"I wear no perfume. 'Tis me you smell."
He laughed as he poured some powdery flakes into the paper he held cupped in his palm. "Yeah, sure. Essence of Gwendolyn, right?"
She giggled. "If you like."
He rolled up the paper and licked it side, front, and back. Taking a match from the table he lighted the tip of the cigarette, inhaled from it, and then handed it to Gwendolyn. She looked at it quizzically for a moment and then imitated his actions. She had no sooner inhaled the smoke than she began to cough violently, dropping the smoldering joint onto the floor. Simon retrieved it and placed it into the ashtray before saying, "I guess you don't smoke too much, huh."
"I—ugh—ugh—I never—" She continued to cough.
"Hey, I'm sorry, Gwen," he said. "I didn't know you were new to this. I should have warned you. It can be a little rough."
"A little rough!" she coughed. "Like swallowing coals it is!"
"Wait a minute. Here." He reached over to the night table And took the half-empty can of beer which he had been drinking earlier, and which was now warm and flat, and handed it to her. "Take a swig of this. It'll help."
Gwendolyn took the beer can and poured the liquid down her throat. "Aye, 'tis better somewhat." She turned to him, a look of confusion on her face. "Why in the Devil's name do you do that to yourself?"
"Do what?"
"Smoke that horrible plant!"
"Oh," he laughed, "come on. I'm sure you've known people who smoke pot."
She shook her head emphatically. "No, never. My father used to smoke tobacco in a pipe, but neither he nor any other man I ever knew coughed like this." And she coughed again as if to illustrate her point.
"Well, you don't get the same effects from tobacco as you get from pot, so I guess it's just a question of being willing to pay the price for the pleasure."
"Pleasure!" she exclaimed. "What possible pleasure—!"
"Hold it, here, here, take another drag, but slowly this time, just a little bit." He held the still-smoldering joint out to her, and she took it from him cautiously. "Take a few more small drags and you'll see what I mean. You'll get stoned."
She did not place the joint between her lips, but rather appraised him with furrowed brow. "And yet again you use this term. What do you mean by it?"
"Mean by what?"
"Being stoned."
"Stoned? Well—well, like, getting high. You know, intoxicated."
Her eyes went wide. "As with rum or brandy?"
He smiled. "Different. Better."
"Indeed." She looked at the joint with renewed interest and then took a few small puffs on it. She inhaled the smoke, seemed about to choke, but managed to repress the urge to cough. Simon took the joint from her and dragged on it again, after which he handed it back to her and the process was repeated.
They sat in silence for a few moments. Gwendolyn was staring blankly out at the half-moon which floated among the dark clouds. Simon was staring at her breasts. Gwendolyn began suddenly to giggle uncontrollably. "What's so funny?" he asked, smiling.
"Oh, I don't know. Nothing," she said, calming down. Then she began to giggle again, louder and more forcefully. "Shhh, shhh!" he cautioned.
"Shhh, shhh!" she repeated and began to giggle again. It was an infectious laugh, and Simon found himself beginning to laugh along with her. "Shhh," he repeated. "We'll wake the whole house."
"Sorry, sorry," she said, trying to stop laughing and failing in the attempt. At last she managed to calm down a bit, though an occasional chuckle interrupted her words. "I feel so light and silly."
"Yeah, that's the general idea," he smiled. They sat in silence for a few moments. Then he said, in an attempt to make conversation, "Well, are you excited about the day after tomorrow?"
"Hmmm?" she asked languidly. "What is to happen then?"
"Meeting the band, rehearsing your numbers. You know."
"Oh, that. Not really. It will be a simple thing. We will do well, you will grow wealthy, and my Master will bless me."
"Yeah, right." I hope to hell you're right, he thought. "You're pretty calm about it. If I were you, I'd be real excited."
She shrugged and then smiled slightly. "Such petty prospects do not excite me. But you excite me, Simon Proctor. You make me mad with longing." She leaned toward him and pressed her mouth against his. She took one of his hands and pressed it palm first against her breasts, moving it around on top of them with a strong circular motion. Simon followed his first instinct and thrust his tongue into her mouth forcefully as he grabbed one of her breasts tightly in his hand, but then disengaged himself from her. "No, wait a minute."
"Why?" she asked with concern. "Do I not please you?"
He laughed at the foolishness of the question. "Are you kidding! I can barely keep my hands off you! But, listen, if we're going to have a professional relationship, we should think twice about getting involved with each other. I mean—"
Gwendolyn giggled. "Such a foolish man! What has tomorrow to do with tonight? And what has tonight to do with yesterday?"
"Huh?"
Gwendolyn stood up and faced him. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, gazing upward at her. Slowly she lifted the nightgown up around her waist and stepped with one foot off to the right, so that though standing, her legs were spread and her pink cleft revealed. She then knelt on the bed, placing one knee on either side of him, wrapping her arms around his neck, squeezing him with her thighs. "I have longed to have you take me, Simon Proctor. I have longed to feel your hands upon my body." She bent down and kissed him passionately, her fingernails raking his back, pressing her vaginal lips against the coarse denim bulge beneath his belly. "What has tomorrow to do with it, or next week, or next month, or next year?" She pulled the thin straps of the negligee from her shoulders, allowing her breasts practically to pour out into his face. "I want you to impale me, to pierce me, to fill me with your seed."
Simon was filled with a lust unknown to him for many years. There had been groupies by the hundreds, female bodies available to him wherever he went for whatever he wanted, and he had grown accustomed to masturbating within those bodies while dreaming of his dead wife, but not until this moment, not since Lucinda's death over a decade ago, had he felt this aching need, this overwhelming impulse to take, to possess.
He grabbed her roughly by the shoulders and spun her over onto her back upon the bed. As he unzipped his dungarees and pulled them down, Gwendolyn spread her legs wide apart and caressed her inner thighs with her long white fingers. Simon fell down upon her without preliminaries, but none seemed to be needed. She was wet and open, and his erect member slid easily into her tight warmth.
He began to thrust in and out of her, grunting and muttering wordless expressions of joy. Gwendolyn's back was arched and her eyes were closed, but small, almost pained gasps broke from her throat. She alternately hugged him to her tightly and dug her nails into his back, trembling and shuddering with ecstasy and pleasure. He grabbed her by the wrists and pressed her arms back over her head, pinning her to the bed as he threw himself into her harder and deeper, feeling her large breasts sliding beneath his sweaty chest, as her thighs crushed him between them. With a quick motion he released her wrists and reached back with each arm, hooking his elbows behind her knees and pulling them forward toward her head, bending her already opened body upward and even more open, spreading her nether lips even wider apart, thrusting deeper and deeper into her. A cry escaped from her lips—a cry of pleasure or of pain, he knew not, he cared not. He bore down upon her madly, pounding his flesh against her flesh with ever increasing passion, passion at that moment indistinguishable from violence, a study in possession and need. He did not stop to wonder who was in fact being possessed by whom.
At last the almost painful ecstasy rose in his member, and he began to spurt into her, to flood her, to drench her interior with his fluids. It seemed an endless torrent which he spewed into her, and when finally the river was dammed he fell forward upon her, spe
nt and exhausted, dizzy and breathless. She lay limp beneath him, panting and quivering, her trembling hands gently stroking his head.
They lay there motionless for what seemed a long while, an eternity, silent and weak. At last he rolled over onto his side, extracting his already-shriveling organ from her sopping passage, and then breathed deeply, allowing the exhalation to pass long and loud from his mouth. "Good grief!" he muttered.
"Hmmm?" she asked softly, rolling over and placing her head upon his trembling chest. "What did you say, my love?"
"I just said—I just said—" he stopped. "I don't know what I just said."
She laughed softly, a deep, rich laugh. "I hope it was kind, whatever it was."
He draped his arm over her shoulder and gently moved his hand up and down her side. "I'm sure it was. I'm sure . . ."
They lay still, silent. The low moan of the wind as it whistled through the naked branches of the trees outside the window, and the slow and steady breathing of the two people, were the only sounds. Soon Gwendolyn could hear Simon's breathing lapse into a slight snore. She smiled and hugged him. "Dear, sweet man," she whispered. "Sleep and dream, sleep and dream . . ."
The hours passed, and the motionless silence of night pervaded the Proctor home. In the rear bedroom, old Floyd Proctor snored heartily, the tassel of his nightcap lying across his face and tickling his nose. The shot glass and bottle of rum stood, both empty, upon the table beside his bed. The Proctors had been makers of rum for three hundred years, and old Floyd, who heartily disapproved of drinking to excess, nonetheless maintained the old custom of taking a healthy draft of rum before retiring. The custom went back to the old days of the triangle trade, when New England traders bartered West African slaves for New Indies molasses, the prime ingredient of the rum they brewed and both drank and sold to the Indians and the few hardy adventurers who braved the dangers of the trans-Appalachian West.
He had been taking a drink of rum each night before retiring for the last seventy years, since he was a boy. And though he never altered the amount, the passage of time and the inevitable weakening of the human body had significantly reduced his capacity. He thus slept soundly, so soundly that the passion which had transpired a short time before in another bedroom on the same floor went unnoticed. Old Floyd slept peacefully, his jagged snores drowning out the clock which ticked upon the night table.
Next door, Lucas Proctor and Karyn Johannson slept the deep but unrefreshing sleep of utter intoxication. Lucas resolved almost daily not to mix his drinks, but this resolve was invariably made as he knelt slumped over a toilet bowl early in the morning. He broke his resolution nightly, as soon as he returned to a relatively normal condition. He regarded himself as an inveterate partier, but he was in reality little more than an alcoholic and drug addict. His sleep was drug induced and imparted neither regeneration nor true repose.
Karyn lay beside him, insensate from yet another night of overindulgence in bourbon, brandy, and hashish. She slept with apparent soundness, but her sleep was mere sedation, albeit self-administered. In the dead sleep into which they had both fallen, neither had heard anything from the bedroom down the hall.
Next door to them, Rowena Proctor tossed about her bed in the grip of a tense insomnia. She had not slept, she had not drunk, and she had heard everything. She had smelled the pungent odor of marijuana, had heard the soft voices of her father and Gwendolyn Jenkins, heard the laughter, the creaking bedsprings, the cries and the moans.
Damn her! she thought. Daddy, how could you!
The Proctor home was silent with both sleep and watchfulness. For reasons known best to herself, Adrienne Lupescu was weeping quietly into her pillow. Rowena Proctor had buried her head beneath her covers, hoping to keep out any further unwanted sounds. Lucas, Karyn, and old Floyd were sound asleep.
And as the moon began to set, Gwendolyn Jenkins gazed down at the sleeping face of Simon Proctor, her green eyes glowing in the darkness with an inhuman ferocity. She whispered a prayer to the Dark Lord, and sent her spirit out upon Simon. And he began to dream.
Simon felt himself moving, but the feeling was not connected to any truly discernible motion. He sensed himself falling, and yet was standing upright, watching as indistinct forms floated by him. They moved from below to above, thus giving him the impression that he was descending, whither he knew not.
He sensed at last that he was standing upon solid ground in the midst of billowing fog. He saw a lone figure approaching him from the distance, her long, full skirts flapping silently in the cold wind. He moved his right hand toward his face to rub his eyes, and found to his distress that his hands were bound together at the wrists with heavy iron chains. He attempted to run, but his ankles were likewise shackled. He trembled with dread as the figure came into view, parting the fog before her like some demonic Moses.
"I can save thee," Gwendolyn Jenkins said. "Do thou but denounce her as we all have, and bind thyself to me, and thou shalt not hang."
"G-Gwen? Gwendolyn? Is that you?" he stammered.
"There is yet time," she said, her voice a monotone devoid of expression. "I have given all I have, all I am, for thee. I ask but this little thing in return."
"I—" he began, and then was startled to hear a voice which was not his own issue forth from his trembling lips. "I'll not compound my sin with lies and betrayal," he heard the voice say. "Get thee gone from me, harlot! Get thee gone from me! Leave me to die in God's grace!"
"There is no grace for thee, or for me," Gwendolyn said in the same even tone. "There is nothing for me without thee, my love, nothing. Thou must live, that thou mayest love me!"
"I love thee not!" he heard the voice scream and felt his throat tear with the vehemence of the cry.
"'Tis not true," Gwendolyn replied softly "Thou art my love, my dearest love, thou art my all. Do but denounce her, and thou shalt live. Do but love me, and thou shalt be as a prince among the rabble." Simon felt his heart leap into his mouth as Gwendolyn's face melted with a terrifying immediacy—into a decaying death's-head whose sole vestiges of humanity were the insane green orbs which blazed from the naked eye sockets. "But betray me, lie to me, abuse me, deceive me, and I shall visit a vengeance upon thee which will make thee beg for the hangman's noose!"
Simon Proctor jumped up in his bed and screamed. When Gwendolyn reached out to soothe him, he jumped from the bed and slammed himself loudly against the wall. He stumbled over to the doorway and switched on the overhead light.
All was as it should have been. His bedroom was the same as always. Gwendolyn was sitting up in the bed, the covers pulled up to her neck, her black hair tousled, her green eyes given a ruddy cast by the shock of suddenly interrupted sleep. "What is wrong?" she asked.
Feeling suddenly very foolish, Simon said, "Nothing. A bad dream, that's all." He smiled sheepishly. "It's nothing, really. Just a silly dream."
Gwendolyn lay back down and placed her left arm behind her head with a slow, languid motion. "And of what did you dream?"
"Not worth talking about," he said as he climbed back into bed. "Just nonsense."
"Was I in the dream?" she asked, smiling impishly.
He laughed. "Yeah, but you wouldn't be flattered by it." He laughed again, and she joined in his laughter.
"I do not like that at all, Simon Proctor," she said, her smile telling him that she was not the least bit offended. "Perhaps you are afraid of me."
"Maybe, a little," he said, returning her smile. "You really are quite an extraordinary woman."
"And you," she said, rolling over and placing her head upon his chest, "are an extraordinary man."
"Hey," he laughed, trying to preserve levity and avoid a conversational turn toward seriousness, "you already got the job, right? No need for the flattery."
She raised herself up upon one elbow and gazed into his eyes. When she spoke, her voice was serious and earnest. "Know this one thing, Simon Proctor, that I am as steady as the North Star, and that I will uphold you in many thin
gs. You can rely upon me as though I were of your own flesh, for you are my beloved and the sole lord of my person. My soul belongs to the Dark One, but in all else I am yours, and will be faithful to your wants and your needs and your desires, even unto death!"
There was an intensity about her words which unnerved him, and he attempted to dismiss her protestation of devotion with a gentle skepticism. "Gwen, come on! You and I have just met, for Christ's sake!"
"Nay, 'tis not so," she said breathlessly as she moved her face closer to his and brought her lips near to his mouth, "for I have known you and loved you for centuries—"
The kiss which seemed inevitable was interrupted by a loud knocking on the door of the bedroom. "Daddy?" Rowena sobbed. "Daddy? Are you awake? Daddy?"
"Hold on a minute, Row," he said as he grabbed his dungarees and pulled them on. "Hold on." The tone of his daughter's voice upset him. She was not a crybaby, never had been. There had to be a good reason for her to be crying, and that fact frightened Simon.
He flung the door open wide and then stood dumbly as he beheld the pathetic scene which presented itself to him. Rowena, her nightgown tattered and torn, stood weeping before him, cradling her cat Pistopheles in her arms. "I tried to pick her up, and she just went crazy, Daddy, she just went crazy!" she wept. "What's wrong with her?"
Simon looked down at the trembling animal, looked at the open, frothing mouth and the panicky, shuddering, extended claws, and he thought for a moment that the cat had contracted rabies. Then he looked at the filmy and expressionless, wide and terrified eyes.
The cat was blind.
Chapter Ten
November 18
"Tom's basement," as Simon had referred to his customary rehearsal hall when speaking on the phone a few days before, was not the subterranean vault of a building, as the name might suggest. It was a rock club of some repute on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and it had come by its name in an honest, if somewhat fanciful, manner. The small group of musicians with whom Simon Proctor had been associated for the past ten years had seen their fortunes rise and fall with his. Good musicians all, they nonetheless lacked as individuals the stage presence, composition skills, and imagination with which Simon had risen to the heights from which he seemed about to fall precipitously. All watched with suicidal fascination as their careers and incomes seemed to be teetering beside his upon the brink.
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