Dark Corners

A Short Story by Bo Blackstar

[m/f, light choking, Mythos, f/eldritch, amorphous devouring, glorious enlightenment]

~September 4th, 1924

“You sure you’ll be alright here by yourself, Miss Winters?” William asked.

I took a moment to think. The subtext of the question was whether or not I wanted him to join me, if only for a short while. It was a subtlety I appreciated as much as I did the man’s generosity and thick arms. William was not a classically handsome man, having rough features and the solid gut of a veteran laborer, but his ruggedness and gentility of character impressed me far more than a soft face or lean figure would have. Even more, he’d resisted the urge to flirt until I’d initiated that particular game. Most swarthy dockside men seemed incapable of containing themselves in the presence of a female with raven hair and long legs. Most importantly, he appeared neither frightened nor offended by the idea of a young woman expressing interest in a tryst, however casual or farcical I might have been able to pass it off as, nor did he take this interest as an open invitation to be crude.

Remarkably refreshing.

The house before us as we stepped out of William’s car was large, built near the edge of a low sea cliff, complete with a long stair leading down to a small dock at the water level. The grounds were untended, but not quite overgrown beneath the gloomy September sky. The path was still clearly marked among the tall, slumping grass. The architecture was suggestive of understated grandiosity, but ill upkeep and general dourness overall gave the place an unpleasant atmosphere. Truly fitting of my late father.

“It’s just a house,” I told William. “Still, it is rather large. Perhaps you could give it a once over with me? Just to make sure there aren’t any vagrants or drunks hanging about, of course.”

“Sure thing,” he smiled under his thick, dark beard. “Wouldn’t want to risk you getting any rough treatment would we, Patricia?”

I smirked back at him. “Well, not from just anybody.”

There was a giddiness in William’s step as he hauled most of my luggage and groceries up to the house. I unlocked the front door with the key I’d been given, but the door refused to open at first. I had to hit it with my shoulder before it allowed access, and I was struck with the peculiar sensation of having been warned. Not surprising, really. I had a great deal of trepidation about coming here in the first place.

The house was well appointed, if a bit stodgy in decor. Lived in, but with little left out of place in the foyer and adjoining dining room. Only a thin layer of dust suggested that this was not a home still in use. The late James Winters was nothing if not particular about organization. I imagined the horrible scenario of encountering the old man alive and well somehow. Thankfully, William’s ample biceps were there to redirect my attention as he set my luggage at the foot of the stairs.

We found the kitchen, which seemed to see little use even before the house was abandoned, and deposited my groceries for the week. We began to take a tour of the house, inspecting each room as we went under the pretense of searching for squatters. We got as far as the first-floor lounge, which featured a sufficiently large chase, before I felt William’s strong hands on my hips.

“Quite a nice spot,” he said, pulling me close against him.

“Agreed,” I replied, then let out a pleased sigh as I felt the scratch of his beard and heat of his breath on the back of my neck. Wearing my dark hair up was beneficial in several ways, not the least of which was the unobstructed freedom it allowed William as he planted a series of increasingly vigorous kisses around my slender neck. I pulled his thick arms around me, relishing their firm embrace.

We spent a few minutes tearing at one another’s clothing, our mouths pressed together as if each of us were starving, and the other was the only source of nourishment for miles. William was not a delicate or graceful man, but he certainly knew his way around a bra. Soon enough I was on my back on the chase, one leg around William’s waist as he fucked me like a savage.

I laughed at the exhilaration and intensity between cries of passion, but there was something else that made me laugh all the more. The delicious, petty irony of getting railed by a stranger in the house of my late father. My late father who, upon learning of my experimentations in my teen years, had tried to have me committed to an asylum for hysteria. Now, after nearly a decade without seeing the man, it gave me a crass sort of pleasure to be wantonly cavorting in a home I had never been welcome in.

Dear William was an absolute champion. The feel of his weight atop me while he fucked me senseless was an encapsulating bliss. When he slowed, and raised himself up a bit to catch his breath, I was once more surprised and impressed to learn that he not only knew what and where the clitoris was, but also what ought to be done with it. I swiveled my hips in his lap and ran my fingers through the hair on his chest, absolutely delighted. More so when he placed a heavy hand on my shoulder.

“Would you do a girl a favor, kind sir?” I asked, moving his hand to my throat. “When I crane my neck, like this… Give a good squeeze. And when I relax… Just ease off a bit.”

William chuckled and flashed his big smile. “As the lady wishes.” He shifted a bit, and then proceeded to pound me into the chase as if he intended to drive me through it. I stroked myself to match his intensity, craning my neck up into his tightening grip. I was off and away before long, bending beneath him as he continued to thrust away. I hadn’t quite recovered when he pulled out and made a mess of my thighs, but I appreciated his restraint after the fact.

We didn’t bother checking the rest of the house. Further pleasantries were exchanged, some things were unloaded, and William began the half-hour drive back to town. I decided to claim one of the guest rooms as my own for the time it would take to put the estate in order, as that room bore the fewest of my father’s photographs and framed awards for his brilliant studies in ancient civilizations and religions.

Disregarding basic housekeeping for the time being, I set to searching for my father’s records and legal documents straight away. I’d received copies of certain things from his lawyer, but without a will it was up to me as the missing man’s next of kin to determine what ought to be done with his various properties and interests. It didn’t take long to locate my father’s office, but upon opening the door I found myself struck by a peculiar sense of unease.

It was like walking into a place far away in a single step. Here, the austere and proud arrangement of the house at large was entirely absent. The office was littered with open books, loose papers, maps, and odd tools. Most of the latter were concentrated on or immediately around the desk, alongside candles that had melted down and formed pools of wax over some of the disorganized pages. Tiny scraps of food on old dishes were left around as well, something so unlike the man I had known that I began to suspect there had indeed been a squatter in the interim.

I was about to turn and leave purely out of the jarring unpleasantness when my gaze settled on one further detail. A small card table had been set up beside the desk, and unlike every other surface in the office it was mostly clear. There was only a single article, a small journal or notebook of some sort, with a leather cover that bore dark stains and the subtle impression of some curious symbol or glyph. I found myself examining the texture of the paper and skimming over the writing within.

Here I paused, as I could not directly recall having entered the room or opened the book. I dismissed this as simple fatigue from the long travel followed by vigorous unwinding with William. It was clear that I was tired, so I resolved to finish settling in, get something to eat, and begin my work in earnest the next morning. The book was with me as I went about my afternoon, and I kept looking to it with interest. It struck me as very odd, though the only oddity I could describe was that it seemed slick to the touch yet left no moisture or residue on my hands.

That evening, by lamplight in the guest room, I flipped through pages of the small book back and forth. I could not recall from one page to the next what I had just read. I was certain that the writing was legible, and made a concerted effort to examine a particular passage. It described a vastness. That is all I could glean. This vastness was detailed so thoroughly that I felt as if the room around me had momentarily fallen away, and I was indeed surrounded by a great wideness of being. I rubbed my eyes and stared at the page. I knew what it was describing, but what were the words? What were the damned words? My inability to grasp them became an obsession. At every moment I knew my eyes were tracing the letters, and the moment my gaze moved on they were forgotten. My head felt heavy, my eyes strained. The depth of this terrible vastness became more and more apparent, and the words on the page less and less clear.

I realized, rather incidentally, that something was touching my ankle. Something warm and slick to the touch. I startled, dropping the book as the guest room came into sharp focus once again. After throwing off the covers, I saw nothing there, and no evidence that there ever had been. Yet the touch lingered as a tingling sensation around my ankle. I unmade the bed entirely, and searched beneath it for the source of the peculiar contact, but found nothing.

“It’s nothing, Patricia,” I told myself, hoping it would be more believed if I heard it spoken aloud. “Nothing at all. You are tired, and uncomfortable in this house. Get some rest.” I remade the bed and climbed back in, though I pulled my legs up close to myself before putting out the lamp.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~ September 5th, 1924

Dreams. Never have I had such vivid dreams, nor any as troubling. In the dream I was standing on the dock behind and below the house, staring out at a still, black sea. Within the stillness I could see uncountable lights, drifting and dancing through the abyss, but it was not the lights that held my attention. it was the darkness between. A simple black void that I knew, by some insight, was not empty. A void that itself seemed to breathe. I don’t know how long I stared.

I had then found myself back up at the house, in the cluttered office. My father had been there, older and leaner than I’d ever known him, pouring over the strange little book.

“Why?” he had asked in the dream, never lifting his eyes from the book. “What are you doing here? No, no Patricia, no… Don’t read it. Don’t you dare. It devours the infirm will without mercy. Stay away, Patricia. Leave this place! It is not yours to see!”

My father had slammed the little book shut, and it was then that I had awoken.

Unnerved, I began my day in a manner disquietingly appropriate to my father’s only child. I procured a bottle of Scotch from the study and soothed my nerves with sips over breakfast. Not wanting to delay any longer than need be, I then set at once to sifting through the storm of papers in my father’s office to locate any legal documents. It was a chore, of course, made more difficult by the distracting nature of the volumes and pages scattered around.

Most were excerpts from studies or stories about coastal or island-dwelling civilizations from eastern Africa and the Caribbean. Circled, without care for the documents whatsoever, were sketches and passages that seemed to hint at similarities between these disparate peoples. My own studies centered on linguistics, but even to me the sketched and photographed artifacts seemed odd, as if they did not entirely fit with any of the civilizations they were found among.

More peculiar were the reports of sailors, traders and smugglers, who operated throughout the Atlantic. They described bizarre rituals that involved casting oneself into the sea, or being entombed alive in the wave-touched sand, coated in a wrap of kelp. In the stories, those thus buried would never be found again after the coming and going of the tide, supposedly taken by whatever deity or spirit they had been offered to. In all but one, that is.

One story recorded more than a century ago by the captain of a trade vessel described the return of an individual that had been buried alive in this manner. The sacrifice behaved strangely after their seemingly miraculous return, and the rest of the islanders fell to fits of wailing that the captain was unable to distinguish as celebration or mourning. A note from the following year reported that the entirety of the island’s inhabitants vanished without a trace in the time between visits.

Midday arrived with little progress made. I had hardly tidied the office, much less located anything I had been looking for. Worse, I could not shake the feeling of being watched. There was, at least to my mind, the very distinct sensation of another presence in the room, one neither aggressive nor amiable, but definitively aware of me.

I retired to the kitchen and grabbed an apple to eat, not in a mood to cook anything. As I ate, I read from the strange book again. This time I decided to start from the very beginning, and I found the words perfectly clear and memorable. With this I confirmed that the peculiarity of the previous night’s reading attempt was simply a matter of exhaustion.

The book was a journal, of sorts. More a collection of notes detailing the writer’s research into esoteric myths and practices observed all across the Atlantic. There was nothing to identify the writer or the dates of the records, but I found myself enthralled by the things that were described. Legends of fantastical cities at the bottom of the sea, and of the power of the inhabitants of these cities to see beyond the world as we knew it.

I felt the touch of something warm across my calf, and jumped out of my seat. Looking around, I could see nothing that might have caused the sensation. More troubling, I was no longer in the kitchen. I was back in the office. Some of the maps and sketches that I had already put away were out again, and I realized I had been looking them over as I read. Once more came the sensation of being observed from all around, somehow closer now.

Feeling silly for being so uneasy in an empty house, I sat down and started reading again, determined to overcome such irrational tricks of the mind. The journal went on to detail curious artifacts and their inexplicable composition. Some moved, or vibrated, or balanced at odd angles that seemed impossible when placed on a level surface. It described a stone sphere the color of oxidized bronze, discovered on the shores of Greenland, which would not roll as a sphere ought to. Even when placed upon a plank which was tilted to severe angles, the orb would slide rather than roll.

Yet again, I felt a touch around my leg. Both legs this time, and on my right leg all the way up to the knee. I ignored the sensation, sternly dismissing it as little more than an imagined itch. As I continued to read, the illusion of physical contact solidified to the point that I was able to distinguish it as a long, singular presence on each of my legs, as if a pair of particularly warm snakes were attempting to wind their way up my figure. Then, I felt a brush against my shoulder, and jumped again.

Looking around, I was still alone in the office, though it did not feel like it. There was no sensation of a touch along my legs, the phantasmal snakes having vanished the moment I shifted my attention back to my surroundings. Furthermore, I noticed that I had at some point lit a lamp to read by, as the sun had set.

I went upstairs to the guest room I was staying in and prepared for bed. It was clear that this place was getting to me, and I began to question whether I should continue the endeavor or simply hire someone else to put my father’s estate in order. It was so unlike me to be this unfocused, and I blamed everything from unpleasant memories of my father to the odd sea air.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~ September 6th, 1924

I awoke on the dock. I was standing in the chill dawn in my nightgown, staring not at the distant horizon, but straight into the dark water. It took me a few minutes to realize that

this was not a dream. The perfectly natural movement of the surface of the water was a key clue. I went back up to the house and straight to the kitchen to make myself a large breakfast, now blaming lack of food for my addled state. I scarfed the meal down despite the absence of hunger, and looked from the journal to a separate sketch of one of the artifacts it described.

I did not question how I had gotten to the office. There were more important things to consider. The journal writer had developed at new theory about the artifacts as stores of knowledge and philosophy which incorporated even their shape into the record of concepts. Myths abounded of those who had sustained contact with the artifacts beginning to disassociate from the world around them, supposedly because their perceptions had shifted to a “higher plane.” Of greater note was the idea the journal posited that the designs on the artifacts themselves, even if photographed or drawn accurately enough, held some sort of insightful power. According to the journal, even picturing these things within one’s mind could spark enlightenment or madness.

As absurd as it sounded, I began to wonder. Was there something to this? Could the sketches and detailed descriptions be the cause of my confusion? Was there perhaps some trick in the designs that caused a dissonance of thought through an odd mechanism of perception? I resolved that the only way to know for sure was to study more and reflect on the effects it might have on my own mental state.

I began to approach my reading differently. I set out an hourglass, and attempted to remember to look over at the timepiece after finishing each page. I discovered very quickly and keeping track of pages was more difficult than expected, and my first few glances at the hourglass found it entirely emptied. I pressed on in the effort however, up until I looked over to see it with more time remaining than my last look.

A few discoveries involved the sensation of being touched. Firstly, it did not occur when pouring over the other reports, maps, or sketches; only when reading from the odd journal. Secondly, I could shift my attention to the physical sensation without breaking the illusion. However, the moment I pulled my eyes from the pages the feeling disappeared. Thirdly, the phantom touches were directly against the skin with no accounting for my skirt or blouse. Lastly, now that I was trying to notice them, the touches would always begin very minimal but quickly progress to the last time I had broken my attention, then proceed from there. I had reached the point where the sensation of hot tendrils was around my left leg up to mid-thigh, my right leg all the way to the hip, my left arm from my wrist to the bicep, and across my right shoulder down to the elbow of my right arm. The touches were not idle, but seemed to squirm and shift at a sluggish pace.

On one reading, the touches grazed my right breast, and began to slide from my hip in toward my womanhood. I gasped and dropped the book, feeling the warm blush on my face.

It was evening already. I made myself another quick meal to ensure my self-examination would not be compromised by simple lack of nutrition. I was eager to get back to the office, but that last experience had unsettled me. Not wanting my studies to be compromised by simple instinctual distractions, I went to bed a bit early so I could alleviate some of those distracting urges.

While I touched myself, at first I thought of William and his strong arms. Of the satisfying weight on top of me. Of the iron grasp applied to my slender neck with accommodating consideration. I squirmed on the bed, fingers slick with my own arousal, and shut my eyes to dive fully into the fantasy. I imagined myself surprising him at his home and riding him until dawn. I imagined myself on all fours in front of him, my face buried in his crotch with his cock down my throat, his strong hands holding my head in place until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I imagined myself bent over the kitchen table when he next came to deliver more groceries. I bit my lip and imagined him doing it all, rolling my hips vigorously as my hand began to cramp from the strain.

Somewhere, my thoughts drifted. My fantasies changed. I wondered about the touch and heat of the phantom tendrils that came to me whenever I read from the strange journal. I imagined where they might venture next. How their lethargic explorations might feel when applied in just the right way. The swarthy man in my fantasy was replaced with the consuming embrace of impossible limbs.

I glanced over at the bedside table, where the dark-stained journal rested. I reached out to grab it, and let out an immature chuckle at the similarities between the inexplicable slick feeling of the book’s cover and that which currently drenched my hand. Opening the journal with my free hand, I began to read by the light of the lamp while continuing to stroke steady circles around my button, tingling in anticipation of the phantom touch.

It came soon enough. The journal began to describe the inhuman inhabitants of the sunken cities in extensive detail, with no remarks about how the writer came to this information. My head felt heavy as the illusory tendrils wrapped around me, drifting and exploring at their leisurely pace. My breath quickened as I felt a phantom touch slide up my neck and brush my chin, but I focused on the pages.

The beings described in the journal were truly alien, with towering forms and limbs that seemed impossibly long. They saw without eyes, and drifted through objects that would seem solid to us. They had been here longer than recorded history, and yet in the scope of their own history the habitation of our planet was a recent development. As I read, the images appeared so clearly in my mind. So clearly that the room around me seemed to fade away.

A tendril brushed the back of my hand as I played with myself, and then it crept forward following the curve of my fingers. I whimpered when its heat caressed my folds, and with a shaking hand I opened myself for it. The exploratory tendril took the invitation, but at the same agonizingly slow pace that it had examined the rest of me. I squirmed, urging it on as it slid into me by the merest degrees at a time. With a shock I realized that I could not only feel these illusory limbs, but taking my hand away from myself… I could grasp them.

My breath caught in my throat, and for a moment I struggled not to move my eyes from the journal and break the spell. How far did this trick of the mind go? Or, I wondered as I pictured the sunken beings so vividly in my mind, was it a trick at all? They were all over me now, coiling around my body and drifting across my tingling skin. I knew I was still in bed in my nightgown, but I could no longer even feel the fabric, only the smooth caress of the warm tendrils. I could no longer see the room, only the open journal before me.

I moaned and writhed in the all-encompassing grasp of the tendrils that may or may not have even been real, silently begging them to reach deeper inside me. I took to stroking them and guiding their explorations, and soon realized that I was no longer holding the book. There was no book, no pages or words, yet I continued to read. Knowledge, raw and unrelenting, flowed into me. I saw the sunken cities and their miraculous inhabitants. I saw the artifacts, saw through and beyond them into the secrets that lay within their construction. With a gasp, I began to shudder under the thrilling embrace and the expansion of my very concept of perception. I could feel the tendrils truly enveloping me now, every inch of flesh warmed by their languid caress. I could not look away or close my eyes to banish the blissful illusion, even if I had wanted to. I knew now that this was no illusion. This was enlightenment.

My ecstasy seemed unending, as if this dizzying peak was to be the whole of my new experience. I quaked and moaned as the tendrils shifted around me. I felt new sensations. The tendrils squeezed, tighter and tighter by degrees with a wondrous and implacable firmness. I felt the scraping of what could best be described as teeth as they emerged from the amorphous being that encapsulated me. It seemed to taste and nibble at me, sending further thrills through my wracked body. There was no longer any distinction between what my eyes saw and what my mind imagined. I beheld the whole of the cosmos, the dancing lights of the heavens in their eternal ballet, and I saw the writhing darkness between. I was there, in the endless night between countless suns, rapturous and inspired.

The tightening of the thing that held me grew firmer. I could not move. It flowed into my furthest depths from every angle, and I could not breathe. The teeth kissed my fleeting, mutable flesh in long, savoring waves. The physical and existential bliss rendered me utterly compliant, as it was meant to be. There was a tightening, a pinch of teeth, and a sudden pull that might be described as a gulp.

With a final cry of joy, what had been Patricia Winters was devoured.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~ September 10th, 1924

The house was all in order. Everything tucked away and arranged as would be expected. A facade, as most thing are. It had to be this way, for the time being. Now that I understood, there was work to be done.

I answered the door, and smiled at William. His big, strong arms were full of a new load of fresh groceries for me, as we had arranged the week prior. A darling man, so small and innocent. So simple. I doubted the Truth would rest easily on his mind. In time there would be no choice, but for now, for this fleeting instant of ignorance, I would not impose the Truth on dear William.

“Been alright up here alone, Miss Winters?” he asked as I let him in and led him to the kitchen.

Alone. I had to suppress my laughter at the idea. I could feel them now, all around me, embracing me. It tickled my vessel of flesh in a way I still found very much to my liking.

“Perfectly fine,” I answered him. “Not that I don’t appreciate some company at last.”

William took me in the kitchen first, and stayed after to share my bed for the afternoon. I clung to him, relishing the simple, beastly act with even greater appreciation than I had known before. The thing which now eternally held me embraced him as well, though he could not know, and to my surprise I felt its grasp upon him even after we parted. In some way, though he could not perceive it, William was now bound as I was to an entity of far greater significance and sophistication.

It was then that I had a joyous revelation. It was not necessary for all to take such an uncertain path to enlightenment. The gift could be shared, seeds sown for the harvest to come later. I resolved to share it with as many as I could, and hope that this first guided step would lead them to see as I now see.