999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [278]
I pulled back the hammer on the shotgun, slipped my face around the edge of the briars, and looked.
There was a fire going in the center of the tunnel, in the spot where Tom and I had seen the bum marks that day, and I could see Tom lying on the ground, her clothes off and strewn about, and a man was leaning over her, running his hands over her back and forth, making a sound like an animal eating after a long time without food. His hands flowed over her as if he was playing a piano. A huge machete was stuck up in the dirt near Tom’s head, and Tom’s face was turned toward me. Her eyes were wide and full of tears, and tied around her mouth was a thick bandanna, and her hands and feet were bound with rope, and as I looked the man rose and I saw that his pants were undone and he had hold of himself, and he was walking back and forth behind the fire, looking down at Tom, yelling, “I don’t want to do this. You make me do this. It’s your fault, you know? You’re getting just right. Just right.”
The voice was loud, but not like any voice I’d ever heard. There was all the darkness and wetness of the bottom of the river in that voice, as well as the mud down there, and anything that might collect in it.
I hadn’t been able to get a good look at his face, but I could tell from the way he was built, the way the fire caught his hair, it was Mr. Nation’s son, Uriah.
Then he turned slightly, and it wasn’t Uriah at all. I had merely thought it was Uriah because he was built like Uriah, but it wasn’t.
I stepped fully into the tunnel and said, “Cecil?”
The word just came out of my mouth, without me really planning to say it. Cecil turned now, and when he saw me his face was like it had been earlier, when Tom was being bounced on his knee and the fireworks had exploded behind him. He had the same slack-jawed look, his face was beaded in sweat.
He let go of his privates and just let them hang out for me to see, as if he were proud of them and that I should be too.
“Oh, boy,” he said, his voice still husky and animal-like. “It’s just gone all wrong. I didn’t want to have to have Tom. I didn’t. But she’s been ripenin’, boy, right in front of my eyes. Every time I saw her, I said, no, you don’t shit where you eat, but she’s ripenin’, boy, and I thought I’d go to your place, peek in on her if I could, and then I seen her there, easy to take, and I knew tonight I had to have her. There wasn’t nothing else for it.”
“Why?”
“Oh, son. There is no why. I just have to. I have to do them all. I tell myself I won’t, but I do. I do.”
He eased toward me.
I lifted the shotgun.
“Now, boy,” he said. “You don’t want to shoot me.”
“Yes, sir. I do.”
“It ain’t something I can help. Listen here. I’ll let her go, and we’ll just forget about this business. Time you get home, I’ll be out of here. I got a little boat hid out, and I can take it downriver to where I can catch a train. I’m good at that. I can be gone before you know it.”
“You’re wiltin’,” I said.
His pee-dink had gone limp.
Cecil looked down. “So I am.”
He pushed himself inside his pants and buttoned up as he talked. “Look here. I wasn’t gonna hurt her. Just feel her some. I was just gonna get my finger wet. I’ll go on, and everything will be all right.”
“You’ll just go down the river and do it again,” I said. “Way you come down the river to us and did it here. You ain’t gonna stop, are you?”
“There’s nothing to say about it, Harry. It just gets out of hand sometime.”
“Where’s your chain and coin, Cecil?”
He touched his throat. “It got lost.”
“That woman got her hand chopped off, she grabbed it, didn’t she?”
“I reckon she did.”
“Move to the left there, Cecil.”
He moved to the left, pointed at the machete. “She grabbed me, I chopped her with that, and her hand came off. Damndest thing. I got her down here and she got away from me and I chased her. And she