Black Creek Crossing

Chapter 16

HORE!

The word reverberated in Angel’s mind. When she first heard it, it had slashed into her like a knife, cutting so deep it penetrated her very soul.

My father called me a whore!

She told herself that he was drunk, and tried to shut out his words as he pounded on her door, railing at her. After what seemed hours but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, his voice finally died away into an unintelligible mutter, and then she heard him go back downstairs.

She stayed in her room, kept her door locked, prayed for her mother to come home, and tried to silence the echoes of her father’s voice.

Her mother at last came home, but Angel didn’t unlock her door until she was upstairs and rapped sharply, asking if she was all right.

Only then did Angel finally twist the key in the lock and open the door, letting her mother in. By then she’d wiped off the last vestiges of the makeup.

Her mother knew in an instant that something was wrong, though Angel insisted that she was fine.

And the word echoed once more in her head.

Whore!

Somehow she got through dinner. All through the meal she felt her father’s baleful glare boring into her as he washed down the spaghetti her mother had made with one beer after another. When he abruptly left the table while she was clearing off the dinner dishes and her mother was serving ice cream for dessert, Angel felt a few short moments of relief. Then her father returned, and there was a look in his eye — a dark gleam — that brought her fears flooding back.

After dinner she went back upstairs to do her homework, and it was only then that she fully understood the glimmer in her father’s eyes when he’d returned to the table.

The key was gone from the door of her room.

She had no idea how long she stared at the empty keyhole, willing the key to somehow magically reappear, until she finally turned away, pulled her books from her backpack, and started on her homework.

It was impossible to concentrate, though, with her father’s voice ringing in her head and the empty keyhole drawing her eyes away from the textbooks so often that she couldn’t follow the simplest paragraphs.

Her mother came in at ten. “What is it, Angel?” she asked. “What’s wrong? Did something happen before I got home?”

And finally Angel blurted it out, telling her mother everything. “He called me a whore, Mommy,” she finished, and began crying again.

Her mother held her stiffly for a moment, then eased her away and looked into her eyes. “Why did you have a boy in your room?” she asked.

“We weren’t doing anything,” Angel protested. “We were just goofing around with that old vampire stuff I had for Halloween last year.”

“You’re sure?” Myra pressed, searching deep in Angel’s eyes for the truth. “All you were doing with this Seth person was putting on makeup?”

Angel nodded. “I swear to God,” she said. “That’s all we were doing. Seth just wanted me to—”

Her mother put a finger over Angel’s lips to silence her. “We don’t swear to God,” Myra Sullivan said. “We pray to Him for guidance. And I’m sure your father didn’t mean what he said, at least not the way it sounded. He loves you, Angel. He loves you more than anything, and I’m sure he was just worried about you.”

“But—” Angel began, but once again her mother’s finger pressed against her lips.

“He loves you,” she repeated. “And he’d never do anything to hurt you. Never forget that. He’s not always the easiest man, but he’s my husband, and he’s your father, and we must respect him. Now it’s time to put away your books, say your prayers, and go to bed.”

Then her mother was gone and Angel went back to her books, but she still couldn’t concentrate. Finally giving up, she returned them to the backpack and went to bed.

Whore!

The word still echoed in her mind. Why had he said it? She and Seth hadn’t been doing anything at all — she’d just put on some makeup, and that was only to see what she’d look like.

She tossed restlessly in her bed, turning first one way and then another, but no matter how she twisted around or pummeled the pillow or tugged at the covers, she couldn’t get comfortable. Finally she gave up, rolled over on her back, and gazed out through the window at the moon that hung just behind the treetops, its silvery light casting dark shadows on the wall of her room.

The wind came up, and the shadows on the wall began to dance, taking on a strange rhythm that at last calmed her, and finally she drifted into a fitful sleep.

Blood.

It was everywhere, on his hands and on his shirt, and on his pants and on the walls and the rug and everywhere else he looked. But mostly it was on the bed.

The sheets were crimson with it, and the hair of the still form that lay beneath the sheet was matted with it, and it was smeared on the headboard and the pillows and the blanket that lay at the foot of the bed.

Marty rose from the chair in front of the fireplace and walked slowly toward the bed. It was almost as if he was floating, for he felt nothing under his feet.

Nor could he hear anything. The silence around him was complete — not a creaking floorboard, or a whisper of wind from beyond the house, nor any of the other sounds of the night.

No insects or frogs chirruping in the darkness.

No low murmuring of birds roosting in the trees.

And no breathing from the form on the bed.

It lay facedown, the flesh of the back lacerated by the knife he’d wielded, slashed in every direction, the skin and flesh laid back so he could clearly see the unmoving ribs that had failed to protect the lungs or the heart.

He reached down and turned it over. It seemed utterly weightless, moving as if it were somehow floating above the bed rather than lying deep in the blood-soaked sheets. And as it rolled over, the sticky matted hair fell away from the face, and Marty gazed at the visage of death that was smiling up at him, the lips drawn back in a rictus around stained teeth, the deep-sunk eyes gazing sightlessly up at him, but seeming to peer directly into his soul.

As he gazed down into the face of his wife, the silence was finally pierced by a whispering voice, so faint at first that Marty barely heard it at all. But as the seconds slipped by — seconds that seemed to stretch out into eternities — the faint whispers coalesced into words.

“The other one…”

“Not done…”

“The other…”

“You want to… you know you want to… .”

As the voice kept whispering, the still form on the bed slowly began to sit up. The bloody sheets fell away, revealing the carnage beneath. His wife’s throat was slashed open, the already shrinking skin pulling back to expose the torn flesh and ligaments. Her breasts had been slashed away too, and her chest laid open to reveal her heart.

But it wasn’t any kind of heart that Marty Sullivan had ever seen — not even in the worst horror movie he’d ever gone to.

This was a black mass of muscle, crawling with worms and maggots.

And it was beating — throbbing in a slow rhythm that spewed a stream of maggots from its puncture wounds with every beat.

Transfixed, Marty Sullivan stood still as the right arm of the living corpse began to rise.

The hand reached out, as if to seize him.

He shrank away, but it didn’t matter.

The forefinger, its nail torn away and hanging only by a thread of cuticle, pointed directly at him, and he felt his flesh begin to crawl as if he himself had just felt the touch of death.

The mouth opened and a croaking voice erupted from the mangled throat.

“You have to,” the voice said. “You want to!”

The finger came closer, and as he felt its touch, a convulsion seized Marty.

An instant later he was wide awake.

His heart was pounding, and the echo of the voice was still in his head: You have to… you want to… .

He lay still, and the images of the dream began to fade. He could hear Myra breathing next to him — the long, slow, even rhythms of sleep.

She wasn’t dead. He hadn’t killed her. It was only a dream.

“You want to, Marty,” the voice whispered again. “You need to. Go on, Marty… do it. Do it now.”

Listening to the voice in his head, knowing what it was telling him to do, Marty Sullivan rose silently from the bed and slipped out of the room, leaving his wife’s sleep undisturbed.

A moment later he stood at the door to Angel’s room, his hand on the knob.

“Go on, Marty,” the voice whispered. “You know what you want… go on… she wants it too … she’s a whore, Marty. She’s only a whore …

“She’s your whore… ”

Listening to the voice, Marty turned the knob of Angel’s bedroom door and let himself in.

The moon had set when Angel awoke, and the shadows on the wall had vanished into nearly total blackness. Even the sounds of the night had fallen silent.

But what had awakened her?

She lay still, listening.

Nothing.

But then she heard a sound — the creak of a loose floorboard.

Now she could feel something — a presence in the room, close by her bed.

Then she heard a single word, uttered in a whisper so low she almost thought she was imagining it: “Whore.”

Another floorboard squeaked, and she felt the presence in the room draw closer.

The voice whispered again, repeating the loathesome word once more.

Angel felt her heart pound, and she began repeating the words her mother had spoken only a few hours ago: “He loves you, and he’d never do anything to hurt you… he loves you and he’d never do—”

“Whore!”

The word struck her with a force that was almost physical, and at the exact moment the word was uttered, she felt a hand touching her.

Touching her chest at exactly the spot where her breasts were beginning to grow.

Terrified, too frightened even to scream, she lay perfectly still, praying that if she didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t cry — not so much as a whimper — it would stop.

He would go away, and the sounds of the night would begin again, and moonlight would stream in the window, and she would be safe.

Instead, the hand on her chest pressed harder, then moved away. For an instant Angel felt a glimmer of hope. But then the hand was back, this time gently pulling the covers away so that all that covered her budding breasts was the thin cotton of her pajama tops.

Fingers reached out of the darkness and began unfastening the buttons of her pajama tops.

Angel clenched her jaw against the scream rising in her throat, and her body stiffened as she tried to prepare herself for the terrible thing that was about to happen.

She felt the heat of the hand poised just above her left breast.

Then, just as she felt the rough skin of a heavily callused hand brush against her nipple, Angel heard a hissing sound.

The hand on her breast was jerked away.

For a few interminably long seconds there was an eerie stillness in the room.

Angel lay perfectly still, too frightened even to breathe now.

More seconds passed — more eternities — but still she didn’t take a breath. And in the stillness and the darkness, she felt the unseen hand moving toward her once again, like a viper slithering silently through deep grass, moving invisibly toward its prey.

Her skin crawled as she felt the hand grow nearer.

Then, out of the darkness, the hissing sound came again, followed by a crash and a brief grunt of pain. A moment later she heard the sound of her bedroom door opening and closing.

Angel lay still for a moment, her heart pounding.

The house had gone silent, but from outside she could once more hear the faint sounds of the night — the hooting of an owl.

She switched on the lamp that stood on her night table, the bright glare momentarily blinding her. As her eyes slowly adjusted to the light, she looked around, at first seeing nothing. Then, on the floor next to her dresser, she saw her piggy bank — a heavy bronze one that she’d been given on her first birthday, and into which she always deposited a little bit of her allowance, even if it was only a penny. How had it gotten there? It was always on top of her dresser, watched over by her teddy bear, who was still leaning against the mirror, just where she’d put him.

But now the piggy bank was lying on its side on the floor.

For several long seconds she stayed in her bed, staring at the object on the floor.

How had it gotten there?

Then, as she tried to remember exactly what had happened, she understood.

Houdini!

Somehow, the cat must have gotten into the room and been on the dresser. And when her father came in—

The cat had leaped at him! Leaped off the dresser, knocking the piggy bank off.

Getting out of bed, she picked up the piggy bank and put it back on the dresser where it belonged. She was about to go back to bed when something in the mirror caught her eye. Her heart suddenly racing again, she whirled around to face whatever was behind her.

And saw nothing.

But there had been something in the mirror — she knew there had!

The cat?

Once again she scanned the room, searching for some sign of the black animal that had appeared the day they moved into the house. “Houdini?” she called out, keeping her voice low enough so it wouldn’t carry beyond the walls of her room. “Here, kitty, kitty. Come on, Houdini — I know you’re in here somewhere.”

Nothing.

She crouched down and looked under the bed, then behind her desk.

Finally she went to the closet and pulled the door open.

The smell of smoke almost overwhelmed her. Gasping, she staggered back and turned away.

Her eyes fell once more on the mirror, and once again she froze. For right behind her, clearly reflected in the mirror, she saw it.

A face.

The face of a girl, about her own age.

Her heart racing, she whirled around again.

And found herself staring into the empty closet.

The smell of smoke was gone.

No, she told herself. I didn’t imagine it! I smelled smoke, and I saw a face!

Steeling herself, Angel stepped into the closet. Except for her clothes and a few boxes on the shelf, it was empty.

And the smell of smoke — the acrid aroma so strong a moment ago that it had almost choked her — was completely gone.

Now she smelled nothing except the faint aroma of the cedar that lined one wall of the closet.

Closing the closet door, she leaned against it for a moment, staring across the room at her teddy bear and piggy bank. They were sitting on her dresser, the bear seemingly watching over the piggy bank, just as they had always been.

Her head swimming with confusion, Angel went back to her bed, sat down, and stared for a long time at the teddy bear and the piggy bank.

The cat.

It had to have been the cat!

But where was it?

And what had she smelled, and seen?

What if she’d simply dreamed the whole thing, like she dreamed about the house being on fire the other night?

Wrestling with the confusion, she slid back into the bed and pulled the covers tight around her neck.

Resolutely, Angel turned off the light; the room plunged back into darkness. For a long time she lay awake, staring into the darkness, trying to decide whether any of it had been real or if she had simply dreamed it. It was a dream, she told herself. It was just a dream, and Daddy wasn’t in here at all, and nothing happened, and I’m all right. Soon, with the night holding her in its embrace, she drifted once again into the same fitful sleep from which she had awakened so short a time ago.