Seeds Of Fear (4 page)

"I'm from here, from the same parish as you. I grew up not far from your house. Remember the old Clancine place? I was Sandy then, Sandy Clancine. I went to school with you. But I was younger ... oh, I was so young and I was always trying to catch up with you, Bastine."

He sank back on the mattress, pressed his hands together in his lap. She was someone from his past. He hazily remembered the Clancine family. They lived as poorly as he, half a dozen kids running around barefoot in rags. He hated Louisiana. He should have known nothing good could come from it.

She continued in a dreamy, detached voice. "I used to sneak out to your place and watch your daddy. He hurt you bad, I saw him. And your mama, she was almost as terrible. That time . . . that time she helped your daddy with the rope in the backyard ... I saw that, Bastine. I prayed for you, that they'd let you down before you strangled. I would have attacked them if they hadn't let go of the rope. But I was so little. When I was ten you were already in your teens. But I knew all the secrets of everyone in the parish. I spent all my time hiding out so I could learn everything I could. Especially about you."

"What else did you see?" Bastine covered his face with his hands to keep the memories from flooding his head. Already the sleeper smelled of the outhouse to him, the air scented with a miasma of dirty, rotten things.

She rolled onto her back and reached out to touch his arm. "I saw you take out your hate on the animals, the wild things. How you went hunting, but you maimed things, then slowly killed them. I saw you turn on your brothers and devise new tortures for them. I saw you with . . . girls. When you started dating, I would follow you out on the dirt paths into the forests, and I saw how you talked them into things, how sometimes it got out of hand, and you had them scared of you. I saw how you mastered them, how you controlled them.

"I wanted to be those girls, Bastine. I wanted to be your one girl. I had to wait until I was old enough to attract you, but you left. That day you packed your things and fled the parish, I cried for a week. My folks couldn't do anything with me. I stopped going to school. I started thinking about you day and night. I knew we belonged together."

"So our meeting wasn't accidental?"

She shook her head. "I've been coming to this truck stop every night or so for a long, long time, Bastine. I knew what company you worked for. I've been waiting. All this time."

Understanding made Bastine raise his face from his hands. "You brought the gun because you knew I'd try to make you leave."

"Yes. I didn't want to, but I couldn't take a chance of losing you again. You understand, don't you, Bastine? You forgive me, don't you? You may punish me if you want. I know I haven't any rights .. ."

"I don't know about this, Shaw. I... no one's ever... all that stuff that happened when I was a kid . . ."

"Shh." She reached up and touched his lips with her own. "Take me with you, Bastine. Don't make me go away. I'll die if you do. Please. I've waited so long, all my life."

Bastine wanted to punish her for insinuating herself into his life, and at the same time he wanted to hold on to her to keep her from leaving again. He'd never had anything of his own except the truck. "Let me think," he said. "I can't promise."

She brought his left palm to her face and pressed it against her lips. "You can't live without me any more than I can live without you. We belong together."

He cradled her in his arms and tried to imagine the future. There would be a thousand secrets they could share, a thousand nights they could make electrifying.

On Sunday he and Shaw spent most of their time together reminiscing. The lengths she had gone to in order to shadow him as he grew up in the parish were beyond anything he thought possible. That's when she'd changed her name, she told him, using "Shaw," the shortened form of the word "shadow."

Near sunset Shaw leaned forward and peered out the windshield. "See that girl?"

Bastine stared. It was a Lot Lizard crossing the back lot. She was scanning the cabs, waiting for a signal of headlights to indicate the offer of a job. "Sure, I see her. Disease carrier."

"Oh, you're a cruel man. They're not all so bad. I even did it now and then to keep body and soul together while I waited for you to come through. I know these girls. And I have an idea for tonight if you're willing."

"Yeah? Like what?" Just the thought of a new sexual game made the blood rise to his head.

"Let's take her to your old place."

"What?"

"Let's offer her some money and drive her out to the swamp. We can have some fun and we can kill some ghosts at the same time. You
do
feel the ghosts out there, don't you? We shouldn't leave here and take them with us. It'll spoil our future together."

Bastine shivered where he sat. "I don't wanna talk about that. I don't think about. . . them ... if I can help it."

"But you could go back if I was with you, couldn't you? It would be fun, Bastine. We'll play with the girl. Chase her. There's so many places there she can get lost and so many places I know where to hide. It would be terrifying!"

Bastine considered the proposition. Ever since he'd walked into the truck stop his entire life had taken a decided tilt. He felt he was moving on a conveyor belt on a slight angle up to the top floor of a malevolent fun house. What Shaw proposed scared him, but at the same time it thrilled him to imagine the things they could do. And he
did
need to slay, for all time, the lingering, tormenting visages of his mother and his father.

"She looks sweet and vulnerable," Shaw said. "We'd better hurry."

Yes, he thought. Yes, yes, oh Christ, things were different now. He could have Shaw and the girl too, he could make them his slaves for the night, send them with torches to light the forest like nymphs dispatched by a god. They could be his audience while he spent his rage on the land that stole half his life.

"Yes," he said, climbing from the cab. "I'll get her. Wait here."

"I'll pay extra because it'll be a threesome," Bastine told the girl, holding her around the waist as he walked her to his truck. She was slim with small breasts, short bleached hair, a dimple in her chin. She made him think of a cured ham, plain, bony, but sturdy, enough meat for a meal.

"I don't mind anything if there's enough money," she said. Her voice was high and piping, the trill of a monkey. An annoying sound that Bastine immediately decided to tune out as soon as he had the preliminaries completed. Let Shaw talk to her.

"And you don't mind we drive out to my old home place, huh? It's not far. We'll have room there. Can't move around much, not three of us, in my goddamn sleeper."

She laughed easily enough. "Naw, I don't mind. We don't wanna crowd each other, hon."

Shaw had moved into the sleeper and let the girl take the passenger seat. Bastine unhitched his load and slid the rig from beneath it. He bobtailed it out of the truck stop while the girl, who called herself Dory, babbled in her tinny voice to Shaw. He wished he could erase her dimple. And he had to silence that noise coming out of her mouth.

He had not forgotten the dirt and mud back roads that led to the old house. He'd dreamed of it often enough since he'd left.

When he pulled into the bare ground of the front yard, mud clung to the rig's wheels and coated the mud flaps. The headlights outlined the leaning porch, the grimy windows where curtains had never hung.

"Bitch of a place," Dory said. "Creepy."

"Let's go check it out." Shaw pressed the girl through the door and crawled out behind her.

Bastine picked up his flashlight and turned off the motor. He couldn't stop shaking. They were plunged into darkness unrelieved by starlight. Bare trees hung with Spanish moss circled the yard like hairy skeletons, and above their heads the sky was black as the oil in his truck's crankcase.

He heard Shaw calling him and swung the light toward her. "I'm not sure this was such a great idea," he said. A burning tenseness bunched the muscles of his neck as if to ward off a blow from behind. He fiercely controlled the idiotic urge to turn and check for an assailant. He made sure Dory stood next to Shaw. He must keep them in sight at all times. That's what he had to do when he was at home. Keep them in sight. Never let them get the advantage. They were always sneaking up and surprising him, grabbing his collar and hauling him off his feet, the willow switch swinging in that blurred arc to sprinkle his back and legs with furious sparks of pain.

"It's going to be all right," Shaw said. She gestured toward him, pulling him forward with invisible strings. "It's going to be fun, Bastine. Remember? We can kill the fear. We can murder it here where it was born."

"What's that mean?" Dory's high-pitched voice rose another register. "What's wrong with him anyway? Why's he acting so funny?"

"You just do as you're told." Shaw's harsh retort shut the girl up. "This is our night and you do what we want you to do, you got that?"

"Sure. Whatever you say."

Bastine lifted the light beam to the porch steps. He watched the two girls climb them, testing each riser before treading on the next. The creaks were loud and grating.

Creaks. His father approaching. When he was hiding in the cubbyhole beneath the kitchen sink. He could hear him, feel his imminent presence through the bare floorboards. There was always something he had done or hadn't done, something he'd forgotten or something he'd ruined, for which he was to be punished. Holding his breath didn't work. Begging for mercy made it last longer. Nothing saved him, ever.

"Come, Bastine. Come with us inside."

He settled the light beam on Shaw's face and did not recognize her for several seconds. She was fiercely ugly. Her face was all stark planes and protruding knobs.

"Come, Bastine. Don't be afraid."

Oh, that's what they always said, the motherfuckers, the cocksucking bastards. Don't be afraid, we won't hurt you, we just want to talk to you, Daddy's not going to use his belt, Mama's not mad at you, you didn't do anything wrong, Bastine. They lied!

"Liar," he whispered.

"No, Bastine. Don't get upset. Come inside first. We have Dory with us, remember? Dory, go get him. Take his hand."

"I'm not sure . . . uh . . ."

"Do it!"

The girl skipped down the steps and grabbed for Bastine's free hand. She turned to pull him up the steps. He resisted. She tugged, grunting.

Bastine finally relented and let himself be led up the steps that creaked, across the porch boards that threw him off balance, and to the door where Shaw ran a soothing hand down his chest to cup his crotch. "Soon, Bastine. Inside. Push the door open for us."

Bastine turned his shoulder in to it and the door gave with a sharp crack, then stuck. He had to push again, wood scraping wood as they walked single file into the big dusty room.

Though it was empty except for beer bottles and trash left over from squatters, Bastine watched for someone to slither from the darkness. Every time he swung the light, the dark followed and swallowed the area again. They could be there. Dead or not, they could certainly still be waiting and watching just as always. He hadn't any evidence that they couldn't. Or they could be through the doorway, hiding in the kitchen. Or in the pantry there. Or in the hall closet. Or in one of the two bedrooms. They could even be in the room with the tub, hiding in it. They
had
to be somewhere because he felt them.

"You're shaking, sugar," Dory said, taking his hand again. "Maybe we should go back to the truck. There's a mattress there and there ain't nothing here. This is one spooky trip."

"Shut up," Shaw said. "We want to do it here. In this house. You'll just have to accept that."

"It's pretty dirty. There might be snakes . . ."

Bastine couldn't take the banging pain of her voice any longer. He reached out reflexively with the flashlight and smashed her in the mouth. Oh God, he hadn't meant... he really didn't mean . . . She screamed and that anchored him to the present long enough to know what he had done.

"Easy, baby," Shaw said. "Go slow now. We want a long night, don't we?"

Dory was on her knees, hands to face, blood dripping onto the floor. She was moaning and swaying. Bastine leaned down and laid his hand on her hair like a benediction. "I didn't mean it."

He told his mama and daddy that so often, it was a litany he repeated silently in his mind sometimes for days on end.
I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it. I won't do it again. I didn't mean it.

Dory spluttered through her torn mouth, "You hith me, you prickth. You hurth me bad!" She was crying now, loudly, and spitting rusty sputum on the floor.

"Shut up," Shaw said. "Come on, Bastine, let's look through the rest of the rooms while Dory takes care of herself. Stay put," she said to the girl.

Bastine followed docilely behind, the light moving just ahead of Shaw's feet, now and then coming up to outline a doorway, a cabinet with a hanging door, a sink with rust stains, a bedspring sitting alone in the center of a bedroom. Dust filled his nostrils and made his throat feel raw. He kept jumping at the screech of rats that clawed and raced across the floor. Far off, he heard bits and pieces of what Shaw said to him during the tour.