CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ann Fleming made a final dab with the brush in one dark corner of the canvas, then put down both brush and palette and stretched. She walked slowly around the perimeter of the glassed-in cupola that perched atop the huge house. Even the painting had failed to ease her restlessness, as it used to do.
For years, every time the tides of the moon had tugged at her, and the inescapable woman's nuisance rendered her useless for the complete kind of sexual romping her nature demanded, she had come up here and fought the irritability by painting. But when the first warning drops had appeared last night, right after a wildly satisfying sexual bout, she had not wanted to come up here.
For the first time in years, she felt a great reluctance to be isolated from her family, even by the small distance that would allow her to be heard if she yelled at them.
And for the first time since Tommy's birth, she had not douched away the fluid which had been spurted into her, if one were to discount the instances which had occurred in that French farmhouse.
She'd blocked her passage this time, she knew, as much to retain the precious semen inside her as long as possible, as to catch the red stains of her womanly curse.
What was happening to her these days? What was happening to all of the family?
They'd all seemed to be throwing off the effects of their submergence into the depths of incest, even before they left Marseilles. Yet there had been a festering inside each of them, an imitating something which – like the oyster – each had coated to stop the irritation. But it wasn't pearls they had produced. Just a hard, cold core of something foreign and frightening. And at unforeseeable moments, that cold hardness would become warm, then build such inner fires that it couldn't be ignored.
She'd watched all of them closely. They'd all watched each other. Not that any of them be grudged any other the smallest pleasure. But each seemed to have, at those moments when the coldness of that knot within turned to heat, a possessive hunger which made them reveal the naked desires they tried to suppress. It couldn't go on indefinitely like this. Either the evil forces within them could be exorcised, or something disastrous should happen.
All of them had come into this life with a healthy body and with a strongly sexual nature, which also should be healthy. Could those brief episodes of forced incest be the total cause of their breakdown? Would these incestuous hungers never have come to the surface but for the despicable Gerault?
Gerault! I hope he's miserable there on Devil's Island, or where ever it is that they've sent him! If he hadn't done those things to us, we might be a happy family yet, today.
Shakespeare didn't cover it all when he said that the evil men do lives after them. The evil that's done unto you lives on, too. It has a horrible life of its own!
She felt the stir of longing increase in her, and she tightened her vaginal muscles on the steadily swelling tampon within her.
I wish it were a cock – a big, pulsing, spurting cock, filling me up till I splashed over, till it flowed all over me! Oh-h-h! Will this obsession never let up?
Is it a weakness that we can never hope to overcome? And was it the same weakness that made us cooperate with Gerault? Would other people have endured the physical tortures – even death – rather than perform the first incestuous act?
But it wasn't the threat of personal pain that swayed us – it was the threat to another. I couldn't let Tommy be tortured to death – so I gave in. I'm sure it was the same way with him. And with Chuck end Darla. It acts our love for each other that made us do it.
But was it the purity of parental love and the love of children for their parents? Or the forbidden love of the damned – working inside us even then, trying to break out into the open?
Could both Chuck and I have the madness of diseased ancestors in our genes, and passed them on, multiplied in strength, to those poor lost children?
A scream seemed to be building up inside her, trying to burst out. But she felt that if she loosed it, she would let her sanity – what little remained – escape with it.
She bottled it up, and walked once more completely around the cupola, until she again faced the ocean. She watched the waves as they assaulted the beach and the rocks nearby.
Then she cleaned her brushes, covered her palette, and turned out the light which she hadn't needed for at least an hour, since the bright dawn began to illuminate the glass cupola.
She went down below, and moved through the halls, restlessly, wanting to go into every room, to shake the occupant from sleep and ask the questions she'd been asking herself.
She opened a door and slipped quietly into the room, then moved to stand beside Chuck Fleming as he lay there, sleeping. His robust body was limned in the morning sunlight which came in through the open drapes at the French windows. His regular morning erection extended to his naked body, and she bent down to it, then placed a kiss on its purpling tip.
Just as quietly as she'd entered, she slipped out closing the door softly behind her.
Down the hallway she moved, halting beside another door. She hesitated, fighting with herself, then gave in and turned the knob. She opened it on its silent hinges, and closed it behind her.
Tommy, unlike his father, wore a pajama top to bed. But it did nothing to hide the virility of his maleness. His morning erection was almost the exact image of his father's, and she bent down and kissed it in the same tender but irresistible compulsion.
He stirred in his sleep, and she backed away a step, waiting until he quieted again before leaving.
Tommy, my son, my lover. Your fluid is still inside me, in the depths of my hungry cunt. But it will soon be gone. The part of you that's in my greedy, evil blood, though, will still be there. When will I find peace? When will we all be free of this thing?
She left the room, and moved down the hallway again. Maybe a shower would help her. A cool shower.
As she started to pass Darla's room, she saw that the door was slightly ajar, and looked inside.
A glass of water on the nightstand was half-consumed, and the tiny envelope beside it showed that a sleeping pill had been taken. A scent filled her nostrils, and Ann moved to the bedside.
Darla's nude form was spread eagled in sleep, and the opened thighs disclosed the wetness of her pinkly swollen slit. A string of the white, sticky semen that had been spurted into her was trailed over one of the blonde curls at the edge of her canyon.
Ann leaned over and inhaled the heady odor. Her tongue lashed out at the solitary telltale string, and gathered it up. Then she turned and went out of the room.
In the doorway, she paused before closing the door, and looked at the girl's sleeping form.
I can't tell whose it is. Either of them could have been in there with her. Either of my lovers. That's the horrible part. Or is it? No. The real horror of it is that I'd feel the same way in either case.
She closed the door, and went slowly down the hall to the bathroom. A really cold shower might be best, after all.