Whoever he was, he was a master. The hands almost levitated Catharine's body above the chair. She wanted to scream, but the pleasure was so exquisite, so overpowering, that it was only her breathing and her deep throaty moan of release that came forth. The room swam in colors.
When she drifted slowly back to consciousness, she was almost able to convince herself that she had imagined it. But she knew she had never been able to give herself such ecstasy before.
Whoever he was, she knew she would have him again.
CHAPTER ONE
Big Tom Johnston would screw anything that was lying down, standing up, or bending over. He'd always been that way and even on the night they brought him home on a slab, he still had a hard-on from several of the ladies down at the cathouse on Canker Beach working him over. That's what gave him the fatal heart attack, and even the heavy gray ambulance blankets couldn't decently shroud what was still the biggest and hardest cock in the county.
He'd always done everything in a big way. The house he built was the grandest in town, sitting high on a hill overlooking the sea. His wife had been the loveliest woman anyone in Placid, Massachusetts, had ever set eyes on, and when she died so suddenly-some said mysteriously-in her early thirties, little Catharine quickly blossomed into an even greater beauty than her mother.
They say that truly beautiful women are damned in this life and the next. They are tormented on earth by the lust of men and the envy of women. The world forces vanity upon them, teaches them to love themselves, and cheers when the beauty begins to crumble into the cold and lonely abyss beneath the surface.
Laura Johnston had seemed contented enough, tending her beauty like a sacred trust, ignoring Tom's wild and raunchy life outside the mansion, filling her days with shopping and fittings and beauty treatments and her nights with elegant dinner parties where she shone like a rare jewel in the setting Tom had provided for her. And she was raising her enchanting daughter Catharine to be much like herself. Tom adored them both, everyone said.
Gossip and rumor are the gas and oil that keep a small town running, and the Johnstons provided plenty of crude ore for the gushers. There were some who said that Laura had just upped and run away one night, not died at all. It had been so sudden, and not even her best friends knew a thing about it until after the quick private funeral. But that was silly gossip, and anyway, if she had run away why would she leave all her jewels behind?
Catharine had been only twelve when Laura died-or disappeared-but she soon filled her mother's place as the ravishing beauty and hostess at Tom's dinners. The big house continued to be filled with people, and Catharine never did seem to go through the adolescent stage that ordinary girls do. She sat at the opposite end of the lavish table from her father, and even when she was still a child, many a proper New England gentleman had to cope with a sudden rise in his trousers when she unexpectedly threw a glance his way.
She was so beautiful that everyone always said she should have been a movie star, or married a president or a prince. But she infuriated every other young girl in Placid by staying right there. At eighteen, she married the town's most eligible young man, Richard Burgess, and after the brief honeymoon she brought him back to her daddy's house to live. Life seemed to go on exactly as before, although the gossip didn't even slow down.
Richard was a handsome enough fellow, although of course he faded into bland whenever Tom was around. And then, of course, there had been the extraordinary scene at the wedding. No one could ever forget the sight of the bride's father carrying her across the threshold while the young groom trailed behind-and had the door locked in his face!
It had been the most lavish and gala affair ever. Tents and a bandstand were set up on the rolling green lawn that sloped for a mile from the house down to the inlet, past rose gardens and cherry-tree arbors and the croquet lawn and the swimming pool, past the stables to the boathouse. Lanterns were strung in the shade trees and manicured hedges, imported champagne poured freely from noon past midnight, whole new beds of tropical flowers had been planted for the occasion (they would die before the week was out), and the orchestra played, over and over, "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World."
Tom had stopped the music and was making a speech about giving his little girl away. He stood with his arm around Catharine, and the two of them were so beautiful, tall and sun-dappled under the poplar trees, that more than a few eyes misted at the sight. Tom had a catch in his booming voice, and Catharine looked like a rare museum piece fashioned out of translucent china.
Something he said-no one knew what it was, exactly-shattered the illusion as suddenly as if a knife had slashed through a masterpiece canvas. Catharine collapsed without warning against her father's broad chest, and sobbed as if her heart was broken.
Tom swept his daughter up in his arms and carried her through the stunned crowd of guests, up the hill to the house. Her wedding train billowed out behind them as he crossed the brightly lit terrace and disappeared through the French doors that led to his private study. The guests watched the young bridegroom follow after, alone and awkward, trying to catch up. They saw him knock at the glass panes, then they saw him try the door, and they stood in silent embarrassment as he went around, finally, to the front of the house, to be admitted finally by Tom's servant, Abel.
The happy couple did not reappear that day, but Tom came out later and the party went on almost as if nothing had happened. He kissed all the women, patted a few choice bottoms, and made everybody happy with the dancing and jokes and champagne.
Catharine hid herself upstairs the whole nine months of her pregnancy. Her friends never even got the pleasure of seeing her swollen and off-balance. Once, after Karen Makepeace had tried to see her and been turned away by the maid, a rumor started in town that even Catharine's own father wasn't allowed to see her in her present condition. It was true that the roadhouses and whorehouses all up and down the coast rang with Tom's great gusty spirits night after night, and the country club was never so filled with women outdoing themselves in finery and flirting, and the best homes welcomed Tom Johnston, drunk or sober, invited or not. There were more than a few people in town who were delighted that Catharine's pregnancy kept her daddy out of the house.
The baby was a girl, and they named her Jennifer. Tom said she looked exactly like Catharine had when she was born. Now the house filled with guests again, and Tom presided at the dinner table, with Catharine at his side, more radiant than ever.
Richard's pride in fatherhood knew no bounds. The beautiful baby was always brought down to be admired by the guests. The house seemed filled with love.
Tom died when Jennifer was six years old. The night they brought him home from Mary's cathouse, dead except for the part of him that refused to lie down, Catharine locked herself in her room again. She was inconsolable.
Richard would speak to her through the door.
"Darling, please let me come in. I want to comfort you. I know how you must be feeling. Please let me in."
"I'm all puffy from crying," came Catharine's sad little voice from within.
"But I love you. It doesn't matter how you look. You look beautiful to me."
"No," she wailed softly, and he could hear her collapse into tears of grief again.
Waiting for his wife to recover from her father's death, Richard found it not unpleasant to dine alone with his adorable little daughter. Jennifer at six was already aware of her power to enchant, and she loved dressing up to have dinner alone with her daddy at the big table that had too often been filled with grownup dinner parties which excluded her. Now she and her daddy sat together in the candlelight, just the two of them, and she could make him smile and laugh by tilting her head just so, or imitating her mother's gestures and conversation. After dinner, she would cajole him to give her her bath, instead of handing her over to Lisa, and sometimes he would. Then he would tuck her in and hug her and she would snuggle down deep inside the covers so as not to hear what happened next.
Her daddy would stand outside her mother's room, down the big hall, and talk softly to her through the locked door. Jennifer covered her ears and hummed to herself so she couldn't hear their voices.
Richard spent his evenings locked in his late father-in-law's study. He would sit in the big leather chair behind Tom Johnston's desk, and plan. He planned how he would have the house redecorated, get rid of the antiques, and fill the rooms with furnishings of his own taste. He planned how he would take over the responsibilities of Johnston Enterprises, maybe even change the name to Burgess Estates. He planned how his private life with his wife would be different, now, without the forceful and all-powerful presence of her father everywhere. He thought about Catharine lying upstairs prostrate with grief, her lithe legs spread unheedingly apart, her orifices moist with soft surrender, her skin pale and satiny against the velvet cushions of her chaise lounge. He would begin to stroke himself until it became necessary and urgent to open his fly and finish himself off. Then he would open the catalogues of modern furniture firms in Boston and Philadelphia and plan some more, until it was time for him to go upstairs to his solitary bed.
Little by little, Catharine recovered from her grief. Richard's nightly pleading outside her door was the praise, the flattery, the love she needed to bring her back to life. She began to look cautiously into her mirror again, brush her hair, and refrain from more tears so that her eyes would not be permanently damaged. Finally, after about six weeks, she allowed her husband in to see her. They sat together on the love seat and he told her how he had missed her, how lovely she looked. He touched her cool skin and soft bright hair with adoring fingers, he kissed her sweetly behind her ears and upon her eyelids. He swore over and over that he would make her happy again.
Worship of her beauty was her aphrodisiac, and she responded. The throbbing bulge in his pants brought pity to her generous heart, and she could not hold out long against what he promised. Their love-making had never been much good to her, but she knew that this was her own secret. She had read in psychology books that actual sexual experience is a disappointment to many girls, after all the romantic fantasies. At night, sometimes, lying awake in the silent darkness, she knew it was something else-a stirring that had been awakened in her once, never fulfilled. Because one special man had touched her-a man bigger than any who had ever lived-no ordinary man could ever satisfy her. But such dark thoughts were quickly smothered with a sleeping pill, and she would appease her terrible longings alone, with her long, slim fingers, as he had shown her how to, her phantom lover, her demon, and her damnation.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she thought she heard him coming to her, unexpectedly, down the long, silent, carpeted hallway. But he never came, and Catharine did not wait any more. She was grown-up now, a married woman with a daughter of her own.
She sighed as Richard caressed her, and her body responded to his flattery and his touch.
"My eyes are puffy from crying," she murmured.
"No, darling. Your eyes are lovely."
"I don't want to come downstairs, in the light."
"I'll tell Abel to have nothing but candles everywhere, tonight. Won't you come down to dinner?"
Catharine finally nodded. "All right, dear. Tell Lisa I'll be coming down, and tell Jennifer."
"She's missed you terribly, you know."
Catharine's smile was wan and brave. "Has she? Poor baby."
She wore a black dress unadorned by jewels. At the dinner table, her full breasts pressed against the silk and she saw that Richard could not take his eyes off them. She smiled across the table at him, trying not to look at her daddy's empty chair.
"Daddy, you're not listening to me!" Jennifer said, pouting.
Richard immediately took his eyes off his wife and grinned at his little girl. "I heard every word you said," he told her.
"What did I say, then?"
"If you stop spoiling that beautiful face with a frown, I'll tell you."
Jennifer's face instantly beamed with a smile which she already knew (at the age of six!) would make everyone smile back. She lights up the whole room, Catharine thought. She's very much like me.
"You said that Laurie Whittaker spit at you in school today," Richard said.
He was listening, Catharine thought in surprise. He was wanting me, my breasts, my body, but he was listening to what the child was saying all the time.
"I hate her," Jennifer said. Abel was passing the serving tray, and the little girl helped herself to a large portion of roast beef as she spoke.
"You mustn't hate anyone," Richard said. "It would make your pretty mouth turn sour. You have to understand that other children don't have all the blessings you do. And besides, Laurie doesn't even have a daddy, any more. You should be extra nice to her."
Jennifer's soft baby eyes filled with tears. "Her daddy moved away," she said sadly.
Catharine felt her own eyes welling up. Her daddy was gone, too. She looked at the empty chair at the head of the table.
Richard reached over to cover her hand with his. "Darling, if you don't eat, you'll begin to get too thin," he said, and Catharine obediently stopped toying with her food and forced herself to eat.
When Abel brought in the coffee, Lisa came in behind him to claim Jennifer for her bath and bedtime.
"Aren't you going to put me to bed tonight, Daddy?" She broke from Lisa's grip to thrust herself against Richard's arm.
"Not tonight, Princess," he said. He leaned down to kiss her soundly on the mouth. His hand caressed her slim little back and came to rest cupped around her baby rump. "Good night, now."
"Good night, Daddy," she sighed, hugging him tightly. She skipped over to Catharine and delivered a big wet kiss. "Good night, Mommy."
"Good night, darling."
Jennifer put her hand in Lisa's and they started out of the dining room. "Hey," Richard called after them, "who's the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world?"
Jennifer laughed with delight. "Me!" she shouted.
After the child had left the room, Catharine looked at Richard sadly. "My daddy used to say the same thing to me," she said.
"You, my dear, are the most beautiful woman in the whole wide world!"
"Am I?"
"You know you are."
"Richard ... I need to be told that. Isn't it silly? Sometimes it frightens me, that I can never get enough of being told. My daddy used to..."
He interrupted her impatiently. "I'll do better than telling you," he said. "I'll show you..." He rose from his chair and helped her to her feet. They left the dining room with their arms around each other and started slowly up the wide circular staircase.
She leaned against him and his hand brushed her breast. She felt it swelling to his touch, and she felt the old renewal of hope that this time...
They went to his room. Hers, still virginal and ruffled white with her childhood things, made him uncomfortable. As they passed by her door, Richard said, "Catharine, I've been thinking about the house. About a lot of things. I want to make some changes..."
"Shh, not now!" she murmured, moving her body against his.
"Oh, God, Catharine, you're so beautiful!" he cried out.
"Yes," she whispered, "yes, yes, yes..."
He picked her up in his arms (he was not nearly so strong as her daddy had been) and carried her through his door. He laid her yielding body on the bed, and stepped back to struggle out of his jacket, tie, and shirt. He sat down on the bedside chair to take off his shoes and socks, and then stood, unfastening his belt. She lay still, staring at the swelling under the dark flannel of his trousers, and then, as he unzipped his fly, against the white of his shorts, finally, there it was.
Catharine gasped with anticipation to see it rise toward her, huge and hungry and glistening with moisture to match her own. She lay as still as she could on the bed, her stark black mourning dress against the white sheet outlining her perfectly proportioned hips and full luscious breasts, her delicately curved waist, her long slender legs in shiny nylon sheaths, and the black silk pumps that arched her slim feet so that the ankles appeared like finely etched portals waiting to be thrust apart.
He would undress her slowly, admire her body, her lips, her love offering. He would pet her and slowly, slowly make her know how much she was loved, and then she, would move wildly, involuntarily, toward him because she couldn't stand waiting for it another second. She waited to be transported beyond reason, to feel the juices of being wanted rise inside her and flood them both with pleasure.
But Richard had worshiped at her altar too long already. With a moan of impatience, he fell across her body and hungrily began to lift her skirt, to wrinkle the elegant dress in his eagerness to get at what was underneath. He pulled at her pantyhose and left them wrapped in a binding and ugly shrivel around her ankles. Her shoes were still on, her dress crumpled. He thrust himself deep inside her. Yes, she was ready, despite herself. She had wanted it too, for so long, for her whole life. His hardness filled her with a moment's stupendously satisfying fullness. But then he groaned loudly, grunted and clutched at her, and it was over. He lay limply across her for a moment. Then his fingers began, wearily, to seek her secret place, to give her relief, dutifully.
"No," she sighed. She didn't want it now. She took his hand and held it. They lay silently. When his breathing became regular, she slipped out from under his sweaty body. She pulled up her pantyhose and tried to straighten the wrinkles in her dress. She looked at him, sprawled on his stomach across her daddy's bed. And her mother's.
Catharine pulled the sheet over her sleeping husband, over his feet, his legs, his bare ass, his back, his shoulders. She pulled it over his head, as they do to corpses. And then she left the room.
His come was running down her leg, making the nylon sticky against her skin. She pressed her vaginal lips tightly as she walked down the hall, trying to keep it in, mingled with her own wetness. No one was awake in the house. She walked the last few steps to her room with her hand holding herself there. It comforted, a little.
In the bathroom, she carefully peeled the pantyhose down, feeling with her sensitive fingers the sensual contrast of nylon against soft, smooth, warm flesh. Her legs were smooth, never needing shaving. Her feet were perfect, free from any blemishes or bumps. She ran her long slim fingers caressingly over her well-shaped toes, idly wondering what it would be like to be married to a foot fetishist ... or at the very least, someone who noticed such delicious details as pale pink toes that had their cuticles softened once a week.
As the water ran into the deep marble tub, she lifted the somber black silk dress over her head, losing her reflection in the mirrored wall only for a second as the whispering fabric covered her eyes. All her movements were leisurely, slow-motion, ritualistic. As her golden head emerged from the folds of the dress, she saw that her stretching body, arms high, looked like a statue in a fine Roman garden. White alabaster skin, no imperfections anywhere. Taut muscles and flat stomach, full upright breasts tilting their straining nipples toward the mirror, a long slim neck with a young girl's vulnerability about it, the perfect face with full mouth and delicately flared nose, high patrician cheekbones, and wide-set eyes of pure violet. And the glorious hair, purest gold, silky and fine, but thick enough to brush into any shape that caught her imagine. She let it down now, loosened the black ribbon that held it, and murmured aloud in pleasure as the soft curls placed themselves in a frame for her face. One hand reached up to touch the golden shower, the other reached down to touch the soft matching gold that curled below her flat, smooth belly.
They were wrong, she thought, those jealous friends of mine. I didn't get fat, I didn't get marks, I am still my daddy's beautiful princess. Beautiful, the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world. I still am. And I'm ripe now, ready for the pleasures I deserve.
Her hands moved languidly in her hair, one above the other. Her breath began to come in slow deep gasps. Her fingers reached down along the sleek damp skin of her inner thigh.
Not too fast, there's all the time in the world...
She opened her mouth to her own image and ran her tongue sensuously around her lips. She turned away and let the hand that was on her head move down to the gold faucets of the tub. She turned off the water, tested it, and, with her other hand still touching the fine soft pubic hairs that curled round her moist lips, she poured oil from a silver decanter into the water.
She turned back to the mirrored closet door and reached inside to take her douche bag from its hanger. She stared for a long moment at the sparkling array of glass and silver and cut-crystal bottles and jars. She selected one. Closing the closet door, she took a long moment to look at herself, standing nude as if caught by surprise, holding the red rubber bag and the pale blue jar against her white skin. Then she turned and crossed the mirrored marble room to her sink. She held the bag under the water until it swelled like a living thing, bursting to ejaculate its warm sudsy contents. She turned oft the water, and opened the lid of the jar. It was half filled with lovely-scented cream. She stuck the long hard nozzle of the douche bag into the goop, playing with it fondly and rubbing it until it was thickly coated and slippery.
Catharine carried the bag to the toilet. She spread her legs wide and sat down. Teasing herself first with a finger, then the tip of the cream-covered phallus, letting it spurt a bit of its warm water on her, then just barely inside her, then stopping the flow and massaging herself with the business end of the nozzle, she began to squirm and moan with pleasure.
She watched herself reflected on all sides, but soon her eyes glazed over and she shut them tightly as the sensation propelled her, willingly, over the edge. She never heard herself cry out.
Reality faded back slowly, adrift on a cloud of languid peacefulness. She withdrew the creamy nozzle from her secret mouth, no longer hungry. Yawning, she rose from the commode and tossed the equipment into the sink. She stepped over the low rim of the big tub, admiring her graceful body in profile ... was that a ripple on her thigh? She stepped out, backed to the mirror, and examined herself closely.
No. It must have been a trick of her eyes, so sleepy. She let her breath out, not aware that she had been holding it. She stepped into the warm oiled water and sat down, the fragrance of lilies of the valley rising subtly to her nostrils.
Her nipples floated like small ripe plums on the water. She smiled down at them and cupped her hands with the liquid, pouring it over herself and watching the rivulets caress her fullness. It was like an absolution. She dipped her head to let her face slide under the water for a second, and then shook her head, laughing aloud.
CHAPTER TWO
When Lisa brought the breakfast tray and opened the drapes to the bright sunny morning, Catharine saw a note pinned to her fresh rose.
"Darling, come and have lunch with me today. One o'clock sharp in front of my office. I love you. Richard."
She smiled and settled herself back against the pillows. She loved to wake up in this room, all white and bright with sunshine, just the way it had been every lovely morning of her life. She resolved to put sadness away. She would wear something cheerful and sweet today. Her tall oval mirror in its carved white frame caught a glint of light and smiled back at her.
"Ask Abel to have the car in front of the house at twelve-thirty, will you please, Lisa?"
"Yes, Miss Catharine."
"What's Jennifer doing?"
"She's down at the stables."
"Oh." Catharine opened the morning paper.
"Shall I run your bath now?"
"Mmmmm ... no! No, that's all right, Lisa. Please don't bother. I'll take care of it myself." She suddenly remembered the cold cream jar standing open on the sink, the greasy douche bag thrown down. She had been too exhausted, too relieved, too lazy last night to clean up after herself. "Leave it, Lisa," she repeated. "You may go now."
Lisa nodded and left the room. Guiltily, Catharine slid out from under the breakfast tray balanced on its ivory legs, and slipped into the bathroom. She washed and rinsed the douche bag and nozzle efficiently, with none of the care she had shown for it last night. As she went to put it away, she stopped, arrested by her reflection in the mirrored door. Even in the harsh morning light, my girl, she thought, you're still okay. More than okay. You're beautiful. Twenty-six years old, with a six-year-old child, a husband who worships you, and you're still your daddy's princess ... only daddy is gone now. Her face puckered for an instant, but in the harsh daylight she caught herself quickly. No more tears, you'll freeze that way. That's what her daddy used to tell her. She wouldn't cry any more.
In another minute she was back in her big white bed, gobbling down the eggs and toast with her usual healthy appetite.
Two hours later, Abel pulled the Lincoln alongside the curb in front of the building her daddy had built. Richard was there, waiting impatiently. He opened the rear door before Abel had a chance to do it for him.
"Hello, darling," he smiled. "How beautiful you look today."
Not a word about her being a little late. She was glad she had worn the blue dress. Mourning really didn't become her. She wore no jewels, though, and her hair was twisted into a simple French knot. Its smooth strands gleamed and sparkled, even in the dim interior of the car. She wore no makeup, except for a light foundation base, a dusting of powder and pale lipstick. Her eyes needed no help to look smoldering and sexy, whether she wanted them to or not. Richard took her hand as he slid in to sit beside her.
"The Wharf, please, Abel," he instructed. In a few minutes they were sipping Bloody Marys in the corner table that overlooked the fishing fleet from a secluded vantage point.
"My favorite restaurant," Catharine said. "How thoughtful you are, Richard." In some ways, she thought.
"I want to talk to you. Away from the house."
"Oh? Something not for Jennifer's little ears? I hope?" she grinned mischievously. On the other side of the little alcove where they sat, a mirror was hung, garlanded with fish nets and lobster pots. She could see herself smiling when she looked up at Richard. The mirror was just behind his right shoulder.
"I think it's time you got out of that house," Richard was saying.
Catharine saw her reflection go pale. She looked straight at Richard, wondering if he had gone quite mad. "Out of my house?"
"We never did take that long honeymoon," he said, holding her trembling hand on the table.
"Oh! Oh, you mean a vacation! Oh, well, yes, maybe it would be all right, for a little while. Where would you like to go?"
"Catharine ... darling, a little vacation is not enough, and your promise to take one is not enough. We've been on the verge of leaving a hundred times in the past seven years, and we've never gone anywhere."
"That was when my daddy was alive," she said quietly. She withdrew her hand and put it in her lap.
"You will go, now?"
"Yes, if you want to, Richard."
He smiled, raising his Bloody Mary glass to her, and drained it. She watched him, but didn't touch her own drink. Her hair looked good this way for a change, she was thinking, although she really must get to Eugene for a real styling. It had been ages.
"There's something else."
"What is it, Richard?"
"About the house."
"Yes?"
"Now that your father is gone, I think it's high time that you and I made it more of our own home. We live with all of his things, and of course they are beautiful, and valuable, but ... I appreciate them, I do, and I appreciate what they mean to you, darling. But ... well, I want you to completely redecorate the house, in any style you like. Would you do that for me?"
"I like the style it is now, Richard," she said, puzzled.
"It's the past, darling. Your past, I know, but still ... I want the future to belong to us, and to Jennifer. Please. I think it's important."
"I don't want to change anything," she said in a small voice.
"It's time," Richard insisted firmly.
Catharine was an obedient girl. Richard was the only man in her family now. She had always done everything she could to please her daddy, and now she had to please her husband. Resolutely, she determined to do as Richard asked, but the unthinkable fear of putting her whole life behind her made her shudder involuntarily.
"All right, Richard," she said, trying to smile bravely. The woman in the mirror smiled back. That's my girl.
"That's my good girl," Richard said, patting her hand. "We can get a fine price for everything, and..."
"No!" Her vehemence surprised them both.
"Darling, what is it?"
"I won't sell anything to strangers. There's room in the attic ... plenty of room, for everything. Please, Richard, please. I won't ... I ... I can't. Don't you see?"
The waiter came over, and they looked down as if studying the menu. Richard signaled that they were not ready to order yet, and the waiter left. When he looked at his wife again, Richard saw that tears were threatening the shimmering violets.
"All right, darling," he said. "It doesn't matter, really. If you want to keep all that old dark furniture in the attic, of course we can. Okay?"
He was rewarded with a grateful smile. Her lips, even when trembling, were deliciously suggestive of secret delights to be shared. Suggested, he thought, but somehow never fully realized. Was it his fault? Every man in town envied him the possession of this magnificent creature, yet ... oh, well, the sex was never what you thought it would be when you were a dreamy kid. Everybody knew that. But sitting in a public restaurant with his sensuously beautiful wife, he felt a stirring in his crotch. He shifted his position on the chair and looked away from her mouth that couldn't help promising more than this earth held for any mortal man.
Catharine glanced at her own tremulous smile in the mirror opposite her, and saw her husband squirm imperceptibly and she knew she could have anything she wanted. But she was fair. She had promised to take all of her daddy's things and put them away, to furnish her daddy's house with new things, Richard's things. She would do it. She could go up to the attic any time she wanted to, to revisit her childhood. She could arrange it all the way she wanted, any way at all, with her daddy's things right next to her own. After all, she was a grown-up woman, and it was time to put away her childhood. She would do whatever Richard wanted. She was a generous person. Knowing that she could always have her own way, it was easy to give in. It was the knowing that was important.
It might be fun at that, she was thinking, to have her own secret place with all her daddy's things and her own hidden away from other people's eyes and hands.
"Can we go to Boston and New York to shop for new things?" she asked, pretending eagerness.
Richard was visibly relieved. "Of course, darling. Any place you want. Paris, if you like."
"Oh, no. Let's not travel after all, Richard. Let's spend our time fixing up the house."
"I can't get you away from there, can I?" he said, amused.
"Everything I want in the world is right there," she said, simply. She looked down at the menu so that her eyelashes made a natural, lacy fan across her elegant cheekbones. "I think I'd like the soft-shelled clams," she murmured.
They furnished the house in large stark modern pieces, mostly. It was Richard's taste, and Catharine didn't really care. She dutifully shopped for the finest in glass and Lucite and teak and rosewood and imported rugs and statues you could see through. She bowed to her husband's judgment in all her decisions except one. Her daddy's portrait, showing him in riding boots and field jacket, remained on the dining room wall. Tom Johnston looked just as much at ease with the stainless steel and glass as he had with the French Provincial. But then he had always dominated his surroundings.
Designers and decorators and artists and artisans and workmen and measurers and movers and cabinetmakers and painters were in and out of the house constantly for nearly a year, but Catharine didn't mind. As the old things were assembled up in the attic, she spent more and more time there, arranging them and just plain daydreaming.
Richard insisted that they must now share the same bedroom and sitting room, although of course they would have separate baths and dressing rooms. Catharine acquiesced solemnly. But when the day came for her little four-poster bed to be moved out of the room she had slept in all her life, she had to run up to the attic to hide her tears. The movers followed her, and reassembled her bed exactly as it had been, in a little corner space near a window. Then they brought up the rest of her things, her private things: her dressing table, her old wardrobe still holding her lovely handmade little-girl clothes, her dear old oval mirror that had watched her grow more beautiful every day. The mirror was her special friend, the one to whom she had fled for reassurance when things went wrong.
She had them set it carefully between her bed and her doll house. She stood for a while alone in the attic, staring into the familiar glass. She saw the little girl she had been at Jennifer's age. She saw the teenager she had been, the only girl in town who never had a pimple or. braces on her teeth. She saw herself beginning to blossom, with small breasts swelling gently until they were full and rosy-tipped. Long legs mysteriously shaping into firmly curved womanhood, a slender waist defining itself, dimpled buttocks rounding magnificently into perfection. This mirror had never failed her. She stood looking at the woman she had become, and was pleased again.
But there was a glimpse, only a shadow, really, of something else that had happened before that mirror. Catharine flushed deeply, remembering, and turned away quickly, before the desperate longing could begin.
The busy days of refurnishing the house went quickly. Richard's take-over of the Johnston empire was thriving, and Catharine's friends frequently dropped in to see how things were progressing. Jennifer had a marvelous time, bouncing on the new furniture and pretending to be mistress of the house. She imitated Catharine in every way she could, going through stages of growing up that enchanted everyone who saw her. Catharine, more than anyone, loved to see her daughter just as she herself had been, and she encouraged the little girl to play dress-up and make-believe. Jennifer would come in from her riding lesson or from school and go directly to the first mirror at hand and say, in a mimic of her mother's voice, "Goodness, there's a smudge of dirt on my chin!" and rush upstairs to have a bath. Catharine laughed, but Lisa clucked disapprovingly.
"She's going to be vain, that child," Lisa would say.
"Oh, Lisa, she's just a baby. She's so like I was. Do you think I'm vain?" Catharine would say.
"You're fishing," Lisa answered, inevitably, as she had since Catharine was small.
"Am I, Lisa?"
"Fishing for compliments, that's what you always do," Lisa said.
"Lisa, tell me the truth. I can count on you, you've always been honest with me. Tell."
"All right, Miss Catharine," the stocky older woman would sigh. "You're not vain, not that anybody can see. But you're a miracle, you are. God alone knows how you keep your head from gettin' big as a balloon from all the flattery. You're beautiful. You're the most beautiful thing in this town, that's for sure. And no, you're not vain. Is that what you had to hear?"
Catharine kissed Lisa's dry cheek impulsively. "Thanks, Lisa. I mean it."
"Well, I don't know how you do it, but you ought not to encourage little Jennifer to love herself so much. She's not you, pretty as she is. She doesn't have your daddy, God rest his soul, to keep her in line the way he did you."
"She has her own daddy," Catharine said. As she said the words, something lurking just beyond them threatened to envelope her. She felt suddenly dizzy and nauseous. She clutched the first solid thing her hands could touch, to keep from falling. As her head cleared, she found herself clinging to Lisa with tense knuckles.
"Miss Catharine! Are you all right? What is it, then?" Lisa asked' helping her to a chair.
"I ... I don't know. I suddenly felt so dizzy. I'm all right now."
Lisa's eyes twinkled knowingly. "Another baby is it? About time, with Jennifer almost ten years old."
Catharine shook her head. "No, it's not that."
"Sure?"
"Positive."
"Pity," Lisa observed. "It's probably you've been workin' too hard, so much to do in the house."
"Yes ... that's it."
"Why don't you go down to the beauty parlor and get your fine hair done in a nice new style? That always cheers you up, doesn't it?"
Catharine smiled gratefully at the dear old face that still worried down over her. "Yes," she said, meek as a child.
"Go on, then," Lisa said. "Sure you're feelin' okay now?"
Catharine stood up. What on earth had come over her? She had never fainted in her life. "Yes, I feel fine, honestly."
She never understood about the abyss of blackness and unnamed fear that had opened up around her that day, and it didn't happen again until two years later.
CHAPTER THREE
"My darling," Richard was saying, "you're thirty-two years old. It's natural that you should begin to have a few lines in your face..."
"One! Just one! I only have one, near my eye. My left eye."
She was lying on the bed. She had nearly fainted, and now Richard was rubbing her wrists as he consoled her. But he sounded impatient. He would be late for work if he didn't leave soon. She could hear Abel gunning the car down in the driveway under their window. But she couldn't help the feeling of terror. She needed him there.
"Richard..."
"Yes, Catharine." He looked at his watch, pretending not to.
"You don't care if I get old, and ugly..."
"You'll never be ugly, Catharine. But it's human to grow older. I've got lines, lots of them. See?" He leaned down over her, smiling, but definitely impatient.
"I don't want to have lines. I'm sorry, I know I'm being idiotic..."
"And childish."
"And childish," she repeated obediently. "But ... you won't love me if I lose my looks, I know it. What else do I have-nothingl I never went to college, I never learned to do anything. Everybody in this town is waiting for me to get wrinkled and old, and then they can laugh at me. ... " She dissolved into sobs.
Richard stood up. "This really is very silly, Catharine. Of course I'll still love you. You ought to know that. In fact..." He trailed off, thoughtfully.
"In fact what?" she gasped through her tears.
"In fact, maybe when you're not quite so perfect, I'll love you more." He grinned down at her, trying to make her smile.
"No," she said quietly. "You won't."
He went to the dressing table and smoothed his hair with a quick glance into the mirror. "Catharine, you really are being impossible. One little shadow of a normal line, and you've become a complete hysteric. Please, pull yourself together. I must get to the office now."
"You see? You can't wait to get away from me."
He stared at her for a long moment. She turned her head on the pillow so that her left side would be hidden.
"That's not like you, Catharine," he said, not unkindly.
"I'm not like me any more!" she wailed. Richard left the room, and then she heard the car gun away.
Crying would only deepen the line, maybe make more lines. She stopped her tears with a loud, unattractive and uncharacteristic sniffle, and sat up. She put on her dressing gown and went out of the room, down the wide carpeted hallway to the end, where the little door led to the attic steps.
Her daddy's big old leather chair now sat right before her oval mirror. Catharine curled up in it, put her head back, and contemplated herself. In this light she looked as she always had. The sun came streaking through the attic windows like a diffused, rosy, faraway memory. Catharine sighed deeply. Her dressing gown fell open. The tangerine silk nightgown underneath made the outline of her legs look carved out of soft marble. But they were warm flesh. She moved, slowly, turning this way and that to see the gentle sunlight play on her skin, highlighting the textures of worn leather, soft silk, smooth skin.
Slowly. Slowly, her long legs were revealed to the mirror as her hands pulled the bright silk up over her calves and her thighs. She spread her legs, a little at first, then wider. Burrowing her head deep into the indentation that her daddy's broad back had made in the chair, she felt safe. The mirror reflected all of her as she lifted the gown high and gazed deep into her own pink and furry cunt. Its little nest of fine golden hair highlighted the treasure as her long tapered fingers opened herself wider. One hand pulled her dressing gown from her shoulders, and her eyes admired the unblemished curve from her cheek down along her graceful neck, around the glowing smooth shoulder, finally coming to rest inside the low neckline of the shimmering gown. She touched her straining nipple, saw it rise against the silk, and slowly she let the gown slip down. Her body tingled with pleasure as she watched her breasts emerge from their coverings.
"Beautiful," she whispered, and then said it aloud. "You're so beautiful. I love you...." Her hand probed deep into her moistness, and then withdrew to run teasingly down the inside of her thigh, almost to her knee. Shudders of pleasure began to shake her whole body and she leaned forward from the chair, close to her face that was glowing with life and excitement.
"Mommyl! Are you up there?"
In one motion, Catharine pulled her gown back over her shoulders and thrust her arms into the dressing gown. Damn! How had she forgotten to lock the door at the foot of the stairs? She must have been so distraught that she didn't stop to think. She stood up on legs that shook and threatened to give way. But her voice was an expert mask as she called down.
"Yes, darling, I'm here."
"May I come in?"
"No, Mommy will be right there, precious."
She breathed deeply three or four times, and turned to open the locked door and take her daughter back down the steps to safety.
"Mommy, why can't I ever play in the attic? You go up there so much of the time. Why won't you ever let me play there, too?" Her voice was not wheedling, just curious.
"It's not a place for playing, darling," Catharine said, leading Jennifer down the hallway. "If you want any toys from the attic, you know Abel will get them for you."
"Well, what do you do up there all the time?"
"Not all the time, surely!"
"Well ... a lot of the time."
"I ... I just remember."
"Remember what?"
"Oh, when I was a little girl."
"My age?"
Catharine looked at her twelve-year-old daughter. Jennifer was no longer the slim little wisp of new grass-she was beginning to bud. She already knew about what to expect when she became a woman, any day now. Catharine sighed. "No, not your age, younger. I remember when I was a very little girl. I guess that's silly."
The subject of being a very little girl bored Jennifer. She changed the subject.
"Will you show me how to put on makeup today, Mommy? You promised, for the school play. Please."
"Not today, darling. I have an appointment. I'll be late if I don't hurry and dress right now. You can watch me get dressed, if you like."
"Okay. But when?"
"First chance I get. The play is not for weeks yet."
"I know, but I have to practice, don't I? It takes skill, you said, and I have to learn how."
"Yes." Catharine looked at her daughter's shining face, thinking what a pity it was she had to grow up at all.
Jennifer drew up a little tufted stool to sit close to her mother, watching intently in the mirror as the subtle touches of highlighting and enhancing color transformed the lovely face into a stunning one. She loved the scents and the textures and the array of jars and bottles like an artist's palette waiting to produce a masterpiece.
"How come you're using that stuff? You never did before."
"It's just a little pale rouge."
"Well, you never used rouge before, did you?"
"Jennifer, when you get ... older, you have to change the makeup you wear." Catharine's voice stumbled, and she turned on the chair to look away from the mirror, directly at her daughter's sweet upturned face. "Jennifer, I think I really have to hurry now. Please, let me finish by myself."
"Are you getting older? Is that why you're changing your makeup? Why do I have to leave?"
"Jennifer, please go now. I mean it."
Jennifer sniffed at her own image in the mirrror, and glided haughtily out of the room without looking back.
Catharine picked up the house phone. "Is Abel back with the car yet, Lisa?" she asked impatiently.
"Yes, he's back. He's in the garage, polishing it up."
"Please tell him to hurry, and to meet me in front in ten minutes. I'm late for an appointment at the beauty salon."
"Okay."
"What?" Catharine's voice was sharp. "I said, yes, Miss Catharine."
"Thank you." She hung up the phone and hurried to the closet. She reached first for the red and yellow Pucci print, thinking she needed happy colors this morning. But then she remembered Mr. Eugene fussing at her about blue. Saying she should always wear shades of blue, because it set off her coloring so well. She put the Pucci back and took out a navy shirtwaist instead. But it looked like something an older woman would wear, she thought suddenly. Fighting panic, she reached for a powdery-blue pleated skirt that had a matching cashmere sweater in one of her dressers.
The single strand of perfect pearls which had always seemed school girlish suddenly looked matronly. She flung them on the floor, fighting back her rising frustration and rage. Who needs jewelry to go to the hairdresser, anyway, she told herself, and stood quietly before the dressing table for a last check before leaving the room. The makeup was wrong. Rouge didn't highlight the fine cheekbones in order to draw attention away from the hint of a crowfoot line at the eye. It made her look like she was blushing, or angry at something. Blinking back tears, she sat down and began to cream off the makeup. She took her time, because it was important to make all the strokes in an upward gesture. When her face was fresh again, aglow from the brisk rubbing, she turned on all the lights for the first time since early that morning, and stared at herself unflinchingly. It was time, she decided grimly, like someone going to the gallows. Time to let Eugene take over. Special creams and masques and whatever else it took to ward off the disaster. He would know what to do. And maybe he would be kind enough to do it in secret, not in front of her friends who would love to see Catharine Johnston Burgess begin to fade and crumble.
"Of course, love," Eugene said soothingly, when she arrived at his place forty-five minutes late for her appointment. He took her to a private little cubicle. In a whisper, she confided in him nervously.
A wrinkle-yes, it's true-had appeared that very morning. Eugene understood. No one worshipped beauty more than he. He examined her with a magnifying glass. He couldn't see any lines, not one, not even a hint. He swore on his roommate's head that he saw no sign of a flaw on her perfect face. But he agreed to begin preventive measures-never too soon, love, he said-and in absolute privacy.
"Just our little secret," he whispered. "You can trust me, love. Your beauty is the shrine I worship at. It will be my sacred trust to tend the fire. You shall never grow old, not you, dear Catharine. You are a goddess, and I shall be your vestal virgin." She looked past her own reflection to his, but there was no trace of a smile.
She put on the coverall smock, and he tilted her chair back so that her long hair flowed into the basin. Eugene played with it in his fingers for a moment, as he always did. "Such luster, such incredible texture!" he sighed.
"Eugene ... is it still the same? No ... no sign of..."
"No, love, no sign at all. Not for years yet. Your hair is magnificent. Haven't we always taken the absolute best care of it? What wouldn't every beautician in the whole world give to work on hair like this! Why, most of them never even see such hair, they can only dream about it. I'm just going to give you a pure castile wash and herbal rinse, just like I always do. Then we'll do your face, and I'll set this crowning glory later."
Catharine sighed, and relaxed under Eugene's tender and sensitive fingers. The warm torrent of water and his deft male hands moving in her hair made her feel pampered, adored. Slowly, lovingly, he moved his palms and thumbs and fingers around and up and down against her scalp, massaging the warm moist suds deep into the hidden roots. As she gave herself up to the hypnotic pleasure of Eugene's shampoo, her knees spread slightly apart beneath the long smock.
"But my appointment was for half an hour ago. I was here on time. Who's he working on that's so special? Don't tell me, let me guess. Catharine Burgess?" The shrill voice penetrated Catharine's trance-like peace. She recognized it as belonging to Ann Birmingham, who had been four or five years ahead of her in school and was already a middle-aged harridan with four messy children and a voice to shatter steel.
"Don't tell me I can't go in there. He's a half hour late for my appointment and I have a right to know who's holding me up!" With that, the door to Catharine's cubicle opened and Ann Birmingham stuck her bloated face inside. "Oh, hello Catharine. I figured it was you. Getting the works, are you?" Ann's smile was a cross between a hippo's and a barracuda's.
"Mrs. Burgess doesn't need the works," Eugene said sweetly. His hands caressed Catharine's head as the rinse water flooded her tender scalp with a warmth that tingled deliciously all the way down to her cunt. "All she needs is a plain wash and herbal rinse." He turned for a moment to scrutinize Ann's scowling face. "My goodness, look at you, you've gone too long between appointments again. I'll be with you in a minute. There's a new issue of Playgirl out there somewhere, I know you love that magazine, why don't you find it and amuse yourself for a few minutes, okay?" He smiled ingenuously, and Ann Birmingham backed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
"Oh, Eugene, I don't want anybody seeing..." Catharine began.
He wrapped her head expertly in a huge fluffy towel and tilted the chair to an upright position. "Now don't you worry about a thing," he said to her mirror image, wagging a long bony finger. He went over to the door and turned the key. Catharine sighed and he began the treatment.
He spoke continuously, soothingly, of her incredible bone structure, her god-given eyebrows that never needed a speck of tweezing, her miraculous long lashes-"I don't know a woman in this town who doesn't need falsies on her eyes," he said-and her fabulous skin. All the time, he was applying a thin green gel over these features, but her apprehension was dissolved by his comforting words. She held her neck high and her eyes never left her reflected face as he covered it with the masque. His fingertips stroked and smoothed as her face slowly became encased in the hardening plastic.
"There!" he exclaimed finally. "I'll be buggered-oh, excuse me-but I'll really and truly be damned if you don't look exquisite even like that. Now the gel will begin to pull, just the tiniest bit, and that means it's setting. It will feel good, I promise you. You mustn't laugh or cry, promise? For thirty minutes, and then I'll come and peel it off-ever so gently-and voila! You are going to be beautiful forever, my love, I promise you that. If God can make such a miracle as you, it is my sacred trust to keep it that way. Now, don't you worry. Do you want something to read?"
Her eyes stared straight ahead through the green slime, and she lifted her hand to signify "no."
"Well, it's back to the piggies. I'm going to set this timer, and you can watch how long it takes. I'll be back when it's time to remove the yum-yum, all right?"
She didn't respond. Eugene unlocked the door, held up the key to show her that he was going to lock it from the other side, and in a moment she heard him turn it.
She sat staring at herself, without moving or twitching a muscle, for the whole time. She was not bored. Under the smock, her hand cupped itself around the rise where her legs met, but the hand didn't move either. She sat absolutely still, in a reverie, gazing at herself and waiting.
When the key turned in the door again, she was startled. Eugene stepped inside quickly and locked it again. "Oh, my dear, those women! AH your friends are here today, would you believe it? Poor Lilly Sanford, she simply can't stop herself eating those lurid chocolates. She brings in a whole one-pound box of Fanny Farmers now every time she comes in here, and she polishes it off while she's under the dryer. Poor old fat thing."
Catharine couldn't talk because of the stiff masque, but she thought, she's not old, she's my age.
Eugene picked up the timer. "Half a minute to go. Are you comfortable?"
Catharine waved playfully with her hand, and Eugene smiled encouragement. When the little buzzer went off, he whispered dramatically, "It's time, Catharine."
As he pulled away the green snake-like skin, her own face was revealed in sections, like a tantalizing striptease. The color was marvelous, especially in contrast to the masque, with vibrant inner warmth pulsing beneath her pale-veined temples. Her forehead was clear as ever, unscarred by any hint that she had ever frowned. (Don't frown, Princess, her daddy used to say. Don't ever frown, not ever. It would make an ugly line across your beautiful forehead. Daddy couldn't stand to see that. ... So she had tried never to frown.) Around her eyes, as Eugene's careful fingers peeled away the rubbery gel, she looked as young as ever. She leaned forward, anxiously, toward the mirror. Wordlessly, Eugene handed her a magnifying glass with a long pearl handle. She watched for the line, but it was gone. (Had it ever really been there?) Her nose was revealed, her fine patrician narrow nose with elegantly flaring nostrils. The space over her lip had never shown a trace of shadow; the masque came away easily and then her mouth was free to smile her special gratitude at Eugene's reflection as he watched the mirror for her reaction. For the first time since she had sat down in the chair, she took her eyes away from themselves.
"What do you think, Eugene?"
"Perfection," he said simply.
"It feels-tingly."
"That's the important thing. It keeps the blood circulating, the capillaries and all that. That's what will keep you beautiful forever, Catharine."
She laughed up at his solemn face.
"Now, the makeup," he pondered. "The makeup must be very subtle, very special. I'm going to give you something entirely new and unique. We'll emphasize-ever so slightly, you really don't need it at all-those marvelous angles and the drama of those eyes. The hair, I think, should be stark and classic this week. To get used to the new face."
"I don't want a new face!"
"No, no, of course. I didn't mean that. I meant the new makeup. My dear Catharine, do you trust me or don't you?"
"Yes," she said, subdued. She slid back down into the chair. "Go ahead, Eugene."
Someone knocked on the door. "Eugene, I've got Mrs. Doughty here, are you finished with the room?"
"A minute, Debbie, a minute!" Eugene called. He grimaced apologetically down at Catharine's reflection. "You don't mind, do you, love? Your secret is safe, but could we move into the other room just while I do your gorgeous hair? Mrs. Doughty has to get her legs waxed. She's like a grizzly bear, you know, poor old thing."
Catharine laughed. With one hand holding the damp towel wrapped around her head and the other clutching the huge folds of the smock, she stood up and followed Eugene out of the cubicle.
"Catharine! I didn't know you were here. I mean, I knew this was one of your regular days, but I didn't see you when I came in. Been getting a special private treatment of some kind?" Her old friend Karen Makepeace was sitting in one of the chairs in the long row facing the communal mirror. Karen's hair was sticking straight up from her bare scalp in weirdly pointed clumps of color, red and bluish as the dye took hold. Karen wagged her hands at Catharine, showing off the gleaming talons of artificial fingernails, blood-red daggers encased in temporary stainless-steel braces.
"Hello, Karen," Catharine said pleasantly. "No, I had a bit of a headache when I came in, and Eugene was kind enough to let me have the private room for a while."
"He's a darling, our Eugene," Karen agreed.
"All right, Mrs. Makepeace, I get your point," Eugene said. "Goodness, everybody's so owly this morning. I did apologize for being so late getting started, didn't I? Shall I apologize again? I am truly sorry, love. This place is getting like a doctor's office. Didn't you ever have to wait for a doctor....? Now, let's admit it, ladies, your hair is more important than, well, some other parts of your bodies that aren't so easily seen in public, if you understand my meaning. I should be making the same money a gynecologist does, if you ask me. Right, my darlings?"
The general laughter of the women lined up in their chairs at his complete mercy restored Eugene's good humor, and the atmosphere settled down after the initial grumble and buzz which had greeted his entrance with Catharine in tow. Eugene began to comb her hair.
Lilly Sanford looked up from the pornographic magazine she was reading under the dryer. She shouted unnecessarily loudly to be heard above the noise her dryer was making in her own, if not everyone else's, ears.
"Catharine! Hi!"
Catharine acknowledged the greeting with a nod into the mirror which reflected herself, Eugene hovering above her, and the rest of the room behind her chair. Lilly's fat legs were balancing a box of candy under the magazine, and unfortunately Lilly had just taken a mouthful of chocolate covered cherry with liquid center before opening her mouth to let everyone know that she was on intimate terms with Catharine Burgess.
She continued to shout, too loudly, across the room, under the impression that her dryer was making everyone else as deaf as she was.
"Catharine, that was a smashing dress you wore to the country club dance last Saturday night! So sheermy gosh, you could see everything when the light was behind you! I could never wear a dress like that. Norman wouldn't permit it."
Catharine's gaze had filtered out the rest of the room except for herself and Eugene, although her smile remained fixed in a polite and friendly, even interested, mask. Eugene set the mass of gold in a few large rollers, and placed a net around her head.
"I always seem to be waiting for Gene to finish with her," Ann Birmingham confided to someone next to her in a voice clearly meant to carry down the long row of chairs.
"I think she feels that she actually is above everybody in this town," an anonymous voice agreed.
Eugene helped Catharine down from the chair and saw that she was comfortable under a dryer at the far end of the room from Lilly Sanford. He smiled at her, and she ducked under the private humming sound that would din out the other voices.
"She reminds me of one of those windup dolls," someone said, but Catharine didn't hear it and Eugene clucked his disapproval.
Karen's timer went off. "I'm ready, Eugene," she announced. Her wisps of hair were entirely blue now.
All the women turned their attention to themselves again, but evidently their own faces didn't interest them as much as Catharine's every motion seemed to. When Eugene lifted the dryer from her head and escorted her back to the dressing table, all the chatter in the room stopped and all eyes were on her. She was accustomed to this, and she accepted it with pleasure. Everyone had always stared at Catharine.
Eugene held his little blow dryer in one hand and with the other he brushed her luxuriant hair with a series of slow sensuous strokes. Her eyes closed and her thoughts floated freely while Eugene brushed and blew her.
That's the only kind of blowjob I'll ever get, she thought dreamily. Ironic. Uptight, conservative, unimaginative Richard, whom she truly loved, of course, could never really satisfy her ... and this gaunt, aging homosexual knew how to please her so much that sex was almost unnecessary. The sensation of being admired and touched and made beautiful was a thrill that transcended the mere physical. You and I, Eugene, she thought to herself, we know what I need. We're the only ones. How sad. Is everyone else in the world so alone...
Eugene had finished her hair, and she almost gasped with pleasure when she opened her eyes and saw how richly it shone, how every curve and wisp of it maximized the elegant sculpture of her face. Quickly, feeling the envious stares around her, she broke into a modest smile, and Eugene was satisfied, too.
"Oh, dear, I've left my special hairspray in the other room. Would you mind coming with me, Catharine, love? We can put your little bit of lipstick on in there."
She followed him past the row of women into the private room again. Eugene was grinning at his own wit.
"Now they're all going to insist on my special hair-spray," he said, "and of course there isn't any. I'll have to invent one and charge a little extra for it! It's just that I wanted to get you off alone for the makeup, right, love?"
"Thank you, Eugene."
His expert blending and application of exactly the right base, powder, eye shadow and liner, highlighting gels, and lipstick took another hour. Catharine sat absolutely motionless, watching attentively. She bought all the preparations from him and touched each container with a freshly manicured fingernail as she carefully repeated its use, much as students of wilderness survival do before setting out on their long journeys in the desert. When the work was done, Catharine appeared natural, fresh and as young as ever, under all the different combinations of lighting that Eugene could devise.
"You look marvelous," Eugene said, finally.
"Yes."
The other women, who were fretting with grim impatience in the outer room, could not hide the envy in their stares as she and Eugene walked out among them. At the door, she pressed a fifty-dollar bill into his hand.
Abel had been pacing up and down the street for hours, proudly guarding the shiny Lincoln and waiting for her. He had also been doing a bit of window-peeking into the beauty shop, rewarded by nothing more exciting than a glimpse of ugly old ladies in plastic curlers, and the usual dark tunnel of fat pink flesh, stocking tops and garters that Mrs. Sanford offered to anyone who bothered to stoop low outside the end window and stare upwards. But now Abel stood properly alert and attentive, holding open the back door of the car for his mistress.
Ah, mistress! What a nice word. He knew what it meant, in both senses. Lisa had explained it to him and he had read it in some of his magazines. In his frequent, almost continuous daydreams and night-dreams, Miss Catharine was his mistress in the way he wanted her to be. He knew how she looked under those sexy clothes. He knew, and the thought obsessed him. Someday ... he vowed to himself for the umpteenth time in his twenty years of service (service, that was another word that meant two things-a stallion serviced a mare, and sometimes in the magazines men serviced women the same way) ... someday.
"Mr. Burgess asked me to pick him up on the way home," he said respectfully.
"So early?"
"It's just almost five o'clock, Miss Catharine."
"Really?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Goodness!" She smiled at him and it was suddenly necessary for Abel to whip off his visored cap and hold it in front of himself. It was a frequent gesture of his, one she thought was just an old habit, a quirk. She never thought of slow-witted Abel as having the same needs and responses that other men did.
He stopped the car in front Of the office building and went in to have Mr. Burgess informed that his car was waiting. Catharine took the hand mirror from the pocket next to her seat, and examined her face and neck and hair. Eugene certainly knew what he was about. She dug into her purse and took out the little magnifying glass. Holding it at an angle to the hand mirror, she scrutinized her eyes. They looked fine. Then she caught something, around her mouth. She tried to recapture the expression she had had a second before, to see if what she had seen was a fact or just a shadow.
The opening of the car door startled her. She tried to hide the mirror and magnifying glass quickly.
"Hello, darling. How beautiful you look, as usual."
"Thank you, Richard."
Abel watched in the rear-view mirror to see if they would kiss each other. They did not.
CHAPTER FOUR
"I have a real surprise for you," Richard said, as they were dressing for dinner.
She glanced at his reflection standing behind her. "What is it, darling? You know I hate surprises."
"How about a trip to Europe? Now that the house is finished, and you were so blue this morning, for no reason ... well, I just decided it was high time. I've booked the flight already, so there's no use arguing. We leave in two weeks."
Before Catharine had a chance to answer, there was a knock on their door, and it opened. It was Jennifer, poking her enchanting face into the room.
"Can I come in and watch you dress?"
Richard was in his shorts and undershirt. His hairy legs were bare and there was the faint beginning of a bulge in his gut that strained the open placket of his fly so that the dark hairs of his underbelly could be seen poking through. But he showed no sign of embarrassment. "Sure, Princess, come on in."
"Richard, don't you think Jennifer is getting a bit too old for that now?"
The lithe twelve-year-old ran to Richard and hugged him around the waist, ignoring her mother's words. She bounced her slim bottom onto the satin coverlet of the huge bed, and settled herself to watch them with serious attention.
"Jennifer will never be too old for anything," Richard said. "Why, she's an enchanted fairy princess." He pulled on a clean shirt and began to button it. He stood with his muscular thighs and bony knees wide apart, in the center of the bright red and yellow and blue Rya rug, which was designed in a free-form target pattern. He was just to the left of the bull's-eye.
Catharine turned her attention back to the jewelry box on the dressing table in front of her. She held one earring up, tilted her head critically to examine the effect against her new hairdo, shook her head slightly and picked another.
"Can I wear your diamond necklace, just for dinner, just this once?" Jennifer asked.
"Certainly not. Whatever gave you an idea like that? You're much too young for diamonds."
"Just pretend, Mommy. There's no one coming to dinner. There's just us. Please, just pretend."
"Oh, let her," Richard said impatiently. "She's got to learn how to be an elegant lady sometime."
"My daddy never would have allowed me to do such a thing at her age. You're much too indulgent with her, Richard. She won't learn to be anything but spoiled if you let her have anything she wants all the time."
As Catharine spoke, she heard dim echoes back in her memory, of someone saying similar things about her ... her mother, of course. Funny, she had never thought about her mother much, even when she was still there. But as her own daughter grew more and more like herself, her mother's faded image seemed to reappear, unexpected and unwanted, in Catharine's own words and gestures. It was uncomfortable and even a bit frightening. But she put the thought out of her mind. Instinctively, her eyes went back to the mirror and she was reassured.
Jennifer was pouting. Richard bent down to look at her, lifting her little chin with his hand. The gap in his shorts opened wide.
"Your mother is right," he said thoughtfully to the little girl. "I don't like the looks of that pout."
Instantly, Jennifer's face burst into a bright smile. It's as phony as ... mine, Catharine thought with a cold shock. She's not an innocent any more. What's happened to my sweet beautiful baby?
"Jennifer," she said, turning around on her chair, "Daddy and I have something exciting to tell you. We're going on a trip!"
"We are?" Jennifer said.
"No," Catharine answered, smiling. "We are."
Richard began to pull on his trousers, finally. Catharine watched in the mirror, and Jennifer watched directly, as he tucked in his shirt-tails and leisurely zipped himself shut.
They all went down the stairs together, holding hands, with Jennifer in the middle, and they talked about the trip to Europe all through dinner. Catharine found herself unexpectedly eager to get away, alone with Richard. Maybe, if they had a new honeymoon, they could start on a different path this time. Maybe, in the depths of Paris and Tangiers and Rome, they could discover new ways of thinking. New ways of fucking, she admitted to herself, that's what we really need. Travel broadens your horizons. God knows ours could use a lot of broadening. Maybe I can get him to take me to some of the low dives where women make love to giants, and get mounted by horses and do terrible-delicious-things to each other ... maybe But the thought of Richard allowing himself or her to see such things was impossible.
Why was she always thinking about it? Did everybody else in the world think about it all the time-except Richard, of course-did Jennifer think about it? No, of course not. Not yet.
"Can't we leave sooner?" she heard herself saying.
"What? Is this my stay-at-home princess in the ivory tower speaking?"
"I'm your princess," Jennifer said. "Mommy's the queen. I'm the princess."
"I'm not a queen, nor a princess either. I'm a normal woman, and as you said, Richard, it's high time we had a trip."
"I can't get away that soon, but there's no reason why you couldn't go on ahead of me, and I'll meet you there. You could leave whenever you're ready, if you want to."
Jennifer looked at her mother with huge solemn eyes. Richard waited, too.
Their stares made her uncomfortable. For some crazy reason she felt suddenly close to the edge again, where something infinite and undefinable lurked in wait for her. She actually felt queasy, and gripped the edge of her chair for support. It's the prospect of actually going away, off and on my own. That's what is frightening me. But I want to do it. I will.
"Yes," she said firmly. She looked over at her daughter's face, rosily cherubic in the soft glow of the candles. Odd how Jennifer's hair hung straight, instead of curling like her own. Straight hair was the style now, of course, and her little girl was as stylish as she herself had been in her time. Was still. "I'll go on ahead, and we can meet in Paris. Won't that be romantic? You're sure you won't mind, Jennifer darling?"
"No, Mommy. I want you to go. I want you to have a good time. Really, I do."
"You'll be fine here with Lisa and Abel to take care of you, and the other servants."
Jennifer sniggered and made a little face, but whatever she was thinking was quickly suppressed in an amiable smile. "Sure I will," she agreed.
"What was that noise about?" Richard asked.
"What noise?"
"That 'ho-ho-humph' noise you just made."
"Oh..." Jennifer toyed with her fork. "It's just that Lisa and Abel are kind of ... you know, weird."
"What?" Catharine was so used to having the old couple (actually, they were brother and sister) around that she couldn't think for a moment whom Jennifer was talking about. "What on earth do you mean?"
"I don't know ... just weird, that's all. It's just an expression, Mommy."
"It's an unkind one," Catharine said.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything. All the kids say 'weird'. "
"But you should not." Richard smiled at his daughter.
"Why do I have to be special?"
"Because you are, that's all. It's wonderful to be special," Richard assured her seriously.
Jennifer lit up the room with her laugh. After a moment, Catharine and Richard laughed too. Jennifer's young joyousness at being alive and being special was infectious.
After dinner, Jennifer and Richard played backgammon in the library, and Catharine went up to masturbate in a warm oiled bath. She thought about swarthy Italians with uncircumcised cocks seizing her on the streets of some seething waterfront town, forcing her to the rank-smelling deck of a fishing boat where live wriggling eels would slither all over and under and around her body while they penetrated her with loud cries of hot Mediterranean passion. She thought about suave, perfumed Frenchmen, wooing her with the finest champagnes and lighting up the Eiffel Tower for her pleasure, kissing her fingertips, her wrists, the insides of her elbows, her soft smooth shoulders, her pulsating throat, her open mouth, her breasts, her belly, her cunt. She thought about Arabs sweeping over her on their enormous and fierce white stallions, kidnapping her off the streets of the Casbah and riding with the sirocco winds to their decadent carpeted tents, where slave girls would anoint her body and prepare her for the sheik's pleasure, because she, and only she, was beautiful enough to deserve his love. She stepped out of the bathtub exhausted and sated, and by the time Richard came upstairs she was fast asleep.
In the morning, she was sad again, for no apparent reason. I'm going away. Far away, she repeated to herself. In a sudden panic, she ran out of her room and up the attic stairs. She thrust out her arms and ran to her old familiar things. I mustn't cry, I mustn't, she told herself as the tears welled up helplessly. She found herself clinging to the old beloved gilt-framed mirror from her own room, hugging herself against the glass and clutching with both hands to the worn rounded carvings along the oval edge.
When her sobs subsided, she looked at herself, nose to nose.
"Ugly," she whispered. "Old and ugly."
"No!" She seemed to hear the mirror itself answering her fiercely, in a kind of unhuman whisper that came from nowhere but the mirror itself. "No, you are beautiful, beautiful, the most beautiful creature in the whole wide world. Catharine..."
"Yes," she admitted, stepping back and wiping her nose with a lace handkerchief from her dressing-robe pocket. "I'm still beautiful. I am."
There, that was better. The reflection smiled back at her and it was true. She was incredibly lovely, especially in this place.
"It's all right," she whispered aloud. Her words echoed back from the flat cool glass. She ran her finger against the outline of her face. The mirror warmed under her touch.
She looked at her daddy's big chair, pulled up before her, facing the glass. No, not today. Too many things to do. She looked back at her reflection. It almost seemed to have a life of its own, a reassuring forever-life that comforted her and drew her in.
"I have to get ready," she whispered to herself. "I have to go away."
"No," the mirror whispered back. "Don't go. You're so beautiful."
She laughed at herself and blew a kiss to her reflection. The sun glinted on her hair as she turned away and went downstairs to begin her preparations for the trip.
First, she phoned Eugene and told him she would be leaving in a week or so, and he promised to give her extra time, or last-minute time-anything she wanted. Then she called Boston and made appointments for viewing the latest clothes from her favorite designers.
Within fifteen minutes of her first call, the phone rang. It was Karen Makepeace, already full of the news.
"How thrilling, Catharine. How perfectly divine, to go off like that on your own! However in the world does Richard dare to let you go?"
"Why shouldn't he?" Catharine asked, puzzled.
"With your looks-and all those European men with their famous hands and ... well, you know what they say about European men. My God, I envy you. Mort thinks I'm being unfaithful to him if I step into the kitchen at a party to get ice-cubes. He follows me."
"I'd never be unfaithful to Richard," Catharine said, laughing at the very idea.
"Wait till you get over there," Karen advised.
"Don't be silly," Catharine said.
"Come on, Catharine, don't you ever even dream about other guys? Come on, admit it. With all the attention you get...."
"I get quite enough from Richard to satisfy me," Catharine lied coolly.
"Okay, okay. How about lunch at the club before you go?"
"I'll try," Catharine promised.
"Call me," Karen said.
"Yes, of course."
She hung up and started to wonder. Would the men in Europe really be any different from the bores and boors, all with the same line, that she knew in Placid? Was there a man, anywhere in the world, who could satisfy her deep and terrible needs ... she put the thought resolutely out of her mind. What to take, which shoes, what jewelry to select, she'd have to buy a makeup case, could she ever find a hairdresser or cosmetician to equal Eugene's intimate knowledge of her face and hair...
And then she remembered. She went into her bathroom and turned on the full power of the stark "truth lights." She examined her mouth and her eyes with the care of a surgeon exploring inside a brain for signs of cancer. She twisted her lips and squinted her eyes. And there it was. A definite crease on either side of her mouth. The line from her left eye had deepened, too.
Determined not to make it worse by crying, she spent the next two hours applying the makeup as Eugene had taught her to do. Finally, she was ready to leave the house.
She was half an hour late for their lunch date, and Richard was obviously angry, although he said nothing about it. He took her to Chez Vous for escargots and squab, and they talked about the trip. After lunch, they went to the bank and Richard arranged for her traveler's checks and letter of credit. Just before he handed her into the car, he said, "Oh, I almost forgot to tell you-Arthur and Janet Manchester are coming to dinner tonight."
"Who in the world are they?" Catharine asked. She was standing with one foot inside the car, bent in an awkward position half in and half out. Abel stood politely holding the car door open, trying not to stare at her thigh where the skirt was hiked up.
"I'm doing business with him," Richard explained. "He's visiting Placid to meet with me and I just found out before I left the office that he brought his wife along. So I asked them both to dinner tonight. I told Lisa, so there's nothing for you to do, except be on time. Seven sharp."
"But-"
Abel couldn't help it, he had to look somewhere. Unconsciously aware of eyes on her, Catharine stepped back onto the sidewalk. The skirt fell back over her tanned thigh.
"But what?" Richard said impatiently.
"Nothing," Catharine said. "What business are you doing with him? Just so I'll know."
"We're going to open up the old mine," Richard said. "If he wants to put capital into it..."
"Daddy's old mine? The one in Stover Hills?"
"That's it. Come on now, I'm late for a meeting."
Catharine got into the car, and Abel shut the door. Richard stuck his head inside the window to repeat, "Seven o'clock, try to be on hand to greet them when they get there, will you, darling?"
"Of course," Catharine said politely. Abel started the car's silent motor and they slipped into the afternoon traffic.
"Miss Jennifer's in a tournament at the country club," Abel said over his shoulder. "She asked me to remind you, Miss Catharine."
"Oh, my gosh. What time is it?"
"It's ten past three," he answered.
"Please take me to the club, then," Catharine said, dismayed. She would be late for Jennifer's tennis match, and the poor child would really feel abandoned. Where did the time go...
"Don't worry, Miss Catharine," Abel said. He seemed to be observing her all the time through that damned rear-view mirror, she thought irritably. She wondered if she should order curtains for the glass divider between the front and rear seats, or would that be an insult to poor old Abel-she hated ever to hurt anyone's feelings. She'd have to go on putting up with it, the sensation that Abel's eyes were always on her. "Miss Jennifer's in the finals," he was saying, "so her match won't be coming up right away. We'll be in time."
"Would I have time to change clothes?" Catharine wondered aloud. "I'm dressed for lunch in town, not for watching tennis at the club."
Abel looked at her in his little four-by-eight inch viewer. How odd, she thought. He sees so much of my life through that little mirror. like it's an aperture, an observation window he sees the world through. My personal and private world. And he sees it backwards ... the idle thought made her smile, and Abel thought she was smiling at him. His underwear started to grab at him and he kicked down on the brake with a spastic gesture, shaking his right leg to ease the pressure. He saw, however, that his mistress was looking out of the window and not at him. She had asked him a question-what was it? Oh, yah, would she have time to dress-that was a hot one, the time she always took to get herself got up.
"No, ma'am, I don't think you better take time to go all the way home and change, not if you want to see Miss Jenny play."
"All right, Abel," she agreed, and kept on gazing out at the shops and bars along Main Street. Damn, she thought, if Jennifer plays last, I won't be home until after five, and I'll never be ready on time for Richard's guests. And now I'm going to appear at the club dressed all wrong. People will stare-they always do, though, the hell with them. I know how to walk and how to hold my head; I know how to make them feel that they're the ones who must be dressed wrong.
Her blood actually started racing to the challenge. She took out her hand mirror and began to repair the damage to her mouth from Richard's quick good-bye kiss.
They stopped at a light. A heavy-set man with a two-day growth of beard, dressed in grimy work clothes, leaned against the wall near a corner bar. He saw the huge sleek Lincoln and the knock-out blonde staring out at him. He stared at her and she stared right back.
He grinned and made an obscene gesture. Catharine turned her head away.
Watching her, Abel thought that it really did serve her right, the way she looked at men without even realizing it. He felt a strongly protective attitude toward Catharine that went way beyond a servant-mistress loyalty. He figured that he understood her better than anyone else in the whole world, including her husband. He had watched her grow up. Literally watched her, he thought, with a little smile. Then he was angry again. That drunk had no business looking back at her like that. I ought to get out of the car and knock that guy into the gutter where he belongs. Would she be pleased? His thoughts were rudely interrupted by impatient horns behind him, and he stepped on the accelerator with a sigh.
They drove along the beach road. Catharine stared out at the sea, her thoughts miles away. I'll bet I know what she's thinking about, the same thing I am, Abel mused, glancing at her profile in the rear-view mirror. Nice Richard can't do the job for her, I know that much. I could. I know what she wants. He sighed again and shifted in his seat as he demonstrated his skill with the wheel on the narrow curves of the road.
He reminded me of that fisherman in my dream, Catharine was thinking. That filthy man on the street, and I looked at him and wondered what it would be like to take his greasy balls in my mouth and make him scream with loving me. It was Karen who put those thoughts in my mind. I never thought about other men before. Not real men, not a ass standing on a street corner. Not that way. Would he have coarse black hairs all over his shoulders and back, and his belly and his ass? Would he smell like beer and sweat and unspeakable things? Would he have a huge red cock with warm ale spurting out of it? Could I take it all in my mouth, would it taste good ... better than champagne...
They pulled up in front of the country club, and Abel came round to open the door for her.
Jennifer ran to them from the far court where she had been warming up. She threw her sweaty little arms around her mother.
"Oh, Mommy, I'm so glad you got here in time to watch me play!" she said excitedly.
Catharine tried not to move away from her little girl, but her silk dress was in danger of getting stained and wrinkled. "Let me watch you work out," she smiled, disengaging Jennifer's hands.
"Is Daddy coming too?"
"No, I don't think so, darling. He's very, very busy today," Catharine said as they walked back to the court.
"Watch me, Mommy. I've improved my serve!" Jennifer ran off, and Catharine admired her long straight legs, just beginning to fill out in the faint hint of curves she would have one day. Her little white tennis dress skimmed her body and the skirt flirted up over her slightly rounding rump as she ran.
Jennifer won her match, against a plain, earnest child with large ears. There followed a long and tedious trophy-awarding ceremony in which every child won something, if only a consolation prize. Catharine privately thought it quite unfair. Only the winners should receive trophies. But Jennifer was thrilled with her silver cup proclaiming her the best girl singles player under fourteen. She chattered happily all the way home.
They were very late. Catharine had insisted on Jennifer showering and changing from her stained tennis clothes before getting into the car. Jennifer had taken a long time in the dressing room, and finally Catharine had to go in there to announce that her daddy would be waiting, so she'd better leave off chattering with her friends and fussing before the mirror. The obedient little girl came right away then, but still it was nearly six by the time Abel dropped them off at the front door.
"Daddy! Daddy! I won, I won the tournament!" Jennifer cried, running up the stairs.
Catharine couldn't wait to get out of the clinging dress she had been wearing since noon. She went directly to her dressing room from the hall, and was ready to step into her deliciously tempting bath when Jennifer knocked on the door from inside her parents' bedroom.
She's in there with him alone, Catharine thought. Is Richard parading around in his shorts again, for her benefit? Disgusting.
"Mommy," Jennifer called. "Can I come in and show you something?"
Catharine poured from a flagon some raspberry-scented moisturizer slowly over her shoulders. It was thick and creamy, and it ran down her back into the water in lazy rivulets, like fingers caressing and teasing and moving down, down into the almost invisible downy hairs, sensitive beyond belief. She squatted in the water, buoyed up on her toes, her bent knees just barely under the surface, and the water lapping at her crotch, skimming in and out, around and behind, teasing and soothing, washing and tickling.
"Not now, Jennifer," she called out dreamily.
"It's a present. Daddy gave it to me," Jennifer called to her through the door. " 'Cause he couldn't come to the match."
"That's nice, darling," Catharine said. She rubbed the moisturizer around her breasts, massaging the soft nipples so they would stay supple and sweet. They stood erect, creamy and raspberry-scented. She wished she could taste them.
"Don't you want to see it?"
"Of course I do, darling, but not right now. I must dress for dinner."
"It's a gold locket," Jennifer said in a forlorn-sounding voice.
"I'll see it when I come out, darling."
"It's real gold."
"That's lovely, darling."
After a few moments of silence, she concluded that Jennifer had gone, and hoped she hadn't hurt the child's feelings. But Richard would be so angry if she was late again ... then he knocked on the door himself.
"I'm going downstairs, Catharine. Please don't be late."
"What time is it?"
"Is the clock in there on the blink again?" he said, annoyed.
She looked up at it, guiltily. Richard had been the one to insist on a clock in her bathroom. She hated the idea. She had deliberately reset the clock several times, so that the fanciful mermaids who wound around the great figure of Poseidon, pointing to the minutes and hours with their tails, would never, never be able to remind her of time passing. They swam happily in their illusionary underwater pool of deepest turquoise, and she liked them better because they pointed no warnings, no morals. As far as they were concerned, it was twenty minutes to three, and it didn't matter whether that was a.m. or p.m., either.
She slid off her haunches to settle down into the water, and continued her bath games as if it really were twenty minutes to three.
"I thought you'd surely be dressed by now," Richard said an hour or so later, when she was sitting at her dressing table. He had come into the bedroom without knocking. Unconsciously, she pulled her dressing-gown up to cover her breasts. He frowned. "The guests have been here for over half an hour," he said.
"I'm sorry, Richard," she answered contritely. She had noticed his reflex of suppressed anger. Was it because she was late or because she had covered herself when he walked in? She wasn't doing anything to be ashamed of. Just trying on different gold necklaces. She turned to smile at him. "What dress should I wear, darling?"
"Wear something red. We could use a little color."
He left the room abruptly, without smiling back at her.
Catharine turned back to the vanity, and opened the top drawer. She took out the little bottle of pills and unscrewed the cap with a nervous movement, shook out a tranquilizer and swallowed it without water. She hurried to dress, and was downstairs in another twenty minutes.
"I'm sorry to be late," she said with her most enchanting company smile.
"Not at all," murmured the rather dowdy Mrs. Manchester.
"Well, it certainly was worth waiting for!" said her hearty, overweight, half-bombed husband.
It was all so predictable. Arthur Manchester's remark, and the quick look his wife darted at him ... the usual reactions that greeted Catharine when people met her for the first time. She knew exactly how to handle it. Ignoring the husband's stares, she turned her full attention to Janet Manchester.
"Have you had a chance to see anything of our little town yet, Mrs. Manchester? I hope you'll be here long enough to lunch with me at our club," she smiled.
Her guest leaned back in her chair, visibly relaxed. She opened her tight little mouth to answer, but her bluff husband cut her off.
"We were talking about gold mines, Mrs. Burgess," he said. "But now it seems to me your lucky husband's got himself a nice little treasure right here at home!"
Gales of laughter from Richard, followed politely by both women, greeted this rude and inane comment. It was clear that his boorishness would pass for flattery because Richard needed him for business reasons. Catharine felt a genuine stab of pity for his wife. Who would want to be married to that gross man ... he had a small nose, turned up. He probably had a small dick, hanging down.
Her daddy never would have allowed such talk to be directed at her.
"It really is a shame to hide your wife all the way out here in the provinces," Janet Manchester said. Catharine recognized the direction the wife had decided to take. A bit of condescension, to salve her own jealous feelings.
"Dinner is served," Abel announced.
Expertly concealing her distaste, Catharine took Arthur Manchester's arm and led the way into the dining room. She managed deftly to keep his arm from rubbing against her breast, although he was almost walking in a crouch trying to reach for it.
"My daddy found that coal deposit up in the Stover Hills when I was very little," she said conversationally. "We used to ride up there all the time, just the two of us. We both rode stallions. Big ones." Now, why had she said that?
"I'll bet you sit a horse beautifully," Arthur Manchester leered.
Catharine ignored that. She allowed him to seat her, and waited for Richard and Janet Manchester to settle themselves at the long formal table. She caught her reflection in the polished silver of the serving plate before her. This was her milieu, this beautiful room with the white linen cloth and gleaming heavy silver, the shining crystal and gentle candlelight. It was the only room where she still felt truly at home since they had moved all the old familiar things upstairs. Her daddy's portrait, full-length in his riding coat, still smiled down at her.
"We used to pretend there was gold in the mine," she said, taking up the thread of the conversation where they had left it, "but of course that was only a family joke. 'Coal is as good as gold,' my daddy used to say, 'and there's a lot more of it.' He was planning to take it out of the ground, just before he died."
"I knew you'd have to mention that, Catharine," Richard said. She looked across the table at him in surprise.
"What the hell's the difference who found the stuff?" Arthur Manchester said. "If it's there, you and I have a deal, that's what matters now."
"Oh, how nice," Catharine said. She stole a tentative glance at Richard, who did not look up from his soup.
"Yes," Janet Manchester said, leaning forward eagerly. "Then we would be spending a great deal of time here. We'd become really good friends. I'm so tired of New York, honestly. We could build a beach house . . , "
Arthur raised his wine glass toward Catharine as soon as Abel had finished pouring. Janet immediately raised hers toward Richard. He reciprocated, and after a second's hesitation, Catharine saluted the beady eyes and tiny nose of the man on her left.
Keeping control of the conversation, she asked, "Do you like to ride?" Her question was clearly directed to Janet Manchester.
But Arthur Manchester answered. "Yes," he said. "I would just love to ride with you, Catharine."
"Do you ride, Mrs. Manchester?" Catharine asked, pointedly.
"Oh ... please, call me Janet. No ... I never have, but I'd just love to learn."
By the time they got to the brandy and coffee, the talk was becoming more and more difficult to steer. Arthur Manchester was unable to take his eyes off Catharine, his wife looked on the verge of tears, and Richard was showing the effects of too many martinis before dinner by either ignoring everything Catharine said or countering her with little sarcastic jabs. It was almost as though he was trying to show his guests that he, at least, was not affected by his wife's extraordinary beauty.
She didn't know what had gone wrong, but she was immensely relieved when Jennifer came into the room.
"Hello, darling! May I see your new locket now?" Catharine said, holding out her arms to her bouncy daughter.
"I left it upstairs."
"Look who's here!" Richard boomed out cheerfully, his good humor restored at last. "Come to say good night?"
"No, I didn't. I came to show Mr. Manchester pictures of me." She stepped into the circle of light from the table, and they all saw that she was wearing a very short white party dress, and carrying a photograph album under her bare arm.
"What a beautiful child!" Janet Manchester gasped involuntarily.
"Thank you," Jennifer said, pretending a shyness Catharine knew damn well she didn't feel.
"Why, I'd love to see your pictures, little girl," Arthur Manchester leered.
"I think you ought to say good night and go to bed, darling," Catharine said.
Richard grinned at Jennifer. "You tell your mother I think it's all right to show your beautiful pictures to our guests," he said.
Catharine's fingers tightened on the stem of her brandy glass. She lifted it and drank. Abel was standing behind Richard, and Catharine signaled him to pour her another.
Jennifer was sidling up to Manchester, her book in his lap. He had pushed himself slightly away from the table and casually put his arm around the little girl as he clucked admiringly at her pictures. Jennifer leaned into him as she turned the pages.
"And this was when I was Snow White, the Fairest of Them All," she was saying. Catharine looked at herself in the shimmering amber liquid before draining the brandy glass again.
"My mother promised she would show me how to put on makeup like she does, for the new play I'm going to be in. Didn't you, Mommy?"
"You don't need makeup, Jenny," Janet Manchester said.
Catharine's throat burned from the brandy. She forced herself to speak. "My daughter is going to be playing the same role I did when I was her age, isn't that fun? They still have my picture up in the school. I wore a-"
"After twenty years, Catharine still thinks she's playing the fairy princess," Richard cut in cruelly.
Janet Manchester filled the awkward moment with admirable social grace. "Catharine, I called you when we arrived in town yesterday. I thought we should get to know each other."
"I was ... I was here all day."
"That's odd. Your maid said she couldn't find you."
"Mommy plays in the attic sometimes," Jennifer giggled.
"Not exactly, darling. I still have things up there. All our old things. My whole life..." she trailed off, wondering at her own words, wondering what it was she was trying to say. "Sometimes I have to spend hours looking for something I need," she finished lamely.
Jennifer pressed herself against Arthur Manchester's chest and turned another page impatiently. "This was my first tennis tournament. I won the girls' singles today," she said. She looked at him, waiting for praise.
Arthur looked into the child's huge innocent eyes, only inches away from his own. "Jennifer," he said, "you're sensational."
"I hope you're here when we do our play," she flirted. "I would like you to come and see me in it."
"I'm sure they will if they can, Jennifer," Catharine said firmly. "Now I think you can go up, don't you, Richard?" Her eyes locked with her husband's down the length of the table, and sparked dangerously in the flame from the low-burning candles.
"Come here, honey," Richard said agreeably, but to Jennifer, not to his wife. "Let's have a good-night hug."
Jennifer gathered her album from Manchester's lap, which he instantly covered with his napkin. The lithe little legs skipped around the table to Richard. Jennifer threw herself into his open arms, and Richard's hand slid down her slim back to rest cupped over her buttocks for a tender open-handed caress.
Catharine tapped her empty brandy glass, but Abel either didn't notice or decided to ignore her.
Jennifer, finally letting go of Richard, came round to her mother. "Good night, Mommy."
" 'Night, darling," Catharine said.
" 'Night, Mrs. Manchester."
Janet waved her diamond-covered fingers and Jennifer moved toward the door.
" 'Night, everybody," she said, milking the attention, and then she danced out of the room.
"She's going to be one hell of a man-killer," Arthur Manchester said fervidly.
"Yes," Richard answered with pride. "Ah, but you should have seen her mother when I met her. She was even more beautiful than Jennifer."
Arthur smiled at Catharine. There was a very tiny speck of food lodged between his two front teeth. "I'd say she's still not hard to look at," he said.
"It's so nice having you both here," said Catharine. "Do you travel a lot?"
"We get around," Janet said in a bored voice. "I've never left this town, except to go to Boston, of course, and when we went to Bermuda on our honeymoon. And that was only two weeks...."
"And whose fault was that?" Richard murmured.
"But we're planning a glorious vacation now, aren't we, darling?" Catharine continued, seemingly unruffled, although her head had started to ache. "We're off for Europe very soon. I'm ... I'm looking forward to it."
"Yes, Catharine needs to get away," Richard said to the guests.
Why was he looking away from her? He had said that she didn't look the way she had when he met her. He made her feel like a stranger, an intruder. "This is my house," she blurted suddenly. The other three stared at her. "I mean, I've lived right here, in this very house, all my life. I love it here. I've never had any need to get away, before..."
"Catharine keeps her childhood safely locked away up in the attic. I finally got her to redecorate the house, but she wouldn't throw away or allow me to sell a single thing. All her father's furniture-you wouldn't believe some of the heavy old Victorian furniture and bric-a-brac. A lot of very fine and valuable antiques, of course, but a lot of junk, too."
"There was a time when this house was the show-place of the state," Catharine said dreamily. The brandy had made her reflection in the silver platter kind of soft around the edges, not an unpleasant effect. "My daddy-"
"Yes," Richard cut in. "Catharine's father was the great lord around here. He could get away with anything in this town ... but those days are over, aren't they, dear? Would you like a cigar, Arthur?"
Abel passed around the open humidor to the men. Catharine held up her glass, and noted with some surprise that Abel looked at Richard before coming over with the brandy to pour her another. Richard nodded, and her glass was replenished.
"Shall we drink to days gone by?" Arthur said, looking at Catharine.
"No," Richard answered. "Let's drink to the future, to our partnership, to the mine."
They sipped at the brandy.
"Catharine, you ought to come and spend some time with us in New York before you leave for Europe."
"Well, thank you. That's very nice of you."
Arthur's loud laughter at that could only be interpreted as lewd. His wife smiled all too warmly at Richard. Catharine felt the table and its occupants diminishing in size, moving away from her. She stared down the length of the receding, endless whirl of white and gold and silver, sputtering candles, and the remains of their meal, trying to find Richard's steady eyes. He looked at her from a great distance.
"I think my wife is at her most desirable when she is flushed and warmed from the brandy," he observed.
"Richard!"
"You know, she hardly took a sip until her father died, six years ago."
"I don't blame you for wanting to hold onto your childhood memories," Janet Manchester said tactfully. "They must have been wonderful times."
"Yes. Oh, my, yes," Richard agreed. "The beautiful and cultivated Catharine Johnston, still trying-after thirteen years-to be an everyday, matter-of-fact wife." He raised his glass. "But she is still quite beautiful."
"I'll drink to that," Arthur said, and drained his brandy in one gulp.
Catharine's hand, usually so graceful, knocked her glass over. The amber liquid spread slowly over the white linen and she stared at it, horrified.
"Come on, honey, pour yourself another. Abel, give Miss Catharine-they still call her Miss Catharine around here-give my wife the bottle. Just leave it there in front of her."
"No ... I ... I..." Catharine rose from the table. Her face was as pale as the napkin she clutched in her hand. Everyone stared at her, not in admiration but in distorted masks of hostility that she could not bear to see. "Please forgive me," she managed to say. "I'm so glad you were able to come tonight. Would you please forgive me, excuse me ... I'm not feeling well..." She moved, a bit unsteadily, away from the table.
Richard stood up quickly. He reached the door before she did and blocked her way. "What is it, Catharine? A moment ago you were..."
She smiled weakly and took his hand in a gesture meant to reassure him. Then she turned and went past him through the door and into the large center hall. Richard stood for a moment looking after her, and then he turned and shut the door. He had an apology in his smile for them.
Catharine locked the door of her bathroom and turned on the gold dolphin faucets. She slid out of the red dress while the tub was filling, but her impatience was too great to bother with her slip or pantyhose. She poured the oil from the first flask her hand touched, and grabbed the douche bag and jar of cream with a haste unlike anything she had experienced before. In a moment, she was rubbing herself with the creamy cock, against the stockings that clung to her legs, and the full shot of the ejaculation penetrated through the panties to fill her with messy but instant relief. Then she stood up, reached down to close the tub's faucets and slowly peeled the soaked and stained pantyhose from her waist, down over her sodden hips, past the wet thighs and calves of her legs, over her tingling toes. She looked at herself, standing in a damp and cream-stained pink satin slip. "Dirty," she whispered. "Dirty. I'll wash you, you'll be perfect again."
She let the slip straps slide down from her shoulders and wriggled her rump over the satin until she was free of it. With both hands, she ripped off the ruined panties and reached down to touch herself with patting, caressing, rubbing, exploring fingers. She opened her lips and ran the side of her thumb gently along the inside, wiping away some of the moisture that came as much from inside her as from the contents of the rubber bag.
Her sweet little clit throbbed shyly as she touched it with a gentle fingertip, promises for later. Lazily, the tiny bud retreated beneath the delicate petaled opening, only to peek out again as Catharine's hands soothed and excited the soft curling hairs where all was hidden.
Catharine stepped down into the sunken marble tub for a long and private cleansing of her body and her mind. "Daddy," she whispered aloud, but she was not aware of it. She sank blissfully into the brief deep moment of orgasmic oblivion.
Much, much later, she looked at the bathroom clock. The swimming laughing mermaids seemed to have stopped moving around the giant Poseidon entirely. They were just suspended there, playing happily with his enormous trident and balls. Their tails pointed to noon, or midnight, or half-past, or something like that. Catharine's indolent gaze didn't bother to focus on that.
Finally, she stepped from the tub. She looked radiant again, self-assured and ivory-pink all over. She selected lotion from a cut-glass decanter, and began spreading it on her throat, shoulders and arms, the swell of her breasts, her belly, ass, and long lazy legs. From a neatly folded stack in the closet, she selected a deep rose gown and let it slide over her head and down her body till its hem touched the floor. The low bodice emphasized her body in a manner that would tempt the saints, and she arranged her hair to flow down her bare back as innocently as an angel's.
When she entered their bedroom, she caught Richard standing before his own mirror, bare-chested, running his fingers over the edges of his receding hairline, staring closely at his reflection to check for lines in his own face. He smiled at himself wistfully and then turned toward the big double bed. He saw Catharine standing in the halo of light from the open bathroom door, but he said nothing to her. He crawled under the covers on his side of the bed and watched her without any expression as she reached behind her to turn off the bathroom light, and came toward him. Before getting into bed, she looked around the room, and saw that the roses on her dressing table were drooping. She lifted them from their vase, cut the stems with a scissors from the drawer, and replaced them in their water. Then she turned to him and smiled her most seductive smile.
"Are you feeling all right now?" he asked.
"Fine," she answered in a husky voice.
"I don't understand you, Catharine."
She turned back to the roses, to breathe deeply of their perfume and to catch one last glimpse of herself in the vanity mirror. Then she walked slowly toward the bed. Richard did not take his eyes from her. She turned off the lamp on her side of the bed and lay back, smiling at him.
"It was a very nice evening," she said.
Richard turned off his own lamp and, in the dark, he pulled the satin comforter down from his wife's body. Catharine closed her eyes and waited for his kiss.
But her half-open mouth, a juicy peach waiting to be licked, tasted, savored, waited in vain. Richard's hand covered her breast, pushing aside the satin bodice to squeeze her flesh. His other hand went immediately to her crotch, impatiently bunching up the long yards of nightgown to get at it. With his knee, he pushed her thighs apart, and he took his hand from her breast to fumble with his pajamas. Tears sprang to Catharine's tightly shut eyes. She threw her hands over her face to hide it from the moonlight that filtered through the open window.
"What the hell is wrong?" Richard panted.
"Can't you ... I'm sorry."
Catharine let her hands fall back onto the pillow. Automatically, she spread her thighs. Richard looked down at her averted face, and felt her body arch beneath him, an offering. His burning erection melted as if it had been hit with a shovelful of snow. He turned away from her and settled back, burrowing his head into his own pillow, his back to her.
She opened her eyes and lay without moving, staring at the mountain of his shoulder, and up at the ceiling where pale shadows danced. The moon was shining on them through the wind-tossed branches of the oak tree her daddy had taught her how to climb.
It was a long time before she heard his breathing become the deep regular rhythm of sleep. She slipped from the bed without disturbing him. She stood at the window for a little while, her arms wrapped around herself, shivering slightly and staring down at the driveway.
When she left the room, the clock in the hallway downstairs was just beginning to chime. One. Two. Silence.
She tiptoed down the thickly carpeted hall on her bare feet. She stopped in front of Jennifer's door, but did not open it. She went on, to the end of the hall and the little door leading to the attic steps.
The moonlight did not penetrate the attic windows. It was impenetrably dark, but Catharine stepped inside with sure feet. She turned the key in the lock and maneuvered her way unhesitatingly through the complex of heavy furniture. In her own little space, she reached her hand out and unerringly found the box of matches on the table next to her mirror. One by one, she lit the candles on the ornate five-pronged bronze candelabra her daddy had brought from a deconsecrated church in Egypt long before she was born.
The ticking of the old grandfather clock was loud and comforting. In the dim light, she opened its etched glass door and turned the huge brass key to wind it. 2:03, it said. Catharine walked lovingly around her daddy's things, touching the sturdy surfaces: the huge polished old desk with the leather top and her daddy's favorite green-shaded lamp still in its proper place; the old wooden steamer trunk whose fittings still gleamed in the shadowy light; many baroque frames holding mirrors and dark, somber paintings stacked carefully in rows. In her own corner, her little white four-poster bed, and next to it her doll's carriage with its handmade lace spread and high shiny wheels.
Her beloved mirror, huge when she was a tiny child primping and prancing before it, now only slightly taller than she was, standing on its own carved easel frame, delicately curved in a tall thin oval. Her daddy's chair had been pulled up before it, like a throne.
Teasing herself, Catharine refused to look into her mirror. Not yet, even though it seemed to reach out to her, seductive, promising the affirmation she so desperately needed. Not yet.
She went to the old white oak cupboard that used to stand in her room, and opened its doors. An array of costumes hung there, fit for a young girl with many fantasies. Gauzy, filmy silken gowns and trousers and blouses and capes, and shawls made of lace, floppy hats with orange flowers and trailing white ribbons, skirts of organdy and satin and sheerest chiffon, and all her proper little party dresses that were the demure costumes she wore in public. A souvenir from every trip her daddy ever took, memories of him dashing up the wide circular staircase with boxes under his arm, waking her in the middle of the night sometimes, to shout "Princess, I'm home! Look what Daddy has brought you this time!" and her mother's protests lost in the excitement, as she tore open the wrappings and dressed up for her daddy-his little Scheherazade, or a Cossack princess or a great lady at a ball, or even a little matador in tight-fitting trousers made for a boy.
She ran her hand slowly over the hanging costumes, touching each fabric in turn, allowing the sensual touch of the material to flood her memory with pleasure.
She chose a simple white party dress, after all, and pressed it to her cheek as she took it carefully from its hanger. It was the one she had worn the night ... but she would not think, she would only feel, tonight.
She laid the dress on her daddy's worn leather chair and reached into a drawer of the oak cupboard. From the neatly folded rows of hand-made panties and camisoles and stockings and slips, she chose a pair of filmy milk-white stockings. Nothing else.
In a moment, her satin nightgown was in a heap on the attic floor. The white dress was pulled over her head, and the ripely lovely woman was transformed into a virginal schoolgirl. She had to strain to get the row of tiny bodice buttons fastened, but when she did, her full breasts enhanced the little-girl look of the simple dress to a degree that went beyond lasciviousness to something more scintillating, more sinful, more sinister.
She moved toward her mirror slowly, almost coyly. At last she stood in front of her reflection, and she was pleased with what she saw.
"There you are," she whispered. "Have you been waiting for me?"
CHAPTER FIVE
She sat so straight in the big chair that her legs couldn't quite reach the floor. She unrolled the white stockings and placed one on the seat next to her, keeping her eyes fixed all the while on her image in the mirror. When she raised her leg to begin to roll the stocking over her clean little toes, she laughed to see the golden hair glinting through the slit between her thighs.
"My goodness, you're getting so grown-up!" she exclaimed, and spread her legs wider so that she could get a good angle for pulling the flimsy stocking up, up over her elegant arch and delicious ankle-such delicate bones, look at the shadows they make-and then, slower, over the tingling skin along the inside of her calf. She stretched her leg out in front of her again, to smooth the stocking over her taut thigh. To do this, it was necessary to pull the hem of the prim white dress over her woman's hips. The mirror seemed to sigh with delight at the fine curve of her milk-white skin where her bikini had hidden it from the sun. Catharine fastened the stocking by turning its hem once or twice against the fleshy part of her thigh. Then, still staring into the glass, she began the same slow process with the other stocking.
A voice said, quite loudly in her ear, "How beautiful you are," and she thought for a moment there was someone else in her attic.
"I really shouldn't be here. What if Daddy should come up?" she whispered to the mirror. Guilty twinges made delicious shivers down her back. She rubbed herself against the worn leather of her daddy's big chair.
She crossed her white legs and admired themthis way and that way, together and far, far apart. She got up from the chair and reached for her silver hairbrush on the dressing table. For a long time, she sat brushing her hair, crossing and uncrossing her legs, peeking at the place that should have been covered by panties. But she was a naughty girl, and the sensation of not covering herself there was her own secret. No one would ever know.
Her breathing began to sound more like panting, and as she leaned first toward and then away from the mirror, she distinctly heard the echoes of her own sounds coming back at her. It was truly as if another person were there, admiring and loving and caressing her, making love to Catharine as Catharine deserved.
"Look at my breasts," she said in wonder. "How big they are gettingl Look, look!"
She unbuttoned the top of the dress and freed her straining tits from the tight bodice. Each full breast in turn, the flesh tender and sweet against the touch of her fingertip. She traced their outlines, slowly circling the pale veins, the rose-colored nipples, then gently hugging their ripeness with her cupped hand, beginning to delight herself as only she knew how.
"Everyone wants to touch them, but they're mine. Mine."
"Mine," the mirror agreed in a voice of its own.
"How wet I am. I'm going to spoil my party dress if I don't hold myself down there, catch the dew in my fingers. Yes, see that, how beautiful it is ... it's mine ... I can touch it ... I'm the only one...."
Her breath came hard and heavy now, faster and mixed with shivers and sighs, mingled with the feedback from her image in the mirror. Both Catharines moved their hands and their bodies urgently now, both voices panted in unison: "You're everything, Catharine ... everything ... there's no one else in the whole wide world like you, so beautiful ... look at you, how I love to look at you ... my life, my life ... oh, I can't stand it...."
Her delirium mounting, her flesh burning with fever, her fingers plunging into the soft moist cave where all sensation lay, her eyes fixed on her reflection, Catharine did not see the faint glow that appeared in the glass and pulsated along with her until it separated into fiery animal eyes staring as if to devour her. They were green, the green of emeralds, of deep sea secrets and of reptiles that lie in wait concealed in the lesser greens of the jungle. The eyes faded away as Catharine arched even closer to her mirror. Her knees touched the oval frame on both sides. Her head was tossed back against the back of her daddy's chair.
"Fill me ... fill me ... I want you to fill me ... inside..." she gasped.
Two green arms slithered through the silvery surface of the mirror toward Catharine. They were long and slender, like snakes. The fingers moved in rhythm with Catharine's own. The nails were long and shining as if newly manicured. On each finger, as it moved hypnotically to caress her, a sparkling jewel glittered against the luscious slime of the green skin. The hands touched her thighs. She shivered with pleasure and desire stronger than she had ever known. They moved worshipfully, tenderly, lovingly, sensitively up, up, and up to mingle with her own feverish fingers. They touched and probed and moved inside her at last. They filled her, and her pounding cunt responded with throbs and spasms unlike any she had ever experienced or imagined.
Whoever he was, he was a master. The hands almost levitated Catharine's body above the chair. She wanted to scream, but the pleasure was so exquisite, so overpowering, that it was only her breathing and her deep throaty moan of release that came forth. The room swam in colors.
When she drifted slowly back to consciousness, she was almost able to convince herself that she had imagined it. But she knew she had never been able to give herself such ecstasy before.
Whoever he was, she knew she would have him again.
CHAPTER SIX
She awoke in the darkened room, aware that something terrifying which lay in wait for her just under the thin veneer of her daily life had been temporarily laid to rest in the deep, dreamless sleep that followed physical release. She was alone in the big bed. Richard had risen and dressed without waking her, as usual, and now she was alone. For the first time in her life, being alone was frightening. Whatever it was that she had to face-what was it, something had happened ... during the night ... she knew she didn't want to think about it, but it pushed dangerously close to her waking consciousness and she squirmed fitfully under the soft satin coverlet.
When she heard the sound of tires crunching on the gravel driveway, she realized that Richard hadn't left yet. Impulsively, she hopped from the bed and ran toward the window. She pulled the drapes aside, letting the bright morning sun fall on her wan face and tousled hair. She leaned out. Richard was just emerging from the house. Abel stood at the car door, waiting for him.
"Richard!"
He looked up, surprised. He did not smile to see her. I must look a fright, she thought. Didn't get much beauty sleep. But he always loves it when I wake early enough to call down to him. Or ... he used to. The look on his face now as he crooked his neck to look up at her was not the delight of the young ardent lover-husband who used to throw kisses to his bride every morning. He's getting older, she thought. His hair is thinning. He looks almost annoyed ... do I look older, too?
Abel was grinning up at her.
Panic, undefined, had brought her running to the window, and now she felt confused and wondered why she had reached out to Richard. Could he save her? But ... from what? What had happened to her, the cool and self-controlled, confident Catharine ... but she couldn't let him go, she couldn't retreat back into her dark sanctuary where something horrible waited...
"I was just thinking," she called down. "It would be so pleasant if I came into town and we had lunch together."
He must surely have been remembering, too, the early days of their marriage when they had this exchange almost every morning. He used to thrill to see her, his golden lady in the tower, he called her then. They would laugh and call silly endearments back and forth, despite the ogling and eavesdropping of Abel and the loutish boys who always seemed to be hanging around, working in the gardens or trimming the shrubs.
He stood for a moment, clearly anxious to be off. Then, finally, he smiled up at her. He looked tired. That was it. He was just tired.
"One sharp, at the hotel," he said.
She nodded and pulled her head back inside, away from Abel's stare and the sight of Richard turning away from her.
Lisa came in with the breakfast tray and the day's fresh roses.
"Good morning, Lisa."
"Morning."
Catharine slid back into bed and Lisa propped the tray over her knees.
"I'll be having lunch out today, Lisa. With my husband. We'll have our usual Wednesday dinner. No guests."
"I heard."
Lisa pulled the drapes open, and the warm sunlight filled the room with the bright anticipation of a new day. Catharine sighed with relief as her vague apprehensive memories of something awful dimmed and faded away in the reality of her sunny room. I'm glad Richard talked me into changing the house, she thought, determined to be positive and cheerful. It's much nicer, the yellow-flowered upholstery and the beveled mirrors reflecting sunshine, instead of my own old dark wood and that old-fashioned ornate carved mirror ... the panic started to rise deep inside her body, and she quickly turned to the mail.
Lisa was in the bathroom, straightening and cleaning and running Catharine's morning bath. It was familiar, comforting, real. Must have been a nightmare, that's all, she told herself, trying to concentrate on the bills and circulars and invitations.
Habit turned her eyes toward the tall silver bud vase on the tray. Its polished sides reflected a slightly distorted image. Automatically, Catharine pushed back a wisp of loose hair as she looked at herself in the gleaming silver. The memory of an image, reaching through the mirror, touching her with monstrous, gorgeous fingers swept through her, shuddering her whole body. But she couldn't take her wildly staring eyes from the vase. Something in the mirror, in the attic...
She sat staring, unable to move for a long moment. The horror slowly crept through her as she remembered green flesh, hot and cold at once as it touched her, and herself aching, begging, wanting it...
Catharine leaped from the bed, upsetting the tray. Coffee spilled in a black spreading pool over the pale yellow satin, but Catharine ignored it as she ran across the room to the little liquor cabinet. She poured herself a stiff glass-full of brandy. Her body shuddered uncontrollably as she swallowed the burning fire in a single gulp. Far, far away, she heard Lisa leave the bathroom by the hall door.
Catharine poured another glass of the brandy and took it with her to her writing desk. She sat down and picked up the telephone.
"Operator, will you get me a travel agency, I think it's called Olympia, in Gloucester. I don't have the number."
Waiting impatiently, she twisted the long white cord in her shaking fingers, and sipped at her drink.
"Olympia Tours, Mr. Morley speaking."
"Good morning," Catharine said. Her voice was under control as she concentrated on the one real thing she could grasp-she had to get out of this house. Whatever it was that had gone bad was right here, in her own home, and now she must leave here. Only for a little while, to get off to a neutral place, to try to understand, she promised herself.
The voice on the other end of the phone gave her a focus. Outside this house, people were going about their normal businesses and she would be among them. Out of the Garden of Eden, away from the snake that had intruded there somehow...
"Can I help you?" the calm, friendly man asked.
"Oh, yes, yes, you can. My name is Burgess, Mrs. Catharine Burgess. I believe my husband made reservations through your agency for flights to Paris..."
"Just a moment, Mrs. Burgess, let me check ... would you hold the line a moment, please."
"Yes, certainly."
Garden of Eden, that's a lot of crap, she told herself. She took a large swallow of brandy. This house hasn't been any Garden of Eden since ... she tried not to think of her wedding day, of a scene she had seen in a famous painting where God expelled Eve from Paradise because she had dared to taste some fruit from the Tree of Knowledge ... you must really be going around the bend, she told herself sharply. Stop it. (Where had Adam been in that painting?)
One wrinkle and you start losing your mind. Over the hill. Crazy, insane, hallucinations and...
It's not a wrinkle. It's just a little hint of a line-
"Yes, Mrs. Burgess, I have the tickets right here. Two first-class round trip flights to Paris, open. Would you like to make your reservation at this time?"
"Yes, please. Just one, immediately, if you can. I will be going on ahead, on the first flight you can arrange. My husband will follow later. How soon can I leave?"
"Let me check with our computer, Mrs. Burgess ... let me see ... no, nothing tomorrow ... I'll have to check with Boston and get back to you. I see that the flights are all booked for tomorrow. Possibly Friday? This is the height of the tourist season, you know."
Catharine closed her eyes. She could keep busy, stay out of the house. She had clothes to buy, things to do ... but the nights would be long and the temptation of the attic was so strong, even now, in the sun-filled morning, she longed for hands that knew how to touch her, green hands that glittered with jewels ... waiting for her. They were waiting for her. Suddenly, she knew it for certain.
"Mrs. Burgess?"
"Yes, Mr. Morley. Please see what you can do. How soon will you know?"
"I'll get on to Boston right away. I'll be able to confirm something for you by this afternoon. That's first class, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Well, shouldn't be too difficult. I'll call you with a confirmation by five o'clock today. We'll probably get you on a flight for Friday, Saturday at the latest."
"You have my number."
"Oh, yes. I have all the information, I believe."
"Thank you, Mr. Morley. Thank you very much. Good-bye."
She pressed the cutoff button and immediately dialed another number.
"Eugene? Can you take me this morning? Yes, I know it's early, I'm surprised at being up, myself. You're a darling. See you then. I'll be on time, I promise."
She finished the drink and set the empty glass down on the desk. In a few minutes, she was soaking in her tub, determinedly thinking of Notre Dame Cathedral and the Louvre Museum and the Eiffel Tower, and other ordinary things.
"How thrilling," Eugene said. "All by yourself in Paris-I wish I could hide in your Gucci bag just to see all the heads turning when they see you!"
"I'm going there to see things, not to be seen," she said, laughing.
"Norman would never let me go off alone like that, not in a million years," Lilly said from the next chair. Her words weren't too clear because of the caramel she was munching on, but her meaning was obvious.
"If she wanted to do anything like that she wouldn't have to go as far as Paris to have the opportunity,"
Karen Makepeace contributed. She wasn't having a dye job today, just a touchup.
Catharine was staring straight ahead into Eugene's mirror, but there was nothing here to be frightened of. She saw herself cool and collected, a woman everyone else envied. She gave herself up to the comforting touch of his hands and his brush as he blew her hair dry.
She was prompt meeting Richard, which surprised and pleased him. Their lunch was pleasant enough, filled with details of her trip, and plans to meet at the Ritz in Paris. He didn't seem to mind her decision to leave at once, or to question it. They ate the hotel's Wednesday special, bluefish and baked clams, with shortcake for dessert. It wasn't the way she liked it. She made a private decision to cut out all desserts from now on, but she didn't mention it to Richard. It was time she started to watch her figure, and from that vigil not even French pastry would distract her.
In the car on the way home, she began to make efficient lists in her neat handwriting. Cancel the couturier appointments. Go through closets to select which clothes and accessories to pack. How many pairs of black shoes would she need? Remember to put unneeded jewels in the vault. Get passport from Richard's secretary, who always kept it up to date even though it had never been used before now. Spend time with Jennifer.
"You goin' away, Miss Catharine?" Abel asked from the front seat.
"Only for a few weeks."
"We'll miss you, ma'am."
"Will you, Abel?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"But you and Lisa will take good care of Jennifer, won't you?"
"Oh, yes, Miss Catharine. You can be sure of that."
"And her father will still be here, for a while."
Abel didn't answer. His knowing look seemed sly, but she decided it was only the angle of the rear-view mirror.
When she arrived at the house, she was still feeling efficient and calm. She made her phone calls, checking them off her list one by one.
Spend more time with Jennifer. She glanced out at the lovely afternoon, and decided to take her daughter for a ride. She put on her slim tan jodhpurs and boots, blue silk shirt and riding hat, and picked up the crop from its hook inside her sporting-wear closet. She went downstairs and out through the side door onto the sunporch, crossed the wide lawn and strode down to the stables.
Nicky, the groom, was shoeing Jennifer's mare. "Is my daughter around?" she asked him pleasantly.
"Her horse threw a shoe, ma'am, as you see. I think Miss Jenny went to have a swim while I'm fixing it." Nicky looked at Catharine without troubling to disguise his appreciation. He actually licked his lips every time he saw her, his insolent eyes roamed at their own leisurely pace up and down and around her body. Her hand tightened on the riding crop. How she'd love to show him who was mistress here! To rip off the faded work shirt from his proud shoulder, exposing his sunburned muscular arms and his broad chest to her whip. Drag him into the dark musty earth-and-animal-smelling stable, grapple with him and throw him to the dirt, force him to strip off all his clothes, to stop hiding behind his ill-fitting pretense at decency, and show him up for what he really was-an animal, rutting and snorting like all the other animals-expose his private places and make him grow large and lustful out of respect for her until he exploded.
If she had the strength, she would do it. If she weren't so well brought up, she would bring him down. If her daughter were not always hanging around the stables. If...
But she had sworn to herself that such fantasies were forbidden from now on. She had come too dangerously close to madness last night. Don't think of last night. Think of the Eiffel Tower-no, not that. Too phallic. She giggled to herself, and young Nicky thought he had pleased her in some way. He grinned back, admiring the way her boobs stuck right up there through the imagine material of her outfit.
"Please saddle Big Red for me, right away," she said haughtily.
That's okay, Nicky was thinking, mentally smacking his lips as he went to get her saddle. I like her that way. I'd like to get her down on the stable floor, right in the dirt, and really rub her snotty beautiful nose in it. In me, he guffawed silently. Before he threw her custom-made saddle over the big roan, he kissed it with his mouth wide open, running his tongue across the exact spot where the magnificent snatch of Madam Supercunt would be rubbing itself. He sniffed and licked and could hardly wait till she got back from her ride and the saddle would be all warm and smelly from her and it would be jackoff time for Nicky again, right into the old saddle, whack! There you are, my imagine lady, how do you like the way I've oiled up the leather for you, how do you like jogging along in a nice fast trot with Nicky's come making it good and smooth for you ... but that was later. For now, he tongued the place where she would be sitting, and rubbed the spot dry with the rolled-up sleeve of his shirt before leading the horse out into the sun.
But she was nowhere to be seen. He tied Big Red to the corral post and went back-to work on the little mare.
Catharine had strolled up the hill to the pool, where Jennifer was floating on her back, practicing spitting water straight up into the air through her pursed lips. She was bare-ass naked.
"Jennifer!"
"Hi, Mommy. Look, I'm a fountain!"
"You're too old to run around naked, Jennifer."
"Not running around, I'm swimming. And there's nobody here, anyway."
"Anyone could come this way, anyone at all." Catharine's thoughts were on the groom a few hundred yards away. She knew a horny young boy when she saw one. If Nicky ever saw Jennifer like this, Catharine would really have to raise welts on him. And that's no fantasy, either, she told herself.
"Jennifer, I want you to come out of the water now and put on a bathing suit."
"Fountains don't wear bathing suits, Mommy. Anyway, you used to think it was cute."
"You're not a baby any more."
Her own words reverberated back through years, mingling with another voice, her daddy saying the very same thing to her. But they weren't in the sunshine ... it was night ... that night...
Catharine suddenly felt dizzy. She sank down onto one of the poolside chairs. She watched her daughter climb out of the pool, her smooth tan skin shaking off the blue water drops like diamonds in her path as she walked to the poolhouse. So firm and straight, her back and legs were perfection, her little shoulders beginning to fill out around the collarbone. She even had the beginning of little swellings beneath her flat baby nipples. Jennifer ran past Catharine with the grace of a water sprite, laughing. Catharine couldn't be sure, as the little girl flashed by her, whether the pale shadow was tiny silken hairs between her legs, or a trick of her imagination.
Maybe I should take her with me to Europe, she thought suddenly.
Maybe it's not wise to leave her here alone with only Abel and Lisa.
And Richard.
In a twinkling, Jennifer came out of the pool-house dressed in a bikini that made her look younger than ever, flat where she would one day be curved. Catharine saw her and smiled at the straight little body. She's only a baby, still. Of course she'll be all right, she'll be fine.
"How come you're dressed for riding, Mommy?"
"I was hoping you and I could have a nice long canter this afternoon."
"Oh," Jennifer thought it over. Then, running for a long low dive off the side, she shouted, "No, thanks!" and splashed her mother's immaculate silk blouse with chlorine that would stain if she didn't take it off immediately.
Catharine waited until her daughter's dripping wet golden head bobbed up to the surface. "Would you rather I came in swimming with you?" she asked.
"No ... that's okay."
Catharine turned away slowly, and walked to the house. Abel was leaning over a flower bed, weeding. He lifted his perspiring face as she passed him.
"Abel, would you do me a favor? Please call down to the stables and tell Nicky I've changed my mind about riding this afternoon."
"Too hot," Abel agreed, and he got to his feet with some effort. He watched her until she had slammed the screen door behind her. Then he went to the shed, called the stable boy on the house phone, and took his ladder from its storage place. He dragged it quietly across the yard to the far side of the house, a place sheltered by the twin elms. He placed the ladder where he always did, and climbed slowly to the eave that ran along the top of the second floor. With well-practiced steps, he made his way to his private peephole alongside the drainpipe that looked right into Miss Catharine's private bathroom. The duct was just big enough for him to see everything, but hidden from her view by the weird clock with those statues of fish ladies on it. He had installed the clock himself, and the peephole, too.
He thought sure she'd be heading for a bath, but today he waited quite a while, staring into the empty tub and gleaming mirrors all around. He finally realized that his treat was not to be. Slowly, he returned to the ground between the house and the sheltering elms, and dragged the ladder back to the shed. When his sister Lisa came out to give him some iced tea, he was back on his knees in the peony bed as if he'd never left.
Catharine threw her riding clothes on the chaise lounge and stepped into a simple cotton robe with a zipped front. She picked up the house phone and spoke to Lisa.
"I've left my clothes on the chaise in my room, Lisa, would you come and get them in a few minutes? Jennifer accidentally splashed me, and I'm afraid they'll stain ... thank you, Lisa. Oh, and another thing. I'm going up to the attic, to check on some things I might want to take with me ... please see that I'm not disturbed ... fine."
She hung up the phone and looked at herself calmly in the dressing table mirror. Calm, cool, collected, contented Catharine. Nothing to be afraid of.
She mounted the attic steps with an odd feeling of excitement, an anticipation she had not felt since she was a very young girl, coming home from a party to find her daddy waiting up for her, wanting to hear every detail of how she had shone at the ball. He would have cocoa ready, and the two of them would sit in the big kitchen, all alone, the only ones awake in the house, and her daddy's eyes would be proud as she told him of her triumphs, of dancing every dance and what the boys had whispered in her ear.
The attic was streaked with afternoon sunlight. The deep silence enveloped her. She moved past the old things, touching here and there as she wound her way through the clutter of memories. The velvet couch, the chintz-upholstered chairs, the carved mahogany hall table, the grandfather clock, her daddy's desk, the painted bookcase, the filigreed Japanese screen, the glass-fronted sideboard, lamps and Oriental carpets and vases and cartons of books...
In her own corner, her daddy's chair and her oval mirror. Her nice little flowered-print cotton robe looked wrong, an intrusion in the mellow surroundings of childhood. Her hand went to the neckline and began to slide the zipper down. The thing fell in a heap and she kicked it away, out of sight. She stood naked. The light fell on her like an illuminated masterpiece whose incredible glow made the viewer reach out to touch the flesh. "Hello," she said softly.
She saw her reflected mouth moving, and heard her own word, but the rest was silence.
"See ... you're just a mirror, and you hung in my bedroom when I was growing up. I know you very well."
She reached out her hand. Her pink nails touched the hard cold glass. She laughed, and threw her head back. She shook her hair free of its ribbon. Her confidence returned in a flood of familiarity. Nothing could happen to her here, nothing bad. These were her daddy's things all around her, and she was her daddy's princess.
The other Catharine, her reflection, reached out a finger, too. They touched, flesh on glass. Her image laughed with her and looked back with the same delight.
"Catharine, you are delicious!" both Catharines said simultaneously.
Their expressions changed to serious contemplatation. "Yes, I am, I really am. Mirrors are my friends. This is my mirror, it is me, me. I'm still beautiful, as lovely as ever, yes I am ... I am."
She whirled before her mirror like a child, laughing. But when she came to a stop, it seemed to her that the other Catharine, the one in the mirror, had not moved. It had stood still, watching her. She stuck her sexy tongue out at it, defiant and happy.
"I can have anything I want. I can do and have whatever I want. It's always been that way."
"Yes, because you're so beautiful, Catharine. I love to look at you," the mirror image said.
"I'll show you something," Catharine confided, and reached out to her dressing table. She looked away for a moment, but when she looked back, the reflection was still there, watching her with the same reassuring smile, the same sparkling eyes. Catharine poured some oil from the little flagon, and slowly rubbed it over her bare skin, watching her other self do the same. They both glistened and glowed in the diffused threads of sunlight that danced across the attic to rest on her. "Will you come to me?"
Coquettishly, Catharine turned her back to the mirror, covering her front with inadequate hands. Her laugh was almost a giggle as she looked over her shoulder at herself. Her hands moved slowly around and over the swell of her oiled hips, to finger her opening from behind.
"I like that," she breathed. "No one has ever touched me there. Would you?"
She took her hand away and raised it to her mouth. Her reflection sucked thoughtfully on her finger.
"Yes, Catharine. I'll do anything you want ... anything. I love to watch you."
The reflection reinserted the wet finger. She smiled out at Catharine with deep pleasure as she moved it slowly inside of her.
"Is that good? Am I good to you?"
Catharine's eyes closed as she savored the expanding sensation. Almost faint from the experience of a new delight, she turned slowly and looked at the mirror with heavy-lidded eyes. The reflection raised her arms out toward Catharine.
"If you'll come to me, Catharine, I promise you pleasures you've never imagined. I know what you need, I know how to give you everything you deserve and have always longed for. I can satisfy you...."
Catharine's arms fell limply to her sides. She stood looking at herself in wonder.
"I'm Catharine Johnston, do you see?" she whispered. "And I can have anything ... I can...."
"And you shall," the reflection promised. "If you come to me ... only me."
Catharine's thick lashes closed over her visionary self. Her hands moved slowly up to her stiff hard nipples. Without knowing she did so, she took a step toward the mirror.
The reflection stood absolutely still.
Violet eyes wide open, it watched the mesmerized Catharine approaching. The smile in the mirror image was full and fraught with lascivious triumph; its nipples were enlarged and the color of bursting wild dark berries; the tongue that slid through the soft lips was a flashing silver blade; the flesh around the eyes was sunken and dark. The eyes turned from violet to dank animal green ablaze with passion. Both bodies gleamed and glistened and the oiled flesh seemed to sizzle.
Catharine stopped at the edge of the mirror. Her eyes opened slowly. She could barely speak. She was aching with desire.
"I am Catharine..." she said in a throaty moan. "I am ... I ... I ... I..."
She leaned into the reflection, half-swooning.
Mouth opened onto mouth as the reflection caught Catharine in its embrace.
An electrifying shock charged Catharine with life-vibrating, vivid, wide-awake, demanding life. Her eyes were wide and alert now. She was suddenly in a different place. Was it the beauty salon-she heard a gabble of women's voices in the background. Brilliant light filled the space. The walls were mirrors, but jagged and fractured so that her image was broken and distorted everywhere she looked. But there were the familiar plastic chairs, the chrome hair dryers, the little wheeled makeup tables. Where was Eugene? She looked around, frantically, confused. One mirror, off in the distance, seemed to be unbroken. She saw that it had an oval frame. Deep inside it, she seemed to see her quiet attic room, but the mirror was so far away, the room was too long. And someone was holding her in an embrace so that she couldn't get away.
She struggled free of the arms that held her, trying to focus on the face with its strange garish makeup. Familiar. A woman. Why was she, Catharine, in this freakish place, embracing-yes, kissing-a woman?
"Don't you know me, Catharine?" It was Karen Makepeace's voice, but there was something odd about it. It was stripped of its civilized veneer. "Since we were children, I've always worshipped you," Karen was saying. "You know that, Catharine. You're above everyone."
It was the same message that Catharine had always gotten from Karen, but here it took on a literalness that frightened her. No, no, we must have rules, we must have manners and never, never tell the truth, she pleaded silently. Her words wouldn't come out. She began to shake her head, but the new Karen moved in on her, the lip stick painted mouth kissing and the darting tongue licking, down the length of Catharine's naked body until, weakened by the sensation, Catharine was lying limply on the floor beyond the mirror.
"We've been waiting so long for you, Catharine. Everyone wants you. We know how to pleasure you here. Trust me."
Catharine wanted to struggle, but Karen's elaborately painted green eyes held her own in a drowning pool which sucked her down. Her friend's blood-red mouth covered every inch of Catharine's sensitive skin with murmured endearments and moist loving kisses, tongue-caresses and little moans of pleasure. Catharine shivered and surrendered.
She allowed Karen to anoint her, first with her mouth and then with precious-smelling lotions, and she watched intently as Karen attended to her own body with the same scented aphrodisiacs. And then, Catharine was no longer the passive one. Seized with hunger and need, half-conscious in her overwhelming passion, she drove herself onto Karen's flesh, thigh against thigh, breasts pressed tightly into breasts, moist slippery skins rubbing and blending into one. Catharine sucked greedily at Karen's big tits, burying her face in the smothering softness of them. As she moved downward on her friend's sweet-smelling belly, she felt Karen begin to slide out from her embrace, away from her.
And suddenly, Catharine was alone, writhing on the hard cold floor.
"I'm late," Karen's voice shouted from a distance, warped and remote. " 'Bye for now ... sorry ... trust me ... I always envied you, Catharine ... I always adored you, worshipped you ... I'm late...."
The voice trailed away.
Catharine screamed, "Karen! Karen! Come back! Come back!" but there was no answer.
Far, far off, she heard other voices, almost familiar, calling to her. "He's waiting for you ... you're late again ... you must dress, Catharine ... the guests are here ... hurry...."
A man was calling to her, who was it? Not Richard.
Suddenly, Catharine found herself standing in a lush green garden. She was wearing her favorite party dress, the one that her daddy had taken her to Boston to have made for her sixteenth birthday party. It was her first really grown-up dress. She looked down at herself. Where was her mirror ... but she was in the garden. A crown of fresh daisies sat on the top of her golden hair. She reached up to touch it, and smiled with delight. Her daddy had ordered a dozen crowns that day, kept fresh in the greenhouse, so that no matter how late she danced, or with how many boys, she would always have a fresh, impeccable wreath for her head.
Manicured hedges rose around Catharine, high over her head. In the center of the hedgerows stood a long table, elaborately set for a great feast.
There were platters heaped high with lobsters, crabmeat, salmon, roast duckling, chicken, partridges, turkeys, guinea hens, roast beef, legs of lamb, pork, spare ribs, chops, and skewered veal birds. There were overflowing bowls of ripe fruits, silver vessels rimmed with nuts and olives, and heaps of fresh vegetables everywhere. Bottles of red and white and rose" wine were cooling in silver buckets of ice, and flaming red poppies, roses, and garlands of daisies and asphodels flowed out of baskets onto the table. Here and there were huge apothecary jars filled with many-colored capsules and pills, evidently part of the feast.
In the center, lying almost the entire length of the table, was a lush naked woman, lying on her stomach with her firm round ass bouncing happily in the air. She was laughing and wriggling her fingers and toes happily as the guests gorged themselves on food and amused themselves with her body.
The diners seemed familiar to Catharine, but their faces were changed. It was as if they had left aside their masks of normal decency, and showed themselves raw, decadent, obscene.
Arthur and Janet Manchester sat opposite each other, stuffing their drooling mouths with roast chicken and frequent handfuls of pills, and slurping red wine until it ran down their chins. They were having an argument, which didn't slow them down from their attention to the food and to the centerpiece, who turned her head this way and that to listen to them. From time to time, Arthur or Janet would stuff a chicken leg or a stuffed egg into the woman's laughing mouth, and once they both leaned forward to kiss the centerpiece, who stuck out her tongue at them.
Farther down the table, Lilly Sanford and Ann Birmingham gossiped amiably between large gluttonous mouthfuls of food. Ann spilled some wine on the white thighs of the centerpiece, who wriggled sensuously in the sticky wetness.
At the foot of the table, Eugene sat alone. He was studying the raised buttocks of the centerpiece as if trying to decide on a hair style. He held the blow-dryer in one hand, and with the other he stuffed food into his mouth in great indelicate fistfuls.
Her daddy's chair, which had become her throne, stood at the head of the table. The grandfather clock was set upon it, but its hands were missing.
Catharine moved tentatively toward the grotesque banquet, knowing that it was a dream and yet feeling the indescribable certainty that it was not. No one seemed aware of her presence. She stopped behind Janet and Arthur Manchester.
"The provinces are the place for her. She sucks, you know, or that is, she'd like to if she could," Janet
Manchester was saying, with an angry scowl on her face. Plum juice dribbled from the corner of her mouth.
"I wouldn't spit it out," her husband said.
"She'd sit beautifully-on your face," Janet said with a horrible laugh.
"Exactly what I had in mind, my dear. I'll buy into that at any price."
His angry wife reached down the table and grabbed at the overhanging breast of the live centerpiece with one hand, while her other brought a dripping rib of beef to her insatiable mouth. As Catharine came closer, she saw that Arthur had been shoving gobs of caviar into his mouth and there were little black specks of fish eggs between all his teeth and stuck in the corners of his lips.
She backed away, down to the foot of the table and dear Eugene, who looked from this distance as if he were deciding whether to jam that dryer up the centerpiece's ass or his own. She stopped midway to listen to Lilly and Ann. They were popping capsules and tearing partridge wings apart with their teeth as they jabbered.
"I'm fattening myself up just for her," Lilly said. "She'd love my tongue up her cunt, and she could gobble on me forever and never get tired."
"I'd wait for her forever," Ann agreed.
"You're not as meaty as I am. Catharine will love it once she tries it."
"She glows, she positively glows," Ann said, licking the bloody juices from a rare leg of lamb. "I could light her fire," she grinned. The blood dripped off her tongue.
Lilly looked down the table. "Do you agree, Eugene?" she shouted through her fat greasy lips.
Eugene was probing the openings in the centerpiece's ass, tasting and testing critically. He looked up with a rapturous smile on his face, and reported, "Immaculate folds ... stunning crease ... enchanting slit ... fantastic cleft ... gorgeous cunt, love ... wish I had it."
"Is it dry?" Ann asked.
"Is it wet?" Lilly shouted at the same moment.
"You'll have to wait till I'm finished. I'll blow you out first." He brandished his dryer, about to begin, but first he stopped for a long drink of champagne. It dribbled from the neck of the upturned bottle onto his usually impeccable shirt front.
Catharine looked away. She saw Nicky the stable boy approach the table. He grinned lewdly at the centerpiece's head, jabbed his dirty fingers into her mouth and began to examine her teeth. She spit at him and he swallowed it, licking his lips. Then he ran prancing around to the foot. He tickled the naked foot as he pretended to shoe it.
"I need a good licking," he grinned, taking up a whole lobster and sucking its openings for the buttery juice. "I'm naughty ... she doesn't like the way I look at her. Her mouth needs something I've got ... she looks hot to me ... she-likes the way I smell. I'm naughty."
The whole table had begun to tip dangerously as the guests became louder and more frantic. They all jabbered together, jamming food and fingers into every opening, their own and those of the centerpiece. They sucked greedily on her neck and shoulders and breasts, and poked into her ass-hole and her cunt and her mouth and her ears. They slurped and spilled and fondled and fingered and elbowed and rubbed and guzzled and nuzzled and swallowed and belched and never seemed to get enough.
Catharine was weak from conflicting desires. She wanted desperately to join them, to be part of the free, uninhibited lust and for once, to feast herself on the bodies of others, to allow all those admirers of hers to touch her-me, me, me! But she felt disgusted, revolted, and sick at the sight of them. They were all talking about her, Catharine, and she needed to hear every word. But she was Catharine, special and elegant and above all this low vile behavior. They were decadent, degraded, disgusting, delicious, desiring, desirable ... she sank down onto the grass to catch her breath.
Under the table, two creatures were crawling on hands and knees, lifting skirts and opening flies indiscriminately, servicing the diners with slurping greedy tongues. It was Abel and Lisa. They didn't see her, either.
No one had noticed her.
Arthur Manchester rose from the table unsteadily, holding a huge goblet of deep red wine. He moved down the table, sliding his free hand over the well-greased skin of the centerpiece, until he reached the foot. Ann Birmingham's mouth, curled voluptuously around the toes of the centerpiece, opened to include Arthur's fingers. She paused in her sloppy sucking only to rip giant bites from a ripe watermelon, returning to the toe-sucking with renewed rapture.
"Can't get enough," she murmured. "Fill me up ... can't get enough ... fill me up ... can't get..."
Arthur pulled his fingers from deep inside her mouth and ran them along the side of her straining face, into her hair. He twirled them leisurely in slow rolling strokes, tangling the silky strands with glints from his diamond rings, while he leaned his head down close to the centerpiece to see what Eugene was doing.
Concentrating hard, with that look of ardent concern that Catharine had always assumed was reserved only for herself, Eugene was inserting vegetables into the ass-hole of the laughing, wriggling voluptuary. He would slowly move each piece in, then out, then deeper in again, and then remove it and lean forward to sample the taste. Carrots, cucumbers, iced celery stalks, plump tomatoes, frilled radishes, handfuls of little green peas, broccoli with thick hard stems and full rounded tops, stuffed olives both green and jumbo colossal blacks, scallions and leeks, soft warm squashes, hard firm zucchinis, tickly asparagus and bold hearts of lettuce-all went deep into the fleshy pink passageway, moistened with Roquefort dressing, dipped with care and then removed and tasted by the elegant Eugene, who sampled and appraised each insertion expertly.
"A precious path ... wonderful way ... deeply deep ... wildly wet ... very, very ... oh, how very ... blazing, burning ... clinging, turning ... but needs more shucking, basting, plucking ... inside and outside, perfect for sucking...."
"I say there, don't hog and maul," Arthur said petulantly. "There's forever, after all."
Generously, Eugene began to hand the dipped and tasted vegetables to Arthur, who sucked noisily on them to get the subtle taste of the centerpiece with its sauce of vegetables and dressing and hairdresser's mouth.
Eugene's graceful hands.were rudely shoved away from the centerpiece's lucious center by fat jeweled fingers. Lilly was holding a quarter-pound stick of melting butter, which had coated her rings and greased her hands until they slithered like overfed snakes reaching for another live meal. She slid the butter into the opening, droning in a kind of delirium.
"In and out ... in and out ... in and out ... I'll take all I can get and stuff more up yet ... in and out ... in and out ... I'll take all I can get and stuff more up yet ... fat, fat, butter fat ... in and out ... in and out...."
The butter was all gone, used up. Lilly's spell was only interrupted, not broken. She reached across the buttocks to tear a leg from a browned and succulent pheasant and moved up along the table to Janet Manchester, who was ardently stuffing her own left breast into the centerpiece's open mouth.
"How do you do?" Janet said. "Her mouth is just fine. All hotty and wet. Are you having a good time?"
With that, she took a handful of pills from a crystal bowl and stuffed them into Lilly's open mouth. Lilly swallowed and grinned. Her huge bosom heaved and swelled, and her tight gown could contain them no longer. Lilly tore at the front of her blouse. With bountiful abundance, her plump tits poured from the opening, spilling over like the Great Falls at flood time.
Janet eyed them hungrily as she tickled her own nipples, pressing them hard against the face of the centerpiece.
"You can have some of this," Lilly offered generously. "They can't hide any more ... take all you can get and stuff more up yet ... take all you can get and stuff more up yet ... take all you can get..." She seemed to be back in her trance-like state as Janet leaned over to begin licking all around the vast heaving mountains and peaks of moving flesh. Lilly, still murmuring her litany, began to gnaw on the pink claw meat of a king crab as Janet ravaged her ample offerings.
One by one the gluttons were moving away from the table. Their actions shifted from the centerpiece to each other. Under the table, having no one left to service, Abel was buggering his sister Lisa, while she lazily chewed on a rack of lamb.
Catharine moved toward the table. Only Eugene still sat there, masturbating with the hand-blower up his rectum and his thin red cock jerking in and out of Arthur Manchester's mouth. Catharine walked around the writhing bodies to the head of the table where her daddy's empty chair oversaw the proceedings, the handless grandfather clock adding to its dignity.
The naked centerpiece lay quietly, sprawled across the remains of the feast. Her yellow hair hung matted and tangled, hiding her face. Catharine, curious, touched the head, which turned to look at her, laughing lustily.
It was herself.
Catharine Johnston Burgess. Her replica-reflection-image-other self smiled ambiguously after her laughter died down. She pointed to the empty throne chair. Her voice was Catharine's own, but strangely remote, as though it traveled on the wind over great distances.
"He wants you. You know that."
Catharine shook her head, not wanting to understand. But she did.
She forced herself to look away from the grotesque, rutting image of herself, and followed her pointing hand to the chair. The clock was gone. Her daddy sat there now.
"Daddy..." she cried. "Daddy, it's me!"
He did not seem to hear her. He was wearing the riding clothes in which he had posed for his portrait. He was neither smiling nor frowning. He looked past her down the length of the table, and then he stood up and seemed to fade back, without taking a step, away from her, back into the faint mist beyond the hedges. She tried to call out to him, but nothing came from her burning throat.
He looked back, just once. He didn't see her. She tried to call him, desperately, but no sound would come. The word choked in her throat and tears poured from her aching eyes. Her daddy disappeared slowly, slowly, behind the hedge. He was gone.
Catharine found strength from somewhere, and she ran after him. Her dress was partly opened-when had she changed again into her white party dress?and the ringlets atop her head bounced as she ran. The garden seemed different. The maze of hedges hid him. Every turn seemed wrong. She couldn't find her way out. He was gone.
At last she came to the break in the hedge. She ran breathlessly through to the pool area. But she stopped abruptly, frozen by what she saw.
All the guests were there, standing formally around the pool and chatting in low polite voices. They were dressed as she had first seen them at the feast. They were sipping cocktails. In the center of the swimming pool, her daddy was standing alone, unseen or unnoticed by the others. The water was filling the pool, slowly rising around him. It had reached his chest. His vacant eyes never blinked. They stared straight ahead.
Catharine moved to the edge of the pool. She was aware that the guests were pointing at her, talking about her. But her daddy didn't seem to know she was there. She still could not find her voice.
"I do believe she belongs. To the manor born, you know," Eugene was saying.
In her polite party voice, Lilly answered him. "Oh, my, yes indeed. She has an appetite, you know. Good stuff, if I may say so."
"Her flesh responds strongly, don't you agree?" Ann was saying. "It won't be long now."
The water reached her daddy's neck, inched up to his ears and covered his mouth. She tried to scream, to bring their attention to the awfulness, the tragedy that was about to happen. No words came. The party guests sipped their drinks, stared at her, and spoke their civilized gibberish as though she were not there.
"She's slipping away slowly," Arthur Manchester said. "He'll have her juices in a wink."
"Shhh ... look at her ... ahhh..."
The others hushed, finally, as Catharine knelt near the pool and watched her daddy's head disappear under the rising water. In the silence, she saw only her own watery reflection, still and green.
The green eyes peered back at her from the depths of the still, ominous water. They were not her own.
The smooth surface of the pool was broken by arms that reached up to touch her. The green slimy fingers entwined themselves in her golden hair as she knelt there, paralyzed. Everyone was hushed and watching. Slowly the arms pulled her down, down into the water.
The daisies from her hair floated on the surface. No other motion disturbed the still pool.
Under the water, Catharine struggled for her life. She could not free herself from the terrible grip of the demon who pulled her down. A sigh drifted from her mouth in a long, lazy series of bubbles that floated upward through the green, still water far above her head.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Gasping, choking, shaking her head to find breath, Catharine came back to consciousness with a convulsive sob that echoed in reverberating waves against the high wooden beams of the attic ceiling. She was lying on the hard floor. Her nude body, curled into a fetal position, was soaked with sweat-as wet as if she had been drowning. As her eyes fluttered open, the first thing she saw was her own pale, shuddering reflection in the mirror.
She lay still for a long time, watching herself come slowly back to reality. The luminous soft round curves of her legs and hips and shoulders against the cold dark floor, the flowing hair gone wild and quivering around her paler face. Her mouth half open, gasping for air. Tremors rippled her skin, up and down the length of her body from her shadowed eyelids to her cold, clenched toes.
Afraid to confront her own eyes, she stared into the mirror at the taut white bones of her knees, her shivering thigh raised to catch an errant ray of sunlight along its long smooth line that rose from the waist and dipped again into the deep hidden valley below her belly. She watched as her natural color began to come back and glow again. The trembling white apparition slowly changed again into her familiar beloved body. Her eyes opened wider, turned at last to the mirror to see themselves. A sigh of relief burst from her lips, and the warm vapor clouded the glass below her wideopen dark violet eyes. She was herself again, and she was alone.
She would not think about what had happened. Not yet. It was too real.
The grandfather clock, behind her, began to gird itself inwardly to strike the hour. When she was little, she used to say that the clock was clearing its throat before speaking. The sound gave her comfort now. And then it chimed. One. Only one. She was supposed to meet Richard at one o'clock.
Catharine raised her eyes from her own image to the other things around her which were reflected in the mirror. All was as it should be. The noon sun high over the house lit her attic with gentle, indirect beams of light that came through the treetops to bathe the huge room with familiarity. There was her daddy's chair, so close she could touch it. Her own white four-poster bed, her wardrobe and her dressing table stood backed up against her daddy's big desk and his leather sofa. Her gaze moved down again, to herself. Beautiful. Naked. Awake. Herself. Catharine.
She rose, finally, and slipped into her robe. Her fingers still trembled, a little, as she pulled at the zipper, but finally she saw herself dressed again, demurely tying her hair back with a ribbon. Her eyes never left the mirror. Her face seemed to her only slightly flushed now, and she drew on a mask of calm to hide the terror still menacing just below the surface of her reflection.
"Good heavens, you gave me a start!" Lisa cried as they almost collided in the hall at the bottom of the attic stairs. "I thought you'd gone to lunch!"
"I'm very late. I need a bath. I ... I've been looking for something. I'm ... all dusty."
Lisa looked at her closely. "What do you do up there in that attic with all those old things all the time? You shouldn't be spending so much time up there, I'm sure your husband wouldn't approve!"
"Oh, Lisa!" Catharine wanted to throw herself in the arms of her old nurse, but she felt unclean, unattractive. "I'm not going up there again, ever. Anyway, I'm leaving in the next day or two for Europe. Oh, did the travel agency call?"
Lisa shook her head. She stared at Catharine curiously, and Catharine turned away from her. "I'll draw my own bath," she said over her shoulder. "Would you ask Abel to have the car in an hour?"
"He's up fixing the drain again."
"Well, it can wait, tell him when he gets down." Catharine went into her bathroom and started to run the bath water. Something at the window caught her eye, and she looked up quickly, but it was probably only a tree branch brushing against the opaque glass. Her nerves were razor-thin. The bath would soothe her, calm her, and help her to forget the nightmare.
Settled comfortably in his secret niche outside the upper story, Abel opened his fly and began to massage himself happily, prepared to dream with Miss Catharine in her bath, but he was disappointed. She washed herself briskly and was wrapped in her huge white towel again before he'd even gotten hard. He almost cried, but folded his big cock back inside his pants, zipped up and started down the ladder to go get the car ready for her.
They pulled up alongside the construction site where Richard was working. He was bent over a drawing board table with two other men, explaining something on a blueprint spread out before them.
One of his subordinates noticed the Lincoln as it pulled up to the curb, and he nudged Richard. She saw the annoyance in his eyes, even from the distance where she sat. She began to tremble again, in the back of the car. Abel had the door open, and after a moment, Catharine stepped out into the glaring sun. Richard strode toward her.
"Lunch was about two hours ago," he said tersely.
Catharine couldn't speak. She buried her head into his leather-jacketed shoulder. He was surprised and embarrassed.
"Hey ... hey ... what's the matter?"
"Richard, something terrible ... something is terribly wrong...."
He put his arms around her. Abel looked straight ahead, toward the deep foundation hole that the bulldozers were excavating.
Catharine slumped against her husband like a child badly in need of comforting. The public exhibition definitely embarrassed Richard, and he pulled her into the car. She threw her arms around his broad shoulders and hugged him tightly.
"Catharine ... honey, look, I know you've been up set lately. That's why we decided to take a second honeymoon, isn't it? Only a few days..."
"Richard," she said, lifting her head from the hollow of his neck to look at him, "I ... I want to leave sooner...."
"Yes, darling," he said, puzzled. "You're going on ahead and I'll meet you, as we planned."
"No, I must leave now, right away! I've already called the agency. They're trying to get me on a flight for the day after tomorrow. Is that all right?"
"Sure, honey, if you want to," he said. "I don't understand, but if you're in a hurry to get away, there's nothing to keep you here. It'll be good for you to have more time on your own. Okay?"
She nodded, trying to smile.
"Did you eat anything today?"
She shook her head.
"Come on, I'll take you to lunch."
"But ... but you already had your lunch break." She sniffled but did not allow tears to come. She knew her brave little smile would please him, and it did. He pulled her back against him briefly, and she hugged him tightly again, to absorb his strength. He leaned out of the open car door to shout to his workmen.
"I'll be back in about an hour. I want that yardage marked off by then!" He nodded to Abel, who shut the door and went around to the driver's seat.
Over lunch, holding Catharine's hand, Richard said, "Of course I want you to go. You're not going to worry about what those silly gossips say, are you? You know I trust you. And you trust me, I hope."
She smiled at him. "Of course I do."
"You can do all the shopping you like, in Paris, and I'll be there before you know it. We'll both be the better for it, you'll see."
"And Jennifer ... I think she's annoyed at me, but she'll be all right, won't she? I've never left her before."
"I'll pay a lot of attention to her. I'll give her extra time, extra love while you're gone. I promise you. Don't worry about a thing," Richard said. He raised her slim hand to his lips and kissed each tapered finger, as he used to a long time ago.
"And we'll meet at the hotel, as soon as you can get there."
"Yes."
"I know I'm being silly. I can't ... I can't explain why I feel this way, but I know I have to get out of that house right away. Silly, isn't it, when I've never wanted to leave before, even for our honeymoon . . , remember?"
"Sometimes I think I married you too young. You weren't really ready to leave your daddy yet. It was so soon after your mother ... oh, well, that's all in the past now. We'll have a real honeymoon this time. No breaking it off to hurry home to your daddy."
"No ... I'll never go back up there."
The odd words hung in the air between them for a moment, and then the waitress brought their coffee and they sipped in silence, still holding hands.
"What I meant is..." she began. "What I meant..."
" ... is that you're grown-up now," he finished for her. "It's time to leave the nest. I understand. You'll have a whole new perspective when we get back."
"Yes," she murmured, trying not to think of her morning's nightmare.
"You look frightened, suddenly," Richard said with concern.
"Frightened? What would I be frightened of?" she said, and launched quickly into a list of things that she wanted to do in Europe-whatever tourist things popped into her head, nothing she really cared about one way or another.
By the time she got home, the horror had almost left her, lulled into dormant lurking, easy to ignore. The bright daylight, the normalcy of the house, Richard's reassuring attentions and the anticipation of all the things she had to do made Catharine feel quite herself again. Jennifer ran to meet the car as it turned into the driveway.
"Lisa's got your suitcases outl Can I help you pack, Mommy? Can I?"
"Yes, darling, of course you may."
They went upstairs together. Catharine gripped Jennifer's thin little shoulders as they walked, and her own trembling finally stopped completely. She was happy, after all, with a daughter as beautiful as herself and a husband who loved her above all else, and a fine home and all the things life had always promised for her. Everybody had fears, imaginary or real, and hers were silly, silly, silly. Was she to be run out of her own house by her own memories? It must be true, she needed a change, that was all. She hugged Jennifer to her and they entered the bright yellow bedroom together, laughing and excited.
Several unopened boxes lay on the bed next to the open suitcases. Catharine rang for Lisa and then began to open them. She held up her new dresses, one by one, and Jennifer admired them with tomboy whistles and girlish sighs.
"Yes, Miss Catharine?"
"Lisa, do you think we can start right in on these things? I may be leaving on Friday."
"Okay."
Catharine stepped out of her dress and hung it in the closet. "Tell you what, Jennifer," she said over her shoulder. "Why don't you start putting the lingerie in that small bag?"
"Oh, goodie." Jennifer opened her mother's lingerie drawers and ran her little fingers over the fine silks and satins, the lovely lacy panties and bras and slips and the softly rolled, flesh-colored stockings.
Catharine slipped one of her new dresses over her head. Lisa knelt down on her knees to begin pinning the hem.
Jennifer held up a pair of black panties. "Mother, how come you can see right through these?"
"That's just the way they're made, Jennifer."
"That's super. Can I have some like this?"
"No, sweetheart."
"Why not? You wear them."
"Put them in the suitcase, Jennifer."
"Will you please stand still, Miss Catharine," Lisa said, her disapproving mouth full of pins.
Jennifer folded the panties and placed them neatly in the bottom of the scented case. She unrolled a pair of sheer stockings and held them against her own straight, little-girl legs. The suggestive curve of the stockings and their length trailing on the carpet only pointed out how long Jennifer had yet to wait before she would be ready for such things.
The skirt was pinned, and Catharine turned around before the mirror to check it. Lisa and Jennifer both watched her silently. She could see the approval she needed on both their faces. "Pretty, isn't it?" she asked, and her child and her maid both nodded solemn agreement.
She took off the dress and stepped into a long flowing skirt. "Too wide, needs to be taken in just a bit, right here," she said. Lisa's hands brushed the bare skin at Catharine's waist as she tucked the material back for a deeper pleat. Catharine's mind flashed back to her dream/orgy. Lisa and Abel ... crouched under the horrible feast, doing things to people ... she remembered the look of Lisa's gaping snatch, running with juices from Abel's exertions and her own....
Catharine's skin suddenly began to perspire, and her face reddened.
Lisa looked up. "Why, Miss Catharine, you're sweating! Are you all right?"
Catharine stared at herself in the mirror, her eyes deliberately avoiding Lisa's and Jennifer's questioning stares. "I'm fine," she said. "Hurry up, Lisa. I want these things ready by tomorrow. I can't go without them."
Lisa grumbled, reinserted the wicked-looking pins in her mouth and furiously resumed work. Jennifer turned back to the drawer and its delicious grown-up promises.
"Oh, and Lisa ... don't let me forget ... I mean, would you run up to the attic when you're finished here and bring down my silver mirror and hairbrush-the set my daddy gave me. I just can't travel without them."
"That door's kept locked, Miss Catharine."
"The key is in the enameled egg on my writing table."
"I'll get it, Mother," Jennifer said. She ran from the dresser to the writing table. "No!"
But Catharine was too late to stop her. Jennifer had the key and was skipping down the hall toward the attic. Catharine started after her, but Lisa gave the new skirt a hard tug.
"Will you stay still!" she muttered, almost swallowing a pin. Catharine settled back, but her thoughts were with her daughter and an indefinable wave of sadness swept through her. She closed her eyes against the sight of herself as she stood obediently still.
Jennifer raced the steps three at a time, and fumbled impatiently at the forbidden door. It swung open into a enchanted half-lit world where all her Mommy's and Grandpapa's things were jumbled together.
It was like entering a place that a spell had been cast onto, like one of the stories in her favorite book.
She tiptoed soundlessly to the corner where her mother's old dressing table stood next to the oval mirror she dimly remembered. She opened the door of the wardrobe that stood next to her mother's white four-poster bed. Her hands ran lovingly over the costumes, the exotic colors and fabrics. In the drawers alongside, all the fine white underwear, more her size than her mother's. She held up delicate lace panties, and then a camisole meant more for budding breasts than full ones. like her own. She ran her fingers lightly over all the neatly folded things, and turned around again and again to gaze in wonder at all the promises of this place.
The great big oval mirror, she remembered that. She used to stare into it when she was very little, when it still stood in her mother's room. She would see a child and dream about the woman she would become someday.
Now as she looked at the mirror, it seemed to radiate with a glow all its own despite the sun that dipped obliquely into the room. Transfixed, Jennifer moved to stand directly in front of it. She slid her fingertips over the glass, and moved back a step to sit in the throne-like chair that was drawn up to face the oval.
Next to her, a table held a profusion of bottles and decanters and vials and pots and jars and her mother's silver hand mirror and matching hairbrush. Jennifer was so excited that she touched each thing in turn. She picked up the hairbrush and lifted it to her own golden head. Slowly, she began to stroke her long, straight, shining hair. She watched herself in the mirror as she brushed. She smiled and pouted, held her chin this way and that, brushing all the while with luxurious care, staring in fixed hypnotic admiration of what she saw.
Downstairs, Catharine stared at herself in the modern beveled four-way mirror. She was extremely agitated.
"I wonder what's keeping that child?" she said angrily. "She should be down here by now."
Lisa, pinning the third garment, nodded her head wearily.
"I told her ... I didn't want her to go up there."
Lisa's head was bowed, and her voice sounded gruff and strange through the battery of sharp pins. "I'll get her," she said. But it was not Lisa's voice, it was the voice of the demon on the other side of the mirror in Catharine's nightmare.
Catharine stared at her old nurse's reflection. Lisa's face was turned downward toward the skirt hem, but her hands-her hands! They were the green scaly devil hands that had pulled her down. The fingers were covered with jewels that flashed blindingly as they worked around the fabric of the skirt and brushed against Catharine's leg. She pulled away, wondering if she were going to faint.
At Catharine's sudden movement, Lisa looked up, startled. Her face was worried, tired, familiar. They stared at each other in the mirror's reflecting glass.
Behind them, the bedroom door opened and Jennifer stood there with the hairbrush set in her hands.
"I got your things, Mother. I saw all-"
"Jennifer, I don't want you up there ever again!" Catharine's anger covered a swarm of other emotions that buzzed and fluttered to get out.
Jennifer opened the door slowly, her eyes narrow with disappointment. Lisa took up the clothes with a loud "harumph" to indicate her annoyance, and left the room. Jennifer stood there, watching Catharine as she slumped into a chair.
"Mother ... are you all right?"
"Yes ... I only ... I need ... I'm sorry I yelled at you, darling. Forgive me."
Jennifer's eyes widened again, innocent and instantly forgiving. She smiled at her mother and left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.
I think I am going mad, Catharine said quite reasonably to herself. What shall I do?
Her head whirled. She had seen it, she had. It was not a dream, not a nightmare. She knew now that she had not been asleep in the attic that morning, she had known it all along. It was real. Whatever was happening to her was either real or ... help me, she mouthed silently, to no one. Help me.
Her arm brushed the cold plastic of the telephone and she stared at it for a moment. Then she picked up the receiver and began to dial. She dialed automatically, Richard's number.
"Good afternoon, is Mr. Burgess in? Oh, hello, Sally. Yes, just fine, thank you. Yes, she's fine, too. Oh ... I forgot. Of course, he's out at the construction site. How silly of me. No, there's no message. It's ... it's not important. Thank you, Sally. Goodbye..."
She let the receiver fall back into its cradle, and her slim fingers slid of their own accord down to the top drawer. They closed around the small vial of capsules. Her trembling hands almost dropped the little bottle as she fumbled to open it, but finally she got one out. She poured a glass of water from the thermos pitcher and gulped down the capsule. She slumped back against the chair, waiting for the pill to work. Her eyes fell on the photograph of herself and her daddy.
He was a huge, overwhelmingly handsome man, with the kind of enormous confidence and ready charm that drew people to him, what they called "charisma" these days. He wore a business suit in the picture. He had his arm around his daughter. She was wearing the same white party dress that now hung upstairs in the attic.
In the photograph, the thirteen-year-old girl was looking up adoringly at her daddy. But his dancing eyes looked straight ahead, staring out at the camera, at her-the woman she was now. Was his glance still proud, did he still adore what he saw in her? She leaned forward to peer closely into her daddy's eyes, trying as she always did to read the true expression in his eyes.
"Daddy," she whispered. "I was your own and only princess, wasn't I?" She closed her eyes and let the gold-framed picture fall into her lap.
There were voices, a young girl's and an older man's voices, in the room with her. She couldn't make out what they were saying. She opened her eyes wide, and saw no one. But she could still hear them, farther away now. The young girl was laughing and teasing, the man spoke in loving, strong monosyllables. But she couldn't hear the words.
Catharine was confused for a moment. Was it the capsule, making her dream again? But no, the voices were real. Richard must be home. He and Jennifer were talking, that was it. They must be just outside, in the hall. With a relieved laugh, Catharine jumped up from the chair and ran to her bedroom door.
"Richard?" she called as she opened it.
There was no one in the hall. The voices were louder now, though still indistinguishable.
"Richard, is that you? Jennifer?" Catharine moved toward Jennifer's room, but the young girl's laughter and the deeper murmurs of the man seemed to be coming from the opposite end of the long hall. Confused, she turned around and called again. Only silence answered her, and then she heard them once more.
The voices were coming from the attic.
"Richard! Jennifer! Are you up there?" Catharine started up the attic stairs. She heard them more clearly now. Why were they up there? She had just now expressly forbidden Jennifer to go up there. But, of course, if her daddy ... that is, if Richard told Jennifer it was all right, she would do it ... but why would he go up there? Richard never went up into the attic, never. The voices grew louder, and then stopped as Catharine flung open the attic door.
It wasn't Richard and it wasn't Jennifer. It wasn't even the attic room now. She had opened the door onto her own girlhood bedroom, just the way it used to be. And the little girl was herself. And the man was her daddy. They were oblivious of her presence in the doorway.
Paralyzed, unable to move or speak, she watched them begin the night that had changed her whole life forever.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Turn around for me, lovely. Slowly, slowly, that's it," her daddy was saying. He stood in the center of her little white room, watching her pirouette for him. There was no mistaking the love and pride and pleasure in his eyes. The little girl-herself-moved as he directed, turning her head first to her daddy's loving eyes, then to her own reflection in the oval mirror as she turned and turned.
"What do you have for me, Daddy?" she laughed, as her turns brought her closer to him. He held one hand behind his back, teasing.
And then he looked beyond the young girl, to the doorway where the grown-up Catharine stood. He saw her but his eyes were hard, knowing, as if they were accomplices together in some terrible game. The young girl, Catharine at thirteen, was unaware of her own self watching.
"Daddy!" Catharine cried out from the doorway.
But he looked away from her. He gave the little girl all the love the older woman craved.
"Here you are, Catharine, my pet. For being so beautiful, and so sweet." He held out the white leather case.
Young Catharine took it eagerly and opened the clasp. It was the silver hand mirror and hairbrush. Yes, this was exactly the way it had happened. Catharine knew what was going to happen next, but she could only stand there and watch, this time.
"It was your grandmother's set, and her mother's before that. It's time you had them," her daddy said, smiling down on the excited child.
She stretched on her tiptoes to give him a warm kiss full on the mouth. Her thin arms hugged his neck as he leaned down to accept the caress. And then she danced to the mirror and sat down on her little white chair, to begin brushing her long shining hair.
She and her daddy exchanged glances in their double reflection. Her strokes became slower, more self-assured as the two of them-the three of them-watched the lovely golden hair grow thick and smooth under the glinting silver brush.
"Oh, Poppa, I love them so much. Doesn't Mommy want them?"
"She doesn't need them."
Her daddy moved closer to the young girl, glancing over his shoulder at the woman in the doorway. You see, his eyes seemed to say, you remember, don't you, you know what is going to happen, you want it to happen, you can't stop it, you feel what you felt then, don't you, Catharine. His eyes said all this, his cold eyes said it all in a second's glance, and then he turned his full attention back to his lovely little girl. Her brushing continued until her hair was free and floating across her proud shoulders.
"Does this mean I've grown up, Daddy? When Grandma's things become mine?"
"It means you're very beautiful. It means it gives me pleasure to look at you. like now ... when you're ... excited this way." He stood so close to the child that his hands, hanging at his sides, were almost touching her hair as she sat looking up at him. Their eyes met in the mirror. The young girl, flushed and filled with physical stirrings she had never known; the man whose singular presence filled every room he entered, concentrating his intense devotion on her alone.
"Oh, Daddy ... do you really love to look at me?"
He moved back a step. "Stand up, Catharine."
When she stood, the top of her head came only to the open button of his shirt. His own dark curly chest hair formed a rich background for her pale golden iridescence. The two stared for a long moment at themselves. Catharine was amazed to see her own face suddenly flushed and expectant as a grown woman's. Above her in the mirror, her daddy seemed different, too. He was breathing hard, with his mouth slightly open, and his intense eyes seemed to penetrate beyond their reflections with a grown-up sensation she could only wonder at.
The older Catharine understood. She wanted to cry out, to warn herself, but more than that she longed to be herself again, the little girl who made her daddy's eyes shine and smile with love.
"I am grown-up, aren't I?" the little girl whispered. "All of a sudden, I see..." Her voice tapered off.
"What is it, Catharine?"
"Nothing, Poppa. I feel..." The strange feeling was not entirely delicious. It was frightening, too. Young Catharine turned away from the mirror in a terrible anxiety of mixed emotions and physical confusion. "I ... I'd better go to bed now, Daddy. I have to get up early."
She darted out from between her daddy and the mirror, and moved toward the dresser.
Her daddy looked over at the doorway, a sly smile on his lips. Again, Catharine tried to call out to him, but she was frightened, more frightened than she had been when it had happened.
The little girl had taken her nightie from the drawer and laid it out on the starched white coverlet of the four-poster bed. She reached her graceful arms up to find the zipper at the back of her pretty party dress.
"Let me do that for you, sweetheart," said her daddy.
Her hands dropped but she did not lift her eyes. Her daddy touched her and the electricity of his nearness did something funny to her pounding blood. Gently, he lifted her golden hair with one huge hand and with the other, glided the zipper slowly down her back, all the way to where her small round bottom began to curve. His fingers moved over the smooth, downy skin of her back, barely touching, making the little girl squirm with the indefinable sensation.
"You are growing up. Soon you'll be able to do what you want to do."
Catharine slipped out of the pretty dress, and laid it over a chair for Lisa to hang up in the morning.
"Do what, Daddy?" She stood in her chemise, looking more innocent than ever, her small breasts just hinting at a roundness above the sheer white linen that already strained from the signs of imminent maturity.
"What do you feel when you are all alone and looking at yourself in the mirror?"
"I don't ... I don't know what you mean." But her blush was not the innocent flush of childhood.
Her daddy looked at her as he had never done before. He was strangely flushed, too. There was something in his eyes just for the two of them, not his daddy-look of pride in his little girl but a new private look for her alone to share. It sent shivers down her skin. But his voice was deep, calm, and quiet. "Go to your mirror, Catharine."
She did as he told her. She stood there looking at herself, and at her daddy standing behind her, and she trembled with anticipation.
He turned his head to look at the woman who stood in the doorway. This time, he spoke directly to her.
"Show me what you do when you're alone here, Catharine."
The older Catharine was caught in a spasm of fear and longing. Desperately, she searched her daddy's eyes for the love she used to find there. She could not speak. She heard herself, the young child, the thirteen-year-old on the brink of discovery, and again she said the words she had that night."
"Do you really want me to, Daddy?"
His answer came from far away and from close, close to her ear. "Look at your body, how it is changing, how beautiful. Don't you touch yourself, when you are alone? To feel the changes, the new sensations, the pleasures your beautiful body has in store for you?"
"I'm ... I'm afraid, Daddy. It feels so ... funny."
"Daddy knows."
"Should I, Poppa?"
"If you want to. If you want me to see."
From the doorway, the older Catharine nodded her head, filled with rushing blood that forced her answer. Yes, yes yes yes!
The young girl let her chemise slide over her shoulders, down to her waist. Her daddy sat down next to her, in the little white chair. His head was just level with her sweet pink nipples. Her breasts were surprisingly ripe and tilted upward like two delicate spring peaches unblemished by the sun.
"Are they beautiful, daddy?" she whispered.
"Yes ... yes, my darling girl. They are very beautiful. There have never been such breasts."
"Oh, Daddy!"
The girl half-turned toward her daddy, and the nipples stirred, rising like firm little buds pleading to be plucked. But the man sat motionless, staring ahead, into the mirror.
"See the profile, Catharine. See how beautifully they stand, high and proud. You are very special, my princess."
"I feel ... funny, Daddy."
"It's a good feeling, baby. Isn't it? Relax into it, enjoy yourself as a woman, a beautiful young girl-woman. Can you do that? Don't be afraid of what you are feeling. Daddy knows."
Breathless, the little Catharine murmured, "Yes." She watched her daddy's admiring gaze at her reflection in the mirror.
The woman slumped against the door frame, weak from desire and the pain of remembering. Her body was a live volcano. Hot lava flowed down her legs. Daddy, I'm here, I'm grown now, I need you, come and do it to me, now. To me, me, not to her. Don't destroy her ... me ... again. Her mind bubbled and boiled with the erupting emotions she could not utter.
"What else do you want me to see?" her daddy said gently to his little girl.
Young Catharine flicked her wet tongue against her lips. Her breath came faster as she began to slide the thin slip over her narrow hips. She moved her body gracefully, instinctively, as the soft material fell in a heap at her feet. She stood naked except for her panties. They were pale pink silk, formless, edged in a border of handmade lace.
Unconsciously, she spread her legs. She was about to pull the waistband down, but her daddy turned to help her, and she let her arms fall to her sides. His huge hands held her through the thin silk. Strong gentle fingers cupped her little buttocks, but not in the same affectionate gesture she had always felt. He rubbed slowly against the silk, caressing her trembling skin underneath. With his other hand, he touched the inner skin along her thigh, moving slowly upward until he touched the faint down that was beginning to grow there. His palm covered the throbbing cleft, from the curiously sensitive button in the front all the way through to the back where his other fingertips touched her tiny rosebud opening. The little girl felt dizzy, but she kept her eyes open wide to watch the wondrous reflection of her daddy's love for her.
He bent his thick curly head down, and his warm breath went right through her panties to the fine golden hairs of her little mound. He inhaled deeply, and the fingers of his left hand began to explore the hidden places deep inside her.
Both Catharines shuddered with ecstasy and terror. The child spread her legs as wide as she could, watching in the mirror as her daddy's head bent to give her love kisses, appreciative, unhurried, unashamed. Shame had nothing to do with it. He was her daddy, and he loved her. She was beautiful, and she was growing up to a new and wonderful kind of love. Daddy knew what to do. He loved his little girl. He knew how to make her feel loved. It was a melting kind of feeling, all soft and giving. She wanted to give her daddy a present of loving, too.
"Take them off, Catharine," her daddy whispered, his breath hot and moist against the thin silk that covered her still.
"Daddy..."
"Don't you want to?" he murmured, kissing with his tongue just barely grazing the little nubbin that seemed to rise to greet him.
Silently, she slipped oft her panties.
"Turn around ... let me see my beautiful ... ah. ... " He moved his head back, and she saw his eyes again, so loving and so private, just for her. He ran a single finger, then two fingers, along the curve of her back and around the two deep dimples, down into the secret cleft where her satiny flesh turned inward to hide the luscious softness inside. He cupped her little ass with both his huge hands, and spread her so that he could kiss the lips that opened to him. "Beautiful ... beautiful..." he whispered.
"Am I perfect, Daddy?" she asked shyly.
"Yes, perfect. You must love yourself, Catharine. Do you know how to love yourself? No man will ever love you enough, not as you deserve, not the way your daddy loves you. You must learn to love yourself. You are special, Catharine, you and I are special. We know that, don't we?"
"Daddy..."
"Do you touch yourself, Catharine? Here, and here, and here....."
"Should I."
"Yes. I want you to."
"I ... I don't know how."
She turned around to face him, but he held her with his firm grip and forced her to look in the mirror, not at him. "Look at yourself there. Put your hand there, as I did."
"Oh, Daddy ... you do it. Please ... you do it."
"Daddy won't always be here, Catharine. Do as I say."
The little fingers moved slowly toward her moist furrow. She trembled and almost fell against her daddy's firm shoulder. He cupped his hand under the rise of her small buttocks and with the other hand he guided her fingers, covering them with his own until she was lost in the sensation. Waves of pleasure shook her from head to toe.
"That's the way, my darling girl," her daddy said.
Catharine in the doorway felt the tremors and the roiling about to erupt inside her. Her fingers followed his instructions and the child and woman were one. "Oh, Daddy ... it's what I wanted ... it's what I always wanted..."
"Turn around, Catharine," her daddy said to the swooning child. Without moving from his chair, he guided the slim, naked little body down onto the floor in front of him. "That's right, Princess. Lie down there. Don't be afraid, Daddy loves you. No one else will ever love you like Daddy does. I want to show you what love is, my beautiful girl. You're Daddy's girl, you will always be Daddy's girl. That's right, do that. Do it to yourself. Does it feel good, Princess? Daddy wants you to feel good, very, very good."
"Oh yes, yes..." Young Catharine was writhing on the floor, her legs spread as wide apart as she could get them, her hands rubbing her thighs and the downy hair and the dewy rosebud that opened sweetly to show her daddy the most secret beauty of all.
He took her ankles in his big tender hands, and placed them on his knees. She thrilled to see his eyes spark with pleasure as he looked deep inside her. The loving smile on his lips told her that she made him happy with her gyrations, her tickling and probing and frantic fingering of herself that she could not now control. The little girl kept her eyes on her daddy's face, and his pleasure made her frenzied with joy.
"Daddy ... Daddy ... I want to ... I want..."
"Yes, Princess, do it. Do what you want to do."
Unable to think beyond the dizzying rapture, young Catharine sat forward and burrowed her face into her daddy's bulging lap. She felt the hard enormous organ straining to meet her, and with a cry she began to suck at the rough cloth of his trousers.
Her daddy caressed her golden head with one hand, familiar and loving. With the other, he deftly opened his pants so that nothing would be between them.
The only penis she had ever seen hung from Big Red, her daddy's stallion. She had always liked to look at it, and had seen it erect a few times, with vague moist stirrings she couldn't understand deep in her own private parts. But now she saw...
And she understood, instinctively, without fear or question. It stood enormously high and proud, so thick that she could hardly get her little mouth around its throbbing tip. She traced the pulsating veins with hungry, loving hands and opened her lips to it eagerly, sucking and murmuring to it in a sudden spasm of lust and love that transported her over the bounds of reality and into a floating planet of stars and rainbows flooded with the wondrous juices that flowed into her mouth and down her throat with the taste of all the world's hunger satisfied at last.
Her daddy looked over at the other Catharine, sobbing quietly now as she stood and watched, alone.
"It's what you wanted to happen, isn't it, Catharine?" he asked softly.
"Oh, Daddy ... I'm vile, I know ... I'm filthy..." The little girl lay quietly, her exhausted head resting still in her daddy's lap, while the older Catharine reviled herself through her tears. She had found her voice, finally.
"No, Catharine," her daddy said, staring over the child to the woman. "You're exceptional. I tried to show you that. Beyond the ordinary rules."
The older Catharine looked at him, for the first time in her entire life skeptical at what he decreed. Her tears stopped. "Exceptional?"
She watched in the mirror as her daddy gently removed the sleeping child's head from his lap and carried her to the virgin-white bed. His wide shoulders and strong arms bent lovingly over her for a second as he laid her on the coverlet as though she were a rare and precious china figurine. Then he turned to the other Catharine. Calmly, he adjusted his trousers, folded his still enormous limp cock inside his underwear, and zipped his fly. He fastened his gold belt and took a step toward her. She breathed in deeply the almost-forgotten odor of him-musky, male, special. Her daddy.
"Yes, you are exceptional, Catharine. You always have been. You're mine, you know. And now..." He took another step, but she found herself shaking her head, no, and shrinking back against the door. It was her own daddy-but her daddy was dead. "Come with me, Catharine," he smiled, with all his old charm and handsome self-assured presence. He held out his hand to her. He was wearing the gold ring she remembered.
"My own exceptional Catharine. If you come with me now, you will always be Daddy's princess."
She shook her head, suddenly terrified. "No."
The look of disapproval that she had always feared and dreaded came into his eyes. "Very well, Catharine. Stay here with these dull, commonplace people in this ordinary place. Get old and wither in it."
He smiled again, then, and her heart turned over in her breast. He turned away from her. She saw his face in the mirror, smiling.
"Daddy..."
He stopped, looking at her staring back at him in the mirror.
"Where ... where are you going?" she asked.
"You are Daddy's girl, aren't you, Catharine? I made sure of that, didn't I? You always will be, you know." He waited.
She peered across the room into the mirror, to see the comforting look that would tell her it was all right again, but his eyes were changed as the reflection stared back at her. They were green eyes, like hard shining emeralds. Her daddy's eyes were gone. A stranger's terrible green eyes were in her daddy's face. They were the same eyes she had seen before, in this mirror.
"You're not my father," she said, her voice shaking.
Her daddy's mouth spoke to Catharine, but the strange green animal eyes glinted demonically off the hard glass surface at her. "When you come with me, you'll be done with fools. Your tedious husband-he'll never give you an orgasm the way you and I can. The insufferable prigs you call your friends-they are jealous and envious of you, but not for long. You'll lose your looks if you stay with them. They have no class, no style, there's not a real orgasm among them."
"No ... I'm going with Richard ... I love him ... we're going to..."
"I thought you were exceptional, Catharine. I thought you had ... longings...." He shrugged his shoulders-her daddy's shoulders-and stepped right up to the reflection, almost touching himself and leaving Catharine smaller and smaller behind him.
"Don't go..." she started to say, but her voice was drowned out by the sudden loud cracking, a long dry shattering sound like ice makes when it separates.
He was gone.
Without thinking, Catharine ran to the mirror, and pressed her face against it.
"Are you there? Have you gone?" she cried aloud. There was no answer. "Please ... Daddy..."
It seemed, in the awful silence, that perhaps there was someone-something-listening on the other side of the cold glass.
"Please," she whispered. "Don't leave me here ... with them. I am special, oh, I am, I am."
She stared into the mirror for a long, long time, with the sure feeling that she was being heard. Her long slender fingers traced longingly with pink tapered nails over and over her image on the mirror's surface. She saw only her own reflection at first, but then the greenish light on the other side seemed to take form, and she thought she could see the little colored points of glitter from the jeweled rings on his fingers.
"Where will you take me?" she whispered.
CHAPTER NINE
The answer came, not in her daddy's voice but in the throaty, amorous growl she had heard in her nightmare. It repelled and drew her, like the first fearful sexual awakening.
"I will take you where your uniqueness will shine and glitter like the stones on my fingers and your beauty will glow everlastingly. Where your senses and that marvelous white flesh of yours shall be bathed, lavished with the adoration and the pleasures it deserves. Where you will be appreciated, truly loved, because you will be forever young and perfect, Catharine."
"That's ... that's not real," she whispered to her reflection with the hazy greenish glow beyond it.
"What is real?" the demon answered. "That world out there? That banal, frustrated, dull, juiceless world you inhabit? Men who leer at you and their wives who hate you, a world where beauty such as yours is allowed to fade and age? Listen to me, Catharine ... to me. We'll leave this place. Be here at the mirror this night at one o'clock. That will give you enough time."
"Time? Time for what?" The urgency she felt in her whole body, the yearning for such promises to be true-too strong to deny. If she held back now, she would never know what it meant to be appreciated the way her daddy had promised, the way her body craved, the way the world beyond the mirror understood...
"Time to destroy your husband's project," the voice crooned.
"Time..." she repeated, dreamily, her breath clouding the glass. Then she stopped, and stared beyond her own startled eyes to the dim vision that drew her closer, closer, closer to herself and the terrible promise. "To destroy...? I don't understand," she whispered. "What project? Tell me, what project?"
"You'll know, Catharine. And ... your jewels. You must fling them away."
She almost smiled at the absurd suggestion, but the demon's breath mingled with her own and she felt a rush through her body that culminated in a hot tingling rush of wet to her crotch. The words came with difficulty as she tried to concentrate on what she was saying.
"My jewels ... but why."
"So he won't have them."
"Richard?" Saying her husband's name was almost a blasphemy, as though conventional marriage vows and the dull serenity of her real life had no place here.
The demon was enraged, although his seductive growl did not rise above the level calculated to make her blood race with longing. His body, more clearly distinguishable now, glowed wetly, and his eyes gleamed brighter and more exciting than any jewels, as he said, "He's a cheat and a borel I touch something there, don't I, Catharine? It excites you to hear that said out loud, because you know it is true. There are real pleasures and real sensuous journeys ahead for you ... when you leave him ... when you come with me. There are always conditions in these things ... you understand, you are exceptional. You will do what I ask, won't you?"
"I ... I'm afraid."
"Then you are not exceptional after all, are you?"
The glow began to fade. Frantically, Catharine pressed her body to the mirror's unyielding surface. "Don't leave me here!"
She saw his teeth when he grinned. They were sharp and glittered like the rings he wore. Her own mouth worked against her will, slavering and begging to be satisfied at last, not to be abandoned here to grow old among the hypocrites.
"And one more thing, Catharine. Give Jennifer the key to the attic. Allow her to come and visit me. She's become so beautiful ... exceptionally so. like you, Catharine."
"No!" she sobbed. "No! I won't ... I can't ... no! You are evil ... I won't do those things ... you are evil..."
"We are the same, Catharine, you and I. You will come back to the mirror. You always have. And I have always been here." His laugh was low, ironic, and certain. Certain of her.
Catharine beat against the glass with her fists, and cried desperately, with long rending sobs. Her tear-streaked cheeks rubbed against the mirror, smudging the image on both sides. She no longer saw her own face, and she no longer saw the glowing temptation as the vile laughter faded away under the torrent of her own agonized cries.
"Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" she wept.
An echo, a thinner, higher voice sounded through her pain, calling, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!"
Catharine gulped and swallowed her sobs away and listened to the childish cry. Was it herself, the younger Catharine, waking in the dark and finding her daddy gone, calling for him to come back to comfort her ... she turned from the mirror to look at her bed.
Her own room had vanished. She felt a rush of vertigo as she looked around at the attic. All the things were piled together, as Richard had made her put her childhood away up here. Her things and her daddy's things, all in a jumble. Where was her pretty white room? What had happened in that room was real, she could still taste her daddy's beloved sweetness in her mouth ... but that was years ago ... her head spun.
The little girl's voice continued to call. "Daddy!" It was Jennifer, downstairs. She was calling to Richard. An icy spasm shivered the length of Catharine's body, from her fine-spun hair to her cold white feet that could hardly support her. She moved weakly away from the mirror-don't look back, Catharinelto the little dormer window where the sun's rays had long since fallen away. She hugged herself tightly, to stop the shivering and to try to keep from falling into the dizziness that whirled the world around her. She looked out of the window just as she heard her daughter's happy call once more.
"Daddy ... Daddy ... I'm so glad you're home!"
Richard had stepped out of the car and was hugging Jennifer's thin shoulders with one arm, swinging his briefcase in his other hand. The little girl wrapped her arms around his waist. Her short dress hiked high on her thighs as she reached up to embrace him. He hugged her tightly, and they turned toward the front door together, casting one monstrously interlocked shadow in the lengthening twilight.
Catharine looked at her watch. Her eyes were tired, and crystal teardrops still clouded her vision. Her wrist shook and she had to stare at the watch for a long moment before she could read it. 5:10. She hadn't heard the grandfather clock strike the hour.
When she glanced back outside the window, she caught Abel quickly looking away. His shoes crunched on the gravel as he walked briskly around to get back into the car. Why had he been staring up at her ... she must look a fright.
Catharine dared a single quick glance in the oval mirror as she passed it on her way to the attic door. She looked flushed, but that always made her even more beautiful. The mirror reflected only herself now, and the blurred spot her tears had left on the glass. It was just an ordinary mirror, after all. Her vile longings and lustful imagination had run away with her. And memories...
If her daddy were alive, she would run to him and ask him what to do. And he would say, "You are perfect, my princess, there is nothing wrong with you, you are not going mad, you are not insane or ill or vile. You need a vacation, Princess, you shall have whatever you want." That's what he would say.
But what did she want, she wondered as she descended the stairs and went quickly down the hall to her bath.
"You have always come back to the mirror," the demon had said.
It was true. The mirror was her only source of pleasure, as close to true fulfillment as she had ever had, since that time, that one time. How she had waited, every night for months and years, for her daddy to come back to her ... but when she had asked him, innocently, to come to her room after that night, he had laughed and told her not now, honey, not yet. Was this what he had meant-was this the time? Was it really her daddy, in some other form, telling her that she could come to him now ... now...
But he had let her marry Richard. On her wedding day, she had cried and pleaded to be allowed to stay with him alone, to send Richard away ... just the two of them now that her mother had gone away. Her daddy had hugged her and kissed her forehead and her cheek, he had stopped her white-gloved hand from reaching desperately to touch the front of his gray-striped pants ... if she could touch him where she most wanted to, she knew he could not help but respond to her ... but he had held her hands, kissed them and made her stop. He had taken her on his lap, in her white wedding dress, and he had sent her away.
"It was wrong for me to love you that way," he had said, rocking her like a baby in his arms. "Now that your mother is gone, do you see I can't trust myself alone in the house with you, Princess. You must have a husband, and I must not touch you again, ever. Richard will make you happy, you'll see. And I'll be here to see that he does."
"No, no, Daddy, please," she had sobbed. Her lace veil came between her face and her daddy's, and she had ripped it off, flinging it to the carpet. She pressed her ripe breasts against him, and took his hand to touch them, but he drew away gently.
"Catharine, don't you see how difficult it is for me..."
Yes, she felt him rising, enormously, in the cleft between her satin-covered cheeks. She burrowed deeper into his lap, opening herself under her wedding dress to him.
Abruptly, he lifted her to her feet and stood beside her, holding her arms firmly to her sides. The study was dark. Richard knocked on the door again, waiting for his bride.
"In a moment, Richard," her daddy called out, never taking his eyes from her pale tear-stained face.
"Go with him," he whispered, "and do all the normal, ordinary things that a beautiful young woman should. I can't keep you to myself forever."
"You don't want me," she wept helplessly. "You don't want me to stay here, with you ... just the two of us. I was glad when Mommy died, I was, I wasl I thought you and I would be happy here, just the two of us..."
"That's why I must send you away, Princess," her daddy sighed. "I couldn't stand it, just the two of us. It's not right, not good for you ... it was wrong, what we did ... you remember..."
"Oh, yes!" she said, happy because he had spoken about it at last. "I remember ... how could it be wrong? No!"
Her daddy started to embrace her, to take her into his huge safe arms, but stopped when there was another impatient knock at the door, and Richard's voice, indistinguishable, called to them.
"Tell him you're coming right away," her daddy whispered, close to her ear. His breath made her tremble. She did as her daddy told her. The knocking stopped.
"Are you still too young to understand, my beautiful girl? Or-God help me-have I ruined your life forever ... no, I can't believe that...." His broad handsome face looked so worried, so sad, that Catharine reached up to touch his cheek.
"No, Daddy, no!"
"Then go with Richard, darling. I want you to be happy. You can be, with him."
Catharine obediently gathered her rumpled wedding gown together and took a step backwards, away from her daddy. She stopped. "I don't understand, Daddy, not really. We love each other more than anybody..."
"You will understand, someday. In the meantime, do as I say, Princess, and make that young man as happy as I would like to be."
She looked through the shadows across the room at his lonely, looming figure. "I'll be back, Daddy. Soon."
"Yes, princess. Daddy will be waiting for you. Now you go on your trip. Go on. Have a good time. Your place is with him now. Don't keep him waiting."
" 'Bye, Daddy."
"Better change your dress before anyone sees you. Don't want to give the common people a chance to gossip."
"Yes, Daddy."
That's what he had wanted-go on your trip, he had said. That's what he would say now. That's what she must do.
But who was it who waited for her upstairs, beyond the mirror with her daddy's things...
CHAPTER TEN
"Where's your mother, Jennifer?" Richard asked absent-mindedly. They were in his study. He was seated at the glass and chrome desk, with paper from his briefcase scattered in front of him. Jennifer, curled up happily in a leopard sling chair, glanced up from her comic book.
"I don't know, Daddy," she said. "I'll get your drink for you."
"No, darling, that's not necessary. I'll wait for her." Engrossed again in the thick folder of papers marked "Stover Hills Project," he didn't see the frown of disappointment that crossed his daughter's sunny face.
They settled down again to read in compatible silence. The evening shadows darkened the room. Tom Johnston's dark bookcases had been replaced with chrome brackets and Lucite shelves, and the green velvet drapes had changed into wide vertical blinds that let in the light, but the study still became early shadowed by the great oak trees on the north side of the house. It had been a warm, cozy room, now it was cooler and supposedly more cheerful, yet late afternoon always found the study in need of artificial light.
Jennifer found herself squinting to see her magazine, and glancing over at her daddy, she noticed his head bent rather low over his work. She jumped up from the chair and turned on the fluorescent desk light. He looked up and smiled at her.
"Thank you, Princess."
"You're welcome, my liege," she said solemnly, and curtsied very low. She held the hem of her dress in both hands, and since it was a miniskirt, her low bow showed a flash of pink panty bobbing slightly higher than her golden head. Richard laughed. He got up from the desk and went over to the Swedish liquor cabinet which slid open at his touch.
"After today, Jenny," he said, well-satisfied with himself, "you're going to be a very, very wealthy young lady."
"More than I already am?" she asked coquettishly.
He poured the vodka and a dash of vermouth over ice. His eyes smiled at her over the rim of the glass as he lifted it to his lips. "Yes," he said after a taste, "much more."
"Good," Jennifer said, " 'cause I want a lot of things."
"Well, you deserve a lot of things," Richard agreed. He took his drink carefully and settled himself in his deep square antelope-skin chair. "Come here and sit on daddy's lap and tell me what you want."
"No!"
Jennifer and Richard both looked up in surprise at Catharine, who stood in the doorway, visibly trembling.
"She's too old to sit on your lap, Richard. Jennifer ... Jennifer..." Suddenly, she was crying, and leaning heavily against the door frame. Little pearls of perspiration stood out on her forehead. Her eyes roamed the room, as if seeking something or someone who was not there. The study had changed, everything had changed. She felt that she was surely going mad.
"Catharine ... what's the matter?" Richard's voice seemed to come from very far away.
His hands reached out to her, and she fought her way back to him from the edge of blackness. She clung to him with cold hands.
"Richard ... I ... I have to get out of the house. Right away ... tonight. Before ... before ... please help me."
"Catharine, what are you talking about? What's the matter? What's happened to you?"
"Please ... I'm already packed," she said.
"Catharine. For God's sake, tell me what's happened?" He spoke sternly, in a voice that demanded an answer. She tried to sort out her feelings, to tell him as much as she could. But the fears and the facts and the memories and the nightmares got all mixed up together. She couldn't tell him all of it, not ever. Her head was reeling too much to sort it all out.
"I ... saw something. I saw something terrible, terrifying ... it's waiting for me..."
"Catharine, come on. What did you see? What did you see that was so terrible?"
He obviously didn't believe her. She drew her icy hands from his and shrank back into the hard unyielding chair. His chair, that had replaced her daddy's.
Jennifer, unnoticed, frightened, slid quietly into the big chair behind the desk. She stared at her parents without any expression on her face.
Her mother was terribly upset, and her daddy was angry. He didn't like emotion very much. She, Jennifer, hardly ever showed what she was really feeling. Daddy preferred that.
"If you can't tell me what you're talking about," Richard was saying in his most reasonable tone, "how do you expect me to help you?"
"I ... I can't explain it ... you'll just have to help me, believe me, please ... there's evil in this house. I must leave. Now. Tonight."
Richard was impatient. He picked up his martini from the table and took a long swallow, looking down at Catharine as if deciding what to do with her. Jennifer wondered if she should offer to refill his glass, or just do it without asking, but then she decided she'd just stay there as still as a mouse, and listen.
"Catharine," her daddy said, "you're planning to leave tomorrow anyway. What the hell is wrong with you?"
"Richard ... I can't explain. I wish you could trust me, I know what I'm talking about. If you can't take my word for it ... I'm sorry. I'm going. I'll stay at the Wayside Inn in town."
"Absolutely not. I forbid it. That's crazy. Are you going to tell me what all this is about, or..."
Catharine felt an unsuspected well of strength and determination suddenly rising within her. It was a survival instinct, she supposed, with part of her mind that was functioning quite rationally, acting to save her. It was this part of her mind that propelled her out of the uncomfortable chair across the room to the desk, where she picked up the phone and began to dial. It was the other part of her mind that didn't even notice her daughter sitting there, watching her with wide clear brown eyes. Catharine avoided looking at the mirror that hung alongside the desk, too.
Richard was furious. "What are you doing, Catharine? For Christ's sake, I come home elated ... I've finally arranged the expansion of the business beyond all expectations, I want to share it with you and our daughter, and you behave like..."
"Reservations, please," Catharine said calmly into the telephone.
Jennifer was upset. She slipped from her daddy's desk chair and came around to stand close to him. She hugged him around the waist with both her thin little arms. They watched Catharine silently.
"My name is Catharine Burgess. I have a reservation on Flight 112 tomorrow morning to Boston with connections to Paris. But I would like to leave this evening. Can you help me?"
Jennifer and Richard saw the terror which flooded Catharine's face. They heard the voice on the other end of the line snarling, a deep and chilling growl, not quite human.
"There are no flights this evening," they heard from across the room. "I can't help you."
Catharine stifled a scream. She thrust the ugly voice away from her. The receiver dropped onto the carpet. From it came the hideous sound of low demonic laughter. And then it said, clearly, "But your current reservations are confirmed, Catharine. Have a nice trip." The disconnecting click was loud and final.
"My God, who was that?" Richard demanded. "It sounded like-"
Catharine's face was twisted into a grimace. Fear and pain, terror and longing wrenched the lovely lines and shadows into a haggard, suffering crone's face. She saw herself in the mirrored wall behind Richard, and in a rage fiercer than she had ever experienced, she reached for the buzzing telephone and smashed it with all her might against the reflection.
The glass shattered. Again, and again and again, she beat against the fractured shards that still clung to the wall.
"Nol No! No!" she screamed. "I won't!"
Richard reached out to hold her. Jennifer, sobbing with fright, still clung to his leg. His strong hands held Catharine until her hysteria subsided and at last, she let go of the heavy instrument. Her eyes rolled in her head as she continued to struggle, helplessly, against Richard.
"Jennifer," Richard said, looking down at the clinging child, "go and get Lisa. Tell her to call Dr. Matthews."
The little girl started to back away from them, toward the door. But her mother cried out pitifully, "Baby, don't go ... help me, we have to get out of this house, you and I..."
"Do as I say, Jennifer. Do you hear me?" Her daddy was angry. She couldn't bear for him to be angry at her. She turned and ran, stopping at the door to look back. Her mother's face was ugly, all twisted and streaky. That frightened Jennifer more than anything, and she quickly slipped from the room and ran to the kitchen.
Lisa wasn't there. Neither was Abel. Jennifer knew where they were. With an angry sigh, she ran through the pantry to the ivy-covered areaway that led to the garage and their quarters above it. She bolted the steps three at a time on her lithe dancer's legs, and rapped sharply at the door of the little sitting room they shared. If they don't answer right this minute, she told herself fiercely, I'll go round to Abel's window and make a terrific racket and scare them good. I know what they do together in there...
But the sitting room door opened promptly, and Lisa stood there, tying on her serving apron.
"Goodness, what is it, Miss Jennifer? Look at you, all flushed from running..."
"Hurry, Lisa, Daddy says for you to call Dr. Matthews. Mommy's sick, she's having a fit or something. Hurry!"
Lisa wasted no time asking questions. She went down to the kitchen, with Jennifer a step behind her and Abel a few paces behind. In a moment, she had found the number in the little book by the pantry phone and had made the call.
"Go and tell your daddy that the doctor is on his way. Abel, go and help carry Miss Catharine upstairs. Hurry now! And come right back down here, you hear?"
Jennifer flew toward the study, and Abel lumbered after her. She motioned to him to stay back while she peered into the room. All seemed quiet. Her mother was sobbing against her daddy's shoulder. He still held her tightly, but she seemed not to be struggling any more. Jennifer couldn't see her face.
"Abel's here," she said. "He can carry her upstairs, Lisa said. And the doctor's on his way."
Richard looked up, and nodded for Abel to come in. He handed Catharine's trembling body over to the burly servant, who picked her up as though she were a great treasure, of no weight but infinite price. With Jennifer leading the way, and Richard behind, Abel carried Catharine carefully up the winding staircase and into her room. He laid her reverently on the bed.
In her panic and desperation, she clung to him for a moment. "No, nol Don't leave me here!" she moaned.
Abel stood paralyzed at the side of the bed. His mistress' long white arms reached up to him, her slim hands clutched at his shirt. Her pleading broke the dam of his repressed desires, and he could not bear to turn away from her.
"All right, Abel, you can go now. Thank you," Richard said.
Catharine rolled over on the bed, away from them, her heartbreaking sobs indicating that she had given up all hope.
"Abel, that will be all. Go downstairs now."
Abel straightened with a last look at the beautiful woman lying crushed and vulnerable on the huge satin-covered bed. Her dress had ridden high over her thighs. Her legs, spread awkwardly in abandon, were deeply tanned all the way up to her white panties. Her face was covered by her long hair now, and her arms no longer reached out to him but fell limply on the pillow.
"Abel!" Richard said sharply.
Abel turned away sadly, and left the bedroom, shutting the door as he had been taught to do.
There were tears in his eyes when he entered the kitchen.
"God in heaven, what is it? Is she terribly sick?" Lisa said, startled to see her brother's expression.
Abel nodded, then shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know," he moaned. "She didn't want me to leave. She said that."
"Now, now," Lisa said, patting his back. "She'll be all right, I expect. Don't you worry about her."
"I touched her. I carried her."
"Oh. So that's it. My poor dear," Lisa sighed.
Abel shook his head, bewildered by his own torment. "She was so soft," he said.
"You never touched her before, did you, in all these years?"
Abel looked up, shocked at the idea. "No!"
"Well, darlin', that's all it is that's got you so upset. Touchin' her and all. Lisa will take care of you, you know that. Later, love. Later. You'll see. It'll be all right. Now you sit down there, that's the way."
Abel nodded. His shivering slowed and finally came under control. Lisa bent to wipe his forehead with a corner of her apron. "You just sit there, now, and when dinner is over-if there's to be any dinner this night-we'll have a fine time, you and Lisa. No need for you to worry. You got feelin's, sure you do, and Lisa knows how to take care of you."
"She's cryin', " Abel said.
"What about?"
He shook his shoulders. "She didn't want me to go away. That's what she said. Honest, Lisa."
Lisa stared at her brother's bent head. A memory stirred unpleasantly in the back of her mind. "Abel," she said thoughtfully, "you remember when Miss Catharine's mother went away..."
Abel nodded.
"I mean just before, when she was so upset that time ... do you remember that?"
Abel's eyes narrowed. After a moment he nodded again. "I was just a kid, but I remember hearing her cry that night," he said thoughtfully.
"Yes, she did," Lisa said.
"She cried a lot," Abel remembered.
"Yes ... and then she just ... left." Lisa's thoughts were deeply disturbing to her, and she tried to shake them off. Just because Miss Catharine was the same age now as her mother had been when she disappeared ... or walked out, never to send even a postcard to her little girl ... and Miss Catharine was the same age then as little Jennifer was now, wasn't she ... just because it happened once that way, it was an old wives' superstition to believe in family curses, or the sins of the mothers returning in the daughters...
Lisa was interrupted in her dismaying reverie by the chimes ringing at the front door.
"That's Dr. Matthews, Abel. Go and let him in," she said. "Goodness, I'd better do something about keeping this roast hot, before it dries up to nothing in that oven!" With that she dismissed all morbid thoughts from her head and busied herself with good hard work.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Outside, the rain was gathering strength, beating steadily against the house and whining with the wind to be let in at the windows. But all was securely locked inside, barricaded with New England permanence against the destructive elements of nature.
Catharine lay quietly staring up at the ceiling. The bedside lamps cast a cozy glow around her, and a fire crackled comfortingly in the grate. Shadows flickered across the ceiling, but her eyes were wide and unseeing. The tranquilizer had done its work. She no longer sobbed, no longer fought to save herself. Someone had combed her hair, and even put lipstick on her mouth, while she had lain limp and helpless.
The bedroom door opened tentatively, and Richard poked his head in. When he saw her eyes still staring, emotionless, he tiptoed into the room to stand beside her.
"Catharine...? " he said.
She turned her head slightly on the pillow to look at him. He took this as an encouraging sign, although he was shocked at how gaunt and pale she looked, with lines at her eyes and mouth that looked ... old. It must be the injection the doctor had given her, or a trick of the lamplight. The lipstick made her mouth look like a stab wound in the deadly white pallor of her skin. He tried not to show in his expression the terrible loss he felt at seeing her beauty gone, even temporarily. He smiled brightly. He was carrying a folder of business papers under his arm.
"Catharine, Dr. Matthews says you're going to be fine. You should be able to sleep now, and if you want to, you can leave in the morning as scheduled. He thinks a vacation will do you a world of good."
Catharine nodded her head once, and looked away from him. She did not smile.
Thunder ripped through the sky above them and a flash of lightning seemed to strike very close by. The tree outside the bedroom window lit up for a split-second, its branches shivering in the sudden light to throw weirdly dancing shadows over the two people safe inside.
"It's just your nerves, darling. Now, tomorrow night you'll be in Paris, just think of that-"
Without looking at him, Catharine murmured, "I know where my mother went."
Richard was startled, but immediately assumed that she was half-dreaming, the effects of the sedation. He reached for her hand, found it icy and unresponsive.
"Your mother died, darling, but you mustn't think about that now..."
"Horse crap," Catharine said. She had never spoken such words before, and Richard's stunned silence was his only answer. "I pretended to believe that because he wanted me to. Everybody knows she went away. I'm the only one who knows where."
At least she was talking, after hours of drugged silence. He would humor her, to rouse her from whatever nightmare she was having. He certainly didn't want a replay of that embarrassing scene downstairs, but perhaps he could gentle her back into full consciousness. If she wanted to talk about her mother, he would listen.
"Darling, are you thinking that she might be in Paris? Is that what you're thinking? But you mustn't try to look for her, you know that. It wouldn't be good for you. You see how nervous it makes you, darl-"
She cut him off with a word he couldn't quite make out. He bent close to hear her.
"What, darling? What did you say?"
She stared beyond his head, at the same spot on the ceiling, as she repeated her words.
"You ass-hole."
Richard was horrified. He moved away from the bed with an involuntary backward step, but she didn't seem to notice.
He had to try to reach her. It was important. "Catharine," he said. "Catharine?"
She seemed to be retreating again, with no interest in him or what he was trying to do for her. "Darling," he said firmly, "there's something I need you to do. I need your signature on some financial transfers ... can you understand what I'm saying, Catharine?"
She nodded.
"Good. It's for a new project, dear, very exciting, and all you have to do is sign your name. Feel up to it?"
She nodded again, without looking at him. Richard took a pen from his breast pocket, and opened the folder to the paper he wanted her to sign. When he looked at her again, he was disconcerted to see her wide violet eyes staring straight at him. He handed her the pen and pointed to the dotted line clearly marked with an "X."
The hall clock began to chime, and they listened to it, counting. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight.
Someone tapped at the door just as the last sound died away.
"It's Jennifer," Richard said, with the special tone he always used for that name. "She's rather upset. Would you see her? I told her she could say good night to you. Just for a moment."
Catharine nodded and Richard went to the door.
"All right, honey, come on in. Mommy wants to say good night to you."
Richard and Jennifer came toward the bed hand in hand. The little girl was clinging to her daddy and smiling shyly at her mother with large frightened eyes, as if expecting this strange woman in Mommy's bed to shriek at her or throw something.
Catharine stared at them. She didn't smile.
"Are you feeling better, Mommy?"
Jennifer seemed to hang back, half hiding behind her daddy. Catharine nodded, watching the two of them.
"Good. Know what?" the child prattled nervously. "You're going away tomorrow, and you never taught me how to put on my makeup." Jennifer didn't pout. She hardly ever did. She had been told that it would put lines in her pretty face if she did, so she didn't, Catharine was silent, so Richard answered for her. "Your mother's really not up to it now, Jennifer. She's been ... the doctor gave her some pills to make her go to sleep."
Jennifer stepped forward. "But how am I going to look pretty in the play?" she demanded.
"You don't have to worry about that, honey. Right, Catharine?"
Richard hugged Jennifer against him and squeezed her rounded buttocks in his cupped hand, as he always did. When Catharine saw this, she finally spoke. Her voice was deep and resonant, as if coming from a long, long distance.
"Oh, yes. Jennifer is exceptional," she said wearily. She turned her eyes back to the ceiling.
Richard didn't notice. He was concerned about his daughter, who was trembling again. His hand caressed her bottom in reassuring pats. "Say good night now, honey," he said to her. "Mommy's sleepy."
Jennifer tiptoed to the bed. Her daddy stayed right beside her, his arm around her shoulders now. "Good night, Mommy," she whispered.
Catharine didn't respond.
Richard leaned down to pat his wife's hand. Suddenly, almost savagely, she pulled it away from him. She was still clutching the pen in her fist. For a moment, he thought she would stab him with it. Jennifer whimpered and buried her face in her daddy's jacket lining.
Seeing the pen, Richard remembered the signature, and picked up the folder from the chair where he had set it down. With Jennifer still clinging to him, he handed the paper back to Catharine.
"Catharine," he said, "darling, you forgot to sign."
"In the morning." The guttural voice, so unlike her soft sweet alto, must be the side effect of the sedative, he decided. All right, it would have to wait till morning. He carefully slipped the pen from her fingers and put the folder and pen on the writing table.
"Come on, Jennifer," Richard said, "Daddy will put you to bed tonight."
Catharine's face contorted into what might have been a smile ... or a stab of pain. She said nothing, did not even look at them. There would have been no mistaking the delight in Jennifer's grin. She skipped out of the room, her arm around her daddy's waist, without looking back at the pale still figure on the bed.
Richard turned out the bedside lamps from the doorway switch. He closed the door and left her in darkness. Her head turned slowly on the pillow to look at the luminous dial of the clock.
Outside, the rain seemed to intensify, and the thunder rolls came closer and louder. The little fire had died in the bedroom grate; only live glowing coals remained, like little eyes, dying.
Down the hall, Jennifer led the way into her room happily. She shut the door behind her daddy and herself. "You haven't put me to bed for a long time," she said.
"You're getting to be too big a girl to be put to bed," he said.
"Here, Daddy." Jennifer pulled out the little tufted chair from her dressing table as though she were playing tea party and had only one very special guest. "You sit here, sort of in front of the mirror, see, and then you can watch me when I'm in front of you and when I'm behind you, too!"
"Watch you!" he laughed. "What are you going to do, dance for me? I didn't come here to watch you ... I came to see you safely and happily into your little bed. Pronto."
"Don't you want to watch me undress?" she asked him, innocent disappointment on her lovely face.
"Why don't I wait here while you go into the bathroom and get washed and into your nightie in there, and then I'll tell you a story when you come out all ready for bed."
"Oh, Daddy! I'm much too old for stories!"
He stood up, pulling himself with some difficulty out of the low child's chair. "Darling, I think maybe you really are too old for Daddy to put you to bed, too. You go on now, and I'll-"
Her eyes, so much like his own, suddenly overflowed with tears. She ran to him and hid her face against his shirt front.
"Hey, Princess, what's this?"
"I don't want you to go."
Thinking she was upset by her mother's illness and erratic behavior, Richard hugged his daughter to him with a wave of love that was almost physical in its intensity.
"All right, baby. Daddy won't go. Now you hurry up and get ready. I'll wait to tuck you in, I promise."
"Sit down?"
"Sure I will." He sat back down in the frilly little chair, his large frame audibly causing the wood to groan. His knees were bent unnaturally high before him as he squirmed to find a kind of balance.
Jennifer danced toward him and bent to give him a butterfly kiss, rapidly fluttering her long eyelashes against his cheek. It tickled, and her scent was sweet, sweet, sweet in his nostrils. Her moist little mouth hovered close to his as she played her little eyelash game, until finally he took her shoulders firmly in his big hands and made her back away.
"Come on, Princess," he said in a hoarse voice, "no more nonsense. It's past your bedtime."
Jennifer laughed, and pirouetted around him to her dresser. She opened a drawer and took out her best nightgown. You could almost see through it, almost. It was thin cotton chambray, not exactly grownup, but as soft and fine as any fabric in her mother's collection. She laid it carefully on the starched bedspread, smoothing its folds slowly and arranging it to' lie in its full, short glory until she was ready for it.
Her daddy was watching her in the mirror. She blew a kiss to him as she crossed the room to get her hairbrush. She stood directly behind him as she brushed her hair, slowly and languidly, as she had watched her mother do a thousand or more times. Her daddy sat so low in the little chair that the top of his head came up just to her breasts, or where her breasts would be someday. They were starting already. She could hardly wait to show him. It would be a surprise.
"How many strokes, Princess?" her daddy asked. "A hundred, every night," she answered. "How many so far."
"Only twenty-two."
"How about making it thirty strokes tonight, just this once, since we're running a little late? Okay, Princess? Daddy's kind of tired, and it's been a long day."
"It's very important to brush my hair right," the little girl explained earnestly, still counting to herself as she stroked the brush through her hair. The fine full ends responded with lively sparks and sprays of curling gold as she carefully drew the brush down and away.
"Princess, I absolutely promise you that not one iota of your lovely hair will be spoiled if you cut the brushing short just this once. Come on, now, for Daddy."
She laughed at him in the mirror. "You want me to hurry up and get undressed."
"That's right," he nodded.
Jennifer skipped to the dressing table and laid the brush down. She turned to face her daddy who sat directly opposite the vanity; she would have kissed him again but for the faint hint of impatience she saw in his eyes. He's worrying about Mommy, she thought. I wish I could make him forget his worries. I wish I knew how.
She sat on the edge of her bed to remove her shoes. She untied them, took them off and placed them neatly, side by side, beneath the bed. As she bent over to do so, her miniskirt rode up. It seemed to take her a very long time to place the shoes exactly where she wanted them.
"Jennifer, you wouldn't be stalling, would you?" he said, peering around from the uncomfortable little chair to look behind him at the bed.
"No, Daddy," she answered promptly. She stood up, her face flushed from bending, and flashed him a smile so enchanting and innocent that he felt ashamed for his impatience. He wanted to be a good father. This adorable creature was more precious to him than anything in the world, even the project that was preoccupying his thoughts.
Jennifer hoisted her little rump back onto the bed and began to unroll her knee socks, one at a time, until each perfectly arched little foot was bare. She wiggled her toes, one foot at a time, and then both 'feet, stretched out on the bed before her. The look of pleasure on her face was so endearing that Richard had to keep himself from laughing out loud.
Finally, she slid off the bed, carrying her socks to the wicker hamper near the bathroom door. She patted the straw elephant's head and lifted it by its trunk, dropping the socks one by one into the basket. She replaced the top and danced barefooted across the deep tufted carpet toward him.
"Will you unbutton me, Daddy?" she asked sweetly, turning her back to him. She held her long hair in one hand, exposing the soft smooth nape of her little neck.
Richard reached up and touched her skin there with one finger. It was as soft as when she was a baby. He sighed and began on the tiny buttons. There were only three. But his large fingers took a while to open them.
In a moment, as soon as he had finished, she had her dress up over her head and off. She waltzed with it to the hamper, lifted the elephant's nose again and dropped the little dress inside. She turned to her daddy, bare now except for her pink panties. She stood absolutely still so he could see.
"Beautiful," he breathed, without meaning to. His voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat and spoke more sharply than he meant to. "You are growing up, Jennifer. You're going to be a very beautiful woman someday. Now hurry up and put on your nightgown, before you catch a chill."
As if to underline his concern, the lightning cracked almost over their heads, with an instantaneous roar of thunder that seemed to shake the huge old house. Jennifer ran directly into her daddy's arms.
"Now, now," he said, holding her nakedness against his rough tweed jacket, feeling the beating of her heart through his shirt, and the small rounds of her new breasts, and feeling the smoothness of her bare back under his hands. "Surely you're not afraid of the thunder? A big girl like you?"
"Yes," she nuzzled into his ear.
Suddenly, Richard felt something horrible happening to him. Something so vile, so obscene, that it threatened to overpower him. He was as firmly erect as he had ever been in his life. His cock was protruding against the folds of his underwear and forcing a hard, pulsating insistence, rubbing painfully against the zipper of his trousers. The blood in his veins was rushing of its own accord down into his crotch, leaving him unable to feel anything except that swelling monster. Lust and self-loathing coursed through him as his heart beat faster to feed the engorging penis. In another moment, it would burst forward with a life of its own, to destroy his innocent little girl and make a mindless, heinous criminal out of him. For an instant, he wrestled between his cock and his conscience, but only for the bestial instant that lurks, waiting, in each of us ... then Richard thrust his child away from him, stood on shaking legs, with his hands jammed deep into his pockets, and strode from the room. Behind him, as he closed her door, he heard Jennifer's tears starting. She would never understand why her daddy had left her alone. A stroke of lightning, accompanied by its loud clap of thunder, illuminated the hallway.
Richard walked uncomfortably, his cock still huge in front of him, down the circular stairs. As he started toward his study, to pour himself a drink, Jennifer's head popped over the banister to look down at him.
"Daddy?" she queried in a small voice.
"I'm sorry, Jennifer," he said gruffly, "but it's quite late and Daddy has a lot of work to do."
"You're not mad at me, because I was scared of the lightning and thunder?"
"No, angel, Daddy could never be mad at you. You go to sleep now."
Did she notice, could she see the enormous protrusion from above? He tried to bend, slightly, so his head would be between his daughter's face and his embarrassing predicament. But she was just a baby, she wouldn't realize...
Jennifer smiled down at him, and blew him a kiss. "Good night, Daddy."
"Good night, Jennifer. Pleasant dreams."
He went into the study feeling that nothing would ever be the same again. But, thank God, he had protected his golden daughter's purity from his animal self. At least for now...
He shook the low rumblings from his brain and poured himself a double Scotch, straight. He sat in his big leather chair to sip it slowly, to clear his thinking. But the hard-on refused to go away. Finally, in desperation, alone in the dark cold study with the fire laid but unlit, with the storm beating against the windows, he opened his pants and began to touch the offending organ, catching the almost instant juices in a fine monogrammed linen handkerchief from Brooks Brothers.
Jennifer didn't go to bed. She picked up her hairbrush and threw it at the mirror. She remembered her mother smashing the big mirror in her daddy's study with the telephone, but her mirror did not break. She walked up to it and made a childish face. She stuck out her tongue and then she spit.
Then she ran to her window and peered out at the teeming rain. The light was on in the window above the garage. Quickly, Jennifer took her rain slicker out of the closet and put it on. It felt cold and slimy against her bare skin. She reached up under it and tore off her panties, letting them fall to the floor. She buttoned up the slicker and set its matching hat on her head, and then left her room stealthily and crept down the back stairs to the pantry.
The rain hardly came into the areaway, protected as it was by the crisscross arbors and thick ivy, but Jennifer's bare feet splashed in the puddles as she ran. At the stairs leading up the side of the garage, she turned and went into the yard. A bolt of lightning lit the house and grounds for an instant, and she hesitated, then made straight for the climbing rose trellis that led to Abel's bedroom window.
Sure-footed, she climbed the wet ladder of the trellis with her naked toes curling around each step, until she was settled in her usual spot just under the uncurtained window. The rain made it a little difficult to see, but her intently peering eyes quickly focused, and she saw that she was in time. She could make out Abel's hulking shape, lying on his back on the narrow iron bed, and Lisa bending over him, her hands massaging ever so slowly, her mouth round as she placed wet kisses on her brother's hairy chest and belly and huge purple prick. It wiggled and throbbed visibly as Lisa cooed and murmured and kissed and licked it. When the wind died down between gusts, Jennifer could hear clearly Lisa's familiar crooning.
"You're thinking about her, you watch her and you want her, you want to touch her, yes, Lisa knows. But she wouldn't do this for you, and this, and this. I know what kind of woman she is. Stop thinkin' about her, think about what Lisa can do for you, how does that feel, you like that, Lisa knows what to do for you. There's no one gonna take care of you like I do, no one would do this, and this, and this, ooohhhh, I'm always here, Lisa will take care of you, that's good, that's good, isn't it. Lisa knows what to do. You stop thinkin' about her, that way is trouble. You let Lisa take care of you, there, there, there!"
Outside the second story window, hanging onto the bower, the little girl watched, with her thumb in her mouth and the fingers of her other hand deep inside herself under the yellow raincoat.
CHAPTER TWELVE
When Richard crept into the bedroom, Catharine closed her eyes. He made his way in the dark to his bathroom, where he took a long time getting ready for bed. She didn't move, and when he slipped under the covers beside her, he stayed on his side of the bed without touching her. Soon she heard his deep regular breathing, with a soft snore at the hook end of every inhalation. Her lip curled in a soundless sneer, and she opened her eyes to look again at the little bedside clock. Ten o'clock. The chiming began in the hall clock at the same moment.
She thought about what she should do. Her heavily tranquilized body could never find the strength now to escape-they had seen to that. Her suitcase was packed, but how could she lift it ... and if she tried to go without it, it would still mean getting herself dressed, calling a taxi, and waiting alone in the dark downstairs, while something stronger than life itself called her, urged her upward, to the attic...
They were idle thoughts. The time was past for that world. She could no longer fight, she had no more desire to fight.
A longing surged through her prone body, more urgent than the drug-induced need to rest. It was a sexual tingling, the anticipatory excitement one should feel on one's wedding night. Catharine's mouth twisted in an ironic smile, a distortion she never would have allowed herself, had she seen it or had there been anyone else to see. It was not the warm and generous smile Catharine Johnston Burgess was famous for. It was not beautiful. It was a silent cry of anguish, of dry tears for something never known. I was a virgin on my wedding night, she thought, but I was never a virgin, really. I knew what it was to be loved, to desire someone ... and now, I have been promised that all my desires will finally be satisfied. I have no choice. It's his fault.
No. It wasn't fair to blame Richard. He was an ordinary man-kind and loving, in his own way. It wasn't his fault that he had no inkling of the terrible tortures of lust that could fill a woman's body. No man, no ordinary man, could satisfy a woman as exceptional as she was. If she could run away from the house now, even if she could ... she would be running back to the life of genteel, polite, civilized frustration that would build into nightmare proportions as age slowly destroyed her only claim to desirability. No one would want her, not even Richard. He had never satisfied her ... soon he would not even try.
And Jennifer, that sweet innocent little girl, what would happen to her? She was damned in any case. She was too like her mother, and her mother's mother before her. Catharine cursed the beauty that was her curse.
Mother, she thought silently in the dark, as the clock hands stole inexorably forward, is this what happened to you? I never loved you enough, I was jealous of you. I wanted Daddy for myself, and it was true-he loved me more than he loved you. I remember that I was glad when you cried on your thirtieth birthday, glad when you began to use heavier makeup and hair coloring to hide your age ... and now, I could cry for you. But I have no tears now. Only this aching, to join you in that place.
But when she thought again of the world beyond the oval mirror, it was with the thrill of sexual tension that drives out all but selfish need. It was not of her mother she thought, but of sensuous emerald green eyes and green-fleshed hands that knew exactly how to touch her. She thought of the feast, when she herself was the centerpiece, with tongues licking her nakedness and voices crooning her praises.
All the ordinary people suddenly turned inside-out, showing their secret desires to be the same as hers, proving that she was special, but not insane. It was the world she had never suspected, but always longed for. Where she was the centerpiece, and all the hidden lust in the world was out in the open, freely indulged, and centered on her.
They all have hungers and needs, but not so rare and special as mine. I am exceptional. My daddy said so. He knows. He is waiting for me. I've waited so long.
The hall clock struck and the little luminous hands near her head touched the hour. She lay still, counting. Eleven o'clock.
Catharine turned her head on the pillow to look at Richard. He slept with his back to her. Her eyes, accustomed to the dark, traced lightly over the outline of his hulking shoulder, the long line of his thighs and legs under the covers. As if he felt her stare, he tossed fitfully in his sleep, throwing the quilt off. She made no move to cover his bare shoulder. His arm was flung out now, toward her.
Catharine slipped out of bed, watching Richard's sleeping form. He turned restlessly, but he did not wake.
What kind of dreams do you have, Richard, she thought idly as she moved away from him. Boring dreams, about projects and deals and money. Do you ever dream of hands touching you lovingly, mouths caressing and licking and sucking on your flesh ... could you ever let yourself love yourself enough to give over to the sensual life ... no, Richard, not you. I'll never see you on the other side. Good-bye.
He turned on his back and she saw his hand clutch at his genitals. Am I wrong, she thought suddenly, does he dream, too ... but not of me ... who, then?
Suddenly cold, Catharine turned to flee from the room. She was dressed only in her lacy nightgown. Richard moaned softly as she took the blue folder from the desk, but he slept on.
She moved slowly, as if in a trance, down the wide stairs, holding the banister that curved to meet the statue of Pan in the front hall. But no, she remembered, Richard had had the statue removed. The banister was still there, warm and worn under her hand. When she was small, she often slid down, feeling the delicious tickle between her legs as she rode backwards into the lap of the god of youth, ... she reached the bottom of the stairs and the stark abstract modern sculpture that now stood in Pan's place, and withdrew her hand quickly. She turned to go into the dining room.
She turned on the portrait light over her daddy's picture. Then she took her daddy's place at the head of the table and sat quietly looking down the length of the long polished wood and up at him. His eyes stared directly at her. She could hear the ticking of the hall clock.
She sat that way for a long time. But whatever final message she hoped to find in his portrait was not forthcoming. "Daddy..." she whispered once, but the paint and canvas and glossy varnished surface refleeted only the flat reproduction of his virile, youthful features. It was mirrors, not pictures, that held secret worlds where there were reflected images of real life, and dimensions beyond what the ordinary eye could see.
You can't see yourself except in a mirror, she thought. Mirrors have always been my best friends, my reassurance, my comfort and my excitement. What I see in people's eyes I find confirmed a thousand times in the mirror that shows me myself. And my daddy looked at me for the first time, that night, that one time, in the mirror. And now he is waiting for me...
But there were things she had to do first. She got up from the chair and walked slowly past the long table. The storm was still blowing outside, and the heavy dining room drapes seemed to shudder at each blast of rain that hit the windows. Catharine didn't even notice the flashes of light. She was impervious to the cold. Her bare feet made no sound on the smooth oak floor.
Under her daddy's portrait hung a group of water-colors. She stopped in front of a little hunting scene. She reached up to turn the picture around on its hook. There was a small wall-safe behind it.
The ticking of the hall clock and the clicking of the combination lock as she turned the dials seemed louder to her ears than the rumbles of thunder outside. The thick little steel door swung open. She reached in and withdrew a heavy steel box. It, too, had a combination lock. She spun the numbers, right, left, right, left. She opened the lid and looked inside.
She felt a strong surge of excitement as she realized what she was doing. She reached into the velvet-lined box to touch each item, as she always did. The diamonds sparkled in their deep blue bed, the sapphires glistened with the only beauty that surpassed her own, the emeralds reminded her of unknown depths of pleasure that waited for her. She carried the box to the window. Holding it under one arm, she thrust aside the drape and pressed herself against the cold wet glass. It was dark and secret there, between the folds of material and the raging raw night outside. Her whole body tingled with fright and exquisite joy as she unlocked the window and pushed it open.
The lightning struck nearby. Catharine held her face up to the eerie light and the rain that poured over her hair and her face, soaking her through the flimsy nightgown and forming puddles on the floor under her naked feet. She stood in the gusting wind and rain until she thought she would collapse, and then quickly she turned the jewel box upside down, scattering the glittering jewels on the wet black grass below.
One trembling hand reached out in an involuntary gesture after the gleaming valuables, but it was too late. The gems caught the bits of light from the storm, and between flashes from the sky, her jewelry sent up its own inner brightness, like a living thing abandoned in the wanton cruelty of a woman's whim.
Catharine turned away from the window without bothering to pull it shut. The wet stain on the lining of the drape widened and spread, finally soaking through to the velvet itself, which fluttered in the strong gales despite its weight. But Catharine had left the dining room, and only her daddy's portrait was there to see, with painted eyes that saw nothing.
She went into the study, and lit the logs that had been laid over dry tinder in the fireplace. Soon the fire crackled and caught. Its light reminded her painfully that this was a changed room now. She drew up a chair and curled herself into a small ball, close to the warming flames, and gazed into the fire as she had done so often when she was a child. As her hair began to dry and become soft again, and her wet clinging gown loosed its grip on her skin, and the flesh began to warm to its natural glow again, Catharine thought about what she must do next. It was the hardest part.
Jennifer was her dear, her angel, her only child, her hope for a better world. Jennifer was the possibility of purity and goodness and innocence. Jennifer was Catharine's own chance to create a better person than she privately knew herself to be. Jennifer was herself again, untouched and unburdened with obsessions and vile dreams and desires. Jennifer was beauty without imperfections. Jennifer was perfection. Catharine loved her very much.
But there was no way to save her. Not from her own perfection, and not from her daddy's love, and not from Catharine herself.
The fire burned low, the stufdy log eaten away by the licking flames until only an outer shell remained. When it snapped and fell with leaping sparks into the ashes, Catharine unwound herself from the chair and walked out of the study. She went upstairs, dragging her feet reluctantly in the thick carpeting of the stairs. But the thing that goaded her mocked the maternal side of her nature with a quickening of physical desire as she moved upward in the house.
She opened the door to Jennifer's room. The dim night light from the hall outlined the figure of a strange apparition with flying wild yellow hair and a wrinkled shroud wrapped around her body. The dark mouth in the eerie face looked like a black empty hole. A hand flew up to cover it. It was her own reflection in Jennifer's vanity mirror.
Her heart seemed to stop beating as she moved toward the wraith, but as she neared it she saw the true image of herself and she gasped aloud in relief. It was a trick of the light, the sudden glare behind her as she stepped into the dark room where the looking glass caught her unaware. Leaning into it, close to it, Catharine reassured herself. The fine line of her cheekbones took on a patrician look in the shadowy dim light, airy and delicate against the halo of shining hair that fell to her shoulders. She ran her hand along the lines of her gown, smoothing out the wrinkles and tracing with her open palm the firm curves and flats of her body. She stared into her own clear luminous eyes. She was-truly!-lovely. Soon she would go where her beauty would be appreciated.
Catharine turned toward her daughter's bed. Jennifer had kicked off the downy comforter. Her long liquid legs and the little swell of her babyish behind sprawled in sleep. Her mouth twitched, as if she were dreaming of a frantic game, in which she must run and call out. A bolt of light flashed through the room, but the child slept on, deep in her own private little-girl world.
Catharine moved to pull the comforter up around the naked little body-goodness, where was her nightie, since when had Jennifer taken to sleeping nude?-but instead of covering the child, she ran her hand over the satiny flesh of the exposed thigh.
Jennifer started in her sleep, and then opened her eyes. "Mommy?" she murmured, confused.
"Yes, darling," Catharine whispered. "You were having a bad dream."
As toasty-warm and cuddly from sleep as an infant, Jennifer reached out to cling to her mother. Her arms went around Catharine's thighs. She pressed her sleepy face against her mother's stomach. Her eyelids fluttered closed again as she hugged and took comfort from her mother's good smell and loving touch.
Catharine could not help but press the beautiful child's head harder against her own soft flesh.
"It was about Daddy," Jennifer said, more than half-asleep and nuzzling with little sucking noises against her mommy. "I think ... but it's gone now." She yawned. Her breath felt hot against the thin material that covered Catharine's belly.
"What about Daddy?" Catharine asked, pulling away from the child's yielding arms.
"I don't remember now," was the drowsy reply.
Catharine turned on the little lamp next to Jennifer's bed. The child sat up, rubbing her eyes with two curled fists. Catharine moved to the dressing table and watched Jennifer come awake. The bright expectant brown eyes caught her mother's reflection in the mirror, and Jennifer smiled, wide-awake in the sudden way that children have.
"I'm glad you're feeling better, Mommy. I'm glad you woke me up to see. You're so pretty, Mommy."
Catharine smiled, looking at Jennifer's almost automatic preening as she sat straight up in the bed and smoothed her hair back from her face.
"Your grandfather would be so proud of you, Jennifer," she said.
"You really think so?" It pleased Jennifer, and she showed her delight in a dimpled grin directed at her own image in the mirror.
"Stand up, Jennifer," Catharine said.
Jennifer scrambled from the bed and stood next to her mother before the dressing table. Catharine pressed her child close to herself, and they stood looking at their two reflections for a long moment.
The child, already ripening into a rich beauty; the mother, with the first traces of age already marring her perfection.
Somewhere deep inside, Jennifer understood. Her smile was almost cruel as she whispered, "I'm growing up, aren't I, Mother?"
Catharine's glance fell away from the mirror. She sat down in the little yellow tufted chair and said to her daughter, "All of a sudden you wake up one day and..."
"And what, Mommy?"
"And you can never go back," Catharine finished, although that was not what she had intended to say.
"Who'd want to go back anyway? I can't wait to grow up!" The naked little girl stretched and posed in front of the mirror. Her tiny breasts stood straight up and their button nipples hardened in the cold air of the bedroom.
"Where's your nightgown," Catharine asked. "Since when do you sleep naked?"
"Oh, it's here ... there." Jennifer pointed to the little heap of white cloth on the carpet near the bed. "It was hot so I took it off."
"Nonsense. It's not hot in here. There's a storm outside and it's very chilly. Put your nightie on, honey, and I'll tell you what I came in here and woke you up to tell."
"A secret?"
"Yes."
"Oh, goodie," said the little girl, scampering to pick up the gown and slip it over her head. In a moment, she was covered, and as sweetly smiling as an advertisement for soap that was nine hundred and ninetynine one-thousandths percent pure. She skipped back to lean against Catharine, her arms around her mother's shoulders and her child-woman breasts pressing her mother's arm.
"Jennifer, I think you're old enough now to have the hairbrush set, the silver one that Grandpapa gave me. It's always been in the family."
The little girl caught her breath in delight. "Oh, Mommy! I love them so much." She kissed her mother's cheek. "But I thought you wanted to take them..."
"They're back up in the attic. You may go there from now on, as much as you want to."
Jennifer stepped back, looking at Catharine's face as if she suspected a trick. She could hardly believe what she was hearing. "Really, Mother?"
"Yes. But you must promise to tell no one, not a soul. It's our secret, Jennifer-just yours and mine. You know where the key is." Catharine felt Jennifer's excitement along with her own. They were both embarking on great adventures. Jennifer was very happy.
"I promise, Mommy."
Her brown eyes were remembering attic pleasures, forbidden until now, and the prospect of being allowed to spend hours and hours alone up there made Jennifer tingle all over with anticipation. She could play dress-up all she liked, and experiment with Mommy's makeup, and pretend-oh, all sorts of things more exciting than any of her friends could offer.
Catharine returned the grateful hug, and looked over the child's golden head straight into the mirror again. "And my makeup," she said, as if she had just thought of it, "it's yours now."
Jennifer pulled back to stare at her mother's serene face. Catharine, avoiding her eyes, turned the little girl so that she, too, would be facing the vanity. Jennifer's expression had changed to one of surprise, verging on dismay.
"You really sound like you're going away, Mommy," she said in a worried voice.
"I am," Catharine answered calmly.
Jennifer shivered under her nightgown. "I know," she shrugged nervously, "but-"
Catharine stopped her question by drawing one long slim finger across the line of the child's cheekbone. Instantly, Jennifer's attention was diverted to her own face in the mirror. She watched her mother gently outlining the highlights and curves of her temples, her chin, her mouth, and her eyes. With devout concentration, they both studied the tracing of the loveliness that was soon to be there.
"Use the pastel blue liner," Catharine murmured. "Just a bit at the end of your pinky. Your eyes are so lovely...."
"Like yours, Mommy, only brown."
"Yes, like mine."
"Only brown, like Daddy's."
Catharine's own violet eyes narrowed as she stared intently at her daughter's mouth in the mirror. "Never use much makeup, only to highlight what you have, never cover up your natural beauty. Your lips are like the inside of a seashell, just lovely ... keep them pink, just a hint of gloss, a hint..."
"The inside of a seashell," Jennifer repeated with a wondrous sigh. "How beautiful, Mommy!"
"Someone once said that to me," Catharine smiled. "Now it is your turn."
"Who was it? Who said that?"
Catharine shrugged. "I don't remember, some boy."
"Daddy?"
Catharine laughed aloud. There was something about the way she laughed that sent a scared shiver down Jennifer's spine.
"No," Catharine said, "certainly not your daddy. I honestly don't remember, baby, and you'll hear so many compliments that you won't remember one from the other, either. Really."
Jennifer laughed delightedly, her fears vanished as quickly as they had come.
"Like the inside of a seashell," she whispered to herself in the looking glass, posing with her lips open, then tightly closed, and turning to her mother again in a spasm of delight. Her lips were formed in a small half-kiss, and Catharine brushed them impulsively with her own.
" ... like mine," she whispered.
The two froze for a moment, a breath away from each other. Then Catharine ran her long tapered hands over the budding outline of Jennifer's body, hidden beneath the little thin gown.
"You are growing up," she repeated. Her voice was low, throaty, and almost coarse. "Soon you'll be able to do what you want to do," she said huskily.
"Do what, Mommy?" Jennifer squirmed in her mother's arms.
"Your body is changing, isn't it, Jennifer?"
Shyly, the little girl looked away. "Yes," she answered.
"You mustn't be shy, or ashamed, not ever. You must be proud. Take pleasure in your body, Jennifer. Pleasure."
Jennifer looked her mother in the eye. There was a hint of understanding, a small bite from the Tree of
Knowledge, something not so innocent after all ... Catharine laughed.
"Soon your body will be like mine," she said, her laugh half-growl with its strange new deep throaty quality.
Jennifer understood. Her eyes closed as she felt an incredible warmth well up inside herself. Her mother watched, and was well satisfied.
"Time to go back to sleep now," Catharine said. She pulled her daughter away from the dressing table and moved with her to the bed. Jennifer slipped under the sheet with a languid slow movement, instead of the usual yelp and leap and bounce. Catharine covered her with the downy quilt. She bent over her child and their arms locked around each other for a moment, until the two seemed to melt and blend into one person, and Catharine felt her resolve leaking from her even as the rich vision of her daughter's future triumphs passed through her mind. She pulled herself away abruptly, and reached to turn put the light.
"Remember our secret," she whispered in the darkness.
"Yes, Mommy," Jennifer promised solemnly.
At the door, framed in the hall light, Catharine stopped. She looked back at her little girl. Jennifer could not make out her mother's features in the dark. She did not see the awful sadness that crossed her mother's beautiful face like a dark storm cloud. But she sensed something and she called out.
"Mommy! What is it, Mommy? What's wrong? I'm scared!"
The deep raspy tone was gone from Catharine's voice when she answered. "Nothing's wrong, baby. It's just that I'm going away and ... good night..."
" 'Night," Jennifer said, burrowing down in the pillow with her head full of delicious new pleasures to anticipate.
There was no sound in the house now except for the ticking of the clock. Catharine made her way to the door that led to the attic steps.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The storm was gathering force. It came from the northeast, the dread New England "Nor'easter," terror of sailors out on the dark ocean with its heaving mountains of waves that could dash a ship to its death, where a wind met head on could pound steel into tinfoil with one angry shriek. The rain seemed as ominous and heavy as the ocean itself, an impenetrable torrent that had no end. Lightning streaked down in furious bursts, with the power to murder and-more horribly-force the world to see itself in sudden illuminations from which all nature recoils. No one ventured from home that night, except those brave few who placed duty above their very lives, and those poor sailors already too far gone to be returned safely to shore, and those exceptional individuals here and there on the earth who had sold their souls to the devil.
Catharine climbed the attic steps. As she ascended she heard the storm more clearly through the thinner walls and insulation of the topmost floor of her daddy's mansion. In the dark enclosed stairway shaft, her bare feet moved without stumbling, one above the other. She put her hand against the wainscoted walls on either side of her, and felt the trembling of the house itself as the unseen forces around her raged and screeched outside.
There was a look of serenity on her face, yet those citizens of Placid, Massachusetts, who thought they knew every nuance of Catharine Burgess' face would not recognize her now. All softness was gone. The mask which all civilized people wear from earliest childhood had disappeared from her features.
Catharine's mouth: not for kissing now, not for temperate conversation, not for the gracious smile, not for the warm and loving role of mother, wife, friend ... this mouth was hungry, voracious, raw in its slavering need, about to be sated.
Catharine's eyes: in the dark, no longer lavender and languid, not fluttering shyly or flirtatiously, not armed with the candid look that took everyone by delighted surprise ... these eyes were staring ahead in the dark stairwell, glaring with glimpses of the bottomless eddies of lust, about to be sated.
Catharine's skin: white as only the absence of all color can be white, moist with the secretions of yearning, trembling in the last throes of starvation ... about to be sated, for now and for ever.
She reached the door at the top of the steps and thrust the key deep into the lock. She left it there for someone to find. She remembered promising it to someone ... who was it? ... and then she pushed open the door and let it close silently behind her.
As if on cue from an unseen director too important to worry about corny visual effects, the lightning cracked against the dormer window to light the attic room with a blinding momentary glare. Then all was dark again. Catharine did not hear the thunder clap that accompanied it. The blood pulsed through her veins in rhythm with the rain that pounded so close over her head now. Her physical aching was so overpowering that all conscious thoughts fled from her brain. She knew only the swelling of her membranes and the salivating deep in her throat and the warm wetness of her readiness that lured her to the oval mirror.
Darkness, and silence unbroken by the soundless pleading of her body from deep, deep inside herself.
Catharine turned from the mirror to reach the table next to it, and carefully struck a match. With it, she lit the thick round candles, one by one, until her daddy's antique candelabra was casting its familiar glow from its many burning hands.
"Are you there?" she whispered.
She saw only her own reflection, more beautiful than she had ever been.
"I'll be ready," she promised, in a low growl that rose from her vaginal lips and shuddered through her torso.
Catharine lifted a pale hand to her shoulder, and slid the strap of her gown down over her arm. Holding the loose bodice against herself in a coy, practiced gesture, she raised the other hand and slowly slipped from the other strap. She held her still-covered breasts in both hands. Her clavicle bones and her fine long neck rose gracefully from the lace border. She stared at her own magnificence in awe. Then, unsmiling, reverently, she allowed the gown to fall away from her taut sculptured breasts. Her hands smoothed the fabric across her waist, her firm belly, her golden mound of silken hair, slowly, slowly, exposing her straight thighs and finally, dropping to the floor. Her polished toes coquettishly kicked at the heap of lace. One foot parted from the other to push the gown aside, and her thighs parted slightly as she moved.
She stood then without moving, one leg forward with its ivory-carved knee subtly bent to drive the beholder's eye upward to the moistness that dripped and glistened high up on her inner thigh. The candlelight seemed to put the color back in her skin, an illusion.
She knew she was being watched.
Catharine reached for a milk-glass flask from the table. She did not take her eyes off the mirror. Taking it by its curved handle, she unscrewed the cap and let it fall to the floor, to roll away under a chair in the corner. She poured the thick white liquid into the palm of one hand, and when it had warmed to her own temperature, she raised her hand and tipped the liquid onto her raised neck and throat. It oozed leisurely down onto her shoulders, and with both hands she began slowly to spread it over her soft flesh, around her pulsing throat, across the hollows of her upper chest, under and all around and over her breasts, and down her lean long arms. She poured the rich lotion onto her hand again, warmed it, and then began the rite of oiling her nipples until they were hard and gleaming.
With infinite care and loving attention, Catharine oiled her entire body. She took a long time massaging the warm ooze across her belly and down into her thighs, spread apart to reach the tender inside skin, so sensitive and so secret down there. She lifted one leg and set her foot on the edge of her daddy's chair, so that she could spread the lotion down into the arch and the ankle and between her toes, and up along her smooth shins and back, again, to the soft gold hairs that sprang vibrantly to life as they received the anointment from her worshiping fingers.
She heard only the ticking of her daddy's clock. The storm spewed its fury all around her, but she was oblivious.
On the floor below, Richard Burgess tossed in his sleep, but he did not wake up. Down the hall, little
Jennifer had fallen back to sleep with the help of her thumb, which she sucked noisily and hungrily as she dreamed.
The clock ticked steadily and the candles burned slowly. Catharine stood before her mirror as a goddess about to receive homage. Elegant, glistening, lovely. She waited.
The pain of her longing flashed across her face as the clock churned, ready to strike.
One. '
She stepped back from the glass and sank into the huge chair. Her legs were spread wide and her swelling, pounding flesh was about to catch fire. She stared into the mirror, and saw that a cloudy substance seemed to be moving in, obscuring the refracted candle glow and making even her own image fade into foggy gloom. She leaned forward from the chair, trying to reach out, to see more clearly.
From the depths of the mist that moved dreamily behind the mirror, she began to perceive two small glowing emerald-green embers. And then the breathing began. Rasping, unbearably sensuous moans of male hunger, as great as her own. Two like kinds mating in the earthshaking power of instinct calling to instinct ... she could no more turn from this lover than steel filings could run from a magnet. The breathing and the green eyes, coming closer and ever closer to her own, found her groaning and writhing and pleading to be taken.
Her hand clutched at her cunt, not to cover it but in answer to the throbbing need to be touched there. Her eyes stared into the gorgeous, glittery, animal eyes. They were cold and voracious, hard and penetrating. They were victorious, triumphant, gloating.
Even as her hips moved with tremulous heavings on her daddy's big chair, even as she thrust her hungry cunt forward, open, to be filled at last, her ego recoiled at the knowledge that she was conquered, and she screamed.
Thunder shook the house. Richard turned suddenly in his nightmare, and pressed himself, hard, into the soft down of the mattress. Jennifer slept through the sound, her teddy bear having worked its way down under the covers to be gripped tightly between her legs.
Catharine watched in helpless horror and lust as the surface of the mirror crackled and seemed to shatter, and the creature stepped through it. At first, in the haze of her vision, she saw only the glittering eyes and the jewels on his fingers that caught the candle fires and shot them back in piercing stabs of color. She heard nothing, and was blinded by the shining pinpoints of light that engorged and seemed ready to burst and were suddenly upon her.
He was green all over, his hands under the sparkling rings were as fluid and slimy and green as kelp. His hands were huge, and open to embrace her. His face was cast in the glittering light from his emerald eyes, his mouth made murmuring sucking sounds, and his tongue flicked back and forth, up and down, in and out. His body was slick and smooth and the color of seaweed undulating in stagnant tidal pools left behind by the sea to rot in the moonlight. His odor was salt and sperm, musk and oil, nectar and sweat, reptile and aphrodisia. Her nostrils flared with the desire to inhale him so deeply she would never be free of his stink again. She never wanted it to stop. She never wanted to be free again. She breathed and panted and gasped and squirmed as he slowly, slowly moved the few feet from the mirror to her sprawled and waiting body.
His cock was huge and slimy. It was not pinkish, as Richard's had been, nor purple like her daddy's. It was like a jungle tree, taller and greener and thicker with clinging damp foliage than any other in the world. Its tip was dripping drops of green honey that slurped with promise of sweetness to pour down her throat and up into her pussy and her ass-hole and over her oiled skin to cover her finally, eternally, in a shield of jism that would protect her forever from wanting. His cock marched ahead of his small twisted body and her hands left herself to grope desperately for it. Her mouth worked hungrily. She opened herself to him with every pore of her body.
With animal ferocity, he spun her around. His hands were hard and his bejeweled claws cut into her ass to draw blood. She felt her spine crack as he bent her forward and penetrated her from behind. She was his.
Her throat and the corners of her lips ripped raw and bloody from the effort of trying to scream. Her eyes rolled wildly and she saw herself in the mirror as the lightning crashed furiously again and again and again in glaring colorless blasts of cruel, stark light.
She saw her face, straining to leave its drawn skin, contorted into a mindless agony of pain and pleasure. She saw her bleeding flesh under the thorny hands of the demon, who rode her with bestial grunts of mastery. He held her down on her belly against the cold rough attic floor, but she felt only the throbbing giant organ that gutted her and probed her and forced her to take more, more, more, more ... again and again, he plunged brutally deep inside her. She saw his tar-green flesh against her own, his cold eyes flashing like the jewels on his claws. She screamed with the pain and the undreamed-of pleasure. She screamed with the pent-up voices of all the humans on earth who never know or feel such ecstasy. She screamed out all the "noes" and "yesses" of all the frustrated girls and women on the earth. She screamed in joy at the bursting forces of life and death in her virginal cunt, and she screamed in terror at the unfairness of the struggle. She screamed in orgasm and she screamed in sheer pain. Again and again and again...
Blessed darkness swooped her down into unconsciousness at last.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Richard's dream woke him. He was positive he had heard screams. Was it the dream? He reached out a hand in the darkness, but Catharine's side of the bed was empty and cold.
"Catharine?" he called, softly at first, and then louder. He no longer heard the screams, but something sinister made his flesh crawl and he knew it had been real.
He got out of bed quickly and went to the door of Catharine's bathroom. No light came from under the door, but he tapped and called her name again. He opened the door to the empty darkness, and then shut it again at once. He stopped only long enough to turn on the bedside lamp and to pull on his dressing gown over his pajamas.
He hurried down the hall and opened Jennifer's door. She was sleeping peacefully enough, her thumb in her mouth like a baby. The light from the hall fell across her eyes and she opened them and saw her daddy standing there.
"What's the matter, Daddy?" she asked sleepily.
"Nothing, darling," he said, hoping that his voice carried a reassurance he didn't feel. "Go back to sleep, Jennifer. Everything's all right."
"Everybody's waking me up tonight," she grumbled good-naturedly as she snuggled back into her pillow. Richard closed her door.
When he turned around, he saw Lisa and Abel, with raincoats slung over their shoulders, pajamas and robes underneath.
"You heard ... something?" he asked them sharply.
They both nodded. Abel looked frightened.
"Somebody screamin', " Lisa said. "Where's Miss Catharine?"
There was something in the woman's tone that angered Richard unreasonably. Almost as if she knew what had happened ... had expected it and was now justified. Almost smug ... he snapped at her more loudly than he ever had.
"Goddamn it, don't just stand there! Go and look for her!" he shouted.
Abel turned and started down the stairs. Lisa seemed to hesitate, then she gave Richard a queer look-he shouldn't have spoken to her like thatand she followed her brother a few paces behind.
Abel went instinctively to the garage. He opened the side door, swung it mightily against the gusting wind and rain, and held it for Lisa until she had stepped inside. She stood there, huddled into her heavy wool robe, the wet slicker over her head, while Abel methodically checked the front and back seats of the Lincoln, and the trunk, and then opened both doors of the little sports car to make sure nothing was there either.
"She didn't take the car," he observed.
Lisa sighed. "No," she agreed. "Now, don't you worry about her. She's gone, that's what I say, like her mother before her. She'll be all right, that one."
"She's gone?" he repeated in disbelief.
"Now, darlin', " Lisa admonished her brother, "don't you be upset. Lisa will take care of you. We don't need her, or him either..."
"She's gone," Abel repeated again, and a single tear escaped from his eye and coursed down the deep lines of his face.
"All right, darlin', " Lisa sighed. "We'll go and look for her. We'll find her, if she's to be found. Now you come on with me, stay close to me. Come on."
"Where can we look, Lisa?" Abel said helplessly.
"We'll start in the house. Not that it'll do any good."
They went back into the kitchen, through the pantry and into the dining room.
"The light's on," Abel noted as they pushed open the swinging service door.
"Yes," Lisa murmured. "The portrait light..."
"And the window's open," Abel said excitedly. "Lisa, look at the wet stain on the curtain! Somebody left the window open in the rain. It wasn't me. I locked all the windows, like I do every night. Honest, Lisa."
"I know, I know. Of course you did." It was strange. Lisa went over to the blowing drapery, and nearly slipped in the large puddle of rainwater that had already ruined the polish on the parquet floor. She ducked behind the heavy wet velvet to shut the window. Her eye caught something shining in the grass below. As she leaned out into the rain that swept around her head in torrents, lightning shot the lawn with a second's clarity. There on the ground outside were ropes of evenly matched pearls, tossed like garbage in a heap of gold and diamonds and rubies and sapphires, rings and pendants and brooches. There was a platinum wedding ring, too.
"Holy Jesus, she's done it, all right!" she whispered aloud to herself. She stood staring at the glittering mess for a moment, until she felt Abel fumbling with the heavy drapery behind her, trying to find the opening, to see what had become of her. She shut the window and led the way back to the center hallway.
"Mr. Burgess," she called up the stairs. "You'd better come down here."
Abel was wringing his hands. "What's the matter, Lisa? Where's Miss Catharine?"
"Go into the study, Abel," Lisa directed, "and light the fire. It's all laid, isn't it?" Abel nodded. "I think Mr. Burgess is going to be wanting to do some heavy thinkin' in there. That's it, go on now."
Richard came out of the bedroom and looked down over the banister. "What is it, Lisa? Did you find her?"
Lisa looked up at him without answering. She shrugged into her raincoat and went out of the front door into the howling night. Richard ran down the stairs two at a time. He saw the door to the study open and strode in to find Abel hunched down at the fireplace.
"That's funny," Abel said, "somebody already had a fire. There's just ashes now. I could'a swore I laid it out before I went to bed, honest I did. Nice dry logs and tinder and everything. Hey, lookee here!" He pulled the charred remains of a blue folder from the cold dead heap of ashes. He held it up with two gnarled fingers for Richard to see.
It was the remains of the Stover Hills Project. The one deal that he had finally been able to manipulate on his own, without the help of his powerful father-in-law. Even though the old man had been dead for over six years now, his ghost had hovered over everything Richard touched ... yes, even Catharine. Especially Catharine. This was to be his first independent strike on his own, the thing that would make him richer and more powerful than even old Tom Johnston had ever dreamed of. All it needed was Catharine's signature. And then he was going to have it copied ... there was only the original, waiting for signature. And now it was gone. Up in smoke. Why would she do that? His balls hurt. He bent over with a sudden, sharp, excruciating pain.
"Abel, tell Lisa to call Dr. Matthews. Tell him ... oh, hell, where did Lisa go off to? Goddamn it!" He straightened up as the stab of pain lessened, and managed to walk to the hall. He opened the front door, but saw only the rain and darkness and heard only the wind and distant thunder.
"Lisa!" he shouted. There was no answer. He slammed the heavy door and turned around to see Jennifer standing on the landing above, rubbing her eyes. Her little nightie was twisted and very short to begin with. From where he stood, it was difficult not to look all the way up her slim straight legs to her little snatch.
Richard realized now that he would never be able to look at his little girl again the way he had before. He cursed himself for a monster and an animal. He turned his eyes to her tangled baby hair falling on her shoulders, to her babyish hands rubbing her lovely eyes, to her unutterably sweet innocent untouched baby-cunt where her pale soft triangle beckoned to him, her legs slightly apart...
"Go back to sleep, Jennifer!" he barked at her furiously. He turned on his heel to stride back to the study.
Tears welled in her sleepy eyes. Jennifer decided not to cry, though, and she gulped once or twice and blinked back the threatening wet. Crying was for babies, and her mother had told her just that very night that she was growing up now. She knew that grownups saved their tears for when they really needed them. She tossed back her golden hair and pattered on her bare feet to the door at the foot of the attic steps. "Mommy?" she whispered.
She waited, listening for an answer. It didn't come. She opened the little door silently and mounted the dark steps one by one.
The key was in the door, as if waiting for her to find it. A little smile flickered across her lips, not a baby smile at all. Carefully, she turned the key and pushed open the door.
Jennifer gasped in wonder to see the beautiful light from the candles that burned low in the great old candelabra. The oval mirror stood invitingly in the center of the rosy warm circle of light. All the bottles and jars on her mommy's table glittered in the light and refracted their myriad colors and crystal facets into the mirror, to tempt her with their mysteries. And best of all, deep in the dim background of the mirror she saw herself standing, quite alone, on the threshold of all the secret wonders. The silver hairbrush glinted in the candle glow as Jennifer stepped forward in the empty room.
"Mommy?" she whispered again, looking around her in the dark cavern of the attic that loomed beyond the light. Without knowing why, she found herself looking to the mirror for an answer, but all was silent. Even the storm had finally quieted, exhausted from its efforts. Only the wind remained. It sounded around her ears, from far away, almost like laughter.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Catharine heard her daughter's call, but she could not reach back. The thin little voice was soon drowned out in the shattering sounds around her, and the tiny oval porthole through which she had come was covered now with a silvery-hard haze. It was miles and miles and miles away. She would never know how to get there, over all the writhing bodies. Catharine could not bear to touch them. They were filthy. Most of them had little or no hair, but pasty scalps showing a revolting pinkish cast as if the hair had been pulled out at the roots. Automatically, her hand went up to her own head. Her fingers stiffened and froze. Her shriek was lost in the horrible cacophony of moans and screams from the others.
A large clump of her own golden fine silk hair had been yanked out. Her hand touched scalp. Her fingers recoiled and she almost lost consciousness, but such relief was no longer available to her and her kind.
She was in Hell.
If I explain to the right people who I am, she thought, standing very still while everyone around her seemed to leap and squirm and dance in some grotesque imitation of a nightmare ballet, if I tell them there's been a mistake, that I am Catharine Johnston Burgess ... oh, God, what is he doingl
The green-skinned demon held a blood-soaked bone in his claws and was tearing meat from it with his sharp teeth. His dick was still erect, she noticed, and despite his disgusting eating habits and the dank sticky liquid that oozed from the corner of his mouth, there was still something about him that made her want it again. This time she would stay conscious, she wanted to experience every second of it, that strange combination of horror and ecstasy ... but she must get out of here. The green cocksman was dancing a little jig as he tore into the bone. His legs were spindly and hairless, and the skin glistened with slime.
Catharine started toward him, pretending to ignore the monstrous cock that pointed up at her, tempting beyond belief.
"Can you help me," she began, using all her knowledge of feminine wile. After all, this ... creature was a man, the proof poked up at her in a most disconcerting way, a man who had taken advantage of her. Surely he understood that he owed her something. "I don't belong here, you see," she said in her prettiest wheedle.
The hideous fellow roared with laughter, choking on the raw meat in his mouth. It came spewing out in a mess all over himself and some got on Catharine, too. She brushed at herself. Oh, God, she was nakedl She tried to cover herself with her hands.
"I don't see what's so funny. I wish you'd help me. After all, you got me into this, didn't you?" she said, a little tartly, but not really bitchy. She knew exactly how to get what she wanted from men, of course, always had. Show a little spirit, but always with the tacit understanding that you are pliant and vulnerable underneath. Throw yourself on his mercy, but let him know he's going to have a lively time of it.
"Cunt," the demon said. "Made me drop my meat."
He began to dance again, and spun away from her as if he owed her nothing.
Still not aware of her true circumstances, Catharine began to look around her for the first time. The landscape was a vast horizonless rubble heap, with all color gone from it. No trees, no grass, no sky or water anywhere, no big comforting house to run to. Only a reddish-brown darkness, with a terrible stench, as if someone had been burning flesh and hair. Here and there, small fires did indeed send up wisps of black smoke, and the air was overcast with heavy fumes. In the distance, naked figures ran in circles, as if constantly being bitten by insects.
And all around where she stood were other naked people, most horribly misshapen and deformed, with scaling skin and running open sores. They were all doing vile things to themselves and to each other. She wanted to look away, but every time she turned from one monstrosity, there was another. There was no place to look that was not sordid, vile, sexually degenerate, and mad.
Am I mad, she thought, is that what has happened to me?
The thought comforted her. Then I shall wake up soon, in a clean white bed with fresh lovely flowers on a little table, and doctors and nurses looking after me. It will be all right. I've had a nervous breakdown, that's what it's called. It's all a bad dream, a nightmare. It's not real. Help me, everyone. Give me a pill, a capsule, a drink, an injection, a little tender loving care, and fuck me, fuck me, fuck me hard and slow and long and never stop...
But she had come this way to leave that awful itching need behind her forever. If she had truly gone with the devil, why then he would have kept his part of the bargain and she would be free of sexual need now . , . this was proof, wasn't it, that it was a dream, only in her mind ... because her body still yearned and ached and hungered, worse than ever before.
Who are these people, those creatures around me, then? Are they inmates of the mental hospital ... figments of my sick imagination ... could even I imagine such ugliness, such debased and anguished orgiastic antics ... what happened to the orgy they promised me, the feast where I was the pretty centerpiece and everyone sucked and kissed and licked and caressed and fed and fucked me with their fingers and their toes and their tongues and their cocks...
She hoped she wasn't speaking out loud, if the doctors were listening, if she were unconscious and lying in a hospital and talking out loud that way she would die of shame when she woke up. What if Richard heard-if. he knew what bad thoughts churned all the time in her head ... what if Jennifer heard, with her innocent little cherry-if Richard gets that he will have gotten both of us, and he doesn't deserve it. Oh, Daddy, why didn't you fuck me, why don't you come and help me now ... I only came this way because they promised me you would be here. I want your thing inside my thing, Daddy. That's all I ever wanted. You know. Do it. Do it, please, come to my room again, at night or in the morning, or in the high afternoon when Mommy is having her nap, and put it in me. Yes, I'm big enough to take it. I'm a big girl now, Daddy. Fuck me in my white satin wedding dress, with the veil over my face. Don't let him have me. He's ordinary.
"Want some, honey?" cried a bulbously fat woman as Catharine wandered past her. "Come and have a little suckle, my, you're a pretty one, so you think! Give us a suck here, see how big and squeezy they are, you like tits, everybody-likes tits, mine are prettier than yours. Want some, honey?"
The woman had no teeth in her mouth. It was red-brown inside when she laughed, blood-red and shit-brown, like everything in this place. Her nipple was as big across as her fat hand that held it up for Catharine to see. The other breast hung hugely down to rest on the scarred rolls of belly. Catharine felt a moistness in her throat as the gross flesh heaved and bounced with the woman's shrill laughter. Her involuntary salivary glands told her that it would be good, good to suck on that enveloping warm flesh, delicious to be held and fondled and sucked in turn by that toothless mouth...
She ran from the fat woman and almost tripped over the long red hose that another woman was busily stuffing up her cunt. It took more and more and more. Catharine watched in fascination until the rubber hose began to emerge from the woman's gaping mouth. More and more she pushed it in and little by little it came out the other end. Catharine gagged.
"I have to get out. I have to get well," she told herself out loud. That brought a croaking laugh from someone so close behind her that she jumped in surprise. Whirling around, she saw a giant female creature, hard and muscled and tattooed around the tits and gut in a wreath that curled right down into her slit. The creature held a white-hot branding iron. With a steely bear-trap grip, she grabbed Catharine and threw her down onto the ground. She pressed the steaming iron into the delicate white skin. It seared and smoke poured from the wound as an acrid smell clotted in Catharine's nostrils. The pain was so horrible that she thought surely she must faint again, but such relief is not possible in Hell. Pain invaded her body, her mind and her universe, blotting out all other sensation and thought. Pain and the equally devastating knowledge that her flawless flesh was being desecrated.
The huge, naked, sweat-gleaming giantess threw down the branding iron and shook with mirth as she watched Catharine's agonized belly crawl along the garbage-littered ground.
"That's the only thing that stops the hots, honey," someone tittered, and then roared with his own joke. "It's sort of a counter-irritant, you'll get used to it. You'll beg for pain, to stop the hots. Just be thankful you didn't get it up the ass. My God, you should see mine. Want to see, please, hon, take a look, do!" The tall bony fellow turned and squatted so that Catharine's eye was pushed against his red-brown ass-hole. There was a scar there, but no telling what had made it.
"Help me, help me," she moaned to him. He seemed friendly. When he turned around, he had smears of garish makeup all over his face, and false eyelashes, but she knew he was a man because his long thin penis was standing right up under her nose like a chicken bone, pale and bare and rigid.
"Sweetie, I can't help you, I mean, that's not what does it for me. I'm just as horny as you are-see?but you couldn't come near cooling me out, so why bother!" With that, he moved away from her toward a group of muscular young men who were hitting each other with wet towels.
"Why, if it isn't the jerk-off lady herself! Hey, come and see who's here, everybody!"
A hulking man came toward her, gesturing excitedly over his shoulder to the others to follow him. He was wearing a torn and filthy garment that had once been an elegant red silk Oriental robe. Catharine could see the faint traces of an embroidered dragon and lotus blossom pattern under the festoons of caked dirt and spittle and dried semen. He had a shaggy unkempt beard with flies buzzing frantically around in it. He didn't seem to mind them, but as he bent his head close to her, Catharine had to keep fanning the insects away with her hand. A huge rent in the hem of his robe showed glitter boots underneath, still with traces of dull gold sequins poking through the dung that clung in clotted turds high up around the ankles. He stopped directly in front of her, blocking her way (but where was she going?) and the others came hurrying up tosee.
There was a woman in a torn tee-shirt and nothing else, a fat man with his scalp showing scabs where the hair had been pulled out, an ancient hag wearing the tattered remains of a satin slip through which her wrinkled folds of withered skin barely covered protruding ribs and pelvic bones. They gathered around Catharine, touching her and turning her this way and that. Their hands were dirty and without gentleness. They clucked and spit and muttered excitedly as they probed and poked at her.
Catharine tried to pull away, but they ignored her pleas and found her struggle amusing.
"She's not so much," the snarling woman in the tee-shirt said, spitting on Catharine's smooth white breast. The woman's cunt was thick with matted hair. Catharine had a crazy impulse to touch it, just to see what she would do.
"Turn her around, I want to stick it to her in the ass," the bearded transvestite said. He opened his tattered robe to reveal a small penis standing erect, peering from the tangled masses of its own beard. It was very small, Catharine thought, sniffing.
All the men were erect here. All the females were wet and ready, it seemed.
The foursome spun Catharine around and spread her buttocks rudely. The bearded man inserted himself and began to pump away. She hardly felt the little thing, although the in-and-out sensation made her want more. They held her bent almost double, with her long hair sweeping the ground, and in a moment it was over. I have to wash my hair, she thought, there's dirt in it now.
"Hardly worth bothering about, a teeny little orgasm, and she didn't come at all," the man in the robe sneered, withdrawing his dick. When she stood up again, she saw that it was still hard. He didn't bother to pull the raggedy robe together.
"You're thinking it's too small," he leered at her. "I used to worry about that, too. That's why I'm here. What are you here for, jerk-off lady?"
The fat man peered around at her and grinned. He offered his hand for her to shake, quite formally. He had tufts of hair all over his body, covering the rolls and folds of pulchritude. His stomach was so enormous that he couldn't see his own cock, although he could reach it well enough. He held it firmly with his left hand while he shook hers with his right.
"How do you do," he said. "I'm so glad you're here. It's queer, isn't it ... I used to watch you sitting before the mirror there. We all did. And now you're one of us."
"Shut up! Shut up!" the old hag crackled furiously. "I'll cream the bitch!"
Catharine shrank from her, but the fat man brought up his wide knee in a gesture surprisingly agile for such a heavy person, and hit Catharine in the groin, knocking her air out. She fell to the ground in pain. The others descended on her as if she were carrion and they a pack of rabid rats.
They held her to the ground, three of them, with hard bruising grips and playful slaps that hurt, while the old hag began to root around in a pile of garbage a few feet away. With stiletto nails the cackling crone picked through the rancid heap until she uncovered a rather large mirror. Her huge red-rimmed eyes glistened as she, dragged it nearer. The fat man and the woman in the ragged tee-shirt pulled at Catharine's legs, and the transvestite grabbed a handful of her hair. It seemed to Catharine that they were pulling in opposite directions, but they yanked and hoisted and wrenched at her until they dropped her with a hard thump onto the top of the greasy glass surface of the mirror.
The old hag moved in, and all four began to examine Catharine with minute attention, probing and poking, as if looking for lice. She turned her head wretchedly this way and that, searching for a friendly face, a sign that some one of these creatures still had some humanity left. She knew how to deal with people, but these ... I She wept helplessly as they flipped her over onto her belly, then on her back, and touched every part of her until she felt that she had never been clean in her life.
The fat man seemed the least hostile of all of them. He had shaken her hand, sort of welcomed her to this place. She might be able to get him to respond to what was left of her charms ... hadn't he fucked her-or had he? She couldn't remember. But men always liked to do things for Catharine, whether they felt they owed her something, or thought they might be able to get somewhere with her ... she knew how to handle men...
Why didn't the doctors give her something to wake her out of this horror? How long would it take before she was back in the real world again ... but even as she thought about it, the real world seemed dimmer and harder to remember.
The fat man was peering intently up her nose. "Please," she breathed into his hairy ear. His finger, inside her mouth, was bigger around than his dick. "Will you help me?"
Someone was licking her toes, a most uncomfortable feeling, halfway between a tickle and a turn on. She felt herself swelling and becoming wet again. She couldn't help raising her hips for more as the examination went on.
"I'll help you, I'll help you," the fat man was blubbering deep into her ear. His moisture dropped deep inside the little opening there. "I come from wealth, too, you see. I've been buttered up, stuffed with glut, bathed in milky baths-like you," he panted, spittle dripping from his tongue into her ear. "I'd like to be your beau, Loo-Loo. That's your name, Loo-Loo."
She realized that he was getting off on his mumbling. His breath came hotter and faster and she had a violent urge to turn her face and meet his slavering mouth with her own. But he was repulsive, horrid. She would never have had anything to do with him if they had met in Placid. The transvestite plucked a few hairs from Catharine's snatch and tickled her belly with them.
"My credentials are impressive," the fat man was saying. His voice was actually rather cultured, although his rising passion was making him drool heavily. She lay as quietly as she could, trying to ignore her own agonized thrusts and squirms. "We had a burnished banister in our chateau. It smelled of Mother's pussy." He giggled, and panted into her ear. "Charming ... charming ... charming ... just a minute ... wait just a minute..."
He spewed his come all over her arm. It was warm and sticky. The old hag grabbed Catharine's hand and held up the arm for the others to see. She nearly yanked it from its socket in her fury.
Suddenly, they all lost interest in Catharine. The hag and the bottomless waitress and the transvestite all began licking the fat man's bulbous belly. Muttering absent-mindedly to herself, the old crone grabbed Catharine's hair as she slid down to her knees. The hair pulled out painfully, leaving another hideous, bleeding patch of bald scalp.
Left alone, Catharine sat up, touching her pitiful head and staring at the red ooze that came away from it on her fingers. She crawled away, across garbage and twisted piles of molten metal shapes and rusted chains. She sat in a daze for a moment, too desperate to cry or to think. Then she saw her green demon off in the distance. He was sitting cross-legged in front of an oval frame that looked like her own dear familiar loving mirror.
She crawled painfully toward him. As she came closer, she saw that the frame of her mirror had come alive. The smooth carved wood had given way to real slithering snakes and crawly scorpions, wreathing in grotesquely moving patterns. She heard the high-pitched cackle of the demon's laughter as he rocked on his heels and watched something inside the oval frame.
There was an amber glow inside the oval, warm and soft in contrast to the stark red-brown of everything else around it. It was candlelight, on the other side, inside. It was her attic, just beyond her reach.
Catharine rose to her feet and tried to run. She didn't see the pit that loomed ahead of her. The fall was a nasty one, but she stumbled to her feet again.
"Help me out! I must get out!" she screamed.
There was one other occupant of the deep hole. She looked vaguely familiar to Catharine. Matronly, plump, she sat as if holding court in the dung-filled pit. She wore elaborate jewels around her arms, a gleaming diamond necklace hung from her neck, and a sparkling tiara was placed carefully atop her well-coifed hair. The woman's primping reminded Catharine of someone-the gestures were those of a grand lady before her mirror, but the woman was utterly naked.
"Help me, please. I must get out," she explained as calmly as she could to the disturbingly familiar eyes. They were violet, like her own, and like her mother's had been ... but heavily overlaid with blue liner and purple eye shadow and almost obscured by thick black gluey false lashes.
"Why should I?" the woman screamed at her. "What'd you ever do for me?"
Just then a young pretty boy, about thirteen, came sliding down into the pit head first. He came to a stop with his head in the woman's lap, and instantly began sucking hungrily at her flesh.
"That's better," the motherly looking woman sighed, leaning back against the stained dirt wall of the pit, and directing the towheaded child's mouth deeper into her cunt.
He looked like an angel. Children, especially boys, had always liked Catharine. She wondered what it would be like to take his little hairless baby prick into her mouth, she could yummy up the whole thing, his sweet little balls too, and then he would help her, she knew it.
"Little boy," she called in her softest voice, "come and let me see how pretty you are."
The boy's beautiful head turned toward her. He had a cherubic smile, and fine golden hair like her own had been. It was dirty, though. How she longed to wash him, to soap his whole sweet little body and rinse him and gobble him up ... he turned from the matron and buried his face in Catharine's lap.
"Nol Mel Me!" the woman shrieked, throwing stones and garbage and whatever she could reach from her sitting position only a few feet away. "Get back here, Pretty Boy! Suck on these, look how juicy, I'm swollen ... suck me here and here ... please, Pretty Boy, pretty please ... suck me, suck me, suck me. ... " She went on and on, like a lullaby, to herself now. Catharine looked up from the boy's pale little buttocks curled under her hand, and saw that the naked matron was being quieted by someone new. A scrawny man, his skin encrusted with rat bites, had slid into the pit with them and was jacking himself off against the woman's breasts. Pretty Boy looked up, too, and laughing, he rolled away from Catharine to take the man's stiff grimy cock in his rosy little mouth.
Catharine, with a moment's regret for the loss of Pretty Boy's attentions, climbed painfully up over the side of the hole. Her body, oiled and perfumed, was now so sweaty and covered with caked filth that she experienced, for the first time since her birth, the distinct feeling of being unattractive. I'll think about that later, she thought as she ran and stumbled and ran again to the place where she had seen the demon laughing into the oval mirror.
She passed a huge muscled female in a wrestler's kimono, opened to show a foot-long red rubber dildo strapped to her, whipping a runny-nosed little child who was whimpering but making no effort to run away.
She passed a yellow-haired young girl with a blue satin sash that said "BEAUTY QUEEN" across it. The girl was sitting in a bathtub, admiring herself in a tortoise-shell hand-mirror. I'd never have a tortoise-shell hand-mirror, Catharine thought haughtily as she stumbled to go around the tub. Tortoises are an endangered species.
A hand reached out and grabbed her painfully by the left tit. It squeezed and twisted until Catharine came to a halt. The hand belonged to a small thin dark-haired girl wearing a tiny apron. Her hand was slimy and filled with some of the black mud she had been pouring over the beauty queen's back.
"Look at this ... she's the best they have in Placid, Massachusetts!" the little maid sneered.
"How disgusting. She's really so plain," said the blonde beauty queen. Her hair is not nearly so fine as mine was, Catharine thought to herself. She stood still while they considered her loudly.
"She's really repulsive," the maid commented.
"Foul. Nauseating," the beauty queen agreed. She slathered some more mud on her shoulders. Catharine saw that it was crawling with little worms.
"Ludicrous. Revolting," said the maid.
"Odious. Sickening," said the dirty blonde.
"Offensive."
"Putrid."
"Repellent."
"Vulgar."
"Loathsome."
"Old."
They don't mean me, she thought, as she finally managed to slip around the tub to the other side. Anyway, they're jealous, everyone is jealous of me.
But her hand strayed to her head, and she felt the horror of the bald patched scalp, and then the only thing that would enable her to go on was her hand deep in her crotch. Her hand was filthy, but so was her cunt, now. It was difficult to run this way, and her steps slowed as she comforted herself. Her whole hand had to be thrust inside there ... my God, he must have stretched me, will anything ever fill me again ... except him...
The little green demon still sat before the mirror, for all the world as though it were a television set playing a particularly lurid episode of "Doctors Hospital." He cackled and rocked back and forth, chewing all the while on the raw meat from the bone he held.
For a moment, her eyes played a cruel trick.
"Daddy?" she cried to the vision she saw.
But the monster cackled again, and she saw that it was the demon after all. She was still too far away to make out what he was looking at inside the warmly glowing oval. The frame writhed and hissed. Running hunched over with her legs spread wide, both hands now frantically inside her cunt, not caring how she looked, Catharine tried to keep her eyes on the amber light of home.
She had to stop. On the verge of her orgasm, a spasm seized her and she squatted close to the dirt ground, pummeling and manipulating herself furiously. Suddenly, a head popped up from behind a mound of rotten eggs. Bulging eyes stared right up inside her cunt. A snake-like tongue began to lick at her. Her revulsion was so great that her orgasm never crested. She stood up and wearily began plodding toward the distant mirror again.
The demon looked up and grinned as she approached. "Why, you're beautiful, Catharine ... you're exceptional, aren't you now? Come look in the mirror, that's what you love ... come, everlastingly ... everlastingly horny, that's your fate ... do you love it, you're just like all the others here ... horny forever, never satisfied ... welcome to Hell, Catharine!"
He grabbed his toes in glee and rolled all the way over onto his back, laughing hideously in the throes of ecstatic pleasure. His slimy green balls rolled out from under his up-thrust ass, and she reached out her hand to caress them. Immediately, he sat upright. He pointed his hard, thick, stiff, green glistening prick at her, but waved it out of reach when she grabbed for it.
"Look in the mirror, Catharine. See how exceptional you are!" He laughed again and rolled away from her.
The snakes and scorpions hissed at her as she approached, but the lovely calm amber light gave her hope, and she was drawn to the mirror despite her fears and premonitions.
It reflected not her attic haven, but herself as she was now. As she really was.
Her hair was mostly gone, except for gummy matted strands and grizzly clumps sprouting from her bony scalp. Her lips were caked and split and blistered out of shape, encrusted with scabs. Her eyes were red, swollen, deeply shadowed, and sunken in pain. Her skin was greenish under the mud and slime, and bits of garbage stuck to her. Her pussy was dank and matted. She smelled as foul as any of them.
She lifted a hand to her head, then touched her stranger's mouth with one coarse fingernail. She closed her purple-green eyes, but when she reopened them she was the same. Behind her, the mirror reflected all the other victims of vanity, eternally in heat, desperately trying to appease their terrible hungers.
Her hand went to her crotch. Then both hands, tearing at herself. Understanding at last the depths of her fate-to-be, she withdrew her fists to beat against the traitorous mirror. Behind her, the bitter wind sighed in the wilderness, and the howls of orgasms, never enough, rose around her ears.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jennifer stood before the oval mirror, stroking her fine bright hair with the silver brush. She was so completely captivated by her image, so enthralled, that she heard nothing but her own whispers.
"Jennifer, you have lovely eyes," she said, bending closer to look deep inside them. "Your daddy's eyes, but so perfect with your coloring. A tiny bit of pastel-blue, I think. Just a trace..."
She reached for the little box of eye shadow, and opened its lid. Her pinky probed into it and came out covered with the goo. She spread it thickly, too thickly, over her tender transparent lids. For a long time, she examined the results in the looking glass, arching her head to get all possible angles, delighted with what she saw. Then she looked away at last, only to choose a lipstick from the array on the table next to her.
She didn't hear the breathing so close to her ear, on the other side. She didn't hear any sighs or cackling laughter as her unseen admirer rocked on his green haunches with glee. She didn't hear the wind dying outside the house, or the voices downstairs.
Lisa emptied the contents of her soaking wet scarf onto Richard's desk. Bits of damp grass clung to the setting of the diamond brooch. The wedding ring rolled off the desk onto the carpet. No one stooped to pick it up.
"The dining room window was wide open. Thesewere on the ground. Just thrown out, all over the muddy ground." Lisa's tone was a mixture of awe and disgust and righteousness. She waited for Richard to say something, but he only closed his eyes and sank back into his chair.
"Catharine..." He lapsed into silence, hiding his face in his hands.
"Is Miss Catharine gone?" Abel asked anxiously.
"Like her mother before her," Lisa said, shaking her head. She had known it all the time. Had a premonition. You couldn't put anything over on her.
Richard looked up. His face was dry. "Abel, call the airlines ... start with the one she had booked for, but call them all if you have to. Find out if she flew to Europe ... and oh, yes, call the inn first ... she said she would go to the inn for the night ... maybe..."
"Without her jewels, I suppose," Lisa snorted. "You're not goin' to find her, Mr. Richard."
Abel, glad of something to do, was thumbing through the yellow pages of the telephone book with as much efficiency as he could muster. Between each flipping of the pages, he stuck his finger into his mouth to wet it.
Jennifer's mouth was glistening wet with a heavy application of too much lipstick. Now her pink tongue tip protruded ever so slightly from her garishly red mouth, as she concentrated on brushing her eyelashes with the thick creamy paste that had made them heavy and bubbled.
The effect was a kind of freakish glamour, a pastiche of beauty at once make-believe and erotic, outrageous and magnificent. It was a total metamorphosis of innocence into decadence, child into whore. Playing the delicious game to the hilt, Jennifer began slowly to unbutton her little nightie.
"Now ... I must dress for dinner. I wonder what I should wear..."
The nightgown slipped from her shoulder.
The transformation was complete, and final. There was no going back, she knew that. In the oval mirror, she saw only what she had become. The light from within the glass was no longer warm, but harsh and burning, like a fire when someone has ventured too close.
Her eyes, gem-green now, shone back at her coldly. Her tongue flicked out of her mouth like a sharp silver knife. Her body shivered and heaved with uncontrollable lust. She threw herself against the hard surface of the mirror, but there was no comfort there now. A scorpion struck at her face, and withdrew to strike again. It left a hideous bleeding welt, but she did not feel it in her agony. She stroked herself frantically, rubbing the mucous which stained her skin all over the tender places, over her breasts and inside her thighs, up inside the oozing hot place ... but it was no good. The mirror had destroyed her. She heard the others moaning and calling, and she turned to them. She was one of them now. With greedy glinting eyes, she headed for the deep pit where she had seen the pretty little boy. Maybe he would let her ... and then she would ... drooling from both ends, Catharine limped painfully toward her comrades in Hell.
The gnarled green demon watched until Catharine left, and then he sprinted back to take his place before the oval frame. He curled down with his slimy green butt on his scrawny ankles, rocking back and forth ever so slightly, gazing intently through the glass, watching Jennifer staring at him from the other side. '
Her lovely face was rapt as she stared at herself. "Yes," she breathed into the mirror, "I am beautiful. You are beautiful, Jennifer. I love you."
