police lights. Small groups of men and women huddled near the entrance. A cop in full uniform stood rigidly in front of the door.

  “Do you think they’re looking for you?” she said. “What are they doing?”

  “Don’t stare,” he said. “Just look forward.”

  No one looked at them or followed.

  They didn’t speak again until they got near the town proper, where Bud took the old county road that rose up behind the town so they wouldn’t pass the courthouse building. It was only two miles around, past some of the town’s older houses and a couple of churches. She stared out the window, fogging it some with her breath.

  Breath I don’t deserve.

  “Just a few minutes to go,” Bud said. “Hang in there.”

  She had no idea what they would find when they got to Ivy’s place. When she had been there with Tripp earlier in the day, there’d been no sign of Lila. She has to be somewhere. Besides the trailer, there were the other outbuildings. She had never been allowed in the tiny smokehouse—Byron’s private domain. It didn’t seem big enough to hide someone in for very long. The barn was barely standing. They hadn’t used it for much, only for storing hay to sell. Thora and her mother had kept two horses for riding, but that was long before she’d arrived. But the creature—he wasn’t a secretive being. He wouldn’t care if someone knew where he was. He wasn’t afraid of people, of Bud, of Ivy, of being seen at the Git ’n’ Go or anywhere else. He didn’t need to hide in the smokehouse or the barn.

  To the left of the car, she could see the lights of the trailer park—the orderly rows of trailers and the nine or ten streetlamps, a car driving slowly down the main road to the highway beyond. Most everyone there would be asleep.

  When Ivy was four, she never wanted to go to sleep in her bed. She had wanted to lie with her head in her mother’s lap—her lap—and have her silky head stroked. She had lain there, sucking her thumb, sometimes humming tunelessly. Or she would play with her mother’s hair, twisting it in her fingers until she got sleepy and her hand slipped onto her mother’s breast, resting there.

  Charity wouldn’t be home yet to find her car gone. She hated to hurt C
harity, who had taken her in without question or regret. Charity would try to hide the hurt, make some smart remark to Eli about Jolene going back to wherever she came from. Eli would know, though. He always knew what Charity was feeling.

  The road met the highway just west of the fuzzy bright lights of the Git ’n’ Go.

  “I wonder if Lila’s had anything to eat today,” Bud said, as though to himself. He turned onto the highway.

  His aura was subdued, and it seemed that when he turned to Jolene a moment later to ask if she was doing okay, his eyes had lost some of their softness.

  It amazed her that he still loved Lila even though he knew about Tripp. It amazed her that anyone could be loved that way, and not feel like the most blessed person on earth.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  “I don’t think Jolene can even drive,” Charity said. “Shit. Did she even think for a minute about how I’m supposed to get home?”

  Nervous energy had Dwight working, and Charity had started helping without being asked. He could tell she was trying not to be pissed off at Jolene. No one liked to be angry with Jolene. Being mad at her was like being mad at a little kid.

  Still, there was something about Jolene that bugged Dwight. She seemed too sweet, too defenseless.

  You always were a crappy judge of character. I tried to tell you, man. Pat’s voice sounded strained and hollow. Listen, I feel like six kinds of hell. I don’t know how much longer I can handle this box.

  “Yours is not an opinion I need at this moment,” Dwight said. He shoved a chair so hard onto a table that the other two on it bounced to the floor.

  “So, I’m supposed to walk?” Charity said. “Are you kidding?”

  “Wasn’t talking to you,” Dwight said.

  She shook her head and moved on to the next table.

  He was tired of being afraid and worried. People like Charity, men like him, they always just got on with the business of living. It was what they knew how to do. People like Bud and Jolene were the feeling kind. The prey of the world, thinking everyone could just get along if people kept smiling.