NINETEEN

P atricia came out of her swoon. Red blotchy skin filled her field of vision. Broken veins crisscrossed and wove in and around bumps like rivulets flowing around hills and through valleys. The veins disappeared into thatches of unkempt, sandy grey whiskers. Fleshy lips opened and closed, revealing yellowed and blackened teeth, jutting and crooked like stalagmites and stalactites.

Doctor Moran hovered over her, and her brain kicked in, processing the gibberish coming from the tooth-packed orifice as words. She wished, however, that he would hurry up. The words, “Are you quite all right now, my dear?” took him two minutes to utter. She’d never heard someone speak so slowly. His voice sounded just like one of her 45 singles played at 33 rpm.

“Wha...” she gurgled, and felt like she was trying to speak underwater.

She also wished he’d take his hand out from under her blouse, which, in her haste, she had only secured by the bottom two buttons. His fingers kneaded her nipple, and she didn’t like it.

“I said, are you quite all right now, my dear?”

“No,” poured out of her mouth like molasses. “Shtop...” She tried to sit up, and got as far as raising her head a few inches, which took five minutes. She saw that she was stretched out on a divan in a sitting room off the hallway at the foot of the stairs.

Footsteps boomed like a series of approaching atomic bomb explosions. Moran removed his hand from Patricia’s blouse and a moment later—or it must have been a moment later, although it seemed like minutes—the housekeeper, eight feet tall, appeared over her.

“Ah, here’s Mrs. Abingdon with your medicine,” Moran said. Continuing to move in slow motion, he took the cup from the woman’s hands and held it up to Patricia’s lips. Patricia should have been able to swat it away, but was almost paralyzed.

“Drink it up, drink, my dear,” Moran said, and the liquid went down her throat like thick, hot lava, gagging her. The lava settled in her stomach and hardened into a lump, and she passed out again.

She dreamed of hands, more than two hands, touching her, sliding over her abdomen and breasts. There were lips on the inside of her knee, tickling her through her stockings, and then they were brushing up her inner thigh, licking and kissing their way upward. A hand held her wrists together and pulled her half on her side. Hands down lower slapped at her bottom. Another hand massaged and teased a nipple, while a mouth was fastened to the other.

Teeth bit, hard.

She gasped and woke up in darkness in her room, eyes snapping open. She sat up, tense, breathing hard. There seemed to be shadowy figures in the room, shifting in and out of focus, leaning over her as she lay in bed, and then backing away off the bed.

Whereas earlier she had felt like she was speaking underwater, she now heard hissing, whispered voices that sounded like they were underwater.

“Shit, what did you do that for, you woke her up.”

“Well, he said she’d be dead to the world all night, how was I to know?”

“Come on, before she really comes out of it...”

Then the shadows were gone, and she knew it had to be by a secret door, since she could see the hall door to her room by the moonlight and nobody exited through it.

Of course, Bess’ ghost also came and went from Patricia’s room at will, but only at midnight. It was long after midnight and the storm had broken up; the moon shined through in patches. Besides, there were two shadows.

No, it hadn’t been Bess. Two people had been in her room, watching her, fondling her, and that meant a secret entrance.

She tried to get up and found she was still very sluggish. She lay back against the down pillows and her breathing stabilized as oxygen pumped through her body. Her fingertips and toes tingled and she started to feel more in control of her body, as if she might be able to move a little bit without the room rotating around her.

Then the lock in the hall door clicked and the door swung inward. In the moonlight, she saw a man come in. He had a walrus moustache and he was naked, his enormous member hanging there like a bell-pull with tiny snakes slithering down it, and she knew it was Doctor Moran.

He came to her bed, climbed on it, and leaned over her on his knees. A drop of something wet landed on her bare stomach, and she realized he was drooling. “Magnificent body, magnificent. Shame to waste it...”

He chuckled, a dry crackling noise, and scooted down to the foot of the bed, grabbing her ankle and pulling her legs apart.

Patricia acted. She sat up in a flash and, though it revolted her to do so, she grabbed his rising penis in her hand and twisted.

Moran screamed and rolled off the bed, and hit the ancient wooden floor with a thud. He continued to roll and writhe in agony.

Patricia jumped off the bed and kicked him, the toe of her boot sinking deep in his huge belly paunch. She straddled his chest, grabbed him by the throat with her left hand, and slammed a hard right into his bulbous nose, sending blood running down his face.

Moran head-butted her on the forehead and, while she was dazed, flipped her off him onto her back. She was coming out of the cocktail of various potions he had given her much sooner than expected, but she was still wobbly and disoriented enough that he was able to punch her in the face before she could react.

Patricia fell back, stunned, her head swimming, and Moran ran out of the room. He returned moments later, now wearing a dressing gown and carrying his medical bag. Injured and furious, he knelt beside her, pulled out a syringe, and, as she raised her head slightly and began to come out of her daze, slipped the needle into her vein.