Awkward as his first true orgasm had been, there'd been no love lost. His French lady (he'd never referred to her as a whore, and never would) took special care of him in those first few nights. Since then, though he'd never been any sort of Casanova, he'd overcome his clumsiness at least, and he'd visited more than a few pretty girls in their bedrooms during his stay overseas.
Afterward, come home a cripple, he'd made a go of it once or twice to find his comfort with willing women. As with most things after his return, it hadn't held, and he'd lost interest in even the intimate companionship. He hadn't taken a woman to his bed since before Shyla came into his life. Until yesterday, he'd believed his mind and body had been content with it.
The doll, however...God, how easily he'd fallen to the bed with her. How naturally his lips had come to hers. He vividly called to mind the taste of her china skin: like kissing snowflakes. The memory of her body writhing with his, moving in tandem—the beautiful, desperate grasps and sweat-soaked flesh. She had warmed with his touch on her skin. She'd warmed even more while he worked a steady rhythm inside of her, bodies flexing, limbs gliding, tightening.
Conall groaned and paused again in his work. His cock throbbed, hard under his jeans, straining at the memories. He palmed it absentmindedly, shutting his eyes to better imagine her ethereal glowing shape in the fog: those luscious little breasts; tight, flat belly; her head thrown back in bliss as he drew her to climax.
A surge of need ran through his rigid shaft straight to the heart of his loins. He stopped kneading himself, wiped the sweat from his brow, then glanced over his shoulder. A furtive, sneaky impulse crept its way into his chest, and his hand returned to his erection.
Only Maya here...and what would she mind?
He watched the statue warily as his kneading increased. Slow, waking pleasure spread through him from the head of his cock, down into quivering thighs. Though the statue didn't even face him, something about her presence gave rise to a boyish sense of shame—a feeling in itself somewhat pleasurable—and after a few moments, he had to find a more private place.
Conall smiled to himself, feeling young as he slipped away from Maya's ring, finding a path down to the oldest part of the cemetery where it backed up to the river.
The trees grew thick here, the gently sloping riverbank shady and cool. His heart thumping, Conall found a low-slung oak and put his back to it. Leaning on the thick trunk, he slipped one hand down to undo his blue jeans and release his yearning cock. He started stroking, closing his eyes again with a sigh.
"Oh," he groaned as the first strong swell of pleasure overtook him. The wide exposure of the open air, shifting light, and the sound of the water meandering by, they all sent a raw thrill through his head and chest. The little spot behind their cemetery wasn't normally well-traveled, but even so he was aware anyone could catch him here, working his cock in his fist with slow, needful motions. He hardly remembered ever being so hard, so desperate to come...except when his beautiful apparition had visited him in the mist, last afternoon.
He inhaled a sharp breath, his whole body shuddering as he ran his tight fingers up and down his shaft. He found his rhythm, steadying himself against the tree with his free hand as he jerked his cock with more eagerness. The head grew slick with pre-ejaculate. Conall wet his lips, pleasure catching all through his loins.
"O-oh..." he gasped. "Oh, fuck...oh, bloody fuck, yes..."
Higher it climbed, mounting and mounting. The sensation brought images to his mind: the camp girl's bright red lips; her ample pink breasts. In his mind's eye she became the doll, lips ethereal white, her tongue sliding across them a delicate, kittenish pink. He pictured it curling, licking around his erection, relishing the salt of his pre-cum, kneeling supplicant before him, begging him.
Conall's eyes rolled back, and he let out a long, overwhelming groan. Another low sound of desire escaped him, coming from deep down, rolling up through his body. In a sudden rush he started to come, the first wet jet of hot semen bursting from him, making him cry out. Stream after stream let loose, each shuddering squeeze spilling his pleasure into his palms.
He gasped, quaking, still holding his wet, sticky cock in one hand. Without letting go, he sank to his knees, slowly massaging his tender phallus.
"Oh," he breathed heavily. "Oh, fuck...I needed that."
How long has it been since I jerked off?
He closed his eyes, still gently kneading himself as the last sweet vibrations of orgasm subsided. Finally—as if waking up—he blinked eyes open and began to arrange himself.
"Holy shite," he muttered. His whole body buzzed. He stood and his eyes slid shut again for a brief instant, as he pictured his beautiful doll, gazing up at him, his hot cum glazing her face instead of his own hands. Moving to the river's edge, he washed off in the cold water and splashed his face.
"Ha," he chuckled. "My doll, now."
As his breaths slowed, he grinned. Maybe he wasn't going mad after all. Maybe he'd simply rediscovered the desire for a woman. Perhaps the time had come to ask Mrs. Trask to start setting him up with some of her friends...
"Dad!" came Shyla's voice from a distance.
He glanced up the rise, back toward the graveyard. Feeling mighty fine for once, he hoisted himself up from the bank and started climbing back up to meet his daughter.
She waited by his forgotten tools and the half-dug-up root. "Oh!" she said as he came into sight. "Where were you?"
"Cooling off for a bit," he said. He opened his arms to welcome her into a hug. "What are you doing back so soon?"
She raised an eyebrow. "You told me to be back by ten."
Conall frowned and glanced at his watch.
"Well in that case, you're late!"
"I'm sorry, Dad," she said, casting her eyes down. "I, uh...had a flat tire on the way home. I had to walk my bike back to town so Toby could fix it."
Conall narrowed his eyes.
She'd...lied.
Shyla had never been a deceitful girl, not the sort to fib. Now it practically blazed on her: she'd told him a blatant lie.
Why, though? If she'd simply been caught up over the horses, she could have been honest. Conall might be stern, but he'd never given her a reason to think he'd tan her hide for a simple mistake.
"Your...bike tire," he said carefully. "You're sure?"
The expression on her face couldn't have been more obvious, but she nodded. "I hope you won't change your mind about me feeding the horses with Ora..."
Was that it? Did she simply think he would forbid her from going back, after being a little bit late?
His daughter toed the ground nervously. Her hand came up to fiddle with something around her neck, drawing his focus.
"What've you got there, lass?"
She glanced at the item in her palm: a small, simple medallion. He'd seen the same type, and he recognized it before she explained.
"It's the medal of Saint Margaret," she said. Her voice had dropped an octave. "Father Frederick, uh...he gave it to me when he saw me at the paddock."
Conall's frown deepened. Frederick of all people should respect Conall had not raised his daughter in the church for a reason. It might be one thing to suggest sending the girl to the Little Sisters, where she could get an education even if she didn't remain to take monastic orders... another thing entirely to be gifting her with tokens of a faith Conall himself hadn't decided he approved.
Conall had many reasons to distrust in spiritual indoctrination, and furthermore to doubt exactly where he wished to guide his daughter in such respects. He did feel quite strongly about this, though: Saint Margaret of Antioch bore many titles in the Catholic religion...and not all of them mantles he wished for his daughter to idolize.
Saint of the Dying, for instance.
"Father Frederick said...my mother might have liked me to wear it."
Her mother?
Now Conall scowled outright. Who did Frederick think he was to talk to Shyla about her mother, without first con
sulting Conall? Shyla's mother—either of her birth parents—were, if anything, a private matter for her to discuss with him, if she wanted to discuss it at all. Frederick didn't have any information Conall didn't. He hadn't been the one to discover Shyla, either. As far as Conall knew, Fred believed the same story as everyone else in the Knoll and accepted Shyla as the daughter of Con's late sister.
If Shyla's mother had intended to leave any message at all, she'd have done so when she'd chosen the graveyard—Conall's graveyard—as the baby girl's shelter. No, Frederick had no call, and no right, to be discussing this unknown woman with Shyla. Not without first talking to Conall about it.
Shyla may have sensed his disapproval, because she quickly slipped the medallion off. "I don't really think I should keep it, myself...I might lose it, and losing a Saint's token has got to be some kind of really, really bad luck."
"What will you do with it then?" he asked. He was incensed at the priest, but he tried to hold his temper for his daughter's sake.
She studied the necklace in her hand, then glanced up at Maya.
"Maya should wear it!" she said, handing it to him. "She watches over the people here, doesn't she? This way, she can be like their own Saint!"
Utter blasphemy, he thought, but he smiled nonetheless. Father Frederick might whole-heartedly disapprove—both of Shyla giving up an icon of his church and of her arbitrarily deciding to name Conall's strange sculpture a saint—but Conall himself saw no problem with it. In fact, it put him somewhat at ease. The statue could follow any faith she pleased, for all he cared.
"All right, then," he replied, and, humoring her, he reached up to hang the pendant around the statue's neck. "Very good. I think it suits Maya well!"
"She probably likes it better than I do, anyway," Shyla muttered, fingering her throat where moments ago the pendant had hung. Conall quirked an eyebrow at her, and, as if she'd forgotten herself for an instant, she blushed.
"Would you like me to make us a lunch?" she asked.
"I would," he said. The brief tension brought up by her lie and by the uninvited medallion faded quickly then, as Shyla returned to the bright girl he knew. "And Shyla, of course I won't keep you from going back to feed the horses. But you keep better track of the time in the future, you hear?"
She nodded. He suspected she knew he'd caught the lie, but they both decided to let it slide.
This time, he thought. Putting his hand on her shoulder, he turned her toward the house, to break for lunch. As they walked, he glanced back over his shoulder to consider the new addition to his angel statue.
In truth, it didn't sit well with him on Maya, either.
Chapter Ten
A terrible sound erupted from the graveyard, shaking Conall from his sleep. At first he imagined he'd dreamed it, but then a second sound echoed it: the loud squeal of twisting metal.
He shot up from his bed and darted to his window. He couldn't see anything from there, so he quickly slid into a pair of trousers and retrieved his shotgun again. As he stepped into the hall, ready to investigate, he found Shyla already standing there, wide awake as well.
"What is it?" she asked, standing in the doorway to her bedroom, looking terrified. Her wide, parti-colored eyes almost glowed with fright, and her pale skin appeared even paler, nearly a match to her white nightgown.
"It's probably nothing," he said. "An animal, maybe a raccoon got stuck in the bars of a gate or found his way into one of the mausoleums. I'll get it."
"Are you sure you'll be okay?" she asked. "I...I don't think it's safe."
Because of the woman you keep imagining down there?
He shook his head of the idea. Shyla wasn't alone imagining her now, after all.
"You can wait downstairs, if you like," he said. "I'll start a fire to keep you warm. I'll be back right away, once I'm done."
"Can't I go with you?"
"If it's an animal, it might be hurt, and if it is, it might lash out," he said. "I don't want you bit by a mad dog."
"But what about you?"
"I'll be fine. Now, if you don't want to go back to bed, then wait for me downstairs. But do not leave the house, you hear?"
"But Dad—"
"You hear me, Shyla?" he repeated harshly.
She dropped her gaze. "Yes, Dad," she said in a meek tone.
She followed him downstairs, and he built up a fire for her as he'd promised. His mind had already wandered down by Maya's ring, and although they hadn't heard any other noises—yet—he had an eerie sense he would not be confronting anything so simple as a raccoon tonight.
Shyla sat on the sofa, pulling a quilt around herself and watching him with wide, worried eyes. He reassured her once more he would be quite all right. Then, shotgun in hand, he headed out the back door.
The usual gray haze of a cold night hung over the graveyard path, but nothing as heavy or obtrusive as before, when the doll had come to him. It thickened like smoke as he came closer to the graves, but something struck him as different. The haze appeared...almost sickly. Not velvet fog or silvery mists, but more like the drifting ash left behind after a terribly destructive fire.
Or...a bombing.
Conall grimaced at the creeping dread along the back of his neck. He recalled the images of the Blitz along the Clyde: the burnt-out warehouses and shipyards, the stale smog lingering between stacks of rubble, and the photographs of survivors. His graveyard smelled like Clydesbank must have on those mornings, like charcoal and dust, like thick clouds of vaporized rock and plaster and wood assaulting the eyes and lungs.
Another wild crash sounded from below. He could make out a shape, thrashing about in Maya's circle.
As he came close, Conall stopped in his tracks, stunned by the scene before him.
Maya...had been destroyed.
The ugly tree root he'd finally dug up during the day had been replaced by others, and they'd broken up the ground around the statue's foundation, toppling her off-kilter. Vines, blackened and covered in terrible thorns, appeared to have climbed their way up the statue's wings and arms, wrenching them from the main form. Her body, where it smoothed into hips and became the rough white rock of the base, had cracked in two.
Her torso and head lay on the ground at the foot of the two mausoleums which stood behind her. The wrenching metal had been the gates of those tombs, twisted violently from their hinges. The statue's serene face stared up into the sky, heedless of the pain and destruction now evoked by the shattered remains of her form.
"But...why?" he asked the silence.
A flicker of movement caught his attention, something slipping beyond the tombs. A gray ribbon? He dashed for it, leaping over the toppled stonework and clutching the gun with both hands.
"Stop!" he shouted. He'd forgotten by now the doll was supposed to be a dream, nothing but the spooky imaginings of a man who'd struck his head. Wild anger infused him and pushed him after her, into the darkness of the woodlands beyond.
"Why did you do this?" he called out. "Why are you bothering my family? What do you want?"
Some strides in, he found her, standing amidst the trees with her back to him. She waited with her head tilted over one shoulder, as though she'd hesitated after hearing the sound of his voice. Waited for him.
Conall joined her in the small clearing, but stopped short of coming too close to her. Tingling apprehension prickled at the back of his neck, and he clutched the gun even harder.
"Why did you destroy it?" he asked again. "You...you're driving me insane, you know that? You can't be real, but you've got me thinking about you, believing in you, and now...why are you trying to pull apart my graveyard?"
The doll's head canted a tiny bit, not in response, but somehow thoughtful. Then, Conall noticed the dripping black lines tracking like thick veins along her arms.
Blood.
Blood from...those thorns?
"Wait," he said when she tried to move away. She shifted to face him, and dark trails of bloody tears streaked down from un
derneath the ribbons around her delicate face. The cracks on the right half of it...he might have imagined it, but they appeared to have spread.
"Were you...trying to stop the statue from shattering?"
No answer. The creature merely gazed back at him. When she stood still, she became a perfect statue herself; no human could be so perfectly unmoving, down to the subtlest twitch. Except for her drifting hair, always caught in some ghostly wind, and the trails of the ribbons enshrouding her.
Conall opened his mouth to say something, but the words died. She wouldn't speak...or she couldn't. The fact remained she could answer none of his questions, and he merely made himself feel stupid by asking.
"I'm...sorry," he said finally. "I mean...if you weren't the one who broke her. I'm sorry if I rushed to judgment."
He might have imagined the slightest nod of her head, but then her gaze shot up toward the path behind him. A second later, footsteps sounded behind them and he spun, trying to put himself between the doll and whomever had discovered them.
Shyla. In her white nightgown, practically glowing again in the darkness in her pale, tender beauty. She stared, goggle-eyed, at the apparition, frozen in place.
"What are you doing here?" Conall demanded quietly. "I told you to stay in the house."
When she didn't answer, still speechless, he crossed to her and gave her a rough nudge.
"I heard more noises," she whispered. "Dad...is she...is she Maya?"
He glanced from his daughter to the doll. He strongly sensed all the doll's focus had now riveted to Shyla: even with her eyes hidden, she appeared oriented, completely, on the girl. Even her ribbons had begun to drift in Shyla's direction, against the night breeze.
"I saw the statue fell over," Shyla said. Her voice trembled ever so slightly, and like the doll, she'd gone rapt at attention. "I thought maybe a bear got into the cemetery. But then...the vines...and I didn't hear your gun go off..."
The doll drifted closer. Her bloodied hands reached out, tentatively, almost in fear... beseeching.
"What is she, Daddy?" Shyla whispered.
His Cemetery Doll Page 5