Blackteeth Page 12

  “Now you know,” Hesper snapped. “Now what will you do?”

  “I’ll do what I have to and then you’re going to tell me everything, so we can do something to those fucking black-mouthed sons of bitches.”

  “Damn, baby, who’d you piss off?” the clerk said to Hesper as she pushed three bottles of lotion across the counter to him. She’d popped the lids to sniff the bottles’ content and there was enough perfume in them to sink a battleship in her opinion, which was all that counted for the moment.

  The air inside the gas station was warm and caused a rash of goosebumps to run rampant down her arms. It smelled vaguely of gasoline and peppermint, and it was a moment that stood out as bizarrely anomalous. A mob of clowns could have run out of the bathroom and sang something from Cats and she wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Hesper didn’t have a ready response for the clerk as she thought about goosebumps and clowns. She glanced at the spinning display of sunglasses to her right and saw in the tiny mirror that she had two very spectacular black eyes. Black, black, and a little bit of dark blue circled her eyes as if she had put on makeup. She didn’t need to look down at herself to tell that she looked like she’d been in fight and lost. There was the evidence of bandages on her arm, and she was still in socks. Her jeans were dirty and rumpled. The jersey she wore was about four sizes too large for her. “Have any shoes?” she asked.

  “Shoes?” the clerk repeated.

  “Things that go on my feet.”

  “There are some flip flops back there,” the clerk said and pointed.

  The three other people in the store didn’t seem too interested in Hesper’s black eyes as she left the front counter to go where he’d indicated. She perused a small selection of beach shoes that were available for tourists probably on their way to the Columbia River or to the endless miles of state parks in the area. Small, medium, and extra-large with various patterns of flowers, rainbows, or ducks were all available for the reasonable price of $9.95 each. She chose a small pair in flowers and went back to the front.

  “Okay,” said the clerk. He was a man in his twenties and looked like he was half-asleep. He stared at her and shrugged. “Flops, three bottles of lotion, and nothing else? Lottery ticket? Going to be a big pot tomorrow.”

  “That’s all.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Hesper saw Moss moving the Jeep. He pulled out and drove around the corner of the store. She hoped he didn’t get too close to lingering shadows. She paid with two twenties, and the clerk gave her some change that she didn’t bother counting. He stuck the lotion bottles in a bag and gestured at the flip flops expectantly. “Gonna wear those?”

  Hesper snatched the shoes up and said, “Got some scissors?”

  The clerk produced a pair and snipped the tags off the flip flops for her. She deftly removed her socks and put the shoes on. She took the bag and threw the socks in the garbage while the man watched her with a curious expression. “Scavenger hunt? Lose a bet?” he called.

  “Once or twice,” Hesper called back. She shivered once she was back outside because springtime in Oregon might mean daytime temps in the low sixties, but it also meant dipping into the forties at night. She needed more than a jersey and jeans.

  Around the side of the store she found Moss looking inside the Jeep’s open door. He was considering what to take from the Jeep. “Forget your dirty clothing,” she advised. “Forget anything that you’ve worn even once before. As a matter of fact, take yourself and your phone. Your wallet.”

  Moss looked at her. “The Uber should be here in about five minutes. The lodge had one suite left. I told them we had an emergency and that you didn’t care for local hotels much.”

  “Maybe we had a car accident where we lost all our clothing, huh?”

  “Maybe.”

  “We could steal some clothing,” Hesper suggested. She’d done it before. There were a lot of things she’d done before that she had begun to think she would never have to do again. What about those goals, Kisho?

  Hesper looked at the shadows cast from the trees around the gas station. The side wasn’t the best place to be, and she itched to return to the bright fluorescent lights in the front. “Maybe we could go back around front?”

  Moss turned to look at the shadows. “Is there something wrong?”

  Hesper didn’t look away from the shadows. “If there was, it would be too late. Let’s just go where there’s a security camera and lots of witnesses.”

  “It didn’t stop them when you were at the river yelling at me.”

  “I think they wanted me so badly that they were willing to take the chance,” Hesper said slowly, “or that they didn’t stop to think. They don’t usually take those kinds of risks. If a child is alone by the river or a stream, then they’re snatched. Or if a parent is looking the other way. I think that many times it’s blamed on the child falling into the water. The lack of a body is explained by the water sweeping them away. If you look at missing people on the Internet, they have sites dedicated to all of the missing, and the authorities pretty much give up after a few days. I know they had given up until I climbed onto the riverbank. Then after Madrid came into the picture…”

  Moss frowned at her. “It was an anonymous tip that the police got about Madrid. They searched his property with cadaver dogs and did what they could. My father is…was certain that the police must have missed where Madrid was really dumping the bodies. There was his property and then there are miles and miles of public lands up and down the Tennessee River.”

  “An anonymous tip,” Hesper repeated as she thought about it. She had tried not to think about Thomas Madrid, and when Alabama detectives came knocking on her door, she said she couldn’t remember him. “It didn’t come from a Blackteeth.”

  “Covering their asses,” Moss suggested. “If I had to guess, I would say that someone didn’t want you sounding too insane about skinny things with black hair and black teeth and threw Madrid under the bus.”

  “That makes them sound almost…sane.” As a matter of fact, giving Madrid over to the authorities made the Blackteeth sound rational.

  “It implies that they have more to do with humans than you think.”

  “That means that the danger we’re under is much worse than I thought,” Hesper concluded. “Anyone could be under their thumbs.”

  “They can’t have everyone in their pockets, Hesper,” Moss said carefully. “Think about it. A secret like the Blackteeth can’t be kept if too many people know about it.”

  Hesper suddenly laughed and Moss flinched. “You think it’s a secret?” she asked with a snort. “Hell, there’s all kinds of stories about it on the Internet. Urban legends and tall tales that aren’t really legends and tales. People do know, but they chose to believe that it’s just a story that someone tells to keep them awake at night.”

  “What stories?”

  “There was a legend in the South that my mamaw used to tell me about on warm summer evenings,” Hesper said as if she was discussing the weather and how they all needed to wear their galoshes. “If your children go too close to the water, ol’ Betsy Blackteeth comes out and yanks you in. Betsy was an old crone who lived too close to the water one spring when the rains came. She wasn’t a good woman, and she was too prideful, you see, to listen to warnings. She drowned because she didn’t listen, and now she drowns the children who don’t listen to their mamas and their papas. Don’t go near the water. You’ll know her because of her wild eyes and her black as pitch teeth. She drags them down, down, down, and no one ever sees them again.”

  Moss stared at Hesper. “I’ve never heard that one before.”

  “Mamaw told me that one when I was five years old,” Hesper said. “By the time I was ten, it was all but forgotten. I remembered it later. That’s why I call them Blackteeth. But they’re not old crones who drowned in a flood.” She set her shoulders in a straight line. “Not even close to that. They don’t drown their victims. That would be letting them go far
too easily.”

  A zombie flesh-colored gray Subaru Crosstrek lurched to a stop five feet away with its tires protesting the abrupt halt and startled both of them. A young man with a prominent bro bun leaned out his open window calling, “Uber?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Blood will not wash away dirt.

  – African proverb

  Pinehurst Lodge was a hotel made to look like a very exotic cabin placed fittingly amongst colossal pine trees. It was, however, no small affair and was three stories high with all the accoutrements of a mansion in the woods. Its views were probably just as splendid, as Mount Hood was only a hop, skip, and a jump away, but Hesper couldn’t appreciate it in the complete darkness of night. All she could see was a large building expertly and aesthetically constructed with logs on the long walls. Rounded river rock had been used for the trim and the three chimneys. Those were silhouetted against a magnificent nightscape of stars. Vast triangular windows reflected warm lights from within that probably were turned off. All of it was illuminated with lights artistically positioned on the ground to reveal the place in all its glory.

  Hesper only took a moment to gauge the front of the beautiful structure before someone flowed out from the front door. A middle-aged woman with dyed-black hair introduced herself as the owner and manager, and she surreptitiously yawned as she directed them to the front desk. She had Moss sign some documents, made small talk about things to do in the area and a brief history of the lodge, and then showed them to their room, all the while sleepily eying Hesper’s appearance.

  “It really was a bad car wreck,” Hesper explained weakly to the woman just as Moss pressed a bill into her hand at the door to the suite.

  “Of course. If there’s anything I can do,” the woman said as Moss shut the door and said over her words, “We’ll let you know.”

  “A car wreck with no actual wreck,” Hesper added resentfully once it was obvious that the woman had walked away from the room door.

  She looked over her shoulder at where they were spending the night. It was a large room done also in a log cabin style. The headboard was roughly hewn logs. The walls were logs. The tables had unfinished log legs with live edge tops. The chairs had been expertly formed from branches, sanded and cut and banded together with other bits of branches. The only things that weren’t logs were the ivory, cream, and beige curtains and bedspread, and a huge brass lantern table lamp. Outwardly it might have sounded as if she was describing the interior of a barn, but the reality was the opposite. Everything fit together and presented an aura of comfort and extravagance in a cabin-chic fashion. It looked like something out of a magazine to her. How the Rich Go Camping in Mega Luxurious Lodge, she thought inanely. Oh my God, what if there’s not fresh coffee from Brazil in the morning. American coffee would be so not de rigueur. Horrors!

  What was even more appealing was the view through the door that led to the bathroom. It revealed yards of marble and an enormous clawfoot tub with a gold faucet and handles. Another stick creation that was likely a stool had parked itself next to the tub, providing a convenient pile of artfully arranged cream-colored towels with bath-related goodies in a little basket on top.

  “If you have to use the bathroom,” she said to Moss, “now’s the time because I’m going to be in the bathtub for a considerable while.”

  Moss shrugged and pulled out his phone. “I have to make some calls, anyway.”

  Hesper stopped, feeling safe for the moment. Safe but wary all at the same time. It was the only way to keep one’s heart beating. Humans might be able to track her, but the Blackteeth could not, and not all humans were trustworthy. “Who are you calling?”

  Moss looked at her steadily. “Who do you think?”

  Moss’s mother was who he was probably going to call. To say what? He’d said his mother didn’t know about Abel and Moss’s villainous plot, but that didn’t mean they were acting alone. There had also been a mention of Vera, who may or may not have been a medical person who could look at Hesper’s wounds. That was a minimum of two more people involved in their plan.

  “Vera, maybe,” she said. Hesper thought about it. She’d heard many names in her time being questioned by the various and sundry authorities. Mostly they were names of other missing children. She didn’t remember a Vera in particular, but she didn’t know all the names of the relatives of the missing, and she suspected that the Symmeses had willing compatriots. Who would be more willing than the relatives of the missing? Or perhaps the frustrated police detectives who had spoken to her with such derision and cold regard? She could hear the questions and statements in her head as if someone was standing next to her shoving their impertinent requirements down her throat. “Do you know what happened to Olivia/Jonquil/Gardner/Emmalee/Rafa/insert name here for reference?” “Why don’t you remember insert various name here?” “Why aren’t you talking about insert various name?” “We know that you really know what happened to insert various name here. We need you to talk about what Madrid did to him/her/them.” “Also, do you know what happened to Jane Doe/John Doe/Baby Doe/Some other Doe from X city in Y state?”

  “How did you—?” Moss started to ask then stopped. He answered himself with “I said it before you woke up, but you were already awake.”

  Hesper shrugged. She wasn’t going to apologize for trying to get as much information as she could in the middle of being kidnapped. Who knew what the Symmeses could have been capable of doing? She didn’t have to remind herself that it seemed obvious that Abel Symmes had a different agenda than had his son. There wasn’t going to be a Hesper Whitehead lingering about to tell anyone what the Symmes family had done in order to get information. It was possible that Moss hadn’t known that; it seemed very likely to her that he hadn’t known that. After all, he hadn’t liked the way his father had treated Hesper even if he didn’t necessarily like her, either.

  Hesper had developed a little agenda herself. It was time to dump Moss soonest and get herself gone before he got them both killed. Team Hesper was the only way to go.

  “Vera is a part of our group,” Moss said finally. He clearly didn’t want to share any more information.

  Hesper cast a covetous eye at the bathroom. A hot bath would be just the ticket for all her aching muscles. Using that disposable ice pack on her nose would also be very nice. Then there were the clean t-shirt, sweats, and underwear that Moss had provided from someplace. Those were in a Walmart bag which he’d brought from the Jeep, and it was probable that that new clothing for her had been part of their scheme. Hesper’s old clothes would have been disposed in the same way that they had been planning to dispose of her cellphone.

  Why do they need to dispose of my clothing? Hesper’s little insidious voice asked. If they were going to let me go, then why go to those ends? Because they really didn’t want to be caught, and I would have been just the thing to allow that to happen. Coupled with evidence of all of that.

  Part of our group. The words just trickled back to the forefront of Hesper’s mind. It wasn’t just Moss, Moss’s father, and Vera. “How many others are there?”

  “Five,” Moss said reluctantly.

  Hesper’s eyes rolled. Stupid. Co-conspirators wouldn’t be able to keep their big honking traps shut. Even if she had vanished again, someone would have blabbed at some point. That made Moss a little more naïve than she’d previously imagined.

  “They want to know what happened,” Hesper stated. “What are you going to tell them?”

  Moss’s eyes lowered to the floor, and she could see the dejection in his form as he knew what he had to say wouldn’t be believed. He was now in a predicament with which Hesper was very familiar. Next time she was going to butt heads with the Blackteeth, she would get a working phone with video on it, so she could get camera footage of everything. Upload that sucker to YouTube and see what the authorities had to say about it. Yeah, boi.

  Hesper said a curse word. It won’t matter if a Today show cohost interviewed a Blackteeth on live
television while it was kidnapping a five-year-old, chubby cheeked orphan on Christmas Eve with a crowd of nuns and priests as witnesses. Someone would call foul and talk about how great special effects are these days.

  “I’ll give you some time to think about it,” Hesper snapped and took the Walmart bag into the bathroom. She slammed the door behind her, hoping that all the twig-and-branch chairs didn’t fall to pieces. There wasn’t going to be an easy answer for Mr. Moss Symmes, and he wasn’t going to like the way that group looked at him in the future. Having a cluster of monsters kidnapping and killing your family wasn’t really tolerable, and it sounded like fabricated bullshit. It was the kind of thing a hack writer would come up with when they were deathly ill from the flu and gulping Nyquil straight from the bottle.

  Hesper had run the water so hot she winced when she ultimately got into it. She ducked into the water and felt about a thousand cuts and injuries on every part of her body. The two holes where the barbs had attached to her throbbed. The scratches from the Blackteeth were open screaming wounds. The scrapes that she’d gotten from tripping over Moss’s kayak stung like fires had been lit inside them and coals left to smolder. And her nose hurt. It just straight up hurt. She knew from past experience that the nose would hurt for days until the cartilage started to heal. From looking in the mirror, she also knew that Moss had indeed set it so that it would likely be mostly straight.

  Hesper used the lodge’s samples of soap, shampoo, and conditioner without hesitation. The basket was full, so there might even be some left over for Moss. Not that Hesper cared if he got to wash his hair. He could ask for more if he wanted it.

  She sat in the water until it started to become cold, looking out the large window into the night and absently fingering the pendant hanging from her neck. It occurred to her that she was looking at part of an orchard beyond the stand of pine trees. The owner had said something about that. They grew all kinds of fruit and raised sheep and chickens. It was also a working winery and had a farmer’s market on Thursdays down near where the driveway cut off of the main road. Moss and Hesper had been invited to tour the farm the following day.