The Backwoods

(III)

It’s heavenly, he thought. He stared up in wonder, drinking up the sight of the stars. My whole life is heavenly. . . .

The night couldn’t have been more beautiful, nor could his love. The God that he believed in was much more nebulous than the God of most people, but just as real. Wilfrud knew, in fact, that they were all essentially the same, and it was to that great ethereal and omnipresent being that he now offered his unbounded thanks.

Ethel, his wife, puttered in the woods, focused on their task. It was Wilfrud who was the dreamer of the pair, the introspective one, which she often, in her loving way, dismissed as laziness. But it’s only my love that makes me a dreamer, he thought, and she knew that, of course.

Besides, she was the better diviner.

Divination could be very effective in obtaining knowledge of that which one desired, so long as the practitioners were faithful people. Faith was in the heart, in the soul. Wilfrud and Ethel had been the clan’s diviners for decades, since their late teens. They solicited the spirits of nature tonight for nothing more complex than finding honey morels for the weekend’s clan banquet. Ethel made a delectable mushroom roux that specifically depended on this rare edible fungus, but they were very difficult to find.

Diviners, however, could find them a little easier than others.

Earlier they’d both prayed over the boiled pig knuckle, and now Ethel meandered about the woods, holding the clean bone in a cupped hand. It was not with anything like tactility by which she read the telltale signal—it would be more like a vibration in her head. She was naked, of course, to further appease the spirits, and Wilfrud’s eyes couldn’t resist that raw beauty of hers as she stepped through the brambles, sensing the air. Her bare skin shone so white in the moonlight; it looked so perfect. No, neither of them was young anymore, but looking at her now, in the quiet night’s glow, Wilfrud got short of breath. He couldn’t be more grateful to God for giving him so beautiful a wife.

The decades had blessed her body; she didn’t look at all like a woman in her mid-fifties, and the gray had barely touched her long, raven-black hair. Even her bosom barely sagged; her breasts glowed like lambent orbs in the moon’s light, centered with large, dark nipples. About her neck hung the pendant he’d made for her when they’d gotten married, a deep blue-and-scarlet pontica stone that diviners and mediums often wore, to maximize their visions. The stone hung between her breasts and seemed to change color when her own passions inflamed. Wilfrud himself wore the cross she’d given him just as long ago: two meticulously carved shavings from an eddo root.

For a moment Wilfrud felt bolted to the ground; he couldn’t move; he could only swallow up this nighttime image of her. Oh, heaven, he thought. I am such a lucky man. . . .

She pivoted on her bare feet, not looking down but staring out into the night, listening for the secrets it would tell her, and then in a second she quickly got down on her knees and bent over. Wilfrud almost collapsed now, his desires reeling. This alternate glimpse of her—kneeling, naked, buttocks jutting—was the last thing Wilfrud needed to see just then. He was supposed to be helping her. . . .

“Oooh, Wilfrud, look!” she nearly squealed in excitement. Her free hand tilled the soft earth between the vee of a tree’s roots. “We’re finding so many tonight!”

Only a woman after my own heart could be so enthused over finding morels, he realized absurdly. He walked over with his collection bag, tried to focus, but only remained dizzy in the fugue of his passion. Her breasts bobbed when she jerked upright, grinning. She extended her earth-smudged hand, which was full of morels.

“Five more!”

He smiled back, so distracted, and put the morels in the bag, then . . .

He dropped the bag.

“What are you doing?” she exclaimed.

“You know,” he whispered, embracing her. He urged her back against the tree, his groin pushing into hers. His voice was parched in his need. “Let me make love to you—right here. In the forest, with the moon and stars watching.” His hands ran up her bare sides; sweat misted her skin from the warm night. She felt so soft. . . .

He was tasting her neck, breathing hard already. The jasmine essence in her hair stiffened him at once.

Ethel giggled. Her fingers slipped around his back. She pressed her breasts more urgently against his chest, then raised one leg and half wrapped it around him. “Hmm,” she breathed into his ear. “So you want to take me right here, on the ground?”

“Yes, yes!”

“Hmm, let me think about that. . . .”

Her thigh slid up and down his leg. Her hand squeezed his buttocks; then it came back around, dawdled over his chest, then began to pop open his shirt buttons.

“Let me think,” she repeated.

Wilfrud was going nuts in his passion now. He kept trying to kiss her, but each time their lips met she jerked away, smiling. Eventually her fingers spidered down his unbuttoned chest, lingered a moment, then proceeded to his crotch, which she slowly—and excruciatingly—began to caress.

“My love, my love, my love,” he kept murmuring into her neck. “Please! Now!”

“Hmm, yes, let me think . . .” As her fingers were toying with the top button of his trousers, were just about to open them—

“On second thought,” she said abruptly, “no.”

Her hand pulled away, and she gently began to push him back.

“Don’t torment me!” he pleaded.

“Wilfrud, you’re so much fun to tease!” She was grinning at him in the moonlight, her bare breasts standing right out. Then she picked up the collection bag and gave it back to him. “We’ve got to get back to our gathering.” The grin sharpened. “We’ll make love later. When we get back home.”

Wilfrud groaned, his eyes rolling in agony.

“Thinking about me more will make you want me more,” she cooed at him.

“No, it won’t! I want you now!”

“Oh, Wilfrud. You’re a wonderful husband, but honestly, sometimes you’re just like a goat. You can wait a bit longer.” And then she disappeared around a stout tree to continue her search.

Wilfrud stood like a horny fool. Women, he thought uselessly. Oh, how they love to make idiots of men.

He shuffled after her into thicker woods. Denser networks of boughs overhead drained off the moonlight—he could barely see. After a time he wanted to call out but thought better of it: he mustn’t distract her while she was divining. Instead, then, he filled his mind back up with images of her nakedness, her breasts and the pebble-hard nipples, all that smooth, warm, white skin that he could indulge in, the nest of down between her legs soft as kitten fur. . . .

Minutes more, and he still hadn’t found her. He stood and listened . . . and heard no traces of her footfalls.

“Sweetheart?” he finally called out.

Ethel didn’t answer.

“Ethel?”

Another step, then—

“Oof!”

He stumbled and fell.

What a clumsy clod. . . . He must’ve tripped on a downed limb. But when he put his hand out to push himself up it landed on a bare foot. Alarmed, he patted upward, up a bare leg. . . .

In slivers of moonlight coming though the trees, he saw Ethel lying prone on the forest floor.

“Ethel! Are you all right?” He slid up to her, got an arm around her back to lean her up.

But her head just lolled on her shoulders.

And he noticed blood on her forehead.

No!

Wilfrud felt crazed in the sudden fear. “Ethel! Ethel!” He shook her. “Please be all right!”

A voice snapped behind him. “Don’t worry, Squatter. She ain’t dead. All’s I done is conk her lights out.”

In the dimmest darkness, he spotted the figure standing over him. Enraged, Wilfrud attempted to jump up, to fight.

“Yes, sir. Conked the bitch’s lights right out with this here beer bottle.”

Conk!

The unseen swipe knocked Wilfrud out cold.

It was a harsh gagging sound that Wilfrud regained consciousness to. Grainy, sooty vision began to fire in his eyes; each time his heart beat, a heavy thud of pain throbbed in his head. In a few more moments, he could see. . . .

Ethel lay naked on her back in some deep, moonlit clearing. A beefy man humped vigorously between her sprawled legs, his overalls pulled down to show pasty buttocks.

The atrocity raged but for a split second before Wilfrud’s mind managed to separate the horror from logic. What happened to me? The pain in his head felt like a nail had been driven into his brain. He and Ethel had been gathering morels, hadn’t they? Yes, the clan cookout was coming up. And she’d dashed off into darker woods with her divining bone. That’s when I found her, he remembered. I tripped over her and—

That figure . . . All Wilfrud recalled was the stocky shadow before he’d been hit in the head with something, and now he was waking up . . . to this.

Wilfrud realized now that he’d been tied to a tree, his wrists bound behind the trunk with rope, and a shorter length of rope had been tied around his head—between his teeth—to gag him. In horrid glimpses, he noticed that Ethel had been gagged similarly. All either of them could do was croak out some feeble noises, nothing even close to a scream that could be heard by others.

The man raping his wife looked over his shoulder while his fornication didn’t miss a beat. “Oh, looky there, sweetie. Your husband’s finally woked his old ass up.” A chunky face grinned back. “Hey, Wilfrud? You don’t mind me raping the holy ever-livin’ shit outta this old bag you got fer a wife, do ya?”

Wilfrud’s eyes bugged in rage; he recognized the portly face at once: Junior, one of the Caudill boys. Wilfrud struggled uselessly against his bonds, the rope digging into his wrists, and when he tried to shout, the only vocal objection he could muster was more of the same croaking.

Worse were Ethel’s croaks. Junior was choking her with the leather cord of the pontica stone around her neck. He’d twist the cord down tight till her face darkened and her tongue began to protrude, but just before she’d either pass out or die, he’d release it—to rape her harder. He wanted her alive for the entire ordeal.

But why was he doing this?

And what would happen when he was done?

Junior began to grunt, twisting the pontica cord harder, and then his pelvic thrusts slowed and stopped.

He straggled to his feet, hitched up the overalls, and dusted himself off. “Ain’t exactly the best piece a’ ass I’ve had, but not bad fer an old box. What is this bitch, Wilfrud? About sixty? Me, I prefer ’em a tad younger, like about ten, but in a pinch? Any piece a’ ass is better than none, huh?”

Junior belted out a piglike noise that sufficed for a laugh, but then his eyes darted back down to Ethel, who now lay utterly still. “Aw, shit! Don’t tell me she’s fuckin’ dead! I need her still kickin’ for the rest a’ the party !” He dropped to his knees, slapped her face several times, then put an ear to her bare chest to listen for a heartbeat. “Whew!” he said next. “Ya lucked out, Wilfrud. Her ticker’s still tickin’.” He stood back up. “Let’s give her a splash or two a’ water in the face, to spark her up. . . .”

Wilfrud roared in his throat through the gag, surging against the bonds. Junior had opened his fly and was now urinating liberally into Ethel’s face. The revolting process did indeed revive her, soaking her.

“Well, there goes another six-pack!”

By now Wilfrud was oblivious to the pain of the flesh around his wrists grinding away. He brokenly barked out through his gag, “Cut me loose! Cut me loose!”

Junior zipped back up. “What’s that, Wilfrud? Cain’t rightly understand ya, what with the gag. Oh! You want me to cut ya loose?” Another piglike guffaw. “Come on! Why in tarnation would I wanna do that?”

Now Junior leaned against a tree, arms casually crossed. “You don’t even know this, Wilfrud, but in yer own little way you n’ this creepy old tramp are playin’ a part in a big plan that’ll make things around here a damn sight better fer everybody.” He scratched his belly. “Well, I should say almost everybody, ‘cos things just got a damn sight worse fer you and the little missus.” Junior looked up at the moon in the sky. “And I’m afraid it’s gettin’ late. Time for this party to end, don’t ya think?”

Ethel shuddered in the dirt, hacking up urine through the gag. Without a moment’s hesitation, Junior reached behind the tree and pulled out an inordinately large fire ax, then stepped up, parted his legs, hoisted it up over his head in a great arc—

“Nooo!” Wilfrud gagged.

—and—

Thhhhwunk!

—dropped the massive blade into Ethel’s belly. Then—

Thhhwunk! Thhhwunk!

—two more downward plunges of the blade cut her naked body in half in a straight line just above her hips.

Her bare heels thunked in the soil, white legs quivering. The upper half convulsed, back trying to arch reflexively.

Wilfrud was choking on his tongue, straining ever harder against his bonds, but all for nothing. He choked out some final, faulty bellows as the whites of his eyes hemorrhaged red in outrage.

Junior grinned, his own eyes beaming down. He set the ax aside. “How’s that for a piece a’ work?”

Ethel’s legs finally fell still, while the upper half of her body remained miraculously alive. She actually managed to flip herself over and began to crawl toward Junior.

“Bitch’s got some spunk; I’ll give her that,” Junior remarked. He grabbed the pendant cord, hoisted her up, then looped the cord over the crook of a broken branch. He stood back to watch as Ethel slowly strangled against the tree, innards uncoiling.

“God, that was fun. . . .”

By now Wilfrud’s horror and exertion left him limp. Junior unsheathed a buck knife and approached. “Her ticket’s punched, so I guess it’s time to punch yours too, Wilfrud.”

“Uuugh!” went Wilfrud.

Junior pigstuck him low with the knife, one deep jab just below the navel.

“But I got tell ya,” Junior went on, “all this choppin’ and chokin’ and stabbin’s got my dog barkin’ again, if you know what I mean.” He chuckled, showing brown teeth. “And there ain’t exactly anyone around who’s gonna call me a pervert, huh?”

Wilfrud groaned in the lowest agony, blood and bile eddying from his wound.

Junior shrugged and approached the sprawled legs on the ground. “So I just say . . . what the hell!”

He lowered his overalls again, then crawled between the legs, and this was what Wilfrud Hild got to watch for the remaining ten minutes it took him to die.