The Orgies Of Stone's Island
by R. John Smythe


INTRODUCTION
by Douglas H. Gamlin, Ph.D. 

The Orgies Of Stone's Island is an interesting addition to the field of 
modern erotic literature. In the tradition of the modern masterpiece Candy, 
by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg, The Orgies Of Stone's Island deals 
heavily in surrealism, fantasy and symbolism-all primarily of a sexual 
nature. Unlike Candy, however, The Orgies Of Stone's Island is definitely 
not a sex-spoof. The author, R. John Smythe, is quite serious in his 
portrayal of an emotionally disturbed mind. 

The sexual description here is destined to raise the hair on some heads. 
Many will argue with the author's choice of a vehicle and contend that the 
emphasis on sex is far too heavy. I would tend to agree with this, except 
that the psychological problem outlined here is of a sexual nature and the 
treatment the author gives it is quite accurate from the Freudian view. Even 
more important, this book deals with a contemporary battle between man's 
morals and the mores of society, and through the protagonist, Drake Hackett, 
we see a rather unique portrayal of man's inner conflict resulting from a 
rather experimental area of contemporary sexual behavior-wife-swapping or 
"swinging." 

First of all, let's discard some of the literary devices employed by the 
author. There is no "journal," nor is there actually a "Stone's Island." In 
truth, the author does not seriously expect the reader to take these devices 
literally. He even warns the reader in his opening paragraph: "I have come 
to think of my descent into the dark bowels of Stone's Island as a sort of 
journey into my own mind, into those perverted catacombs of the unconscious 
into which one will not look while awake." This warning is repeated near the 
close of the story as it races to its final climax with the words, "... the 
stupid notion that I had heard something dark and prophetic about myself." 

What the author is doing here is using the "substitute" device so often 
encountered by psychologists in the first interviews with disturbed 
patients. "Doctor, I've come to you to talk about a close friend of mine... 
" After the ice is broken it turns out that the "friend" is the person 
himself, and he used this device to protect his ego. This substitutive 
method is in itself a defense mechanism. While the individual may 
subconsciously recognize that something is amiss in his personality, he will 
not consciously admit this to himself or others. The analyst's job, of 
course, is to bring this disturbance out into the open and make the patient 
come to grips with the truth about himself. 

If we accept the author's clues and warnings and view The Orgies Of Stone's 
Island as a tour de force through an emotional disturbance, we then see that 
we are in truth witnessing one man's private hell. That man is Drake 
Hackett, and his hell is his own inner conflict over his practice of 
unlimited sexual freedom. 

How do we reach this conclusion? Take the opening sequence of the book and 
analyze it carefully. We find the protagonist, his wife, his six-year-old 
son and two prostitutes with a handsome young life guard. The author makes 
it quite clear that these people are engaged in swinging or wife-swapping, 
and that the protagonist and his wife enjoy complete sexual freedom. Rather 
than hide this from their young son, they encourage him to join them. 

Think for a moment. Just what purpose does this scene serve in the overall 
narrative? It is not placed at the beginning to sexually stimulate the 
reader because the sexual description is choppy and does not take the action 
to climax. It serves no real purpose for the sub-plot of what takes place on 
Stone's Island, and really has little connection to that segment of the 
story. The author could have opened with a family picnic on the deserted 
island, or any one of a number of story devices which would have served him 
better. Yet he chose this rather unique and strange opening. Why? 

The answer is obvious. The author wanted to state his problem at the very 
beginning, launch his narrative from a dramatic moment when the emotional 
disturbance manifests itself in the individual. Drake Hackett watches 
another man make love to his wife and is struck with jealousy. "Even though 
he had just come from an hour's tumble with her in the cabin of our yawl 
Argo anchored offshore, he couldn't seem to keep his hands from creeping up 
over her tits as he talked." 

We next see him comparing his wife's body with that of the prostitute he has 
hired for himself, and then we're introduced to his son who has been raised 
on sexual freedom. The conflict in Drake's mind is evident in the 
description during these passages, but we see his real doubt come to the 
front when he begins to hear the organ. He is at that moment engaged in a 
sexual contact with Honey, the prostitute, but he breaks the contact to 
leave the group and go off by himself. 

Before going off into the realm of fantasy, the author provides us one more 
clue almost immediately. As Drake and his son climb the hill, the son looks 
back and notes to his father that his mother and the prostitute are engaged 
in a homosexual contact. "Look, Daddy, Mommy and that lady are playin' 
sixty-nine." Again, this is something that serves no useful purpose to the 
story-unless the author is placing another facet of the problem before the 
reader. And this is exactly what he is doing, for we find that one of 
Drake's largest areas of anxiety throughout the narrative is that his wife 
will turn homosexual. 

In order to see this we must cut through the heavy symbolism used in the 
book and discern that Drake is also Stone and that Yvonne, his wife, is a 
part reflected in each and every female character portrayed. Stone, the 
island, the orgies, the Black Mass and every element in this part of the 
narrative are fantasies in Drake's mind. They are quite literally the inner 
turmoil he suffers as he wrestles with his sense of morality. 

The symbolism here is perhaps overdone and underpolished, but it is 
psychologically accurate and tells an important story of its own. Sex 
becomes the devil, and instead of a beautiful act it becomes an unpleasant 
mixture of darkness, fire and everything vile. This, of course, was 
intentional on the author's part. Drake has come to grips with his own sense 
of morality and suddenly recognizes the ugliness in his and his wife's 
behavior pattern. 

It's important to note that Drake does not blame his wife for what has 
happened. He shoulders all the blame himself and a great deal of his 
disturbance is centered on what will become of her. One notes that he 
fantasizes Lesbian behavior all through the narrative, and all of the sexual 
sadism portrayed is directed at females. Perhaps this is best summed up with 
Drake's own words spoken through the "journal" device: "-There she lay in 
that treacherous cave. Amanda, my bride, on a bed of filthy rags. The stench 
of death and decay welled out of the cavity in a nauseous wave-yet I stood 
my ground. Her eyes were gone and her teeth hung loose in their bony 
sockets; scraps of rotted flesh hung on her skull and fluttered from her 
bones- Ahg!" 

Following this same theory we can see why children play such a predominant 
role in the narrative, and especially in the ending where the young girl 
becomes a sexual machine in the hands of a Lesbian; i.e. the wife. This is 
all a manifestation of Drake's concern over his young son and what sexual 
freedom might eventually do to him. The sex transference at the end is 
simply an extension of his own homosexual anxiety. 

The nature of his disturbance becomes clear to Drake at the end of the 
story, and this is evidenced in his statement that "Stone," 

"Confused darkness with light, and light with darkness... " 

Then Drake discovers that Yvonne had temporarily become a prostitute, 
something about which he had evidenced a great deal of anxiety in his erotic 
fantasies, and, after a moment's rage, resolved his conflict. "I looked down 
at the handful of bills. Then I looked into her eyes-deep, deeper maybe than 
I ever had before, deep into those clear green eyes of hers, trying to 
penetrate the mask-if it was a mask. Had I too gotten the roles wrong?... 
suddenly it didn't seem to matter very much." 

Discussing each of the hundreds of symbols and dream-fantasies used by R. 
John Smythe in The Orgies Of Stone's Island would take a book in itself, and 
it would serve to spoil much of the reader's fun in spotting these 
psychological clues to the meaning of the work. Mr. Smythe makes some 
interesting observations on contemporary sexual behavior in a round-about 
way and these should provide some food for thought for serious students of 
psychology and human behavior. Take the two missing skeletons for example, 
could these be Drake and Yvonne returned to life? 

Much, both good and bad, has come to us from modern erotic fiction, and I 
think it is refreshing that we can now enjoy frankly adult themes in our 
literature. 

-Douglas H. Gamlin, Ph.D. 

 * * * 

PART ONE - THOSE WHO COME IN THE AIR 

 CHAPTER ONE 

January, 1969. 

I feel I should set down at the beginning the circumstances under which I 
stumbled upon the bizarre secrets of Stone's Island, buried these 
thirty-seven years. I make no pretense as to the relevance of these events 
to the actual story of Simon Stone, and yet in my own mind I cannot separate 
the two; I have come to think of my descent into the dark bowels of Stone's 
Island as a sort of journey into my own mind, into those perverted catacombs 
of the unconscious into which one will not look while awake. As a matter of 
fact the whole affair seems to me to me somewhere between a nightmare and a 
wet dream! I am put in mind of that sentence composed by the fifteenth 
century alchemist Basil Valentine on the initial letters of the word 
vitriol: Visita Interiora Terrae, Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem, 
which in English reads, "Visit the bowels of the earth, in order that you 
may come upon the hidden Stone by rectification." (Pun intended.) 

One of the few structures still standing more or less intact on Stone's 
Island today is the great concrete arch called the Dragon Gate which 
overlooks the little cove where Stone's boat docks once stood. This 
grotesque but magnificent piece of sculpture guards what was once the 
estate's southern approach, now only a weed-covered terrace of crumbling 
flagstones, breached here and there by a casurina tree or an ancient-looking 
gumbo limbo. It was on a night in January of 1969, sitting on this terrace 
and watching the full moon like a bubble of cold fire rising over the Dragon 
Gate, that I first heard a bit of the legend of Stone's Island. Rick Morgan 
sat with his back to the Gate, facing Honey and me across the fire; my wife 
Yvonne sat between his legs, the flames warming her feet and Rick's chest 
warming her back. Even though he had just come from an hour's tumble with 
her in the cabin of our yawl Argo anchored offshore, he couldn't seem to 
keep his hands from creeping up over her tits as he talked. I had asked him 
why the mansion had been torn down. 

"Wasn't torn down, it burnt down. You mean you been in Lake Leethy a whole 
week and haven't heard about Stone's Island? You ought to talk to some of 
those old timers over at Sago Docks. According to them this little island is 
crawlin' with ghosts, man. Stone came here before the Boom days and built 
this place-practically built the island, they say. He dredged sand out of 
the lake to make that hill, and then built his main house right on top of 
it. I've seen some pictures of it, looked like a Spanish castle or 
something, spooky as hell, man. First there was just Stone and his wife and 
daughter and a bunch of spades, but then after his wife and kid drowned-the 
old timers'll tell you he murdered them-after that there was a girl's school 
set up here, and nobody knows what happened to Stone. Some say he died, some 
say he went away, but the best story is that he stayed here and fucked the 
pants off all them little girls! Ha ha ha!-yeah, that's what they say. 
Anyway, then the place burned down in-when was it, Honey?" 

Honey said, "1932, I think," without lifting her head from my lap. 

"Yeah, that's right," he went on, "burned to the ground, no survivors-'cept 
for them dragons there." He indicated the Dragon Gate by a jerk of his head, 
since his hands were tied up. "And the old fishermen'll tell you that when 
the wind is right you can still hear old Stone up there on the hill playin' 
his organ and-" Here I had to interrupt. "Yeah," he replied, "he had a 
full-scale pipe organ installed in the house, at least that's the story. 
See, the thing about Stone is that nobody really knew anything about him, 
that's how all these stories got started, I guess. He was sort of a hermit, 
holed up in his castle like a rat. The old men admit, most of them, that 
they never laid eyes on the man. That's why nobody seems to know when he 
died, I guess. But anyway they say you can hear the organ, and on a full 
moon, like tonight, you can see his daughter's ghost dancing on the beach. 
Some weird shit, huh?" 

"Well," says Honey, snuggling in my crotch, "the only organ I hear is the 
one knocking against my ear." 

And Rick says, as he slips his hands inside my wife's sweater, "That's no 
organ, Honey, that's a skin flute. Why don't you play us a tune?"-which she 
did. 

Honey was one of two whores I had picked up that afternoon, and Rick was a 
lifeguard whom my wife had seduced the day after we sailed into Lake Leethy. 
The other whore, Marie, we had left in the cabin of the Argo sleeping off 
the combined effects of the grape and a vigorous gang-bang inflicted upon 
her delicious young body by the rest of us, including my six-year-old son 
Billy who always likes to get in the act. Lake Leethy was to be only a brief 
stopover for us on our way to the West Indies, and these people we had just 
more or less picked out of the hat for a little sexual fun. Had we wanted an 
admixture of intelligent conversation we would have fallen short of the 
goal, since our new friends turned out to be far better endowed between the 
legs than between the ears, but as it was they ideally suited our purpose. 

It was partly the action of Honey's head in my lap and partly the firelit 
view of my wife's large breasts responding to the uplifting caresses of the 
hands inside her sweater that had caused me (ghost story or no) to raise 
another erection. Honey now had my cock out and was going to work on it with 
her well-trained lips and tongue while Rick and Yvonne watched. Soon Yvonne 
was out of her sweater, leaving her tits bare and glowing like flickering 
moons in the firelight. I pulled Honey's sucking mouth from my cock and told 
her to stand up and strip. She was wearing nothing but a micro-length beach 
tunic, because the bikini which had been beneath it when we left the dock 
had disappeared long before we anchored off the island. She had short honey 
blonde hair and one of those odd but exciting "composite" type bodies which 
one comes across every now and then-a body, that is to say, which looks as 
if it were made up of parts from several different types of women: this girl 
was of small-boned medium stature, slim hips and legs -legs which could have 
stood a little more meat in the calves-and enormous tits! She said her bust 
measurement was forty-one D, and I believe every inch of it. To be sure, 
they sagged a bit, these massive piatas, but so much less than one would 
have suspected that viewed raw they boggled the mind! Though her body was 
evenly tanned from head to foot from sunning herself daily in the nude, her 
nipples still retained a bit of their girlish pinkness; the areolae of these 
striking turrets were a good three inches in diameter, but the inflation of 
the over-developed glands was so great that the knobs at the centers just 
barely broke the parabolic contours. In other words, even the nipples seemed 
to have been intended for a smaller set of jugs; whenever I see a nipple 
like that I think of a balloon blown up halfway, painted at the tip with a 
small circle, then inflated just short of the breaking point. You know the 
type. 

My wife's body is altogether different-even to the color, since we were only 
a few weeks out of the cold north and her skin was still white as cream. She 
is the very picture of the center nude (the redhead) in Renoir's painting 
The Bathers, except that Yvonne's nipples are a bit bigger. She has one of 
those soft plenteous bodies which strike such a delightful medium between 
fluidity and firmness; between the plump and the slim. I am a tit man, pure 
and simple, and my old lady's boobs, pound for pound and inch for inch, 
certainly could not measure up to Honey's overblown footballs, but when I 
burrow between those smothering 38-Cs like the happy mole that I am, the 
comparison doesn't bother me in the least. 

Anyway, when Honey got up to unveil that impossibly top-heavy body of hers, 
Yvonne wriggled out of Rick's tentacles and joined her-already stripped to 
her hip-hugger bellbottoms. Honey slipped her little tunic off over her head 
and stood there naked in the yellow glow as my wife unbuckled her belt and 
stepped out of her slacks. She too wore nothing underneath her clothes. 
Standing there together beneath the two huge stony dragons, their jaws 
locked in deadly combat overhead, the naked girls looked like two sacred 
prostitutes at the gate of some ancient pagan temple-the dark-skinned Honey 
like Diana of the Ephesians, the thousand-breasted goddess of the fertile 
earth; Yvonne like bright Venus herself, inviting Mars into the 
nectar-filled darkness of her womb. 

Little Billy broke my contemplation. "Her pussy's not as hairy as Mommy's, 
is it, Daddy?" This sent Rick into spasms of laughter. "That kid's too much, 
man," he croaked, "I don't believe it." Ignoring this, I replied to the 
boy's observation: "By Jove, I believe you're right, Billy." The girls 
eye-balled each other's twats. Honey's bush was only a little darker than 
her hair and made a striking contrast against the deep tan of her belly and 
thighs; its pattern was a sort of double triangle, like a two-barbed 
arrowhead, the two lower barbs extending their fuzzy points out along the 
slight creases where her crotch met her thighs, the upper two bristling 
along the line at which her flat belly gave over to the rise of her mound. 
Unlike the general run of cunt hair, it did not have a definite termination 
at the top, but rather trailed off in an ever-narrowing line of golden down 
(like the shaft of the arrow), disappearing into her navel. Also, her hairs 
were less curly than most and, for this reason probably, seemed longer, 
tending to hang downward and give the whole sun-bleached patch the 
appearance of a misplaced goatee. This delightful foliage clothed one of 
those solid, ridge-backed, deep-scored cunts common to many lean-bodied 
women. At any rate, Billy's comparison, while crude, was not inaccurate: 
because though Honey's maidenhair was by no means sparse, it could not stand 
up against my wife's in denseness. 

Yvonne's love nest is one broad, sharply defined triangle of thick 
flame-colored curls reaching halfway from slit to bellybutton and covering a 
gently swelling bulge, cleft at the bottom into two puffy cheeks soft as 
faerie pillows, forming a cursive flaming W at the confluence of her milky 
thighs. 

The two girls shook their hair-Yvonne's long and red, Honey's short and 
blonde-and preened their fuzz for our inspection. Overhead the dragons 
glowered down in fierce depravity, rattling their silent scales in the 
flickering shadows, as the moon like a single bared breast showered us with 
a spray of ethereal milk. Those two vividly contrasting bodies on the ruined 
terrace seemed to polarize the night into its negative and positive poles: 
Honey with her great heavy pink-eyed breasts and her downward pointing 
arrowhead of white-gold on dark bronze was the very form and substance of 
the dread Night Huntress, stalking the wild satyr upon the subterranean 
plain of Tartarus; while Yvonne, like a baroque Minerva with her moon-white 
skin, her flaming bush and livid nipples, seemed somehow lighter than air, 
as if at any moment she would float away to rejoin her lover in the Olympian 
sky. I was enthralled with the sight; I made them hold their positions while 
I gorged my eyes and let my imagination run rampant. Gold on bronze, fire on 
snow-it was like some Persian vision, some obscure allegorical scene from 
Zoroastrian cosmology, the duality which drives the wheels of life and 
death- 

It was at this moment that I heard the organ, and I suppose that's the 
reason that whenever I envision that nude scene at the Dragon Gate, and the 
one later in the altar room, I am immediately reminded (with a shudder!) of 
the following lines from one of Charles Williams' books on witchcraft: "The 
angels of the abyss say to them, 'Look, we will show you the things that are 
to happen,' and they fill the place with mighty phantasms." 

"Did you hear that?" I whispered, raising my hand to silence the chatter. 

"Hear what, big daddy?" said the lifeguard. 

My wife said, "What is it, Drake?" walking over to where I sat. 

"Maybe he hears the organ," said Honey with a giggle. 

"That's exactly what I did hear-at least that's what it sounded like. Didn't 
you hear it?-what about you, Billy?" 

"Hear what?" 

"A sound like, oommm-very low." 

"Gosh no!" The boy glanced around, peering into the dark. "Was it a ghost?" 

"I think your daddy's got a mosquito in his ear, Bill. My ghost story musta 
gone to his head. Let's get on with the party, Drake." 

"Yeah, sweety," cooed Honey, nuzzling in my ear and fondling my cock, "let's 
get on with the party-" 

I was certain I had heard something. I gently but firmly rescued my genitals 
from Honey's eager fingers and stood up. "Honey, you beautiful big-titted 
nympho you," said I, kissing her on both nipples, "you and Red here keep the 
party going till I get back." I drilled a finger playfully into my wife's 
navel. "Just be sure you save some of that stuff for me." 

"Where you goin', baby?" asked Yvonne. I told her I was just going to take a 
little walk up the hill, I'd be back in a few minutes. Billy wanted to come 
too. As we left the terrace and started up the eroded and overgrown path 
that once led up to the big house, I heard Rick say in an inspired voice, 
"Hey, I got it! Why don't you two make out till the professor gets back?" 
and when we topped the rise, Billy looked back and said, "Look, Daddy, Mommy 
and that lady are playin' sixty-nine." And so they were, with Rick 
scrambling around them on his hands and knees as if he were trying to get 
the view from all angles at once. "Now, Billy, if you want to go back and 
watch, you go ahead. But if you're going to stay with me, keep quiet-and 
keep your ears open." 

We made our way northward across the rubble-strewn, tree-covered tabletop of 
the hill, stumbling frequently until our eyes adjusted to the moonlight. I 
was reasonably sure that it was from this direction that the sound had 
come-if there had been a sound at all. We followed a relatively clear 
corridor through the weather-beaten sand pines-it must have once been a 
ground floor hallway-until we came upon a grassy clearing falling away to 
the right. This extended all the way to the top of the east bluff, and from 
there we could look down on nearly the entire east shoreline of the island. 
Stone's Island is, I would say, about a thousand feet long, bearing north 
and south, and about four hundred feet across the south end, tapering to the 
north like a curved fang and ending in a sharp swampy point. The hill on 
which the old house had stood rose steeply from the north edge of the 
terrace of the dragons (to give it a name) and fell away just as abruptly 
near the island's waist. The east and west slopes of this flat-topped hump 
are veritable precipices, plunging straight to the narrow beach and held in 
place evidently by the network of sand pine and casurina roots. Standing on 
this ancient-looking bluff, it was rather hard to believe that it was not a 
natural hill, that it had been pumped and scooped from the lake bottom, 
heaped up and shaped by hand, but then there had been very little else that 
was "natural" about Stone's Island since it had got its name, as I was about 
to find out. 

Lake Leethy itself is one of those wide places in the Intracoastal Waterway 
common to the southeast Florida coast, a lagoon separated from the Atlantic 
by a narrow strip of land on which much of the region's tourist trade is 
concentrated. There are two inlets cut through this barrier ridge, the Lake 
Leethy inlet near the south end of the lake and the Sago Beach inlet twenty 
miles to the north. Stone's Island lies more or less equidistant from the 
east and west shorelines and directly in line with the north inlet. From my 
position on the bluff-forty feet perhaps above the water-I had a beautiful 
view of the lake, the inlet and the ocean, the black waves edged in 
moonlight and the red eye of the bell buoy out beyond the jetties winking 
and bobbing on the rising tide. Suddenly a low unearthly sound cut through 
the distant clang of buoy. The organ again. 

It was louder now-as though it were coming right out of the ground beneath 
my feet. At the same time a cold draft swept over me, a deathly chill, 
shivering me to the bone! Was I imagining it? Had the weird sound merely 
sent a chill up my spine? Or- 

"Daddy, look!" Billy stood at the brink of the bluff, pointing down at the 
beach; his voice was a frightened whisper. "-It's a ghost!" 

There at the water's edge a slim girl, as naked and pale as the moon itself, 
danced like a weightless phantom over the white sand... 

It may well be that if I had not seen this "ghost" I would never have 
uncovered the secret of Stone's Island. Let me explain. No matter how I 
might deplore the fact, I am a child of the twentieth century, a product of 
the technological society, and therefore a born skeptic. But at the instant 
I recognized Billy's apparition I realized that up until then I had harbored 
a germ of irrational doubt that these phenomena-the hellish music, the cold 
draft, and (for a moment) the moon girl-were the result of natural causes. 
If it had not been for the girl, I have the rather shameful feeling that I 
would have crept away from Stone's Island and put the whole uncanny business 
out of my mind, purely because of this irrational fear. 

The girl of course was not Simon Stone's daughter, but Honey's girl friend 
Marie, who was supposed to be asleep aboard the Argo. She had apparently 
revived somewhat and swum ashore. I suppose my reflexive logic ran something 
like this: "Well, since she's not supernatural, then neither are the other 
things," and at that moment I resolved to root out that damned noise and the 
shivers that went with it. 

"That's no ghost, Billy," said I, "that's our friend Marie. Hello, down 
there!" My shout seemed to scare the hell out of her for a minute. Then she 
said, "Hey, whatcha doin' up there? Come on down!" She jumped up and down in 
the water and her small titties bobbed in the moonlight. I was tempted to 
accept her invitation-she was a very sexy little piece of ass-but at the 
moment I was more interested in proving my sanity. "I'd rather you came up 
here, love," I answered her. "Go get the others, will you? I want to show 
them something."-though I didn't know exactly what it was I was going to 
show them. She said she'd seen it before, and I said that wasn't it, and she 
said she didn't want to see it then-but finally she skipped off down the 
beach, her little bare butt glowing in the dark. "She's still drunk, Daddy," 
observed Billy, again quite accurately. As I watched her go, I lit my pipe 
and noticed that the wind had swung around to the northeast. 

I turned around and studied the clearing we had crossed. It was pockmarked 
with holes, like bomb craters, all different sizes. Much of the hilltop was 
underlain with concrete or stone slabs-the remains of the mansion's 
foundation-and these pits were apparently where the slab had fallen into 
rain-eroded hollows beneath it. I stood on the spot where I had heard the 
sound and waited. Billy wandered about the clearing, peering into the holes. 

When the others finally arrived, groping through the trees, I was still 
there. I had heard nothing. I let them piss and moan for a while about my 
interrupting their fun, imaginary noises, dementia, and what not; then, 
raising my hand with an air of undaunted confidence, spoke I. "Now if you 
will all please shut up for a moment or two, and stand perfectly still, you 
will hear Simon Stone playing his organ... " 

And by God there it was, right on cue, just as if I had summoned it up-that 
cacophonous, nerve-tingling chord, which seemed to seep up out of the 
ground. Again I was enveloped in a foul, chilling breath, the icy flame of 
eternal death. It was as though we had stumbled upon the mouth of Ge, the 
earth mother, through which she sings her eerie songs of unrelenting 
vengeance and revolt against the heavens. 

"Goddamn," said Rick, suddenly a believer, "I heard it." 

"So did I," gasped Maria, "-and I thought I was straight!" 

"You are," I said. "Now listen, did any of you feel anything? like a cold 
draft?" None of them had felt anything except a spinal chill and 
goosepimples. 

"Then it's coming from somewhere over here." 

"Say, man," Rick said with deadly seriousness, "let's get the fuck outa 
here." 

"Shut up, kid, I'm thinking," I said, pulling at my beard. "At first I 
thought it was coming out of the ground right where I'm standing. But that 
time it seemed coming from-that direction generally." I pointed west. "Yet 
it can't have come all the way across the clearing because Yvonne didn't 
feel it. She was standing about thirty feet in front of me, on the other 
side of one of the sink holes. That means it must have either been generated 
out of nothing somewhere between us, or else it came up at an angle-out of 
that hole." 

"But there's nothin' down there but sand, Drake." 

"Are you sure?" I said. "What if there were a slanted flue of some kind 
drawing a draft from below-a corridor maybe, or a staircase. That would 
cause the air to flow up at an angle. Come on, Ricky me lad, let's dig." 

And dig we did, though my enthusiasm was somewhat exceeded by the reluctance 
of our friend the lifeguard. Honey and Billy went down to the boat and came 
back with a flashlight and a couple of kerosene lanterns. The bottom of the 
pit was covered with loose rubble, through which conceivably my "cold chill" 
could have emerged, and I expected at any minute to break through into some 
sort of opening. But at the end of an hour or so of heaving stones we had 
found nothing but more stones. Though we had deepened the hole by only about 
four feet, we were exhausted, and Rick was becoming more and more persistent 
about abandoning the project. I was just about to relent-partly from fatigue 
and partly because the three beautiful women standing naked in the lamplight 
were beginning to deflect my interest in ghosts to things more 
substantial-when Billy fell through the bottom of the pit. 

When Rick and I had climbed out for a rest, Billy had jumped in and started 
dancing around on the rubble. All of a sudden the bottom gave way like a 
coal chute and, with a yell, the boy, together with probably a hundred 
pounds of shattered concrete, disappeared through the end of the funnel. 

In her surprise and panic, Yvonne nearly fell in on top of him. "Stand 
back!" I yelled. "Everybody get away from the edge, before the whole thing 
caves in. Rick, throw me that flashlight." I got as near to the edge as I 
dared and shined the light down into the darkness. I couldn't see anything, 
but then Billy started crying; by the sound of it he wasn't very far below 
the cave-in. "Billy, are you all right? Calm down, boy, and tell me if 
you're hurt." Finally he stopped crying and I got him to move his arms and 
legs, one at a time; apparently no bones were broken. We lowered the 
flashlight down to him on the end of a stick. "Now move back away from the 
hole, Billy m'lad, the old man's coming down!" I cut a pole from the 
thicket, shoved it down to the bottom, and lowered myself through the 
opening. 

Billy was okay, just a little shook up. The floor of the well was covered 
with a thick, uneven layer of sand, but I could tell by the solid feel of it 
that there was concrete underneath. Standing upright I could just reach the 
crumbling lip of the hole, and in a few minutes I widened out the hole and 
cleared away most of the unstable rubble. The chamber had a room of heavy 
timbers and was entered evidently by a trapdoor, but the door and parts of 
the roof had nearly rotted away, so that only a thin shell had been 
supporting the burden of sand and rubble. The whole inside of the cubicle 
was blackened with soot and ashes. The west wall, just as I had suspected, 
opened onto a stairwell. It was dark and steep. I shined the light into it, 
but about twenty feet down it made a sharp bend to the left, so that I could 
see no further. 

"We've got a staircase, everybody," I called up triumphantly, "come on 
down." 

Rick said, "No shit?" but he hesitated for quite a few moments before 
climbing down the pole. Soon we were all in the chamber and, with lanterns 
held high, we started down the winding corridor. In places the wall, which 
had been shored up with timbers, had caved in, nearly filling the tunnel 
with sand. The concrete steps were covered with a layer of black soot. A 
tremendous fire had obviously raged through this passage with the fury of a 
blast furnace. The darkness was alive with the sound of scurrying rats, and 
we could see them scrambling into holes in the walls and fleeing down the 
stairs just ahead of our light. I believe that we all harbored a secret hope 
that we would not hear that demonic music again just yet; it was one thing 
to hear it in the open air under the familiar moon, and quite another to 
imagine it welling up in this dismal, evil-smelling grotto... 

At last we reached the end of the stairwell, It seemed we had descended into 
the very gullet of the earth, but we could not have gone deeper than sea 
level or the whole place would have been flooded with ground water. All that 
was left of the door was a blackened frame, and through this we passed 
cautiously into a high-vaulted, tomb-like chamber of indefinite dimensions. 
It was ankle-deep in ashes and filled with heaps of burnt timbers. Here and 
there huge cones of sand loomed up where the roof had given way, but much of 
the shorings were of concrete and the portions of wall and ceiling that 
remained appeared fairly substantial. There were several round holes high up 
on the walls-ventilation ports, no doubt-and several doors, at least one of 
which opened onto another staircase, but most of these were badly blocked by 
charred debris and mounds of sand. For some time we pussyfooted about the 
room, conversing in whispers, for some reason. Billy clung tightly to his 
mother's hand, and big Rick kept closer to me than my own shadow. But our 
investigation turned up nothing new-the whole place was completely gutted by 
fire-until Honey and Marie found the skeleton. 

They had come upon an unblocked doorway at the far end of the room-the south 
end-and passed through it to have a look. When I heard the scream I dashed 
through the dark opening, bold as you please, raising my stick, ready for 
anything. But I hadn't traversed half the distance from the door to the 
place where the two girls stood when my boldness underwent an instantaneous 
change to cold intestinal fear. In an icy rush that unholy song of living 
death flooded the hollow chambers and pierced every one of us to the bone. 

It is perhaps because of this one moment-or rather, the impact of this 
moment upon me-that I have felt compelled to add my own voice to those of 
the former denizens and victims of Stone's Island. It is a personal reason, 
to be sure, but whether or not it is irrelevant only time can tell. It 
struck me, this scene, with all the force of an apocalyptic vision; it was 
as if these empty cells, untrodden by human feet for nearly four decades, 
had some hellish power to draw into themselves only those living forms from 
which they could construct images of their own horrid past, images which 
were prophetic because of their fateful and fatal ability to reproduce 
themselves, however obliquely, down through (and perhaps beyond) human 
history. 

The skeleton lay stretched out on its back upon a raised slab of stone, an 
ornate but corroding dagger lodged upright in its breastbone. At either end 
of this massive bier the two naked girls trembled in the droning draft like 
satanic concubines. Honey's blonde arrowhead cunt and the black 
innocent-looking puff at the bottom of Maria's belly both bristled in the 
stale howling air as if electrified. They were like Hecate and the dread 
Lilith, the incubus and the succubus, attending at the infernal throne. And 
upon the concrete backdrop of this somehow obscene stage Rick's lantern 
behind us cast the distorted and grotesque shadows of myself, my wife and my 
child. The wavering image of my upheld stick had the appearance of some 
crooked scepter, some netherworldly baton conducting all by itself the 
echoing dirge of Simon Stone's organ. 

The rest can be summed up in a few words before turning directly to Stone's 
diaries. The immobilizing spell of the moment was broken when the draft and 
the music-if it can be called that-died out. Obviously the legendary organ 
had not been up in the house as Rick had said, but down here in the hill; it 
didn't take long to find its remains half buried in the rubble and ashes 
behind the altar stone. The console and the wind chests and so forth had of 
course been consumed in the fire and most of the pipes had been crushed or 
scattered, but several pipes from what must have been the eight-foot stop 
(that set of pipes covering the range of the human voice) were still 
bracketed together and only bent or warped a little. These lay with their 
foot-holes directly in the open mouth of an air vent which must have emerged 
somewhere on the east slope of the hill near the beach. When the wind blew 
in some precise combination of direction and intensity, a circulation was 
set up between the vent and the stairwell we had descended, forming a 
"natural" bellows for the old pipes. The descent of the air through the damp 
earth was enough to cool it to a "chilling breath." 

Somehow the discovery of the other skeletons didn't give us nearly the shock 
the first one had. The bones of the man on the altar were for the most part 
only charred and blackened; the others were less intact-of some only the 
teeth and parts of the skull survived the flames. Altogether we found the 
remains of no less than thirty-two per sons, some of them definitely 
children. Had no one ever wondered about the absence of teeth or bones in 
the ruins above? 

In a small cell behind the organ I found the last skeleton. This room had 
escaped the fire but not the termites: the shell of a desk fell into dust at 
my touch and the other furniture had already collapsed. The skeleton 
reclined on the bare springs of a rusty iron bed against the wall; all about 
the skull wisps of long white hair hung from the scaling coils. 

It was in this same room among the dust and splinters of the collapsed desk, 
that I found the small metal chest containing Stone's journals and several 
bundles of letters, many of them unposted. To me-a writer with an 
incorrigible obsession for unearthing the secrets of the past-this discovery 
was like finding buried treasure, and I spent the rest of the night aboard 
the Argo pouring over those cracked and yellowed pages. (That is, I spent 
most of the night doing that.) 

On the lid of the box was an intricate bas-relief in black bronze inlaid 
with silver; it was a miniature copy of the Dragon Gate, exactly like the 
one on the terrace except for one thing: beneath the locked jaws of the 
dragons was an open scroll bearing the same inscription as another gate 
described by Dante: 

ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE 

 CHAPTER TWO 

Simon Stone's Journal, 1915 Feb. 15-The work on the island is proceeding 
better now than at the beginning, though I am still having some difficulty 
with the workmen-careless malingerers, all of them!-have to watch them every 
step of the way. These Florida swamp rats are not used to such a large 
project, and the climate, too, is not conducive to hard work. Still, if I 
keep up the pressure, it will be done. How magnificent it looks already! It 
is impossible to make the hill as high as I had planned, but even as it is, 
from our temporary quarters on the west bank of the lake, it looks like a 
veritable mountain in contrast with the flat landscape and the other swampy 
islands. In my mind's eye I can see my future castle in the most intricate 
detail, perched high in this almost Mediterranean air, overlooking the 
squalid fishing village of Sago like a Spanish manor house. Indeed, among 
these rude "frontiersmen," a man with money like myself truly has the power 
of a feudal lord-or almost so. I can hardly wait until the upper structures 
are finished!-I have decided to wait until then to begin the underground 
work; no hand but mine and my Negroes' will have a part in it. What fun, 
after all, are secret chambers if they are not secret? 

Last night, for the first time since the marriage, Amanda seemed really to 
get into the spirit of things. Naturally, she has always complied with my 
wishes-she even agrees that the sexual experience is more exciting when 
dramatized-but there has always been a touch of distasteful reticence about 
her actions, an excessively strict adherence to my instructions, none of 
those impassioned improvisations which seem to come so natural to some 
women. Still, I do not forget that those women were sluts and whores, fallen 
women, whereas Amanda is the very flower of youth and innocence-seventeen!-a 
child bride; how lucky I am to have her! I wonder was it by accident or by 
unconscious design that I have come into possession of such an unblemished 
bud of beauty. Have I imitated Poe without realizing it? Perhaps I should 
change her name to Anabelle-Ha ha! What inexplicable ecstasy to watch such a 
bud in the throes of bloom, opening almost insensibly to the moonlight of 
carnal lust-O exquisite unfolding flower of evil! Salut, Baudelaire, 
wherever you are! 

Last night.-These rooms leave much to be desired for the purpose of our 
games, but I fitted the windows of the spare bedroom with black drapes and 
hung the Prometheus painting. I unpacked the purple silk coverlet which I 
bought in New Orleans and covered the bed with it. I was a little uneasy 
about bringing the chains up; in their place we used silk scarves-a 
stimulating innovation! It is an attic room with a few exposed studs across 
the rafters, and over one of these I threw a length of rope and had her 
hoist me up by the wrists to my tiptoes- wrists and ankles bound with the 
scarves. I wore nothing but a rag of cheesecloth about the loins, the stage 
thus set, she hurried off to prepare herself. 

These preparations always take a long time- everything must be just right: 
her hair, her gown, her make-up and jewelry, even her skin tone is of the 
utmost importance!-but this time she was gone over two hours, the longest 
yet. No matter what roles we are assuming, what sort of scene we are acting 
out, this waiting period is always an integral part of the action. It must 
be spent in an uncomfortable position-the more severe the discomfort the 
livelier grow the workings of the imagination. I never know, nor do I wish 
to know, just when she will reappear; hence the ingredients- pain and 
suspense. Her long absence this time had me a-tingle to the breaking 
point-because I knew that she was giving herself over completely to the 
game, torturing me with the ecstasy of waiting, drawing it out, examining 
and re-retouching every tip and crevice of her tender body to make it cruel 
and agonizingly beautiful, an instrument of torture all of itself, letting 
the pressure build, the juices rise-when the moment of her entrance arrived, 
we were no longer Simon and Amanda Stone... 

After Gaius Valerius had, in jealous spite, published a poem accusing Clodia 
of poisoning her husband, the former governor of Cisapine Gaul, so that she 
might without further complications continue sleeping with her brother, she 
had the love-mad poet taken in secret and imprisoned in her villa outside 
Rome. She had him bound and dangling by his wrists in her apartment for 
several hours, alone, before she presented herself to him. 

She wore a red gown of the sheerest fabric, bound beneath her breasts with 
black cords and falling loosely to her sandaled feet. Her long black hair 
cascaded about her bare shoulders and fell in ringlets over her forehead; 
against the white skin of her flat belly and slim thighs the egg-shaped 
patch of maidenhair gleamed like a black medallion through the scarlet mist 
of her gown. From her ear-lobes hung great sunbursts of gold and jet, and 
between her small swelling breasts a flashing ruby swung on a golden chain. 
But the two rubies of flesh at the tips of her breasts far surpassed the 
beauty of the stone. In one hand she carried a leather scourge. 

"Well, Gaius, you've finally succeeded in getting into my bedroom, haven't 
you? Are you comfortable?-can I get something for you?" 

"No,"-Gaius fought to keep from wincing-" I require nothing, Clodia. Just to 
be here, my love, where you have slept-what more could I ask?" 

She laughed cruelly. "But I do not sleep here alone, Gaius. I have many 
lovers to warm my bed, as your poems have told all Rome." 

"All Rome knew it anyway." 

"Perhaps. Anyway, you can thank my brother for your good fortune. The poor 
fool only wants to be your slave, he said to me, why not grant him his wish? 
So I have. You can be my personal slave and hang there at the foot of my bed 
every night while I entertain my lovers. If you are good, I will beat you 
from time to time." 

"I ask no more," said Gaius with a pained smirk. "Unless it be that you 
should become a vulture and visit me once a day to feast on my liver." 

"Ha, ha! Perhaps I will do that too, my sweet Prometheus." She stepped 
closer to him and brushed his taut stomach with the hard knobs of her veiled 
nipples, drawing a jeweled dagger from her girdle. "But you know, Gaius, if 
you are to be my bedroom slave, you will have to let me keep these for you." 
She drew his loin cloth aside and tickled his testicles with the point of 
the dagger. 

"Of course," he answered-but he trembled inwardly with the thought that she 
might actually do it! 

How brave he is, she thought. "It is only an act of kindness-it will save 
you from much torment in watching me entertain in my bed." 

"Yes, I quite agree. Perhaps you could make a necklace of them and wear them 
between your lovely breasts." 

"Oh, no, that would look silly! I will put them in a small box on my 
dressing table-and I'll leave the lid open all the time, in case you should 
forget." 

"My body as well as my heart is yours; do with it as you please." 

With the point of the knife she traced a line around the base of his 
scrotum. But the penis valiantly retained, its erection. How big and 
beautiful it is! she thought, And how fearless! She jabbed gently at the 
pulsing blue veins and the stiff member jerked and recoiled-but did not 
wilt. She moved the razor sharp blade beneath the cloth until he felt its 
edge along the root of his genitals, point up. "It will only hurt for a 
second. Are you ready?" 

"Yes." 

When she made the quick savage upward thrust with the dagger, Gaius could 
not restrain a cry of terror. It was just what she had wanted, to expose his 
fear, destroy his will. Now her laughter broke down the dam the knife had 
pierced, the dam of his romantic will, and he whimpered like a child. 
Nothing but the cheesecloth rag had fallen to the floor, but he felt as 
though his testicles, his maleness, had fallen too. Now it was time for the 
lash-before he could regain his composure. With every blow he cried out in 
unashamed pain, tears streaming from his eyes. When his back and buttocks 
were well striped, she hung the scourge over her shoulder and stood before 
him, smiling in triumph. She had broken him. 

Through burning tears he saw the blur of her body undulating before him like 
a lascivious snake, saw the red cloth fall from the ruby-nippled whiteness 
of her exquisite moons-from one and then the other-struggled to focus upon 
the delectable form, the revealed flesh- 

"Are these what you came all the way from Verona to see, poor 
Gaius?"-cupping her naked breasts in her palms. He could only whimper in 
reply, like a beaten cur. "-Or was it this?" She drew back the folds of her 
gown and showed him the black perfumed ringlets between her legs. Letting 
the gossamer curtains close, she approached him again and let her bared 
bosom touch his hot trembling body, looking up with quickening breath into 
his contorted face. She slipped a hand inside her gown, ran a finger along 
the oozing inner lips of her vagina and raised the finger to his nose. With 
an animal whine he seized on it with his teeth, sucking off the pungent 
honey. His cock jerked urgently against her belly, spotting her gown with 
its leakage. I would like to suck it, she thought, but then he would see my 
need and weakness. Let him crawl for it! "Would you like to make love to me, 
Gaius?" A passionate grunt escaped his lips and his pelvis began to thrust 
in spasmodic jerks like a dog in rut, but the only hole his prick found was 
her navel. Laughing, almost breathlessly now, she stepped back, ungirding 
her gown, and sat down on the edge of the silk-covered bed to remove her 
sandals. It took a great deal of effort, but she did it slowly-as an added 
torture. Then she unpinned the top of the gown and spread herself out in the 
center of the bed. The red folds fell away as she stretched her limbs and 
the unblemished whiteness of her naked body against the violet silk dazzled 
and stung his eyes almost to the point of blindness. Between her spread 
thighs the downy lips opened and he saw the livid pink beauty of her inner 
flesh. She taunted him thus until he was on the verge of a spontaneous 
ejaculation, from pure visual stimulation. 

Then she raised the dagger to the rope secured above the bedstead and slowly 
sawed it through. Gaius fell heavily to the floor and for some time lay 
crumpled in a heap, unable to move. 

"I'm waiting, Gaius. Do you want me or not? I can't keep my brother and his 
friends waiting all night, you know." 

With pure sexual energy Gaius Valerius, his wrists and ankles still bound, 
slithered across the floor like a snake toward the bed. He drew himself up 
and peered over the edge straight into her gleaming slit. His arms and hands 
had no feeling in them and were all but useless to him, but at last he 
succeeded in climbing onto the bed and plunging his face between her thighs. 
Though his teeth hurt her, she thrust her pelvis hard against his mouth and 
his tongue reached deep into her drooling warm cunt. He sucked mightily, 
drawing the thick elixir from every pore and fold of her silk-lined 
fountain. It was a balmy brew and it brought the blood back to his limbs and 
strength to his muscles. Summoning all his energy, he brought one knee up 
hard and freed his ankles from the bonds. Before she could struggle he 
sprang up and sat heavily on her chest, pinning her arms with his knees and 
slapping her several times hard across the face with his hands. When she lay 
still and whimpering beneath him, he got the dagger from the bedstead and in 
a moment cut the cords from his wrists. 

"And now, sweet Clodia, your slave Gaius is going to fuck you as even you, 
whose cunt is public property, have never been fucked before." 

And so he did. After bringing her savagely through four separate climaxes, 
he lifted her quivering buttocks and drove his rock-hard cock brutally into 
her asshole, while with his thumbs he manipulated her tiny stiff clitoris, 
his fingers wriggling deep into her flooding well. As his torrent of come 
gushed into her rectum, she went into a bone-wracking chain of orgasms which 
left her body limp and lifeless and her brain full of black flashes... 

-What fun we will have when the dungeons are finished! 

 CHAPTER THREE 

New London, Conn. 

Nov. 24,1925 Dear Manda, Just received your disturbing letter. I can only 
think that you must be mistaken about Simon!- he seemed like such a nice and 
proper gentleman when he was here, and so well educated. Even in ten years 
how could he have changed so? You know, Manda, that I was just as much 
against your marriage as Mama and Papa were-you were so young!-but it's done 
now and a thing of the past. You should try to make it work, even if only to 
prove us wrong-and you have your daughter to think of. Oh, I just can't 
believe your fears for little Eleanor are justified-I won't believe such a 
thing! I don't even dare show your letter to Charles. Honey, if I thought 
there was a shred of truth to your story, believe me, I would have the man 
committed myself. But you've always had such a wild imagination-I don't want 
you to think I don't trust you, I only want to ease your mind. I couldn't 
possibly interfere as you suggest. Charles and I have had our problems too, 
and no one would have helped us work them out-we had to do it ourselves. I 
know you and Simon will find a way. For Eleanor's sake. 

Maybe a change of scene would help. Why don't you all come up and visit us 
for a couple of weeks? After all, you haven't been home in ten years. We 
would love to see you, especially Eleanor. I'll bet she's a living doll! It 
might be just the thing to set everything straight, Manda. Do speak to Simon 
about the trip and let me know what you decide. 

Love Always, 

Pat West Sago Beach, Fla. 

Dec. 1,1925 Dear Pat, For Eleanor's sake, you said! Oh, Pat, that's why I 
wrote you, why I asked for your help. If I must beg for it, I will. Do you 
think I would beg for myself? Have I ever? I have had ample reason long 
before now, and maybe I should have-maybe if I had this would not be 
happening now. But I didn't. I loved Simon in the beginning and went along 
with his deviations to please him-I even enjoyed them myself sometimes-and 
later, when it got worse (almost intolerable for me sometimes!) still I did 
not complain, because he was my husband and I wanted our marriage to 
work-maybe, like you said, just to prove you and Papa wrong. But now it is 
no longer a matter of pride-I am pleading for my daughter's safety! I am 
twenty-seven years old, Pat, you simply must stop scolding me as though I 
were still your baby sister and try to understand the seriousness of this. 

In fact, my age is one of the main problems. I'm getting too old for 
Simon-he likes young women, girls. That's why he wants to bring Eleanor into 
his "games." The more I oppose him in this the more sullen and irritable he 
becomes. I am ashamed to go into the details of these games of ours-what I 
have already told you should be enough: he wants to have sex with his 
daughter. Would I tell you this (you, of all people!) if I were not 
desperate? 

At first I tried to persuade him to go to Jacksonville or Miami and bring 
back as many girls as he wants-It may shock you, but there are such 
creatures for hire, at all ages. But he won't do this. He never leaves the 
island any more. There is a kind of fear in him, growing stronger year by 
year, day by day-a fear of people, of the outside world. The island is our 
world. You probably won't believe this either, but I have not set foot on 
dry land in over four years. I say it that way because this island does not 
seem like land to me any more-it's more like some kind of horrible sinking 
ship. Have you ever seen that painting, "The Ship of Fools?"-Simon has a 
print of it in our bedroom! That's just what this island is to me, a ship of 
fools. 

This is perhaps the last distress signal I will be able to send you. I had 
to bribe one of the Negroes to deliver your letter directly to me when it 
arrived -if Simon knew of this correspondence he would put a stop to it. I'm 
afraid he is suspicious already. He won't let anyone off the island, as I 
started to say, except for a few of the older Negroes-they bring the mail 
and supplies from town. Two years ago he took Eleanor out of the private 
school in Sago Beach and hired a tutor for her. Tutor!-an old man on his 
last legs, one of the few people Simon ever befriended here. I am almost as 
afraid of him as I am of Simon, one is as mad as the other. Poor Eleanor! We 
are prisoners here, Pat, that's the only word for it. There isn't a one of 
the Negroes I can trust, not even the old mail carrier. (I only hope this 
letter reaches you.) They are all in Simon's power. I hate them and pity 
them at the same time. He has made zombies out of them, puppets. They think 
only of how he rewards them, never how he mistreats them. They practically 
lick his feet for a tidbit, they perform for him like dogs. These ignorant 
creatures are my sole companions. I am alienated from every living person on 
earth except for Eleanor and you-and now he threatens to take her from me, 
and you scold me for my wild imagination. Oh, if you only had an inkling of 
Simon's imagination! He hired (or bought) the Negroes in New Orleans-ten 
men, six young women and four boys (some have died since then, ten years 
ago, and some have been born) and as soon as we were settled in our house he 
renamed them all-in a christening ceremony I cannot describe to you. He gave 
them such devilish names as Belial, Moloc, Mammon, Gorgon, Charon-oh, it was 
all a joke at first, to add to the atmosphere of our "castle," Simon said. 
But now-not always, but sometimes- he seems to really believe they are 
demons or something, his "allies of Hell," he calls them. There is one huge 
young man-Beelzebub, Simon named him-Once Simon told me in all seriousness 
that he believed Bub was "actually an incarnation of Satan." Even knowing 
Simon as I do (I mean, knowing that he is harmless), all this is becoming 
very frightening to me-especially now that I know he wants to implicate 
Eleanor. 

I hope I have said enough this time to convince you. The visit you suggested 
is of course out of the question-and escape would be futile and dangerous to 
Eleanor, I've tried it before. All I ask is that you come here and see for 
yourselves, you and Charles. Then if you still think I am childish or crazy, 
you may leave and I will never bother you again. Please, Pat, come as soon 
as you can, before it's too late. 

Your loving sister, Manda* 

[*This letter was never posted. D. H.] 

New London Dec. 21,1925 Dear Simon and Manda, 

I can't tell you how delighted I am to know you two lovebirds are happy 
again! I knew all the misunderstandings would straighten themselves out, 
they always do. Ah, it almost makes me wish Charles and I were still young 
enough to have lovers' quarrels-ha ha! 

Well, this is just a note to thank you for writing, Simon-your wife did have 
me a little worried- but don't be embarrassed, I understand completely. 
(Sorry about your hand, Manda-try soaking it in green tea, the best thing 
for a burn.) When you get this, Charles and I will be on the boat for 
Europe. A bad time of year, I suppose, but Charles has to go to Paris on 
business, so we thought we'd have a little vacation in Greece afterwards. 
Now that I know you two are all right, I can really enjoy myself. Well, I 
have to run now. We'll send you a card from Paris. 

Love always, 

Pat 

 CHAPTER FOUR 

Stone's Journal, 1927 New Year's Day-At last Amanda has ceased opposing me. 
How perfect she is now!-how gentle and permissive, how wanton! With utter 
calm she invites all the world to enter her body through the yawning gates 
between her legs. And my stupid blackamoors-! I spat on them-had to beat 
five of the black bastards. Try as I might, the Devils would not enter them. 
If only I could discover the exact formula! When the Devils are absent from 
them, they are nothing but thick-headed niggers. Ah, but when They 
come!-Orcus and Demogorgon and Charon and the others-then they attend my 
every want as if I were the Master himself, and my dungeons are transformed 
into a temple of Hell. So much have I accomplished, with the help of Him, in 
the short space of ten years. 

But last night it was as if all my training and teaching had been for 
nothing. She lay so beautiful and naked on the altar-her teats were firm 
again, as in her youth, all the flab and heaviness gone from her hips and 
thighs, her hair for once unkempt, flowing in wild wet strings about her 
face, her cheeks smooth and gleaming, white as porcelain. Even her nipples 
had lost their distasteful brown color and become tight and pale; a touch of 
rouge and they jutted forth in all their original youth, rosy islands of 
sin! I commanded them: "Come on, you black dogs! This is my wife, joined to 
me by the sacraments of God; I give her to you. Fuck her in the name of 
Satan. Baptize her with your black sperm, cleanse her of the last waters of 
the tyranny of Heaven! Here is her white ass on a black pillow, she beckons 
you, sink your black cocks into that crimson cunt. You, Gorgon, mount!" 

But all I could get from them was, "No suh, mista Stone, no suh." They knew 
I would beat them, they asked me to beat them-anything but that, they said. 
I beat them, all right, and I made them beat each other, but still they 
would not obey. A prize like that, and they refuse! The fear I have tried to 
purge from their ignorant skulls came rushing back as if I had taught them 
nothing. All but Bub. 

Ah, Bub!-what plans I have for him! He alone has the power to take into his 
body the spirit of the Master. He was but a child when I got him, a blank 
slate on which I have written the words of Hell- his black brain knows only 
the black truths I have put into it. By a lucky chance, due to his mother's 
death at childbirth, he had not yet been baptized when I purchased him. He 
is the perfect crucible for the inhabitation of our Infernal Lord. He did 
not back away!-not Bub. He is now twenty years old and lusty as a he-goat. 
With a laugh and a sneer at his elders, he mounted the altar. His huge 
jet-black form hunched over the lithe pale female flesh, dwarfing her 
fragile form, drooling in the dark beard between her spread thighs. "Lap it 
up, Bub," I cried, "it's the Devil's own brew, my lad!-and he sank his thick 
beautiful tongue into her gaping abyss... 

While the others cringed in their chains at the sight of this ultimate 
adultery, Bub gripped my wife's white hips and drove all thirteen inches of 
his iron-black poker into her hungry body. As he panted over her, I got an 
idea. I ordered a large mirror brought to the head of the altar, and climbed 
up astraddle Amanda's lovely face, my back to Bub. I had the mirror held 
high and at such an angle that I could watch Bub at work behind me, and 
slipped my cock into Amanda's pale smiling lips. Ah, the cool breath that 
flowed from her!-the closeness of her throat which opened without revulsion 
and accepted my sounding length! Oh, my little Lesbia, my lascivious Lilith, 
how perfect you are! 

All the while old Minos played the organ, improvising a hellish fugue in 
counterpoint to our grunts and cries, and Amanda's wild, joyful shrieks 
filled my throbbing head. (Even now I can hear those lewd siren strains!) At 
the peak of an inspired crescendo, Bub discharged his copious load through 
his long cock and into her juicy rut, and her limber legs fluttered over his 
head like white streamers in the torchlight. I followed his lead, pumping my 
juice straight down her laughing throat. But even these molten injections 
could not warm her serpent's blood. 

Later, near dawn, I took her into my cell, alone, and fucked her time after 
time on the iron cot which she hated so before. It was her most perfect 
performance-better even than those times before our marriage, in the days of 
her youth. And she is as happy now as she was then, all her grotesque 
reticence gone forever; she is the cool, pristine flower of her warm and 
unstable girlhood, so fleeting and corruptible. She is here on the cot 
beside me as I write, sleeping now, the picture of calm and eternal youth. 
The very sight of her brazen nudity is stirring my loins-that black woolly 
hole in her crotch (I must trim and shave the hair a little to restore it), 
those smooth hips and still unsagging teats-I must break off and have her 
again! 

Night-Amanda and I were interrupted in our pleasure this morning by the 
stupid constables. There was nothing to do but go up and receive them. They 
asked the same idiotic questions they asked before-over and over again!-and 
then had the audacity to ask me to come with them, "to headquarters," as 
they put it. How pompous and self-inflated they are, these public servants! 
Nothing I could say about my ill health, my duties, or their own rude 
impropriety would dissuade the idiots from their purpose-until I flapped a 
bill or two within reach of their greedy hooks. Ha! How quickly their 
righteous integrity deflates at the sight of a few crumbs! I doubt they'll 
bother me anymore. 

Amanda rests quietly, as before. In spite of the troublesome intrusion 
today, now as I look at my new bride (for so she seems to me) a great calm 
and security comes over me. Her scolding tongue has softened to me, her 
glance is no longer one of chastisement, but of love and desire-and peace. 
The bite is gone from the air. When my limb of love enters that cool 
vestibule to her inflamed womb (O delicious chill!), my soul seems to pass 
out of this troublesome time and into an age before even the fires of Hell 
were kindled, an age before our long suffering Lord was cast from Heaven, 
before the seeds of good and evil began their long travail. Why this endless 
revolt? this eternal struggle, these wars of the torch and the book? this 
shrinking from the light? Do I long for the warm oblivion of that ghastly 
woman's-gut from whence I whelped like a smoking turd? or for a time before 
that, a time before the first vile wiggler polluted the empty seas, before 
the planets spun, the moon shone, the sun burned, before the stars violated 
the uncreated void, when the universe was an empty egg without a shell? Am I 
beast or angel who seeks this ancient stillness? Ah, but my pen runs away 
with me, and I have promises to keep. 

Tonight I will know the pleasures of both worlds. 

Now at last, with Amanda's consent and blessing, I will penetrate that most 
precious of secret flesh, the bittersweet fruit of our lust. Show me the 
way, brave Lucifer, lord of the dark wing; show me the exact recipe for the 
living pentagram, unlock to me the invulnerable reservoirs of Power! I am 
your loving servant, your companion-in-arms against the Sons of Light, 
faithful in all things to our Pact of blood. Truly a new year is upon us. 

MOTHER, DAUGHTER DROWNED IN INLET* 

[*Excerpt from a story in the Sago Beach Sun-Times, dated January 1, 1927, 
same as the above entry in the journal. I have placed the article after the 
entry instead of before it, in the hope of conveying a little of the shock 
which I myself received when I read it for the first time; I found it in the 
Lake Leethy Memorial Library only after I had read the bulk of the journals 
and letters in the metal box. The journals themselves are completely devoid 
of any description or allusion to that cold night in the inlet (the paper 
reported a low of 45 degrees); apparently there were some things which even 
Stone did not care to set to writing. D.H.] 

Mrs. Amanda Stone, 27, and her daughter Eleanor, 11, wife and daughter of 
local million-aire recluse Simon A. Stone, died last night when their 
14-foot boat overturned in the Sago Beach inlet. Mrs. Stone's body was 
recovered by her husband, also in the boat, but the body of the daughter has 
not been found, Police Chief Marlin Kendrew said. Chief Kendrew said 
dragging of the inlet will begin today, but, he said, "It isn't likely we 
will find it because the tide was going out." 

... Stone said they were fishing when a large wave capsized their boat. 

He was able to reach his wife, he said, before her body sank, but could not 
revive her. No autopsy report was mentioned. 

Stone said he lost sight of his daughter in the dark after the wave struck. 
As they were some distance from shore in about forty feet of water, 
authorities 

said, she is believed dead. 

After a brief investigation last night, the body of Mrs. Stone was released 
to her husband for a private burial on the grounds of his estate on 

Stone's Island in the north end of Lake Leethy near the scene of the 
accident... 

 CHAPTER FIVE 

Stone's Journal, 1928* 

[*In September of that year the worst recorded hurricane ever to strike this 
part of Florida caught the populace unaware and left a broad swath of death 
and wreckage all the way from the coast to Lake Okeechobee and beyond. 
Coming as it did on the heels of the 1926 Florida Depression, it was doubly 
disastrous to the area. D.H.] 

Sept. 16-Ah!-safe again at my desk. Ha ha! How weak and stupid I was to 
doubt Him-and myself. God's blood! The whole hill is shaking. I hear the aid 
house rattling its bones up there, but what of it?-let it collapse, let the 
ground seal over us! I spit on the upper world, I spend the last breath of 
my servitude on a great green glob in the faces of those harassing 
hypocrites. Now I will be free. The great Fiend has sent a liberating host 
to me on the tempest. I have seen them with my own eyes, entering, 
impregnating, activating my black-bored witches, young and old alike! Now 
with what dark hordes will I plague your huts, you pious dolts- what evils 
will I unleash in your streets; Like Gulliver, I piss upon your "palaces" 
and shit in your churches! 

This wind is surely a black herald from Hell, pregnant with pestilence. Such 
fury! Maybe it will wipe out the town, leave it as it was when I came here 
to find peace, to escape from the very mobs which have followed me! Truly 
there is no place on the face of the earth free from this rabble, this crud 
and scum of middle-class dungheads. They suck dry the swamps and level the 
mountains, no place however dim and remote is safe from their poisonous 
meddling. Perhaps this wind comes as a purge from the Black One, a blast of 
defiance to reassert His power in the world, and to insulate me, his 
disciple, from the encroaching hoards of usurpers (except for those I 
desire). Ha! how they must be cringing now in the teeth of the blow-that 
shredded sky'll turn their blood to water or I don't know them!-while ours 
grows thicker and blacker! Fuel for our fires, that's what it is. This 
furious draft makes our torches blaze up as never before, and the soul-fire 
of Mammon glows with rejuvenation all through the chambers under the hill. 

How the niggers loved it! Something about the smell in the air corning 
through the vents this morning made me go up to the house. The lake and sea 
were all afroth, and the spray and sand were blowing all the way up the east 
slope and striking the Dragon Gate like shotgun blasts. Yet the sun shone 
through a sky of ragged cloud and salt-mist. The weather so refreshed and 
thrilled me, that I decided to give the blacks the day off. I gave them free 
run of the terrace, and they immediately set about a great feast, singing 
and dancing, as heedless as I of the growing storm. 

Toward evening I descended from the house to the beach and stood for a long 
while at the south point of the cove. The sky had darkened and descended 
until it seemed to lay flat on the earth, whipping land and sea into a 
hissing turmoil. But still it did not rain, and the fires on the terrace and 
the hillside blazed higher than ever; the blacks danced and sang over the 
howl of the wind, their passions seemed to grow with the gale; the blacker 
the sky the hotter grew their blood. But this I only heard in progress 
behind me at the top of the stairs; my eyes were turned seaward, watching 
the great toothy rollers steaming into the jaws of the inlet. The lake 
seemed like a giant beast sucking in the fury of the storm from the east and 
farting it out over the towns and fields to the west. And me and my island 
in the middle, in the viscera, a demonic liver transforming the phlegmatic 
sea water into a spreading discharge of black bile. Huge riddled columns of 
cloud grew up on each side of the inlet and became dragons, snapping at each 
other over the raging water, and scanning the surface below for sign of boat 
or ship to devour. I fell on my knees and thanked Satan aloud for sending me 
this vision and asked for a key to its meaning. But nothing came but a blast 
of spray which soaked me to the skin. In the time I had stood there the 
water had advanced toward me some thirty feet and now lapped my boots and 
ate away at the sand, scooping great scallops from the shoreline. Suddenly I 
was aware of a presence behind me, though I had heard nothing. Turning, I 
saw the Black Man himself, Beelzebub, looming against the glowering sky, his 
eyeballs aglow like coals. 

"Come on, Mister Stone," he said in the voice of my man Bub, "You gonna wash 
away down here." I told him to lead on, and we climbed the stairs from the 
cove. At the top the two stone dragons were copulating furiously; one was 
fucking the other in the rectum, flame shooting from his scaly cock. I 
trembled and held back, but my companion urged me on. I protested; doubts 
and fears began to assail my soul. "Come on now, Mister Stone, come on up, 
they ain't gonna hurt us." I followed him close, and the dragons reassumed 
their positions over the gate. 

On the terrace, the blacks, finished with their feasts and drunk with the 
wine I had given them from the cellar, had fallen into wild revelry, dancing 
half-naked around the fire or pairing off to fuck. Fat old Baubo cackled 
like a hen as she rode on the back of a young buck who kept changing from a 
man to a pig and back again. She gyrated her hips, rubbing her cunt 
frantically on the ridged back of her mount, trying to get an orgasm from it 
and shaking her huge dark jugs in the firelight. 

In the skulls of those who were already possessed I could see a demonic 
glow, making their eyes burn brightly. The others lay with open mouths and 
legs, waiting to be ravished by the spirits now rapidly filling the air. In 
they came from the inlet, from the north and east, born on the black gusts. 
One came hurtling through the sky in the form of a scrap of canvas, bursting 
into human form only when it fell savagely upon the spread-eagle form of 
Hecate, one of my younger witches. She shrieked as he ripped her clothes 
from her body and sucked the fiery milk from her teats; then he milked them 
with his clawed hands, and two fountains of incandescent milk arched up into 
the air and blew away in sparks and blazing droplets. Orcus stepped up and 
opened his great maw in the stream of fluttering milk; when it struck his 
throat it hissed and turned to steam. His throat burst into flames and he 
fell on his back, shrieking with laughter. The demon rose from Hecate's 
prostrate body and, standing over Orcus, pissed a raging stream into his 
mouth to put out the fire. Smoke rolled from his throat and the pungent 
smell of hot urine spread over the terrace. The demon lifted Hecate up by 
the hips, upside down, and dipped his long pointed tongue into her smoking 
asshole. A fart filled his cheeks and he blew it into the fire where it 
ignited and became a whirling fireball, tumbling off over the hill. This 
sent old Baubo (for she is Hecate's mother) into such spasms of laughter 
that she pissed all over the back of her steed, the pig-boy, who almost 
broke his neck trying to lick it off his shoulders. The demon saw this and, 
pointing one of his young hostess' teats toward the boy, squirted a stream 
of igneous milk full in his face. Hecate was now so inflamed by the spirit's 
manipulation of her body that her every breath ignited when it struck the 
tempestuous air, and sparks shot from her nipples, her navel and her cunt. 
Her devil-lover placed her on the flagstones by the fire and stood over her; 
gripping his great scabrous phallus in both hands, he pissed on her face and 
body at each point of ignition until she was well-soaked and steaming. Then 
he lay down upon her with his face in her crotch and his great shaggy balls 
dangling in her eyes, and entered her bristling hole, tongue first. In a 
smooth, rolling curve he flowed into her body: when his head disappeared, 
her cunt-lips tight about his neck, her eyes began to glow-dim and red at 
first; then his shoulders collapsed and slipped in-his waist, his hips, 
thighs. With every inch her eyes grew brighter, until with a snake-like 
wiggle his ankles and long-toed feet slithered in through her quaking slit, 
and her pupils became pinpoints of white light in penumbras of blazing 
brimstone. 

This possession by ravage was going on all about us, as my chuckling guide 
led me across the terrace. In our path lay a naked black girl-Diana, just a 
baby when I brought her here, now swollen into puberty with fattened hips 
and new-sprouted teats, their nipples jet-black and jutting stiff from the 
firm cones of brown flesh. She lay spraddle-legged, love-hole foremost; 
artesian streams of thin milk flowed straight up from her little chocolate 
udders and were blown off in yellow mist, while steaming globs shot glowing 
from the scant-wooled mouth between her thighs and fell with wet smacks onto 
the flagstones. She looked up at me and her white teeth flashed like 
lightning. "Doncha want some o' this, Mistuh Stone?" she asked. I fell down 
and sank my face in that spouting crack, and the hot globs jetted down my 
throat as though shot from a cannon! I let them splatter against my face and 
run down my cheeks. Hellfire was in those gelatinous projectiles! They 
charged my blood with the balm of Dis! 

Bub urged me away, on up the hill. "These niggahs gonna all blow away 
directly, Mister Stone, les you and me get on up to the house." Thus He 
spoke, but there was more in his speech than the words alone revealed. He 
seemed to want to hurry me away from this carnal scene. Why? Again doubt 
poisoned my blood, my faith faltered; at that moment, in the midst of the 
howling, hissing air, my whole life seemed to hang in the balance: the words 
of Kierkegaard (which I thought I had long forgotten!) came back to me in a 
heavy rush-"Either this, or that." What was this madness? Had I not long ago 
made my choice? Made all the choices? Was my course not set? Had I not most 
decisively turned my back on the church of my father? Had I not vowed 
vengeance and sealed my oath in a covenant of blood? Yet here again was the 
old choice-a last hurdle, perhaps?-Thrown across my dark path by this 
tempest-but by whom? God or Satan? And what form was it to take, this last 
temptation? 

One side of the hill up which we climbed was fast being eroded away by the 
wind; the sod was gone and the black roots of the trees protruded from the 
naked sand, writhing like snakes, gelatinous antennae of giant insects. 
Snares of the mind, these hissing serpents funneled my gaze to a 
particularly deep wind-gouged hollow in the face of the stripped bluff. 
Something was there, a figure, only a little lighter shade of blackness than 
that which surrounded it. I gripped my black Virgil by the arm and pointed 
to the spot. "Look there, what is that? Let's go look." 

"That ain't nothing. Mister Stone. Them roots'll keep the sand up. We can 
shovel it back up when the weather clears up." 

"I know you don't want me to see it," I said, shocked at my own blasphemy, 
"but I have to. You know me, you know I must see all. Otherwise I am nothing 
to you, a worthless idiot, like the others. If I am to lead and do your work 
properly, then I must not be shielded from temptation, but lead straight 
into it. Test me!" I don't remember his words to this, but at least in this 
matter I felt he was powerless to resist me. I approached the gaping hollow. 
It was a black maw, a mouth of rotten teeth, surrounded by those writhing 
tentacles, a poisonous flower drawing my gaze into its trap by undulations 
of its cilia. Only for a moment did the vision clarify itself to my eyes, 
but that moment was enough to petrify my very bones. 

(Ha ha! the day Stone turned to stone! I can laugh at it now. It was only a 
trick, for the "vision" now lies beside my desk, smiling peacefully, whole 
and beautiful as ever, and ready for love.) 

There she lay in that treacherous cave, Amanda, my bride, on a bed of filthy 
rags. The stench of death and decay welled out of the cavity in a nauseous 
wave, yet I stood my ground. Her eyes were gone and her teeth hung loose in 
their bony sockets; scraps of rotted flesh hung on her skull and fluttered 
from her bones-Augh! I cannot describe it! 

When I opened my eyes again, it was gone, and Bub was leading me forcefully 
up the hill, chuckling to himself. Now horror mixed in my soul with 
jubilation: I had seen, and I had not succumbed. I had not groveled, I had 
made no sign of the cross; I had at last passed through the gates. Now all 
things would come to my fingers, and no door would be locked against me. And 
so it will be-even if the bloody house falls to splinters and blows away. Of 
what concern is it to me? 

Yet, as I say, with this thrill of new power was mixed the taste of horror, 
and I confess I was anxious and not a little afraid of what I would find in 
my cell. Who knows what a night like this might bring? My head spun with 
apprehension and revulsion and it seemed Bub and I were mounted on huge 
black horses, surging up the hill like the wind -yet making no more speed 
than a snail; it was all potential, bottled-up fury, and I fought 
involuntarily to hold it back, restrain what minute headway it could 
generate, lest it draw me headlong into my cell before I could prepare 
myself. Down the dark stairs crashed the ponderous horses, fire from their 
nostrils lighting the way, and I walked those last fearful steps to the door 
of my cell-and opened it. 

Now nothing, no one, will assail our walls. We are safe, my love, my two 
loves-and all my sweet black witches!-and we are ready to act. Thanks to 
this great storm we begin anew; that which weakens them fortifies us, and we 
will not lag in our advance. No more holding back! Our grottos cry out for 
fresh young blood, smooth white skin-Let this howling wind broadcast our 
overtures throughout the town-whatever's left of it. 

Enough for tonight, Amanda grows impatient. 

 * * * 

PART TWO - THE DAUGHTERS OF GE 

 CHAPTER SIX 

The reader will appreciate that for the purposes of this volume I can only 
lift excerpts here and there from the journals and letters, hopefully 
sufficient to tell the tale. And since I am trying to arrange these papers 
and interviews in such a way that the story will roll off more or less 
chronologically, I now ask you for the time being to climb with me out of 
the little metal box and accompany me on a visit to a certain whorehouse of 
good standing in the city of Rodriguez, some fifty miles south of Sago 
Beach. 

Much of the tale would have gone untold-at least some of its more colorful 
aspects-if it hadn't been for the lucky chance of having Honey Jones with me 
that first night on the island. Without her I would never have struck the 
trail of Molly Goldsmith, according to the old newspapers the only survivor 
of the Stone's Island fire. (I have a feeling this is not completely true, 
that a few of the others, at least one of the Negroes, may also have gotten 
out alive, but this is purely a personal opinion.) We were all in the cabin 
of the Argo-day was just beginning to dawn-poring over the contents of the 
box. That is, my wife and I and Honey were poring over the contents; Rick 
and Billy were fast asleep. Honey had come upon some ledger sheets listing 
donations and expenses for the Verlain Home for Girls, evidently the "girl's 
school" Rick had mentioned earlier. It was apparently a formal report to 
Stone of the school's financial standing. On one of the sheets was a list of 
girls' names, fourteen of them. 

"Hey, look," she said, "Molly Goldsmith, it says here. I used to know a 
Molly Goldsmith. She runs a cat house in Rodriguez." At first I dismissed 
the idea; it's a common name after all. But the thought that I might be able 
to get a firsthand account of Stone's activities was tantalizing. Later I 
asked Honey how old her Molly Goldsmith was. "Well it was a couple of years 
ago when I worked for her-I don't know, she looked around fifty, I guess. 
Kind of a weird old lady, but she treated her girls well. I just got sick of 
working in a house, that's all." 

"Does it give the girl's ages on that sheet?" I asked. 

"Yeah, it gives their ages for 1929. They were all between nine and sixteen. 
Let's see... Molly was thirteen." That would make fifty about right; maybe 
we were onto something after all. I asked if Molly had ever lived in Sago 
Beach. Honey didn't know, but she told me a very interesting thing: "She had 
her name changed. I don't know when, some time before I met her. She goes by 
the name Holden, but I knew it was really Goldsmith because a couple of 
times people came to the hotel and asked for Miss Goldsmith, and Molly would 
come out and fix 'em up. Maybe they were from Sago Beach, I don't know. Then 
one time a letter came for Molly Goldsmith and she took it." Honey didn't 
know where the letter was from either. It was all beginning to sound very 
suspicious, and that afternoon when I dug out the old newspapers at the 
library and found Molly Goldsmith listed as the only survivor of the 1932 
fire, I was convinced. The next day I left Yvonne at the cottage with Billy 
and her lifeguard (so called), and Honey and I took off in her car for 
Rodriguez. 

The Hotel Mandalay was wedged loosely into a row of somewhat newer 
buildings-some commercial, some residential-on a street bordering the 
ghetto. Its architecture was of the stucco-and-tile imitation-Spanish type 
popularized by Mizner and his disciples during the Florida Boom. (It was an 
early devotee of Mizner, by the way, who designed Stone's Mansion, according 
to the journals.) The neglected exterior was contrasted by a plush, baroque 
atmosphere inside-everything in meticulous, dust-free order, like a museum 
of antiques. Miss Molly greeted Honey with a warm kiss and after sending for 
a pot of tea led us into a small parlor off the lobby. 

Molly Holden (or Goldsmith) made an immediate and strong impression on me. 
If she was truly our Miss "M" of the journals, she would be fifty-three; yet 
to me she didn't look much over forty-five. Her black hair had begun to turn 
gray, but was still very thick; she wore it pulled high on her head and 
fastened in a jeweled barrette from which it cascaded to her neck in soft 
waves ending in ringlets. The crow's feet about her eyes gave a certain 
sparkle to her face rather than an aged look, and the loose lapels of her 
flowered silk kimono-like garment revealed the upper swells of a smooth and 
voluminous (though no doubt well-brassiered) bosom. Though the hem of her 
dress struck her above the knees, displaying her rather thick-ankled legs 
sheathed in black net, somehow she didn't have that embarrassing appearance 
of older ladies who try to dress like young girls. She had in fact a very 
dignified and cultured air about her, in spite of the earthiness of her 
conversation. 

A young buxom blonde in a mini-skirted peasant outfit came in with the tea 
and dangled her unharnessed tits over the table as she filled our cups. Miss 
Molly lowered her eyes discreetly as I stared into the blonde's gaping 
neckline. Without looking up, she said, "Is this something like you had in 
mind, Mr. Hackett?" 

I looked back at the blonde. "Well-" 

But before I could explain, Miss Molly went on- "Mina honey, show the 
gentleman what you have to offer." The blonde smiled, and with a slight 
wiggle and a shrug of her shoulders, the loose blouse fell from her breasts. 
They were big and ripe, almost blue-white around the cherry-pink nipples. 
Somehow my explanation got stuck in my throat. Miss Molly turned aside to 
Honey and said, "She's new. Nice, huh?" Honey agreed, with a wink at Mina. 
"Draws almost as much business as you did." Honey laughed. "Sure you won't 
come back with us, Honey?" In other words, there were no hard feelings 
between Honey and her former boss, but I lost track of the conversation when 
Mina, having displayed her boobies from several angles, lifted her short 
skirt to give me a look at her hairy snatch. I knew I had better speak my 
piece before I forgot all about Stone's Island. 

"Actually, Miss Holden, I came only to talk, but I must admit the 
merchandise is very tempting. If I were to find the time-say tomorrow 
night-Miss Mina here would certainly be my choice." The girl smiled and 
thanked me as she smoothed down her skirt and tucked in her jugs. 

"Consider her reserved then," said Molly, nodding to Mina. When the blonde 
had gone out, Molly's face seemed to have lost some of its friendliness. I 
suppose that she had been under the impression that Honey had brought her 
some big business. "Now, Mr. Hackett," she said, "what can I do for you?" 

I blurted it right out. "What can you tell me about Simon Stone, Miss 
Holden?" 

Her face grew pale and her mouth hardened. She stood up and glared down at 
Honey. "Do you think I'm running some kind of information service, Miss 
Jones?"-and to me-"Mr. Hackett, as you know, my business is girls, not local 
history. I'm getting fed up with you newspapermen and your hot leads on a 
story that was stale news thirty years ago. I know, don't tell me, somebody 
told you my name used to be Goldsmith, right? But I'm not the Molly 
Goldsmith you're looking for, Mr. Hackett, and I never knew Simon Stone. Now 
if you'll please excuse me... " She held the door open for us. 

"Miss Holden, I'm not a newspaperman, I-" I was at a loss as to how to 
proceed; maybe she was telling the truth. Right or wrong, I felt like a nosy 
bastard, and was about to make my apologies and duck out, when I noticed 
something that changed me from a person normally considerate of other 
people's privacy back into a ruthless sleuth. 

From the wrist that held the doorknob dangled a bronze medallion on a chain 
bracelet. On both faces of the slowly spinning disk, in low relief, flashed 
the burnished image of the double dragon. I didn't have to read the 
encircling inscription to know what it said. 

I gently but firmly took her hand from the knob and closed the door. All 
this was embarrassing Honey, but I was determined. 

"Let me explain, Miss Holden. Please sit down. As I say, I'm not a reporter. 
Nor am I a detective or anything of the sort. I am, however, a man who 
enjoys a good story, and one who is quite willing to pay for the privilege 
of hearing a good one." 

"I'm not interested," she said. "I sell love, not stories." 

"Ah, but a good story and a good woman can be equally valuable commodities, 
and sometimes serve the same ends. But all right then, let me go further. 
I'm not a newspaperman, but I am a writer-a novelist. I may or may not write 
a book about Stone's Island. If I do, even without your side of the action I 
have enough information to reveal those parts of it which you have been 
sitting on all these years- that is, the parts concerning you and your girl 
friends." Her expression changed from anger to fearful anxiety. "You see, 
Miss-Goldsmith, purely by chance I have discovered the underground rooms of 
Stone's Island. In one of the rooms I found a metal box, with this-" I 
reached down and held the medallion in my open palm "-on the lid." . 

"A box-?" Her voice trembled. 

"Containing Simon Stone's diaries covering the years between 1915 and 1932." 

"But everything-" She put her hand to her mouth. 

"Burned?" I said. "Not quite everything. You are referred to as simply 'M,' 
but his description of you is quite adequate. Maybe you haven't changed as 
much as you think since then." (I was lying about the description; Stone's 
descriptions, though sometimes extremely detailed, were not concerned with 
purposes of identification. They were in fact nothing but spontaneous 
products of the auto-erotic tendency which apparently compelled him to keep 
the journals in the first place. In the majority of entries Stone's highly 
imaginative and startlingly lucid style of self-directed pornography reads 
like an extended verbal masturbation. 

At last Molly sat down. The age which she had staved off so well seemed now 
to siphon towards the surface. She looked so pitiful, almost desperate, that 
I began to hate myself again. I sat down on the divan beside her and took 
her hand in mine. Her palm was cold. 

"Miss Goldsmith, I didn't mean any harm. Maybe I've gotten carried away with 
all this. I guess I'm not very good at prying into other people's pasts. If 
you don't want to talk about it, I won't bother you anymore. I'm only in 
Florida for a few weeks." 

She seemed to regain some of her composure and stood up. Honey said she was 
sorry, and Molly smiled her forgiveness. "Come back tonight, Mr. Hackett. I 
have to think. I'll let you know what I decide then." 

Honey had an appointment to keep in Sago Beach that night, so after we had 
lunch I sent her off. She was to give the news to Yvonne and meet me again 
the following evening at the Mandalay. I didn't want to hurry my Miss "M" or 
seem overanxious now that I had her on the hook, so after supper at a little 
spaghetti house, I took in a movie. It was around ten when I walked up the 
front steps of the hotel. 

The girl at the desk had a message for me: I was to go directly up to Miss 
Molly's rooms on the second floor. To my surprise the old girl actually 
seemed happy to see me. I suspect that for a long me-unconsciously, 
perhaps-she had felt a growing need to unburden herself of that buried 
segment her life from which she barely escaped with her sanity, not to 
mention her life. Now, with the truth finally in the hands of another, it 
was as if a great weight had been lifted from her, a weight she had borne 
precariously for the last thirty-seven years. However, the only explanation 
she gave for her change of heart was that it didn't matter anymore, she was 
getting old, etc., and that since I was going to publish the story anyway, 
she would rather I heard her part as it really happened, instead of solely 
through the eyes of a madman. 

She was dressed informally in a flimsy silk wrapper of pale yellow with 
large hand-painted flowers. On her feet were gilded slippers and her long 
gray-streaked hair, parted severely in the middle, hung in thick waves over 
her shoulders. She looked-if somewhat older-even more ravishing than she had 
that morning. She looked the way every beautiful woman hopes she will look 
at fifty-three, but rarely does. I sat with her on a curved Louis XlV-ish 
divan in a room lit dimly with red-shaded lamps. A beautiful brunette in a 
smock of black gauze came in with a chilled bottle of champagne. Molly 
locked the door after her. 

In that atmosphere, that ambience, her voice an appearance were charming 
almost to the point of being hypnotic. There was in her voice a certain 
barely perceptible substratum of-what shall I say madness?-hysteria? I can 
think of no better simile than that gripping undercurrent of despair in the 
opening choruses of Bach's St. Mathew Passion which slowly and painfully 
intensifies itself until in the fifty-fourth recitative it explodes in that 
insane spine-chilling cry of the mob- Barabbam! 

Molly: My mother and father were both killed in the 1928 hurricane; I was 
twelve years old then. It was such a terrifying experience, I guess my mind 
blacked out during the confusion. I don't remember how or when I was 
separated from my parents and brothers. It was like the whole world was 
blown away. They say that half the buildings in our town -we lived in 
Chaclahatchee-were completely destroyed. Anyway, I was rescued somehow and 
ended up in the orphanage in West Sago Beach along with a lot of other 
half-drowned kids like myself. But I was there only a day or so before Mrs. 
Verlain came and took me away. 

Mrs. Verlain was a widow-in her late thirties, I guess, at that time. She 
had a charter to operate a school for homeless girls, but very meager funds 
to get started with. Nevertheless, with the depression in full swing and the 
storm on top of it, she soon filled her house with refugees of one sort or 
another, until in a couple of months there were fourteen of us. The house 
she rented was much too small, and she was always on the verge of losing it, 
because she was operating almost wholly on contributions-her small 
inheritance was nearly gone. But small as the place was, it was a thousand 
times better than that damned orphanage, and Mrs. Verlain was so kind and 
gentle with us that we all soon loved her like a mother. 

I often wondered in those days why she had picked me out of all the girls at 
the orphanage. She knew nothing about me and I was too scared to tell her 
anything. The girls came from all sorts of backgrounds, some were farm girls 
like me, others were from the cities, and our ages ranged anywhere from nine 
to sixteen. But there was one thing alike about all of us, though it didn't 
occur to me till later: we were all quite pretty. 

Mrs. Verlain wasn't bad looking herself, in a severe sort of way. I 
shouldn't say she had a masculine look, but her features had a certain 
hardness to them, you know?-and she carried herself straight as a ramrod. 
She was part Indian-Blackfoot, she told us proudly-and you could see it in 
her face, the high cheekbones, full but hard lips. Her nose was too big and 
had a slight hook to it, and eyes black as coal-really beautiful eyes. She 
wore her hair cropped short, but never allowed any of us girls to cut a 
single strand of ours. She was a tall woman, not lean exactly, because she 
had a good set of tits. May I speak in the vernacular, Mr. Hackett? 

Hackett: Please do. And, Molly (brushing a strand of hair from her face with 
my fingertips), call me Drake. 

Molly (smiling): All right then, Drake. Mrs. Verlain had a nice set of tits, 
and her ass was smallish but not masculine. She seemed lean because of her 
hardness. I mean, her tits and ass were as hard and firm as her legs and 
arms, solid, like pure muscle. I'll bet she didn't have an ounce of fat on 
her whole body. 

But like I say, this was only her appearance. Her manners and personality 
were just the opposite- gentle and loving. She fed us as well as she could, 
going hungry herself sometimes, made all our clothes and drilled our lessons 
into us. She was so strong that despite the hard times we all felt as 
se-cure and happy as baby ducks under mama's wing. 

But our security was an illusion, and after less than a year Mrs. Verlain's 
money-if not her strength-finally ran out, and one night she got us all 
together and told us that this was the last month we would be able to stay 
in the house, she couldn't raise the back rent and the landlord was going to 
foreclose. I wasn't worried in the least until she told us there was a 
chance we'd have to go back to the orphanage. That night all of us girls 
cried in each others' arms, and Mrs. Verlain sat in a straight wooden chair 
until dawn, staring out the window. But in the morning all her strength and 
faith seemed to have returned. She scooped up the last few bills and all the 
loose change in the money box, stuffed it into her purse, put on her hat, 
and walked out the house, as casual and as buoyant as ever. 

She spent our last dime on an ad in the newspaper, fully stating our plight 
and humbly requesting donations. We had barely enough food in the house for 
two days. On the second day a colored boy brought an envelope from Simon A. 
Stone containing a check for the back rent plus an extra hundred dollars-and 
a message. 

Mr. Stone offered Mrs. Verlain, free of charge, the use of a large guest 
house on his island which he said could easily be converted to a dormitory 
and classrooms. He said since the death of his wife and daughter, he had no 
use for the extra buildings, and it would give him great pleasure to be of 
service to her in her admirable project, and so forth. 

Well, to us it seemed like a dream come true- life on an island! How 
wonderful it would be! But our mistress seemed to have some misgivings. 
Everyone had at one time or another since 1926 heard the rumor that Simon 
Stone had murdered his wife and daughter. The rumor has persisted, as you 
know, all these years, even though the law couldn't even bring it to trial. 
This was part of Mrs. Verlain's worry, I suppose-a lone woman and fourteen 
girls living on an island with this man. For another thing, his generous 
offer seemed very strange. Stone had been known for years as an incorrigible 
recluse-he never left his island for anything and was reported to have 
nothing but hatred for the townspeople. Also, he had a reputation as a 
miser. But of course there was really no choice, and after another night in 
her chair, Mrs. Verlain paid a visit to Stone's Island. 

She returned convinced of the man's sincerity. It was out of remorse for his 
dead family, she said, that he had opened his heart to us. Now she was as 
excited as we were, and within a month we had moved into the house on the 
island. 

And it was wonderful. It was even better than we had imagined. It was 
idyllic. I can't describe the effect the setting had on us that first year, 
I had never known anything like it, and never would again. It was a year 
full of such joy and innocence, such-! But I really don't have the words for 
it, Drake. Seeing the island as it is today, you can't imagine what it was 
like then, the trees and flowers, the rolling lawns and fountains, the 
garden full of birds... 

But most important, it was the year I fell in love for the first time. I was 
thirteen, naive as they come, ripe and ready to be picked. 

Living as we did, it was natural that we would sooner or later discover the 
pleasures of Lesbianism. Maybe Yvette and I were the first ones to become 
lovers, but it wasn't long before many of the others began to pair off at 
night too. It got so bad-or so good, I should say-that after a while a lot 
of us didn't even bother to get under the covers when we did it. If Mrs. 
Verlain knew what was happening, she never let on. 

It started with us-Yvette and me- the very first week on the island. Stone's 
Negroes had not yet completed the alterations of the guest house, so we had 
to double up in bed for a while. Mrs. Verlain had her own room, by the way, 
apart from ours. Yvette was sixteen and I think the most beautiful of all 
those beautiful girls. To me her little breasts -but they were big to 
me-were the loveliest thing about her. They were developing so fast that I 
seemed able to watch them swell day by day. We had already become good 
friends, so she and I slept together till the dorm was finished. The first 
night, when the lights went out, she pulled the sheet up over our heads and 
whispered in my ear that she thought I was the prettiest girl in the Home. I 
just laughed at her and told her not to talk so silly. Then she kissed me on 
the lips and turned her back to me. 

That little kiss disturbed and thrilled me like nothing ever had before! It 
was a long time before I went to sleep. 

The next night I asked her why she said I was the prettiest one when 
everybody knew that she, Yvette, was the prettiest of all. She said, "Shh! 
Pull the covers up so the others don't hear." With the sheet over our heads 
again, we put our faces close together and talked in whispers. She said she 
wished she was slim again like me. "Rose and Joyce are always giggling 
behind my back," she said, "They say I'm getting fat." I told her Rose and 
Joyce were just jealous because they didn't have any figure, and because she 
looked like a movie star. I told her I was jealous too. "I look so stupid 
and flat-chested beside you," I said. 

"You are not flat-chested," she said, "Let me feel." I lifted up my pajama 
top and she felt my little titties. "You're not flat, Molly. Gosh, they're 
getting big!" I thought it was taking her a long time just to see how big 
they were. She kept rubbing my hard little bumps with both hands, and I 
started getting all tingly again, like when she had kissed me. Then she 
said, "Don't you want to feel mine?" and I said yes. She opened her pajamas 
and I timidly reached out in the dark and touched her warm bosom with my 
fingertips. Oh, her tits were so soft! So shapely to the touch! She said, 
"Don't be afraid, silly," so I pushed my palms against them and felt the 
flesh yield and the nipples push back against my hands. Her breathing got 
heavier and the air got hotter and hotter under the sheet as our play got 
bolder and bolder... 

(Molly had ceased by this time to look at me as she talked. She seemed to 
have passed over into another time, her blood stirring to old passions long 
dead; her speech was almost sing-song sometimes, childlike, or else it 
became surprisingly lucid in its expression, rhythmic and flowing like a 
Sapphic hymn. Minute by minute the accumulated months and years seemed to 
lift from her voice, and suddenly I was able to identify that faintly 
hysterical substratum I spoke of: it was the ghost of her youth, flying 
backward in time, giddily, like a moth toward a candle. She went on-) 

... I noticed Yvette's nipples had gotten stiffer than they were before, and 
when I called her attention to this we both started giggling, and after a 
few minutes some of the other girls told us to shut up, so we didn't play 
anymore that night. But before we went to sleep, Yvette kissed me again, and 
this time she pushed the tip of her tongue between my lips. That night I 
dreamed of a handsome prince on a white horse. I sat in a flowing robe 
beside a black pool, and the prince was riding toward me, cutting his way 
through a field of sugar cane with a shining sword. He had long golden hair, 
like Yvette's, blowing in the wind; and on his chest, sticking out through 
round holes in his mail, were two lovely white female breasts with scarlet 
nipples... 

The third night Yvette pulled the covers over our heads again, but for a 
long time-at least it seemed like a long time-she didn't say or do anything. 
Then she said, "Molly, do you have any hair between your legs yet?" 

I said, "Yes, a little bit." 

"Look at all this!" she said and wiggled out of her pajama bottoms. Of 
course I couldn't see anything, but she took my hand and put it on the 
fleecy thing at the bottom of her stomach. It felt so thick and soft-it gave 
me goosepimples! "Isn't it awful?" she said. I told her I thought it was 
wonderful, and asked if it was blonde like her head. She said it was, and 
that as soon as we got a chance she'd let me see it in the light. 

"Do you want to feel mine?" I asked, "I've just got a little stupid fuzz." 

She said, "Hurry!" so I pulled down my pajamas and she put her hand between 
my legs-Oh! I'd never known such a feel as that, the sensation of those soft 
fingers on my pussy! I tried to do what she was doing, and her slit started 
getting all wet and slippery. Her lips covered mine again and this time I 
touched her tongue with mine and arrows of love went all through my body! 

There was no giggling that night. Yvette pulled off her pajama top and 
almost ripped mine open, she was so eager to get at my breasts again. I was 
just as eager, and we took turns passionately kissing each other's nipples, 
until our chests were all wet and heaving. Then Yvette said that when she 
was at the orphanage one of the older girls had shown her another way of 
kissing. "You want me to show you?" she whispered. I said sure, if it was 
fun. She twisted around under the covers until we lay head to foot, and I 
felt her breath on my belly. She gently opened my thighs with her hands and 
kissed my pussy with her soft lips. Then she paused, spreading her own legs, 
but I didn't know what to do at first, I was trembling so with excitement. 
She kissed me again, this time using her tongue like when we kissed each 
other's mouth. How I tingled! -it was like a fire between my legs! Then all 
of a sudden I knew what to do-I wanted to do it, to repay her for giving me 
such pleasure. The smell of cheap soap and young sex filled my nostrils and 
drew my mouth to just the right place. I spread back her silky curls with my 
fingers and kissed that pouting mouth with my lips and tongue. Oh, that 
taste!-I will never forget that sweet, bitter taste of my first lover's 
body! 

It wasn't long before Yvette's hips and thighs began to tremble violently 
and I heard her whining strangely down there in the dark. I was about to 
stop and ask her if she was sick or something, but she clamped my head with 
her thighs and her pussy jerked again and again against my mouth, almost 
smothering me. 

Finally she relaxed, and I heard her say, "Thank you, sweet little Molly," 
and she went to sleep. All night I lay close against her shapely body-so big 
and warm it seemed to me!-and what dreams I had! We did the same thing the 
next night, but it wasn't until the time after that that I found out what 
the trembling was all about. Do you remember your first orgasm, Drake? 

Hackett (Startled!): Huh?-Why, uh, yes-yes, I do. 

Molly: You must tell me about it sometime. A woman always remembers her 
first time... 

Anyway, that was the way it went. The others gradually discovered these 
delights for themselves or else imitated us-after all, we couldn't hide our 
activities for very long, all of us living in the same room like that. When 
the dorm was finished, Yvette and I would take turns sneaking to each 
other's bed. Sometimes you would run into another girl in the dark on the 
way to her own lover's bed, and a few times I ended up on the floor with the 
girl I ran into. But I don't think there was much swapping around. Yvette 
and I were never deliberately unfaithful to each other until-but I don't 
want to get ahead of myself. 

I just want you to see that, no matter what happened later, that first year 
was filled to the brim with nothing but innocent love and happiness. It was 
like the Garden of Eden must have been. Now don't misunderstand-we didn't 
just make love all year, and we didn't spend all our time on the island. 
Mrs. Verlain was a very strict and thorough teacher, and if you fell behind 
in your studies, she could make you feel like an outcast just by looking at 
you a certain way, so I must say I think we got a much better education than 
most kids were getting in the public schools in those days. And then we 
worked in the garden too, and did the house cleaning- everybody had their 
chores. But there was a lot of free time too, and Mrs. Verlain would take us 
to a movie in town whenever she could afford it. But more and more we came 
to prefer the island to the town. Mrs. Verlain never prevented us from 
pairing off with our girlfriends for chores, and there were so many 
beautiful bushy places to hide in the garden or along the shore-to make love 
or just to sit and talk. We felt complete there, we needed nothing from town 
to fill out our days-they were full to the brim, and all the tragedies of 
our former lives had blown away on that warm wind from the sea. 

As for Mr. Stone, we never saw him. Our house was set off from the main 
house on the top of the hill and separated from it by a sort of wild park of 
Australian pines. You know how the hill terraces off on the south 
slope?-well, our house was then on the high part, above and to the left of 
the park where the gate was as you approached the big house from the docks. 
Even though the house had been badly damaged by the hurricane and Mr. Stone 
had done nothing to repair it, his Negroes still mowed the lawns and trimmed 
the trees in those days, but we girls did most of the yard work, and 
sometimes Mrs. Verlain even sent some of us up to the big house to help the 
maid with the house-cleaning. She said that was the least we could do for 
all Mr. Stone's kindness to us. On several occasions she would send rum a 
cake or a pie or a bouquet of flowers, but if there was ever any response to 
this I never heard about it. Mrs. Verlain often said, "How lonely he must 
be." But at the same time she was relieved that he was evidently content to 
leave us alone, because she had been afraid that he might be a problem. 

But anyway, all we ever heard from him that year was the lovely music of his 
organ. He played- or we thought it was he who played-every morning and 
evening, sometimes late into the night, waking us to those bright warm days 
and lulling us to sleep after our games of love... 

 CHAPTER SEVEN 

Stone's Journal, 1929 Aug. 10-They are already in my power and don't know 
it, bless their little cracks. The fumes from my crucibles and the music 
from my organ have already driven them mad with love. They have begun to 
tongue each other in broad daylight, beneath my very windows-and the other 
day two of them who came to help with the cleaning curled up on a sofa and 
went at it. Right under the Prometheus painting! Ha! 

At night they become a sea of flesh, rolling and swelling, turbulent as a 
maelstrom, serene as the moon, shameless as Venus! How many times in the 
last few months have I thanked Him for giving me the strength and 
persistence to complete the south tunnel in spite of all the 
difficulties-and the one-way mirrors work perfectly. Tonight the place 
sounded like a kennel at feeding time, they set up such a slurping with 
their little pointed tongues. They don't bother to cover themselves anymore- 
1 fact, they seem to want the others to watch them, especially the ones 
without a partner, to make them envious and jealous. 

I wonder if they would even mind if they knew I was watching them every 
night. Ah, how sweet it will be to touch that tender, unrent flesh! 
Especially Y, the loveliest of them all! Ah, to trade places with M for just 
one night. But soon she will lose that quality-oh doomed transient flesh!-if 
only I could free them all from the slump and decay of time as I have freed 
Amanda. Soon Y's firmness will begin to relax, her teats will fall, her 
belly will bloat, her hips and thighs will grow heavy and groesque-Shit!-if 
it weren't for the damned squaw I would move immediately. 

Still, there is such pleasure in anticipation. I'll bide my time-watch them 
pee and crap and bathe and suck pussy, while I splatter the back of their 
mirrors with semen hot as hellfire- 

I'll have my chance... 

Nov. 24-Soon now, Master, I will lay at your feet he first morsel of hot 
trembling girlflesh. The proper course of action has suddenly become clear. 
If I had been in the least attracted to the squaw- just enough to take a 
peek into her room-I would not have been this long in making my move. But 
what matter? Have I not deliberately hung weights on the hands of time to 
prolong our ecstasy, yours and mine? 

Tonight, instead of going back the usual way after Y and M went to sleep, I 
continued on around the passage of the south wall and looked into the 
squaw's mirror. A small light was burning. She was not in the room. I 
thought this was odd since it was quite late and I was under the impression 
that she turned in early. I checked her bathroom. It was empty. Puzzled, I 
started back toward the dormitory, but as I passed the end of the hallway 
which separates the girls' beds from the squaw's room, I thought I heard a 
noise. There is no mirror here, but I had a peephole cut behind the clock. I 
opened it and peeked into the dark hall- 

There she was, crouched at the door to the dormitory, her hand between her 
legs, peering through the keyhole. 

So! She knows what's going on. This makes all the difference... 

She will be my lever to pry wider the hairy gates of Hell! 

Nov. 27-Last night I saw clearly into the nature (and into the cunt!) of 
that dyke-Valkyrie, the squaw Verlain. 

One of the girls, R, is sick-nothing serious, apparently; a doctor came over 
yesterday evening and gave the girl a sedative to knock her out for the 
night, and I heard the widow say she would sleep in the infirmary so she 
could keep an eye on Miss R. An eye on her indeed! 

As soon as she turned the lights off in the dorm, down she goes to the 
infirmary where R was resting peacefully, dead to the world. Such a pretty 
little thing-fifteen years old, wavy light brown hair and teats like a young 
nanny goat. I wonder if her lover was faithful to her last night; I didn't 
even go up a watch the others, I was so eager to see what the squaw would do 
with this opportunity. 

At first I thought nothing was going to happen, he sat on the bed adjoining 
R's, sipping tea-all very prim and proper. After a while she got up and 
locked the doors and checked all the windows to make sure the shades were 
drawn, then came back and stood silently over the sleeping girl. I watched 
her face change as she looked down at the lithe form on the bed: her 
forehead seemed to smooth out, her cheeks soften. A passionate longing came 
into her eyes, and I could see the savage blood beating at her temples. She 
called the girl's name several times, to make sure she wasn't going to wake 
up. Then she touched R's pale cheek. No response. Her hand trembled as it 
moved down the girl's face and neck to the top button of her gown. She laid 
back the bed covers and gingerly opened her collar; bending over, she kissed 
the soft pink lips- 

As she kissed the girl's lips, eyes, cheeks, ears and neck, her hand 
continued down the front of her body, opening each button as it went. But 
before he got to the last button her hand shook so she lad to use both hands 
to complete the task. Her breath came faster and faster, and as she laid 
open the flannel gown and gazed down at that white glare of naked beauty, 
she seemed on the verge of swooning with emotion. R's pink-tipped little 
mounds rose and fell in tranquil counterpoint to the she-wolf's violent 
panting. Her long brown fingers lightly touched those rosy nipples-rolled 
them slowly between her fingers-traced spirals of perspiration outward over 
the snow white flesh- clutched them!-throwing her head back, a low howl of 
animal anguish rising from her open mouth, her fingers like boney snakes 
gone mad, bruising the soft young breasts! 

Suddenly she regained control and tore her hands away, leaving red and white 
marks where her fingers had gripped the tender mounds. In a moment she had 
changed completely, metamorphosed from a guilt-ridden school mistress, 
tortured by desire, into a calm, ruthless savage. She was all lust now-her 
true self had broken through, all inhibitions fallen away. Her black eyes 
still burned, yes-God's blood, how they burned!-but her hands no longer 
trembled, her fingers no longer fumbled; her thin lips ceased to twitch, and 
curled up slightly in a smile of anticipation as her fiery gaze raked the 
naked body from mouth to mouth. 

She walked with a certain powerful swagger over to the mirror on the wall at 
the foot of the bed-the mirror behind which I stood-unbuttoned her long gray 
dress and let it fall to the floor, followed by her slip. I was stunned by 
her body! I have been so preoccupied with the girls I'd hardly looked at the 
woman, never thought of her as other than an obstacle to my purposes. Her 
body has an unassailable quality about it, a body fully capable of rape, but 
not of being raped! Hard, hard as a rock-yet it is unmistakably a woman's 
body: the teats shapely, yet dense and unyielding, as though composed of 
gristle through and through (Ah, to get her pregnant just for a draught of 
milk from those grumose jugs!-Ha!-one swallow would fell an ox! But what 
man, what devil even, could mount that Amazon? Unthinkable!); the belly flat 
and well muscled, but cradled in a wide female (if not feminine) pelvis, 
which gives her hips a gentle flare, though the flesh on them is lean and 
sinewy; legs- what legs!-undulating columns carved with savage precision 
from red marble, with feet that grip the earth like the roots of a mountain 
pine. 

She removed her brassiere and I saw that the knobs at the centers of her 
black nipples were long and blunt, stiff as hard rubber. They vibrated at 
summits of her chest like divining rods, sniffing out the sexual waters of 
her prey. Then she pulled down her step-ins and showed me her hairy hump. 
What a beard she has, black as a crow's wing. The outer labia of her cunt 
were ajar, so the pink inner lips shone in a livid swath through the shaggy 
tangle. She looked at her nudity and smiled, white teeth flashing. She ran 
her long-fingered hands down over her hard body till they reached her mound; 
slowly her fingers slithered in through the coarse curls toward the gash. 
She applied pressure to the lips, and something appeared at the upper 
corner, something round and scarlet. It was her clitoris- but what a 
clitoris! Surely such a thing has never been seen, even in Hell. Out it came 
from its lair, gleaming and dancing. At full erection its exterior portion 
alone was a full two inches of pulsing meat, curved upward like a 
scimitar!-What manner of creature is this?-is it he or she, devil or angel? 
(Whichever it is, it'll be witch before long, or else I'm a Methodist.) 

She returns to the bed. Nothing could have presented a more vivid contrast 
than those two naked figures-one standing, one prone; black nippled cones of 
muscle against flower-soft hillocks, blushing at the tips; raw sienna 
against zinc white; strength against weakness, and that black-bristled beard 
against a tan tuft of downy fuzz- 

In a flowing, perfectly controlled wave of motion, the woman climbed over 
the girl, planting a knee on either side of the slim torso, spread the limp 
thighs and lowered her mouth to that sweet spring. All I could see then was 
the back of her head and neck as she seemed to devour the tender flesh like 
a humpbacked vulture, lowering her hips and jerking her crotch back and 
forth over the girl's bosom. 

At last she lifted her face and looked into the mirror-that is, straight at 
me-her finger-tipped teats pointing downward. Her eyes blazed, her wide 
nostrils flared, her drooling mouth hung ajar, teeth bared like a rutting 
tomcat. Below, R's little slit was soaked and dilated, and her pelvis 
twitched a bit, though she had not regained consciousness. 

Now Verlain rose from all fours and stood over the ravaged girl like some 
beautiful, terrifying colossus, her feet spread wide on the mattress 
astraddle the dimpled knees of her victim. She bent her legs slightly, 
hunched forward and began some violent action with her right arm, but her 
back was to me. What was she doing? The motions did not seem those of a 
woman fingering herself-more like-! I had to see! I dashed around to the 
west wall. There was no mirror here, but I had a peep-hole behind the 
medicine shelf. Frantically I dropped to my knees and opened the slide... 

I nearly laughed out loud with delight. She was masturbating, all right, but 
you could hardly call it "fingering"! Jerking off is what she was doing. She 
had that scimitar-like clitoris between her thumb and forefinger in the 
manner of young boys when they first begin to manipulate their little 
pricks, pumping away in short lightning-fast strokes-and in a blur of flesh 
and a chain of hip-grinding spasms, she came to her climax, and-or do my 
senses deceive me?-yet I saw it clearly: A burst of fluid spurted from her 
cunt and splattered upon the sleeping child's face and bosom, and some of it 
dripped from the colossal thighs in dewy droplets to the sheet... 

 CHAPTER EIGHT 

Stone's Journal, 1929, (continued) Dec. 2-So. It is done. At least it is 
begun. We are allied, she and I. Hail, Satan! 

How neat and straight-laced she looked corning up the hill, how pure and 
motherly. It wrenched my imagination to watch that long-skirted school marm 
prancing primly up the steps and to remember at the same time how she looked 
the previous night. I knew I was going to have trouble getting through that 
hard shell to the she-dragon that slumbered beneath it. It was the philtre 
that finally did it. 

As soon as I told her what I knew she became a rock of indignant outrage. 
She would remove her girls from the island immediately and inform the police 
of my spying. She called me all sorts of names. I let her rave for a while. 
Then I said, "But where will you go, Mrs. Verlain? You have no money, after 
all. And besides, who will contribute to your little, ah, institution after 
the pictures have been made public?" 

"Pictures," she says, "what pictures?" 

"Oh, didn't I mention the snapshots?" I explained the principal of the Leica 
camera to add a touch of credibility to my story, but in fact I do not have 
such a camera. I marveled about the clearness of the prints. "Would you like 
to see them? You make a striking subject, you and your friends. You have a 
very, ah, photogenic quality about you-" 

Now she dropped the pretense of denying it all, but her rage grew, and the 
dragon was stirring in its lair. "And what price do you expect for these 
snapshots of yours? As you yourself just told me, I am practically 
insolvent." 

"Price? No, no, Mrs. Verlain, you misunderstand me. I only meant that when 
the police come to investigate your complaint, they will surely find the 
pictures. I myself would not dream of publishing them! Did I not tell you in 
the beginning how much I admired you and your cause? I haven't changed my 
mind. I did not send for you for the purpose of accusing or criticizing-nor 
even to confess my secret admiration of your, ah, activities. On the 
contrary, my only purpose, now as before, was to help you." 

She called me a beast. Hee hee. But I went on; her veneer was unbroken, but 
it was thin, and the dragon inside was listening with all ears. I told her 
that I had noticed her quite understandable hesitance in openly 
propositioning the girls, that I was acutely sympathetic toward her anguish 
of waiting for some chance opportunity for taking her pleasure without her 
partners' knowledge. "Even though I am sure many if not most of the girls 
would not object if you made your wishes known to them," I said, "I quite 
understand your embarrassment in revealing yourself. In your situation I 
imagine I would not act differently. And so, I thought that this"-I held up 
the little vial of green fluid-"might be of some assistance to you." 

Now I could see the school marm and the dragon waging desperate war behind 
her blazing black eyes. I knew who the winner would be. 

explained to her the uses of the philtre and its effects. She hesitated-then 
said, "There is no such drug. Do you think I would fall for such a trick? I 
am an educated woman, Mr. Stone, not a witch-wife." (I almost said, Just 
give me a little time.) Then she added in a lower voice, "What is it made 
of?" 

"Many things, Mrs. Verlain-a powder made from certain dried beetles, a few 
Mexican and Brazilian herbs, scallop shell hinges, and other things." She 
laughed in ridicule, but her eyes did not leave the vial. "But I don't 
expect you to take my word for its effectiveness. You will have to give it a 
test." I instructed her as to the proper dosage and placed the vial in front 
of her on the table. She hesitated. 

Then, without another word, she snatched up the bottle and marched out of 
the house. 

And so, the thing is nearly done. When she comes back for more-and she will 
be back-I will name my terms. All is going according to plan... 

Molly: Then in December of that year, things began to change. The girls, 
some of them, began to tell of strange dreams. The strangest thing about he 
dreams was that they were all very similar, almost identical. They dreamed 
that a beautiful woman came to their beds in the night and carried them to 
another place, where they were treated to such pleasures as they had never 
known before. Some said the woman was Mrs. Verlain, or someone like her. 

The ones who had the dream began afterward to quarrel with their lovers all 
the time. Jealous triangles, intrigues, secret affairs began to develop. 
None of them seemed to be able to get satisfaction anymore from their 
bedmates. All our former tranquility and happiness began to disintegrate. 

I thought at first that some of the girls were lying about the dream, or 
that they had it because of the vivid description that May gave-she was the 
first. Then one day Yvette told me that she noticed that every time Mrs. 
Verlain fixed hot tea for a girl who wasn't feeling well at bedtime, that 
girl had the dream. But even if the tea caused them to dream, why should it 
make them all dream the same thing? I puzzled my little head over this until 
I had the dream myself. Far from solving anything, this only confused me 
more than ever. Because then I wasn't so sure it really was a dream. 

I was getting a slight cold; I told Mrs. Verlain I had a headache that 
evening and she fixed me a cup of tea. It tasted strange, almost bitter. 
Yvette came to my bed when the lights went out, but I was too drowsy to 
respond. She went away and I dropped off immediately. 

But it was a strange sleep. I knew I was asleep, yet I was aware of things 
in the dorm-two girls made love on the bed beside mine, three others were 
quarreling on the other side, I heard the waves lapping the beach at the 
foot of our hill, the breeze ruffling the window curtains... 

Long after everyone went to sleep, I kept going over and over again my old 
dream of the prince with Yvette's hair and breasts, savoring every detail of 
it, longing for the prince to kiss me, to touch my body, but I could not 
make this happen. There was always a distance between us, a tantalizing 
distance that made me burn with desire. I felt if I could wake up, I could 
reach out and touch him, or her, but I couldn't. I suppose eventually I 
would have had an orgasm in my sleep, but it began before that happened. 

When she appeared beside my bed, I remember thinking, So, it's true. How 
beautiful she was in the moonlight! She wore a long flowing robe of fluted 
silk, white as milk against her dark skin. I loved her on sight, and at the 
first touch of her hand rose and followed her from the dorm. She led me into 
a room I had never seen before. It was lit with several large brass 
candelabra, and two entire walls were covered with mirrored panels reaching 
from floor to ceiling. These walls faced each other, and gave a dizzying 
effect of an infinite corridor of candle-lit rooms, spinning away into 
space. In the center of the room was the only piece of furniture, a large 
round bed, covered in black silk. My bare feet sank into a deep-piled 
scarlet carpet that stretched from wall to wall, and the high ceiling was a 
blur of shadowy red, gleaming with gilded ornaments. Strange as it was, it 
all seemed quite normal to me, as things do in a dream, and I calmly watched 
the beautiful woman in the mirror as she removed my pajamas and led me to 
the black bed. 

I lay down on my back and she took my ankles in her strong hands and spread 
them wide apart. She leaned over me and kissed my lips. I heard her say, "Do 
you love me, Molly?" and I answered, "Oh, yes!" I felt one hot hand on my 
tits and the other on my pussy, caressing my fuzz and parting it in the 
middle. She took a large black pillow and put it under my hips. I remember 
giggling when I saw my furry little pussy sticking up in the air with the 
shadows dancing all around it. She sucked on my nipples till they puffed up, 
then put her long lovely tongue in my bellybutton and I giggled again when 
the warm spit went running out over my belly in little rivers. 

Then she stood up beside the bed and removed her gown. Her naked body glowed 
red in the candlelight, and I remember so clearly how her black nipples cast 
long pointed shadows across her breasts and torso. She climbed onto the bed 
on her knees and straddled my face, and her strong smell flooded me. Oh, it 
smelled so good! Intoxicating! I opened my mouth and breathed it in. I said, 
"Oh my, you have such a lot of hair! None of the girls have that much. It's 
so beautiful!" She laughed and lowered her hips a little so her long hair 
brushed over my face. It hung down between her legs like a stiff black mop, 
so thick I could hardly see the crack. She moved her hips in a circle, 
trailing the long hair around and around my face, my eyes and lips-oh!-it 
tickled me so I could hardly stand it. When I looked up through the hair, I 
saw her nipples making slow black trails through the air. Then she reached 
down and took two handfuls of hair and drew them apart so I could see her 
crack. The long lips were open, and you could see right into the pink part. 
I put my tongue out and licked it, like I did Yvette's, but this one was so 
much bigger! I opened my mouth as wide as I could, but I couldn't cover the 
whole thing. It closed on my tongue and she tickled my eyes with the two 
tufts of hair in her hands, and her pungent juice leaked down my tongue and 
ran into my cheeks, and I licked faster and faster to make her happy like I 
made Yvette happy... 

But all of a sudden something funny pushed against my tongue. It startled me 
and I pulled back to see what it was. A little red knob was sticking out of 
the top of her slit. For a minute I was scared, but then I remembered it was 
just a dream, and I giggled. She laughed too, from high up in the air, it 
seemed like. The thing kept coming further out. It was curved and red and 
about as long as my little finger. It twitched and throbbed like a live 
thing. She leaned forward over my head and made the thing go into one of my 
nostrils. I didn't even struggle. 

It went in and out, in and out, faster and faster! I put my hands on the 
hard cheeks of her behind and felt the muscles moving, vibrating. If she was 
hurting my nose, I didn't notice it. It seemed so natural and thrilling! I 
found her asshole with my hands, and I remember thinking that I'd better be 
careful, "Mrs. Verlain might get angry if I stick my finger in her rear 
end!" But then I remembered that it was a dream, and went ahead and did it. 

Immediately she hunched up over me and began to moan and lurch, and that 
belly came down and jerked against my face so I couldn't see anything, and 
her long thing swelled up in my nose and I felt a hot burning sensation in 
my sinuses and something hot and wet sprayed all over my face- 

For a while after that, I wasn't aware of anything much; I seemed to have 
gone to "sleep" for a while. I knew that she was lying beside me, panting, 
with one leg still thrown over my face, but I don't remember her moving from 
this position. The next thing I was aware of was her lovely face rising up 
like the moon behind my pussy-I was still propped up on the black pillow. 
She spread my legs wider and took one of her tits in her hand and guided the 
stiff black nipple up and down along my pussy till it was all slippery. Her 
nipples were about that long (she indicated the first joint of her little 
finger) and seemed to get longer and longer the hotter she got. She wiggled 
it back and forth over my clit and I got my cookies almost immediately. But 
I still wanted more, and she gave it to me with her tongue. That tongue!-oh, 
it was so long: It went up inside me and I thought it would never stop!-and 
all the while she did the most delightful things to my titties, and my 
little pink nipples got so fat I thought they would burst. 

When I came that time, she had to hold me by the hips to keep me from 
bouncing off the pillow, and when I got through, my pussy hair was all 
soaking wet and her saliva was all over my belly, running into my belly 
button and on down all the way to my titties. She stood between my legs on 
her knees and smeared it all over the front of me till I was all slippery 
and sparkly in the candlelight. Then she got one hand wet again between my 
legs and wiped the other one through her own crack and rubbed the juice over 
her breasts and face till she was as shiny as me. 

After that she put my legs over my shoulders and put her pussy up against 
mine. This is the part that seems most like a dream to me. It was sort of 
the way I had imagined my prince would make love to me. She rose up so high 
and strong... I don't know, I guess I went into a kind of swoon when I felt 
the thing go in. It was like she became the prince, and I remember thinking 
how strange it was that up close his hair was short instead of long and his 
nipples were black instead of pink, his skin red instead of white... 

Then it came to me all in a flash, and I said to myself, "Why he's not 
Yvette after all!" 

And so that night all my romantic fantasies and girlish dreams were fucked 
out of me. I knew then why the other girls were no longer satisfied with 
their lovers. How can I explain the effect on a fourteen-year-old girl of 
being fucked for the first time by a woman? 

Hackett: The best of both worlds? 

Molly: Please don't joke about it! I was never the same afterward. After 
that night, even the incredible things that came later seem somehow unreal, 
unimportant, as if they followed naturally from this one act. That little 
red-hot poker jabbing in and out of that tender twat of mine burned away 
everything that had come before, and left me wide open to everything that 
was to follow. I yielded to everything. And it was the same with the others. 

She gave me my first chain-orgasm, I thought it would never stop. And that 
savage grunting, those iron fingers clamped on my hips, that thing stabbing 
into me, the slip-slop noise we made with our cunts, and those hot bursts 
and sprays that came out of her-I never forgot those things, they never lost 
their vividness... 

I might not have doubted that it was a dream, except that when I woke up the 
next morning my nose was all bruised and sore. And I had a burning discharge 
of fluid from my sinuses. 

Dream or not, there was no doubt in my mind that it was Mrs. Verlain. It 
came as no surprise to me when I happened to wake up one night and see her 
leading Yvette from her bed. We never got along well after that, Yvette and 
I. In the weeks that followed we tried out many new partners among the 
girls, but every affair ended in jealousy and anger. No one could satisfy us 
now but her, and we all knew it, even the very young girls, eventually. We 
were in such a state of anguish and longing, we hardly even made a show of 
resistance. Our innocence was dead, and we were all anxious to bury it deep. 

 CHAPTER NINE 

I asked what she meant by "others," though I knew the answer. 

"The black men," she said, "they came out of the walls and carried us off to 
the initiations under the hill. But you didn't know that until it happened 
to you-" 

There was a knock on the door. "What is it! I told you we were not to be 
disturbed." 

"I'm sorry, Miss Molly, but it's urgent." It was the voice of the brunette 
who had brought the champagne. Molly drew the lapels of her wrapper 
together-they had gradually migrated outward at the persistent urging of her 
unharnessed tits, which bye the bye (stretch-marks notwithstanding) didn't 
look bad, and went to the door. I heard some kind of commotion down the 
stairs, but was more interested in the way the hall light shone through the 
brunette's gauze smock, outlining the bare hips and thighs inside it. All 
that lezzie talk had got me hot as hell in spite of myself. I may as well 
admit it, because it had a bearing on what followed. 

The girl was in a panic. She said the so-and-so brothers were there again, 
drunk and tearing things up-including the girls. Molly threw on a robe and 
said she was sorry, but I'd have to excuse her for a few minutes. 

"Need any help?" says I, "I'm pretty good with the old judo chop." 

"Thanks, Drake, but I can handle it. This happens every month or so. It may 
take a while though, I hope you don't mind waiting." 

"Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. Call if you need me." I hadn't wanted 
to take notes while she talked for fear of inhibiting her, but I was itching 
to jot down some of those pregnant phrases-key phrases. Some of them-knowing 
through the journals what lay behind the words-made my hair bristle like a 
porcupine. So as soon as she was gone, I whipped out my notepad and started 
scribbling. 1 hadn't been at it very long when I became aware of someone 
standing at the door, though I had not heard it open. 

I looked up to see a little girl, about ten yean old, standing there looking 
at me. She had big blue eyes and her blonde hair was tied in two pigtails. 
In her plain white dress and loafers she looked like she might have just 
stepped out of a school room. She startled me so that it was a moment before 
I realized how out of place she was here. 

Hi," she said. "Watcha doin'?" 

Her face... it looked somehow familiar. But that was impossible; I'd only 
been in the state a few days, and never before today in Rodriguez. I asked 
her what she was doing here. 

"Waitin'," she said, chewing on one of her pigtails and grinning at me 
mischievously. Waiting for what, I wanted to know, now knowing exactly how 
to proceed, though I am not usually uneasy around children. "Can't tell ya," 
was her answer. She followed it up with a giggle. Whatever the joke was, I 
was missing it. 

"I bet I know what you're doin' here," she said in t teasing voice. Too big 
for her goddamn britches, I'm thinking, but I ignored the remark and got up 
to shoo her away. But the little bugger didn't shoo so easy, and those big 
blue eyes were something else. "Where'd ya get that funny beard?" she said. 

"I didn't get it, I grew it-" 

"Why?" 

"Because I'm a sea captain, a pirate, as a matter of fact, and sometimes I 
kidnap nosy little girls like you and throw 'em to the bilge rats." 

"I'll bet," she sneered. My hand was on the doorknob, but I hesitated. 

"Listen, why don't you tell me what you're doing here? If you sneaked in off 
the street, your mama's going to be very mad when she finds you. And it 
won't go easy on you when the lady that owns this hotel finds you up here 
opening doors." 

"I didn't sneak any place. My mother's right in that room down there-" she 
pointed down the hall "-and Miss Molly don't care what I do." 

"Your mother-? You mean your mother works here?" 

"No, she just brings me. But tonight we gotta wait." 

"You? I suppose now you're going to tell me that you work here, eh?" 

"Wouldn't you like to know?" she said. The sassy little brat had me curious 
as hell now. In a few more minutes I might have pumped the truth out of her, 
but just then a door opened down the hall and up runs Mama. 

"Kathy, what are you doing in there? Can't I take my eyes off you for one 
minute without-I'm sorry, Mister, I can't take my eyes off her for one 
minute without-Kathy, get back in the room!" 

The woman's voice had an unpleasant dullness to it, but she was young and 
shapely, and had a certain loneliness in her eyes that appealed to me at the 
time, though her face was actually rather plain. Her flaring hips and legs 
were encased in a pair of metallic silver-blue slacks, into which was tucked 
a silk blouse of pale yellow stretched so tightly over her boobs that I 
could see the flowery patterns in her black lace bra, and the knobs of her 
nipples poked defiantly through both lace and silk. The first two buttons of 
the blouse were undone. She gave the impression not so much that she was 
trying to be sexy, as that she just didn't particularly care what showed. 
But even dressed like that, she was no raving beauty, and another time 
perhaps I would not have looked twice at her, but that night, as I say, even 
old Molly had begun to look good to me. 

I assured her that the little girl had not bothered me, that I was just 
waiting for Miss Molly. "You too?" she said, and then looked as though she 
wished she hadn't. "I gotta go. Come on, Kathy," and she grabbed the little 
girl by the arm and started down the hall. 

"Er-wait a minute," I called after her, stepping out of her room, "I'd like 
to talk to you. I mean, since we're both waiting. Come on in and have a 
glass of champagne." I really wanted to know what a little girl was doing in 
a whorehouse, especially now, since it apparently concerned Molly in some 
direct way. The woman paused and looked back at me. A strange smile curled 
the corners of her lips without affecting her eyes. 

"I can't," she said, "but we can use my room." 

I leaned over the banister and peered down the stairwell. I couldn't see 
Molly, but I could hear her smooth-talking the two drunks, who didn't sound 
quite ready to curl up with a warm whore. I guessed she'd be at it for a 
while. 

"All right," I said, closing the door to Molly's suite, "that'll be fine." 

Maybe I had some vague ideas in my head of things other than the gleaning of 
information, but I was totally unprepared for what followed. 

As soon as the three of us were inside the room, he woman said 
matter-of-factly, "Turn off the light, Kathy." 

The room went dark except for a dim, green shaded night light. Warm scented 
breath rippled over my face and two soft muskmelons flattened themselves out 
on my chest. Her lips covered my open mouth and her tongue touched mine, 
just as I was about to say, "But-!" 

While we kissed, I was rehearsing my explanation-what I would say when she 
broke off: "I'm afraid you misunderstood me," I would say. "You see, I 
really did just want to talk to you," and so forth, but when she 
deliberately brought her cunt hard against my prick in a rolling uppercut, 
it all went right out of my head. So that when she pulled away and said, 
"Come on, but we'll have to hurry. Miss Molly won't be very long down 
there." I followed her to the dim-lit bed like a puppy dog. 

The shimmering silver slacks opened at the side with a little hiss and 
unveiled a broad-cheeked ass half contained in a pair of black transparent 
bikini panties. Kicking off slacks and sandals, she finished opening her 
blouse and sent it fluttering off into the gloom. She faced me and reached 
behind her back for the hooks; her tits came out of the bra like two big 
phosphorescent jellyfish. She jerked her pants down off her butt and sat on 
the edge of the bed. I bent over and slid them the rest of the way down her 
outstretched legs, dropped my own drawers and crawled onto the bed with her. 

She spread her legs wide, ready to go at it, and her big hairy crack smacked 
in the dark like a clam. I let her steer my cock for the hole while I 
grabbed a few quick mouthfuls of those big glowing jellybags, but her cunt 
was too dry; it was no use. 

"Oh, shit," she said in an irritated voice ,"maybe you better go back. We 
haven't got time to-" 

But I wasn't going anywhere just yet-except into that steaming twat-even if 
I had to rape the bitch. I mean, after all! 

So I said, "Wait a minute, I'll take care of that," and I start licking 
those unprimed lips for all I'm worth. But damned if the pressure of the 
situation hadn't made my mouth as dry as her cunt. The more I licked the 
drier my tongue became. Finally, in desperation, I sucked up all the saliva 
I could from my glands until I got a pretty good mouthful, pried open her 
gash with my thumbs, and spat a big wad right into the hole. Bullseye! I 
worked the jaws up and down against each other until she was 
well-lubricated, and remounted her. 

The tongue-work and whatnot had heated her up a little, and her own juices 
were now adding to the pot, so that this time it went right in-slick as 
owlshit, as the Floridians say. But no sooner had I started throwing it to 
her, when the little girl lets out a giggle. I had completely forgotten 
about her till then; she'd evidently been standing there watching the whole 
thing, peeking around the screen beside the bed. Mama jerked her head round 
and hissed at the kid, completely destroying our rhythm, "Kathy! Get the 
hell away from there, goddamn it!" Goldylocks ducked out of sight. 

I threw her legs over my shoulders and gave her a series of fast jabs to the 
button, and in a minute I had her mind cleared of all outside interference. 
The Pope could have been watching and it wouldn't have bothered her. As for 
me, I buried my face between her boobs and imagined that Kathy was still 
standing there watching us-fingering herself, maybe... 

I make that confession for one reason. Just as my young lady was squeezing 
the last few drops out of me with her twat, a sudden realization came to me 
that struck a chilling chord along my spine-a resounding echo of that moment 
under the hill when my own shadow stood ominously over the blackened bones 
of Simon Stone: the realization that this was just the sort of thing HE 
would have enjoyed. 

At the time, however, I took this little flash only at its face value, 
namely, as a reminder that I was forgetting why I had come to the Hotel 
Mandalay. As I put the money on the dresser, I tried one more time to find 
out what she and the kid were doing there. I was certain she wasn't one of 
Molly's regular whores. In fact, I didn't think she was a whore at all, from 
the way she handled herself, at least not a professional. But she wouldn't 
talk. "You better hurry up, Mister-and please, don't tell Miss Holden about 
this. I'm not really supposed to-" I told her that I understood and that I'd 
keep my trap shut. The last thing I saw as I slipped out the door was little 
Kathy sitting in the corner with a smirk on her face, sucking a lollypop. I 
was more confuse now than before I went in there, but I made up my mind to 
get to the bottom of it before I left Rodriuez. I had a vague premonition 
that that little girl had some connection with the legacy of Stone's Island. 

I had just settled down again on the couch and lit my pipe, when Molly 
returned. 

"Get 'em bedded down all right?" I asked. 

"Yes, at last. Those two are a big pain in the butt, but they've got money 
and don't mind blowing it, so I can't afford to run them off. Sorry I kept 
you waiting so long. Any champagne left?" 

"Plenty. I hardly touched it. Do you feel like going on with the story?" She 
lit a cigarette, and blew the smoke slowly up into the candlelight... 

"I've started it now. I have to tell it all, but the rest is... " She 
removed her housecoat and sat down beside me. "Well, some of it is hard to 
believe, even for me. I think that over the years I had almost come to 
believe that it didn't really happen, that it was some kind of delusion, a 
nightmare or something. But-" she looked me in the eye, intensely "-but it 
did happen, didn't it?" 

"Yes," I said, "it happened." 

She took a sip of champagne. "Where was I?" 

"The initiations-" 

She nodded. "The initiation. God, how I longed for it, and how I dreaded it! 
I didn't know what there was to dread, none of us did, because the initiated 
girls were sworn to secrecy, but we dreaded it anyway. The suspense was 
unbearable, you never knew when your turn would come. It was like Death Row, 
I guess, with just about as much chance of escape. Not that we couldn't have 
escaped, if we had really tried, but I don't think anybody thought about it 
like that, not seriously. That was part of his plan, to make us want it to 
happen to us, and at the same time to make us terrified at the thought of 
it-to be petrified when those black ghosts came stalking through the dark. 

"They started with the older girls, more or less, and generally never took a 
girl who had not started to menstruate, but there were exceptions even to 
that, and there was really no way you could know when it would come. 
Sometimes they would take a girl a week, usually on Friday, but sometimes 
there would be only one in a month. They were gone four days, and on the 
night of the third day you heard such sounds in the air and in the ground! 
Oh, God -sounds that would freeze your blood- 

"But then they came back. And how we envied them then! They were completely 
different-they acted different, talked different, dressed different. They 
had the free run of the island-except for the big house; they only went 
there when he sent for them." 

"Stone?" 

"Yes. They called themselves the 'Wives' because they got to sleep with him. 
Of course we didn't know anything about the little games he made them play 
with him, or that they only went| up there when he sent for them; they 
wanted us to think they went whenever they felt like it, and did whatever 
they pleased. They wouldn't even talk to us, hardly, except to swear at us. 
That shocked me, I think, even more than the way they dressed, I mean the 
way they talked in front of Mrs. V. They were really the upper crust, you 
know? - the aristocrats of our little society, and they let you know it 
too." 

"You say they dressed differently?" 

"Yes. What do you think of the way I dress my girls here?" 

"Very nice, very sexy, the ones I've seen." 

"Well, they're dressed for church compared to the way the Wives dressed. I 
remember how I blushed when Celia came down the hill that day. She was the 
first. We didn't know what had happened to her, she was just gone from her 
bed one morning, and Mrs. V wouldn't say a word about it, except that she'd 
be back soon. On the fourth morning we were out on the lawn beside the dorm 
having our art class, and here she comes down the path from the big house. 
We hardly knew her at first without her uniform on. We all had to wear long 
gray skirts and white blouses, you know. 

"At first I thought she was naked, and she almost was. She had a long flimsy 
blue gown that you could see right through, and nothing underneath it. We 
were speechless! Celia was kind of plump, she had the biggest tits of any of 
us, and how they bounced as she came down the steps to where we sat! Her 
neckline was so low it looked like they would fall out at any minute, and 
you could see her pussy plain as day. We were all sure she'd catch hell from 
Mrs. Verlain when she saw her, but we were wrong. When Mrs. V came out she 
paid no attention to Celia at all. We were dumbfounded. 

"After lunch we were sitting around on the steps waiting to go back to 
classes, when here comes Celia again, swishing along the garden path, 
smelling the flowers, with her tits still half-naked and the nipples showing 
through, and you could count every hair in that black bush of hers. She went 
right past us and down the path to the terrace where two colored boys were 
trimming the bushes. They stopped working and stared at her. We saw her 
motion to them and sit down on a bench behind a bush. They came over to her. 
Even from where we were we could see them grinning from ear to ear, and in a 
minute her gown came fluttering up over the bush. You can imagine how 
shocked we were, and how envious. Mrs. V had never even allowed us to talk 
to the Negroes except when absolutely necessary, and I don't think there was 
a one of us older girls that didn't have vague yearnings for them. They were 
the only men we ever saw. And now this! We would have all run down the hill 
to see what was happening behind that bush, but just then Mrs. V called us 
in. 

"From then on our studies went to pot. For a while yet Mrs. V made a 
pretense of holding classes, but few of us made an effort to keep up. Other 
things were happening now. Something was entangling us. At night when that 
eerie music would start, I used to get the feeling that black things were 
creeping up out of holes and spinning a web all around us. You see, by this 
time we were confined completely to the island, no more trips to own. And 
now the weekly abductions, the strange behavior of our mistress, our little 
romances all shattered-well, I began to get a feeling of hopelessness. But 
it was almost a willing hopelessness, if that makes any sense. I mean, it 
was only at first that I, personally, thought about escape; after that I 
only thought about going deeper, however frightening it might be, going 
right to the center of the web. After all, where would I have escaped to? My 
whole world now was Stone's Island. It's important , to me somehow that you 
understand that." 

"I understand perfectly. Please, don't think that I'm out to judge anybody, 
Molly. Everybody lives in his own little island, and few escape it this side 
of the grave." But this seemed to go over her head. That strange undertow of 
muted desperation was coming back into her voice, renewing its ponderous 
friction. 

"Thinking about those nights now, it seems like me long dream of tall black 
shapes, manshapes, moving through the darkness, a slow dance to the tune of 
that organ growling under the hill. One girl after another was taken away 
and returned transfigured into a cruel sprite, a lusty lake nymph, free as 
the wind. This was the freedom I longed for, and none other. I used to lie 
awake in my bed, hoping and fearing that the phantom shape would come for 
me. For me! Longing and terror, those are the two words that describe it 
best-longing and terror in the same bed. 

"But it was months before it happened. Once during this period my longing 
and curiosity got the best of my terror, and I did a little spying. It was 
the most frightening thing that had happened to me, including the hurricane; 
I trembled for days afterward. 

"More and more frequently the Wives would go up to the big house at night. 
They never came back before morning. If you asked them what they did up 
there, they would say, 'Shut up, you little queer!' or 'Suck my ass!' or 
something like that. One day I decided that after everyone went to sleep in 
the dorm, I'd sneak up there and see what I could see. 

"When the time came I was scared to death, but I was determined to go 
through with it. I got out of the dorm window without any trouble, but when 
I got near the big house I saw one of the Negroes guarding the front door. 
So I went around the east side of the hill through the bushes and came up on 
that side of the house. There was one light burning, way up on the tower at 
the northeast corner. There was a double door up there that opened on a 
narrow balcony with a wrought iron rail, and a window, but the curtains were 
drawn enough so that I couldn't see anything. A big vine grew there on a 
trellis that reached from the ground to the balcony, but it looked awfully 
high and scary. I was about to give it up again, when I heard girls' 
laughter coming down from the tower... " 

It wasn't until Molly was well into her account of this adventure that I was 
able to identify its counterpart in Stone's journal. It is a passage 
reminiscent of some of the fantastic entries in his earlier books, though, 
unlike them, it is wholly devoid of my direct reference to reality. The 
entry is dated February 4,1930, and begins- 

"While the Black Death rages through Europe, Grilles de Rais, Marshal of 
France, dwells secure in his castle, almost nightly taking his pleasure with 
the 'Maid' Joan, right under the noses of both the Dauphin and his young 
wife, Nastasie. But last night Nastasie heard the whinny of a horse in the 
courtyard and saw the Maid, disguised as a monk, ascending the tower to her 
husband's private chamber. She followed and secreted herself in an adjacent 
room, where she watched everything that occurred between Joan and de Rais 
through a parted curtain. 

"The Marshal lay naked in his bed, his blue-veined yard bolt-upright. Joan 
smiled when she saw it. 'Monsieur!' she said, 'You have drawn your sword too 
early. The battle has not yet begun.' 

"De Rais laughed and his yard dipped in salute. 'What outcome to the night's 
encounter do your voices portend?' 

" 'My voices are silent,' said she, 'Another mouth speaks to me tonight.' 

" 'Ah? May I see it?' 

" 'Certainly, my lord,' quoth the Maid, lifting the skirts of her robe... " 

By now Molly had climbed the trellis and crept up to the window with 
knocking knees. "The first thing I saw," she said, "was a big four-poster 
bed-it was right by the window-with Mr. Stone stretched out on it, propped 
up on a lot of silk pillows, and his red-headed prick sticking straight up 
in the air! That was practically the first time I had ever laid eyes on a 
man's genitals, and what a jolt it gave me. Those hairy balls hanging down 
and that big slimy thing jerking and jumping-actually it wasn't all that 
big, Mr. Stone didn't have much of a cock, but it looked big to me, 
especially since it was practically right in my face. Then I saw Carol 
standing near the foot of the bed. She was dressed in a long brown robe with 
a hood and a rope tied around the waist. A big silver crucifix hung around 
her neck, very thick and elaborately sculptured. She didn't have anything on 
underneath the robe, and she was holding it up in front so he could see her 
pussy. They were talking and laughing, but I couldn't hear what they were 
saying." 

Then Molly saw the face of Celia, who was playing de Rais' wife in this 
little drama, peering out through a curtain near the bed. "She was clearly 
visible there, but Carol and Mr. Stone didn't seem to see her. Then Carol 
took off the robe and the crucifix and threw them on the floor. She climbed 
up on the bed with both feet and stood over Mr. Stone. She bent her legs a 
little and held her pussy open with her hands so he could see in... " 

But Stone writes, "The Maid stood naked and majestic on the bed astraddle de 
Rais' hips, and he watched her coynte open of itself like a vicious flower. 
It yawned and snapped and made a hissing noise. 'It sings a sweet song,' 
said de Rais, stroking the hairy petals with his big toe. 'It is a battle 
song, my lord,' says she. "Then let us have at it, my pretty knight,' 
answered the Marshal, thrusting his toe into her parted flesh. 

"All this Nastasie watched with outrage and alarm, but she did not dare 
reveal her presence, and in spite of herself her blood began to warm with 
passion." 

It was affecting Molly the same way; already her land was inside her 
pajamas. "Carol stood like that or a while, giggling while Mr. Stone wiggled 
his toes around in her crack. Then she pushed his foot away and sat down on 
his chest. She pinned his arms down with her knees and rubbed her tits back 
and forth across his face. She took them in her lands, like this-" Molly 
cupped her big bazooms in her hands and hoisted them to attention "-and 
jabbed her nipples in his eyes. He kept snapping at them with his teeth, but 
she kept out of reach... " 

Stone writes that de Rais was "nearly blinded by the thrusts of those 
red-hot pokers! She used her teats like battering rams, laughing with glee 
as she battered his face mercilessly. But when she spit in his face, the 
tide of the battle turned. De Rais overturned the kicking wench and covered 
her hips with his, thrusting his tongue down her throat. She became passive, 
subdued, undulating with her need for him. He put his hands between her open 
thighs and sank his fingers into her honeycomb. His wife could no longer 
restrain herself as the bulging head of her husband's great love-engine 
searched through the Maid's dark forest for the smacking rut, oozing with 
honey: she jerked up her skirt and with her finger went frantically to work 
in her coynte... " 

"I watched this part very attentively," said Molly, "trying to imagine how 
it would feel to have that thing inside me. They rolled over so that Carol 
was on top again, and she raised up on her knees and straddled his prick. 
She took it in her hand and started rubbing it up and down the lips of her 
cunt -Oh!-I got so hot watching that I almost forgot my fear. I had my 
drawers down and my face pressed right against the window. Carol gave a 
little wiggle of her ass and settled right down on that throbbing thing. I 
had a perfect view of it sliding up into her hole. I could almost feel it 
myself! In and out, in and out-like Mrs. Verlain did to us, only slower-and 
so much deeper. Carol hunched forward a little and really went to work on 
him, she gave it to him good, and when he shot his cum, the bed damn near 
hopped across the floor with his lurching... " 

"No sooner had the spurting explosions of his come died out, than the Maid 
drew her dripping coynte from de Rais' yard and sprang across the room to 
the door where Nastasie stood. She tore the curtain aside and de Rais sat up 
in surprise. There stood his wife with her nightdress up around her waist, 
her hand and coynte well lathered, her face red and bosom heaving. 

"'Behold the beholder, my lord!' quoth Joan. 'Well, well,' said the Marshal, 
'Won't you join us, my dear?' 'Yes, do,' said the Maid, jerking her into the 
room. Nastasie was speechless with fright and embarrassment. Joan threw her 
onto the bed and ripped her nightdress from her body. 'She's beautiful, my 
lord! I compliment you on your taste.'Thank you,' said de Rais with a bow, 
but she really is a frightful bore, don't you know.' 'Oh, please, Gilles,' 
cried Nastasie, weeping, 'please let me go back to my room! I'll pretend I 
saw nothing! Please!' But the sight of his young innocent wife lying there 
naked, pinned down by his mistress, also naked, was rejuvenating de Rais' 
passion, and already his mind was exploring the possibilities presented by 
this unexpected turn of events. 'Oh, you may as well stay, my love, now 
you've come. Ah, but you two haven't been introduced. Nastasie, this is Joan 
from Domremy. Joan, my wife Nastasie. The trouble with Nastasie, Joan, is 
that she is miserably inexperienced; perhaps you could instruct her in some 
of the, ah, livelier arts?' 'Why, I would be delighted, good my lord. Fetch 
me a length of rope, if you please.'" 

They stretched Celia-Nastasie on the bed, face-up, and tied her wrists and 
ankles to the bedposts. By now Stone had regained his erection, and Saint 
Joan and her lover proceeded to instruct young Madame de Rais on the finer 
points of the Medieval blowjob, peasant-style. Carol lay across the bed on 
the side of Madame's face, while the good Marshal knelt on the other, so 
that his cock met her hips just inches above Madame's eyes, which "bulged 
with shock and disbelief," or so it is written. Carol first went over his 
penis and scrotum with her tongue, liberally bathing them with saliva so 
that the excess dripped onto Celia's face. When Stone gripped Carol's head 
in both hands and began rhythmically thrusting his member into her mouth, 
the slobber ran even freer, and soon Celia's pretty face was running with 
spit and sexual leakage. This sort of thing delighted Stone, and to heighten 
the effect he put his hand between Celia's outstretched legs and collected 
some of the lather she had generated in masturbating: this he spread over 
her cheeks and lips; another dip into the pot and he had her tits and belly 
well anointed also. 

Meanwhile, Molly had already come in her hand once, and when she "saw the 
white stuff spurting out of that thing," as she said, she forgot all 
caution, plastered her face against the glass, and gave her hot box the 
finger-whipping of its life. 

And here our two accounts intersect: Stone writes- 

"Just then de Rais chanced to notice the face of his and Nastasie's young 
daughter Emma at the window, wide-eyed with wonder. For hearing he mother 
leave the bed chamber, she had followed and seen her stealthily enter the 
tower; fearful of following directly, but too curious to go back to sleep, 
she had slipped out a side door in the castle wall and climbed up to the 
balcony outside the tower window. 'Good,' thought de Rais, 'Let her see all, 
for soon it will be her turn,' but he told neither his wife nor his mistress 
of the watcher, nor did he make any sign to the child that he knew of her 
presence." 

This discovery no doubt quickened the restoration of Stone's twice-drained 
organs, and before long his prick stood again at the ready. He now had his 
"imminent conqueress of Orleans" give Nastasie a lesson in the Lesbian arts, 
while he stood aside and watched. But he was most interested in watching the 
watcher watch! 

Surprisingly soon (under the circumstances of the drama) Joan's rapid tongue 
brought Nastasie to a jerking climax, but Monsieur de Rais stroked his penis 
slowly, savoring the carnal display he was giving his daughter... 

"I didn't even see Mr. Stone then; he must have been standing off to the 
side of the window. Pretty soon Carol rolled off of Celia and picked up the 
crucifix she'd had around her neck. She sat on Celia's chest with her legs 
spread and held the big cross in front of her face-" 

"' I confess that I have not been faithful to your husband, Madame,' said 
the Maid, pressing the Holy Tree between her teats. "This is my other lover, 
who directs me in battle-'" 

"Then I saw Carol stick the crucifix into her cunt, feet-first, and fuck 
herself with it. I could tell it was getting Celia hot again watching it at 
such close range-I mean, for all the heterosexual experience they had gotten 
in the last few months, I think they were still basically Lesbians. I know 
it was a long time before I began to really prefer a man to a woman. And 
there's something about seeing a holy image like that-something you're 
supposed to worship-being sloshed around in a wet cunt, that-well, anyway, 
it got me hot too. She got her cookies on it, or pretended she did for Mr. 
Stone's benefit, maybe-and then pulled it out and went to work on Celia with 
it. And then it happened-" 

"Suddenly, with a shout, de Rais leapt in front of the window, pointed his 
fire dragon at his daughter's startled face, and discharged volley after 
volley of thick steaming love-sap upon the glass, obliterating the image in 
a teeming cataract!" 

In cold panic Molly jerked up her pajamas and somehow got over the rail and 
to the ground without killing herself. She didn't stop running till she 
reached the open dorm window, but once she looked back-just before she 
rounded the front corner of the big house... 

Stone was standing on the balcony, illuminated by the yellow light from the 
open doors, stark naked with his cock hanging over the rail, urinating and 
laughing up at the full moon like a wolf on a mountain ledge. And he cried 
out in a ringing voice which must have resonated over Lake Leethy from shore 
to shore: "I PISS UPON YOU ALL FROM A GREAT HEIGHT!" 

And so, in that world as in ours, then as now, the watching went on. The 
watching and the waiting. Molly would not have much longer to wait. As Stone 
had said in the voice of Gilles de Rais, who was burned for heresy, "soon it 
will be her turn," her turn to watch the watchers watching her. Re-member 
that old cartoon in the Journal-the Watchbird? "The Watchbird watches YOU," 
it said. But who is the Watchbird? and who does he really watch? Maybe we're 
all voyeurs under the skin, eh? But what is it we're watching? Molly watched 
Stone who knew she watched; in this knowledge what was he really watching? 
And me; I was watching the whole phantasmagoria unfold before my eyes, 
watching the very island pump itself on and on toward its last fiery orgasm, 
its final bloom as a flower of flame. What was it I was really watching? 

I think now of Narcissus, whose eyes saw only the reflected image, whose 
ears were deaf to the echo, the echo perhaps of an inner voice which would 
have shattered the fantasy. Was it this voice that needled through the 
moaning chord that pierced me to the bone that first night on Stone's 
Island?-this voice alone that had driven me on from the very first to uproot 
the gruesome secrets from those dead ashes? What are those bidden truths 
which we all instinctively avoid and yet drift insensibly toward as if on 
some relentless tide, some subterranean undertow which sucks us on toward 
that vague black vortex which threatens our very existence, toward the 
sharp-edged voice which seeks the breastbone?-a voice which perhaps will 
come upon us at the last ditch and say, in the words of Stone's Maid of 
Orleans, "Behold the beholder!" 

 CHAPTER TEN 

While Molly's fears and longings continued to build, Simon Stone was 
carefully plotting every detail of her coming initiation. From the first, he 
had taken a special interest in his "luscious little M," and would have 
begun his weird gamut of pleasures with her long before, if it hadn't been 
for his preoccupation with the "ecstasy of waiting," and for wanting to 
pluck her just at the moment of her psychological ripeness. It seems to me 
that for all Stone's madness he had an instinctive ability to determine the 
mental climate of his victims. He seems to have deliberately picked the 
strongest girls first, those who were most likely not to break during the 
ordeal, and then to use them like corrosive chemicals to eat away the 
resistance which the other girls would normally have had-that feminine 
"reticence" that he disliked so. On the other hand he didn't want them too 
willing; then they would not respond properly to his terrorizing processes. 
In the case of Molly for instance, he wanted to bring her to "the perfect 
balance between fear and longing, revulsion and envy." As we have seen, 
Molly's account of this period amply testifies to the accuracy of the man's 
observations and insight, and to the success of his technique of playing the 
initiates against the novices. 

Another reason for his excitement over the approach of Molly's "moment" was 
no doubt the fact that she would be his youngest flower to date. A careful 
study of Stone's seventeen journals would show, I believe, that his 
pedophilia was growing gradually worse over the years. That is, the ideal 
age of his victims seems to have decreased in some sort of inverse ratio to 
his own age, so that in a few more years it would probably have dropped well 
below puberty. (I am going to make no attempt here, by the way, to solve the 
riddle of Stone's age; the various opinions I have been able to collect are 
at such absurd variance with each other that it is impossible to come to a 
conclusion.) 

Anyway, the ecstatic waiting at last came to an end, and Molly's moment 
arrived. Stone's entry of March 3,1930, began as follows: "The torches have 
been lit for the consecration of the eighth virgin, M. It will be a special 
event; the oracle has prescribed some innovations, certain changes in the 
ceremonies to bring us even deeper into the spiritual pit, even closer to 
the dark fountains of the body of the Evil One, whence gush the waters of 
eternal life." 

That night Orcus went down the south tunnel to the girls' house, up the 
narrow stairs to the second floor, and entered the dark dorm through the 
sliding wall panel. Now that Molly's time had come, she was frozen with 
fear; she said that if she could have moved a muscle she would have fought 
for her life, "But I was paralyzed. And yet it was like he had picked me up 
by the nerve-ends; I could feel every vein and ripple in those steel arms, 
and I could feel the black heart beating inside him." She said the sobs and 
screams welled up in her throat but would not break free. "That was the 
first time I can remember since coming to Stone's Island that I ever thought 
about my mother. I wanted so bad for it to be a horrible dream. I'll wake up 
in a minute, I told myself, and I'll go hug Mommy's neck and cry on her 
shoulder and tell her about it, and she'll stroke my head and say, 'Oh, poor 
little girl, don't be afraid, Mommy's here now, it was just a bad dream,' 
and then she'll hold me in her lap in the rocking chair and sing to me. But 
then we went into a dark part of the tunnel and I felt a cold draft and I 
remembered that Mommy was dead and that Mrs. Verlain was one of them and 
that I was only fourteen years old and there was nobody anywhere to save 
me-" 

But the sheer horror of what followed crowded all such thoughts from her 
mind. For now their route took a sharp turn down and to the left and the 
narrow corridor opened out into a howling cavelike chamber full of long 
darting shadows. Along both sides of this hall were ranked black demonic 
figures, their loins girded in shaggy skins with holes cut to admit the 
genitals, and brass chains hung around their necks. At the far end, 
silhouetted against a huge monstrous face illuminated by a ring of torches, 
stood the figure of Simon Stone in a black cowl and robe, arms folded before 
him like a priest. The close damp air was filled with a whining whirr that 
echoed through invisible hollows, growing louder and louder as though at any 
minute the chamber would be filled with hoards of insects. And cutting 
through this terrifying hum was the brittle squeal and clatter of steel on 
rock. 

Suddenly Stone raised his arms over his head, and the cacophonous clamor 
died down to a low breathing sound. Though his words cut into Molly's brain 
like needles, she had at the time of our meeting forgotten all but a few 
phrases. This speech, according to the journals, ran as follows: 

"I am the priest Loki, slave of Lucifer, servant of the goddess Hel. You are 
one shorn of name and identity, and you have entered the sacred lair of the 
dragon Thuremlin-Midgard to be devoured. Thuremlin-Midgard will taste you 
with his tongue: if he finds you sweet, he will swallow you whole, but if he 
finds you are bitter and resist his caresses, his great teeth will gnaw you 
through and you will cease to be. That is your first test. Then, if in the 
course of your passage through his body, at any time you repulse him, he 
will vomit you up in a great wave and his teeth will not spare your 
contemptible flesh. But if you are found worthy, you will on the third day 
pass from his body as excrement and we will form from your digested remains 
a new shape with a new soul and a new name, and your former inferior soul 
will remain forever in the bowels of Thuremlin-Midgard. Thus reborn, you 
will lie in holy communion with the Black Master to consecrate your body to 
His service and be admitted to His fold. But first you must swear a sacred 
oath never to divulge to any mortal ear these things which you are about to 
witness and undergo... " 

Molly swore the oath in a voice which must have been barely audible. Then 
Stone clapped his hands and a black man stepped up with a closed basket, and 
brought it out clutching a snake by the throat, live and writhing. Orcus's 
iron fingers forced Molly's mouth open. Stone held the serpent up before her 
face. 

"This is a child of Nidhogg the Snake King, whose tongue knows truth from 
falsehood. If she tastes deception in your mouth, she will tear out your 
tongue by the roots. But if your oath was sincere, she will not harm you." 

Stone then lowered the head of the snake into Molly's mouth and its foul 
breath hissed down her throat, but she was evidently too frightened even to 
vomit. (I would guess here that the snake's jaws were bound, but who knows 
how mad Stone really was?) 

"Very well," says Loki, "you have passed the first test. But if you ever 
break this oath, in whatever remote time or place, the snake people will 
seek you out and deal unto you the penalty of final death. Prepare her for 
the sacrifice!" 

Molly was then stripped naked and placed on a small raft, probably made of 
coconut logs. Her legs were spread wide and strapped in place and another 
strap was passed over her waist, but her arms and upper body were left free. 
Several Negroes then stepped from the sides of the hall and like savage 
pall-bearers lifted the raft and solemnly carried her, feet first, toward 
the gnashing teeth of the dragon. 

I became very curious about this "dragon," Thuremlin-Midgard (Stone often 
referred to it as "Womb-belly," or simply "Old Cunt-mouth"), and one day I 
finally discovered an unblocked stairwell leading down into the lower 
chambers where I knew it must be. These sea-level tunnels are now nearly 
completely filled with lake sand, but with a shovel and a little guesswork I 
was able to make out a wheel-like design; the rim-which formed the belly of 
the dragon-runs nearly the whole circumference of the hill and is connected 
to a central shaft by a number of hollow spokes. By making my way through 
one of these spoke tunnels, I was able to find the "entrance hall" where 
Molly was taken and, with a little more digging, the head of Old Cunt-mouth 
himself-or herself. 

The thing had evidently been carved from sandstone blocks erected at the end 
of the antechamber. It stood about twelve feet high, had bulging reptilian 
eyes, rimmed with rough-hewn scales, and a huge gaping vertical mouth fully 
eight feet tall and shaped exactly like a vagina with the lips spread open. 
On either side of this mouth, behind the stone "folds" were little alcoves 
with raised platforms on which two men might easily stand. And all along 
both "lips" small slots had been cut through the stone. By these devices 
Stone was able to fit his monster with teeth: four men, two on each side, 
evidently crouched concealed in the platforms and manipulated eight swords 
through the slots. Molly said the teeth were "long and curved, dripping with 
blood, and shiny like steel." The great eyeballs were hollowed out from 
behind with slits cut in front like the pupils of a cat's eye, and inside 
each was a socket for a torch. Similar sockets were cut into the wall of the 
"lair" up and down both sides of the head. 

Even as it was when I saw it, by flashlight, dead and toothless, this 
grotesque visage numbed me to the bone. Imagine how it must have affected 
little Molly Goldsmith who lay helpless before it that night, her tender 
private parts bared to its stabbing teeth gleaming in the torchlight, and 
its ghastly eyes blazing down at her! Nor did she see cold stone as I did: 
"The jaws were all red and bleeding and the teeth seemed to cut right 
through them, and all around the mouth and eyes was a thick mossy beard-!" 
Because when Stone wrote, "Thuremlin-Midgard awaits his prey, new-decked in 
hot flesh," he meant just that. Before every initiation he had the monster's 
lips covered with the raw flesh of dogs and cats collected from the town by 
his servants. As for the pubic "beard," this must have been made from moss 
and brambles wedged under the stone scales, and serving among other things 
to conceal the teeth-wielders. 

Now Molly is brought before the maw of this voracious worm, the shadows of 
his clashing teeth darting over her naked body. 

"Behold the tongue of Thuremlin-Midgard!" 

And out through the meshing teeth comes a long, limber pointed tongue, 
whipping and flickering the shadows above the trembling girl, red-fleshed 
and glistening. She watches horrified, afraid to resist, as the dripping tip 
creeps up her white leg toward her crotch. Clumsily, crudely, it jabs at 
that quivering flower between her thighs, but enters only as far as the 
inner lips. As the "tasting" continues, the insect-like hum increases to a 
howling drone, and the teeth grind and clatter louder and louder upon their 
stony gums. 

At last the tongue withdraws into the dark maw, and Molly feels herself 
being thrust up into the foul breath of the dragon, through the bloody jaws, 
iron fangs hissing above and below her, missing her by inches. She glances 
to one side, panic-stricken. A drooling scimitar darts from its bloody slit, 
straight for her eyes. She blacks out. 

When Molly came to, she found herself afloat on the raft in the 
vile-smelling belly of Thuremlin-Midgard. For a while the distant torches 
beyond the throat sent grim shadows of his teeth stabbing into the gloom 
overhead, but soon she found herself plunged in total darkness, and the 
sound of the gnashing fangs died out. Only then did she become aware of 
another sound beneath the low drone of the worm's breathing: the scurrying 
sound of tiny clawed feet... 

"I kept thinking, No, not three days, they won't leave me in here three 
days, he was just saying that, it was just part of the game, and that's not 
really rats I hear, they're just making sounds like rats to frighten me-" 

But soon there appeared in the gloom ahead a cold glow. It was a bundle of 
phosphorescent seaweed, and as she approached it she saw the rats in the 
greenish light, hunchbacked and popeyed, running to and fro along a narrow 
ledge just above the water, stretching out their forefeet toward the raft. 
Long after the raft had passed beyond the phosphorus glow Molly kept her 
eyes tightly shut and her arms stiff against her sides. She tried to force 
all thoughts from her mind except those of what a grand life of pleasure and 
warmth she would have when it was all over, of how much fun it would be to 
lord it over the little girls, and of what beautiful sexy clothes she would 
be allowed to wear- 

But she was not to be left free to choose her thoughts; Stone was too 
thorough a terrorist, too perverse a lecher, for that. He had a million 
surprises planned for her along the way. At certain intervals Stone or one 
of his men would appear in an opening in the inner wall of the tunnel and 
douse her with water, or something worse. Once in a while a burst of sewage 
would shoot over her raft, or a black man would step out on the ledge and 
urinate on her as she drifted past. Sometimes she would come upon a Negro 
man and woman copulating on the ledge among the rats, and when she 
approached they would wipe their genitals and throw the slimy rags at her 
face and body. 

At certain times they dangled a chunk of half-raw meat over her head on a 
pole, and if she tried to grab it with her hands they jerked it away. But on 
the second day she learned that if she didn't use her hands, they would 
allow her to eat whatever she could snatch off with her teeth until the raft 
drifted beyond reach of the pole. The only liquid she got was whatever blood 
she could suck from that stringy gristle. 

On and on she went, day after day, until her mind was a running sore. 
Sometimes the hum and scurry would be overlaid with a moaning chant: "Dead, 
dead, dead. You are dead, dead, dead... " It seemed to come from all 
directions at once. At other times her forward progress would cease, and 
they would haul her backward for hours on end. At these times the thought of 
going back through those teeth nearly broke what was left of her will to 
survive. 

But survive she did, and after some seventy hours on that gastric river of 
death, Molly was at last rewarded with a glimpse of torchlight, its yellow 
fingers flickering just around the next bend. But at this point "fat old 
Baubo" was hoisted over the stream in a commode seat, and as the white girl 
passed below, the old witch thoroughly defiled her, and her mad cackling 
filled the resounding caves. 

At last Molly felt the straps being loosened from her waist and ankles; 
strong hands cast her from the raft into the foul water, which with a sudden 
belching surge, washed her limp body through the rectum of Thuremlin-Midgard 
and out into a great heap of wet dung, smoking in the firelight. 

Stone now considered our heroine quite dead, digested and soulless, and was 
anxious to begin the rites of rejuvenation. Molly was bathed, blindfolded, 
and carried upward through a series of winding corridors to the altar room 
of the Cathedral of Satan. There she was chained to a pillar and her 
blindfold removed. 

Her three-day ordeal in the dragon had so shocked and blurred her emotions 
that she now viewed the bizarre scene before her with a kind of 
uncomprehending passivity, just what Stone wanted: a clean photographic 
plate, well-emulsified, ready to be exposed to the images and imprinted with 
the will of Hell. 

To one side of her, on a wooden semi-circular bench, sat the seven neophytes 
in casual flirtatious poses, legs crossed or spread, lips painted in 
scarlet. They were dressed in short red tunics of a transparent material, 
pleated and loose. The upper parts of their breasts were bare and their 
nipples were hardly blurred by the gossamer cloth. Around their necks hung 
the double-dragon medallions on fine gold chains. Their heads swayed from 
side to side in time to the dirge-like music of the organ played by old 
Minos, invisible at the console behind a stop of gleaming pipes. The music 
and the luxurious side-to-side swinging of the girls' long lustrous hair had 
an almost hypnotic effect on Molly. 

On the other side sat seven tall muscular Negroes on another curved bench. 
They too swayed from side to side with their hands on their knees and their 
flashing eyes all on Molly. They were dressed in crimson kilts of fine satin 
embroidered with cryptic signs in black and gold, and around their necks 
also hung the chained medallions. Bands of hammered bronze encircled their 
upper arms, and each had a gold ring in one ear. 

In the center, between Molly and the elevated organ, stood the altar, a 
large flat stone resting on three rough-hewn boulders of encrusted 
limestone, wrenched from a sea reef. The smooth surface of the slab was 
stained with blood. 

All about the gallery the walls were hung with red velvet curtains, and at 
even intervals stood tall bronze braziers of yellow fire. At various places 
the curtains were drawn aside to reveal massive gilded doors, each painted 
with a red rune-like inscription. The journals say they were painted with 
blood, but Stone does not translate the runes. 

Soon the music died to an eerie murmur, and inside his cell behind the organ 
Stone bent over his wife Amanda, gave her a nice Venetian kiss in the 
crotch, put on his headdress, and stepped out into the quivering light of 
the apse. 

For all her dulled reflexes, Molly caught her breath when she saw him. For 
though he still wore his priestly black cape (without a cross), now from out 
of the cowl thrust the long-fanged snout of a great wolf, and its eyes were 
empty sockets, black and hollow. He took his stand behind the altar and 
raised his arms aloft. 

"I am the priest Loki-Anubis, judge of the living dead," he said. "We are 
gathered here to consecrate to our purpose and cause the Asar M, here before 
us without name or soul, to test whether she be found pleasing or loathsome 
to our supreme master, the Black Lord, and, if He finds for her, to restore 
her miserable remains and infuse them with a new name and soul of His 
choosing." 

Here the dog-snout swung straight toward the chained girl and the hollow 
eyes fixed her with a black stare. 

"Does the nameless Asar know that she is now but lifeless excrement, nothing 
more than a vile turd, fresh shit from the anus of the soul-eater 
Thuremlin-Midgard? putrescent clay to be molded according to the dictates of 
our god Satan-Lucifer?" 

Molly told me, "I was so frozen with fear, I couldn't say a word or move a 
muscle," but according to Stone she nodded her head. 

"Very well," he went on, "You shall now, accordingly, be permitted to watch 
that which no unconverted eye may witness on penalty of death by torture: 
the Black Mass." 

Whereupon the supplicants, black and white alike, set up a moaning chant 
over the echoing continuo of the organ. Molly looked at her former lover 
Yvette and hardly recognized her distorted face, but she felt no emotion. 
Only ragged scraps of memory of a world and time before her "death" in the 
jaws of the hellworm fluttered across her consciousness and blew away in the 
wind of that droning song. 

When it was over, Loki-Anubis turned his back on the altar and muttered a 
long rasping incantation of unintelligible gibberish. Then it was time for 
communion. The "black Host" was brought through one of the wide doors on a 
tray of hammered silver, held high by a beautiful Negro girl (Hecate) 
wearing nothing but a "gown" of white beads strung on long strings and 
fastened together only by a wide collar of copper wire; the clicking strands 
parted in two places where they fell over her bosom, completely exposing her 
jutting black-tipped breasts and giving striking contrast to the rest of her 
bare brown body. She placed the tray on the altar. It contained sixteen 
triangular wafers, lack as coal, and a crude chalice of green copper. Stone 
boasts that these "Hosts" were all stolen from local Roman Catholic 
churches, then cut and blackened with menstrual blood; but he doesn't say 
how he managed these thefts. As for the consecrated wine, nowhere does he 
give his recipe, but Molly said, "it had a horrible bitter taste. I could 
never drink it without breaking out in a sweat, and it turned ice-cold in 
your stomach." 

Loki-Anubis now leans over the tray, his yellow fangs dripping, and drools 
upon the black Hosts. Having thus received their final consecration, they 
are once more borne aloft by the bead-clad altar girl, but the chalice is 
left for the present on the slab. Hecate and Loki-Anubis first cross to the 
bench of the Negro supplicants, and the priest takes one wafer at a time 
from the tray and places one on each extended tongue. The black men 
partially chew the crackers but do not swallow them. Now the priest and the 
girl step aside, and the white "sisters" rise from their pew. 

Across the apse in front of Molly they come, with slow seductive steps, 
their bare butts winking through the red veils, and the organ begins a slow 
swinging chant, eerie and erotic. When they reach the leering black men, 
they jerk up their skirts and sit down on their laps, legs straddling the 
men's hips. Molly watches Yvette take her partner's face between her hands 
and raise up on her knees; black fingers slip up under her tunic and cup the 
pale buttocks, creep between them with bold caresses... 

Yvette lifts the man's face up from where it burrowed between her breasts 
and plunges her tongue into his mouth, fishing out a portion of the 
half-masticated wafer. When each girl has swallowed her morsel, she rises 
again to her feet; but before returning to their places a few of them bare a 
breast and brush a teasing nipple across the lips of their partners. 
(Wherever Stone describes this part of the Mass, he invariably has it that 
at least one of the girls squirted a stream of milk into her partner's 
face!) 

When the girls are seated again, the second part of the communion begins; 
each communicant has so far taken only half a Host into his body: he must 
eat a whole one. Old Jackal-head crosses the floor to the other bench, 
Hecate by his side, the prominent cheeks of her brown ass thrusting aside 
the bead curtain as she walks. Loki-Anubis kneels before each girl, who in 
turn holds up the hem of her skirt and spreads her legs to receive the 
Sacrament. Then, one by one he inserts seven black cookies into seven fuzzy 
pussies, and tamps them home. Now the Negroes rise and cross the floor like 
a skirmish line of black warriors, their erect pricks standing out under 
their kilts like tent poles. They kneel before the sisters and kiss their 
knees for admission. It is granted, and the shadowy thighs open wide. Again 
Molly watches Yvette. The thick-wooled head of her "brother" twists and 
turns as his tongue probes deep for the unholy Host, and the strong dark 
hands again slip into her tunic from below and slide slowly up her belly and 
ribs until the long white-nailed fingers close gently over her 
cherry-crowned tits... 

Celia's co-communicant was the first to succeed in extracting from her twat 
the hallowed tidbit. Still kneeling, he lifted his face to hers, the limp 
wafer between his teeth. Celia then gripped it in her own teeth, and 
together they tore it in half and ate it, nose to nose. As soon as a couple 
completed his maneuver, they would fall to kissing and caressing each other 
with hand and tongue, keeping it up until all had communicated properly 
according to the rules of the coven. Then the men rose, gave the girls a 
short jab in the face with their satin-covered cocks, and returned to their 
seats. 

But the pseudo-Eucharist was not quite over yet. Molly, being still a 
novice, could not of course take Communion, but there was still Father Loki 
and his altar girl. This was accomplished in a separate ceremony and 
witnessed by the congregation. 

Old Minos deadened his rhythm a bit, and went into a heavy fugue on the reed 
stops. Loki-Anubis stepped up to the altar, turned his back to Molly and 
with a ceremonious flourish draped himself over the slab. Hecate steps up, 
whirls around once making her beads stand out, flips up Stone's cape and 
solemnly crams one of the two remaining Hosts into his asshole. 

This done, the priest drops his skirts and steps back. Hecate now mounts the 
altar facing Molly, her buttocks resting at the edge of the stone, legs 
spread and dangling off, tits bare and pointed upward. Loki-Anubis spreads 
the beads from her cinnamon loins and steps aside to give Molly a clear view 
of the altar girl's black-bristled cunt. Deftly he parts the wool and shoves 
the last black wafer out of sight between the glistening lips. 

Now Minos lurched into an African tempo, a howling love chant, and Hecate 
let out a yell and leapt from the altar. She began to dance, a whirling, 
bumping, grinding, tit-shaking dance, around and around Molly's pillar, 
while Loki-Anubis dropped to all fours, barking and howling and pretending 
to snap at the brown girl's ankles as she whirled past him. As she spun 
wildly around the column, her whistling beads whipped and stung Molly's 
naked thighs and belly, and the supplicants cried out hysterically, clapping 
their hands to the thunderous beat. 

Suddenly Hecate shrieked gleefully and leapt onto the back of the barking 
jackal, but mounting ass-backwards, so to say-foot to head. As he thrashed 
about, making a show of trying to throw her off, the girl jerked up his 
skirts, dug her heels into his armpits, and plunged her face between his 
bared buttocks, snapping at his balls and jerking at his prick with her 
hands. The congregation cheered and shrieked when she sank her claws into 
his cheeks, spread them roughly apart, and sank her tongue into his asshole, 
sucking out the black lozenge. 

The Host clenched between her teeth, Hecate rolled off onto the stone floor, 
and with a savage snarl the wolfman pounced on her with all fours, pinning 
her down. He unhinged the jaw of his wolf mask and lowered his face to hers, 
tearing off his part of the wafer with his teeth. Molly said she had he most 
terrifying feeling that at any moment the wolf-jaws would snap shut and 
crush the girl's skull. 

When they had savored and swallowed the fouled sacrament, Stone whirled 
around and, with his genitals in Hecate's face, savagely wrenched open her 
highs. She nibbled at his balls and sucked his cock is his tongue fished 
deep into her cunt for the hidden cookie. As soon as he drew it out in a 
mucoid blob, the black girl bowled him over in a flurry of lying beads and 
sat heavily on his chest. She opened the wolf-jaws with her hands and 
plunged her face between them like a lion trainer in a circus. 

And so ended the breaking of the bread at the evening service of the Stone's 
Island Church of the Antichrist, as at our heroine's feet the long-eared 
celebrant and his beaded aide, with drooling fang and heaving breast, 
ingested the last slimy shred of the black Host. But Communion was not over 
yet. 

Having ritually eaten of the tortured flesh of the Dark Angel, the 
communicants now turn to the drinking of "His black blood, boiled in Dis, 
frozen in Cocytus, yet eternally potent." 

To this rite, as to the celebration as a whole, Stone had made some 
additions and "improvements" on the classical models of traditional 
witchcraft. Though obviously well-read in both science and the humanities, 
modern as well as ancient, Stone held to the Aristotelian belief that male 
semen was highly purified blood-and, conversely, that female "semen," that 
is menstrual fluid, was blood of an extremely impure nature (which should 
give us some idea of at least one ingredient in his sacramental wine). He 
also went along with the Seventeenth Century investigators Hartsoeker and 
Dalempatius, who saw in every sperm cell a tiny, long-tailed human embryo, 
fully formed. But since his blackamoors were possessed by "intelligences 
from the pit," Stone believed their sex organs to be irreparably altered, so 
that, as he put it, "In every wiggling sperm of their black loins crouches 
an un-coagulated demon from the body of the Great Proliferator!" In 
accordance with these concepts, he proceeded thus with his Eucharist: 

Two wooden stools were brought out and placed at each end of the altar. The 
priest mounted one stool, the altar girl the other. With a crooked pine wand 
Loki-Anubis traced the ancient sign of the swastika over the blood-stained 
slab, then lifted both arms in a grotesque semaphore of the crucifixion. The 
seven black men rose now and spaced themselves evenly along the altar, three 
on one side, four on the other. At a nod of the dog-snout, they hopped onto 
the waist-high stone and lay back on it with their legs hanging off the 
sides and their pricks standing straight up under their kilts. The banquet 
being thus laid, the film-clad witchlets came to table; each stepped up 
between a pair of black legs and threw back the satin coverings. 

Then quoth Loki-Anubis in a loud voice, "The Lord Seth, overseer of the pit, 
Black John, triumphant, saith: 'This is my blood, drink ye all of it!' " 

With a joyful shout they fell to feasting. Molly watched Yvette-who was on 
the other side of the altar, facing her-bend hungrily over the huge 
twitching tuber before her and touch its oozing mouth with her tongue. She 
gripped it with both hands and smeared the spittle and leakage all up and 
down the throbbing black trunk and down over the corrugated scrotum. Then, 
with her laughing eyes on Molly, she slid her painted lips down, down over 
that demonic cock as far as they would go. In a burst of wild laughter she 
sprayed her partner's belly with saliva and prick-juice, and he rubbed it 
over his skin and into the long blonde hair that draped his jet hips. Molly 
stared, dimly amazed that she could be aroused after what she had been 
through, as Yvette's head began to bob over the enormous member in rhythmic 
caresses with her lips and tongue. 

All around the table, as their juices rose higher and higher, the men groped 
freely in all directions, clutching and caressing any and all tits within 
reach, male and female alike grunting and gasping with swelling passion. 
Meanwhile, back at the console, old Pops Minos was blowing a dirty, lowdown, 
whorehouse blues, and on their pedestals above the communicants Wolfman and 
the bead girl were laying down a wild syncopated chant, with strophe and 
antistrophe, and doing everything but the hambone. 

Finally the orgasms began, and the cum flew like seafoam. The sexual tide of 
Yvette's man was one of the first to crest and break into those pink-tongued 
lagoons. Stone's perverted muse describes it this way: "The first burst 
blasted Y's head completely off the muzzle, nearly breaking her neck, and 
the thick smoking bombs exploded over her face, blinding her and filling her 
nostrils-" But as Molly remembers it, Yvette simply raised her face and 
pumped the prick with her hand, letting the cum shoot into her mouth. 

It was important that the girls swallow the entire load, even as it is 
written, and so whenever the good father spotted one of his children waxing 
deficient in this duty, he would give her a smart whack on the ass with his 
staff. 

And so when the possessed blackamoors had all been thus ceremoniously blown 
and temporarily divested of their "uncoagulated demons," Loki-Anubis 
immediately took up the great battered chalice and gave it to the 
supplicants to pass around, urging them with howls and curses to drink it 
down, drink it down, "Faster! Faster!" When it came back into his hands, he 
up-ended it and drained the last drop. This ended the communion, and 
everyone now fell to the floor as if in a dead faint. 

"For a long time they just lay there like they were asleep," Molly said, 
"and then another girl in beads came in with some food on a tray. I don't 
know what it was, something hot. She put pieces of it into my mouth and I 
ate it, because I was half-starved. Then she poured some cold water into my 
mouth and left. After that I went to sleep- standing up, chains and all. I 
don't know how long I slept, but suddenly I was aware that the music had 
started again. It was a high-pitched, sing-song kind of thing, like... " She 
hummed a folksy little ditty that reminded me of the music to which the 
dwarfs come dancing through the forest in that modern TV ballet The Evil 
Queen, somebody's adaptation of the Snow White story, but Molly's tune was 
even spookier than that, what with the candlelight playing on her pallid 
face and that gradually building undercurrent of hysteria in her voice, like 
a Wagner opera whispering on toward the soul-rending thunder of its climax. 

"When I opened my eyes, I saw the girls dancing all around me and the altar, 
shaking their tits and flipping up their little skirts in back to show their 
behinds. The men were still on the floor but they were sitting up, clapping 
their hands in time, and grinning at the girls. Sometimes they'd pinch their 
butts if they got close enough, but Simon wasn't with them. He was sitting 
in a tall wooden chair on a raised platform behind the altar. I hadn't 
noticed the chairs before-or thrones I should call them; there was one to 
the right of the altar-the one Simon was in, and another empty one to the 
left. In the center of the platform was a heavy dais of oak, carved all over 
with horrible faces and strange signs and letters. Hecate stood Reside Simon 
with her titties poking through her beads. 

"Anyway, they danced and danced, getting sexier and sexier, and closer and 
closer to their audience on the floor, and the boys were getting hard-ons 
again. I was beginning to think-or to hope, anyway-that maybe my ordeal was 
about over, so that I almost enjoyed watching this part-" As I say, Stone 
seemed to know exactly when the physiology would crack, precisely when it 
needed rejuvenation. "Finally one of the men made a grab for Yvette's tunic 
and ripped it right off. She laughed and kept dancing around naked, but the 
next time around the same guy tackled her around the knees and jumped on top 
of her. He ate her pussy and then fucked her... " (Stone's version: "His 
abrasive tongue got her cunt so hot that a cloud of pungent steam hissed out 
of it and scalded his ears... and when he shot his molten load into her, I 
saw the incandescent gobs glowing inside her stomach, her radiant skin 
transmuted to a lucent foil by the ambient passion of the Dark Presence... " 
Nowhere outside of Criswell's Book of the Worms have I read such wild raving 
as in these last few notebooks of Stone's journal.) 

So the dancing rapidly degenerates into fucking, until, one way or the 
other, all the suppliants have been had. But no sooner has the last wad been 
shot, when Molly is nearly deafened by a sharp explosion beside her left 
ear. 

A loud voice boomed out of nowhere: "Nerthus-Njord of the Cold Lake, scourge 
of Hel, queen of Niflheim!" And suddenly in the wings of this weird theater 
appeared a tall muscular red-skinned woman, her oiled body and polished 
trappings flashing in the torchlight. From her right wrist, on a leather 
thong, dangled the butt of a blacksnake whip which lay out before her at 
full length on the floor. On her head was a bullet-shaped helm of bronze 
that extended to the nape of her neck in back and to the bridge of her 
beak-like nose in front; the cruelly slanted eyeslits had sculptured lids 
and feathered brows, skillfully incised. Slender upcurved horns sprouted 
from the temples, and from her ears hung swastikas of black iron. About her 
rippling upper arms she wore brass bands inscribed with runes, and her 
solid-looking breasts were held in round cups of bronze mail held in place 
by leather thongs; at the centers of the cups were large holes through which 
her black nipples thrust their long tips straight out before her. Her feet 
and calves were encased in tight rawhide boots studded with brass and silver 
bands in criss-cross pattern. Her graceful midriff was bare to the hips, 
around which was girded a belt of large polished disks, stamped with the 
image of the double-dragon, and from this belt hung a thigh-length skirt of 
coarse unbleached muslin with a panel removed from the front to reveal her 
genitals. Out from her pubic hump and down between her thighs, parted in the 
middle into two combed strands, hung a jet-black tight-waved beard. (Stone 
has its length at halfway to her knees-and maybe it was... ) 

But most obscene and terrifying of all, from out of the midst of this beard, 
from the top of her open slit, protruded a thick livid member of stiff 
flesh, curled upward like a beckoning finger. 

Molly demonstrated her pose to me; I was put in mind of certain Egyptian or 
Babylonian colossuses, those fearsome monolithic reflections of masculine 
femininity, dream images of the tyrant mother: She stood straight and rigid, 
with her high-heeled feet wide apart, and her arms stiff at her sides, held 
out at a small angle from her body, palms turned outward, fingers unbent and 
slightly parted, each bound with a brass ring and tipped with a steel talon. 

This image, though I only got it second hand, will follow me to the West 
Indies and 'round perdition's flames, as Ahab said-it will haunt me the rest 
of my days. 

Frequently, during those last few years, Stone's diary writing would shift 
from first to third person narration, sometimes jumping from one to the 
other without warning, as though his "observing self" dwelt one moment in 
the body of Simon Stone, the next in one of those omnipresent demons of his 
"who come in the air." This is how he describes his liturgical rape at the 
hands of the amazon: 

"The judge Loki-Anubis then prostrated himself upon the altar of Satan in 
order that his body might be purged of whatever secret conceits of 
self-righteousness still dwelt there, whatever vile vapours of Christ's 
blood still lingered within him." (In this way Stone rationalizes his 
masochistic compulsion-and incidentally gives us one of the few allusions to 
his Catholic upbringing to be found throughout the journals.) 
"Nerthus-Njord, with gleaming helm and nippleless byrnie, addresses the 
blood-soaked rock and, by authority of our Banished Prince, strips the 
vestments from the confessor's back. She spat upon his bared rump to whet 
the flesh and spread it about with her clawed hands. Her long lash like a 
living snake coiled upward among the black witnesses afloat on the living 
shadows, and in a whistling shriek rent the trembling flesh. With savage 
precision, for the Master guided her hand, the lash wrote upon his backside 
a magical benediction in bleeding runes, and from the flayed flesh rose 
black smoke, and with every crack of the whip the wolf-eyes glowed brighter 
and brighter with the reflected light of Hell, the internal fires of the 
soul dedicated to the Night. His fangs drooled with bile, green then black, 
and the red tongue lolled on the stone, twitching like a death-bound worm." 
And so forth. 

Molly says that, indeed, Mrs. V beat the hell out of him, and that (though 
she remembers no smoke or bile) the blood ran free. "But he seemed to enjoy 
it," she said. "He never put his hand to his cock and neither did she, but 
he got his gun all right. He kind of hunched up, you know, and you would see 
his butt jerking up and down. That was her signal to stop, and when she 
rolled him over, I saw the sticky pool of cum on the altar and on his 
stomach. Some of it was still leaking out of him in a long string. Mrs. V 
smeared her hand in it and rolled him back over. Then she rubbed it into the 
crack of his ass... " 

This was for lubrication. With the torn robe she mopped the blood from his 
back and rump-the cuts could not have been too deep, for all Stone's 
boasting-and vaulted up onto the altar. She straddled his striped bottom and 
stood over him for a moment in that colossal pose, clitoris twitching like a 
thirsty tongue thrust through the vertical lips at the parting of that black 
shag that hung down to God knows where. Though she tried to sweep it from 
her mind, Molly could not help being reminded of the grizzly jaws of the 
leviathan Thuremlin-Midgard who had eaten her alive. All that was lacking 
were the teeth. 

Now Nerthus-Njord bent over and gripped the hips of Loki-Anubis with her 
hawk-like talons, lifting his ass till he rested on his knees, head and 
shoulders still flat on the stone, arms akimbo. He still wore the wolf head, 
but nothing else save his black sandals. Dropping to her knees behind him, 
she brutally spread the cheeks of his ass, guided her fleshy dagger to the 
exposed hole-and rammed it in! 

Details of the conversion of the "squaw Verlain" into the Teutonic 
hermaphrodite Nerthus-Njord, full-fledged member of Stone's coven, are 
missing, but he makes it clear that this was the first consummation of his 
dream of being raped by the strange creature he watched in the infirmary 
that night through his trick mirrors. And raped he was -literally and 
brutally ravished. He says her clit darted in and out of him so fast that "a 
wind of brown blood broke from the tortured hole!" As she pumped away, her 
hands went around his hips to his crotch, and she milked his prick at her 
own copulating rhythm and clawed at his balls with her steel nails. 

Finally she got her cookies, and Stone says that, "Loki-Anubis shrieked in 
ecstatic pain as a bolt of blue lightning shot out of the He-She and 
exploded in his rectum like a bomb of needles!"-at which time he too offered 
up another spurting volley of semen to Black John. 

Now the time had come for the Devil to appear in person and accept the 
sacrifice of the virgin M. (Stone considered every girl a virgin once she 
had passed through the digestive tract of his dragon, no matter what had 
happened to her previously.) If she was found acceptable by the "tall black 
man," as the Inquisitioners used to call him, then she would be infused with 
a new soul and christened with a new name. 

Loki-Anubis was sponged off, revived with wine, and clothed in a fresh cape, 
while the He-She carried a great horn of strong drink to her adoring covey 
of naked neophytes on the bench. The black brothers also partook of this 
brew, and old Minos started up a whining sirensong that seemed to strain the 
very forests of Transylvania through his shivering pipes. Molly says the 
music and the drink changed the mood-a dream-like atmosphere settled over 
the gallery, and the worshippers began to sway back and forth as though in a 
trance. Again the priest took his seat to the right of the dais, the beaded 
Hecate at his side, and Nerthus-Njord sat straight and silent on the other 
chair, her chainlink breast-cups expanding and contracting rhythmically as 
she breathed. 

Two of the brothers now approached Molly and fitted a black blindfold around 
her head. She was then unchained from the pillar, but her wrist and ankle 
shackles were left on. She was carried to the altar and chained down on her 
back in a spread-eagle position, except that her knees were bent and 
strapped to two wooden uprights set in sockets near each side of the 
slab-sort of a delivery table setup. She was left like this for some time, 
and a cold flame of fear grew in the pit of her stomach until her bones 
turned to ice. Then suddenly a chilling draft swept over her naked body and 
through the blindfold she saw the torchlight waver and go dim for a moment. 
(Stone has it that "every flame was extinguished and the cathedral was 
stricken with a flash of darkness... ") 

Then the blindfold was removed and Molly was aware of a huge presence at the 
foot of the altar, but cold fear locked her gaze into the shadowy vaults of 
the ceiling. Over the tense strains of the organ she heard heavy guttural 
breathing with a rattling hiss at the end of each breath. Then she knew she 
was going to have to look. She didn't want to look, didn't want to know what 
it was that stood there dark and heavy at her feet, leering down at her 
secret flesh. "It was like driving fast down the road and knowing that in a 
minute you will swerve over into the other lane and hit another car head-on, 
and there is nothing you can do to prevent it, it's just something that you 
know your muscles will do all by themselves. I felt-or it seemed that I 
could-his shadow creeping up my legs, over my stomach, my breasts, and I 
knew that when the shadow got to my face, I would have to look-" 

Stone writes that "the scream of the offered corpse when she viewed the face 
of her lover made the very flames in the braziers shrink with alarm! His 
smoking nostrils flared and the scales of his ridged brow clattered in 
anticipation of the morsel before Him, empty and devoid of the vapours of 
His enemies. Mounting the altar, he swung his great black phallus in a wide 
circle with his horned hands, and his blazing eyes scorched her flesh! Down 
he came, the point of his long tongue darting about her face, tasting her 
pale lips, quivering into her ears. His serpent lips nibbled at her eyes, 
sucking up the gushing tears and spraying them back into her face as steam 
from his nostrils. His fangs, sharp as needles, pierced her neck, and he fed 
upon the undead blood, sweet as sin... " 

"I felt his scaly lips scrape down between my breasts, and his rough fingers 
pinched my nipples. His breath was hot and strong smelling and it seemed to 
flow all over me at once. His tongue was like a lizard's tail, long and 
slimy. He licked me between the legs with it, and wiggled it up inside me. 
Oh, God, how he burned me! He split me in two with that tongue that wasn't 
even a tongue, it was like I really became two people-one was still a 
terrified little girl, full of horror and loathing for that thing, that 
beast, snuffling and rooting in her crotch like a pig and scratching her 
with those awful claws, but the other one! -the other one was shocked beyond 
belief that she could be aroused by such a monster, but she was aroused. 
That tongue, those scaly lips, they were kindling a fire in my cunt-not the 
cunt of the little girl, but the cunt of a wanton slut who actually reveled 
in the sheer horror of being fucked by the Devil!" 

"Ha! I could hardly keep my hand off my yard when I saw that beautiful 
shell, that passionate husk, rippling with lust for the Black Fiend! He took 
his huge scabrous member in his thorny fist and scraped its bulging head on 
the lips of that dainty gash, and the tender flesh opened in a soundless 
scream of joy and horror! In one voice the faithful gasped and intoned their 
dissonant hymns of adoration, and as the head of that one-eyed dragon 
squeezed into its new-found burrow, distending the crimson walls, the first 
sparks of living earthfire appeared in the eyes of the slaughtered lamb. How 
lovely she was, how brave! How her spine curled as she folded herself over 
the black ram between her flowering thighs! In, in, in it went, and the hymn 
rose to a shrill crescendo, a wave of fire and ice, breaking over us and him 
and her in a crash of gas and crystals... " 

Imagine it. The wolf-headed priest and the bronze-masked dyke with her black 
nipples and bearded cunt, the naked brown girl in her curtain of beads, the 
intoxicated worshippers, naked and gleaming with love-juice, swaying and 
moaning in the torch light, and in the center, at the throbbing axis of the 
spectacle, on a stone slab such as men have sacrificed upon since the 
Paleolithic dawn, the toad headed black giant laboring over that 
white-skinned slip of a girl whose breath comes in grunting gasps from the 
sheer force of the terrific engine grinding through her body, battering down 
the last frail barriers to her womb... 

"He destroyed me, he split me all apart with that thing. I felt my very 
bones opening up and spreading out, and my head kept flashing red and orange 
and black. Sometimes he would raise his head and hold my face in his claws 
and make me look at him-at his eyes-and he panted on me and the whole room 
went whirling around, slow, sickeningly slow. It felt like his thing was 
right up in my stomach, getting bigger and bigger and spreading me all out 
of shape, and my eyes would go out of focus. I couldn't close them, I had to 
look and look and keep looking till I died, and I kept thinking in a minute 
I would die and that horrible face was the last thing I would see, with the 
green flames burning all around it like a frame-and I did die. I died over 
and over again but I still saw it and felt it, and I kept falling apart in 
smaller and smaller pieces till there was nothing left of me at all. I 
blacked out completely, I know I did, but it kept on killing me just the 
same. I dreamed, and even in the dream I couldn't get rid of that whore in 
me who could feel the pleasure all through the hurting- 

"I saw my body go all limp like a rubber sack, and the long pole went right 
through me and came out my throat, and when the black head came out he took 
it in his own scaly lips and floated up into the air, going over and over 
and round and round like a wheel, with me skewered on that thing. I was 
nothing but shreds of rubber, fluttering in the wind as he whirled away into 
the dark. Then way up ahead I saw a light, a yellow light, and a voice said, 
"It will take a million years to get there, where the light is, but then 
you'll be safe." And we flew for a long time, and the light got bigger and 
bigger and brighter and brighter-and then I knew I was really going to 
explode. There was a bomb in me, filled up with all the deaths that had 
killed me, that had tried to kill me, but they could not kill the one little 
park, and that spark was the bomb, and I knew in minute it was going off, 
and when my eyes opened there I was back on the stone, covered with sweat, 
and it went off. One of the girls told me later that I was laughing when he 
got his gun-I guess I was laughing because that light we had flown toward so 
long, where it was supposed to be safe, that light was right there in the 
room, right back where we had started. I realized that sometime during the 
explosion. It was so clear to me, and awful. Doesn't make any sense now, 
does it?" 

"As He brought her to her climax the hill shook to its very bones and the 
torches lashed the faithful with stinging shadows. In a moaning hiss the 
black steam rushed from her navel and fountains of milk like magma erupted 
from her distended nipples, and her limbs quaked and lurched in demonic 
spasms, and Loki-Anubis could see the green glow of rushing fluid surging 
from the hidden springs of her ovaries. Her thorax swelled with the sacred 
semen that flooded her every pit and hollow-blast after blast!-until it 
leaked from her pores, her ears and nose, and ran from her mouth and eyes in 
thick, smoking runlets... 

"... As He withdrew from the mouth of her carnal crucible that massive cork, 
such a spurting flood poured from her that it ran off the altar in seven 
boiling cataracts!" 

Molly had no recollection of her assailant's departure from the cold couch, 
but Stone says he cleared the distance from the altar to the dais "in one 
effortless bound, slow as cooling pitch," and reclined there in a satyr-like 
pose, his dripping cock draped over a black thigh. 

Loki-Anubis, at the right hand of Satan, now rises to speak (though Molly 
remembers none of this): 

"Kneel, children! This unworthy gift has pleased our black Lord. Hail 
Satan!" The worshipers take up the cry. "The tongue of His dark member has 
rent the restored hymen and tasted the dead blood of the nameless one, the 
Asar M, and found it pleasing. He accepts this husk, and finds it a fitting 
vial for His sacred poison. Now, in His presence and in His name, shall the 
Familiars know also of her flesh, for she is without totem or spirit, a 
vessel to be filled. Let the Familiars approach!' 

Molly says that she was in a stupor during most of what followed. "It was so 
much like a horrible nightmare that even when it was all over I didn't 
believe it had really happened. I didn't believe it until later when I saw 
them do the same thing to the next girl... " 

A rasping hush fell over the room, a scurrying hiss of silence that 
resonated in soundless echoes through the dismal vaults. The silence in that 
room is almost a tangible thing; I have sat there, alone, and felt it 
pressing on me, funneling in toward that one place from all those burnt-out 
voids in the honey-combed hill. It's as if the dead had imprinted their 
voices on the stale air, embalmed their essences in the scratching scurry of 
rats feet and the rip of rainwater. There is almost a roar of silence in the 
place, as in a seashell or a skull. It must have been the same then, the 
same voiceless sound that Molly heard and felt through her delirium that 
night thirty-nine years ago as she waited for the next assault upon her 
tormented body; because the hill was a tomb even then; it was a tomb even 
before Stone drowned his wife and took her corpse to his bed; like an 
Egyptian pyramid it was erected for that purpose alone. But it was worse 
than that, thousand times worse than a pyramid, because this tomb was 
intended for the living. 

The rustle of feathers and the inhuman hiss were more an intensification of 
the silence than a breaking of it; and the broad spread of black wings at 
the foot of the altar was more a fluttering blur behind the eyes than an 
indication of shape and mass. But then sharp claws raked her inner thighs, 
and the pain forced her whole body into focus: in a black flash she saw the 
great swan beat the air, its long neck thrusting at the shadows which held 
it, its clawed feet flailing furiously. With a clattering hiss he bird's hot 
breath scorched her belly in a swooping arc. She remembers a black hand 
dipping into a small pot and smearing something greasy and bad smelling 
between her legs, and then the swan jabbing at her with its beak, jabbing 
straight at her eyes-then nothing. "I must have fainted again," she said. 
"The next thing I remember is that snaky neck swaying over me-I thought it 
was a snake at first, a dancing snake. It bit me, it bit my breasts and my 
neck-it kept striking at my face and hissing, but they held it back. Then it 
stopped biting, and its wings stopped beating my legs, and it put one foot 
on my stomach. I was so sore all over I hardly felt it, but I saw it there, 
pushing hard on me, and when it dug its claws in it was like nails being 
driven into every inch of my body, all at once. It seems like I should have 
known what was happening, what would come next, but I was utterly shocked 
when it stuck that thing in me! I thought I was being set on fire-'They're 
going to burn me alive!' I remember thinking. I heard screams of horror and 
flapping shapes all around me, and I thought, 'Why are they screaming?' and 
then I realized that I was the one who had screamed, the rest were 
echoes-echoes and hallucinations. 'I'm dreaming that a swan is fucking me,' 
I thought, 'I'm dreaming that a big black swan is fucking the life out of 
me.' " 

For Molly the rest was a blur. She dreamed that she was being ravished by 
black animals of all descriptions-sphinxes, serpents, vultures, rodents, 
insects. Stone's account is hardly more intelligible, but it is clear that 
she was to be given sexually to three black animals-all important shapes in 
Stone's mytho-demonic system: a swan, a dog, and a goat. Other animals were 
used for other initiations, so that each girl was given a different "soul," 
her own personal hybrid totem. 

Molly vaguely remembers being unshackled and set upon her hands and knees. 
"I fell, but they held me up," she said. The goat was brought to the altar, 
and judging by what Molly remembers and the bruised condition of her body 
afterward, it must have been quite a struggle; but Stone says, "The goat 
Dionysus, long horned, shaggy and smelling of dung, mounted the lusting 
girl-shell with a will, clutched her slim waist with his hooves and pumped 
his torrid brew into her sucking hole with such an ear-piercing bleat that a 
thousand devils sprang anew from the Pit to view the spectacle." 

Far off, in the dark corners of her numbed perception, Molly heard the 
vicious snarls and smelled rank urine, as the dog Fenir-"a black mongrel, 
half wolf," Stone says-was beaten into position behind her. "When the 
drooling beast dismounted, the yawning cunt of the newborn was a scorched 
hull of black flesh, a limp sack, a smoking gate, open forever to the 
phallic children of the Pit... " 

At this point they must have given Molly something to revive her; Stone 
wanted her awake to witness her own christening. She found herself 
unchained, lying on her back upon the altar. All round her towered black 
giants, naked and gleaming in the torchlight, their cocks in their hands. 
Each one put his hand into her cunt to lubricate his member. "I knew I 
wasn't tied down, but I couldn't move a muscle. I could only watch. The 
music had started again, and it got faster and faster and louder and louder 
as they masturbated. By the time they started shooting on me, it was 
deafening, didn't even have the strength to turn my head-it spurted all in 
my eyes and nose and mouth, and felt it splattering heavy and wet all over 
my tits and belly." 

It wasn't until then that she noticed the dog headed Loki-Anubis on his 
knees at the foot of the altar, hunched over, his drooling snout thrust up 
between her legs, furiously jerking off in the storm of semen raging out of 
the black cocks over his head. With ecstatic groans and gasps he approached 
his orgasm, and his passion-strained chant drummed through the driving howl 
of the organ-"Your name is Oni-Kalma, your name is Oni Kalma, your name is 
Oni-Kalma." He shot his load straight into her gaping wound: "ONI-KALMA IS 
YOUR NAME!" 

 CHAPTER ELEVEN 

The games and the initiations went on for two more years. Stone drew it out, 
savored it, added to it; he increased his sway over his flock to an absolute 
tyranny, a tightly closed system responding to his slightest whim with the 
utmost sensitivity; but at length he tired of it, as perhaps he had tired of 
his wife Amanda. In spite of his attempts to arrest all movement, he saw 
movement continuing, saw the girls aging in spite of the spiritual death he 
had inflicted upon them. He had also wanted to shock the town, but the town 
seemed indifferent to him. I have not done enough, he seems to have thought, 
I must go further. 

In the last entry of the journals, dated December 22, 1932, Stone makes his 
decision: "The time has come for the dead to die again. It shall begin with 
her. Tonight." And that's all. For the rest I must rely on Molly and my own 
imagination. 

The torches are lit and the music begins. The Master has ordered everyone 
present, though no mass was scheduled. Strong wine is passed around and soon 
there is almost a party atmosphere in the gallery. The dais and the thrones 
are empty. Soon Molly begins to feel giddy and sexy. She decides to dance. 
She is wearing a long-tasseled G-string and gold pasties. Somewhere, behind 
some screen, through some peephole, Stone is watching, perhaps with his 
joint in his hand. What is he feeling at this moment? All the 
transformations have been made, all the wild dreams incarnated and carried 
out to their bloody ends, all the luscious twats tickled, pickled and fucked 
to a fare-you-well-What was left him? Remember the voice that sang in 
Molly's head while she was being raped by the Devil?-"It will take a million 
years to get there, where the light is, but then you'll be safe." Had Stone 
run his million years and found himself in the end right back where he had 
started? Had he forged his chains so tightly that even he could not escape 
them? Does the hot blood still rush into his prick now as Molly tears off 
her pasties and waggles her tits in the faces of his Negroes, little 
innocent Molly whom he snatched from the outside world and transformed into 
a lascivious slut, ready to fuck at the drop of a hat? Does his breath still 
come hot and heavy as she throws her cunt in Gorgon's face and lets him take 
off her G-string as she pulls him to the floor in front of the others and 
sucks his cock and smears her juicy slit over his face, as he spurts his 
load down her throat and she swallows every drop and sucks for more, 
because, as she told me, "I really got to enjoy the taste of a man's cum, I 
washed down every meal with it!" as she rolled him over and stuck her tongue 
up his asshole as far as it would go? as her old sweetheart Yvette steps up, 
rips off her clothes and buries her face in Molly's sudsy cunt, as Charon 
drops to his knees and shoves his black dick into her asshole? as little 
Mary, not contrary, eleven years old, climbs with a giggle on Mammon's lap 
and skewers herself on his pike? Does he beat his meat as of old, and 
"splatter the walls with volley after volley of smoking love-sap?" 

I want to tell you something, John, and you can leave it in the script or 
take it out, it's all the same to me. In fact, you can take the whole 
goddamn thing and burn it for all I give a shit. I wish to Christ I'd never 
stuck my fucking nose into it. I've got one hell of a bad taste in my mouth 
over it, and this morning I damn near threw the son-of-a-bitching thing in 
the motherfucking ocean. As I write this, I'm already halfway to Barbados 
and don't even know why in the hell I'm going there. I tell you this thing 
has got me all fucked up, John- I'm sick to death of it. I wish I wasn't the 
sort that has to finish every goddamn thing he starts; some things ought to 
be left hanging, abandoned. I started getting a funny feeling about it even 
then, that night the old whore was spinning it out. I got the goddamnedest 
urge to just get up and leave and never know how Simon Stone died or how the 
fucking place burned down. Let me spit it right out, John: I'm too much like 
that son of a bitch and I don't want to be like him!-Remember what he 
said-"I've got promises to keep." Promises my ass! It's just another way of 
saying that you have no control over the direction you're going. And that's 
just why I keep working on this cockeyed thing, because I promised myself 
I'd finish it. It's just like that asshole in Frost's poem that stopped to 
look at death in the cold woods; he too had promises to keep-that's the only 
thing that kept him out of those woods. But, goddamn it, John, that's no 
reason to go on living, just to get to the end of some fucking road that you 
don't want to come to the end of. Stone went his own way, and maybe that's 
what interested me about him, but now it becomes crystal clear that even he 
ended up right back on the road, the road that goes round and round and 
always ends up right back where it started, not a gnat's ass closer to the 
"light." And me, sailing off to the West Indies as if that's where the light 
is. I tell you, John, the whole thing is depressing the shit out of me. 
Excuse me for puking all over the paper. What I wanted to tell you is 
something that happened on my last night in Lake Leethy. 

Yvonne had met a new one and invited him to the cottage that night. As 
usual, Billy and I ducked out the back door and took our stand at the 
window. She greets him with a sloppy kiss and says, "We're in luck, my 
husband just left." I could see his prick pushing his pants out as he 
watched her walk to the kitchenette for the drinks, her bare ass twinkling 
at him through her black negligee. She winked at me out the window as she 
set the drinks on the nightstand beside the bed. 

Seeing she was ready for action, he didn't waste any time. "You look 
beautiful," he said, running his fingers through her long red hair and 
staring down the front of her negligee. She breathed a "Thank you" in his 
ear and pressed her lightly veiled cunt against his cock, "Wouldn't you like 
a better look?" You bet he would. She stepped back and opened the front of 
her gown, and those big tits of hers nearly knocked his eyes out. He dropped 
right down on his knees in front of her and reached up for her jugs, burying 
his face in her thick bush. She spread her legs for him and his tongue 
slipped into her slot like a fish into a sack. It was a lively fish and it 
didn't take but a few seconds to turn her on. "Oh, wait," she pants, "I want 
it to last longer!" 

In a moment he had doffed his clothes and joined her on the bed. He mounted 
her backward and they went into a fast-moving sixty-nine which brought them 
both off together in a very short time. Yvonne took the whole load in her 
mouth like I taught her, losing only a little. It was a copious blast, but 
she'd picked a virile young stud this time, and he was soon ready to go 
again. This time he fucked her straight-that is, in the cunt-with her big 
beautiful ass propped up on two pillows and her legs wrapped around his 
neck. This cat was so well hung, so long and lean, that he was able to 
double himself up and lick her clit while he fucked her without missing a 
stroke. (In the old days of the Alley Patrol such a sight would have really 
turned us on, eh, John?) Next time she got up on her hands and knees and he 
gave it to her in the ass, dog-style, fingering her twat and rolling her 
nipples as he worked... 

All of a sudden two things popped into my head: one, the picture of Simon 
Stone standing at his peephole in the last few hours of his life; and, two, 
the realization that I didn't have a hard-on. 

I left Billy standing there and stormed in the back door like a mad bull. I 
must have caught Slim right in the middle of an orgasm, because his cock 
came out spitting like a grasshopper. I grabbed the son of a bitch by the 
neck, dragged him out the front door and kicked him down the steps. On the 
second bounce he came up running, fast. I threw his clothes out the door, 
but they were still there the next morning. 

When I came back in, Yvonne said, "What the hell did you do that for? What's 
the matter with you?" 

"I got bored, that's what's the matter! Pack up the goddamn gear, we're 
shipping out of here in the morning!" 

Now, what the fuck's happening to me, John? 

So what was left Simon Stone, who had built his fortress on the doorsill of 
Hell? He had exhausted the pleasures of hot blood; he would now turn to the 
cold. He would take that final step over the threshold, because there was no 
other way for him to go. There could be no turning back for him now; he had 
made his total commitment to death in 1928 when Hell sent a great wind 
against his enemies and lured the sweet victims into his snare. He had even 
gone through the pretense of making a choice, a final affirmation: either 
this, or that. But that's all it was, a pretense; he had made his choice 
long ago. 

I see him leaving the peephole, moving down the dark corridor to his cell. 
He opens the door and the stale stench of death envelops him. Who knows how 
it smelled to him? If he smelled it at all? He stands over the dry bones, 
looks into the empty sockets of her eyes, long since emptied even of worms. 
Who knows what he saw? Nothing he ever wrote, except for that fantastic 
record of his "vision" during the hurricane, indicates that he saw anything 
but cold, pristine beauty, the image of the perfected female, young and 
unchanging, saved forever from the transformations of time. Just as the 
slightest altering mark of time upon living flesh cut him to the quick, so 
to the same degree was he able to ignore completely the alterations of 
death-the decay of the flesh, the invasion of the worms, the reek and rattle 
of hollow bones. He had perhaps prophetically hit the mark when he likened 
himself to Poe, for he loved his Anabelle in death far more than he ever 
could have in life. 

So what was left Simon Stone? Death, that's what, though he would not have 
called it by name, the last step over the doorsill, the final ultimate 
advance which would at last bring him into that realm of light where he 
would be safe, where a million years would have no more effect than a day. 
He would fill his castle with the pristine beauty of death. And he would 
begin tonight. He would begin, as he said, with "her." 

"We had a chain going. I was sucking off Ades while Abadon fucked me in the 
ass, and Ades was eating Barbara who was eating Yvette, and so on. We were 
all half-drunk and fucking and sucking away, when all of a sudden the music 
stopped and there was Simon, standing on the platform. We stopped and 
started to go back to our seats, but he told us to go on with our fun and 
sat down on his chair to watch. He had his priest's outfit on but no mask, 
and he had a sort of faraway look in his eyes. So we' kept on until 
everybody had shot their wad, and then went back to our seats. Simon just 
sat there for a long time, staring up at the ceiling. We wondered what was 
up and started whispering to each other... " 

Then Nerthus-Njord came in and took her seat to the left of the dais. Except 
for snakeskin boots and her bronze helm she was naked; she carried her whip 
in a coil over one shoulder. She sat as usual with her legs spread, 
displaying the shaggy beard and open jaws of her grim gash. The heavy roar 
of silence was broken only by the hiss and sputter of the braziers. Was this 
pause planned, was it an intentional prelude, a death-hymn to the first act 
of this vast new drama about to unfold? Or was Stone growing impatient? Were 
the muscles of his face twitching? Was something happening in the bowels of 
the hill unknown even to him who imagined that he knew all? Another drama 
long in progress of which he knew nothing? Some waxing, outraged force at 
work against him, a counterforce equal to all the strength he could muster 
from the Pit? Had he miscalculated somewhere? 

Soon the great doors swing open and two tall blackamoors enter with measured 
step. They carry between them a black cushion. Stone rises and approaches 
the altar. The cushion is brought forward and placed upon the slab. On it 
lies a jeweled dagger, long and sharp. Stone grips the dagger with trembling 
hand and holds it aloft. The blade flashes with black fire, the gems of the 
hilt flickering in a silent song. With a triumphant flourish he throws back 
his hood. 

"Behold the knife of truth, the key to the infernal city! Look at it! See 
how it gleams! It is the spiritual knife of liberation, forged on the anvils 
of Dis, tempered in the waters of Cocytus, born of ice and fire and the 
power of our king, Satan-Lucifer, triumphant!" 

There was more, but Molly was more fascinated by the strange light in his 
eyes than the words in his mouth. There was something about the sacrifice of 
a white lamb, and she remembers the words, "twice-dead" and "the gift of 
flesh." Then the speech ended, and awkward silence again settled over the 
room. Stone placed the dagger on the altar and stared at the closed doors at 
the back of the hall. What was happening behind those doors? What was 
causing this delay of ultimate pleasure and fulfillment? 

At last the coffin is brought in. It is borne down the aisle on the 
shoulders of six black men and placed carefully before the altar. Something 
stirs inside, scratches at the lid. The pallbearers back off into the 
shadows, and Stone steps to the foot of the coffin. The dagger shivers on 
the altar like a live thing, impatient to be fed. The watchers grow rigid. 
The air is drawn and tense, tight as a bowstring. The priest waits... but 
nothing happens; the silence crackles like a burning fuse... 

And now Stone does the unthinkable: he loses his temper. 

"GODDAMN IT, WHERE IS HE? HE HAS TO BE HERE!" 

Immediately he regained his composure, but it was too late; he'd blown his 
cover. He had gone out of character. In that brief moment he had shed the 
aura of an all-powerful priest of Satan and revealed the frustrated 
sex-fiend within. If this outburst was not Stone's undoing, it was at least 
Molly's salvation; its effect on her was tremendous. 

"Can you see how it was?" she said. "Can you understand that we all really 
believed that the Negroes were demons and that the Devil really visited us 
in person? He had made us believe it so thoroughly that it had never even 
occurred to us to doubt it. I don't know how the others took it, but in that 
one moment the reality of the situation came crashing in on me like a 
landslide. Suddenly Simon was like an angry little boy throwing a tantrum 
because his playmates would not go by the rules of the game. I didn't know 
what was in that coffin and I didn't know what was going to happen, but I 
knew it was going to be something horrible. And for the first time since 
we'd come to the island, I wanted to run away and never see any of those 
people again. I started looking around for a way out and noticed that one of 
the doors on the east side was open. I could swim to one of the little 
islands, I thought, and hide there until a boat came by. Of course I would 
never have had the courage to actually try it, and anyway they would have 
caught me before I got halfway across the room. I'm just telling you what 
was going through my mind, because if I hadn't spotted that door then, I 
never would have gotten out alive." 

But if in that moment she had begun to see the light, what followed was to 
plunge her into darkness and doubt for years to come. 

At last the double doors swing in, the flames flicker and dim in the chill 
draft from somewhere, and down the aisle comes the Angel of Darkness, the 
claws of his toes rhythmically rasping upon the cold stone. The faithful 
fall on their knees as usual, moaning their chants of suppliance to the 
Master. Like a great flesh-eating bird he passes by them and mounts the 
platform, but he does not sit. Stone looks at him curiously. The Fiend 
glares back coldly through his reptile eyes, the scales of his neck and 
jowls rattling ominously, his long tongue quivering in the gloom. His giant 
form is shrouded in a black cape, and he looms over the assembly like some 
great lizard-headed bat; he leans slightly forward, as if at any moment he 
might spread his wings and soar through wall and earth into the brooding 
dark. A confused, fearful murmur passes through the ranks of naked 
bacchants. Perhaps Stone felt-as I did, listening to it-some terrific 
unresolved syncopation, alien and retrograde, perhaps his first indication 
of a sub-rhythm long in progress which did not respond to his baton and 
never had. But whatever he feared, if he feared anything, he could wait no 
longer; he stood now at the very threshold of a new beginning, a new realm 
of wonder-and the Devil could stand or sit, just as he pleased. He rises to 
his feet and proceeds with the sacrifice. 

"It was like when I was chained on the altar. I didn't want to look, but I 
had to look. I knew something horrible was going to come out of that coffin, 
and I didn't want to see it. He opened the lid and at first all I could see 
was something white inside the box. Suddenly I wanted very much to be 
dressed. It was like one of those dreams where you find yourself naked on a 
busy street, and there's no place to hide. I groped around in the shadows 
for something to put on, but I couldn't find anything. I touched Yvette's 
leg accidentally, and it was ice cold and covered with goose pimples. Then 
the white thing raised up out of the coffin, and it was horrible-it was 
horrible just because it was so beautiful. 

"It was a girl-or the ghost of a girl-and her beauty was like a sharp pain 
in my eyes. She was so white that she seemed to glow, like those 
phosphorescent lamps in the dragon's belly. Her hair was snow white and hung 
below her waist, it draped her shoulders like a shawl of spun silver. I 
remember thinking it must be true that your hair keeps growing after you 
die, like people said. Because I think that whatever doubts I had begun to 
have about Simon and the Devil and the demons and every other fantasy he had 
drummed into us, I never for a moment doubted that that girl was dead. You 
could almost feel the cold of death radiating from her body. Any slim hope I 
might have had of going through with my escape plan vanished into thin air; 
I was frozen solid with fear and awe. 

"The ghost looked as blinded by us-or by the torches-as we were by her. She 
seemed to shrink in fear from the light, dim as it was, like she hadn't seen 
light of any kind for a thousand years. It seems like she stood there 
trembling like that for an eternity, but at last she took her hands away 
from her eyes and looked around. She looked but she didn't seem to see 
anything. Those eyes of hers will haunt me to the grave. They were the color 
of the moon-that's the only way I can describe them. It wasn't even a color 
really-just a deep dead glow. Like the moon... 

"But that was the only thing about her that you could describe as having 
color. Even her nipples-she was stark naked; I could stand up right now and 
strip off every shred of clothing, every piece of jewelry, every speck of 
make-up, and I would not be that naked; if her skin had been peeled off, she 
could not have appeared more naked-even her nipples were colorless. And the 
hair between her legs was like a mat of cobwebs. You got the feeling you 
could see right through her skin, see the veins and the bones-I don't mean 
to say she was thin; she wasn't. Her figure was perfect-high breasts, slim 
waist, full hips-it was just that she seemed to have no weight. Even when he 
lifted her, it was like he was just going through the motions to give the 
illusion that she was really made of flesh and bone. If someone had opened 
one of the vents and let a draft in, she would have drifted up onto the 
altar without his laying a hand on her-like a puff of lint. But he picked 
her up anyway, and lay her face-up on the slab. She looked frightened, maybe 
not in a human way, but frightened just the same. She seemed to have no 
power to move of her own accord; she was like a doll with movable joints, so 
that wherever he placed her limbs, that's where they remained. This made her 
seem all the more like a corpse. Not until the very end did she make a move 
under her own power-like that was the one thing in the universe that could 
animate her." 

"What? What thing?" 

"Wait. Simon spread her out on the altar, just as he had spread all of us 
out so many times before -with her legs open and knees slightly bent. He 
lifts his robe and climbs between her legs... 

"We'd all seen Simon fuck-seen it so many-times that nothing was more 
commonplace to us. But watching him mount that colorless ghost, that 
painfully beautiful corpse-I tell you it was the most grotesque, the most 
horrifying sight imaginable! To me-surely to all of us-who had been steeped 
for three years, three of the most impressionable years of our lives, in the 
careful study and deliberate practice of blasphemy, this, beyond all other 
things we had done or heard of, seemed blasphemous! It was absolutely... 
excruciating in its blasphemy! 

"The only sound was the slip-slop of Simon's slimy prick going in and out of 
those white lips. We sat there numb with shock, watching that man- our 
husband-having sexual intercourse with death. It was a rape of the dead, a 
death-fuck. And right in the middle of it, Simon laughed, and I would swear 
that even the Devil shuddered! Every living thing in the room shrunk back 
from that hideous sound. Even when he finally had his orgasm- and it seemed 
like an eternity before it happened- even this didn't have the effect of 
that laugh. Remember that as far as we were concerned we were witches, and 
we rubbed shoulders daily with the supernatural-it was common fare for 
us-but this! -this was the laugh not of a devil, but of a man, a madman 
between the legs of death herself! It was shocking beyond words. 

"When he got off, she just lay there, staring up into the shadows, as she 
had through the whole thing, wet and dripping between the legs. I wanted to 
tell him to close her legs, please close her legs, but he didn't. He picked 
up the dagger that lay beside her on the pillow, and held it up to Satan 
with both hands. He was still standing there in front of his dais. For a 
long time he just looked down at Simon, nothing more. Then Simon said, 'She 
is yours, Oh King. Take her. Freely I deliver unto you this treasure, flesh 
of my flesh. Take her, free her from the bond of bone! This is your 
instrument, your hand alone will it fit. Take it! DO THE DEED!'-It was not 
quite, but almost the same voice he had used before, when he lost his 
temper. 

"Finally a claw came out of the cape and took the dagger by the handle. He 
unfurled his huge black body and came down from the platform with the knife 
held out before him. Simon took a torch from its standard and held it high 
over the girl, and the Devil slowly approached the altar. Simon was still 
breathing hard from his exertion, but he wasn't tired; he had a ghastly leer 
on his face, as though he was anticipating something wonderful about to 
happen. It was all too clear what was about to happen: the lovely white 
ghost was going to be killed. To me the fact that she was already dead made 
it even more terrifying-I know it makes no sense, but that's the way I felt. 
It wasn't the time or place for logical thinking. 

"Up went the knife, clutched in that scaly fist, the point directly over her 
throat. The air was so thick you couldn't breathe, and Simon's hand-the one 
that held the torch-shook so with excitement that the whole room seemed to 
tremble. And then it happened." 

It must have happened so fast that Molly missed some of it; or perhaps the 
panic that followed muddled her memory. She said that suddenly the Devil 
changed himself into a Negro, a Negro none of them had ever seen before. 
"And he had tears in his eyes," she said, "he was sobbing like a child, and 
the Devil's head lay all limp and hideous on the altar. Simon 
said-something, I don't know, one word-and then the Devil, or whoever he 
was, had him by the neck. He lifted him right up off the floor by the neck 
like he didn't weigh anything at all and there was a sound like-like an egg 
cracking, and the torch fell on the floor. Then he just stood there, holding 
Simon up in the air at arm's length, sobbing and sobbing, tears rolling down 
his face." 

Here Molly's voice cracked and she stopped talking. I realized for the first 
time that I had gone rigid, stiff as a post. I wanted to say, Go on, go on! 
but there was a lump in my throat the size of an apple, and I was unable to 
let out so much as a croak. I had the feeling that that moment I had been 
anticipating and dreading had already come and gone, that it had come not as 
the mob cry of the Passion but rather as an implosion of supercharged 
silence, the same silence which I myself had already experienced as I sat 
alone in that bone-strewn altar room in the hollow hill. After a long moment 
Molly drained her glass, took a deep breath, and continued in a voice 
strangely empty, a voice which no longer revealed its inner torment: the 
substratum of tension was either gone or it had sunk to an inaudible level. 

"I'm sorry... The next thing I knew the whole place was in flames. The big 
Negro had picked up the torch and thrown it the whole length of the hall, 
and I guess it hit the drapes by the main doors because that was the first 
wall to go up. Everybody started screaming then and running for the door, 
but at first the fire didn't seem important to me. I kept thinking, Why 
doesn't he put Simon down? I guess that's what I was waiting for. I lost 
sight of the altar for a second in the smoke and confusion, and when I saw 
it again there was Simon, stretched out on the slab, just like the girl had 
been a moment before. The handle of the knife was sticking up right in the 
center of his chest, and the front of his robe was all soaked in blood. 

"Everyone was going crazy with panic by then. I saw Mrs. Verlain tear off 
her helmet and run for the door, knocking down everybody that got in her 
way, and then her hair was on fire and she was screaming and rolling on the 
floor. It was no use, nobody could get to the door, and in a few seconds all 
the other walls were on fire too. I remembered the open door I had seen; I 
couldn't see it now for the smoke, but I ran for it anyway. I ran right 
through the flames and somehow got through the door. I was burnt pretty bad, 
but I made it. 

"I don't know how I ever got to the top without killing myself, because the 
corridors were dark as pitch and I didn't know where I was going. I kept 
running into walls and falling on the stairs, but I didn't stop, and at last 
I came out into the house. But the fire had already gotten there ahead of 
me. It must have come up some of the other stairwells. I don't remember much 
after that. The walls were ablaze all around me and the roof started caving 
in, and then I was falling, rolling through the burning bushes. I guess I 
jumped or fell out a window and rolled down the hill. I had a broken leg and 
a brain concussion when the fireboat picked me up. I was in a coma for a 
week." 

"But the girl, Molly, what about the girl?" 

"Yes. That's the last thing I saw before I ran. She and the Negro were still 
standing beside the altar. They had their arms around each other, as if 
there was no danger at all, as if the fire couldn't hurt them. They just 
stood there, calm as anything, staring into each other's eyes... " 

But I had to be sure. I had to pin down the unseen and unsuspected force 
that had infiltrated and destroyed that indestructible edifice; I had to 
hear it spoken. 

"What was in their eyes, Molly? I mean, what expression?" 

"Why, love, Drake. Anybody could see they were madly in love... " 

 CHAPTER TWELVE 

And that was the end of it, or it should have been. That was all I had set 
out to discover, how the end had come and what had led up to it. I filled 
Molly in on the parts she could not have known. The one word Stone had 
uttered before he died, for instance: "What did it sound like?" I asked. 

"I don't know, it was a short word-like 'but,' or something like that." 

"Bub," I said. "That was the Negro's name, short for Beelzebub. He was your 
Devil. I suppose you never saw him without the mask." 

"No, that was the only time I ever saw that face. But the girl, who was 
she?" 

"Stone's daughter, Eleanor." 

"But-you mean-?" 

"No, she wasn't really a ghost, but she may as well have been. You see, 
Stone really did kill his wife in 1926, but he didn't kill his daughter. He 
kept her hidden in the hill all those years for his own pleasure. He killed 
Amanda partly because she was getting too old for him, and partly because 
she would not allow him to sleep with Eleanor, who was only eleven then. 
Then he saw Eleanor aging too, in spite of all his magical efforts to 
preserve her youth. It was the same with you girls-he couldn't bear to see 
you change. But he knew what to do about it, and that night of the fire was 
the beginning of his remedy. You didn't know the corpse of his wife lay in 
the little room behind the organ, did you?" 

"Oh my God!" 

"It was on his bed. The bones are still there." 

"There was a smell-whenever he opened that door-" 

"I can well imagine. But he seems to have preferred her-or that, I should 
say-to all of you, including Eleanor. He would have made you all like that, 
if it hadn't been for Bub. It would have been worse than the fire." 

"But... he was the Devil. I-mean, he was with Simon in everything. How could 
he have-" 

"I know what you mean. He played his role to the full, and it must have been 
the only role he knew-he was only eleven years old when Simon got him. 
Evidently he scarcely saw the light of day for at least four years. He was a 
slave in every sense of the word, body and soul. Stone never dreamed Bub 
would turn against him. Bub was the Devil to him just as much as he was to 
you, more so perhaps. He forgot that behind the mask was a human being." 

The rest is pure conjecture on my part. I can see the huge black form of Bub 
quietly descending that hidden corridor while Stone frolics in the tower 
with his girls, that tunnel where no torch was allowed to burn. He slides 
back the iron door and enters the damp chamber. With sure ringers he frees 
the bolts and opens the lid of the coffin. He has brought her some fruit 
perhaps, or maybe a sweet roll that old Charon smuggled in from town, or a 
pitcher of hot tea. They talk in whispers. Later he spreads a pallet on the 
cold floor and they lie together in the crawling dark, the gargantuan black 
man and his secret moonwhite love. 

How long had it gone on? Who knows? At the time Eleanor was entombed, in 
1926, I figure Bub to have been about twenty years old; it may have started 
then, perhaps even before. Stone's references to his daughter in the 
journals are so oblique and fantastical that it is difficult to make any 
sense out of them, but it is clear that he knew nothing about her romance 
with Bub. He rarely if ever took her from her crypt, and only at night was 
she allowed to emerge from the coffin, just long enough for him to lay her. 
She was fed some unnamed food which Stone thought appropriate for the dead, 
and whatever it was, without some supplement from somewhere no doubt she 
would not have lived as long as she did. It is pointless to say more. The 
reader can make his own explanations and draw his own conclusions. But what 
other flame than that flame could have kindled the inferno which destroyed 
Stone's Island? 

It was dawn when I stumbled out of Molly's suite. Before I went down the 
stairs, I couldn't resist a peek into the room where I'd knocked off the 
quickie. It was empty, but I noticed a note on the nightstand: "Dear Miss 
Molly," it read. "Sorry but couldn't wait any longer. If you want me to 
bring her back tomorrow night call me at the Club." It was signed Lorraine. 

I spent the morning walking the streets of Rodriquez like a somnambulist. At 
first I decided I wouldn't go back that night, wouldn't keep my appointment 
in bed with Mina. I'd meet Yvonne outside and split. Because whatever was 
going on, I wasn't at all sure I wanted to know about it. I'd heard enough 
for a while, I needed time to think, to get the taste out of my mouth, to 
get rid of the stupid notion that I had heard something dark and prophetic 
about myself. 

So I walked. I walked it all out of my mind- Molly, the note, the face of 
the little girl, the whole fucking business. By noon I had worked up a sweat 
and a leg cramp: I felt better. I stood on a street corner and watched the 
cunt go by. It was like a purge. I even followed a waggling butt for a few 
blocks, just to lose myself in the rhythm. A sandwich and a cup of coffee 
and I was a new man. I sat on a park bench and watched all the poor bastards 
running back and forth like their pants were on fire, and began telling 
myself again how lucky I was to have gotten off the workaday treadmill. Let 
'em stick the "American dream" up their asses, says I to myself, I'm off for 
the Spanish Main, the South Seas, Eldorado-who knows where I may end up? I'm 
a footloose tramp, a carefree son of a bitch, free as a bird! (It was my way 
of patting myself on the back for having become a writer after dreaming 
about it for so many years.) What the hell could I have been moping about? 
Why, I haven't a worry in the world! The only thing I needed now to top it 
off was a plate of spaghetti and a piece of ass. And so, with a full belly 
and a hard-on, at nine o'clock sharp I'm back at the Mandalay just like a 
yo-yo. 

Molly was nowhere in sight, and I didn't ask for her. Mina met me in the 
lobby, all smiles. With her long flounced gown and her blonde hair piled on 
her head in a topless cone, she looked like she might have just stepped out 
of the palace of Minos, especially since her bosom was bare. Bare, that is, 
except for sparkly pasties not quite big enough for her rosy nipples, from 
the centers of which extended fine shimmering tendrils that curled 
gracefully outward over the plush swells of her whipped cream tits. The gown 
was wine-red with purple and gold embroidery; it had elbow-length sleeves, 
and the "neckline" was cut from her shoulders down around the outermost 
roots of her breasts, over her ribcage, swooping inward a bit at the waist, 
following her voluptuous contours all the way to her hips where it ended in 
a dazzling loop below her navel. This too -the bellybutton-was decorated 
with a sparkling flower like those on her nipples, only slightly smaller. 
Below that-in just the right spot-was embroidered an ornate delta of curling 
gold threads, an exquisite pussy, just so you wouldn't forget what you had 
come for. 

"Wow!" I said, giving her the once-over. "Do you always get this dressed up 
to go to bed?" 

She laughed, and her flower-tipped tits jostled together delightfully. "I 
just came from a party." 

"Must have been some party." 

"It was. How do you like my new costume?" She held her arms out and whirled 
around once. 

"Breathtaking," I said. 

"Don't worry, it all comes off." 

"Good. Shall we get to it then?" 

She led the way up the stairs and I followed with my nose practically up her 
ass, so eager was I to crawl over that luscious thing. Some men turn to the 
bottle to forget their troubles; me, I turn to cunt. I can drown a veritable 
sea of troubles in a warm pussy: bury my face between a set of warm tits and 
I'll fuck my way through doomsday and never be the wiser. 

Her room was lit with parchment-shaded lamps that gave her blue-white 
breasts and belly a soft warm wash of color. She stood before the dresser 
mirror and unpinned her hair. As it fell in soft waves over her shoulders, I 
came up behind her and embraced her hips, pressing my cock into the crack of 
her ass. With my fingertips I stroked the gold swirls of the pussy-design on 
her gown, watching my hands at work in the mirror and savoring the cushiony 
feel of the real thing underneath. She cooed like a pigeon and moved her 
pelvis forward and back, first pressing her ass against my prick, then her 
cunt against my palms. She lay her head back against my chest and I ran my 
hands up her belly to her tits. They were heavy and warm to the touch. I 
fingered the pasties. 

"Pull," she breathed, "they come right off." 

I pulled, and watched the nipples stretch with an elastic firmness before 
the adhesive let go. God, what a body she had! I squeezed her tits so hard 
she winced with pain, but she loved it. I was going to be rough with her, I 
could see it coming. There was an anger in me, a nameless thing, eating at 
me; if I could get rid of it no other way, then I would shoot it out the end 
of my prick. At least I see it like that now; at the time I only felt like 
being brutal. 

I forced my hands down into the front of her gown and my fingers rustled 
into her thick crisp bush. Her deep slit was already juicy. She slipped her 
arms out of the sleeves and pushed the gown over her hips. It fell in a heap 
at her feet and I drank in her delicious nudity in the mirror-that dark 
blonde bush with its deep rut, those creamy flaring hips and heavy thighs, 
those voluminous cherry-tipped tits... 

I almost became outwardly angry when she turned around to undress me: I just 
wanted to look at her-in the mirror-with the hands, my hands, playing over 
her naked body forever. 

When I came to my senses, and it was just a split second thing, I was even 
more irritated at myself than ever. I tore my eyes from the reflection of 
her bare butt and dragged her straight to the bed. I had come for cunt, 
goddamn it, and cunt it was going to be. I got on her and fucked her blind. 
I fucked her like a blind bull: I fucked her in the ass and I fucked her in 
the cunt, it made no difference; I fucked her up one side and down the 
other, I lost myself in the labyrinth of her uterus, I sunk into her twat to 
the ankles and boiled myself alive. It was the sort of fuck that leaves you 
limp as a fish and foaming at the gills. 

But it wasn't enough. I suppose I had known all along that it wouldn't be 
enough, even if I fucked my bloody brains out. All that horseshit I fed 
myself at the park?-Ha!-just a way of talking myself into coming back 
quietly and not at the end of a rope. Because I had to come back, one way or 
another. Like a two-bit sleuth I had to come back and sniff out the last few 
bloodstains, the last dry turd. 

"Mina, where is Miss Molly?" 

As I expected, she said she didn't know. I pulled out an extra ten and 
placed it on the dresser on top of the other bills. 

"Where, Mina?" 

"Downstairs. In the basement. But please, Drake, if you tell her I-" 

"Show me," I said, pulling a housedress out of her closet and tossing it to 
her. She hesitated... 

"All right." 

We must have looked like a couple of thieves, creeping down the hall. Mina 
kept glancing around nervously, as if she expected someone to pop out of a 
door at any moment and clap us in irons. She quietly opened the door at the 
end of the hall and we slipped out onto the fire escape landing. The iron 
steps led down into a dirty alley which ran darkly through a narrow corridor 
of dingy buildings, defined here and there by yellow windows that seemed to 
give off no light at all. 

When we reached the alley, Mina led the way to a wooden door near the corner 
of the hotel. The stucco on this side of the building was black with mold 
and dust, and only a few patches of peeling paint remained on the door. Here 
Mina stopped and pulled me close. 

"Now listen," she whispered, "once we get inside, don't talk, because she'll 
hear. Oh, Christ, if she ever finds out I brought you here-" 

"Don't worry. After you show me, you can go. And I promise you, you'll never 
see me back in this part of the woods again." 

She looked at me curiously. "You're really not a cop, are you, Drake?" 

"No." 

"Why do you want to... to see this?" 

"Because I am a stupid son of a bitch who has to see everything. Lead on." 

She turned the rusty knob and opened the door with painstaking slowness, but 
the hinges creaked in spite of everything. We entered a dark dusty storeroom 
of some kind-a shell of a room, really: its only window was paneless and 
boarded up, and the studs and rafters were stripped of paneling. Even the 
floorboards were gone-or had never been there-which at least allowed us to 
move quietly. There was a dim filtering of yellow light emanating from some 
obscure source up ahead. It gave just enough illumination to reveal a 
shadowy blur of roaches scrambling out of our path and swarming up the 
walls. Mina held my hand tightly and moved at a cautious crouch toward the 
light. 

At the far corner of the room, behind a pile of scrap lumber and roof tiles, 
was a short hallway into which opened a doorless closet. We squeezed in. The 
light was coming from behind a loose board along the floor. Mina put her 
lips to my ear and whispered- 

"Move that board and you can see down into the cellar, but be careful!" She 
kissed me on the cheek and was gone. 

I dropped to my knees. All the nails had been pulled from the board, and it 
came easily away from the wall. I crouched low and peered through the 
crack... 

The room below was small, narrowly oblong in shape, and divided in half by a 
bamboo-and-bead curtain. At the far end of the room, through the curtain, I 
saw it: the concrete top of a picnic table set on four cinder blocks. A 
pathetic imitation. That part of the room was bathed in harsh electric 
light, which cast sharp shadows and gave the place a barren look, a certain 
coldness, a vacuous permanence. At first I saw no one, heard nothing. No 
sound or shape rippled the stark stillness. Maybe I had missed it; I was 
almost relieved. 

But then I heard whispering directly below me in the darker part of the 
room. There was a small bed near the wall, but I had to press my face 
against the dusty lathing and practically lay on the floor to see it; two 
figures lay there. I couldn't see their faces well in the shadows, but it 
wasn't difficult to identify them: Kathy's golden locks presented a 
brilliant contrast to the gray-haired head which nuzzled her neck. I had 
just situated myself to get a clear view, when suddenly the sheet was drawn 
over their heads. For a few moments I watched the suggestive undulations and 
tried without success to make out the muffled murmurs, punctuated now and 
then by little squeals in brittle falsetto and grotesque giggles from the 
woman. 

But something was missing. I scanned both sections of the room. No one in 
sight. Then I understood: the mirror. It was mortared crudely into the wall 
over the bed and framed with black curtains. It wasn't necessary to see the 
watchers; there would at least be Lorraine, the child's mother, maybe a few 
others, a select few, sworn to secrecy. 

Soon the giggles and whispers had become ecstatic gasps, and in a flurry of 
movement the sheet was thrown back. Molly was on top, hunched over the girl, 
devouring her tiny breasts and vigorously massaging the sparse peach fuzz 
between her open legs. Whatever signs of youth Molly's body had retained 
were greatly diluted now, seeing her contrasted so starkly to the firm pink 
body of the little girl. Though her back had not entirely lost its feminine 
charm and though her waist was not over-thick, her age was plainly indicated 
by the abrupt bulge of her now ungirdled hips and the slack, dented flesh of 
her quivering buttocks. 

She swung a heavy leg over the girl's waist and dangled her great pendulous 
jugs in her face. Kathy giggled and took one wrinkled nipple between her 
teeth, stretching it out until Molly squealed with pain and delight. She 
buried the girl's face between them-they were each as big as Kathy's 
head-and turning them inward, plugged a nipple into each ear. Meanwhile 
Kathy's small hands were playing over the pitted expanse of Molly's ass, 
stroking the cheeks, exploring the great crack between them and tickling the 
brown crater of her anus. 

Now the woman wheeled around with a wolfish snarl and straddled the young 
face, lowering her lips hungrily to that dainty crotch. From my position 
over them I could see only the back of Molly's head, but I had a clear view 
of the shaggy gorge between her jiggling thighs and of little Kathy's tongue 
lapping its slack jaws. In a flash I realized why the little girl's face had 
looked familiar to me last night: it corresponded exactly to the mental 
picture I had gotten from Molly's description of her first love, Yvette! 

Molly shivered like an enormous sack of custard as the kid went to work on 
her, practically sinking her whole face into that bubbling stewpot, and in a 
short time apparently had an orgasm-or at least went through the motions of 
having one. Whatever it was, it left her heaving like a beached walrus, and 
she didn't even seem to notice when Kathy slithered out from under her, 
skipped over to the dividing curtain and drew it back. Now I had an 
unimpeded view of the "altar" in the illuminated part of the room-as would 
anyone behind the fake mirror. 

It was apparent now what was to happen next. I wasn't surprised when the 
door opened and the tall naked Negro youth strode up to the bed. He lifted 
Molly's limp bulk in his arms, carried her into the light and placed her 
gently on the low slab. A low chant started up, a dull monotone, growing 
gradually louder. Kathy stepped up on the altar just as her mother came in 
the door. At first I thought she was going to protest. Maybe I even hoped 
she would; maybe I was hoping to see some sign of shock, outrage, 
indignation-even lust!-anything but this cold, impassionate carrying out of 
instructions. But no: Lorraine's entrance was just part of the schedule. It 
was apparently her job to arouse the young man enough to do his job. The 
necessity of this was made quite clear by a glance at the unappealing relic 
of flesh on the altar and at the Negro's cock, which was so far as slack as 
Molly's tits. 

Molly lay on her back on the slab with her ass right on the edge, her feet 
on the floor. The black man stood at the foot of the altar, looking at 
Lorraine with a nervous smile and toying with his cock-long and thick for 
all its limpness-while Kathy stood right over Molly's grinning face, 
twitching her little slit and playing with her own nipples. 
Somewhere-probably in the room behind the mirror-someone put on a scratchy 
record and Lorraine started to dance, peeling off her clothes in time to the 
music. The chanting, however, continued as before. 

With each piece of clothing that fluttered to the floor, the "demon's" cock 
grew larger, and by the time she was down to bra and panties it was a great 
throbbing pound of black meat. His eyes still on Lorraine, he lowered 
himself between Molly's legs and slipped it into her gaping cunt. Lorraine 
released her bra and shook her big boobs in the harsh glare; she wiggled out 
of her panties and with spread thighs ground her hips and parted her cunt 
hair with her fingers-but her face was an unheated mask, her smile 
mechanical. The Negro, however, wasn't looking at her face, and soon he was 
throwing his cock to the old girl like he really meant it. 

But I'd seen enough. I was almost afraid the next thing I saw would be a 
dagger on a black cushion. Perhaps Stone had prevented change after all-or 
perhaps he need not even have bothered. But how is it that Bub, in stark 
slavery, in utter mental subjugation, with the aid of not so much as a ray 
of sunlight, had somehow broken his bonds and, if only for a few blazing 
moments, gained his freedom, while Molly, whose freedom was handed to her on 
a silver platter, with no strings attached and no living tongue to tell the 
tale, has remained enslaved to this day and will remain so till the day she 
dies? From the very first Stone miscast his players. He got the roles all 
wrong. He confused darkness with light, and light with darkness... 

I quietly replaced the loose board and made my way through the roaches to 
the alley. The last thing I heard as I went out the door was that monotonous 
chant, barely audible: 

"Oni-Kalma, Oni-Kalma, Oni-Kalma... " 

In the lobby I found Honey and Billy waiting patiently. I was in no mood for 
delay; I felt like I'd been dipped in urine. 

"Where's Yvonne?" I snapped. 

The answer made me want to start breaking things. It seems as though a 
certain customer had drawn a bead on my old lady and had immediately taken 
such a hankering to her-and was apparently such an idiot-that he could not 
be made to understand that she did not work there and what's more was not 
even a whore. He made a fuss and threw such a tantrum that Yvonne finally 
agreed to go with him, if the girl behind the desk would be so kind as to 
lend her a room for a few minutes. She reasoned that, since I wasn't there 
anyway, she might as well put the time to some use. The clerk was delighted 
to comply, just to keep the headstrong bastard from wrecking the place. I 
was speechless with rage. 

Just then, here she comes down the stairs, grinning like a pig shitting 
apples. 

"Hi," she says, opening her purse. "Look what I made!" 

I looked down at the handful of bills. Then I looked into her eyes-deep, 
deeper maybe than I ever had before, deep into those clear green eyes of 
hers, trying to penetrate the mask-if it was a mask. Had I too gotten the 
roles wrong? Suddenly it didn't seem to matter very much. 

I looked down again and thumbed through the money. "Well," said I, "looks 
like we damn near broke even." 

We laughed all the way down the stairs and halfway back to Sago Beach. 
Except for Billy, that is, who laughed the whole way. 

There may have been even more. For instance, the reader may recall that we 
found only thirty-two skeletons on Stone's Island; if my count is correct, 
there should have been thirty-four. Did Bub and Eleanor get out alive 
somehow, as I would like to believe? Would a little more sleuthing have 
turned up a huge old black man with a crazy white woman for a wife, living 
perhaps in some God-forsaken backwater in the Everglades? Maybe. But Lake 
Leethy and the Dragon Gate are now far astern, and tomorrow morning, if this 
wind holds, we should raise St. Lucia; then it's through St. Vincent Passage 
and on to Barbados. And if all goes well, this manuscript will be aboard the 
first plane out of Bridgetown, on its way to my friend John Smythe, to whom 
I turn over full rights to dispose of it as he sees fit, with due 
consideration of course for those still living who might be injured by its 
publication. 

If I have started out to record a history, and ended by writing a 
confession, I can only say, so be it. To put it simply, I wash my hands of 
it. 

Drake Hackett February, 1969 The yawl Argo, at sea. 

(NOTE. On March 7, 1969, a month after I received Mr. Hackett's manuscript, 
Molly (Goldsmith) Holden was bitten on the finger by a coral snake and died 
on route to the hospital. R. J. Smythe.) 


THE END
