“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 celclass="underline" “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.”