Chapter 9
Lee Windsor lay back on the bed in his shabby room, his eyes closed. His head was in Laurel Payne's lap and she was stroking his forehead with gentle fingers.
"I hate this place," he said. "The dirt, the squalor."
"Then why don't you get out of it? You don't have to live here."
"I do a little while longer."
"Are you hiding from someone, Lee?"
His smile was brief. "What do you think?"
"I don't suppose you want to tell me."
"I don't think that would be very smart."
"You're not convinced that I'm on your side?"
"You couldn't possibly be on my side."
"You may be wrong."
"If you were, you'd be a most remarkable woman."
"Haven't I proven certain exceptional tendencies?" The very fact that I'm here?"
"After what happened, I guess I have to concede that point."
"I won't say I'd agree with whatever you're doing. But I won't be your enemy."
He reached to caress her breast, loose under a soft green sweater. "Do you think you're in love with me, Laurel?"
"I don't know. Are you in love with me?"
"I've wondered. Perhaps this is only physical. We seem to have a tremendous chemical affinity. No woman has ever meant a thing to me in bed. In that respect at least, you're the only woman in the world."
"Do T mean enough to you to make you abandon this crazy thing you're doing?"
"I'm afraid not."
"And you don't want to tell me about it?"
He thought that over. "I think I do want to tell someone. A psychiatrist doesn't fill the bill in a case like this."
"You're going to a psychiatrist."
"Yes."
"Is he good?"
"As good as any, I suppose. But-" He stopped and there was a full minute of silence. Then he said, "Laurel, suppose I told you that this afternoon I went to a woman's home and hung her naked to an overhead beam and left her that way for her husband to find?"
"I'd believe you," Laurel said.
"And that doesn't revolt you? Doesn't send you shuddering out the door?"
"No. As I said, I'm a very remarkable woman. But you do stir my curiosity."
"Isn't your first urge to implore me to stop the things I'm doing?"
"Of course. But I don't think I'd succeed."
"I began a long time ago," Lee said.
"First, Lee, let me ask you a question. I know about Caron and myself. Have there been many others?"
"There have been four. There will be one more."
"Were any of them injured? I mean-oh, I think you know what I mean."
"No worse than you were, Laurel. I'm sure there was no fun for Mrs. Watts, hanging by her arms. This has been a matter of distributing among five women the punishment and brutality that a single girl once took."
"I don't understand, but I don't think you expect me to."
"I admit to a terrible injustice to those women a terrible injustice to you, but I think they get credit though they'll never be aware of it of saving the lives of their husbands."
"It all sounds very complicated."
"It is, I suppose. But if I hadn't conceived this form of vengeance, there would have been only one other. I would have had to kill those five men including your husband."
"You must have had a very strong reason."
"I did."
"And I don't think it's quite fair to tell me that must without giving me the whole story."
"You were there when the thing happened. You remember the group that went together in high school back in Ludlow. They never accepted Carl and me. And I think the girls resented Barbara."
"As I remember, we did. We thought she was snobbish. Anyhow, it was easier to reject her than to accept her. That I recall."
"Do you remember the night of the sophomore prom?"
"I think so. Yes yes. I remember. It was a fiasco of sorts. Some of the boys brought liquor. There was a fight on the gym floor and the teachers and chaperones had their hands full."
"That's right. Carl and I stayed away, but Barbara wanted to go even though she didn't have an escort. So she went alone. Later, Carl and I heard there was trouble, and we drove over to get Barbara. She was gone and someone told us some of the boys had offered to drive her home."
"We went home, but she wasn't there. We were uneasy because we'd heard those boys had started the trouble and were drunk at the time of the fight."
"It was pretty awful. One of those crazy things. A lot of the boys got drunk."
"We knew a place in the woods they went sometimes when they wanted to drink beer and have bull sessions, so we drove out there. We found five boys abusing Barbara."
The silence rang in Laurel's ears. Somehow, Lee's narration had recreated that night in Ludlow, and Barbara was thinking as she would have thought then, had she known the facts. She shuddered.
"I don't know what to say."
"There's nothing to say. The time for words is long past. When we got there, they were pushing Barbara around in a kind of mad circle, as though they'd gone out of their minds."
"Jim was one of them?"
'Jim, Frank Lovell, Tom Weathers, Mike Bevins, Clete Watts. Alone, they would have been harmless. Any pair of them would not have lost their sanity. But the five of them constituted a mob. They drew their insane strength from each other.
"Carl and I went a little crazy, so I guess it was partly our fault. If we'd retained our own sanity we could probably have shamed them out of what they were doing. But we lunged in and angered them.
"They beat us unmercifully. Carl was knocked out. I was beaten semi-conscious, too to a point where I couldn't function. So I lay there and watched them abuse Barbara. The memory of what each of them did to Barbara has governed my vengeance. Jim used the whip on Barbara making her run naked in a circle. That was the part you paid for in the woods."
Lee stopped talking and took Laurel's hand with his own and held it. Laurel wondered what thoughts were running through his mind. But she did not ask.
"Clete Watts got the hanging idea. It brought much hilarity. Then-" Again Lee stopped and continuing appeared to become a great effort. "Then-at the finish only three of them raped her."
Laurel did not ask for the names. Frank Lovell had to be one. Jim, another. But who was the third? Had Lee already inflicted corresponding punishment upon that wife? Laurel found herself hoping that he had. She did not care for the emotions that stirred within her at the thought the question engendered. Lee had one wife left to visit. Would he rape her? Laurel drew him closer to her and tried not to think of him as taking another woman.
"Crazy all so crazy " she breathed. "Yes." His vice was weary.
"So long ago. Why did you wait so long, Lee?"
"When the mad fire inside them died out, they let us take Barbara away. Carl was in shock and I wasn't in much better shape myself. I wasn't alert enough to keep him from taking the wheel. You know what happened then. And I'm sure it was intentional on Carl's part. I'll always believe he tried to kill all three of us. But only he was killed. I don't know how Barbara would have come out if the accident hadn't occurred. I tell myself that it contributed the most toward her crack-up. The permanent brain damage certainly came from the accident.
"My face was terribly mutilated. There were a great many operations. They gave me back what I have now. But there was something else; the incident in the woods was blocked out of my mind it came back about a year ago. That's why my vengeance has been so long delayed."
They were silent for a time. Then Laurel said, "Do you feel better now that you've told me the story?"
"Yes, I think I do."
"Are you ready to end this? Or must you go on to whatever finish you planned?"
"I must go on. Unless you betray me. Will you tell lim?
"No. I'll tell no one."
"How can you rationalize that? You have a conscience. You still have to live with yourself."
"I can rationalize." Laurel gently stroked his cheek. "I'll tell myself I'm a priestess something like that. I'll say your confession is sacred, a trust, privileged."
"That's quite novel," he replied. "But I'll want you to tell them about me, who I am, where I live."
"Lee! No! They'll destroy you."
"Perhaps. Maybe I deserve it after what I've done."
She drew him fiercely into her arms. "I don't want anything to happen to you!"
"We'll see how things work out."
"At least, we have tonight."
"Yes. We have tonight."
He got up and lifted her to her feet and tenderly undressed her. He made a rite of this also, but one for the moment; a memory he was creating, not one that haunted him from the past.
Stripping off her sweater, he kissed each of her breasts, cupping his hands around them and pressing his lips against the dark tips.
Laurel trembled and pressed his head hard against her breast.
"Darling, darling. Don't ever go away."
He removed her skirt and garter belt, panties and stockings, in a single slow, luxurious operation. As he did he managed to brush her flesh in a series of light, inflaming caresses.
Laurel closed her eyes and stood motionless.
When he was finished, she extended her hands to catch his.
"Now you."
She initiated a quivering rite also, her face close to his body as she stripped off his garments. Then she worshipped him and caressed him glorying in the trembling of his limbs as he responded to her urgent ministrations to of lust.
She arose. He seized her, pressing her back on the bed, and their hungry mouths met. Her teeth closed to his tongue and held, while she caressed with her own.
Then she released him and lay back. "Kiss me," she whispered. "Kiss me all over, lover. Find new places to kiss. Let me know your kiss everywhere."
He moved her around like a glowing vibrant doll and excited her tingling nerves even further. Wherever he could reach, he left the print of his lips as she strained this way and that to help him.
"Now you," she said again.
But he would be put off no longer. His whole body was vibrating with desire and his whisper turned savage.
"I want to make you scream. I want to--. "
"Yes, yes! Destroy me!"
There was end of tenderness and finesse. He moved to her and she cried out. But then they had started and the violence heightened.
But he stopped on the edge of the peak and she saw a devil's smile on his face.
"I'm getting to know you," he whispered.
"Please," she begged.
"No. Not yet."
"Now! Now! You are a devil."
Again the frantic rhythm of love. She clawed at his back, already marked by her nails.
When she screamed, he did not have time to stop her, except by clamping his mouth to hers, stifling her breath but not her ecstasy.
Again, the sensation, was unbearable, but he did not inflict punishment on her. He took her gently in his arms and they shared exhaustion as they clung to each other
Time passed. They slept.
Laurel awoke first and kissed him.
"What time is it?"
"I don't know. I'll look."
"No, it doesn't matter. There is something T must have from you."
While she took what she wanted, he lay holding her head in his hands. He lunged again and there was punishment but she gloried in that, and then crawled whimpering to his arms and they slept again.
She awoke and sighed. "I wish this would never end. I wish we could stay here forever."
"You must leave."
"Once more before I go," she begged. "All right," he agreed. "Once more." And that was like the first time for Laurel, as though he had never thrilled her before.
"I must never lose you," she whispered.
Laurel got home a little after tour. Payne, sleeping fitfully, awoke and scowled at her.
"Where have you been."
"Out."
"That's not an answer."
She looked at him in silent regard as she stripped off her sweater. She saw his eyes on her nipples and she wondered if he saw any change. In her mind there had to be a change. They had to be different. They'd been caressed and loved, and their pride had to show.
"I never once asked you where you'd been, Jim. Several times you never came home at all and still I didn't ask."
"That's all over now. Things have changed."
"Have they?"
"Yes. And you'd better understand that."
"Is that a threat."
"Take it as you like."
She reached for her sweater. "Then perhaps I'd better leave now."
"Oh, don't be so dramatic," he growled. "Come to bed."
At about the same time that night, Frank Lovell was I awakened by a sound in the bed. He opened his eyes. Caron was mumbling. He held his ear close.
"Please, now! Hard! Hard!"
Her lips were parted. They shone in the night light. She smiled and face twitched expressively.
She stirred and reached out, finding Frank. She gripped him cruelly. He winced as her body jerked. "Now," she whispered. "Oh, now-"
Her teeth clenched. He lay there watching knowing what was happening, cursing under his breath because he also knew that he was not in her dream.
"That rat," he muttered. "I'll find him. I'll kill him before he ruins any more women."
But he knew he wasn't really interested in service to other husbands. Let them worry about their own wives. He was interested only in what the louse had done to Caron
He'd had her in reality and he'd made her remember him in her dreams.
He heard the two quick gasps that signalled her supreme moment. Then she twisted wantonly and smiled.
This was too much! Too damned much! Lying there watching his wife dreaming of love from another man.
He shook her roughly. "Caron. Wake up."
Her eyes opened. "What's the matter, Frank?"
"You woke me up."
"What was I doing?"
"You were snoring."
"But I never snore. She smiled. "I was having the nicest dream.'
"Do you want to tell me about it?" he asked acidly. But she already drifted off to sleep again.