An Unnatural Kind: 5

5- Devil's Mark

"Where't you been off to, Li'l Ray?" Dave Sweeter asked his daughter as she moved in through her open window, Rachel quickly righting herself as she nearly spilled in over her desktop. Rachel regained her feet and stood up, her eye falling to the beer can in hand and his beet-red eyes. Dave Sweeter was not a very tall man, but the booze seemed to add an extra foot to his 5'6" stature. His curly dark hair was matted down in a ring just over his ears, salt and pepper stubble starting to cover over his lower jaw. Wearing the same old once-white thermal undershirt and a pair of loose jeans; she was not certain how long that he had been standing there, waiting for her to come back home.

"I was over at Bethany's house," Rachel said, testing at his mood as if it weren't three in the morning, and nothing more needed to be said about the matter.

"Bethany likes it when you wear your short li't slut skirts, and see through tops does she?" Dave said, and then took a deep swig from his beer.

"No," Rachel said, her face flushing as she went to her dresser and pulled out a long shirt to sleep in. Dave stepped inside of her room as Rachel moved past him, hesitating for only a moment as she turned to watch him sit down at her desk, his gaze moving around the room. Rachel went to the bathroom, quickly washing her face and putting on the long pull-over shirt before hurrying back to find that he was still sitting there.

"Did your Mother e'er tell you about when she was a girl... 'round your age?" Dave asked after he finished off his can of beer and tossed the empty into the waste-basket that Rachel kept beside her desk, ala drawing table.

"Some Daddy," Rachel said as she moved up under the covers of the old quilt blanket, sitting up with her back against the wall.

"She's the one that brought all this hell-fire douwn upon us," he said as he stood up to close and lock her bedroom window. "She had a choice and a chance, and she chose wrong." Rachel's brow knitted slightly as she noticed that his eyes seemed to be tearing up. "Lonnie isn't my boy," he said, his gaze seemingly full of pain. "But you are mine, and I didn't want all of this bad business to coime douwn on you... I mean the crazy part..." He said and then wiped a hand down over his face. "I should have left her after she come up pregnant, or maybe had her put away in  some nuthouse. She doun't mean to do wrong... she has moods, and sometimes there's things more to concern yourself with than merely what you have convinced your heart is right," he said, and his gazed lowered toward the shag carpeting that covered her bedroom floor. "You'd never really think that sort of thing is catchy. She was real pretty, and looked quite a bit like you do nouw; but she was raised up pretty poorly. She ever tell you about her Daddy?"

"Some," Rachel curled her knees up against her chest, and folded her arms around them. "She said that he could do things that most men couldn't."

"He could do thinks that any man shouldn't ever even consider trying," Dave said, as if to correct after her. "I was in the Navy when I first met her, and I had no idea what had worked through into her head that she wanted to come up and start talking to me. She probably could have met anyone that she cared to know... I was still just a kid. I thought I must be something when she came up to me. She wasn't so bad off back then... which is to say that she was better off than she is nouw, but not the sort of gal that some dumb kid from the sticks should probably be getting himself involved with. Her Daddy thought he was the Devil's boy, and maybe he was. I only met him once, and that was plenty enough for me. He just laughed at me when I told him that I was going to take her out of his madhouse. Told me that she was already spoken for, but that I was fully capable to try." Dave said, and then his voice trailed off as he stared into the floor, as if he could see down through it.

"I knew that she was a little nutty back then too," he continued on, as if he had never stopped. "I mean, how many girls you know talk about such a thing as being kept down in the Devil's bed? And being used in some kind of crazy black mass ceremonies... I wasn't ever a particularly good Christian, but I had been raised up right. I thought maybe, if I were to give her a chance at a normal life and all, all that crazy would just kind of simmer back down and she could be someone else. Of course, I didn't know it all. As things worked out, it seemed that I didn't really knouw the half of things... I knew that I loved her back then. I was absolutely positive that at least that part of it all was true. I didn't get all riled and ignorant when she started talking out of her head, acting up as if the Devil was at the front door, and ready to take on her douwn-below."

"You didn't believe her," Rachel wasn't asking.

"I believed that she believed it. I hadn't ever come across anything like it all, and she really couldn't talk about it. But there was a time and a good while that we were pretty happy with one another." Dave smiled distantly. "After I had bought my Uncle Denny's old place, it gave her a place to start over. She had tried to tell me that she would do me some harm... though she would never want to do that. But she did try really hard in the beginning. After she found out about Lonnie was when things changed. Probably even a little before that. It wasn't really me that she was trying to convince that he was mine... as she didn't want to believe that Lonnie could be his. Even so, she thought that I might still be able to make things come out alright afterall. We knew not long after he had been born that he was touched. He didn't act like any regular sort of baby. He came on to things really quick. He wasn't stupid. I was still in the Navy back then, which was to say that I would come home not so very often, when the opportunity would present itself. I'd say that it was around the time that Lonnie turned six that all hell broke loose."

"Is that when the house burnt down?" Rachel laid her chin down against her kneecap as Dave shrugged and then nodded.

"It's also when I got my disability... I was pretty damn lucky that they didn't lock me up and toss away the key. Lonnie had just sort of taken over the house in my absence... It wasn't really about being evil. He didn't get it anymore than your Mother did really. It was just that part of his other nature trying to take over, and become something else. That wasn't really your Mother's fault. I should have been around to keep things in hand, and she wasn't in any kind of condition to resist what was making him that way. Safe to say that time-outs were not likely going to be very effective, and even at six years old he would stand up tall in your face, basically daring you to try to do something about him. What I hadn't really gotten at the time was that beating him at his own game was not the right answer. What likely had kept us both alive, at the time, was that the part of him that came from your mother, such as herself... Well, the boy truly believed I was his Daddy, and I did too. He didn't hate me then, such as he does now. It'd be hard, even now, to think that he might be holding something back. I thought I was going to have to pretty much cripple or kill him to get him back in line... It was about that time that your Mother told me about how it had been pestering at her, pretty much since the day I left to go out to sea. Of how it was all just little things at first, kind of like the house was spooked. It took her, after it had convinced her that she didn't belong with me. And that was pretty much how Lonnie was born." Dave stopped, his jaw clenching and unclenching as he sat there and continued to stare.

"I wasn't ready to let him go then," Dave finally started speaking again, his eyes moving up to meet Rachel's. "I wasn't ready to let either of them go. Not without some kind of fight. Once it came down to it, I actually thought that I had won." he chuckled humorlessly, his eyes tearing up. "I am not certain at what point Lonnie had started figuring things out for himself, that he was different... the sort of difference that being a child of your Mother or I couldn't really account for. I don't think that he actually knew for sure until you came along, and you were pretty much normal."

"If this is normal Daddy... I dunno, but I am not entirely convinced that I am."

"Yeah," Dave said, his eyes lowering again. "As with before, it started with small things... Well, not small, as in insignificant. More like things you could never be entirely certain about. I'd always drank, but not like I do now. That all started to get bad about the time that the Navy kicked me out. It all kept building up, and I would come home to your Mama hunkered down into a corner of some room with you in her arms, trying to avoid the both of you being kilt... We didn't think it was Lonnie doing all that, not at that time. I mean, he was only like nine or ten years old. Do you remember anything from back at the old house?" Dave asked, and watched her shrug. "well, between the stress of being back here at home and my drinking, it almost seems like it was some sort of set up to get me to the here and now. Folk out and about the house would hear all of the racket, and your Mother's screaming, and think that I was tearing her ass up. The local police department had already arrested me twice, and my chain of command was well aware of that. What in the hell could we really tell them?"

"What I don't really understand is why he hates me," Rachel said, her voice hitching back with some emotion of her own. "Why he tried to hurt me... why he did hurt me."

"I thought that they were going to lock him up after he did that to you. You kind of expect that sort of thing to work out, I guess, after the authorities became involved. I knew for damn sure I was not going to let him get back at you again, even if I had to kill him dead. One thing for certain is that he didn't come out any better than when he went in, but at least he is old enough where I do not have to take the heat anymore. Sure, I'm a drunk and pretty much a wreck otherwise... But you don't always have to try to escape on out of here anymore. I'll shoot him down dead, sure as you breathe, before I'll let him get back at you again."

"I didn't know that it was Lonnie telling everyone what kind of a whore I was, when I wasn't. The whole witch thing," Rachel wiggled her flattened hand out in front of her. "Part of me just wants to try to understand what the heck is going on, and the rest wants to try to do something about it. I don't really want to feel so damn vulnerable all of the time Daddy."

"He's trying to take you down with him," both of them turned their heads towards the still open door. "He's trying to make you like me." Helen Sweeter said as she leaned against the door frame, wearing only her housecoat. "I can't keep keeping him out... I can't really stop him anymore. He thinks that I hate him, but really I am just afraid of him. He hates us because we don't love him, not like we did anyways. He hates you because we do love you."

"I've been talking to John Walker at school. You know, the guy that lives out on The Pines?" Rachel said, as she pulled out a small leather pouch from under the neck of the her night-shirt. "He gave me this," she said as she handed the pouch over to Dave.  "He said that it might offer me some protection, but to do it right-- we would have to take Lonnie out to see his uncle. He said that he really isn't sure if he believes in it, but his Uncle Shine definitely does."

"Shine Walker?" Dave asked, and then shook his head. "Not much good ever came from that. He really doesn't care for white people much, mostly on account of the old sheriff. I guess he got a posse together and killed his brother... which would be John Walker's daddy. I am not even sure how much I would trust him Lil' Ray. I mean, he's alright I suppose. He's never done anyone any harm, but he doesn't socialize much with the other folk in town. Way too damn quiet, and all that really means is that I do not know what he is really about."

"I talked to Fr. Carmichael first," Rachel said, her tone lowering. "He didn't really believe me."

"Yeah," Dave said, his expression seeming to indicate that he had heard something about that. "So where were you really tonight? And don't tell me at Bethany's house."

"I was out, meeting someone."

"Okay, so what is it about him that you know I won't like, in as you are a tad too reluctant to tell me who he is." Dave's brow arched slightly.

"You probably don't know him... He's from the college up in the Sault..."

"Which is to say that he is older than you, as in too much older." Dave suggested the truth of it, while Rachel winced slightly in response.

"Danny's not a bad man Daddy. I mean, he is really nice to me."

"Ted Bundy was pretty nice too, at first."

Rachel was about to say something back to him about that when the stereo in the living room suddenly started up, playing very loudly. Dave was up and to his feet, as Helen Sweeter turned her attention down the hall and started screaming...

Rachel's eyes opened again, as she laid back in the hospital bed and tried to recover herself to some sort of sense of what was going on. It wasn't like a dream so much as it seemed her subconscious was trying to do most of the busy work of catching her back up to speed... and explaining, at least to some degree how it was that she had ended up waking here in an all white room, a heavy disinfectant smell seeming to close off her nostrils from any other scent. Her nose and throat were painfully dry, her back and legs aching.

She laid there for a while, turning her head to see that there was somebody else in the room with her. It was a younger girl, with what looked almost like a vacuum cleaner hose jammed down her throat. She almost looked dead, lying there, pale and still. Only the slight rise and fall of her chest gave any real indication that she was still alive at all.

Rachel closed her eyes again, getting some sense about how badly off she must have been to be put in a room with a person who looked so awful as that. The sense that she could have died was somewhat disappointing, as if she had taken the wrong turn down a two way road, and wound up somewhere that she had not intended to be.

She thought it quite likely that dead would be a better place to be.

Uley