She Walks in Shadows(16)
“Thank you, Cousin Lavinia. I’d have been adrift without you.” He gave a smile, which she returned.
“You certainly would.”
He hesitated. “May I visit again?”
She raised a straw eyebrow. “Why?”
“To ... to speak with you. I ….”
“Come back on May Eve,” she said, interrupting before he had to examine his wishes too closely; he even found her scent, much stronger this time, intoxicating. What had come over him? He’d be back at Harvard in a few days, back where the world was real and normal and solid, away from this earth where he’d been born, but did not belong. There, he would forget this strange pull towards he knew not what.
Her voice was pitched low and husky when she said, “Come then, Cousin Rist, and I’ll show you what the others don’t know and don’t care to know. Are too afraid to look upon. Come then, cousin, and I’ll show you everything you ever desired to see. Don’t tell anyone, though, or the deal’s off.”
And with that, she leaned forward, whispered something in his ear, breath tickling his skin and hair, and raising goosebumps on his flesh, and sending a rush of blood to southern climes.
As she walked away, he watched the slow swing of her hips and wondered what lay beneath. He would, he knew, return.
Lavinia had sat anxiously by the window all afternoon, peering through the thin, antiquated curtains. She’d made a special effort with her dress; it was her mother’s wedding gown, starched organdie, yellowed with age. The tiny brown spots on the hem were barely noticeable. Bell-shaped sleeves hung to the elbow. The bodice was cut lower than was strictly necessary, and three rows of once-fine, now-crumbly lace encircled the skirt. Still, she thought, it was pretty and the darkening of its tones meant she didn’t look completely washed out. And it was a size too big, giving her some room to wriggle.
She’d braided her hair around the crown of her head, so it looked like a coronet, and threaded crimson beebalm through it, bright as rubies, bright as blood.
He arrived at dusk and she’d had to keep calm, tamp down her relief. Lavinia watched as he hesitated at the edge of the yard, taking in his expression as he examined the lurching gambrel roof of the two-storied house, with its peeling paint and missing roof slates.
Lavinia left him to knock anxiously five or six times, before she stepped onto the porch, and gave him a cool smile and a chaste kiss on the cheek. He blushed, but it barely showed on his smooth, olive skin. He was so young, this cousin of hers, a good decade or more her junior, so well-raised. He’d brought flowers — What a lamb! — and not some common bunch either, not wildflowers picked from the roadside or garlands pilfered from the headstones of Dunwich’s bone orchard, like some had offered, trying to get into her knickers. No, it was a real bouquet, tied with a ribbon, a proper tribute! Lavinia’s heart sang in spite of itself.
She put the arrangement just inside the door and when he’d objected, “They need water,” she’d covered his mouth with her own to still further protest. When he’d grown quiet and hard, she broke away. Lavinia gathered up the brand she’d prepared earlier, one end wrapped around with hessian and soaked in pitch. She used the flint and steel to strike a spark and the flambeau burst into life.
Rist took the hand she offered and they set off towards Sentinel Hill, the flame dancing in the wind, throwing shapes and shadows before them, flashing in eyes that hid in the undergrowth and bushes on either side as they processed in silence.
The path was much easier than the one Rist had tried to blaze a few weeks before. Indeed, it seemed as if the foliage made a point of drawing back so as not to snag Lavinia’s ancient finery. He’d been worried sparks from the torch might fall onto her dress, turning her into a Roman candle, but the fire seemed respectful, too.
By the time they surmounted the summit, the flare was dwindling, almost spent, but Rist didn’t doubt that his cousin would have been able to negotiate the dark with her confident step and astonishing pink eyes. They entered the circle of standing stones with its table-like rock in the center. Lavinia didn’t waste any time, placing the dying brand on the mountain of kindling set closest to where the hill dropped steeply away, but still inside the stone ring.
She turned to face Rist, smiling as the balefire lit and leapt. Lavinia reached up and pulled the dress from her shoulders, sliding it slowly until she stood in a pool of sepia froth. She rolled her shoulders, making her breasts bounce a little.
Rist noticed only that, despite their heaviness, the bosoms still sat high, never having had a child to drag them down. He noticed only the tiny waist, the flaring lower hourglass of her hips, and the bushy white triangle at the junction of her sturdy legs. He was so distracted that he didn’t notice the malformations on her flanks, her hips, the myriad tiny eyes embedded there, blinking lashless lids in the flickering orange glow.
She gestured to the table-rock and watched as he disrobed clumsily, quickly, and came to her so she could maneuver him onto her, into her. He was a handsome boy, she thought, though one of the others, one of the shitty ones like Putnam or Wilmot or George, might have served better. Their natures might have been more fit for what was being done here this night. She did not regret having chosen him, though, as her first.
As the young man labored over her — in and out, in and out — the night sky gleamed, lightning tearing across the silvered black, the stars brightening. Nebulae formed and swirled, shot red and blue and purple like pinwheels, and a sort of ebony gold streamed into an enormous shape that was not a shape, that was form without form, with tentacles and eyes like Christmas lights which appeared then faded as fast as blinking. Rist reared up, unable to see what was occurring above and behind him, but sensing it. Though he couldn’t stop his rhythmic motion even if he’d wanted to, he tried to turn his head when he felt the cold fire that poured from the crack in the heavens touch his skin and seep in. Lavinia latched one hand to his jaw and held him there with a strength that, in hindsight, shouldn’t have surprised him.