The Sadist's Bible (6 page)

“Gotcha. Any friends out of state? You know...people who might harbor her while

she’s on the run?”

“She’s not the kind of girl who makes friends. I’m sure you can understand that from

having dealt with her before. She spent a lot of time talking to people on the computer, though.”

“Good. Then her computer might give us some clues.”

“Sure...by all means, have people search her apartment. Look at the computer. I’m

certain you’ll find all sorts of incriminating evidence. But, most of all, save my

grandson!”

* * *

There was screaming and there was music and there was night and there was rain.

The storm tap danced across the top of the Toyota. Josh and the stereo seemed to be

in a contest to see which was loudest. The bawling was shrill, high-pitched, and gurgly.

Each time Lori nudged the volume dial to make the woman sing louder, the baby took its

screaming to a new decibel level. It was screaming even louder than it had when she’d

first taken it.

She snapped and started screaming, too. “Shuttup! Shut...up! ” She could feel her

throat burn after yelling, the way it used to burn after screaming at a concert. For a

moment, it seemed as though her voice would prevail as the loudest. But then it cracked

under the weight of its own fury. She started to stammer and weep. “Wh-Why the f-fuck

won’t you die?”

She’d gotten onto I-64 West two hours ago. All the crying should have worn out

Josh’s lungs. It couldn’t have kept going like this on such a limited air supply. Yet it did.

She wished her mother could see all this. Then she’d believe Josh was the son of God.

Only its divine parentage could explain its continued survival.

She looked at the wobbly needle tracing her speed. The Toyota had held up well,

given its age, but its speedometer was no longer one hundred percent accurate. It lurched forward and back erratically, even as she held the gas pedal down at a constant rate. All she could tell was that she was going somewhere in between sixty-five and seventy-five

miles per hour. She knew just enough to feel assured she wouldn’t get snared in any

speed traps. She sure as fuck didn’t need that right now. No cop would understand the

necessity of putting her son in the trunk.

A guy passed her on the left. Had to be going ninety. He had the interior lights on

and he seemed to be fumbling for something. Looking into his car, through the

downpour, was like looking at a melting oil painting. She could make out a rough outline of him. Even the night and the rain and the speed couldn’t obscure the fact he was well-muscled. She pulled even with him. Turned on her own interior light. Honked at him.

He turned his interior light off. He didn’t even look over at her, let alone honk back.

When God had claimed her as one of His wives, He cast a spell on all the men of the

world to prevent them from pursuing her.
Maybe
, she told herself,
he’s not looking
because if he took his eyes off the road, in this heavy rain, he’d be asking for trouble
.

But that was all wishful thinking. The truth was that God had chosen her, and she’d

foolishly agreed to be chosen, then He’d raped her, then He’d marked her as His

property. Then, just for good measure, He’d saddled her with a little piece of Himself. A disfigured reminder of a monstrous night.

Memories, like razor blades, started to slice trails through her brain. (
The sour,

smoky stench of her own burning holes made her want to faint, but she couldn’t, and each
hole would be blistered and scorched from the flames, but that didn’t stop Him...
) No. Not now. She couldn’t think about that stuff now. Not while she was driving.

She’d freak out if she let all the memories loose in her head while she was driving. She had a Lortab in her glove box. She took it. Then she turned the stereo volume up to the

highest level. Let the singer scream away the nightmarish past.

The baby screamed louder.

This had to end. The trunk wouldn’t be enough to end it. The baby couldn’t suffocate

that way. It
should
have suffocated that way. Wouldn’t any other baby have suffocated that way? Was air getting in? Was the trunk closed all the way? She’d hoped she could

put the baby out of its misery. Let it gradually lose consciousness from lack of oxygen.

She’d thought the whole thing would be as painless as possible. She hadn’t expected this.

A brown sign along the roadway announced an upcoming state park. (Which one,

she couldn’t read through the sheets of rain.) Such places were typically nestled away in sparsely populated areas. No witnesses. She’d drive out there and bash the fuckin’ kid’s brains in. Hell, yeah – just fling it against the asphalt over and over again. Gentle murder wasn’t working. She’d have to be brutal.

She took the exit and followed the curving road. Drove over fallen branches. Drove

under a canopy of foliage so thick that, for a moment, there was a pause in the pounding on her car roof before the rain-drumming started anew. There was a blur of road and a

blur of light and a turn to the left and a turn to the right and then an animal – a fucking
animal
, the size of a deer but looking more like a goat or a bull; no, having two heads, one of a goat and one of a bull – fuckin’
standin’
there, soaked, in the middle of the road.

And she let out a shriek and she avoided the beast but then the road curved too sharply

and she remembered that she’d been needing new tires for a while now and the road was

too narrow and...

Her whole world lurching...tumbling. Her stomach wobbling. Then an explosive

slam against the ground. A cracking against a tree. A scraping of branches. Then more

slamming ...then finally stopping.

She tried to breathe, but only drew in about half her usual air. She smelled gasoline.

She tried to get out, but she couldn’t move. Even though there were no houses

nearby she instinctively tried to call out for help. She found she could not speak.

But Josh still screamed. The radio still played. There was screaming and there was

music and there was night and there was rain. Then a rumbling in the back. Then a

whirring. Deep, masculine grunts. Murmurs. Someone else – another adult – in the

wreckage with her. A man’s voice, shushing the baby. A man’s voice, cooing to the baby

and then mumbling unintelligibly.

Grunts. Then heavy feet hitting the ground. Steps. Feet limping through the brush.

More whirring. Then the door flew open, torn off its hinges. More whirring as a flashlight burned in her face. She could only see the man holding it in silhouette. He looked less

like a man than an eroded statue of one. He took the baby off of his shoulder and seemed to drop it.

The night air held Josh aloft, though. He levitated. Stopped crying. Grunted. Twirled

around, weightless, in mid-air. The figure holding the flashlight placed it back into his belt and took a pad of paper from his shirt pocket. In the faint shine of her headlights, Lori saw him get out a pen from behind his ear. Start writing. Whir-whir-whir went his

hand as he wrote.

When he’d finished writing, his hand whirred some more as he thrust the sheet close

to her eyes. Then he got his flashlight out of his belt with his other hand, turned it on, and bent over – illuminating his poorly-scrawled handwriting.

I WAS IN THE TRUNK.

WITH YOUR SON.

OBSERVING YOUR CRIMES.

I BREATHED THE BREATH OF GOD INTO HIS MOUTH

SO HE WOULD NOT DIE.

GOD KNEW YOUR PLANS AND SENT ME.

YOU HAVE VIOLATED HIS WILL.

YOU HAVE PLOTTED TO KILL HIS SON.

YOU HAVE SOUGHT TO LEAVE HIM,

YOU ARE A FUGITIVE FROM HIS JUSTICE.

I SHALL TAKE YOU, BODY AND SOUL, BACK TO YOUR HUSBAND

FOR DISCIPLINE

AND MATING.

YOUR SON SHALL LIVE ON,

SO THAT HE MAY BEAR WITNESS TO THE TRUE GOSPEL.

NO PLAN FOR NON-EXISTENCE EVER WORKS.

THE ARC OF THE UNIVERSE IS LONG,

BUT BENDS TOWARDS DEGENERACY.

Then the wreckage was no longer wreckage, but instead an unblemished police car.

Lori’s bones had been pulverized by the impact. Long patches of her skin had been

ripped off. She lay in the back, behind the metal grating. She’d been there – in that space reserved for prisoners – so many times before. But that didn’t make any of this more

comfortable. Her baby was tucked away in a safety seat secured to the front. Red and

blue swirled around her.

She lost consciousness, coming to only briefly and sporadically in spasms of

nightmare. First, the red and blue lights became red and blue stars. Then, all was

blackness again. Then, strange new guides dragged her past fires. Past half-human

oddities perpetrating the most sadistic varieties of sodomy on one another. Then, all was blackness again.

Then she was in the throne room of a hideous Heaven, filled with wailing angels and

amputated wings. She lay broken, paralyzed, and mangled at the foot of God’s throne.

Then, all was blackness again.

And each time she blacked out, she lost a little more of her memory. The name of her

hometown escaped her. Her own name escaped her. This rattled her, and she tried to

focus on keeping her wits about her. The key was to remember that her plan had been to

escape God by being sent to Hell. The escape, that was the important thing. Perhaps there was still a way.

When she awoke again, her husband sat on His throne, holding Josh in His arms as

He spoke to her.

Behold the adulteress! The concubine of God does now lay broken before her

husband. Her crime was that she would not bow before my will, would not accept my

torture. And now she shall forever dwell with me, prostrate before my glory. And I will
know her, in whole and in parts. I have already re-assembled her into a more pleasing
shape. A shape incapable of disobedience. She sought to kill herself. But I shall not let
her die. Every breath will be torture for her, and I will heap punishment on top of that as
oft as I feel the urge. And she shall continue to give birth to my children. Do you have
anything to say for yourself, woman? Your new shape does not allow speech. Think the
words and I will hear them.

Lori shunned the pain and fear from her consciousness so that God could hear her.

Just send me to Hell and be done with it.

God stepped off His throne. His radiance burned her as He approached.
Is that what

this was about? You wanted to go to
“Hell”
?
And you thought that killing our son and
committing suicide would get you there? Away from me?

There was a burst of light like an atom bomb in front of her, and suddenly God was

the height of skyscrapers. He held her in His hand and lifted her up to His face. When He laughed, it was as though a flame thrower shot right over her. Yet as much as she begged for it, death did not come.

* * *

Ellie felt like a wimp, not driving straight through to the Hillbriar. She’d hoped the

meal and the caffeine would give her some pep. But instead of infusing her with healthy, wholesome energy, they only fueled her anxiety. And she was old enough to know that,

once she reached a certain threshold of nervousness, her body tended to react by

demanding she crash and reboot.

She’d gotten far enough out into eastern Kentucky that she’d reached the foothills of

the Appalachians. It was after dark now, and the mountains could not be seen. But from

past travels she knew they surrounded her. Stood tall, over her, like a crowd of

disapproving men.

Decent accommodations were scarce, this far out. But there was a state university in

Morehead. She could find a hotel there where she could stop for the night and get some

rest. She could use her phone to see if Lori had sent her another message. If she had, then that would encourage her to move ahead with their plans. If she hadn’t...well...who

knew? Maybe she would have a “come to Jesus” moment like people were always

discussing in their testimonies at church. Maybe she would go to the nightstand, pull out the Gideons’ Bible that had been tucked away there, and find new comfort in the onion

skin pages. Maybe it would be like when she was a teenager, when she closed her eyes,

opened the Bible to a random page, and discovered a message there that seemed meant

just for her. Maybe she would live.

So many possibilities. She had to stop thinking about all of them. They only made

her feel more exhausted.

Few cars traveled this stretch of Interstate late on a Tuesday night. The traffic was

mostly tractor trailers – all of them mammoth and slow, most of them adorned with some

Christian slogan or symbol. (Mudflaps bearing the name of the savior, the sign of the fish appearing under the hauling company’s name, warnings that “Heaven is ‘Real’ and So is

‘Hell’!” painted on the back of trailers so that they would face following drivers.) She’d only gone to community college, but she knew enough to be aware that the quotation

marks had been placed there by mistake (that proper writing didn’t work that way), and

this gave her a feeling of superiority. Soon afterward, though, guilt replaced the

arrogance.

They may not know how to use quotation marks, but at least they’re making sure

they’re going to Heaven. They’re not running away from their spouses to commit acts of
abomination. They’re not the ones who feel lost even though they know exactly where