She could hear him whispering to her in her mind: ‘Let me fuck you, Mara . . . Feel my prick inside you. Does it feel good, Mara? Feel me fucking you . . .’
She gasped with pleasure as the whip burrowed into her; and as she felt her desire increasing, she took her fingers from her nipple and slid them down her belly to her cunt, teasing aside her pubic curls and seeking out the throbbing button of her clitoris.
As she brought herself to a powerful climax, she imagined that she was lying on Andreas’s bed and he was on top of her, fucking her as he had done so many times before; fucking her and crying out for more.
‘Andreas!’ she cried, as her cunt tightened about the whip-handle and her juices flowed in triumphant abundance down her thighs.
A strange sense of peace seemed to have descended upon her, and Mara felt no fear as she laid aside the whip and took up the box containing the Phallus. She turned towards the stone sarcophagus which she had tried so hard to blot from her vision, for it awoke so many disturbing half-memories.
But she was not afraid now. There was nothing to be afraid of. All fears of traps and deceptions had left her. Somewhere in these cellars Andreas’s spirit was imprisoned; and she must try to free it.
Somehow, she just knew that everything was going to be all right now.
She took the Phallus from the box and held it in front of her, like a talisman, confident now in its will to protect her. And as she approached the sarcophagus, a miraculous thing happened.
The crystal talisman and the Phallus began to glow, pulsating with a greenish light. The crystal grew hot against the bare flesh of her throat and sparks of light crackled from the Phallus in her hand.
The heavy, granite lid began to dissolve, fade, clarify . . . It was becoming as transparent as the cellar wall had become. It glowed a pallid green and grew glass-like as she approached. She could just make out a dark shape within.
A voice in her head was crying out:
‘Yes, Mara, yes! Come to me, come to me. I can feel you near now. You are so very near . . .’
Andreas, sightless within his crystal prison, tried to hold back the excitement, but he sensed Mara’s presence all about him. She had known that it was him in the guard’s body. She had come to him at last! He didn’t know how, but he knew she was going to help him to break free.
As she reached the sarcophagus, Mara gripped the Phallus firmly in both hands and looked down, not quite knowing what she expected to see or do. A strange serenity had overtaken her. The Phallus would guide her. Andreas would guide her.
But the sight that met her eyes did not console or reassure her. She looked down, and the scream tore through her body, unbidden and uncontrollable.
‘It’s me, Mara: it’s me – can’t you see?’
Andreas tried desperately to break through the wall of her terror, but she just kept on screaming as she looked down into the coffin and into the sightless eyes of the Master, his cast-off body imprisoned for eternity within the crystal block; his thin lips dragged back, baring his teeth in a cruel sneer.
Memories flooded her brain; drowned her reason, her consciousness. Mara stopped screaming and stood trembling violently, a low moaning escaping from between her clenched teeth.
‘Mara! What’s happening to you?’
Andreas’s thoughts bounced off the protective barrier of psychic energy she had instinctively cast up around her, and there was no way through to her now.
Still clutching the Phallus in its open box, she turned and fled – back through the dark and dusty cellar and away up the steps to the glassy wall, which oozed and yielded as she flung herself through onto the other side. In her haste she dropped the lantern and it rolled noisily back down the steps into oblivion.
Mara turned momentarily to watch its faint light disappearing as the wall darkened and solidified into its former impenetrability. Still shaking, she dragged the cupboard back to its original place. Now there was nothing to suggest that anyone had ever been here.
Breathing deeply to try and calm her terror, Mara stepped back into the corridor, closing the secret panel behind her. The corridor was empty. If she hurried, she might yet escape before the Master’s evil power fell around her like a blanket, suffocating and imprisoning her, robbing her of her psychic powers and her identity.
She half-ran, half-stumbled along the corridor, back towards the kitchens. Voices from an open doorway alarmed her, and she flattened herself against the wall. A naked woman emerged from the room, laughing. She had peroxide blonde hair and a butterfly tattoo on her right breast, and there were little trickles of red liquid drooling from the sides of her open mouth. Now she was wiping her hand across her lips, smearing face and hands with sticky redness.
Mara held her breath and the woman passed the alcove where she hid without even glancing in her direction. A couple of guards came out of the room, dragging the body of a naked man. His flaccid penis was still dripping a glistening trail of semen, mingling with a mass of sticky red on his groin.
They went off after the woman and Mara was alone again. She crept out of her alcove and hurried on, glancing momentarily through the doorway of the deserted room. Inside, red-stained silk sheets spilled in disarray from a heart-shaped mattress, clashing with the candy pink of the walls and the deep-pile carpet. The door hung open, its name-plate coy and concise: ‘Marilyn’, in sugar-pink lettering on a white ceramic plate. Mara shuddered, and moved on.
She reached the kitchens safely. The back door was closed and to her dismay she saw that a key protruded from it. Did someone know she was here? Did someone want to prevent her from leaving?
Footsteps in the corridor outside. She fumbled with the key. It was stiff and rusty and wouldn’t turn.
The door from the corridor creaked open. Mara swung round, defenceless yet ready to fight for her life and freedom in any way she could.
It was a guard she had never seen before: short, thick-set, with a deep scar running down the right side of his face. He was walking towards her, slowly and inexorably, as though relishing the sharpness of her fear, the unmistakable scent of growing panic.
‘Don’t come near me!’ screamed Mara, wrenching the key so violently that it at last turned in the lock.
The guard just kept on coming, silently and slowly. He took a knife from his belt, held it up so that it caught the light, and Mara could see its wicked blade glint with malevolent intent. The front of his uniform trousers bulged obscenely and there was no doubt what he planned to do with her. He would have her there, on the kitchen floor, and then he would kill her. He would thoroughly enjoy both stages of the process.
Mara rattled the door-knob, desperate to get out of this place, to run away, anywhere, just to escape.
The guard turned round, suddenly, to see another man standing behind her. He smiled, a broken-toothed leer lighting up his brutish face.
‘Bit of fun, eh, Mister Delgado? Wanna join in? You can have her after I’ve finished, then we’ll cut her up a bit and say she was stealing the silver . . .’
His expression turned momentarily to one of astonishment as Delgado took a pearl-handled revolver from his waistcoat pocket and calmly shot him through the temple. The silencer reduced the sound to a dull thud and the guard sank to the floor in a crumpled heap.
Mara gazed in amazement at the man who had once so cruelly abused her, possessing her body again and again and afterwards casting her to his minions as casually as he might cast a lump of rotten meat to the dogs. Why would he want to protect her? There was something different about him – a look in his eyes . . . a look of . . . Andreas?
‘Mara . . .!’ There was pain in the voice, and a hand was reaching out to her, clumsily, tremblingly.
But there were other footsteps now, coming up the corridor towards the kitchen door. Time had run out. There was no time to stay around. Maybe this was a trick anyway.
Ignoring Delgado’s desperate pleas for her to stay, Mara wrenched open the door and ran, ran, ran into the nearby
woods. Ran for her life and kept on running.
In his borrowed body, Andreas watched Mara run from him, cursing the lameness that prevented him from pursuing her. She had gone. Terror had torn her from him and now she might never return. In a few moments, darkness would come again and rob him of the little life he had in this imperfect, evil shell. In that darkness, he must find a way to help Mara. In that darkness, he must somehow learn how to free himself from this agony that was neither life nor death.
The cries of desperation died in his throat and almost choked him. For the first time in its odious, calculating life, the body of Delgado wept.
16: Envoys
Heimdal was feeling pleased with himself. Ever since he had met the Master, he had experienced a tremendous flowering of his psychic powers. Together, they had undertaken astral travel and had spied upon the white witch Mara Fleming in her quest for the Talisman of Set, the breathtakingly powerful Phallus of Osiris.
Strange, it had taken the awesome power of the Master to reveal to Heimdal the folly of his former ways, the insignificance of the Fleming girl. For so many years he had felt he owed her a debt of respect and gratitude for helping him to discover and develop his psychic potential. But the Master, in his infinite wisdom and mercy, had helped Heimdal to see that the girl had been but a trifling diversion, an inconsequential source of useful information on his natural progression towards the fulfilment of his psychic and spiritual destiny.
And all of this felt and sounded good to Heimdal. For he had never felt easy with the thought that a slip of a girl might carry within her the seeds of a power far greater and more mature than his could ever be. It was fitting that he should now understand that she had been no more than a useful stepping-stone.
Yes, the Master had brought him enlightenment. Enlightenment and the gift of immortality. Small wonder, then, that Heimdal’s obedience to him was now total, beyond question.
And now the girl Mara had succeeded in obtaining the Phallus. There had been a few anxious moments when she had managed to shake off the hopelessly amateurish acolyte Geoffrey, but they had soon picked up her trail again. The Master’s agents in Romania had been most helpful. By all accounts, the silly girl was back in England now, still looking for the body of her lost lover. He smiled as he pictured her likely reaction when at last she found it. The stupid little bitch was in way over her head.
She did have a nice body, though. Heimdal thought about her luscious, firm tits and felt his massive cock stiffen in his skin-tight leather pants. The things he’d like to do to her . . . He longed to humiliate her, to make her perform unspeakable obscenities – maybe tie her up and make her fuck with some hideous, pox-ridden old man. He wondered vaguely if he could perform a ceremony of conjuration, and watch her being fucked by a fiery demon . . .
But these pleasures must be for some later time, perhaps when the Master had enjoyed his plaything and cast her aside for his followers’ pleasure. For now, the Master had instructed that the Fleming girl must not suspect that anything was wrong. The next stage of the operation was vital if his queen was to be located and the ceremony carried out successfully. Heimdal must therefore confine himself to more ordinary lusts.
Doubtless Mara would now seek her dear friend Heimdal’s help and advice in her misguided quest to resurrect the unwary – and irredeemably dead – Mr Hunt.
And Heimdal, needless to say, would be only too ready to help. He’d be happy to give her as much time as she wanted. Why, since he’d met the Master, Heimdal had all the time in the world.
‘Show it to me,’ said Heimdal, genuine excitement making his voice tremble. ‘I must see this wonder.’
Mara laid the painted wooden box on the floor, and opened the lid. Inside lay the Phallus, greenish-black and shiny, like some strange polished wood-carving, smooth with the patina of age.
Heimdal stroked it gently with his fingertip.
‘Amazing!’ he breathed. ‘Never did I think I would live to see this. Scholars and magicians have quarrelled for thousands of years about whether it even existed! And you, my dear Mara, have succeeded where all others have failed.’
Mara sighed.
‘You have told me that only the Phallus can save Andreas, and I have seen its power myself. But it serves no useful purpose unless I can find Andreas’s body.’ She looked across at Heimdal, beseechingly. ‘Will you help me to find him?’
Heimdal smiled broadly, benevolently. He was enjoying this. Mara was in his power and she knew it. She could achieve nothing without his special abilities.
‘Of course I will help you,’ he replied. ‘I’ll do anything I can. Don’t worry,’ he added. ‘I won’t leave your side until you find him.’
Mara wondered why she felt a little cold shiver run down her spine.
‘We must carry out another ceremony of location,’ announced Heimdal. ‘But not here. This place is too secluded, too empty. We must carry out our ceremony in a public place, so that we can employ the energy of those around us to add to the power of our evocations.
‘Get your coat, Mara. I’m taking you to the pictures.’
The entrance to the cinema was halfway up a grubby side-street, on the unsavoury side of town. Its crumbling facade retained a certain elegance, reminiscent of more affluent days, but a quick glance at the billboards outside destroyed any lingering hope of respectability.
‘Hot Nuns,’ announced the posters. ‘Watch them teach those monks some dirty habits!’
Mara looked at the poster and felt sick. Was she really going to allow herself to be taken into this place? A couple of tramps were reading the other poster. One of them had his hand in the pocket of his grimy duffle coat and was obviously wanking himself off as he looked at the stills of a nun with her habit up round her waist, her glistening pink crack clearly visible to all who cared to look.
Two please.’
The ticket-seller was a fat, middle-aged woman with dirt under her fingernails and fine, dark hairs on her upper lip. She handed the tickets to Heimdal with a conspiratorial smile.
‘Enjoy yourself, dearie,’ she sneered as Mara pushed through the ancient turnstile.
The auditorium was a regular flea-pit, all flaking paint and elderly bucket-seats with frayed upholstery, stiff with dirt and God-knows what else. There was a strong smell of Jeyes fluid, cigarette smoke, stale urine and dried semen.
To Mara’s dismay, the cinema was pretty full. Heimdal led her to the back row and dragged her along to the end. There was no one on either side of them, but she had to push past a couple of disgusting old men on the way to her seat and they had a good feel of her tits and arse. She sat down on the rough moquette and realised that her blouse was gaping open. Those old men were quick workers.
There were several men in overalls in the row in front, presumably factory-workers or garage mechanics, taking some well-earned leisure after a hard day at work. The smell of engine oil rose from their overalls and mingled with the pot pourri of fragrances already filling the cinema. Mara felt vaguely nauseous.
‘I don’t understand,’ Mara hissed to Heimdal. ‘How can we perform the ceremony here?’
Heimdal put his lips to her ear and whispered:
‘We fuck, darling. We fuck.’
‘But . . .’
One of the men in front turned round and glared at Mara.
‘Will you fuckin’ button it, darlin’? Some of us is tryin’ to watch!’
Mara sank into her seat, feeling thoroughly miserable. Heimdal continued, more quietly than before:
‘We fuck here, my darling, and in that way we shall tap into the sexual energies of all the people sitting here. At the moment of maximum power, there will be a sign. That is all I know.’
‘What if someone sees us?’
Heimdal shrugged his shoulders. God, he was enjoying this. The silly bitch would do anything he told her, just to save her precious Andreas Hunt. And to think it was all a complete bloody waste of time! It was a good joke and he almost laughed out loud,
only just managing to check himself in time.
The film had already started, but it didn’t make much difference. There didn’t seem to be much of a plot. A couple of nuns were about to have a bath together. They’d stripped off their habits but were still wearing their starched white wimples – plus rather more eye make-up that you’d expect to see on the average holy sister.
The women were touching each other up now – running their hands over each other’s bodies, slipping fingers between each other’s thighs and up into slippery cunts. They must have been enjoying themselves because one of the nuns took out her finger and it was dripping with clear juice.
Now they were getting into the bath. The taller one was kneeling at the end with the taps and the other one was standing up in the water at the other end. The tall nun was holding a long, rough loofah. Now she was running it over her flesh, rubbing it hard so that her skin blushed deep pink. Her breasts were small but perfect: like roses just before the bloom opens fully – full of sap and promise.
The taller nun was reaching out with the loofah and – oh no, surely not! – she was inserting it between the other girl’s thighs. How could she possibly hope to . . .? As Mara watched in frank astonishment, the tip of the loofah disappeared upwards, into the smaller nun’s cunt. She was crying out and gripping the taller girl’s shoulders so tightly that her knuckles gleamed white with the tension. Yet her cries were not of protest but of passion. She was loving every minute of it.
As Mara watched, Heimdal took hold of her hand and guided it to his flies. With a shiver of pleasure she felt his naked penis, already protruding massively from his open flies.
‘Place this over my shaft, and wank me.’
Heimdal handed her something cold and hard. Mara looked down at it and saw in the flickering half-light that it was a ring, fashioned out of clear white crystal. Its many facets flashed multi-coloured fire as she slipped it over the tip of Heimdal’s enormous penis and slid it – with some difficulty – down to the base.
The Phallus of Osiris Page 27