NIGHT CRUISING (36 page)

He paused and swiveled
his head from one side to the other, watching the grim faces of the
men surrounding him. He wasn't going to tell them
everything
.

"I'd stay awake
and watch Molly," he repeated. "I thought about
dismembering her, taking off her head first, and then her arms, her
legs, taking my time to watch the life run out of her eyes..."

He kept telling them
what he wanted to do to Molly and so many of the things he had done
before. All about the blood and the dying, the cleansing rites and
the time, way back, when he knew he wasn't going to be like the rest
of the men, not like them, the ones coming to...

Bash in his head.

Shoot out his eyes.

Break the bones of his
legs.

Murder him.

They weren't going to
hand him over to the cops. He realized that hard truth with a shock
that ran through his chest and down into his legs. He wobbled
slightly on his feet.

And still he kept
talking, despite everything, telling them what he had wanted to do to
Molly, all the intimate details of his fantasy of blood.

#

Molly stood next to her
father behind the closed line of men, the hair on the back of her
neck standing up as Cruise talked about what he had planned for her.
The mutilation. Burying her somewhere he could come visit the way
Henry Lee Lucas did with the girl he had traveled with and
dismembered and left beside a roadside fence in Texas during one of
his murderous sprees.

And as the hair rose on
her neck, Molly felt again the humiliation Cruise had allowed to
befall her. She felt again the ropes digging into her wrists and
ankles. She saw clearly the way he killed the woman in the Pick 'N
Save, the poor soul's eyes still begging Molly for help even in the
last moments. She relived the night she ran from him across the
desert toward one of the ranch houses near the Mexican border. She
thought she was dying. She thought she couldn't breathe.

She thought about how
many hours of her young life she had lived in fear of dying. How
close she had come to death.

Her gaze lowered to the
man in front of her, to his hand. He held a claw hammer, loosely
gripped in his fingers. She heard Cruise's voice. She saw how the men
stood there unmoving and suddenly she feared they would never move on
him, they'd let him get away with all the crimes he listed for them.
Before she knew it she had grabbed for the hammer and ripped it from
the trucker's grasp.

She was running across
the circle, coming at Cruise's back, the hammer raised. She heard
faintly her father calling her. She felt the circle tremble as if
made of one body. Everyone stepped in closer, but they wouldn't stop
her now, she was almost upon him, and still his words would not
cease, the words kept coming to spew the filth of murder into the
open. His very existence made the world a squalid and dangerous place
to live, his madness made the night a time of terror for the innocent
who died at his hands.

She rushed behind him
and landed a blow to the back of his head, but it glanced off his
ear, nearly ripping it from his skull. He turned screaming and she
raised the hammer again, sound far away and muted, the sound of her
father's voice calling to her, the combined roar of the men as they
screamed in unison a battle cry.

The hammer claw caught
him in the side and she pulled with both hands to free it. She must
kill him. She must stop him for good. Forever.

His flesh gave and an
incredible spout of blood pumped out from his side even though he
hunched over and tried to hold it with both hands.

Then the circle of men
had reached them, led on by her example, yelling like men at war,
descending on the despicably evil human in their midst.

She felt someone take
her around the waist and haul her backward off her feet. She dropped
the hammer and kicked and fought.

Her father said into
her ear, "No, Molly! No!"

The first man to reach
Cruise stove in the side of his head with a baseball bat.

#

Cruise didn't feel the
rest. He thought--his last thought--that maybe he had made a few
mistakes, but all in all it was worth it to live his life the way he
chose. He was a real man.

#

Mark thought he hadn't
seen anything, even in Vietnam, like the savaging the truckers gave
Cruise Lavanic. He was horrified that it was his daughter who started
it. When the men finished, there wasn't anything recognizable upon
the ground. Just blood and bone jumbled together, it could have been
a large animal worked over by desert scavengers.

When the highway patrol
arrived, trailing more dust across the desert into the dawning red
streaks of sun to the east, the truckers were already in their cabs,
tidying up logbooks, and talking on their CBs about a good place to
eat off I-l0.

Everyone agreed the
killer tried to fight them, that he threatened them with a knife,
that he even, by God, jumped one of them and wanted to cut his throat
and would have succeeded had they not all intervened.

One officer overheard
by Mark said, "Lucky if we can get a fingerprint off the son of
a bitch. Might not be enough left even for that. I hope to shit they
got the right guy."

In the ambulance on the
way to the hospital, Molly sat beside him, holding on to his good
hand. He smiled up at her from the gurney and she slowly smiled back.
Molly.

#

Molly wasn't the same
girl her father knew before she left him. In one week of separation
she had lived a lifetime of experience. She could tell from the look
in her father's eyes that it didn't matter. He was glad to have her
back.

For her part, she was
glad to be back.

She took a cloth
offered to her by the ambulance attendant. She wiped her hands. He
pointed to her face and she wiped there, smearing Cruise's blood
across her cheeks so that she looked like an Indian painted for the
warpath. She handed back the cloth and thanked him.

She didn't care how she
looked. She was happy just to be alive and free.

Happy just to be.

THE END

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BANISHED

By

Billie
Sue Mosiman

Copyright 20ll by
Billie Sue Mosiman, All rights reserved.

Cover art by Neil
Jackson, Copyright 20ll

"The Magician
rearranges the Universe to make himself the center, the Mystic
rearranges himself to find the center."

CHAPTER l

THE LITTLE DEATH

She could barely
breathe she was so hot. She could hear the night birds call and the
rustle of her mother’s palm grass skirt as she moved about the
small hut. She could see just the light from the flames of the fire
in the center of the floor, but she could not make out anything
beyond.

She closed her eyes to
blessed darkness and wondered when she would die. She knew she would
never be well again, never stand and walk, never kiss her mother’s
cheek, or feel the comfort of her mother’s loving embrace. She
had not lived long, a handful of years, so there was not much to
miss. Yet she knew she must fight against death. She must not
willingly let it take her.

A blanket of coolness
slipped over her bare skin and it was not from the water her mother
had been sponging onto her. She tried to reopen her eyes to discover
the cause, but her lids were too heavy. She was so hot! The coolness
that temporarily enveloped her was not helping. She wished they would
carry her to the sea and float her in the waves.

Dark grew darker. Grew
to pitch black. Grew to encompass a vast void. She struggled to take
a breath. It would not come; her lungs would not obey. She thought,
Death has me. Death has slipped his arms around me and holds me so
tightly I cannot breathe.

Faintly she heard her
mother’s wails, but she couldn’t lift a hand for her to
come near, nor could she whisper the compassion she felt for the
loved one she was leaving behind. She couldn’t even say
goodbye.

Take me to the sea,
she begged of Death.
Take me from this heat and pain and let me
float in the cool frothy waves. I always loved…I always loved
the sea.

The heat grew like a
malevolent cloud in the darkness until it filled the void. She
couldn’t feel her body. She knew she was but a pinpoint of
matter, a tiny bit of consciousness floating in the emptiness. It
seemed time had stopped or it was moving so slowly it would last
forever and nothing for her would ever change.

I’m not ready
,
the child complained.
I’m too young.

And then she was swept
off into the dark beyond where there was no more thought or heat or
life.

She was done with this
world.

CHAPTER 2

A NEW TRUE BEGINNING

“Life. A
wriggling mass of cells blindly replicating, always in motion,
endlessly in search of food. Is that life? They say it is.”

The girl lay dying. Her
week-long fever had put her into a coma and though her mother kept
bathing her with cool water, her skin felt like hot coals. Though
fevered, her light coffee-colored skin shone smooth and beautiful as
a river stone in the flickering firelight.

In the little one-room
shack made from date palm leaves the heat was stifling. Not one stray
breeze made its way through the open doorway. Flies were so thick
they congealed the air and had to be batted away constantly from the
comatose child.

The mother, frantic
about losing her only child, knowing in her heart death stood close
with a skeletal arm extended, ran from the hut crying to the night
heavens. She sped along the lone path through the jungle to the witch
doctor’s hovel and stood outside wailing loud enough to wake
the dead.

In her native tongue
she told the witch doctor about the dying child and begged for him to
save her.

It seemed to take him
forever to gather his special feathers, shells, rocks, and sticks
tied in bundles with strings of dried pig skin. As the mother raced
back along the path to her baby, the witch doctor stayed at her side,
pacing her, a pale sickle moon at their backs.

Bursting into the hut
where a small fire in the center of the floor burned, grotesque
shadows swathed the little girl who lay against the back wall. Both
mother and witch doctor knew it was over and done with.

The child’s arm
lay limp off to one side, her head was turned toward them, her eyes
open, glazed, and forever stilled.

The mother turned to
the witch doctor and in her grief made the ultimate request. She knew
of the rumors.

“They say you
have raised the dead. Raise her up!”

“I have only
raised a few animals,” he said. “Never a human being.”

“Raise her!”

It was true he was
renowned across the island as the most powerful witch doctor ever to
have lived, but what the woman was asking he thought was surely
beyond his powers. He had brought a dead chicken back to life. A dead
dog. And once, even a dead panther, just to see if he could. But a
human being? He had not dared try. He was not even sure that the gods
would allow him that kind of power.

“I will give you
anything,” the mother cried. She beat her chest and rolled her
eyes. “Anything! Anything!” She was close to madness.

The witch doctor’s
countenance darkened, his eyes took on a glow. His gaze left the
mother and settled on the child. He stepped closer, two steps. Three.
He went to his haunches and studied the girl. She was undeniably the
most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Her skin was lighter than most
islanders, as if it were lit from within by soft white flame. Her
nose and lips and eyes and brow were perfection, and the face was
shaped like a heart. Her long dark hair was smooth, shiny with whale
oil, and it fell in curls like coiled snakes from her scalp. He
reached out and trailed his fingers along her cheek. It was cold, so
cold. It was a shame she was dead. It seemed to Mujai that the gods
were intentionally cruel when children died.

Suddenly, and without
knowing how it happened, the witch doctor fell in love with the dead
child. If he hadn’t known better, he might have suspected he
was under a spell not of his own making. His face softened, his lips
parted, and he let out a little sigh. He swiveled on his haunches to
face the mother at the hut’s door opening.

She was silhouetted in
the firelight, a gaunt figure with clenched hands held before her
breasts. He could feel her grief as if it were an extra person in the
hut. It loomed over her, a dark, heavy figure bearing down on her
thin shoulders.

“You will give
anything if I raise her up? Anything? You will even give up your
child to me?” He must make sure she meant it.

A look of dawning
understanding and then dismay filled the mother’s eyes. She
hung her head. Her tears kept falling, drenching her sweaty naked
breasts. She had to decide. Bury her child in the cold ground or see
her rise up and walk again, alive and well, but belonging to someone
else. Belonging to…

“Yes,” she
said, jutting out her chin in defiance. “Yes, I told you, yes.
Anything. If you must take her, then take her, as long as she is
alive again.”

The witch doctor stood
and came to the child’s mother. “When I raise her, she
will be mine. You understand? Forever mine. I will take her from here
and she will live with me. One day, when she is old enough to wed,
she will be my bride. Tell me you understand.”

Since the mother made
no protest beyond the horror of what she was doing to her only child
reflecting from her eyes, the pact was sealed.