by Olivia Myers
“I will pleasure you tonight,” whispered Pierre into the soft curve of her belly. His breath was warm and wet.
“Yes,” she moaned. She didn’t wait for him to wrestle her tight-fitting jeans down past her sides: she did it herself. Despite the cold, the fire and the wine had made her whole body warm. She ached with pleasure and anticipation.
His tongue began to caress the soft fabric of her panties, tenderly yet with reservation. He was nervous. He probably didn’t know how she wanted him to behave.
“Pierre,” she whispered. “Stop being so gentle.”
His tongue caressed harder, wetter. But it wasn’t enough for Celia. She dipped her hands down, removed the undergarment and threw it in the corner. She was exposed to him now. Her thighs were propped on the ottoman and spread to give him as much room as possible. Eagerly his tongue sought for her wet, loose folds, sucking them in like water. “Oh,” she gasped, “oh!”
He kissed the folds of her clit with a tenderness, as if he were afraid of hurting her. He was too gentle. His gentleness was maddening.
“Stay down there,” she ordered, and because of the tone in her voice he obeyed. She began stroking her breast with her right hand, and then let it trail down her belly, stroking, letting it rest finally on Pierre’s head. She slipped three fingers in his mouth. He dared not disobey her. She was in control.
When he’d finished sucking her fingers she let them dangle for a moment on the soft hairs just above her center before slipping them inside. She was surprised at the full sensation. It had been a long time since she’d pleasured herself.
She slid her tips of her fingers out again, and nudged Pierre back into position so he could pleasure her with his tongue. She moved her fingers over her wet folds and gasped with each one of the thousand tiny pleasures that it gave her; with the strange, foreign pleasure of the soft penetration, with Pierre’s massaging tongue caressing her, working deeper and deeper inside her.
It was a soft and wild pleasure. The gentleness of Pierre’s tongue soothed her and filled her with intense warmth. Yet there was something foreign about it that disturbed her, as if there was another presence in the room with them. As though the man she knew as Pierre and had known once as a lover had reentered her life as a stranger. As though the tongue that pleasured her wet folds was not his, but that of a stranger.
Something in the mountains was reawakening, she felt. Some obscurity was materializing slowly into view, even in this moment of warmth and intimacy, with a man she’d once loved. She did not know what to call the obscurity. There wasn’t yet a name for it. But it was there, known and invisible, like the castle that loomed on the hillside. A forlorn, nameless presence.
***
Pierre agreed to take her to the castle the next morning. They set out early, when the mist still hung thick over the mountainside. There was hardly a trace of the snow that had blown in the night before, but dry snow now flickered through the air as they trekked the distance up the roadside. After roughly an hour of hiking, the path banked sharply to the left and the path became thick with tussock and gorse.
Celia was having a tough time with the hike. Her thighs burned and despite the cold a thin layer of sweat beaded along her forehead.
“Bly probably doesn’t make this hike very often,” she remarked sarcastically to Pierre.
“I don’t think he’s been to the castle more than three times in all his life,” Pierre said. He was quiet, concentrated and serious. His seriousness bothered Celia. There was no trace of his endearment and charm that had characterized the night before. “He is away on business quite often.”
“You never did tell me what the man did,” Celia said.
“I would tell you if I knew.”
“Well, a man who’s willed a castle in the Alps by some distant relatives probably has some interesting connections.”
“Interesting and unknown,” Pierre said. “But the ancestors weren’t all that distant. It was his aunt who left him the property.”
“And is she as much of a mystery as he is?”
“I believed she lived a lonely and rather sad life,” Pierre replied. “But perhaps you can ask Monsieur Bly these details when you see him today.”
Pierre had mentioned to Celia before they set out that he had received confirmation from Bly stating he would be making a visit to the castle that same day. The sudden reminder brought her into a rude and uncomfortable awakening, and she closed her mouth, perturbed and anxious.
Hardly another hour had passed before they caught their first view of the castle. Whatever romantic images Celia had conjured in her mind—of twisting spires and Gothic roofs and fairytale towers—were quickly dashed. The place was a functioning ruin: a great black slab of coal-blackened stone set squat against a hillock like a fat man perched on a small bench. Even the lake itself seemed to carry an aura of disarray and ruin. Beneath the curtain of mist, she could see that its waters were fouled and muddy, its banks the sallow color of sun-scorched seaweed.
“What a mess!” she said.
“Wait until you are closer.”
True to Pierre’s threat, the castle was brought into even more hideous detail once they were standing alongside it. Here Celia saw the fairytale image that she had been anticipating, although this was not the fortress of a prince, but of a dragon. Gorse and bramble and prickly hawthorn curled alongside the jagged walls like razor wire. It snaked around the entire perimeter of the structure and seemed to be snaking still onwards, despite the frozen chill that caused everything to assume a clammy stillness. As they circled the castle they saw the remnants of a garden, its walls smashed and its trees choked by the invasion of gorse. Several fountains depicting various scenes of Grecian mythology were scattered in what once might have been a geometric design, but had since become an unrecognizable mess. All of the figures in the fountains were missing limbs, picked off long ago by vandals.
“There is an unlocked door at the back entrance,” Pierre said, leading her. “It will take you to the main hall. Compared to this, I am happy to say that the inside is a little nicer.”
Celia, who’d half-expected that the castle would be missing a roof, was indeed surprised to find the interior mostly well kept. All of the furniture—what bits and pieces remained—was already preserved in white sheets. The Gothic fireplace was blackened like tar and smelled foul, but it was clean. The chandelier, old and imposing, showed no sign of crashing down.
“Well it’s good to know that at least someone has been doing some work,” she said.
Pierre cracked a wry grin, the first he had made that morning. Celia was glad to see that he was at last showing a bit of humor.
“Do you have any first impressions to share so far?” he asked her after he’d taken a generous drink from his water bottle.
Celia paused, trying to sum up her thoughts. “The land is gorgeous,” she said at last. “And if Bly is willing to put any money forth we can probably get that lake cleaned up with a proper crew.”
“Monsieur Bly was quite adamant that he would put no further expenses into the estate.”
“Well then apart from that, I don’t see much hope,” Celia answered truthfully. “He’s got a beautiful antique on his hands but without any legwork it’s going to stay that way. I can understand if he doesn’t want to pay for the upkeep. In fact, I’ve never even heard of anyone who’s actually lived in a castle, never mind how they managed to do it. I suppose the place could be turned into a museum, but I haven’t the faintest idea who would travel two days by train to come up and see it.”
“So perhaps you think it would be better to simply demolish it?”
“It would break my heart,” she said. Hideous as it was, Celia was already rather fond of the place. There were too few left like it. Too few mysteries, these antique juggernauts, abandoned like old trains to rust on desolate tracks, miles away from civilization.
“I will speak to Bly,” she said. “Maybe I can convince him there’s a way to save it
.”
“And then you will let me know how the conversation proceeds,” Pierre said, shouldering his pack.
She touched his shoulder. “Are you leaving me alone already?”
“Monsieur Bly will be arriving in the valley in a few hours and he’ll expect to see me there. But take this time, my dear. Familiarize yourself more with the place. We will meet you here when we can.”
Before Celia could offer much more in the way of protest, he leaned forward and kissed her fully on the mouth. Celia dropped her hands and returned the kiss, feeling its sweet ache fill her with warmth. All too quickly he broke off and disappeared out the door they’d come through.
The castle felt like an empty cavern his departure. With Pierre, Celia had been in good humor. His gentleness and her familiarity with him had offset the gloom of the atmosphere like a candle. Now with him gone, she felt the castle’s vastness oppress her like an unwelcome presence. It was frightening, but she knew she had to shake off her feelings of dread quickly and extend her survey of the property. She took a notebook and pencil from her bag and set off in the direction of the West Wing.
For hours, Celia passed through corridors and rooms, the names and functions of which were lost to her. She entered multiple kitchens and parlors, a drawing room with plaster that had been peeling for so long it was almost completely curled like a papery snake coiled along the wall. She found cellars and bathrooms and locked rooms and rooms that showed signs of forced entry. Through these she passed in a kind of daze, overwhelmed by the presence of a rich history in whose fabric she was intruding. Her pencil became indented with bite marks. She made few notes, as if chronicling the castle were an even bigger affront.
She was slow in her work, and deliberate. Although the castle intimidated her, Celia saw it as her duty to do her job carefully and precisely. If there was a scrap of old history left buried away beneath the old stone crypt, she was going to save it.
The exhaustion and the pain from the hike got to her before long. She’d felt her muscles aching earlier but by the time she’d finished surveying the first floor she was in agony. There was a little flask of whiskey in her backpack that Pierre had given her for the cold, more as a joke than as a remedy, although now she made use of it. She took two generous swigs from the flask and felt the pain dissipate into a tiny, golden cloud. But her exhaustion remained. Well, she thought, it was not to be helped. These jobs take time. They also take energy. She’d do a better job if she had some rest, first.
She went back into the entrance hall and found an upholstered couch large enough to hold her body. She pillowed her head against her backpack and looked at her watch. It was a little after eleven in the morning. If she only slept for an hour, it would give her more than enough time to explore the other two floors before Pierre returned with Bly. She closed her eyes and was asleep instantly.
The light had changed drastically by the time Celia awoke. Drowsily she sat up, trying to recall where she was and what she was doing. Her thoughts reached her, slowly but clearly. She checked her watch. Four hours had passed. Not idea, but there was no reason to panic yet. She’d go through the upper floors quickly. There were two floors apart from the attic. Aside from bedrooms and a large room with a ruined billiards table, there was nothing to occupy her attention on the second. The third floor contained a sizeable library which was not only surprisingly well stocked, but stocked in books that were still legible. There was a little reading table next to the fireplace on which someone had left scattered various pieces of paper, old photographs, pencils, and lithographs.
She set her instruments down on the table and turned her attention to the books. They were in French, German, and that strange, local language—like the books in the hotel—but there were other volumes as well, in Greek, in Turkish, Armenian, Estonian, and languages she couldn’t even identity. Who kept a collection like this?
She took one of the volumes off the shelf and flipped through it idly. Sellable. At least there was one thing in the castle that wouldn’t end up pulverized. She went back to the desk to retrieve her notebook.
And then she froze. Sitting on her notebook was a photograph, a frayed, yellowing photograph of a young girl, looking sheepishly askance at the camera, her thick, curling hair in a rope that fell down one shoulder. The little girl couldn’t have been any older than five.
But it wasn’t the photo itself that frightened her. It was its presence on top of her notebook; Celia had never touched the photograph. She had never even laid eyes on it. So how was it on top of her notebook? She felt her skin prickle. Her mouth went cold as the dumb impossibility came welling up in her mind. Was there someone else in the room with her? Had someone else been watching her the whole time?
She opened her mouth. It had to be Pierre. He’d returned early. Maybe Bly had been delayed. She opened her mouth to call out to Pierre, to let him know that his little jest wasn’t funny in the slightest. But at the moment she was going to make a sound, a door opened on the first floor and a deep, delicate voice announced the arrival of Monsieur Bly.
Part 2
They made love again in the hotel that night. Again, amidst the thick of a snowstorm. Again, loosened by drinks of cheap wine, warmed by a crackling fire. But it was not tender love. It was as far from tender as Celia could imagine. Indeed, she could imagine no such thing as tenderness. Not ever. Not after the evening with Bly.
Pierre was on top of her, pumping into her like a piston. Celia felt him filling her—she felt him quivering to life inside her as he worked to get deeper and deeper—and it was not enough. “Pierre,” she gasped, “harder, Pierre. Harder.”
Their thighs were covered in the sweat of their intensity and they rubbed against one another furiously, generating heat, generating speed. He penetrated her harder, faster, his whole being inside her. Yet it was not enough. It could not force away the images, of Bly, of Diane, and again of Bly. “Harder, Pierre,” she pleaded.
She saw him in the room as they’d been that night while they ate dinner, a collection of food Pierre had brought from the hotel. The room where they ate was one of the dining rooms she’d surveyed earlier in the day. It had been just the three of them at the table, Pierre at her side and Bly across the table, listening as Pierre spoke about the logistics of the appraisal, of any potential the castle had for restoration, of the possibility of demolition.
Destroy it if you must.
Celia remembered Bly’s voice. Its harsh bite, the clipped phrases, the dry baritone that left an ashy taste in her mouth. A cruel voice.
“Of course if you will be so patient as to wait a little longer we might find a more adequate buyer,” Pierre said.
Celia had recognized the pleading tone. He’d been afraid. She’d resented him for his fear because she knew that Bly resented it. Bly was a man who resented weakness. She’d known that right away.
You have a month.
Bly’s voice cut through again. There’d been silence. Then a mousy woman had stepped into the room and spoken quietly to Bly.
“That’s his caretaker,” Pierre whispered to Celia. “Diane, I think.”
No one dared to move except Bly and that was to tell his caretaker something. She pulled out a chair and sat down to dinner with them.
Pierre later explained that Diane lived in a shack just a short walk away from the castle, although Bly had offered her apartments in the building itself if she wanted them. She’d refused. Diane kept her face averted from the guests throughout the dinner. She showed only her profile, and this was obscured by her dress’s high collar so that her curled hair was the most visible feature about her. Diane spoke only with Bly and this was done furtively, fearfully. He did not seem to think this behavior strange. He made no mention of it.
“Harder, harder, Pierre,” Celia whimpered. She was in tears. Tears of agony and disgust filled her eyes. The gentleness and the tenderness of the night before humiliated her. She wanted to be overwhelmed. She wanted him to dominate her, to thrust out t
he cruel curl of Bly’s lip, the gleaming blades of his parted hair, the thin nose and the ghoulish, waxy face.
She wanted Pierre to overwhelm him before she was forced to meet him again tomorrow. She did not know how she could do this unless she had the power of two inside her. One was not enough. Bly could swallow one in the depths of his eyes, as easily as an ocean swallowed stone.
“Oh, Pierre!” She twisted her body roughly from under him and in a single movement, forced herself on top of him. Pierre stared up at her with a dumb smile that enraged her.
“Don’t even speak,” she said as she pushed her wet thighs against his quivering cock. She ran her fingers down his chest, trenching white valleys in his skin. She kissed him until she tasted blood. “Don’t even breathe.”
He was warm. His skin was hot, yet it was mocked by the coldness of Bly. The coldness she’d felt when he held her hand after the dinner was over, bidding them a safe journey back home. When he’d fixed her in the murky unfathomability of his eyes, staring deep inside her, capsizing her soul onto a storm-tossed and raging ocean.
And the coldness, the penetrating chill she’d felt in the last few seconds when, turning to go, she’d caught a look at the face of Diane, staring from behind the back of Bly. It was the most wretched face she had ever seen. A scarred, disheveled, demonic face—the demon to accompany Bly’s ghoul. And Celia had gasped, for she saw in it a frank and hideous madness, the madness of those who know they are mad. Through the madness there came an even more terrible realization, as one who, seeing an approaching storm cloud, feels her heart sink as an even more threatening squall thunders afoot. For in the brief, passing moment, Celia was sure that she recognized Diane from somewhere. That she in fact knew her.
“Harder,” Celia said, driving forward. “Pierre, I need you inside me.”
***
In their first two nights, Celia and Pierre had felt only the first flickers of the snowstorm. The snowstorm had finally unleashed its fury, and they awoke to a world of apocalyptic whiteness, a blinding freeze. Pierre ventured two steps outside and lost a boot in the thick snow. There would be no venturing to Bly’s castle that day.
