Chapter 5

Mark awoke that morning from a dream of Linda Barnes. This was surprising because he could not remember when he'd last had a dream, and he'd never had any as violently sexual as this one.

He and Linda were in a wild uncharted country, for no reason apparant in the dream, and she was laughing at him. In anger, he threw her into a nearby lake which turned into a swamp and then into dry land. Linda was buried up to her waist. Mark tried to dig her out but the dirt kept filling in and soon he was exhausted. Linda put her arms around him and said, "Now see what you've done. You can never have me again."

Mark tried again to pull her out but it was no use. Then he ran away because of some strange, unexplainable fright. Linda's voice came to him down the wind. "I want you-I want you-and I can never have you again...."

She was of course sharply in his mind as he awoke, and the fright stayed with him. Then reason stepped in and he was wide awake. He went to the window and looked out. The girls of Peace Haven were very much in evidence and Mark understood why the place looked so neat and well kept. They were keeping it so. Tanned golden, looking like background characters out of an old Greek play, they were trimming hedges, cutting grass, sweeping walks. They also were in evidence around the cottages and cabins, washing windows and generally making Peace Haven shine.

Mark dressed and went to the bathhouse. Two girls were scrubbing the brick floor at the far end but he found a shower room unoccupied. He showered and shaved and got out as soon as possible. As he left a tall blonde goddess entered with a bucket in her hand. She smiled, looked Mark over boldly from head to foot as she passed.

He left the bath house and went directly to the dining hall. There were a dozen girls working there. Floors seemed to be a compulsion at Peace Haven, scrubbing them a way of life. And the short skirted girls on their hands and knees made the process attractive. He'd had never seen so many exposed posteriors in his life.

But the girls varied in personality. One luscious little brunette deliberately turned her rear toward him, spread her knees far apart pushed her rump out lewdly and appeared to be daring him to do something about it. He passed her with averted eyes and heard her whisper, "Coward!"

Some of them ignored him completely while others turned away and tried to preserve as much modesty as possible.

He went on into the kitchen where he found Linda alone. She blushed as he entered, and he knew what was going through her mind.

He should of course have sympathized with her and saved her embarrassment by keeping it impersonal. Instead he grinned, winked and said: "We ought to be ashamed of ourselves-but I'm not."

Her blush deepened. "Please-you're being cruel."

"Why am I being cruel. Are you sorry?"

Her eyes turned defiant. "No! I'm not in the least sorry."

"Neither am I. We'll have to do it again sometime."

"You wouldn't-"

"Wouldn't what?"

"Take advantage of me would you?"

"If I got a chance."

"You are cruel."

"That's beside the point. Are you going to give me a chance?"

The blush faded and there was something desperate in her face. "How can I help myself if you stay around here-if I keep seeing you?"

"Do you want me to go away?"

"No."

"Then that's settled. How about some more ham and eggs?"

They were as delicious as before. When he'd finished and was emptying his third cup of coffee he said, "I'm going into Devil's Bend this morning."

She turned quickly and her fright was genuine. "You're not leaving. You will come back."

"If they let me in."

"Please come back. I'd-I'd miss you."

He set his cup down and reached for a napkin. "Linda, do any of the girls ever escape?"

"Escape? You mean run away?"

"Yes. It looks easy enough. There aren't any guards at night. The place is pitch dark."

Linda lowered her voice.' "A few have tried."

"They weren't successful?"

"It's not as easy as it looks. The woods around here are thick and the underbrush is impassable in places. They have a roll call every morning and when a girl is missing they go out with the dogs. They always find them. Then-" Linda shuddered.

"Then-what?"

"Let's not talk about it."

She picked up some dishes and hurried into the kitchen. Mark waited a while but she did not return, so he left the hall and moved toward the exit gate where he'd left the car. There several acolytes watched the progress of the work, breaking up groups that drifted together. They watched Mark with more hostility, he thought, than otherwise. But none of them challenged him. He passed the giant at the gate with a nod and a good morning. Neither was returned.

The Thunderbird was where he'd left it. He turned it around with some difficulty and headed back the way he'd come. As the forest closed in around him he had difficulty in believing he'd ever seen a place called Peace Haven. Did it really exist? In assuring himself that it did, he was thinking mainly of Linda Barnes; of her avid, hungry passion so like Candy's. Candy and Greenwich Village.

Candy? What had happened to her? Where had she gone? So far back into his mind that she too seemed a dream, and The Village a dim-place he once had passed through in another life.

Candy and Linda. So alike, yet so different. Their hunger so alike and yet so different. Candy's so madly frantic but so sick, so sad, so terrifying. Linda's? Madly frantic too, but young in yearning and eagerness. Not sick, but terrifying in its need for fulfillment. Yet clean-so very clean....

Mark drove on and after a while Devil's Bend came in sight.

An urchin wearing a shirt and nothing else directed Mark to a small cottage he'd overlooked earlier. He knocked on the door and was not surprised when Dr. Sanders answered. He found himself annoyed at the calm manner in which the Doctor took his pipe out of his mouth and said, "Oh, Hanes. Come in, old man-come in."

He entered and found what he as an Englishman would have called "comfortable diggings." Sanders waved him into a comfortable overstuffed chair and asked: "A spot of scotch, perhaps?"

Mark ignored the offer as he looked around. "My office is out in back, if that's what your looking for," Sanders said.

"I could have used your services the other afternoon," Mark answered crisply. "I had quite a bump on the head."

Sanders seemed honestly concerned. "Oh, is that so? Let's have a look." He got up, crossed the room and peered at Mark's skull.

"It looks quite all right now." Sanders went back and sat down. He sucked thoughtfully on his pipe. "I suppose it happened when you went into that blasted cave."

"When I came out. i'm not saying it was you there in the shadows, but somebody-"

"Me? Good Lord, man! Why would I hit you on the head?"

"I spent a little time trying to think of a reason."

"I'd have no cause."

"All right then. Let's quit dancing around. I'd like to know what happened."

Sanders lowered his eyes. He shifted uneasily in his chair. "The hubsand of a patient of mine found me and told me his wife was in labor. Of course-"

"Do you expect me to believe that?"

"No-not really, I guess."

Mark got angrily to his feet. "Now listen here. I've had enough of this. I trusted you. I came here willing to listen to a reasonable explanation. But for God's sake, you can't expect me-"

"Of course not, of course not. In plain terms, old man, I was ordered away. So I left. But believe me, I didn't think you'd come to any harm. I didn't think they'd do you bodily violence."

"You were ordered away? By whom?"

"We were being watched. Not being much of a woodsman, I didn't realize this. But that man Welch had a couple of his bully boys on guard."

"They ordered you away? They told you to leave a public place out in the woods and you meekly obeyed?"

"I had to, old man. You see, there's something I-well, something I'm ashamed of."

Disgusted with Sander's evasion, Mark got to his feet. "I guess I'm wasting my time, old man. I'll run along now. If you ever decide to be honest, let me know. Maybe we can talk."

Sanders raised a hand in a gesture of deparation. "Just a minute-please! I-"

Mark waited but Sanders dropped his hand and turned morosely away. Mark went out, letting the door slam behind him.

As he passed through the center of the town, Sheriff Tate got up out of his chair and walked into the street. Mark pulled up, scowling. "What do you want?"

Tate didn't anger. He looked the Thunderbird over with a kind of musing calculation. "People spoiling for trouble usually get it, mister."

"I'm not spoiling for trouble. You stopped me. I asked you what you want. Is that asking for trouble?"

Tate didn't answer directly. "You know there's a law in Devil's Bend that you got to have a man or a boy not less than ten years old walking in front of any automobile on the main street to warn people of the danger?"

Mark didn't laugh. He didn't feel like laughing. "What's the penalty for breaking this law?"

"Just about anything Fred Kelp-he's the J.P. around here you know-about anything Fred Kelp wants to levy. The law's a little vague about that part."

"Anything up to life imprisonment?"

"Just about. Of course, a person might think the penalty too rough but-" Tate smiled and the smile said he might relish inflicting penalties on Mark. "-after all, my job's to enforce the law, not make it."

"Philosophically sound, Sheriff. But I'd like to meet the people who make it legal to rape defenseless girls and illegal to drive down your main street."

Tate's lip jerked spasmodically. A man who could hand it out but couldn't take it, he flared, "Keep it up, Hanes. Just keep it up. Next time, maybe, it won't be just a lump on the head."

So the sheriff knew of the attack in the cave. Satisfied with having gotten under his skin, Mark eased the car on down the street and out of town. As he drove, he wondered about Sheriff Tate and the pornographic storehouse. Obviously he was aware of its existance. Did that make him a partner in whatever rotten operation was involved? Possibly.

It did not occur to Mark to regard Tate as the mysterious Mr. Big. Even less so now, because of the Sheriff's incautious tongue. The power running this clever operation would not let anger jockey him into damaging revelations. In fact, Sheriff Tate now stood out in Mark's mind as a weak link in the invisible chain. He wondered if the master mind realized Tate's stupidity.

He turned his mind from this to wondering what his next move should be. Again came the anger of frustration. There was something terribly vile in this tight little world into which he'd blundered. Rottenness one would expect to finally disintegrate from the weakness of its own unnatural filth.

Yet this dark operation seemed to have a strength behind it and under it-supporting it. A Satan-power of some sort? A negative strength transferred from the devil's dark realms into the hands of some competently evil human?

All that sounded very poetic, Mark realized, but it was about the only way he could grasp the idea in his own mind. Still, poetic or not, the key question loomed. Who was the mysterious Mr. Big? Who was really running this show?

Mark was surprised that he so glibly dismissed The Prophet-John Basford-as a candidate for the sinister role. Without having seen the man or really learned much about him, Mark fitted him into too small a category to be considered a giant of evil.

Why?

Probably, he decided, because he felt The Prophet to be a phantom-a cleverly constructed ghost figurehead who existed only in the minds of those who looked upon him as real. Certainly both Patience White and Linda Barnes believed in his flesh-and-blood existance.

Mark wondered about this, but realized these ponderings were getting him nowhere in his investigation. He smiled wryly and conceded that as a self-appointed sleuth he was a good painter.

A painter! The thought struck him with such force that he involuntarily hit the brake, and the Thunder-bird answered his rudeness by throwing him forward against the wheel. Of course, that was the answer. In fact that was his mistake. To come barging in belligerently, showing his cards to anyone who wanted to know what kind of a hand he held.

That had been stupid. No wonder they'd him in. They were in no danger from a blundering, loudmouthed do-gooder who wasn't using the sense God gave him. All they had to do was keep him in sight, close certain doors to him, and let him run around braying at the moon.

What was that old saying? If you can't lick them, join them? Okay-he would join them after his own fashion....

The Thunderbird had been nibbling away at the distance between Devil's Bend and Peace Haven. Now only a mile or two separated Mark from his destination. He visualized arriving in a few minutes and began formulating his new approach-devising the process whereby he would try to create a new image of himself for Tate, the Kelps, Gaylord Welch and whatever invisible eyes were watching him. He would-

"Mr. Hanes-Mr. Hanes-Mark!"

Mark hit the brake and searched the closely banked trees and bushes for the source of the voice. It was not difficult to locate. A quick thrill went through him as he caught sight of Linda Barnes standing in the semi-shelter of some low bushes.

Managing a calmness he did not feel, Mark pulled the car as far to the side as the road permitted, got out and approached the thick undergrowth. "Good lord, Linda! What are you doing out here?"

Her eyes revealed what she tried to hide in her face. "I-I wanted to see you."

"But you said you were doing penance. Doesn't that mean-"

"That they'll punish me? I suppose so. But I don't care. I got to thinking that maybe you wouldn't come back. I'd have gone clear into Devil's Bend, maybe-I don't know."

He pushed through the bushes and the manner in which they went into a partial embrace-Mark putting his hands on her shoulders and Linda moving close to him-seemed natural and unavoidable.

"All right, darling," he said. "What did you want to see me about-what makes it so important?"

She didn't answer. Taking his hand she turned and they walked back into the woods, threading in and out of the undergrowth until they came to a small, naturally sheltered pocket. It was carpeted with thick, soft grass and reminded Mark vaguely of the spot where the three Kelp men had raped Patience White.

"I found this place," Linda faltered. "-I came through it on the way here-"

He turned her around and looked into her face. "What are you trying to say, Linda. What do you want?"

Her look was stark and pleading. "My God! Don't you know?"

He knew and he felt quick guilt for shaming her with the question. He drew her close and with a quick sob, she raised her mouth to his. At first the kiss was child-timid, child-clumsy. Then, in an instant, her lips became stiff and demanding. They pushed Mark's lips apart, her searching tongue drove frantically between his teeth, forcing them apart. Her body pressed against his and her hips ground hard against his thighs.

She murmured huskily into his mouth. "Oh, God, how I've wanted you. First there was shame. I hated myself for my thoughts, I was disgusted with myself. Then I didn't care-I just had to have you."

If Mark had been in a reflective mood he would have wondered how such a transformation as this could have come about in Linda Barnes overnight. As it was, he didn't care. The consuming heat in Linda was transferred to him and his flesh responded with a heat of its own.

She dropped to her hands and knees, her head hanging, her body trembling, and said, "Undress me-Oh, please undress me!" He did not hesitate.

Going to his knees, he lifted the back of the short Peace Haven skirt. He slipped his fingers under the elastic of the thin panties and drew them down over her quivering buttocks. As the creamy flesh was revealed, inch by inch, his own desire flared in ratio until he was completely avid for her body. She raised each knee, in child-like obediance, and he slipped the panties completely off. Then as he touched her intimately she whirled and came over on her back, her legs up and wantonly spread. "No-not yet-first-please-"

She suited action to the word by coming to her knees and fumbling desperately with his clothing. He helped her, involuntarily turned away. But she pawed at his legs and cried, "Don't, hide from me. Let me see, let me watch. You're so beautiful, darling!"

He stepped back and undressed under her hungry eyes, and did not feel embarrassed. Her eyes carressed his body, ate hungrily at his flesh. "Beautiful-so very beautiful!" she crooned. Leaning forward, she seized him and drew him down on top of her.

"Careful!" He voiced the warning as his knee almost jammed into her soft belly. He caught himself just in time, straddled her as she lay on her back.

She laughed. "It's all right, you can hurt me. From you it wouldn't be a hurt."

Savagely she hooked her hands around his neck and drew his head down, arching her back and pressing her bosom against his face. Her eyes were closed and it was again the gesture of a child as she searched with her nipple for his mouth. When she found it, she quivered, her lips parted, her pink tongue came out in quick, snake-like anticipation, she moaned softly.

The nipple, hard and bold, seemed to have a life of its own as it prodded and carressed Mark's tongue. Her eyes were still closed and her words came thick from her taut throat. "Oh, make me do things, make me do things to you. Anything! Anything you want, darling!"

He was in no shape to wonder at the implications of this plea-whether it had any special implications. In a sudden frenzy of his own he drew her breast into his mouth so she cried out as this sudden violence and pain.

"Oh, yes! Yes! That! Tear it out! Rip it out of me!" Now each individual act of their love-making became blurred into a montage of ecstatic movement. Uninhibited frenzy took over and there were no formal patterns any more. Observed, struggling there in the grass, they would have presented an incredible picture-a merging of the animal blended with human frenzy and inventiveness. These with occassional cries from Linda.

"Oh, yes. That's it-there! It's wonderful!"

"My darling-"

"Harder. Hurt me! Hurt me, lover!"

It ended in exhaustion. Climax merged with climax and unquenched flame until there were no dividing places, and Mark was conscious only of lying exhausted across Linda's body, feeling the heave of her bosom and the pounding of her heart. He turned and slid off, the sweat of their savage love-making moving him off her on the cushion of its slipperiness.

Linda was past reaction now, lying limp, and un-moving, her eyes closed, her mouth open and panting.

It was a little while before he realized that a change Mark lay likewise trying to recover his breath, had come over her, a subtle change of mood but clear enough to be sensed. So he wasn't too surprised when she quietly began to cry.

He cradled her gently in his arms, smoothed the wet hair back off her forehead. "It's all right, baby," he said.

She shivered as though the air had turned cold, didn't seem to hear him or even be aware of his presence. Even as she cling to him she looked off into space and there was a kind of far-away terror in her eyes. Mark's impression was one of wierdness--as though the transformation in Linda had pushed her into the realm of the unreal, the unnatural. Yet there was no basis for this except his instinct

"It was a long time ago," she said.

"A long time ago?"

She did not answer and the feeling of broken communication intensified.

"A long time ago-there were three of them."

"Three of what?"

This time, she answered him.

"Three men. I was at a lake place near the town."

He saw no point in asking what town, or which lake place. He had the feeling she was referring to the town she'd been brought up in.

"What happened?" he asked gently.

She shivered again and the look in her eyes turned even more glassy. "My date got mad at me. He drove away and left me and I had no way to get home."

"The three men took you home?"

"Almost all the way. After that I had to walk."

Mark wondered whether he ought to let her talk or stop her. Evidently some memory had risen from her mind to harrass her. Was it better to let it come out?

"So I went with the three men. It was dark and I knew I shouldn't have but I didn't want to walk all the way home so I went with them and they made me do things."

"Why talk about it? Why not just forget it?"

She didn't seem to hear him. "They made me do terrible things-on my knees, on the floor of the backseat while they laughed and held me. When I stopped doing the-the things, they twisted my arm and slapped me so I had to do them again. It was-terrible."

Mark held her close. "Linda, stop it! Stop thinking about it, stop talking about it."

"Things to the two men in the backseat, and then the man driving came and sat in the back and I had to do it all over again."

"Linda," Mark said sharply. "Stop it!"

But her emotion increased until she was on the verge of hysteria. "Then on the edge of town they threw me out of the car-naked, naked! I didn't have a stitch on! They threw my clothes after me. And-and they'd tied my panties in a knot, my bra in a knot, my dress in knots so I stood there naked in the dark trying to untie them!"

Suddenly Linda burst into wild, uncontrollable sobs. She clung to Mark, sobbing on his chest. He held her tight and said, "It's all right, darling. It's over now, it's ended. Stop torturing yourself with the memory."

"You don't understand."

"I do."

"You don't! The thing is that I liked it. Don't you see? It was the first time I'd ever done those things and as I stood there in the dark the only thought I had was-why don't they come back and make me do these things to them again!"

"Linda!"

She clawed at him in a frenzy of shame. "That's what's so awful. I'm sex-mad, I'm crazy for sex. Anything-anything anybody makes me do-I like! Oh, Mark, I'm a terrible, terrible person! Don't you see? I'm doomed!"

"That's nonsense," he said, shaking her roughly by the shoulders. "There's nothing wrong with sex. Everybody likes it."

"Maybe I'd never have known how much it meant to me if those three men hadn't-"

"We aren't going to talk about it any more. I like sex too. Didn't I just prove it?"

"But you're a man."

Mark laughed in spite of himself. "There's no law against women liking sex too. It would be a pretty bleak world if only men liked it."

Her agitation lessened somewhat and he took the opportunity to lift her briskly to her feet and say, "Now we've had enough of this. We've got to think about getting you back to Peace Haven without anyone seeing us."

"They've already missed me."

"Maybe not. Where would you have been spending the time you've been away?"

"In my cabin. I go to the dining hall at three o'clock."

Mark looked at his watch. "There's half an hour. We can make it. You can slip back the same way you came out."

She seemed hopeful and Mark picked up her panties and held them for her. She put her hands on his shoulders as she lifted first one leg and then the other. He pulled the panties up over her legs and her thighs. As he straightened he found her lips waiting, and he kissed her gently.

"All right, let's go. I'll walk you to the place you came out. Then I'll come back, get the car and drive to the gate."

As they threaded through the woods, Mark felt an uneasiness inside him. Somehow it seemed he had gone through all this before. The circumstances and the approach had been different with Candy, but the result was the same-an entanglement with a nymphomaniac. Was this indicative of his own deep-seated desires? Did he really have a deep attachment to the sick things he'd fled west to escape?

He wondered. Linda had been abused by three men, but subconsciously she had wanted the abuse. Do we all, he wondered, get what we really want, whether we know it or not? Do many of us know what we really want?

He barked his shin again a log and turned his mind to the practical business of following Linda through the thick, treacherous woods....