Matthew Corbett 03 - Mister Slaughter

'You didn't have ' Could she ever make a whole sentence again? Something in her mind was screaming, but she could barely whisper. 'You didn't have to do that.'

'I wanted to. Lark. That's a pretty name. There used to be a nest of larks in a tree outside my house, when I was a boy.'

'Did you did you kill them?'

'Absolutely not. They woke me up in the mornings, so I could get to work.'

And now came the question that she had to ask, but that she dreaded. 'Are you going to kill us now?'

He finished the apple before he spoke again. 'Lark, let me tell you about power. Most men will say that power is the ability to do as you please. But I say power is the ability to do as you please, and no one is able to stop you. Oh!' He watched as Faith threw up her breakfast and in so doing blew the cornbread out of her mouth. 'I think she's coming around.'

Faith was trying to stand. Her face was pallid and somehow misshapen, her mouth twisted to one side and her eyes sunken inward as if a pair of vicious thumbs had forced them back into the skull. The tracks of tears glistened on her cheeks. Her mouth moved, but she made no sound.

Then Lark thought her mother's tortured eyes must have seen the bodies again, and the whole event must have whirled once more through her mind like the gunsmoke that still roiled at the ceiling. Faith slid back to the floor and began to cry like a broken-hearted child.

The Not-Reverend continued to eat. He cut another piece of ham and whittled it down between his teeth.

'We didn't we didn't do ' Lark feared she too was going to vomit, for the smell of blood and burnt hair had touched her nostrils. 'We didn't do anything to you.'

'And that matters exactly how?' he asked, with a spoonful of beans at his mouth. When no reply was made, he ate them and dug in for another bite.

Lark wiped her eyes. She was trembling, the tears still running down her face. She was afraid to try to stand up, for she was sure that would bring him upon her with either the knife or some other implement. She listened to her mother crying, and thought that something in the sound reminded her of how Robin had wept when the spotted puppy-Dottie, they'd named it-had died of worms last summer.

Lark felt her lips curl. She felt the rage seize her heart and embolden her soul, and even though she knew that what she was about to say would mean her death she spoke it anyway: 'God will fix you.'

He finished the piece of ham he was working on, took a last drink of the cider, and then he put his elbows on the table and laced his murderous hands together. 'Really? Well, I'd like to see that. I want you to listen. Listen beyond your mother's crying. What do you hear? Listen now, listen very carefully. Go on what do you hear?'

Lark didn't answer.

'Nothing but my voice,' he said. 'No one but me.' He lifted his arms toward the smoky ceiling. 'Where is the bolt of lightning? Where is the angel with the flaming sword? Bring them on, I'm waiting.' He paused a moment, smiling thinly, and then he lowered his arms. 'No, Lark. It won't be today.' He regarded the nails of his right hand and with them scratched his chin. 'You'll stand up now, and take off your clothes.'

Lark didn't move. Deep inside her head, the words repeated over and over again.

He picked up the knife. It reflected a streak of light across his face and across the walls. 'Let me ask you this, then: which ear could your mother do without?' When no sound came from between the girl's tightly- compressed lips, he continued, 'Actually, she could do without either one. All you need is a hole. But fingers now that's another kettle of cod.'

He waited. She waited also, her face downcast.

'I'll demonstrate,' he said, and with the knife gripped in his hand he stood up.

Lark said, 'Wait. Please.' But she knew he would not wait; no man who had just slaughtered three people was going to wait, and so she got unsteadily to her feet and when she began to remove her clothing she tried to find a place in her mind to hide. A small place, just enough to squeeze into.

'Show me where you sleep.' He was standing right beside her, the knife glinting. One ragged fingernail played across her freckled shoulders, down her throat and between her breasts.

In the room she had shared with her sister, Lark stared at the ceiling as the man moved atop her. He made no noise, and did not try to kiss her. Everything about him-his hands, his flesh, that part of him battering itself within her-was rough. The knife was on a round table beside her bed. She knew that if she reached for it he would kill her, and perhaps he was so adept at murder that if she even thought about reaching for it he would kill her, so she stayed in that safe place in her mind, that far and distant place, which was a memory of her mother holding her hand and by candlelight reciting the nightly ritual before going to bed.

Do you believe in God?

Yes, Momma.

Do you believe that we need fear no darkness, for He lights our way?

Yes, Momma.

Do you believe in the promise of Heaven?

Yes, Momma.

So do I. Now go to sleep.

The man was still. He had finished in silence, with a hard deep thrust that had almost conquered her refusal to break before the pain. The tears had coursed over her cheeks and she had bitten her lower lip, but she had not sung for him.

'Momma?'

It was the voice of a child. But not Robin's voice.

The man's hand went to the knife. He slid off her. Lark lifted her head, the muscles taut in her neck, and looked at her mother standing in the doorway.

Faith was holding both hands to her private area, her face half-masked by shadow and the other half sweat- shiny. 'Momma?' she said in the childlike, horrifying voice. 'I have to water the daisies.'

It was what Robin always said. And what Lark knew her mother had said to Grand Ma Ma when she was a little girl.

'Hurry, Momma,' the child in the doorway pleaded.

Lark heard the man begin to laugh. It was the slow sound of a hammer nailing a coffin shut, or the hollow cough of a puppy choking on worms. She almost turned upon him and struck at him then. Almost. But she let the rage go, and instead decided she would try to keep herself and her mother alive as long as she could.

'Never seen that before,' said the man. 'By all means, get her to a chamberpot.'

Faith allowed herself to be guided. To be directed and squatted and wiped. Lark realized that her mother's dull blue, sunken eyes no longer saw anything but what she wished to see, and if those were scenes from nearly thirty years ago on an English farm, then so be it. Faith gave no reaction to the man's presence, not even after Lark had put on her clothes again and the man instructed Lark to heat a pot of water and fetch a pair of scissors because he wished to shave. Not even, when the man had drawn the last stroke of his razor and the devil's beard was gone, he put on a pair of her father's stockings, a pair of his brown breeches, a gray shirt and a beige coat with patched elbows. When the boots came off the corpse and went onto the man's feet, Faith asked Lark if they were going to town today to see someone named Mrs. Janepenny.

'You remember, Momma!' Faith said, as she walked across the kitchen avoiding the blood and the bodies like a child making her way through a blighted garden. 'About the lace!'

The man had his tricorn hat on and his haversack with the pistol in it around his shoulder. He waved away the flies, which had arrived as he'd predicted. 'We're going to the barn, and you are going to help me harness the team.'

The afternoon sun was bright and warm, the air cool. There were only threads of clouds in the sky. In the barn, as Lark got the harness down from its hooks beside the wagon, Faith sat on the ground outside and played with some sticks. The man brought one of the horses from its stall and was getting the harness on when Faith said excitedly, 'Momma! Somebody's coming!'

Instantly the man said, 'Bring her in. Quickly.'