Chapter Ten
The woman flickered back before me.
“I need to get through.”
“Say the words. Offer up your sacrifice freely and willingly.”
“I...uh...want to offer up my sacrifice to you...uh...freely and willingly. I'm just...uh..not sure about the little girl.”
“I am the little girl.” The woman said.
“How?”
“I was killed when I was eleven. My womanly form is the projection of the energy of my thoughts of what I was destined to become when I grew up. I never got to grow up and realize my dream, so the energy of that dream became my womanly presence in my projection among the living. However, because my death was a particularly gruesome affair, I have trouble letting go of the image of my former self and becoming what I was destined to be.”
“How did you die?” I asked.
“I do not like to talk about that.”
“I'm sorry. It just looked like you took a horrible beating.”
“It was before the Keeper came. He is much more gentle with his offerings. Before him there was another who sacrificed screams and pain and other energies that required much injury to the sacrifices before they gave up their blood and spirit. There are different kinds of energies and that one took the harsh energies rather than the quiet, enjoyable ones.”
The little girl with the deep, dark eyes was back. She had a trace of a smile on her lips.
“I have been happy since coming here but the trip to get here was not a joyful one. The pain and agony he wreaked over my body have stayed with me despite my ability to enjoy and move on emotionally and intellectually in this new realm.”
“I am sorry for your suffering.” I did not know what else to say.
“You did not cause it and you are now offering me a chance to enjoy life, so do not fret about it. My grandmother always said that we should only worry about the things we can change. I can not change my past. So, I only consider those things that affect my future. Right now I am considering enjoying your fluids.”
The little impish grin and her story did little to make me feel any better about this. I am not a prude. And, truth be known, if I was confronted with a have to case of having sex with a regular human woman to save Kathy, I believe I could do it. But I was having real doubts about this little girl, ghost thing. Even if I wanted to, I was not aroused. I was scared to death.
“For humans, sex is more than just an act.” I tried to make a case for extenuating circumstances.
“We know. That is what makes their sex so vital and energized. It's a life event unto itself.” This explanation coming from a little girl's mouth made no sense to my brain. Little girls talked about dolls and TV shows, not sex and enjoying the energy from it.
“I mean, it takes more than just a wanting to, to make sex happen for humans.”
“Oh, you mean...” the woman flicked back into shape.
“...the arousal.” She smiled at me standing there with all her natural womanliness on display.
“I believe I can get you aroused sufficiently to accept your sacrifice.” She giggled. A husky, little girl giggle.
I paused. I was out of options. My mind was offering nothing to bring to them. They were asking only one thing. It was time to put up or shut up, as my dad told me quite often. I started unbuckling my belt and unzipping my pants.
“Oh, goodie, goodie, goodie,” The little girl was back. I was not the least bit aroused.
By the time I had stripped down and laid back in the pine needles where they asked me to lay, the woman had flickered back into form. Slowly she mounted me and I felt the tingling of her touch upon my skin as she slowly massaged me to a reluctant readiness. She was beautiful, if even a dream of a ghost herself. The little girl had a great destiny. Too bad for some lucky guy the old Keeper had kept her from attaining it.
I felt her electrical contact and I felt a sheepish embarrassment come over me as she smiled down at me and maneuvered herself into position over me. Then there was a warm rush of electrical current unlike anything I had ever felt before. Not a stinging electricity but rather a warm, engulfing, almost human feeling of pleasure.
No sooner was the beautiful dirty blond ghost resting on me than she changed back to the little girl. The grin of the little girl was replaced with a look of serene satisfaction that could only be ascribed to a woman. Those dark, mysterious eyes were now closed and she was absorbing the sensation of our coupling. As amazed as I was at her display of sexual abandon and enjoyment, I was embarrassed to feel myself respond to her. I had feared that I might lose my ability to be aroused when the form shifted back to the little girl, but now I was just as scared that I was some kind of pervert getting off on little girls.
“Enjoy it,” She whispered in a voice made hoarse by her desire to put all her energies into her passion.
I watched the little girl change several times from little girl to the woman. Her joy was a child's joy. Her knowledge of the sexual act was a woman's knowledge. She was adept at maintaining arousal of her partner in many ways. Eyes. Smiles. Twists and turns of her body. She was a master at this. And every time I neared finishing, she slowed down, made another move and let me rest while she geared up for another round of ride-the-man-who-wants-to-get-through-the-mist.
I have no idea how long it took her to finish. I was embarrassed and worried about my own abilities and desires after this. I had visions of being ruined forever and wandering around playgrounds looking for sexual partners. I tried to chase the thoughts from my head but my mind had already been fed too much. I was trying to deal with things that were not able to be referenced.
Finally she let ended it. We shared our fluids. As much as I would like to complain about my treatment at the hands of the ghostly little girl, I could not complain about the sensation of utter release that flowed through my body. Her giggles and screams of joy at my ultimate response to her body would have made most men glad that they had caused such joy in a child. I could only feel revulsion. Not at her. Not at what we had done together. I was dealing with the terms of our relationship. It was a business deal, something I had to do to get to Kathy. My revulsion was at my discovery that I could be turned on by the sexual advances of a child.
“There.” The little girl spoke as she backed up off. “Now, tell me. Can any little girl do that for you?”
“Uh...no.” I responded.
“You're damn right they can't. I may have died a little girl but I have learned a thing or two since entering the Mist.”
“You certainly have.” I tried to sound macho after losing my Mist virginity to a little girl ghost.
She shifted back to the woman's form.
“I hope that you have enjoyed this as much as we have. You have provided us with a great supply of emotional energy and fluid energy, too.” She laughed.
I looked down at the ground. I was embarrassed. It was like lunch time to them. It was like revealing my most embarrassing moment in front of an audience. Hell, this was my most embarrassing moment.
“I need to get to the cabin, quickly,” I ended my embarrassment.
“Walk that way,” The little girl was back and I followed the direction of her pointed finger.
It was not the same direction she had pointed before.
“That's not the same direction you pointed to before.”
“Relative to your position, no. But the Mist is always moving. The maze of the Mist is not dependent upon position but rather fluctuating direction. As you move in one direction, the Mist swirls around you changing that direction for you and keeping you always headed in the direction we want you to go. You may think you are walking straight ahead but as the Mist swirls, you change direction several times.”
“Still, I need to get there, now.”
“Please, take your leave. Do as you feel a need to do. But remember, you are one of us now. You can come back at any time.”
With that the Mist cleared a path toward the cabin for me and the little girl/woman disappe
ared. I was standing in clear darkness. The light of the stars and a bright moon overhead drifted down through the branches of the large pine trees all around me. I was back in the woods and the Mist was gone. For a second I discounted the experience I just had as some kind of dream. But I still felt that tingle in my pants. I knew I had done what I thought I had done. The Mist had thought it a good thing. The little girl-woman had thought it a good thing. But my staunch, religious upbringing told me I should revile myself.
Later.
Kathy was somewhere straight ahead and in need of my help. I set out in the direction the little girl had indicated. My flashlight worked now that I was in a clearing. I shined it around to see if I could locate the Mist. But it must have been too far away for my light beam to reach it. I continued on toward the place where the cabin was supposed to be.
It was a ramshackle little cabin perched on a small rise in an even smaller clearing. I approached it with the idea that someone would come out to defend the cabin and its prize, Kathy. What I found was an unlocked door that let me inside a dusty, musty, grimy, smelling wooden room with one window on the side. The cobwebs hung thick in every corner. The place had that not-lived-in look. It appeared abandoned. I wondered if I was still on my property or if I had gone far enough to be on the park lands that abutted the back of my property.
On second thought, after my experience with the Mist, I was pretty sure I was not on anyone's land. Except maybe the Keeper's. When I thought about the Keeper before, I had been sure he was a man who prayed on innocent victims and was dangerous, but still a man. Defeatable. Now, looking around the decay and silence of this old cabin, it was plain that no one had been here for a really long time. The thought entered my mind that the Keeper may not be a human. He may be someone from another plane, as they called it. Whatever, he was definitely something I had never dealt with before. I wish I had asked the little girl.
There was nothing to indicate this was anything except an abandoned cabin. Even the dust had not been disturbed. If Kathy had been brought here, she was brought in some way that did not disturb the dust and cobwebs of this old place.
Then the thought hit me. What if the Mist had tricked me? What if it had gotten what it wanted and given me nothing in return? What if Kathy was somewhere else, miles from here? An anger boiled up in me that took a few minutes to calm down. I needed to think this out. Practicality. Maybe the Mist had deceived me. Maybe not. Maybe Kathy was here. Maybe not. The little girl had said the cabin was a maze like the Mist. Maybe I had to find an entrance to the maze. Maybe she had been pulling my leg.
I searched inside and out and found nothing revealed in the glare of my flashlight. To all intensive reasoning, it appeared to be just what it was. An abandoned cabin in the woods. I was starting to feel Kathy slipping away from me.
The mist. A little girl ghost that transformed into a naked woman. A demented killer who is set up in an abandoned cabin in the woods. A time constraint to finding the love of my life before that demented killer can take her from me. A strange ritual to get through the maze to the cabin. A mystery to solve before I could ever hope to get on with my life. I was no match for all this. I felt completely inadequate to the task. Yet, I had to try. I had to move forward. First, I had to find forward.
I found a rock at the front of the cabin and sat down to think this out. I was not going to panic. Not yet anyway. I turned off the flashlight to save the batteries for my walk out. I was trying to fight off the notion that I was going to fail and not find her. I had to fix this. I just had to. Everything told me time was important here.
I went through all that the little girl had told me about the Keeper and his job. Apparently he collected victims to bring here and share their blood, fluids and spirit with the Cabin and sometimes the Mist. Somehow he convinced them to offer themselves to the sacrifice because forced sacrifices were not allowed for some reason. I could not picture that. Judging from the little girl, the Cabin likes young children sacrifices. Vital, she had called it. There was no evidence of anything going on that even slightly resembled sacrificing in the old cabin. So the cabin had to be the outside of the maze. There had to be a way in.
I knew the cabin was the key. I just did not know how to use it. Somehow the cabin opened up and allowed the Keeper to go inside. And inside it was a maze itself. But opening it up was my first problem.
“It's just like the Mist.” The little girl's voice.
Startled, I looked around quickly. Nothing. I turned on the flashlight and waved it in all directions. Still nothing. Maybe I had imagined it.
“You didn't imagine anything, John.”
“Huh?”
“I said, you didn't imagine anything.”
I looked around some more.
“I'm right here. In your head, silly.” Her childish giggle had an honest ring of humor to it this time.
“In my head?” I asked out loud.
“Yes. That's where you hear us.”
“Us?”
“The entities of the Mist, silly. I told you, you're one of us, now.”
“How?”
“By sacrificing your fluids. Don't you remember, silly? Golly, I thought I was more memorable than that. It's only been, what? Thirty minutes? I'm hurt that you don't remember me.” Her voice said she was toying with me.
“Okay. Okay. That's not what I asked. How'd you get in my head?”
“You're one of us, now. We're in you and you're in us. As we exist in your plane, you are in connection with us in a small way in our plane because we have shared.”
“I'm in you?” Once again, I was not following her very well.
“Yes, John. We are joined at the convergence of our energies. Your distress called out to us in its plaintive state. I answered so as not to startle you more than necessary. But you have the ability to talk to all of us now. Although, I will remain your primary liaison.”
“All of you?”
“Yes. There are thousands of us in the Mist currently. From all planes of existence, too. Maybe someday you will join us in the Mist, too.”
“Join you?”
“Yes. When you die, you can say the words and give yourself totally over to us and become one of us in the Mist. You will live for eternity in here with us. It is actually quite wonderful. Lots of sex, you know?” She giggled again.
I did not know what to say.
“I called on you?” I asked with a whine that almost held my frustrations in check.
“By stressing out over not finding the doorway, you activated an energy level sufficient to call out. Since we are of you, now, we heard it and I responded. It's pretty simple.”
“That's easy for you to say.” My head was spinning again. It was bad enough to have a memory of having sex with a child and a ghost, or whatever, on top of that. But now she was in my head to remind me forever of my perversion.
“It was not perverted, John.” Her voice was stern and loud inside my head. “I may look like a child in appearance. That is only because of the way in which I died. Torture has a way of stunting the growth, physically and mentally. Spiritually though, I am one hundred and thirty three. I did not seduce you as a child would, did I?”
“No.” I admitted.
“Do not think of me as a child. Think of me as the woman birthed from that child murdered all those years ago.”
“Okay. Okay.” I wanted it to stop. I was getting a headache.
“Actually, it is okay, John. Think of it more like you had sex with a friend of your great grandmother.” Her giggles shook the essence of my head like a vibrator. I could physically feel her laughter. She obviously enjoyed messing with my mind.
“Okay. Okay. Stop trying to cheer me up. You're not very good at it.”
“Oh, John. You know I'm good at making you feel good.”
“Please don't remind me. I'm still trying to get that picture out of my head.”
“Come on, John. After the act, memory is all there is. Memory holds a certain energy of
its own. Sharing the memory is a way of keeping the act alive.”
“Okay. I get the picture. I'm sorry. I did not totally understand.”
“We know. Also, you do not have to talk to us with your mouth any more. I'm in your head. We're in your head. We can hear your every thought. We're personal. We're in you and you're in us.”
“How's that work?”
“Concentrate on us and we will come into hearing distance for you. Concentrate real hard and you can actually move among us in the Mist and wherever we of the Mist happen to be.”
“Huh?”
“It's simple, silly. Not all the people of the Mist are inside. Like you, some are still in their own bodies on different planes of existence. If you get inside the Mist and meet the people of the Mist, you can meet the people of the Mist who are still alive. That connection will allow you to contact them through the Mist and see and hear what's going on in their lives. It's like a perfect hive of collective information. You access it and browse around enjoying all it has to offer. Then when the time comes for you to pass over, you can choose to come here.”
“What about heaven?”
“Your God has created the idea of heaven to help you understand the concept of life after mortal death. The actual embodiment of the theory is displayed in multiple ways at multiple levels of existence. Some of your theologians offer their insight into the levels of hell or heaven like there is a ladder effect of rank and servitude or pleasure involved. Truth is, it's more like planet hopping. Spiritually, you can exist wherever you want after the fleshly shell has been shuffled off. Those in good relation with the Creator of Life get to choose their existence. Some choose to join us. You can also choose to change later. It's a benefit of living right or, in many cases, dying right.”
“What about those who are not in good relations with the Creator of Life?” I used her terms.
“Oh, they are sent to the Place of Chains with locks and guards. Theirs is not a pretty end. Eternity without relationship with life is exhausting and interminable. It goes on forever without any pleasure ever entering there. No one wants that.”
“But some end up there?”
“Yes. Unfortunately.”
“What about the Keeper. Seems that what he is doing is evil. How come he has not been sent to this place of chains?”
“He works the loop holes.”
“Loop holes?”
“Yes. There is no law against evil activity, nothing that stops someone from performing an evil action. Just a proper reward for those who practice it. He has not been sent because he created a place for himself in the physical world before he died. He used some of the energy he was supposed to share with us to make himself a hideout of sorts. It is his place and no one else. In it, he makes the rules and he decides the rewards of all who enter. Like a fake plane all in itself. Contained within another plane, where he feeds on the energies from that plane.”
“So, the Keeper was one of you but he's gone bad and made a secret place to do his work from.”
“Yes. But it is not a secret. We all know about it. And he does share some of the energy with us because of the deal, although lately he does not share the blood or the fluids with us.”
“So, he's keeping all the torture, abuse and killing to himself? He's only sharing the emotional energy with the Mist?”
“Yes. He has become more and more secretive about his work in there, too. That is why we allowed you through. He is no longer considered one of us by most of us. He has crossed over and is no longer even benefiting us with his presence. His presence has also brought undue observation to our woods. Although we exist in many planes at the same time, we require a certain amount of anonymity to maintain our existence. Physical life forms do not like being made aware that they are not the ultimate existence.”
“Boy, don't I know that.” I shook my head. If I was reeling before from all the revelations, I was now officially punch drunk from all the hits I had been taking.
“But you were murdered as a little girl. Does that not qualify for evil?”
“Yes. And the man who did that has since been sent to that Place of Chains and darkness. He was allowed to operate while he was alive, but when he died he fell into the hands of the Creator of Life who judges all things.”
“So, when this Keeper dies, he will be similarly judged?”
“No. He is already dead.”
“Huh?”
“Let me explain, John.”
For a little girl, she sure had lots of patience.
“Again,” she huffed in my head. “I am not a little girl. I just appear that way because of the manner of my death.” She blew out air with an almost whistle quality to her frustration at my failure to recognize her as anything but a child. Even in my head, I could sense her attitude.
“When bad people do bad things in the many worlds we inhabit, especially to the young in age, there is a calling that goes out, if they have the time to cry out, that calls on us. We respond by going to the distressed ones and inviting them to accept our way and enter the Mist with us. We do not advocate or in any way support the evil of the many planes of existence, but we do try to use it to the best of our ability. We take what was meant for evil and absorb them into our community for their good. They become one of us in their time of distress and release. Once in here, the torment and danger of their lives is over. Happiness can be returned to them and joy can once again be achieved as they embrace the fullness of life as it was meant to be.”