The Mystery at Faldor Hotel Ch. 07

While getting dressed, Nancy again fell to thinking about Ned, her mood darkening in the absence of her friends. She went over the unpleasant incident at Lookout Point once again, comparing it against her shameful enjoyment of what had happened with the Colonel. It certainly wasn't as though she saw the Colonel as a better prospect than Ned. It mystified her.

She paused in her wardrobe choice for the day, an odd smile at the corners of her mouth when she removed the button up red dress from her suitcase. It was the raciest garment she owned and she felt a vague shame for picking it out, for the excitement that was already growing over the thought of wearing it for the Colonel.

Along with her usual garters, Nancy pulled on a pair of white cotton bikini panties and a little bra of the same soft fabric that felt comfortable and looked nice. After following the example of Bess and George in the application of her makeup and the extra time she took with her hair, she finally donned her red dress. In the mirror, her smile was wider as she inspected its belted waist and the hemline that ended just above her knees, more than properly covering the tops of her white stockings. The low neck, she'd noted, could be lower if she were to carelessly forget a few buttons... She decided against this, but then pondered the idea of removing her bra. The rayon garment would surely showcase her nipples like Bess's had been in the white top she'd worn for the disgusting bellhop, and she debated this for twice as long as she'd debated how far to button the bodice of her dress before deciding to leave her bra on. She slipped on a pair of three inch black heels, again wondering if she should show just a little cleavage, again deciding against it.

By the time she opened the door at almost half past two, Nancy felt marginally better for her appearance and the excitement it wrought within her. The question of Ned still resided in her mind, but was overshadowed by the vague shame she felt at her excitement. It wasn't as though this particular dress was indecent in any way, rather the reasons she'd chosen it that made her feel the way she did. As she did the day before, she found herself at odds with these opposing feelings, not to mention her undeniable excitement at being in the company of the dirty old Colonel again, but couldn't make sense of them beyond the fact that she enjoyed how they subtly played with her psyche.

Mr. Carmody was at his desk, giving her a warm smile and a morning greeting which Nancy returned. The Colonel, however, wasn't in the parlour so she headed down the hall that led to the rear veranda.

It was a beautiful morning that promised an even more beautiful day as Nancy breathed deeply the salty sea air at the railing. Looking down to the water's edge, she had to resist an urge to go wading again, the memory of how the cold water felt around her legs drawing her until she forced herself to turn from the railing and move towards the wooden screen door that led to the kitchen. Behind it, a heavier inside door with a narrow wood grained plack which warned that only employees were permitted past that point stood wide open. Nancy tried the handle to the screen door, found it unlocked and, with a last look around, she slipped inside.

The kitchen was sufficiently large and the length of its oblong shape ran away from her towards the front of the hotel. A long stainless steel island with various pots and pans hanging above it ran down the center. It separated another long stainless steel counter to the left, occupied by professional grade appliances and two ranges with ovens from a blue tiled wall on the right.

Aside from the one through which she'd entered, there were five more doors leading from the kitchen. One was at the end wall, opposite the veranda entrance, and had a round window, obviously the door to the dining room. Another was to her immediate right and, quickly moving to it, she found a broom closet. Softly closing this door, she moved on, down the right hand side of the long island, opening another which turned out to be a fair sized pantry. She hoped the next door would yield results, as the one after that was obviously the entry to a walk in freezer. The last option opened to a short hallway with a door at the end and one to either side.

The door on the left turned out to be the one Nancy wanted, opening to a small landing with a set of service stairs going up, but also a set going down. The sound of shoes descending this stairwell from above necessitated quick movement on Nancy's part so, after quietly closing the door behind her, she crept down the first flight of basement stairs to the mid-level landing and rounded the corner. Thankfully, whoever it was coming down the service stairs exited to the short hallway through which she'd come rather than continuing to the basement, and Nancy allowed herself a breath of relief before making her way down the second flight of stairs to a heavy wooden door at the bottom.

The attractive, teenage sleuth smiled at the sight of the old fashioned latch handle without an accompanying lock and, moments later, she found herself in a short hallway, barely lit by a dim, naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. The walls were made of narrow, horizontal slats that certainly offered splinters for anyone careless enough to rub against them on their way through the hall, and each one featured a door of rough planks with another at the end of the passage.

Nancy's smile was all about the mystery as she started down the short hallway, her shoes falling on the rough cement floor being the only sound. This, for her, was what it was all about, what she lived for and any post grad vocation she may end up following would only support this passion, or actually be comprised of it.

The door on the left opened to a fair sized storage room lit in the same fashion as the hallway. A quick survey of its contents revealed the expected items, including old washing machines, tables and chairs, a rolled up carpet, wash basins, boxes piled in a corner and other assorted junk that she hadn't the time or interest to go through.

The door on the right opened to a workshop. Nancy breathed a small sigh of relief that there wasn't anybody actually in there before walking in for a short inspection. This room was lit with a long fluorescent ceiling fixture. There was a workbench spanning the length of one wall with a heavy vice bolted to one end, a key maker on the other with a large metal key box affixed to the wall behind it. On the bench were different gadgets and gizmos, a few of them with colourful wires sprouting from them, and assorted tools. Spanning most of the wall above the workbench was a large sheet of brown pegboard with various specialty tools hanging there, such as pipe cutters, gear pullers, a paint gun, heavy chain cutters, and several power tools. All of these items were clean and shiny, as was the air compressor against the left wall, the tall, shiny red toolbox beside it, and every tool in it.

Above that toolbox was a large poster of a young brunette woman in a white, one piece swimsuit with tattered edges. She held a pipe wrench and the suit, smeared with dirt here and there, was soaked and showed very clearly her nipples, full vaginal lips and the patch of dark pubic hair above them. Her expression was one of defiance and lust, her green eyes seeming to lock on Nancy as though challenging her presence there.

The right wall held a bunk close to the door, its clothes made up of a soft looking red blanket with a large, brown quilted moving blanket and two pillows in red corduroy covers. Its unmade condition suggested that somebody was using it at least somewhat regularly. Beside this and separated by a tall headboard of vertical planks was a large rack of two-by-fours, copper pipe, long pieces of angle iron, flat bar and other such stock while the wall opposite the workbench was comprised of deep shelves that held all manner of things, most notably a motorcycle engine, a collection of electric motors, some disassembled power tools and parts of exercise machines.

Back in the outer hallway, Nancy's mind returned to the poster. To her mind came the exciting thought that if the bra and panties she was wearing should somehow become soaked, they would be almost as revealing as that young woman's swimsuit. Banishing this with a shake of her head and the smallest, guilty grin, she moved on. The final door, the one at the end of the hall, was also secured by only an old fashioned latch. She lifted it and slowly pushed the door open to stand in awe of what she found within.

As she'd suspected, the four large crystal columns of the main lobby extended down through its floor to the cement floor of the basement. In this large basement chamber, the milky light from the columns was much brighter than it was in the lobby but, as with the level above, there was no clue as to how this could be. Nancy could find no light shining on them and could only conclude that, somehow, the columns themselves were emitting the light that lit the rest of the room, bathing the unpainted plywood walls.

Closing the door behind her, Nancy walked further into the room, stopping when she was in the center of all four pillars of light. Here, the concrete was dark, clear, clean of dust and dirt and smooth like glass, her heels taking on a sharper tone against its surface. Slowly turning, she could feel heat radiating from the columns and found herself smiling, simply standing and enjoying a queer sense of giddy contentment there. After a few minutes, she noticed that the engravings on the crystal pillars were different from the ones in the lobby. Walking closer, she inspected them further, finding a surface of long, snaking bulges, emerging and disappearing, intertwining and crossing like a living thing of petrified muscle and veins. She tentatively touched the surface with her fingertips, her mouth flickering a smile at the heat. Pressing her palm, the heat seemed to penetrate her hand with a subtle throb, slowly soaking its way to her wrist.

"Ohh-h..." she gasped, enjoying the feel as she moved closer, pressing her other palm and soon encircling the crystal, hugging its girth as though it were a lover.

Pressed against it, she moaned, the hot, throbbing light working its way through her chest. She raised one of her legs, pressing the inside of her thigh against the bright, veiny surface.

"Mmmmmmm," she moaned again, tenderly kissing the light.

Tingles broke out behind her ears, cascading down her neck and back, over her buttocks, inner thighs and down to her ankles. She kissed it again before coming to her senses with a start. Suddenly pushing herself away while she had the will, she staggered backwards to the center once again, looking with undisguised awe and alarm. Even so, the desire to hold the pillar again, to wrap herself around it was a real and pressing urge within her and she had to fight the temptation with all of her understanding that such a thing shouldn't be.

The conversation she'd had with George the night before now came back to her, the one where her brunette friend had advised that they leave Cinder Bay as soon as they found Susan Quinn. In that moment, were it not for the fact that her aunt's friend was still missing, she'd have fled the basement, found her friends and left town immediately.

But as she stood, staring at the light column, her reaction calmed somewhat. With a sense of rationale slowly replacing the urge to run from the lovely columns, she realized that it hadn't hurt her, had actually treated her with tenderness and, if anything, she was the one who had accosted it. This idea seemed ludicrous, but was nonetheless undeniable. Soon, once she'd calmed sufficiently, she found herself walking towards a different one, touching it and receiving the same kind of sensation. With some surprise, she found herself embracing it and felt her nipples harden almost instantly, her vaginal lips heating and spreading in invitation.

"Uhhh-hhhh..."

Again, she raised her leg, bending her knee so that her inner thigh was pressed against the crystal. Nancy began slowly, raunchily humping the light column with her pelvis. She found a spot that jutted against her clitoris in just the perfect way and was soon mindlessly grunting and groaning in pleasure until she again found herself staggering backwards to the center of the clearing in shock and awe.

"Goodness me, what is going on!?" she hissed, trying to collect her wits and will.

But again, she realized that the column hadn't hurt her, that she'd been the aggressor, not it, and that she had no business being in the basement to begin with. She should apologize and make things right by removing her clothes, sticking her hand down her panties and playing with her clitoris until-

With all her will, she backed out from the center of the columns on shaky legs, moving as far away as possible until her back stopped against one of the four plywood walls. She stared at them in disbelief for several minutes, still feeling their warm throbbing within her, battling their irresistible draw while their influence slowly ebbed in her mind. She closed her eyes, still seeing their images in her retinas until even they faded. When she opened them again, their influence had somewhat weakened, but she refrained from looking at them, those alien lovers of such power and influence.

A few minutes later, with her mind reasserted and centered, she forced herself to approach them once more while keeping her eyes down. It seemed like a useless way to inspect the columns, but she knew that the initial sight of them was what drew her to their center where their power was so subtly overwhelming. Nevertheless, this approach did turn up something interesting, that being the fact that the crystal supports did not actually rest on the concrete floor as she'd thought, rather they extended down through this floor too, as the approximately one quarter inch gap between their bases and the surrounding concrete seemed to suggest.

Crouching for a closer look, Nancy found it hard to believe that such weight as this could be resting on soft, compressible dirt and quickly came up with three possible explanations. The first and most likely possibility was that they were based on another, earlier floor, possibly a roughed out surface of bedrock which someone later poured a proper concrete floor overtop of. The second and most unlikely possibility was that the columns had been pile driven down to the bedrock, (somehow without being shattered to a trillion shards by the pile driver, a mechanism which probably didn't even exist at the time of the hotel's construction) and the floor was then poured around them. The third and most exciting possibility was that there was a sub-basement that they were rooted in.

Standing, she looked around and only then noticed that the other three walls had doors set in them. Like the one by which she'd entered, they were made of rough planks, but securely locked with old, blackened padlocks. From the edge of one of these doors, she managed to carefully pry a narrow splinter measuring over a foot long. She hurried back to the column with this, still averting her eyes from its heady light, to crouch at its base. With the long splinter, she probed the gap, its end stopping at different depths in different spots until she was able to sink it all the way to her fingertips. She smiled, now almost certain that there was indeed a sub-basement and that one of the three locked doors would eventually lead her there.

This particular pillar, Nancy realized, wasn't one of the ones she'd accosted. She knew this because her fingers were touching the base and the feel of this one was different from the other two. She lay her palm against it, closing her eyes and slowly inhaling at the sensation of heat and its soft, nurturing love. Dropping the splinter, she slowly encircled it with her arms, caressing its twisting surface of light with her fingers, nuzzling it with the side of her face until she once again caught herself.

"Nnnoooo!!" she groaned, forcing herself backward, still crouching and looking away while the crystal called out to her mind, silently begging her return.

"No!"

With a violent shake of her head, she stood, turned her back and heroically resisted their call, the crystal columns that now knew her intimately.

"This is impossible!" Nancy uttered.

Finding it difficult to center her mind again, she once more shook her head, then pinched her forearm. It helped, but it was taking longer to clear her mind of the crystal's influence this time and a dark, giddy temptation to completely give herself over to them arose in her mind until she knew she had to flee that room while she still could.

Back in the outer hallway, she took a few minutes to catch her senses, her mind clearing faster once she was away from the immediate presence of the wonderful crystals of love and lust. Yet, even when she'd reached the ground floor landing, she was still so distracted that she almost opened the door and walked right into the hall without even carefully checking first. While the stronger part of her mind demanded flight, another part of her mind still wanted to go back down the stairs to the basement, back to the room of light and warmth to again experience the columns. She took a deep breath, re-established control over her mind and listened at the door, her hand hesitating on the knob.

Less than three minutes later, she stood in the center of the crystal columns of beautiful light once again, moaning in a low tone as she stared from one to another of them. They sang to her, wooed her, demanded her and she wouldn't resist. She found herself next to one of them with no memory of walking to it, raising her hands to lay them on its surface. Caressing the column, her hands reached around it, squeezing its bulging cords as she slowly sank to a crouch, her thighs spread and pressed against the crystal. Now she withdrew her hands, leaning back with one placed on the polished concrete behind her for support while she hiked her dress with the other.

Her lower lip trembled, a small, desperate cry escaping her throat when she found the crotch of her panties soaking wet with her own excitement. With never more a thought, she pressed her sex to the column, immediately feeling its heat, a throbbing lust that bore through her, a dark heavy vibration that was and yet wasn't.

"Awwwwwww!! Ohhhh-hhh!!

She again began humping the crystal, this time with no intention of stopping. Her voice became broken and guttural again as her pelvis jerked up and down, rubbing her erect clitoris against the light as she held her skirt back. An incredible sensation began to build very quickly, an intense sensation that started in her vagina and radiated outward from there. With her back arched, she tried to improve the angle, rubbing harder, thighs spread as far as she could make them part and she was soon rewarded with something she'd never experienced before.

Ohhh!? Ohhh!? Ohhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, Gaaawwwd!!"

The first orgasm of her life pounded through her like a marching column of giant soldiers, stomping her senses, flattening her mind and destroying her inhibitions entirely. She strained, howled and groaned, drooling as she kept grinding herself until it was over and she lay collapsed on the floor at its base, eyes closed and at a peace she'd never felt.

After a time, she rolled over, crawling with her dress still hiked to her waist, bottom rotated up like an alley cat in heat to the center of the floor where she felt another of the columns calling to her. Looking in its direction, she saw something incredible and beautiful, wondering if she'd only missed it before or if the lovely thing had made it just for her. Crawling the rest of the way, she tentatively curled her fingers around several inches of thick, curved cord that sprouted from the column, its base about nine inches from the floor, its length ribbed, its head wide and bulbous. With a giddy smile, then a delirious giggle, Nancy squeezed the unforgiving light phallus, stroking it with her hand as though it were a man's penis.