Helltown - Jeremy Bates Page 0,83

small woman and patting her on the head. “I wanna have some fun? Please? Can we, huh? Can we have some fun?”

“Given all the trouble we’ve gone through to get them…” Jesse said, nodding. “Yeah, I think it would be a mighty shame not to get our due.”

“I’m in,” Weasel said with alacrity.

“Cleavon?” Spencer said.

“You four go have your fuckin’ orgy,” Cleavon griped. “I’ll search for the girl myself, like I do every goddamn thing else myself round here.”

Spencer clenched his jaw. “Weren’t you listening to me? She’s—”

“Hiding. Right.”

“Tell you what, Cleave,” Spencer said, playing his final card, “this being our last mass in a while—we’re going to have to lay low for several months after this—I was contemplating holding it in Mother of Sorrows church.”

“Inside the church?”

“That’s right. Do a proper mass for once. Also, if that young woman somehow makes it from the forest—and that’s a big if—Stanford Road will take her straight past the church. She’ll see our cars parked out front and come to us for help.”

“She’ll come right to us!” Earl parroted. “Then we’ll have her, we’ll have her good!”

“Smart thinking, Mr. Pratt!” Weasel exclaimed.

“Hell of an idea, Mr. Pratt,” Jesse said, nodding sagely. “Hell of an idea.”

Cleavon, however, was ever the pessimist. “Or she might walk right on past the church.”

“Would you?” Spencer said. “If you were terrified and alone and you’d just been through what she’d been through, would you pass up the nearest help you came across? Anyway, Cleave, to alleviate your concern, we’ll rotate a sentry outside the church while the masses are proceeding, to keep an eye on the road.”

Cleavon scratched his stubble. “Well, now we’re getting somewhere, boys.” He nodded. “I s’pose that might be okay. But the church, it’s a bit public to hold a mass, ain’t it?”

Spencer shook his head. “There’s nothing for miles save that little motel.” He made a show of glancing at his wristwatch. “And who’s going to be peering out their window with night-vision goggles in the middle of the night? Now, are we all agreed?”

To Spencer’s immense relief, they were.

They drove to Mother of Sorrows church in three separate cars. Cleavon, Weasel, and Jesse in the El Camino; Earl, Floyd, and the two women in Earl’s old nuts-and-bolts jalopy; Spencer in his Volvo. They parked at the top of the hill on which the church was built and dashed through the rain to the abandoned building.

The sanctuary was pitch black and dusty. The air smelled stale, with the faintest traces of myrrh and spikenard. Spencer turned on his flashlight and led the way down the center aisle to the small nave. The others followed, carrying the supplies they would need for the black mass: the cast iron chamber pot, the brass Chinese gong, the cased ceremonial sword, black and white candles, and a rusty bucket filled with chicken blood. Weasel usually brought his Casio keyboard to the black masses they held at the scattering of abandoned houses they frequented, but Spencer assured him the church had a full-sized organ that was in working order.

Earl dumped the two struggling women on the stone floor, next to the altar, and said, “Can we do the small one first, Spence? Lookit her go! She’s like a rabbit that knows what’s coming for it. So can we, Spence, can we do her first?”

“I’m in the mood for the blonde,” Jesse said. “See if she really is a blonde.”

“I’m with Jess,” Weasel said. “We haven’t done a real blonde yet, have we?”

“Cleave?” Spencer said. “Your call.”

“The fuck does it matter?” he grumbled. “We doing both of them, ain’t we? So it don’t matter two flying shits to me what order we do them in.”

“The blonde it is then,” Spencer said.

Jenny was nearly insane with fear. She didn’t know how anything could have been worse than lying beneath the bed in that house, knowing Noah and Steve were dead, knowing someone was coming for her. But this was. Because at least when she was beneath the bed she’d had an inkling of hope she might yet get away. Not now. Now she was strapped down on an altar, stripped naked, the number 666 painted across her breasts with what smelled like sour blood. Now… God, now she was being sacrificed. These men were going to sacrifice her to their dark lord. They were going to rape her. Then they were going to bury her in a hole somewhere.

How is this happening? her mind screamed hysterically. I’m a second-year