Ragged Man (31 page)

For a full minute that felt like a full day, they stared at each other, eyes locked in a deep soul grip and J.P. knew what had happened to his cousin Janis. Like the whale that swallowed Jonah, this thing had swallowed Janis, only she wasn’t coming back. The saber-toothed Ghost Dog had eaten her, ripped her flesh apart and eaten her, then it drank her blood and all she was now was saber-tooth, Ghost Dog, tiger shit somewhere in the woods. And if he wasn’t very, very careful and very, very lucky, that’s what was going to happen to him, too.

Slowly he started to back up, neck hairs curled as he inched away. Any second he expected the black demon to pounce, and it looked powerful enough to clear the clearing like Superman, in a single bound.

Maybe the thing could jump like Superman, J.P. thought. But he was fast as the Flash. If only he could get a head start, maybe he could get away.

He backed up another inch and the satisfying purr of a cat that had the mouse turned to an irritated growl. The animal perked up its ears and J.P. stopped his retreat.

He waited but the black demon animal didn’t move. J.P. moved back another slow inch. Then another, then another. The Ghost Dog lowered its ears flat against its head and J.P. thought it was going to jump. He had to do something. So he did the first thing that came to his mind.

“
Stay!” he commanded.

The animal stopped its growl, perking its ears back up.

“
Oh God, make it stay,” he pleaded as he inched further into the woods. He moved cautiously, carefully, inch by inch, then foot by foot, never taking his eyes from the beast. As soon as the path angled and the animal was out of sight, he turned and ran, paying no attention to his bleeding feet, starving thirst or the heart pumping pain that pierced his lungs.

He didn’t hear the animal give chase, but he knew it would.

He dodged through the brush, pumping his arms like a sprinter, picking his bare feet up and laying them down on the dirt path like he was wearing track shoes and running on cinder. His raw feet were unable to send the messages of pain to his stressed out brain, because it was too frightened to listen.

He sensed, rather than heard, the black beast somewhere behind. He tried to pump his arms harder, knowing that his fleeing feet would keep pace, but his young body had been battered, abused, bruised, deprived of food and water and now he was losing blood. It was unable to answer the mind’s call.

He was running toward Lover’s Hideaway, on the verge of collapse, when he heard a woman’s voice crying out for more. There was help ahead. If only he could go on just a little longer. The hope of help sent a second wind soaring through his lungs and he was able to force himself to continue on, picking them up and laying them down.

He hoped that whoever was up ahead would be able to deal with the Ghost Dog, but down deep he knew that nobody could deal with a saber-toothed tiger. Not and live, but he wasn’t going to give up. He wasn’t going to be a quitter. Even if he couldn’t go on much longer, he wasn’t going to quit. Quitters never win.

A scream that could have come straight from the African bush roared through the night, sending arrows of fear running up J.P.’s back, causing his body to pump out whatever remaining adrenaline it had left in a quick short blast. J.P. burst into Lover’s Hideaway Clearing, a screaming banshee wraith of a boy, covered with blood, sweat and dirt, looking like he had run straight out of hell.

He saw Stacy Sturgees, the Sheriff’s daughter, naked, sitting atop Deputy Terrenova and lightning quick he knew they were having sex. She was screaming, “More, more, more,” and somewhere back in his mind he knew she was enjoying herself, but he doubted she would be enjoying herself much longer.

He ran toward the couple, jumped over them and continued on without looking back, darting onto the path on the other side of Lover’s Hideaway, chugging like a dead-tired fox fleeing from the hounds. He shot along the familiar snaking path, grabbing for air and ducking low branches, like he’d done so many times when playing tag with his friends, only now it wasn’t a game. If he lost, he really lost.

He rounded the last curve before the path ended at Prospector’s Donkey Road and he saw the police car. He poured on speed, like a long distance runner, running for the tape. Please God, let it be unlocked, he silently prayed as he ran toward the driver’s door.

He pulled on the door and cried out. It was locked, but he had come too far and been through too much to quit. He tried the back door. Locked. He ran around to the passenger side and pulled the door open. Thank you God, thank you God, he thought as he piled into the car, shutting and locking the door after himself.

He was safe. At least for now. He lay back on the seat with his heart sending blood pounding to his brain. He fought for breath, but he failed to get and keep enough air to remain conscious. He passed out as the shooting started with one thought in his head. He hadn’t quit.

* * *

Jesse Terrenova was wide eyed, watching Stacy’s breasts bob and weave, twin melons of sexual excitement, as she slid her cute ass back and forth, pumping like a jack hammer. She screamed for more as the orgasm hit her.

He reached up and grabbed a melon in each hand. Their sexual softness sent shivers through his body and he squeezed and held on as his own pleasure began to build to a rising peak. “Oh my god,” he moaned, “I’m going to come again.”

She kept pumping through her own orgasm screaming, “Come for me baby. Come for me baby. Come for me baby.”

He was so excited, so worked up, so lost in the moment that he imagined he heard a jungle cat roaring in the forest. His second orgasm was so close and her fever rapid body was sending pricks of pleasure through him that were small precursors of the total rapture that he was about to experience.

He felt it building. He picked up his rhythm to accommodate hers. They moved as one. He was about to blast his way to heaven on earth when J.P., looking like he’d been put through a meat grinder, jumped right over them and continued on through the clearing. Stacy, her eyes closed in pleasure and abandonment, wasn’t even aware her privacy had been invaded.

He started slamming his seed into her when a deafening roar ripped through the clearing, drowning out Stacy’s orgasmic screams and all of a sudden a large-toothed, black panther-like animal roared into view. With a great leap it sprang upon Stacy, sinking its tusk-like teeth into her breasts, yanking her pumping, fucking body off his stiff hardness, leaving him to ejaculate into the cool evening breeze.

Still shooting his sperm, he instinctively rolled toward his service revolver, keeping his eyes on the huge animal. By the time he’d reached his weapon, the animal had ripped Stacy’s breasts from her body and blood was shooting from the screaming woman’s chest. He raised the forty-five automatic as the beast devoured her breasts and began shooting as it clamped its jaws on her once beautiful head, ripping it from her body, leaving the headless, breastless body squirming in the dirt.

The first shot hit the animal in the left shoulder as the black beast continued its grisly meal. The second and third went wild as the beast crushed Stacy’s head with cat like speed. He sank the fourth and fifth into its flank as it swallowed the bloody mess. The sixth and seventh hit the animal in the chest as it charged. The eighth and final shot followed the first into the left shoulder, but the beast kept coming.

* * *

J.P. had to go to the bathroom, and his sides hurt, but it was his feet that were the big problem. They were black and blue, swollen to almost twice their normal size. Getting out of the car to pee was going to hurt. He didn’t have to go all that bad, he thought, so he decided to wait.

Inspecting the inside of the cruiser, he found Jesse’s thermos and was reminded of how thirsty he was. He spun the top off, unscrewed the rubber cork. He had only tried coffee once, when his mother wasn’t looking, and had quickly decided he didn’t like it, but Jesse Terrenova’s lukewarm coffee was the sweetest tasting drink that had ever crossed his parched dry lips. He downed the coffee, chug-a-lugging, like a drunk in a bar does a pitcher of beer, spilling as much down his chest as he swallowed.

With his thirst satisfied, he popped open the glove compartment and took out the box of granola bars that he knew he would find there. Like every boy in town, he’d spent plenty of time riding in Jesse’s cop car. Jesse coached Little League, ran the weekend crafts at the park, taught Bible school and did a myriad other things that caused him to give the kids in town a lift in the black and white, not to mention taking them on patrol with him. There wasn’t much about Jesse or his car that J.P. didn’t know.

The box of ten was half-empty, and he greedily scarfed down the remaining five, in a hurry to blunt the aching in his stomach.

Feeling a little better, with two of his three basic urges taken care of, he decided to concentrate on the third. There was no way he was going to get out of the car to pee. Reason number one, what if the black, saber-toothed Ghost Dog was still out there, and reason number two, he didn’t think he could walk on his battered feet. But he darn sure didn’t want to wet his pants.

He thought for a second, decided he could take the risk of opening the door. If he saw the Ghost Dog, he could close it quickly enough, but he wouldn’t get out of the car. He’d pee out from inside.

He rolled the window down and listened. The woods were making their normal noises. Birds were chirping, the morning breeze was rustling through the trees. They sounded alive and safe. He opened the passenger door, knelt on the front seat, unbuttoned his fly and pissed a strong yellow stream out into the wind. When he finished, he reached out, closed the door and rolled the window back up.

Then he checked the ignition and realized that he was going to have to get out of the car anyway. He needed the ignition on to use the radio and Jesse had taken his keys with him when he left the car, but fortunately J.P., like everyone else in town, knew he was always locking himself out of the car and that he kept a hide-away-key under the front bumper.

Again he rolled down the window and listened. Then he opened the door and gingerly stepped out of the car, onto his bruised, hurting feet. It was like walking on shards of glass or through hot coals. And as swiftly as he could, he made his way to the front of the car, leaning on it for support. He reached under the bumper, pulled out the magnetic box and painfully returned back to the safety of the car.

Once the door was closed again, and locked, he put the key into the ignition and turned it to the accessory position. Now that the radio had juice he picked up the mike, holding the push to talk button down with his thumb as he’d seen Jesse do.

“
Is anyone listening out there?” he said, lips inches from the mike.

Ten minutes later, J.P. sat secure behind locked doors and watched as Deputy Lincoln Hewett’s police car drove up the dirt road and parked alongside. Not until the Deputy was out of the car, did he unlock the door.

“
Well, J.P., I’m sure you have quite a story,” Lincoln said.

J.P. had always like Lincoln, but he wished the sheriff had come instead.

“
Come on, J.P., what’s going on?”

J.P. told him about how his father and Sylvia were murdered. How he was kidnapped and held in the trunk. How he got away. How he saw the saber-toothed Ghost Dog. How it chased him. How he saw Jesse and Stacy, naked, making love. And how he got safely into the police car.

“
Stacy and Jesse were up at Lover’s Hideaway?” the deputy asked, pointing up the dirt path.

“
Yes, sir.”

“
Show me!”

“
I can’t walk too good and besides, I don’t think it’s a good idea to go up there.”

“
Nonsense. I’ll carry you.” Lincoln pulled J.P. out of the car, hefting him up to his shoulders the way his dad used to when he was younger.

“
I don’t wanna go there.”

“
It’ll be fine.”

J.P. kicked against Lincoln’s chest.

“
Stop that.” Lincoln squeezed his leg, hard.

“
You’re gonna be sorry.”

“
Just calm down.”

“
This is a bad idea.” But it was no use, because now they were in the clearing and Lincoln set J.P. down.

The dead leaves, pine needles and the dirt throughout the center of the small clearing were covered in wet blood. The couple’s clothes lay in a heap, near the clearing’s center, undisturbed.

The deputy bent to pick up Stacy’s frilly blouse.

“
The Ghost Dog did it,” J.P. said. “It killed ’em, then it ate ’em.”

“
There is no Ghost Dog,” Lincoln said.

“
Yes there is. I saw it. It chased me.”

“
He fired his weapon,” Lincoln said, talking to himself. He bent over and picked up a shell casing. He found the forty-five near a pool of blood, picked it up. “My God,” he said, “he emptied it. Whatever did this is one bad son of a bitch.”

When they reached the end of the clearing, J.P. heard a low growl and wailed, “Oh, no, not again,” as the black beast slammed into Lincoln Hewett.

He had a front row view as the Ragged Man stepped from the bushes and slit Lincoln’s throat with his Jim Bowie knife.

J.P. wanted to run, but he was frozen in place as the Ragged Man stepped away from the dead deputy and the Ghost Dog moved back in, clamping its powerful jaws around Lincoln’s neck and closing them with a sharp snap, severing his head and sending it rolling toward J.P. like a soccer ball kicked out of play.