Illicit Read online

  She cringed and bucked beneath him as he plunged mercilessly into her dry body. He grunted and swore as his body moved over hers, his thick phallus tearing her as she felt the burning pain from his brutal attack.

  Her thoughts seemed to go off on their own as she lay there helplessly. Did these things really happen? Why did they happen and to whom did they happen?

  All these thoughts ran through her head as tears of regret fell from her eyes.

  She knew why this particular horror was taking place knew of the wretched hand behind it. They had all feared it, but no one could believe that such a thing could happen.

  Who would believe that such evil existed? She cried for her poor little grandbaby, and the life that would be destroyed.

  Why hadn’t they left when the whispers started? Why hadn’t they sent the boy away sooner? It was too late for what ifs now. Much too late!

  She felt the burst of his seed as it exploded inside her, but nothing else. She had grown numb about the third time he’d thrust into her unwilling body.

  The body next to her was rolled and tossed with the violent movements of the monster atop her, as he cried out his release. She never felt the blade as it sliced into her neck severing her head from her body.

  The day was hot and humid. Hunkered down as she was in the backseat of the old beat up truck, tucked under a blanket, she sweltered and itched but dared not move for fear of what might happen next.

  She’d learned as the days went by not to do anything other than what she was told.

  Her body bore the bruises from her few bouts of rebellion. She had no tears left to cry.

  So instead she listened to the sound of the wheels as they rolled over the pavement outside.

  She hadn’t seen anything of the outside world in days, not since she’d been dragged from her bed and tossed to the floor.

  Coming out of a deep sleep she’d barely had enough time to open her mouth to scream, before she’d been backhanded to the floor.

  The man had dragged her across the room by her hair, across the hall and into her nana’s room, where her true nightmare began.

  All remnants of sleep had fled as she’d taken in the scene before her. What had once been her nana resembled a bloody mess of rags and spread thighs with blood smeared on them.

  But the horror didn’t end there it had only just begun, as she saw her grandmother’s sightless eyes looking back at her from beneath the bed.

  She’d started screaming then and hadn’t stopped, not until the punch in her stomach had winded her and the knife at her throat had threatened.

  Throughout it all she wondered why he hadn’t come, she’d called to him from her silent place inside, but there was no answer.

  She was too young to understand all that had passed, too innocent to grasp the horror that had become her world.

  The fear threatened to choke her young body, as she felt silent tears roll down her face.

  The sense of terror was equaled only to the sense of abandonment. He’d promised hadn’t he? He always said he would be there to take care of her.

  As young as she was, she knew what that meant; knew also that he’d never broken his word before. As she drifted off to sleep she prayed between sniffles that her angel would come back for her.

  ***

  “Cody Parker here.”

  It was three o’clock in the morning so I knew right off the bat that it was not going to be good. Nothing good ever comes a calling at this bitch of an hour.

  “Parker your boy struck again.”

  Fuck, that’s the last thing I wanted to hear, anything but that. The caller didn’t have to say any more than that for me to know what or who he was talking about.

  For three years I’ve wanted to get my hands on this guy, but I could never get within a mile of the fucker.

  I didn’t know who he was, but I knew what he was. Monster was not harsh enough, evil isn’t dark enough.

  Somewhere in the universe there’s a word to describe this being, but what that is I don’t know.

  “Where?”

  “ Havenhurst Estates; you know, that big old place on the border between New Hampshire and Maine. Apparently the family’s away, but he went after the caretaker and his wife. There’s one problem though, there’s a little girl missing from the home, we think he’s got her.”

  Fuck me no this was bad. “How old?”

  “Three years old.”

  “Are we sure it’s him?”

  “Pretty certain, same MO down to the gum paste on the door, my men are combing the area but it doesn’t look good.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  I hung up the phone with my guts in knots; I couldn’t stop to think. Every minute that I waste a little girl’s life is at stake. The monster doesn’t have a conscience, whatever and whomever, he’d destroy.

  What was his game this time? He’s never taken a hostage before, why would he take the girl? Nothing about this felt good, every minute that child was in his hands was a minute too long.

  Then again, maybe this would prove to be his downfall. I got my team on the horn and prepared to travel the few miles out of town to go face whatever the evil one had left behind.

  Chapter 3

  Fifteen Years Later

  My skin burns as his hands move over my body in the dark. The heat is the most intense it’s ever been, especially there, between my thighs.

  I rub them together as I wait for his fingers to find my secret places. I long for that most of all.

  Finally he’s there, his fingers move ever so slowly across the surface of my heated flesh.

  Always he teases me, going only so far but never far enough. I want to beg and plead with him for more, but I’m afraid to break the spell, afraid to send my phantom lover back into the shadows.

  It’s only lately that the dreams have turned into this. Only in the last few days that my body has been awakened, and each night since the first, I hurry into sweet oblivion so that I can be in his arms once more.

  The dreams have become so real, so that where always before I wondered, now I knew here in this place, there was something different about the way I dream, the way I’ve been dreaming for as long as I can remember. But who could I ask?

  It was as if they had been waiting for me to come here to escalate. It’s only here that he touches me, only here that my body seems to take on a life of its own. Here where my senses were heightened.

  I writhe now beneath his hands, my own hands moving as if of their own volition, touching myself in places never before explored.

  Again, I felt that other presence that frightened me even though I it couldn’t be seen. “Shh Jasmine, you’re safe; I’ll keep you safe.”

  His whispered words helped to settle me as they always do and I reached for his mouth with mine, but once more as before, he turned away just in time so that my efforts landed on his cheek.

  ***

  It’s never easy being the new kid having to start over, make new friends. It’s even harder when you’re naturally shy and introverted.

  That’s why I’m not really looking forward to my first day at Havenhurst High. Bad enough I’d only moved to the town of my parents’ birth two days before, which meant I hadn’t had time to learn the lay of the land just yet.

  It also meant I knew no one here, so now I’m suffering from a serious case of new girl syndrome.

  The town itself seems to fit me somehow though, in a weird way. Like I’d come home after being away for too long.

  It feels almost welcoming, even though I have yet to meet anyone here. But from the first moment I set foot off the plane, this feeling of acceptance overcame me.

  It’s hard to explain, especially for someone who has never really fit in anywhere before, but Havenhurst spoke to me of new beginnings.

  It was the first place I’d ever felt that sense of peace and acceptance, and I’ve been to a whole lot of places in my almost eighteen years.

  I wasn’t going to stress
too much on that other feeling, that one that was so thick it was as if I could actually touch the darkness of it.

  I had almost asked my dad about it, it was so strong, but I was too old to go running to my father with nightmares.

  That was another reason for concern, at almost eighteen I would be starting over at a school where everyone would’ve already formed their friendships since childhood.

  From what little mom and dad had shared, their hometown was one of those places where everybody knew everybody else, and families had been here for generations.

  I would be the outsider in more ways than one. None of that mattered now though, because I’d decided to make it home.

  I know mom was still holding onto the hope that I might change my mind and return, but I was through living the life of a nomad.

  This was the place of my birth; for all that I hadn’t seen it since I was too young to remember anything about it. But if my feelings on arrival were anything to go by, I was finally where I needed to be.

  Apart from the nerves of having to start anew, there was an excitement bubbling under the surface, that I was hard pressed to put into words.

  I’ve been having these strange feelings for the past year or so, things I couldn’t explain.

  It was almost as if my life was playing out in front of me, and somehow I was moving towards something. What that something was, I didn’t know, and it made no sense.

  I chalked it up to finally being settled, something I’ve never been in my life.

  With a mother who always seemed to be running from her own personal demons, a woman whose answer was always to move from place to place, without any care as to what it did to the small girl she dragged around behind her, there was never any feeling of home. Here I felt it, whatever home was.

  I felt heat spread across my face as I remembered the night before and the dream that had seemed so real.

  “Jazz you about ready Sweet-pea?”

  I had to smile; my dad is such a dork. He was so excited to have me finally come live with him, that he’d gone out of his way to make things super cool.

  Like having my bedroom done in my favorite colors of pink and black, fixing up an old beat up truck that was a left over from his high school days, and was older than me.

  And most of all, taking the last few days off to help me get settled into my new home.

  I know from our weekly conversations in the last year that dad’s a workaholic, so that last was a true testament to his love.

  I’d taken the initiative to call my father after the last time mom had gone on a bender and I’d decided that I’d had enough.

  In all the time I’d known my mom, it was the first time I’d ever seen her so upset. She seemed almost afraid when I’d told her what I’d decided.

  But the damage was already done. There followed months of fighting back and forth, threats were made and dad had promised to get the law involved; and because I’d had enough, it was my decision to come live with him, if he’d have me.

  It was the first time I’d been old enough to say one way or the other. Before that, I had only spoken to him sporadically here and there, and always after each phone call, we’d move in the dead of night again.

  Looking back it was as if mom was running from something or someone. Instinctively I knew it wasn’t my dad, but I never could figure out who was the cause of that fear that I sometimes saw in her eyes.

  He’d been ready to come get me there and then, but I had to make sure mom would be okay first.

  She’d been so defeated there at the end. Like all the wind had been knocked out of her sails.

  But in the end, no matter how she fought against it, it was a losing battle, I wanted out.

  I’d grabbed at the chance for some normalcy and snatched dad’s offer, taking the first plane I could get as soon as I was assured that mom would be okay. Maybe now she could stop running.

  Neither of my parents has ever told me what had happened between them to make my mom disappear in the middle of the night.

  It was strange really, sometimes I got the feeling that mom still had feelings for my dad.

  I could remember when I was much younger, sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night to find her holding one of his pictures and crying.

  It used to scare me to see that, but I had no understanding of what it meant. All I could do back then was wrap my tiny arms around her and try to offer comfort.

  ***

  “Ready dad.” I hopped down the stairs even as I reminded myself that maybe I was a little too old for that, but it made dad smile. I guess since he’d missed my toddler years we had a lot to make up for.

  “Let’s see how the old girl runs shall we?”

  “Uh dad, you’re not following me to school are you?”

  “Why Jasmine Tanning, are you ashamed of your old man?”

  He clutched at his chest and made a sad face, which made me giggle snort.

  “You’re such a dork dad.”

  “That’s sir dork to you young lady show a little respect if you please, and to answer your impertinent question, no I am not following you into the belly of hell. I’ve already done my time in that cesspit thank you very much.”

  “Nice dad, real nice.”

  There was a warm mist like rain falling as we exited the front door. That’s Havenhurst for you.

  In the two days I’d been here it has been either raining or misting, and always there’s a dark cloud hanging over the place; it’s like the sun never shone here, though dad assured me it did.

  Trust me to go from one extreme to the next; mom lives out west where there was too much sun, I’ve moved to the polar opposite. I guess it’s right what they say, be careful what you wish for.

  He started the truck, which he claims has been a little temperamental since he hasn’t driven it in a few years, but which worked like a dream for me.

  It coughed, spat and hiccoughed, which caused him to mutter and use what for him was profanity. Mostly damn and blast.

  “Step aside old man let me show you how it’s done.”

  I hopped up into the cracked and patched seat of my new love and turned the key gently; she turned over on the first try.

  “Well crap, show off.”

  “See old man, she knows my touch already, she’ll never answer to your boorish ways again.”

  I loved sparring with him, it was almost like having a friend at long last, but with him I knew he was dad.

  Not so much with mom, with mom I’d spent a lot of time being the adult. That’s why dad had finally stepped in; it had killed me to make the choice when it had been laid before me, but it was something I had to do.

  I’d been suffocating, drowning in a sea of nothingness. Anna’s constant hair brained antics of jumping from one sure-fire get rich scheme to another had finally caught up with us.

  Maybe with me out of the picture she could finally grow up, since I won’t be there to hold her hand.

  I waved goodbye to dad as I backed out of the driveway, and like the small town father he was.

  The man I vaguely remembered tucking me in at night with a teddy bear, before my mom took off with me in the middle of the night, watched until I was out of sight. It brought tears to my eyes as I watched him fade in the rearview mirror.

  ***

  Havenhurst was a far cry from the dingy cities mom had always found for us to live in, while she looked for the next big deal or whatever it was she sought on hour many travels.

  There was also something very ethereal and somehow familiar about the place. It reminded me of a place in my dreams.

  I would’ve put it off as childhood memories, but that would’ve been hard, since I hadn’t been here since the age of three, and I had no real recollection of the place, other than this feeling of belonging, that was rather persistent.

  The drive to school covered practically the whole town, which was no more than a few square miles on the map.

  I think dad had joked that y
ou could drive from one end to the next in ten minutes flat doing twenty.

  I had yet to test that theory, but I wasn’t sure he was too far off. There was a quiet stillness about the place; a stillness that went beyond what the eyes and ears could sense.

  It was almost skin deep, which sounded fanciful and more like one of my fictitious stories than anything else. But somehow the quiet spoke to me, almost like a beckoning.

  Beyond that, or beneath it, was the feeling of something dark following me; yet I felt no real fear, because somehow I knew that the other would stand between me, and the darkness.

  There was nothing but woods lining the main road. Tall trees some of them with thick trunks that defied logic.

  Their branches spanned from one side to the next, as if reaching out for each other, so that even in the early morning hours, the light always seemed to be hidden.

  It looked like every setting I’d seen in a horror flick filmed in the Midwest somewhere.

  Only, if there were any cornfields around, I had yet to see them. I shook myself out of my gloomy reverie before I made myself afraid.

  I was starting to spook myself, and that feeling I got when I reached the middle of the road where the trees were at their densest didn’t help.

  I felt that strangeness in the wind once more, a feeling of calm and security enveloped me even as I sensed the darkness creeping up.

  I guess the place was relatively safe though since my dad hadn’t issued any warnings to be careful.

  So it was with mixed feelings that I drove along the straight road with no one else in sight, to my new beginning.

  I didn’t turn the radio on, which was strange, because music was my constant companion. But somehow I sensed on this lonely stretch of road that it wasn’t needed.

  Either that, or I needed to have my wits about me and be on the alert. A chill ran through me just then at the thought, and I shook that off as well.

  I knew I could be fanciful in my imagination, always have been, but I was determined to put that all behind me starting now.