As Roger came closer, he saw her red shirt through the undergrowth and grass that grew on the edge of the clearing. The girl was lying on the ground and crying. Her mouth was open, and tears were running down her cheeks, making lines through the dirt that smeared her face. She looked so young, so like a small child who needed help.
"Are you hurt?" Roger said.
The girl kept crying. "I fell," she said.
Roger didn't know what to do. Even though he and the other girl had a routine, he never really knew what to do when she cried, and she did cry from time to time, even after she had been living with him for many, many years. She usually cried at night, when she thought Roger was asleep, and he'd lay there on his side of the bed, listening but not acting like he had heard, while the girl muttered and sniffed, sometimes saying something over and over again, something that sounded like the word "Mommy."
Roger held out his hand. "Here," he said.
But the girl didn't take it. She pointed at the ground, near her feet, and Roger thought he knew what was wrong.
"Is it your ankle?" he said. "Let me help you up."
She shook her head. She kept shaking it and pointing at the ground.
The light was fading, but Roger leaned forward and looked where the girl was pointing. It took a moment to see, but eventually he saw something nestled in the grass and weeds, something a dirty gray-white color. Roger knew right away what it was and why it made the girl cry.
It was a human skull and bones.
Roger held his hand out again.
"Come on," he said. "Let's get you out of here."
This time, the girl reached out and took his hand, allowing him to pull her to her feet. She started muttering.
"I fell, so I tried to hide, to get down in the weeds there, and I found those bones. I laid right on top of them. Why are they there? What happened?"
Roger didn't respond. He started guiding the girl back toward the path and the house. She went along for a moment, her body limp and fluid, but then Roger felt a stiffness coming into her form, a resistance to his efforts to move her along.
"My God," she said. "You're going to kill me."
"No."
"You killed all of these people, and you're going to kill me. My God, my God, my God."
She started pulling away, trying to release herself from Roger's grip. Roger tightened his hold, but one of the girl's arms slipped out and began flailing. She went for Roger's face, swinging and scratching, jabbing at his eyes. He leaned away, letting her go wild for a moment, then he stepped in and tried to pin her arms to her sides. The girl turned away from him, so that he ended up grabbing her from behind, but he managed to pin her arms by holding her tight across the middle. He increased the pressure and heard the air go out of her mouth with a soft whoosh. The girl made a small grunting noise, then was silent. He remembered the bedroom and how he almost choked off all of her air. He eased up a little and heard the girl gasp again. She was okay.
They stood like that for a moment, Roger holding her up while she caught her breath. She still felt limp and weak in his arms. He hadn't been this close to a girl, hadn't touched one in this way in so long. The stirring, the aching pleasure between his legs, had never gone away, and with the girl so close, her backside rubbing up against his front, it grew even more intense, more sickly pleasurable until Roger thought he was going to explode.
And he was in the clearing with her. And something in his head told him, over and over, that now was the time, now was the time to make her his wife.
Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it.
Roger took her and lowered her to the ground.
The girl gasped again, this time with the knowledge of what Roger was about to do. He worked at her clothes quickly, his big hands suddenly more nimble than they had ever been before. The girl offered little in the way of resistance to him. It seemed as though she had already given up and accepted her fate, and Roger took this as a good sign. He had a wife. The plan had worked. He had chosen the right one.
When he had her clothes off, throwing the bike shorts aside like they were garbage, he worked on his, opening his zipper with one hand, slipping his member out, the thing feeling huge as a log in his hand. He remembered how to do it.
The girl lay still beneath him while he did it. His face was close to the dirt, smelling the rich soil, the musty odor of the ground, while the girl's hair tickled his nose. Somewhere beneath them, worms crawled through the earth, feeding off the bones of the last girl, but Roger didn't care. He was here now, alive, with his new wife, and when the moment came his body grew rigid, almost frozen, then shuddered repeatedly as he shot off into the girl, the flooding release feeling like it came from the very ground itself and out into her. He was taking her, making her his own, just like his dad had told him.
Take a wife, the old man said, and that's what he meant. Take a wife in the clearing.
CHAPTER TWELVE