The Beckoning
by Arafin © 2009
Lost Harbour (Arafin’s blog)
Creator of image unknown. If this image is your property and you object to its use here, please notify webmistress and photo will be removed.
Walking quickly back to the car to retrieve the keys to the boathouse, you curse your inability to be perfect. Not out loud, of course, or even under your breath, but you are being too hard on yourself and you know it. Still, you cannot seem to stop. Grasping the keys with an angry fist you head back to the boathouse and enter, the slight delay costing you nothing more than two minutes in time, but your impatience charging you interest which will be applied later. The boat seems in order and you offer thanks to the caretaker who has now been resting in the ground for six months. These estate sales forced by Probate Court are never a pleasant thing and it is always nice when someone does their job properly. If only the owners had shown as much foresight and left a will. If only they had planned for their passing as they had when they hired that old man to look after this place during their time of life. There must be at least three hundred acres of the six hundred forty here that could be subdivided and host a good sized collection of townhouses. The lake frontage alone was probably worth a fortune. Now that the courts have finally decided that the one daughter does indeed have title to everything, she’ll lose the apartment in town. Needless. Everyone should have a will. If her parents had had a will then that apartment would not have had to be sold to cover the cost of Probate Court. Lawyers. They always win no matter how you slice it. You wish you had become one instead of a property manager.
Untying the boat and pushing it out into the foggy lake, you start the small outboard motor and head slowly across towards where you know the little wooden dock should be. You have seen pictures of it but with this mist you have doubts that you will be able to recognize it when you see it. Seeing it will not be easy, will it? Every once in a while you can spy a bit of treed shoreline in the distance and it does seem to be growing closer. Sort of. Damn, this wet air is cold!
Why hadn’t the daughter been willing to come out here and do this? It was her property now, for crying out loud. Finally you see the dock and slow to a crawl to let the boat rub up against it like a dog begging to be scratched. Jumping out, you tie it off and carefully ascend the slippery wooden steps to the long walkway which leads towards the house. House? “Mansion” would more accurately describe it. These people certainly had money. You try two keys in the front door before finding the right one and step cautiously inside. “Hello”, you shout to the vastness, even though you know it is empty. A small songbird flits from the chandelier in the foyer and disappears down the hallway. Someone must have left a window open. Your task is simple. Find the “old oak desk” upstairs and remove from it a green ledger which you will return to the daughter in person as soon as you copy out the figures you need to conclude your part in this business. Somehow you cannot let the matter of the bird go, and so investigate the hallway until the creature reveals itself again, this time flying into the kitchen and promptly disappearing out the open window you suspected. Closing it and heading back to the foyer, you climb the half circle marble stairway and then walk back into the East Wing of the house towards the “Upper Den” where the desk is promised to be.
As you enter the den another songbird flees before you and you close yet another window. Curious, though, how you feel it was the same bird. There in the corner is the oak desk and in it the green ledger, just as described. Sitting in the short backed chair at the desk you copy the necessary figures into your PDA and then slip the ledger into your briefcase. As you stand to leave you are a little shocked to see yet one more songbird fly away out of the room and down the hall the way you came. “Is every window in this stupid place open?” you mutter to no one in particular as you reach the stairs and descend. Thinking it likely that the bird headed for the kitchen in order to find the window that was once open when you arrived, you stop dead in your tracks when you see that that which you had closed not five minutes before is now wide open again. “Hello!”, you shout loudly, feeling that you are not alone. In fact, you have the unmistakable feeling that you are being watched. “Hello!”, you holler again, but the only sound which returns is that of the bird chirping outside on a limb of the lilacs just starting to bloom. There scent is heady and enticing. Closing the window again you head briskly for the door, experiencing now a strong desire to get away from this place. You have not gone so far as to believe it is haunted, but you could swear you are not alone.
As you follow the little stone path back to the dock the mist parts for a moment to reveal two women standing next to the place where you had tied the boat. This surprises you to the point of both panic and irritation, and you teeter for a moment between whether to chastise them for not announcing themselves when you shouted “hello” or saying nothing more than a polite “good morning” and being on your way. The mist folds back in around them and then wafts away again. Now you are closer, perhaps only one hundred yards away, and what you observe causes you to stop dead in your tracks. The woman on the right is naked except for a high feathered headdress and your boat is gone!
Panicking and trying to fight back the urge to run, you begin to notice the other woman. She looks for all the world like the daughter who has inherited this property, except for her hair. It is blonde and long now whereas before in the office back in town you had seen a picture of her sporting short black curls. As your mind initiates small musings about women’s hair color, wigs, and dyes, you suddenly realize that they are both now staring directly at you. “Hello”, you call out for the umpteenth time today, but more timidly. “I, uh, have the ledger you wanted.” No answer and they both just continue to stare. The naked woman on the right with the impossible feathered headdress makes not the slightest effort to cover herself and you find it curious that you are not embarrassed to see her standing so unabashedly. Perhaps it is because she is unperturbed by her nakedness that you are unperturbed. It is so odd though, like a troubling dream. Her white skin blends in with the fog so perfectly no wonder you did not see her at first. Why isn’t she cold? And where is the boat? How are you going to get back across the lake?
The blonde woman on the left is clothed in a dark violet ball gown of some kind with diaphanous upper sleeves. She raises her right index finger without lifting her arm and beckons you to come to her. In an instant, without any realization whatsoever why you are doing so, your legs start walking again, and very purposefully at that. It is as if your body is no longer under your control as you seem to lunge forward towards these two silent women as would water from a waterfall plunge helplessly into a pool below. You try to stop yourself. You try to turn and run away, but you can no more change direction than you can sprout wings. She is drawing you to her and you are powerless to stop! Within ten feet you suddenly halt, commanded again by the slightest movement from her slender finger, and for an instant you are thankful, but then you notice the desire raging in you. You want so much to continue moving closer to her! Why had you not noticed this when you were walking? It feels as if the desire had been there all along, been there for ages, in fact. You do not just desire her physically, you love her with all your heart. You need her. You are desperate to be as close as you can. And as she raises one perfect eyebrow and launches a coy smile, your head races to catch up with your heart and you almost laugh when you sense yourself falling to the ground, overcome and overloaded at last by the spell that has been cast over you. The final thing you see as your eyes grow heavy and close is the naked woman opening her mouth, and the last thing you hear is the sound of a songbird’s call escaping from those perfect lips.
Darkness ………….
The sound of tiny lake waves lapping against the side of your boat raises you slowly from sleep. At first you cannot move and so just lay there on the cold aluminum, but gradually your limbs become your own again and you manage to sit upright. You are surrounded by mist, thicker than ever, and there is no way to tell where in the lake you are. You are quite alone, ….. you are dripping wet from the fog, …… and you are quite and utterly naked. The green ledger and your briefcase are next to you along with a silver foil envelope. On the envelope, embossed in purple flowing letters, is your first name. Are you still asleep? Are you still under her spell? You reach for the envelope and almost cry out when your fingers meet it. Where you had expected cold there is heat. It is very warm to the touch, almost hot.
Tearing open the shiny paper you withdraw a folded blue foil card. The front is blank, as is the back, but opening it reveals a brief message written in bright red shiny ink. You tremble when you read the words. “You are on my land. You are in my lake. You are my property, and you are my slave! I will bring you to shore when I have need of you. Do not try to swim.” Remembering the outboard motor, you instinctively reach for the pull cord in order to wind it to life and race free from this nightmare, but where once stood a fifteen horsepower Evinrude there is now a large pumpkin lashed to the transom with some baking twine. Is this a joke? What is happening? You panic once more and unwittingly call out for help again and again, your voice muffled by the heavy damp air too dense to see through, too dead to pierce with sound. It is almost as if you are mute and you question if you really shouted at all or are perhaps stark raving mad. There are no oars and you know the lake is too large to paddle across with your hands, … and you have no idea what direction to move in anyway, absolutely no idea where you are. Or why you are here. Or what they were, those two women on the dock.
Can you swim to shore? Any shore? The warning on the card reverberates in your mind like stinging hail stones bouncing off tin, and you sink back down into the bottom of the boat and curl yourself up into a ball for warmth. The water laps against the boat and the sound almost sickens you by it’s constant reminder of your predicament. Look at that card. Just look at the absurdity of it, of this whole thing! Cast adrift by those two witches for just trying to do your work! You could die out here of hypothermia in this blasted fog! And the words on the card seem to beckon you to touch them with your cold, aching fingers. Ah, the warmth. The card is so warm. Why is it warm? You don’t care as you draw it next to your chest and huddle around it, thankful for any source of heat you can get. If only this damn fog would lift and the sun would shine. You could feel some real warmth then and see where you are. The dullness of the hours passes into a horrible blur as you drift in and out of fitful sleep. Your stomach gnaws at you with hunger. You try slaking your thirst with lake water but it is so icy you soon abandon your need to drink in favor of your need to stay warm. Only the little silver card with the shiny red ink keeps you from freezing, and only just. Darkness finally comes, long and slow, and with it deeper sleep and a kind of relinquishment of fear. As longing for freedom blessedly falls from you like blossoms from a tree, you sink deep, deep into the sleep of the possessed. You fall, down, down, down into a warm abyss of welcome heat, and you simply no longer care if these are merely the dying sensations of your body as it succumbs to the relentless cold that fleeting logic dictates surrounds you, so far above in the real world. So far above and so trapped in the little aluminum boat.
The voice of a small songbird calls out through the mist, and the boat, as if by magic, begins to slowly move. Sleep has overcome you completely now and you have no awareness of what is happening. Within a few minutes, (or was it a few hours?), the boat bumps up against the dock. It is not tied by any mortal hand, but still it stays there as if by secret order. Tender fingers of ancient flesh descend to lift you from cold metal and draw you away across the dewey grass, around the side of the great house and out back to a fairy tale cottage, something which loving parents might build for a deserving young daughter, only the detail looks so real and intricate that surely this must be something else. Something else? But what? The blonde woman in the purple gown and the naked woman with the high headdress carry you inside and lay you upon a soft feather bed. Through the depths of your sleep you notice the sweet smell of plums. Gentle fingers arrange your naked body and probe softly to determine the best manner in which to awaken you, the most efficient method in which to transition you from bottomless slumber to the highest peaks of mad arousal, the loftiest heights of desperate love. You will be here for a while, so don’t try to fight it. If and when they let you go it will only be to move temporarily back inside your former world of business and mundane activities. Sooner of later she will beckon for you to return and you will have no choice, obeying as if you are bewitched. And you are. Bewitched and possessed. And then they and all their friends will have their way with you again and again and again.
The windows of the little cottage are all open so that the songbirds may come and go as they please.