'Oh, God, it hurts!' a girl's voice cried into the deep night. 'For the love of God, somebody please help me. I can't stand the pain.' She screamed piteously. 'No!' she wailed. 'Not there!' Then she screamed, again and again, the voice soon becoming hoarse as it continued to push out of the young throat, straining in agony.
'It could well be a trick,' Sam cautioned the others. 'Janet pulled the same thing up in Canada, at Falcon House. Nydia and I thought she was being brutally raped. But it was all just a show for our ears.'
Monty curtly nodded his head in the direction of the howling. 'But what if that is not an act? What if that is the real thing?'
'Then she is having a bad time of it,' Sam said, a coldness to his words. 'What would you suggest we do?'
Monty's shoulders slumped. '1—don't know, Sam. But I can't take much more of that poor girl's screaming. It's getting to me.'
'It's getting to us all, Monty. But we can't afford to do anything rash or foolish. We can't afford to lose anybody. There are too few of us compared to many of them. And it's going to get worse; much worse. Believe it.'
Monty turned away and walked into the center of the mansion without replying. His back was stiff with pent-up anger and frustration.
Sam knew exactly how the man felt.
'What is being done to that poor girl?' Father Le Moyne asked.
Despite himself, Sam was growing weary of the constant barrage of questions. He held his temper in check and said, 'Probably being raped and sodomized, Father.'
Sam walked away, leaving the priest alone with his prayers. The screaming was getting to Sam, as well.
DAWN. TUESDAY.
First light found the small group of Christians haggard and mentally worn. The screaming, howling, and painful shrieking and the dirty laughter and shouts of obscenities had picked up during the night and continued without abatement until the first faint touches of light filtered past the dark.
Telling the others to stay inside, Sam went outside for a look-around.
The day was cloudy, with low-hanging clouds, gray and black, threatening to spill rain at any moment.
A short scream of fright stopped Sam. 'Oh, my God!' he heard Barbara say. 'Look over there! It's horrible!'
Sam turned, the AK on full auto, off safety. The body of a naked man hung by a rope over the stone fence to the west of the mansion. The noose was around his neck, his face horribly swollen, blackened tongue sticking out of his mouth. He had been tossed over the fence sometime during the night and slowly strangled.
'Monty!' Sam called. 'Come on. I need your help. The rest of you stay in the house.' He looked up at the second level of the mansion. Joe stood watching him from a window. 'Give me some eyes on the west side, Joe,' he called. 'Just in case.'
'Gotcha,' Joe returned the call. He disappeared from view.
Sam walked toward the dead man. He recognized him as the minister of a small church in Logandale. He could not recall the man's name or the church. The man had been hideously tortured. Strange markings covered his naked body, cut deeply into once living flesh. Blood streaked down his inner thighs from the horrible wounds where his testicles and penis had been hacked off.
Monty reached Sam's side. He wore a sidearm and carried a Remington Model Six, .308 caliber. 'Dan Abbott,' Monty said. 'Pastored that little Baptist church over on Davidson Street. 1 didn't know him very well. Seemed like a decent man, though.'
'Married?'
'Yeah. Two or three kids. Three, I think. Yeah, that's right. Two girls and one boy. Girls are about thirteen and fourteen. The boy is in grade school. Wife's name is—ah—Nancy.'
The men cut the rope and lowered the body to the ground. 'I'll get something to wrap him in,' Monty said. 'A tarp.' He looked at Sam. 'Next thing is what are we going to do with him?'
'I don't know. Burn him, I guess.'
'Jesus Christ, Sam!'
Sam met the man's eyes. 'You want to start digging holes, then?'
Monty didn't.
'Ya'll got company on the other side of the fence,' Joe called. 'Two men and two young girls. Look like teenagers. I think it's the Abbott girls.'
'Perhaps we have found, or they have found us, some more Christians,' Monty said hopefully.
'Don't count on it.' Sam dashed the hopes.
The voice of one of the girls confirmed it. She called from the other side of the tall fence. 'What are you people gonna do with the old fucker?'
'What is he to you?' Sam called.
'He was our daddy,' the girl replied matter-of-factly. 'We tried to give him some pussy. Our pussy. But he didn't want none of it. Hell with him.'
'Dear God in Heaven,' Monty whispered.
'Get away from this house,' Sam warned them.
'Oh, fuck you, Balon,' one of the men with the girls called. 'You ain't gonna do nothing except run that goddamn Christian mouth of yours.'
