Chapter Sixteen: Trapped!
It was early afternoon when Mary and Imogene returned to Triple Forests. Deputy Katz reported that Grandma Petra was still safe upstairs, but there was still no sign of James, Mary's father, Margaret, their housekeeper and lover, or Bucky, the wild deaf and mute boy that the Triple Forests women had tamed. All the partygoers and helpers were accounted for and had departed, leaving only Katz on guard and Grandma Petra and Aunt Selene in the mansion.
Mary and Imogene found Aunt Selene wandering the house looking for her new husband Bucky. Selene had locked herself in her room to escape the revelry of the previous evening, but now she was wailing her new husband's name in every corner of the mansion in the hope of hearing a cry for help back. Mary and Imogene assured Selene they would find Bucky together. The three looked in on Grandma Petra, who was still safe and resting in her bed, and who told them she had heard mysterious noises above her room in the attic.
Mary, followed by Imogene and Selene, climbed the rickety attic ladder and opened the scuttle hatch to climb into the attic. The attic was surprisingly free of dust, for an attic. There was a telescope pointing out an attic window. Through the telescope, Mary could see the Streamview Rectory, for it was a clear day. She noticed there was a distinct bulge in the turf leading all the way up the hill from the rectory to the house. Could it indicate the secret passage she had been searching for?
One half of the attic space was partly walled off, with a low shelf running along that wall. There were nine large holes in the wall, perhaps large enough for a girl to crawl through. Imogene looked through the holes and saw some kind of infernal device on the other side. Mary identified it as a giant version of the hypnosis machine she'd found in the red-walled basement, and the timer next to it said the device was set to switch on in fifteen minutes!
"There's no time to lose!" cried Mary, and leapt up on the shelf to try to scramble and squeeze through the hole at the end of the wall to shut off the timer before it could turn on the hypnosis machine and cause dire consequences. Imogene picked the hole right next to her to try to squeeze through, while Selene tried for the hole right next to Imogene.
Once all three women had stuffed themselves into the holes and were wiggling their way through, a big weight slammed down on their backs, trapping them. Mary heard gears cranking behind them, and suddenly two slip-knotted ropes fell around her ankles and tightened, pulling her legs roughly up and apart. "Oh no!" cried Selene. "It's one of daddy's infernal sex constructions!"
There lay Mary, Imogene, and Selene, trapped tummy down on a table by the holes they had been trying to squeeze through and by a weight pressing on their backs, their legs pulled up and apart, in an ingenious sex trap designed by Imogene's late grandfather. Perhaps the secret of escaping it died with him. But wait. Mary saw a lever over near her left hand labeled "Stockade release." She couldn't quite reach it though.
Suddenly there were footsteps behind them, men's footsteps. "Look what we have here, boys!" said an alto voice Mary recognized as Humpf's. "Well, if it ain't stuck up old Aunt Selene."
Mary heard the sound of panties ripping and a screech from Aunt Selene, "Don't touch me in there, you cad!"
"And the virginal heiress, Imogene, with no panties! Are you a little slut now, sugar?"
Imogene shrieked and cried, "No don't touch me there!"
"And finally, the piece de resistance, Mary Jones, stuck like a pig in a fence. And no panties neither, but I'd expect as much from a whore like you." Two of the little man's fingers rammed roughly into her slot, which was thankfully moist enough to not be hurt by the intrusion.
