I was too disturbed by my newfound carnal thoughts about my cousin to sleep, so I crept from my room to the tower stairs, thinking I should like to see how altered was the place we had used to play together as children. Up and up I climbed, my candle casting strange shadows on walls of the staircase, until I reached the door. Upon pushing it open, I found the room unchanged by time. There was even still a sheet strung from wall to wall, the roof of our play-castle in which we had pretended to be lords and ladies. I took a faltering step and my foot hit something—looking down, I saw it was the play-sword that Laurent once used to carve dragons and monsters to pieces. That sword was the only thing that had gotten me to come up to the tower, for the first time we braved the stairs, I had believed it haunted!
A sudden movement made me scream—perhaps there really was a ghost that haunted this room! But then my cousin emerged from the shadows, grinning at me.
“Why Camilla! Venturing up here—and in the dark!”
“Oh, Laurent! You gave me such a fright!” I cried. My legs were trembling beneath my night-dress; perceiving this, he offered me his arm and led me to a dusty sofa.
“Will you allow me to make it up to you?” said he. “I know a treatment that is said to cure nervousness in women, it is called fucking.”
“Oh, I know all about fucking,” I laughed weakly. “I have never done it, but nearly everything but. The girls at school said I could lick a quim better than anybody, and a gentleman on the train said my cock-sucking was first rate!”
“Let us see about that,” he said, putting my hand on his stiffening prick. It was quite a large affair, larger than anything I had yet encountered. “If you are as good as you say, then I shall introduce you to the very best pleasure of all!”
5 April 1887, Morning. In my room—Oh, what a good night’s sleep can do to improve one’s spirits! Or at the very least, a good night’s something. Susan was right, my visit home has yielded quite a lot of inspiration for my serial!
Not a quarter of an hour after I blew out my candle for the second time I heard a soft knock at my door. Somehow I knew who was outside—the new Lord Calipash—but unsure if I wanted to see him, I did not answer. He had been unpleasant, yes, but he was also rather attractive, at least in a squirrely sort of way, and I have enjoyed my share of casual romps with far more irksome men. Many and manifest are the advantages of having no inclination to marry and an excellent understanding of abortifacients.
A second knock, then the handle turned. Without lifting my head from my pillow I saw in the doorway the outline of Orlando, whom I think I may now safely call by his Christian name!
He stole into my chamber, closing the door softly behind him, and then shed his coat, throwing it upon the chair in which I had earlier sat scribbling on my latest story, which, if I do say so myself, is coming along nicely. After kicking off his shoes, to my surprise, he slid wordlessly into bed beside me.
“My God,” I whispered, for he stank of death from his trip into the family crypt. “What is it you want so badly that you could not bathe before coming to me, I wonder?”
He said nothing—merely groaned in the most fetching, desperate manner, and put his hand on where my right breast swelled beneath my nightgown. I turned over, and his lips found mine.
I drew back, appalled by his stench. It emanated from every pore in his body; his mouth was foul with the reek of the grave.
“Go and wash,” I said. I love an unexpected frolick, but the unclean human body is disgusting to me.
He groaned again, urgently, but due to his odor I was no longer inclined to engage in any amorous endeavors. I pushed him away, but he grabbed my wrist, and held up something in his other hand. It swung to and fro in the moonlight, for the fading storm had parted her clouds to reveal the last sliver of that waning sphere, and I could just see what he held out to me.
It was the jade tortoise I had earlier seen hanging ’round my guardian’s neck!
“For me?” I asked him, surprised. He grunted his assent, and then fastened the clasp around my neck.
When I felt the weight of the cold stone on my skin (I am ashamed to write this, for I cannot account for it—not even to myself, here in my private diary) I was possessed of a passion stronger than any I have ever felt before. I was ever so desperate to be fucked, more than when I finally managed to sneak Lord Crim-Con away from his wife for a quick one in a servant’s bed at their tenth anniversary party, more even than the time on the occasion of my twenty-third birthday when Susan surprised me by taking me on holiday to Winsor, and snuck me into her brother’s dormitory so I could have some sport with five handsome youths of that year’s senior class.
“Why, Lord Calipash,” said I, snaking my hand down his chest and under the lip of his trousers. “You have inflamed—bewitched me! I simply must have you! Do let us make love!”
He kissed his answer upon my neck, and then lower, lower. I know I am in the habit of describing my encounters in detail here, for my personal enjoyment when I am in my dotage, but we sported for so long, and in so many ways, I fear I shall miss breakfast if I record everything. Suffice it to say, a more tender, compassionate lover I could never want, and he made full use of every place of pleasure I possess. It is sadly rare to find a man as able with bottom-hole as with cunt, but Orlando knew the unique needs, challenges, and delights to be had behind as well as in front. He also had no reservations allowing me to do what I would with him, even going so far as to allow me to work my favorite dildoe (I always take it with me) up into his fundament to induce the truly copious spending which is nigh impossible for men to produce any other way.
Good Lord, but I am hungry! It’s only natural after taking so much exercise in the night, I suppose.
Later—Orlando was not at breakfast. Lizzie says he will not come out of his room.
Later still—Feeling rather lonely, for neither Lizzie nor Bill seem to want much to do with me (they are holed up in the kitchen, apparently “doing what must be done” regarding the Lord Calipash’s death, though I swear I saw Bill sweep away a trick of bezique when I came into the room…but I must have imagined it, for the sanctimonious old ferret never trucks with any games at all, and certainly not cards!) I went for a walk after my meal.
The grounds are still very lovely here, I think their being so overgrown actually adds to their savage charm. And yet…one would think such a wilderness would attract more wild creatures, but I saw no life within the twilit deeps except for a tiny, but bright red bird of a type I had never seen before. It landed on a tree and peered at me silently. I know it will sound strange, but I swear that once it was sure it held my attention, it fluttered to a close-by tree and did not move until I stepped toward it. Then it did the same thing again, and again, until it led me—by chance, surely—to the Calipash family crypt. There it landed on the pediment—and after a moment, flew inside the crypt itself. The door was ajar from Orlando’s midnight sojourn.
The charnel smell that had clung to Orlando’s flesh last night whilst we frolicked emanated from the black interior; I found it nauseating but strangely compelling, and reached out my hand to push open the door and further investigate what lay inside the sepulcher. In I went, and once again braved the stone steps down into the crypt proper.
It is a horrid place, the crypt, a burial-place worthy of the strange legends concocted by the locals. Grinning carven demons watch over the bodies of former Calipash lords, and from their mouths emanate awful orange and purple light, very like sunlight through filtered glass, but they shine even at night! My steps echoed on the granite floor as I peered about, revisiting that dead place where the dead dwell, thinking of the strange ghost I had thought I had seen as a child—but then I am ashamed to say my courage failed me. I fancied I heard the ghost groaning at me; looking up, I saw a shadow of a man, tall and thin—and screamed!