The Hunters Series: Volumes 1-3 Page 4

  A small framed picture sat on the table beside Lyn. She picked it up and peered closely at it. A big man in overalls sat outside on a kitchen chair in the yard in front of the house holding a small baby in the crook of his arm. The baby was Lyn. The man was her Daddy. At least that’s what Mama had told her. Was it really him? Was it really her? Lyn couldn’t remember. She sat there until the small room seemed to close in on her so that she had to stand up to escape. She moved numbly into the bedroom where her few things were already being neatly folded and stacked on the bed by the old woman who was her mother.

  Ten minutes later, she stood clutching her mother by the neck. She could smell the plain soap she used, the detergent in her clothes, the musty, earthy fragrance of her gray, thin hair. She tried to soak in everything about her that she could.

  Finally, the old woman pried the girl’s fingers off her neck.

  “You have to go. Go.” She ordered through her sobs.

  Opening the door, she pushed her daughter out into the night.

  “Go…now,” she choked the words out and slammed the door.

  The girl stood on the front porch of the only home she had ever known. Mean and rough as it was, it was all she had known.

  She didn’t know how long it was before her feet started to move numbly. First one, then the other. Unconsciously, they carried her to the dirt road and out to the two lane highway about a mile away. Her small bag dragged in the dust as she walked.

  A soft moan escaped the old woman’s lips. She was slumped on the floor against the door she had closed behind her only daughter. Her breast heaved in pain at the thought, and she sobbed.

  A muttered prayer came trembling from her lips and echoed softly in the room. But the house seemed a black hole. It sucked everything into it, not allowing it to escape. Words, thoughts, happiness, prayers. It seemed that nothing made its way out of the dark house.

  But her daughter had made it out. And she would do whatever she could to make sure the young girl kept going. Anywhere. Just away.

  10. He Was Hungry

  Across the Georgia line, the countryside was dark. On a section of deserted highway, he spotted what he was looking for.

  The old wooden church with a dirt parking lot looked perfect. Surrounded by trees on all sides but the road frontage, it was dark and secluded. Not likely that any churchgoers would be around this time of night. Churches were usually deserted when the flock wasn’t there praying or singing, or doing whatever it is the flock does.

  The area was transitional between the busy city and the remote backcountry of northern Florida and southern Georgia. The little wooden structure had probably been there for seventy-five years. It had no parking lot lights, and the rear could not be seen from the road. The car glided around to the rear of the old building with its lights off. Yes, just what he was looking for. The hunger growled within. It was time to feed.

  This project had started so quickly, he had had no time to scout around for the spot. But then, he had always been lucky this way. And he was smart, at least he thought he was smart, and able to adapt to circumstances. But most of all, he trusted his instincts and ability to sense danger. This spot felt safe, and he was hungry.

  The wheels of the car crunched the gravel as it came to a stop behind the church at the far end of the lot. He put the knife to her throat again.

  “I’ll be right with you, sweetheart,” he said holding his face so close his lips touched her cheek as he spoke. She shivered at the movement of his lips against her soft skin. He knew she could smell his breath.

  Opening the driver’s door, he walked around to the passenger side, chuckling a little as he walked to the rear and then around. Closer to go around the front, he thought to himself. He found the irony amusing, that he was like everyone else in this little eccentricity. Curious.

  Stopping for a moment, he breathed deeply. The night air was thick, humid, and pungent with the smell of vegetation and life. Buzzing, chirping, and humming from a billion insects and frogs filled his ears. Life rustled in the trees and scurried and slithered along the ground. It was all around him, and he was part of it. Glancing at the car, he could see that the trembling girl was not. He exulted in the life swarming around him and filling him. She only awaited the fate he had selected her for…and for her. She was no longer part of the life teeming and swirling around in the night.

  It was a curious thing to see her through the spotted car glass, isolated and separated from the life. He was part of it, the life. She was…something else. Separate, different, alien. Her separateness and isolation and difference excited him. It made him powerful.

  Jerking the passenger door open, he slit the plastic tie holding her wrists to the door’s armrest with a quick motion. She almost fell out onto the ground as it released.

  11. Rocking on the Porch

  “You hear that?”

  The old man hunched over in his rocking chair on the front porch of the old house and squinted, as if that would sharpen his hearing. Light filtered out through the curtains of the living room behind him. The window was open and moths fluttered against the screen.

  “What?” The equally old woman was sitting a few feet to his left in an identical wooden porch chair. Focusing on the cross-stitch embroidery she was working on in her lap, her peripheral vision picked up the side-to-side movements of his head as he tried to pick up the sound again. It was distracting, so she dropped her work in her lap and turned her head and asked more sharply, “What?”

  “Nothin’,” the old man said leaning back in his chair. “Thought I heard something through the woods, over by the A.M.E. Church. Must have been nothin’.”

  “Maybe you should walk over and check around,” the old woman said. “You usually hear pretty good for an old man.”

  A wheezy soft laugh escaped the old man. “Right, maybe I should.” He reached over and patted her thin knee.

  “Old man, huh. Where’d you learn to talk like that?”

  “From you I reckon,” she looked over at her husband whose hands were bracing on the arms of the chair to push himself up. “You thinkin’ you’re not old?”

  He chuckled and shifted a little, as if trying to get up the energy to rise from the chair.

  “Young buck would be more right,” he said, rising stiffly from the chair and shuffling his feet in a little jig to show his wife how spry he still was.

  Her response was a shake of the head and a short, “Go on now. See what’s going on through those woods.”

  “Why, yes, ma’am. I’ll do just that. Wouldn’t want nothin’ to happen over at the church. I ain’t never been a church person and don’t suppose I ever will be, but still, I don’t need any more points against me with the old man upstairs if something was wrong over there, and me just sittin’ here passing time with an old woman.”

  “What makes you think you get any points at all out of this? It was my idea for you to check it out. You are forgetful, old man.”

  “Well, old girl, I guess you could say I identified the problem and organized the expedition. That ought to be worth somethin’,” he drawled back with a smile.

  The screen door banged as he walked into the house and through it to the kitchen. A minute later, the door banged again.

  “Think you’re makin’ enough noise? Not likely you’re gonna sneak up on anyone with all that door bangin’ goin’ on.”

  “What makes you think I’m trying to sneak up on anyone? I want them long gone by the time I get there. No need to be overly ambitious or under cautious about such things.” He smiled at his wife, still seated in her chair.

  He clicked on the flashlight and shined it across the yard toward the tree line. The batteries were old, the light dim and yellow.

  “Better hurry,” she encouraged him. “Not much light left in them batteries.”

  “Yep. I better get movin’.”

  When he was half way across the yard, an uneasiness bubbled slightly inside her and she called out from the porch, “Yo
u take the gun?”

  He turned, and reaching behind, the old man pulled the .38 Smith and Wesson, two-inch barrel revolver from his back pocket. He held it up for her to see as he walked toward the trees.

  12. Appetizer

  He smiled again as he jerked the girl roughly to her feet. The knife was at her throat. His body pressed hard against her forcing her against the side of the car.

  “Don’t make a sound, sweetheart. Do you understand?” The grin was still on his face.

  She nodded slowly, trembling.

  “We’re gonna have a little fun. Then I’ll take you somewhere and drop you off. You can find your way home. Right?”

  Again, the slow, trembling nod.

  He glanced around and saw no lights through the trees surrounding the church. Just woods and dark. Reaching into the car, he retrieved a roll of duct tape he had conveniently placed under the passenger seat. No need to worry about being spotted now.

  With a quick motion, he circled the girl’s face with the tape sealing off her mouth and any possible sound she might make other than the soft, muted whimpers she was trying to control. Her fear and pathetic effort not to make any sound as he had instructed sent a thrill through his loins.

  Roughly, he jerked her away from the door and pushed her towards the front of the car. With one hand, he grabbed the back of her neck and pushed her over onto the hood of the car, banging her face against the metal. He knew she could feel the heat of the engine radiating through the hood onto her face.

  The knife went down the back of her pants slicing through them and the panties beneath. She gasped as the cold steel continued down between the cheeks of her buttocks and rested there for a moment. A shudder ran through the man as he leaned against her, and she sobbed more heavily.

  Stepping back, he looked at her pale skin just visible in the dark. Her bare, trembling white buttocks gave off a ghostly luminescence. Opening his pants, he moved back to her. This time, she would have screamed had she been able.

  It only took a couple of minutes—painful, terrifying minutes for the girl. After, he stood quietly in the dark, leaning against her still trembling body. The powerful heat and force of his attack on the girl faded into a satisfied warmth. It was not the afterglow of a pleasant sexual encounter. It was the desperate relief of drinking after a trek through the desert without water. This had been the appetizer for what was to come. Soon, he would experience the belt loosening feeling of feasting after a long fast.

  He could feel her trembling in fear against him and he drank in that which he had missed and needed so much. Leaning against her, he savored the feeling and her terror.

  13. A Walk in the Woods

  “Maybe we should just call the sheriff,” she called after him. “You might be too old to go traipsing through the woods in the dark.”

  “I’ll be alright old girl. Most likely just a raccoon pulling on the old back screen door, or some youngsters looking for a place to park” he called back. And now he was determined to check things out and show his woman that after sixty odd years of marriage, he was still a man. Maybe an old shriveled up man, he chuckled to himself, but a man nonetheless.

  At the tree line, the old man stopped for a moment looking for the small path that led about a hundred yards through the woods to the back of the old church. Finding the entrance, he threw one backward glance at his wife, still sitting on the porch. She watched him, and then conscious of his glance, looked back down at her cross-stitch work.

  He scanned the ground ahead with the flashlight. Most anything out would scurry away as he approached, and there wouldn’t be any gators here. No water nearby. But snakes…there were lots of them, and they tended to lie on the paths at night in the cool air. They weren’t very active at nighttime, even in this warm climate. But they could get downright mean if you stepped on one in the dark. He was careful as he walked. He didn’t like snakes.

  Emerging from the woods, he clicked the flashlight off and stood quietly at the edge, trying to blend in with the tree line. Without the light, he would be nearly invisible from a few feet away.

  He could make out the church across the rear gravel lot. Nothing seemed out of sorts and he could see no one. Walking as softly as he could through the gravel, he went to the back of the church building. The crunching sound his shoes made in the rocks caused him to wince at every step. Clicking the light on for a few seconds, he could see no signs of prying on the back door.

  He walked around to the front of the church, trying to stay in the narrow patch of grass surrounding the building so that his steps were muffled. The windows seemed intact. At the large double wooden front doors, he checked again with the flashlight for any signs of a break-in. There were none. The two large, wooden doors revealed chipped and peeling white paint, but no signs of prying or other damage. He stepped from the church’s front porch.

  Crossing the gravel lot to the road, he could not make out anything unusual. No way to tell if anyone had pulled into the lot. The gravel didn’t hold tracks, and he wouldn’t know what to look for if it did.

  Shining the light around from the driveway of the church, he could see nothing unusual. The light sparkled brightly back at him from the reflectors marking the centerline of the road in front. No traffic, but that was not unusual here. In fact, any traffic would have been unusual this time of night. Something scurried in the brush across the road. Probably a possum, or maybe an armadillo.

  Okay, so much for his adventure. Time to get back to his porch and his chair. Turning, he circled around to the rear of the church and the path leading through the woods to the old house.

  Stopping at the edge of the woods, the old man scanned the building and lot one more time. The air was becoming thicker and damper as the night came on. A mist seemed to rise from the ground enveloping the base of the church, like something from a spook movie, he thought. An involuntary shiver crawled up his back.

  Silly old fool, his wife would say, and she would be right, he thought. Enough. Definitely time to get back to the front porch. He turned and clicked the flashlight on as he swung around and started to step gingerly back into the trees. The dim, yellow beam of light reflected off something about a hundred feet away, and he stopped in his tracks.

  Squinting, he could make out that it was a car backed up against the woods, almost hidden by them at the rear corner edge of the lot. It looked like an older car and dull in the beam of the flashlight. The type of car someone from around here would drive.

  Peering intently at the ground for snakes, alert to anything that slithered, the old man thought for a moment about going back into the woods and the comfort of his porch chair. An old car left in a parking lot in these parts wasn’t all that unusual. In fact, it was pretty common. Probably one of the church goers broke down on Sunday, or some kids laid down in the seat waiting for him to leave. That thought tweaked his curiosity.

  He stepped back onto the gravel and walked along the edge of the woods towards the car. The shadows of the trees made the corner of the lot where the car sat much darker so that he hadn’t noticed it as he walked from the woods. He had been focused on the church building. He still wouldn’t have noticed it if the flashlight hadn’t reflected dimly off the car’s glass as he swung around.

  14. Ambush

  Somewhere a door had banged shut. It was a muffled sound and seemed a long ways off. Swiveling his head, the gray eyes scanned methodically in all directions. No light. No movement. But the sound had been unmistakable.

  Roughly but silently, he pulled the cut clothing up around her waist and pushed the terrified girl into the car, binding her once again to the seat frame. His fingers left purple bruises on her arms. Putting his finger to his lips, he leaned close.

  “No sound,” he whispered. “No movement.”

  He stared at her with his eyebrows raised expectantly until she nodded her understanding.

  Quietly and carefully, he moved into the woods.

  The dim, yellow beam of the flashligh
t emerged from the woods, wavering from the shuffling gait of the person holding it. The beam swung widely back and forth, as if searching for danger, but not truly expecting any. The dim light detected no trace of the man in the woods. He was invisible to the person holding the light, and would have been difficult to see in broad daylight.

  He watched as the yellowish beam from the flashlight made its way around the church. The person holding it shuffled to the woods, and for a moment, it seemed it would disappear into the dark trees. But then it hesitated and swung in the direction of the car. After a minute the light bounced slowly up and down moving deliberately towards the old car and the unseen man in the woods.

  Avoiding directly looking into the light, he allowed his night vision to give him a picture of the intruder. The silhouette and shuffling gait were that of an old man. An animal growl grew inside him. Outside there was only deadly silence.

  Approaching closer, the old man shined the light through the windshield. There was nothing visible. Stepping up to the old car, he bent over with the light to peer inside. ‘Reckon what the car’s problem is,’ he thought, unconcerned. The danger so close raised no hackles on is neck, no psychic warning, or premonition from the Almighty. It was just an old, empty car in a parking lot.

  A startled breath escaped him, and he almost jumped back.

  The girl, bent over sideways so that her head was below the window, had her hands tied and bound with something he could not make out. There was duct tape around her mouth. It was like something from a movie, and in the few seconds it had taken to approach the car and see what was inside, the old man really and truly wished he had let the old woman call the sheriff. He very much wanted to be on the porch of his house waiting for a deputy to come shine his lights around and make things right with the bright spotlights and not this dim little flashlight. What had he gotten into? It was less than a second before he discovered the answer.