Burn Daughters Read online

  I dangled.

  “You take care of my sister,” I told Clay. “Make certain you get her out of there in time.”

  Clay took hold of my shirt and pulled me toward him. “You are the bravest girl I’ve ever known,” he said, and then kissed me softly on the lips. His warm surrounded me and for a second I imagined I was someplace else, someplace where there would be NO climbing out the window. Clay lowered his forehead to mine and let out a long sigh. “I’m sorry—.”

  “Just do it, Clay. Before I chicken out.”

  He slipped the pocket knife in my hand and began to lower me.

  “What’s this for?” I asked, hanging on to the rope with one hand, and holding up the knife with the other.

  “When you see flames, cut yourself free. Hit the ground running. You hear me? You run. I’ll get everyone else out. I won’t let anything happen to Evie.”

  “I descended, feeling each knot pull against the sill. My heart raced. I second guessed everything I’d agreed to. When it came right down to it, I hardly knew Clay, yet I let him talk me into this. What the hell was I thinking?

  Unable to grasp onto anything, my foot hit the top of the window casing below, searching for a thin slither of ledge. “Oh my God, it’s not going to work. Pull me back up! Pull me up!”

  “We’re almost there,” Clay called down.

  “No. You don’t understand. I changed my mind. Pull me up!”

  “You’re there, Mill. Now get their attention.”

  Moot point. I already had their attention. I could see the dogs entering the room through the dirty glass.

  Paws struck the window. Teeth bit at the wood, dividing the panes. I swung out, pushed by my shoe. Again the dogs lunged at me from the other side of the window. I screamed.

  My foot caught the top of the casing and I paused, my grip tightening on the rope. My heart slammed against my chest. “Okay, you’re safe. Calm down. You got this. Deep breath,” I chanted as I hung there, suspended. Just beyond the window sat the black Shepherd, watching. Arrogance and confidence poured off of him. His gaze locked with mine. If he could speak I was certain his tone would be mocking as he told me, “You and your friends are doomed and you don’t even know it.”

  The other dogs charged. I kicked off from the window, spinning mid-air. I was so busy freaking out over the dogs and my position dangling in space, I never saw her coming.

  A hand closed around my ankle and yanked. I spun out of control. The toe of my shoe bumped the glass window. Don’t go through the glass. Don’t go through the glass. Please don’t go through the glass!

  Then my knees caught in the rope, and my world tipped upside down. I dropped Clay’s knife.

  “Let her go. Let her go. Let her go!” I heard Clay yelling from the window above me.

  I felt myself being pulled upward by the rope.

  “I got you!” Clay told me.

  “Bring me up.” I fought to right myself. “Get me up!”

  My head jerked backward, suddenly stinging with pain. The woman had grabbed a fistful of my hair and was pulling me out of my harness.

  I heard Evie cry out, “Millie, don’t leave me.”

  December, 1946

  Oh, wicked, wicked Jezebel how you have wooed me with your sinful, silly charms, your soft female curves. Blasted woman! She comes to me at night claiming sickness, oh how she deceives me into inviting her into my bed! She is consumed by a demon I am sure of it. How else could she distort my thoughts into perversion even in sleep?

  Reverend Rufus Alexander Keller

  Chapter Sixteen

  “You filthy whore,” the woman spat.

  I couldn’t catch my breath. I couldn’t stand on my own. The woman’s hold on my hair tightened. The dogs struck the window of the room they were trapped in, mouths sideways gnawing at the glass. I kicked and clawed at the woman, but she was supernaturally strong.

  Had I gotten free at that moment, I would have run straight into the woods leaving my sister and the others. At that moment, the only thing on my mind was getting the woman’s hands off me and getting far away from her.

  I’d seen what the woman could do. I’d seen what her dogs could do. Was David’s death instant? Emily’s? Or did they feel every fang as it sank into their flesh? Did it happen so fast they had no time to comprehend it? Or did they know exactly what was happening to them, and what would come of it?

  No. David had reached…he had known.

  And it was my turn.

  “Don’t let them get me!” I beat the woman’s hand, but it was iron under my skin. I felt my hair ripping from the scalp. I couldn’t gain my footing. I couldn’t get hold. “Please,” I sobbed breathlessly.

  The woman dragged me through the grass, toward her house. She said nothing. Her silence felt like a death sentence. I kept my eyes on the farmhouse, praying the dogs didn’t come. Praying the glass withstood their fury, keeping them inside.

  Strange as it sounds, once the door shut to the woman’s house and I was safe inside, away from the dogs, I was relieved.

  Her house smelled like urine. I gagged on the noxious fumes of ammonia.

  Quilts were draped over windows as makeshift curtains blocking out sunlight. There was an old gold recliner, its cushion chewed, its stuffing jettisoned like vomit. One room served as kitchen and den. Dog hair was everywhere.

  The woman continued to pull me along. My scalp throbbed. The soles of my shoes stuck to the dirty floor. I struggled, but it was no use.

  Swallowing an entire corner of the room was a cage. It stood chest high with four wired sides, a solid wood top, and no base, other than the wide plank floor of the house. Its door was open.

  My eyes widened. “NO!”

  The cage sat there as if it were alive, opening its mouth wide to welcome me inside. The woman pulled me toward it, no hesitation in her step. No sense of mercy on her person. The woman was pure evil. So was the cage. And she had won. There was no way she was ever letting me go.

  The woman shoved my head down and into the cage.

  “Get away! I cried. “Let me go!” I dug my nails into the woman’s bony, blue-veined arm until she cried out in pain and let me go.

  Her hand crashed like a hammer across my face. I fell, knocked off balance.

  “Don’t like the tone of your voice,” she spit. “Be respectful.”

  I grabbed the sides of the cage and stiffened my arms. “I’m not going in. You’re a crazy ass bitch!”

  “Quiet now or I’ll scalp you.” The woman seized my hair. “Scream if you like, but it will do you no good. Dogs howl all they want. Does them no good.”

  I did not scream. I did not want to give her the pleasure of hearing my pain. She stepped on my neck, heavier than I would have figured her to be, as if her cruelty had weight to it. My face smashed into the floor where I could see claw marks. If I were a dog, I would be adding my own marks, but I was not. I could only lay there, her foot immobilizing me, my ribs hurting from my descent out the window. “Please. Don’t do this,” I said.

  “Turn!” The woman grabbed another handful of hair. I bucked under her weight. She twisted my hair tighter and yanked, hard and strong as life had made her.

  I cried out, my eyes blurring, my fight abandoning me to a state of pure terror and a rapidly growing helplessness.

  “In!” The woman kicked. I resisted. The woman kicked again, this time catching my stomach. I buckled. She brought her weight down on my arm, it caved. She shoved me into the cage. “This is exactly where a bitch belongs.”

  The door slammed in my face. An old mortise lock clicked. I dove forward, grabbing at the heavy wire, unable to control my cries. “Don’t kill me, don’t kill me!”

  Her face was suddenly there at the wire, inches from mine. I smelled her putrid breath, ammonia and urine.

  “Kill you?” She cocked her head. “Why would I do that? I’m going to do the right thing. The only thing. I’m going to purge you of your filth.”

  ***

&nb
sp; The woman left the room. I turned from the wire door and threw up, choked by fear. My vomit slithered down a round hole in the floor. I studied it, envying my vomit, fully planning to plunge into the hole myself and escape. I shoved my hands down it. I shoved my arms down it. But that hole had other plans, and they were not consistent with mine. That hole, that house, that cage was on the old woman’s side. My arms caught at the elbows. It was too small. I was too big.

  My eyes landed on the heavy lock hanging from the cage door, and then raced around the inside of the cage. In it there was nothing but the hole and a soiled blanket.

  “I can’t do this,” I muttered, falling into a corner of the cage.

  Dogs barked outside of the house. They clawed and dug at the siding, knowing where the cage was, knowing I was in it, their next meal.

  “Shut up! I screamed, clamping my hands over my ears. “SHUT UP!”

  The house was hot. I broke into a sweat. Sweat gathered between my breasts. My hair was damp with it. I collapsed against the side of the cage, my arms wrapped around my stomach, and lay there. Dead.

  Perfect love cast out all fear. Perfect love cast out all fear. Perfect love cast out all fear.

  Everyone will die because of your failure to act. Act, I told myself. Evie depended on it.

  I sat up and scooted toward the cage door, gripping the wire, studying the room. There had to be something I could do. The old lady was not all that smart. Tugging at the neck of my t-shirt, I covered my nose with the material to block the stench so I could focus.

  The room was dirt and cobwebs. Old blankets were thrown across the floor. Clothes hung from a wire stretched from wall to wall. There were a few wooden chairs, jugs, crocks. A gray tin bucket sat by the door. Embers glowed in the fireplace. A shotgun hung above the mantel. A single key dangled from a nail hammered into the door frame. A key to what?

  Blood was smeared on the sides of the sink cabinet. I could just make out the handle of a butcher knife and the glint of the steel cleaver sticking above the countertop. The house was full of weapons I could use, but first I had to get out of the cage.

  I shook the wire rattling my prison, wanting to scream, knowing it would be pointless. No one would hear me except for the woman and her dogs. King, watching my every move, waiting for me to make a run for it.

  Daylight showed through the bottom of the front door where the dogs had tried to chew their way out. I understood. I wanted to chew my way out too. I watched a flea crawl across my arm, reached down and squeezed it dead between my fingers. I did the same to a flea crawling across my ankle.

  The woman harsh voice came from outside. My heart responded. God, she was coming. What would she use on me the cleaver or the gun, or some other weapon that was hiding from my view?

  Get out of the cage, Millie. Get out!

  I half stood, pressing my back against the top of the cage, straining until I had no strength left. The cage frame was bolted to the floor and would not give. I tried rocking the cage back –and-forth. I kicked at the door. Nothing worked.

  I fell into a corner and curled up into myself, fetal position. I cried. I held the gold cross my father gave me and prayed. “I need your help. I pray it’s not your will that I die in here. Please. I’m scared. I don’t want to die alone.”

  As I lay there, the oddest thing happened. I felt love. Light. Like hands lifting me. I sat up, wiped the tears from my cheeks, and studied the cage closer. The wires were rough and rusted. A few were loose. With some work and repeated bending they might snap off. I had a plan. The plan gave me back my strength and I went to work.

  It was not long before the front door swung open.

  King entered, his eyes on me, black as a wolf moving through the night. He pressed his wet quivering nose between the wires, breathed in and out, angry, his ears slicked back.

  I shuffled to the back of the cage. King followed me, found my scent, and growled deeply.

  “Get it away from me,” I pleaded. “Get it away from me.”

  The woman kicked the cage. “Look here what I snagged for you,” she told King. “What should we do with her, hmm?” She kicked the cage again.

  King’s head remained low, watching me, his eyes trained on my every move, slime dripping from his mouth. He breathed warm, foggy breath through the wires.

  “Please let us go. We didn’t mean any of it, I swear. We’re scared. We just want to go home. Can you understand that?”

  “You hungry, boy?” The woman turned and walked toward the metal cabinet. King remained by the cage, staring me down.

  The woman stood by that sink with cleaver in hand. I will never forget the image. Butcher, murderer. She chopped, she filled a metal pan with meat and blood, she lowered it to the floor for her precious King. I hoped he choked on it.

  The dog buried his muzzle into the mound of fresh meat. Well fed. Not like the other dogs in the yard that fought for every scrap. That remained forever hungry.

  After King was fed and watered, the woman knelt beside him and brushed his black fur. Her strokes were slow and tender. She scratched him behind the ears. She murmured in those ears, kind words, loving words.

  It felt as if I was interrupting some freaky romance scene when I asked her to let us all go. “You need to. Too many people have already gotten hurt.” The woman kept at the dog, whispering sweet nothings to it. “People are looking for us,” I told her. The woman’s eyes immediately turned to me, sitting in that cage. “They’ll come here. Our parents. The police. News crews. You’ll have more people here than you can imagine. More people on this precious land of yours, snooping through your precious house. Taking away your dogs. Probably even euthanizing them. Let us go, and no one will bother you.”

  The woman slammed the cleaver into the counter and marched toward the cage. “You spoiled, ungrateful, cur,” she sneered. “You’ve no respect for nothin’.”

  “Let us go,” I persisted.

  “Can’t do that. You’re corrupt. You and your sinful ways,” she said. “Lustful thoughts dwell inside you. Immoral!” She dragged a wooden chair next to the cage and shed her big black coat.

  She glared at me, her eyes full of hate, as good as stabbing me with a sharpened stick. “He can read your mind. He knows the chambers of your heart.” The woman pointed a crooked finger at the cross dangling from my neck. “Where did you get it?” I did not answer her. She seized me by my hair and pulled me against the wires of the cage. “Do not mock me!”

  “If you want it, then let us go,” I told her.

  She released me and sat back in her chair. Her hateful eyes raked over me. Then she got up and brought something back from the kitchen. It wasn’t until she sat again that I saw what it was.

  The woman slid a bible between the wires of the cage. “Read,” she demanded. She locked eyes with me. “I said read.”

  “Read it yourself.”

  “You read it for me.”

  “You can’t read?” I asked, astonished. I stared down at the book opened before me. “How do you know what the bible says if you can’t read? Who told you these things? Your husband?”

  The woman peered nervously about.

  “Your father?” Did he read to you?”

  A painful shadow crossed over her eyes.

  “Your father read to you, didn’t he?” I asked. That painful look grew darker. “Did he ever try to teach you how to read?”

  The woman shook her head. “Read,” she commanded, shaking the cage. “Or I will get the Reverend’s Rod!”

  I would soon learn that the Reverend’s Rod was a long rod bound by leather. The leather coiled around the rod like a snake. To the woman, the Rod was pure evil.

  “What do you want me to read?” I asked her, the pages of the bible soft under my fingertips.

  Her face relaxed, brightening like an eager child. “Anything, just read to Grace.”

  Finally. I had a name for my tormentor.

  Grace. The name was beautiful but still bitter. I repeated it, “Gr
ace.”

  Lips pressed in a white slash she gestured for me to get on with it. “Okay, let’s see…” I began slowly.

  Suddenly Grace was there beside the cage, tilting a lantern toward me. “Need more light?”

  “No. I can see.” My gaze lifted to hers. “This excites you doesn’t it? Why don’t you go to church? I bet you would enjoy it. Get to dress up, be around other people—”

  “No!” Grace yelled, startling me. Her tone was sharp as a razor meant to bring blood, “People are bad. They will hurt you.”

  “Like…your father hurt you?”

  She grabbed hold of the wire above my head and shook the cage again. “I SAID READ!”

  Frightened, I did as I was told and read John 8:

  But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Now early in the morning, He came again into the temple, and all the people came to Him; and He sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in Adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they said to Him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say?” this they said, testing Him, that they might have something of which to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger, as though He did not hear. So when they continued asking Him, He raised himself up and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. Then those who heard it, being convinced by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, “Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.” Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”