Bad Juju: A Novel of Raw Terror (13 page)

Skeeter was sucking wind,
pretending it was water. The air in the barn loft was getting hotter by the
minute as the sun headed toward its zenith, and Skeeter was already dehydrated,
hanging from the rusty chain like a slab of raw meat. The stub of his severed
finger throbbed, but it had stopped bleeding when Luther cauterized the wound
with a cigarette lighter with its flame turned up as high as it would go.
Except for a couple of bats hanging upside down from a rafter above him, he was
alone. He supposed the Porch men were out there somewhere, waiting for Joe Rob
to show up so they could kill them both. Skeeter wished they’d hurry up and get
it over with; death would mean an end to his suffering.

Picturing his body laid out on his
father’s embalming table, he passed into a state of delirium. The bats began
whispering to each other, mocking the weak human hanging below them. He looked
up and saw that the bats had human faces. One of them looked like Odell, the
other like Cowboy.

“Go on and kill me,” he told them.
“I don’t give a shit.”

***

Candyman greeted him with a grin.
He was shirtless and his beer belly hung over his jeans, making him look like
he was nine months pregnant. “Whass up, man?”

“Hope your water don’t break while
I’m here,” Joe Rob said as he stepped inside the cracker-box trailer.

“What?”

“Nothing. Let me do a few lines of
coke, man. And I need some speed if you got any.”

“Got some white crosses from
Mexico. Pop three or four tabs and it’ll get you up to speed, heh heh.”

Joe Rob dealt a fifty from his
wallet and slapped it on the counter separating the kitchen area from the
living room. A bleached blonde head rose up from the couch and a set of bleary
brown eyes drank him in. “Hey, Joe Rob,” said Candyman’s porky wife, Marilyn.
“How’s it hanging?” She flashed him a lascivious smile. The TV was tuned to
cartoons.

“Long and low,” he said.

“Goddamn, you got a one-track
mind,” said Candy. “Fucking nympho.” He went down the narrow hallway and
disappeared into the bedroom.

“Come sit down,” Marilyn said,
sitting up and patting the empty space beside her. “These ’toons are a trip.
This is the one where Daffy gets dynamite stuck up his ass.”

“That’s all right. I’ll stand.”

“Why you wearing a jacket in this
heat?” she asked.

Joe Rob chuckled. “Haven’t you
heard? There’s a shit storm coming.”

“Tell me about it,” she giggled,
then turned her attention back to the flickering tube.

Candyman came back with a leather
pouch of illegal goodies and laid out four lines of coke on the counter. He
offered Joe Rob a cut-down plastic straw, and Joe Rob took it and snorted two
lines. Pinching his nose, he handed the straw to Candy, who stuck it in his
nostril and bent down to snort up the remaining two lines of powder.

“Hey, don’t I get any?” asked
Marilyn, bouncing up from the couch, her pendulous breasts jiggling behind her
tight T-shirt like water-filled balloons. “You guys...”

“You already had enough,” her
husband said. “Do any more, you’ll be humping the fridge.”

“Fuck you, Rodney. Don’t be such a
prick.”

He rolled his eyes. “See what I
have to put up with? Don’t ever get married, man. You’ll fucking regret it.”

“Eat shit,” she said, then cranked
up the TV’s volume with the remote. The familiar sounds of cartoon violence
filled the tiny trailer, rattling the wafer-thin walls and bringing a grimace
to Candyman’s jowly face.

“Give me the speed,” Joe Rob said.

Candy pulled a plastic pill bottle
from the leather pouch and shook out four tabs that looked a lot like aspirin.
“Here you go. This will rev your ass up.”

Joe Rob tossed them into his mouth
and washed them down with tap water.

Scratching his hairy belly, Candy
said, “You’re kinda antsy already, man. What’s up?”

“Nothing. I got to shoot some
people is all.”

“What the fuck’re you talking
about?”

“Remember the Gunfight at the O.K.
Corral?”

“Shit yeah, I seen that movie a
hundred times. What about it?”

“It’s gonna be like me against the
Clanton gang. Without Doc Holiday or the Earp brothers backing me up.”

“What the hell you been smoking,
Joe Rob. You ain’t making no sense.”

“Nothing. I’m just yanking your
chain.”

Candy lit a Marlboro and squinted
through the smoke. “What’s with the hunting jacket? It’s ninety degrees
already. And it sure ain’t hunting season.”

Joe Rob glanced around for a clock.
Didn’t see one. “What time is it?”

Candy walked over to the electric
stove and looked at the built-in clock. “Eleven-thirty.”

“Hunting season opens in half an
hour.”

“What—? Marilyn, turn that shit
down, will ya? I can’t hear myself think.”

“That ain’t nothing new,” she said,
thumbing a button on the remote to cut the volume.

The coke was kicking in good now,
and Joe Rob grinned at his fat friend. “That’s some kick-ass shit. When the
speed kicks in, I’ll be good to go. Got a beer?”

“In the fridge. Help yourself.”

Joe Rob snagged a can of brew from
the over-stuffed fridge, popped the top and took a big gulp. “Time to go.
Thanks for the shit, man. If you never see me again, have a good life.” He
walked over to the couch, bent down and kissed the top of Marilyn’s head. “Take
it easy, pretty woman.”

She craned her head back so she
could see him. “I’ll take it any way I can get it. You know me.”

Joe Rob shook Candyman’s hand, then
went out the door, cranked up his Mustang and drove off.

“What the hell was that about?”
Marilyn asked her husband.

“Damned if I know. I think he might
be going to shoot some people.”

“
What?
”

“He was strapped. Had a couple of
pistols under his jacket.”

“Who’s he gone shoot?” She was on
her knees, facing him and leaning her breasts over the back of the couch.

Candy said, “I don’t know. Don’t
ask so damn many questions.”

“Fuck you.”

“All right.” He grinned and grabbed
his crotch.

She jumped up and followed him to
the bedroom.

A stick of dynamite blew Daffy Duck
into space.

***

Fate Porch leaned his stiff back
against the side of the barn, took a pull from his flask of homebrew and winced
as it burned the back of his throat. He glanced at his watch again. Twenty till
twelve. Soon he would know if Maw was right about the Campbell boy. He still
couldn’t see how the boy would show up at the trestle without going to the
cops, all the while knowing he was going to die if he did show up. Why show up
at all? Was he that loyal to his friend? Could he possibly believe that he
could come riding in like some picture-show hero and save his friend? Against
me and my boys? Kid would have to be crazy to believe that. Or have a death
wish. Maybe he felt some guilt for killing Odell. Probably it was an accident,
like the other boy said. Too bad we can’t just let it go and forget it, but
that ain’t our way. Family blood was spilled and there has to be restitution.
The law wouldn’t do nothing but give the boy a suspended sentence for
manslaughter, if even that. Might say it was self-defense and make him out a
hero for trying to save the girl from being raped and paint poor Odell as a
depraved maniac with a history of mental illness. Folks in town love to sully
the Porch name. Hell, us Porches are the boogiemen of Graves County. Modern-day
outlaws. Well, damn them all to hell. We take care of our own. That’s all we’re
doing here. That’s why them two boys got to die. Paw would say the same thing
if he was still alive.

Fate checked the load of his pump
shotgun again, then lit his pipe.

Quarter to noon. Luther and Cowboy
would be hiding in the woods by the trestle now, waiting for the Campbell boy
to show up and see the note nailed to the trestle. The note would send him here
to the old barn, and the boys would make sure no cops were following Campbell.
Any cops show up, and Luther would call on the cell phone, and Fate would put
the Partain boy in the back of the truck and haul ass before any cops got here.

Fate reached in his pocket and
pulled out Cowboy’s cell phone. Handy little gadgets they were. But not worth
what it costs to use them. Still, it was amazing what you could do these days
with all these electronic gizmos. And all that talk about the Internet. Fate
didn’t understand why anybody would spend hours in front of a computer screen
looking at something that wasn’t even real. The way Luther explained it to him,
the Internet was a bunch of “sites” that didn’t even exist in the real world.
It was all out there in space but didn’t really occupy space. The whole thing
was crazy.

The little plastic phone chirped in
his hand. He pushed the button and held it to his ear.

“Diddy?” It was Luther speaking in
a loud whisper.

“Yeah.”

“He’s here. Looks like he’s alone.
He’s reading the note now.”

“All right. You know what to do.
Wait a few minutes after he leaves to make sure nobody’s following him, then
get over here quick.”

“We will. Okay, he’s getting back
in his car. We’ll see you in a few minutes, Diddy.”

Fate dropped the little phone in his
pocket, then went inside the barn, the shotgun cradled in his arms. “Looks like
Maw was right again,” he said to himself. “The Lord surely favors the old
lady.”

***

Joe Rob wadded up the hand-printed
note and stuffed it in his pocket and looked up at the creosote-scented
crossbeams of the old trestle supporting track where trains no longer ran.  “Go
strait to the old Jenkins house,” the note said. Dumb bastard couldn’t spell
for shit.

So it was going to be the Jenkins
place. The haunted farmhouse. The Bad Place, as some called it.

He got back in the car and
scratched off, rear tires kicking up gouts of red clay. He wasn’t surprised
that they weren’t here at the old trestle. This would be their fail-safe spot,
the place where they would see if he was alone or not. He stuck his hand out
the window and waved, knowing that at least one of them was watching him from
the woods.

The amphetamine was coming on
strong now, having been kick-started by the cocaine already buzzing through his
system. His heart was goose-stepping to the helter-skelter cadence of a
heavy-metal march, and he was sweating like a hooker in a hot church. He
punched up some vintage Stevie Ray and gunned the Mustang down the dirt road,
heading for the old Jenkins place. His fingers did a double-time dance on the
steering wheel. A nervous tic set his left eye jumping. Sweat rolled down his
sides from his armpits. He turned the air-conditioner full-blast to keep from
suffocating in the hunting jacket. Fear was fighting for a foothold in his electrified
mind, but with the alchemical aid of the speed/coke euphoria, he transformed
the fear into a warrior’s pre-combat fury. He chanted the slogan his father had
learned in Nam: “Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out.”

The black snake stirred in his belly,
coiling into a tight ball of cold muscle. Joe Rob’s stomach fluttered. He had
the sudden urge to take a shit, but he clenched his sphincter until the urge
went away. The image of Charlotte the Harlot’s round ass popped into his mind,
and he got a killer hard-on as he recalled the delicious anal assault.

“Fuck ’em all!” he shouted. “They
can’t touch me.”

He was two miles from his
destination.

He was totally psyched for combat.

***

Luke was pacing beside the truck,
watching for the ambulance and keeping tabs on the dazed old lady behind the
wheel. Where the hell was the ambulance? It should’ve been here by now.

The noon sun was beating down on
him, cooking the top of his head where his hair was thinning. He grabbed his
ball cap from his pickup and put it on. Agnes Porch looked at him and said
something he didn’t catch, but her eyes seemed more focused. Was she coming
around?

“What’s that, Miz Porch?”

“Get my boys.”

He draped an arm over the open
passenger door and leaned close to her face. “Where are they?”

She blinked several times, then
said, “Out at the Jenkins place.”

“The Jenkins place. Are you sure
that’s where they are?”

“Yes. I’m sure. Hurry.”

“Yes ma’am. I’m on the way. You
just stay right here and wait for the ambulance.”

He hopped into his truck, revved
the engine and tore off down the gravel driveway and wheeled onto the dirt
road. The old Jenkins farm was a good five miles away. If he floored it all the
way, he could be there in ten minutes tops.

He got on the radio and called in
his destination. Dispatcher Holly Stimson acknowledged.

“Advise all units,” Luke said. “A
possible ten-niner at the Jenkins farmhouse.”

“Roger, Chieftain,” said Holly.
Then she breached protocol herself by adding, “Luke, you be careful out there.”

Ree Tyler was about to lock up
Tyler Antiques and go to lunch across the street at The Vinewood Cafe when the
spirit materialized in the darkened mirror of an antebellum vanity. Framed by
dark brown wood, the ghostly entity beckoned to her with softly glowing
fingers, and she stepped closer.

“Beau,” she whispered, her breath
catching in her throat. Her guardian angel had shown himself to her two
previous times, always in the same mirror, but this time his features were more
distinct, his handsome face more defined in the murky glass. Her heartbeat made
her breasts quiver, and deep in her belly there was an involuntary contraction
of muscle. “I thought you’d left me.”

I won’t leave you.
His lips
didn’t move when he spoke, but she clearly heard his deep melodious voice in
her head.

She resisted the urge to touch the
mirror. “You know about Luke Chaney?” she asked, somehow knowing why Beau was
here. “That I’m seeing him tonight?”

Of course I know.

“Well?” Unbidden sexual tension
charged the air. Ree found it difficult to catch her breath.

Darkness is gathering. You must
be wary, lest it touch you.

“Be wary of Luke? He’s a good man.
I
know
he is.”

The darkness may gather him, and
you, if you get too close.

“I don’t understand,” she told him.
“Are you saying I shouldn’t see him?”

No, you must follow your heart.

She nodded, though she wasn’t sure
she understood what he was telling her. Beau’s impatience made him quick to
anger, and she didn’t want him angry with her, so she didn’t press him to
explain further.

His image in the glass wavered. The
reflection of the shop’s opposite wall showed through his dark topcoat and his
chalky face blurred. His voice remained strong
. The darkness rises like
water. There is one who would open the flood-gate.

“What should I do? This is
all...beyond me.”

Give up tobacco.

A blush warmed her face. “That’s
it? Stop smoking?”

A slight smile appeared in the fog
of Beau’s face, then he was gone.

Ree touched her fingertips to the
mirror. The glass was warm. She blew out a big breath that inadvertently fogged
a spot on the mirror. She turned away, wanting a cigarette. From her previous
encounters with Beau, she knew he had an odd sense of humor and that he liked
to speak in riddles. Was his give-up-tobacco line a joke or was it his way of
telling her there was nothing she could do about an impending flood of
darkness? She didn’t know.

Her stomach growled. She hung the
Out To Lunch sign on the shop’s door and walked across the street to the cafe.
She didn’t take her cigarettes.

Beau had first appeared to her
after the death of her husband, when she was spiraling down into a suicidal
depression. Zoned out on tranquilizers Dr. Jackson had prescribed for her, Ree
had been remarkably unruffled when the apparition appeared in the antique
vanity mirror. She giggled and said, “You’re a ghost. A good-looking ghost.”
The ghost scowled. She said, “If you’re trying to scare me, it ain’t working.”
Then his voice was inside her skull, a sonorous voice wrapped in a deep
Southern accent, and he told her his name was Beau and that he had come to save
her from herself. He said he had known her in a previous life and that they had
been lovers. A sucker for a romantic story, she asked for details, but all he
said was that he had died in the War of Northern Aggression and that she had
died the death of a lonely widow. Then he told her that her husband had crossed
over and that he was happy, though he missed her very much. Beau instructed her
to stop taking the medicine and to climb out of the pit of self-pity and get on
with her life.

She had chalked up the encounter as
drug-induced hallucination and stopped downing the tranks. Her Christian
upbringing didn’t exactly allow for reincarnation, but she was nevertheless
intrigued by the romantic notion of a ghostly lover from a past life appearing
to save her from her suicidal depression. It wasn’t until Beau’s disembodied
voice saved her from stepping in front of a speeding car that she really
started to believe that he was her guardian angel. Now she had no doubt, and
she had successfully integrated the concept of reincarnation with her Christian
beliefs.

Ree sat at a corner table and
ordered a BLT on wheat and a glass of iced tea. She was oblivious to the other
diners around her as she tried to make sense of Beau’s warning that darkness
was gathering. Until he had appeared in the mirror, she had been almost giddy
with anticipation of her date tonight with Luke. It was to be her first real
date since the death of her husband, but now she didn’t know if she should go
through with it. Beau had advised her to follow her heart, and her heart was
set on being with Luke.

By the time the waitress brought
her order, Ree had decided to keep her date with Luke and to be wary of
anything suggestive of dark forces at work. What else could she do?

She took a bite of her thick
sandwich. The juice from the slice of tomato dribbled down her chin. The fried
bacon and crisp lettuce were unusually delicious, and she savored the first
bite as she dabbed her chin with a napkin. She gazed dreamily out the window.
It was a beautiful day, and the promise of a romantic night had her fairly
tingling with anticipation. Nowhere did she see any evidence of dark forces at
work.

Then she heard the young couple in
the booth behind her talking about the sinkhole on Main Street, the man giving
his eyewitness account of a dump truck falling into the expanding hole. “I
couldn’t believe it,” the man said. “The street just fell out from under it and
the damn truck dropped straight down, out of sight.”

A chill slithered up Ree’s back.

The sunlit day suddenly darkened.

***

“Skeeter?”
called the
familiar voice.

He lifted his chin off his bare
chest and looked around. As far as he could see, he was still alone in the barn
loft.

“Skeeter!”

“Grandma?” he croaked, his voice
abrading his dry throat.

But how could it be his
grandmother? She had died two years ago.

“You’re in big trouble, young
man.”

He giggled. “No shit, Grandma. Tell
me about it.”

The light outside dimmed as the sun
went behind a cloud, darkening the interior of the barn. Skeeter glanced over
the edge of the loft and saw a hazy shaft of eerie light floating just above
the floor of the barn. Within the glowing shaft he thought he could see his
grandmother’s round face and white hair.

“Come down from there this
minute.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I’m chained
up. You have to help me.”   

“Do it directly, son.”

Then he saw a flesh-and-blood
figure step out of the shadows, and his grandmother’s apparition disappeared.
Shotgun cradled in his arms, Fate Porch looked up at him and said, “Hush up,
boy. It’ll all be over directly.”

“Thank God,” Skeeter mumbled, then
shut his eyes.

He thought he smelled Grandma’s
apple cobbler baking in the oven. He knew he felt the heat.

 ***

Charlotte Claymore popped another
Advil and washed it down with straight vodka. The burning in her anus had
subsided some, but not completely. She’d had anal intercourse before, and it
hadn’t been that bad, but this time it had been against her will and she was
still furious at the pushy little motherfucker, Joe Rob Campbell. No, little
was the wrong word. If he’d been little, it wouldn’t have hurt some goddamn
much.
I should’ve whacked off his pecker with the razor, that’s what I
should’ve done.

She picked up the phone and tried Carl
again. This time he answered.

“Where the hell ya been?” she
demanded.

“Hey, baby, what’s wrong?” Carl
asked.

“I just got fucked up the ass,
that’s what’s wrong.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I was fucking raped
up the rear.”

“One of your johns?”

“Yeah. A crazy fuck, Joe Rob
Campbell. The high school football jock.”

“What the hell you doing turning
tricks this early?”

“He paid extra. Listen, Carl. He
held a razor to my throat. I thought I was dead.”

“Son of a bitch!”

“I want this guy dead. You hear me?
You’re supposed to be my protector.”

“Not over the phone, goddammit.”

“You know somebody, right?”

“Sit tight, baby. I’ll be right
there.”

“Sit tight, my ass.”

Carl laughed. Charlotte slammed the
phone down. She poured herself another shot of vodka, then lit a cigarette.
Carl could be a heartless bastard sometimes, but he knew people who would do
anything you wanted done, if the price was right. He had once told her he had a
man killed for ripping him off on a dope deal. A hundred bucks for the hit.

She tossed back the booze, sucked
on her smoke, and smiled to herself. It would be worth a hundred bucks to make
that butt-fucking bastard dead. Sure as hell it would.

***

As he sailed over the blacktop,
Luke Chaney took the Rossi .357 Magnum from the glove box and checked the
cylinder. Five shells were snugly in place, the hammer resting on the empty
slot. The checkered rubber grip was a perfect fit for his big hand. It was more
powerful and therefore more reassuring than the .38 holstered on his hip. He
sighted down the two-inch blue-steel barrel and shuddered. He hoped he wouldn’t
have to use it, that he would be able to defuse the situation by virtue of his
experience as an officer of the law, but he knew the chances of such a peaceful
resolution were slim to none. The Porches had no respect for the law, and Joe
Rob was obviously unstable and probably desperate to save his friend.
Desperation in a testosterone-swamped youth was a dangerous thing. In short,
this was not a situation a former guardian of the peace could enter waving a
white flag. He had to be prepared to use deadly force—something he had never
had to do as a cop.

He hoped he would be equal to the
task.

***

Chief Keller responded immediately
to his dispatcher’s call. He left his junior officers to handle the situation
on Main Street and sped off with emergency lights flashing, en route to the old
Jenkins farm outside of town. Still stinging from the tongue-lashing Peters had
given him, he saw the possible ten-niner as a way to redeem himself in the eyes
of the head councilman. But he had mixed feelings about Luke’s involvement in
this powder-keg situation; having the former chief on the scene was a definite
plus, so long as Luke’s long-standing zeal to nail Fate Porch didn’t make
things worse.

He keyed his mike and raised Luke
on the radio. “Chieftain, this is Unit One. What’s your twenty?”

“Two miles east of target,” Luke
responded.

“I’m on the way. Wait for backup if
you can.”

“Roger, One. If I can.”

“Shit,” Keller said to himself. He
knew in his gut what lay ahead. There was no way around it. The inevitable shit
was about to hit the fucking fan. The devil’s due was going to be paid in
blood. “Shit!”