Black Water (24 page)

He looked at the girl on the bed. Her eyes were wide open, lookin’ at him, apprehensive. Her little fists were clenched tight, and he saw her pulse throbbing in her neck. She was smilin’ but he knew she was as nervous as he was. He could feel the tension. He felt her wonderin’ if she’d made a mistake. With her dress pulled up, she was not only exposed, she felt exposed. And she loved it. The essence of innocence and sex. He knew she wanted him to look at her as badly as he wanted to. She lifted her arms from over her head and down to the hem o’ the dress, brought her heels to her butt, lifted her butt off the bed, arched her back, and pulled the front o’ the dress up to her neck, also exposing her washboard ribcage and tiny nipples. There was just o’ hint of tittie. Not much more than a puffiness.

Ten-year-old Ret was so shocked at her other self’s audacity that she almost laughed out loud. She rubbed her fingertips over her own chest as if imagining that someday, soon, they’d be hers, too. Then the girl on the bed straightened her legs, pointed her toes, put her arms back over her head, stretched, and her whole body quivered. When Hub finally looked back at her face, he understood she was as excited at watchin’ him watch her as he was in the watchin’. A visual, sexual feeding frenzy.

Lookin’ deep in his eyes, she let him know how long she’d wanted this—how she’d peeked at him while he’d been peekin’ at her. How many times she’d gone to bed, taken off her underpants and tucked ’em under the mattress, pulled up her dress, pretending to be asleep, hoping he’d come in and touch her, kiss her, experiment with her. So she could experiment with him. But he never had. She let him know how disappointed she’d been that all he’d ever done…was look. But that was then…this was now, and if he wanted to….

She sat up, pulled the dress over her head, and casually dropped it to the floor. Then she lay down and stretched, and he saw her flat little tummy jump with each heartbeat.

Ten-year-old Ret wriggled and laughed silently, nervously, excitedly, her hand over her mouth, astonished that the girl on the bed actually had the nerve to go through with it, and finally telling her nasty secrets and taking all her clothes all the way off. She didn’t even have socks on!

Keeping her eyes riveted on Hub’s, twelve-year-old Ret seductively ran her shaking fingertips over her tummy, slid her hands down the inside of her thighs, spread her legs apart and….

And ten-year-old Ret took him by the hand and pulled him from the bedroom.

NO! NO! NO! NO!

Why, when his most impossible fantasy was about to come true, was she pullin’ him away? She hauled him through the door and he looked back, hungrily, over his shoulder. The bedroom door was closing of its own accord, but just before it did, he saw that the curtains that had been billowing so softly now hung in desiccated, rotted tatters, the floor and the bed were shrouded in dust, and the girl on the bed…was gone! The bed was empty. All made up. Not a wrinkle on the bedspread. No discarded dress on the floor. Just footprints. One set. Large. His. He looked at the girl pullin’ him through the front room. She wasn’t the ten-year-old with the kitten any longer, but the one who only seconds before, had been on the bed, naked…now fully clothed. She dragged him through the front room toward the screen door.

She stopped him at the door, pulled him down, and, with her sweet voice again goin’ to the middle of his brain, told him she had a surprise for him. He was to close his eyes and not open ’em until she told him to. She was lookin’ up at him expectantly, smiling. Her face said she had a gift he was really gonna love and she couldn’t wait to show it to him. Before he’d be shorted another fantasy-come-true, though, he leaned down, closed his eyes and kissed her on the lips. When he opened his eyes, she was still there, still holdin’ his hand and smilin’ at him. He’d never kissed her before, but he’d fantasized about it over and over and over. It was better than he’d ever imagined. Her lips were soft and warm and moist, and bein’ that close to her, she smelled musky. Earthy. He kissed her again. He didn’t push into her, or pull her into him, but just helt it, his lips on hers.

He started to kiss her again, but she put her fingers over his lips, shook her head, and nodded to the door. Her smile was so sweet, so enticing, so exciting, so…innocent, he was more than willing to cooperate. After all, ever step so far had been better than the one before. He closed his eyes like she’d asked. He heard the screen door squeak and felt the breeze on his face as she led him on to the porch. She led him to the steps and helped him sit. He felt her squat down behind him, pressing her chest to his shoulder blades and her tummy on his low back. She squeezed her knees at his sides, wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and then, with the same internal voice, whispered that he could open his eyes.

There’d always been a small creek about a hundred yards west o’ the house. It now burbbled not ten yards from the porch. It hadn’t been there when he first watched the six-year-old play in the dirt, but it was now. It reminded him again, this was a dream. And there was another Ret. In the creek. Not six, ten, or even twelve years old, but fifteen or sixteen. She stood in the cool, six-inch deep water, barefoot, with the hem of her dress bunched up to her knees as she playfully flicked water in Hub’s direction with her toes. Hub turned to look at twelve-year-old Ret, but she was gone. Again. He looked at the porch and saw only one set o’ prints in the dust. Boot prints. His.

When he looked back at the Ret in the creek, she was steppin’ out o’ the water and walkin’ in his direction. That saucy, flirty little walk she used on the boys. She stopped just in front of him, ran her fingers through her black hair, displaying herself. She wanted him to look her over, like the little girl on the bed had, and he took advantage of it. The three or four year difference between the Ret on the bed and this one was miraculous. Taller, more and better physically developed, somewhat more adult, although still young. But the most captivating aspect was the nervous smile and the look in her eyes. They radiated the same sexual cravings the twelve-year-old had displayed. After a few seconds, she took a step for’ard, bent down, placed her hands on the inside of his knees, spread his legs, and stepped between ’em.

She gripped a fistful o’ the dress and pulled it up, achingly slow.

His eyes flitted from one leg to the other while the hem rose like the curtain in a picture show.

Then...there it was. His breath caught in his throat. More feminine, more mysterious, more glorious than he’d ever imagined. In fact, what he was lookin’ at could only be imagined. Skin like felt, and as hairless as the day she was born. Dream or not, he had as much chance of pullin’ away as a drunk sittin’ at a bar with o’ glass a whiskey under his nose. She bunched the dress at her waist, lifted her long, silky right leg over his left, and placed her foot on the raised edge o’ the porch. The lips parted just enough to reveal the wrinkled edge of the prize tucked inside.

It’s all right
, he heard in his head. Her voice sounded kinda husky, but unmistakably inviting.
Nothin t’worry about. There’s nobody else here but you...’n me. Do whatchu want
.

When Hub had sat on the Komes shack floor with Ret’s tortured body at his back, one of his strongest emotions had been regret. He’d ached for her for years. Fantasized about havin’ her, but George and Matthew’d stolen any opportunity of that ever hap’nin’. As he sat with his back to that dirty couch, he wished he’d gone after it. He woulda suffered through any consequence if he coulda slaked that thirst. Now, for whatever reason, he had that opportunity, and he wasn’t gonna make the same mistake a second time. He ran his hand up the back of her calf, closed his eyes in ecstasy, and kissed her thigh just above the knee. Then he pinched a tiny bit of her thigh between his front teeth and felt a shudder pass through her body. He kissed and licked, higher and higher. She pushed her pelvis to him, invitingly, and his tongue finally gave in to her soft, warm, wet lips. He was so immersed, he’d completely set aside the impossibility of its reality. Even if he had recognized it, he wouldn’ta had the will to give it up. He ran his tongue the length o’ the crease, and she moaned and dropped the dress over his head, and he felt her hands through the material, kneading and pressing the back of his head, guiding his hungry tongue to satisfy her own rising carnal longings.

Both of his hands ran up the back of her legs to the tight little butt. He pulled her cheeks apart, kneading, drowning in ecstasy. She moaned in response and pulled his mouth in tighter. He heard her fun-filled giggle, while his tongue explored every fold and crease. All the years of fantasy had come true; he was lost in the sensation, the scent, the taste, the feel of her body. His tongue found the little button at the top o’ the crease, and it made her moan. He felt it pulse and grow, almost as if it was reachin’ out to be massaged and sucked, like a cat, stretchin’ its neck to be scratched.

He felt her desire building, the urgency in her breathing, in the way she guided his mouth, tensing, tensing, tensing, quivering, until finally, she moaned, and when she cascaded over the edge he tasted the salty, pulsing, orgasmic secretions. She moaned with each pulse. Totally enveloped in the moment, he was ready to explode hisself, but then…slowly…he became aware of a change. She continued to move his face over her body, but now she helt his head pressed so tightly, he couldn’t breathe. It was as if the labia had grown, like cabbage leaf, and created a seal around his mouth, halfway over his cheeks. And it was cold. One second it’d been warm and alive. Now it was cold and sluggish. Cold as death. Then she was pressing his face so hard against the pubic bone he was actually concerned she’d break his nose. He was suffocating, it hurt, and the taste was wrong. The secretion became a flowing! Pee pee woulda been much better. What’d been sexually salty and exciting, now tasted…Decayed? Rotted? Dead? He opened his eyes and the tender, silky alabaster thighs had withered horribly. Sagged. Purple veins zigzagged under the surface o’ the skin on her bulbous belly, and the hairy, nasty crevasse between her legs oozed a putrid, bloody pus, squirming with maggots and wriggling grubs.

It was Lootie Komes, and he was trapped under her smelly robes! He heard her gurgly cackle while she ground his face in the filthy, bloody, maggot-squirming morass. The harder he tried to pull away, stronger was the pull back. Like iron to a magnet, hauled into a hellish maw of wrinkled hide, yellow teeth, and black, bristly hair. Her vaginal lips waved seductively, back and forth, like pond moss, beckoning him back, and the putrid crevasse was filled with rounds of hellish, pointed teeth, churning like a meat grinder. He placed his hands on her bony hips and shoved with all his might, but the nasty thing’s pull was more than his push. Just when he thought his face would be chewed up, it just let go, and she jerked the filthy dress from over his head, laughing.

“No, not yet, boy,” she cackled.

Desperately sucking for air, Hub saw the hideously scarred face of his worst nightmare, the blind eye, the depthless black one.

“Mayhaps not fer a long time. Not until I’ve had my fill o’ pesterin’ you. And yer family.”

Never taking her eyes off him, she raised the dress to her waist, squatted, spread her legs, raked her gnarled fingers across the gaping hole between her legs, scooped out a handful of the rancid mess crawlin’ with masses of the squirming filth, and slathered it across his left forearm.

He gnashed and hissed like it was acid. The arm festered and the skin bubbled, the flesh writhing and wrigglin’ with maggots and fallin’ off in clumps onto the ground.

“I let ya go now,” she told him, her image dissolving into a roiling cloud of black smoke, “but we, me ‘n my little girls, we be back, now ‘n then.”

Her hellish screech and cackle fading like steam from a boiling cauldron, he slowly came to his senses, trying to pull away and get up, but he couldn’t move. His arms were securely chained to two eyebolts anchored to the porch. He thrashed and thrashed, jerking frantically on his tethered arms. He closed his eyes, took a deep, ragged breath, and blew it out, then another. His face pruned up. Somethin’ stunk, bad. Somethin’ left over from the nightmare.

He raised his arm to wipe the stinging sweat from his eyes and discovered that he
was
tethered, securely. To a bed. In a large room. He raised his head and noticed two other beds at the far end, inhabited by men starin’ at him like he was nuts. Let ’em stare, he didn’t care. They didn’t scare him. Who were two grown men he could pound to a pulp compared to a ninety-pound Creole witch who’d handed him, and his wife and kids, a death curse. And then given her own life as insurance that the curse would be carried out.

That scared him.

He tested the strength of the heavy leather straps, painfully reminded of the ravaged left arm, as a man in his mid-forties approached his bed.

“Welcome back,” he said, friendly enough, “and welcome to Angola.” Then, casually, “Bad dreams?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, at least you’re alive enough to have nightmares. For a while I was concerned we were going to lose you. I’m Dr. Kamarata. You were poisoned,” he said, as if Hub’d asked. “A couple of times I considered taking the arm, but you started to turn around.” He looked at the blood-soaked bandage and added almost to himself, “I still might.” He unbuckled the straps. “Do you know where you are?”

“Hell.”

“I guess so, from your perspective. Where were you born?”

“Oledeux. Southeast o’ Opelousas.” He groaned when the doctor lifted his arm.

“Sorry,” Kamarata said, and it sounded like he actually meant it. “Oledeux. Yes, I know where Oledeux is. Everyone does. Big things doing there recently. Thanks to you, from what I hear.” He started to remove the bandage. “When?”

“When what?” Hub asked, wincing.

“When were you born?”

Hub let out the breath, “October tenth, ninety-nine.”

Kamarata gingerly unwound the gauze wrappings, but Hub grimaced all the same. The pain was extraordinary, and the stink was startin’ to turn his already weakened stomach. “Do you know what day today is?” the doctor asked. He had to turn his face away to breathe.