The Backwoods Part 11

Then something very sharp and very pointed p.r.i.c.ked the side of her neck.

"Feel this?"

A coa.r.s.e whisper.

"It's a knife. If you make any noise at all, I'll cut your throat. Understand?"

She felt burning hot yet immobile, as if frozen solid. At first the terrified paralysis wouldn't even allow her neck muscles to work.

The knife point p.r.i.c.ked a little harder.

Patricia nodded.

Next: "If ya bite, I'll cut'cher tongue out 'n' slice yer big t.i.ts off and leave 'em on yer mama's doorstep. Understand?"

Patricia nodded.

The clammy palm left her mouth, only to be replaced by a slavering mouth. At least her rapist was pa.s.sionate-he wanted to kiss first. The dirty mouth sucked her lips, a tongue pus.h.i.+ng through. Reflex caused Patricia to squeeze her eyes shut in spite of the blindfold, and from there . . .

Her mind went blank.

More reflex, more defensive instinct. Earlier it was the moon, but now, blinded and lashed to the ground, she became her own voyeur, sight replaced by sense. It was as though she were watching herself with her mind. Her mouth fell open and she simply let him do it-Don't fight your rapist, she'd read in a women's column once-so she admitted his tongue, tasting liquor and bad breath. The tongue continued to slaver, his drool falling into her mouth. Then the strange mouth sucked her own tongue out, sucked it hard, and that was when she noticed the gap.

His two front teeth were missing.

Eventually the abominable kiss ended; the mouth lifted, then fell right back to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Wet, ugly suction drew each nipple between the gap in his teeth, and the tongue began to whirl furiously. She could feel that he was naked himself-that hot, hard weight pressing down. All the sensations and mental images collided with revulsion, but Patricia now was disengaged, her own self not part of what was happening.

He never said another word.

She simply lay there and let him molest her, her belly sucked in, her arms and legs pinned out straight as steel rods. Her nipples buzzed now from the furious tendings of his tongue and the way the gap in his teeth isolated the dark areolae. A moment later he sat upright as though her stomach were a seat. His s.c.r.o.t.u.m lay like a hot bag of pudding on her belly, his manhood no doubt inflamed by his own demented desires. His hands opened and closed over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, intent, as if he expected to wring out milk. The sensations hurt; she imagined handprints bruised into her flesh. Next, his fingertips closed on her nipples, tweaking at first, then grinding. Patricia's hips squirmed beneath his weight as he twisted her nipples as if turning screws into a wall.

The weight began to s.h.i.+ft. He kneed himself backward, off of her. Was he done? A foolish question. Of course he wasn't done-he was just beginning. Only now did she realize how widely her legs had been parted. Hands gripped her upper thighs, and then the mouth lowered.

Oh, G.o.d . . .

Her revulsion collapsed on her like a brick wall against the fiercest wind. The most secret and personal part of her body was brazenly invaded by the detestable tongue. First the tip traced around the opening of her v.a.g.i.n.a, stimulating the outer ridges, then delving up and down the groove. It was a long tongue, too, evidenced by how deeply it delved inside after each revolution. These ministrations lasted for a long time, until she thought the body she was perceiving so distantly would go nuts and simultaneously choke on vomit.

Could she actually feel the moonlight on her skin even with taped-shut eyes? Patricia could almost see herself writhing, half in arousal and half in utter repugnance.

The mouth rose and its new target was no surprise. . . .

Now the wicked suction drew over the a.s.sailant's true target in a variety of movements: back and forth, up and down, then hard circles. And all the while it continued to suck, drawing the nugget of her s.e.x through the gap in the front teeth-a macabre inversion of f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o.

The sensations rose and rose. Loops of rope abraded her ankles and wrists, and every muscle in her body began to clench up; a feeling she'd never experienced seemed to sear into her, something scalding hot but delicious. Then that detached kernel of her consciousness-that seemed to be spectating the crime from afar-snapped back into her brain like something yanked inward off a cord, and at last the thing that all those sensations had been building up to . . .

. . . broke.

Patricia went out of her mind, and that was all she remembered.

Some early risers found her at sunup. When the duct tape was peeled off her eyes-taking quite a bit off her brows-she dizzily saw that she'd been staked to the ground. She felt humiliated and insensible, naked and laid out for all to see. A man who'd been walking his dog gave her a light jacket to wear until the police came.

Of course her a.s.sailant had raped her after his oral invasion, yet she remembered none of it. She could feel her virginity ruptured between her legs, but at least there was little blood, and she recalled no pain. But she could feel the sperm deep in her like some devilish slime. Her mind spun in rings of disgust; she couldn't have felt dirtier than if she'd been defecated on. Worse were the pitying looks in the eyes of the people who'd found her, as though she were crippled, an elderly invalid who could no longer control her bowels. "Poor girl," a woman said. "Like to kill the sick animal that did this," said a man. But Patricia could barely even cogitate. Eventually a much younger Chief Sutter arrived to take her home. Her mother and Judy were aghast, Judy breaking into tears when she'd heard what happened. Chief Sutter couldn't have been more considerate in dealing with the sensitive aftermath of physical examinations and questioning. There'd been no DNA profiling back in those days, no way to type her a.s.sailant with technology, just a v.a.g.i.n.al smear for rudimentary disease screening. And Patricia supposed-even now, after the pa.s.sage of over two decades-that if anything could be worse for her than the rape itself, it was her father's reaction when he'd learned of the details.

"Skinny-dipping!" he bellowed, red in the face when he'd gotten home from the crabbing docks. "Runnin' around with no clothes on like a common tramp! Life's hard enough, and now I got a daughter s.h.i.+tting on our good family's name, makin' us look like tras.h.!.+" He slapped her in the face with a sound like wet leather snapping. "How could you let something like that happen?"

The words were worse even than the blow; Patricia felt as though she'd been shot with a gun. Tears flooded her eyes, and when she looked to her mother for support . . . her mother just looked back with a face set in stone.

So long ago, she thought now, looking at the poster on the wall. I'd forgotten all about it, until I came back here.

Enough of this . . .

She shook off the flash of despair, focusing instead on the bag that Chief Sutter had given her. I guess the desk is as good as anyplace, she thought, and tucked it back in the bottom drawer. The recollection of her father-and Bowen's Field-seemed to hasten her out of the cramped room, but before she would leave, she made an abrupt decision.

She tore the poster down and crunched it up in her hands. The gesture provided little satisfaction, but that was better than nothing. She was about to drop it in the small wastebasket by the desk when something caught her eye.

Something inside.

An envelope and a crumpled letter.

Perhaps the only reason she'd noticed them at all was because the items were the only things in the basket.

She picked them out, focusing. . . .

The envelope was addressed to Dwayne, handwritten, not typed. There was no return address; the local postmark was dated one day before Dwayne's death. Junk mail wouldn't be handwritten, but it was obviously something Dwayne had opened, looked at, and immediately discarded.

Her curiosity pecked at her, though she couldn't imagine why; Patricia wasn't ordinarily nosy. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d's dead, so it's not like I'm invading his privacy, she reasoned.

Paper crinkled as she uncrumpled what she could only guess was a letter, but she saw in a moment that it was not really a letter at all.

Just a sheet of paper with one word inscribed neatly at the top.

Wenden.

(III).

It's heavenly, he thought. He stared up in wonder, drinking up the sight of the stars. My whole life is heavenly. . . .

The night couldn't have been more beautiful, nor could his love. The G.o.d that he believed in was much more nebulous than the G.o.d of most people, but just as real. Wilfrud knew, in fact, that they were all essentially the same, and it was to that great ethereal and omnipresent being that he now offered his unbounded thanks.

Ethel, his wife, puttered in the woods, focused on their task. It was Wilfrud who was the dreamer of the pair, the introspective one, which she often, in her loving way, dismissed as laziness. But it's only my love that makes me a dreamer, he thought, and she knew that, of course.

Besides, she was the better diviner.

Divination could be very effective in obtaining knowledge of that which one desired, so long as the pract.i.tioners were faithful people. Faith was in the heart, in the soul. Wilfrud and Ethel had been the clan's diviners for decades, since their late teens. They solicited the spirits of nature tonight for nothing more complex than finding honey morels for the weekend's clan banquet. Ethel made a delectable mushroom roux that specifically depended on this rare edible fungus, but they were very difficult to find.

Diviners, however, could find them a little easier than others.

Earlier they'd both prayed over the boiled pig knuckle, and now Ethel meandered about the woods, holding the clean bone in a cupped hand. It was not with anything like tactility by which she read the telltale signal-it would be more like a vibration in her head. She was naked, of course, to further appease the spirits, and Wilfrud's eyes couldn't resist that raw beauty of hers as she stepped through the brambles, sensing the air. Her bare skin shone so white in the moonlight; it looked so perfect. No, neither of them was young anymore, but looking at her now, in the quiet night's glow, Wilfrud got short of breath. He couldn't be more grateful to G.o.d for giving him so beautiful a wife.

The decades had blessed her body; she didn't look at all like a woman in her mid-fifties, and the gray had barely touched her long, raven-black hair. Even her bosom barely sagged; her b.r.e.a.s.t.s glowed like lambent orbs in the moon's light, centered with large, dark nipples. About her neck hung the pendant he'd made for her when they'd gotten married, a deep blue-and-scarlet pontica stone that diviners and mediums often wore, to maximize their visions. The stone hung between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and seemed to change color when her own pa.s.sions inflamed. Wilfrud himself wore the cross she'd given him just as long ago: two meticulously carved shavings from an eddo root.

For a moment Wilfrud felt bolted to the ground; he couldn't move; he could only swallow up this nighttime image of her. Oh, heaven, he thought. I am such a lucky man. . . .

She pivoted on her bare feet, not looking down but staring out into the night, listening for the secrets it would tell her, and then in a second she quickly got down on her knees and bent over. Wilfrud almost collapsed now, his desires reeling. This alternate glimpse of her-kneeling, naked, b.u.t.tocks jutting-was the last thing Wilfrud needed to see just then. He was supposed to be helping her. . . .

"Oooh, Wilfrud, look!" she nearly squealed in excitement. Her free hand tilled the soft earth between the vee of a tree's roots. "We're finding so many tonight!"

Only a woman after my own heart could be so enthused over finding morels, he realized absurdly. He walked over with his collection bag, tried to focus, but only remained dizzy in the fugue of his pa.s.sion. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s bobbed when she jerked upright, grinning. She extended her earth-smudged hand, which was full of morels.

"Five more!"

He smiled back, so distracted, and put the morels in the bag, then . . .

He dropped the bag.

"What are you doing?" she exclaimed.

"You know," he whispered, embracing her. He urged her back against the tree, his groin pus.h.i.+ng into hers. His voice was parched in his need. "Let me make love to you-right here. In the forest, with the moon and stars watching." His hands ran up her bare sides; sweat misted her skin from the warm night. She felt so soft. . . .

He was tasting her neck, breathing hard already. The jasmine essence in her hair stiffened him at once.

Ethel giggled. Her fingers slipped around his back. She pressed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s more urgently against his chest, then raised one leg and half wrapped it around him. "Hmm," she breathed into his ear. "So you want to take me right here, on the ground?"

"Yes, yes!"

"Hmm, let me think about that. . . ."

Her thigh slid up and down his leg. Her hand squeezed his b.u.t.tocks; then it came back around, dawdled over his chest, then began to pop open his s.h.i.+rt b.u.t.tons.

"Let me think," she repeated.

Wilfrud was going nuts in his pa.s.sion now. He kept trying to kiss her, but each time their lips met she jerked away, smiling. Eventually her fingers spidered down his unb.u.t.toned chest, lingered a moment, then proceeded to his crotch, which she slowly-and excruciatingly-began to caress.

"My love, my love, my love," he kept murmuring into her neck. "Please! Now!"

"Hmm, yes, let me think . . ." As her fingers were toying with the top b.u.t.ton of his trousers, were just about to open them- "On second thought," she said abruptly, "no."

Her hand pulled away, and she gently began to push him back.

"Don't torment me!" he pleaded.

"Wilfrud, you're so much fun to tease!" She was grinning at him in the moonlight, her bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s standing right out. Then she picked up the collection bag and gave it back to him. "We've got to get back to our gathering." The grin sharpened. "We'll make love later. When we get back home."

Wilfrud groaned, his eyes rolling in agony.

"Thinking about me more will make you want me more," she cooed at him.

"No, it won't! I want you now!"

"Oh, Wilfrud. You're a wonderful husband, but honestly, sometimes you're just like a goat. You can wait a bit longer." And then she disappeared around a stout tree to continue her search.

Wilfrud stood like a h.o.r.n.y fool. Women, he thought uselessly. Oh, how they love to make idiots of men.

He shuffled after her into thicker woods. Denser networks of boughs overhead drained off the moonlight-he could barely see. After a time he wanted to call out but thought better of it: he mustn't distract her while she was divining. Instead, then, he filled his mind back up with images of her nakedness, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and the pebble-hard nipples, all that smooth, warm, white skin that he could indulge in, the nest of down between her legs soft as kitten fur. . . .

Minutes more, and he still hadn't found her. He stood and listened . . . and heard no traces of her footfalls.

"Sweetheart?" he finally called out.

Ethel didn't answer.

"Ethel?"

Another step, then- "Oof!"

He stumbled and fell.

What a clumsy clod. . . . He must've tripped on a downed limb. But when he put his hand out to push himself up it landed on a bare foot. Alarmed, he patted upward, up a bare leg. . . .

In slivers of moonlight coming though the trees, he saw Ethel lying p.r.o.ne on the forest floor.

"Ethel! Are you all right?" He slid up to her, got an arm around her back to lean her up.

But her head just lolled on her shoulders.

And he noticed blood on her forehead.

No!

Wilfrud felt crazed in the sudden fear. "Ethel! Ethel!" He shook her. "Please be all right!"

A voice snapped behind him. "Don't worry, Squatter. She ain't dead. All's I done is conk her lights out."

In the dimmest darkness, he spotted the figure standing over him. Enraged, Wilfrud attempted to jump up, to fight.

"Yes, sir. Conked the b.i.t.c.h's lights right out with this here beer bottle."

Conk!

The unseen swipe knocked Wilfrud out cold.