Read Lucky's Girl Online

Authors: William Holloway

Tags: #cults, #mind control, #Fiction / Horror, #lovecraftian, #werewolves, #cosmic horror, #Suspense

Lucky's Girl (25 page)

That appeared implausible too, but there it was. All he’d remembered about Lucky was very general stuff. Even the parts at the end were very vague. The enormity of it had vanished when he’d left Elton. When his wife had asked about his childhood he’d never explained Lucky’s unreal charisma, and had
never
mentioned those final days. It was as if it had never happened.

Was it guilt over Mary, and Christie and her parents? Had he just blocked out the sheer horror of it all? Maybe, he couldn’t block out what had
caused
those things. Certainly not if that cause was a person.

And definitely not if that person had happened to be your best friend.

Jenny and Jake stood a few feet from him, tears in Jenny’s eyes and hate in Jake’s. What could he say to them?
I’m sorry but I’m uprooting you again. You lost everything and now I’m uprooting you a second time.
He sank down in front of them, not a man, not a father, not an adult, just a scared kid who couldn’t understand the world around him.

He felt the tears roll down his cheeks and slide off his face. He felt the tiny patter as they hit the front of his dress pants. He reached up his hands to embrace his kids, an embrace he needed, a comfort he desperately needed.

Jake’s fist hit him first. One, two, three in a blur of stars. Jake was just a little boy but he was strong and fierce, and fueled by rage. It hurt.

His grandfather would be proud
. Kenny fell back, whacking his head into the dirt of the driveway. Kenny had always been secretly envious of their relationship. Kelly’s dad was a tough, driven, type-A guy. He’d been a Marine in Korea and looked the part. Steely grey buzz cut and steely blue eyes. He’d probably taught Jake how to throw a punch because he thought Kenny would never get around to it.

The soundtrack came back on and Jenny was tugging on Jake and screaming.

Stop! Please! Jake! Stop!

A car is pulling up the driveway but I can’t see it because I’m lying on my back getting kicked by my son. In the ribs. Damn that hurts.

Kenny rolled into Jake’s kicks, sending him sprawling into the gravel. He cried out as his elbow impacted, then his head, but he was a little kid and little kids bounce.

And Jake bounced, right back up to a sitting position to start kicking again. Kenny tried to grab his flailing legs while Jenny was tugging him in the other direction.

Stop! Please! Jake! Stop! Daddy? Please stop!

Then Jake whirled around on his sister and punched her to the ground, his fist hitting her already bruised face.

Kenny grabbed Jake by both legs and pulled him bodily through the dirt away from his sister. His hand went up and back and down again, backhanding him. Jake’s head thunked into the gravel from the sheer force of it.

Kenny looked up. There was a lumpy church lady holding a lumpy cake. The same one who’d greeted them at the door to the church. Her name was Ellen. Kenny recognized her now. He’d taken her to the prom in his junior year.
No wonder she’d given me that confused look when we’d walked in the church.

His son stared back at him in wide-eyed terror. He’d never laid a hand on the boy before, now he lay in the dirt bleeding from his mouth and nose. He looked back and forth between Jenny, Jake and Ellen. He didn’t know which end was up.

Jake stumbled to his feet. “I hate you.”

And then ran into the woods.

***

“What about the county cops, or the state police?”

Errol bit his lip uncomfortably: he knew the truth of this situation. The county guys were spread too thinly covering the highways. The state guys too. And Elton was as far from their minds as could be. Those guys policed places that produced revenue for the state, not a ghost town which didn’t even know it was dead.

And ambulances? He’d just got back from driving Jerry to the county hospital when Frankie had called. Ellen Kazinsky had called to tell him that Kenny McCord’s son had run off into the woods after they’d gotten into a knockdown drag-out.

Errol cleared his throat. “Kenny, what we’re gonna need to do is go by the church and put together a search party, but understand, he won’t go far, he’s just gonna go cool off then he’ll come right back. Right now you need to…”

“There are wolves out there.” It was Jenny, Kenny’s little girl. She hadn’t said anything up until now. And she didn’t look up at them as she said it. She was too busy ignoring the attention Ellen was trying to give her. Ellen meant well, and someone at the church (maybe Ellen or Abby) had been thoughtful enough to bake a cake for whoever-it-was at the old McCord cabin. It probably hadn’t crossed their minds that it was actually Kenny McCord, the boy who’d left after all that stuff had happened years ago.

Kenny was on his feet and running into the woods screaming
Jake! Jake! Come back!

Errol looked to Ellen and shook his head. He ran after Kenny.

Jenny looked up from the ground, resignation written all over her face. Ellen attempted a reassuring smile but it wasn’t very convincing. She exhaled and asked brightly. “Honey, would you like to come to the church picnic? It’s a sad day because the Rev passed away, but you can meet Abby and… everyone else?”

A spark of light flared behind Jenny’s eyes. “Can I meet Jesus?”

CHAPTER 2

The funeral was short. The townspeople buried the Rev in the small plot on the north side of the building where the founder of the church had been buried alongside his wife. Back then the church had been Lutheran and then abandoned in the sixties, sitting empty until Abby and the Rev had moved into town in 1971.

Everyone in Elton was there to offer Abby their condolences. It should have been a wake for the Rev, and a wake for the Township, but the black clouds had been parted with beams of red and yellow light casting a heavenly glow on the assembled town.

They were blessed.

Things were going to change, things were going to get better.

Despite their loss, a newfound hope had arrived.

They were more than fortunate.

They were Lucky.

The Rev’s son Mason was here to take his father’s place. While there was still no announcement, everybody knew it. Everybody could just tell. It was natural. It was right. It was God’s will.

Most only had a faint recollection of Mason. If they remembered anything it was the dedicated and charismatic youth minister and high school quarterback. He had been voted prom king, a girl named Christie Tellefsen had been voted prom queen, and she’d fallen in love with him. But Mason had only had eyes for his lifelong sweetheart, an angelic and devout Christian girl named Mary.

Christie was some sort of deranged, evil rich girl. Like Salome or Delilah, she hadn’t been able to countenance their pure love. So, she’d killed Mary as well as her own parents, and Mason had gone mad with grief. Since then he had lived a monastic life feeding starving kids in India or Africa. Some people thought he’d been a missionary in the Amazon. One person thought he had gone to Tibet and had converted the monks to Christianity.

Everyone had a different story of the tragic lost love of Mason James and what missionary work he had done to salve his unfathomable loss. But they were all in agreement of the substance, if not of the exact details.

Mason James was a
prophet
.

He had walked in and they
knew
, no questions, no doubts.

The specifics hadn’t mattered.

And as the line of mourners reached the table where a dazed Abby was sitting, their mourning had become hope because Mason James was standing reassuringly at her side, a marble angel come to life, living proof that God hadn’t abandoned them.

“Ellen, who is Abby? Why did my daddy make us come to the funeral?”

Ellen squeezed her hand and smiled down at her. “Jenny, Abby is Mason’s mommy. The Rev was his daddy. Mason was your daddy’s best friend when he was a little boy until he moved to Texas and met your mommy.”

“Oh. Will they know who I am?”

“Yes, sweetie. And I know that they’ll be thrilled to meet you!”

“Daddy’s best friend was Jesus? I mean Mason…”

Ellen laughed. “Yes, Kenny and Mason were best friends from the time they were itty bitty boys.”

A confused frown sat across Jenny’s face. “Daddy never told me that.”

Ellen looked down at her with some kind of pity. “Didn’t he tell you all about Abby and the Rev?”

Jenny shook her head, even a little more confused. “No, I’d never even heard about them ‘til today.”

Ellen was puzzled as well. “Between them and his uncle he had a complete set of parents…”

And now they’d reached the front of the line. Abby was sitting at a picnic table, Mason standing by her side. Ellen leaned down to hug Abby, whispering condolences and thanks in her ear. A tear fell down Ellen’s cheek and she sniffled, closing her eyes. She opened them and looked up to Mason.

“Thank God for you, Mason James. Praise Jesus for bringing you back to us.”

He nodded sadly and humbly. “You’re a good woman, Ellen, and we’re going to need you now more than ever.”

Mason stepped forward, putting his hands on her shoulders and looking her straight in the eyes. “We need you to be strong because there’s a lot of work to be done, a lot of healing. But our God is a mighty God and he gives strength to those who serve him.
Are you going serve our God, Ellen
?”

Ellen stood with eyes wide and mouth hanging open in bliss.

She stammered, “Yes, yes, yes anything for you… I mean for Je…
our God.

Mason left his hands on her shoulders, kneading them gently while looking down to Jenny.

He knelt down on the grass in front of her. “I’ve known you since conception, Jenny McCord, and you look like my kinda girl.”

He smiled, laughing and looking from Ellen to Abby. “Kenny did pretty good, whaddaya think ladies?”

Abby smiled glassily and laughed, Ellen smiled like she’d won the lottery, and Jenny grinned like a kid sitting on Santa’s lap at the mall.

He looked back to Jenny. “So where is Tonto? I figured he’d be here…”

Ellen cleared her throat. “Kenny’s boy ran off into the woods so him and Errol are looking for him.”

He looked at Ellen with a curious raised eyebrow.

She looked at the ground. “There are family problems.”

Lucky stood. “Well there’s nothing that
our
God can’t fix.”

He looked out to the crowd. “Isn’t that right?”

A cheer went up.

He motioned to a section of the assembled throng and more than thirty people stepped forward. “Follow me people, we’re gonna find our prodigal son!”

***

“Jerry, as your doctor, and as an Iron County employee, I gotta tell you – leaving right now is fucking stupid. Besides, if you blow another gasket without croaking we’re gonna hafta cart your fat ass back to County and give you free fucking room and board. Is that fair to the taxpayers?”

Jerry stood in front of the Iron County Hospital in the scrubs he’d filched from the nurse’s station. He still had a tube up his arm which he’d disconnected from the IV bag. He lit up a Camel, his eyes rolling back his head in pure fucking bliss. It had been forty-eight hours since his last one and every single one of those hours had hurt. He exhaled and looked back to Doctor Pete.

Good ol’ Doctor Pete. He’d watched Jerry’s slow-motion disintegration for the last twenty years and had never made him feel like any less of an asshole for being the asshole that he was.

“What have the taxpayers ever done for me, Pete? That is besides cut my funding and my pension?”

Doctor Pete Polanski cringed inwardly at that. He’d been through all the funding crashes in the Upper Peninsula. There was never enough money. Not for a real hospital, not enough to pay doctors and nurses or even to buy the basics. Emergency medical services and fire were hard enough, but a pension for a cop in an unincorporated township?

“Look, Jerry, you shouldn’t be up and about yet.”

“There isn’t one cop in the worst neighborhood in this whole fucking joke of a joke. The Rev has died. The other shoe just dropped. Errol is a
mailman
.”

“And you are a walking coronary asking for a stroke.”

“Then the taxpayers have nothing to worry about.”

Doctor Pete looked down and shrugged. Getting all emotional wouldn’t work with a dead-eyed cynic like Jerry. He needed to play tough. Talk tough. And he
was
tough – being the only doctor for thousands of poor people will make you tough, but this was too much. But still, he had to play it off. That’s how you dealt with Jerry.

“Okay Jerry, will you let me take that tube out of your arm? You know that thing snakes all the way up to your heart?”

Jerry turned to him and flicked his cig out into the parking lot. “I’m gonna need something for the pain, Pete. There’s no one but me, and you know it. I’ve gotta be there. I’ve gotta be on my feet. I’ve gotta be ready. I can’t be laid up in a hospital bed there ain’t no way to pay for.”

“I can’t really see how you’re gonna be useful to the good folks of Elton in the first place, much less on the amount of painkillers you’ll need.”

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