Nineteen: Depth and Discovery
***
In regard to Marty’s request, she decided to give the full treatment. She returned to her room after a long shower to find a black vest that left the navel exposed, a pair of fishnet leggings, and the most dangerous mini-skirt—also in black—ever conceived by needle and thread. With this outfit laid out, Keltie turned to her make-up kit. She spent an hour applying black to her eyes, foundation and rouge to her face, red to her lips.
“Boy,” she said to the mirror as the hour crept past 11:30, “if you don’t show up tonight I’ll fucking kill you.”
But he did show up. At precisely 12AM there was a light tap on the door. Fully donned and ready for action, Keltie opened it to a tall, dark, handsome stranger with a rose in one hand and—Lord love him—a length of silk in the other.
“Get in here, you,” she purred.
“Keltie?” Marty said in disbelief at what he was seeing. “Wow.”
“Like it?” She closed the door behind him, locked it.
His eyes began to feast, starting with her boots and working their way up. It made Keltie hot. Hotter. She flashed a smile, arched a brow, blew a kiss. Then she turned to give him a look at the goods from behind.
“It’s so perfect I don’t have words,” he said at last. “You look astonishing, Keltie. Damsel of darkness indeed.”
“You won’t need words,” she told him, peering over one slender shoulder. “Is that another rose from poor Mrs. Cobb?”
Marty looked at the flower as if he’d forgotten it was even there. “No, no. Not this time,” he insisted.
She closed the distance between them like a cat, never once dropping her eyes. Slowly her hand reached out, touched the flower, caressed it. “Are you sure?” she whispered to the face above her.
“Feel the thorns, Keltie. This flower is for no one but you.”
A scent of chocolate cologne impelled a long breath into her lungs. Holding it, her other hand found the silk. “And what about this?” she let out.
“I can tell you,” he said, “or I can show you.”
He kissed her then, long and deep. Keltie took it like a glutton. Rising to the toes of her boots, she let her red nails run wild through his hair, while he in turn ran his arms up and down her back. She remembered how powerful those arms were. How they had carried her through a blizzard. Her breath ran out, and when she gasped, more of the chocolate cologne got in. It was the last straw. Her knees buckled. Like paper, Marty caught her up. Keltie felt the bulge of his crotch against her belly. She felt his fingers unzip the back of her vest. Raising her arms, she let him take it off completely, then allowed him to unhook the brassiere underneath, which brought her soft, slender chest into full view. With much needed air her breasts rose. It only helped a little. A tidal wave was coming in, and it looked too high to handle alone.
Come on, girly-o, do something before you faint.
She lifted her boots off the floor, so Marty could carry her. And carry her he did, over to the bed, where she lay back to let him tie her wrists to the headboard.
“Ooh, honey,” she cooed. “You have a very keen sense of direction.”
He shushed her with kisses over the breasts and belly. There came a jingle as the belt of her skirt was unbuckled. He pulled down the zipper.
“Have you been a good girl?” he asked, slipping the skirt away from her panties.
“Yes, Daddy,” she answered.
“Don’t lie to me.”
Now she felt her panties come down, felt his eyes on her hairless cunt, her tight crotch.
“No, Daddy, I’m not.”
He reacted by taking skirt and panties completely off, and then lifting her legs from below the knees, higher and wider, higher and wider. “Open,” he commanded, menacingly. “Open. Come on.”
Keltie helped him bring her legs back. Back, back, back, until Marty could see absolutely everything there was to see down there.
“Good girl. Good girl. How does that feel?”
All she could manage by way of reply was a smile. It seemed to be enough. She felt his finger play over her soaking wet slit before moving down to poke curiously at the much tinier, much tighter hole to the south. Here, for the first time, Keltie began to get nervous. Her eyes fluttered as Marty gave a gentle push. The hole stayed shut, but it wouldn’t sustain much more.
“Uh!” Keltie let out. “Mmn!”
“Hurt?” she heard him ask.
“Just be careful.”
His response was cause for more fluttering. The finger retreated, and Marty stood to undress himself. She gawked at his wide, tanned chest, then gawked some more when, for the first time in months, she saw his penis spring from beneath his jeans. Armed and ready for business, Marty approached the bed again. He lifted her legs back to re-establish the earlier view.
“Um,” Keltie said, eyeing his dick, which looked far too eager to fit the place he seemingly had in mind, “I’m curious, sweetheart, don’t get me wrong, but—“
“Shh.”
“I don’t know if I can do it.” And I don’t want to poop all over the bed, she almost confessed. But rather than disquiet his mood with thoughts of this happening, she beared down on her sphincter muscles instead to assess the situation. All felt clean and empty. But then what did that guarantee? Not a damned thing.
Her groin was now aimed at the ceiling, much the way a gynecologist would want during a yearly exam. Cold light reflected off the buckles of her boots. Marty touched her pelvis. His brown dick loomed, monstrously hard. Prepared to explode.
“It’s okay,” he suddenly said. “We don’t have to. I was curious, too.”
She gave him a look. The face looking back—nervous and hesitant—was not the kind she liked to see in a bedroom. Oh no. That would never do. Confident and domineering were much more interesting traits to find in a sex partner. Keltie flashed him a devil grin—one that came directly from Miss Crazy Bitch. “There’s Vaseline on the table.”
He paused to put some of it on. Keltie watched, and saw that his hands were shaking a little. Yes, he was nervous all right. But also very excited. So at least they were both on the same page.
“Take a nice, slow, deep breath,” Marty said.
His hands were on her hips again. Keltie inhaled, bringing her breasts up high.
“Good girl. Let it out.”
“Phew!”
“Good girl.”
Marty bent his knees, bringing the tip of the monster’s head into direct contact with her closed hole. Gently then, he began to push.
Mmmn. Oh God…
The hole kept shut. Suddenly it felt very small, while at the same time the monster had become wide as a newel post. Keltie grimaced. There was pain now, though Marty remained in check. And still the hole would not open. Marty came closer, shifting his weight. She fought an urge to bear down, to push back. Snatching a breath into her lungs, she bent her hips a little more.
And finally the monster broke through.
Keltie’s eyes flew open. The sudden fullness from down there, the tightness, alarmed her on the spot. Marty’s dick felt like the biggest, most painful bowel movement waiting to happen. She couldn’t accommodate him. She wasn’t meant to accommodate him, not through that passage. But so far she hadn’t signaled for him to stop, and the monster was still curious, getting in there, checking things out at increasingly deeper levels.
She might have called the whole thing off right then and there, but that was when Marty reached into her vagina with two of his fingers, curling them backward against the palm of his other hand, which had found its way to her pelvic bone.
“HAAAH!” she gasped, hips jerking.
The monster retreated a little, then redoubled its efforts, going further than it had ever been while Marty continued to work the ceiling of her vagina, forking her breath away with palm and fingers. Keltie’s eyes gawped towards the stucco, though the patterns there no longer interested her. Indeed, she could no longer even see them. Spots of color shone everywhere—flashbulbs from a million different psychedelic cameras going off in endless spectacle. What the hell was he doing down there?
“Go!” she moaned, for want of anything more coherent to say. “Go!”
And the monster went deeper. She felt it hit the danger point—the point where her body warned of imminent accident—and didn’t say a word. Speech meant nothing anymore. It had become the only impossible thing in a sudden universe of all that was wondrous.
“OH!” she let forth, with every thrust of his palm, every curl from within. “OH! OH!”
And her hands squeezed into fists. And the colors flashed, and her lungs begged for breath. Begged and begged. And she cried out again at the kaleidoscope—OH! OH!—and the colors cried back with the screeching of birds in a stormy sky. Keltie’s back arched until the bones of her ribs threatened to tear through her skin. She begged Marty to stop; she begged him to keep going. Keep going! Keep going! I need this! Oh yes! OH YES!
“It’s okay,” she heard him speak from somewhere behind the lights. “Go ahead, sweetheart. It’s fine. It’s beautiful.”
And with one, final cry into the void, Keltie succumbed. Twisting and twitching, her body let loose everything it could no longer retain. And the screeching became singing, and the storm, a garden. And then, in a flurry of heated breaths, it all came to a slow and delicate stop.
The courage to look down was a long time in coming. While she waited, Marty untied her, wearing the oddest smile she’d ever seen on a boy. “Did I?” she asked.
Marty nodded. “You did.”
“Oh my god! I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t you dare be sorry,” he told her. “Don’t you dare.”
“But—“
“I’m very happy to have made you feel that good, Keltie. Very happy.”
“It felt better than good, Marty. I’m not sure I would ever want to do it that way again, but…” She smiled up from the pillows. “Whoa. God. So intense.”
“For me too.” He let out a laugh. “I can’t believe I didn’t fall over.”
“Oh, I can make you fall over,” she winked. “Next time we do this I’ll prove it.”
***
He helped with cleaning the mess. As they worked, Keltie became more and more curious as to why they’d done what they did, in that way, with not only a total disregard for hygiene, but for the boundaries of their relationship as well. What boundaries? the crazy bitch wanted to know. But this time the more rational side of herself came back with a raised hand. Spreading a new sheet on the mattress, she asked Marty what had brought it all on. What had made him hungry enough—lusty enough—to do what he’d done?
His answer was stunning in its simplicity. “You,” he said. “Just you.”
“Come on. I’m not that awesome.”
“Nah. You only fought off three vampires. Killed two of them. You suck.”
“Actually,” she said with a small grin, “I fought four and killed three. One of them with the help of some heavy traffic.”
“See? That’s called awesome, dear.”
“It’s also called lucky.”
He sat to put on his shoes. With sinking heart (he would be leaving soon), Keltie watched him. Despite the opinion he’d offered on her greatness, she didn’t want to sleep alone tonight. Her dreams had been far from sweet of late, and she no longer trusted the stucco patterns to sing her off with pleasant pictures. Were she kill the lights now, it would more than likely be Bolt’s face that appeared on the ceiling, eyes black, snarl fierce. Or perhaps Vera’s, weeping tears of despair. No thank you.
“Hey,” she said, “can you stay here until I fall asleep?”
His hand stopped with one shoelace hanging over the thumb. “Of course. Are you all right?”
“I will be if you stay.”
Kicking the shoes off, he stood and crossed the room to her. She fell into his arms with a sigh of relief.
“Late night jitters,” he said, doubtless noticing the enthusiasm in her hug.
“Always, baby.”
His arms squeezed tighter. “Well let me try and help you with those. Hey!” he suddenly called out.
She looked up to see that he’d noticed something on her bookshelf. Following his gaze, she guessed that more than likely it was Vera’s strange little book of Dead Riding Hood. The guess proved accurate not two seconds later when Marty broke their embrace to pluck it from the mess of other well-thumbed titles.
“Wow,” he marveled, seating himself on the mattress. “Dead Riding Hood. I forgot about this.”
“I…took it from Vera’s room,” Keltie confessed. “I was hoping maybe there’d be some clue in it about Bolt. But no.”
Marty looked up from the cover. “No?”
She shook her head. “It’s a strange book though. You’ve seen it?”
“I used to see her reading it sometimes. But I’ve never actually opened it.”
That was enough for Keltie. She stepped forward in an attempt to take the book from him. “Yes, well, it’s useless, like I said. Very boring.”
He opened the book.
From here Keltie had two choices: snatch it from his hands or let him explore the literary genius of its creators. With an inner cringe, she chose the latter. Not that there were any surprises in it about the girl whose rectum he’d just ejaculated into, but what would it make him think of its previous owner? She watched as Marty looked at one page, and then the next, and then the next. But for the ruffling of paper, the room had gone dead silent. Much to her shock, Marty broke it by beginning to read aloud.
“Dear me!” Dead Riding Hood exclaimed. “I seem to have gotten myself lost in these woods! Whatever shall I do now?”
“Don’t worry, little girl,” a smooth, rich voice suddenly purred from behind a tree. “I’ll make sure you find your way home…nice and safe.”
And with that, the wolf appeared before Dead Riding Hood’s astonished face. She gasped. He was a huge beast, with brown fur and yellow eyes. And fangs. Terrible, murderous fangs.
“Oh,” the wolf whispered at the sound of her breath. “Such pretty, pretty lungs. Pretty lungs in a pretty girl.”
Marty looked up from the page and smiled. “Heavy.”
“Yeah,” Keltie managed.
“Have you read all of it?”
“Well…yes. Again, I was looking for clues about Bolt.”
“You missed two. The girl is Vera. The wolf is Bolt.”
“I don’t know about that. Maybe.”
She decided to take a seat on the bed so they could study the piece together.
“In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if Bolt gave this to her,” Marty added. “As a message. Owner and pet. Chances are he knew Vera liked to read.”
“Maybe,” Keltie said again. “But it’s a stretch, Marty.”
“I’ve never seen this title in any bookstore.”
She touched the corner of the page. “No. I think for titles like this you need to ask the manager for a special key. A special key for a special door.”
“Either that or you need to be a monster who’s been to some dark places.”
Suddenly Keltie remembered the picture she’d seen on the back cover—the one drawn not by the illustrator, but somebody else. “Check the back,” she told Marty. “The very back. There’s an extra picture.”
He did as she asked, and there, as before, was the much more crudely drawn girl in the much more crudely drawn house, frowning from the upper window.
“’This is me’,” Marty read. Then: “Holy shit.”
“I guess it’s not such a stretch after all,” Keltie had to admit. “I mean the girl was presumably drawn by Vera. She’s—“
“No, I mean holy shit, Keltie.” Marty’s face was transfixed, his eyes wide. “This house. I know this house.”
She looked at the picture again. The house, she remembered, had indeed looked familiar when she’d first laid eyes on it weeks ago. Now she studied it more closely, hunting for a connection. Huge windows. Stone pillars. Something that looked like a fountain or maybe a flower bed on the front lawn.
“I don’t know,” she let out, flustered. “I mean it does look like one I’ve seen, but—“
“It’s the Wooster-Boalt home.”
“The what?”
He looked at her. “Wooster-Boalt. I don’t think many people call it that anymore, but those were the names of its previous owners.”
Keltie was confused. Frowning at the picture, she asked why the house would be named after the man who supposedly lived there now. Had Bolt built the place himself? Drawn up plans and shouted orders through his fangs to construction workers in the middle of the night?
“No, no, no,” Marty cut in. “Not Bolt. Boalt—B-O-A-L-T. This was a totally different person. I think,” he added, more gently.
“So it’s just a coincidence?”
“Probably. Though the vampire Bolt might be old enough to have seen it built. Around 1830. The house was used as a seminary for girls for about ten years. Then someone turned it into a private residence.”
“I still don’t quite recognize it—“
“It’s on West Main Street. Number 114.”
Keltie shrugged. “All right.”
“I’d like to check it out,” Marty said, never once lifting his eyes from the girl in the window. “In the daytime, of course. Find out who or what is living there.”
She kept her silence, but felt her stomach tighten at the idea of wandering around another ancient house where death quite possibly dwelled. It wasn’t like Bolt would invite them both in for tea if it turned out he really did live there, nor would he be as stupid as the Satanists from Howling. If they fucked things up the way they had in Howling, there’d be no idiot in a hockey mask and a green jumpsuit to return the favor. They would only become another piece of this number 114’s long history. Two more dead people who’d once walked its halls.