Hot Blood Tales of Erotic Horror by Jeff Gelb & Lonn Friend

Author:Jeff Gelb & Lonn Friend
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 1989-09-21T06:00:00+00:00

* * *

VENGEANCE IS.

Theodore Sturgeon

"You have a dark beer?"

"In a place like this you want dark beer?"

"Whatever, then."

The bartender drew a thick-walled stein and slid it across. "I worked in the city. I know about dark beer and Guiness and like that. These yokels around here," he added, his tone of voice finishing the sentence.

The customer was a small man with glasses and not much of a beard. He had a gentle voice. "A man called Grinny…"

"Grimme," the barman corrected. "So you heard. Him and his brother."

The customer didn't say anything. The bartender wiped. The customer told him to pour one for himself.

"I don't usual." But the barman poured. "Grimme and that brother Dave, the worst." He drank. "I hate it a lot out here, yokels like that is why."

"There's still the city."

"Not for me. The wife."

"Oh." And he waited.

"They lied a lot. Come in here, get drunk, tell about what they done, mostly women. Bad, what they said they done. Worse when it wasn't lies. You want another?"

"Not yet."

"No lie about the Fannen kid, Marcy. Fourteen, fifteen, maybe. Tooken her out behind the Johnsons' silo, what they done to her. And then they said they'd kill her, she said anything. She didn't. Not about that, not about anything, ever again, two years. Until the fever last November, she told her mom. She died. Mom came told me 'fore she moved out."

The customer waited.

"Hear them tell it, they were into every woman, wife, daughter in the valley, any time they wanted."

The customer blew through his nostrils, once, gently. A man came in for two six-packs and a hip-sized Southern Comfort and went away in a pickup truck. " 'Monday-busy,' I call this," said the barman, looking around the empty room. "And here it's Wednesday." Without being asked, he drew another beer for the customer. "To have somebody to talk to," he said in explanation. Then he said nothing at all for a long time.

The customer took some beer. "They just went after local folks, then."

"Grimme and David? Well, yes, they had the run of it, most of the men off with the lumbering, nothing grows in these rocks around here. Except maybe chickens, and who cares for chickens? Old folks, and the women. Anyway, that Grimme, shoulders this wide. Eyes that close together; and hairy. The brother, maybe you'd say a good-lookin' guy for a yokel, but, well, scary." He nodded at his choice of words and said it again. "Scary."

"Crazy eyes," said the customer.

"You got it. So the times they wasn't just lyin', the women didn't want to tell and, I got to say it, the men just as soon not know."

"But they never bothered anyone except their own valley people."

"Who else is ever around here to bother? Oh, they bragged about this one and that one they got to on the road, you know, blonde in the big convertible, give them the eye, give them whiskey, give them a good time up on the back roads. All lies and you know it.

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