Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror (6 page)

Butch Dempsey took a sip of scotch and turned a shrewd eye on Henry. “Same old, same old. Working til I die. My life don’t change that much.”

“I hear that.”

“What you doing here, anyway? Ain’t this your anniversary night?”

“Shee-it. I was wondering why Frieda was so hell bent on having dinner with me. Shoulda known.” Henry ordered a boilermaker from the bartender and rubbed a broad hand over his face. “Damn. How you remember my anniversary and I don’t?”

“’Cause y’all got married six years ago on Janey birthday and I never forget Janey birthday.”

“Right, right.  How she doing?”

“Janey? Oh, she has good days and bad days.” Ebony circles hung under Butch’s eyes, stark against his pockmarked mahogany skin. “Starting to be more bad days. But her mama’s with her. Give me a few hours rest.”

“I couldn’t be sick like that. You know, live my life sick. I wanna go quick. Don’t want nobody giving up they life for me.” Henry glanced at his friend. “I don’t mean nothin’ by that, what you do for Janey is good, it’s—”

“Yeah, I know.” Butch drained his glass and stood. “I better get on home.” But he no longer had Henry’s attention.

“Uh huh.” Henry’s gaze was fixed on a woman at the end of the bar. He rose from the barstool, picked up his shot glass and the bottle of beer as though she’d bid him.

“Where’d she come from?” Butch frowned at the sly smile on the strange woman’s lips. A chill crept through his bulky frame and gooseflesh grew on his meaty arms.

“Don’t know. But I’m gonna find out.”

“No, I mean, she wasn’t there a minute ago.”

“Then she come through the back door.” He shook off the hand Butch placed on his shoulder and straightened his collar. “You disturbing my groove.”

“You need to stay away from that one. She seems… freaky.”

“Just what I’m hoping. Catch you on the flip side, man.”

“Henry, wait.”

But Henry didn’t respond. He had the scent and nothing could get him off the trail.

Butch watched his friend approach the mysterious woman. He started forward to intercept him and the woman looked up, straight into his eyes. Her grey-blue gaze, startling against her tawny skin, held him fast.

All ambient sound from the crowded bar faded. Butch felt himself grow hard and the throbbing ached like a wound. His skin itched like it was covered in dirt. He dug his short nails into his arm with ruthless fervor. Angry welts rose up and still he raked his flesh, unable to get rid of the feeling that she was on him—in him—crawling around.

He yelped when his blunt nails broke skin. The mental hold loosened and he was able to move. Without another glance at Henry, Butch pushed through the throng of people and hurried from the bar.

The woman was chatting with the bartender as Henry strolled up. “Hey man, give the lady here another one of what she drinking.” He gave her hourglass figure, draped in a lavender silk jumpsuit, a lingering once-over. “I’m Henry. You sure is foxy.”

“And you’re a little cocky.” Her voice was husky with no trace of Southern drawl.

“You got me all wrong, baby.” He took a long pull from his beer then pointed toward her with the bottle. “I’m a big cocky.”

She almost choked on a sip of strawberry daiquiri, but it turned into a spurt of laughter. “Now that is one I haven’t heard before.”

“What’s your name, foxy lady?”

“Does it matter? You’ll only forget it afterwards.”

He leaned closer and her fragrance glided over the smokiness of the bar, a tangy mixture of sea air and citrus fruit. “After what, little mama?”

A coy smile accompanied her words. “After tonight.”

“Now, how you know what gonna happen tonight? I might decide to take my time and court you.”

She shook her head and chestnut ringlets brushed her bare shoulders. “It’s my last night in town.”

“You got people here?”

“Nope, it’s a business trip for me.”

“Business? What kinda work you do?”

She ran her tongue over her straight, smooth teeth. “I make people over.”

Henry nodded. “That Avon kinda thing? Cool. Cool.” He downed the shot of whiskey. “So, this your last night, huh?”

“Umm hmm.” She looked up at him, her grey-blues glittering.

“That’s a shame. Guess I’m gonna have to work fast.” He slapped a ten down on the counter and stood.

“Not too fast, I hope.”

***

“You must make some serious bread. This ain’t no cheap motel.” Henry strolled around the expansive suite, whistling at all the extra touches. Fresh flowers blossomed in a vase on the side table next to an overflowing fruit basket. A corner of the king-sized bed was turned down, revealing crisp sheets.

“I like to be comfortable when I travel.” She tossed her clutch purse on the bedside table.

“This ain’t just comfortable. This is… nice. Real nice.” He stood in the middle of the room, gawking, until the sound of a zipper grabbed his attention. The woman stepped out of the light purple satin puddle at her feet and stood, clad in only a black strapless bra and panties, at the foot of the bed. Any thoughts he might be out of his league evaporated.

“Well, don’t stop now.” He unbuttoned his own shirt and tossed it on the floor as he strode over to her. She nudged him toward the bed.

“Why don’t you lie down and watch the rest?”

“Oh, yeah. I like that, baby.”

Henry lay down in the middle of the bed and watched her reach behind her back to unhook her bra. Her high breasts sprang free from their confines and he salivated at the sight of her dark, hard nipples. She climbed onto the foot of the bed and crawled up Henry’s body, her eyes laughing with challenge.

She straddled his waist and ground herself against his hardness as she brushed one breast over his lips. He opened his mouth and sucked on the stiffened tip. Warm liquid flowed into his mouth and after his initial surprise, he suckled harder. He tried to reach up and pull her closer, but his body resisted, seizing up with the effort of movement. His eyes widened.

“No, Henry. You don’t get to touch me.” Her silky voice darkened as her milk soured in his mouth. Lumpy curds drained down his cheeks. He gagged, tried to turn his head and spit, but his thick lips were fused to her slick flesh.

“You asked me what my name was,” she said as her fingers stroked his throat, forcing him to swallow the thick pap. Henry groaned as his stomach twisted, but it refused to expel the foul liquid. Her swollen nipple popped from his mouth when she leaned back to remove her brief panties. “It’s Eldra.” As the silk slid down her thighs, fat drops of her vaginal fluid fell onto the crotch of the panties, bleaching the fabric a sickly yellow-white. 

“Don’t ring a bell?” Eldra draped the ruined underwear over Henry’s face, ignoring his gurgled protests as the caustic fabric burned his skin. “No one here calls me that. They call me a hag. Can you believe it?” She slid down to his crotch, her bristly pubic hair like needles in his groin as her nails ripped through denim and exposed the length of him. She squatted, legs wide, her nether lips open to expose two tiny rows of glinting silver-white teeth.

His scream bubbled through the lumps in his throat as she lowered herself onto his stiff penis. Eldra shoved her fingers into Henry’s open mouth, turning the panties into a putrid gag as she rode him with demonic wildness while he lay immobile, unable to stop the flesh-rending fuck.

Hours later, Eldra climbed off his limp, wasted body. She gave an impressed grunt. “Ooh, Henry. You’re still hard.” She took his mutilated penis in her palms and gripped it, holding the flayed pieces together. Her salt and citrus scent filled the room as she lowered her acidic mouth again and again.

***

“We patched him up the best we could, Miz Frieda.” The young nurse said as she reached for the door to the shared patient room at Saint Francis Hospital.

Frieda blocked the door with one outstretched arm and whispered, “How bad is it? I mean, how is he?”

The nurse hesitated. “It’s… uh… He’s been asking for you.”

“Frieda? That you?” Henry’s voice was high-pitched and weak. “Frieda, please. I need you.”

He soundsexhauste
d
.
That witch must have done her job.

“I’ll be at the desk if you need anything.” The nurse made a hasty exit.

Frieda hovered in the doorway, twisting the knob back and forth. The police had found him in an alley, the doctor had said, unconscious. He’d been beaten badly, but his clothes were still neat and pressed, as if they’d been removed and replaced later. They’d wanted to talk to her more, but she said she needed to see Henry first.  She put iron in her spine and pulled the door open and strode in. Two beds were inside—the near one cradled an old man and the other housed a hunched figure, turned to face the far window, covered in a thin blanket. No sign of her husband.

She walked toward the window until she heard a rasping voice behind her. “I’m here. Frieda. Here.”

Slowly, she turned to face the first bed. Her breath caught in her throat as she realized it was her husband, her Henry, small and shriveled in the middle of the bleach white sheets. His face was a mass of blotches, where his formerly smooth dark skin seemed to have dissolved. At the corner of his lips, white chunky crusts formed
.
I need him
,
she’d said.
Now look at him.

He reached out a shaky hand to her, his flesh slack over the wasted muscle. One of his eyes was wide and pleading, the other a cloudy grey. She stepped toward the bed and pulled back the sheet covering his lower body
.
No, not that, too
.
Shriveled to nothing, the fragile skin was held together with tiny black stitches.

What you gonna do now, Frieda? 

Two officers waited for her in the hall just outside the patient room, she could see their indigo uniforms through the window. One of them looked up and met her gaze. Absently, she patted Henry’s hand then beckoned the men to enter. 

“We’d like to ask you some questions, Mister Cannon. Are you feeling up to talking about what happened to you?”

Henry turned his head into the pillow.

“Henry,” Frieda whispered loud enough for both men to hear and nudged his arm. “Answer them.”

When he didn’t respond, Frieda closed her eyes and her hand dropped away from her husband’s shoulder. “Officers, I don’t think he’s up to talking to anyone right now. Maybe you can come back in a little while. I’m going to get some coffee.”

All three of them left the room and headed toward the canteen. The taller man placed his hand at the small of her back to usher her forward and it sent a thrill through her where it pooled into her core. She looked up into his disarming grey-blue eyes. “It’s gonna be okay, ma’am.”

Frieda knew that it would.

“Everything in life you told me not to do, I done.”

It was the saddest thing my son had ever said to me.  And the scariest. But this was his way of getting back at me, removing the blame from himself and placing it on my shoulders.

Don’t know how long I sat there silent, thinking about why he said it until I felt his eyes on me, wide and waiting. He wanted my reaction, I realized as I regarded him through the prison’s visiting room Plexiglas barrier, scuffed with the remains of so many other fights before ours.

“Like what?” I asked.

“No, Mama!” His tone made me jump and I scolded myself for being so nervous. So scared of my little boy’s voice, full to bursting with anger and desperation. “You’re supposed to ask me
why
.”

“Oh,” I said. “Why?” Only now did I realize how obedient I could be to my son, but not to my husband or my vows. I sat there in my best church hat, marveling.

He sat back in his chair, hair buzzed almost bald, revealing his pale scalp. A faint raised scar shaped like a sickle marked where he’d been hit with a beer bottle five years before. It was a fight over some worthless girl. That’s how he’d known, he’d told the papers. When he fought over some girl and she’d still walked away with the loser he’d beaten to a pulp that he’d vowed never to care about another woman. To make them all pay.

Upon seeing the scar, his M.O. solidified in my mind. Jesus take the wheel. I was thinking like one of those TV shows now. Modus operandi. Method of operation.

I’d felt lightheaded in the courtroom when the prosecutor described it. Out of body, I floated above the pictures of my son’s handiwork. I was beyond the words of the medical examiner.
Wounds consistent with a curved blade. A lot of force. Brutal force.
The cutting words of the prosecuting attorney yanked me from my daze with just as much viciousness.

Severed heads, their scalps always found yards away from the rest of the body. The defendant’s semen dried into their long hair. Eight young women, the prosecutor had said, his Armani suit tailored to his lean frame. He looked at the jury over the top of his trendy yuppie glasses. All under twenty-five. I’d fainted.

A guard appeared in the door behind my son. “Phillips, five minutes left.”

Now, I shook my head and asked again. “Why?”

“Cause you let me,” he picked at his teeth, then looked at his finger. “You always let me do anything I wanted.”

So it’s my fault? I wanted to scream at him and storm out. Then I’d never need to have another body search in order to visit this festering hole south of Hades. Never have to endure another seedy, depraved look from the men on the inside, their sweat rank with the stench of captivity.

Men really did devolve without women. I stood and left without another word, my legs and back stiff and wooden. Sweat ran down the middle of my back under my suit and into the waistband of my pantyhose. When I got into my car, I turned the air conditioner to maximum. Pray for him, Lord just make it okay. I didn’t see any of the road the entire drive home.

When I opened the door, the rich meaty smell of roasted chicken hit my nose and my stomach roiled. Hat carefully placed on the hall table, I greeted my husband. “Visit went all right today.”

“Um hm.” Bill’s head was buried in the Sunday paper, likely the food section. His roasted chicken was the best I’d ever tasted, but right now acid bubbled up my throat and threatened the back of my tongue.  

My hands shook as I removed my suit jacket and hung it over the back of a chair, content to stand in the living room in my bra and camisole, letting the icy air chill my damp skin. “He looks okay, just thinner. When he finally comes home—”

Bill interrupted me, his tone one not to argue with. “He’s not coming home, Agnes.”

“He’s our son.” Even to me, the words sounded weak as water.

“He’s a murderer. A serial killer.” He threw down the paper and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “God, all those girls… It makes me sick.”

“One day he’ll get out. I prayed to get the verdict overturned. He didn’t do all of that...that what they said he did.” The room swam and I grabbed the back of the chair to steady myself. “There’s a chance he can still get out.”

“Not as long as I’m here, there’s not.”

My heart tripped, fell into nothingness.  My voice was a stage whisper as I repeated the words that had been my mantra all through the investigation and the trial. “He’s our son. We raised him.”

“Well we fucked up, didn’t we?” Bill stood up from his recliner, grabbed his jacket from the peg in the hallway and stormed out the door.

I ran after him to the garage door, my stocking feet slipping on the polished hardwood. “Where are you going?”

He didn’t answer. Just got in his car and drove away. Some men would have peeled out, screeching tires and stinking smoke. But Bill buckled his seat belt and checked his mirrors before reversing out into the cul-de-sac and away. And he didn’t come home until five hours later. When he did, he wouldn’t let me pull him into conversation again.

After that so-called argument, Bill never discussed Hardin prison again. If he had—or at least come to see his son once—maybe I wouldn’t have let that guard escort me to my car. And I definitely wouldn’t have listened to him when he said he didn’t live far away. Maybe then his offer of coffee and a sympathetic ear would have gone unanswered. 

But I stayed, against my better judgment. In the guard’s bed and in my son’s corner. My next two months of visits to Hardin tumbled by in a blur. Today wouldn’t be so kind.

“You know something? My baby isn’t going to be anything like me.”

“Your what?” Heat rushed to my face and my heartbeat sounded loud in my chest, like hail on a rooftop.

My son ran his hand over the peach fuzz on his face. “My wife is having a baby. Oh, yeah. And I got married. Didn’t I tell you? It’s the only way you can get a fuck in here. From a chick anyway.”

Heat boiled over inside me. How did they let him marry?  Who would marry a man convicted of murdering eight women?

I stuttered, but no coherent words came out. My shock and dismay brought a smile to my son’s face. “I’ll tell you more about it next time. I gotta go. It’s con-jew-gull visit day.”

He pushed back his chair with a scrape that set my teeth on edge and strutted out of the room, his oversized orange jumpsuit baggy around his waist and hips. As the guard ushered him out, he winked at me over his shoulder.

I walked out of the visitation rooms in a daze, my short steps almost heel to toe. All around me, the prison flashed by as if in fast-forward. The movie reel in my mind of my son growing up was the only normal thing. Holding him for the first time. Teaching him to swim. Clapping and whistling at his championship soccer game. At the front desk, I fished around in my handbag for my keys.

A young woman approached the desk where I stood and handed the attendant a box wrapped in bright paper. When she gave her name as Mrs. Phillips, I turned to look at her squarely.

Thin and not fashionably so. Her eyes had a dull look, sunken and vacant. Resigned. Desperate. But it was her hair that made me snap. Long, lank blonde hair. 

“He did it you, know. He killed them,” I could hear my voice rising, becoming hysterical. “What are you doing here? Why are you visiting him?”

The girl shrugged, unsurprised by my outburst. “Why are you?” Her dead tone gave me a start, which quickly turned to itchy fear, but somewhere deep inside, I felt the need to defend myself.

“Because I’m his…” The word caught on my tongue and I bit it back. I didn’t want to speak it aloud. Didn’t want to claim him or his deeds. But I was tied to this monster, had held him in my arms for years, inside of me for months and still the need to deny him burned deep.

Before I could cough the word out, the girl turned away. Then she followed the guard through the sliding iron bars, leaving me on the outside.

I knew it with a certainty that hadn’t been there before. All of the support and faith ebbed from me as I walked to my car. False hope giving way to a resignation that was somehow freeing. There would be no celebration. My son wasn’t coming home, ever. And now, finally, I didn’t want him to.

Empty of spirit, I drove. For miles. Ended up at a hole in the wall fish shack on the outskirts of the city on the way out to Edisto Island. I hadn’t been down this way since I married Bill and we set up life in suburbia. The scent of frying peanut oil drew me inside and I dusted the seat near the door with a napkin before settling into it.

Not many people were there—Sundays were days to eat at home with family, if you had it—so the young woman behind the counter wasn’t delayed in sauntering over to my table. She looked me over with heavy-lidded eyes. The crack of her chewing gum was like gunfire. “Yes, ma’am?”

I had no idea why I was here. I didn’t want to go home to face an end to my devotion. What would life be like if I just let my son go? No more visits, no asking the congregation to pray for him. How do I give up on him? “What’s the special?” I let my Geechee show, ending consonants smeared to nothing and vowels stretched to their limits.

If she was surprised, the waitress didn’t show it. “Whiting platter. Fried or baked. Two sides. Dinner roll.”

My son’s favorite. I hadn’t fried fish for him since he was a child. Too messy. Too much grease. The smell clung to the curtains and the couch and the carpet and it wouldn’t come out. Only time faded the smell, not the aggressive effort of cleaners and air fresheners.

“Two fried platters to go.”

The meals were ready in minutes, packed up with plasticware and a surplus of napkins. When I got home, the bag was still searing hot and I removed it carefully from the floor of the car.

“I’m so sorry to be late.” My apology to Bill I’d worked out in the car—I was hours late and I hadn’t called. It was so unlike me.  I’d tell him the truth about the baby and say I’d needed time to myself to get a handle on a new addition to the family. “But I picked up dinner.  I hope you didn’t cook…”

Bill sat at the dining room table, head in his hands, cordless phone on top of the folded newspaper. No smells wafted from the kitchen. I placed the bag on the table and lowered myself into the chair across from him.

“What is it?” The strength in my voice surprised me.

“He’s gone.”

I didn’t need to ask who. “When? How? I was just there.”

“A few hours ago. Poison.” He shook his head. “From a cake some young woman brought to him. Where does a girl get cyanide?” Bill raised his eyes to me and I saw my emotion reflected. Pain, confusion and relief. “They said it was some kind of a wedding cake. Did he—”

“He said he did, but I didn’t know before today. And I don’t know when it happened.” I plucked at the plastic tie on the bag. “What about the girl?” God answers prayer.

“They shared a slice of the cake. He’s at the morgue. We’re supposed to go down there.”

“We will.” I opened the bag and pulled out the Styrofoam containers of fried fish, potato salad and spicy collard greens, their scents entwining to make a soup of fragrance that would, in time, fade. “After dinner.”