The Secrets of Eseme Bellows

I fled Vermillion and the weirdness which I had seen in that hospital room as quickly as my car would take me.

I wish there was more to the story than that, I honestly do.

There I was, a hip free spirited young woman looking for the west coast vibe, and it is no point of pride that I abandoned the whole thought at the first instance of strange occurrence. I mean, what else was I looking for in California? I'd gone west to be a hippie, to be an open minded and free spirited woman, unconstrained by the conventions, yet there I was, running scared at the first sign of the unaccountably strange.

I'd always thought there was more to me than that.

Of course I never imagined that I would find myself in a situation like the one which confronted me in that hospital room. No amount of open mindedness could encompass that scene, that awful incident between the woman I had rescued and the visitor who had called upon her.

Even as I fled west along the seemingly endless highway my mind was full of images of what had occurred, the grotesque image of Ginny Bellow's body, the piercings and the bell and the silver chains that adorned her. The wide spread thighs of Violet Dawes. The dripping and expectant pussy between them and Ginny's tongue snaking out to flick upon her distended clitoris...

But even as I drove it was not the sights I had been privy to which caused me the most unease, nor the odd circumstances that had brought me to that room as witness. No, it was something else and something deeper.

It was the words which the women had spoken, the strange narrative they had sketched between them. Strange names...Arshinov and Eseme and whispers of obscure dark fates. I know I could have ignored all that, could have pushed it altogether from my mind as the babble of a mad woman were it not for Ginny Bellow's words before I fled.

"Run. It will not matter you poor silly bitch...It's too late already."

That didn't seem to me like madness or confusion. It didn't seem to me like it had been a mistake. It sounded like a promise or an oath, and I had no intention of sticking around to discover just what was implied.

And even as those words echoed time and again in my mind as I raced through the darkened hours, I was troubled by my response to them. Not the fear or discomfort which what had happened provoked in me, but rather the physical and unwanted effect that it had upon my body.

I had grown wet between my thighs at the sight of Ginny Bellow's body, at the terrible moment when I knew that she would place her lips upon Violet's offered pussy. Somehow my body had been turned on by the events within that room, even as my mind rebelled against them. I would have liked to pretend that it was not the case, to have denied that it ever happened at all, but even as a drove I could feel the damp heat spreading beneath my jeans, could smell the fragrance of my own sex filling the whole of the Pontiac, until I had to drive with the windows down, until I had to chain smoke cigarettes just to keep the fragrant truth at bay.

There was no explanation for it, no excuse that I could offer to myself, other than the simple fact that part of me had been aroused by what I had witnessed.

As I look back upon it now, I wonder what I might have done differently. I wonder if there was some exit off that highway that I missed, some turn I could have made that would have led from one story and into another. A road which would have led me to the shores of California and the life which I had imagined for myself. I scour my memories and I search for that second when I could have gone another way...Even now I cannot say for sure.

I still debate inside myself, if I had just pushed the car a little harder, if I had just pushed myself a little further...But I didn't. I couldn't.

I had been awake by then for more than twenty four hours, and I was exhausted, frightened and confused. The adrenaline of my flight from terror was beginning to fade as the sun came up over the horizon and I found myself speeding through the red rock landscape of the South Dakota bad lands.

Maybe it was the first rays of the light, that childhood assumption that nothing awful can happen in daylight. Or maybe it was the knowledge that I was only a few miles from the border of Wyoming. Whatever the reason, as the sun rose in the badlands I took a breath and decided it was safe enough.

There was no sign of anyone on the highway behind me, I had not seen a set of headlights all night, but even so I was rattled enough to turn onto a small dirt road and follow it until a dead end among the rock formations before I stopped the car. Even as I was willing myself to be brave I was still rattled enough to want to be out of sight of the road. I think I intended to get out of the car for a couple of minutes, to stretch my legs and see if movement could shake off some of the strangeness that had enveloped me. I didn't make it. No sooner had I pulled the keys from the ignition than I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

I knew at once that I was dreaming. There was no uncertainty about that.

I found myself sitting on a stone bench, shivering in the icy wind of a city which I did not know. I looked around at the dark tenement houses that loomed all around me, but I saw no light in any window, there were no cars upon the empty boulevard. I took a deep breath then. I closed my eyes and willed myself to dream of someplace warm. Some place where I would not be alone.

When I opened my eyes I was still there on the stone bench, in the same cold and darkened city, but I was no longer there alone. A woman stood in the center of the empty street, watching me and saying nothing. Even though she was only ten yards from me, there was something about the light or the drifting snow which prevented me from making out the features of her face.

I could hear my own voice carrying out into the silence, telling the woman that it was alright, that I was not really there.

"I'm somewhere else." I heard myself say. "It''s ok...I won't stay long."

And at once I heard her voice drifting all around me, "There may come a time when you will wish that you had stayed...It is cold here, yes, but at least it is lonely...Sometimes there is great comfort in being alone."

In the dream I shrugged my shoulders, searched my pockets for a cigarette, for matches. "I like people. I'm going to a place where there are lots of them...so I won't have to be alone."

"That is certainly true." I heard the woman say. "But even so you may not love it as much as you thought you would. Or worse, you may love it far too much Rebecca Marsh."

"What's wrong with that? In loving the place you find yourself?"

I think the woman began to laugh then, a strange sound that reverberated through the snow and the silence of empty buildings, refracted on the panes of dark and vacant windows. All at once there was a cigarette between my fingers, and a match was burning in my other hand.

"Take your pleasure where you can." The woman said as I placed the cigarette between my lips. "I think you will miss this place in time. The place you are going...it is not the place that you think."

"So where am I going?" I asked, distracted watching the blue smoke of my cigarette drifting into the pale white sky.

"Many places." Came the answer. "They are looking for you now."

"Who?"

"You could call them my children...but they do not really know me. They know my name, all too well, they know my name. But none of them have ever seen my face. Not for all their greatest efforts, not for all their sacrifices."

"I can't see your face." I pointed out.

"That is because it is secret." The woman told me. "That is because it is a mystery."

I smiled then, remembering something from a long time ago, another place, another life. I told the woman that I had always loved mysteries.

"Yes." she said, and even though I could not see her face it seemed to me that she must have smiled. "You do,don't you...would you like to know a secret Rebecca?"

In my dream I thought it over, and I told the woman I would like to see her face.

She laughed once more, and she told me that it was only because I had not seen it.

"In time you may...you are not yet like them...you could still take a different road, or even taking the same road as all my children you may find yourself reaching a much different end. That is up to you Rebecca. The secret I would offer you is all your own, and just for you. It will not seem like much, and the price for it is exorbitant...your body, your will, your sanity...maybe your life. Would you like to know it?"

"Who would want to know something like that?" I asked her.

"Everybody, Silly." The woman in the street replied. "Everybody dreams of secrets, no matter how small...I will give you one if you like...if not...then not."

Inside that dream I must have thought it over, maybe I weighed all that had been said. But I cannot remember those moments now, they are gone along with so much else. I only know that I told the woman yes.

"Tell me a secret then." I told her.

And the woman did.

She said," Keep this always in your mind, and always to yourself. Initiation is a two way street, it is a door that once opened will always be open. There are people who are looking for you now Rebecca. They have seen your face, and you have glimpsed some of theirs. I will tell you plainly girl...they will find you. They do not lie when they tell you that there is no running. Soon, very soon, they will find you Rebecca.

When they do, I want you to remember the secret. Through it all, remember this: Initiation is a two way street. When you are in, you are in. what you do with your initiation is up to you though...it will not seem that way, but always remember. Your life is still your own. The choices are there for you to make."

There was a sound then, from far away. Thunder in the pale white sky or the echo of an engine. All at once the city which surrounded me seemed to shift, all at once the sky was black and clear and where there had been endless row houses and empty windows there was great dark sentinel pines and the shadowed trunks of elm and oak. All at once the street was gone, and a woman I could not quite make out was moving away through the gloom of the forest, and even though I knew it was a dream I could not help but feel afraid to be alone there in that lonely city which had become a forest.

"Wait!" I called out after her hazy form. " What is coming? What is going to happen to me?"

The woman's voice came back, drifting soft through the pines as though from far away.

"Wake up Rebecca Marsh. Wake up and find out."

There was another peal of thunder, the world inside the dream began to shake and roar.

My eyes flashed open and still the world was roaring, and the world beyond the Pontiac was all dust and rage and dark shapes swirling, screaming, lost within it. In that first instant I believed that the dream still held me and I only wished to wake, but no matter how hard I tried to focus waking I could not, and swiftly I knew that I was awake already, that I was still within my car in the Badlands pull off and that I was not alone.

I began to understand and with understanding came the horror. I screamed as a thousand tiny pebbles crashed against the glass of the pontiac, as tires kicked the stones from the hard packed earth, as headlights flashed through the dust and I knew that the threat was all too real.

And it was as though my screams were a signal to those riders in the dust storm, as though my screams were what they had been waiting for. As my terror burst forth from my lungs, those engines dwindled and then were gone, and I was screaming alone in an empty silence as the red dust of the badlands slowly settled back to the earth.

I saw them first as dull shadows through the screen of the falling sand, like nightmare creatures hunched upon the black forms of their engines, though with each passing moment their forms revealed themselves more fully to my sight. I could see that there were three of them, instead of the three hundred that I had imagined. I could make out the soft sheen of sunlight on black leather and flashes of flesh that proved they were human.

I stopped screaming as their humanity struck me, even though I must have known in some sense what they were from the first. Just three riders in the wilderness, and for all I knew they might have come upon me by accident, the horror of my waking just a twist of fate and no ill intention meant. As I watched those riders come into focus I tried to tell myself that I was being silly, that I was not the type of woman to lose my cool for so little.

I told myself that I had been rattled by something bizarre, but there was nothing to fear, the world was still the world, and I'd never been one to judge it too harshly or to expect the worst at every turn. I told myself that dreams were only dreams, and I forced myself to breathe and to relax. Would you believe that I stepped out of the Pontiac of my own accord?

When the last of the dust had settled, and I beheld three riders on their stilled bikes watching me, I took a deep breath, and I forced myself to put on a smile. I opened the door and stepped out onto the dirt...I wouldn't let myself cower, would not accept my own fear, though I kept the door open and made sure that the keys were still in the ignition. And my heart was still hammering in my chest as I forced myself to call out to them.

"Jesus, you guys scared me. I was sleeping...I guess I didn't hear you coming up the road."

That forced smile was still on my face, but it faltered in the face of their silence.

I could see little of them. Leather jackets and leather gloves, goggles over their eyes and helmets on the top of their heads. Two of them wore bandanas over the lover half of their face, while the other wore a sort of leather covering that left only the bridge of the nose exposed to the air. And they sat on their bikes and they stared at me as though I had never spoken at all, as though they had been carved from stone and dressed up in the manner of men.

" You probably come here a lot, sorry if I'm parked somewhere I'm not supposed to be." I went on. " I've just been driving all night...you know how it it. But I'll be moving on now. I hope you guys have a nice ride."

I would have climbed back into the Pontiac right then, but one of the riders moved, and I saw gloved hands go to the bandanna that covered the face and pull it down, before reaching up and taking off the helmet. Strange to say, but as I saw blond hair fall down to the rider's shoulders I let out a sigh, and I felt myself relax to know it was a woman.

Some things never leave you I suppose, or at least not until they must. There had always been some part of me that associated violence and danger with men, and with men removed from the presence of women. As I understood that one of the riders was of my own sex I let my guard down. I almost laughed at how silly I had been. And I did not run when I should have.

"You lost?" The blond haired woman called to me, and I saw that she was smiling. " Nobody winds up here unless they're lost."

" Uhhm...no not really." I called back. " I just pulled off the road to take a little cat nap. Like I said, I've been driving all night. Just got tired."

"That can happen." The blond called back. " We're sorry if we scared you...didn't realize you were sleeping."

" Oh, no problem....really, I think I'm just a little over tired. Ordinarily something like this wouldn't make me scream like that."

I saw the blond woman smile, and I smiled back. It struck me that she was probably around my own age, that she seemed at ease and I reminded myself that the world was at heart a friendly place, that women in basements and strange scenes in hospital wards were the exception and never the rule. I told myself that what had happened in Vermillion was an aberration, it was was a small splinter of insanity in an otherwise rational world.

And then the woman asked me, " Would you like to take a ride with me?"

There was a sweetness in her voice, a playful innocence, but somehow the words struck me as wrong, as off somehow.

"No, I'm alright. Thanks...but I should probably get going."

"You could ride with Tom here." The woman nodded to the rider on her left, the one whose face was still covered by a bandanna. " Or if you really want, you could ride with the Gaunt...but I wouldn't recommend that. Wouldn't recommend either of them if I'm honest, though Tom would be the better choice."

As she spoke, the rider on her right, the one in the leather face covering climbed off his bike, and in spite of myself I took a step back.

"It's really alright." I told her. " I'm on my way to California...I got a job there and have a lot to do to set myself up...So thanks, but I don't think I've got the time."

"Come on honey." The Blond replied, " You don't have to go...Take a ride with me. You ever been on the back of one of these things?"

The woman tapped the chromed handlebars of her bike.

"I promise you you're going to love it...one ride and you'll be hooked for life. I know I was."

The rider on the left, the one that she had called Tom spoke up, said, "Come on Molly...just give her to the Gaunt. We're wasting time."

Even as the woman answered him she never took her eyes off mine. "Shut up Tom! It's you're fault we're out here...you were supposed to be watching the house."

I was back in the Pontiac before the woman, Molly, had finished the sentence. My hand was on the key and I was pulling the door shut behind me when the woman called out to me again.

"Try it and this will go as badly as it possibly can...honey, a couple of things are going to happen here, there are possibilities. You might get that car started before the Gaunt punches through your window and pulls you out of it...but if you don't, then you're his, and I can't save you. If you do get it started, how far are you going to make it before we chase you down? Before we drive you off the road? And when we catch you...and we will, I'm not going to be sweet again. There won't be any asking...it's just going to be taking. Why don't you get out of that car?

Why don't you get out and come over here? I'll give you a ride to where you're going and I promise that it's the best option and the best ending that you're going to get."

My fingers were already turning the keys...why didn't I start the engine? Why didn't I take my chances?

In that moment, it honestly wasn't fear.

I was afraid, obviously I was terrified. But that isn't what stopped in that crucial moment.

It wasn't the implication of the threat...no, it was something else.

I've always been drawn to secrets...I've always been curious. I'm sorry to say that in that moment I was stilled by the thought of never knowing what I had been a part of. Without any idea of who those three were, or what they wanted from me, I couldn't bring myself to run.

That would have been all the woman needed to say. "Run and you will never know what you were a part of."

That would have been enough to stop me.

As stupid as it sounds, I had to know.

The third rider, the one she had called the Gaunt has started forward in the instant that I bolted for the Pontiac. He stopped as I slid once more out of the drivers seat, as I demanded of the woman just who she was.

The woman smiled, said, "I'm Molly. I'm just like you Rebecca. Just another lost girl in a great big world. The only difference is that I know where I'm going."

I screwed up all of my courage to hold my voice steady. "Yeah? And where's that?"

"To Eseme of course." Molly replied at once. " She wants to see you Rebecca...And one way or another she's going to see you. You can run all you like...but in the end you'll wind up exactly where she wants you to be."