Soultaker

CHAPTER EIGHT

After her son left, Jolene McAllister swept the remains of the broken pickle jar into a dustpan, dropped the glass fragments into a garbage can that was already stuffed to capacity, and went to her room. She shed her clothes and went into the bathroom to take a shower. Steam filled the room and she began to feel very mellow, some of the nervous tension generated by her oldest boy’s return dissipating as she closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the tile-covered wall. She fell asleep standing up, waking up when her knees began to buckle.

She squelched the flow of water, stepped out of the tub, and toweled off. Then she dressed herself, went back to the kitchen, and yanked open the sliding glass door that overlooked a backyard overgrown and strewn with debris. One day soon she’d have to break down and blow one or more of the Crawford boys down the street, get them to come out here with their riding mower and weed trimmer. The Crawford boys liked to talk about her behind her back, run her down like all the other Zone assholes, but they sure didn’t talk shit when the prospect of putting their rock-hard dicks in her oh-so-experienced mouth was raised.

Jolene slipped on sandals and ventured into the backyard. The yard was bordered by rust-encrusted chain-link fencing, which was so old it sagged in places. A stand of trees loomed beyond the far end of the yard, the edge of a stretch of forest that extended to the man-made lake a mile north. Trey was always disappearing out there for hours at a time, and it bothered her, but she had other concerns at the moment.

She crossed the yard, the sandals protecting her against an array of sharp objects obscured by the tall grass as she made her way to the dilapidated old shed in a corner of the yard. She fished a key from a pocket of her denim shorts, opened the new lock she’d purchased last week, and stepped inside. A powerful lantern sat on a dusty worktable. She turned it on and studied the sleeping figure in a rear corner of the room.

“Wake up.”

Her voice was loud in the room’s stale, dusty air. The man in the corner awoke with a jerk. He looked at Jolene and muttered something unintelligible. The gag in his mouth rendered decipherable speech impossible. Not that Jolene wanted to hear anything her husband might have to say. Hal McAllister’s nude, fat body looked gray in the glare of the lantern light. The bloat of his hairy beer belly turned Jolene’s stomach. It sickened her to think of how many years she’d wasted allowing this shitty whale of a man to flop around on top of her.

She sneered. “You’re disgusting. You’re a blob. You look like a big ol’ hairy pile of mashed potatoes.”

More indecipherable muttering ensued.

Jolene stepped over to a wall and examined a row of rusty tools hanging on pegs. Some of them were dark with recent stains. There was a big saw that had last been used decades ago. She was saving it for some of the bigger operations to come. She looked forward to cutting off his legs with it. She reached up and removed a wire cutter from one of the pegs. Hal’s eyes tracked her movements, widening when she flexed the wire cutter’s blades.

She turned away from the wall and fixed him with a grin that looked both hungry and salacious. He knew by now the pleasure she derived from his pain. She walked toward him slowly, enjoying his terror, growing wet as she watched him shiver, anticipating the agony he was about to endure.

“Jake was just here, Hal. We talked about Trey and his troubles.” She stood before her bound husband, her legs spread, staring down at him, using her rigid posture and position to emphasize his vulnerability. “You know what’s funny? He never once asked about you. Not once.”

She snipped the wire cutter at him, the blades snapping on air millimeters from his face. He whimpered. Began to cry. Soon he would begin to blubber, perhaps even go into convulsions. It had happened before.

“Nobody ever asks about you, Hal. Nobody.”

Hal’s chest hitched.

“Trey never asks about you. Your own son. You’ve disappeared off the face of the earth and he hasn’t noticed. It’s like you never existed.” She grinned. “By the time anyone thinks to ask of you-months from now, years maybe-every trace of you will have vanished from this earth. What do you think about that, Hal, baby?” She leaned down, her mouth poised inches from the place on his head once occupied by his left ear. “Doesn’t it make you feel worthless? Like scum? Like something a rabid dog might crap out its ass?”

Hal threw his head back and wailed, straining against his bonds.

Jolene groped for his right hand, pulled its forefinger rigid, and fit the wire-cutter blades around it. She paused a moment and leaned closer, getting her eyes good and close to Hal’s, enjoying the sensation of power that coursed through her as she watched his milky orbs jitter. Then she gritted her teeth and squeezed the handles with all her strength. Hal’s forefinger, the only finger remaining on his right hand, until now, tumbled to the dirty floor.

Hal squealed and writhed.

Jolene went to her knees and opened her mouth to taste some of the jetting blood. It filled her mouth and sprayed her face and chest. She would need another shower. She let him bleed a little longer; then she got to her feet and retrieved the blowtorch from the worktable.

She approached Hal, smiling. “This is going to hurt you more than it’s going to hurt me.”

She cauterized his wound and shut the blowtorch off. She retrieved a syringe filled with morphine from a bag she kept under the worktable, stabbed the needle into a much-abused vein on Hal’s left arm, and filled him with the medicine that would keep him from dying of shock.

“There, there, baby. You’re going to be around a long time. Mama ain’t near done with you.”

She laughed.

Then she picked up the severed finger, shoved it into her pocket, and left the shack, leaving her miserable husband alone with the shadows and his nightmares.

And a few other things.

Crawling things.

Horrible, leering things that grew and changed shape.

Things that knew infinitely more about sadism than Jolene McAllister.