“Wake up.”

Her voice was loud in the room’s stale, dusty air. The man in the corner awoke with a jerk. He looked at Jolene and muttered something unintelligible. The gag in his mouth rendered decipherable speech impossible. Not that Jolene wanted to hear anything her husband might have to say. Hal McAllister’s nude, fat body looked gray in the glare of the lantern light. The bloat of his hairy beer belly turned Jolene’s stomach. It sickened her to think of how many years she’d wasted allowing this shitty whale of a man to flop around on top of her.

She sneered. “You’re disgusting. You’re a blob. You look like a big ol’ hairy pile of mashed potatoes.”

More indecipherable muttering ensued.

Jolene stepped over to a wall and examined a row of rusty tools hanging on pegs. Some of them were dark with recent stains. There was a big saw that had last been used decades ago. She was saving it for some of the bigger operations to come. She looked forward to cutting off his legs with it. She reached up and removed a wire cutter from one of the pegs. Hal’s eyes tracked her movements, widening when she flexed the wire cutter’s blades.

She turned away from the wall and fixed him with a grin that looked both hungry and salacious. He knew by now the pleasure she derived from his pain. She walked toward him slowly, enjoying his terror, growing wet as she watched him shiver, anticipating the agony he was about to endure.

“Jake was just here, Hal. We talked about Trey and his troubles.” She stood before her bound husband, her legs spread, staring down at him, using her rigid posture and position to emphasize his vulnerability. “You know what’s funny? He never once asked about you. Not once.”

She snipped the wire cutter at him, the blades snapping on air millimeters from his face. He whimpered. Began to cry. Soon he would begin to blubber, perhaps even go into convulsions. It had happened before.

“Nobody ever asks about you, Hal. Nobody.”

Hal’s chest hitched.

“Trey never asks about you. Your own son. You’ve disappeared off the face of the earth and he hasn’t noticed. It’s like you never existed.” She grinned. “By the time anyone thinks to ask of you-months from now, years maybe-every trace of you will have vanished from this earth. What do you think about that, Hal, baby?” She leaned down, her mouth poised inches from the place on his head once occupied by his left ear. “Doesn’t it make you feel worthless? Like scum? Like something a rabid dog might crap out its ass?”

Hal threw his head back and wailed, straining against his bonds.

Jolene groped for his right hand, pulled its forefinger rigid, and fit the wire-cutter blades around it. She paused a moment and leaned closer, getting her eyes good and close to Hal’s, enjoying the sensation of power that coursed through her as she watched his milky orbs jitter. Then she gritted her teeth and squeezed the handles with all her strength. Hal’s forefinger, the only finger remaining on his right hand, until now, tumbled to the dirty floor.

Hal squealed and writhed.

Jolene went to her knees and opened her mouth to taste some of the jetting blood. It filled her mouth and sprayed her face and chest. She would need another shower. She let him bleed a little longer; then she got to her feet and retrieved the blowtorch from the worktable.

She approached Hal, smiling. “This is going to hurt you more than it’s going to hurt me.”

She cauterized his wound and shut the blowtorch off. She retrieved a syringe filled with morphine from a bag she kept under the worktable, stabbed the needle into a much-abused vein on Hal’s left arm, and filled him with the medicine that would keep him from dying of shock.

“There, there, baby. You’re going to be around a long time. Mama ain’t near done with you.”

She laughed.

Then she picked up the severed finger, shoved it into her pocket, and left the shack, leaving her miserable husband alone with the shadows and his nightmares.

And a few other things.

Crawling things.

Horrible, leering things that grew and changed shape.

Things that knew infinitely more about sadism than Jolene McAllister.

CHAPTER NINE

Jordan Harper staggered into her apartment and threw the door shut behind her. She shuffled into the kitchen on legs that felt like those of an old lady. Heavy and weary. Stung by Bridget’s betrayal, she’d been unable to sleep all night. She’d nonetheless managed to show up for her morning shift at Mondo Video.

In retrospect, she should have stayed home.

Robbed of her patience by exhaustion, she’d snapped at several customers and a few of her more annoying coworkers. This culminated in a bitter exchange with a snide old bitch. A dispute over late fees ended with Jordan screaming at the woman, calling her a “miserable, skeleton-faced cunt hag from hell.”

Thus had Jordan’s less-than-illustrious career at Mondo Video come to an end. Not that she cared. She didn’t give a shit about her job or anything else connected to this rotten town. Showing up for work today was just the kind of thing Jordan did, fulfilling her obligations. She felt nothing but contempt for slackers. But how could she reconcile that with her behavior today?

She poured herself a glass of juice and shut the refrigerator. “Christ, give yourself a break, girl.”

Okay, this talking to herself shit was a bad sign. But the sentiment was dead-on. This was just a setback, and a minor one at that. The loss of the Mondo Video job was your basic blessing in disguise. It meant there was one less thing tying her to Rockville. Even last night’s public embarrassment was a blessing. She didn’t need duplicitous people in her life. She was better off without those backstabbing bitches.

She sipped her juice and contemplated her immediate future. As recently as yesterday evening, she’d planned to be in Rockville for another year, long enough to get her associate’s degree from RCC. But fuck that. She was spinning her wheels here. Her first-year grades at RCC were impeccable. It was time to start sending out applications to real universities, maybe get enrolled at a good school by the fall semester, somewhere far away from Rockville.

“Sounds like a plan,” she muttered.

And thought, Stop that!

Bailing out of Rockville was clearly the way to go, but there was some shame in it, too. She felt a bit like a whipped dog running away with its tail tucked between its legs. It was the sort of thing she would normally rebel against. But not this time. Enough was enough. This time running away was absolutely the right thing to do.

It was too much to think about right now. She was tired. She yawned and stretched. What she needed right now was rest. The future could wait a few more hours. She dumped out the rest of her juice, dropped the empty glass in the sink, and shuffled out of the kitchen.

She heard the dim noise of a television as she moved down the short hallway toward her bedroom. Alarm surged through her until she realized she’d probably forgotten to turn it off before leaving this morning. She’d been in a mental fog, so it was a reasonable explanation-but when she entered the bedroom, she saw that she was wrong.

Bridget Flanagan was on her side in Jordan’s bed, her head propped in the upturned palm of her right hand. Her other hand aimed the remote control at Jordan’s television. A white comforter was pulled up over her breasts. Her bare shoulders made it clear she was nude beneath the comforter. Jordan gaped at her a moment before her gaze went to the small pile of clothing at the foot of the bed-Bridget’s skirt, blouse, and panties.

Jordan cursed herself for being so stupid. The door to her apartment had been unlocked when she came home. She’d been too tired to notice. Probably she’d left it unlocked this morning, too.