CHAPTER 38

IF THIS IS YOUR FIRST VISIT TO THE REDEEMER’S LAW PROJECT, YOU ARE COMING INTO THE STORY ALREADY IN PROGRESS. YOUR EXPERIENCE HERE WILL BE FAR LESS CONFUSING IF YOU USE THE CHAPTER INDEX ON THE RIGHT TO GO BACK TO THE INTRODUCTION. OR AT LEAST TO THE PROLOGUE.

CHAPTER 38

The air next to the Plowman’s tractor shimmered and went blue just as he was climbing down from the seat. The Plowman leaned against the tractor and crossed his arms as Ichabod appeared. “You should’ve been watching TV just now,” Ichabod said, looking a bit smug. “Sinclair just went national in a big way.”

The Plowman shrugged. “Good. At this point it’ll only hurry things along.”

“I’m a little worried, actually.” Ichabod fell into step beside his brother as they headed for the barn. “What if this sudden grandstanding is just a precursor, and Sinclair gets unstable? I mean mentally? Even if Grove doesn’t kill him?”

The Plowman dragged one thumb across his neck. “Then we turn him off. You knew that.”

Ichabod was silent for several moments. “Grove’s mental health has never been outstanding. If Sinclair goes loopy, we’re back to square one.”

Grimly the Plowman said, “That’s right.”

“Well...here’s to Sinclair’s sanity, then.”

# # #

Simon slowly emerged from his room that evening and approached Brenda. She’d moved to a chair in the living room, but was still reading the same book. Brenda glanced up as he came in, and her lips curled as she took in the look on his face.

Brenda put the book down, uncoiled from the chair, allowed her skirt to ride high up her thighs as she rose, and moved into Simon’s arms before he realized what she was doing. Her kiss felt cool and silky. Simon’s hands moved down her back, then lower, but she smiled and chuckled and pulled away from him.

“No no, remember yourself.”

He’d already started to react to her, a sexual ache he’d begun to get used to, and he frowned resignedly. “Sorry.”

“I’ve got another favor to ask of you,” she said, and took his hand. He let himself be led, and she pulled him to a small utility room off the kitchen and put her hand on the knob. “Tonight I want you to do something...decisive for me. But first...”

She opened the door, and Simon’s eyes flickered and changed at what lay inside.

“You’re still a growing boy. You can have your meal.” Brenda lowered her eyelids and traced one finger along the bulging line of his crotch. “And after that, maybe you can have dessert.”

She left him standing in front of the utility room door. He didn’t move for several seconds, only watched.

Another teenage girl lay on the floor of the room, slumped against the wall, barely conscious. A thin silvering line ran from the corner of her mouth, and her eyes rolled back in her head. Several sheets of thick plastic covered the floor of the room and curved up at the walls.

Rail-thin, the girl wore only a ragged pair of jeans with the knees worn out and a dirty blue bra. Fine blond hair fell down just past her shoulders, and tracks like a miniature railroad ran up the insides of both arms. No-name junkies Brenda brought to him, junkies looking for a fix, all of them, no lives to leave behind, nothing. Wasting themselves on synthetic peace. He could feel the drugs as they came through. Simon found himself sneering as the urge roared inside him.

He did nothing to hold it back. His jaw unhinged and stretched, popping and sliding, his fingers lengthened and waved through the air around him.

Without taking the hard white pinpoints of his eyes off the girl’s semi-conscious body, he entered the room and quietly closed the door behind him.

# # #

Later, Simon walked out of the utility room, coated and dripping red.

Brenda had put down a plastic runner for him, and wordlessly he padded along it to the bathroom, where he stripped and got in the shower. Before he closed the bathroom door he glanced out at Brenda, where she sat at her usual place on the couch, curled up with her book. She hadn’t even looked up at him.

He thought of Scott Charles. The kid hadn’t left his room in a couple of days. What had Brenda said? “I think Scott’s had too much, for too long. He might be broken.” What did that mean? He didn’t know. Not that it mattered.

Simon took his time in the shower, let the scalding water soak into him.

He didn’t worry about the mess he’d left. Fields always took care of that. A small, scratchy thought popped up, and Simon took a moment to examine it: he was pretty sure that Brenda touched Ned Fields in the same way she had just touched him, gave him the same feelings...even let him go all the way with her.

He paused, a bar of soap in his hand, and the water ran off the tip of his nose in a stream while he considered that. Finally he decided that that didn’t matter either, and finished his shower.

Simon came back out into the living room with one towel wrapped around his waist, drying his hair with another. He wore nothing under the towel. He flopped down on the couch beside Brenda Jorden and said, “So. You mentioned I might get dessert tonight.”

Brenda put her book on the floor and stretched mightily, arching her back, so that her heavy breasts pushed against the material of her dress. Simon immediately responded, and she smiled playfully and tugged at one edge of his towel.

“You’re right. I did. I’m in the mood for a little dessert myself.” Tenderly she touched his face. “But I also said there’s a favor I want you to do for me.”

Simon trembled. “Sure. Anything.”

“Anything? You’ll do whatever I ask you to?”

He cupped one of her breasts, and she let him. He’d wanted her for so long... “Yeah...yeah, whatever you say. Just...just...”

“I believe you. I believe you will do whatever I ask of you. But this is a very important thing, and I want to be sure I have your full attention.”

“Yes, yes! Please...”

She smiled. He thought, maybe, that it was all a game for her, the way she teased him and tortured him. He didn’t care. She moved over and straddled his hips, and he realized she’d removed her own underwear. He hurriedly unfastened the buttons of the dress, but she had already opened his towel and begun moving against him. His breath caught as he realized she was as ready as he was.

They moved onto the floor in a sort of crablike motion, Brenda straddling him the entire time. Once Simon lay flat on his back, she positioned herself, and his breath came in shudders as they joined.

A few minutes later they separated, and she turned over onto her hands and knees.

As Simon knelt behind her, he looked up and saw Scott Charles standing in the doorway of the dining room, watching them. Scott wore rumpled white pajamas, and he’d coiled the filter’s cable around his neck two or three times. His eyes were hollow and empty. He stared at them unblinkingly.

Brenda had her head down, her forehead touching the carpet, so she didn’t see Scott standing there. Simon regarded Scott for a moment, his eyes narrowed in derision, then grinned, winked at him, and slammed into her, pumped fast and forcefully.

As Brenda began to cry out Scott turned and drifted silently away.

# # #

Much of Scott Charles’s own life he didn’t understand. His memories, coherent and ordered, only started a few years ago. Before that...before that it was like looking into a sea of fog, gray and oily and bad, with things moving in it. Things with the faces of people he knew. Things that looked like his mother and his father.

He remembered some of what they’d told him. He remembered what they said he was. Child of evil—taken by the Devil, soul was gone, soul was gone and eaten, had to send the body after it. Bad thing. Rotten thing.

The thing with his mother’s face was named Claire.

Claire came back to him every once in a while, up out of the oily gray fog while he slept, and put him back under the floor. Down under the floor, with the things he couldn’t see, and he couldn’t move because of the thick silver tape around his arms and legs, and one time she and the thing with his father’s face left him down there for three days, and when they came back to get him a spider had built a nest in his left eye socket and he couldn’t scream anymore.

After that they wrapped him up in plastic before they put him down there. The thing with his father’s face was named Emmett. Emmett’s hair was all white, not white like snow but white like worms under rocks, white like the giant hard worm that he only showed Scott when Claire had gone away out of the house.

Mr. Vessler made all of it stop, though...he pulled Scott up out of the oily fog and made the things with his parents’ faces go away, and gave him a good bed to sleep in, and gave him the filter so that his arms and legs always worked right and his heart worked right and he could always breathe. Mr. Vessler’s hair was black. He didn’t look anything like Emmett.

Simon’s hair was black, too, but Scott had seen...he’d seen the white, the white like worms, like giant worms on his hands, and...and...

Agent Jorden. Scott liked Agent Jorden a lot. She confused him sometimes, when she touched his face, and he felt like there was something he was supposed to remember, but he didn’t know what it was, and she was so pretty. So pretty, and she smelled nice, and she brought him things and helped him pick out his clothes, and she didn’t smile very much but, when she did, he’d do anything for her, anything to see her smile, and

touch her skin

liked her, something inside him that got all tight, and he liked her saw the giant white worms

Simon

Scott was dimly aware of some sort of reaction going on in his head, but he didn’t know what it was or how to stop it. Abruptly Brenda Jorden’s scent filled him, traveled through him, and his blood came alive and crawled in his veins like a billion tiny ants.

touch her skin

liked her, liked her so much Claire and Emmett and the white and

Scott felt something moving in his head, in his mind, something struggling to break through, to break loose.

Simon and

liked her

touched her skin

Simon touching her skin

Giant white worms, touching her skin, Miss Jorden and Simon there in the living room and

God!

His stomach heaved. He shoved aside the draperies on the window nearest his bed, popped open the catches on the window and pushed it up. Night air rushed over his face and he leaned outside and vomited, as quietly as he could, into the bushes below.

If he strained his ears he could hear them, still, through his door and down the hallway. Skin striking skin.

Tears welled and burst from his eyes, and Scott knelt at the window, his arms and head outside the house, fresh air on his face for the first time since Mr. Vessler pulled him out of the gray—

— and he opened his eyes –

– and looked. Looked up at the stars, and out at the trees surrounding the house, and down at the grass, and he didn’t want to be afraid anymore. He’d had enough of the fear, the fear that kept him from doing anything, anything normal, he’d had enough.

Miss Jorden’s scent still swam through him, but it was different this time, and he felt something leaving him, the insects in his blood scraping clean from the walls of his veins and arteries and pouring out through his tears.

Not to be afraid...not to feel the fear...

Something like thunder exploded in his ears, and he didn’t immediately realize that it was only in his head, not in the sky. His blood squirmed and burned inside him like electricity, and his limbs shook and convulsed.

He couldn’t tell how long it went on, but it was terrible and new, and he thought it felt like...

...like being born.

Finally Scott hung on the window sill, limp and wrung out, and felt as if a huge, foul tumor had just been sliced out of his brain.

He stared out at the world around him for, in a very real sense, the first time.

“Oh Jesus,” he whispered, at the grass waving in the breeze and the tall, majestic oaks and the beautiful, beautiful sky. “Oh, Jesus, it’s been just like this all along. All along.”

With his world pulled out from under him, Scott would have torn loose the metal headband, scrambled out the window and rolled in the grass—if not for the ache that replaced his fear, the ache deep in his heart.

Simon and Miss Jorden. There in the living room. That was real. That was now.

Scott picked himself up off the floor and crept to the door of his room. He knew where Miss Jorden kept her cellular phone.

He could still hear them. He knew he’d have time.

# # #

When it was over they both lay on the floor, breathing heavily. Simon had his head propped up against the base of the couch, and Brenda rested on his flat stomach, her left cheek pressed against the ridged muscles there. She still wore her dress, though she hadn’t bothered with any of the buttons, and her right breast was exposed, the dark nipple still slightly peaked. After a few minutes she sighed and raised herself on one elbow and looked him in the eye.

“Well, if that didn’t do it it’s not going to get done,” she said.

Simon didn’t know what that meant, but he felt sort of glazed over, and it didn’t matter too much. Sweat and sex and that other strange, strong scent all filled him up. He was content to lie there, savor the prickly sensation of the shag carpet against his back, and listen to her.

“I’m glad you didn’t end up like Scott,” she said calmly. She could have been reading the ingredients on a can of dog food for all the passion in her voice. “He didn’t want to go along, and now he’s just about used up. But you...you didn’t take much convincing. And you’re just fine.” With the word fine she dragged her nails lightly across his chest and stomach, and let a husky tone enter her voice.

Even more glazed over now, Simon couldn’t follow what she was saying.

It still didn’t matter.

“All right. Now. Listen carefully.”

“Okay,” he said, coming a little clearer. She wanted him to listen. That sounded good. Listening was good. He blinked a few times, focused on her.

“I’d like you to do something for me. You’d still like to do something for me, wouldn’t you?”

“Sure.”

“All right. There’s someone I want you to go see. I’ll tell you where to find him. He’s a grumpy old man, and he’s been a pain in my ass for some time now. I want you to go to where he is, kill him, and kill anyone with him. Tonight.”

He blinked a few more times. She looked a little weird, a little fuzzy, but he heard the words well enough. Sounded like a reasonable request.

“Yeah, sure, okay. Whatever you say.”


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