“I…”
But she’d already fallen asleep, her head on his chest.
The thunder and lightning had at least subsided enough that he didn’t quake with each flash. Sleep was inviting him within minutes, but images and words kept snapping him back to a tense wakefulness: his dream of the whore named Harriet, “Dirty dog!” the
scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch
as a young blonde girl shaved her legs and, presumably, her pubic hair in the brook, “Gast buried his two daughters alive, then went about the business of murdering Jessa and seeing to the gang-rape and sequent ax-murder of his wife,” horses hauling caged wagons toward a plume of smoke, “I heared they killed all the slaves when they was done. Near a hunnert of ’em,” an irate man with a gold nose
scribbling checks, “He built an entire railroad to Maxon and refired the furnace solely to incinerate the innocent,” a daguerreotype of a beautiful nude woman with a shaved pubis and a single freckle an inch above the clitoris, “Rumor has it that the dog escaped, never to be seen again. But you can be sure…it escaped with a full stomach…”
Collier audibly groaned at the imagery, eyes pressed shut. But more details focused.
In the room to my left, some guy was drowned in a hip bath and got his dick spat into the toilet, and in the room to my right, Penelope Gast got an ax between the legs.
And in THIS room…
Collier could feel bubbling in his belly. All of Sute’s stories and all that beer was suddenly boring a hole. The muskrat sausage probably hadn’t helped either.
Even with the thunder, he could hear his own heartbeat along with Dominique’s, and he could even hear his watch ticking. When he closed his eyes he couldn’t shake the idea that a mutt was in the room, and when he opened them, the patterns on the wallpaper seemed to shift into something like train tracks.
Go downstairs and get something to eat,
the idea came to him. Something bland might settle his stomach.
But did he really want to cross that big portrait of Harwood Gast? Or what if he saw Windom Fecory scribbling on checks at the writing table?
Jesus…
He knew it was his imagination when he thought he smelled stale urine.
Collier carefully slid out from under Dominique, hauled on his robe, and slipped out of the room, candle in hand.
It was late now, but certain sounds in the hall comforted him: voices of guests, television chatter, even some bedsprings creaking from the Wisconsin woman’s room. Some rumbling followed him downstairs—he
didn’t look at the portrait or the desk—then he crossed the dining room to the kitchen.
There were no lights, of course, and the candle made the long kitchen seem cubby-size. Collier helped himself to a piece of shortcake from the fridge, took one bite, then—
Shit!
—dropped it.
He’d heard a dog bark from somewhere deep in the house.
Bullshit. I didn’t hear anything…
He was staring into the black entryway, which led to the back wings. The voice of a little girl said in a cattish, snippy tone: “…ritual atrocity and the sacrifice of the innocent are nothing new…”
Then the patter of bare feet running away.
It was no mistake.
I heard that…
Sute’s words from earlier, but definitely not Sute’s voice.
Collier’s eyes bloomed as he held the candle out and walked through the entryway.
The hallway felt like a catacomb. The dim candlelight wobbling on the walls lent the impression that the hall was moving past him rather than he through it. A window at the far end lit briefly from a throb of lightning. He could barely detect the dark paintings along the walls, and a row of closed doors.
Collier came to a dead stop.
Another voice, just a whisper: “…an oblation to the devil…” and then a trailing laugh.
Not a child’s voice this time but a mature woman’s, with a rich, wanton Southern accent.
What followed was the most complete silence he’d ever experienced.
Hands snapped out of the dark, grabbed Collier’s robe collar, and yanked him into a suddenly open doorway—
Collier bellowed. The candle flew out of his hand and extinguished.
“Come in here!”
The terror jolted his heart in time with the next flash of lightning. He fell over on a bed with whomever had grabbed him. His fear sealed his throat.
It was Mrs. Butler who shuddered next to him. She put her arms around him, in sheer terror.
“Jesus, Mrs. Butler! You almost gave me a heart attack!”
“Mercy, I’m so scared! The lightning…”
Collier, infuriated, tried to calm her. “Just take it easy. It’s only a storm…” He looked around at what was obviously her bedroom, done up nicely with antiques. Candles wavered from each corner.
“Mrs. Butler. Did you say something when I was in the hall? Something about the devil?”
“The—Mercy, no!” Her arms tremored around him. “But someone else did…”
“You heard a voice?”
Sweat adhered the cotton nightgown to her bosom. “It was her…”
Her.
She heard it, too,
Collier thought. “Her? Who?”
The woman rose, her gray hair astray to her shoulders. Something forced Collier’s eyes to fix on the old woman’s breasts and belly printing against the damp nightgown.
She walked dreamily to the window.
“Mrs. Butler?”
The next lightning flash framed her crisp silhouette in the window. “I just love these storms…”
Collier frowned. “Mrs. Butler, are you all right?”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Collier.” As the words ran out of her mouth, she flipped off her straps, peeled down the nightgown, and stepped out of it. A moment later, she stood right before Collier.
Collier stared at the candlelit flesh glittered by sweat.
No…
“It’s just…the house is all,” she drawled.
“What?”
Her fingers laced behind his head and urged forward as she leaned over slightly, till a nipple was in his face.
Without thinking, he took the nipple into his mouth and sucked.
“Aw, yeah, just like that…”
He let his face and mouth revel in the midst of her breasts for several minutes before he twinged from an inner jolt and thought,
What am I doing!
You’re priming this old sleaze for a GREAT roll in the hay—that’s what you’re doing, you moron,
his bad side answered.
But Collier knew he couldn’t continue, even with his own arousal more than apparent.
Dominique,
he thought.
To hell with that highbrow frigid ho, damn it! Now be a MAN and GIVE IT to this old bitch!
Mrs. Butler sighed, then straddled Collier’s lap and pushed him back. “Suck ’em harder now, hon. I know ya been dyin’ to, since that night you was watchin’ me through the peephole’n jerkin’ yerself.” She slid upward and pressed her breasts more deliberately in his face.
Instead of resisting…Collier did as she’d instructed.
“Yeah, you like that, don’t’cha?”
Regardless of her age, these were the best breasts he’d ever seen. He entered a dream world now, where nipples equated to deliverance.
Then he snapped again:
This is crazy!
She began to pull him down onto the bed.
“Mrs. Butler, this is crazy!” he yelled. “We can’t do this!”
“We’se
already
doin’ it, hon…”
“There’s some serious shit going on here. This house—”
“Shhh…” She was already on her back, her hands pulling at him.
No!
“Mrs. Butler! You said you heard a voice before. What did you hear?”
Her legs were parting. “Voice? Aw, don’t mind that…”
Collier was about to bolt until her hands touched him more urgently…
“Come on, come on…”
Collier shivered, then let himself be pulled down atop her. At one point he looked up and saw Lottie standing naked in the doorway. She was watching, eyes fixed. She was touching herself…
Yeah, man!
his id celebrated.
Looks like it’s gonna be a two-fer night!
The idea frenzied Collier. He tried to get up, but…
The house wasn’t letting him.
Collier’s face fell back down into the old woman’s bosom. Then the bed creaked, as Lottie climbed on.
“Little whores, the both of you,” a man’s voice blacker than coal croaked. “Look at you. You’ve let men fill your bellies with their seed—men who
work
for me, men who
take my money
and then
betray me
behind my back. But what should I have expected, with a harlot mother as abominable as yours? We must not suffer harlots to live…”
Collier clenched his teeth.
Don’t listen! Just get down to business!
A young girl: “Please, Father, no!”
“Oh, no, I won’t kill you. I’ll let the earth do it…”
The voices seemed to come from everywhere in the room.
Then he heard the sound of shovels biting into dirt.
Don’t listen!
Then muffled children’s screams…
He looked up again, and this time, saw Jiff standing in the doorway: naked, aroused. Then, he, too, climbed onto the bed…
Just as Mrs. Butler, Lottie, and Jiff’s hands all began to
caress him, Collier grabbed his robe and lurched for the door.
“Where you goin’!” Mrs. Butler yelled.
“Aw, come on, Mr. Collier,” Jiff complained. “We can have us a four-way the
right
way…”
Collier ran out as if fleeing a blaze. Without a candle now, he stumbled in the nearly lightless hall. He blindly got his robe back on and felt his way to the atrium.
What’s happening to me?
Then the answer came to him.
Not me. It’s the house.
He stopped when he found himself in the middle of the atrium. The storm seemed to be dying off now, the lightning less intense. But in each diminishing flash, he caught himself looking up at the portrait of Gast.
The house…
Was it merely suggestion, or had Harwood Gast changed his posture and expression? The plantation baron seemed to be grimacing now, and instead of looking out at the tree, he was looking to his left…
Collier looked left.
And saw the old writing table…and the smaller portrait of Penelope.
Slow steps took him over, his eyes widening. The next throb of lightning was all he needed to discern the small painting’s only necessary detail.
The oil painting only showed a landscape of trees in the background—the image of Penelope Gast wasn’t to be seen, as though her likeness had never been painted in it.
Was the rich Southern accent in Collier’s head?
“It’s not the house,” it whispered from everywhere.
Collier stumbled for the stairs.
“It’s me…”
Both of his hands let the banister guide him up. His eyes had barely adjusted—after feeling his way through more grainy darkness, he found his room.
He closed the door and leaned against it.
I’ve really had enough of this place,
he thought, almost hyperventilating, but in only a moment, he sensed something wrong.
The candles…
There’d been two lit candles when he’d left the room earlier. Now there was one.
He grabbed it, dipped it toward the bed.
Dominique wasn’t there.
Collier cursed himself.
Damn it! The storm probably woke her up; then she saw that I wasn’t here so she got scared and left!
But—
Her work slacks and blouse were draped over the chair. Then he noticed with more alarm that her silver cross was hanging off the bedpost.
And so were her bra and panties.
Collier made the cold, unbelievable deduction.
She’s not here but all her clothes are. Which means she’s somewhere in the house…naked.
The storm had faded. Collier tried to think—
Then he heard something like a long splash, like a bucket of water being emptied.
Collier had heard that sound before.
It came from the room to the left.
The bath closet…
By now, Collier knew the drill.
When he blew out his candle, he wasn’t surprised to notice a dot of light on the wall: the peephole. He got to his knees and looked in.
Candlelight flickered, not much, but enough. Dominique’s beautiful pubis appeared, the triangle of dark thatch ever apparent. She lowered herself into the hip bath.
Collier watched, his eye frozen open on the hole.
It wasn’t a bar of soap that she held in her hand, it was Collier’s can of Edge Gel. Her finger squirted a few curls
into the plot of hair; then she began to massage it into a thick white froth.
She’s going to shave her crotch,
came the slow acknowledgment. That was fine with Collier but…
Why shave your crotch in a goddamn Civil War hip bath, during a power failure!
Another sound he’d heard came to his ear next.
scritch-scritch-scritch
But it wasn’t Collier’s disposable razor she was using. It was an old-fashioned straight razor.
When the task was complete, she got out and patted herself dry with a towel.
Even in the candlelight, the clean, hairless crotch seemed to radiate its fresh
whiteness,
but…
What’s she doing…now?
Now something else occupied her fingers, a small flat box that she quickly snapped open.
It was eyeliner.
Collier could bear no more.
What’s she doing NOW?
Then—
thunk!
The power snapped back on; the room blared in light. Reason returned. Collier bolted out of the bedroom and turned right into the bath closet.
“Dominique, what the hell are you—”
She stood facing him but with her head pitched down; she hadn’t noticed him enter.
But Collier was too taken aback by the shock of seeing her naked. All he could do was stare, his mouth drawn open.
The bright lights brought out every detail of her curves and feminine features, the sleek legs, wide hips joined by a flat white stomach. Plump white breasts jutted outward firmly as implants.
And what was she
doing?
Two fingers wielded the tiny eyeliner brush, dabbed it
into the circle of dark makeup, then very daintily left one single tiny dot on her pubis, about an inch above the clitoris.