The Blair House

"Look at her," said the real estate agent. "Ain't she a beauty?"

Angela Blair stared up at the house as the man's car slowed to a stop. "It's...it's definitely something."

If Angela had to describe Blair house, the word that she would have started with was Spooky. It was tall and brooding and grim, with peeling paint and windows that seemed to gape open in the light of day. It looked like nothing less than the set of some grim gothic horror story; the sort of place that practically demanded the presence of a ghost, ghoul or at the very least a bloody murder or two. Isolated too; it had taken them a full hour to drive through thick woodland forests to reach it. Angela decided that she hated the house on sight.

Just as well it wasn't hers.

"Now, the Blair House is famous in these parts," said the estate agent- a big, bluff sort of man that had been giving her creepy used car salesman vibes since she'd met him. "Being as the family name is an old and important one in these parts. Why, this house has to be hundreds of years old." He caught her expression and then added quickly, "Oh, don't worry. It has all of the new additions as well- you aren't going to be walking around with lanterns or anything like that. Your aunt made sure that she had everything set up nice." He smiled at Angela in a way that was almost certainly not meant to be sleezy.

Angela did her best to smile back as they walked into the house. The estate agent fiddled with the keys for a while and then they stepped into the entry hall.

Angela blinked. The house was big and old- she could see that it was big and old- but she wasn't really ready for just how big and old that the entrance hall was. A set of formal stairs led up to the second floor landing, all covered in tattered red carpet. There was a door to one side that looked like it led to a library of some sort- or at least something involving a lot of old, dusty shelves. Angela walked around into a formal dining room, complete with a small chandelier. She breathed out. "Aunt Becca lived here all alone?"

"Yup." The man sighed. "Place is pretty worn down but all things equal she didn't do too bad a job at looking after it. Don't know quite how she managed it, you know."

"How did she..."

"No-one knows, truth be told. She was always a bit of a recluse, you know. Kids used to call her the 'Goblin Lady. Mind you, all of the Blairs have been a bit-" He caught her expression. "Uh. Pardon me."

Angela sighed. She'd grown up far away from this little town, her father having left the area in his youth for reasons that were never adequately explained. Truth be told, she didn't even know she had an Aunt until she and her brother had learned that she'd passed on, leaving them a surprisingly large fortune- and this creepy old house. Well, given her brother this creepy old house, but she could hardly get upset at that. It's not like she had a family to-

She closed her eyes and tried to smile again at the estate agent. By the way he cringed it didn't seem to have worked. "Thanks for all of your help."

"So, will you be living here alone, or..."

"No. The house is actually going to my brother. He'll be arriving in three days with this family." His beautiful, happy family. "I offered to help clean it up and get it ready for when they come." Give the sad old, divorced aunt something to do.

The man nodded. "That sounds awful nice. Listen, you call me if you need anything, will you? Telephones are up; electricity's connected, although you tend to get blackouts with storms, I'm afraid."

"Wifi?"

He checked his notes. "It should be set up in a few days. You might have to manage with just the telephone until then. Connectivity out here aint the best." He shrugged apologetically. "Um, is there anything else that you might..."

"No. I'm good."

"Well, alright then." He paused. "Listen, this house has a lot of strange stories about it. Weird stuff. You know... kooky."

"Kooky?" She nearly wanted to sing along, mysterious and spooky? But the man just shrugged. "Just feel free to call if anything goes wrong."

"Okay."

She sat down on an old, creaking wooden chair in that cobwebbed house and listened to the sound of the man departing. Then she sighed and began to explore.

It bore repeating: Blair House was huge. Ten bedrooms. A formal dining room. Three bathrooms. A study, full of dusty shelves and lined with books just short of moldering. A vast and impressive kitchen with- and for the first time Angela actually felt the presence of her aunt in this house as something other than a history lesson- a small table and chair nearby, still set for one.

She lugged her cases upstairs and unpacked her things into one of the bedrooms. Everything about the room- the sheets she found in one of the closets, the furniture, the lighting fixtures- had a strange 1950's feel to it. There was no plastic or electronics; nothing sleek or modern. Everything had the solid, bulky look of an antique. She wondered how much of it would be sold off. Surely David and Helena wouldn't want any of the old stuff? Her nephew and niece were eighteen, for fuck's sake.

She walked downstairs and did her best to find a spot in the house with a reliable signal. When that failed she pulled out a decaying on yellow pages and went hunting for pizza places.

An hour later she put down the last of the pizza feast. She'd have to go for a food run tomorrow- the fridge (thankfully functional) was bare. She had managed to find a bottle of red wine, now depleted by a good third. She poured herself another glass and sat out on the porch while the sun set in the distance.

This was, she knew, nothing more than a break. A break from Tom. From The Divorce. From the slow, splintering disintegration of her life. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the precise moment when they'd drifted apart. When things had dried up in the bedroom, when he'd started to work late. Told her he was working late.

When she began to notice how threadbare his excuses were becoming. How alone she felt even before he left.

She shuddered. She was thirty-five years old and back to square one; no husband, no children. A career in publishing that seemed to be going nowhere. a life that seemed to be full of nothing but emptiness and regrets.

Enough.

The water was on, wasn't it? And there was a tub in the bathroom near her room. If she was going to wallow then she would damn well wallow properly. She got up and, clutching the wine bottle, walked into the house. She passed through the great hall, where the shadows shifted as the air seemed to murmur with unheard whispers. There was a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye-

Wait.

What?

She turned and saw it again; a flash of action as though she had just caught someone stepping out of the room. She followed the path of the movement and stopped at a doorway.

She looked down at a short passage that terminated in a small, thick-looking door. Something had been carved onto the door; some complicated symbol involving a lot of squiggly lines. There was nothing in the hallway that might have made the movement- no rat, no stray cat and certainly no intruder.

Angela walked up to the doorway and tried the handle. It opened.

Beyond was a set of cellar steps that lead down into darkness. The walls were bricked, heavy-looking and bare. There was no floor in sight; merely the stretching abyss of total darkness.

Angela stared at the cellar entrance for a long time.

"Nope," she said, shutting the door and walking away.

The bath helped. Huge and heavy-looking, it filled with piping hot water from the taps. Angela rooted through the bathroom cabinet until she found a collection of bath salts which she liberally dumped into the water. Then she slowly stripped down.

She took a moment to take a look at herself in the mirror. She was, at thirty-five, still attractive- dark brown hair that she'd cut short after The Divorce, a slim body that still managed- for now- to push against the cruel, entropic drag of gravity. She'd lost weight, although that was less to good dieting habits and more the miasma of misery that set upon her during The Divorce that had culled her hunger for months. She sighed and stared at the woman in the mirror and wondered precisely how long it would take for everything to start to fade in earnest; for her body to catch up with her heart.

She sighed. Focus on the tub, she thought. Drink your wine and soak in the tub and above all, stop thinking about The Divorce.

And especially stop thinking of It with capitalization.

She followed her advice and sunk down low, letting out a low groan. Tomorrow. She'd clean and fix up the place a little tomorrow and the next day, so that when her brother showed up the place would look nice. And she'd pat herself on the back for being a good sister and aunt, and spend a few days basking in the warmth of her family and then go back home to that shitty little apartment where she'd be all alone now that The D-

Okay, seriously. Stop. Think about something else.

She was single. That was something positive in that, wasn't it? Her marriage bed had been stale for a very, very long time. She could look forward to fresh lovers; fresh smiles, fresh bodies in her bed, fresh hands to hold and touch her.

(No-one would want her. She was being delusional.)

(Stop that.)

She sighed and put down the wineglass. One hand moved to touch her breast as she pushed herself towards fantasy. How would she meet him? She pictured tall, handsome strangers, their skins and hair and features blurring into one another as she discarded one and seized on another; their only similarities the eager desire in their eyes as she took them to bed for the first time. That eager lust that died from Tom's eyes for far too long.

(She was going to die al-)

Her hands began to slither down to between her legs and pinched gently on her nipples. Soft murmurs filled her head, sibilant whispers that she could never quite understand. She pictured stripping down in front of them in some softly-lit bedroom, seeing their eyes roam over her body; seeing their trousers bulge with anticipation. Seeing them strip down in front of her, firm muscles ready for her to touch and kiss. Kind men; rough men; gentle men and men like animals, their hands on her body, touching her, exiting her, just like the hands on her breast and between her legs and caressing her ass-

She shrieked, shifting. There was another hand on her body. Another hand that wasn't hers.

Her eyes snapped open and she trashed in the tub, sending water splashing over the sides. She looked around for the other source of the foreign touch on her ass; then, franticly groping underneath the surface of the water.

Nothing. No-one.

She rose from the bath, shaking. She thew on an old dressing-gown that she had found earlier and retreated to the her roo- the room she was staying at in her brother's house. She sat down on the bed and waited to calm down.

It was nothing. It was a mistake. There must have been a bump in the tub or something dropped in the water; something that she brushed up against as she shifted around.

(Only it wasn't brushing up against her. It was caressing her. Stroking her.)

It- it was nothing more than just her imagination. Part of her fantasy. Just her over-active imagination. Nothing more.

(No. It felt real.)

She took a long sigh and retrieved her glass. She dug out her ipad from her pack and opened up her kindle app. She read one of her thrillers and finished the rest of her glass of wine.

Eventually she put her kindle away to recharge, lay down on the bed and closed her eyes.

She dreamt of Tom. Not the cold, loveless man that she had divorced but the young, hunky, energetic boy that she'd met. Tall and laughing with the sort of cocky arrogance that her youthful self had thought made him the master of the world. She dreamt of the two of them running through a forest clearing, picnic basket in hand. They'd told their parents they were going camping in the woods.

(Their parents remembered picnicking in the woods. Their parents had probably shaken their heads and hoped they had taken protection.)

The two of them dropped the picnic basket and laid out the blankets. There was no talk, no pretense at reaching for the food. Angela laughed as she shimmied out of her shirt, smiling as her firm bouncing breasts were revealed to her lover's eyes. She didn't hesitate but stripped herself out of her shorts and panties. She took a moment to close her eyes and let the sun and the wind play on her naked, nymph-like form.

She was young and she was strong and she was naked in front of her handsome, virile lover. Everything was perfect with the world.

She opened her eyes. Tom was somehow already naked, his big fat erection hard from the sight of her. Giggling, she dropped to her knees and stalked to him like a hunting cat, the tips of the grass tickling her thighs and her breasts. Without hesitation she licked his lovely hard cock, savoring the taste of flesh and sweat. He laughed and gently stroked her hair like a pet as she kissed and sucked, losing herself in his heat and hardness and wonderful male scent. She was already hot and wet, the grass like fingers trailing over her pussy lips, like soft lips on her breasts; she groaned at the sensation. There was a murmur in the wind like someone whispering secrets in her ear; half-heard erotic promises that made her heart beat faster even as she bobbed her head down, letting the slobber spill from her lips as she worshiped his huge cock. Tom's clawed hands were on her hips, her breasts, trailing her shoulders, travelling in the wind. She was gently pushed back onto the grass, his erection filling her sight, the soft grass beneath her like blankets as his fanged mouth sucked and kissed her body, his throbbing cock pressing against her mouth, other mouths on her pussy, more hands travelling over her body and then-

She woke up, thrashing, just as something slid between her lips. She sputtered and the sensation of a cock, hot and ready and slick with pre-cum, vanished. She screamed and looked around, the air full of darkness and whispers.

In the half-moonlight she saw things dart away from the bed. They vanished into the darkness like scurrying rats; all but one, which froze halfway to the door. It turned around.

It humanoid but small- the size of a child- and hunched over like a chimpanzee. It's eyes were bright and gleaming, it's face oddly foxlike. Two horns jutted from its head and it smiled at her with a fanged mouth. A cock- stiff and slick and oddly large for such a small creature- jutted from between its legs.

It stared at her for a handful of heartbeats. The whispering in her dreams returned like a cresting ocean wave.

Then it vanished, quick as a shadow, and she was alone.

She did not sleep that night. She turned on her lights and waited until dawn came.

Dawn brought with it calm and calm brought with it rationality. Angela could not have been molested in the bath by invisible hands. Angela could not have been attacked during her dream by strange little goblin things. She was a divorcee in her mid-thirties with a bad publishing career and a promising life as a cat-loving spinster in the future, not the character in a Steven King book. She was stressed from the changes in her life and from the atmosphere of the creepy old house. That was all.

Angela was fine. Angela was safe. Angela did not need to panic. Angela ignored the faint whispers as she walked down the stairs to her breakfast of re-heated pizza.

She drove into town in her rented car. The nearby town was small and- well, she was definitely going to call it country. It was nestled in the depths of a mountain valley with a small and surprisingly tidy-looking main street surrounded by a web of residential suburbs, logging stations, bars, service stations and other far-flung additions. She drove around until she noted a supermarket. She got out and bought herself enough supplies to last out the next two days. On a whim she stopped off and bought herself a coffee at a cute little café. The rich, strong caffeine cut trickled out through her body and burned away the rest of her foreboding.

The boy who brough her the coffee was young and handsome and reminded her a little of the Tom in her dreams. She wondered what he would look like naked; what his cock would look like when it was hard and ready for her. He smiled at her in a shy, uncertain way and she realized that he had caught her looking. She retreated, finishing her coffee quickly and leaving, chastising herself for drooling over a boy probably half her age.

She came home and unpacked her groceries. Then she got to work. She cleaned and mopped and scrubbed. Her Aunt was at least modern enough to supply herself with a hoover, which she put to good use. She put a load in the washer; Jeff's family would not be sleeping in musty sheets. She made herself a simple sandwich for lunch and worked through another coffee as she set herself towards more cleaning.

The work was peaceful, if tiring, but she welcomed the ache in her legs as she pushed herself to get at least the bedrooms completed before nightfall. She put some saved music on her smart phone- damn that rotten signal! - and worked, humming to the songs. She thought she heard hidden whispers in the lyrics; words muttered just outside of her range of hearing. She ignored them, busying herself in preparing the house she did not own for a family that did not need her so better to distract herself from what was waiting for her when this was all over.

It very nearly worked.

By the time the sun sunk over the horizon she had finished cleaning the upstairs bedrooms. She lay back, feeling oddly energized despite the ache in her legs and back. She stripped off and washed the grime from her body, stopping to peer at herself in the mirror.

She was, she realized, horny. Had been all afternoon; had been all morning, since she had woken. The fear and then the work had kept it bottled up but now, staring at her naked body in the window, she felt it return in full force.

She reached up and ran one fingertip over a breast, feeling the skin dimple, seeing her nipple stiffen in anticipation. Her other hand moved slowly down to touch her mons. She closed her eyes and thought of young Tom last night; how he had tasted. How he had looked. How she had looked when she was young and fearless and not broken and alone.

As her hand slipped down further, as it began to stroke and touch long-familiar points of pleasure, she idly wondered if she could have picked up the boy at the coffee store. Would he have come with her? Would he be interested? Could she have called him over to take a second order and whispered into his ear, promising the pleasure of her body for the afternoon? Would he had said yes? Of course he would. Of course he would have come into the house with her and taken her down to the-

Then she heard it.

The sound was unmistakable; the creak of a door being opened ajar. It lasted for several seconds. It wasn't the sound of a door swinging in the wind; not the sound of an old house settling. It was slow. It was certain. It was unmistakably deliberate.

She felt the fear ripple through her like an electric shock; lust blurred and mixed with the adrenaline spike for a shocking, powerful heartbeat. And then the fear rose higher and she bit back a shriek. Stumbling, she grabbed her sweatpants and shirt and shoved them on. Then she reached for the her phone.

Fuck rationality. Fuck not needlessly panicking. Fuck being a frog in a slow-boiling pot. Fuck this house. She dialed nine-one-one and held it up to her ear.

Nothing. She looked at her phone and saw that her signal had fluttered away. She bit back a horrified giggle as she moved to the door and opened it, shuddering at the way that the hinged screamed her location. She stepped out onto the second story landing and looked down at the great hall.