by Jeremy Bates
Because he wants to rape your first.
Swallowing a moan, she continued her progress.
“Jess!” the man shouted.
“You find her?”
“Get outside! To the side of the house. She’s gone out the window.”
“Okay!”
Jenny glanced at the tree. She wouldn’t reach it in time. The other man would be down below her any moment, waiting for her.
She only had one option remaining.
She jumped.
Cleavon stared in disbelief as the stupid cunt jumped off the small ledge. She hit the ground with a hundred-pound thump. For what seemed like a long moment she didn’t move, didn’t make a sound, and he thought she was either unconscious or dead, and it served her right—
She began to scream, high pitched and glassy, like a stuck pig.
“What did you expect, darlin’?” he muttered, then went downstairs to see how badly she was hurt.
Jesse was bent over her when Cleavon got to them. She was still screaming and crying at the same time. It wasn’t doing his headache any good. But he didn’t think she’d quiet down no matter how nice he asked, and he didn’t have a sock to stuff in her mouth, so he ignored the noise the best he could.
“It ain’t pretty,” Jesse said, his owlish face frowning.
Cleavon studied the girl. She had large blue eyes and what would have been a pretty face when it wasn’t wet with tears and rain and twisted in pain.
“You see what you did?” Cleavon told her. “You went and broke your goddamn legs. I told you I wasn’t gonna hurt you.”
Jesse said, “What we gonna do, Cleave?”
“Give me a hand getting her to the car.”
“I mean, about all this.” He swallowed. “Lonnie’s dead, for fuck sake, Cleave. Both Lonnie and his boy. How we gonna cover this up?”
“Just give me a fuckin’ hand getting her to the car.” He crouched next to the girl and set Lonnie’s rifle and his machete in the mud. “You take her left arm. I’ll—”
“We gotta call Mr. Pratt.”
Cleavon paused, one hand on the girl’s shoulder. She was moaning now, which was better than screaming. “What the fuck is Spence gonna do?” he snapped. “He some sort of clean-up man, Jess? He gonna come out here and clean up this mess? What’s calling him gonna do?”
“He might think of a way to explain all this.”
“What needs explaining, Jess?”
“Lonnie’s dead, Cleave! Lonnie and his boy. How’re we gonna explain that?”
“We’re not.”
“We’re not?”
“We were never here.”
“We were never here?”
“Do I have a fuckin’ echo? No, we weren’t never here. Whatever happened, happened between some out-of-towner and Lonnie and his boy. We weren’t here. We don’t know nothing.”
“But won’t the sheriff wonder where that buck inside, where his friends went? Surely they told people where they were going, people’re gonna know they were travelling together, they’ll wonder what happened to the rest of them.”
“Let them wonder, Jess. No one took a picture of us, did they? We weren’t never here. That’s all that matters. Now give me a fuckin’ hand with the girl.”
Jess set his rifle aside and took her left arm, Cleavon her right arm, and they hefted her upright. She shrieked but there was little else she could do with only one good leg. They carried her between them to the Chevy El Camino and set her in the flatbed.
“Why…?” she said between sobs, propping herself up on her elbow. “Where…what are you…doing to me?”
“Keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle for the duration of the ride, darling,” Cleavon told her. “And if you try another jumping stunt once we get going, and don’t break your other fuckin’ leg, you better believe I’ll do it for you.”
He slammed the tailgate shut.
CHAPTER 16
“These are godless times, Mrs. Snell.”
Carrie (1976)
“Would you like any more potatoes, dear?” Lynette asked Spencer Pratt, her husband of seventeen years—who, she was nearly positive, was cheating on her with another woman.
He dabbed his lips with the cotton napkin. “Thank you, no,” he said.
“Are you going to the hospital this evening?”
“Are you so eager to have the house to yourself?”
“Of course not. I was just wondering,” she said, collecting her dishes and taking them to the kitchen. “You’ve been spending a lot of time there this year.”
“Yes, well, work’s work, isn’t it?” he said, following her with his dishes. He set them in the sink and rinsed them with hot water. “These two new patients I have require…extensive work.”
Lynette placed the jug of milk in the refrigerator. “Work that can’t be done during regular working hours?”
Spencer didn’t reply, and Lynette wondered whether she’d said too much, overplayed her hand. Smiling kindly, she turned around, assuming the role of the doting, naïve housewife. Spencer was scribbling something in a notepad he had taken from his pocket, apparently oblivious to her question.
Lynette went to fetch the rest of the dishes from the dining room table. They’d had roast pork, vegetables, and mashed potatoes with gravy. As usual, Spencer finished off most of the pork and potatoes but barely touched the vegetables. When she returned to the kitchen, Spencer was still scribbling notes.
He was the Psychiatrist-in-Chief of the Boston Mills Psychiatric Hospital, which had once been called the Boston Mills Lunatic Asylum. Lynette still thought of it as the latter. She had grown up in Boston Mills, and her first memory of the asylum had been overhearing her parents talking about a lunatic who’d gone on a rampage and killed a caseworker and two nurses. At six or seven she didn’t know what a lunatic was, but she could tell by the way her parents were acting that she should be scared. Her mother would use this fear to keep her in line with ominous sayings such as, “You better be good or the lunatic will get you.” She would also threaten to ring up the director of the asylum to have Lynette committed, telling her, “It’s a rat trap, very easy to get in, impossible to get out.” These threats were made all the more real and frightening because Lynette’s father, a gardener at the hospital, brought home any number of stories about what went on there. Patients who would be forced to eat everything on their plates at mealtime even if it made them vomit it all back up. Patients who would be tied to their beds with wet sheets layered in ice in the pit of winter. Orderlies who would beat patients to within inches of their lives with wiffle ball bats before locking them away in solitary confinement. An old woman who wandered into a closed-down ward and died, her corpse remaining undiscovered for so long it left a permanent body-shaped stain on the floor. And then of course there was the debacle in 1962 when a man escaped the asylum and murdered a local woman and lived in her house for a week, eating her food and dressing in her clothes, before being discovered by the mailman. After this the community came together to form a civic association that convened with hospital administrators on how to keep the community safe, an association that existed to this day.
Given how terrified Lynette had been of the lunatic asylum growing up, it was ironic she would wind up working there. But when you grew up in a small town, and had no ambitions of leaving it, you took whatever work came your way. After graduating high school, Lynette was hired as a part-time receptionist at the local doctor’s office to cover for a woman away on maternity leave. When the woman returned a short month later, Lynette worked the odd shift at a dairy bar before hearing about a position for a medical transcriptionist at the asylum. Thankfully most of her father’s horror stories proved to be false. The lunatic asylum was by no means paradise. There were metal doors that locked behind her everywhere she went, most of the patients wandered in circles, and only a few had teeth due to the psych meds that dried out their mouths. However, there were no sadistic orderlies or rotting bodies or murderous p
atients—none that she came into contact with, at least.
When Spencer began working there as a psychiatrist, Lynette fell for him right away. He was not a particularly attractive man. He was stout and had a weak chin. But he had a full head of glorious red hair, and he was positively charming. They went steady for six months before he proposed to her. They married soon after and tried for years to conceive a child but were never successful. Eventually, after several consultations with their doctor, it was determined that Lynette was infertile.
Over the next decade they grew apart. Lynette stopped working at the asylum and became something of a lonely spinster, while Spencer did the opposite, immersing himself in the community and his work. Their relationship deteriorated to such an extent she now sensed he privately resented her, as if she were his ball and chain, preventing him from fully enjoying his life. She no longer thought of him as a husband but more of a stranger—a stranger living in her house and sleeping in her bed. This was accentuated by the fact that Spencer, physically, barely resembled the young man who had swept her off her feet. Some years ago he’d gotten into bodybuilding, and he could no longer be described as stout; he was a wrecking ball, with a bull neck, barrel chest, and bulging biceps. Also, he’d grown a beard. It had been her suggestion, because she’d known how self-conscious he’d been about his weak chin. But he continued to grow it out until it reached its current length, which stopped just short of his waistline.
Lynette dumped the remaining dishes she’d collected in the sink and filled the basin with hot water and dish soap. Spencer stuffed his notepad back in his pocket just as the telephone on the nearby table rang.
Spencer picked up the receiver and said hello. He listened for a few seconds, turning his back to her. “Stay there,” he said finally in a low voice. “I’m coming right now.” He hung up.
“Has something happened?” she asked.
“Yes,” he told her curtly. “You’ll be fine by yourself?”
“I think I’ll draw a bath, then retire early. I’ve been a little tired recently.”
“Can’t imagine why,” he said. “You never leave the house.” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“No, you’re right. I should look into a hobby of some sort.”
“Why don’t you join that book club at the library? They meet every Tuesday, I believe.”
“I’ll think about it.”
He nodded, took the car keys from the pegboard, then left through the back door.
Without his briefcase, she noted.
Lynette watched Spencer through the window over the sink as he hurried through the rain to the garage, pulled up the roller door, and stepped inside. A few moments later headlights flooded the gravel driveway and his silver Volvo sedan appeared momentarily before disappearing from her line of sight.
Lynette dried her hands on a dish towel, then hurried to the front of the house. She pulled aside a blind in the darkened foyer and peered through the small beveled window as the Volvo continued down the driveway and turned left, disappearing behind the forest of trees.
Lynette went immediately to Spencer’s study. She’d been contemplating divorcing Spencer for some time now, but she’d been reluctant to file the necessary paperwork. She knew Spencer would be furious at the embarrassment it would cause him, at the hit his sterling reputation would take, and he would paint Lynette as a disillusioned, raving housewife. The small community would turn against her. She wouldn’t be able to go to the supermarket without someone talking about her or snickering behind her back. She would be ostracized from the town in which she had grown up, the only home she knew. However, if she could produce proof Spencer was having an extramarital affair, nobody would believe the lies he whipped up. She would be viewed sympathetically. She could live out the rest of her life in relative peace and quiet. A fly on the wall, a nobody. And that was fine by her. Better a nobody than the target of scorn and ridicule.
Lynette stopped before the door to Spencer’s study. She turned the brass knob and found it locked, as she knew it would be. Last year Spencer began locking it whenever he went out. The reason, he told her, was to protect confidential patient information he kept in his filing cabinet in the rare chance the house was broken into and burglarized. Initially Lynette accepted this explanation. But when he started spending more and more nights at the “hospital,” she decided there was another reason altogether why he locked the study: to hide evidence of his affair.
She had been tempted on several occasions to search the study while he was in the shower or outside planting in the garden. However, she could never bring herself to do this, fearful she wouldn’t have enough time to conduct a proper search, or Spencer would appear unannounced and catch her in the act. Instead she decided to remove the study key from his keychain and search the study while he was at the asylum. This carried risks as well, as she didn’t know whether he would notice the missing key while at work, or whether he would head straight to his study when he returned home, before she had a chance to replace the key. Nevertheless, it was the best option she could think of.
So earlier today, when Spencer informed her that he would be going to the asylum later, she slipped the study key from his keychain while he’d been in the garage changing the oil in the Volvo. She kept it in her pocket all evening and was irrationally convinced Spencer knew it was there, could see it through the cotton of her dress. But of course he couldn’t, he was none the wiser, and now he was gone, and it was time.
Lynette removed the key from her pocket and stuck it in the keyhole. She half expected it not to work, or for it to break in two. It turned easily. She eased open the door. The study was dark. She reached a hand inside and patted the wall until her fingers brushed the light switch nub. She flicked it on.
The room resembled something you might see in a men’s club. Maplewood paneled walls, stodgy button-tufted furniture, a wall-to-wall bookcase. Two stuffed gray wolves stood on either side of the stone fireplace, trophies from one of Spencer’s hunting trips. She had always hated them. They reminded her of that three-headed dog in Greek mythology that guarded the gate to the underworld.
Lynette went directly to the oversized desk and opened the top drawer. She sifted through the sundry items, careful not to disturb their positions. She uncovered nothing more interesting than stationary supplies and hospital memos, certainly nothing incriminating. The contents of the three smaller drawers proved equally unremarkable.
She went to the antique wardrobe next and opened the mirrored doors. Several starched white shirts and dress pants hung from the clothes rack. Spencer kept these here instead of the bedroom closet so he could change without waking her if he had to leave for the asylum early. She checked the shirts for lipstick, smelled them for any trace of perfume. They were all freshly laundered. She stuck her hand into each pant pocket. They held nothing.
There was a shelf above the hanging space, but it was too high for her to access. She dragged a wooden chair over, climbed onto the seat, and discovered three shoeboxes. The first contained several envelopes bursting with receipts, though none from jewelry purchases or expensive out-of-town dinners. Most, if not all, were utility bills from AT&T, the Ohio Edison Company, and Aqua America. The second shoebox contained stacks of aging photographs wrapped in rubber bands. Lynette’s chest tightened with nostalgia as she shuffled through photos taken when she and Spencer were twenty years younger, smiling, in love. She promptly moved on to the final box. It held nothing but miscellaneous junk Spencer hadn’t been able to throw out: broken watches, a torn wallet, a faded issue of Playboy magazine, a suede brush, a personal grooming kit, a toy pistol, a silver napkin ring, a bottle of still-corked glycerin.
Lynette stepped off the chair, closed the wardrobe doors, and looked around the study. Where next? she wondered with a growing sense of desperation. Her eyes paused on the bookcase. Could Spencer have hidden a telephone number or a love letter inside one of the books? She gritted her teeth in frustration.
This would have been much easier had she known what she was looking for. Still, she wouldn’t quit; she would make the most of this opportunity while she had it.
The first three bookshelves contained hardback tomes on psychiatry and psychology and science and medicine. She found nothing inside them any more interesting than a bookmark or an underlined passage that was meaningless to her. She retrieved the chair and climbed on it again so she could reach the uppermost shelf. She frowned at the first book she examined. It was bound in leather and titled: The Book of Baphomet. She flipped through the pages and discovered shocking illustrations of grotesque demons and people wearing animal heads and naked women in submissive poses. Her revulsion turned quickly to confusion, then fear as she realized all the books on the shelf were dedicated to the occult, books with titles such as The Left-Hand Path, Arcana, The Infernal Text, Blood Sorcery, The Lost Art, and so forth.
Why did Spencer have books on devil worship?
Why so many?
Was he—could he be—?
While stretching her arm for a large red book just out of reach she lost her balance and leapt off the chair. She stumbled when she landed and collided into the ottoman, bumping it across the floor. Something inside it rattled.
Kneeling, Lynette discovered the padded, upholstered top lifted away to reveal a hollow storage space. She frowned at the contents it held. There was a silver chalice, black candles, incense, what might have been folded black robes, and a stack of photographs bound by an elastic band like those in the shoebox.
Lynette swooned, momentarily lightheaded. What did all this mean? Was her husband a Satanist? And if so, what did he do with this stuff? Sacrifice virgins to his dark god? For a moment she experienced a strange mix of relief and disappointment. Was there no affair after all? Was this the reason he went out at nighttime, to play dress up and Dungeons & Dragons with a group of like-minded associates at the asylum? Yet this seemed so unlike Spencer…
