The Family Tree

by John Everson

  “These guys are good,” he said to Caroline, who nodded. She pointed at the tall girl to one side of the stage wearing a long paisley dress and jabbing a bow across a violin—or a fiddle, Scott supposed it was called.

  “That’s my cousin Maggie,” she said. “She’s been playing since she was just a little kid.”

  Scott nodded at the smooth wail of her leads. “She sounds great,” he said.

  He found his foot tapping along incessantly with the music. The band played a couple bluegrass-style instrumentals and then one of the long-haired guitarists took the microphone and began singing a slow, low-voiced melody over a bit of a backwoods strut from the bass and drums. Something about the song sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it at first, not until the singer raised an eyebrow at the crowd and with a grin crooned, “I want your sex…”

  Scott almost choked as he laughed out loud. “George Michael?” he said. “Are you kidding me?”

  Rocky leaned over to whisper in his ear. “It’s the Last Tap,” she said. “That’s what this party is all about.” Her tongue licked a circle around his ear, and then she eased back into her chair. “I hope you’re ready for one crazy night,” she added. He heard a playful warning in her voice. Then she picked up his half-full glass and handed it to Jerry to top off from the keg.

  “Drink this,” she said passing it back to Scott after Jerry handed it to her. “You’re gonna need it.”

  Scott was already feeling the ale’s sensual heat moving through his body, but he accepted the glass and tilted it back, enjoying the cool heaviness as it slipped down his throat.

  People were getting out of their seats and starting to dance on the open floor around the band. When he set his glass down, Caroline pulled on his arm. “C’mon,” she said. “I want to see you move before you can’t move at all!”

  He laughed. “How much do you think I’m going to drink tonight?”

  It was Caroline’s turn to laugh. “More than you think. Trust me!”

  While he protested that he didn’t dance, Caroline would have none of it. “Everybody dances tonight,” she said. And he saw indeed, that already many of the tables were being pushed back so the dance floor could expand. The band played some kind of hoedown-style number and as Caroline dragged him towards the center, he noted that many of the men were acting more like pillars that their dates moved around. A couple of them had brought their glasses to the floor, and tilted back more ale as their girls shook and teased around them.

  It wasn’t exactly the structured formal dance he would have expected of a country inn. As he tried to follow Caroline’s moves, he noticed that some of the dancers around him were already clearly drunk. A couple of the women hung on their men as if grasping for support, while some of the men made no secret of pawing their partners in full view of everyone.

  “Looks like some folks can’t hold their liquor,” he whispered to Caroline when she pulled him in close at the end of a song.

  She smiled. “Nah,” she said. “Some of them started earlier than you. There won’t be a sober eye in the place in another hour. That’s the point of this night, don’t you get it?”

  He shrugged as the band began a slower, mournful number. Instead of clearing the floor, the dance space only got more crowded.

  “Yeah, I figured there’d be some of that, but…geez, look at them.” He nodded at a middle-aged couple dancing next to them. The man was wearing good jeans and a casual button-down shirt with a blue pattern. The woman had been wearing a halter top and white slacks. The slacks remained, but the man had pulled the halter down, exposing the fact that she wore no bra. He was bent over and sucking at one bountiful pale breast as her hands ruffled and grabbed at his black hair.

  “Get used to it,” Caroline warned. “That’s part of what this night is about too. There are more babies born nine months from the Last Tap around here than at any time of the year. And some of them are conceived right here in this room.”

  “You’ve gotta be kidding,” he said.

  Caroline rubbed her chest suggestively against his, and pressed her lips to his. They were soft and warm and she wasn’t letting him have any air but hers. He breathed her in and felt his pants tighten in response.

  “I am not kidding,” she finally said, breaking away. “We can stay here all night if you want.”

  “And watch?” he said, aghast.

  “Or join,” she said. She kept one arm around his neck, but with the other, traced her way down his side and across his thigh, before coming up to cup the thickness below his zipper. “It feels to me like you are not completely against the idea.”

  “That’s not fair,” he said. “You kissed me.”

  Caroline grinned. “And I’ll do it again. I promise.”

  The song ended, and a dark-haired woman came up behind Caroline and tapped her on the shoulder. She looked Italian and young—thirtyish and thin, dark complexioned. She was wearing a short red dress with a hem of black lace and a V-neck in the front that would have shown cleavage on the most unendowed woman. This woman, however, was not unendowed.

  “Can I take him for a spin?” she asked Caroline in a rich Southern drawl.

  Scott’s eyes widened. He wasn’t crazy about dancing with Caroline, if you could call what he did dancing. But he didn’t want to be with a stranger. He tried to catch her eye, but she ignored him.

  “Sure you can, Lucy. I’m a bit thirsty as it is.” She turned to Scott and placed Lucy’s hand in his. “She’ll take care of you,” Caroline promised. Then she leaned up and pecked him on the cheek. “Have fun!”

  And she was gone, back to their table, as the band began a new beat and the guitars started plucking a fast but catchy melody.

  “I don’t really dance,” he apologized as she held both his hands and began to kick out her feet in front of him.

  “Most of the boys never do.” She grinned. Her smile was infectious. “That’s okay though, cuz I can dance enough for the both of us. You just stay offa my feet but don’t let me go, you hear?”

  And with that, Lucy began to twist and twirl and generally kick up her heels around Scott as if he were a human Maypole. She pulled him down towards her when she dipped and then shimmied up his thigh when she drew close.

  He played his part as an anchor and watched the couples around the room. There were dirty dances going on all around. And some couples and threesomes locked in amorous embraces at many of the tables.

  When the next song began, another slow dance, Lucy clasped her hands behind Scott’s neck and swiveled her hips to perfectly match the sway of his own. The flowery scent of her perfume and the pressure of her hips made the heat that had been building in him for the past hour come to a head, and when he looked in her eyes, he saw that she was feeling it too. Her lips parted in slow motion, and he could see her tongue resting on the tip of her teeth. Somehow her body wrapped tighter around him and he bent without thinking to kiss her.

  She responded with a hunger that left him breathless. Her hands moved up and down his back, exploring him and slipping beneath his waistband to clutch at the slope of his butt. His hands roamed too, sampling the sensual curves of her, tracing the line of her hips to her thighs and then cupping her ass to squeeze her groin hard against his own. When his hand slipped along her rib cage, she twisted and suddenly he was holding her breast. His fingers slipped over the lace of the low V of her red dress and his fingertips slid along the smooth skin of her cleavage as they continued to sway slowly with the beat of the band. She raised her eyes to his, brazen, not moving away from his touch. That look was clear. She offered herself to him. He knew that he could take her back to his room right now and she wouldn’t hesitate. And he was having a problem keeping his mind from fogging over and just going with his instincts. Animal instincts that screamed at him to rip the dress from her bosom right now. Shred it. Bend down and suckle those pert, Italian breas
ts while her fingers dug into his shoulders. Take her now. Fuck her on the dance floor…

  Luckily the song ended then, and Scott blinked back the insane lust that had almost overpowered him.

  “I have a room,” Lucy whispered, not letting go.

  Scott took a deep breath. He almost said yes.

  “No,” he blurted. “I need to do something first.”

  Her hand slipped around his forearm. “I’ll come with you.”

  Scott lifted her hand off and he kissed her forehead. “Not right now,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

  Then quickly, before he lost his nerve, he backed away from her, and quickly moved towards one of the exit doors. He stopped there for a moment to survey the room, which had grown more risqué by the moment. There were clothes lying on the floor. Women lying on tables. The band was playing a countrified version of Prince’s “Erotic City”. He couldn’t believe how close he’d come to bedding sexy woman number four back there. He’d barely been able to break away from her touch, but now that he had, he felt the insane peak of desire abate, slightly. The sexual need didn’t go away though; he felt it buzzing in the back of his head, just waiting to rise again the next time he got within spitting distance of a woman. It was intense. Another drink and he was sure he wouldn’t be able to control it at all.

  Scott couldn’t see Caroline anywhere in the room, but he did see Sherrilyn. The flash of her hair drew his eye just as she led a handful of people out of the room through another door. He hurried in her direction, intending to ask her where Caroline might be.

  But she was walking quickly away from the hall, talking animatedly. Two men hung on her arms, while another couple walked behind. Scott followed them, and when they turned a corner, he immediately recognized where they were, though they’d come at it from a different direction than he had before. He stopped and watched them walk down the hall a few doors and then stop at the locked “Party Room” that he’d been curious about now for days. Sherrilyn fumbled a key into the lock and opened the door. He waited until they were inside, and then moved down the hall to try the door. It remained unlocked.

  He opened it a crack, and saw that the way was clear; a flight of steps led down, and he could hear their voices below, seemingly far away. He slipped inside and carefully closed the door behind him. Then he slowly made his way down the rough-hewn stairs, testing each one to make sure it didn’t creak before putting his full weight on it. When he reached the bottom, he realized that the stairs didn’t end in a room, they connected to a corridor. There were only two dim lights; one on the wall at the base of the stairs, and another about ten yards down. He walked slowly toward that one, and just beyond, the corridor ended in a T. He could hear the sound of laughter from the right, so he hung close to the wall and moved in that direction. There was a room just ahead; he could see a warm blaze of light brimming from the doorway. He approached it carefully, and bent down before peering around the corner of the jamb. There were three steps down, and then a short foyer before the room opened up; the majority of the space wrapped around to the right, and Scott crept along that wall until he could peer around the corner. Sherrilyn was laughing loudly at something one of the men had just said, so Scott risked a peek around the wall, assuming they were occupied.

  They were definitely occupied.

  The room held a wide-cushioned brown couch, an antique-looking divan and a couple of easy chairs, with an ornate oriental rug covering the center of the wood plank floor between them.

  Sherrilyn lay back on the divan, sipping from a goblet with her dress pulled down to expose her chest. Her hair was undone, and curled over the nipple of one pale breast. The other was being suckled by one of the men who’d been walking arm in arm with her. He knelt on the floor, and as Scott watched, she dribbled a bit of the amber liquid from her glass down her cleavage. He lapped it eagerly, not allowing any of it to drip onto the furniture.

  The other man, who had doffed his shirt to expose a heavy pelt of chest hair, leaned across the divan to rub his hands across her exposed skin. With each stroke, he was edging the loose dress lower. Meanwhile, on the couch, the couple who had walked behind Sherrilyn in the hall were now “ahead” of her. They were both completely naked, their clothes discarded in a jumbled heap on the floor. The woman sat astride the man, arching her back and holding on to his leg for support. Her stomach and breasts rippled as she began to rock faster and faster on his lap. The man held her with one hand, but wasn’t relinquishing a glass of ale. He held it out to his side with the other, not letting go of his drink while she ground herself against his hips. As Scott watched, she began to moan, and Sherrilyn laughed at the quickly developing carnality next to her. “Somebody really couldn’t wait!” she said.

  The man held up his ale and grinned from around the woman’s shoulder. “It’s a good thing you’ve got some of the hard stuff down here. I’m gonna need it to keep up with her tonight.”

  “Diane can always borrow Billy or Nate, here, if you can’t handle her,” Sherrilyn offered.

  “I can hold my own,” he promised, and then let out a moan of his own.

  “Maybe we’ll just ask Diane about that in an hour or two,” Sherrilyn teased, shifting on the divan as one of her lovers pulled the dress down around her ankles. She now wore nothing but a gold waist chain with small diamonds and a tiny triangle of red panties. Scott felt his lust rising dangerously as he watched the men play with her. His body ached to join them, but he also felt a twinge of jealousy, even though he’d only been with her once. His loyalty was to Caroline, but, still…to watch other men toy with a woman he’d slept with just a few days ago… His legs trembled as he imagined himself leaping out from around the wall and shooing them away.

  But then he heard another moan, this one louder and less erotic than the coos and whispers from the couches. This one sounded like the moan of pain. And from somewhere just beyond his field of sight, he heard a woman’s voice. She sounded lost. Weak.

  “Please, just let us go?”

  Sherrilyn propped herself higher on the divan and looked over her shoulder. Her lovers both turned to look in that direction as well. The suckler took the opportunity to stand, and began to undo his belt.

  Scott poked his head around the corner and stifled a gasp with his hand.

  The far right of the room was one of those areas in the inn that backed up to the trunk of the Family Tree. And pinned against the thick, peeling ridges of slate-gray bark, were two people. They were naked; their arms and legs were manacled and chained to the trunk. Their pale flesh was covered in thin trails of dried blood. They had clearly bled severely; trails of crimson crisscrossed their chests and trailed all around their thighs—all the way down to their feet.

  The man turned his head in a pained slow motion, and echoed his wife’s plea. “We won’t tell anybody a thing,” he said. His voice was low and slurred. “Just please let us go.”

  Scott recognized them then. They had supposedly checked out of the inn a long time ago.

  It was the Thornes!

  Scott’s eyes widened in shock. Why were they still here? Why had Sherrilyn chained them up? And why had she brought people down here for the past several nights if the Thornes were captives? Was hers really a sick little club that got off on torturing people? Some kind of sex and death club? He flashed on the clothes and auto graveyards in the forest beyond the inn and his stomach clenched. What was really going on here…

  Sherrilyn got up from the couch and walked over to the two, gently running her fingers across Mr. Thorne’s cheek. With her other hand, she reached between his legs.

  “I’m sorry, Richard, but you know I can’t do that. Somebody has to feed the tree, or the tree can’t feed us. I’m trying to keep your stay here as enjoyable as possible though. We like our guests to be happy.” She motioned to one of the men on the divan. “Nate, would you bring us two glasses of Belvedere Bourbon. We want t
o make sure Mr. and Mrs. Thorne stay warm tonight.”

  The shirtless man got off the divan and walked over to a small bar to pour the drinks.

  “How does this feel?” Sherrilyn asked, massaging Mr. Thorne. Her elbow bobbed back and forth, as she worked Richard Thorne’s thick, flaccid penis in her hand. The man answered with a faint moan.

  When Nate returned with the glasses, she pointed at the captive woman. “Give her a hand,” Sherrilyn demanded, and took one glass to feed to Richard. She held it to his lips with her free hand. At first he tried to refuse it. But then she twisted her arm that remained between his legs, and he yelped loudly. He stopped fighting the glass.

  “I’ve told you before, when I say drink, you drink. It keeps you happy, it keeps the blood flowing, it keeps you alive.”

  “I want to die,” he moaned.

  “Not ’til the fall harvest festival,” she promised. “You and Evie should be able to last here all summer. We’ll take good care of ya.”

  She pressed the glass to his lips and this time he didn’t protest. In moments, the tumbler was empty. Next to her, Nate finished feeding the liquor to Evie Thorne, and then took the empty glasses away.

  “How do you feel now,” Sherrilyn asked, and Richard Thorne answered with a slur. “Warm,” he said.

  She turned to Evie Thorne, and traced the tip of her fingernail around one drooping areola. The nipple responded instantly, extending like a bullet to meet her finger. The captive woman moaned from deep in her throat, only this time, it didn’t sound like a moan of pain, but of desire.

  “You don’t want to go right now, do you?” Sherrilyn asked quietly. The woman writhed against the wall, her hips beginning to gyrate in a familiar, obscene motion. She let out a faint squeal when Sherrilyn pinched one erect, bloodstained nipple.

  “Tell me what you really want,” Sherrilyn said.

  “I want…Richard,” Evie said in a husky whisper.