The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires - Grady Hendrix Page 0,123

the bathroom. Slick hadn’t moved. Patricia knelt beside the tub, leaned forward, and got her arms around Slick. She stood, pulling Slick up with her, amazed at how weak her legs were. She helped her out of the tub, one foot at a time.

“They can’t know,” Slick said.

“I didn’t say a word,” Patricia said.

She took off Slick’s one earring and laid it on the bathroom counter.

“The other one’ll turn up,” she reassured her.

Patricia locked the bathroom door, then pulled Slick’s sweater over her head and unfastened her brassiere. Slick’s breasts were small and pale and the way she was hunched over, the way her ribs stuck out, the way her breasts hung lifeless, she reminded Patricia of a plucked chicken.

She sat Slick down on the toilet and put her fingers in the waist of her skirt. It was torn down the back so there was no need to unzip it. The tear went right through the suede, not down the seam. Patricia didn’t know what was strong enough to do that.

As she started to pull off her skirt, Slick recoiled, pulling her hands up over her groin.

“What’s wrong?” Patricia asked. “Slick, what’s wrong?”

Slick shook her head back and forth, and Patricia’s heart hitched. She focused on keeping her voice steady and slow.

“Show me,” she insisted, but Slick shook her head faster. “Slick?”

“They can’t know,” Slick moaned.

She took Slick’s thin wrists and pulled them away. Slick resisted at first, then went slack. Patricia pulled her skirt down. Slick’s panties were torn. She pulled them off, lifting Slick’s buttocks. Slick clamped her thighs closed.

“Slick,” Patricia said, using her nurse’s voice. “I need to see.”

She pried Slick’s knees apart. At first, Patricia didn’t know what was coming through Slick’s sparse, blond pubic hair, and then she saw Slick’s abdominal muscles convulse and a runnel of black jelly oozed out of her vagina. It smelled rank, like something lying rotten on the side of the road in summer. And it kept coming, an endless ooze of fetid slime pooling in a quivering black puddle on the toilet seat lid.

“Slick?” Patricia asked. “What happened?”

Slick met her eyes, tears trembling along her lower lids, and she looked so haunted that Patricia leaned forward and embraced her. Slick stayed stiff in her arms.

“I didn’t make a sound,” Slick insisted.

Patricia sprayed enough air freshener in the bathroom to make her eyes burn, and then she ran the shower. She took off her blouse and helped Slick back into the tub, holding her under the hot, strong spray. She cleaned the makeup off Slick’s face with a washcloth, rubbing until Slick’s skin turned pink, then used as much soap as she could to clean between Slick’s legs.

“Bear down,” she told Slick over the spray. “Like you’re going to the bathroom.”

She saw the last remaining black drops fall into the water, stretch into tendrils, and swirl down the drain. She used an entire bottle of St. Ives shampoo to wash Slick’s hair, and when they were finished the bathroom smelled steamy and floral. She dried herself and put her top back on while Slick stood naked and shivering, and then she wrapped Slick in her robe and tucked her into bed. She put a glass of water on her bedside table.

“Now,” she told Slick, “I need you to tell me what happened.”

Slick looked up at her with wide eyes.

“Talk to me, Slick,” Patricia said.

“If he did this to me,” Slick whispered, “what’s he going to do to you?”

“Who?” Patricia asked.

“James Harris.”

CHAPTER 33

“I prayed over your photograph,” Slick whispered. “I sat with those clippings and your photograph, and I prayed for guidance. That man put so much money into Gracious Cay, and he made himself Leland’s friend, and he came to church with my family, but I saw that picture, and read those clippings, and I didn’t know what to do. That photograph is him. You look at it and you know.”

Her chin started to shake, and a single teardrop streaked fast down one cheek, shining silver