Captors Read online

  THE CAPTORS

  By John Farris

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Copyright 2012 / Penny Dreadful, LLC

  Cover design by: David Dodd

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  John Lee Farris (born 1936) is an American writer, known largely for his work in the southern Gothic genre. He was born 1936 in Jefferson City, Missouri, to parents John Linder Farris (1909–1982) and Eleanor Carter Farris (1905–1984). Raised in Tennessee, he graduated from Central High School in Memphis and attended Southwestern College (now Rhodes College) in Memphis. His first wife, Kathleen, was the mother of Julie Marie, John, and Jeff Farris; his second wife, Mary Ann Pasante, was the mother of Peter John ("P.J.") Farris.

  Apart from his vast body of fiction, his work on motion picture screenplays includes adaptations of his own books (i.e., The Fury), original scripts, and adaptations of the works of others (such as Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man). He wrote and directed the film Dear Dead Delilah in 1973. He has had several plays produced off-Broadway, and also paints and writes poetry. At various times he has made his home in New York, southern California and Puerto Rico; he now lives near Atlanta, Georgia.

  Author's Website – Furies & Fiends

  Other John Farris books currently available or coming soon from Crossroad Press:

  All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By

  Catacombs

  Dragonfly

  Fiends

  King Windom

  Minotaur

  Nightfall

  Phantom Nights

  Sacrifice

  Sharp Practice

  Shatter

  Solar Eclipse

  Son of the Endless Night

  Soon She Will Be Gone

  The Axeman Cometh

  The Captors

  The Fury

  The Fury and the Power

  The Fury and the Terror

  The Ransome Women

  Unearthly (formerly titled The Unwanted)

  When Michael Calls

  Wildwood

  DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS

  Visit our online store

  Subscribe to our Newsletter

  Visit our DIGITAL and AUDIO book blogs for updates and news.

  Connect with us on Facebook.

  Chapter One

  Sunday, June 23, 1968

  After they were out of sight of the house, Carol Watterson stopped her car in front of the gates to her grandfather's place and shifted to neutral. She smiled at her brother. "All yours."

  "You mean it?"

  "Why not? You can handle it. Pittsford Lane is a lot wider than our driveway, and there's no traffic on Sunday."

  "What happens when I get to the Parkway?"

  "Cross with the light. You won't have any problems."

  "OK," Kevin said, Pleased and apprehensive. Carol got out of the Corvette and waited with the door open for Kevin to come around. As usual she felt a little awed at having to look up at her brother. He was one month past his thirteenth birthday, and already he was nudging six feet. A few days ago he weighed in at one hundred and sixty pounds for the first time; Carol had rewarded him with a trip to Shea Stadium for a twi-night doubleheader. She'd endured five hours and forty-six minutes of a game which she found baffling and boring, and her seat was still a trifle tender from the experience. But they'd left the stadium close friends again after having seen very little of each other during her college years.

  "Anything you need to know?" she asked as Kevin carefully adjusted the deep seat for his legs.

  "No."

  "Let's go, I'm hungry."

  She belted herself into the opposite seat and unconcernedly lit a cigarette. Kevin let the emergency brake off, looked hard behind him at the sun-streaked blacktop, then pulled out into the road. His shift to second was very rough; the Sting Ray, basically a racing machine which thrived on an expert touch, bucked and nearly stalled. But Kevin eased in the clutch and downshifted to third immediately, gave the gas pedal just enough pressure for a steady getaway. The engine labored nervously, recovered. Carol settled back, glanced at the speed—just under thirty-five miles an hour—smiled, appraised Kevin's reactions. He was concentrating but not tense.

  "You're a natural," she said affectionately. "Trouble is I can't get my junior permit for another three years."

  "But then you'll be able to have your own car." Kevin stopped at an unmarked intersection: the cross road was clay and gravel. Two girls about Kevin's age cantered by on sweating horses and one of them called to Kevin; the other girl turned in her saddle to look and wave.

  "Hey, I didn't know about those two."

  Kevin muttered, "I just met them the other night. They're from the city. Staying over at Ted Fortner's."

  "I wouldn't be surprised if they came riding up to our front door in the morning." Kevin shrugged to indicate his indifference. "Remind them, please, that you're taking your sister sailing." The angle of the late-afternoon sun had changed and Carol put on glasses with rhomboid amber lenses to cut the glare. She admired her brother as he drove on, absorbed in his handling of the low, quick-charging car: it wasn't much more than a thin, bright skin over a power source as mysterious to her as the core of the earth.

  Like Carol, Kevin was still dressed in tennis togs, somewhat grimy now from several highly competitive sets on the family court. He was growing fast but he looked strong, not spindly and out of proportion: he had big hands and feet, but his head was large too and not impossibly shaggy, in the fashion of the day. There were tantalizing glimpses of the man to be in Kevin's face. Beneath a fair, faintly cherubic skin he had his father's solid bones. His eyes were gray as gunpowder, cat-steady. It made Carol feel odd and at times bereaved to be so close to this still-unfinished version of their father, whom she usually found hard to remember.

  "Do you think it'll go a hundred and sixty?" Kevin asked as he drove cautiously on. They had the road to themselves except for a black delivery van well back and following slowly.

  "Well—" After breaking the Sting Ray in properly she'd hit one hundred and twenty-five miles an hour one full-moon night on the wide Taconic, perhaps a celebration of a sort, or a rite: the car was a graduation gift from Sam and Felice, and the special terror and exhilaration of being twenty-one and all but free were symbolized for Carol in those seconds of charmed recklessness. "I suppose it could," she said, not wanting to elaborate. The Corvette had given her all the speed she wanted, without a tremor. And, remembering, she felt a sharp melancholy underlying her pride in the car: it would be the last thing she would receive from both of them. Once they were divorced there would be separate dutiful presents on the appropriate occasions. She would feel cheated, somehow. It was unfair of her, even childish; but she knew she would feel cheated, and not very well-loved anymore.

  The Saw Mill River Parkway above Fox Village was clogged with Sunday cars, particularly in the southbound lanes: metallic glitter through a light-blue haze. Kevin turned before he reached the Parkway, drove half a mile south of the traffic light, crossed to the single tree-bordered business street of the town.

  The village was quiet, all but deserted. Only a clangorous Esso station beside the Saw Mill and two eating places, within a block of each other at the south end of the small business district, were open. They had already decide
d on Jake's for Steak, which had an air-conditioned dining room; the other place was a drive-in, and the late-June sun fell brutally on the open spaces of Fox Village.

  Kevin parked behind the building, beneath an overhang of the cantilevered roof to keep the open car out of the sun. He handed over the keys with a wide grin and a sigh.

  They had a short wait for a table. The temperature inside felt close to freezing, and Carol began wishing she had worn more than the sleeveless one-piece tennis outfit. She stared unresponsively at the assembled family groups. Some were bickering and some looked stifled by the clatter and the Muzak, but a few others seemed content and at peace with themselves on a Sunday afternoon.

  She wondered why it had come now, the breakup, when Sam had been confident the marriage was going to survive a bad year. Her mother's point of view was especially difficult for Carol to understand: Felice was not ordinarily obstinate about anything. But Carol had to admit that, whatever Sam's intentions were, he had made some awful blunders. His disappearing act just before Christmas had frightened and angered Felice, even though she knew how exhausted he'd been. Maybe his trip had been impromptu, for recuperative purposes as he said. Maybe he'd taken a woman with him to Mexico. Carol didn't know but she thought it was unlikely. What Felice thought was another matter.

  Kevin was greatly troubled, even if he didn't let it show. He and Sam Holland had always been close. But Kevin also had the emotional resiliency, a hardheaded positiveness, that would enable him to live through a divorce without bitterness.

  I wonder how much Kevin knows? she thought. In his unobtrusive way Kevin missed virtually nothing of what went on around him. He might have overheard something pertinent. Carol wasn't sure he'd talk, but if she could convince her brother there was a possibility of patching things up between Sam and Felice—

  Carol had not been aware of staring at the Latin young man in the phone booth by the door. Probably he was paying no attention to her. He had the receiver propped between one shoulder and his ear and he chewed at a fingernail on his left hand as he talked. His eyes weren't visible behind aviator sunglasses. Yet Carol had the odd, blurry sensation that she was being closely observed; furthermore, he looked surprisingly familiar. She was about to smile, not sure why, when the hostess appeared at her elbow. We're ready for you now.

  Carol turned obediently and the two of them followed the hostess to a corner booth.

  After a lengthy search of the menu it occurred to her that she had lost most of her appetite. She settled for a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich and iced tea, ordered, then excused herself and went to the ladies' room.

  Her hair, which she usually wore in a bulky rope twist over one shoulder or tied back with a long scarf, had become tangled during the drive. She combed it out and looked herself over in the mirror with the rigid scrutiny of a professional model bent on finding fault. She was naturally blonde but away from the sun for any length of time her hair tended to brown and curl at the tips like a dying poplar leaf. Now it was too dry, she thought, because she'd baked herself carelessly almost every day during the two weeks at home.

  The dark smudges beneath her eyes were plainly visible. They had been something of a plague all her life, appearing whenever she was off her feed or went sleepless. She had the vanity to be grateful for brown eyes, which were somehow enhanced by the darkened skin. She disliked the shape of her eyes, which were large but too round and insufficiently lidded, like a snake's, basically without expression. Still, they were a warm reflectant color, and she had a lazy jesting smile that could happily transform her face. Essentially she was a replica of hundreds of other long-boned and youthful blondes with the bikini shapes and a specific, piquant sex appeal that is for the young alone and heartbreakingly perishable. Carol's saving grace was a certain witty intensity that would endure, and favor her as a woman.

  The Mets were playing the Giants in San Francisco and Kevin was sitting with his transistor radio at his right ear, taking it all in. He listened for a minute or two after Carol sat down, then winced at some unfavorable turn in the game and broodingly put the radio aside.

  "When do you look for your apartment?" he asked.

  "What? Oh—I don't know, Kevin, probably not until after Labor Day. I don't start work until mid-September." While he listened to the game she had been thinking of California, in particular of the wind and harsh sea at Big Sur, and strangely enough—unluckily—she was also thinking of Dev.

  "What sort of apartment do you want?"

  "I'll take what I can get; everything's so damned overpriced nowadays."

  Their sandwiches came and Kevin devoted himself to basting a steakburger with everything in sight: A-1, catsup, mustard, relish. "Since I'm going to be off at school," he said, carefully cementing the top half of the bun in place, "maybe you wouldn't mind staying at home."

  "It's a long commute into the city." But Carol knew what he was trying to say. She wondered then if it would be possible for her to do as she had planned. She'd spent very little time in Fox Village during the past four years, her interests had gradually become centered in Berkeley, but with a divorce seeming certain it could make things easier for Felice if she did stick close for a while. Living at home, she couldn't hold down her job and also do postgraduate work at NYU. And it would mean giving up the total independence she was now so eager for. But she wanted them to stay a family, somehow, even with Sam gone.

  "Well, maybe I will stay home," she said, conceding that much. "I have some time to think about it." The rest of the summer she planned to be a bum. There would be time to do some plotting and, ultimately, to convince her mother and stepfather that they should stay together. Not that she had any unusual wisdom to offer. She hadn't been so very good at patching things up with Dev. But that was different. Carol still felt forlorn and occasionally desperate over Dev, although it had been the intelligent thing to do. Dev would never settle down if he could avoid it.

  But how would it feel to give up on a marriage that had been solid for almost nine years? Was Felice terrified behind her façade of good-humored resignation? We just feel it would be better to remain friends and live apart, Carol. . . . That was the official line: Felice would say nothing more.

  Damn it anyway, if he'd had a girl or two wasn't Felice tough enough to overlook it? Had Sam gone out of his way to humiliate Felice, rub her nose in an affair? No, he wasn't having some silly second childhood.

  Carol decided she would have to know more, and Kevin seemed willing to discuss the matter—in a way he'd brought the whole thing up.

  "What's the matter with them?" Carol blurted in a fit of exasperation, and Kevin looked up, mildly startled. "What are they rowing about? Do you know?"

  Kevin chewed away at a mouthful of steakburger, swallowed, said finally, "Getting divorced isn't Sam's idea."

  "Well, I know that, brother. But is it his fault?"

  Kevin looked perplexed; then he understood her. "I don't know if he has a girlfriend." The thought hurt him, belatedly. Kevin glanced at his radio as if he was thinking of tuning in the game again and tuning everything else out.

  Carol covered one of his big hands with both her own. "He doesn't. I don't believe Sam would do that to her."

  "It happens all the time," Kevin replied, but he looked less troubled.

  "Look, if Sam had someone else—someone he loved, I mean—then he'd be the one to ask for a divorce. Sam wouldn't try to hang on, keep both things going, tell a lot of lies and make everybody miserable."

  Kevin picked at his french fries with a fork, put the fork down and shrugged, willing to believe.

  "Have they been fighting?"

  "They don't yell at each other. But I guess they fight. Sam's gone a lot." He. shrugged again. "Mom gets lonely. Sam won't take her with him when he travels."

  "Most of the time he can't. Has she complained?"

  "Not exactly. But Mom told him a couple of months ago"—Kevin stopped and looked at the table, trying to get the right words, he had a flair
for total recall—"told him that she was tired of being shut out of his life." Carol frowned, finding that uninformative. Kevin went on, "Then Sam said he didn't realize he was shutting her out of his life, and she said, 'Oh, he was being very tactful about it, he was still a gracious escort and always attentive, even in private. All his, uh, gestures were in the right place,' I think she said. And then she said, 'But why are you trying to fool me? I know when there's no feeling, all feeling's gone, no feeling for me, it's the same as if I'm paying you so much for your time and attention. I get full value for my dollar, but everything we used to have, that made the marriage worthwhile, is gone.' I think that's how she put it."

  "Hmmm," Carol said, fascinated. "And what did Sam tell her?"

  "He said she was, uh, imagining things. He said maybe she could have claimed to be paying for him at one time, but not anymore."

  "Uh-huh!"

  "Mom said, 'Is this my punishment? Why did you put it off? Fight fair, Sam. That's all I ask.'" Kevin stopped and looked hard at his sister, perplexed again.

  And Carol said again, "Uh-huh!" Her eyes filled with a gleam of comprehension. "That was a dandy fight, for those two."

  "What were they talking about?"

  "Epilogue," Carol said.

  "Sam's magazine?"

  "Right."

  "What about it?"

  "Felice put some money into it three or four years ago. Quite a lot of money, almost all she had except for the trust. Epilogue was always in trouble. Finally there just wasn't any more money—"

  Kevin nodded. "The General wouldn't give him a loan, I remember that."

  "So Epilogue folded. Sam took that hard. And maybe he felt guilty about pouring Felice's money into the magazine. That could explain his crack about being paid for." Carol left her sandwich untouched and settled back in the booth. Epilogue, like other politically oriented magazines with limited circulations and little advertising, had been well-written, admired by many—and it also had been doomed to an uncertain life span and an abrupt end. Sam Holland, during the years of his magazine, had crystallized his politics, progressing—or regressing, according to his critics—from Liberal to Left Conservative. He had written a book called The New Aims of Anarchy, which was especially popular on college campuses. He appeared often on television with the eminent political philosophers of the time.