I.S.: The Rector House

(What was she? I asked myself. Was she a witch?)

Verena lit the lantern on the counter, taking it with her to light the dark.

We looked around, seeing nothing but chipped, gray-stone walls, melted candles and a red-stained, dark earthen floor. I found chains spiked to the wall. Sniffing the urine and fecal odors that burned the top of my nose, I noticed empty, yellow-stained jugs. Everything Verena said seemed true.

Verena clawed at the floor, pulling gobs of earth away, exposing what I thought was one of mother's painted-wood dolls. However, upon getting a closer glance, I recognized the frontal hollows of a skull.

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"Mommy went to the Graveyard

"and didn't come back!

"Margret went to the Graveyard

"and didn't come back!

"Daddy went to the Graveyard

"andbrought back friends!"

I heard them chanting it over and over again, Judeth and Lynn, up before midnight on All Hallows Eve. And I was too frightened to open their door, afraid that Father was right behind the door, watching them play.

Verena was soon behind me.

"What's going on?" she said.

"They're chanting some game," I said.

"Mommy went to the Graveyard and didn't come back!" Judeth chanted, laughing behind the door.

"Oh no," Verena said. "You should go. You should get out of here."

"No. Not without my sisters," I said.

"Margret went to the Graveyard and didn't come back!" Lynn chanted, laughing even louder than her sister.

"Please go. We shouldn't have brought you home!" Verena said, her hand gripping my arm as I reached for the doorknob.

"Daddy went to the Graveyard and—" they both sang.

I opened the door, Judeth and Lynn now looking at me as they jumped on their bed.

"—andbrought back friends!"

"Enough!" Verena cried to them.

A groaning sound, from some beast, rose up in the house, everywhere. I thought that it sounded like howler monkeys—having heard them at the London Zoo—growling a deep, horrible resonance, married with something tainted, cold.

I took a match and lit a candle, holding it up. I smelled the musty scent of sweaty flesh, sex, rum and blood. My gut turned in and knotted, but I saw nothing more than my sisters, staring back at me in the realization that something was wrong.

"What was that?" I said, Verena looking at me with horror.

"It's Daddy," she said. "For the last time, you have to go."

"I'm not going unless you three are going with me," I said.

"We can't go," Verena said. "He won't let us go. He owns us, even in death."

"What makes you believe that? How? How can he hold onto you like this?" I said, not understanding.

Verena shook her head, came close to me, put her hands on my chest. She whispered: "He made us that way. Piece by piece, he made us a part of him, made us to always come back. Lynn and Judeth, your sisters, I took them far away from here and somehow, not even knowing why or how, they found their way back. Daddy called them when he died and they came back to him. How is that possible? How is thatnot possible? He owns us, Benjamin, until we all die."

"I cannot believe this!" I said, pulling Verena close to me. I wanted to feel that she was mine, no one else's. It was weird; wrong, maybe, but I suddenly felt jealous of her, love for her that I didn't even know I had. I hated Samuel, wanted him to leave her to me.

Verena's tears wet my shoulders.

"You were the only one born to escape him, Brother," Verena said. "And I fear that since he had no power over you, not like us, he will take control of you, command you. He'll make you do things you would never do! There's no other way, but for you to leave, get as far away as you can get. Leave and forget us, Brother."

"No," I said. "I won't leave you. Not while I'm alive. You three are all I have left of my family."

Verena cried into my chest while Lynn and Judeth, knowing that it was a time to cry, joined in her weeping. I kissed Verena's forehead, her cheek, her mouth.

III. MALEFICUS COGNATUS: THE UNMAKING

The hands of the old clock stuck when it reached 1. The midnight hour was spent by Verena and myself coaxing Lynn and Judeth to sleep. It was a moment after I saw that both were resting that I realized the clock wasn't moving anymore.

"That's funny," I said. "What time do you suppose it is?"

"It's the 13th hour," Verena said, as if she knew exactly what was going on.

"The what?"

Verena snapped out of her spell and said: "Time is still moving for us, for one more hour of the night, an hour only belonging to the damned. An hour only belonging to the House, the grounds, our father."

Verena came over, wrapped her arms around my waist and lifted up to kiss me again.

"He knows about us. I can feel it," she said. "And he's angry, maybe murderous."

I was frightened, I have to admit, but Verena and I were now inseparable. Stitched together in ways that I didn't, couldn't yet understand.

She led me to the couch in the living room, looking at me with her wide, pool-blue eyes that glimmered in the firelight. Her diminutive hands on mine, our fingers entwined and lightly stroked each other. Her face spoke of fears and love, exciting me onto plains where both positive and negative forces tugged at each other, crackling in the air around me.

Exasperated, she said: "Do you know what meditation is?"

I was stunned. Was she calling on my intellectual nature? I wondered. I turned her hands over, looked at her pale palms, rubbing them with my thumbs.

"Introspection, right?"

"It's about letting go, letting yourself feel, not think. Thinking runs the mind down when done all the time. Sometimes you just have to let go and feel, let things come and flow through you. Do you know what I mean?" she said.

"I suppose so."

"Lay back," she said, "and close your eyes. No matter what's going on, let it happen."

I nodded, leaning back on the couch. After closing my eyes, not knowing why I was beginning to trust a woman who had lied to me, I felt her get up and slide her hands on my legs, parting them. I sat up, eyes wide.

"What's the meaning of this?" I said, wanting her, not knowing how or why. This just wasn't the civilized thing to do. I had tried most my life to be a gentleman, but something in the house was wearing me down, making me someone else.

"Daddy read the Gate of Chazah out loud to us," she said, her hands running up and down my thighs, stirring things between my legs. "It was as though father was reading us a bedtime story, only we never understood why he did it. I think, now, that he was trying to open us up, trying to get us to see behind the illusion that manifested from our unwillingness to accept what really is."

I grabbed her wrists and pulled them up between us, her hands going slack as she looked into my eyes.

"I cannot let you do this," I said despite the urges that boiled under my skin.

"Why don't you trust me, Brother? Am I that evil of a person to want you? To need you? I'm just trying to help you see."

I let her hands go, shaking, aching with the need for release.

"I've never done this before," I said. "I'm a gentleman."

"I know. Damnant quod non intelligunt, my Brother. They condemn what they do not understand.

"And neither have I, but we girls talk behind locked doors. Close your eyes and I'll help you relax. You're getting a fever and it's not healthy," Verena said, so, God help me, I reposed into the couch and let her resume. I told myself that people did not need to know and that God forgives.

She carefully tugged on my belt until the buckle was released, slackening my pants. Her fingers hooked between my hips and the material, and she pulled my pants down my legs, off from my feet. I had to open my eyes for a moment, look at her eyeing at my stiffness, which pointed at her proudly. I watched her face move in between my legs, viewing her mouth parting as her left hand reached to soothingly stroke my heavy balls.

I closed my eyes, feeling her hot breath before the wet lips enveloped as much of my silken stalk as she could get. I listened and became emerged with the sensations of her suckling. Her caressing, nimbly pinching fingers issued charges through the soft skin of my sacks, adding to the stimulation that coursed, ebbing and flowing, through my buttocks and over my stomach.

I thought I heard things. In the dark, my mind becoming vivid with the feelings and images of imagination, I swore I felt somebody enter the room, felt them crouching near and watching.

Then I heard and felt the lightpopping of her lips releasing my bulbed apex, felt her stand up, shift and crawl on my lap. My wet erection laid against my stomach for a moment before I felt her fingers grasp me, lead my fountainhead to the moist floret between her legs. Then I felt her weight come down on it. There was a moment of pained resistance and then I felt the smooth gliding of my rigid flesh into a wet, tight channel, until I felt the warm cheeks of her bottom squeeze down upon my balls, leaving the whole of my shaft completely buried, swallowed within her belly.

"Dear God," I gasped. Inside my sister, there was a sudden fear that we awoke demons and made God blush. Part of me wanted to push her off, tell her to forget it, but I was already getting foggy, heady, as my sister began to thrust her rear against my hips, grinding down onto me as much as she could. We were undulating together, our bodies buzzing with honey bees under our skin—thrusting to make the sensations better, more acute, I began slowly getting pleasurably frustrated that I seemed to never get enough of myself within her, even though I had no more to give. Along with the headiness, I felt like I was going crazy with lust for her.

And that was a scary thing. Whatever was watching us, with eyes that were as deep as forever, was titillated and outraged at the same time. I wanted to push Verena off me, stop this abuse, but she held me enchanted, unable to. All I could imagine was that my sister was some witch, having some power over me that I could not stop.

Her whimpering breaths finally turned into whining gasps when she stiffened and shook, leaving me alone to drive into her, sailing her though her firework-convulsions. Her arms squeezed around me, sweat running between our chests, and her feet kicked outwards. I ran my fingers down her soft, pale back, pushing against the firm muscles underneath until the palm of my hands found the muscles of her buttocks, the impressible tissue that rounded and caved into the warm, summerlike regions of her sexuality. I helped her body grind, letting her pule her orgasm into my ears.

I was seeing things with my eyes closed. I was seeing that maybe I was wrong. Maybe Verena was my savior and that our bestiality was also our power. I was feeling stronger, though light-headed at the moment, and I knew that I'd do anything for her now.

As my willowy sister shook, coming to a finish, my sex peaked with rhapsody, a culmination of my sister's ecstatic mewls, her enduring slender-form tremors, and the balm of her lovemaking. I was wracked, my rousing cloud-mind began to storm while my eyes began to blur.

Everything seemed to darken, fade to darker blues—even the fire that snapped and popped in the fireplace, lazily waving back and forth like my obscured conscious. Shadows moved in the room, dancing, coalescing for moments before spreading out, returning and repeating.

I could feel my seed welling up, drawing out of my testicles, and I drove harder into my Verena. She quietly let me ram at her buttocks as I grasped to force the seed out of me. It raced through me, through my aching stalk. I felt myself empty into her, stiffening and bucking as much as I could.

And my eyes opened.

There were shapes in the shadows. I saw them. They moved together, formed onething and I tried to make my mind put itself back together. It was occurring to me that the shadows were not being bounced around by bending light. The shadows were something else, shifting and forming in a blur.

It wasn't until I was spent that the shadows came into focus, everything else become blurred all at once.

Samuel Rector: he stood there for a moment, his petrified grin marking my horror. I wanted him to immediately disappear upon seeing him. His eyes were voids—there was a deepness in them that stretched back into the farthest expansion of oblivion and glowing with a dark aura.

Verena, even in the dark, seemed whiter, almost effervescent, which is why I could see her bloody grin, her branched slices of flesh stitched together and stretched over bone. Her motley strips of flesh were not given to openings—these were made with slashes. Her flesh was sewn to flesh, my semen mingled with blood, leaking from a knife-like gash between her legs, a black tongue lolling in the same sort of laceration that gave her eyes, a mouth and ears. She was like the stitched doll, Margo, who looked like Margret, and I wondered if this is what my mother would have done or wanted.

Daddy went to the Graveyard and brought back friends!trilled in my head. I tried to push Verena off of me, but Verena gracefully caught my wrists each time and shoved them back as she stood up before me.

"Can you see behind the illusion now, brother?" Verena said, her gashed opening—that made her mouth, and slowly drooled strings of blood over her chin—formed a morbid smile. She drew some of the blood from between her legs and licked it with a black tongue. "You taste like Daddy."

"Verena!"

Samuel Rector stared at me, grinning still, mocking me with his cold eyes.

"Did you like fucking me? Your sister?" she said. "Because you can see and believe in all of it. Your blood has been sacrificed, given to me, for our brood. For Daddy's brood."

All I could stammer was: "No."

"I'm yours," Verena said. "And our children, Benjamen, will haunt and hunt men and women, feeding on them, bringing anything we want back to us. It's what Daddy wanted!"

I looked for Samuel Rector, who wasn't there. A fulminating lamentation crooned through the Rector House, my hairs pinned and needled, stirring my heart into speeding palpitations. And I wasn't the only one in shock—Verena looked around, frightened.

That's when I saw the black, coarse threads interweaving my slitted, welted skin on one arm. Of course, my whole body was as Verena's—a patchwork of sewn flesh. We were living, breathing dolls, flesh wrapped over bones and nothing more.

"I don't understand!" Verena was shouting at the direful noise that continued without pause. "I did everything you made me to do!"

"I know what it is," I said. Verena whirled about on her toes, still so very graceful. "You were right. He's jealous. He wanted us to generate a new brood, to spread our pure family blood, so that he could live forever through them, maybe even leave the House, following them wherever they went. Then, our father realizes that he made you and you're his. He loves you, too. He doesn't want to share you with me, doesn't want you to come under my dominion. He's a jealous lover!"

"He did it for Mother," Verena said. "She was born barren. Brother, he did it because he wanted to spread the blood, but he also did it for his lover. That's why mother made dolls, so that she could imbue herself with false maternalistic fantasies. He wanted to give her us, give her something she could never have."

I grabbed Verena, pulled her over to me.

"I know now," I said. I kissed her bloody mouth, teased her black tongue. Then I added: "He's different now and you're mine. As mine, you'll do exactly as I say."

"Yes, Brother."

I was about to ask her about my other sisters, Lynn and Judeth, but there were leathery things scattering around in the shadows. I could hear their claws, their short panting. I looked around, trying to see one of them.

"And-brought-back-friends," Verena said, her eyes filled with tears as her head rolled around, looking into the shadows for a place to run or run from.

There was rapid clickings on hard wood floor, sounds of curios being rattled and the fireplace died, snuffed out from a gust that wasn't really there. I went to light the oil lamp, waited for its cold phosphorescence to awaken. Verena was frozen still, unmoving, telling me that she wasn't sure of what to do.

"Ouch," she cried. "Ow! Ah!"

I was unsure of what I was seeing, so I wandered closer, holding the lamp between us. When the shadows dispelled from her, I realized her stitches were unwoven, some of the black threads coming undone from her bleeding cuts. That's when my eyes fell on the things that had come for us. They were short, dwarf-things with fetal faces and misshapen skulls, and long claws that poked at her skin, drawing threads and pulling her apart with maniacal glee.

That's when I felt their abrupt dashes of claws, inserting into my skin, uncoiling my stitches that held me together. The pain was, at first, mild, but they yanked and tugged, jolting me around like a puppet on strings.

Verena was screaming, her arm having fallen to the floor, blood oozing from the stumped end as the creatures shifted around us, half in and out of shadows, chuckling and chattering as their incredibly swift claws poked and pulled.

I didn't want to be a part of this world. It was darkness, a black terror of space that wasn't for humankind. Although I tried to reach my sister, who bawled in horror at what was happening, I couldn't reach her. These impish things tugged me back, loosening my limbs, and I couldn't do more than pull back, letting the threads tear through skin as it came apart from me.

I dropped to the floor, trying to swing my lax fist at the nightmares, but I couldn't reach—I couldn't punch or grasp one of them.

When I looked up, I realized that the clock-face was barely lambent from the fallen lamp, which had rolled away from me. The hands started moving and I narrowed my eyes as the pain in my skin burned. It took me a moment to realize that I wasn't undone. Neither was Verena, though her pain was horrifying to see.

"They're gone," I said. There was more light in the room. The 13th hour had faded, replacing the illusion and the barrier between us and the creatures that had been murdering us.

I took out my watch, started winding it.

DESINO

Benjamen Rector left off from writing soon after, expressing his wishes to stay in the Rector House, taking care of his sisters, his blood. He suggested to the reader that Samuel Rector was still alive, still nurturing his own passions. One would lean toward believing him when one looks at the papers two months after Benjamen's last written event on the tragic disappearance of Katrina, Renate's daughter, and her bones being found at the property just one year ago to this very day. Though, I must confess, the more logical explanation is that Benjamen fell to his own father's madness.

Despite, however, new evidence suggesting Benjamen's decline, the era of his life looked upon him fondly, unlike his father, even though the journals of those who knew him lasted only three years after these events. After that, it is said that Benjamen Rector went into seclusion, probably sick—his secret of incest, having married his sister, Verena, in New York, was kept and only admitted in this final letter I found in this grave. Nobody was the wiser, assuming that he was merely looking after three dim sisters.

The rest of the letter that I have not written is much more vague and hard to understand, though I can accept that Benjamen believed the only way to take away his father's power was to take dominion of all three of his sisters.

From the letter:

With Verena's help and understanding, I too gave into the succor of my dim sisters, forcing them to accept me as their new master. While one would think this a wicked tale of abuse, they must understand that I had no choice, lest I allow my father the satisfaction of their abilities to which his power resided.