The Dunwich Romance (9 page)

Tobias glared, but then resigned. He was as poor as most in these regions; any currency seeking emigration into his proprietorship would not be turned away. Crabbed hands begrudgingly filled a sheet of store paper with said licorice, then wrapped it up.

“Thar’s yew’re blammed licorice, cripple,” Tobias declared, his adam’s apple bobbing on his old, thin neck. “Naow git aout.”

“Ee-yuh,” laughed the girthy Wheeler. “Go’n tell more
fortunes.
”

Kyler tucked his parcel under his arm. “Nay, see, my friend heer got business as well...”

Tobias and his ramshackle associates all turned hateful glares to Sary.

Even before this, Sary was conscious of assessments being made of her; the hateful glares also possessed more than a small amount of lust as those blood-shot eyes roved her body. One man—the Lang—openly dandled his crotch.

Tobias yelled, waving a bone-thin hand. “Only kind’a business she do is fuckin’ and suckin’! She dun’t got no cash money!”

“Aw, but I got me some m—” Sary began, yet the owner’s outburst would not license the completion of her statement.

“I run a ‘spectable operation heer, and I wun’t hev no whorin’ fer goods!”

Wheeler’s brow rose, then he too rubbed his crotch while his eyes narrowed on Sary’s form. “Holt on a sec, Tobe. Mebbe we oughta dew some thinkin’ on this. Can’t hut ta give Stew Face a smidge’a food long as she put a fuckin’ on us fust—”

“Ee-yuh,” added Lang. Did a tiny spot of wetness darken his crude trousers as his hand continued to knead his genital region? “Jess the look’a this ‘un got my pecker
all
riled up. And haow ‘baout them tits shewin through thet shiny dress?”

Wheeler nodded with a grin, remarked, “Let’s see thet cut on her tew,” then briefly raised the hem of Sary’s diaphanous gown with a yardstick, the action of which briefly flashed the mound of plush, dark hair between her legs.

Wheeler and Lang whistled.

“Thar some meat fer the dogs!”

“An’ my dog’s a-barkin’!”

With a half-shriek, Sary jumped at the start, then righted the gown.

This visual treat seemed to ameliorate Tobias’ previous condemnation. He, too, caressed his crotch. “Fuh-got jess what a looker she be onct ya git past thet roadkill face...”

“
Thought
yew’d change yer mind, Tobe.” Lang made a dismissive laugh. “The pussy on this bitch could put hardwood on a pack’a faggots.”

A leering pause caused Sary to shrink; the ill-feeling in her gut gave her a clear impression what was taking place, and it was an impression with which she was all too accustomed.
They dun’t even keer that I got money...
By now, erections of various dimensions showed through the pants of the rapists-to-be—even the crackly Tobias, who must’ve exceeded the age of seventy. “Ee-yuh. Naow’s ye all mention it, it been a while sinct my dick had itself a good spit!”

“Any livin’ minute this cunt ain’t full’a cum be a blammed cryin’ shame!”

“And we’ll be a-fillin’, brother! We’ll be a-fillin’ it!”

“Gonna get me some shit on my stick too. Mebbe a buttful’a my jism’ll make this dutty tramp think twice afore she shew her mess of a face in heer agin!”

Sary was no stranger to such less-than-stately verbal regards, just as she was no stranger to rape. Often, she’d simply resign to it, for resignation tended to minify the physical damage which often played chaperon to resistance. Today, however...

She’d had enough. She made to bolt, but—

“Whar yew goin’, gravy boat?” Wheeler’s cumbrous form moved with unexpected quickness—right toward Sary—in a manner that left no secret of his intent. The exclamation “Nooo—!” was all poor Sary had time to issue before Wheeler had girded her with his porcine arms. The remainder of her objection was interrupted by the vising of her throat in the crook of the man’s elbow; this action produced an immediate reduction of the blood-flow to her brain. Wheeler’s other arm wrapped about her abdomen.

Consternation and outrage tried in earnest to break through the force being so brutally administered against her, yet in an instant, her vision dimmed. Her consciousness took on a lolling buoyancy, even as her feet flew off the floor and she was lain roughly on the card table and divorced of her gown...

At once, her body raved.

“It be only fit thet I warn ye,” Kyler intoned, yet before he could give more voice—

CLACK!

The Lang man kicked the soothsayer’s cane out. Down Kyler went, to the dusty wood floor.

All I wanted was some rock candy,
Sary thought through her fading sentience,
but look what I get instead...
She lay in a torpid daze, and she could see only as if through soiled gauze. As much as she wanted to fight and flee, her muscles made only the most feeble responses to her will. She couldn’t move, no, but she could feel, and what she felt was the reality of her physical body being metamorphosed into a smorgasbord of touch-fodder for deviants. Rough hands splayed over her quivering skin, squeezing, kneading, pinching, plucking. Fingers burrowed into her sex, a thumb prodded her anus. Her private hair was stroked adoringly, then abruptly yanked and twisted. Soon it was more than hands she felt molesting her; it was raw, hardening genitals. One penile shaft
pap-pap-papped!
against her lips; another, slicked with spit, was pressed between her breasts and drawn in and out after one of the demented toughs straddled her. A third—Tobias’ she would later presume—was squeezed between her feet. Eventually mouths sucked her nipples to numbness; someone may have bitten her inside the thigh.

The visual “gauze” betrayed only the most inchoate blots of darkness, but at least she believed her overall range of vision was ever-so-slowly regaining clarity.

Words seemed echoic.

“This gull’s body got my dick jumpin’ like bullfrog on a skillet! En’t no way better ta get a tickle in yer blood and some feist in her joint like mussin’ a whore up jess fer the hell of it!”

“Bet her pussy’s had more cock in it than I’ve had hole cutters in the ever-lovin’
graound!
”

“I’ll be a-breakin’ my eggs on
these
tits, ee-yuh, but not afore I fuck this pussy like I’se charnin’ buttuh!”

When Wheeler pinched her clitoris and twisted, Sary’s hips flinched, and she managed to mutter, “Eat shit, fat man...”

Wheeler chortled. “Wal naow, Stew Face, jess fer sayin’ that I’ll make damn sure
you
be eatin’ shit ahf-tuh I’m done tarnin’ yer cunt inside-aout with my pecker!”

Cackling exploded; Sary moaned. Her consciousness, indeed, was returning, but she suspected this return would take place only
after
the definitive act of rape had commenced; she knew, likewise, that pleading with the men, or offering them her dollar bill as a dissuasion, would prove a profitless endeavor indeed.

Kyler’s voice sounded from a lower angle, surprisingly quiescent. “I warned ye onct, I’ll warn ye again, fellas. Yew’ll regret whut it be ye’re fixin’ ta do...”

Wheeler’s voice: “Thet balt-headed gimp’s pipin’ up again.”

And Tobias: “Shut yer maouth, cripple, lest ye want it filled with what’s in thet spit-can!”

“Mebbe he’d like ta trade thet cane in fer a wheelchar...”

Sary was able to lean slightly up, and found her vision clearing enough to see one blurred shape spreading her legs. Then—

Clunk!

Her head was slammed back down. A now fully hardened penis was seeking entry to her mouth. Sary had recouped enough coherence to yearn,
Gawd, I wish I had my front teeth,
but still could scarcely move. After a pause, the pasty, foreskinned corona pulled back, then fingers dug past her lips. Her mouth was pried open.

“Luke? What’cha fixin’ ta dew?”

“Piss in her maouth, a’course.”

“Why ya wanna dew thet?”

A chuckle. “Aw, Tobe, thet ain’t the question. The question’s
why not?
”

Then came a roar of laughter.

The denizen who’d spread her legs was beginning to mount her, when—

“Whut the—” someone huskily exclaimed.

“Hey!”

And Tobias: “Why, yew big butt-ugly shit-smellin’ freak!” and then the sound of scuffling. Sary still couldn’t see but she could feel that her three molesters had all pulled away.

“Thet witch Levinny’s bastert kid!”

Sary received the sense that loud, steady footfalls were making an entrance; then came a
slam!
as a door closed; and at her vision’s farther periphery...did something hove into sight?
What’s happenin’?
she thought. With a significant effort she was able to lean up on elbows. Why had the men prorogued their carnal fete?

Her vision continued to clear but not enough to discern anything in detail.

“I’se a-fetchin’ my gun!”

“Ee-yuh, Tobe. Time someone done away with this buzzard-neck white trash devil.”

“Be dewin’ justice, mind ye. Ever-one knows it were he who made off with Kelly Bishop!”

“And Lars Low’s boy tew! Disappeart last October and en’t been seen sinct! ”

“And them poor Farr sisters! All they ever faound of them was their blammed
shoes
at the bottom of Sentinel Hill!”

These accusations confused Sary—with some of those names came a ring of familiarity—but something else confused her as well: a
hush
as material as a solid wall that insinuated itself throughout the room. Sary’s ears buzzed, while in her mouth an odd mineralish flavor suddenly fizzed. Pricklish static pelted her skin, and she could positively feel her body-hair rising on end from the roots.

Then...

The sound which Sary heard next she could not liken to any manner of aural example in her life. An abstractionist, or an audiologist, or perhaps a hebephrenic writer, might describe it as “guttural pressure,” something akin to human utterance yet too distantly departed from the combination of the traversional and longitudinal waves that are referred to as “sound” to be called “vocal.” Its source seemed to defy identification, and it would strike the intellectually inclined as a mode of pandemonic transliteration via some sensitivity to a phenomenon with no previously recognized ken.

In truth, though, it was merely the laryngeal vibrations of an only partly terrestrial throat.

These sounds that were not sounds only heightened that queer mineral taste on Sary’s palate, while the remonstrances of her attackers had ceased altogether. But as her senses grew more revitalized, her confoundment redoubled.

Exactly
what
was taking place?

At last her vision returned as the blood supply to her brain normalized.

Sary stared.

Alas, Tobias, Lang, and Wheeler were still in the room, but all entertained preposterous poses as their trousers were at their ankles and their genitals not only exposed but so terror-shriveled as to be pathetic. All three ruffians bore the most strained facial expressions, as if in violent resistance against what they were doing...

What they were doing was this:

Lang knelt, his neck inclined forward and his mouth opened wide. It was the suet-white, sack-bellied post-digger Henry Wheeler who stood upright, the withered penis tweezered betwixt thumb and forefinger. Wheeler was urinating unsparingly into the Lang man’s mouth, while Lang himself swallowed gulp after gulp after gulp.

But Lang was not the only one consuming a vile substance. Tobias Whateley stood near the corner, his thin forearms shaking as he held in his hands the noxious tin-bucket-turned-spittoon. He’d already raised it to his lips and was—

gulp, gulp, gulp

—swallowing its contents in noisy, grueling increments.

Time seemed to lock in place; the sound of
gulping
 held sway over the store. Gulping, gulping, gulping. Eventually, Wheeler’s bladder had shed the last of its product, then Lang fell over on his side, curled into a fetal configuration, and began to shiver. But the elderly Tobias...

He just kept on
gulping.

How much time transpired proved impossible for Sary to take account of, but some considerable time it must’ve been for it was after only an eternity of staring that the old man finally reached the spit-can’s bottom. From his rack-thin frame, however, protruded quite a distended belly, as though a honeydew melon had been slipped beneath his shirt. Then Tobias, too, toppled over, curled up, and convulsed.

When Sary’s mortification veered off, she saw that Wheeler had already broken from his previous stance and had quite perfunctorily squatted. Amid flatulence that resembled boughs cracking, the post-hole digger moved his bowels directly onto the floor, to deposit a remarkably weighty allotment of excrement.