It was late morning in Hollow Falls. The sleepy little town was old and boring, to most. Outsiders looked at it as a go-nowhere town where the residents were born and died, generation after generation. They weren't wrong.
Very few moved on to anything outside the town. It did have a reputation for high school drop-outs who were almost always declared runaways. So, at least some people were leaving.
Inside the local library the study room was booked and inside it were the only two young people in Hollow Falls who had any big plans. Katie and Jeremy were standing at the folding banquet table covered in photo albums and boxes of family artifacts.
She had just turned 18 two weeks earlier and Jeremy had done two years of community college and was headed to University life two states away.
The realtor, who had become kind of a historian on their ancestral home over on Reedy Street, had agreed to show them the house due to their interest in their family history.
Growing up, Katie and Jeremy had been told the old house on Reedy Street was where their grandparents on their mother's side had lived until they died in a car accident back in the sixties.
Their mother was their only child and hadn't lived there since her youth. Before that their family had owned the house going back as far as history had the house on record.
The realtor was an older man, about in his forties, and looked at them nervously. It was an awkward position for him to be in since the house had gained a reputation for being haunted and he was privy to information about their ancestors that they were not. An issue that he did his best to handle with grace.
It didn't help him at all that he was trying his hardest not to be noticed taking glances at Katie's pretty little 4'11" frame and cute little B cup tits. He particularly didn't want to get caught looking by Jeremy who seemed to be quite a protective brother and built like a personal trainer. Almost twenty years old and could surely kill him with his bare hands.
The realtor continued what he'd been saying. "So after the last residents of the house died, your grandparents, your mother boarded with the family of one of your mother's school friends."
"Who are these people?" Jeremy asked, pointing at a picture of a couple standing in front of the house.
"Those," the realtor said, "are your great grandparents. They were the last generation to creep folks out around here."
Jeremy gave the realtor a look that prompted him to apologize and the realtors eyes nervously went to Jeremy's biceps as if he was reminding himself that one punch would kill him.
Jeremy actually didn't seem like a hothead and Katie was a quiet little girl who seemed interested but on the timid side.
The realtor got the idea that something tense was going on between them that they weren't talking about. It was as if he was being overprotective to make up for something. But he figured it could just be nerves or anticipation about learning their history.
"I'm sorry," the realtor said again, "I'm in a real awkward situation here. You gotta understand, the house has been vacant so long, this generation has kinda forgotten, and nobody links it to you."
He turned the photo of the great grandparents to face their great grandchildren. "But these folks and your whole family before them are still remembered for being some not very nice people."
"What's not nice about them?" Katie asked quietly.
"Look," the realtor said, "are you sure you kids want to know this stuff?"
"What's this?" Jeremy asked pointing to a picture of what looked like an out of control bonfire.
The realtor glanced at each of them and took in a nice long look at Katie's chest while they both had their heads down looking at the photo.
"That is your grandparents trying to make everything right. The house was built in the early 1700s, your ancestors were wealthy but well known for practicing witchcraft."
"Witchcraft?" Katie said in a soft whisper.
"Yep," the realtor said, "and all through the 1800s. In the early 1900s, right around the great depression, they gave up witchcraft for the cult life."
He considered asking them if they really wanted to hear all of this but he knew the answer.
"Around that time one of your ancestors married a woman who liked to hold down young women for him to have sex with. They lured many young ladies, anywhere between 18 and 28, with newspaper ads for service jobs- maid, nurse, nanny, you name it. They would come in from out of town and fall right into their trap."
"How do you know their ages?" Jeremy asked.
"It's all in there," the realtor said passing him a book. "That's like their trophy book. When the women answered the ads they would log her age and name in their little rape book there and then notate her description once they saw her."
Jeremy turned the pages. "What do the names at the tops of the pages mean? It's like they're chapters."
"The book was passed through the generations. Those are the men who had it. Generation after generation. It was a sex cult. They didn't marry until they found a woman who would go along with their fetish. Many unsuitable women ended up in the book."
"Looks like the men in every generation had the same type. The descriptions of all these women... they're all very small," Jeremy said.
"Huh," the realtor replied as if he'd never noticed, but his eyes undressed Katie again, this time from her tits all the way down to her ass.
Jeremy didn't see it. His eyes looked over the other books laying on the table.
"This one is some sort of diary of the witchcraft years. Rituals, recipes, and spells it seems. The other is a sort of scrapbook and journal of the cult. It goes up to your great grandparents and stops. Your grandparents wanted no part in any of it."
Katie's eyes examined the photo of the fire. "They tried to make things right? What are all the things in the fire?"
"Anything they could find that was used in their ancestor's evil deeds. Anything from whips to leather restraints. You see that large thing in the middle of the pile that looks kinda like a burning dining room chair? That's their famous rape rack. They had leather belts nailed to the floor in their rape room. They'd put a girl over the rack and strap her wrists and ankles to the floor, you know, down on her hands and knees...?"
A look from Jeremy made him shut up.
"Is this a family tree?" Katie said, changing the subject. They had struggled with finding anything concrete on the ancestry website they were using. "What are these little notes next to the names?"
"Okay," the realtor explained, "going back to the witchcraft years, as far back as anything we've found, they kept track of their bloodline. Female descendants with a direct bloodline to the original... well, witch I guess, they called primaries. Secondaries are marriages, adoptions and male descendants."
"And what did that mean?" Katie asked.
"Not sure," the realtor shrugged. "The old timers in town think the family thought the primaries had the witchcraft in them. They pass on these local legends about your ancestors having pass over parties, to see the dead primaries and secondaries off to the afterlife. A living primary had to perform a ritual at the party. The ritual is in that book."
Jeremy turned the family tree toward him. "Pretty easy family tree to follow. Looks like each generation only had one daughter. Hell, more than half of them never had more than one child. There's a brother now and then but mostly just women." He looked at Katie. "That makes you and mom primaries."
"Whatever that means," Katie said.
"Well according to your ancestors, it means you have control of your relatives souls. You can pass them over to the afterlife after they die. Something your grandmother never did for your great grandparents. They had their little bonfire instead. The old timers think that's why they died in that crash. Family curse. It was supposedly very shameful for some reason. It was a family tradition to die in the house. Don't ask me why."
Jeremy began putting the things back in the cardboard box they had come from. "This stuff for us?"
"Technically the bank owns it. Same as the house. After decades, trust me, nobody remembers it," the realtor said. "Listen, if you kids want to see the house then we'd better go. You need to be out by dark. That's when all the creepy shit happens."
"What creepy stuff happens?" Katie asked.
"Pretty much everyone who's messed with the house at night has gone crazy. Halloween's the worst. Always some teenagers trying to be brave, all of them are currently declared runaways."
"What, like they just leave?"
"Pizza girl went to the house on a prank call once," the realtor nodded, "she left too. Cleaning lady worked past dark once prepping the house for a showing, same. Left town."
"We promise not to leave town," Jeremy said.
"All right tough guy. I'll drive you. You said it's three blocks from where you live now? You kids can lock up and walk home whenever you're done. I'm not staying in that house longer than I have to. Remember we're expecting thunderstorms tonight, all the more reason to leave before dark."
The realtor pulled into a driveway through a one-car hole in hedges that framed the entire front yard. He explained as they got out, "this was originally a sitting garden. One of the more recent generations paved it and it's pretty much just a parking area now."
He handed Katie the keys, Jeremy was carrying the box of artifacts, and let them lead the way to the front door. His eyes never left Katie's ass.
"Remember," the realtor urged, "out by dark. "If you're still in there after dark, well... I'm not coming back The entire street is abandoned. I can't sell any houses on Reedy Street. You're on your own."
"You've given us enough evidence that I might believe what you say about our ancestors," Jeremy said, "but seeing how they're dead I'm not expecting them to give us too much trouble."
They watched as the realtor turned his car around in the hedge box that was the house's front yard and drove away.
Katie put the key in the door. "Here we go."
The front room was vast and grandly decorated. An elaborate staircase wound up to the upper floor on the right side.
Under the upstairs balcony a set of double doors led to a large library with antique leather chairs and a fireplace.
A dusty grand piano sat next to the foot of the staircase. They traveled up the stairs and found the bedrooms in the middle, directly above the library.
When they walked across the upstairs balcony, passing the bedroom doors, they found an identical staircase winding down on the other side, making the house a sort of yin and yang design.
At the bottom of that staircase was a grand dining room, behind the library, the direct opposite of the front room. Large double doors with windows opened to the back yard. Above the doors was a wall of windows. The back wall seemed to open directly to the outdoors.
After the initial tour of the house they went room by room exploring artifacts that hadn't been removed. They started in the dining room, where they had been after the walk-through.
