P. Parrish - South Of Hell

Cursing softly, she moved to the back door and stepped out onto the covered porch and into a spray of rain. She squinted into the storm, looking for the beam of Owen’s flashlight. It took her eyes a minute to adjust, and when they did, she saw the sliver of white, jumping in the darkness out in the cornfield.

Margi watched him, more in morbid fascination than anything else. She grew wet from the rainy wind, and she felt a shiver snake up her spine, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Owen. And she couldn’t help but wonder if this particular ghost might just be real. She’d always believed in things like ghosts and ESP and UFOs. Heck, she’d had her fortune read more than once at fairs and by that psychic woman down on Burton Street in Akron.

Not one of them had ever told her she would win the lottery or marry a millionaire or find true love. But one time, a woman dressed like a gypsy told her she would die young and that she should purchase a set of special salvation candles for sixty dollars and light them daily to save herself.

Margi had been nineteen at the time and had brushed the prediction off as something the woman said just to suck her into buying the candles.

But now she was almost thirty and living with a lunatic, and she wondered if the gypsy woman had been right. Was this where it would all end for her? The same way it had ended for Jean and all those other poor people buried out there in that crappy graveyard?

“If you was going to leave him, Jean, I don’t blame you one bit,” Margi whispered to the air.

The jumpy beam of Owen’s flashlight came closer. A few seconds later, she could hear the slush of water around his shoes and his guttural mumbling. Owen stopped at the bottom step and shined the light on her.

“Get in the house,” he said.

She slipped inside and stood against the cupboards as he came inside behind her. He spotted the candles and dug in his pocket for the matches. He was still muttering, but all Margi could make out was Jean’s name.

The candles bathed the kitchen in a yellow glow, with shifting black shadows that jumped with the windy slap of branches on the windows.

“You okay, Owen?” Margi asked.

He spun around. His skin was slick with water, his eyes glinting like some sick animal that knew it was going to die. He held the flashlight in one hand and the broken skinning knife in the other. His palm was dripping bloody water from where he had cut himself.

“No, I’m not okay.” He set the knife on the counter.

Margi let out a breath, her eyes going from the knife to his face. “Owen, please,” she said softly. “You can’t keep doing this. We should leave here. We should go someplace you won’t have to think about her. Maybe Florida. You said you wanted to go to Florida. We could go there and-”

Brandt drew back to smack her. She twisted away from him and his blow caught her behind the ear. She dropped to her knees against the cupboard.

“Stop it!” she cried.

He kicked her in the thigh. With a cry, Margi tried to scramble into the open cupboard. She couldn’t fit her whole body in, but the door gave her some protection.

Brandt reached down and grabbed her hair, jerking her head back out so he could see her face. His hand went up again, but suddenly he froze.

“Get out of there,” he said.

“No!”

He jerked her from the cupboard by the hair and tossed her across the slippery kitchen floor. She huddled up, thinking he would come after her, but he was just standing there, staring at the cupboard. Then he bent and looked inside. When he stood up, his eyes were glazed with something new, something that looked like it scared the hell out of him.

He was clutching something in his hand. For a second, Margi thought it was a dead animal. Then she realized it was just a stuffed rabbit.

“She saw it,” he said. “The damn kid saw everything.”

“What are you talking about?” Margi asked.

“This fucking cupboard,” Brandt said, pointing. “This is where that kid hid the night I killed her slut mother. She saw everything.”

Margi kept silent.

Brandt threw the rabbit down. “Fuck!” he said, pacing. “That’s why she has a damn shrink around her now. They’re trying to get in that screwy brain of hers and dig it out.”

Brandt kicked the cupboard shut and snatched the bottle of Ten-High whiskey from the counter. He stood at the window and stared out as he drank it.

Margi pulled herself to her feet, grateful Brandt had found someone else to be mad at but still scared at the way he was talking.

“She was always weird,” Brandt said, like he was talking to himself and she wasn’t even in the room anymore.

Margi stood perfectly still, her eyes riveted on the knife, still on the counter by Brandt’s elbow.

“She always had this way about her, like knowing people were going to die before they did,” Brandt muttered. “Knowing a tornado was coming before the sky ever clouded up.”

Margi pressed back against the wall, trying to think of something she could say to get him calmed down. “You mean like ESP, Owen?”

He spun to her. “Don’t you understand nothing?” he shouted. “If she was in that cupboard that night, then she knows where Jean went!”

Brandt set the bottle down and grabbed the knife. His eyes scanned the kitchen, finally finding his denim jacket. He snatched it up and started for the door.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m going to get the girl.”

Margi wet her lips. Her heart was thundering, and she could barely find her voice. First he was chasing a ghost, and now he was going to go after a little girl. What was it about this place that turned people nuts?

“Owen,” she said softly. “Why do you have to go after her? In a few days, a judge might give her back to you, and then you can ask her where her mother went. You get caught with a knife, they’ll send you back to jail.”

He was shaking his head. “I told that fucking cop I wasn’t her father. This is the only way.”

“But she’s got all those people around her,” Margi said. “You’ll never get close to her.”

Brandt shoved the knife into his waistband, picked up the whiskey bottle, and took a long swallow that dripped down his chin. “So I’ll kill that nigger cop and that bitch woman and that stupid old doctor if I have to,” he said. “And when the girl tells me where her mother is, I’ll kill her, too.”

Margi brushed back her hair and looked around. The candles were getting low, and soon there would be no more light at all.

“And that motherfucker Shockey,” Brandt said softly. “I’m going to take extra special care of him. He’s going to pay for fucking my wife. He’s going to pay real hard.”

“You going tonight?” Margi asked.

“Yeah.”

Brandt took another drink and turned back to the window. From behind, she could see his reflection. The watery glass gave a distorted shimmer to his face.

“Owen, please don’t go tonight,” she said. “You been drinking, and it’s raining…”

Brandt mumbled something and took another drink, but he didn’t move away from the window.

Margi drew a shallow breath and walked up behind him, never more scared in her life than she was right now. She reached around him and began stroking his zipper. He wasn’t responding real quick, and she knew it would be a grueling effort to get him off, since he’d already finished almost a whole bottle since dinner, but she wanted to try.

“I’m afraid of storms,” she whispered in his ear. “Stay here with me, and I’ll suck you off real good.”

He took another drink, quiet as he thought about her offer. She continued to stroke him. When he started get hard, he turned and faced her, put a muddy hand on her shoulder, and pushed her down to her knees.