Depraved (11 page)

The numbness was gone.

She told the sheriff she would do anything to stay out of that place. She would do anything for him. Do anything to him. DeMars listened to her and rubbed his crotch as she said things that shamed her.

Then he laughed.

They were parked now.

He turned toward her and put a hand on one of her breasts. She didn’t bother knocking it away, knowing it would do no good. He squeezed the breast and licked his lips as he stared at it. “Tell you a little something most strangers don’t know. There’s two Hopkins Bends.” It was weird how bland his tone was, given what he was doing. He sounded like a man sharing a bit of local color over a drink at a bar, and not at all like a depraved maniac who was about to sell her into the local sex trade. “There’s where you just came from, and that’s the public face of Hopkins Bend. Looks like any other little town, almost quaint on the surface. The people who live there are almost what you might call normal. Then there’s the hidden Hopkins Bend, where the old families live, out in the woods. They’re a strange lot, and you know that’s saying something coming from the likes of me. Most of them live like its still the middle of the nineteenth century, backwards as all get-out. Oh, and they’re cannibals.”

Megan blinked. “What?”

DeMars chuckled. “They eat people. Well, outsiders.”

Megan’s stomach twisted again. “Jesus…”

“Yeah. And this place here? It’s run by one of the old families. One of the more enterprising ones. Hell, they’re tycoons by local standards. The Prestons.”

Megan was shaking. “Will they”—she gulped—“eat me?”

DeMars shrugged. “Probably not.”

Megan’s shaking intensified. “Oh, God…”

“Don’t worry, darlin’. Deal I made with Mama Preston
was for five grand. They’ll want to get their money’s worth out of you. Still, I think you better do your damnedest to impress when they run your sweet little ass out on that stage the first time.”

DeMars ran his hand up and down the length of her thigh a few times, but Megan barely noticed—she was shaking too hard.

“Mmm, but you’re a nice piece. May have the Prestons deduct a bit from my fee for an hour with you in a VIP room.”

He got out of the Crown Vic then and came around to the other side of the car. The door opened. The blare of music and rowdy laughter grew louder as he leaned over her and popped the seat belt loose. She shrank away from him when he reached for her, but it was a futile effort—he hauled her out of the car with ease.

And dragged her quaking and screaming toward what looked to her like the yawning maw of hell itself.

The squat little shack Mama Weeks called home stood in the center of a small clearing many of the locals said was a haunted place. The old woman’s husband went missing some thirty years back, and the gossip at the time was that she’d killed him and buried him right here in this clearing. Whatever the truth was, it had happened before Abby’s time, and in the intervening years had become the stuff of local legend. It was said the man’s ghost sometimes appeared at night, a shimmering specter that wandered the edges of the clearing, apparently afraid
even in death of venturing too near the shack where Cassie Weeks lived.

Abby figured the old woman had really killed her husband. People from the old families didn’t just up and leave. And the local law rarely intervened in their affairs, being of the opinion that matters of right and wrong were best left to them to sort out. Jesse Weeks wasn’t much missed by anyone, and so no one ever pressed Cassie about it. It was possible his rotting bones were in the ground beneath Abby’s feet, where she stood at the edge of the clearing, trying to work up the nerve to go knock on the old woman’s door. This didn’t bother Abby overly much. She had seen ghosts before and knew they were mostly harmless. Her hesitancy was based on the fear of Mama Weeks seeing too well into her mind. She needed to know whether the Kincher boy’s seed had planted an abomination in her belly, but maybe not enough to risk everything else.

The decision was taken out of her hands when the shack’s front door creaked open and Mama Weeks shuffled into view. She had silver hair tied back in a bun and wore a frilly ankle-length black dress. She was scrawny and short, no more than an inch over five feet, and stood stooped over in the door’s frame. She adjusted the bifocals that sat perched on her hooked nose and leaned forward to peer closely at Abby.

“Stop gawking, Abby Maynard, and come on in. You’ve been standing there for an age.”

Abby kicked at a rock on the ground, didn’t move toward the shack. “I don’t know, Mama. I wanted to talk to you, but now I’m not so sure.”

Mama Weeks stared at her in silence for several moments, frowning over her visitor’s reluctance. Then she clucked and shook her head. “Your secrets are safe with me, girl. Now get on in here and talk to me.”

She turned her back on Abby and disappeared back inside the shack. Abby stared at the darkness visible through the open door and hesitated only a moment longer. She stood on the cusp of a great change. Making it happen would require enormous courage, maybe more than she could summon. She wanted it to happen so bad. More than anything ever. The desire for it swelled inside her again as she thought about it. She had to make it happen. Anything else was death. And if she couldn’t find the gumption to sit down and talk with an old woman, even one as creepy as Mama Weeks, she was doomed already.

Her legs carried her into the clearing without conscious instruction, her whole body thrumming with the urgency and desire she felt in her heart. A dozen long strides, and she arrived at the darkened front door. She paused at the threshold for barely more than the space of a single second and stepped into the darkness.

The little shack’s interior wasn’t completely dark. A single candle’s flame fluttered on a table situated at the approximate center of the room. The place was tiny,barely half the size of the sitting room back home. A queen-size bed jammed into a corner dominated the space. There was a large steamer trunk at the foot of the bed, with piles of junk heaped on top of it. In another corner was a tiny wood-burning stove. There was a cabinet with some plates and other dishes. A small wardrobe stood against another wall. It was hard to imagine how two people could have lived in so small a space without going completely crazy, which maybe explained some things about the old woman’s past. But even more disturbing than the cramped conditions were the…things…hanging from the ceiling by lengths of twine. Charms and wards, she guessed, at least a dozen of them. The one closest to her was a bundle of tiny and brittle animal
bones, perhaps those of some largish rodent, wrapped in more twine and sealed in wax. Another looked like the shrunken, dessicated head of a dog, also preserved in wax. Some defensive mechanism in her mind steered her gaze away from others, perhaps sensing these were things any sane person would never want to see. After just a few seconds inside the shack, Abby knew there was yet another reason the local law never bothered with Mama Weeks—they were afraid of her.

Abby just managed to contain a yelp of fright as the woman’s bony fingers took her by the elbow and steered her toward the wobbly table. The old woman released her elbow as they reached the table, and shuffled around to the other side. Abby settled onto a wooden chair that felt brittle beneath her skinny ass. Cassie Weeks sat down with an audible creak of old bones and stared across the table at her, a faint smile curling the corners of her thin lips. “I remember when you was just a little girl. Your daddy used to see me about spiritual matters every now and then. Brought you by a time or two. You were a cute little thing, full of vim and vinegar. Even then I knew you’d be different.”

Abby’s heart thumped faster at the unexpected mention of her father. She blinked moisture from her eyes. “I…don’t remember that, I’m sorry.” Her brow furrowed. “How do you mean, ‘different’?”

The breeze shifted outside and a gust of air blew into the shack, making Abby’s golden hair fan out around her face and causing the candle’s meager flame to dance wildly. The flickering radiance made Cassie’s eyes glitter in a way that hinted at madness. Abby knew this had more to do with preconceived notions she had harbored about Mama since childhood than anything connected to current reality, but the vision was no less disturbing for the knowledge.

“How old are you now, Abigail?”

“I’m…”Abby stared at the table and watched the little flame dance again as another gust of air came swirling through the doorway. The familiar shame stung her again, and she couldn’t bring herself to meet the seer’s searching gaze. But she made herself admit the truth in a voice as soft and hollow as a mourner’s at a graveside. “I’m twenty.”

“And you ain’t been with child yet, have ya?”

Abby squeezed her eyes shut as tears rolled down her cheeks. She tried to speak, but the emotion gripping her was too strong. Her face dipped closer to the table as sob after sob racked her body, a body still sore from the violation so recently perpetrated against it. She heard Mama’s chair scuff across the wooden floor as the old woman rose with a grunt and moved away from the table for a time. Abby prayed she wasn’t coming to comfort her, knowing how awkward any level of physical intimacy would be for a strange old lady who’d shunned such things for so long. She was relieved when she heard chair legs scrape the floor again. She forced her eyes open and saw that the old woman was sitting at the opposite side of the table again.

She frowned.

A crumpled square of aluminum foil lay on the table in front of Mama. On it was a thick lump of some black, tarry substance. Mama packed a pinch of the substance into a tiny pipe and lit it from the candle. She drew on the pipe and in a moment expelled a small cloud of fragrant smoke. She smiled at Abby’s puzzled expression. “Hash. Picked up a taste for it after Jesse came back from ’Nam in sixty-seven. The son of a bitch left me with one thing worth a damn, anyway.”

“Did you kill him?”

The blurted words startled Abby, emerging through her
lips ahead of any conscious thought given to the matter. Her heart raced and her body tensed, ready to bolt from the creepy shack at the first hint of malice from Mama.

But the old woman’s smile never faltered. “Of course I killed him.”Mama indicated the clearing outside the shack with a slight incline of her head. “Buried the cocksucker right out there, about where you were standing when I looked out and saw you there.”

A chill pricked the hairs at the back of Abby’s neck.

I knew it.

“But…why did you kill him?”

The old woman drew on the pipe again. Her eyes looked glassier with every hit. But her voice was just as intent as she leaned over the edge of the table and pointed the stem of the pipe at Abby. “I just told you a thing I never told another human being. A big thing, I think you’d agree. And still there are some secrets I’d rather keep. I think maybe you can understand that better than just about anybody in all of Hopkins Bend.”

Something in the statement made Abby want to bolt again, but she again made herself stay right there. If Mama sensed her unease, she didn’t show it. She just kept smiling and puffing on the pipe while Abby struggled to respond, her eyes shining with drug-besotted amusement.

Then Abby blew out a big breath and found her voice at last. “What do you mean by that?”

Mama set the pipe down and laced her fingers together. “It’s said the good Lord made mankind in his own image, and I reckon maybe that’s true to a degree, but he damn sure didn’t make us all the same. Some—hell, most—human beings are made to tread the tried-and-true path from the day they’re hatched till the day they croak. But a goodly few are made another way. For them folk the tried-and-true path is a special kind of torture. It ain’t an easy thing being different in this hard old world,Abigail.”
Here her voice hardened and her eyes lost some of that glassiness. “But that damn sure don’t mean you should let the bastards grind ya down.”

Abby gaped in astonishment at the old woman. Mama’s face looked younger as its features twisted with surprising passion. It was amazing. People of a less kindly nature would look at Mama and call her crone or hag (although perhaps not to her face). But in this moment she looked youthful and vigorous, her skin smooth and unlined. It was the way she imagined Mama must have looked fifty years earlier. But then she relaxed and settled back into her chair, and the appearance of youth was revealed for the illusion it was, as her features untwisted and the deep wrinkles again became apparent.

Mama smoothed the front of her dress and stared soberly at Abby. “You’ll forgive the outburst, I hope?”

Abby relaxed her iron grip on the chair. “Of course, Mama. And…” She chewed her bottom lip a moment. She knew what the old woman was saying to her, despite its vague nature. And it spoke to her on a deeper level than she could convey. “I agree with you.”

“I’m glad to hear it, Abigail.”

“But there’s something else I wanted to see you about. Something I need to know.” She flinched at the memory of the grunting and sweating Kincher boy thrusting away atop her. And she remembered the powerful release of his seed deep inside her, how he’d just come and come, filling her up. She began to feel sick again as she thought of it. “Something happened to me today. I need to know…I need to know if…”

Mama’s smile brightened. “Abigail,I am truly and deeply sorry this terrible thing happened to you. A woman should never be taken against her will by any man, and that goes doubly for those tainted by the Garner Blight. And so it pleases me to tell you to set your fears aside.”

Abby’s eyes widened. “You mean…?”

“You are not with child.”

Abby beamed at the old woman even as fresh tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. “Thank you. I can’t tell you how much that means.”

Mama nodded. “I suspect not, but I think I know anyway.” Her mouth opened in a wide yawn. “Excuse me, child. I’ve grown tired. I’ve enjoyed seein’ ya. You did the right thing coming here.”

Abby palmed moisture from her cheeks and sniffled. “I think so, too.” She pushed the chair back and stood. “I won’t keep you any longer. I’ve got some more thinking to do anyway.”

Mama rose from the table and accompanied her to the door. She gripped Abby by the elbow again as they paused for a moment at the threshold. “Remember, you are not bound to live as others say you should. And you can be whatever you want to be.”

Abby patted the old woman’s hand. “Thank you. Again. For everything.”

And then she was gone,striding back across the clearing with a new spring in her step as the little shack’s door slammed shut behind her.

She never saw Mama Weeks again.