Heaven (Casteel Series #1) Read online

  Still, I whispered, "N0000," but it didn't stop him from kissing where he wanted to kiss, or fondling where he wanted to fondle. I quivered all over, as if God above were looking down and condemning me to eternal hell, as Reverend Wise had said he would, and where Kitty reminded me every day that I was sure to go. It surprised me that he would want to nuzzle his face against my breasts while his tears poured like hot rain and he sobbed in my arms.

  What had I done or said to make him think

  what he had to be thinking? Guilt and shame washed over me.

  Was I truly innately wicked, as Kitty was

  always saying? Why had I brought this on myself?

  I wanted to cry out and tell him what Kitty had done, burned my mother's doll—but perhaps he'd think that a trivial, silly sorrow, to see a doll burned.

  And what were a few slaps when I'd endured so much more?

  Save me, save me! I wanted to scream.

  Don't do anything else to take away my pride, please, please! My body betrayed me. It felt good, what he was doing. It felt good to be held, rocked, cuddled, and caressed. A precious thing he made me feel one second, an evil, wicked thing the next. All my life long I'd been starved for hands that touched kindly, lovingly. All my life yearning for a father to love me.

  "I love you," he whispered, kissing my lips again, and I didn't ask how he loved me, as a daughter or as something more. I didn't want to know. Not now, when for the first time in my life I felt valuable, worthy enough for a fine man like him to love and desire . . . even if something deep within me was alarmed.

  "How sweet and soft you are," he murmured when he kissed my bared breasts.

  I closed my eyes, tried to not think about what I was allowing him to do. Now he'd never leave me alone with Kitty. Now he'd find ways to keep me forever safe, and force Kitty to tell him where Keith and Our Jane were.

  Thank God caressing my thighs and abdomen

  and buttocks under my torn dress seemed to satisfy him enough. Perhaps because I began to talk, to make him remember who I was. In a burst of words I gushed it all out, about the doll, the burning, how Kitty had forced me by saying she knew where Keith and Our Jane were. "Do you really think she does know?" I asked.

  "I don't know what she knows," he said shortly, bitterly, coming back to himself as the dazed look in his eyes went away. "I don't know if she knows anything but how to be cruel."

  He met my wide, frightened eyes. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be doing this. Forgive me for forgetting who you are, Heaven."

  I nodded, my heart pounding as I watched him take from his shirt pocket a tiny box wrapped in silver and tied with blue satin ribbon. He put it in my hand.

  "I have a gift to congratulate you for being such a good student, and making me so proud of you, Heaven Leigh Casteel." He opened the box and lifted the lid on the smaller black velvet box inside, which revealed a dainty gold watch. His eyes met mine, pleadingly. "I know you're living for the day when you can escape this house, and Kitty, and me. So I give you a calendar watch, to count the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until you can find your brother and little sister. And I swear I'll do all I can to find out what Kitty knows. Please don't run from me."

  Truth was in his eyes. Love for me was there as well. I stared and stared, until finally I had to accept, and I held out my arm and allowed him to fasten the watch about my wrist. "Naturally," he said bitterly,

  "you can't let Kitty see this watch."

  He leaned to kiss my forehead tenderly,

  cupping my face between his palms before he said,

  "Forgive me for trespassing where I should never go.

  Sometimes I need someone so badly, and you're so sweet, so young and understanding, and as starved for affection as I am."

  He didn't notice that I'd sprained my ankle, since I took great pains to see that I didn't walk until he had left the room and my bedroom door was closed. I couldn't fall asleep. Cal was so close, dangerously close, and we were alone in the house.

  He was in the other room, a few feet away. Right through the walls I could almost sense his need for me, and my terrible fear that need would override his sense of decency made me get up, pull a robe over my nightgown, and painfully make my way down the stairs and into the living room, where I lay on the white sofa and waited for Kitty to come home.

  All night long the rain was a steady drumming, slashing against the windowpanes, pelting the roof, rolling thunder and far-off flashes, keeping me always on edge. However, I had a purpose in mind. I meant to confront Kitty, and this time come out the winner.

  Somehow or other I had to force her to tell me where Keith and Our Jane were. I clutched in my hand a tiny crystal bead with a few threads of charred white lace I'd found in the fireplace. Yet as I sat there on her sofa, in her spanking-clean white house, with her rainbowed creatures all around me, I felt

  outnumbered, overwhelmed. I fell into sleep and missed Kitty's stumbling steps when she came home dead drunk.

  Her loud voice coming from the bedroom woke me up.

  "Done had me a good time!" Kitty bellowed.

  "Best damned party eva! Gonna do it every year from now on—an ya kin't stop me!"

  "You may do as you damn well please,"

  answered Cal as I drifted nearer and nearer the stairs.

  "I don't care anymore what you do, or what you say."

  "Then yer leavin me . . . are ya, are ya?"

  "Yes, Kitty. I am leaving you," he said, to my surprise and joy.

  "Ya kin't, ya know. Yer stuck wid me. Once ya go ya ain't got nothin. I'll take yer shop, an all these years ya done been married up t'me go down t'drain, an yer penniless agin . . unless ya go home to Mommy an Daddy an tell em what a damn fool ya are."

  "You do have a sweet and convincing way with words, Kitty."

  "I love ya. Ain't that all that counts?" Kitty said, her voice sounding suddenly vulnerable.

  I stared upward, wondering what was

  happening. Was he stripping off her clothes, full of desire just because this time she was going to let him?

  When I heard Cal in the downstairs bath the next morning, I got up and started breakfast. Cal was whistling in the shower. Was he happy now?

  Kitty came from upstairs apparently a changed woman, smiling at me as if she hadn't burned my most beloved possession and punched me in the face.

  "Why, honey baby," she crooned, "why'd ya stay upstairs durin t'party ya gave me, huh, why did ya?

  Missed ya, I did. Wanted ya there t'show ya off Call my friends. Why, all t'girls were dyin t'see ya, an ya were shy an didn't show up an let em see my pretty daughta gets betta-lookin every day. Really, honey doll, ya do gotta get used t'monthly cramps, an ferget all about em—or else yer neva gonna enjoy bein a woman."

  "You tell me where Keith and Our Jane are!" I shouted. "You promised to tell me!"

  "Why, honey, what ya talkin bout? How would

  / know?" She smiled, so help me, she smiled as if she'd completely forgotten all she'd done. Was she pretending? Oh, she had to be! She wasn't that crazy!

  Then came the more dreadful thought—maybe she really was insane!

  Cal strode in and threw Kitty a look of disgust, though he didn't say anything. Behind her back his eyes met mine, sending me a silent warning. Do nothing. Say nothing. Let Kitty play her pretend game, and we'd play ours. A knot formed in the pit of my stomach. How could I live through day after day of this? My eyes lowered to watch the eggs sizzling in the pan.

  It was May now, and the hustle and bustle of preparing for exams was in the air. I studied hours on end so I'd earn good grades. Very late in the month, a weird kind of northeaster blew in and chased away spring warmth, and suddenly it was unseasonably cold. Furnaces that had been shut down in March were started up again. Sweaters put in mothballs came out with woolen skirts. On the coldest Friday in May I'd ever known, I stayed late for a conference with Mr.

  Taylor, my biology teacher. He asked me if I'd please take our class hamste
r, Chuckles, home for the weekend.

  The dilemma I faced showed up clearly in my troubled expression as I stood by the hamster's large wire cage, wanting to shout out the truth about Kitty and her diabolical hatred of all living animals, when under any other circumstances I would have been delighted to be in charge of the pregnant hamster that was the biology-class pet.

  "Oh, no," I said quickly when he persisted. "I've told you. Mr. Taylor, my mother doesn't approve of pets in her house. They're messy, smelly, and she's always sniffing the air for odors she doesn't recognize."

  "Oh, come now, Heaven," said Mr. Taylor,

  "you're exaggerating, I know you are. Your mother is a lovely, gracious woman, I can tell from the way she smiles at you."

  Yeah, how sweet and kind were the smiles of Kitty Dennison. How dumb men could be, really.

  Even book-smart ones like Mr. Taylor.

  My teacher's voice took on a persuading tone while the wild northeast winds whipped around the school building, making me shiver even with the heat on. On and on he wheedled: "The city orders us to turn off the heat on weekends, and all the other students are gone. Do you want the poor little expectant mother to stay in a freezing room so we'll find her dead on Monday? Come, dear, share the responsibility of loving a pet . . . that's what love is all about, you know, responsibilities and caring."

  "But my mother hates animals," I said in a weak voice, really wanting to have Chuckles for an entire weekend.

  He must have seen some yearning in my

  expression, for he went on cajoling. "Gets mighty cold in here," he said, watching my face in a calculating way. "Even if Chuckles has food and water, mighty cold for a wee dear caged expectant mother."

  "But . . . but . . ."

  "No buts. It's your duty. Your obligation. I'm leaving this weekend with my family, or else I'd take Chuckles home with me. I could leave her in my home alone with plenty of food in her cage, and her bottle of water . . . but she might give birth any day.

  And I want you there with the movie camera I taught you how to use to show the class the miracle of birth, in case it happens while she's with you."

  And so I was persuaded against my better judy ent, and in Kitty's spick-and-span white-and-pink house, among all the brilliant ceramic critters, tan-and-white Chuckles was established in the basement, a place Kitty never went now that she had a slave to do the clothes washing and drying.

  However, Kitty was not in the least predictable.

  Her mood swings were startling, dramatic, and, most of all, dangerous. With much trepidation I bustled about making a clear and clean place, out of drafts, for the big cage. Under a sunny high window seemed to me just perfect. I found an old standing screen with its black lacquer peeling off, and I set it up. Now Chuckles would be protected not only from drafts but from Kitty's cruel seawater eyes if ever she dared to enter the basement. There was absolutely no reason for her to come to where I had Chuckles cozily established against a distant wall. I felt only a small apprehension for Chuckles' safety.

  "Now, you take it easy down here, Chuckles," I warned the small animal, who sat up on her haunches and nibbled daintily on the slice of apple I gave her.

  "Try not to use your treadmill so much. In your condition, you might overdo it."

  The darn wheel squeaked and squealed, and

  even after I took the wheel out and oiled the moving parts, it still made a certain amount of noise when I spun it with my fingers. Chuckles ran madly about in her cage, wanting her exercise wheel back. Once I put it back in the cage, Chuckles instantly jumped in and began to run in the wheel—it still squealed, but not very much.

  Upstairs in the back hall I pressed my ear against the closed basement door. All was silent down there. I opened the door and listened. Still I couldn't hear anything. Good. I descended the stairs, five, six, then seven of them, paused to listen. Only then could I hear a faint sound, but it was all right. Kitty would never enter the basement alone, and she couldn't do anything if Cal was at his workbench. I had finished with the laundry, so why should she check?

  In another few minutes I had a few old chairs put one on each side of the screen, so it wouldn't topple over and fall on the cage. I tested it, found it stable enough, and once more told Chuckles to be a good girl, and please don't have your babies before I have the camera set up and ready."

  Chuckles went right on spinning in the

  treadmill.

  It was another of those strange evenings, with Kitty not working overtime as she used to do. There was a distraught look in her pale eyes. "Got another migraine," she complained in a whiny tone. "Goin t'bed early," she announced after an early supper.

  "Don't want t'hear t'dishwasher goin, ya hear? Makes t'house vibrate. I'm gonna swallow some pills an sleep an sleep an sleep."

  Wonderful!

  Saturday began like any other Saturday. Kitty got up grouchy, tired, rubbing at her puffy, reddened eyes, complaining of feeling drugged. "Don't know if I kin make it t'my classes," she mumbled at the breakfast table, while I dutifully tended to the sausages, browning them just right, with a bit of water added to keep them moist. "All t'time tired, I am. Life ain't good no more. Kin't understand it."

  "Take the day off," suggested Cal, unfolding the morning paper and beginning to read the headlines. "Go back to bed and sleep until you can get up and not feel tired."

  "But I should go t'my classes. Got my students waitin . ."

  "Kitty, you should go to a doctor."

  "Ya know I hate doctors!"

  "Yes, I know, but when you have constant headaches that indicates trouble, or the need for eyeglasses."

  "Ya know I'm not gonna wear any damn

  spectacles an make myself look like an ole lady!"

  "You could wear contacts," he said as if disgusted, and he glanced at me. "I'll be working all day, until at least six. I just hired two new men who need training." He was telling me not to expect too much in the way of entertainment tonight.

  Kitty rubbed at her eyes again, staring at the plate I put before her as if she didn't recognize her favorite morning meal of sausages, fried eggs, and grits. "Don't have no appetite fer nothin . . ." She stood up, turned, saying she was going back to bed and sleep until she woke up without head pains. "An ya kin call an make my excuses."

  All morning I cleaned and scrubbed, and didn't hear or see Kitty. I ate lunch alone. In the afternoon I dusted, vacuumed downstairs, quickly saw to the needs of Chuckles, who very obviously didn't want me to go and leave her alone. She indicated this in playful, touching ways, sitting up and begging, acting cuter whenever I turned to leave. Oh, but for Kitty I'd bring Chuckles home every night, keep her in my room. "It's all right, darling," I said, scratching her soft, furry head, and that made soft sounds of contentment in her throat. "You play as much as you want to. The demon in the house has drugged herself with Valium, and that keeps you safe, safe."

  Cal didn't take me to the movies that Saturday; he and I watched television, neither one of us talking very much.

  Sunday.

  Kitty's loud singing woke me early.

  "Feel good," she shouted to Cal as I got up and quickly strode down the hall toward the stairs and the downstairs bath. "Feel like goin t'church. HEAVEN,"

  she bellowed as she heard me pass her open door, "get yer lazy butt down in t'kitchen fast, an fix breakfast.

  We're goin t'church. All of us. Gonna sing praises ta t'Lord fer chasin away my headaches . . ."

  Why, she sounded just like her old self!

  Feeling tired myself, burdened with too much to do, I dashed about trying to do everything before Kitty came down. I started for the bathroom to take a quick shower before I began breakfast. No, better to put the water on for the coffee first, and shower while it heated. After the shower, I'd check on Chuckles as the bacon fried slowly.

  But someone had already put the water in the kettle, and it was hot and steaming. I headed for the bath, presuming Cal had been downstairs and was eager for h
is two cups of morning coffee.

  My robe and nightgown I hung on a hook on

  back of the bathroom door, before I turned to step into the tub. That's when I saw Chuckles!

  Chuckles—in the tub—all bloody! A long

  string of intestines spewed out of her mouth; her tiny babies strung out from the other end! I fell to my knees sobbing, heaving up the contents of an almost empty stomach so it splashed into the tub to blend with the blood and other sickening contents.

  Behind me the door opened.

  "Makin a mess agin, are ya?" asked a harsh voice from the doorway. "Screamin an yellin like yer seein somethin ya didn't expect. Now go on, take yer bath. Not gonna let no dirty hill-scum gal go inta my church widout a bath."

  Wide-eyed with horror, with hate, I stared at Kitty. "You killed Chuckles!"

  "Are ya losin yer mind? I ain't killed no Chuckles. Don't even know what yer talkin bout."

  "LOOK IN THE TUB!" I yelled.

  "Don't see nothin," said Kitty, staring directly down at the pitiful dead animal and all the bloody mess there. "Jus use t'stopper an fill up t'tub while I watch. Ain't gonna take no hill filth inta my church!"

  "CAL!" I screamed as loud as possible. "HELP

  ME!"

  "Cal's in t'shower," said Kitty pleasantly, "doin what he kin to cleanse away his sins. Now ya do t'same cleanse yers!"

  "You're crazy, really crazy!" I screamed.

  Calmly Kitty began to fill the tub. I leaped to my feet and snatched for a towel to shield my nudity.

  And in reaching, I took my eyes off of Kitty for one brief second.

  Enough time. Like a baseball bat Kitty slung her stiffened arm so it struck and hurled me toward the tub. I stumbled, staggered off balance, and again Kitty moved, but this time I managed to dodge, and, screaming, I headed for the stairs, calling Cal's name as loudly as I could.

  "YA COME BACK HERE AN TAKE YER

  BATH!" shrieked Kitty.

  I pounded on the door of the upstairs bath, screaming for Cal to hear me, but he was in there with the water going full blast, singing at the top of his voice, and he didn't hear. Any minute I expected Kitty to climb the stairs and force me to sit in that tub of filth and death. Daring embarrassment, I turned the knob on the door. Cal had locked it! Oh, damn, damn!