Dark Rite

Chapter 13

“This is it.” Grant ushered Jazy inside the cabin, closed the door behind them, and locked it, vowing that any Stallard who interrupted them would pay in blood.

“Not bad,” she said, looking around. “I've never been up to this part of the mountain. It's nice and quiet here away from town.” She turned and draped her arms around his neck. “Very romantic.”

He drew her close and pressed his lips to hers. They fell onto the old couch, arms and legs entwined. He ran his hands up and down her body, half his mind refusing to give up thoughts of Cassie and the other half marveling at Jazy's fine curves. That second half quickly won out and he pulled the t-shirt off over her head. Passion lent them urgency and it was no time before they were both naked and thoughts of any kind beyond the carnal found no further purchase in Grant's beer-buzzed brain. He forced himself to take his time, let all his frustrations and concerns boil away in an unquenched furnace of desire.

By the end they had migrated to the rug in front of the big fireplace. Grant wanted to get up and light it, but their bodies were still hot and glistened with a fine sheen of sweat, and he was reluctant to remove Jazy's head from his chest, or her leg from where it lay hooked over his. She ran a finger in gentle swirls over his belly, sending pleasant shivers through his body.

“You wanna take me away for a few days?” she asked dreamily.

Grant frowned. That seemed like a strange and sudden request. “Take you away?”

“Sure. You know, go somewhere fun and exciting. I know I have to work my own way out of this shitty town, but maybe you and I could take a few days, you know? We can have some more fun like this, and maybe I'll get some ideas for my escape plan.” She brushed his earlobe with her soft lips, making him shudder with pleasure.

He tried to ignore the urge that was already stirring again inside of him, and focused on the moment and her request. He wanted to say something along the lines of I hardly know you, why would we go away together? but given what they had just done, that seemed like the wrong way to go. “I dunno, I have a still lot to sort out here,” he said. “Maybe we could, you know, just hang out around here, and maybe go away in a week or so once I've got everything straightened out?”

She pushed herself up onto one elbow, and stretched, displaying her figure to full effect. Her hazel eyes, suddenly flinty, gazed at him through a curtain of tousled hair. “I got me the wanderlust.” She whispered the last word like an incantation. “I want to be spontaneous. Let's go right now! The cabin will still be here when we get back.”

He reluctantly tore his gaze away from her amazing breasts. “Right now?”

“Yeah! Let's get in that hot car of yours and just go somewhere. It don't have to be anywhere fancy. I just want to go.”

Grant laughed to cover a sudden unease. Guilty thoughts of Cassie flitted through his mind and Jazy's strange insistence on going away raised uncomfortable suspicions. From the corner of his eye he saw his shirt draped over the arm of the sofa and the material of the top pocket shifted and bucked. He winced and pulled Jazy in for a kiss before she could notice. As they moved apart again, he rolled her over to his other side to put her back to the hideous dismembered finger and brushed back her hair. “I'm too beat to drive anywhere right now,” he said. “Why don't we talk about it again in the morning?”

She pouted, but nodded. “Sure. But what are you gonna do to keep me entertained till morning?” She sat up, straddled his hips and put her palms on his chest. She shifted back and forth, eyes alive with a mischievous gleam.

Grant refused to give a moment's notice to the thoughts tumbling over each other in his mind and reached up for her again.

The dawn pushed shadows from the bedroom. They had retreated to the comforts of the bed at some very late hour of the night. Or early morning depending how one measured such things. Grant watched Jazy sleeping, half-covered by the sheets. She was one gorgeous girl, but the cold and sober light of day brought with it troubling concerns.

He slipped from the bed, careful not to rouse her, and tiptoed out into the front room. He began searching through boxes and it wasn't long before he pulled out a small paperback volume. Ancient Mysticism in Appalachia by Professor Charles McKenzie. His mind buzzed as he imagined his father checking the book out of the library. He thought of the horrible leatherbound volume the Stallards had stolen. The blackened finger they had missed. Coupled with this book, his own concerns and Cassie's nightmares, not to mention McKenzie's violent death, everything about Wallen's Gap took on a darker hue. And something else, something that had been bothering the edges of his conscious mind for a while that he couldn’t ignore. His father's death. He remembered what the waitress in the diner had said just a few days ago, even though it seemed like a lifetime. So young for a heart attack.

There was no family history of heart disease that Grant knew of and his father had never been a smoker, or a particularly heavy drinker. By the time Grant had arrived in Wallen's Gap, the local doctor had already made the official announcements and the memorial service was for a man already cremated. Grant's hands began to tremble. His father had definitely been a part of this Kaletherex group, but had he perhaps found things he didn't like? Had he learned things he shouldn't have? Had he perhaps not died of a heart attack at all?

Grant shook his head, rubbed one hand back over his hair. This town had him so confused, so many things made no sense. Or seemed to be far more complicated than they needed to be. Was he losing his mind? His thoughts fell to Cassie again and a burning guilt rose up from his gut. He had been so ready to believe Jazy the day before, but now even that seemed unreal. Was checking the book out of the library one of the last things his father had done?

He opened it up and began looking through the table of contents. There were chapters on all kinds of Appalachian myths and legends, but towards the end of the book was a chapter entitled, Cults and Secret Societies of Appalachia. Grant swallowed, nerves cooling his spine. He turned to the chapter and began scanning the sub-headings. He got to one that made him gasp, The Banishing of Kaletherex.

“You okay, sweetie?”

Grant jumped, dropped the book in his lap. Jazy stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame wearing nothing but one of his t-shirts. With the morning light behind her, she was hotter than ever. “Yeah, fine,” he said, hoping she didn't notice the tremor in his voice.

“What's that you're reading?”

“Oh, just going through some of dad's stuff, you know. Trying to decide what to keep, what to throw away or give to charity.”

“Uh-huh.” She rang her tongue slowly over her lips. “So, what about that idea of you and me going away for a few days?”

The nerves and unspent energy that were making Grant twitchy didn’t dissipate. “You seem pretty anxious to go away right now.”

A flash of annoyance darkened her eyes for a moment, then it was gone. She smiled and peeled the t-shirt off, stood before him unashamedly, and amazingly, naked. “We can put the trip off for an hour or two if you want breakfast,” she said.

Grant stared at her for a long time, trying to ignore his body’s insistent and obvious desires. He tore his eyes away. “I can't, not right now.”

Her voice was suddenly hard, angry. “Are you serious?”

He refused to look up at her again, but stood and gathered his discarded clothes from the night before, began pulling them on. “I'm really sorry, Jazy, I'd love to take off with you, but I just have to… You know, I have to…” This was wrong. Everything here was all wrong.

“Have to what?” Her tone was cold.

“I have so much stuff to do with my dad's things.” He stuffed the paperback book into the back pocket of his jeans, dragged on his shirt. The finger in the top pocket twitched and writhed momentarily.

Jazy stalked past him, collected her own clothes from the floor. As she dressed she said, “I can't believe you're turning me down.” Something in her eyes scared him. A deep, abiding hatred seemed to have sprung up from nowhere and burned into him relentlessly.

He felt the need to reassure her, if only to not make any more of an enemy here. “I'm not turning you down, Jazy, really. I just have so many things on my mind. Let me get some stuff sorted out today and we can come back here later and…”

“Take me back to town, Grant.”

He reached for her. “Come on, Jazy, don't be…”

She slapped his hand away. “Take me back to town.”

A glacier had descended between them and Grant knew it was pointless to try to do anything about it. “Okay.”

They drove back down to Wallen's Gap in icy silence. The book pressed uncomfortably into Grant's backside, but he didn't want to move it anywhere that Jazy might see it. The finger in his pocket jerked and twitched occasionally. When they reached the main street, he drove slowly, wondering what to do, what to say. He pulled up at a T-junction and Jazy opened the door and got out.

“Hey!” he called after her, stunned. “Hey, Jazy, come on.”

She walked away without a word or a backward glance.