Soultaker Page 4

  Jake doubted this Myra chick was as horrible as Jolene made her out to be. Still, if her account of Trey’s abrupt and dramatic change of behavior was even partially accurate, then there was some legitimate cause for concern. A selfish, private corner of his psyche boiled with anger, though. When he and Mikey were skipping school and getting in scrapes with the law, she’d never been anywhere near this concerned. Hell, she hadn’t given a shit.

  “I’ll try to help,” he said at last. “When’s the best time to see him?”

  Jolene smiled. “I told him you’d be by to see him when he gets home from school today.” She sniffled. “I just knew you’d help. He should be here about three thirty.”

  Jake stood up. “I’ll be here.”

  “He’ll want you to tell him all about being a famous writer. He just loved your books.”

  Jake’s expression remained impassive. “Yeah. Right.”

  Jake had two published novels to his credit, but their sales figures were far south of “famous writer” territory.

  Jolene’s expression softened. She almost seemed to project real warmth at him. “You’re a good role model, son. I always knew you’d turn your life around someday.”

  Jake felt a headache coming on.

  “Three thirty,” he said.

  He turned and walked out of his nightmare house.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The girl looked good enough to eat. The way she sat there all curled up in the chair on the other side of his desk was just about too sexy to take, her legs tucked beneath her, her body turned sideways, one arm draped languorously over the back of the chair. He wanted to chew on her pooched-out lower lip. Wanted to kiss her eyelids. Smudges of dark eye shadow created a false impression of fresh bruises. The eye shadow and a delicate bone structure made her eyes look big and white like fat flakes of falling snow.

  Principal Raymond Slater had lusted after hundreds of the young girls who’d passed through Rockville High’s not-so-hallowed halls over the years, but he’d never attempted to seduce any of them. He enjoyed his job and his position in the community, and he was smart enough to shy away from forbidden fruit. Still, some temptations were more…tempting…than others.

  He made himself frown. “Surely…” He cleared his throat. “Surely you do not mean to propose an exchange of sexual favors for leniency…do you?”

  Myra chuckled. “Do I?” Her gaze lingered on Slater a moment. Her tongue darted out and she licked her lower lip. Mischief twinkled in her eyes. She stroked an arm of the chair, gripping it the way Penelope often gripped his cock, with a delicious mixture of delicacy and firmness. “That’s not really what I said, Principal Slater.”

  Slater swallowed hard. “You said…” He cleared his throat again and squirmed in his chair. “When you came into my office, I directed you to the chair you’re in now. You leaned over my desk and said you’d prefer to sit in my lap.”

  Myra batted her eyes, licked her lips again, shifted her hips again. “Mmm…yes…”

  Slater’s penis leaped against the fabric of his trousers. He cursed the thing. He could feel his self-control faltering. He didn’t know how much longer he could stand to watch her undulate on that chair. He was tempted to give her a free pass just to get her luscious little body the hell out of his office.

  He glanced again at the open file on his desk and sighed, realizing that just wasn’t an option. Myra had been causing trouble in lots of little ways almost from the day she’d arrived on campus at the beginning of the year. Her attendance had been spotty from the start, but today was the first time she’d deigned to show up in nearly a full week. Even so, her poor attendance alone would not have been sufficient to bring him to the brink of the decision he was about to make—to recommend her expulsion from Rockville High to the school board.

  He shook his head and sighed. “I hate to have to do this, but I have no choice. I could overlook everything else. This close to graduation, nobody cares about attendance if your grades have held up, as yours have. But you crossed a point of no return when you punched Cindy Wells in the face.”

  Myra laughed.

  Slater’s expression sharpened. “It’s not funny, Ms. Lewis.”

  Reverting to a student’s surname after conversing with them more familiarly was a patented Slaterism, his way of signaling a serious shift in temper. Most students heeded the warning, recognizing at last the serious trouble they were in.

  Myra just laughed some more. “I thought it was hilarious. Cheerleader fall down, go boom.”

  And now she giggled.

  Slater gaped. His iron glare had never failed to instill fear in the hearts of students. “You broke her nose. You disfigured one of Rockville High’s most popular students. She lost teeth, for Christ’s sake! You knocked her unconscious!”

  Myra shrugged.

  She seemed uninterested, almost disinterested, as if the matter under discussion was of no concern to her at all and could have no impact on her life. “You may not graduate, Ms. Lewis! Don’t you care about that? Why did you do it?”

  There was something disturbing in Myra’s oddly knowing smile. “There are times when I want to hurt people for no particular reason. This time there was a little bit of a reason. Cindy’s life was a little too perfect, you have to admit. Perfect body, perfect football-player boyfriend, scholarships spilling out of her tight little ass. I thought I should introduce her to some possibilities she may not have previously considered.”

  Slater’s brow furrowed, a topography of valleys and canyons forming across his forehead. “What!?” It was like the girl was speaking in a foreign language. “Are you insane? What the hell do you mean?”

  A detached part of himself was appalled. He never lost his cool with students. Never. Oh, they knew when he was pissed, you bet your ass, but he never flew off the handle. He was always calm, cool, and when necessary, menacing. But now this infuriating girl, this strange, exotic creature so unlike any other girl at Rockville High, had him on the verge of a meltdown. She made him furious. Christ, she made him so horny! And the hell of it was there were dozens of female students more classically beautiful. Tall, busty, blonde girls with tawny skin and sleek bodies. Myra was small, barely taller than five feet, and she was so pale, her flesh just a few subtle shades removed from albino white.

  Her smile broadened. “I decided I wanted Cindy to know bad things can happen to her, too. That being loved and adored won’t protect her. That there’s ugliness in the world and she’s just as vulnerable as anybody.”

  Slater shuddered. “My God. You’re absolutely psychotic.”

  Myra laughed again.

  Slater shook his head. “Why was this important to you? Did her friends pick on you? Did she slight you in some way? Please help me to understand this.”

  “Cindy treated me as well as anyone else in this school, maybe even a little better.”

  “And this is how you repay her kindness?”

  “Oh, I’ll make it up to her.”

  Slater frowned. “How do you mean?”

  “I’m going to visit her soon.” Myra unfolded her legs and leaned forward in the chair. “We’ll kiss and make up. Then I’ll make her boyfriend watch while she eats my pussy.”

  Slater could not conceal his shock. “Wh-wh-wha…”

  Temporarily unable to utter complete words—much less coherent sentences—he gave up.

  Myra leered at him. “Her missing teeth should make things interesting.”

  Slater’s next words emerged in a strangled squeak: “Get out of my office…you…you…”

  Myra stood up and circled the desk. She was straddling Slater’s lap before he could even think to fend her off.

  Myra’s eyes widened in mock shock. “Why, Principal Slater, what’s this creature in your pants?”

  Slater gulped and managed to recover a mea sure of dignity. He imagined someone bursting into the office unannounced and felt horror. He seized Myra about the shoulders and tried to push her away, but she clampe
d a surprisingly strong hand around his throat.

  She leaned closer and whispered in his ear. “You’ll do whatever I want you to do from now on, little man. You won’t suspend me. You’ll trump up a reason to suspend Cindy instead. Just because. Oh, I know it seems mean, but that’s the fun of it. Being mean is a good time.”

  Her warm breath felt good on his ear. He had to force himself to concentrate. “But—”

  Her hand closed tighter around his throat. “And the reason you’ll do this, other than my ability to make you do whatever I want anyway, is your reputation. I can destroy you, Raymond Slater.”

  Slater blinked. Swallowed. “What…do you mean?”

  Myra drew his earlobe into her mouth, bit down.

  Slater shuddered—with both pleasure and fear.

  Then she told him all about what the crow had seen through his window one night.

  Slater’s heart paused a moment.

  Myra clamped a hand over his mouth to stifle his scream.

  And she laughed. “Don’t be too afraid, Raymond, baby. I have such wonderful plans for you and your wench. Your future is glorious.”

  Then she revealed her true self to him.

  This time Slater was too terrified to muster a scream.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  After her son left, Jolene McAllister swept the remains of the broken pickle jar into a dustpan, dropped the glass fragments into a garbage can that was already stuffed to capacity, and went to her room. She shed her clothes and went into the bathroom to take a shower. Steam filled the room and she began to feel very mellow, some of the nervous tension generated by her oldest boy’s return dissipating as she closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the tile-covered wall. She fell asleep standing up, waking up when her knees began to buckle.

  She squelched the flow of water, stepped out of the tub, and toweled off. Then she dressed herself, went back to the kitchen, and yanked open the sliding glass door that overlooked a backyard overgrown and strewn with debris. One day soon she’d have to break down and blow one or more of the Crawford boys down the street, get them to come out here with their riding mower and weed trimmer. The Crawford boys liked to talk about her behind her back, run her down like all the other Zone assholes, but they sure didn’t talk shit when the prospect of putting their rock-hard dicks in her oh-so-experienced mouth was raised.

  Jolene slipped on sandals and ventured into the backyard. The yard was bordered by rust-encrusted chain-link fencing, which was so old it sagged in places. A stand of trees loomed beyond the far end of the yard, the edge of a stretch of forest that extended to the man-made lake a mile north. Trey was always disappearing out there for hours at a time, and it bothered her, but she had other concerns at the moment.

  She crossed the yard, the sandals protecting her against an array of sharp objects obscured by the tall grass as she made her way to the dilapidated old shed in a corner of the yard. She fished a key from a pocket of her denim shorts, opened the new lock she’d purchased last week, and stepped inside. A powerful lantern sat on a dusty worktable. She turned it on and studied the sleeping figure in a rear corner of the room.

  “Wake up.”

  Her voice was loud in the room’s stale, dusty air. The man in the corner awoke with a jerk. He looked at Jolene and muttered something unintelligible. The gag in his mouth rendered decipherable speech impossible. Not that Jolene wanted to hear anything her husband might have to say. Hal McAllister’s nude, fat body looked gray in the glare of the lantern light. The bloat of his hairy beer belly turned Jolene’s stomach. It sickened her to think of how many years she’d wasted allowing this shitty whale of a man to flop around on top of her.

  She sneered. “You’re disgusting. You’re a blob. You look like a big ol’ hairy pile of mashed potatoes.”

  More indecipherable muttering ensued.

  Jolene stepped over to a wall and examined a row of rusty tools hanging on pegs. Some of them were dark with recent stains. There was a big saw that had last been used decades ago. She was saving it for some of the bigger operations to come. She looked forward to cutting off his legs with it. She reached up and removed a wire cutter from one of the pegs. Hal’s eyes tracked her movements, widening when she flexed the wire cutter’s blades.

  She turned away from the wall and fixed him with a grin that looked both hungry and salacious. He knew by now the pleasure she derived from his pain. She walked toward him slowly, enjoying his terror, growing wet as she watched him shiver, anticipating the agony he was about to endure.

  “Jake was just here, Hal. We talked about Trey and his troubles.” She stood before her bound husband, her legs spread, staring down at him, using her rigid posture and position to emphasize his vulnerability. “You know what’s funny? He never once asked about you. Not once.”

  She snipped the wire cutter at him, the blades snapping on air millimeters from his face. He whimpered. Began to cry. Soon he would begin to blubber, perhaps even go into convulsions. It had happened before.

  “Nobody ever asks about you, Hal. Nobody.”

  Hal’s chest hitched.

  “Trey never asks about you. Your own son. You’ve disappeared off the face of the earth and he hasn’t noticed. It’s like you never existed.” She grinned. “By the time anyone thinks to ask of you—months from now, years maybe—every trace of you will have vanished from this earth. What do you think about that, Hal, baby?” She leaned down, her mouth poised inches from the place on his head once occupied by his left ear. “Doesn’t it make you feel worthless? Like scum? Like something a rabid dog might crap out its ass?”

  Hal threw his head back and wailed, straining against his bonds.

  Jolene groped for his right hand, pulled its forefinger rigid, and fit the wire-cutter blades around it. She paused a moment and leaned closer, getting her eyes good and close to Hal’s, enjoying the sensation of power that coursed through her as she watched his milky orbs jitter. Then she gritted her teeth and squeezed the handles with all her strength. Hal’s forefinger, the only finger remaining on his right hand, until now, tumbled to the dirty floor.

  Hal squealed and writhed.

  Jolene went to her knees and opened her mouth to taste some of the jetting blood. It filled her mouth and sprayed her face and chest. She would need another shower. She let him bleed a little longer; then she got to her feet and retrieved the blowtorch from the worktable.

  She approached Hal, smiling. “This is going to hurt you more than it’s going to hurt me.”

  She cauterized his wound and shut the blowtorch off. She retrieved a syringe filled with morphine from a bag she kept under the worktable, stabbed the needle into a much-abused vein on Hal’s left arm, and filled him with the medicine that would keep him from dying of shock.

  “There, there, baby. You’re going to be around a long time. Mama ain’t near done with you.”

  She laughed.

  Then she picked up the severed finger, shoved it into her pocket, and left the shack, leaving her miserable husband alone with the shadows and his nightmares.

  And a few other things.

  Crawling things.

  Horrible, leering things that grew and changed shape.

  Things that knew infinitely more about sadism than Jolene McAllister.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Jordan Harper staggered into her apartment and threw the door shut behind her. She shuffled into the kitchen on legs that felt like those of an old lady. Heavy and weary. Stung by Bridget’s betrayal, she’d been unable to sleep all night. She’d nonetheless managed to show up for her morning shift at Mondo Video.

  In retrospect, she should have stayed home.

  Robbed of her patience by exhaustion, she’d snapped at several customers and a few of her more annoying coworkers. This culminated in a bitter exchange with a snide old bitch. A dispute over late fees ended with Jordan screaming at the woman, calling her a “miserable, skeleton-faced cunt hag from hell.”

  Thus had Jordan’s less-than-
illustrious career at Mondo Video come to an end. Not that she cared. She didn’t give a shit about her job or anything else connected to this rotten town. Showing up for work today was just the kind of thing Jordan did, fulfilling her obligations. She felt nothing but contempt for slackers. But how could she reconcile that with her behavior today?

  She poured herself a glass of juice and shut the refrigerator. “Christ, give yourself a break, girl.”

  Okay, this talking to herself shit was a bad sign. But the sentiment was dead-on. This was just a setback, and a minor one at that. The loss of the Mondo Video job was your basic blessing in disguise. It meant there was one less thing tying her to Rockville. Even last night’s public embarrassment was a blessing. She didn’t need duplicitous people in her life. She was better off without those backstabbing bitches.

  She sipped her juice and contemplated her immediate future. As recently as yesterday evening, she’d planned to be in Rockville for another year, long enough to get her associate’s degree from RCC. But fuck that. She was spinning her wheels here. Her first-year grades at RCC were impeccable. It was time to start sending out applications to real universities, maybe get enrolled at a good school by the fall semester, somewhere far away from Rockville.

  “Sounds like a plan,” she muttered.

  And thought, Stop that!

  Bailing out of Rockville was clearly the way to go, but there was some shame in it, too. She felt a bit like a whipped dog running away with its tail tucked between its legs. It was the sort of thing she would normally rebel against. But not this time. Enough was enough. This time running away was absolutely the right thing to do.

  It was too much to think about right now. She was tired. She yawned and stretched. What she needed right now was rest. The future could wait a few more hours. She dumped out the rest of her juice, dropped the empty glass in the sink, and shuffled out of the kitchen.

  She heard the dim noise of a television as she moved down the short hallway toward her bedroom. Alarm surged through her until she realized she’d probably forgotten to turn it off before leaving this morning. She’d been in a mental fog, so it was a reasonable explanation—but when she entered the bedroom, she saw that she was wrong.