Edward Lee - The Chosen

She could barely see. The candles backlit the figures to crisp silhouettes. One figure was a woman—Donna could tell by the contour of hips and breasts—and the other was a man. But as her eyes tried to focus up she noticed one more thing. These two figures, these dream-escorts, were—

They’re…bald.

She could tell by the silhouette-shapes of their heads that both of them—the women included—were bald.

And a third bald figure seemed to be standing aside.

Who are all these bald people? Donna thought.

A moment later, though, she didn’t care.

It didn’t matter.

Her senses slipped into a chaotic swirl. Hands prodded at her, removing her fishnet bra and stockings, snapping off the scarlet panties. The three bald dream-chaperones stepped back, yet other figures continued to probe her. Another woman slithered forward, breasts rubbing, and in her sloppy kisses, Donna dully noted that the woman had no teeth. Then yet another woman, a brunette, lowered her face to Donna’s sex…

Before her stupor finally claimed her, Donna managed to lean up. She’d never seen these two women who tended to her. They seemed sluggish, woozy. One mouth alternately sucked her nipples, while the other quite pointedly sucked her sex. Beyond this, however, and past the three bald silhouettes, she thought she could see even more figures, many more.

Watching.

And there were sounds. Glasses clinking. Silverware ticking against plates. Soft, unintelligible chatter. Was she dreaming of some outré dinner party? And what of these two sluggish women in bed with her? Am I a latent lesbian? came Donna’s muted thought. Why am I dreaming about women?

She’d never been with a woman before, so perhaps the dream was telling her something about herself. Soon, in the dream, she was coming. The brunette’s mouth expertly plied her sex, a finger slipping in at prime moments, which caused her loins to jettison blade-sharp pulses of bliss. Her pleasure seemed to gush…

And her stupor deepened. Soon, the figures more distant became impatient with mere watching. They approached the bed, perhaps a half-dozen of them. Donna, through her strange haze, couldn’t really see them, and she didn’t need to. She didn’t care. The candlelight dimmed; each orgasm that claimed her only left her in want of more. Soon the bed was acrawl with figures, and things were being done to her that she had never even thought of.

And as the night lolled on, Donna began doing things in return, which beggared description, reveling in her infidelity and newfound decadence.

But none of that bothered her.

Because it was only a dream.

It’s only a dream, she assured herself, as she admitted yet another stout, musky penis into her mouth.

— | — | —

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Vera wandered through the main dining room, checking the place setting and flower arrangements. Lately it seemed she had nothing to do before opening but that: wander. The early afternoon light looked drab in the gaps between the heavy gray draperies. In the far wing, one of the housekeeping staff seemed to grimace whilst laying out more place settings and teepeed linen napkins.

A solitude, drab as the winter light, fell down on her: The Carriage House felt dead. What was wrong now? She couldn’t stop calling up the memory of her encounter with the blond prostitute, and how so much of what she’d said corroborated Paul’s explanation. And the business with Chief Mulligan disappearing—she knew it had nothing to do with her, or The Inn, but it still seemed so strange. Earlier, in her office, she’d gotten a call from Morton-Gibson Ltd., someone inquiring as to the whereabouts of one Mr. Terrence Taylor. Vera told him all she knew, that Mr. Taylor had checked in but had forgotten to check out. This, too, seemed strange. But that wasn’t all that bothered her—

“You look bothered,” the soft but solid voice drifted out. Feldspar stood by the hostess station, eying her. He wore fine black slacks and a loose gray-silk shirt, diamond cuff links winking. Bothered? Vera thought. Me? What could she tell him? Nothing, really, so she lied, “I’m fine, Mr. Feldspar.”

He unlocked the glass cognac case and poured himself a shot of Louis XIII. Vera winced when he threw it back neat. That stuff’s a hundred years old and cost five hundred fifty dollars a bottle, Vera wished she could scold. You don’t throw it back like it’s Old Grand Dad. Of course, it was his; he could do what he wanted with it. He could wash his hands with it if he so desired. “You’re fine, you say?” he seemed to challenge. “Frankly, I’ve never seen you appear so…disconsolate.”

Well, I think someone was in my room last night. Is that something worth being disconsolate about?

No, it wouldn’t work. What could she possibly tell him? Last night, her dream had returned, her fantasy of The Hands. The Hands had caressed her into ecstacy, after which their phantom possessor had made love to her in the graven dark. Well, no, not love —she’d been fucked, roughly and primitively, her face shoved down into the pillows so intently she thought she’d smother, her buttocks slapped till it stung, her hair yanked like a bell cord on an ice cream truck. Yet in spite of the dream’s flagrant violence, she’d enjoyed every minute of it.

And when she’d awakened…

She swore she’d heard a click.

As if her bedroom door had just clicked shut.

Suddenly it hadn’t felt like a dream at all. Her sex ached, and her buttocks seemed—yes—it seemed to sting. And hadn’t Donna reported having bizarre dreams too, undeniably sexual dreams?

Laved in sweat, she’d lurched from bed, donned her robe, and stepped quickly into the hall. No, this hadn’t seemed like a dream at all. It had seemed real in some hazy unsorted way. She even harbored the consideration that maybe, just maybe, someone had been coming into her room all these nights. Molesting her. Raping her.

In the dim hallway she’d seen the figure, its back to her as it walked away. “Who are you?” she called dizzily out. She’d always believed the dream-lover was Kyle, but this figure didn’t look like him at all. “Who are you!” she called out again.

When the figure turned at her call she saw at once that it wasn’t Kyle.

And she knew that it must be a dream.

No, the figure wasn’t Kyle. It wasn’t even human.

The memory snapped like a thin bone, bringing her back to Feldspar, the dining room, reality. “I just haven’t been sleeping well,” she said. “Bad dreams.”

“I’m sorry,” Feldspar offered. “I suppose we all have them from time to time. They say that dreams, particularly nightmares, represent abstract depictions of our darkest desires.”

If that’s true, I need to be locked up, Vera thought. She remembered the dream-figure’s face, once it had turned: pallid, malformed, hideous. Rheumy, urine-colored eyes peered back at her with irregular irises. A cluster of pale slimy tentacles emerged from a mouth like a knife-slit in meat…

When you have a nightmare, Vera, you don’t fool around. But what in her subconscious could be so demented that her mind would produce such awful images in her dreams? Am I that screwed up? she wondered.

Feldspar obliquely smiled, something he rarely did. “I’m very enthused, Ms. Abbot. Things are just going so well.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Vera said, though she still had yet to see any evidence of The Inn’s success. Evidently, room service was still blowing the restaurant away. “Oh,

I meant to mention something to you. Remember Chief Mulligan? He seems to have disappeared.”