The dream man got tired of lecturing me, eventually, and then he got physical, instead, wrestling me across his lap, yanking up the long nightgown I hadn't realized I was wearing until just then, and then he spanked me! I couldn't remember ever feeling actual pain in a dream before, but I felt that. Every time his hand slapped down on my bare ass, I felt the sting and heat of it. I don't know how many times he hit me; everything blurred into a haze of pain after the first dozen or so.
He wasn't the least bit gentle. It wasn't like a few smacks during sex; this was full on punishment, like my dad used to give me when I was a kid. And it was unbearable. I struggled with every bit of strength and got nowhere. He had me pinned so tight I couldn't move an inch from where he wanted me, and his hand, it just kept smacking down, over and over. He was lecturing me while he did it, but honestly I couldn't concentrate on the words. All I knew was that he was angry about the house, telling me I had no right to do what I was doing and that he was going to teach me a lesson I wouldn't forget.
The weird thing is that I knew it was a dream. I knew I was dreaming but I couldn't wake up, and parts of it were foggy, like dreams often are, but the pain—that came through loud and clear. I prayed to wake up but I was stuck there until he was finished. By the time he finally did decide to stop, I was a sobbing mess. My ass was burning and throbbing like I'd sat down on a hot plate. My face was red and wet, hair sticking to it, snot running down my face. I haven't cried with such complete loss of control since I was a kid, believe me.
He let me go, and I slid to the floor, then, suddenly, I was awake and sitting up in bed, sobbing. I ran to the bathroom, convinced it had actually happened, but when I checked in the mirror, I couldn't see a thing. My ass was its normal color, everything was—normal. And I felt like I'd lost my mind, because even though there wasn't a mark on me, I could swear I still felt those huge handprints, pulsing on my skin. And I—
The words came to a stop, and Elizabeth cleared her throat pointedly. "Are you listening? Kinda embarrassing the hell out of myself here, so it would be nice if you paid attention," she said, one eyebrow shot up reprovingly.
April realized she'd gotten lost in the memory and had ended up staring off into space. But she hadn't been daydreaming; she'd been experiencing the story first hand, as if she'd lived it herself.
She flushed and shifted in her seat. Her body had reacted to the story, and she felt a phantom tingling in the general vicinity of her backside, though if she focused too hard, she'd have had to admit it wasn't the only thing tingling.
"I was listening, believe me. I have—" April trailed off, wondering how to phrase it exactly, so that Elizabeth would understand. "My grandmother called it an affinity for the past. It often goes along with the medium skills. When I touch an object sometimes, I see flashes of its history, for instance. When I'm listening to someone telling a story of something they've experienced that was deeply personal, sometimes I live it, like it was my own memory."
Elizabeth blinked slowly several times. It seemed to take her a minute to gather her thoughts. "You—experienced what I went through?" she asked slowly. "Like you're watching a movie or—" She was clearly confused and trying to understand, but there was an underlying tone of skepticism, as well.
"No, like it was me it happened to." She paused and laughed. "I'm not sure why this comes off less believable than me fucking a ghost, but, yeah, when people tell me a story with emotional attachment, I can let myself go until I can feel it all. It's a really strong kind of empathy, I think. Really, everything I can do is based around being strongly empathetic," she explained.
The blonde was quiet for a few minutes. Once, she seemed like she was about to ask a question, but she stopped herself. Finally, she nodded, "No, I think I understand now. And you're right. I've already seen a dozen impossible things in this house, and your mother—well, she convinced me the psychic stuff was real a long time ago. I've never forgotten some of the things she told me." Elizabeth reached for her purse and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She tapped one out of the pack and lit it with a shaking hand.
April, who wasn't fond of the smell of cigarettes, shifted her chair subtly to move out of the path of the smoke. She must have had a disapproving expression on her face, because her employer, or whatever Elizabeth was to her, gave her a guilty look and sighed.
"I know. Bad habit, right? I started smoking in college and kicked the habit years ago, but this house—" She trailed off, eyeing the stone exterior with a mixture of longing and disgust. "I started again when everything here got weird, and now every time I come back, I crave them. It's like a security blanket. You don't mind do you?" She seemed almost desperate for permission.
April shook her head, "No, it's fine, really. Besides, it's your house right? I'm just sort of working for you right now," she pointed out.
Elizabeth laughed, and it had a bitter tinge to it. "For now. You'll be owning it soon enough. He's chosen you and he gets what he wants. Unless you decide to leave. You can, you know? I'm not— He swore that the choice would be yours. I'd burn the place down and claim the insurance before I'd give him Foshi's daughter, you, without your consent." She leaned forward earnestly as she said that and gripped April's wrist with the hand that wasn't holding the cigarette and stared into her eyes. "You do have a choice," she assured her.
April swallowed nervously but put on a reassuring smile. "I know; he told me. He asked me if I would stay with him."
"And? And what did you tell him?" the blonde pressed. She sounded eager to know the answer, and maybe that was why April had confided what she hadn't told anyone else.
The younger woman dropped her eyes, looking at their clasped hands. The paler skin that crossed her own tan flesh as it held her wrist was freckled, and she concentrated on one of the spots as she spoke.
"I told him I'd think about it and we'd spend the rest of the month seeing how things went," April admitted. "I told him that he's living in a different time, things have changed, and I'm not used to being bossed around. So we agreed to find a place in the middle that we can both live with, but I'm not sure how it will go yet."
Startled, the blonde let go and sat back in her chair. She took a long draw off the cigarette as she stared at April. Finally, she laughed with real amusement and shook her head.
"You're Foshi's daughter, all right. She was stubborn as hell. No one could make her agree to something she didn't want to do. I think you'll be a match for him if you stay. I feel a little less guilty about bringing you into this." She dropped the remains of the cigarette to the flagstones and crushed it out with her foot.
"Guilty? Why guilty?" April asked. Her brow furrowed in confusion. "Your attorney offered me money for a job, I knew it was a haunted house, and I knew ghosts were real, so it's not like I was tricked."
"Ha! Except I bet you hadn't counted on a ghost who likes to punish people and invade their dreams with sex and a side of BDSM, huh?" Elizabeth was teasing, but there was some embarrassment still lingering over her experiences, which reminded April of a few questions.
"You said the dreams were sexual, but what I felt in your memory wasn't sexy at all, Ms. Hagmaier," April pointed out. "And you didn't give up living here over a few dreams, did you?" She knew there was more to the story and she wanted to hear it. There was a small part of her that was experiencing a feeling not far from jealousy. She didn't like the idea that she wasn't the first living girl John had hit on.
"Just Elizabeth, please," she said quickly. "Give me a second. It gets more intense, and I need fortification." She tapped out another cigarette and smoked half of it before she continued where she'd left off. April tried to hold off that time, to listen to the story from a distance so she could separate her own feelings on it, but, bit by bit, she was drawn back into the scenes until once again she was a participant.
Chapter 5
That first dream was a turning point in the house. I woke up from it knowing something in that house didn't want me there
. But I had no idea how bad it was going to get. I slept well the next night; despite being afraid to sleep, nothing happened. I should have known it was too good to be true. In a way, the dreams were the least scary part of all of it. I will fully admit some of them I actually did enjoy.
The following night, the scene replayed itself, except that time he tried a different approach. Instead of storming in angrily, lecturing me, and then blistering my ass, he tried seducing me. He was hot, and it was a dream, so why not, right? Plus, it was better then being spanked until I sobbed.
He pulled me up against his hard body, and his hand gripped my ass tight through the cotton pants I was wearing. It was some kind of old-fashioned underwear, like women wore in the eighteen hundreds. Bloomers and a chemise, I think they're called. They were tied shut with pale blue ribbons, and he slowly untied and unlaced the chemise until it fell open in front. He kissed his way down the side of my neck, over my shoulder, and then he found my breasts and began to lick and suck until I was moaning. I cupped them, lifting them to his mouth as the thin cotton dampened between my thighs.
I kept trying to remind myself that this wasn't real. Everywhere I looked in the room told me that this was not my life or my time, but it felt so good. So right. He devoured my body. Dropping to his knees in front of me, sliding the pants down my legs, and pressing his face between my thighs. His tongue probed between my pussy lips, stroking and caressing my clit until my legs shook, and I had to bury my hands in his hair for balance. I clung to him as he brought me to orgasm. And then I woke up. It was a much nicer wakeup call. I will admit that, too.
My body was humming with pleasure, clit still pulsing from the orgasm. I thought, at that moment, that maybe it was an added bonus with the house. I knew, I was positive, that these dreams were coming from the house by then. But I was thinking maybe it was a good thing, a sexy plus. I was so fucking wrong.
The dreams continued along the sexual route until eventually we were actually having sex. I looked forward to going to bed each night, and it made the other things that were happening in the house palatable. Everything kept going wrong. Workers quit, things broke, there were freaky sounds all night long, but when I was with him in my dreams, I could sleep through it. When I hid out in the bathroom and soaked in the tub, everything was peaceful. I wasn't sure why, but nothing weird ever happened in there.
He treated me like a lover, and I put up with the occasional ass smacks because the sex was so good. But it progressed from that to actual spankings again. Not punishment like before, but still—not my thing. He'd caress the skin as it burned, and he did other things to keep me excited while he did it, but I don't really enjoy the bottom role and I think he knew it. I also think that it had been a way to get control of me so I'd obey him when it came to the house. Gradually, he started lecturing me again, telling me that the molding wasn't quite the right color stain or the carpet I was choosing was covering too much of the wood flooring. Small things, at least to me, but I wasn't bowing to his manly demands.
My dreams stopped being a haven, and they started to become nightmares. I wasn't going to do what he wanted, and he wasn't going to give in. I got tired of it so I went to the doctor and got sedatives. I complained of vivid dreams that were keeping me from getting a restful sleep, and he prescribed something that would knock me out and keep me from dreaming at all. I slept like a baby, and he couldn't get to me in my sleep anymore.
But the physical things in the house escalated abruptly. It was like he'd given up trying to reason with me, so he was going to play hard ball. Things smashed left and right; I was pinched so viciously in the kitchen one night that I had bruises for days, but I couldn't see who was doing it. The light bulbs blew constantly, and I was buying them by the caseload just to keep up with it. By then, I knew there was more than one spirit in the house. I could almost feel their personalities in the pranks they pulled.
John was angry that I had cut him out, but he wasn't the type to pinch my arms or pull my hair. And he loved the house too much to gouge deep scratches in the hardwood floors. I don't know how many beings reside in this house, but it's more than a few, I'm certain of it.
And even though I was knocking myself out to avoid the dreams and the noises in the night, that didn't stop them from throwing me out of bed. Some mornings I'd wake up on the floor or find my covers ripped to shreds over my sleeping body. I had to take a break from the house and stay at a hotel every few days just to get some peace. I no longer saw any upside to what I was going through, but I'm stubborn and I didn't want to give in and sell, especially when I knew I'd be taking a huge loss if I tried to unload it in a hurry.
I started to go through the letters and messages I had received from people wanting to help deal with the spirits. Mediums, religious people, parapsychologists—it was no longer a joke to me. I needed help and I needed it fast. I must have walked two dozen people through the house, every one of them promised they could help me, and none of them did. Most wanted money, and I admit to paying a few of them for their services, but things got worse, not better.
Finally I met Maria. She was an Italian psychic who had recently immigrated to America to join her family. A pretty woman but tiny, shorter than me by several inches. She seemed so small to be that confident she could help, but she had charisma, and I decided to give her a try. I paid her the fee she requested, grudgingly; I'm sure she no longer thinks it was enough for what she went through, but at the time, it seemed high to me, and I resented pouring more money into this mess.
She walked through the house with her long black braid swinging behind her hypnotically and an assertive stride; I followed. She didn't want me to tell her anything or say anything at all. She didn't even want a tour; she'd find her own way, she assured me. I shrugged and let her lead. I'd have done anything at that point, really, anything.
She went through every room on the first floor and then she went into the basement and stopped short. I couldn't see her face, but her back stiffened and she didn't move for several minutes. She began to mumble under her breath and she paced through the entire basement, stopping at every room. The servants' quarters were once down there; now it's all storage rooms, but still there must be fifteen rooms down there, and she went into each of them.
The mumbling got more agitated, and by the time she'd worked her way through the whole sublevel, she was clearly upset. She practically ran back to the stairs, and I followed fast, because whatever had scared her, was scaring me, too. The basement was finished and well lit, but I was jumping at every shadow. I felt this prickling on my skin and goosebumps from cold.
When she made it up the stairs and into the kitchen she stopped and turned to me.
"This house is full of spirits. Some are just innocent souls trapped here, but others are evil. They don't like the changes in the house, and things will keep getting worse until they hurt you. All I can feel here is pain and death. The things that have occurred in this house are horrifying. We need to cleanse it immediately. Now. Today!" she said, grabbing my arms and tugging at them frantically.
I could tell she was close to panicking, so I nodded. Whatever she thought was best.
In the back of my mind, I wondered if she was working herself up in an attempt to extort more money out of me. But, no, she left and returned with supplies from her car and immediately got to work. I didn't have much faith in the sage she burned as she walked through the house, even forcing herself down into the basement again with great reluctance. I didn't follow her down that time; instead, I waited in the kitchen, and when she returned, she shook her head.
"This isn't enough. Salt!" she demanded.
I frowned at her tone but dug through the cabinets and handed her a canister of salt. She poured the entire thing into a huge pitcher of water and then began marking symbols on every window and door in the house. It took hours, and eventually I got tired of following her around like a lost puppy and sat down to wait. She tried other things. Even holy water at one point. She'd bro
ught it with her from Rome; blessed by the pope himself, she told me.
I think what she was doing was agitating the spirits, more than anything. There was a weird feeling in the air like you get before a big storm. Things started to rattle and shake. At first, I was busy trying to keep things from breaking, but I gave that up and moved to a safer place to wait it out. The wreckage was incredible. It was like a tornado had brushed through every room. And in the middle of it all, I heard a sudden scream of pain, and shouting.
I wanted to run out the door, but somehow I got up the courage to find her. She was in one of the guest rooms on the second floor. I stopped in the door, in shock. I couldn't see what was attacking her, but I could see her and—her pants had been yanked down to her ankles. Panties ripped right off of her, and she was being held face down on the bed. I could see her body arching backwards against the pressure holding her in place. Kicking and flailing desperately as she tried to get away. Wide red marks were appearing on her skin. Vicious welts all over her ass and thighs, and I realized she was being whipped by an invisible belt.
I just stared, gaping. I'd seen so many things in this house, and, yes, some physical things had happened to me, but nothing like that. It went on for, I don't know how long, really; it probably felt like forever for her. She was screaming and crying, begging him to stop, and I realized she could see him. It wasn't just a formless entity, it was a person, invisible, but there and real. Of course I knew who it was. Who had been invading my dreams, spanking me, punishing me when he felt like it. I doubted there was more than one kinky ghost in the house, but the jump from dreams to reality shocked me to the core.
No ghost story I ever read had prepared me for that. I couldn't see him or hear him, but her reactions made it clear what was going on. He was pissed that we'd tried to evict him from the house. I could imagine what he was saying to her, filling in his side of the conversation as she apologized and promised to leave right away if he'd just stop. He finally released her, and she stood quickly, yanking her jeans up, and then she stopped. She stared at an empty place and seemed to be listening intently, despite her tears. She nodded occasionally and shot me a look before bringing her attention back to the spot in front of her.
A Haunting Experience Page 11
