A Haunting Experience

by Kessily Lewel

  "An easy trick. I go intangible for a moment and let the water fall to the floor, then I reform. It only takes a second," he explained with an indulgent smile, but behind it lurked shadows.

  There were things he didn't want to tell her, she could feel it, and that reminded her about the things she'd wanted to talk to him about. She'd wanted to be calm and centered when she approached it. She also didn't want to do it on camera because it was going to be emotionally embarrassing. After what they'd seen that night, she didn't know that it mattered much any more. She felt like she had very little dignity left at that point, but they were in the one room where they could talk freely. She grabbed a thick, fluffy bathsheet and set it on one of the wide marble steps leading to the tub, and then she carefully eased herself down onto it.

  It cushioned the step enough to make it fairly comfortable for her, with her backside ravaged the way it was. The rough weave of the terrycloth she was wrapped in was less forgiving with the way it pressed into the tenderized skin, and she shifted carefully, arranging her legs to take some of the weight off as she wrapped a smaller towel around her long wet hair and then got ready to press.

  "So, you were saying about your skin?" she asked, watching him intently.

  "Determined," he replied.

  He gave her a look and then sighed. He wavered for a second and suddenly he was dressed. His erection was still obvious, pressing to form a bulge in the front of the coarsely woven trousers. He wore his usual shirt, hanging loose and unbuttoned halfway down his chest. He sat down next to her and stretched his long legs out in front of him, bare feet crossed at the ankles. He'd hoped to sate his own body in hers once she calmed down, but perhaps that was too much to ask when she'd been so thoroughly disciplined. He'd have chosen something other than discussing this difficult subject after such a stressful evening, though. He took a moment to choose his words carefully, not wanting to scare her.

  "The dead feed on the living, April. You're one who sees us, so you must have some knowledge of this. They—" He paused and corrected himself. "We feed on the energy you put out. It's not a dangerous thing for you, at least not with me, more like a symbiotic relationship. The longer you live here, the more lifelike I'll become. My skin will warm and flush like yours. Eventually, it's possible that I may be visible to others without your gift. It's happened before. In the beginning, this house was full of people. My partner and his family, a dozen servants to care for them."

  He stared off, watching a swirl of steam uncoil and disperse from the open shower door. His voice, when he began to speak again, sounded hollow, distant, and she thought it had to be hard for him to think about that time.

  "There was so much life and energy in the house at first, but it took a while to learn how to draw on it. I believe several years passed before I was able to anchor myself. I scared a kitchen maid so badly she quit on the spot and never came back. I'm afraid I must have looked quite gruesome.

  "I've learned to change my appearance to a certain extent over the years," he explained. "When I first was able to take form, I appeared as I did the moment I died. It wasn't a pretty sight. If the scream was any indication, I expect she remembered seeing my brutally murdered corpse dripping blood on her clean kitchen floor until her dying day. With time and energy, I learned to change to what I consider my real form. What you see now," he said.

  She reached out and slipped her fingers through his hair, following it down to the ends where it spilled over the light shirt. She ran the palm of her hand over the fabric, paying attention to what it felt like under her hand. The more she tried to capture the texture, the less it felt like actual cloth. It startled her, and she drew her hand back. It was better when she let her mind fill in with what she should feel. Too much analyzing made it less real.

  "You can take clothes off, but why can't you wear anything else?" she wondered. It seemed as though if he could appear in various stages of undress, then changing the outfit entirely should be possible.

  He shrugged. "That I don't know. I've tried many times to wear something else. I've gotten sick of looking at the same thing for a hundred years. And they were worn old travel things to begin with. You might not believe it to look at me, but I did own all the latest fashions," he said mournfully.

  She sniggered, covering her mouth with one hand as she tried to picture that. He'd probably been, what was the word? Dapper.

  He growled. "Don't laugh, wench. I had a whole wardrobe I'd have chosen over these if I'd have known." He chuckled and leaned back, folding his arms behind his head and looking relaxed. "I've tried to change them, but alas, I'm stuck. The best I can do is to vary what I have."

  "What if I bought you a shirt? You're solid enough to wear it, aren't you?" she asked, running her fingertips over his arm. True, only she could see him, but he could make himself solid enough to haul her up the stairs.

  "I could, as long as I concentrated. If I let my attention drift, it would fall through me, the way the water did. And of course, on the cameras, they would merely see clothes floating around," he pointed out.

  "Oh, I meant later," she said. "When the cameras are gone. I just thought it would be nice to see what you looked like in modern clothes," she explained, flushing slightly and sneaking a glance at his expression from the corner of her almond eyes.

  "If it would please you," he said amiably, and she smiled. "Your question from earlier, that I promised to answer in the kitchen. I assume you understand it's the same principal. I have the strongest connection to this house so I've always been able to make myself known, day or night, but it's easier with you here to draw from. The others can't come out during the day at all; none of them can. I'm not sure why. There are dark things in this house, forces that I'd expect to avoid the light of day, but there are others who are innocent and pure and they are held back, as well. I'd gotten into the habit of not bothering to come out except at night, so I could keep an eye on them. "

  A chill ran down her spine as he mentioned the others. She'd felt the touch of children, and he was right. They were pure. But the thing that had attacked in the hallway had been a swirl of dark malevolence that terrified her. So much pain and rage were connected to those powers that it was very nearly mindless.

  "Where did they all come from? I know how you got here, but the rest—"

  "Harold built this house for his wife, Martha, and their children. I believe stealing and then murdering me to keep possession of it created a darkness here. One by one, his children died, all four, and eventually their mother hanged herself from grief. Of the older two, I've seen no sign; I hope they passed on. You met the younger. They were no more than babes. He brought it upon himself, but I pity her. She resides here still, walking the halls, dressed in black and looking for her children."

  His mouth tightened. The lines around his mouth were more prominent. He seemed angry.

  "And—the others?" she asked tentatively. She watched as he forced his fists to uncurl.

  "Left here alone, no family, and only the ghosts of the evil he'd done. I believe Harold slowly went mad," he said quietly. He seemed to hesitate, looking her over. "It's not a story for a lady's ears," he said with a sigh.

  Her eyebrows went up, and she crossed her arms over her chest. "I think I can handle it," she said shortly. She might be submitting to him in some ways, but she didn't need to be coddled or protected from the truth. She wanted to know all of it.

  He examined her, searching her face and, after a moment, he nodded. "You're right." And then he stopped, and there was a long silence. Finally, with the look of a man forcing himself to do an unpleasant task, he began the story. "He dismissed most of the servants, explaining that with just one person in the house, there was no need for a full complement of staff. Those that were left he— I can only describe it as terrorizing them. He made their lives a misery, and one by one they disappeared. He'd tell the others that they ran off in the night, but the truth was far worse than that.

  "By then I'd learned to show
myself and moderate my appearance, though neither worked predictably. I tried several times to stop him, but I hadn't mastered the ability to interact with the physical world yet, so I tried to scare him. I've never understood why, but he was the one person in the house I couldn't force to see me. I was able to scare a few of the staff into quitting, and saved their lives by doing so, but I could do nothing to stop his crimes."

  His eyes searched hers for signs of shock and horror, but she stared back calmly. A lifetime of gory horror movies had allowed her to deal with the story without too much upset, and when he saw that she was fine, he continued.

  "I won't give you all the details. You don't need to know them," he insisted, holding up a hand when her mouth opened to protest. "I will say that I believe my murder was the first but not the last to occur because of him. The men he killed brutally. The women suffered his foul lusts before they also were murdered. When all the staff had either escaped or been killed, he began to bring in prostitutes to satisfy all his desires. I believe he'd developed an insatiable hunger for death by then, and he was never caught. At least not then." His mouth twisted over the bitter words.

  "Is he—is he one of the ghosts here?" she asked, a small tremor in her voice. The last thing she wanted to run into in the middle of the night was a murdering rapist ghost.

  "No," John assured her immediately. "No, he didn't die here. He was so focused on his evil activities that he let the business fall apart. The creditors took this house, and he was forced to leave, penniless. Seeing him put out on the street gave me my first happy moment since I died. They sold off this house, and a new family moved in. And they found a room full of corpses in the basement and moved right back out." A short unhappy laugh burst out of him, sounding harsh, and she reached out to rest a hand on his arm. "They didn't find mine. of course. Likely no one ever will, but the others received a decent burial and most of them didn't choose to linger long afterwards."

  "What happened to him? I mean after they found the bodies?" she asked, curious to wrap up the story.

  He shrugged. "Nothing about it was said in the house, so I can't say. I hope they caught and hanged him for his crimes.

  "Oh." A disappointing end; she wished she knew for sure what had happened. There was no happy ever after to this tale, but at least she'd like to know that the bad guy got caught in the end. "Once I can leave the house, I'll see about looking it up," she suggested. "The library might have newspapers from that time. If not, I can probably find something on the Internet," she said thoughtfully.

  He nodded, but looked doubtful as he shifted his position. He didn't really trust the Internet or its capabilities, though of course he'd heard about it. She found herself being pulled into his arms and she settled down with her head against his chest. The dark and depressing combination had clearly been a turn-off for her ghostly lover; his erection had vanished. She wasn't sure if she was sad about that or not. The long shower had done a lot to calm her, but it had done very little to ease the burning heat that had thoroughly soaked into her bottom flesh. She didn't think it would be very comfortable on her backside, though an image flashed through her mind of his thighs slapping against her ass as he fucked her hard, and she felt a little flutter low down in her body.

  "My turn for a question," he said suddenly.

  "Want to know about the Internet?" she asked quickly, tilting her head up to look at him as she attempted to distract him with an easier question than the one she worried he was about to ask.

  "No. I know about that. It's a box like the television, but you can put words in and ask for things." He waved away such nonsense with one hand, as if it was an unimportant matter. She had the idea that he'd never actually seen a computer, but maybe had caught some references to them during a show. "I want to know what you were so upset about earlier," he said.

  She deflated a little, the small smile on her lips vanished, and she started to pull away. That was what she'd dreaded. It was the best time to discuss it, but she didn't want to. Just the reminder caused an uncomfortable feeling of hurt to grow in her belly.

  He tugged her back against him and shook his head. "Not this time. This time you're going to tell me what's going on," he said firmly. As if she needed a reminder, his hand slid over the swell of her backside to rest on her upper thigh, just where the towel ended.

  She shifted nervously. "John, I don't—" She trailed off, and when she remained silent for too long, he gave her left butt cheek a squeeze to prompt her. She sighed. "Fine. I'll talk. Ms. Hagmaier came to visit today." He looked completely blank, eyebrow going up in question, and she clarified. "The owner of the house? Elizabeth?"

  "Oh, yes. I remember her. Surprised she returned here willingly, after our last meeting," he said with a low chuckle.

  "Yeah, well, she wouldn't, not really. She insisted we talk outside, so we walked around back and sat for a while." She paused, turning her head to stare fixedly at a spot on the wall as she continued, "She told me what you did to her and her psychic. And then she told me—about your deal." She kept her voice carefully neutral and as emotionless as she could manage, but inside she a mass of nerves and confusion.

  He didn't respond at first, though his arm tightened around her. He'd noticed the change in her voice and reacted to it automatically, but he wasn't entirely sure of the cause.

  "I see. I can tell that you're upset, but I'm not sure of what has made you that way," he said finally.

  "Everything. All of it," she whispered.

  She kept her face turned away, and finally he captured her chin in his hand and tilted it back to look at him.

  "Let's take it one piece at a time, then, April. And we'll see if we can sort it out."

  His voice was gentle, kind, offering her a lure of resolution to everything she was feeling, and after a brief war with herself, she took it, starting with the easier things first.

  "I-I'm not the type of girl who sleeps around. I don't usually get involved with men I've just met, but I fell for you, and now it seems like you do this with every woman who sleeps in this house. Your house," she corrected herself, because that was part of the problem, really. The house that was being dangled as bait or reward was his house, and staying in it meant agreeing to be what he wanted, and she still wasn't sure she could do that forever.

  His eyebrows lowered, forehead wrinkling. "You think I'd do this—" He waved one hand to indicate her body draped across his. "With any woman?" He shook his head. "April, I've been looking for the right woman for a hundred years. Longer than that, really. Even before I died, I could never settle down with a woman because I never met one who was right for me," he explained, his voice low and earnest.

  "Seems like you sampled a few on the way, though," she muttered.

  He snorted, "Women are not chocolates, April. I have tested several women, since my death, in dreams only, to see if we might be a match, but it never went beyond that because none of them fit what I was looking for," he said.

  She bit her bottom lip; her hazel eyes met his dark blue hesitantly. "And what are you looking for, John? What is it that you want in a woman?" she asked.

  He sighed, his thumb stroked lightly over her strong chin, contemplating his answer. "To be honest, I was never sure exactly what I wanted. I only knew that I hadn't found it. I can tell you that there is a certain type of demeanor that appeals to me, and that the moment I first entered your dreams, I knew you matched. It was just a matter of then finding out if we were compatible."

  "And are we? Compatible, I mean?" she asked tentatively.

  "You have to ask?" He frowned, sitting up and pulling her into his lap. Her long legs dangled to one side. "Yes, we are compatible. You're everything I ever wanted in a wife. Fiery, stubborn, but eventually you yield, and your body—" He stopped.

  She pressed against him, searching his face earnestly for confirmation she could believe in. "My body?"

  "Your body reacts to my touch like no woman I've ever been with. I crave you every second of the day,
and when you're pressed against me like this, I can barely restrain myself from ravaging you," he said. There was a growl underscoring his passionate words, and beneath her she could feel his shaft stirring to life.

  "And—and the spanking? Have you spanked all these women?" she asked. Maybe there was a hint of jealousy there. Something about picturing him spanking another woman irritated her more than sex, even. It was no more intimate, certainly, but there was something about it.

  To her surprise, a loud laugh rumbled in his chest. "Some, April. Just a few. I don't usually bother to punish what isn't mine. If women were unruly, rude, or behaved badly, it was not my job to change that. I usually removed myself from the situation instead. Ignoring them I found was usually enough, but it's different now. I'm trapped in this house and so, yes, unable to let certain things go I have resorted to punishing when I couldn't ignore."

  "Ha! And what do you call blistering my backside, John? That's not ignoring me," she said. Her tone was almost playful, which showed how much she'd recovered from that event.

  "Ah, but you, my girl, do belong to me. Your behavior is mine to correct," he reminded her, tipping his head to drop a gentle kiss on the tip of her nose. "Your submission is part of what I love about you. You bend, but you don't break, like a willow sapling in a heavy storm. I think that's something I needed without even realizing it."

  Her eyes had narrowed when he'd spoken about her like she was his property again, but by the end, her expression was relaxing. As much as she wanted to deny it, to fight it, it was true that she'd already begun to submit to him. She knew very little about how that was supposed to go because she'd never experienced it, and in reality, most of the rules couldn't apply to a ghost that was a hundred years out of time. All she could do was ease her way into the relationship and negotiate as needed.

  "I never thought I'd be submissive to anyone," she said softly. "I'm still not sure what I can handle; tonight was intense."