Final Scream by Lisa Jackson Read Free Book Online Page B

going?”
    “Kitty—”
    He grabbed at the collar of her dress. “It’ll be fine,” he growled, his breath hot with whiskey and smoke. “Now you just do what you’re told and clean this mess, or I’ll have to take a strap to you, ya hear?”
    “No!” she cried and his smile twisted even more.
    Sunny tried to scramble away, but her bare feet slipped on the wet linoleum. Her father didn’t let go. Still holding her by the collar with one fist, he began to slowly unbuckle his belt.
    “No! Papa, no!” Sunny cried.
    “It’s time you learned your place around here. Turn around!”
    She shivered and tears filled her eyes. “Please, don’t—”
    “Believe me, girl, this will hurt me more than it does you.” He slid the belt through his pants and Sunny noticed his eyes, dark and burning with an unholy light, spittle collected beneath his ragged moustache, and then…in a sudden vision, she saw him falling to the ground and clutching at his chest, his eyes rolling up in his head, his skin turning blue, and her mother standing over him, never bothering to reach for the phone, though he was gasping for breath and cursing her and telling her to call an ambulance. The vision was so clear that she forgot where she was until she felt the first bite of the belt slap hard against her rump. She screamed loudly as the vision faded in a ripple of pain. Her knees gave out, but he jerked her to her feet.
    “Don’t hit me!”
    The belt bit through her shorts again. Pain ripped through her buttocks. “Papa, don’t!” she screamed and sobbed and begged, but still he held her.
    “Now you seem to be gettin’ it!”
    He raised up his right hand again, but stopped in midair when the screen door opened and banged hard against the wall. Lily, carrying a bucket of beans from the garden in one hand, a butcher knife in the other, glowered at him. Rage burned in her cheeks. Fury glowed in her dark eyes.
    “Let her go,” Lily ordered, her lips barely moving, her nostrils quivering in repressed violence.
    He snorted. “You don’t scare me!”
    “Let her go.” Lily’s lips flattened and she glared at him with a hatred so intense that Sunny inwardly shrank away from both her parents though her father still held her so tightly she could barely breathe.
    “She defied me. I’m just teaching her to obey.”
    “And I’m going to teach you not to hurt her ever again.”
    He laughed and his grip eased a little. Sunny squirmed, her feet gaining purchase. She twisted away from her father but slipped, falling facedown into the sticky mess.
    Isaac’s anger centered on his wife. “You’re gonna pay for this!”
    “What you do to me has nothing to do with her.” Lily’s pail slid to the floor, rolling and spilling long beans onto the already dirty floor, but the tanned fingers surrounding the knife never loosened their deathlike grip.
    “I’ll kill you.” His lips curved into an evil smile “Then what will she do, eh?” He hooked a thumb at his daughter. “She’ll have to take over for you, won’t she? Do the squaw work around here. I’ll marry myself a nice white woman, a young one who’ll do what I say and give me sons, and your kid, she’ll be our little slave.”
    Lily placed her other hand around the knife, curling her long fingers over the bone handle, and a blank look came over her face. She began saying things—over and over—chanting words that Sunny didn’t understand, and the smirk on Isaac’s face faded. He stepped backward, dropping his belt as the strange litany continued. The buckle banged against the floor.
    Sunny’s hand snaked forward and she grabbed the horrid strap of old leather.
    “Don’t you put no curse on me,” he sputtered, backing away from his wife and stumbling against a chair.
    The chanting continued, soft and low, but endless, rolling like thunder over the far hills.
    “For the love of Mary! Woman, what are you doing to me?” As if struck by a force that couldn’t be seen, Isaac