I let her take her time. I couldn’t hardly hear her breathing. She went on, “Mack, they filled this baptismal tub with snakes. I ain’t never seen anything like it. There were pinewood boxes of ’em all around this room, and they were all stirred up. I still can’t get the hissing outta my head. The Elis tossed Deddy into that tub like it wasn’t nothing. Didn’t even give him a chance to beg. Deddy’s always been fearful of snakes, and they started pouring box after box in on top of him. He tried climbing out, but they ate him up. That hiss they make as they strike didn’t ease up for a second. I ain’t never heard him scream like that. Something came outta him that was otherworldly. It scares me to think about it. They locked me up down here after that. Left them snakes down here for days and made me listen to ’em slither around. I’m just glad they’re gone.”

She let out a sigh clear enough to hear inside the freezer and finished. “I’ve been needing to get that off my chest. Sorry it had to be you, Mack. Don’t be mad, but I’m going to sleep. I’m exhausted now.”

I don’t know if Andy slept, but she didn’t say another word to me. I know I never caught a wink.

10.

The basement light blinded me, and I couldn’t see shit. My arms worked like rolled putty, and my legs gave out when Cody dragged me from the box and tossed me at the preacher’s feet. Randy Jessup handed me my jeans and said, “Put these on, friend. I don’t want to have to see your indecency.”

I looked down at my shriveled member and smiled with all my teeth. “You afraid of looking at my pecker because you might like what you see, preacher?”

Andy laughed. We both looked over at her, huddled up in a corner, and she covered her mouth. She’d got stripped down to her underwear—and a shackle locked around her ankle. A big chain laid on top of a bolt next to her, and she sat on top of a sleeping bag.

“Why ain’t you got no clothes on?” I asked her.

Randy Jessup answered for her. “God spoke in the book of Isaiah, ‘Thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen.’”

“Go piss up a rope,” I said before the preacher could go on. His eye ignited in a burst of anger, and he nodded his head. A big paw grabbed me by the back of my neck and squeezed until I thought the vertebrates would splinter. A heavy fist found the same spot the toe of the boot tenderized the night before, and I fell. I didn’t know if anything got broken, but I could hardly breathe and wheezed in a little bit of air at a time.

Andy said, “Keep your goddamn hands off him.”

The anger in Randy Jessup’s eye spread across his face. Andy thrust her hands up, but he shoved them into her lap, and smacked her. Her head snapped to the side and the rest of her body went with it.