The Shadows Whisper

Gothic horror is a difficult theme for me because when I hear of it I'm transported to two loves from long ago; Dark Shadows and E.A. Poe. The former is a somewhat dated afternoon soap opera from the very early 1970s and the latter being one of my favorite authors. I can't do it justice but I felt obligated to try at least. Many thanks again to the Black Rand for shepherding the Beyond the Wall of Sleep event.

The regular disclaimers are simple. If you drip your discharge all over the comments, I'll have to break out a dose of pixelcillin.

Repressed desire is oftentimes the most vulnerable emotion.

Beyond the Wall of Sleep story, supernatural, wife, Balkan, drugged, non-consensual, surrealism, whore

June 10, 1892

The blueish white daggers of lightning struck the craggy outcropping of Miley's Point with a cacophonous ripping thunder a couple seconds behind. Even old man Whitman's wagon team of Perc herons flinched and bayed at the menace of such a foreboding night. Each step of the stone pavement was well known of those hooves and was it not for the treachery of God reaching across the bay they would have pranced in like the kingly escorts of some noble pursuit. Instead with ears laid back and nostrils flared each steed wrestled with the heavy leather reins in Cecil Whitman's burley hands as they approached the Inn and stables.

"Easy, boys." the man in the driver's seat soothed as they came to a halt at the entrance. "Last stop, Brown's House Inn, Brooksville Harbor" he bellowed as his passengers debarked from the long wagon coach underneath the entrance overpass.

Six souls, a driver and a team of four steeds had worked the journey up from Portland since morning and with darkness settled over the village, there were reliefs abound as the arrivals made their way into the refuge of the Inn. Cecil Whitman and one of the help worked the luggage off the top of the carriage and brought it into the vestibule as the proprietor, Mr. Alfred Brown set to the task of registering his guests.

"Mr. and Mrs. William Hansen" the mature gentlemen in the long grey overcoat along with his rather staid wife announced when they stepped up to the long chest high carved oak registration desk.

"Yes, I see." replied Mr. Brown as he wrote in the particulars of their arrival in his register. "Up from Portsmouth through the tourist season perhaps?"

The gentleman nodded in agreement with his wife's arm crooked in his own. They were a pleasant enough couple during the ride up the coast engaging in chitchat with the others. He was an implements and hardware wholesaler, recently retired with a small pension and an apartment in their son's home down in Portsmouth. This was to be their first summer at Brooksville Harbor and a celebration of sorts after nearly 40 years of marriage.

Mrs. Catherine McGill was next up to the desk. She was a widow staying over until her quarters could be made ready at the Stonington Isle School, a summer retreat for the privileged folk of Long Island who could afford to send their children off to summers in Maine. Mrs. McGill would assume the duties of head cook and quartermaster until the fall closing before returning to Boston, the home of her marriage to Mr. McGill until his untimely death.

Carole Stutzman looked around the lobby with her arm on her husband. She was a young, handsome woman with her long blond hair tied up in the fashion of the day. Her husband Jacob, blond, youthful yet reserved, was a lawyer down in Portland. This was a holiday, an escape the two of them could enjoy for a week after securing a prosperous client.

For Jacob it was always about securing this or that for any ambitious man kept his eye on advancement and being in the employ of Scott, Wilson & Scott, advancement was a key to every success. It was how a man was measured, Jacob reasoned and in his mind he measured well.

A booming clap of thunder shook the Inn following a perilously close strike of lightening that lit every window pane with an eerie blue cast giving each of the souls inside an almost ghoulish countenance for just a moment. The curious man with a black trench coat hanging off his shoulders, knee high black leather boots, his trousers and tucked shirt matched only by the deep black mane of shoulder length hair resting on an upturned collar approached the Innkeeper.

"Petar Vukovic" the man mentioned barely above a whisper as the Innkeeper checked his register. With one spectacle a light violet hue and the other almost burnt amber; the man cast a challenging figure as the two eyed each other.

"Here for the week, yes?" The Innkeeper asked almost petulantly with an air of distaste for the man's appearance. It might have been the accent more than the appearance since being from that far away was certainly a challenge for his accustomed familiarities. With origins a bit beyond the comfortable confines of New England or the New York Isles, subtle suspicions were always the order of the day.

"At least through Friday next" he replied with his Balkan inflection.

The guests were gathered before the fireplace waiting on the porter to lead them to their quarters upstairs. Ms. Stutzman's arm tight in her husband's, she eyed the other guests taking special note of the odd man returning her gaze before she turned away to the others.

"The bar and refreshments will be open shortly, ladies and gentlemen. Please feel free to join us as you wish." The Innkeeper announced proudly.

With brisk activity the porter began his charge of moving the baggage to the 2nd and 3rd floor guest quarters before showing each of them to their rooms. Each was spacious with a large comfortable bed and dressing tables as well as two overstuffed sitting chairs, a desk and a divan. Double 12 pane windows opened bayside if needed to freshen the room but with the crackling storm still raging from across the bay, they remained closed up until calmer conditions prevailed.

"Are we going to join the others in the lounge for refreshments, dear?" Carole Stutzman asked her husband as she slipped her traveling clothes off her lithe frame.

"Yes, of course, the evening is still young and I noticed a fine selection behind the bar when we passed."

Carole freed her firm breasts as she stood before the mirror and admired her young form. Having not yet borne children each breast stood proud upon her chest with dark areolas and pronounced long, eraser like nipples that hardened in the cool air of the chamber room.

"We have time, dear." She whispered as her hand traced fingers across her bare bottom and her eyes met her husband's.

They had decided the time was ripe to begin the family each of their own had clamored for since marrying some two years earlier. Carole was the more interested of the two but Jacob at least took his pleasure in the sport when he did.

Without much foreplay Jacob bent his wife over the upholstered ottoman at the foot of the bed and moistened his cock in the folds of her wet pink sex.

"Do it, Jacob .... Take me." Carole whispered as her husband entered her.

Her body responded to his rather mechanical thrusting and she excitedly met each of his fucks with an arched back and her naked ass raised up to meet him. Two or three minutes of his carnal pleasure and Jacob stiffened and sunk his cock to its depth and released his seed to work its way to her womb.

Carole caught her breath quickly as Jacob rose up and excused himself to the washbasin. It was always like this, the marital duty as her mother explained. Jacob, being the man, took her when appropriate and she always accommodated him. Being an untouched woman when they married, he was the only man she had known this way.

That didn't stop her of her curiosity. Her older sister Evelyn had played the field as she put it before she married and told ribald tales of endowment and pleasure no decent woman should ever have known of, if public opinion were the harbinger. Her tales wove fanciful in the impressionable mind of her younger sibling, especially when Jacob was taking his pleasure.

"Let's change and join the others in the parlor, shall we dear?" Jacob suggested and broke the momentary lustful hold Carole's mind was enjoying. It was lust and wicked and thoughts that could only be entertained in deep recesses.

"Yes, dear, I'll dress quickly."

The Inn's parlor room was busy that evening with the guests mingling with the others that had arrived earlier. With the aromatic wisps of cigar smoke and the dusky tumblers of whiskey, rum or gin occupying the conversations of menfolk, the ladies of the Inn gathered together with polite acquaintances and whispers above the din of boisterous voices.

"He's a bit odd but curious, don't you think?" the Mrs. Catherine McGill asked the young blond woman to her side as she noticed Petar Vukovic looking on with a slight smile.

"He seems somewhat out of place here but you are right, there is something curious about his character. Maybe it is his outfit as I've never seen anything like it." Carole replied as her eyes met Petar's for a brief moment.

The men broke into laughter over some ribald exercise of sorts and Petar Vukovic stepped up to the bar and offered a round to all the guests. Doing so, he pulled a bottle from inside his black overcoat and set it upon the bar.

"Might I offer something from the homeland to soothe the palate?" he offered in his old world brogue.

The menfolk peered over the curious bottle; almost Irish green in color yet oddly iridescent in a small way.

"Absinthe from the city of Zagreb in my country... I have yet to find it here in this country" Petar offered. "The womenfolk too, my friends, it is the custom... all except the youths not yet of age."

Shot glasses were set up and the green liquor poured freely into each as the several guests each partook of the refreshment. Carole felt the tingle on her tongue as she tasted and swirled it around in her fresh mouth with her eyes on the captivating foreigner. Jacob downed his like a quick shot of whiskey as did the other men while women explored its curiosity.

"Another, my dear?" Vukovic offered as he poured into Catherine McGill's glass and the woman brought it again to her lips.

"I have to say, that is quite different from anything I've had before." Mr. Hansen offered as their fellow traveler poured more.

Jacob had returned to the bourbon finding the taste not agreeable in comparison but it lingered on his tongue in spite of the Kentucky vintage. For Carole, it was intoxicating; the same for Catherine. Each of the women felt the warmth spread from the breasts outward as they clung to each of Petar's words, his eyes on theirs as they chatted.

With her eyes slightly hooded, Carole's thoughts came back to Evelyn's tales of lust and illicit adventure as the warmth reached her womanhood. Clenching her thighs slightly and shifting the balance on her toes the effect of the drink heightened her lustful thoughts and she imagined herself surrendering to them.

Petar's eyes were transfixed between both of them, moving seductively from Carole to Catherine and back as each woman flirted with a dangerous undercurrent of lust. It was the revelry near the bar that brought them back to their stations as the men offered a toast for the evening even while still young.

"Shall we call it a night, dear?" Jacob asked as the weariness grew on his face. Perhaps it was the long trip and it caught up with the imbibing. The other menfolk seemed of a similar mind and the various couples retired up the stairs for the evening.

Upon arriving at the room, Jacob nearly fell into bed after undressing while Carole stood before the mirror brushing her long blond hair, her mind still transfixed on the odd foreign man and his elixir. Her entire body was warm, rushed with excitement and she thought of the word Evelyn had used in her lustful manner, cock... prick her lover had called it. Thick and full and virile, it had fucked her into orgasms, something Carole had never experienced with Jacob.

Jacob's snoring interrupted the lewd imaginings for a moment and making the bed ready for her as well, she put out the lamp on the nightstand and slipped between the covers of the comfortable bed. Her body was still warm, on fire with lust as she imagined being the harlot Evelyn played.

Long slim fingers found the soft hair covered mound above her moist sex as she thought of the wicked things her sister did; being fucked by those men, some of them the husbands of other women, taking their cocks, their pricks into her mouth under the covers of silk sheets or on her knees at their feet still dressed but for the cock pulled through their trousers.

Two fingers entered the sloshing pussy and an aroused clitoris stiffened and protruded from its sheath as it was stimulated by the intoxicated woman. The other hand found a naked breast and tugged at the hardened nipple.

"Suck my cock" she imagined the lover saying and in an almost realistic dream she brought the thick engorged cock to her lips; her actual fingers furiously working her pink pussy to a climatic end. The lover fucked her mouth with his full balls tapping gently on her small smooth chin. She imagined him tensing up and ejaculating streams of milky white semen into her mouth and on her lips and cheeks.

"Oh my god" Carole whispered loudly as her body shook violently from the cascading orgasm. Her hips thrust up and fucked her fingers in frenzy as her breath came in short pants.

The young wife lay there in the bed shared with her husband as her mind envisioned one fuck after the other while he snored away oblivious to her awakened sexuality. It was the soft rhythmic bounce on the wall behind the headboard that she first noticed thinking it was her masturbation causing it...

In the next room Catherine McGill had climbed into bed highly aroused, her headboard against the wall between the two rooms. She too had been enthralled by the odd foreign man and being no stranger to strong drink when her husband was alive, found the elixir highly stimulating and pleasurable.

It had been three years since he departed at the unusually young age of thirty five leaving her a small savings and their Boston home, at least paid for. Now being thirty seven and without children she spent her days working among the finer restaurants about town with her established culinary talents, at least until now for the excursion to Maine.

It had been three years as well since a man had touched her in that familiar way, a lifetime it seemed given their robust intimacy during those several married years. Catherine was a full figured woman, not cherubic but full breasted and hips strong and wide with a moderate waist. Moments secreted away late at night after retiring were her relief, the arousal of fingers in place of her departed man. It was always the thought of a debonair gentleman sweeping her off her feet and stripping her down to nakedness before ravishing her with unbridled lust.

The elixir was working Catherine's mind into a heightened sense of sensual desire and she threw back the covers pulling her thighs wide apart as she worked her clitoris furiously with a middle finger. Her breasts heaved on her chest as her strong hips fucked in rhythm.

Just as she began to climax from the effort, a bluish streak of lightning struck the ground outside the window immediately followed by a thunderous roar as the heavens opened and a torrent of rain began beating against the closed window. There was a slight chill in the air at the moment a hand grasped one ankle yet there was no hand to be seen. Another seized the other ankle and both legs were wide, her pink sex bare and open.

'Maybe it's just the orgasm' Catherine reasoned, still in a state of lust with her mind sated from the stimulation. Her eyes grew wide as hands moved up upon her white thighs and she remained still, unable to do otherwise as she felt a cool moist mouth take her entire pussy as a smooth warm long tongue entered her vagina. It wasn't just licking; it was filling her, fucking her deep and swirling inside next to her womb.

Yet, nobody was there, nothing corporeal. A flicker of a faint shadow was all to be seen as the physical ravishment of her womanhood continued. The imagination, it had to be that she reasoned again, continued devouring her pussy and fucking it with long slow strokes of a thick organ working its way out of the imaginations mouth.

The fruit of the efforts began as a slow tingle, a slight quiver in the thighs as it built into a raging torrent of physical contractions and carnal bliss. Her pussy was moistened and juicing and became a quivering cunt with an imaginary tongue continuing to fuck it. A cunt is what the coarse boys called it when she was young, unsuitable language for a young lady but heard nonetheless.

She heard it again or thought she did. 'You fucking cunt' she heard whispered ever so slightly. 'I'm going to fuckkkk your steamy cunt'. Just as her orgasm began to subside, the Imagination removed himself from her cunt and with a slight cool breeze mounted her fully in the bed. She could feel his strong mass pressed against her naked breasts. She could see her breasts mashed down and in her own horror saw her nipple being tugged and pinched in a vicious manner.

Before her mouth could open to cry, the Imagination worked his thick very large prick up and down the engorged pussy and with its cool mouth pressed against her soft throat, it fucked into her deep with a singular thrust. Catherine inadvertently moaned as the thickness filled and stretched her naked pussy. She closed her eyes hoping the imagination would subside and a sense of sanity might return. Instead, it only intensified the coursing lust and her body utterly surrendered to the animal fuck she was receiving.

The Imagination fucked strong and deep and with varying rhythms as the large cock brushed her clitoris back and forth. Her whole body was being fucked and tossed on the bed with the headboard banging the wall between the two rooms. Beads of sweat formed between her breasts as the creature held her thighs in its arms and continued impaling her cunt on its prick.

Then suddenly a cold chill air rolled across her breasts and Catherine threw herself into a violent orgasm as the Imagination began spewing jets of milky semen deep inside her womb. As her body subsided, the prick slowed its fuck. 'It's impossible' she thought to herself as she felt the moisture seeping onto her puckered ass.

When the Imagination was finished with his conquest, another bolt of bluish lightning struck casting an odd glow in the room. Catherine opened her eyes and was met with his glowing greenish yellow pupils that vanished in an instant with the clap of the accompanying thunder followed by a curdling scream from the lips of Mrs. McGill before she fainted into an induced slumber...

By nightfall of the second day, several of the guests were mingling in the parlor as the storm outside continued into its 2nd evening. The chatter of men and women was broken by intruding bursts of brilliant light bouncing off the mirrored backdrop of the bar as harsh roars of thunder split the air. The proprietor, Mr. Brown, set about the task of displaying refreshments and various edibles for consumption and taste as the women watched on with studied interest.

"I haven't seen Mrs. McGill this evening. Does anybody know if she is feeling ill?' Mrs. Hansen asked the others milling about. "She could tell us whether any of these offering are any good." The mature woman chuckled.

Carole smiled to herself thinking of the torrid escapades she heard through the wall last evening. 'I wouldn't blame her for taking a check this evening after that devilish performance' she almost said aloud.

The desk bell at the bar chimed several times as Mr. Alfred Brown announced "Mr. Vukovic has bought the house" to the cheers of the menfolk around. They watched as the barkeeper set up several tumblers as in the night before and Petar Vukovic pulled a fresh bottle of the odd liquor with its iridescent green vintage.