Two women and a man hung suspended from a beam. They were in manacles connected to thick lengths of chain. A system of pulleys was attached to the beam, allowing for easy lifting and suspension. The women hanging from the rafter—a blonde and a brunette—were young and attractive, though that was marred somewhat by the abuse they had endured. One was slender, with the taut musculature of a runner. The other had more meat on her bones. She had a curvaceous build and long blonde hair. A smattering of colorful tattoos decorated her arms and legs. Clean her up and she could be one of those sexy alternative pinup models or burlesque dancers. The man, however, was so obese Daphne was surprised the rafter could sustain his weight. He had an enormous bloated belly. Two of the strung-up unfortunates—the woman with the runner’s build and the fat man—no longer had feet. These extremities had been surgically removed, with crimson-stained bandages covering the stumps.
The door to the meat freezer came open with a waft of cold, misty air. One of the most beautiful women Daphne had ever seen emerged from the freezer and shut the heavy door behind her. Her salon-styled dark hair hung past her shoulders in lush waves. She had a face with the kind of striking bone structure that could have made her a star in Hollywood. Her outfit consisted of stylish black riding boots, designer jeans so tight they looked spray-painted on, and a form-fitting black top that emphasized a rack that was nothing short of majestic. Daphne was stupefied by the woman’s appearance, her brain initially unable to process the presence of such a goddess in a place like Mama Hunt’s Diner. The woman’s looks were so distracting it was briefly possible to overlook the sight of the blood-dripping meat cleaver clutched in her right hand.
This lasted until the goddess approached the strung-up woman with the runner’s build from behind and buried the cleaver in her back. The woman’s body spasmed as the sharp steel punched through her flesh. She screamed loud enough to hurt Daphne’s ears, but the kitchen staff never flinched. They continued to go about their jobs as if nothing unusual was happening. Even the woman who had performed the horrifying act displayed a disturbing nonchalance. The only people with a different reaction were Cletus and Floyd, who were giggling like demented schoolchildren.
The goddess signaled two large men in bloody aprons with a tilt of her chin. The men had been stationed at long wooden tables, where they were busy butchering animal carcasses. But now they abandoned their posts as one of them moved to operate the pulley system while the other stood ready to collect the screaming woman in his muscular arms.
The goddess left them to this task as she approached Daphne and her giggling captors. “Hello, boys. Is this exquisite specimen for me?”
Floyd nodded. “Yes ma’am. She’s, like, way above average in the looks department. Naturally, we figured you might take a special interest in her.”
“Uh-huh, that’s right,” Cletus added. “We heard what happened to Janelle and figured you might be in the market for a replacement bitch.”
The goddess was staring into Daphne’s eyes with an avidity that mirrored the expressions of the diner’s patrons. But Daphne had a feeling hers was a different kind of hunger, a hunch given extra credence when the woman’s eyes went to her bosom and lingered there. “You may be right, boys. Get her clothes off.”
“Yes, ma’am, Mama Hunt,” Floyd said.
Daphne ignored the impulse to resist when she felt the men’s hands tugging at her clothes. She didn’t even react when Floyd ran his callused fingers up her leg after removing her denim shorts. She expected violation by now. Struggling would only make things worse in so hopeless a situation—said hopelessness being emphasized by the fate of the woman the butchers had taken down from the beam. She was on a wooden table with a clean strip of wax paper stretched across it. One of the butchers wrenched the blade from her back and forced her to lie flat on the table. She screamed and struggled, the bloody bandages affixed to her ankle stumps sliding over the wax paper. This lasted until the other butcher took the cleaver from his partner and separated her head from her shoulders with a single practiced whack.
But another factor contributed to Daphne’s disregard of the molestation being visited upon her. “You’re Mama Hunt?”
The goddess smiled at Daphne’s incredulity. “I don’t often converse with sows, but the boys are right. You may be a special case. I am actually the fourth Mama Hunt. My name is Vivian Hunt, and I am the latest in a line of Hunt women to run this proud establishment.”
“Why am I a special case?”
Mama Hunt snapped a hand across Daphne’s face.
“That’s for your insolence,” Vivian said, glaring at her. “I said you may be a special case. Your true value has not been determined.”
Vivian cupped one of Daphne’s now bare breasts in a blood-flecked hand. She squeezed it and pushed at the nipple with the ball of a thumb. This time Daphne had to work a little harder to conceal her distaste for the way she was being handled. There were other explorations as the woman’s hand came away from her breast, her fingertips trailing lightly over Daphne’s taut stomach muscles before sliding between her legs. She probed at Daphne’s sex for a few moments before she abruptly withdrew her hand.
Floyd coughed nervously. “There a problem?”
Vivian snorted. “She’s dry as a bone.”
“Well, hold on a minute,” Cletus put in, sounding concerned in the way of a used car salesman who senses he’s on the verge of losing a commission. “She’s just scared. You get her settled in up at your place, you might have a whole different situation.”
A thoughtful look crossed Vivian’s features as she gave Daphne another up-and-down appraisal. “Possible. I need to think on it some. For now you boys get the standard rate.” She cut a look at the kidnappers to head off additional protests. “If I change my mind, you’ll get the bonus. In the meantime…” She snapped her fingers at one of the aproned men. “Klaus! Hoist this one up.”
One of the butchers turned away from his bloody work. Clutched in his right hand was a bone saw. He had been using it to cut through the dead woman’s ribs. Klaus shook the bone saw, flinging bits of slimy tissue from the blade. He glanced at Daphne, his gaze briefly flicking downward in a meaningful way. “Shall I remove the feet?”
Daphne started shaking. “No. Please. No. Whatever you want, I’ll--”
Vivian slapped her again, harder this time. “No, Klaus. I may yet have an alternate use for this one. I’ll decide what to do with her in the morning. Get her hoisted.”
Klaus nodded. “Yes ma’am.”
The butchers abandoned their work on the dead woman and approached Daphne. Floyd relinquished his hold on her as he and Cletus moved out of the way. Daphne started crying as the butchers got to work, pleading insensibly while Klaus shackled her wrists and affixed the iron manacle to the long length of heavy chain. Once this was done, the other man started turning a crank and the chain began to rise, sliding inside the pulley wheel’s groove.
Daphne shot a pleading look at Vivian. “Don’t do this. Whatever it is you want from me, you can have it.”
Vivian said nothing.
Floyd scowled at Daphne. “My advice, girl? Next time your pussy better be wet.”
The last loop of coiled chain came off the concrete floor and began to rise, tugging Daphne’s wrists upward with it. “What?”
Cletus brayed laughter. “You sure are slow on the uptake. Next time Mama Hunt plays with your lady parts, get turned on. That way, you get to live, maybe, and we get paid.”
Then they were all laughing—Vivian, the redneck goons, and the blood-spattered butchers. The chain kept rising and Daphne’s feet came off the ground. Soon she had an aerial view of the cluster of grinning maniacs. She was surrounded by madness, trapped in a place where cannibalism was a proud tradition, and her best hope was that one of these human monsters would opt to keep her as some kind of sex slave rather than eating her.
Daphne finally started screaming again.
And the monsters kept on laughing.
7.
Sienna Baker struggled with the weight of a heavy, loaded-down backpack as she trudged down the long, tree-shaded country lane leading to the old antebellum home where her cousin Arlene lived. From a distance, the house looked as grand as she imagined it must have in the pre-Civil War days, with its gabled roof and tall columns. But she had been here many times before and knew the illusion crumbled well before visitors could reach the porch. Some of the windows were boarded and paint was peeling everywhere you looked. Walking on the porch was always an exercise in queasiness, with the way the old planks bowed beneath even a light tread. Sienna always fancied she could hear the termites chewing their way through the ancient, rotting wood.
There was no evidence of anyone around as she climbed the steps to the porch. In the olden days there would have been a constant buzz of activity. Her imagination supplied vivid images and sounds from that bygone time. She could almost hear the barked commands of the white minders the family had employed to oversee the activities of the slaves. And if a slave failed to adequately perform his or her duties, the crack of a whip would have resounded through the countryside. Sienna didn’t have to close her eyes to conjure the image of the whip biting into brown flesh or any of the rest of it. History was very close here and ghosts were all around her.
And so was the lingering legacy of all that human misery. Sienna was a student and fan of the dark side of history. All that endless pain and suffering down through the ages fed into her own darkness, which had been growing ever since the death of her father and the fall of Hopkins Bend. And soon it would be her turn to inflict misery on a great many people, including some of her kinfolk.
Sienna’s scheme revolved around the wild notion that she could raise the dead. Most folks would have deemed this a dubious idea at best, but she had never shared her plans with anyone. This was in part because she had no one to tell. Her sister was a useless idiot and she had no close friends. But the secrecy had more to do with her intent to resurrect her father, which would have been perceived as crazy by just about anyone, the man having been dead for years.
People in these parts had good reason to believe in the existence of the supernatural, but true command over unnatural elements was believed to be a rare thing. You had to have the knack for it in the first place, which few did. And even if she had been known to possess the talent, it was unlikely anyone would have believed her experienced enough to have mastered it.
But that impression would have been wrong.
She did have the knack and she had developed it to an extent even those who knew the truth about supernatural things would have found shocking.
Sienna had known it since an early childhood visit to Mama Weeks, the old witch who’d lived out in a remote part of the woods around Hopkins Bend back then. Her father had taken her to meet the woman as a special treat. Everyone in Hopkins Bend knew the stories about Mama Weeks and her special talents, and Sienna had grown up enchanted by the tales. The old crone had sensed her latent ability and had counseled against letting any of the adults in her life know about it, advice Sienna had heeded to this day.
She banged on the old plantation home’s weathered door with the base of a fist. The door rattled in a disconcerting way. Kicking it open would be a simple matter. The flimsy door didn’t offer much in the way of security, but it didn’t matter much. The home’s remote location made it an unlikely target for robbers. Also, people in Bedford knew Arlene Baker didn’t have much worth stealing. All the treasures formerly housed under this roof were long gone, many taken by a rampaging Union army in the wake of the War of Northern Aggression. It was a wonder Arlene had been able to hang onto the place this long.
Total silence from the other side of the door.
Sienna eased the backpack’s straps off her weary shoulders. She had been walking for hours and though she had the stamina typical of a person her age, she was feeling the strain. Also wearing on her was the lingering anger caused by the confrontation with Jodi. She hadn’t planned to flip out the way she had, but something about walking in on her sister while that idiot cousin of theirs was taking the hypocritical bitch from behind set her off.
Oh, well. It was probably for the best.
She had been yearning to get out from under Jodi’s thumb for a long time. And anyway, it was past time she started putting her resurrection scheme in motion. Getting the boot had given her the proper motivation. She just needed a temporary place to stay while she finessed the last details of how to make it happen.
Arlene Baker was a woman who’d endured more than her fair share of misfortune. Her husband, Delmont, was tending to his husbandly duties less and less all the time, leaving his crippled wife to fend for herself. It was shameful, really, though for Sienna’s purposes his neglect was a good thing. It meant Arlene would be lonely and desperate for company. Surely she’d have no problem letting her young cousin stay with her a while.