The Familiar Ch 02

Chapter Two – The Quartz Ring

Selfish father of men

Cruel, jealous, selfish fear

Can delight

Chain'd in night

The virgins of youth and morning bear...

...Break this heavy chain,

That does freeze my bones around

Selfish! vain!

Eternal bane!

That free Love with bondage bound.

 Lines 11-16, William Blake, "Earth's Answer"

It had taken a great deal of energy to fabricate the exactness of what her mother had wanted done to the entrance way, and, following that, what was to be done to the first floor of the building. Walking with the men, who lead her past places in the floor that were dangerous to walk on, she continued with her theme of re-construction, in a way that would not damage the original look of the place and, hopefully, not take too much time to do.

After all was said by her and accepted by the crew members, Catherine was left trying to talk the man who drove her to the building into taking her back to the hotel.

"We might need you around for something. You are supposed to watch us, right?"

"Well, uh, yeah, but -"

Before Catherine could think of anything to say that could sway him, another one of the men came up to them and loudly interrupted Catherine. "Danny, we're gonna need somewhere in the neighborhood of a shitload more wood for the floor in the kitchen."

Danny groaned and said, "What NOW?!"

"Whaddaya think? Mold. Lotta mold."

And with that Danny and the other man walked off towards the right end of the building. Left with nothing to do – aside from standing in place – Catherine followed the men, walking into the kitchen.

A place that she had been told had been the only part of the estate that had been heavily remodeled, aside from the bedrooms, the kitchen and the attached dining room had been updated into what, back in the "hey-day" of the fifties, would have been considered updated. The good news had been that before she had arrived, some rather extensive work had already been done, gutting out much of the place and placing the beginnings of what was going to become the new kitchen for the entire Bed and Breakfast.

Only...

"Yep, look. See that?" Danny was gesturing for Catherine to come closer to his side. Peering down at the spot on the ground that he was pointing at, Catherine had to hold back a gasp when she saw what was hiding under the already quite hideous yellow linoleum.

A black splotch that looked raised-up from the surface of the wood seemed to spread from one opened edge of the flayed and partially removed linoleum to the other end, about ten feet apart.

"What are you guys gonna do with this?" Catherine asked tentatively.

Danny groaned loudly. "The whole thing has to fuck – it all has to go."

"What do you mean "it all has to go"?"

Danny threw his arms out dramatically. "We're gonna have to cut up as much floor, leading from this shit, until there ain't any left. Then we gotta replace it." The other man, who had brought them into the kitchen, sighed, hanging his head low.

"Wait – what if we didn't do that?"

The two men looked over at her slowly, then looked at each other, as though in disbelief of what they had both heard her say. "Girlie, d'you mind repeating what you just said?"

Catherine bit her lip anxiously. "Well, I mean – that much work, just for that? I mean, if you guys had never pulled back that linoleum, you would have never seen that. I mean, you guys pointed out a lot of places that were dangerous to walk, but you guys never picked up on the kitchen as being dangerous to walk in..."

Catherine trailed off, as she realized that the two men were looking at her in much the same manner that adults are liable to, when listening to a child's borderline insane chattering.

After a moment's silence, Danny murmured, "And that's why you're in charge of planning what the place is supposed to look like and not the repairs itself." Raising to his feet, Danny grunted and said, "If we were to do that, the inspector – and that happens to actually be Lewis -" The other man waved at Catherine, looking embarrassed for her. "would shut this place down the second it opened in the summer. Why don't you do us a favor, and just go walk through some of the floors above?"

Flush with embarrassment, Catherine somehow managed to choke out, "Can I get a ride back to the hotel?"

Danny sighed. "Give me a little time, and I'll drive you back to the hotel for the day. Just... I dunno, go look around for a bit. Most of the dangerous places upstairs are cordoned off. Just be careful about where you walk."

Feeling almost as humbled as she possibly could, Catherine nodded numbly, and walked out and into the entrance area and over to the foot of the simple wood stairway that lead up to the second floor.

Looking up, she saw that there were no lights on the landing ahead on the stairs. All she could discern on the landing above was the sight of dim white sunlight, pouring in from a window somewhere on the floor above. Fighting back the sudden dread that filled her, Catherine walked up the steps with a cautious slowness, being careful of where she was walking as much as she could.

Red-pink rose floral wall paper, ragged and torn, covered the walls on the second floor, and the air smelled of staleness and the almost intrusive smell of new building materials. When she attempted to flick the light switch, she heard a sound that sounded a bit like a low

pop

, followed by a vague flicker of artificial light that came from a blackened light bulb further into the hallway.

Sighing, Catherine began to walk down the right side of the halllway, examining the damage done to the walls, floors and the ceiling done by the passing of time and neglect. Walking through the hallway, Catherine peered into the rooms whose doors were open, and felt a deep gut reaction at the sight of the deep extent of the damage that her mother had forgotten to tell her about. By the time she reached the end of the right side hallway, she had a new found understanding of just how much work she was being tasked with overseeing.

On the walk back through the hallway, Catherine was deep in thought, over just how long she was going to have to stick around to see the business in operational condition. Flitting in her mind was the grotesque image of that black mold, growing freely in the exposed wood of the floor.

So deep in her own thought was Catherine that she nearly missed the thing in the middle of the floor. The only reason she saw it in the first place was because of the light streaming in through the window that hit it so that it looked like a piece of crystal in the sun light.

As she bent down to look at it, she realized that while what she was looking at was not a piece of crystal, but the thing she was holding in her hands was made, partially, of some sort of a purple gemstone.

The ring was very simple, but as she picked it up, she got the feeling that there was something in it that made the skin that touched it feel distinctly warmed. There was also something about it that made Catherine feel as though it were something that did not belong on the ground of an abandoned place like the Witchwood Bed and Breakfast.

Staring down at the ring, Catherine only caught a sight of the shadow that passed in front of the window and went over her.

Catherine gasped and jerked her head upwards, only to realize that if there had ever been some sort of a shadow, it was now gone. For a moment, she sat in a half-crouched position, her heart feeling as though it had stopped in her chest. A few seconds later, the loud silence was broken by the gravelly voice of Danny, echoing from off of the stairwell behind her that he was warming up the truck's engine.

Catherine rushed to her feet and turned around to run down the stairs. Somewhere around the middle of the stairs, she realized that she was and had not, for the entire day, been wearing a bra, when she felt her small breasts jiggle on the walk down.

The entire ride back to the hotel was quiet and awkward, with Catherine staring out at the snow-covered streets and the miserable-looking people who attempted to pass through the waist-high snow and filthy-looking slush. When, finally, Danny pulled up into the parking lot of the hotel, he mumbled a good-bye and told her that when they would need to have her back in the Inn, he would call her. She numbly gave him her phone number and quickly got out of the truck, running up the stairs and up to her room. When she got up to the balcony, Catherine gave a quick and relieved look down at the truck in the parking lot as it pulled out of the hotel's lot.

Going back inside of the dark room, Catherine felt deeply embarrassed at having been around all of those men inside of the Inn without having worn a bra. Out of morbid curiosity, Catherine walked into the bathroom, flicked on the light, and looked at herself in the mirror.

Her near-shoulder length black hair was a mess, her eyes were a bit sunken from her insomnia and stress and, as she had worried about, it was not just her reddened nipples but also basically the entire outline of her small breasts that were showing underneath the thin fabric of her white University of Chicago t-shirt.

Shivering at the memory of every moment she had around the men in the Witchwood, Catherine began to pluck her clothing off of her pale body to prepare for a warm bath. After starting to fill the questionably clean bath tub with hot water, she began to pull her jeans off. As she checked her pockets for whatever she had left in them, she pulled out the purple gemstone ring that she had stuffed in her pocket. Curious, Catherine slid the ring onto her left hand's ring finger, and was surprised to find that it fit perfectly.

She kept the ring on, as she slid into the slightly too-hot water and started to relax.

He stood across from where she sat in the tub and watched as she laid back in the tub, her mouth opening and then slowly shutting as she let out a low sigh. On the hand laying out of the tub He could see the unearthly glow the ring had begun to emit.

Could she had chosen a more fitting time to have slipped that ring on? On her entire ride back to her room, he had worried over if she would even attempt to try it on. The ring had a certain pull to it that caused those with Potential to want to own it – but she still had to wear it to experience its effects

Oh, he could go with a variety of methods to do what he wanted done. She so obviously had no idea of what she was wearing, as her thin body bobbed under and above the line of water in the bath tub, and she felt no real apprehension over having stepped foot in a place that still resonated with the deeds that her ancestor had committed. She had been completely ignorant to the fact that he had been raking his eyes over her young body the moment he had first laid eyes on her. In much the same manner that he was doing to her then, his hunger for her wet body was a near perfect match for the intense loathing he felt at the very fact of her existence.

Indecisive over what He should do with her, he came closer to the tub, until he was standing over her. He was weak, so weak that he could do a scarce number of things to her if he wanted to, and he wanted to make their first "contact" something to remember. He had had hundreds of years to learn the art of subtlety, and even with everything inside of him howling to take her, he could wait and watch for the right movement, the right moment.

She sat up to reach for the bottle of soap that was sitting on the end of the tub, next to her foot, and a brush of inspiration took Him, and he leaned down to run the back of his hand against the flush skin of Catherine's back. He brushed his hand past the line of water, and watched with pleasure as she sat in the water, for all of the world looking like a doe who had become aware that she was being hunted.

Everything in him quickened at the sight of her wide, frightened brown eyes. It took much of His willpower to move back and away from the tub, but his eyes never left her shivering body as she bolted up from the bath and pressed her hands to her chest. He laughed, and was immensely pleased to see that she heard his laughter as she raced out of the bathroom, stopping only for a moment to grab the small towel on the rack to wrap it around herself before she ran as fast as she could, out of the hotel room.

As He watched her running, with the small towel woefully unable to cover her breasts and ass, he felt another laugh rip out of his throat.

Catherine ran as fast as she could out of the hotel room with the booming, unearthly laughter ringing off of the walls as she slammed the front door behind her. Running as fast as she could with her bare feet on the snow-covered, rough carpet, she made for the office on the first floor of the mostly empty complex.

As she careened down the stairs, her feet slipped on a pile of mostly melted slush, which sent Catherine flying head-first down the stairs. The fall seemed to happen in slow motion for her, but when she tried to grab for the railing, her hand knocked uselessly against the cold metal and her fingers refused to flex and grip the passing rail.

As she landed on the last step, her naked knees snagged the step, breaking her momentum and crashing her, hard, head-first against the floor.

She laid where she fell on the floor for a long moment, in a daze, before she managed to struggle to her feet, bruised and in gasping pain. It was painful to do it, and the cold hit her mercilessly, the wind mainly striking her left side, but she managed to stagger those twenty steps to dirty glass door that was the entrance to the hotel's check-in/office.

Struggling to get inside, while trying to use the towel that she had grabbed on her way out of the bathroom to cover as much of herself as she could manage, Catherine rushed inside of the warmth of the office. Trying to make herself look as dignified as she could, given the situation, Catherine leaned her back against the door to relieve pressure from off of her skinned and bruised knees and looked up to meet the eyes of the stunned old woman who looked at her from behind her desk as though a ghost had just burst into the office.

"Oh, hi."

The old woman rushed, with almost unreal speed, to her side. "I think you need to go to the hospital!"

"I think you're right." Catherine gasped, as the old woman tried to maneuver her into one of the ugly green plastic chairs to her left.