Lady in White

by A. J. Matthews

  He got up and held out his hand. Teasing, she feigned limpness, loving the surge of strength from him when he pulled her upright and over his shoulder in a clean lift. Kicking her legs and beating her hands on his back just enough to make a point, she allowed Martin to carry her, screaming softly, into the bedroom.

  With a twist and push, he let her fall onto the springy surface of the bed and she bounced a couple of times, laughing. "I love your laugh, sweetheart," he said.

  "Yours is pretty neat too!" She reached out with her foot and ran it up and down his thigh. "Along with quite a few other things," she added, giving him her best sultry look.

  He stooped and kissed her quickly on the lips, just a quick touch, and the scent of his cologne and warm skin filled her nose. Grasping the hem of his sweatshirt, he hauled it off and threw it aside, and she admired his muscular chest, the neat diamond of brown hair between his nipples. As he began to unfasten his jeans, she sat up and unzipped her dress, shrugging it off and feeling like a butterfly shedding its chrysalis.

  Martin kicked away the jeans and stooped once more to kiss her, one hand seeking and finding a breast. As they kissed, he rolled it back and forth, the movement constrained by her brassiere. "Unhook me, Marty; let the girls come out to play with you!" she whispered with a grin.

  He leaned close, and she felt his firm body against her as his fingers worked the hooks of the bra. A moment of tightness across her chest then blessed release, and she felt him pull the lacy wisp away from her. "Ooh, yeah!"

  Without a word, but with every sign of love, he eased her back on the bed and lowered his head until his lips found her breasts. She shivered as his tongue slid lovingly over her, working a pattern of delight that made her head swirl. "Mmmm!" she murmured, stroking his hair, running her fingers through it, combing it.

  His hands caressed her sides and thighs, roaming up and down, slowly building a multitude of hot, electric sensations that rose sharply as his teeth closed on a nipple—and bit.

  "Oh! Oooh!" Her back arched through sheer reflex, pushing her breast against his mouth where he buried his face in it and shook his head fiercely as he sucked on her. Marty's weight was on her now, and she brought her thighs up, rubbing them against his legs, feeling the fabric of his boxers.

  "Marty…" His hand closed around her other breast, squeezing, fingers drawing her flesh up until her nipple was pinched in a grip as firm as a vise. "Marty!" she gasped and tapped him on the head. When he looked up, his face flushed red, she gestured with her head. "You've got to lose the boxers, babe."

  "Uh huh."

  With a wriggle and a push, he shed the boxer shorts, and she felt his cock pressing against her mound. Wrapping him in her arms, she tightened the grip of her thighs and bodily wrestled him onto his back. He tickled her, and she screamed, batting his hands away only for them to find another opening.

  A dull knocking sound came from the apartment overhead, accompanied by a querulous voice. The words were indistinct, but the meaning was clear. She leaned forward quickly and pressed her lips to his, muffling their laughter. Martin heaved silently beneath her, the feeling of his hot body between her thighs sending all kinds of wonderful signals through her. Raising her hips, she fumbled for his cock and grasped it, put it to her pussy lips and then sank down on him in one clean, smooth rush.

  *

  Claudia's sex enfolded his cock, and he felt his foreskin roll back as he entered her deeply. The feel of her large round breasts brushing his chest, her warmth, her scent, and her closeness gave his cock an added stiffness that earned him an appreciative grin from her.

  "Our first time without a rubber, darling," she said softly, her gaze warm. She kissed him quickly. "You're safe; I'm safe. There's nothing between us but a little juice and a little sweat."

  "I'm so fucking glad!" he said, giving her breasts an ardent squeeze and sighing with contentment. "Damn, but it feels good!"

  "Ooh! The Englishman swore!" She chuckled. "And fuck, but I love it when you talk dirty!"

  She leaned back and rose and fell in the saddle, her hands braced on his chest to support herself, her eyes on his. He winked at her then dropped his gaze, delighting in the sight of his cock sliding in and out of her body as she rode him. Leaning forward, he caught one of her nipples between his lips, sucking and nipping it.

  "Ooh, yeah, Marty!" she said, rising and falling quicker. Her hot pussy mashed hard against his loins, the smoothness of her skin already slick with her juice. Leaning back further and further, she was soon all but laying on his thighs, his cock pressing against her pussy wall. He felt the strain on his cock—but he felt too the incredible sensations of Claudia's rippling vaginal muscles running up and down his entire length. Reaching out and down, he raked his fingernails over her taut thighs, making her shiver.

  *

  Marty's fingernails sent thrilling little spirals of pleasure through her thighs and pussy, and she began to breathe hard. Rocking back and forth on his legs, she speeded up, adding a little upward thrust every time she pushed home against him. His wiry pubic hair scratched lightly against her shaved lips, adding its own unique sensation to the steadily building energy between her legs.

  "Uhh, uhhh, uhhh!" Her breath came quickly, rising with the fires in her mound, each thrust of Marty's wonderfully long cock, the feel of his bare flesh inside her, the knowledge that she would soon feel his cum jetting deep, stoked her to new heights of pleasure.

  "Ahh, uhhh, uhhh!" Marty grunted and gasped as he met each thrust of hers with one of his own. Finding an ounce of spare effort from somewhere, she sought out his hand, grasped it, and brought it down to press on her clitoris. He responded with a firm pressure, pushing it up against his shaft as it slid in and out—and her pussy exploded with orgasmic fire.

  Jackknifing forward by pure reflex, she rose and fell one last time, impaling herself on him and driving his cock up into the neck of her womb. Marty's body rose beneath her, a grating groan of almost-agony escaping his lips as he came simultaneously.

  Claudia's mind was one long cascade of blinding lights and colors, her entire body a tingling mass of energy. Marty's cum flooded into her, filling her sex to overflowing, mingling with her juice to make a potent cocktail of love and lust.

  As reality returned from the scattered corners of her mind, she became aware of a renewed thumping from the apartment overhead. She found her hands braced on Marty's chest, his eyes blinking and rolling as he regained his wits. Their eyes met, raised as one to the ceiling, then they were clutching each other in helpless laughter as the beat from upstairs went on.

  Chapter Four

  That Sunday, Caroline arrived at the apartment. Martin checked through the spy-hole and let her in. "Hello, I'm glad you could make it."

  "Thanks for seeing me." Caroline flashed him a nervous smile as she stepped into the hall. He took her overcoat and hung it on a peg near the door as she gave a quick glance around, assessing the place. She'd gathered her hair up in a ponytail held by a scrunchy, and her face was devoid of any makeup, which combined to make her look younger.

  "Won't you come through?" he asked, gesturing to the sitting room. "I've made coffee. I should warn you, as I'm a committed tea-drinker, I can't answer for how it tastes!"

  She nodded, a smile flickering over face. "I'm sure it'll be fine," she said gravely.

  *

  Caroline sat on the sofa, arranged her skirt neatly about her knees, and watched Martin covertly as he busied himself with the coffee. She felt curious about the man Claudia had brought into her life. He was tall and slim with dark brown hair, a good-looking face with sea-blue eyes, and he wore a maroon sweatshirt with fawn slacks. She put his age at somewhere in his early thirties. As he set out the coffee cups, his movements were neat and precise. She could sense a powerful but controlled energy in him, an energy that seemed to infuse the air around him.

  *

  When he handed her the cup, she added a copious quantity of creamer and sugar, then sipped cautious
ly. "Mmm!" She licked her lips. "This is good."

  "I'm glad." He sat opposite her. "How're you feeling today? Forgive me for saying so, but you looked rather unwell at your parents’ house."

  "I'm fine now, thanks," she said, cradling her mug in her hands. "I didn't tell my folks, but I had to go into the White River the other day for reasons which I'll explain, and I swallowed some of it." She grimaced. "Most of it was cleaned up not long ago, but some places are still polluted. As a precaution they had to pump me out at the hospital and give me medication to counter the toxins. When Mom spoke of food, it made me feel nauseous."

  "You went in the river?" He looked at her in shock. "In this weather?"

  "Yeah." She gave him a brittle smile and shivered. "I survived, although I don't think I'll feel warm again until summer!"

  "I'm sorry to hear it. It sounds like quite a story. Have you enough time this morning to recount your experience?"

  "Oh, yes; I've more than enough. I'm going into work tomorrow. My boss, Doctor Burwell, wanted me to take the whole week off, but we're so short of staff just now it wouldn't be right."

  Martin nodded then gestured to his tape recorder and notepad. "I'm ready whenever you are."

  Caroline drew herself up, as if steeling herself for an ordeal. "I'm ready."

  Martin recorded the time, date, and Caroline's name, then placed the microphone on the coffee table between them. "Begin when you like."

  In a calm, even voice, she recounted the events leading to the rescue. Martin regarded her with growing surprise as she spoke. "I had no idea you'd been through such an ordeal," he said, when she came to a close. "Have you told your folks?"

  "I will tonight. They'll hear it from other people before long, so I'd rather tell them the true version." She gave Martin a wry smile. "You're the first member of the family to hear all this."

  It gave him a warm glow and made his ears tingle to be counted as one of the family. His liking for Caroline rose considerably. "Thanks for sharing it with me. It was a really brave thing you did, Caroline," he said seriously. "You could've been killed!"

  She blushed and waved away the compliment. "I acted on instinct. Any nurse would do the same." Her serious green eyes turned to him. "But, Martin, I want to know about the ghost! Could she have led the boy into danger?"

  "You're certain the woman wasn't human?"

  "Oh, yes! As I said, I saw her as plain as day; she looked solid, real; yet there were no tracks in the snow other than those the boy made." She looked worried. "Martin, please, could she have deliberately led him into danger?" she asked again.

  "It's possible." He nodded slowly. "I can think of one case in a ruined castle in the Welsh Marches. A female spirit tried to lure a man onto a crumbling section of the battlements." He gave her a considering look. "It's unusual, I'll grant you."

  "Would you investigate?" she asked anxiously. "I really hope you can help, as I don't want anyone else put in danger."

  "Of course I will. If there's anything I can do to help, I'll do it. The only thing that concerns me is gaining access to the hospital grounds and buildings."

  She looked relieved. "I can help you there. Doc Burwell's a nice guy, very interested in the psychological side of the paranormal. If I ask him, he'll probably let you have access to most of the buildings. You can walk through the grounds anyway. Daniels LaRoche will be closed before long. There're no resident patients left, so the hospital authority lets local people have access to the grounds so long as they keep away from the buildings."

  She paused and chewed her lip, a habit Martin had seen in Claudia. "There are a few other things I need to tell you about the hospital," she said quietly. "The atmosphere in most of the place isn't very pleasant."

  "You mean in a spiritual sense, not the general working atmosphere?"

  "That's right. The people there're fine; we all get along real well."

  "That's good. As for the spiritual atmosphere, mental anguish leaves a strong psychic imprint on the fabric of a building." Martin gave her a somber look. "General hospitals are bad, particularly around the ER. People often die there under conditions of extreme pain and stress. Spirits of people who die like that tend to pounce on the first psychic they see." He shuddered. "It makes walking through those places very difficult for me. I've found mental institutions tend to be that way too, especially the older establishments."

  She nodded vigorously, her ponytail bobbing. "That figures. Daniels LaRoche was originally Victorian. The date over the door to what we call the old quarter is 1858. It was the first built on the site. Everything else kind of accreted around those. Would you feel okay about entering the buildings?" she asked.

  "I'll be fine, once I have my defenses up. Are there any specific locations where it feels particularly bad?"

  "Yeah; the old building." She shivered. "I worked there for a couple weeks; it was closed down just after I joined Daniels LaRoche. Even from the outside, it feels horrible. Fran Brown, my colleague, worked in there for years. She told me she often saw a white shape floating down a passageway in one of the upper wings. Even before that, not one member of the nursing staff ever wanted to be alone in there."

  "Okay," he said, making notes. "That's something I can pursue. And there were other occasions?"

  "Oh, yeah!" Caroline nodded again, warming to the theme. "One of the maintenance guys told me he refused to work in the boiler room down in the basement of the old building. He claimed something attacked him."

  "Really? Did he say what it was?"

  "No; I asked but he clammed up."

  "Hmm! Some people just don't like to talk about what they see. Is the old building still accessible?"

  "Yeah, just. The lower windows are all boarded up and there's steel security fencing around it. I think it's scheduled for demolition early next year."

  He made another note. "That might be a relief. Have you noticed anything in the more modern areas?"

  "Yeah, there's something about the Greville Wing. It's the most modern block; the only one remaining of two built during the last expansion in the 50's. One of the wards at the rear always feels freezing cold, even in the depths of summer." She shook her head. "Any electronic equipment left in that room for a while stops working until it's taken out. We've had electricians go over them with a fine-tooth comb but they check out fine. Spooky!"

  "It's been known to happen in other cases. There's a clear link between paranormal phenomena and electricity. Cell phones seem to do strange things to spirits," he said, thinking of Gerry Maguire, the ghostly pilot who featured in his last case. "Anything else you can think of, either in the buildings or the grounds?"

  She pursed her lips, looking into the distance. The mannerism was similar to Claudia, and Martin thought Caroline looked more like her big sister in that brief moment. "Only in the Dan Spade Pavilion," she said at last.

  "What's that?"

  "It's a glass structure, something like one of those old-fashioned conservatories. It was built in the mid-thirties by a benefactor on the roof of the Victorian main block as a kind of day room for patients. It's located right above the central hall. Some of the windows have stained glass panels with hearts in them, which look beautiful when the sun's at the right angle."

  "What did you feel there?"

  Caroline wrinkled her nose, and then shook her head. "It didn't feel bad, you know? All the other places I've described to you have felt awful in some way. The Spade Pavilion doesn't." She shook her head. "No, it feels restful; a place of calm."

  "Not all ghostly or psychic phenomena are bad, Caroline." He smiled. "I've been in places where I've felt a kind of pure joy emanating from the surroundings, as if the place has been truly and deeply loved."

  "Really?" Her gaze was intense. "That's not quite what I felt up there, yet it does feel peaceful."

  "I'm glad your experience of the hospital isn't all bad." He turned off the tape recorder. "Now, I have enough background to begin an investigation. All I need is a word with Doct
or Burwell."

  "I can arrange that," she said, glancing at her watch. "I really should get going to beat the lunchtime traffic. It can be murder on I-465 this time of day."

  He escorted her to the hall, where he helped her on with her coat. When he opened the door, she turned and looked up at him gravely. "I'm glad you're on the case, Martin," she said. "I feel I can trust you."

  Giving him a quick peck on the cheek, she hurried away.

  * * * *

  Mid-morning the following day Martin drove to the Daniels LaRoche hospital. The grounds were surrounded on three sides by a high chain link fence, the support posts driven into footings composed of an old orange brick wall barely visible through the snow. An empty security booth stood at the gates and the barrier was up, a sign in itself that the institution no longer housed in-patients. It was a long drive along the curving access road leading from Morris Street, a feature which reminded him of the origin of the old English expression “to go round the bend” when referring to the onset of mental illness. "Keep the insane out of sight of normal folks, lest the contagion spread," he said to himself and shook his head.

  At some time in the morning the road had been gritted, although it seemed few vehicles had passed that way; the post-Thanksgiving week was slow to get underway. The wheels of the Suburban growled and crunched through the unblemished snow that had fallen an hour before. As he passed through stands of trees and past snow covered lawns, Martin peered through the windshield for a sight of the buildings themselves. They remained hidden by skeletal but numerous trees and he wondered again at the predilection for hiding such places away, as if the stigma of mental illness could infect the sane on sight. On rounding the last of the curve, the hospital appeared. He slowed up and gazed at the brooding pile of buildings, ancient and modern.

  The central block rose, a five storey Victorian fortress of red brick and white-framed windows capped by a solid Mansard roof of gray slate. Little snow stuck there, the steep angle of the pitch shedding it in safety as soon as it reached any weight. A faint gleam of reflected light in the middle amidst the chimneys hinted at the presence of the glass pavilion. Attached to the arched front entrance was a blocky security center. It resembled a World War II bunker that stood near his mother's house on the Norfolk coast in England. Built of concrete with a brushed effect, it did nothing to enhance the looks of the older building. As a further measure of security, the entire frontage was screened by a metal mesh fence of the kind found skirting the edges of construction sites, and the lower windows had been boarded over with plywood sheeting.