Unearthed (32 page)

“Well?” she asked, expectantly.

“Still gonna go with ‘fuck you,’” Hendricks said.

This time she twisted at the waist, like a serpent, her abdomen bending unnaturally to allow her to pivot 180 degrees so that her back was showing. He could see holes in the ratty shirt she wore. It looked like a comfort object, something that had a loose string hanging from the elbow. He could not see her face, but she kept her knees right where they were, digging into his sides like a rock he couldn’t pry out of his shoe. “Fucking me is not an option,” she said, and he saw the glint of her knife as she raised it high. “I’m going to have your submission, you know that, right?” She turned her head enough to look at him, tucking that matted hair behind her ear. She gave him a look with those evil fucking eyes, and the smile faded to a malicious sneer. “I’m going to start by cutting off your pinky toe. You can stop me at any time. All you have to do is say that you’ll eat my pussy.”

“I’d rather eat a real, live cat straight out of the town dump,” he said. “Which would probably smell better and be less hairy—”

She drove the knife down before he even got the words out, and Hendricks felt a sharp pain in his toe. It was lightning fast, so fast he didn’t even know what had happened. She came back up and the knife’s blade gleamed a little duller, covered with red at the tip again. Her tongue zipped out of her mouth, serpent-like, licking the blood off the blade. “You probably can’t see, and I doubt it’s hit your brain yet, but I just cut off your pinky toe.” Her eyes gleamed. “It’s like an episode of Seinfeld.”

Hendricks turned the scream into a pained grunt. His brain was telling him now what had happened, and it was fucking misery. He’d been pummeled before, and it never felt real great, but this was something else. He heard sharp breathing and realized belatedly that it was his own. He was breathing so fast it felt like he was going to hyperventilate, even as a cool feeling settled over his flesh. At least he still had all his clothes on, he figured, otherwise he’d really have been cold.

“You’re gonna lose another toe in about five seconds,” she said, still turned away from him, head turned just enough to regard him with cold indifference sprinkled with a hint of glee.

His eyes fell back to the shadowed area of her crotch, to the patch of hair lurking there, and he felt a great swell of revulsion. “No fucking way,” he said, and she moved like lightning again, down and up in a sharp motion.

“I don’t mind the taste of your blood,” she said, licking the blade again. “It’s kind of salty, like your fucking language, you foul-mouthed little shit.” She turned and slapped him right in the gut, driving the air out of him and adding to the scorching agony already radiating off his foot. “Two toes down, three to go.”

“I … have … eight left, you cunt,” Hendricks managed to get out.

“After I finish this foot, I’m working straight up the leg,” she said, like he hadn’t just called her the vilest thing he could think of. She was licking the knife like it had cake batter on it. “Count of three and your next little piggy is about to go to market, permanently.”

“Fuck you, I’m dead anyway,” Hendricks said, rolling his head against the dirt floor. “You …” he took a breath, the pain not even coming close to subsiding, “… you aren’t gonna let me live, so why do I care?”

“I think you’ll care by the time I get to the knee,” she said, shrugging her shoulders lightly. “And if you don’t, maybe you will when I get to your cock. I could cut it off in stages, like a salami, serve it on crackers with a nice, sharp cheddar and feed it to you when you get hungry.” She laughed, and it was a horrible sound, deep and throaty, like her voice box was bound in leather. “By that time, you’d be so fucked up from the shock and blood loss, I bet you wouldn’t even know the difference between the two.”

She leaned back toward him, arching her back, her body contorted impossibly. “Either way, I’m having fun. How about you?”

Hendricks tried to find something, some glib amusement, something funny to say. Heroes in movies always did, no matter the torture, right? Hendricks was having trouble thinking, his thoughts moving slower and slower. She rocked back away from him again, raised the blade high, and drove it down into his foot again. He still felt it, even though the chill was starting to seep into him, and this time Hendricks filled the air with a scream, unable to hold it back anymore.

Brian sat in the passenger seat, just shaking his head. This was new, he had to admit. And weird. Not like he hadn’t ridden around in his dad’s truck before, because he had, more times than he could count. “What the hell are you into, Dad?” he asked, just getting it out there.

“Something important,” his dad replied.

“You’re hanging out with some weird company, talking some crazy shit,” Brian said.

“These are strange times.”

“Huh.” Brian couldn’t find a point of argument with that, not exactly. “Look, I know that some bizarre stuff has been going on lately, but … I mean, come on. Demons? Really?”

His father kept both eyes on the road, but there was a noticeable tensing of the arms he had on the wheel, like he froze in place for a few seconds. “I know what I’ve seen.”

“Man,” Brian said, shaking his head, “look, it’s Tennessee, okay? You carve a Virgin Mary in a loaf of bread and toast it around here, people flock like it’s a sign to the faithful. Weak minds are always looking for signs and symbols to reaffirm their delusions—”

“You could be a little less of an ass,” his father said. “Just ten percent or so might leave you with the ability to have a friend or two in the state.”

Brian felt the sting of that turn back into a cold irritation. “There’s nobody left here I want to be friends with. Look, if you want to all hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya’ every week at church while talking some ancient set of rules handed down from on high, that’s your thing, okay?”

“I never asked you to believe.” Bill Longholt held the wheel steadily. “I recognize that you didn’t fit well in this town. That you didn’t see eye-to-eye with me or most of the people of Midian—”

“Because the people around here are wrong, so much of the time—”

“—but I didn’t think I raised you to be so utterly disrespectful of what other people believed.”

Brian felt his arms fold in front of him automatically. “Yeah, well, if only you’d raised the rest of the town the same way.” He felt that cold anger bubble and spit, and something came out. “You think it’s fun being the kid that feels weird and out of place in the youth group he’s compelled to attend? You think it’s high times to be asking these questions that your Sunday school teacher can’t answer and insults you for even trying to understand? ‘Why did God do this?’ ‘Why did God do that?’ Answer the simple fucking question of these huge, inherent contradictions in your book. Why is that so frowned upon?”

“It’s not—at least not by everyone,” Bill said.

“Really? Because they treated it like blasphemy.” Brian paused, thinking it over. “Which it technically is, I suppose, if you want to get, y’know, literal.”

“Aww, so you met a bad Christian or two,” Bill said. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you’ve never met a fellow traveling atheist who was a sanctimonious asshole.” He shot a pointed look at his son. “People are people, son. Assholes are everywhere, regardless of religion, creed, race, or geography.”

“Seems like I’ve met an awful lot of them around here,” Brian said.

“Because most people around here are Christians, you half-wit dunce.” His father stared him down. “For a bright kid, you sure can be dumb sometimes. If ninety plus percent of the people around you are Christians, then yes, Virginia, most of the judgmental assholes you meet will be Christians, in the same way that if you hung around with a shitload of Shintoists, most of the assholes you met would be—shocking, I know—Shinto. This is the way of the world. I’m guessing you met a few judgmental shitbirds at college that probably didn’t profess the name of Christ as they did whatever terrible things they did.”

“Which meant at least they weren’t hypocrites,” Brian said.

“Yes, isn’t it wonderful not to have a publicly stated set of higher morals to fail?” Bill said. “What was your degree in, again? Philosophy? You’re somewhat obtuse on this subject; what the hell did I pay for?”

“You’re falling into the asshole percentages here, Dad,” Brian said, running his fingers over his face. He was coming down off his high and regretting it. “Original point—people turn to explanations of demons and shit like that when they can’t explain what they’re seeing through logic or science. This is Tennessee, so naturally—”

“If you weren’t so goddamned blind, you’d know that this is not a feature exclusive to Bible-believing folk.”

Brian stared back at him. “Yeah, okay, whatever. Still, the weak-minded turn to myth for explanation when there’s a perfectly valid, logical explanation for what’s going on here.”

“What is going here?” Bill asked. “In a perfectly valid, scientific explanation.”

“Let me put it in terms you’ll understand,” Brian said, deriving some satisfaction from the condescension. “Bad people are doing bad things.”

“I didn’t think you believed in bad people anymore. Too black and white, isn’t that what you told me not that long ago?”

Brian sat there in stunned silence for a beat. They’d had a lot of discussions since he’d gotten home from college; he was surprised his father remembered that particular point. “I said I was talking in your terms.”

“Don’t explain it in my terms,” his father said. “Explain it in your own. I’d like to hear it.”

“I assume there are environmental factors in play,” Brian said. “And by environmental factors, I mean that the individuals involved have had some sort of traumatic experience that has pushed them outside the bounds of normalized society and into the realm of—if you can believe the crime reports in the papers, which is maybe a little iffy—cannibalism and mass murder.” Brian shrugged. “Bizarre, no doubt. Thousands of miles outside of the norm. But demons?” He snorted. “Weak minds, Dad. Don’t be like them.”

“Well, that was an interesting explanation,” Bill said. He pulled out his cell phone and started to fiddle with it with one hand while he drove.

The dark of night, the winding of the country road combined together to make Brian a little nervous. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Trying to find Lex Deivrel’s number,” Bill said. “Ah. There it is.” He pushed a button on the screen and held it up to his ear.

“I thought you were gonna rebut my explanation about what’s going on here,” Brian said.

“Oh, I don’t think you want me to,” Bill said quickly, putting the phone between his shoulder and ear, craning his neck to hold it there.

Brian sat there, staring. “Seriously? Come at me. What have you got? I give you a reasoned, albeit basic, thesis that comes from very logical points, has some depth to it, and hits a few different layers, and your friends’ explanation is the simple, one-word answer of ‘demons.’ I want to hear you defend that because … well, because I want to hear it.”

“You want to take it apart, you mean,” Bill said. “Just a second—yes, this is Bill Longholt calling for Lex Deivrel. I need immediate representation because my son-in-law is in jail at the sheriff’s station in Midian, Tennessee. His name is Archibald Stan—and yes, hello? Sorry, I was leaving a message on your machine.” There was a pause. “That’s quite the hourly rate, but … yes, that’s acceptable. Yes, please, immediately. Call me back, and I’ll give you my credit card number for billing, sure. Thank you.” He took the phone out from between his ear and shoulder and pressed end. The beep was loud enough that Brian could hear it over the road noise.

“Well?” Brian asked.

“She’s going to go meet with Arch,” Bill said.

“Yeah, I got that,” Brian said. “I was talking about your response.”

“Mmm, that,” Bill said, nodding. He kept his eyes on the road.

Brian waited then cracked a smile and shook his head. “Yeah. Kinda what I figured. You have no argument.”

“No,” Bill said, “I was just employing the restraint I asked of you earlier, if you recall? Sometimes you win an argument but lose the war—the war being that of civility. Son, you were a brilliant mind and an absolute snot at school, always having to be right rather than be friendly. You could make your points with less venom, less dagger, and you wouldn’t have alienated half the people you did or had half as hard a childhood as you did.” He looked at him. “Politeness is the grease that keeps society from chafing itself apart. Humans are disagreeable, opinionated, cantankerous creatures, and if you were of a mind to, a bright boy like you could argue all day, every day, be assured you were right every time, and completely piss off every person on this earth in the process.”

“Sounds like fun,” Brian said, facing the window.

“I congratulate you on your nuanced, multi-level explanation of recent events,” Bill said. “The idea of different factors in play to shape a human being the way you described—absolutely, I could buy that. The idea that whoever is doing this is not a vicious, pernicious, redemption-free savage but someone who exists in shades of grey driven by natural and environmental factors is a very, very deep argument indeed.” He looked at his son with a distinct lack of amusement. “I can talk like you too, when I want to.”

“But you don’t,” Brian said, and was surprised how sullen it sounded. “You never have. Because we’re here, and because you fit in and I never wanted to.”

“No. Because sometimes things are simple,” Bill said. “But in referring to our earlier discussion on hypocrisy, let me challenge you with something—how is that you can take a deeply complex look at all the different angles in the creation of a potential group of serial killers, finding empathy for their plight, and humanizing them, but you somehow can’t develop an ability to extend the same to the Christians you’ve met in your own life that have wronged you personally and whom you dislike?” He shot a look at his son. “Take a moment before you rebut, because in essence you’ve decided to take the nuanced approach to people who slaughter and the simple one when it comes to people who have personally offended you.”