“Going to play hard to get, huh?” Pieces of straw stuck to the broken blisters on his face.
Peggy shook her head and closed her eyes. Her fingers had found the thing she’d been looking for in the straw. She grasped it tightly and waited…
Marsh’s hand went back down to complete the task of pulling off her panties. He turned his head and watched the veil of silk inch tantalizingly over her pubis, groaning with delight until Peggy’s hand shot up from behind and cracked him in the temple with a rusted horseshoe.
“You bitch!” Marsh screamed. He made the mistake of turning his head around to face her. This time Peggy smashed him between the eyes before she lost her grip on the horseshoe.
When Marsh sat up electrical sparks swirled at the corners of his vision and every beat of his heart brought with it another shade of darkness. He gazed down at several Peggy’s lying naked on the hay below him and got lost in the shifting kaleidoscope. He clasped his hands together to form an anvil and swung it down with all his weight behind it.
And hit only the bed of straw below him…
Peggy had acted fast. She was swimming across the golden pool of hay now in a shiny pink blur.
Marsh saw the leather leash trailing behind her and reached down and grabbed it. He heard her choke as it snapped back her head. But she didn’t stop moving, not even as the dog collar bit into her skin and the strap of leather burst hotly through Marsh’s hand, taking with it a layer of his palm.
Unable to comprehend what had just happened, Marsh held his hand up to his face and stared at the raw bloody patch. He heard a sound and looked up. Peggy was aiming his rifle at his head.
Is this how the show ends?
He watched as her finger squeezed the trigger in slow motion…
When the thunder boomed inside his head it was oddly anticlimactic. He felt his body become weightless. As he fell forward onto the hay, he imagined he was a crow gliding lazily over golden wheat fields on a hot summer afternoon.
That was until he realized he was being eclipsed by another shadow bearing down from above…
Marsh didn’t have to be reminded who it was.
CHAPTER 45
When Peggy squeezed the trigger on Marsh’s rifle, nothing happened.
The gun was empty. He’d used up everything putting holes in Wilbur’s water truck.
Yet Marsh had fallen on his face as if he’d been struck down. He hadn’t moved.
Peggy finished pulling on her clothes and ran outside the barn into the blazing sunlight. She headed for the tool shed where she could hear the other’s cries.
“Connor. Are you all right?”
“I’m OK. But it’s really hot in here mom. The lady who made us pancakes fell asleep.”
“Don’t worry honey. I’m going to have you out of there in just a few minutes.”
The metal doors were hot to touch, and when she saw the padlock holding them together she screamed out in anger.
She searched the ground for something to pry the padlock apart but came up with nothing except some brittle sticks. What she needed was a crowbar or a sledgehammer. They were probably inside the shed too.
She turned her head and looked back at the barn door she’d left wide open. Marsh still lay on the bed of straw, his burned flesh shining as if covered by embryonic fluid. He looked to Peggy like the stillbirth of some demonic creature.
She ran back into the barn and grabbed a pitchfork from a bale of hay as she went. Being careful not to turn her eyes away from Marsh for very long, she searched the barn for something she could use to break the padlock…
CHAPTER 46
At the moment Marsh had left his body, Horn had come to him again. Not only as a ghost who could tear him to pieces, but what he feared most. The Horn who did terrible things to his mind.
“You’re nothing but a stupid piece of charred meat,” Horn bellowed inside his head. “I’ve asked you to carry out my plans. Now look at you. You’re giving into your degenerate instincts again. I should kill you now.”
Marsh raised his head and stared at the bloody sun of his internal universe.
“Forgive me Horn. You know I’m weak. That woman really hurt me. I deserved a chance to take payment for it.”
Horn swelled with anger, filling the inside of Marsh’s head with a painful light, until Marsh was certain that at any moment it would explode. He reached up with his hands and pressed his temples. His nostrils dripped blood.
“Aw god please stop!” he screamed.
It seemed as if Horn was pressing forever. Marsh’s eyes bulged, nearing the point where they might spit from their sockets. Then Horn pulled back, and the crimson nova in Marsh’s head shrank to a mere pinpoint suspended in utter darkness. He dropped his hands and cried. He thought for sure he was going to die.
“Don’t forget Marsh. You’re just an ant to me and I’m the magnifying glass. Next time I’m not going to pull away until your bones are cinders. Can you get yourself together now and take charge of this situation?”
Marsh nodded, his swollen eyes still pressed shut.
“Then rise to your feet.”
To his own amazement, Marsh could. His mind felt suddenly clearer than it had ever been in his life. The recent injuries his flesh had suffered had unlocked a mystical part inside him. For the first time his saw his black heart and understood how it had become that way.
As a boy he’d learned there were pleasures one could experience from inflicting pain. In order to free him from the pain of what his father did to him, Marsh’s first victims were his weaker classmates and stray animals. And while he was still only a junior in high school he had his first woman…
He’d tried to resist, even attempted suicide. But his need for release only grew stronger. It festered after every beating he took from his father and even after he’d gotten away with killing the old man the taste for it never left him. And then along came the draft and Vietnam—every opportunity Marsh had tried to avoid suddenly served to him on a big silver platter.
Now his ugly heart spoke to Marsh with the voice of a young boy. A young boy scared of being punished again for being bad.
There was no escape from the cycle. He was doomed.
The only thing left to do was to obey and hope that maybe he’d be rewarded soon with more gold than he could imagine. Or maybe Horn would later kill him as promised. The uncertainty churned an icy froth in his stomach, and yet he’d never felt this alive in years, not since his mercenary days.
Marsh sobbed some more as he pulled on his shirt and buttoned it up over his stinging skin. He glanced around the barn, thought about how similar it was to the one his father used to take him to when it was time for punishment. His heart quivered against his ribs like a frightened rabbit.
It’s time to finish this. No more mistakes…
CHAPTER 47
Peggy used a tire iron to rip apart the lock. She slid open the shed doors. Connor flew into her arms, almost knocking her to the ground. She drew him close and kissed his face and wet it with her tears. Jan and her daughter stumbled out into the sun, blinking.
“Did that man hurt you Connor?” Peggy asked.
“No Mom, I’m okay. But I think the nice lady is hurt.”
“She’s still breathing,” Jan said, wiping the sweat from her eyes. “But we need to get her out of there right away.”
“Okay,” Peggy said. She set Connor back down.