The Secrets of Eseme Bellows

It was not a monster in an abandoned cellar, it was a woman bound and gagged, left naked and exposed upon a cold dirt floor. And I had left her there.

The house stood just as it had when I had fled it, I could see the path that I had blazed to the front door which now stood open on it's hinges. Once again the road was empty, and no sign of another living soul, no one to help but me. I was grateful to my father for insisting I always carry a small flashlight in my glove box, he had always claimed that sooner or later I would need to change a tire in the dark. He had never counted on haunted houses either.

With the flashlight in hand I returned to the house and through it, once more the noises from below, more desperate than before and now I knew the reason why. Mine might have been the only tread the woman had heard for days and I had left her only a scream, in her blind captivity. This time her restricted movement did not cease as I descended the stairs, and as the beam of my flashlight fell upon her I chewed my lip and promised myself I would not scream again.

" It's ok." I told the woman on the floor. " I'm here to help."

It was not ok, it was a long way from ok, but the woman nodded just the same, a low moan escaping from around the knotted rag that had been set deep behind her teeth.

In the steady beam of the flashlight I could see her plain, and take in all that I had missed. The fishing line that held her wrists descending taut down from a beam upon the ceiling, the angry color of her feet sticking out on either side of her head. Other details were clear as well, and awful one's but my concern was to help, and I ignored fresh revelations as I went to her. The thin strands of fishing line were slim enough that I was able to break them one by one, and the woman groaned as her arms fell heavily to the floor, as I helped her lift her legs from behind her neck and lay them down below her.

Her eyes were wild when I pulled away the cloth that had been tied over her eyes. Her tongue fell heavily from her lips when I pulled out the knotted cord that had held her silent, yet at first she could not speak, only open and close her mouth slowly and deliberately., hiss a word that sounded like "please."

"Can you walk?" I asked the woman, kneeling by her side. "We need to get you to a hospital..."

But the woman shook her head.

She was trying to say something, something beyond the rasped pleading she had started. After a few tries I understood that she was begging for water.

"I'm sorry, I don't have any...We'll need to get you out of here."

The woman began to moan and she tried to turn over on her side,her arms moving weakly across the dirt. I followed where they pointed with my eyes and shone the light into the far corner of the cellar, saw two small dishes on the floor. Rising to my feet I went to them, and I saw that one was empty, and the other held a few mouthfuls of dusty water at its bottom. I brought that bowl to the woman, tipped it to her lips and let her drink, wondering as I did so what had happened in this place, if the woman had been kept here a long time, food and water in dishes as for a dog before at last she had been bound and left in the dark.

When the water was gone the woman's head fell back to the hard packed floor, and she closed her eyes and gave a long sigh.

"Thank you." she rasped." Is...Eseme? Will you tell her...tell her I was good?"

I did not know any Eseme of course, and I only told the woman once again that we needed to get her help. There was nothing in her eyes when she opened them to suggest to me that she understood at all, that there was anything left of a person behind them to reach. So long in the lonely dark, left as she had been for however long it was, I knew there was a good chance that her mind was gone. Who could have blamed her? What other reaction could there be to the state in which she had been but madness?

By flashlight beam I checked her over, trying to see if she had been hurt, but there was no sign of bruising or blood, only the welts left from the fishing line at her wrists and ankles, only the pallor of her skin and the blue paint that marked it. Curious I tried to decipher the words, for they were clearly meant to be words, but though the letters were plain enough they added up to nothing. Words spelled out by an illiterate, no guessing what they might mean, or else in another language, one that I had never glimpsed or heard and bearing no relation to any of the dialects of which I had learned.

"Who did this to you Ms?" I asked her, not expecting any answer, not surprised when she gave none. It was myself that I was asking, a question for the dark beyond the flashlights beam, and one that I could live without ever having answered.

She spoke again, unhinged words, a message she wished me to convey to parties I had never heard of.

" Tell her I have seen the night gaunts and the black goat of the woods...I have sucked the cock of Arshinov...licked his seed from the cunt of the hanged mute...tell Eseme..."

"You can tell her yourself honey." I promised the woman, not wanting to hear anymore, and I rose to my feet to lift her up, strained at the effort of hoisting her until her arm was over my shoulder and my arm tight around her hip. "We're leaving this place honey...just take it easy, we're going to go slow."

"You're bleeding..." I heard her whisper, and I looked down and saw that my jeans were ripped at the right knee, a small bit of blood drying on my skin, the unnoticed damage suffered in my initial flight.

"Just a scratch." I promised her. "I'm fine honey...I've got you."

And by inches, pain filled and straining inches, I supported the mad woman across the dark cellar, and up the old stairs. Up into the light.

***

It was dark by the time I got her back to Vermillion, a tiny town but one that was home to the University of South Dakota and also to a hospital. I gave my statement to the campus police, who assured me that they would pass it on to state law enforcement when they arrived in the morning. They asked me not to leave town, that the state officers would want to ask me some questions and would most likely wish for me to show them the house.

I had nowhere to go, and for some reason it bothered me to leave that poor woman alone in that hospital, just as she had been left all alone in that cellar. So I sat in a chair by her bedside all through the evening and on into night, as the doctors and nurses came in and out, running tests, checking the woman over. They told me that she was badly dehydrated, that she was probably weak from hunger. The nurses hinted that she had probably been assaulted, left that hanging in the air for me to make of it what I would.

So much in the world of women that we do not say, even to one another. The code words and the subtle hints that mask the truth, as though the truth is as shameful as the act that created it. It had always bothered me, the intimations and hints that surrounded the fate of women. It bothered me then, it still bothers me now.

But I sat by her bedside, watching the IV fluid flowing slowly into her arm. She was asleep most of the time. When she woke it was only to speak of a woman named Eseme, and of the horrible obscenities of dream. I preferred it when the poor woman slept. I could pretend that she was peaceful then.

I had found her nude, but it was only when covered by a cotton gown and beneath the thin blankets of the hospital bed that I truly took the woman in. When they had cleaned the paint and the dirt from her body, and her body was stilled by the medicated slumber, I saw that she was young, perhaps in her mid thirties, and that she was beautiful in her way. That her dark hair would have shimmered when it was clean, and her smile might have lit up her face...that she might have been anything and anyone before she had met her fate, whatever it had been that left her naked and alone, bound in the cellar of a house out on the plains. It made me sad to think of it, but everything about her made me sad. Her broken mind, her haunted eyes, the cruelty she had born. She was the image of sadness, she was tragedy made flesh, and I wore myself out staring at her, until at last, in the chair by her bedside, I slept.

I woke to footsteps in the room, and I opened my eyes to see a woman standing over the bed, looking down on the stranger I had saved. She was older, fifty or so, her long red hair just beginning to show streaks of gray, and covered to her knees in a thick black coat like mourners garb, widows weeds that actually became her, that matched the deep sadness drawn heavily on her features.

" It's a shame." The woman said, but I was not sure if she was speaking to me or to the woman upon the bed. " She wouldn't have wanted to come here...she hates hospitals. It would have been better to have brought her home."

"I'm sorry, do you know her?" I asked, and the woman glanced at me and nodded, before she returned her eyes to the sleeper.

"Her name is Violet Dawes. She is a professor here at the university...her house is a mile from here. She'd be more comfortable in her own bed."

"She didn't have any ID." I explained. " I found her down the road...I'm not from here. The doctors and nurses, they didn't know her. Not even the cops..."

"No, they wouldn't. Violet hates hospitals. And she isn't the type to talk to police." The woman reached down and she placed her hand on top of that of Violet Dawes, the sleeper stirring at the feel of flesh against her skin. " She knows better, don't you Violet?"

I saw Violet Dawes open her eyes, and I saw the smile break across her face as she said again the name of Eseme.

"No dear." The woman shook her head. " But she is close. You will see her soon...tell me dear, do you know who I am?"

"You're Ginny Bellows...you were Ginny Hastings once."

"That's right sweetheart...You've been travelling I think. You've gone to strange and unknown places. I think you met someone there...someone who knows me, hmm?"

"Yes." Violet whispered. "I have been with your friends...and with your master."

"And does he have a message for me Violet?" The woman leaned down close over the bed, her face just inches from Violet's own. "What does the master say?"

Violet's eyes darted towards me before she gave her answer, as though she were looking for my approval before she spoke. When she did I had to lean forward in the chair to hear her whispered words.

"He told me that a woman would find me, that she was hungry and full of secrets. He wants her for his own."

The red haired woman glanced at me and I heard her sigh.

"Alright. I'll see to it."

And Ginny Bellows made as if to pull away, but Violet grasped her by the hand and with strength she had not possessed a few hours before she held the older woman fast. She hissed that it was not all.

"What else Violet? What else does he wish to tell me?"

"He does not wish to tell you anything. He wishes for me to see and to know...to taste my fate. He wishes for the girl to see."

"Not here." The woman shook her head. "Not now...you are too weak Violet. Let me go...soon, I promise."

"Here!" Violet hissed, her grip on the woman's wrist unwavering. "Now!"

"Please..." I heard the woman whisper, but she did not finish as Violet reached up with her free hand, ran a finger across the woman's lips for silence.

"Here." Violet insisted. "Now."

And saw Ginny Bellows nod in solemnity, saw her straighten as Violet let go of her slender wrist. The woman kept her eyes lowered to the floor as she brought her hands to the collar of her black mourning coat, began to undo the buttons one by one.

What should I say about that moment? The moment that I should have left but did not.

I was confused by the interaction between the two women, but then I was confused by the whole day, by everything that I had wandered into. Maybe I was just too tired, too worn by the shock of it all to react. Or maybe I simply didn't understand.

Because how do you react when the world shifts and it ceases to make sense? What do you do when you enter that other place, wander through into the world of secrets and of mystery and for the first time find that you are not alone within it. That there are others there, and they are speaking words that you never expected to hear and hinting at knowledge that you never expected to gain...in that moment I had no thought of leaving.

What they were saying struck me as crazy, of course it did. But all the same it thrilled me, and I could not bring myself to look away.

Even when Ginny Bellows let the long coat fall away from her shoulders and I saw that she was naked beneath, nude down to the black heels which wrapped around her ankles, but it was not the surprise of her skin which made me gasp and froze me cringing in my seat. No, it was the rest.

She stood beside the bed with her eyes upon the floor, her head lowered in shame or in a modesty that belied her actions, the fact that she had been naked beneath the long coat all along. And she must have known that something would happen, that the request that Violet had made of her was a distinct possibility. As to the rest there was no explanation, no meaning I could ascribe.

No explanation for the marks upon her body, the tattoos which swirled across her white skin. Not paint as Violet's had been painted, no, she was heavy with the ink of India, the legacy of a thousand needles piercing skin. Once more my eyes flashed across a garbled narrative upon the flesh, and once again I could pick out not a single shred of meaning in all the letters and symbols that announced themselves upon her shoulders, her belly and her breasts, that blazed out from her shaved mons and wrapped around her parted thighs.

No explanation for the silver chains that draped themselves across her form, that hung down from rings pierced through the dark flesh of her erect nipples, danced upon her belly with each soft breath the woman took, wrapped round her hips and down to join with silver rings that pierced the poor woman's labial lips, kept her sex spread and open, revealing a small golden bell that hung from her exposed clitoris.

The bell that clamored softly as the woman raised her head and met my eyes with her own. She did not speak but I felt the deep helplessness that lay behind those eyes, a lost and lonely desperation that called out to me and touched me where I sat aghast.

"Now you've seen." The woman whispered, but to me or to Violet Dawes I could not say.

Violet reached up her hand once more, grasping for the woman who stood exposed just beyond the limits of those trembling fingers.

"No..." I heard the older woman whisper, but it was not so much a refusal as it seemed to be a plea. "Not here. Please sweetheart...you are too tired, you must wait..."

"Come here." The woman on the bed ordered, and there was no weakness in her voice at all, a fierce insistence had replaced it, drawn out from the depths of her broken mind. Violet threw the thin blanket from off of her body, exposing her pale legs beneath the hem of her hospital gown, and with her left hand she began to pull the garment upward over her hips and belly, exposing her intimacies to our eyes, I watched dumbfounded as those trembling fingers crept down to weakly stroke her glistening sex, and I sat so close that I could smell the desire wafting off of her, heavy in the confinement of that hospital room as spilled perfume.

The bell chimed softly as the redhead took a small step forward, drowned out by a soft whimper as Violet took the older woman by the wrist once more and pulled her forward to the bedside, and rasped in her deranged voice for Ginny to come closer still, to climb atop of Violet where she lay too battered to rise.

"I want to taste you." I heard Violet say. "I want to taste you as I have tasted the others...show me my fate you filthy whore, let me drink the future from your soiled cunt!"

Once more Ginny Bellows made no reply, but I watched as she slowly climbed up upon the bed, her knees shaking as she straddled Violet's body, her eyes shut tight as the woman below her reached up to tug the silver chains that danced from the rings of breasts and labia, a lunatic giggle as that little bell was made to ring and ring.

"Turn around." Violet ordered the woman above her. " Eat my pussy as you would for your mistress...I want to cum as I taste what the master has prepared for me."

And with a last meek whimper the older woman shakily adjusted herself, turning slowly, one knee at a time. Once more Ginny Bellows stared into my eyes, and she shook her head ever so slightly as she offered me a look that I could not at once decipher...sadness maybe? Or more like pity. As though it was I who needed pity as she slowly lowered her upper body, went down upon her elbows. The two women upon the bed were belly to belly as Violet's thighs closed slowly around the older woman's head, locking her in place and obstructing my view of what occurred.

Yet I knew at once from Violet's sighs and moans what was transpiring , the same sounds that I had made myself on summer nights, in sweltering Providence apartments, a lover's hair tickling my spread thighs, a hot tongue flicking out to touch my eager pussy and send electricity dancing up my arching spine. I knew those sounds as I knew the feeling coursing through Violet's battered form in that moment, like a long smoldering fire suddenly catching into the first of the flames.

I could hear the soft rattle of the chains and the delicate chime of that little bell as Ginny's body shifted and moved, just as I could hear the wet sounds of her lips and tongue upon that other woman's flesh and the long moan from Violet Dawes before she raised her head from off of the pillows and with her hands roughly spread the heavy cheeks of the older woman's ass. A moan of complete surrender as she plunged forward and drove her face into the parted slit before it, but surrender to what, surrender to who?

And I watched stunned and breathless as those bodies writhed together, as I sat witness to their act and to madness, my ears filled with the growing sounds of both women's building pleasure.

In that moment I felt a stirring in my own body, a sudden wetness between my thighs and it was the desire that coursed through me in that strange moment that broke the spell and filled me with horror. Enough that I shook away the image on the bed, enough that I bolted up from the chair in which I had been sitting, an unwitting accomplice to an act of madness.

I bolted for the door, but in the entrance way looked back to see that Ginny Bellows had pulled her head up from between Violet's trapping thighs, that her eyes were hungry as they bored into me and her face was west and shining with the other woman's juices.

"Run." I heard Ginny Bellows say. "It will not matter you poor silly bitch...It's too late all already."

And then she plunged her head down once more, hungrily attacking the wet and dripping pussy which she had for a moment left behind.

I ran then, as fast as I could I ran from the horrors and the secrets of that hospital room.

As I look back upon it now, I know that the woman had been right, that Ginny Bellows had not lied. It was already far too late.

I had wandered into a haunted house out there upon the plains, and I had brushed against a secret deeper than any I had ever dreamed. It was far too late, and it was only just beginning...

To be continued.