Chapter Eleven

 

“Foddd-dddeeerrr! Foddd-dddder!”

The bellowing of the cave-man echoed in Erin’s ear. She looked up at him, able to see shadows dancing on his cheeks, but the dark recesses of his eyes kept evidence of what was inside his mind hidden. Hands fiddled in front of him, and noises clicked.

How long had she been there? What did Macon say? Did he call back?

Lyric, Lyric. Her brain pounded with waves of energy, wondering where Lyric was, and with each brainwave her muscles strengthened and her wrists wiggled against the rope. Her core got ready to rock a bit, to thrash herself right out if needed, and if it came to it, to fight somehow.

Her tongue pushed against the tiny opening in the cloth, burrowing for more space. Cold, dusty air came into her lungs, but it was much easier to breathe than when the cloth had fully gagged her.

She thought of screaming for help again, or of asking the cave-creature a question, but the time wasn’t right. She didn’t want him to know she could breathe, that the cloth was loose, or to even suspect she was trying to escape. And she didn’t want him to come over and check the rope, or decide to kill her.

But where was Lyric?

“I said Fodder,” he screamed again, “Foodd-deeerrr,” and Erin winced. She had wiggled a few more inches away from the body lying next to her. The person was perhaps from the tent-city she had run through earlier, probably unknown to anybody, yet still, a person who was alive. The wretch leaned over this body like a coroner, ready to perform an autopsy.

The creature grabbed at the man’s chest, and Erin heard a ripping noise. The shirt he was wearing was shredded by one of his knives, and a few groans came forth. Unconscious or not, there was some life left.

Erin started to slide again. She used her butt cheeks to creep over, shifted her weight left to right, but getting her legs to follow was near impossible since they were tied tight and stuck together as if they were one. She had been made into a mermaid like the ink on her belly. Her ears listened for anybody nearby who might be walking the trail, but all she could hear was the raspy breath of the victim next to her. Her tongue had dried from poking at the cloth gag, but a clear gap had developed, and a good scream would get through.

She wiggled her fingers and grasped the ground underneath her for something sharp. Most of it was smooth, either cement or rock; she could not tell which, nor could she tell if this was a constructed sewer system or some kind of cave or tunnel—it seemed to be both. The sound of water somewhere hummed in the background, but she was not sure if it came from inside her head, deeper in the tunnel, or outside on the trail.

Footsteps were approaching; tiny patters, and then the children appeared like ghosts out of the blackness.

“Pa-pa-pa-poppa, whatcha got? Whatcha got?”

“Just line up behind me.”

“Daddy, we got a friend now.”

“How lovely for you. Get in line and get ready.”

“Stop pushing.”

“Na-na-na-not. I’m not. Yer always first.”

“Cause I’m the oldest.”

“Ba-ba-by a second, and I’m a ba-ba-boy.”

“And you don’t know how to be nice. Q doesn’t know how to be nice, Daddy. Mamma says…”

Her voice faded and if she wanted her poppa to take her side of the argument, he would have none of it. He barely noticed them; treated them like they were flies buzzing around him as he worked. The light of their flashlights combined with his lantern and sprayed rays in all directions, as if the three of them were the sun of this hellish cavern.

“Q doesn’t know…”

A stiff forearm came from the wretch, punching out to his side without a glance, and he caught his daughter smack in the face. Whap! Erin heard the smack, saw the little girl’s face jerk back like a boxers, felt her own body jump as if she herself had been hit, and then felt everything go silent.

The children filed in quietly to his side—message received.

Erin was just out of arms reach from the body next to her, unnoticeably sliding over when she could, and the two children paid no attention to her. When she had first seen their shadows appear, she hoped one of the stick figures might have been Lyric.

But still no sign of her daughter.

She’s off down the trail toward home, Erin tried to convince herself.

But the children spoke of a new friend. This was her Lyric.

Beads of sweat from her run mixed in with the wetness of the ground and made her shiver. The air was cold and wet in this dungeon, as if never having been heated by a sun. She was in a chilled, forgotten cellar.

Both children looked in the air as the creature held up the knife. Erin’s eyes widened; her mind’s eye imagined him killing people right in front of his children, like it was some ritual, and he made them watch, or worse.

Victims have been here before—this was clear, and her gut filled with rotten bile that started to creep up her throat.

The creature used his forearms to weigh down the man’s abdomen, and his knife went down.

Grunts, barely audible, and a slight motion to fight came from the homeless man, but the wretch just added more weight and pressure to make his victim surrender and resign to the cutting. The creature’s elbow bobbed in the air, making a jerking motion, up and down, his hand clearly cutting.

Like little pups the children gathered, kneeling down at both sides of the black man’s body and burying their heads into the bloody mess.

The girl was the first to pull her head up from the body, and when she did, Erin saw the liquid all over her chin. Just the feint trace of dark red in the light splattered amongst her cheek. And then the son came up for air as well, but not for nearly as long. He quickly returned to feed.

Grunting noises came from the daddy creature as he put more weight and strength into the cutting, grinding away as if sawing at a tree limb. Then he paused, put the knife down, and started lifting up pieces, tiny pieces of something, which he stuck into his son’s mouth first, his daughter’s second. Slurping and swallowing noises followed, as if they were eating oysters.

Erin kept shuffling, moving centimeters at a time by shifting her weight, using her ass cheeks pressed against the ground to ever-so-slightly slide. She had to do something, had to move. This was worse than she thought; she was in some kind of hell and needed to move.

Each time a murmur came forth from the homeless man, Erin was sure it would be his last. She hoped he would just die. Just die already. But he didn’t, and the cutting moved on to different parts of his body.

Noises from supping children seemed to stick to the cold moisture in the air.

Erin tried to be quiet, but she felt her own mouth ready to give, ready to make noises; she was sure of it. She needed to scream. Instead she pretended she had no mouth and let the terror shoot into her stomach and mix with the sickening bile.

Then she heard it: a buzz, the buzz of her phone. Zinnnggg… zinnngggg. It was vibrating in the wretch’s pocket; someone was calling for her. She tried to stop breathing, to stop her heart from beating, and to focus her energy on her ears to listen.

Zzinnnng… zinnnngggg.

No movement by the creature.

Answer it. Answer it. Answer it!

The ringing stopped. She was ready to break; it was all too much. But then he moved. The creature got up and shuffled out of the cave, in and out of the shadows the way only someone who lived within them could.

They live here. How long have they lived here?

I will not die. We will not die. I’ll get free and find Lyric.

She could feel it… needed to feel it.

I have people who will pay. I have people who will pay.

She kept pushing with her tongue on the rag, which was halfway off her mouth. Her hands were numb, but fingertips were free to give tiny pushes and help her scoot. She heard the plop of the creature’s boots and realized he went through the exit, onto the trail.

By the sound she was maybe fifteen yards away.

How could Macon get that kind of money? Why would they let her go anyway, even if he did pay? They won’t. Even if it made sense to, they wouldn’t let her go—they wouldn’t let her live.

The police? Would he go to the police? He never trusted them. She always saw his back get tense when a cop car drove nearby, and he took odd turns or went in circles to avoid the police car.

With the wretch gone, she started to rock more and more. What if she could plop herself over onto the trail somehow?

Then he’ll knife me. He’ll slit my throat with one of his blades, and then Lyric will be lost forever.

What are they doing with Lyric? Do they even have her? She’s on the trail, she told herself, almost back by now, back to Macon. She pictured her daughter’s face, with tears on her cheek but a steadfast walk, head down, trotting on the trail in a small run to the hotel lobby where someone would help.

Then she saw an image of her own funeral. Her daughter stood there in a floral dress with her head to the ground over a cenotaph. Lyric would grow up without her mother, but honor her memory, and she knew Macon would raise her right. But the grief will leave a mark. Lyric would be forever scarred, scars that no tattoos can cover. Lyric’s last memory will be of Mom yelling at her for getting Pop-Tarts in a hotel lobby.

Tears started to well—tears of rage, of immense hurt, and pressure. She pulled at the rope with her hands, exercising all the rage inside her, but the cord just cut deeper into the flesh of her wrists.

She turned to glare at the children—the children feeding on this person. She wanted them to find her daughter, her Lyric.

“Where is she? Where is she? Where’s my daughter?” she pleaded. The words were muffled from the gag in her mouth, but clear enough to be understood. “Help me find her, please. Help me, please, my daughter. I love her. She’s a little person like you.”

“Q, there’s someone else here, I think.”

“Wa-wa-wa, what?”

“Yes, look.”

Their eager feet came shuffling over, and their anxious eyes went wide.

“Can you cut her?”

“Cu-cu-cu, cut. Cut? No.”

“Why, get Daddy’s knife.”

“Na-na-knife. I can’t.”

“What about your fingernail?”

“Na-na-na-not that. U-u-you do it.”

“It’s a boy’s job for that.”

Gone. These two were gone and evil and no longer human, and Erin felt death coming by their hands. She thought of Max and wondered if when she saw his face it would look years older or the same as it did the day he passed.

“No, kids. Don’t kids. Don’t, please. Your poppa is waiting for someone. Someone is paying money for me, you see.”

“What is she saying, Q?”

“Huh-huh, shhhee, hmmm, I don’t know. I got one, got one. I got one.”

The boy called Q had something in his hand. He started scraping it on his own arm and then lightly traced it in squiggles across this palm.

“Wa-wa-wa-wow.”

“She’s a good one, Q. We never had a woman before.”

“Beaf-beaf-beaf… no, we didn’t. No, not beaf-fore.”

Erin shook back and forth. For every inch she gained moving toward the trail, she moved right back again when she thrashed. She could smell the children as if they were rotting, could see their stained skin and moisture of new blood on their chins and lips. Maybe they weren’t human, maybe some different race, but their sympathies were not to be gained.

“No don’t, kids. Kids, you got to listen to me. I can get you out of here. I can get you food, regular food.” Her words gasped in desperate muffles with rapid breaths and even faster heartbeats.

“Your poppa shouldn’t feed you this. There’s food. I can get you it. I am a mommy. I have a daughter. I had two children.”

“What’s she saying, Q? What is it, food? Is it like fodder? We tried that stuff once.”

“Stu-stu-stuff, yeah, but lez-lez-lets hurry before Poppa comes back.”

“Hey, look it.” The girl’s hand reached down and grabbed ahold of Erin’s eyebrow piercing, pulling on it. She first tugged it upwards and then yanked it side to side. Erin made groans of pain in protest and felt her whole head being pulled up by the flesh her piercing was stuck through.

“She’s got something stuck in her head. I can’t get it out.”

Erin squirmed, bucked a bit, but couldn’t get away.

“Loo-loo-look it?”

The boy lifted her shirt up from her belly. The belly—the same place they started cutting on the man next to her.

“Aw, she has drawings. Look it.”

“Draw-draw-draweering… she has pictures.”

Erin squirmed and felt tiny fingers upon her, right on the tattoo that covered her C-section scar. She wanted to wrestle these children and toss them out of the cave, or grab them, save them, and bring them home, but the knife was out and ready to descend into her.

Her eyes squeezed tight and she was back in her bathroom, fourteen years old and full of black hate in her heart, looking for white pieces of her flesh to cut. Bringing forth the red blood brought a beautiful rush and washed everything away. The blood was so warm to her soul, like she was returning to the womb. The clean bathroom mirror reflected everything back to her, and the locked bathroom was her private universe.

Cut me. She thought, Cut me and take this pain way. She knew it would happen. They would cut, her body would rush with warm endorphins, and blood would bubble to the service. But when they tasted her blood, it would sizzle with rage and be nothing like they’d ever tasted before.