But Luisa was implacable: she had no time for puerile games. Sternly, she ordered him to draw the curtains and turn out the lights, leaving the room in semi-darkness, illuminated only by the candles and by two small oil-lamps.
‘Have you prepared Mara’s possessions, as I instructed you?’
‘Yes – I have them here.’ Hunt produced a box in which he had placed clothes, jewellery, a locket containing a little of Mara’s raven hair, books, lots of little things that belonged to Mara.
Luisa searched through them diligently.
‘These will suffice. Now, I wish you to undress.’
‘What – completely?’
‘Take off all your clothes. Now, please. We do not have much time.’
‘I . . .’
‘Oh, for goodness sake, Mr Hunt. This is no time to be shy. Look, I will help you undress if you won’t do it yourself!’
And Luisa began to undo his shirt buttons with a resolute determination worthy of any prep-school matron. When she got to the trouser-belt and flies, turmoil erupted in his groin: his prick leapt to rigidity and he blushed deeply, unable to hide his excitement.
To his surprise, Luisa seemed pleased by this reaction:
‘Good, good. This will prove of service later in our ceremony,’ she said. ‘The male essence possesses very strong magical powers.’
Soon he was completely naked before her, his prick ramrod-stiff with desire for her. She remained fully clothed, and he looked at her not just with a schoolboy’s embarrassment but hopefully, expectantly, as she picked up the red silk robe. To his immense regret, she left the room and undressed in the bedroom, returning a few moments later wearing the silk robe, which hung loosely from the throat and chastely concealed those parts of her which Hunt most coveted a glimpse of.
‘Now you must robe,’ she announced.
‘But there is only one robe,’ pointed out Hunt. ‘What am I to wear?’
To his dismay, Luisa pointed to the box containing Mara’s possessions:
‘You are to put on some of Mara’s clothes,’ she replied. And, just to ensure that he complied, she began to take out those items of clothing which she wished him to put on: a red satin bra and lacy panties and a crystal necklace.
‘But why . . .?’ protested Hunt, as he strapped the bra, which was of course much too small around his torso.
‘Because we are trying to invoke Mara’s spirit on the astral plane, and by wearing her most intimate clothing you are emphasising the intimate link which exists between you. Trust me.’
Hunt felt like a complete fool, but he had no option. Trust her he must: at this point she was his only chance. And still he gazed at her and coveted that tall, slender body, so tantalisingly veiled by the silk robe, which swirled about her as she moved.
‘Kneel before the altar,’ she commanded, and he knelt obediently before the small table which they had set up with the candles and chafing-dishes. A swirl of scented smoke rose up from the smouldering sweet woods, making Hunt’s head swim.
She began the incantation:
‘Lords of the spirit world, we command you by our offerings to deliver unto us the spirit of Mara Fleming, that we may question her and know where she lies in peril.’
The rest of the incantation sounded like mumbo-jumbo to Hunt, a mere jumble of meaningless sounds that nevertheless possessed a certain strange musicality, a rhythm that was itself the meaning. He was beginning to feel very odd indeed: dizzy and other-worldly, somehow outside himself; yet exceedingly excited, aroused, lustful.
Luisa turned to him and beckoned him to his feet:
‘It is now time for us to perform the Great Rite,’ she announced. And, without further ado, she reached out her hand and pulled Hunt’s engorged penis out of the front of the red lacy knickers. Then she bent forward, hoisting up her robe and supporting herself on the altar table. Her slender rump thrust out to him, inviting him inside.
‘I . . . I want to fuck you,’ gasped Hunt, uncomprehending. ‘I want to stick it in your cunt.’
‘You must bugger me,’ hissed Luisa. ‘It is the only way to empower the incantation. Take me quickly.’
Rather clumsily – for he had relatively little experience of such things – Hunt pressed the tip of his penis up against Luisa’s hole and pushed. His first attempt at penetration ended in failure, for she was tight and dry. But a drop of saliva eased the way and, with a second thrust, he was inside. She felt wonderful, and he abandoned himself utterly to the rhythm which she set him, thrusting her buttocks out to receive him deep within her backside. But his confused brain could not understand why she removed his hands gently every time he tried to put them round in front of her and play with her clitty.
It did not take him long to come, and it seemed that Luisa had come too, for she gave a great cry of pleasure in harmony with his own.
As they lay locked together, slumped against the altar, something amazing happened. The room filled with a blinding white light, light that flashed like the many-hued glittering facets of a crystal. And, shielding their eyes and looking upwards, they saw in the centre of the light a tiny figure.
As they watched, the figure grew larger and more distinct until at last it became recognisable:
‘Mara!’ cried Hunt, trying to touch the apparition – but his hand encountered nothing more substantial than empty air.
Mara seemed to be gazing sightlessly before her, as though unsure that anyone could see her.
‘Andreas,’ she cried, but her cry sounded faint and very far away. ‘Andreas, only you can save me now.’
‘Tell me, tell me how!’ he cried, sudden tears springing to his eyes. ‘I will do anything, anything.’
‘Look and you shall see the place of my imprisonment,’ went on Mara. And she raised her hand and behind her appeared the outline of a large country house. It stood dark and sinister against the evening sky, a ravening beast waiting for its prey.
‘Winterbourne . . .’ whispered Mara. ‘Winterbourne, where my body and spirit are enslaved . . .’
‘Winterbourne!’ exclaimed Hunt.
‘Listen to me,’ continued Mara. ‘If you would save me, you must, tomorrow at noon, draw a picture of this house in your own blood. Draw it in the centre of our bedroom floor and stand in the place where you have drawn the door. Then wait . . . I can say no more . . .’
The image faded, and was replaced by a sight so terrible that Hunt cried out in horror: his beloved Mara, tied up on the floor of a windowless cell and forced to suck the cocks of fat old men with the faces of perverts.
‘No!’ screamed Hunt, pulling away from Luisa and trying to reach Mara.
But his efforts were in vain: the dazzling images disappeared, leaving the room once more in semi-darkness.
Luisa stood up and turned around, her silk robe still hitched up around her waist. Hastily she pulled it down, but not quickly enough to hide the horrible truth from Hunt, who recoiled in disgust and self-hatred.
For he found himself gazing, not upon a damp dark bush of pretty curls, but on the withered stalk of a satiated penis. This slender, boyish woman he had desired so much, who had ordered him to bugger her – small wonder she had been so reluctant to let him touch her cunt!
Hunt ran into the bathroom and was violently sick.
‘Luisa’ slept the night on the living-room floor, and left the following morning, unrepentant to the last.
‘The incantation would not have worked if I had told you, for you would have refused to bugger me,’ came the defiant explanation, delivered with a half-smile and a coquettish peck on the cheek. And then Luisa was gone and Hunt found himself automatically wiping away the traces of that final, tainted kiss.
He could scarcely believe that it would work – any of it. And yet Luisa, for all the deception, had delivered the goods. Somehow, impossibly, he had been able to speak to Mara and he knew deep inside him that the vision had been no deception, no illusion.
So he must carry out Mara’s wishes, no matte
r how futile the exercise might prove to be.
The clock ticked round to eleven o’clock, eleven fifteen. He tried listening to the radio but the tinny jangle of techno-pop just irritated him. Eleven forty-five, and he knew he had to make a move soon. He had cleared a space on the bedroom floor and rolled back the carpet. He might be nutty enough to do this but there was no sense in ruining a perfectly good Axminster – especially since it didn’t belong to him.
The big hand moved inexorably on, and he looked at the sharp blade of the carving knife and wanted to be sick all over again. He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t. The slightest trickle of blood – especially his own – and he always passed out. But he had to do it. Mara’s life depended on it, he knew it did.
Twelve o’clock. High noon. Now or never.
With a trembling hand, he raised the knife and – so quickly that he didn’t have time to change his mind – used it to make a small incision in his forearm. At first, nothing: and then the blood came flowing out. Not much really, not enough to matter, but it mattered because it was his blood, besides which . . . it hurt. It stung like buggery. No, not buggery – he didn’t want to think too much about buggery. Like Hell.
He squeezed the blood into an egg-cup and put a plaster on the wound. Now. He had no talent for drawing, but figured as long as the general shape of the house looked right . . . with a fingertip traced in blood, he began the outline, remembering to emphasise the steps up to the front door and the ornate portico.
It was done. The best he could do. Shaking and still nauseous, he stood up and stepped into the picture, making sure to stand right on the door he had drawn.
At first, nothing happened. He knew it. It was all hokum. Nothing was going to happen, it was all hopeless.
And then – the strangest feeling. Like dissolving, melting, floating away. The room was going all fuzzy, indistinct. He couldn’t make out the hands on the clock any more . . . or the clock even. Everything was spinning, swirling, disappearing.
And then everything went black.
And Andreas Hunt vanished. Leaving nothing behind him save the crude picture of a large country house.
A house with an open door.
19: The Lure
Delgado awoke in the middle of the night with a thought that burned right through him, ate into his soul and refused to let him sleep or screw. The voice was inside his head again and its seductive whisperings would not let him rest.
There must be cellars under Winterbourne. Bricked-up cellars. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before. But now, suddenly, he knew that he had to find them, open them up right away, find out what was in there. It was very important. He didn’t yet understand why, but he knew that it must be.
For the Master had told him so.
He slipped out of bed as quietly as possible so as not to wake the sleeping whore who grunted questioningly as he lifted her arm and took it from round his waist. Nathalie was a good screw – the best – but she had a feather duster for a brain. He didn’t want her coming along, asking questions, getting in the way.
Got to do it now. Got to.
He got dressed hastily and crept out of the room. Luckily all the evening’s guests had either gone home or retired to bed – their own or each other’s – and the house was sleeping. Most of them were dead-drunk or drugged anyway. They wouldn’t be any trouble. Besides, soon it wouldn’t matter any more. Very soon now, nobody would be able to cause trouble for Delgado and his Master any more.
He stepped over a couple who had fallen asleep after copulating at the top of the stairs, and hurried down the ornate carved staircase to the ground floor. He made a brief detour through the kitchens to the storeroom where he knew some builders’ tools were kept, and selected a heavy long-handled pickaxe.
Then he set off down the long torchlit corridor, turned left down the dark flight of stairs, and through the secret panel into the hidden room where the soul of the Master’s Queen had entered the succulent body of Mara Fleming.
It must be in here. Somewhere. The way through to the rest of the cellars. Delgado knew the house better than anyone and was certain there was nowhere else they could be. They had been cleverly bricked-up, certainly; made to look as if the cellars stopped here. But one of these walls was false: a much later addition.
Delgado tried knocking the walls with his fist. They all sounded the same. But just as he was giving up, a quiet voice spoke confidently inside his head:
‘Behind the cupboard.’
It was a massive mahogany cupboard, full of magical regalia and mysterious jars and dishes; and it took all his strength to move it. Panting and groaning, he at last managed to edge it round so that it stood at right-angles to the wall.
‘Take the pickaxe and strike the wall, three feet from the left-hand corner.’
Without thinking to question the command, Delgado took up the heavy pickaxe and swung it at the wall. He was not a strong man, and the swing was an amateurish one – but to his amazement the pickaxe struck home and part of the surface of the wall fell away, revealing the almost-new brickwork underneath. Encouraged, he swung again and again at the wall, the sweat coursing down his brow and into his eyes.
Five or six more swings of the pickaxe and he managed to dislodge one of the bricks. Instantly, a current of chill air rushed into the room. Another brick, and another, and now the wall was crumbling away before him. He tore at the bricks with his bare hands, and they chafed and bled, but he did not care. He felt no pain. There was an inhuman strength within him tonight and he could not fail. Nothing could stop him.
After half an hour, Delgado had succeeded in making a hole large enough for a man to walk through. He picked up the oil lamp and held it up to illuminate the scene beyond.
Delgado found himself gazing down a flight of six or seven steps into another cellar, much bigger than the room he was standing in. It was completely empty, save for one single, dominating object: in the middle of the chamber stood a massive granite sarcophagus. Featureless, its smooth surface obscured by a thick layer of dust, it drew Delgado towards it as inexorably as a moth to a flame.
‘You have done well,’ spoke the dark voice within his head. ‘Approach and listen carefully: for I have more work for you to do.’
Mara lay on the bed and tried desperately to project her thoughts into the mind of the transvestite witch she knew as Luisa. Luisa was the only person with whom she had consistently been able to hold telepathic conversations in the past and – ever since the brief but passionate affair which they had enjoyed a few summers ago – Mara trusted Luisa implicitly.
If anyone could get her message through to Hunt, Luisa could.
She strained against the leather straps holding her to the bed, but they were buckled tightly and cut into her skin whenever she tried to move. She sighed, and tears glistened at the corners of her eyes. Her bonds were far too strong for her to escape from them.
Why, why had she come here? What force had got inside her head and forced her to such madness, such degradation? And why had it chosen her?
The three guards had used her cruelly, handling her roughly and taking turns with her as though she were no more than a toy, provided for their sport. They were uncouth, thick-set, unintelligent men: mere animals for whom the gratification of their sexual impulses was a bodily function as basic as eating or pissing.
She had been forced to submit to every indignity as they explored each orifice with their fingers, tongues and pricks, mocking her growing discomfiture and satisfying themselves again and again with her sweet flesh. There seemed to be no end to their sexual appetites: they fucked and buggered and half-choked her with their big pricks until she was dazed and crying for mercy. And still they kept on abusing her.
After they had done with her, the man Delgado handed her over to a group of disgusting old men: rich elderly perverts whose money could buy them any gratification they desired. She shivered as she recalled how they had forced her to drink down their watery spunk
and wank their world-weary pricks back into wakefulness.
It was late at night before they left her, strapping her tightly to the bed where at last she drifted off into a fitful slumber, bruised and aching from her ordeal.
She was awoken by the sound of the door handle slowly turning and, raising her eyes to focus in the gloom, she made out a shadowy figure framed in the doorway, a flickering candle in his hand.
Delgado. She trembled with the memory of what had passed between them in the secret room: the terrible change which had come over both of them as dark and hostile spirits used their bodies like dolls to satisfy their needs. She remembered, too, Delgado’s cold satisfaction as he had handed her over to the guards and the reptilian old men.
He crossed the room to the bed and she looked up into his face, eerily illuminated by the candleglow which transformed him into a demon out of some medieval fresco of Hell. His expression was peculiarly blank, and he moved like an automaton as he unfastened the straps which held her to the bed.
He hauled her up into a sitting position, apparently indifferent to her bruised nakedness, and bound her wrists together behind her back with a piece of cord. She made no move to resist or to escape from him. She was too weary now, and too afraid.
‘Come,’ he ordered her and pulled her to her feet, pushing her out into the corridor and keeping tight hold of the cord binding her wrists. ‘The Master has work for you to do.’
She stumbled as he pushed her, and almost fell down the stairs; but he wasn’t going to let her damage herself. She was too important, too useful. He guided her down to the ground floor, along the torchlit corridor which ran the length of the building, and down the darkened stairway to the secret door. It opened smoothly and silently, and they entered the secret room once again. Mara felt a pang of dread as she heard the panel click shut behind her, blocking off any faint hope of escape.
The oil lamps were still burning, and the room was filled with an unpleasant smoky-yellow light which lent the scene a dreamlike quality. Mara gasped as she caught sight of the wall which Delgado had hacked away, leaving a hole which gaped blackly like some ancillary entrance to the underworld. Beyond was only formless darkness. No light, nothing to lend hope. She shivered as Delgado pushed her towards the hole, clearly insisting that she should climb through.
Kiss of Death (Modern Erotic Classics) Page 28