Daemon of the Dark Wood Page 17

  She rocked forward, clutching a hand to her old dugs and squinting behind her bifocals for a clearer look. Yes, it was Wilbur. There was no mistaking his noble homeliness or the kindness shining in his eyes.

  “You come to take me home?” A mournful groan escaped her lips. “Oh, sugar, I can’t go just yet. I do want to, but …” She had to pause to catch her breath. “I got something I have to do first. Then I’ll come directly. Hear?”

  Wilbur’s ghost shimmered, guttering like a lanky candle-flame above the porch steps.

  Liza’s heartbeats lost some of their frightening force. She breathed a little easier, knowing her time on earth wasn’t quite over. She reached out with a gnarled hand and said, “Please? Touch me, Wilbur. Before you go.”

  The specter extended his long fingers and touched Liza’s hand. A current of cool warmth made her fingers tingle. Bittersweet memories flooded her consciousness, a profound sense of nostalgia gilded with sensual tensions she’d thought she would never feel again. Touching death, she knew her nine decades of life were but a brief tick of Heaven’s cosmic clock, and she was deeply aggrieved that she and her beloved husband couldn’t have had a larger allotment of time together.

  Wilbur withdrew his spectral hand. His face was a sad ghost-mask of regret.

  “Wait for me,” said Liza, sobbing. “I’ll be coming soon.”

  Her late husband withdrew and disappeared into the fog.

  Three dark shapes crouched like unmoving gargoyles in the front yard and watched her with luminous eyes.

  * * * *

  Judy Lynn Bowen had to use the cordless phone to call Josh because she’d lost her cell phone the night she hit the deer and met him—the dark god of the mountains.

  She sucked hungrily on her cigarette, the ninth from the fresh pack of Virginia Slims she was chain-smoking her way through, greedily drawing the smoke into her lungs as if it could satisfy the intense lust that burned within her.

  But of course it couldn’t. Tobacco was a poor substitute for what she really craved. Which was why she was phoning her fiancé at so early an hour to tell him she had returned to the world.

  Her mother had wanted to take Judy Lynn home with her, but Judy Lynn assured her that she would be fine at her own home, so her mother reluctantly dropped her off at the rented house in Widow’s Ridge. Judy Lynn intended to feed her fierce appetite as soon as possible, and she didn’t want to have to worry about the ruckus she might raise in her enthusiastic feasting.

  Josh answered his cell, his voice slack with sleep. “Hello?”

  “Hey, baby, it’s me.”

  “Judy Lynn! Thank God! Where—”

  “I’m home. I need you to come over. Right now. I need you, Josh. I need you so bad.” She touched her bare breast, pinching the taut nipple.

  “What time is it? Six? Where’ve you been? Are you okay?”

  “I will be when you get here. Hurry, baby. I’m dying for you to touch me.”

  “I’m on the way.”

  She hung up, stubbed out the Slim and fired another one. Then she lay back into the pile of pillows, spread her legs and ran her fingers between the sodden lips of her sex. She shuddered pleasurably. She sucked down more smoke. She spread her thighs wider, slipping her fingers deeper.

  “Hurry, you prick,” she said, “I can’t wait much longer.”

  She set the cigarette in the ashtray so she could use both hands for pleasuring herself. As good as one hand felt, it wasn’t enough. Nor would two hands be. Neither would Josh be. He was a good lover, but she was different now. She’d been touched by a pagan devil, and that touch had awakened feelings she never knew she had. Feelings she was only just beginning to understand.

  She shut her eyes and the mouth of the mountain cave opened to her. She entered into its glowing darkness and fell on her knees before him. He stamped his hooves like a horse straining at the bit. His humongous erection quivered just above her head and she got the crazy idea that he was going to knight her with his throbbing wand and initiate her into his royal court. She gazed up into his eyes but quickly looked away, instinctively knowing that if she looked too long into those oily black orbs she would surely go mad. After a momentary relapse into the terror she’d felt when she first heard his shrieking summons, she bravely parted her lips and drank the sweet blood-wine from his engorged fount. The effect was immediate. A luminous river of lust flowed through her, around her, and then she was riding those wine-dark rapids through a timeless land of dark miracles, a realm inhabited by ancient gods and servile humans. The river spat her onto the shore and she found herself stumbling into a circle of naked revelers, wild women capering around a great roaring fire. She danced with them as they whooped and stomped, shaking primitive weapons at the night sky. Bare breasts bouncing, they danced themselves into a frenzy of unspeakable lust. Then he came out of the fire and took them one by one, ravaging them with his tireless member, savagely plundering them until they cried mercy. Then, having no mercy, he took them again with his great glistening staff.

  She rode the swollen waves of her orgasm back to the reality of the bedroom and opened her eyes. The cigarette in the ashtray’s groove had burned down to the filter and gone out. The first faint light of dawn nuzzled softly against the windows. She floated on a magical bed that she hoped would provide conveyance from the torture of covetous longing.

  Josh stood at the foot of the bed, his boyish face a mask of shock at seeing his betrothed asprawl on the twisted bedcovers, her swollen labial folds gleaming with silvery mucus.

  “Jesus Christ, Judy Lynn. Couldn’t you wait for me?”

  “Fuck me, Josh. Fuck me harder than you ever have.”

  He grinned uncertainly. “What the hell’s got into you?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. C’mere, stud.” She cocked her knees, slipped the backs of her wrists along her inner thighs and waggled her fingers in welcome.

  He unsnapped his jeans and stepped out of them. He pushed his jockey shorts down his long legs and then kicked them into the air, laughing.

  He crawled onto the bed and let her slender beckoning fingers guide him to the core of her outrageous craving.

  He rode her with abandon until he realized it was she who was riding him from below, humping him with frightening violence. When he faltered, she raked his buttocks with her fingernails, drawing trickles of blood. When he tried to pull away, she held him in place by wrapping her legs about his hips and squeezing him with strength that bordered on superhuman.

  Her rushing bloodstream carried the echo of the pagan god’s shriek, and it entranced her anew. She dug her nails deep into her lover’s taut ass cheeks and he cried out in protest. His pain and his sudden terror fanned the flames of her volcanic passions, and when they finally erupted she sank her teeth into the pliable flesh of his throat and drank deeply of his arterial ejaculations.

  He struggled desperately for his life, thrashing between her muscular thighs, but to no avail; she’d depleted too much of his energies. Her vice-like leverage was too precise, her strength insurmountable. His final convulsions brought Judy Lynn to orgasm.

  When he was dead, she released him, rolled his slack carcass off her, took his wilted cock in her mouth and chewed it off at its root.

  Chapter Nineteen

  * * *

  The small caravan of cars and pickup trucks followed the police cruiser up the mountain road; a second cruiser brought up the snaking motorcade’s rear. Blue lights flashed from the racks atop both official vehicles and lit the convoy at both ends, lending the illuminated fog a stroboscopic pulse of veinal blue.

  The lead cruiser pulled to the side of the blacktop and parked on the shoulder in front of a Watch For Falling Rocks sign. The trailing vehicles followed suit and parked along the side of the road.

  Rourke stepped out of the lead cruiser and waited for the others to disembark. Knott stood beside him, arms habitually folded across his chest. Neither man spoke.

  Low-hanging clouds
blanketed the mountain and leached much of the color from the chilly dawn. Though it was June, the mountainous elevation would keep summer’s heat in check until later in the morning, when the cloud cover would burn off and the hills would turn as steamy as the lowlands.

  Headlights winked out. Car doors creaked and slammed. Male voices tested the fog-muffled air with short bursts of extraneous comment and glib witticisms. Cigarette lighters made firefly flashes in the fog. Someone coughed and spat. Someone farted, drawing a few hoots and catcalls.

  The men moved tentatively toward Rourke, who pointed at a leafless maple tree that stood in a small clearing above the road and said, “Form up by that dead tree and keep your voices down.”

  Rourke strode across the road and climbed a low embankment to the clearing. Knott trailed after him. A few minutes later all the men who would make up the search party had assembled themselves in a loose rank facing Rourke, who stood in a wide stance with the dead tree at his back. A few of the men had rifles, a couple had shotguns and one had a machete. Most were unarmed.

  “All right,” Rourke said, holding up his arms to catch their undivided attention. “You know why we’re here, so knock off the grab-ass and get serious. Everybody with a gun step forward.”

  Six men moved forward, forming a provisional front rank.

  “You six will form a wide skirmish line and move up the mountain. Nobody should be walking in front of you. The rest of you will stay well behind the guns. I don’t want anybody catching a bullet in his ass. Keep about a twenty-yard interval between you and the men to your left and right as we sweep up the hill. We’re looking for a cave where the missing women may be stashed. If you run into a bad guy, we want him alive, so don’t get trigger happy.”

  “I don’t see how we can find anything in this fog,” someone said.

  One of the volunteer firemen said, “I’ve been all over this mountain and I never came across a cave.”

  Rourke said, “That’s why we have to do a thorough search. If there is a cave, it’ll be hard to see.”

  “Where’s Dudley’s dog?” another man asked. “He can sniff out anydamn-body.”

  “There he comes now,” said Travis Tate, pointing down at a black SUV coming up the road.

  “Hell, I didn’t know the mutt could drive,” said Dave Deets, part-time deputy and perennial clown.

  “Deputy Rourke, is it true that you got the tip about women held captive in a cave from an escaped abductee?” The inquirer was Arvin Sheets, editor of The Dogwood Weekly. He nervously rubbed a hand over his bald head as if he were polishing a beloved bowling ball.

  “Abductee? Hey now, nobody told me we was huntin’ aliens,” Deets quipped.

  “Arvin, are you here to help with the search or as just a reporter?” asked Rourke.

  “Both of the above. Though I take umbrage at your ‘just a reporter’ remark.”

  “Yes, it’s true, Arvin,” Rourke said with an edge of warning in his voice, “but I’m not at liberty to make her name public.”

  Sheets scowled, then put away his notepad and pen. As an afterthought, he said, “Well, maybe you can tell me this. Is Dr. Knott here for some on-the-scene counseling in case we find the missing women?”

  “This is not a damn press conference, Arvin,” said Rourke, resting his hands on his hips. “I don’t have time to field your questions. I’m trying to field a search party.”

  With his tracking dog leading the way on a short leash, Dudley Wallace came up the embankment.

  Rourke said, “No smoking beyond this point. Dudley’s dog has a sensitive sniffer, so put out your smokes.”

  With minimal grumbling, the smokers field-stripped their butts.

  “The dog goes up first so we won’t contaminate the scent-trail,” Rourke went on. “The weather’s in our favor. The sun should burn off this fog pretty soon but until it does, keep your eyes extra sharp.”

  Dudley Wallace approached Rourke and greeted him with a nod. He said, “Sit, Pogo,” and the German Shepherd immediately obeyed his master and sat beside Dudley’s right heel, tongue lolling.

  Rourke reached into his pants pocket and brought out the small swatch of the hospital gown Judy Lynn had been wearing in the ER. He had cut off a section of the gown’s sleeve, figuring the lingering scent of Judy Lynn’s armpit would be enough to put the dog on the scent-trail she’d left when she came down the mountain to the road.

  He handed the fragment of cloth to Dudley and said, “This has the girl’s scent. Her back trail should lead to the cave where the women are supposed to be.”

  “So we’re not looking for the girl,” said Dudley.

  “No, she’s safe at home. She escaped, came down the mountain and flagged a ride.”

  “Then that’s where Pogo should start.”

  Knott said, “I can show you the spot. I was the ride she flagged down.”

  Dudley and the dog accompanied Knott down to the blacktop. When they were in front of the Falling Rocks sign, Dudley held the gown fragment under Pogo’s nose and said, “Find!”

  The dog immediately set to the task, sniffing the ground as he pulled his master along with the leash. After less than a minute of scent-searching, Pogo obviously had the trail and started back up the mountainside with Dudley in tow. Man and dog circumvented the gathering of men in the clearing and made a beeline into the trees above them.

  “All right,” Rourke said to his search party of sixteen men, “front rank move out. And keep your intervals.”

  Knott rejoined Rourke and they hastened after Dudley and Pogo, staying close behind the skirmish line of armed men.

  “And a dog shall lead them,” muttered Knott.

  “What’s that?” Rourke looked askance at the doctor.

  “A bunch of grown men following a dog. Seems a little strange, that’s all.”

  “Strange is the name of the game,” Rourke said with a brittle laugh.

  Chapter Twenty

  * * *

  Julie sat lotus fashion at the sculpted feet of a lofty stone angel. The marble pedestal beneath her rump was hard and cool, but it wasn’t all that uncomfortable to one accustomed as she was to the discipline of meditation. Though she’d been a little scared in coming here alone, now that she was here she felt as if the small fog-kissed army of angels would protect her from the thing that had called her out last night. Though made only of stone, they were nevertheless angels, and thus should afford her some measure of protection in the same way a crucifix protects one from evil; such symbols had power if you believed in them. And she did. She had to. Otherwise, last night’s terror would still be with her and she wouldn’t have been able to set foot out of the apartment to come here in search of her guardian angel and for some semblance of security and peace of mind.

  “Michael? Are you here?” Her voice echoed hollowly within the hedges and ricocheted redundantly off the garden of rocks and statuary, changing its timbre so much as it traveled its erratic course that it was scarcely recognizable as her own. “Please answer me. Give me a sign. Michael, please? I need you.” Treble-edged echoes haunted her voice.

  Here among the angels, Julie found it a little easier to disbelieve her earlier suspicion that something dark and inhuman was growing inside her, yet she needed reassurance from Michael.

  But her guardian kept his stubborn silence, leaving her to face her fears alone.

  “You shouldn’t be out here by yourself. Not after last night.”

  She looked around to see Angela walking toward her in a man’s blue-and-gray flannel shirt, bare-legged below the long shirttails. Julie patted her chest as if to quiet her startled heart. “You scared me.”

  “Sorry. I woke up and you were gone. You should’ve left a note.”

  “Sorry.”

  “We’re a sorry pair, aren’t we.” Angela smiled as she sat beside her on the pedestal. She looked warily up at the angel towering over them, fingered the top button of her shirt and said, “Stop staring at my tits, you stone-faced pervert
.”

  Julie laughed. Then she planted a kiss on Angela’s cheek. “I think you’re going to have to be my guardian angel since Michael’s derelict in his duties. Would you?”

  “Thought you’d never ask.” Angela slipped her arm around Julie’s back. “Guardian Angela, at your service.”

  “You saved my ass last night.”

  “That’s ’cause I love that pretty little ass.”

  “I know. And I love you too. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “I do. You’d get your tit in the wringer and your ass in a sling. Just for starters.”

  “And you’ll save me from myself.” Julie said with skeptical inflection.

  “Absolutely.”

  She placed a hand on Angela’s bare thigh and caressed the soft stubble. “Ange, what did you see last night?”

  “Same thing you did.”

  “Then you saw the devil. ’Cause that’s what I saw. Sure as hell.”

  “That was your over-developed imagination, babe. All I saw was a shape in the rain.”

  “You must’ve seen more than that or you wouldn’t have shot at it.”

  “I shot at it because of that fucking noise it was making. That screaming cry. Whatever makes a sound like that has to be dangerous.”

  “Then you really didn’t get a good look at it.”

  “No, and I didn’t want to either.”

  “It was the devil.”

  “There’s no such thing, Jools.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “Because I’m not a rightwing Christian moron. I think maybe you should switch to writing romance or mystery. All this horror crap is warping your mind.”

  “That’s a mean thing to say. The Christian thing too …”

  Angela shrugged. “I’m just saying …”

  Julie jumped up and stalked off.

  Angela went after her. “Hey, wait up. Don’t be such a pussy.”

  “Leave me alone, dyke.”

  Angela caught up and put her hand on Julie’s shoulder, and Julie rounded on her, drew back a fist and threw it at Angela’s face. Angela blocked the punch with her forearm and stepped backward. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?”