Soultaker

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

There was something strange about the rat in the corner of Jolene McAllister’s jail cell. Her cell was one of eight at the Rockville police station, and to night she was the township’s lone prisoner. She’d been grateful for the solitude in the beginning. She wanted to be away from people, away from the reality of the royal mess she’d made of her life. Here in this cell, removed from the detectives and their endless questions, she’d experienced a strange kind of peace. She could close her eyes and pretend she was in her own bed in her own home. The cot in her cell was a good deal less comfortable than her own bed, so it took a bit of imagination.

But she managed.

And she even succeeded in slipping into a blissful, dreamless sleep for a time. Until she heard the chittering of the rodent. The sound drew her back to grim reality. She heard the rodent scuttling across the floor of the cell, and the fleeting sense of peace she’d known deserted her. She was in jail. She was alone. And there was nothing at all she could do about it. She was going to spend the rest of her life behind bars. Never again would she see Trey, her best-loved son. The long-dreamed-of pilgrimage to Memphis, the city where she was born, would never occur. Her days of determining the course of her own life had come to an abrupt, irrevocable halt. The stark prospect sent her tumbling into depression, and she began to imagine ways she might kill herself.

Then her gaze went to the corner and she saw the rat for the first time.

Shit.

That’s no motherfucking rat.

Jolene’s mind whirled and her vision went blurry for a moment. The thing in the corner was an impossibility. So this could only be a dream. Except that the uncomfortably thin mattress upon which she lay felt exceedingly real. She could feel every ache in her old and creaky joints.

Her vision cleared and she risked a peek at the corner again.

Still there.

Fuck.

There were a lot of things wrong here. Scratch that. A lot of things weird here. And not just the central mind-fuck threatening to explode what remained of her sanity. For one thing, she shouldn’t have been able to see the thing in the corner at all. The corridor lights were off, rendering her cell and the others as dark as the inside of a coffin. Yet she could see the thing. Its eyes glowed like tiny specks of yellow neon, and the dim light allowed her to see the hazy outline of its little body.

Jolene whimpered. “Go away! You’re not real!”

The creature waddled closer and now she could no longer deny the reality of what she was seeing. Nor could she pretend her mind was playing tricks on her. The thing was definitely not a rat. And the sounds emanating from its tiny mouth weren’t rodent sounds. The thing on the floor was her husband, somehow reduced to rat size. He was trying to talk to her, but he was too small for his words to be intelligible from this distance. Jolene would have to get down on the floor, put her ear down close to his shrunken body, to hear what he wanted to tell her-but she had no intention of doing that.

Her mind again rebelled against the idea that Tiny Hal was real. Jolene was a junior high dropout, but she wasn’t completely stupid. She thought she had a pretty firm handle on what things were possible in the real world. What she was seeing now just wasn’t possible.

And yet…

The thing that could not be continued to stumble toward her cot. As it drew closer, Jolene was able to make out finer details, including evidence of her own handiwork, the ragged stumps where she’d cut off his fingers and cauterized the open wounds with an acetylene torch. And she could see the terror in his eyes. He was gesturing wildly and opening his mouth wide to scream at her.

Jolene closed her eyes. “This is a dream. A nightmare. I’m going to wake up now.”

Just because this felt real didn’t mean it was. She’d had dreams like that before. Some far worse than this. Real doozies, like the recurring one in which a masked serial killer chased her endlessly through a dark forest. The killer would inevitably close the gap between them, getting close enough to reach out to her with a gloved hand-and then she’d wake up with a gasp, drenched in sweat, her heart pounding. The serial killer dream always seemed so real-the danger, the rough forest floor beneath her bare feet-and so it seemed safe to dismiss this episode as mental silliness, a case of her mind weaving her tragedy into a kind of dark farce. Very vivid and compelling, but a farce nonetheless.

Jolene began to drift toward unconsciousness. She spoke again, a groggy but defiant jab at the darkness: “People don’t shrink. I’m not crazy.”

A sound close to her ear snapped her awake.

She glanced down and saw her diminutive husband attempting to climb up one of the cot’s metal legs. Jolene’s eyes went wide and she let out a yelp. Hal cringed. Her shrill shriek seemed to overwhelm his little ears, probably sounding to him like feedback from a wall of amplifiers at a rock concert.

Jolene acted without thinking.

She snatched Hal off the cot leg, sat up, and swung her legs over the edge of the cot. Hal struggled in her grip and almost got loose, but Jolene tightened her fingers around him. Maybe a bit more tightly than was necessary. Hal’s face turned red. He struggled to draw in breath. Jolene eased the pressure slightly. Hal immediately began trying to speak to her again, but she still couldn’t make out what he was saying.

“Oh, just shut up!”

She’d intentionally pitched her voice at a high level, smirking as it achieved the desired effect. Hal’s fat face crinkled, and he surely would have cupped his mutilated hands over his ears had he been able to work them free of Jolene’s grasp.

Jolene smiled.

“Well, shit, I guess this is real.” She gave Hal a slight squeeze, delighting at the way the small amount of pressure made his eyes bug out. “Have to say I like you better this way, you fat sack of fucking ugly-ass shit. You’re easier to handle at pocket size. Although you were pretty damn manageable out in that shed. That was a good time. You know what, though? This has some real nice possibilities.” She nodded. “Yeah. I think I like this even better.”

Hal tried to speak again.

Jolene made a tsk-tsk noise and pinched the sides of his head with the thumb and forefinger of her other hand. “Didn’t I tell you to shut up? I think you might want to obey me, you fucking cocksucker. Unless you want your fat little head squished, I mean.”

Hal’s mouth slammed shut.

Jolene examined the visible parts of his little body with interest, marveling at the minuscule eyes, nose, and mouth. She turned him slightly to see where she’d sliced off one of his ears. She laughed. “Jesus jacked-up Christ on a cracker, this is a fuckin’ trip.” She cast a glance up at the invisible ceiling in the darkness before returning her gaze to little Hal. “I reckon somebody upstairs must like me. I couldn’t have asked for a better present.” She shook her head. “Though I gotta say the way your eyes are glowin’ like that is a mite creepy.” She shuddered before smiling again. “You listen to me, shit stain. I’m gonna put you up to my ear, and you’re gonna tell me how this happened? Got it?”

Hal nodded.

Before she could do that a sound came from outside the cell. It was a metallic sound. A lock turning. Then the corridor lights came on and she heard footsteps clicking down the concrete floor. And voices. A flash of panic sizzled through Jolene. The very strange thing that had happened to her husband still freaked her out, but she did not want to give him up. The opportunity to torture him again, in new and previously unimagined ways, was a dream come true. It was a gift. A beautiful gift from someone, some god the nature of which she couldn’t fathom. And she would not be robbed of it. She considered ducking under the covers again and pretending to be asleep.

But there was no time.

It was a short corridor. Her visitors would be at her cell in seconds. So she leaned back against the cold wall adjacent to the cot, turned on her side, and pushed the hand holding Hal under her pillow.

The footsteps came to a stop outside her cell.

Then Myra Lewis was staring in at her with a strange, knowing smile, her thin lips stretched so thin they looked as if they might snap like rubber bands. With her was a plainclothes police detective and the officer on duty. The detective said something to the officer, who inserted a key into the cell’s lock, turned it, and threw the door open.

Myra muttered something Jolene couldn’t hear.

The detective nodded and the cops departed.

Myra strutted into the cell. She looked as she always did, like an insolent, sneering, rebellious teenager. She was wearing a studded leather jacket, a midriff-exposing black Misfits T-shirt, and tight leather pants. The sight of her filled Jolene with revulsion. The girl looked every bit the corrupting tramp she’d described to her skeptical older son. The little cunt was the realization of her worst nightmares, a harlot who would be the ruination of her perfect, angelic Trey, who had been the one and only good thing in her life for so many years.

Jolene shook with hatred. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to fetch you.”

Of all the things Jolene might have expected to hear, this hadn’t been among them. “Fetch me? What am I, a fucking dog? You gonna throw me a stick? Make me do some fuckin’ tricks? The fuck are you talking about, whore?”

Myra chuckled. “Let me ask you a question or two, Jolene.” She came several steps closer to Jolene, with the ease that comes from supreme confidence. Jolene gulped. She wished she could slip through the wall behind her back, just step through it like a ghost. The need to be away from Myra was sudden and intense.

There was something…wrong…something very wrong with her baby’s girlfriend, something she sensed on a primal level. It was palpable, rolling off her like Louisiana swamp stink. Her eyes watered and she began to feel nauseated. How had she never sensed this wrongness before?

Myra was standing over her now.

She smiled again. “Do you like my present?”

“What?”

Myra rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t play dumb. Wait. You are dumb. Still, brains aren’t everything.” She looked Jolene over, appraising her in a slow, frank way that made the fine hairs at the back of her neck tingle. “Hmm, not a bad little body for an aging piece of white trash. It’s much as I remember it.”

Jolene’s confusion deepened. “Remember? What the fuck kind of sick-ass game are you playing here? Why’d those cop bastards let you in here?”

Myra reached into a jacket pocket, brought out a pack of cloves and a Zippo. She sparked up and blew smoke at Jolene. “I own them. Like I own practically everyone else in this town. Now let me ask you another question-do you remember the time you got down and dirty with Moira Flanagan?”

Jolene gaped at the girl. Her heart seemed to stop for a long moment. Her mouth opened, moved as if to form words, but no sounds emerged.

How could the bitch know about that?

Fuck, it was impossible.

Nobody knew about that.

Myra exhaled another stream of pungent smoke. “I remember, Jolene. Because I was there.”

Jolene scowled. “Bullshit. You couldn’t have been no more than a baby.”

Myra smiled. “I remember how surprised you were when I showed up at your door alone that day.” She licked her lips and her eyes shone with a mischievous gleam. “And I remember how easy it was to seduce you. Later you told me how much it turned you on to fuck your son’s girlfriend.”

Jolene’s mouth continued to work, but she still couldn’t speak.

Myra flicked the half-smoked clove away. “But enough of Memory Lane. Let’s get back to the matter at hand.” She giggled. “In your hand, that is.”

Jolene at last was able to push a few halting words through her numb lips. “You…you’re not her. Moira’s dead. You…look nothing like her.”

Myra’s face contorted with sudden anger and her voice boomed out in the cell: “ENOUGH!”

Jolene cringed and whimpered. That voice. Holy Mother of God. No human voice could ever be that loud. What was she really dealing with here? She couldn’t begin to guess. She recognized then how helpless she was. Terror burned in her guts like acid. “Please…”

Myra’s features smoothed out. An almost serene smile touched the corners of her mouth. “You don’t need to be afraid. Now about your husband…”

Jolene sniffed. “My…husband?”

“You know, the abusive asshole clutched in your grubby little fist.”

Jolene felt Hal squirm in her loosened grip and clenched her fingers tighter around him. “That was…you?”

Myra nodded. “Yes. I did that. It’s my goodwill gesture to you. It’s not the kind of thing I can do too often. Too much of an energy drain this close to the Harvest. But I think it was worth it in this case.”

Jolene shuddered. “What do you want from me?”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.” Myra sat down next to Jolene, draping an arm over her shoulders. “As you’ve seen, I’ve got a lot of power. I can do amazing things to people. I can make most of them do whatever I want them to do. Some people, though…well, let’s just say I sometimes find it useful to find alternate ways of manipulating them. Let me ask you another question.”

“Okay.”

Myra started stroking Jolene’s hair. “Would you say your son Jake is an ungrateful little piece of shit?”

“Yes. Yes, I certainly would.” Jolene nodded.

“Good. I can see you and I are on the same page now.”

Jolene closed her eyes and savored the feel of Myra’s fingers gliding through her hair. All of her previous anger and fear dissipated. She’d badly misjudged this girl. Something about her touch made all the bad feelings go away. She shivered when Myra’s fingertips brushed the back of her neck. A little erotic tingle went through her. It felt nice. More than that, it felt…familiar.

Myra leaned close and whispered into her ear. “I’m getting you out of here, Jolene. In more ways than one, I’ll be your liberator. But I’ll be expecting a favor in return. There’ll come a time when I’ll ask you to help me hurt Jake.”

Myra’s other hand settled on Jolene’s knee.

The girl’s breath was nice and warm on her earlobe. “Will you help me with that, Jolene?”

“Yes. I’ll do anything you ask,” Jolene sighed.

Myra smiled. “Of course you will.”

She gave Jolene’s knee a squeeze, then got to her feet.

She held out a hand and Jolene let the girl pull her off the cot.

Then, arm in arm, they walked out of the jail.