Haunting Sex Story

Hi Everyone, here’s a whole new Chapters of Incest & penetration story added:

Haunting Love

Chapter One

The house stood dark in the moonlight, among tangled undergrowth that had once been an expanse of shrubs, carefully tended flower gardens and lawns. Old mossy trees loomed around its perimeter, stretching their bare-looking arms up into the sky as if begging for some release from terrible torture. Smaller trees had volunteered to fill the empty space around the three-and-a-half story structure, which had been built during the American Civil War, over a hundred years now past.

Built in the Victorian style, the house had many gables and a tower that reached into the sky like it was some attempt to reach the stars. While the windows were intact, they were dark and had been dark for more years than most in the little town of Nettleton could remember. Scraps of white showed through the grimy glass, remnants of window coverings that seemed to move in the wind occasionally, even though the wind couldn’t reach them. Like sightless eyes, the windows stared out at the world, and hid what might be inside. No paint remained to give life or color to the exterior of the gloomy place and what, in daylight, was a uniform gray, appeared as a mottled collection of shadows in the weak light of the quarter moon.

While all appeared to be lifeless in and around the old mansion, there were a multitude of sounds about the place; creaks, groans and popping noises as if the tired structure was shifting its weight on the stony ground. Tree branches rubbed against each other in the breeze and a number of creatures provided a soft susurration of noise as they struggled to stay alive in their daily routines of hunting food and avoiding predators.

Many in the town that surrounded the Nettleton Mansion believed that its builders, after which the town was named, still roamed the rooms and staircases of the old place, even though they had been dead and buried for over a century.

The fact that four of the exotic old building’s residents had been murdered over its long and painful history was responsible for the belief that it was haunted. That, and those flutters of movement in the dark windows, among other things.

One death was an attempt to separate Jeramiah Nettleton from a significant portion of his wealth, in the form of trying to kidnap his 12 year old son. The boy fought and was strangled during the incident. Two men were caught, one of which had the boy’s pocket watch on him. Both were hanged from an oak branch on a tree that still grew on the property.

Forty years later Joshua Nettleton’s wife, Constance, was found murdered in her bedroom, stabbed repeatedly by an obviously angry and demented person. When her almost decapitated body was discovered, she was naked, and her clothing was neatly stacked on a sideboard nearby. Her gardener was accused of accosting her and, when she tried to resist the rape, he was believed to have killed her in a fit of anger. The gardener was also hanged, though in this case, from a proper gallows in the town square.

And, in 1931 both Roger and Elizabeth Nettleton had been murdered in their sleep. Investigation revealed that the murderers, when they were caught with the family silver, admitted that they had been hired to kill the whole family by Roger’s business partner, who would have then inherited the entire mining operation. The men confessed that they hadn’t been able to find the children in the house, and had therefore taken what they could carry and taken off. In fact, it was the two children, ages four and six at the time, who had raised the hue and cry by appearing in a servant’s room in the carriage house, soaked with blood. That resulted in the bodies being found, and the murderers being pursued and caught. The children couldn’t talk very well at that age, and all the questioners could get out of them was that they had been in the tower room and had heard screams. The fact that the only route from that room to the outside led right by where their parents were being killed, and the fact that the children were too young to understand that the reason Mommy wouldn’t get up was because she was dead, just made things more mysterious.

That mystery was also solved. The robbers were caught red handed. Technology had advanced by then, and the criminals, to include one Chauncey Fallworthy, the mastermind of the horrific crime, were electrocuted instead of being hanged.

The children were removed from the sad place and fostered until their majority, but in the decades since the murders no Nettleton had returned to the place. It had too many sad and painful memories.

Including the criminals, eight people associated with the place in one way or another had died violent deaths.

But, banks being what they are, managed the already existing trust fund set aside to take care of taxes, and produced the required funds each year, duly transferred to the county. And, county governments being what they are, the funds were received and disbursed. County commissioners didn’t care where the tax money came from. They just wanted to spend it.

There were only a very few people who knew what had happened to the Nettleton fortune that had resulted from sharp investments and savvy supervision of a mining empire.

Most of those who knew worked at the bank, but they were not willing to part with that information lightly. There were no heirs other than the two sad children, so people drew their own conclusions.

The property sat and decayed. Various teenagers tried to get in, probably on a dare, or in an attempt to establish a makeout haven, but the wrought iron fence that completely surrounded the property had been made specifically to keep people out. And, after the last murders, someone had gone to great lengths to securely board up the lower windows and doors, foiling casual attempts to plunder or engage in other mischievousness. Various people in town swore they’d seen mysterious lights through the grimy windows in the house on dark nights, over the years and, though there was no data to support it, most townspeople thought of the place as haunted. It was easy for those who swore over the years that they saw movement in the boarded up house to believe that unhappy spirits roamed the dark place.

One attempt at raising the property taxes had been made, years ago, but had failed. The current absentee owner, one Robert Ellsworth Nettleton, who was one of those sad children fostered after his parents’ murder, and whom almost no one in town had ever met, fought off that attempt. No one was beating down the doors to buy the place. In that part of the state land … that wasn’t haunted … was plentily available. The fact that the town had been named for the mining baron who had originally built the house was only a dim memory documented in dusty old papers in a box of historical documents in the basement of the town library.

Over the years, people began to think of “The Nettleton Mansion” as having been named after the town … rather than the other way around. The haunted wreck was a thing of mild curiosity, mostly ignored as people drove past its nearly invisible rusty iron fence, which was now screened by a tangle of vegetation. Only the imposing wrought iron gates were really visible from the road any more, and beyond them a dim unpaved track that was impassable to vehicles these days due to the three inch saplings that were trying to fill the empty space.

And so the old house sat and waited for something to happen.

In some ways the house mirrored what had happened to Nettleton, the town. When, as the ore veins were cleaned out and the operation began to be less and less profitable, the miners were laid off, a few at a time, until the mines finally closed for good in the late forties. Nettleton lost about half its population in the process, and property values plummeted. While that might have made it attractive to outsiders, there was nothing else in the town to bring them there.

The town, like the Nettleton mansion, slid slowly and almost gracefully into a quiet decline. Once a population equilibrium was reached, people began to decide, on more or less a nationalistic basis, not to let the town die completely. A cold storage company was induced to buy one of the larger mines and turn it into something that generated some badly needed jobs and the wages that they provided. During the fifties a manufacturing plant was built, to get the tax incentives, and several other businesses took advantage of the low cost of living in the area to produce goods that were shipped to more lucrative markets. Things had settled into a workable little place where people liked to live, but which had no hope of ever being in the limelight again.

TBC

Debbie Franklin lay on her bed in her bedroom, staring at the ceiling. She was bored. She lay listening to Petula Clark, singing her new hit song Downtown and scowled that, in Nettleton, there was no “Downtown” to go to for the excitement the singer drew reference to.

It was early summer between her junior and senior year in high school and she couldn’t wait to be a senior. Due to her late birthday, she hadn’t been able to take Driver’s Ed in her junior year like most kids did. While the state didn’t require Driver’s Ed to get a license, her mother did. The way she thought of it, though, was that when school started again, she’d turn sixteen and be able to get a license. A license meant freedom to Debbie and she yearned for freedom. Living in Nettleton was, she had decided several years ago, punishment of some kind, imposed on her, probably by fate, and probably as a result of the fact that she loved to masturbate. It was 1965 and, despite the sexual revolution under way in America, adults loved to classify self pleasure as a nasty habit that was probably responsible for a variety of personal ailments and social ills.

Debbie ignored all the warnings though. Even though she was classified by her friends and most adults as a “Tomboy”, she loved nothing more than the exquisite pain and thrills that her fingers frequently brought to her as they teased the little bump between her slippery pussy lips that she had only recently learned the proper name of.

Debbie thought about masturbating now. But she dismissed the idea. She preferred to be totally naked when she got those wonderful feelings, and it was the middle of the afternoon. While her mother, Ramona, was at work at her job as a teller at the bank, Debbie’s twin brother Robby was around somewhere with his friend Mike. He had a bad habit of just walking into her room when he wanted to see her. Privacy was a word he didn’t seem to understand. And, while she wouldn’t have minded her brother finding her gyrating on the bed with her fingers stuck up in her, she sure didn’t want Mike to see that.

Debbie sighed and got up off the bed. She wandered to the window and looked out at the forest beyond their yard. Her eyes were drawn to the tall round tower with its conical cap that topped the old Nettleton mansion next door.

Unlike … and unknown to … most people in Nettleton, she was intimately familiar with that old house. Having lived next door to it their whole lives, she and Robby had naturally explored the dark forest surrounding it. They had never heard the stories that caused most adults in town to avoid the place and, to them, the forest was a magical place. The house was too, though it was a bit daunting and dark and … scary somehow … at first.

She thought back to some of the things that were imprinted indelibly in her memory about the mysterious place next door.

It was when they were about ten, and were playing in the forest that they found “the secret”. There was an old root cellar behind the house, off to one side of the sagging carriage house that had once held horses, and still held an old carriage with only three wheels and rotted leather seats. Their tentative exploration of the overgrown cellar entrance was the result of a fantasy that there must be gold in there, since it looked like a mine to them. Instead, when they had snitched a candle from home and illuminated the dark hole, they had found that it had walls of brick, covered by wooden shelves, which themselves were partially covered with glass jars containing something dark and gelatinous that they knew had been food at one time. Their fantasy morphed into pretending that the gold had been hidden in these jars of muck, since no one would think to look for it there. They only opened one, though. The stink convinced them that this particular daydream wasn’t worth pursuing.

But they had made the cellar into a hideout, where they could evade various imagined bad men, or police seeking trespassers, or just be in a place that was theirs alone, and which nobody else knew about. They fixed it up with old furniture found in the carriage house, and pillows and blankets from home … a small hidden nest where they could disappear into when they wanted to.

And they kept it a secret from everyone. They somehow knew their mother would disapprove in the strongest terms if she found out they had found a place they could slip through the fence that surrounded the Nettleton Manor, as they had renamed it.

But the cellar itself wasn’t “the secret.” It was while they were moving things around in the root cellar that they had discovered “the secret.” Robby had been tugging on a tall rack of shelves, trying to break off a piece of wood that he needed to put under an old overstuffed chair which had only three stubby legs. But instead of the board coming loose, the whole shelf unit had, with a creaking groan, swung outward from the wall, exposing a dark tunnel behind it.

More candles were smuggled into the hideout and the tunnel was explored. It was featureless, a tube of old, crumbling brick that led nowhere for sixty feet to an oaken door with a thick iron ring on it instead of a knob. Neither child, at only ten years of age, had been able to figure out how to open the door. It seemed to be stuck fast. But their dreams of hidden treasure were re-awakened and, for a week, they examined the obstacle, which was solid as a rock. The close fitted planks of the door were held together by thick iron straps with huge rivets holding them to the door. Hammers and screwdrivers, which were all the tools available to the exploring siblings, made only dents and scratches.

Debbie was the one who solved the mystery when, in frustration, she hit one of the thick rivets with the hammer and the door made a grating, popping sound and moved a quarter inch.

It took the combined weight of both kids to pull on the ring and get the door to move more. Their excitement, aided by a little adrenaline, caused the door to suddenly creak open, dumping both youths on their butts. They stared at the wooden steps beyond the door … steps covered in a thick coating of dust … steps that led up … into the Nettleton Mansion.

Fighting bouts of continuous sneezes brought on by dust that hadn’t been disturbed for decades, brother and sister held hands and climbed the steps. They found themselves in a hallway of sorts, so narrow that they couldn’t walk side by side. The expanse of wall, made only of boards butted together and nailed from the other side of the walls to studs, extended beyond the range of the two candles they had.

They crept forward, afraid now for some unknown reason, until they came to another door with a ring in it. That one opened fairly easily when they both pushed against it and they found themselves in a room that looked startlingly like the root cellar. Its walls were covered with shelves, and they recognized it as a pantry. The back of the door had shelves on it, like the one in the root cellar. These shelves too were cluttered with old cans and jars. There were traces of what was left of sacks too, but mice had feasted on their contents over the years and all that was left was their droppings and tatters of cloth.

The discovery of the secret tunnel and what turned out to be a secret corridor inside the house which gave either visual or physical access to almost every room in the mansion, changed the lives of the twins. Now their private world had been expanded a thousand fold. Over the next five years they roamed the old house as if they owned it.

Almost everything had been left behind, but little of worth was left. The good dishes were gone, leaving behind mismatched bowls and plates probably used by children and servants. The same was true of utensils. Furniture was still there, but most looked to be in bad shape. There were still paintings and portraits on the walls, but they were dark with age and dust, and it was difficult to tell what, or who they portrayed. Anything made of, or covered with cloth had deteriorated and faded.

Everything exposed to the air, that was.

There were chests made of cedar wood that had preserved their contents remarkably well, and some drawers had contained some kind of pungent smelling substance that had also kept the rigors of time and mice at bay, mostly. There were beautiful gowns and suits packed away that the children gasped over. There were hats and shoes and umbrellas made of lace. There were shirts and things that looked like a ballerina’s tutu, but which hung down to the floor instead of sticking out. There were old smoking pipes, carved into the likeness of fishermen, or a tiger’s head and some decorated with tarnished silver, or simply plain. They found a few scattered coins, which were immediately identified as part of the treasure they forever sought.

Because the only things they found in reasonably good condition were the clothes, they played dress up together. Debbie gathered too-big dresses around herself and paraded back and forth while Robby put on a top hat and tails that hung to the floor, one of the pipes clamped in his jaw as he struck poses for his sister. It was in this way that they kept on discovering their bodies after their mother, for some unexplained reason, established separate bath times for them.

During dress up play, Debbie unashamedly stripped out of her street clothes to don a gown while Robby watched with interest, noting that, as time went by, her breasts began to push out from her flat chest and then got bigger and softer looking every year. She watched as he skinned out of his clothes too, to don some fancy vest that, at first, covered him like a jacket, but as he grew, left his growing genitals exposed.

They pretended to be lords and ladies of years gone by, each one with their own wardrobe, and they had these characters interact with each other, requiring frequent changes of costume. So they saw each other naked almost daily as they grew into puberty.

TBC

It was Debbie who developed pubic hair first … mere wisps of golden strands that sprang from her skin almost overnight, or so it seemed. Then there were more and suddenly Robby could see them.

“You have something on you,” he pointed out that first day he noticed.

She looked down at her pubescent mound with its tightly closed lips that covered up the little bud she already knew all about by then. She’d never told her brother about what she did in her bed at night. They shared almost everything in the world, but that was one thing she instinctively wanted to keep for her own secret.

“That’s my hair,” she said, as if it were obvious, which to her it was.

“When did you get hair?” asked her brother.

“I don’t know. One day it was just there.”

Robby bent over, examining his penis. “I don’t have any,” he said, disgruntled.

There was some competition between them. Their father had died in an accident when they were little and their mother had never sought another husband. They got by on her salary at the bank, but there was no extra money for frills. As a result, whenever something did come into the house, ownership was heatedly discussed and quite often things were portioned out. If it was a food item, like a box of candy, each got his or her portion. If it was something else, each claimed a certain percentage of the use of the item. It was mostly a game, because they shared everything they had, but establishing ownership meant that they could then choose to share, which was somehow important to each.

For her to have hair, and him not … seemed unjust somehow.

“Do you have those singing things too?” he asked.

Debbie paused, her pert young breasts with their soft pink puffy nipples hanging a little as she bent to step into a gown of forest green.

“What?” she asked.

“You know, what we heard about in health class” said Robby. “Those singing periods where you have blood … down there.” He pointed to what was already covered.

“Menstrual periods?” she asked. “What do they have with singing?”

“Didn’t minstrals go from place to place in the old days and sing songs and tell stories and stuff?” he asked. “I never could figure out what that had to do with girls bleeding, but I’m sure that’s what they said.”

“Dummy!” she laughed. “I have men-stral periods, not min-stral periods.” She giggled. “I sure don’t feel like singing when they come around. I’ll tell you that!”

“It all sounds the same to me,” sighed Robby, who took no offense at being labeled a ‘dummy’. “But you have hair and you have … those thingy periods. Doesn’t that mean you can have a baby?”

“I guess so,” said Debbie, unconcerned. Her mother had simply explained that periods happened to girls as they grew up, and it was something they had to put up with. She understood the remorse and tears in her mother’s eyes as that was said when her mother made her put the thick pad between her legs that soaked up all that blood. It was awful! The pad rubbed her legs and was uncomfortable. But if she didn’t use them it ruined her panties and even the jeans she loved to wear, so she … put up with it.

Later that night, back home, she found Robby with the textbook they used in health class, reading avidly.

“It says here that boys grow hair later than girls. When that happens semen will start coming out of my penis,” he said.

“Well if it’s anything like my menstrual periods, don’t be anxious for that to happen,” she said darkly. “Periods are a pain.”

“I don’t see why. It already feels good if I rub it,” he said, looking up.

Debbie was astonished. At thirteen, she thought she was the only teenager in the world who disregarded the stern warnings about masturbation that seemed to come from everywhere. It had never occurred to her that her brother might do the same thing.

“You rub your penis?” she asked.

A guarded look came into Robby’s eyes.

“You know … in the shower … when I wash it.”

Debbie wasn’t buying it. She knew her brother too well and he couldn’t lie to her.

“You masturbate?” she whispered as loudly as she could without drawing the attention of their mother, who was in the house somewhere.

“SHHHHH!” Robby’s eyes darted to the doorway. “I didn’t say that,” he whispered.

Debbie knew she had an advantage, and she pressed it mercilessly.

“You masturbate … don’t you. You can’t lie to me. I’m going to tell mom!”

“No!” he whispered urgently. “She’ll kill me if she finds out. Come on Deb, it was an accident. I really was just washing it and it got to feeling so good I just kept washing it and then it got hard and it felt so good I just didn’t want to stop. Don’t tell mom … pleeeease?”

“I don’t know,” said Debbie in her carefully practiced but completely fictitious voice of thoughtful worry. “I heard it makes hair grow on your palms if you do it more than just a few times.”

She watched with glee as Robby immediately looked at his palms. Then, with puzzlement on his face he looked back up to see his sister holding in a laugh.

Robby was much more mercurial than his sister. He jumped immediately to hot anger as he realized his sister had tricked him.

“Get out of my room,” he said in a low voice. “Tell mom whatever you want.”

Debbie knew when she went too far. She had done it hundreds of times, teasing her thin-skinned brother. She also knew how to deal with him when he got mad like that.

“Come on you goof,” she said in a jovial voice. “I was just kidding around.” He was still surly and she knew she’d have to give him something in return. She thought about her own secret, so carefully kept over the years. Knowing that he did it too it didn’t seem so dark any more. She held out her palms to him. “I do it too.”

Debbie knew her brother well. He was instantly intrigued.

“You do?” he whispered. “Really Deb?”

She blushed, but nodded, dropping her hands. “Yeah, a couple of years now.”

She saw his eyes widen and his mouth drop open.

“And I’m not insane, and I don’t have warts or any of that stuff.” She folded her arms, like she’d settled some big debate.

“How come you didn’t tell me?” he asked.

“How come you didn’t tell me?” she shot back.

“Oh … yeah,” he said. He looked thoughtful. “How … often … do you do it?” he leaned toward her as he whispered.

Debbie’s skin had begun to go back to its normal pale color, but she blushed again. She wasn’t so sure she wanted to admit just how often she rubbed her clitty.

“Ummm … a lot,” she settled for.

He slumped a little. “Me too,” he said, his voice normal, but low. “Sometimes I take a shower when I don’t even need one … just so I can … do it.”

Debbie had always thought she was the smarter twin. It was at times like this that she felt justified.

“You don’t have to be in the shower to do it,” she said patiently. “I do it in bed, after everybody’s asleep.”

Robby’s forehead wrinkled. “Really?” he said. “I never thought of that.” He looked at his lap. “Boy, just thinking about it makes me want to do it now.”

Debbie had never really been all that interested in boys, at least not as sexual objects. She had her little secret that she did in bed and which satisfied her, and that was fine. Other girls went on and on about boys and kissing and all kinds of things that sounded pretty yucky to Debbie at the tender age of thirteen. Her way of conquering a boy was to beat him at a footrace, or make it to home plate without being thrown out.

“Well don’t do it when I’m around,” she sniffed.

They hadn’t talked about it again, but after that, when they went to the Nettleton Mansion to explore, if they dressed up, each one was more than a little interested in the other’s body. They still had an easy unconcerned manner about themselves as they got nude together.

It was almost a year later that Robby, while he was putting on a formal kind of suit that had a shirt with no collar, and which had begun to fit him a lot better than it had in years past, said, “I’m getting hair too.”

TBC

Debbie, who now had a nice collection of honey gold hair above her pouting pussy lips wanted to see, so Robby bared his adolescent prick and she bent over to look. Sure enough dark brown hair was beginning to sprout all around his penis and the sack that hung under it. That sack suddenly looked much more full than Debbie remembered it being … larger. As she stared the penis moved all by itself.

“I can feel you breathing on me,” said Robby in a strained voice.

“Your penis is moving!” said Debbie.

“I think it’s getting hard,” said Robby.

“Why?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Sometimes it just does that,” he replied. “When it does … that’s when I want to rub it.”

Debbie’s mind set about such things had undergone not a little transformation in the last eight months. Her breasts were now huge, from her own perspective, though they were only the size of a softball, roughly. The nipples, which had been puffy and soft for a long time had begun to get firm, especially whenever she rubbed herself in bed. They tingled too, and she had found that it felt very good to rub them and squeeze them gently as she rubbed between her legs.

“You want to masturbate now?” she asked, standing up. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I told you it just happens sometimes. Whenever it gets hard I know it will feel really good to rub it.”

“Could I watch while you do it?” she asked, a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“I thought you said not to do it around you,” he remembered.

“I changed my mind,” she said with the certainty that all women have, and which is based on the fact that all women somehow know they have the ultimate and uncontested right to do so.

“I’d feel pretty weird doing that here,” he said, looking around the dusty bedroom they were in.

“Why?” she asked. Debbie felt completely at home in the Nettleton mansion by now.

“What if the ghosts watched?” he asked.

They had heard some of the stories about the house by now and had decided long ago that the Nettleton mansion was, in fact, haunted. Things got moved around … little things … and there were noises. But, after fleeing several times in abject panic, they had always crept back in. Eventually they came to the comfortable agreement that, while there might be ghosts in the house, they weren’t apparently unfriendly ones. They spoke to the ghosts a few times, proclaiming loudly that they weren’t there to take anything, or destroy anything, and that the ghosts were welcome to do whatever they wanted to do, since it was, after all, the ghosts’ house.

“Why would ghosts care if you masturbate?” asked Debbie.

Debbie threw out “the challenge”: “I’ll do it if you do it.”

“The challenge” was a time honored way in which they talked each other into doing whatever it was that one of them was worried about doing, but which the other one wanted to do. They had issued “the challenge” to each other so many times in the past that the result was almost always an immediate, if still somewhat nervous acquiescence to the suggestion … whatever it was. Basically, responding to “the challenge” was a habit they’d both fallen into, and it was ingrained in them … as normal as hunger.

“Okay!” Robby stuck out his jaw and his hand went to his penis. He immediately began stroking it, and it got even longer and harder than it had been.

“Hold on!” complained Debbie. “Give me a minute here.” She dropped the gown, just naturally getting ready to do it like she almost always did it … naked.

Then she went to the bed, which still had a musty cover on it. Pulling that off she scooted up onto the sagging mattress and lay back, sideways to her brother. Her fingers went automatically to her clit and she began rubbing it in circles.

“Okay,” she said. “You can go on now.”

Robby, unlike his sister, had been interested in the opposite sex for some time now. His friends also told tales of kisses and groping sessions and other more involved things that he always pretended to know all about, but actually knew very little of. He had never actually thought of his sister like he thought of other girls. Sure, she had breasts and all the other things girls had, but he had seen them so often he just took them for granted.

Until now.

Now, she was a girl, and she was naked, and she was doing something sexual right there in front of him.

He felt something in his balls that he hadn’t felt but once before. That one time he had been stroking his soapy penis in the shower. Usually he just stroked, and it felt good, and he just assumed that was all there was to jerking off. His mother usually came along yelling at him to stop wasting water, so his stroke sessions never went on as long as he’d have liked them to. And, when he started doing it in bed, at Debbie’s suggestion, he’d experienced much the same thing. He concentrated on the feeling of his hand, and what it was doing. He’d never thought about a girl while he was doing it … at least not in any specific way. He hadn’t quite connected what he was doing to what his penis could do … with a girl.

As a result, Robby had never actually had an orgasm.

Now, however, seeing his sister’s fingers busy at the juncture of her legs, he stared. And he suddenly realized that where her fingers were moving in more and more rapid circles, the lips under her fingers were puffing up and beginning to gape open, exposing the very area where his health teacher had told him that a penis was designed to fit into.

The strange feeling in his balls increased until it was almost painful. He was jerking faster now, much faster than he’d ever done it before. He was a little freaked out, because while it was painful … it was a good kind of pain somehow. He didn’t know what was going to happen, but he didn’t want to stop.

Debbie was watching, her eyes half closed, her lower lip caught between pearly white teeth. She moaned and the sound bore into Robby’s heart like a dagger.

Then she stuck one of her fingers into that dark opening and it disappeared up inside her. The connection between what was in his hand and where her finger was exploded into Robby’s mind and the pain in his penis became unbearable. He had an instant of panic that he’d hurt himself when he felt a soothing rush of … something … racing through his sensitive penis. To his astonishment, a long stream of milky-white fluid arced up and out of his cock. It seemed to hang in the air for the span of a single heartbeat, which he could clearly feel in his chest, and then splatted wetly on the edge of the bed and the floor.

Debbie knew instinctively what that liquid was, and seeing it shoot out of her brother’s penis gave her a feeling deep inside her that was almost as scary as what Robby had felt just before he ejaculated. She pulled hard on the finger deep inside her, mashing her clit and her own orgasm crashed down on her like a ton of bricks.

“Awwwwwwmmmmmmm” she groaned, curling up into a fetal position, her finger still buried in her as the sensations wracked her young body.

Meanwhile Robby was staring as more and more of that fluid leapt out of his cock. It suddenly stopped, and he felt a dull ache in his balls. It still felt good to hold his penis and he did so tightly. When he finally let the pressure off a big bubble of white oozed out of the tip and hung, swinging gently as he panted, before dropping between his feet.

It was quiet, the only sound the panting of two teenagers. Debbie finally opened her eyes and stared at her brother, for whom she suddenly felt feelings that were more intense than she’d felt in the past. That was saying something and she knew, somehow, that everything had changed between them. It was a good change, though, as far as she was concerned. They had always been close, but now they shared something they felt with no other person on earth.

“That was awesome,” she sighed.

“I squirted,” he said, amazement clear in his voice.

“You sure did. It almost got on me,” she said, unfolding and stretching.

Robby watched as her naked body stretched, long and slim on the bed. He had a sudden urge to squirt some more, even though his balls ached and his penis felt dead. He realized he was still holding it and let it flop down.

“I never squirted before,” he said, unnecessarily.

“You said you would some day,” she pointed out.

“Yeah … I guess I just wasn’t expecting it.” He stood there uncomfortably. “Is that okay?”

Debbie sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her leg felt a wet spot and she rolled to see she’d put it right on a glob of his spunk.

“Ewwww,” she said as she wiped at it with her hand. “Do you have to get it all over the place?”

“I’m sorry Deb,” he said, his voice tragic. “I didn’t mean it … honest.”

She stood up, looking at her brother’s face. He was obviously upset that she was upset.

“It’s okay. You’re supposed to do that. Just try not to get it all over the place next time.”

Robby’s response caught her off guard. Wearing only an unbuttoned shirt he stepped forward and hugged his naked sister.

“Oh thanks Deb, I promise. I’m so glad you’re not mad.”

Debbie was shocked by the feel of his chest against her breasts, and something poking into the area she had just been rubbing, also warm and soft. Before she could process that strange feeling of naked skin against her own naked skin he backed up. The look on his face was of pure joy. She wanted to laugh because he was so eager to please her. She felt a rush of warmth in her chest.

“I love you, you goof. You could never really make me mad,” she said. “Now come on, I want to be Lady Nettleton.” She retrieved the green gown that “Lady Nettleton” always wore and stepped into it, pulling it up to cover her nakedness. It fit her a lot better these days too, and she smoothed it into place at her waist, turning so that Robby could button the numerous tiny buttons up the back.

“I love you too Deb,” he sighed, as his fingers strained to deal with the small pieces of round bone that closed her dress.

Then he put on his formal suit and they got the mismatched porcelain tea service out of a cupboard in the dining room and pretended to have tea. Robby commented on how beautiful she was, and how well the crops were doing, and how well she was supervising the servants. She curtsied and spoke about his bravery in running off the latest raiders, and how handsome he was. Then they danced, pretending they were at a ball they were hosting, with hundreds of people all around them. Robby “introduced” Debbie to their imaginary guests, calling her “his beautiful bride, Edwina” and, because they didn’t actually know the real names of the semi-fictional Nettletons they were pretending to be, she introduced him as “My handsome husband, Beauregard”.

They had pretended to be Beauregard and Edwina many times before this, but this time, after sharing something so intimate, the mood was different. To the surprise of both of them they slowed in their dancing and were suddenly kissing each other, standing still, their lips clinging to each other’s.

Debbie’s eyes were closed and, while she was imagining herself kissing the mythical ‘Beauregard’, she realized that her brother’s lips tasted sweet and good.

Robby had forgotten all other women, and the feel of his sister’s lips against his was hot and electric. He felt his penis begin to stiffen again.

He pulled back. “My penis is getting hard again!”

She looked at him sternly. “We don’t have time for that again. Come one. Mom will be wondering where we got to.”

Ten minutes later they were climbing up out of the root cellar, dressed in their own clothes, just normal looking teenagers, as they slipped between the trees back to the real world.

Robby and Debbie, for whatever reason, did not take their newfound sexual intimacy back home with them. It was something to be shared only in the Nettleton Manor. While each still masturbated at home, neither sought to be with the other while they did so. Perhaps it was that both knew, on some level, that what they had done would be frowned on most horribly by any adult who found out about it. Or perhaps it was because that secret sharing of their passion was so precious that it must be restricted to their secret imaginary world. For whatever reason, there was unspoken agreement between them that, if they were to do that again - and both wanted to do that again - that it would only take place in the faded rooms in the forlorn house that harbored so many other secrets so well.

And, perhaps because that sharing was so intense, they both regarded it as a treat, or luxury, and as such, did not increase the frequency with which they stole off to explore and pretend in the house. No doubt there was an unconscious desire to protect, for as long as it could be protected, their secret hideaway. If they went too often, someone would eventually notice them, or find them, and everything would be ruined.

Over the next couple of years they grew more mature, though, and while the house still held fascination for them, they played dress up less often and turned more to exploration of the secrets the house might still be protecting.

They explored the secret passageways extensively, finding places where holes had been made in the walls so that a person in the secret passageway could peer into the various rooms of the mansion … including the bedrooms. Most of these peeking holes were so cunningly constructed that they were incorporated into the whorls of woodwork that adorned the fancy trim of the rooms. Two were designed so that they looked natural as gaps in the mountings of old gas light fixtures.

The bedrooms held fascination for them too. One had obviously been a little girl’s room, with the remnants of dolls and tiny dresses that were the match for the larger ones that older women had worn. Another was littered with wooden toys, carved horses, and an intricately made wagon … boy’s toys. Then there was the big bedroom, with its canopied bed, the canopy hanging in tatters of rotted cloth, but still grand in its faded way. This room held the chests filled with gowns and formal mens’ wear that they loved to put on.

Still others were almost bare of furnishings, and smaller, as if people less important had slept in them. Those rooms, they noticed, all had peek holes that viewed primarily the beds.

And, when they felt the urge, instead of dressing up … they dressed down, stripping off their clothes to tease each other with their nakedness, strutting and posturing, exposing their sexual parts and, when their passions had been raised as high as they could stand it … masturbating in ways that inflamed themselves and each other.

It was inevitable, in a way, that each time they did this, they got closer and closer to each other, until, one time, Robby’s spurts of semen splashed on his sister’s skin. He had ignored her admonition “not to get it all over the place” simply because he didn’t know how to avoid “getting it all over the place.” And she said nothing, because she loved watching those streams of spunk fly through the air so much she didn’t press the issue. It always dried by the time they returned, so all she had to do was avoid stepping in it when it was fresh.

And this time, when it splattered across her stomach as she lay, legs spread as wide as she could get them, hand frantically shoving a finger deep in her pussy, she didn’t complain about it because of the surprise that it was so hot where it touched her. Her only experience with touching it was that first time, when she sat on a spot that had had time to cool in the air. So, without thinking of where it came from, she’d always thought of it as being cold. But now, where it made a streak on her stomach and one arm, it was warm. And somehow warm wasn’t at all yucky.

Her orgasm that day was hotter than ever.

Robby, though, was horrified.

“I’m sorry Deb,” he gushed, backing up as his prick continued spurting wildly. “I didn’t mean it.” Robby, being a boy, had a long history of yelping, “I didn’t mean it.”

His sister shushed him though, to his great relief. He watched in amazement as she brought the hand away from her pussy and scooped up a glob of his spunk, rubbing it between her fingers.

“It’s not so bad,” she said. “It’s really slippery!”

Perhaps, because she was intent on calming her brother down, or because she was concentrating on feeling the stripe of his spend across her stomach, she habitually returned her spermy fingers to her clit and rubbed it gently in the afterglow of her orgasm. She was slippery enough already that she didn’t notice the added slip as her brother’s sperm was rubbed into the top of her pussy split.

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TBC in next Chapter

Chapter Two

The incident in which her brother’s semen had splashed on her skin had just been a few days ago. Debbie thought about it as she stared out her window at the roof of the tower where she had played princess, while her brother, the knight, fought all manner of monsters and beasts for the privilege of getting to see her rub her naked pussy while he jerked that lovely slippery stuff out of his prick.

She sighed again as Petula Clark sang the last chorus of Downtown and the announcer promised that the new Beatles hit would be coming up soon. She couldn’t go find Robby and ask him to go to the manor. With his friend there that wouldn’t work. They hadn’t told any of their friends about their secret place, because all their friends would want to go and see it. Then it wouldn’t be theirs alone any more, and they wouldn’t be able to masturbate there either, since they’d never know if some friend was going to sneak in like they did.

She opened the window to get some air into her room, which seemed stuffy. It was then that she heard the noise coming from the Nettleton Manor next door.

It was a motor noise, that much she could tell, like a truck. There was a clanking sound too, but it came and went, while the motor noise was more or less constant. But that was impossible. There was no way to get a car or truck onto the property. She saw a cloud of black smoke drift upward above the trees and begin to dissipate in the light breeze.

Panic seized Debbie’s heart. Fire! Something was on fire over there!

She ran, screaming for Robby.

Robby and Mike were in Robby’s room. Each was working on an AMT plastic model, and each was bent over, carefully and intently painting very small parts with tiny brushes. Debbie’s screams electrified both boys, whose hands jerked, causing paint to smudge off onto upholstery in one case, and armor plating in the other. She was yelling something about a fire and both boys jumped up and charged out of the room only to run head on into Debbie. She slammed into Mike, who had been closer to the door, and both landed in a heap on the floor while Robby screamed for information.

Debbie was crying by now and her sobs made it difficult to understand her. They heard “Fire … Smoke … and our place”, but couldn’t make any sense of it. Then she pointed toward the Nettleton mansion and Robby paled. He ran outside and stopped to stare at the forest next door. He heard the same motor noises, but saw no smoke. Debbie and Mike skidded to a stop behind him.

“Where?” asked Robby. “I don’t see any fire.”

Debbie, who had expected to see walls of flame and a tower of smoke, stopped crying when she saw only what the others could see … basically nothing.

“I saw smoke!” she said. “From my window upstairs.”

“What’s that noise?” asked Mike. “It sounds like a tank or something.”

Robby started for the place in the fence where he and his sister in the past had almost walked through to get on the property, but now had to squeeze through. Then he remembered Mike and his habit of keeping the secret was so strong that he stopped. The fence led down to the street and turned a corner to run almost a block to the big iron gates.

“Come on,” he yelled, and took off running for the corner of the fence.

Minutes later the three youths stopped and stared. In all their lives those massive wrought iron gates had always been closed, with a heavy black chain and a huge old padlock with the key hole on the front of it keeping them that way.

But now the gates had been flung wide, the chain lying on the ground with the old padlock, now broken, lying forlornly beside it. A big flatbed truck and trailer were parked on the street, with heavy ramps leading down from the trailer. Where there had only been a choked track through the forest behind the gates, there was now an eight foot wide swath of destruction, making a flat, open expanse to drive on. There were tread marks in the exposed topsoil.

Without a thought the three ran up the newly cleared track. A hundred yards later the motor noise was loud and the teens slowed and left the cleared track to enter the woods. They lurked from tree to tree until at last they could see what had happened.

There was a big yellow bulldozer pushing a huge pile of trees and shrubs that had been growing in the old driveway, but were now a mangled collection of destroyed vegetation. Other than the man driving the bulldozer, only one other person was visible.

He looked at first like what all three kids thought a hermit would look like. He had long, raggedy black hair, with a wild unkempt beard that was at least a foot long. He was wearing a black overcoat, regardless of the fact that it was eighty-five degrees outside. His arms were gesticulating, guiding the man on the bulldozer … showing him where to push the big pile of cleared plants. As it moved the bulldozer sent a huge plume of black smoke up into the air out of its smokestack. Debbie recognized it immediately as what she’d seen before.

Her relief at finding there was no fire though, was completely overcome by finding strangers on the property … her property … her secret property. She stood up and moved from behind the tree she had been hiding behind and started marching toward the scene of destruction.

TBC

Robby saw her and intuited what she was going to try to do. His mind reasoned that, without knowing who the crazy looking man was, all that would probably happen was that Debbie would get in trouble. He lunged forward and grasped her slim waist, pulling her behind a huge old oak tree. She struggled against him, her yells overcome by the noise of the bulldozer as it strained to push the huge pile of debris a little further. In the end he had to put his arms all the way around her. His hands inadvertently were filled with her breasts as she strained to get away from him.

Mike looked on in astonishment as his two friends struggled. What was Robby doing grabbing Debbie’s breasts? He had the flash of a thought that he wished he could be doing that. Debbie was a good looking chick and he’d tried to get her to go out with him lots of times, but she didn’t go on dates. Neither did Robby.

Now Robby was yelling in her ear and she finally stopped struggling. Her hands came to his and dragged them off her breasts. Then she turned around and hugged her brother, burying her face in his chest. Mike could tell she was sobbing, but he couldn’t figure out whether it had to do with her breasts, or what was going on that short distance away.

The motor of the bulldozer suddenly went quiet … so quiet that it seemed to the kids as if they had gone deaf. All three held their breath, Debbie less successfully as she gasped a sob now and again. The driver was getting down and his feet made noises on the metal parts of the bulldozer. The sounds were so clear that the kids suddenly thought any sound they made would be clearly heard by the two men.

The hermit yelled, as if the motor was still running.

“That’s fine for now. I can get a truck in here at least. There’ll be more work later, but I have to make plans.”

He walked over to meet the driver, digging in the pockets of his overcoat. They saw him pull out a wad of money that would choke a horse and he peeled bills off of it, handing them to the driver.

In a softer, but clearly audible voice, the hermit said, “I thank you, sir, for your prompt service. I assume cash will be sufficient?”

“Cash is right fine, mister Smith. And I appreciate the bonus. I can use it. Running one of these beasts is right costly. But they sure do short work of things. When I was a boy we’d have had to do all that with horses and it would have taken a week. But for your bonus it wouldn’t have hardly been worth taking her off the truck.”

Mister Smith smiled through his thick brush of fur and waved. “I’ll get the gate.”

With that the driver got back on his iron beast and it roared to life, the blade lifting like some monstrous guillotine, ready to destroy something else.

Debbie flinched. She had been darting looks at the house, and the pile of debris, and the hermit, trying to assess what all this meant. The noise of the bulldozer unnerved her. She saw with her own eyes what it could do. She feared at first that he was just going to make a long sweep back to the gate, destroying more of their precious magical forest, but the thing, with a groan of metal and the screaming of the motor, making huge clouds of sooty black smoke, spun as if it were light as a feather and lumbered off back down the smooth track it had made. With the blade raised it moved much faster than it had before.

The hermit stared at the pile of brush and trees and gave a little shake of his head. Then he turned and just looked at the mansion, hands on his hips, staring, as if he could see something the others could not. The noise of the bulldozer got more and more distant and then there was a grinding noise made by the treads on the big metal ramps leading up to the long, low trailer. The noise cut off and it was quiet as a tomb again.

The three teens stood, stock still, watching the stranger watching the house.

After what seemed like an interminable time, there was the sound of a truck motor starting, revving up and pulling away. Mister Smith turned his head toward the newly cleared driveway and then turned his body and began walking down to the gate.

Silent shadows flicked from tree to tree … three shadows … as the teens cut through the forest on a soft carpet of dead, moist leaves. One of them stepped on a branch that cracked like a gunshot to their ears and the other two shot dark looks, raising fingers to their lips. They crept on, arriving just in time to see mister Smith leaned against the one open half of the gate, pushing with all his strength to close it.

“Gonna have to get some oil on these hinges,” he muttered.

He moved inside and pulled, getting the two halves closed as much as he could. Then, digging into another pocket of that strange greatcoat, he pulled a shiny new lock from it. Bending he gathered up the old chain and draped it through the iron bars of the gate, pulling on the loose ends until the gate closed even more. He fumbled with the ends and then stood back. The new lock was securely fastened. He nodded, turned on his heel, and began trudging back up the drive toward the manor.

The three kids looked at each other, staring open mouthed.

They were locked in.

Mike started to say something, but Robby shushed him quietly. He held up a hand, standing still, his head swiveling, watching the stranger until the number of trees between watcher and watched got so numerous that they could only catch glimpses of movement. Robby waited longer and then finally dropped his hand. He turned to his sister and friend and beckoned them toward him.

“What are we gonna do?” whispered Mike anxiously. He looked up at the sharp spikes that topped each upright iron bar in the fence that, as far as he knew, completely surrounded the property. The bars were only six inches apart. There was no way to go through, or over the fence.

“We know a way out,” whispered Robby. Debbie shot him a look but he shook his head. “We used to play in the woods. Follow me.”

He took them along the fence, back toward the corner they’d run around … not right by the fence, but ten or fifteen yards inside the undergrowth, as if he were afraid someone outside the fence might see them. To his credit he made it look as if he were searching for something, though he knew exactly where the wide spot in the bars was. It took them fifteen minutes to circle the mansion. When they got there it was obvious that there was a trail leading from the fence toward the house.

“Look!” said Mike. “Somebody’s been using this!”

“Game trail,” said Robby confidently. “You know, rabbits … deer … that kind of thing.”

There were deer in these parts, though none of the teens had ever seen one that hadn’t been shot by a hunter and hung up to butcher. Mike nodded. His primary concern was getting out. There was no way he wanted to go knock on the door and face mister Smith to get that gate unlocked. He saw the gap in the fence. Someone had gone to great lengths with some kind of heavy force to bend the bars apart. What none of them knew was that this was the entrance point that kidnappers had used decades before to gain entry onto the property.

That wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Now all three youths squeezed between the bars. As soon as they were out all three ran like the wind toward Debbie and Robby’s house.

They were out of breath when they arrived, pounding through the door and into the kitchen where they stood, poised for further flight for some reason. Debbie had a wild look in her eyes. Her hair, which had been in a pony tail, had come partly undone, perhaps from brushing a tree branch, and her hair flew off in several directions. Her heaving chest caught Mike’s attention. He could see the dents in her shirt that he knew were made by nipples.

“What was that all about?” he asked, breathlessly.

“I don’t know,” said Robby, sitting down. Then he stood up again and went to the fridge, pulling out bottles of Royal Crown Cola for them all. He couldn’t find an opener, digging through the junk drawer under the counter. Debbie took hers and dug the edge of the serrated cap into the aluminum strip that went along the edge of the counter. She raised it fractionally and then jerked downward. The cap sailed and she tipped the bottle up, drinking thirstily.

“You know mom doesn’t like that,” chided Robby. “It marks up the aluminum.”

Debbie let the bottle fall back, half empty. She let out a long burp and wiped her mouth with her forearm. “That’s not important right now,” she said edgily. “We have to stop that man.”

“Why?” asked Mike, trying to do the same thing he’d seen Debbie do, but unable to make it work. “Maybe he bought the place.”

Debbie jerked the bottle from his hands and opened it for him expertly on the edge of the counter, like she had her own. She handed it back to him.

“He can’t buy the manor.” She unconsciously slipped into her common name for the Nettleton Mansion.

Mike took a gulp of pop and tried to burp. It was a short one and he looked disgusted. “Why not? If he’s crazy enough and has the money he can do what he wants.”

Debbie was about to hotly exclaim that he couldn’t buy the place because it was hers!, but Robby shot her a look that made her mouth snap shut.

“He doesn’t look like he has that kind of money,” said Robby hurriedly.

“He sure pulled a bundle out of that coat,” insisted Mike. “And he paid that guy on that bulldozer. Maybe he’s some rich crazy guy or something. He’d have to be crazy to buy that place. That’s for sure.” He went back to trying to work up a respectable belch.

“We have to tell Mom!” said Debbie urgently. “She’ll know what to do.”

“Why do you have to do anything?” insisted Mike. “Who cares?” He took another swig of RC Cola. “I can’t wait to tell my parents,” he said, exhibiting just who he thought would care.

“Yeah” said Robby. “Go home and tell your parents. I need to … ah, mow the lawn anyway.”

Debbie could tell that her brother was trying to get rid of his friend, which was fine with her, because this was an emergency and they needed to do something. Mike, not having any of the urgency that was seething beneath the surface of both twins, kept trying to work up a burp. His eyes fell to Debbie’s chest again.

“Hey, I just remembered something,” he said.

The other two looked at him anxiously.

“When we were out there, watching them, and you tried to go do something …” he addressed Debbie, “and Rob stopped you? Remember?”

She nodded, wishing he’d just leave so she and her brother could discuss what to do.

“Rob touched your titties,” announced Mike.

“No he didn’t,” she said hotly.

“Yes he did! He had his hands all over your titties,” insisted Mike.

“What’s your point Mike?” demanded Debbie.

“Well I was wondering if maybe you’d let me touch them too.” Mike had known the twins for as long as he could remember, and he’d spent hours playing baseball with them, or riding bikes or playing Monopoly. He’d always accepted Debbie as just another friend … not a girl. It was only recently that he’d noticed her as a member of the fairer sex.

“What kind of pervert are you?” Debbie leaned in close to him.

“I’m not a pervert!” yelped Mike. “He did it! So why can’t I?”

“Mike, buddy, I didn’t grab her boobs on purpose, you idiot,” said Robby. “I was just trying to keep her from running in front of that bulldozer. It was an accident.”

“Oh,” said Mike with obvious disappointment, looking down. He then looked back up, hope back in his eyes. “What did it feel like? Were they soft?”

“You really are a pervert!” squealed Debbie.

“No I’m not!” defended Mike. “Guys do that all the time. If you like a girl you’re supposed to touch her titties.”

“So you like me?” asked Debbie, not at all sure how she felt about that possibility. She had too many things on her mind right now to think about that.

“No!” blurted Mike. “I mean you know … not like that. I think you’re cool and everything. I just never got to touch a girls titties before.”

Debbie folded her arms under the titties being discussed, framing them nicely, though that wasn’t her intent.

“Well you’re not going to be feeling mine any time soon. I can’t believe you Mike Sumner! I should tell your mother what you just asked.”

TBC

Mike reacted just like her brother would have, groveling and begging and promising anything if she’d refrain from getting him in trouble. It was a lesson Debbie would remember. Up to that point the only male she had any real sway over was her brother, at least in terms of using extortion and blackmail to control a boy. But she took it easy on him. All she really wanted right then was for him to go home so she could talk to Robby about the manor. So she told him to go home and think about what he’d done, about how he’d hurt her feelings. She even worked up a tear and managed to look sad and confused about how a friend could sink so low.

Mike escaped while the escaping was good.

Once he was gone Debbie’s demeanor changed instantly from a weepy teenage girl to a young woman deadly serious about attacking a real problem.

“What are we gonna do Robby?” she asked him worriedly.

“I don’t know,” he said, just as worriedly.

“We could call the police,” she suggested.

“If he hired somebody to take a big machine like that in there he’s not trying to hide anything,” reasoned Robby. “I mean he’s not trespassing or anything.”

“What’s he doing there?!” cried Debbie. “That’s our place Robby! He can’t just take it away from us! That’s not fair!”

“What about our stuff?” asked Robby.

Over the years they’d taken small personal items to the house. The nest that had been in the root cellar had been moved to one of the bedrooms that they adopted as their own. There wasn’t a lot other than a few smuggled pillows and one blanket.

What Robby was talking about, however, was their treasure trove. An old hand-made wooden jewelry box had been found and, while it contained nothing of real value that they could see, they had made it into the place they put all the treasures they did find in their explorations. The two coins were there, along with a heavy salt shaker that they thought was made of silver. There was a polished comb of bone, intricately carved, that Debbie used to pin up her hair when they played dress-up in the past. And, their prize possession, a gold pocket watch they’d found stuffed into a hole in the mattress of what appeared to have been a woman’s bedroom. The watch still worked and it was beautiful.

“We have to go get it!” whispered Debbie, even though they were the only two people in the house.

“We can’t do that. He’ll catch us,” whispered back Robby.

“We’ll wait ‘til he leaves and then get it,” reasoned Debbie.

“He locked that gate from the inside. What if he’s not leaving?” reasoned Robby.

“He has to leave sometime,” said Debbie firmly.

In the end, they couldn’t think of anything to do, and each subsided to think while they waited for their mother to get home. Both instinctively believed that she would somehow know something that would somehow make everything okay again.

Indecision reigned for half an hour as Debbie and Robby tried to divine something to do. Debbie was probably more upset about the changes in their world than Robby, until she pointed out that they no longer had a place to go to … play. As that sunk in Robby got more and more upset until he was as frantic as Debbie.

“I’ll go down to the bank and talk to Mom,” he suggested. “You stay here and watch the house.” They both knew he meant the mansion, and not their own house.

For lack of a better plan, Debbie agreed and, after Robby pounded out of the front door, she stood in her window and stared at the dunce cap roof of the tower next door.

Perhaps it was because Debbie had always been self confident, afraid of very little, that she decided she needed to watch the new goings-on from closer. It wasn’t a conscious decision that led her back to the fence and their “private entrance”, and through the woods to the rear of the carriage house. But that’s where she found herself, peering through a tangle of brush at the back of the mansion. There wasn’t, of course, much to see. The house sat there, like it always had, lonely looking, run down and forlorn.

She had settled into a comfortable squat, holding on to a branch to keep her balance, when sudden movement at the back door of the house caught her eye. She was suddenly struck by the fact that the boards that had kept that entrance from being used were gone, and the door had opened.

But the man who came out of that door and began walking directly toward her was not the hermit she had seen before. This man was younger, slimmer, without the trench coat. And his face was smooth shaven, with a thatch of brown hair above it … not the dark and ominous beard and black hair of the hermit. He was wearing shorts and a T shirt that was dark with sweat around the neck and armpits. The man looked gray and she realized he was covered with dust.

About the same time it registered in her brain that he was walking toward her hiding place.

TBC

Panic seized her and she froze, not breathing as the man stalked closer. Then he veered to his right and approached the little wooden shack that sat alone in what had been the far reaches of the back yard. The kids had examined that little shack, puzzled at first when all they found inside was a low shelf, like a floor mounted cabinet, with a round smooth-edged hole cut in the top, and a dark, empty pit under it. Then Robby remembered seeing something like this at their grandfather’s farm when they were little. It was an outhouse. Once that had been determined, they had forgotten all about the little building. If they needed to use the bathroom they simply went home.

But this man went to the shack, now leaning a bit because of the growth of a big sycamore tree that had grown up right next to it. He went inside and the door slammed shut.

Debbie moved then, getting further behind the bush she was hiding behind. She was amazed to hear singing coming from the outhouse, snatches of an old rock and roll tune from the fifties. He stayed in there for what seemed a long time to her, and she jumped as the door banged open and the man came out, zipping up his shorts. He was still mumbling the words to the song, and he even broke into a dance of sorts as he trudged along the path that led to the structure. When he got to the back door of the mansion he turned around and his head swiveled as he surveyed the carriage house and the woods around it. With a shake of his head he turned on his heel and re-entered the house, slamming the door closed behind him.

It was the normality of his actions that troubled Debbie the most. He acted like he had every right in the world to be in the house … to have removed the barrier to entry … to use the outhouse. On impulse Debbie backed out of her hiding place and retreated deeper into the woods. She then began circling the mansion, taking special care to see if there were any other changes that had been made. With a sinking heart she noted that the front door was also uncovered, as were the windows at the front of the house. It looked different somehow, more like a house, though still disheveled and morose in appearance. Some of the windows didn’t look as grimy and fly-specked as she remembered them.

It looked like the man … or men … were planning to stay.

But there were still so many questions. Who was this new man? Where was the hermit, and who was he? Why had they come to ruin things? What were they doing in the house? Were they searching for treasure? Debbie thought of her and Robby’s little stash of recovered valuables. It was lying in plain sight in the bedroom they’d decided was “their” bedroom, which had once belonged to a little girl. Had these strangers found that stash?

It was the desire to get answers to these questions that drove Debbie to the root cellar, and through the tunnel, to attempt to open the secret door as quietly as she could. It made a horrible racket, the hinges squeaking as she slowly pulled it open. It had never made that much noise in the past … had it?

She didn’t have a candle … hadn’t thought to bring one … but by now she knew the secret passage like the back of her hand and didn’t really need a light.

Slowly, taking extra care to step quietly, she crept up the stairs, wincing at each creak her footfalls made. The first peep hole gave her a view of the kitchen, but no one was there. Then she tried the dining room, also without success. As she approached the upper part of the house she began to hear faint noises. She struck pay dirt in the little boy’s bedroom. The man … the second man … was in that room. She peered through the peep hole and watched as he moved a broom along the floor. She wondered inanely why he wasn’t using a vacuum cleaner and then remembered there was no electricity. The bed had been stripped and the decayed mattress was standing, half leaning against one wall as it tried to settle into a lump. What little furniture was in the room had all been shoved to line one wall, leaving the floor open for the man to sweep. He was humming.

She was closer to him now and could examine him better. She judged his age to be about that of her mother’s. He was deeply tanned and had obviously come from someplace where he was in the sun a lot. His face was strong-jawed and lined, as if he had spent a lot of time in the weather. He wasn’t skinny, but there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him either. His leg and arm muscles were well defined. He looked like he was in good shape and used to working hard. His hair looked wild and unkempt, but only in the sense that it looked like he’d lost his comb or something. He needed a haircut, or her mother would think he needed one anyway.

Debbie realized her muscles were cramped. She had been staring through the holes at the man for a long time and hadn’t moved. She backed up and then had a frantic thought that her brother must be back by now and wondering where she was. She turned and made her way back down to the root cellar, trying to be quiet, and astonished at how much noise her passage made. Once she had stuck her head up out of the entrance to the cellar and made sure the coast was clear, she ran like a deer, dodging between trees and bushes, squeezing through the fence and arriving at her house panting and sweating. She slammed through the back door calling her brother’s name, but got no answer.

The phone rang suddenly on the wall right by her shoulder and she jumped.

“HELLO!” she shouted into the handset, and then relaxed, thinking how silly she was acting.

“Honey?” came her mother’s voice. “Are you okay?”

Debbie sighed. “Yes Mom, I just had to run to get the phone.”

“Oh” said a confused Ramona Franklin. “It only rang once.”

“Um …” mumbled Debbie, trying to think of something to say. “It rang a whole bunch of times here,” she lied.

“Well, never mind. Honey, Robby was here. Don’t do anything! Do you hear me? Don’t worry about anything. I’ll explain it when I get home.”

“Mom!” complained Debbie. “What’s going on?”

“I’ll explain when I get home. Don’t worry about it, Okay? Don’t you go over there and bother that man. Do you understand me Debbie?”

Her mom’s voice held an anxious concern, as if there were something terrible going on and she was afraid. It didn’t help things at all.

Debbie’s take-charge attitude bubbled up. “Mommy I want to know what’s going on!” she pleaded. “Who is that man? What’s he doing over there?” She almost told her mother what changes had been made to the place and then remembered she wasn’t supposed to know anything about the mansion.

“Don’t be scared, honey,” said her mother’s voice in her ear. “I’ll explain everything when I get home. I have to get back to work. I’ll see you in a few hours. Bye bye.”

The phone went dead and Debbie moved the handset to where she could look at it, like she could will her mother to come back on the line and answer her questions. She slumped as she hung it up and leaned against the wall. She was still breathing heavily.

Debbie gave out a little shriek as Robby barged in the back door and almost ran into his sister. His hands gripped her forearms. He had ridden his bike to the bank and was as out of breath as she was. They stared at each other for a few seconds, trying to decide what to do or say.

“Mom said not to worry!” Robby barked as Debbie said, “I went over there!” at the same time.

Then there were the inevitable “What?!“s as they got control of themselves and deciphered what each had said.

Debbie took center stage, though, as Robby stared at her astonished that she’d gone over there to spy by herself. As she described what she saw he got more and more upset.

“Anything could have happened!” he shouted, getting red in the face. “You could have gotten caught! He might have hurt you!” He was shaking, still gripping her forearms, his knuckles white, his fingers digging deep into her muscles.

She shook him off “You’re the one hurting me!” she yelled, trying to shake free of his grasp. “Let go of me!”

His grip relaxed suddenly and she fell backward, against the wall. She rubbed first one and then the other forearm.

“I didn’t get caught!” she said, her voice forced.

Robby felt weak suddenly. He was thinking about the amorphous man catching his sister. His imagination showed him slaps, her blouse tearing, her breasts exposed to the stranger … He shook his head to stop himself from thinking more.

He gripped her hands this time, more gently. “But you coould have gotten caught. Deb he might have done things to you,” he whined. “I couldn’t live without you.”

Debbie felt a flush of warmth in her belly at his words. Her anger melted. She felt an overflowing gush of love for her twin brother.

She slammed against him, her arms going around him as he hugged her back instinctively. Her grip was fierce … possessive.

“You’re so sweet,” she mumbled into his chest.

All their surprise … their fear … their anxiousness … all the unanswered questions and the tension that went along with everything that had happened … it all burst forth in each of them in that embrace.

This … this embrace … this intimacy, was something they did understand … something that made them feel safe and warm. All the emotions they felt were suddenly channeled toward that intimacy and the embrace became sexual.

They both felt each other’s bodies pressed against the other. Debbie’s face came up and her lips sought her brother’s. It was a crushing kiss, a bruising kiss, a kiss filled with urgency to do something they both were comfortable with.

They’d never done anything sexual at home together. It was an unwritten, almost unacknowledged rule. What they shared was reserved for the manor, that little girl’s bedroom, with the ghosts looking on fondly as something loving was done in the house that had so many terrible memories staining its old walls.

But the urge was so strong that that prohibition was blown away as if by a tornado. Still kissing, still hugging, they fumbled with each other’s clothing, he unbuttoning her blouse and she tugging at the fastening of his shorts. His hands roamed across her breasts, his palms scraping her sensitive nipples as her hand snaked into his shorts to grip his suddenly stiff prick. The strangeness of their contact - they had never touched each other before … only watching the other as they sated their passions - that strangeness didn’t seem odd at all. Too many other strange things had happened and what they wanted now was something to make them feel good, and happy.

Standing in the hallway by the kitchen, though, wasn’t what Debbie wanted. She wanted to be naked … on a bed. She wanted an orgasm naked and on a bed, and she pulled him, gasping and panting to the short stairway that led to her bedroom. He held her hand with one hand and held his shorts up with the other as he staggered along behind her.

No words were necessary and they both stripped out of their clothes efficiently and quietly. He got naked first and stood there, his prick pointing at her like an accusing finger. As soon as she dropped her panties she melted against him again, though, that hard cock pressing into her abdomen. She shivered, even though both were sweating still, from their exertions and excitement.

Since masturbation was what they knew, they gravitated naturally toward that as Debbie pulled him to the bed and gasped, “Touch me.”

They ended up lying side by side, kissing each other with long, breath-stealing kisses as his fingers fumbled at first between her legs. She raised one leg and draped it on top of his to give him room. Her hand gripped his cock and slid sensuously along its length. Then, because they had watched each other dozens of times, their hands took on familiar rhythms. Her stroke was the same speed he used when he started, and his two fingers found her electrifying nubbin and began circling it, scraping sideways across it occasionally. Almost naturally, as she speeded up and his prick began to weep its sticky essence, his fingers moved in faster circles. She moaned as she felt her orgasm within a hair’s breadth away and jerked him even faster.

“Oh Robby!” she gasped. “Pinch it for me Robby.”

His slippery fingertips found the bump and he tried to grasp it, slipping off again and again. But that squeezing mashed it delightfully and she tumbled into an orgasm harder than any she’d brought on herself. Her tenseness, her whining voice as she made nonsense sounds, and her hand, still whaling on his prick, brought Robby off and his cock delivered its heavy load between them, getting on their stomachs, her breasts and her hand and arm as she kept pulling.

“Uhhh ….Uhhhh …Ahhhhh,” groaned Robby as his seed erupted satisfyingly. Her hand left his prick to grab his own hand, stopping him from abusing her clitty any longer. It was too sensitive now and she didn’t need any more stimulation. She sagged, her face rolling into his chest as her hand came to the mess between them and spread its warm mass up to her breasts and over each nipple.

“Oh Robby,” she sighed.

There was no shame or remorse. What they had shared was something priceless, to be remembered and savored many nights when they weren’t together.

It had also drained them of their anxiety and worry.

“I made a mess,” said Robby, rolling away from her.

“I don’t care,” she said, still stroking her breasts and belly with her spunk-covered hand. “We can clean it up before Mom gets home.”

“I really liked that Deb,” he sighed.

“Me too,” she sighed back. “Why didn’t we think about doing that before this?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He rolled back toward her for a kiss, disregarding the wet between them. It was worth it to taste her lips again.

Eventually his spend cooled, and got uncomfortable for both of them. They rolled apart and bounced up off the bed, suddenly energized by the task of getting the bedspread into the washing machine and using warm wash clothes to clean each other up. Robby paid special attention to the fluff of hair between Debbie’s legs and she laughed and pushed him away.

“Stop!” she giggled. “You’ll get me going again.”

“So?” he asked.

“Mom will be home soon,” she chided. “I don’t think she’d approve.”

“You got that right,” he sighed. “Is what we do wrong Deb?”

“I don’t think so,” she said firmly. “It feels too good to be something bad.”

“What are we going to do now?” he asked. They both knew he was talking about the loss of their private place.

“I don’t know. Mom said she could explain it. All we can do is wait and see what she says.” Debbie sounded sad.

TBC on the next Chapter……

Chapter Three

Ramona Franklin’s emotions were almost at as high a peak as her childrens’ had been as she drove home from the bank. She’d known this day might come. She’d dreamed that this day might come. But another part of her had dreaded this day coming. It was all tied up with her past, a past she’d tried to leave behind her like a bad dream. She’d gone to college, looking for and hoping to find a man to share her life with so that her life could be normal. Up to that point in time her life had been anything but normal.

Ramona had found a man, whom she had fallen in love with, and who had presented her with two beautiful, normal, happy children. That he had been someone she knew long before she ever stepped upon a college campus was as much a surprise to her as it was to him. They had gone to High School together, but had traveled in different social circles. She tried to fade into the background and he was involved in every extra curricular activity he could fit into his schedule. She had gone home to study each day, doing extra work on the weekends, while he dated all the popular girls.

When they bumped into each other at a Freshman mixer at Welsley College, she was amazed to see him. It was an exclusive school, so small that most people didn’t even know it existed. He had been from a blue collar family, with limited means. And he had smiled at her.

“Hey, is it a small world or what?” he said, walking up to her.

She hadn’t thought he’d recognize her. “I didn’t think you’d even know who I am,” she replied.

“Are you kidding? It’s great to see a familiar face. I thought I was going to be all alone here,” he said.

Their chat had turned into a pledge to study together. He had obtained an academic scholarship and needed to keep high marks to maintain it. He was also the first person in his family to go to college, so a lot of hopes were riding on him. His manner was so easygoing that Ramona had pushed away her fear of letting someone close to her.

By the time they had finished the first semester they were not only study mates, but they were lovers. He never questioned why she had no virginity to make their first time uncomfortable, or that she seemed to know what to do, perhaps even more than he did. She never talked about her past, and he never questioned her about it, seeming to know that she didn’t want to that subject broached.

They married while they were seniors, when it became apparent she was going to have his baby despite the precautions they had taken. Both welcomed the marriage and the baby. That was what young people were supposed to do. His family welcomed her into their lives. She had no family to ask questions, and her guardian was happy to see her married so that he could begin to finalize certain arrangements and his task would be complete.

When Richard had taken her back to Nettleton, to show her their new house, a time she should have been overjoyed, she was almost crushed. She couldn’t believe it was right next to the house that inhabited her bad dreams, the house in which her parents had been slain, the house that she never wanted to see again in her life. Right next door to the Nettleton mansion.

Her husband didn’t know, of course, because she hadn’t told him. All he knew was that her parents were dead in a tragic incident. He didn’t know she was Elizabeth Nettleton, or that, upon marriage, she would receive her portion of a trust fund that would make them wealthy beyond almost anyone’s wildest dreams. He didn’t know because Ramona didn’t want the money. She wanted a normal life, free from her past. The irony of having to live next to the one place on earth she never wanted to see again was almost palpable, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t want him to know. And when she was summoned one last time to her guradian, who handed her the legal letter informing her that an account had been established in her maiden name, which she was now free to draw upon at her will, she burned the letter, and the account number with it.

Her mind drifted, against her will, to the history she wanted to forget.

When Ramona and her brother had first been carried out of the crime scene, there had been chaos for a while. They had been separated at first, having been placed in an orphanage where boys and girls were not allowed to mix, whether they were related or not. Most four-year-olds don’t remember much about what happened to them at that age, but the changes in Ramona’s life were so tumultuous that they were imprinted in her mind forever.

It had taken six months for her father’s will to be found and executed. That will had very specific provisions in it about who would take care of the children, and provided funds from the estate to do so. Ramona’s reunion with her brother was joyous, but relatively short-lived. The woman her father had specified as guardian only had charge of them for a year before her tuberculosis wasted her away. The court then gave over their care to another family, a family that the judge classified as “temperate and stable” and which made their living by fostering children such as the two.

Ramona’s life had been good with the woman, and her relationship with her brother had been close. Their new guardian sent them to boarding school, paid for by trust funds established in their father’s will but they saw each other rarely, in arranged formal “sitting room” meetings, where they were expected to drink tea and have light conversation.

The house and grounds in which they had lived was also put into trust, to be turned over to Robert upon reaching his majority. Money was set aside to ensure that the property was maintained. Other funds were put into trust for the children, but conditions were attached. For Ramona, she would receive access to her trust when she married, or finished college, whichever came first. For Robert, his trust could not be touched until he graduated from a university.

Roger Nettleton had planned well, and his will had been very detailed and specific. But, without an advocate keeping a close eye on things and, people being what they are, things didn’t always go as he had planned. The money was guarded by banks and the law, and though people tried to get at it, they failed, for the most part. Their new guardian didn’t care about the house. He signed off on authorizations for its upkeep, but didn’t actually check to see what was happening. Those funds were skimmed and pocketed most of the time.

The boarding school presented inflated bills and expenses associated with the Nettleton children, and the finite amount of money legally set aside for that purpose, which should have taken care of their education through High School, was depleted by the time they were in the eighth grade.

When their guardian couldn’t find a way to extract more money from the estate, he was forced to take them into his own home, where they were, for the most part, unwelcome mouths to feed. The other fosterlings in the house had an established hierarchy of “rank”. Ramona and Robert were at the lower end of the scale, getting only hand-me-downs and the last helpings of food.

Their new guardian had had some success in the past at getting money by having the children take his name. It wasn’t adoption - that would have ended outside financial compensation - but sometimes a child’s trust fund could be penetrated in the legal twists and turns of such a procedure. Ramona, in a vain effort to exorcise the horrors of her past, accepted that suggestion, adopting her middle name and the last name of her guardian.

Robert did not.

While the man’s dream of getting access to Ramona’s trust failed, she was glad for her name change when they entered the public school system. As they went through school, teachers always perked up when the Nettleton name was called in class. No one paid any attention to Ramona Shanks, though, and she preferred it that way. People knew she lived in the same house, and that there was “another Nettleton child”, but never put the two together.

Robert, knowing the travails of bearing the Nettleton name, did not publicly acknowledge that Ramona was his sister. He protected her as best he could at “home”, where they shared a room that was big enough for one child. They both tried to keep a low profile, both at home and at school and, for the most part, succeeded.

TBC

There was a price to pay, however, and that price was that the only people in the world who loved the Nettleton children were … each other. Their forced proximity at home, sleeping in the same bed well into puberty, and their reliance on each other for all of their emotional needs, led to a closeness between the siblings that polite society would have been horrified at.

Their guardian, a man with zealous religious convictions, was not aware of their relationship and the effect that entering puberty had had on that relationship. He worked ceaselessly to convince Robert that service to mankind as a missionary was the only way to extinguish the evil that had hounded the Nettleton family in the past. He tried to convince Ramona of that as well, encouraging her to become a nun. There was, in the back of the man’s mind, the thought that if she never married, and Robert never went to college, all that money would remain in the bank, and he might find some way to get it.

Ramona had resisted the man’s brainwashing.

Robert had not.

He was tortured, not only by their family history, but by the fact that the only real joy he experienced was when he was in his sister’s welcoming embrace, as they writhed naked in the dark of night, performing their sinful dance of lust together. The thought of receiving forgiveness for what he couldn’t control drove him to follow their guardian’s plan. After High School he joined a group of missionaries, turning his back on wealth.

He hadn’t told Ramona of his decision until the night before he was due to leave. She didn’t know this was the last time she’d feel his weight pinning her to the lumpy mattress as he probed her depths with his manhood and she felt the warm rush of his love spewing into her womb.

He gave her that one last moment of bliss before he turned her world on its ear once again.

Then, he disappeared overseas somewhere, being chased by his own demons.

She cried bitterly for weeks after he left. Her loss was assuaged to some degree by the letters he sent, addressed to her through their guardian.

And she responded to those letters. The letters were forwarded to him by the people who administrated whatever mission he was assigned to at the time. When she went to college he was able to send his letters directly to her, but she still had to respond by routing her letters through the mission center, because many times he could collect his mail only every six months or so. She told him, over the years of her new life, college, Richard and her children. She informed him her desire to keep her past secret from her new husband. She knew he was in Africa somewhere, after having been stationed in several other exotic locations.

His letters grew fewer and fewer, and hers to him as she found love and emotional support from Richard replacing that of her distant brother. When she and Richard had moved into their new home, and she no longer had a private mail box in which to receive letters from a man her husband knew nothing about, she made the gut-wrenching decision to stop writing. She had cried about that for weeks too.

They had not communicated for the past five years.

She had tried to ignore the unhappy place next door to her new home, and concentrated instead on loving her husband and raising her twins. She hoped that Robert could find some happiness too.

Then, as if the dark miasma of her former home had sniffed around and found her, seeping through the iron fence to continue its assault on normalcy, her husband was killed. A truckload of paper products was too heavy, and the brakes of the truck failed as it came down the mountain side. Richard had seen what was happening and drove for the shoulder. The truck driver, thinking to avoid hitting any cars, also headed for the woods at the side of the road. Neither could adjust and Richard was killed instantly.

Had her twins not been there … not needed her … she would have taken her own life. But she had to go on. There was only one other person she could turn to … her brother Robert, but the one human in the world who might be able to fully understand how she felt was beyond her reach. She didn’t even know where he was any more. The thought of what it would take to write a letter, which might not even be read by him for months, caused her to leave pen and paper lying unused.

She got a job at the bank, ironically the same bank that still guarded a fortune that was hers, but which she still thought of as blood money. She was aware that, while he was involved in his missionary work, Robert had somehow obtained a college degree. Access to personal accounts gave her the information that he drew from his own fortune from time to time, but not in large amounts. He used less than the annual interest his account earned. She took comfort in seeing those small transactions, though, because that told her he was still alive.

Life had eventually settled back down for Ramona. Her twins and her job filled her days for her, as well as her love of reading and quilting. She made a half dozen intricate, huge quilts that adorned the beds in the house and filled several storage containers.

In honor of her brother’s life work, she made a large number of plainer ones that she donated to Robert’s missionary headquarters to be sent wherever they were needed. She also gave them to the Salvation Army, dropping them off as simple donations packed in paper sacks recycled from grocery shopping. A woman who worked at the Salvation Army center had wanted to know her name, but she demurred, simply saying “These are for whoever needs them.”

Toiling over the quilts gave her satisfaction that she was doing something worthwhile with the time she had wanted to throw away when Richard was killed.

And she was proud of her children. They were smart, and strong and happy, untouched by the ugliness of their heritage and unearned wealth that might have corrupted them. She knew she’d have to dip into her unwanted trust fund to send them to college, but that was for a good cause too, and she didn’t want them to have to scrimp and work, like she had breren forced to do, herself in school. True, her tuition had been taken care of by the trust fund, but her living expenses she earned herself, never responding to letters asking how much she needed for such things.

She had been tempted, when, after Richard died, her guardian contacted her and suggested he knew worthy charities that could benefit from the money she wasn’t spending, but she ignored him. He was a cold and loveless man, who dominated his wife mercilessly, as if she were chattel. His attitude toward the children under his care was also cold and distant. She had suspicions about where the money would have gone. Even though he had been handsomely paid for his duties under the court appointment that gave him dominion over the Nettleton children, he had made it quite clear that he deserved more, and they deserved nothing.

That she didn’t want her children to ever face such a life was a lesson she learned the hard way. Her will was up-to-date and even more specific than her father’s will had been when he was murdered in his bed.

All had been mostly serene. She found happiness in her children, and the things she used her time for. There was an emptiness in her heart since Richard had been taken, but that pain was less severe than others she could recall.

There had been overtures from men from time to time. She didn’t consider herself to be beautiful, though many of those men would have disagreed. Their attention had appealed to the little vanity she had left in her … had made her feel warm and good. But the idea of laboring toward a relationship that was more than just dinner now and then, or that included passion, was something she avoided. There had been too much loss in her life to risk more. Nothing gained meant nothing could be lost, as far as she was concerned. That passion still lurked in her, she knew. She tried to keep a lid on that, succumbing to her infrequent sexual yearning only in-so-far as using her fingers to bring release now and again.

She convinced herself it was enough.

Yes, life wasn’t so complicated that she couldn’t enjoy it, all things considered.

Until she received a registered letter, in her married name, addressed to her at the bank.

It was from her brother.

She had no idea how he had tracked her down, but he had. She had read it so often that its contents were committed to memory now:

“Dearest Rami,

I have done what I could to comfort the bereft wherever I found them. I have missed you more than I would have thought possible. Living among the needy has illuminated my own emptiness.

I have decided to return to our house … to restore it to its former grandeur, and try to make of it a place of happiness and light. I know you want nothing to do with that sad place, but this is something that is driving me. I know not what I’ll do with it once its darkness is expelled. I know I may not even be able to do that. Perhaps I’ll donate it to the county as a museum. But I know this is something I must do.

I want to see you again too, dearest sister. I know you are happy with your husband and family, and I will not intrude upon that happiness. Please find it in your heart to let me see you again when I return, if only briefly and in secret, and then I shall retreat again, leaving you to your well-deserved wonderful life.

The image of your face in my mind has lifted me from despair on more occasions than I could count. I know I was never a good brother to you, but I have learned much about the world and myself in my years abroad. I’m not the man you knew so long ago.

I don’t know exactly when I’ll be done with this commitment. I’ll contact you when I return.

All my love”

His signature was simple script, spelling “Bobby”

That had been a rough day for Ramona. Memories and fears had come rushing back, affecting her so much that another employee had become alarmed, asking if she were okay and offering to call for help. She had folded up the letter and gotten control of herself, stammering that everything was fine … that it was just a bit of unsettling news. She had thrown herself back into her work, concentrating on each of her customers as if they were the only people alive at the time.

Later she had re-read the letter, and many times since then. Her emotions had undergone a roller coaster-like journey within her mind. She was filled with questions. How could Robert want to have anything to do with the mansion? True, he owned it, according to the provisions of their father’s will, but how could he want to restore it? Could it even be restored? What did that mean for her and her children, living in the shadow of the place? How would she feel when she saw him? What would she say? How would all this change her life?

And then, there was their former relationship to think about. As children they had clung to each other, orphaned by cruel circumstance, living in a cold and loveless place with foster parents who cared but little for them. They had naturally bonded much more closely than most siblings ever did. That bonding, over the years, had led to things their guardian would have raged at … would have called an abomination. He had never known what they did together. Those times were the few memories Ramona had that were joyous and happy. She loved her brother and he loved her, and nothing could take that love away. There was bitterness there too, though, for the fact that their love could not be consummated publicly. Society forbade that. Never mind thousands of years of historical precedence. Never mind that their love was true and pure. Never mind that they could be happy together. That was not to be … not if the powers of “propriety” had anything to say about it.

And, knowing that, Robert had foresworn their love and separated from her, tearing her heart from her chest. Once again, the only love they had known was ripped from them by events beyond their control, leaving wounded, bleeding survivors to make their way in that hostile world as best they could.

And now … that wound would be reopened. Robert made it clear that he didn’t intend to interrupt her life, but he didn’t know of the changes that had taken place since her last letter to him. He made it clear that their former relationship was a thing of the past, and that he didn’t intend to resume it. But Ramona’s feelings on that point weren’t so clear.

All in all, Ramona was as upset about the “stranger” who had opened the gates of the Nettleton Mansion after all these years as her children were. Ironically, their fears were remarkably similar. Their lives had been turned topsy-turvy, and the result was an emotional storm of doubt, fear, and anguish over forbidden love.

She pulled into her driveway, stopped the car, and laid her head gently against the steering wheel as she wept quietly.

Ten minutes later, providence preventing her children from realizing she was home already, the woman who entered the Franklin household was a completely different woman.

“I’m home,” she sang, expecting and getting an excited welcome from her children.

“Thank goodness you’re home!” Debbie said excitedly, skipping into the living room, where her mother was dropping her purse and keys on the sideboard where she kept them.

Ramona held up her hands. “Be patient a little longer. We’re having a visitor for dinner tonight. All will be explained.”

“But Mahhhhhm” came the drawn out protest. “You have to tell us what’s going on!”

TBC