Bad Juju: A Novel of Raw Terror Read Free

taken his eyes
from Odell—though of course he would never really know.
    In the brief instant he looked
away, Odell drew the hunting knife from its sheath at the small of his back and
sprang at him.
    Joe Rob instinctively stepped back
from his attacker, startled by the gunshot that rang out. A third eye opened in
Odell’s forehead and began weeping red tears as he staggered about like a
bumbling drunk, determined to stay on his feet.
    Then Odell’s eyes rolled up in
their sockets and he toppled to the ground.
    The dark eye in his forehead
remained open, leaking blood.
    “Oh Lord,” Joe Rob moaned. “I shot
him.”
    Jessica A. Lowell began to giggle.
Her giggling became cackling laughter.
    The hollow laughter of the mad.
    “It doesn’t want me ,” she
tittered. “It wants him .”
    She raised her arm and pointed her
finger at Joe Rob Campbell.
     
    ***
     
    Skeeter hated his best friend at
that miserable moment. Didn’t Joe Rob see the position he was putting him in?
What the hell was he supposed to do? Sit here and wait while Joe Rob went and
got himself killed? Drive off and leave him to go against Odell Porch? Yeah,
just drive the fuck away.
    He put his hand on the key,
hesitated, then cranked the engine. The old green Chevy pickup roared to life,
rumbling and shaking like a harnessed beast impatient to be given free rein.
    Skeeter shouted a curse, then
turned off the ignition. Fuming, he hopped out of the cab of the truck, grabbed
his rifle and went after Joe Rob.
    He heard the gunshot as he
approached the woods. Fear spawned a metallic taste in his mouth. His heart
thumped wildly in his thin chest. But he pushed on into the woods. He was
pretty sure that the sharp report had come from Joe Rob’s .22, rather than
Odell’s .30-.06. Joe Rob must’ve fired a warning shot to show Odell he meant
business. He was like that, Joe Rob was; whenever he got his hackles up and his
mind set on something, nothing could turn him away. He was one stubborn son of
a bitch then.
    Skeeter tripped over an unseen root
and stumbled onto a scene he would never forget. The girl was pointing her
finger at Joe Rob, and Joe Rob was standing over the sprawled body of Odell
Porch. Just below Odell’s headband a neat hole had been punched into the center
of his forehead.
    “It wants him ,” the girl
repeated maniacally.
    “Jesus Christ!” Skeeter blurted.
“You shot him .”
    “I didn’t mean to,” Joe Rob said
meekly. “He came at me with a knife. I...it just went off. Oh Lord. I think
he’s dead.”
    “Check his pulse.”
    “You do it. I can’t touch him.” Joe
Rob dropped his rifle and sank to his knees. “I’m sick.”
    “Dead head,” Jessica Lowell said,
then lapsed into another fit of inappropriate laughter.
    “Shut up, God damn you!” Skeeter
shouted at her. “This is all your fault. Crazy ass bitch.”
    She covered her mouth and laughed
into her hands like a misbehaving child.
    Skeeter knelt down by Odell and
touched his fingers to Odell’s neck. “His heart ain’t beating. He’s dead, no
shit.”
    Joe Rob retched, then spewed a foul
gush of vomit onto the ground.
    Skeeter backed away from the
corpse, then moved away from Joe Rob when he caught a whiff of his puke. “What
the fuck do we do now? Huh? I told you not to come back.”
    Joe Rob wiped his mouth and nose
with the back of his hand, then turned his face skyward to catch the rain. He
coughed, spat, then said, “We go to Chief Keller. Tell him what happened. It
was self-defense. He had a fucking knife.”
    Skeeter shook his head. “Think
about it, man. The law might let you off, but the Porch clan will kill you. You
think they’ll care what the law says? No fucking way. Old man Porch and his
boys will come after you and keep on coming till you’re dead. You know what they’ll do to you. They’re Porches , man. They ain’t hardly human.
Remember Monroe Shockley. Everybody knows they killed him, but nobody could
ever prove it. Be the same with