CHAPTER TEN I



“Please!” wept the nasally voice. “I’m begging you…My love!”

Jiff frowned, his feet kicked up in bed before the television. “But I was just there earlier today. You want me to come over again, tomorrow morning?”

“Yes, yes!”

“I—” Sheee-it! “I got too much work to do tomorrow,” he semilied. “My ma’s pissed at me fer not gettin’ to all my chores today.”

Sniffling. A croak. “I’m…worthless.”

You got that right.

“I love you.”

“I done told ya. Quit talkin’ like that!”

“I need…to be utterly debased. I’m not worthy of your love because, I know, I’m shit. I’m begging you. Come here tomorrow morning and humiliate me. Treat me like the garbage I am.”

It was getting pathetic. “No. I told ya. I cain’t.”

“I need to be profaned. I need to be debauched. Please, my love.”

“No!”

“I’ll pay you a hundred dollars…”

“I’ll be there. What time?”

“Thank God!” Another sniffle, and something like a yelp of joy. “Come at nine, and…Jiff?”

Jiff was trying to watch Home Shopping Network. “Yeah?”

“I need it…to be real bad. Because I’ve been real bad. I’m so unworthy of your love that I need to be treated like common scum, do you understand?”

Jiff waved his hand. “I gotcha, J.G.,” he almost yelled. He was getting to hate the pitiable fat old man and his masochistic kink games, but…

For a hundred dollars?

“Don’t worry. I’ll surprise ya. Now go to bed, I’ll be ’cos at nine.”

“I love y—”

Jiff hung up. At least business was picking up. He’d made over a hundred dollars today just at the bar; another hundred tomorrow just from one trick with Sute would cash in a fine week. Things could be worse.

It was going on midnight; Jiff hoisted himself up and left the room. He still had to empty the ashtrays and take the trash cans outside, then make a final window check before going to bed. When he passed Lottie’s room, he thought he heard her bed squeaking. Sounds like she’s humpin’ her pillow again, Jiff figured.

The next contemplation aggravated him. Sute wants something extra hard tomorrow. But Jiff couldn’t imagine what. He was being left to his own creativity, and as much of a pain in the ass as it was…

A hundred bucks is solid bread.

Jiff knew he’d think of something rough.

When he left the wing, he didn’t notice the pallid brown dog snuffling around at the other end of the hall. II



Collier came back to a lobby empty and barely lit. Damn, didn’t realize it was so late. He felt like looking around at more of the display cases but thought better of it. Need to go to bed right now, he reminded himself. I need to be in CHURCH at seven thirty tomorrow morning…He could still scarcely believe it. I’m pussy-whipped for a girl who will never go to bed with me. Collier thought hard about that, but didn’t feel any different after doing so.

He was really looking forward to seeing Dominique.

The incident on the bench seemed so absurd now, he almost laughed out loud. Smart move. Great way to really impress her. But his nerves still felt vibrant from being so close to her. He could still smell her hair, could still taste the clean sweat he’d been allowed to lick off her skin…

God…

He left Mrs. Butler’s truck keys behind the counter. Mental note: NEVER borrow her truck again. He’d walk to the church in the morning. He was about to turn up the stairs but noticed a display for the first time: an oblong glass display case on end, almost as tall as he. It held a woman’s dress, a rich burgundy, in something almost like velvet. BALLROOM DRESS WITH STOMACHER AND PANNIERS, the plaque told him. WORN BY MRS. PENELOPE GAST. Collier stepped back to assess it, as one might a painting. She wore that, he abstracted. A hundred and fifty years ago, her flesh and blood was standing in that dress—in this house…the wife of a twisted killer. The notion gave him a chill.

Mrs. Gast. Mrs…Tinkle…

He stepped away, unnerved, but not before noticing a much smaller case hanging on the sidewall of the stairs. It looked like a pair of crude pliers next to an old hat, but then he read, HAND-FORGED IRON COOLING TONGS—1861—AND REGULATION PATTERN 1858 “HARDEE” HAT, OWNED BY R. HARDING, THE FAMILY BLACKSMITH.

Collier remembered Dominique’s story, the midnight blacksmith in the floppy hat. That’s it, he thought, looking at the hat. If the guy she saw really was a ghost…that’s the hat he wore. Same guy that made the shears in the other case…

Another chill followed him up the stairs. He hadn’t noticed that the “Naughty Girl Clips” in the other case were now missing.

The floor creaked with every other step upstairs. Several wall-mounted electric candles were all that lit the stair hall. Did he hear a door click shut somewhere? Collier gazed through grainy dark. When he passed room two, he couldn’t help it. He bent to sniff the keyhole but noticed nothing. Then he whisked into his own room and locked the door.

Why am I so creeped out tonight?

It was Dominique’s story, of course, and the power of suggestion that would follow most anyone who’d heard it. Something in the house was building up, some unnamed psychic residue, and Collier was picking it up like a lint trap.

When he stripped and turned out the lights, impulse took him to the curtains over the French doors. He looked out at the old forge, which, in the sinking moonlight, looked like nothing more than a pile of rocks.

Sleep impelled him once in bed. God, I’m tired. But when he tried to drift off, his brain betrayed him with images of Dominique: her eyes in the moonlight, her bare legs shining, her nipples plump beneath the thin fabric he’d sucked a great, wet circle in. His penis erected at once, but he shouted at it, No!

He thought about her force of will—to abstain from sex—and then thought about his, which barely existed. He determined himself not to use her to assuage his own lust. The voice of his id kicked in yet again, You got her so torqued up, she’s home right now with her feet sticking up in the air with a twelve-inch dildo stuck in her, you asshole!

Collier, somehow, doubted it, and he sloughed off the voice.

Right now she’s hauling some other guy’s ashes ’cos you didn’t have the balls to go for it…

Collier smiled and shook his head.

He fell into black sleep and began to dream at once. Please let me dream about her…Instead he dreamed of lying prone in a lightless void; darkness lay on him like great rolls of pitch-black cotton.

No sex dreams tonight, he begged his mind in the dream.

Because he knew this was a dream.

He dreamed that someone was looking in his keyhole…

Who was it? And what were they seeing?

The blackness prevailed. A soft hand ran up his chest. Shit…There was no relent to his lust, even in sleep. It stained him like wine on white linen. Another pair of hands landed on him, one rubbing the other pectoral, the other slowly sliding toward his groin. His hips squirmed but he couldn’t move—of course not—as the hands softly molested him. It was as though two women knelt at either side, to tend to him.

Even his dream was goading him to masturbate. But why not with images of Dominique? Was Dominique one of the women, and if so, who was the other?

Eventually the tongues and hands retreated.

Did he hear a giggle?

That’s when it occurred to him how small the hands on his body seemed…

A lively whistling, then a girl’s Southern drawl whispered through the utter blackness, “Here! Come on! Here!”

The bed rustled a bit; then someone else began to ravenously lick his face. It was frenetic, unabating…

More giggles.

The voice on the right: “Look at him go! Good, good boy!”

The voice on the left: “Don’t lick him there, Nergie! Lick him down there!”

“What a dirty dog!”

This is no dream! Collier’s mind stormed, and he lurched up, shoved his hands through the dark, and pushed two unseen forms off the bed. His legs mulekicked outward, and his heels shot something lean and hairy off the mattress. After a thump! he heard a dog yelp.

He snapped on the bed lamp—

The room stood empty, but…

Bullshit!

The door was ajar.

“I know I locked that!” he stated to no one. He got up uncaring that he was naked, and he closed the door and locked it. “I’m positive I locked it…”

But was he really?

Damn it. He sat on the bed’s edge. He felt his face and chest and, of course, there was no trace of wetness. I gotta get out of this house…

Collier wished he smoked just then, because it seemed the perfect time for a cigarette. Should I leave? Should I just pack my bags right now and get out of here? But he’d barely written anything on the book. And where would he go at this hour? He’d have to pay his bill.

tap, tap tap…

His eyes shot wide. He looked at the door but—

tap, tap tap…

The tiny tapping sound came from the other side of the room.

What in the HELL is going on now?

tap, tap tap…

It was coming from the wall. Low on the wall.

Even with the lights on, he could just make out the peephole.

He switched off the lamp and found himself kneeling at the wall. Now the hole was lit.

He looked in.

He could tell at once that the sleek physique sitting in the hip bath belonged to Lottie. The circle encompassed her spread thighs, belly, and tight peach-size breasts. Oh, Jesus…

The strange girl’s hips writhed in the bathwater, her hand frenetically plying her sex.

Collier’s teeth chattered; he watched for many minutes, even as he thought, She’s knows I’m watching. She WANTS me to watch…

His hand inched toward his own crotch. Not this again, he thought, wincing, but then his face blanked when he imagined what Dominique would think if she knew he was doing this, on the verge of masturbating while peeping on a whack-job exhibitionist.

She’d think I was scum.

He pulled away from the hole and sighed. Madhouse, he thought. A house full of sexual weirdos…But did this solve his most current dilemma? Did Lottie enter his room with a master key and feel him up before slipping away to the washroom? It made perfect sense, except…

There were FOUR hands on me…

And what could explain the final observation, what could only have been a dog lapping his face and chest and, very nearly, lower?

He remained there on his knees for several minutes, and through the wall heard Lottie’s obvious climax, then the hip bath being emptied, then the door click shut. A few moments later, and not much of a surprise…

tap, tap, tap…

It was from his door now.

“Gimme a break, Lottie,” he hefted his voice. “Go to bed.”

tap, tap, tap…

Don’t answer it.

He felt absurd sitting on the floor, in the dark. He was hiding in his own room. But he knew what would happen if he let her in.

A few more taps and evidently she got the message. He heard her footsteps pad away.

You really are Man of the Year, huh? his id voice complained. What kind of MAN says no to a horny woman?

Collier didn’t answer the voice.

thunk!

Collier’s head jerked upright. The sound he’d just heard…had come from the other side of the wall. The bath closet.

Had Lottie returned, to tempt him further with more

exhibitions of her body?

And the next sound? A rapid gurgling…

Collier looked back to the peephole.

A dark blur crossed his pinpoint field of vision. The gurgling sound continued, heightened, then stopped. When the blur moved off again, Collier blinked, and in the space of the blink thought he saw a man…with his head in the hip bath…

Impossible! he yelled at himself.

Another blink, and then he heard a vicious gnawing sound.

Collier jerked his eye back from the hole. He took repeated deep breaths, staring into the dark. Then he jumped up, pulled on his robe, and bound out of the room and over to the bath-closet door.

He paused, hand on the knob.

I know that when I open this door, no one will be inside.

He opened the door and found the small room unoccupied.

Madhouse, he thought again.

He returned to his room and went back to bed, disgusted, exhausted, and no longer capable of considering the latest absurdities.

Go to sleep. I have to go to church tomorrow…

Exhaustion and unease sucked him deep down into sleep… III



Just as the sun sinks, you notice the man hanging by his neck. That’s the first thing you saw when you turned the corner at the bottom of the hill…

Then you blink, and you’re a little girl again.

Your spirit has transfused. Your name is Harriet, and you know this because you read it in your mother’s diary that you kept for five years after she died. You remember: When you were seven, you came back from picking boysenberries in the woods and saw the Indians ripping off her clothes. She was screaming, and the Indians took turns lying on top of her and moving funny. They chopped off the top of her head with a great war hammer, then peeled off her scalp. You were terrified but you knew you must be very quiet. You looked around for your father but quickly saw that the Indians had done the same to him. After that one Indian cut off your father’s thing, too, and put it on a cord around his neck; the cord had the things of many men on it. Another Indian had a curvy French knife—you knew it was French because your father had one just like it. He’d told you once that he got it from his own father, who’d killed lots of Indians in a war a long time ago. In this war, French soldiers gave lots of these knives to the Indians and paid them for parts they cut off of colonists. But anyway, right now this Indian used the knife to cut off the fur between your mother’s legs, along with the skin, and he put it in a bag.

Then the Indians burned the camp, but they never caught you.

You were in a place called the Ohio Territory, and this happened in 1847. You thought you were going to freeze to death that winter but some federal soldiers found you and took you with them. They took you south. You lived in a supply wagon, and it was your job to wash the soldiers’ clothes, and at night they’d all come into the wagon and take turns lying on top of you and moving funny the way the Indians did to your mother.

That’s how it went. You got used to that part. The soldiers always smelled horrible but they gave you food and left you alone most of the time. By spring, they arrived at an army post in Tennessee called Camp Roan.

There you lived with a lot of children whose parents were killed during various Indian wars or died from diseases. It was mostly widowed women who taught you how to sew, cook, tan hide, and any other duty that was needed around the camp. These women also taught you how to read. That’s when you were able to read in your mother’s diary about your name. “Walter wanted to name our wonderful baby Harriet after President William Henry Harrison, the hero of Tippecanoe. ‘He’ll be the finest president we ever have,’ Walter always said, ‘and it’ll be good luck to name our beautiful daughter after him.’” At least your luck had lasted longer than President Harrison’s. He died during his first month of office.

Because the camp had calendars, you always knew what day it was. On your sixteenth birthday, you snuck out of the camp and never came back. You got real skinny living on roots and berries but eventually you were taken in by a charcoaler. He was a strange little man who lived in a sod hut and spoke almost no English—he was from some weird place called Germany. You cooked for him and sewed his clothes while he spent the whole day chopping up wood and turning it into charcoal to sell to blacksmiths. He was always smeared black with soot. Every night he put his thing in you just like the soldiers but he also taught you how to do other things to his thing, too, with your mouth. You guess you did it very well because sometimes he’d bring you little presents from the nearby town called Branch Landing where he sold his charcoal. Several times you got pregnant but the baby usually died in your stomach and came out early, but one time it lived, and you were overjoyed. By then you understood that this happened most of the time to pregnant women, so to actually have a baby that lived was a great gift. You named your baby Henry, after President William Henry Harrison, and maybe that was bad luck, because a week later the German man took the baby to town and sold it to a couple who just lost theirs. They gave the German man thirty dollars, a big sack of flour, a brand-new cast iron skillet, and a pig.

That night you killed the German man for selling your baby. He fell asleep after you used your mouth on him, and then you collapsed his head with the skillet. You buried him in the giant ash pile and let the pig go, and then you left. You’re not sure how old you were then but you were probably around nineteen, because a trapper’s wife you met on the road to town told you it was 1859.

You didn’t know how pretty you were. You hadn’t seen a mirror since the camp. When you got to the town, a jolly fat woman named Bella took you in. You were dirty and covered with charcoal soot. She washed you vigorously in a tub, chattering, “Oh, my good Lord, aren’t you just the most precious thing to ever walk in here!” It was a wooden building with two floors, which you never knew existed, and it had a swing sign out front that said BELLA’S. There were a lot of other girls there who didn’t look very happy to see you.

When you’d crushed the funny German man’s head, you took the thirty dollars he got for Henry, plus more money he got for his charcoal, but Bella took it. “It’s for housing and training, dear,” she told you. “All the girls have to pay, but lookin’ at you I can tell you’ll be earnin’ your keep a right fast.” This was when you learned what a whorehouse was.

You learned a lot more here than the camp. You learned that there were men who pay money to pretty girls who let them put their things in them. You learned that if a girl squirted vinegar in herself after a man put his thing in you, then you sometimes wouldn’t have a baby. You learned there was a thing called an abortion that would kill a baby growing inside of you, and lots of girls did this because they could make more money at the whorehouse. There was a doctor in town who could this for a girl but it had to be a secret because it was against the law.

You also learned that the town wasn’t called Branch Landing anymore; it was called Gast, after a tall man in nice clothes who brought lots of money to the town. Most of the men who came to Bella’s worked for Mr. Gast, and they got paid lots of money because they were building a railroad for him. Mr. Gast never came to Bella’s whorehouse, though, but he did build it, so his men would have a place to put their things in girls.

The other girls didn’t like you, and one day you learned why. “It’s ’cos you suck better,” one of the rail workers told her one night after she’d done just that for two dollars. “And, shee-it, girl, you’re the best-lookin’ whore in this place.” You figured that was a compliment, and it must be true because you seemed to make more money than the other girls. Some men paid extra for…other things, like putting it in your bottom. One time a nutty man with a beard even paid you to let him squirt his jism on your feet, and he paid three dollars! But the funniest one was a little man weirder-looking than the German. He had a nose made of gold and wore a red hat that looked stupid, and he paid to watch you move your bowels into a bucket. That’s when it came to your mind that lots and lots of men were really weird.

Then there were other men who were bad…



“You take him, bitch,” Jane snaps, glaring at you. “You the only whore here that likes suckin’ it. So go suck his.”

“Fuck you!”

You go to hit her but she runs away.

“Yeah, you best run! Ain’t no man wanna pay you with two black eyes’n I’ll knock the rest’a your teeth out to boot!”

“That’s enough’a that, Harriet,” Bella orders from the velvet couch. She was eating sugar balls from the baker’s.

“Is it that man I keep hearin’ ’bout?”

Bella just raises her brows and keeps eating.

“The one that’s so mean?”

Bella licks her chubby fingers. “Oh, Mr. Morris is a good customer, and he pays good. He just gets a little rough sometimes, but you’ll be all right. You’re a tough girl, ’cos that’s how I taught ya.”

“I don’t want him,” you declare.

Bella lurches up and slaps you hard across the face. “Do as you’re told, girl. Don’t get high’n mighty just ’cos you’re the favorite ’round here. I made you, remember? You were eatin’ grubs’n drinkin’ creek water when I brung you in. And I remember that day well, hon, how you were all covered with soot. I never told that to no one, even after I heard ’bout that charcoaler they found in the ash pile near ’Bethstown.”

You wilt.

“Am I gonna get any more sass out’a ya?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I need my girls to be reliable. Bunch of Mr. Gast’s rail men come back a few days ago so’s we’ll be busy. I need girls who wanna work, ya hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So get in there’n take care’a Mr. Morris.” Then she shoots you a big, jolly smile. “He’ll probably give ya five dollars, and he’ll only last five seconds!”

You share a phony laugh, then turn for the waiting parlor. But as you’re walking you glance in the pantry and notice Teeta, who’s mulatto. She’s dipping a tin cup into the spring barrel, and she’s only got one hand. “Mr. Gast’s railroad’s done is what I heard,” she says.

“Really?”

“They’se all comin’ back over the next few days, so we’se’ll be gettin’ lots of business.”

“Oh. Good.”

“Some’s back now.”

“I know. Bella told me.”

The mulatto girl’s eyes widened with something scary. “I heared they killed all the slaves when they was done. Near a hunnert of ’em. In Maxon.”

“That can’t be true,” you say.

“Hope it ain’t.”

“We hear things all the time that ain’t true. Like the Yankees gettin’ close. Our boys whup ’em anytime they get near Chattanooga. So don’t believe most’a what’cha hear, Teeta.”

The girl smiles a little, then walks away after taking down a jar of vinegar. But now that she’s gone you can see the calendar on the wall. You notice that it’s May 3, 1862.

“Aw, yeah, I done heard about you,” the voice seems to grind out of the air when you enter the sitting parlor. “‘S’bout time I had me a crack at’cha.”

You smile and bat your eyes, reeling in a sudden nausea. The man sits spread-legged in pants of tent canvas and wears a raggy hat. Several gold teeth interspersed with rotten ones sparkle.

“We’se finally back. Five years’a hard work’n for the last four I ain’t been back home but once a month. To top it off me’n some of the boys’ve been workin’ up the house past few days, diggin’ and such. I need me some relaxation.” He peers closer. “You ain’t even been workin’ fer Bella a year, have ya?”

“About that, sir.” You take his roughened hand and lead him through the crimson curtains to the hallway. You immediately notice that his hands are gritty with earth.

“And that’s a mighty fine ass on ya.”

You can’t think of any reply. One of his hands claws your bottom when you lead him into your room. A short, scruffy beard makes his face indescribable, but you notice…something—

Maybe it’s just the way the light is in the room, but his eyes look yellow, like a piss stain on a white bedsheet.

Even before the door closes, his hands are up your dress yanking down your linens. Fingers like file stones tweeze the tender folds between your legs.

“Yeah, that’s real nice, too…”

Finally you speak, as he’s bending you over the daybed: “Puh-pardon me, sir, you gotta—you gotta tell me what’cha want’n then pay me first—”

A ten-dollar gold piece hits the floor, spins like a top, and lands tails. Part of you could squeal with delight—you’ve never been paid that much for just one go with a man, but then your belly continues to sink because you know that this man Morris will make you earn it. You can’t help but notice the very long knife and scabbard on his hip.

“Sir, thank you—”

A knuckled fist hits you in the back of the head. “Shut up,” he says, and continues to fiddle with your sex like a baker working dough. His pants are already down…

You can’t even think about the thing he does to you. Oh, God, please, you beg over and over. Let him be done soon…

A half hour later, you fall back on the floor.

“There, that weren’t so bad, was it, sugar?”

You look up through misting eyes and see him sitting on the couch, his trousers still unfastened. The taste in your mouth combines with the smell coming off your lips. It’s so foul it seems evil, and just as bad is the malodor wafting off his exposed groin. On the couch arm lay a pretty cotton smock you’ve been sewing; it’s about half complete. You could howl when he picks it up and wipes himself off with it, then drops it to the floor. He winks at you, and lights a long, thin cigar that smells like burning garbage.

“Come on up here, pretty girl. I need my money’s worth.”

You remember the ten-dollar piece, and tell yourself that this will be worth it.

“I ain’t got much more time,” he says rather distantly now.

You reluctantly sit next to him. “Pardon me, sir?”

His yellow eyes stare into space, but then he smiles again. “Gotta get back to the house a right quick. One more thing I gotta do fer Mr. Gast. He’s already gone, but he trusts me’n a few others to do what he wants.”

“He’s left town again? I heard he just got back…”

“See, only important men are invited to do his bidding. Men like me.” His yellow gaze slowly turns to you. “Do you believe that? Do you believe that I am an important man?”

He sounds so strange now. You know you must ingratiate him. “Oh, yes, sir, I do, very much so. I understand that you are one of Mr. Gast’s most important foremen.”

“Yes…” He nods. “Yes, that is true.” Then his eyes focus. “Do you like me? What I mean is, do you enjoy my company?”

You shiver. “Oh, yes, sir. You’re a very handsome and rugged gentleman.”

“Now, I realize that I just put you through the wringer a mite hard. So you’ve probably had enough. Right?”

You’re not sure how to figure him. You don’t know what to say. You know he’s very, very violent. “Only if you feel you’ve had your money’s worth, sir…”

He blinks. “Hmm. Yes. And I suppose I have. But…you just said that you enjoy my company…”

It’s getting too strange. You don’t like it at all.

“So…I’ll tell you what. I’ll leave it up to you. If you’d like me to stay a bit longer, then I will. Or’n if you’d rather I leave now, then I’ll leave.”

He’s plotting something, you can feel it. You know that your next response is very, very important. If I ask him to leave, then I just know he’ll beat me’n take the ten-dollar piece with him…

“Well, sir, I would like it if you stayed…a bit longer…”

The man shrugs, then grins. “Whatever you say, honey.” And then—

smack!

—the web of his hand catches your throat and slams you off the couch to the floor. He moves in a blur and pins you down. He’s got one knee across your throat and the other on your belly.

“I’m always one to oblige the request of a lady,” he says, and then he laughs so hard and dark that you think it’s more like a caterwaul from hell. “Don’t’cha move, now,” he warns, “less’n I might have to break your windpipe.” So you lie perfectly still, breathing fiercely through your nose as the pressure of his knee on your throat increases. Then—

swish!

He slides that long knife out of the scabbard. “I skinned me a lotta women with this, and cut off a lotta ears’n tits. Mostly Injuns’n creek people. You work hard as me, you need some sport.” The tip of the blade tickles up your thigh. “Does this scare you?”

“Yes, it does, sir.” You choke out the words.

“I like a honest gal,” he says, then laughs and puts the knife back in the scabbard. “Don’t’cha worry none—you’re too pretty to cut. But I’ll be cuttin’ on someone else with it real soon. Now…Let’s see this apple-dumplin’ cart,” he says and jacks down the top of your ruffled blouse. The terror makes your breasts quiver. His hand plays with one; then his fingers begin to pinch the nipple. You look up through slits for eyes and see his cigar smoke ringing his head like an unholy aura.

“Let me put a little spark in your day, huh, pretty girl?” His forefinger and thumb begin to vise the tip of your nipple until it hurts. Then, “What we got here—ahh, perfect,” but you can’t see what he’s reaching for, and then, “Look it. Think this’ll liven ya up?”

With his other hand, you see now, he’d taken a long sewing needle out of the pincushion on the end table.

“Oh, my God, please, Mr. Morris, I’m beggin’ you not to—”

He sticks the needle directly into the tweezed tip of your nipple, and the sound that comes out of your throat is like an animal’s shriek. Your body bucks beneath his weight as you watch the entire two-inch-plus needle disappear into your breast.

The shriek reels out of your throat like ribbon. “What?” he asks. “Does that hurt? Awwwwwwwww…I’m sorry.”

He removes the needle, and your body goes limp.

“See, some gals like a little spark…but I guess you ain’t one of ’em.”

You’re breathing so fast you can barely understand him. His face looks blurred through your tears.

“Guess I’ll be on my way. I done told ya. Got a chore or two up the house…”

Please, leave! Please, please, please!

But if he’s leaving…why does he still have the end of your nipple pinched between his fingers?

One last grin and he says, “Honey, aren’t ya glad ya asked me to stay?” And then he puts the lit end of the cigar to your nipple and begins to puff.

You drown in the instantaneous wave of pain, and then your mind turns black.



The room is darker when you wake up. Your left nipple burns in a slow, thudding pain. It doesn’t take you long to remember what happened.

“At least he’s gone,” you whisper in relief.

The end of your nipple is inflamed beneath a scab. You carefully re-cover your breasts and collect yourself, then crawl around the couch to where he’d dropped your ten-dollar gold piece.

It’s not there now.

You bolt out of the room. You haven’t felt this enraged since the time the German man sold your baby. When you storm into the parlor, Bella looks up surprised from a plate of chocolates.

“Why…Harriet! What—”

“That shitty man burned my nipple and stole my money!” you wail. “Do you have a gun I can borrow?”

“Calm down, dear! My, oh my, you ain’t gonna be shootin’ no one. Now just you sit down and—”

“No! I’m gettin’ my money!”

“Harriet? Honey? Listen now. You just have to accept that these things happen to a gal in this line sometimes. Sometimes we get took advantage of—”

“I earned that money and I’m going to get it!” you bark.

“Settle down! You just leave that Mr. Morris alone, girl! He’s crazy! Lotta them rail men are awful rough with the girls, but he’s the worst. He’ll kill ya—”

“He can try!” you scream and tromp out of the house.

Bella calls after you but you don’t listen. You’re running up the hill…

To the Gast House.

Your rage sends you running up but then you begin to slow down and eventually stop, because that’s when you notice the man hanging by his neck from the biggest tree in the front yard.

The rope creaks as the well-dressed corpse turns very slowly. You see that it’s Mr. Gast.

My…God…

You keep stepping back, because it almost seems like the corpse turned by a will of its own, to look at you. Mr. Gast’s face is pressed with a dead grin, and you can see yellow in the slits of his eyelids. The scariest thought sends a chill up your back: that those yellow eyes will fly open and he’ll begin to laugh…

The lowering sun covers the yard with dark molten light. You hear a snuffling and notice several stray dogs nosing through some bushes. A brief shadow crosses your face and you look up, still stepping backward, and see a lone raven gliding silently overhead.

“Ohhh!” you yelp, and turn just before you’d fall. You’d been stepping back farther from the corpse, and now you see what you’d almost fallen in: a hole.

A deep trench had been dug into the yard, six feet long and probably six deep. A grave? you wonder. But you know the hole was recently dug because the turned earth is fresh, and several shovels are lying around. You remember the fresh dirt on Mr. Morris’s hands and his reference to “diggin’.” Could he have been the one who’d dug the hole?

“Jumpin’ Jesus!” a voice cracks like a pistol shot. “Mr. Gast has up’n hung hisself!”

“Oh, my holy shee-it!” booms another.

“Looks like he’s been hangin’ a few days…”

Several townsmen are running for the house, and you see that one is the marshal. He glares at you and points. “You! You see what happened here?”

“Nuh-no, sir…”

“What’s that hole dug there?”

“I don’t rightly know, Marshal Braden…”

Something like recognition flashes. “You one’a Bella’s whores, ain’t ya?”

“Yes, sir,” you speak right up. “And I come up here ’cos a man inside owes me money.”

“Forget about your money and come help us!” he orders, so you do as you’re told.

You follow the two men into the house. “Ain’t no one seen his wife or kids for several days. Girl, you check upstairs, and we’ll check—” But the other man was already groaning.

“Marshal, in here. You ain’t gonna believe this…”

In the study two men are sitting in brass-studded armchairs. They’re both grinning but not moving.

“It’s Mr. Morris,” you gasp.

In his hand is the long knife you saw at Bella’s, and it’s clear what he’d used it for: to cut his own throat from ear to ear. A gush of blood had run down his chest to pool on the floor.

The other man is older, and has a long mustache. Half the side of his head is gone. A pistol dangles from his fingers.

“What in God’s name happened here?” the marshal mutters.

“Looks like they both kilt themselves, like Mr. Gast…”

“We gotta find Mrs. Gast and them two kids’a theirs. And where’s that damn maid?” The marshal points to you again. “Upstairs! Give a shout if ya find anything,” he says, and then both men stomp through the room toward the back of the house.

But you stay to stare at Mr. Morris. Part of you wants to rummage through his pockets to retrieve your money but you know you can’t do that. You know that if you did, he’d reach up and grab you.

So you scurry back to the foyer and go up the stairs. The first thing you notice are dirt tracks going up. On the landing you falter—your heart is pattering—because there’s something about the silence that terrifies you even worse than when you watched the Indians killing your mother.

The tracks lead to a door in the middle of the stair hall. You try the knob but it’s locked.

Maybe this one. The door clicks when you turn the knob.

You don’t scream. Instead a pressure jolts in your chest and your heart stops for a moment, but you steel yourself to remain composed. Another of Mr. Gast’s rail men lay dead. You don’t know his name but you’ve seen him at Bella’s. It’s a bath closet that you’ve entered, a fancy one that even has a wooden commode.

A hip bath sits on a heavy wooden table, water still in it. You notice that the dead man’s hair and face are sopping wet, but only after you see his trousers open, and there’s a big splotch of dried blood there.

Something in your mind that’s not really your will makes you lift the wooden lid on the commode cabinet. You look in and see the man’s thing floating in the chamber pot water.

You back out of the room. You pass the locked door and move to the one next to it.

When you open it, you’re knocked down.

Oh! Lord! What IS that?

It’s not a person who pushed you to the floor, it’s the stench that plowed out of the room. It’s an awful hot rotten smell mixed with another stench like latrine dirt on a sweltering day.

You pick yourself up and look into the room—

—and that’s when you scream a hundred times louder than when Mr. Morris was pushing the sewing needle into the tip of your nipple.

You’re looking down at a naked woman dead for days, spread-eagled on a blood-caked bed. A large ax had been dropped right between her legs.

Just before you fall backward, you think you noticed one more thing: A bloody fetus on the floor, but it’s tiny, not much bigger than a field mouse. It looks like someone had squashed it under their shoe.

Footsteps thunk up the stairs, and now you think you also hear a dog barking.

The second man gags, “In the name of—What’s that stench? Piss?”

“What the hell—” The marshal looks into the room.

The other man helps you up, but looks like he wants to throw up over the stair-hall rail. They all got enough of a look.

“Guess we done found Mrs. Gast…”

“somethin’ pure evil’s goin’ on in this place.” He jerks his head. “Where’s that dog barkin’?”

The other man leaves you to lean against the rail. “This door here.”

You bring a hand to your chest. “It’s locked…”

Ka-KRACK!

His booted foot implodes the door. More meaty rotten stench gusts into the hall, so dense it’s like a cloud, and a skinny mud-tan mutt tears out of the room and disappears down the stairs. But the man is already on his knees and then he sidles over. He’s passed out.

The marshal looks in the room but when he turns back to you it’s with a face leeched of all color, and though it can’t be true you could swear that in the time it took him to look into that room, some of his hair turned gray.

He puts his hand across your eyes and turns you around. “You get out’a this house, girl. You get out right now, and don’t come back.”

“But, sir, what’s in the—”

“You get out now! You run to the town square’n ring the bell and tell every man to get on up here to help me.”

“But—”

“Go!” He shoves you toward the steps. You stumble down the staircase. You can hear him weeping, “God, protect us, my dear God, protect us…”

Downstairs, the spacious foyer seems smaller now, and very dark.

When you turn, your heart freezes again and you almost scream.

There’s a man sitting at a desk, scribbling. He looks up at you as if irritated.

“Who are you, child?” a creaky voice asks.

“Harriet…”

“Oh, yes. The whore…” He gets back to scribbling. You recognize him a moment later from the stupid red hat and metal nose: one of Mr. Gast’s employees, who once paid to watch you shit.

“You should leave here,” he mutters without looking at you. “Even in the grievous sin of your whoredom, you are more blessed than anyone to ever set foot here.”

You don’t understand him at all.

He stands up at the desk. In his hand is a sheaf of oblong papers, which he slips into one of the desk’s many letter slots. “I won’t be needing these anymore”—his tiny eyes scan the dark room—“just as this place will no longer be needing me.”

Now his hand is extending, his palm full of gold coins. “Take this. I’ll write you a receipt.”

Your mouth hangs open as you shake your head no.

His fingers pluck up one coin. “At least take this ten-dollar piece. It belongs to you, does it not?”

“No…”

“My time here is at an end, and so is yours.” He removes his false nose to reveal gnawed holes. “Say your prayers, fornicatress. You’ve much to be grateful for. You will live a long, long life, and you will have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and you will die on the day before Trotsky is murdered.”

Your stare gapes. “What?”

He walks away into a side hall.

It’s as if the house ejects you; you nearly fall down the front steps. Mr. Gast’s corpse has turned on the rope again, to face your exit. You stumble down the path, exhausted by your witness. Before you begin to run, you see the last edge of the sun melting over the distant cotton and soya fields, backlighting so many skulls on sticks, and you also see the tan mutt that escaped the room upstairs humping the other stray dogs in the yard, and that’s when you feel as if Lucifer himself has just blown you a kiss…

You fall to your—


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