This woman belongs to the man. She has stood by him as he hurt her with hot water and then with cold. She has hit her, held a gun to her head.
She takes the stairs three at a time and when she rams her shoulder into the woman's midsection, lifts her up and slams her down into the dirt she howls in pain. The Woman kneels and straddles her. She waves her arms trying to hit her or push her away and she bats them off like pests, like insects, like flies.
She is shaking her head and shouting. Her eyes are wide. The Woman digs her thumb and forefinger into those eyes and they pop like pits from ripe fruit and roll across her cheeks. She leans down and quickly bolts first one and then the other. Then her teeth find the soft flesh of her cheek.
The man's woman is no longer shouting now. She is making choking sounds as though it were she and not the Woman doing the eating.
The Woman chews, swallows, leans down and drinks from the sweet seep and spurt of blood. She turns the head beneath her hand, which offers no resistance - she has seen this many times before with the grievously wounded, it is almost like a kind of sleep - and bites deep into the other cheek.
She glances up as she chews and sees a thresher machine leaning against the side of the house, one of its blades propped upright beside it. She finishes chewing and sucks the blood from this cheek too. Then she hoists the woman up onto her shoulder and walks to the house.
She tosses her high up onto the steps. Hears her backbone crack against them and sees her head thump down like a log on a woodpile and loll off to one side.
She picks up the blade and runs her finger up and down.
It lacks a proper edge but it will do.
Peg hears her mother's shouts Chris!Peg!please!help!help! Chris!Peg!please!help!help! and then hears no more and even the dogs have abruptly stopped but it is as though she were tranced there standing in the cellar, she knows she should try to help her mother but she cannot, she's rooted there - and what she feels most strongly is a sense of and then hears no more and even the dogs have abruptly stopped but it is as though she were tranced there standing in the cellar, she knows she should try to help her mother but she cannot, she's rooted there - and what she feels most strongly is a sense of safety safety though that makes no sense to her at all. though that makes no sense to her at all.
Safety. And calm. Though there's a wild woman loose. Safety.
Strange.
And then she thinks god! Darleen! god! Darleen! and realizes her little sister's utter and realizes her little sister's utter lack lack of safety - her vulnerability to everybody concerned dashes the calm, fills her with terror suddenly and breaks the spell. of safety - her vulnerability to everybody concerned dashes the calm, fills her with terror suddenly and breaks the spell.
She runs up the stairs and sees that the sun is setting, her house bathed in a warm yellow-orange light, sees her mother's broken body on the stairs in that same soft glow, steps over and around it and hurries inside, calling her sister's name.
THIRTY FOUR.
Cleek is rapt.
He has seen the dogs ravage a raccoon felled from a tree at night under the beams of his and his buddies' flashlights but never anything like this. Nor has he ever seen his daughter at work. If anything she's the most vicious of the four. She's digging teeth and bloody hands into the remains of the teacher's right breast all the way down to the exposed ribs. Agnes is at her side tearing into the woman's haunch while George and Lily have an arm and leg respectively chewed to the bone.
They're working as a team.
The teacher's face is gone. Her ears are gone. Her cunt and most of her ass are gone.
The dogs are sloppy eaters. There are bits of her scattered everywhere.
"Doesn't even look real anymore," Brian says, "does it, dad."
He's every bit as engaged as Cleek is.
"Does to me," he says.
He doesn't know particularly what he means by that but it has the ring of truth so he says it again.
"Does to me."
The barn door slams open and at first he doesn't believe what he's seeing. His mind is playing tricks on him. She's standing in the waning sunlight. There's blood smeared all along her face and neck and hands and staining Belle's baby-blue dress. She's holding something a foot and a half long, wide and flat.
"Jesus wept," he says.
Peg glances out the window. Sees the woman striding across the yard toward the barn, taking her time, in no rush at all. Moving away from the house, which is very good. Moving away from the house, which is very good. The woman's back is straight. There's an almost sensuous sway to her hips. Peg thinks of cats. Big golden cats. The woman's back is straight. There's an almost sensuous sway to her hips. Peg thinks of cats. Big golden cats.
She holds Darleen by the hand while with the other hand she's searching through the open drawer for a spare set of keys to the Escalade but all she finds are the spares to her mother's Toyota which are no good to her at all. The Toyota's at the shop. Her father's got the keys to the fucking Escalade in his pocket of course and there are no fucking spares in the drawer.
"Momma!" says Darleen. "I want Momma!"
No you don't, she thinks. Not anymore.
You want me.
The Woman watches the man take an involuntary step back and go down stumbling in a shower of rakes and shovels. But the boy is frozen. Holding on to a dripping hose with his mouth open, staring at her. He looks like the stupid pig boy that he is.
The man is fallen so first it's the boy.
She crosses to him in three long strides and brings the weapon down into the soft flesh of his lower belly just above the hip and just beneath the rib. It's a practiced move. The boy shouts and drops the hose and leans instinctive into the bloody wound, grasping for it to stop the pain and the flow of blood and she tosses the blade into her other hand and brings it down on the corresponding side. The boy leans into that one too.
She tosses it again and strikes. Tosses a fourth time. Strikes again.
She is chopping him like a tree.
This tree is screeching now.
The man is trying to get to his feet so she rises up on one foot and kicks him back down amid the rakes and shovels.
Inside the cage the dogs are wild. Blood in the air. She can smell it too. Both inside the cage and out. It is the smell of conquest, of food, of life.
Twice more she tosses and strikes and on the second strike severs the spine.
The tree is felled - into two parts which drop away from each other.
And neither part knows that it is yet dead. The legs kick and tremble. The mouth and eyes open and close. The hands grapple with empty air.
Later perhaps she will eat of him. His penis perhaps. His nose. Perhaps the eyes that have watched her. But for now there is the man. Who is on his knees and reaching for something above.
Peg is going through Miss Raton's purse looking for her her car keys. She still has Darlin' by the hand but Darlin' is whining and crying, tugging at her, breaking her concentration. She dumps the contents of the purse on the living room floor. car keys. She still has Darlin' by the hand but Darlin' is whining and crying, tugging at her, breaking her concentration. She dumps the contents of the purse on the living room floor.
"Goddammit, goddammit, goddammit!" she says.
They are either in her pocket or in the ignition. In either case she can't risk going outside to look. She can't risk having Darleen see her dead mother on the front steps either.
They're going to have to walk on out of there.
The Woman roars, steps over to the man and tears open the shoulder of the garment they've forced her to wear. It falls away from her and pools at her feet. She is free of all trappings of the man.
Cleek is in a panic but his hand fishes across the shelf and finds the stockless short-barrel twelve gauge he keeps out there for varmints, a paper towel shoved in the end of the barrel against the dust and he brings it round. There is a moment of triumph as he swings it on her and fucking bitch! fucking bitch! he shouts as the woman slaps the barrel up with the mower blade so that it's parallel to his head but he's already pulled the trigger. The towel shreds like snowfall all around him and he feels as though somebody's shoved an ice pick in his ear. he shouts as the woman slaps the barrel up with the mower blade so that it's parallel to his head but he's already pulled the trigger. The towel shreds like snowfall all around him and he feels as though somebody's shoved an ice pick in his ear.
He falls to his knees again and drops the shotgun and both hands go to his blasted ear and the side of his head rough and bloody with buckshot and he looks up at the woman who is smiling.
Peg and Darlin' both hear the gun and Peg thinks, has her father shot her? Killed her? Can he somehow know that Peg is the one who set her free and is he coming for her next? For both of them? Her father is capable of anything, she knows that now. Darlin' is crying so hard she can barely get her breath. The poor thing's terrified. She needs a distraction. Anything.
Peg rushes her back into the kitchen. There's a six-pack of liter Deer Park water bottles on the shelf. She snatches one up and shoves it into Darlin's hands.
"Here. Don't drop this," she says. "Whatever you do, don't drop it. Let's go!"
It works. She's got something to occupy her mind now. Don't drop the water bottle. Don't drop the water bottle. She's not choking on her own tears at least. She runs down the hall headed toward the front door.
"Wait! Stop!" Peg says. Their mother's out there. Their mother's out there.
Darlin' stops on a dime and turns to her.
"Back door," she says. "Come on."
The man is howling in pain. He raises a bloody hand to plead with her. Please! Please! he says. She understands that word. She has heard it many times before. he says. She understands that word. She has heard it many times before.
She hacks at the man's wrist. There is not enough resistance and the blade isn't sharp enough to break cleanly through so the wrist hangs there by fragments of bone and tendon spouting blood. He raises the other hand to grasp at the first. She swings on that wrist too and the result this time is better. The hand tumbles through the air and clangs against the metal cage in which the dogs are barking.
No no no he wails and she understands that word as well. he wails and she understands that word as well.
He screams like a child as she lowers the blade.
She slices him open from crotch to sternum. For this soft flesh the blade is quite sharp enough.
The man looks perplexed it's so fast. The man doesn't know what's just happened. She shows him. She drops the blade and squats beside him and reaches to each side of the long wound and parts him as though the man were a stand of tall grass - pulls him open wide and buries her head inside him. Through the heat and wet of him she can hear him screaming.
She pulls out a length of intestine and spits it out immediately. The man's intestines are foul. The man is still conscious, waving his arms, looking down at her in defeat and horror. The hand has dropped off and lies beside him now. She dips her head inside him once again and bites down on his liver, pulls it out with her teeth and chews. The liver's foul too. She spits it out.
She reaches inside with her hand this time and wrenches out his heart.
And this she eats with pleasure. The heart is good.
She stands. The dogs have gone mad now, barking and clawing at the cage to get out, to get to two fresh piles of meat. There is also something very strange inside the cage. But this one is grasping grasping at the cage, not clawing at it. It has no eyes and it is as bloody as the rest of them. But this one is human. A human child. at the cage, not clawing at it. It has no eyes and it is as bloody as the rest of them. But this one is human. A human child.
She remembers the voice she heard from inside the cellar. She hears it again now. Somewhere between a bark and a cry.
She goes to the cage and opens the door. The dogs rush out and fall upon the bodies. She sees that the dogs are not hungry - they've already fed - there's a third body mostly devoured inside the cage.
The dogs aren't hungry, they're angry.
The child rushes out too but the Woman grabs it by the back of the neck and hauls it up. She sees that the child is female. She struggles in the Woman's grasp and tries to bite. Socraigh, Socraigh, she says, she says, socraigh. socraigh. Be calm. But the child will not be calm. She howls and snaps. The Woman slaps her, hard and only once, then strokes her. Strokes her head, her back, her shoulders and haunches. Her struggling slowly stops. She walks the child over to the man's body, stoops and retrieves his half-devoured heart and offers it to the child who first sniffs at it and then grasps it and begins to eat. Be calm. But the child will not be calm. She howls and snaps. The Woman slaps her, hard and only once, then strokes her. Strokes her head, her back, her shoulders and haunches. Her struggling slowly stops. She walks the child over to the man's body, stoops and retrieves his half-devoured heart and offers it to the child who first sniffs at it and then grasps it and begins to eat.
She stoops again and plucks out the boy's right eye and tosses it back into her mouth and chews. Let the dogs have the rest. There's a small child inside the house. Sighted, not like this one - and younger. She has seen her in the cellar with the rest of them.
The child will be tasty.
She scoops her weapon off the bloody dirt floor and walks out into the fallen night.
THIRTY FIVE.
Darlin's really scared again.
It's dark and they only have the one flashlight which keeps blinking on and off so that Peggy has to shake it to make it come on again and she doesn't know the woods at all - she's not allowed to play there. And where's momma? Why isn't momma here? And why's Peggy's hand so sweaty?
And what are they doing in the woods at night in the first place?
She's got the water bottle tucked under her other arm tight because Peggy said don't drop it whatever you do but then the light goes off again and her big sister's shaking it to get it to work and all of a sudden she's falling because her big sister's falling and she's going with her and the bottle gets away from her and Peggy says ahhh! ahhh! and and shit! shit! shit! shit! which she's not supposed to do. which she's not supposed to do.
The house is empty. She's knows that the moment she enters.
The Woman is amused. The child with no eyes has followed her and pads around her now on all fours panting like a dog as they make their way through the house. The child is very like her in a way. It can't see her but it can smell her. That sense has developed greatly.
Just as the Woman can smell the girl and her little sister. Their fear lingers in the air like the scent of a mudbank by a stream. They have gone out the back. When she crossed the yard to the barn she noticed that behind the house was all woodland.
They are in the woods. Standing on the porch her keen eyes discern a footpath and beyond that a trail.
They will be easy to follow.
Outside she bends into the light breeze and listens.
Peg's in a lot of pain. Her ankle's twisted badly. She knows this trail through the woods. It leads to a little stream and a mile or so after that, to Weber Road, which in turns leads out to the highway. She and Brian used to come down with empty Campbell's soup cans to catch crayfish in the stream when they were kids. But she's never been out here at night and with the goddamn flashlight on the blink there was no way to anticipate that hole she's just stepped into.