Blood Mountain

warning, too, when Lionel turned back to Mercy to drag her all the way out of the window and she came alive in his arms and buried something in his neck.

SIXTY-EIGHT

There was no time for Mercy to register that the cook had knocked her out against the steering wheel and was now pulling her out of the window over pebbles of broken glass so he could rape her and then let Victor finish her off. She came out of unconsciousness as if she had been zapped with something, grabbed the first thing she could and jammed it into the guy’s neck.

Cars were made with glass that crumbled in tiny pieces so people wouldn’t be eviscerated during an accident. The glass from the driver’s side window was nothing but harmless little fragments without even a sharp point, but the broken windshield, where something had crashed through it, could be shattered into jagged pieces.

At first she thought she had been lucky enough to find such a dangerous shard but as the man stumbled back from the car screaming, she saw the frantic flapping wings of the crow beating against the man’s head is if it were birthing free from his skull. Its beak was imbedded in the flesh of the man’s neck.

She had time to think how what she was seeing was impossible before gravity dropped her free from the window. She pulled her head up in time to save a skull fracture. Upside down, Mercy watched the man beat at the crow.

He tripped on the concrete steps leading into the kitchen and sat with a thump. Again, she wondered how the crow could have broken through her windshield right as she crashed. It was an impossible thing.

No more impossible than cancer, her mother said. No more impossible than a psychotic stranger raping you on a mountain. No more impossible than you surviving all this.

The cook was screaming and finally got his hands around the frantic crow and yanked it free. He threw it and the bird spread its wings to glide across the parking lot where it settled among the growing gathering of crows. A few cawed in response.

Blood bubbled from the man’s neck, quickly saturated the shoulder of his white uniform. He tried to stop the bleeding but the blood overwhelmed his hands. Some spurted on his face. His scream now was one of desperation and disbelief.

She had a moment to realize that this guy, this nighttime cook at the Alexis Diner, was in collusion with Victor Dolor before Victor stepped behind the man and swung a huge butcher knife down into the top of his head. THWAP! The sound was heavy and final.

The man fell over, still.

Victor hobbled down the last step and paused. He was leaning heavily to the side. His pants were soaked with blood. I did that to him, she thought.

He spread his hands wide and tried to speak but nothing came out. It didn’t matter. He wanted her to come at him. He was out of weapons and bleeding profusely. She could run away and he would be dead before police ever arrived, but he was daring her to finish him off. The man who had raped her and would have killed her, was daring her to be a killer, too.

She got her feet under her, leaned against the car.

This will define who you are for the rest of your life. She wasn’t sure whose voice that was. It didn’t matter.

That voice didn’t understand that Mercy was no longer herself. She had broken. There was the Old Mercy who lived a quiet, reclusive life and loved books and daydreamed that a handsome guy would walk into her life. And then there was the New Mercy, a woman scarred from a horror that seemed interminable and yet had finally ended.

Almost, she thought. The last move is mine.

The split did not happen when Victor forced himself upon her or even when he hunted her through the woods. That was still the Old Mercy, fleeing for her life, praying for rescue. The Old Mercy had the chance to end this back on the mountain but she had pulled her grip at the last minute. She should have gutted him. Strewn his entrails for the animals to eat.

Sometime between then and the car crash, a new Mercy was born.

This Mercy’s mind flooded with blood-soaked fantasies. This Mercy was a danger. A genuine threat. She recalled her old self, screaming and beaten, and knew that the voice was right: what she was about to do would define her for the rest of her life.

Victor wobbled but kept his balance enough to wave her on.

As Nietzsche said about the abyss, when faced with evil like this, there was only one thing to do.

Mercy smiled as best she could and charged right at him.

SIXTY-NINE

The bitch knocked him backwards onto the steps and half on top of Lionel. Her hands clawed at his face, tore his nostrils, ripped the corner of his lips.

He tried to punch her but his left arm was useless and his right was crushed between them. He tried to push her off but she was too heavy. No, that wasn’t right. She wasn’t too heavy; he was too weak.

As blood slipped from him faster and faster, his strength dissipated. He couldn’t even scream. He laid back and let her tear at his face. She pierced one of his eyes but the pain was slight and numbed, as if it were happening to someone else.

She was screaming enough for both of them. Her hands fell away from his face and a calm, soothing coldness took its place. Like sliding into a pool on a hot day. He could let himself fall into this pool and it would be grand. He had failed in his quest as a cleanser, but he would find peace in this pool. All was not for nothing. His reward was coming.

He was sure of it.

When Mercy’s hand drove into his bleeding wound, however, Victor was yanked from the pool as if a predator had spotted his vulnerability and snagged him in its jaws. Now it was dragging him off to a hot, empty desert where it could feast on his organs so Victor could watch his intestines dangle from its massive jaws before finally dying while the hot earth burned his flesh.

Hot breath against his face, the beast spoke. “Now, I rape you. How’s it feel to be penetrated? You like it when I do this?”

Her hand pushed deep inside him. Pain like an earthquake that ruptures the ground rocked his body in a spasmodic shutter. Through pulsing flashes of bright white, he saw her arm thrust into him, faster and faster. Blood splashed up her white arm and across her face.

“You stupid bitch,” the beast said. “Take it all.”

Please, he tried to beg. Please stop. Please, Mommy, make it stop. Mommy, please, make it stop!

I can’t help you, Mommy said. Her severed head rolled through the leaves. Something had chewed off her ears but her eyes were still there, still staring at him, and her mouth moved. Her voice echoed to him.

You’re Mommy’s little angel, she said. I’m waiting for you, baby. I’ll open my legs for you. I’m going to swallow you deep inside me. Mommy’s going to keep you warm, angel.

“Fucking like it,” the beast said. “Don’t you?”

Fingernails scraped the inside of his ribcage and the vibration shook into his jaw. This could not be what the universe wanted. He could die and be content but not like this, please dear God, not like this.

Scream all you want. But for Christ’s sake, be tough about it.

He tried to scream and couldn’t. Couldn’t release any of the pain.

“What’s it feel like?” the beast hissed. “Is it a good fuck?”

A flash of white like an electric zap directly into his mind and there was Mommy and Daddy in the bedroom,