Mitchell’s lips curled into a sneer of triumph. She felt him relax, and then chopped down on his wrist with all her strength, fueled by the memory of his assault in Memphis. Three loud reports ripped through the forest, and she heard Walter’s shout over the roar in her ears as gunpowder smoke burnt her nostrils. Her rage burst forth like the waters behind a storm-swollen dam, and she chopped again. The pistol spun from Mitchell’s hand and landed on the carpet of leaves.
“Bitch,” Mitchell grunted, backhanding her across the face. He stooped for the gun, but Julia dug her fingers into his sleeve. Walter dove to the ground, clawed among the leaves, and came up with the pistol. Mitchell flung Julia away and stared at Walter.
“You going to shoot, redneck?” Mitchell smiled, all white teeth and wickedness. “I don’t think you have the balls for it.”
Julia rubbed her stinging cheek. “You sent me to Elkwood, didn’t you?”
Mitchell frowned at her, the slightest hesitation flashing across his eyes. “You’re crazy.”
“Not as crazy as you wanted me to be,” she said. “You and Dr. Danner set me up with Dr. Forrest. You wanted me to move here. You wanted her to make me so helpless that I’d fall into your arms and stay there forever.”
Mitchell looked at Walter. “Can’t you see how loopy she is?”
“But there was one thing you didn’t count on,” she continued, glad that she wasn’t the one holding the pistol. She might have shot him. “Dr. Danner had his own agenda. He was doing his part to be a good little member of the Brotherhood.”
“Brotherhood?” Mitchell looked confused. But all lawyers were actors on some level.
“Satan worshippers,” Julia said, pleased to see Mitchell’s face go pale.
He looked at Walter and shook his head. “She’s crazy. Now she’s babbling about Satan. She really fell for her doctor’s shrink job.”
Walter held the pistol and said nothing.
“You know Snead, don’t you?” Julia said. “You knew him in Memphis. I wouldn’t be surprised if you helped him get a job here so that he could keep an eye on me.”
Mitchell took a step toward the pistol, but Walter said, “I wouldn’t if I were you. Semiautomatic .45 with three shots gone still leaves four in the clip.”
“Did you know Snead was in Satan’s little circle, Mitch?” Julia smiled as Mitchell squirmed from the sarcastic nickname. “Maybe you’re just playing Satanist. The truth is that I can’t see you bowing down to anybody or anything. You’d never worship anything besides yourself.”
“I’m in it for the money, just like them,” Mitchell said. “Why else would anybody want to marry you?”
“Money? I don’t have any.”
“What do we do with him?” Walter asked Julia.
“I just want him out of my sight,” she answered wearily. “Out of my life.”
Walter motioned with the gun down the forest slope. “You heard her. Get out of here. And I wouldn’t plan on coming back, or this here redneck might pull a ‘Deliverance’ on you.” He gave a leering wink that would have made Julia laugh under other circumstances.
Mitchell’s eyes widened, unable to tell if Walter were joking or not. He backed away a few steps, turned, and started down the slope. His leather shoes kicked at the leaves, his shoulders slumped. When he was nearly out of sight, near a gathering of scrub hemlocks, he looked back.
“You know that guy that lives next to you?” he called through cupped hands. “I paid him to play with your mind.”
Mitchell took a few more steps, turned, and shouted again. “He mailed me a pair of your panties. Think about that the next time you’re laid out on some shrink’s couch. Or taking it on the devil’s altar.”
He ducked behind the hemlocks and the sound of his running footfalls soon faded.
“Your panties?” Walter said.
“He’s a Creep,” she said, crossing her arms and hugging herself. “To think that I ever let him touch me.”
“Sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be. I’m just glad to be rid of him.”
“What did he mean by ‘I’m in it for the money’? I thought he was rich.”
Julia frowned. “Who knows, with Mitchell?”
“You reckon he’s in on this Snead deal?”
She shook her head. “He just wanted me as his little toy. Snead wants me for Satan, and I don’t believe Satan likes to share.”
“They probably heard the shots. They’ll be coming soon.” Walter flipped on the gun’s safety and looked back up the hill in the direction of the cabin.
Julia just wanted to sag down to the forest floor, to join the rotted loam beneath the leaves, to decay in peace. She was tired of being owned. She had been owned by therapists, owned by Mitchell, owned by the memories of something that may or may not have happened when she was four years old.
And now Satan wanted her, or at least his misguided minions did. But she’d be damned if she was going to surrender now, not when she was on the verge of freedom. And she was no longer alone. She wasn’t locked inside the house of her head anymore. She could trust.
She glanced at the sky but the clouds were still silent. But maybe that was the definition of faith, believing even when there was no evidence.
“Let it come, God,” she said. “I’m not afraid anymore.”
As they climbed the slope, Julia wished she could tap Walter’s strength of faith. With Walter’s help, she could fight Snead, Hartley, and Dr. Forrest. But she didn’t have any weapons against a creature built from the flesh of bad faith, or the darkness that crept from the depths of her soul and was expanding to fill all she knew and believed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“The Jeep won’t do us any good,” Walter said when they returned to the cabin. “They could block off the road easy.”
“Maybe we should stay here,” Julia said. “You’ve got the gun.”
Walter shook his head. “I told you I’m no Clint Eastwood. I’d be just as likely to shoot myself as to shoot one of them. And they got us outnumbered.”
The sun was high overhead, with all the night’s rain burned away. Julia studied the woods around them. The Creeps could already be here, surrounding their hideaway. She shuddered at the thought of holing up in the cabin, waiting for the Creeps to call up their stupid dark master or whatever it was they did. She pictured a mad scene of torchlight and shadows, low sinister chants, the air filled with bitter smoke from strange herbs. She shuddered the image from her mind.
“Which direction do we go?” she asked.
Walter nodded toward the north. “If we head over the backside of the mountain, we can follow the creek down to the Amadahee. If we keep at it, we ought to be out of the county in a couple of days.”
“A couple of days?”
“I don’t think we ought to risk trying to get any help around here. There’s no way of telling who’s on their side. On the devil’s side.”
Julia shook her head, staring at the ground. “I don’t want to believe in Satanic conspiracies.”
“Me neither, but they still keep on coming. You go in and pack up the stuff and I’ll go down to the spring to gather some water. If we figure on two days of hiking, we’ll have to travel light.”
The smoke had thinned from the chimney, the fire nearly dead. The forest was reflected in the cold black windows of the cabin. The peace of this place had been shattered. Now the cabin looked forlorn, soulless, only wood and stone.
She went inside, the room steeped in the glow of the dying fire. She gathered the clothes and the remaining food, stuffed them into the backpack, and threw the pack over her shoulder. Walter’s can opener was on the hearth. She unzipped one of the pockets of the backpack and slid the can opener in, but decided the sharp edges might make a tear. She should wrap it in something. She reached into the pocket and her fingers touched a warm, round shape.
It felt familiar, and a shiver raced up her arm. Her heart skipped a beat as she pulled out the object, feeling it
s strange pulse even before she saw the twin rubies.
The skull ring.
The silver face leered up at her, the rubies gleaming in the firelight.
Something stirred in the loft. A voice came, muffled by the quilts.
“Hello, Jooolia.”
She recognized the voice from her childhood. An icicle speared her chest.
The quilts rose in the darkness. Julia looked away from the shadowy loft before the nightmare could come fully into view. She flung the ring into the fire and ran for the door.
As she fled the cabin, dark laughter chased her, crawling from both the fireplace and the loft. Walter was out of sight. She was going to call him, but was afraid they would hear. The thing in the cabin called her name again.
Creep, her mind screamed at her as she ran. Creep, creep, creep. Devil made flesh.
She ran toward the high rocks along the peak. The granite protruded from the Earth like the bow of a sinking ship, its gray mass cracked by eons of wind and weather. The trees blurred by, branches slapped at her face. Her breath burned in her lungs and she was dizzy, in danger of collapsing at any moment. Fear served as fuel, though, and kept her legs moving.
She reached the rocks and peered back through the bare trees. No one was chasing her. Had she imagined the voice, the figure in the cabin? Oh, God, she wasn’t going to start having delusions out here, was she?
She hugged the backpack to her chest, fighting for breath. Below her, the rocky slope dropped off a hundred feet or more, broken only by moss and a few stubs of pine that sprouted from cracks. She leaned against the sun-warmed stone and closed her eyes.
Two steps forward into the air and she would be rid of them. Now and forever. Satan couldn’t chase her beyond the grave. The pain, the past, the tricks and lies, nothing would be able to touch her.
But that would be a different surrender, and she was sick of surrender. She was a mountain. They couldn’t break her.
And she didn’t know what lay waiting on the other side. A ceaseless darkness promised peace, but that suicidal leap might end in the roasting pit of the one who had owned her all along.
She edged along the granite shelf, pushing the panic away from her mind. The wind was stronger here, shaking the stunted balsam trees below. A few clouds had spun their gray threads together, with another storm pushing in from the west. It was as if Satan were controlling the weather just to play with Julia’s moods.
And why shouldn’t he? Even God and Jesus acknowledged Satan was the master of this world, according to Luke’s little chapter in Walter’s Bible.
Voices came from somewhere in the forest. She ducked into a crevice and eased back into the shadows. She held perfectly still for what might have been minutes or an hour, hardly daring to breath, thinking that at any moment the shadows would swell and turn into the fingers of panic, to clutch her heart until it stopped.
Her legs were asleep from crouching, so she stood and leaned against the walls of the narrow cave. Julia pressed her back against the granite as footsteps came up the rocky trail.
Walter.
She stepped out of the crevice, but the footsteps had faded. The wind between the black trees was the only sound.
Except for the harsh breathing behind her.
She spun, dropping the backpack. Snead stood there, wearing a crooked smile.
“Are you ready, Judas?” he said.
He had crept up on her without a sound. Or else popped out of thin air. How could she fight the master of the world?
“Did you find her?” shouted a man’s voice from somewhere below. Julia recognized it from her house, from the cabin, from the night her father disappeared. Hartley.
“She’s here.” Snead tugged her arm. “Come along, Julia. He’s waited far too long. You’ve made him very angry, you know.”
As if to support Snead’s words, thunder rumbled over the far hills. The sky had gone from sunny to dismal in scarcely half an hour. The wind gained force, and branches creaked on the slopes below. More clouds massed overhead, black and gray rags torn in anger.
Julia allowed herself to be led along the cliff. She was numb, as if her blood had stilled itself in her veins. A lamb to slaughter.
They squeezed between two large boulders and emerged into a flat clearing. Hartley was waiting, dressed in a brown wool robe, the hood thrown back to reveal the dome of his bald head. His eyes were set deep in the bones of his face, condemned to always look out at the world from shadows.
“Anybody follow you, Lucius?” Hartley said.
“Nobody,” Snead answered. “Triplett ought to be in custody by now.”
“Should have put him out of the way a long time ago.”
“Don’t worry. I’m sure we can arrange a little ‘accident.’ A chase through the woods, he falls from a cliff trying to elude arrest, nobody will think twice about it. Not with his past.”
Hartley pulled a gun from his robe. “Unless the Triplett whore’s bones turn up. And the bones of the baby she gave us. Then somebody else might start snooping around, like Judas Stone here.”
The Triplett whore? Walter’s wife. Oh, God, no. What kind of woman could give up her infant as a sacrifice?
Julia’s anger revived her, and she fought against Snead’s grip. Three more hooded figures emerged from the trees. It was as if Satan had summoned them out of earth, wind, fire, and water. They surrounded her, rough hands groping and clutching her limbs.
“Tie her,” Hartley ordered.
Julia struggled but was overpowered and forced to the ground. Her hands were yanked behind her and her feet bound with rope. A faint scent of perfume crossed her nostrils, and a slender hand touched her cheek. The whispers went into her ears and through the lost rooms of her soul.
“You’re one of us,” Dr. Forrest said. “You’ve always been one of us.”
“You bitch,” Julia spat. “I’ve never been one of you.”
“You were born one of us,” Dr. Forrest said. “You belong.”
“The master is ready,” Hartley said, looking around, the gun pointed at the turbulent sky. The wind had risen, now was chattering and screaming through the trees. “He’s given us the signs.”
“What do we do after we finish her?” Snead asked Hartley.
“Let Satan decide.”
“There are too many loose ends, Hartley. Satan’s supposed to blind the weak. But bodies have turned up, and sooner or later somebody’s going to link us to Memphis.”
“Are you doubting, my Brother Judas?”
The hooded figures stood around Julia, watching the confrontation. Julia noticed two of them wore patent leather shoes. Cop shoes.
Snead said, “He has truly blessed us. I’m just thinking about it from a law-enforcement perspective.”
Hartley’s voice rivaled the low thunder that crept over the hills. “There’s only one law, and only one enforcer.”
Julia looked up at Snead, saw the man’s aquiline face redden in anger. “That’s easy for you to say. You make the messes, and I have to clean them up.”
Hartley raised his left hand as if addressing the sky. “Even the book of fools acknowledges the master of this world.” Hartley smiled at Julia. “Four-oh-six, Judas.”
A gunshot echoed over the hills, coming from the rocks near the peak of the ridge. Julia’s heart clenched.
Walter. They must have found him.
She pictured him slumped in the leaves, blood pouring from his chest. Shot while trying to escape, they’d say. But Julia would know the real truth: that he had given his life trying to protect her. And she had doubted him and his God.
Hartley had ducked at the sound and now motioned Snead to investigate. Snead and two of the hooded figures disappeared among the boulders. Hartley whispered, “Watch the whore,” and then slipped into the trees. Julia lay on the ground, tied and helpless, alone with Dr. Forrest.
The doctor knelt beside Julia, gently stroking Julia’s hair. Julia cringed from the contact, sickened by the possibility
of Walter’s death. She sobbed.
“Hush, Sister Judas,” Dr. Forrest said to her. “You’re nearly healed.”
What was this crazy woman saying? How many others had she polluted in her role as a therapist? How many other vulnerable victims were led to this wicked end by Dr. Forrest’s manipulation?
Dr. Forrest smiled down at her, like a Madonna upon a child. “If only your father could see you now.”
“What about my father?” Julia managed to ask through her confusion.
“He was weak, a fool. He lost his courage just when he was about to enter the Inner Circle. Imagine the power Satan would have bestowed upon him if only he’d have had the strength to seize it.”
“No,” Julia said. “You told me–you made me remember that he molested me.”
Dr. Forrest laughed, a sound as sinister as the whipping of the rattlesnake’s tail. “Douglas Stone couldn’t molest a lamb, much less a living human being. Your mother was the strong one, the one willing to sacrifice everything. Then, when it came time to deliver you unto the master, Douglas stole you.”
Dr. Forrest’s face grew dark and her eyebrows made arrow tips. “But nobody runs away from the Brotherhood. And the Master doesn’t suffer fools.”
“What did you do to him?” Julia fought against her bonds, but now, just like 23 years ago, she couldn’t break free. She was angry at these monsters, a rage that almost drove the colors of her mind from black to red. But she was even angrier at herself, to think she could have let someone else build false memories in her head, to have allowed someone to own her so completely.
“He’s in a better place now,” Dr. Forrest said, a vacant smile on her face. “The master surely saved one of the hottest pits of hell for that pathetic worm. I was one of those who came for you that night. Douglas had called the cops, and we could hear the sirens. If Snead hadn’t been there to protect us–”
Dr. Forrest closed her eyes as if to control her rage. After a moment, she opened them and continued. “Your father broke the window and tried to shove you through. Your belly was cut on the glass. There was so much blood, so much magic. And Douglas wasted it.”
Mystery Dance: Three Novels Page 56
