Three brothers: a Sheriff, a Butcher, and a pedophile Priest, control a small desert town infested with maniacal witches. Breathtaking Verna, the Butcher's wife, and Sheriff's lover, is slaughtered. Luke, the Butcher, is accused. John, the Sheriff, attempts to prove his brothers innocence and to discover who is filling the town, of Glenrock, with dead witches.
Excerpt:
Inside an elegant, ten thousand square foot, California ranch house—with dusk leaking through its bay windows—Verna Dieadad argues with her husband, Luke, “You're home early. So early. Checking on me? Ten years and I never know you to come home early from your precious meatpacking. You all done meatpacking, tonight?” She is dressed in a sheer blouse and Slim Fit Levis. Her feet are small and bare. On the middle toe of her left foot she wares a Princess-cut Black Diamond, fifty thousand dollar toe-ring; it matches the Black Diamonds on her slim, left wrist and on her ears and on her perfect, neck. She is tall and she is breathtaking. She plays with her long, black hair; drawing the silky strands through her Jolie lips.
“I came to get my boning knives, if you don't mind?” Luke says and then walks from the rosewood game room to a huge, professional kitchen lined with black utilities setting on a black-and-white checkerboard, tile floor.
Verna follows; still twisting her long, straight hair. “You came trying to catch me with someone. You should have told me you were coming. I could have given you the arrival times of my many lovers. You wouldn't have to waste your precious time, standing around.” If her husband ever guesses how many sex partners she has dragged through this big, lonely house, he will use her long, delicious hair to strangle her and then use that same hair to drag her out into the desert and bury her along with all her dreams; most of them unfulfilled.
“You been with someone?” The boning knives are wrapped in a leather apron and sitting on the stainless steel counter top. But Luke doesn’t pick them up. Instead he returns to the game room. He takes a pool stick from the plush green field of the pool table and then hits the cue ball. The cue ball slams into the three ball which slams into the corner pocket, like a gun shot.
“I’ve been with hundreds while you're out slaving. You are out slaving, aren't you? Like some superhuman creature.” She walks around the table so that she faces him the length of the slate top. Her hillbilly husband has become an unlikely millionaire workaholic. He is her slave. So she can have the most expensive stuff. Stuff that she deserves because she is stunning. As stunning as any woman on earth. As stunning as any woman in Hollywood. “You are out slaving, aren’t you?”
“Twenty-four seven. I work my ass off so you can have toe rings.” He hits the cue ball again and hammers the seven ball, toward the side pocket, it slams into the leather bound pocket, spins, and then ricochets, at a forty-five degree angle, directly at Verna’s angelic head.
She ducks. “You're a saint. That’s what I told your brother on the down stroke.” She bends over and picks up the seven ball rolling back from bouncing off the wall. She heaves the ball at Luke. Die! You goddamed hick.
He catches the ball in his left hand. Just to the side of his left temple. “Down stroke? That supposed to mean you been doing John?”
“Maybe John; maybe Paul,” she says. She turns and smooths her hair while watching her reflection in a breakfront. Witchcraft has kept her young and beautiful. But witchcraft has not gotten rid of her hick husband. Maybe tonight.
More horror from Alexander Hope:
Don't Go Near The Pool
Winter Wheat
