Chapter Two

The Lovers

Note: Sorry it took me so long to post – my previous computer hijacked this chapter but now that I have it back I will be updating regularly. Also, as in keeping with the tradition of the show, the story is quite dark and maybe a tad revolting. Just bare with me…thanks again for reading.

Ben cautiously stepped out of the trailer and into the still warm, fading sun. It streaked across the sky in intense reds and yellows. It was a beautiful night, one that should have brought him pleasure, but all he felt was pain.

A pain so deep, it felt stitched into him, into his entire being. He wanted her, he wanted Sophie but she was with him. Him! The enemy and he knew that she wasn't going to come back.

No, that preacher had her good and spelled over.

He saw that the carnival was starting to get under way. There was the smell of food frying somewhere and with it the sounds of children shrieking with laughter, people talking merrily amongst themselves. These were people, his people, those who worked hard and were ready to let their ills rest for at least a little while. He on the other hand didn't have that luxury. The preacher was alive and that meant his work wasn't done. He had to go back and finish the job right.

This time there would be no failing.

Her eyes opened, fluttering into the darkness as she sat up, gasping for breath. A scream stuck in her throat, her body covered in a light film of sweat.

"Dearest…love…"

Her eyes turned towards the voice at the edge of her bed, a hand crawled up towards her and came to rest on her thigh.

The fingers, ice cold, felt like the fingers of the dead, and she willed herself to breathe.

"Help me," the words were a choked out sob, formed from fear and revulsion.

Then she saw his face in the moonlight. His eyes depthless pools of blackness and that hand came to rest on her face and she pulled away, a strangled cry on her lips.

"I will make you forever, my beautiful Sophie," his husky voice whispered as he pressed a kiss into her lips, breathing in her fear.

"Don't…please, you…"

She couldn't speak, couldn't form the words as his kiss deepened and his hands began to touch her, everywhere.

The insist fingers probing under her nightgown, touching her in her warm secret places and she was powerless, pinned beneath his bulk.

"Stop…oh' please…stop…you're…my…father…"

He pulled back and looked at her, she was paralyzed with fear beneath him and she thought, prayed that she had reached him, made him understand.

His eyes locked with hers, her body rigid, her breath heated, gasping for air, "My daughter?"

She nodded, tears streaming down her face, her heart beating against her rib cage, desperate to break free.

"P-please don't…"

She saw him smile, a slow, sinister smile that spread across his face and he leaned down and kissed her again.

"That makes it all the better, doesn't it, my love?"

She couldn't speak; a wall was coming up – a world of blackness blanketing everything in its path.

She was dying and even dead, she would live…she would live with him in his hell for all of eternity.

"P-please…" she managed to utter once more, before the darkness of his intentions overcame her and she remembered no more.

"You stop right there, missy," Rita Sue admonished loudly as she put her admirable bulk between her daughter and a whole heap of trouble.

"Momma, stop it, I am going and that is that…"

"No," Rita Sue said as she wrenched a suitcase for her daughter's hand and tossed it to the ground.

"You can't keep me here, I am a grown women and I am going after my husband."

"You're only going to get your fool self killed, girl!"

"I don't care!"

There was silence as each of them in all their stubborn glory stared down the other one.

Rita Sue changed tactics and reached for her daughter with a tender hand.

"Baby, Jonesy will come back on his own, that place why you know it ain't safe for us kind there…"

"I got to get him back," Libby said with a stubborn shake of her head, tears whelming up in her eyes.

"He will come back on his own, man is crazy about you…he'll come," Rita Sue said in a sweet voice, though she didn't think that were true. She figured Jonesy was dead. Yet, she wasn't going to say that to her little girl, not today anyway.

"He ain't dead," Libby said for she knew that no one but her believed he was still alive She turned around, sobs shaking her tiny frame and Rita Sue went and drew her into her arms and held her close.

"Course not, Baby," she soothed, rocking Libby back in forth in her arms, "Of course, he ain't."

Brother Justin sensed a storm was coming and he welcomed it, stood out under the cover of the porch and watched as the sky darkened and the wind whipped through the trees.

A smile, a cold evil smile spread across his face as he thought of what he would do…

His strength was doubled, trebled now and upstairs in a darkened bedroom slept his lover, his consort, his bride…his very own daughter. So it truly begins, he thought. You can't hide from me anymore, Hawkins…

I am stronger then you now.

"Father."

He turned at the sound of her voice. She stepped out from the front door, wrapped in a sheet.

Her face was drawn, deathly white, her eyes black onyxes of sorrow.

He went to her, took her by the arm and steered her to the front of the porch, wrapped his arm around her shoulders. The first flashes of lightening streaked across the sky and then the evitable boom of thunder. It had started to rain.

"Do you see the world out there, Sophie?"

There was no response.

"Do you see it?"

"Yes," her voice was a hollow whisper.

"It is ours… all of it, all that a stands in our way is Hawkins."

"Ben," She breathed.

"You must bring him to me…"

"You will kill him?"

"Yes."

She could feel his eyes her, their horrible death stare and she was suddenly so cold. She could still feel his seed crawling up inside her. Feel it filling her with its disease, its evil.

"You love him?" His voice was low, mocking.

"No," she whispered.

He turned her to him, roughly, seized her shoulders and bore his fingers into her tender flesh.

"It is I who you love, remember that!"

"Yes."

"If you lie to me…"

The rain began to come down harder, in a flash of lightening their eyes locked.

She leaned forward and kissed him, felt his hand snake beneath the flimsy sheet she wore and caress her roughly.

He pulled her closer, deepening the kiss.

In a window, watching behind a curtain, Iris watched them as they came together like lovers.