by Edward Lee
The front room wasn’t that much different from his aunt’s. Regular furniture, chairs, a big wooden highboy in the corner, and a grandfather clock. It was just a little older, that’s all. He followed Dawnie up the stairs to the left. The stairwell was dark, and the hall upstairs was even darker. But this made sense ’cos he’d heard Creekers, like most hillfolk, didn’t have electricity. “Where we going, Dawnie?” he asked on the landing. “We going to your room?”
“Naw,” she said, facing him. Again, he noticed her bubs; they were little but sticking out real nice through the old sundress she wore, and actually she’d be kinda pretty if it weren’t for the messed up hands and feet.
“Foller uh-me.”
Then she took him by the hand and led him up another, even darker, flight of stairs.
Jeez, it’s hot, he thought. Twice as hot as outside, and a lot more muggy. Once they got on the third-floor landing, Phil was so hot he felt like he was cooking. Up here was a smaller hall; more old framed pictures hung on the walls, but they were too dark to see. The only light came from a small, high little window at one end, and then he noticed a line of lights—tiny white dots shooting from each door in the hall.
Keyholes, Phil realized.
Dawnie seemed winded with some weird kind of excitement. Phil could see the grin behind the black ribbons of hair.
She squeezed his hand.
“Wanner, uh, wanner-see-um?”
“See who, Dawnie?”
“Er-um, my-um sisters?”
Her sisters? Phil didn’t know about this. He didn’t know if he wanted to meet Dawnie’s sisters. What if they were real messed up and ugly? What if they didn’t like him?
And what would Dawnie’s sisters be doing up here in all this darkness and heat?
Her hand was hot and moist. She squeezed his own hand harder.
“Wanner, uh, wanner-see-um doin’ it?”
Doing what?
All of a sudden, Phil didn’t like this. He could get in trouble. He wasn’t even supposed to be here, and he didn’t even really know where he was.
He wanted to leave.
But Dawnie pulled excitedly at his hand. Phil wanted to pull away, but for some reason he couldn’t.
She took him to the first door.
“Git-er on down,” Dawnie said and put her hands on his shoulders.
Phil knew what she meant. She wanted him to get down on his knees.
She wants me to look in the keyhole.
Phil knelt as her excited hands on his shoulders pushed harder. The bright light from the keyhole blazed on his face.
Dawnie’s hand nudged his head.
“Look-it. Looker-on in-nair.”
Phil felt woozy, kinda sick. He hadn’t felt good for the past coupla days, and right now he felt real bad. His stomach quivered, and even though it was so hot, he suddenly shivered against a chill. He knew he was coming down with the flu or something, or maybe some stomach bug he got from eating his aunt’s awful stuffed peppers.
Plus, he was scared.
“Hey, Dawnie, I’m not feeling too good. I better get on home now.”
But Dawnie wouldn’t hear of it. Her fingers tightened on his shoulders, and she nudged him again.
“Go-on. Look-it.”
The keyhole blazed.
Chills coursed up his back.
Then ten-year-old Phil Straker took a deep breath, put his eye to the keyhole—
Jesus Jesus Jesus!
—and looked in.
««—»»
Eagle seemed duly amused by Phil’s recital of the story. “Yeah? So what did you see?”
“I don’t know,” Phil foolishly confessed, his elbow propped out of the truck window. “That’s the last thing I really remember, kneeling down and looking in that keyhole. Sometimes I think I remember more, sometimes I dream about it, but the only stuff that comes to mind are just little pieces, glimpses of things, like a hand or a foot, or part of a face in the shadows. Anyway, next thing I knew, it was a couple days later. I was in bed with a hundred-and-four fever.”
Eagle laughed. “Ya probably didn’t see anything; ya probably just dreamed it all on account of you were sick.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” Phil said, but he didn’t really believe that, even though the doctor said that fevers frequently caused hallucinations and morbid dreams. Phil knew he could never prove it, but he also knew that the whole thing really had happened and that the House—
Phil blinked hard.
The House was real.
I just wish I could remember. I wish I could remember what I saw in that keyhole. Not just the glimpses I’ve dreamed about. Everything. Why can’t I remember it all…
“Time to forget about your haunted Creeker whorehouse,” Eagle said. He pulled the truck up another rutted, narrow road, and stopped. “We’re here.”
Blackjack had a little hovel of a cottage with clapboard shingles. It sat jammed back into the woods amid a bed of high-reaching weeds and gangling vines.
Strings of mist from the previous rain floated off the ground.
“Wasted trip,” Eagle cited. “His truck ain’t here. I knew something happened to him. I’ll bet you and Paul were right. Somebody put a hit on him.”
Phil peered through the moving mist. “Keep your shirt on. You ever think that maybe it’s just that his truck blew a gasket, and he’s got it in the shop? And look.” Phil pointed out the window. “That back window—there’s a light on.”
“Blackjack’s bedroom. Well, maybe the fucker is home after all. Come on.”
They disembarked. The night sucked up the heavy chunks of Eagle’s truck doors closing. The mist parted as they moved forward, swatting at mosquitoes and gnats. Phil seemed to inhale the thick fog, the air’s humidity sopping him at once. Pulsing nightsounds throbbed from the woods which backed the shack.
Eagle began to rap on the front door but stopped when the door, ajar, swung open. “Shit, now I know he’s here. No way Blackjack’d leave his place with the door open. He’s got guns and shit in here.”
“Guns?” Phil asked with some concern.
“Yeah, so we better announce ourselves good and loud.” Eagle stuck his head in. “Hey, Blackjack, you here? Don’t shit a brick. It’s me, Eagle.”
They waited a moment. The shack responded with silence.
“Blackjack! Come on, man, wake it up and shag ass. It’s Eagle, and I got our new driver with me.”
Nothing.
“Must be asleep or stoned,” Phil guessed.
“Yeah, come on.”
They edged inside. The place was a dump, but it wasn’t wrecked. “At least there’s one good sign. Ain’t all busted up like Paul’s joint. Wait here. I’m gonna go check out the bedroom.”
Phil nodded, glancing around. I’ve seen better-looking shithouses, he reflected of Blackjack’s interior decorating tastes. He crossed his arms, waiting, but then—
What?
Some sound, ever-faint, seemed to slowly leaven itself into his ears.
What is that?
A hum, etchy yet so slight he could barely detect it. It seemed to originate off to the right.
The kitchen, he realized, noticing old enamel-white appliances standing in the dark.
Phil walked over, looked in.
The shifting hum rose.
Phil’s hand padded up the wall and flicked on the light.
His stare locked downward…
“I don’t believe this shit, man,” Eagle complained, coming up from behind. “The fucker ain’t here.”
“Yes, he is,” Phil croaked.
Then he pointed down to the fly-covered corpse sprawled across the kitchen floor.
««—»»
“Dream On” by Aerosmith ended Vicki’s set amid a rowdy cannonade of applause. Sure, dream on, she thought beneath her best “dance-face.” Dream forever—
Dream till you’re dead.
She could swear Sallee’s walls actually shook, they were clapping
so hard. It sounded like a storm. And when she stepped down through the stagelights and endless, moving sheets of cigarette smoke, she always felt the notion that she was stepping down into hell.
Maybe I really am, she considered.
She took a final bow, then left the stage and the noise and the crowd behind her, perhaps in the same way she’d left her dignity and self-worth behind her so many years ago—with a cold turn of her shoulder.
Druck stood at the entrance to the back room, a deformed sentinel in overalls. Vicki could feel his warped gaze sliding down her naked back as she quickly passed and slipped into the dressing room. She noted a trickling sound the moment she entered; it was coming from one of the toilet stalls. Someone douching, she guessed at once. One of the Creekers. Cody forbade the Creeker girls from using condoms—hence the necessity to douche. The rednecks paid more to forego protection. What did they care? Men couldn’t get pregnant, and were at much less risk of contracting diseases. There’d only been a few occasions when, servicing a special client, Cody had ordered her to not use condoms, but on those nights she’d been too coked up to really care. She got tested every two months at the county clinic and had so far tested negative. It seemed a miracle, considering the extent of her prostitution before she’d married Natter. Anything for a line, she thought in utter grimness. She’d done things she couldn’t believe…
The stall door opened and, as predicted, one of the Creeker girls emerged, immediately looking down when noticing Vicki there. The Creekers treated Vicki with an almost queenly respect; they were afraid of her. After all, she was the king’s wife now. The girl, who only had one arm, limped past and out the door, her black hair lifting in her wake.
Jesus…
Vicki knew the Creekers were powerless against Cody’s exploitation of them. Still, she subtly despised them. The Creeker girls were an ultimate reminder of the depraved backwoods underworld that Vicki’s life now tightly revolved around.
They reminded her of her own powerlessness against Cody Natter. They’re retarded and deformed and terrorized, she thought. At least they have an excuse.
But what’s mine?
She knew there were no excuses. She had no one to blame for the wreckage of her life but herself.
Dozens of one-dollar bills stuffed her tip garter, along with a few tens and twenties. It all went to Cody, just like her trick money. She knew he made a fortune off her, and God knew how much he made off the Creekers. She transferred the cash to her purse, then, as she did every night after her last set, turned to face herself in the mirror.
It was an accuser’s face that peered back, or a ragged Doppelganger’s. Her red hair didn’t shine like it used to, and her green eyes had lost some of their emerald luster. Crow’s feet encroached, and the tiniest threadlike lines. At least my tits aren’t sagging yet, she indelicately noted of her bare, thrusting bosom.
But what of the rest of her?
The truth compiled every day. Her lean, nimble physique was a little too lean now, and beginning to show signs of depletion. Sometimes, when she woke up, she looked absolutely emaciated. The coke stole not only her vitality but also the simple common sense that she should eat better. Each day of her life took another little fleck away.
And the flecks were adding up.
Yeah, I’m starting to really look beat, her thoughts informed her reflection. Pretty soon I’ll be lucky to pull a couple five-dollar blowjobs per night.
Not much of a destiny.
And what would Cody do then? There was so much she had seen, so much she knew…
She tried to think of a time when her life hadn’t been in so many pieces. She knew when it was: during her engagement to Phil. She’d been a different person then; she’d had a real future, and real ambitions. Where had it all gone? To hell, she thought. To hell in a handbasket and straight up my nose. The diamond pendant glittered between her breasts—Phil had given it to her a decade ago. For the past few nights she’d been wearing it again, but—Why? she wondered. Did she think that he would notice? And so what if he did? Phil’s own life, it seemed, had taken the same fall as hers; he was hanging out with Eagle Peters now, a known dope runner. He said he was doing dust. And the other night? I was just another fuck, like I always am. She must be out of her mind thinking that he could somehow save her from Natter. Why would he even want to? she asked herself in steepening self-hatred. My whole life is in the pits…
She’d never even bothered telling Phil the real reason she’d married Natter. He’d never believe it; it would just sound like the typical self-pitying bullshit of any whore. It was best to simply let him think what anyone else would would think: that she’d married Natter for convenience, for free coke and fewer tricks. Those were parts of the reason, but the main reason was that Natter, in exchange, agreed to pay for her father’s heart-valve operation. She’d bartered her flesh, and now Cody had his prize. It was almost medieval.
Her father had died a few years later, but at least her effort had given him some extra life.
No, Phil’s necklace was nothing more than a dead icon, another reminder as to how flagrantly she’d let her whole life slip away from her.
Then another reminder reared.
“Damn it!” she whispered aloud when she reached into her purse and withdrew the tiny vial. It was empty.
The vial was an icon too, a perverted censer by which she worshipped her own demon. She was enslaved, and it was hard to clearly remember back to the time when she wasn’t…
Rap-rap-rap! the hard knocks resounded on the door. Oh, God damn it, she thought. She knew who it was; it was Druck. And just when things were looking like she wouldn’t have to turn any tricks tonight. At least being married to Natter had one benefit: he only reserved her now for higher-paying clients, which amounted to two or three tricks per week instead of five to ten per night. Having as his wife the highest-priced hooker in the club was Cody’s prestige, like a pimp’s “top-drawer” girl. The other girls provided the standard grist for Natter’s mill, and the Creeker girls, of course, catered to the kinkier clientele. Vicki was on a pedestal in a sense. The Queen of Sallee’s, she thought. Cody Natter’s fuck trophy, the grade-A prime of the redneck underground…
Rap-rap-rap-RAP!
“What, Druck?” she nearly screamed through the door.
“’Scuse me, Miss Vicki,” the halfwit voice came back. “But ya about done in there?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Cody wants to see ya.”
“What for, for God’s sake?”
The slow voice behind the door paused. “Don’t rightly know, Miss Vicki. But ya best git finished up ’cos he been waitin’ on ya fer awhile’s now.”
“I’ll be out in a minute,” she replied, all the bite gone from her words. Yes, she knew. One last glance in the mirror, and she nearly broke out into tears.
Who did she hate more? Natter, or herself?
She swiftly put on her jeans and blouse, and left.
Druck waited outside, cracking his strange doublethumbs. “Yessir, yer shore lookin’ mighty perdy tonight, Miss Vicki.”
“Where’s Cody?”
The smile on the warped face looked like two fat worms lain together. “He’s on back in the office.”
Druck’s uneven red eyes gazed at her bosom. The smile squirmed. His gaze felt like a molestor’s hands freely kneading her breasts.
Scumbag.
She went down the hall, her stiletto heels ticking, and entered the back office. At once she noticed two of the less-defected Creeker dancers, nude save for their g-strings, standing against the wall. Their ebon-haired heads were bowed as if in the presence of a deity.
Which, in a sense, they were.
Cody Natter sat at the desk.
“So lovely, so beautiful,” came his familiar, creaking voice. “And how was your night, my love?”
“Peachy. Druck said you wanted me for something.”
Natter sat half-cloaked in darkness, which somehow made his twisted
visage even more terrible. “Merely a minor arrangement; it shouldn’t take too long. But there are three gentlemen who would very much like the pleasure of your company.”
She looked aghast. Three bigshot rednecks, no doubt, chock full of cash from a recent dope deal. “Aw, Cody, come on, I don’t do groups anymore. I hate doing groups.”
“Well, certainly I’d never expect you to engage upon such a task on your own. You’ll have some assistance.” And with that disclosure, Natter’s dark blood-red eyes looked across to the two Creeker girls.
Vicki gaped at them, then gaped back at Natter. “What? Them?”
Natter’s crooked brow rose. “What of them?”
“They’re Creekers!”
The room fell silent. Vicki knew she shouldn’t have said it, but it slipped out. And there was no taking it back.
Natter stood up. He seemed to do so in increments, more or less unfolding to his nearly seven-foot height. The dark office corner released him; he began to walk forward.
“Cody, I didn’t mean it,” she rambled. “I—”
His long, three-fingered hand blurred, reached out, then snatched her throat.
And his voice seemed to flow, like a brook full of dark water. “Yes, my love, you are right. They’re Creekers. But then…so am I.”
His hand felt like an iron cuff. His face was hideous, a gaunt framework of pocked and lined flesh, the enlarged head and uneven ears. Lumps could be seen beneath graying-black streams of hair, genetic protrudements of his cranium.
And, of course, his eyes.
The huge blood-red eyes…
“And…” The eyes slid down to the V of her blouse. “What have we here?”
The long thumb and forefinger of his free hand plucked up the pendant about her neck.
Oh, no, Vicki thought.
“Who gave you this, hmm?” queried the cracked voice.
“Yuh-you did, Cody,” she lied.
His lips stiffened. “I did? Are you sure?”
“Yes, yes, don’t you remember? You gave it to me before we got married.”
“Hmm. Well.” He jerked the pendant away, snapping the tiny gold chain. Then, right before her eyes, he rolled the gem and mount between his fingers. Eventually the mount broke, and the diminutive diamond fell to the floor.
