Chapter 20: The White Witch of Walden - Plot and Tempest

WILLIE AND THE TREE

I returned home about three the following afternoon. I taught for four hours on Thursdays, and the young men and women in that class were not my favorite students. Let's face it: no one WANTS to be in summer courses. I had dropped my application and letter on the dean's desk, expressing my desire for only one course during the fall semester. Though my two years toward tenure would be held in reserve until I began teaching full-time again, I somehow knew my career as a professor was over. I sighed as I pulled the Mercedes into our driveway. At least I had Friday off. A three-day weekend looked especially tantalizing.

The girls were outside, waiting for me. They were dressed much the same as they'd been six days ago; in shorts and t-shirts, Dee's stretched tightly over her protruding belly. They stood nervously beside the truck, which had obviously been packed again for another camping trip. Maxine was especially excited, bounding around, barking, whining to be let in the truck's back seat for the trip she knew was coming.

"What's all this about?" I demanded, getting wearily out of the car.

"We thought that we all needed a getaway," Brenda explained. She had a nervous expression. There was something she wasn't telling me. "We didn't get to spend the night last week. We owe Maxine a camping trip." She reached down and stroked the dog's head.

"The boat's still down at our marina," I said. "Why don't we go tomorrow morning? I'll have time to get it out and take it with us."

"We don't need the boat, Freddy. You can rent one, if you really want to go fishing later. We want to go camping today!" She couldn't seem to keep eye contact. Dee kept her eyes downcast, as well. She'd developed the habit of running her fingertips across her abdomen when she was nervous or thinking about something. "Please, Freddy," Brenda pleaded softly, finally looking me in the eye. "We want to go today! Please?"

"They're calling for a good chance of thunderstorms tonight."

"Please?"

"What's this all about, Brenda?"

"Don't ask, Freddy. Okay? We'll tell you tonight, after we're there. It's important to us."

"Is this about Willie? Have you been in contact with her? Are you going to meet her?"

"No." She looked back down at her feet again. "I mean... no. I mean, it has something to do with her, but we haven't been in contact with her, and we aren't going to meet her. I don't think. I mean..." She looked back up again, exasperated. "Oh, Freddy, please! Don't make me beg you! We NEED this!"

I held up my hands. "Okay, okay! I'll get ready, and we'll go camping!" I started walking toward the house, Maxine running circles around me, barking, urging haste.

The drive to the same campground was done mostly in silence. This was my fourth trip there that week (including my two fact-finding excursions), and it was almost two hours away. It was a warm day, and we had the windows rolled down, so conversation would have been difficult, anyway. Maxine kept going from one side of the back seat to the other, sticking her head out, seeing if the air was any different on opposing sides of the truck. When we got there, the campground wasn't as crowded as it had been the previous week, but of course that would be the case on a Thursday versus a Friday. Still, our choice campsite from the preceding trip was occupied, and I chose another one nearby that was more out in the open.

The girls told me they would set up camp, and I grabbed my favorite fly rod and walked down to the lake's edge, Maxine at my side. There is nothing as therapeutic as fly fishing; and an hour's effort, though producing only one perch (which I let go), was just what the doctor ordered. As I walked back to the campsite, the dog bounding all around me, I found that I had a much improved disposition and calmer nerves.

The campsite was in more or less good order when I got there. The tent was up, though the girls had missed a few tie points on the large alpine tent, an error I easily rectified. The air mattress was inflated and the sleeping bag was spread atop it. There was a fire going, and Dee had made foil packets containing ground beef, bacon, onions and sliced potatoes, which sizzled on the coals and smelled wonderful. I took out a folding shovel and dug a shallow trench around the tent, just in case the weatherman was right about those storms, which, with building cumulonimbus on the horizon, looked probable. I waited until the meal was almost over before broaching the subject of what had brought us here.

"We've been having dreams, Freddy," Brenda said as she cleaned up the table, throwing the paper plates and my empty beer bottle into a trash bag. Dee was quick to get me a second beer. I had just decided I'd like to have another, but hadn't yet asked.

"Dreams?"

"Dreams about Willie.

I looked toward Dee. "Both of you?"

"Yes," Dee answered. "But that's not the weird part."

"Weird part?"

Brenda took over again. "We have the same dream, Freddy. Each time it happens, we're always together, Dee and I, and when we wake up, we've found that we've had identical dreams. It only happens when we sleep together, but it's been three times this week. And we've always had the same dreams. I mean, they've been different dreams, each time, but we've dreamt them together. Does that make sense?"

"Yes," I said flatly, "it does. One of you has been talking in your sleep, and the other has the dream as she hears it." They looked dubious. "You are both very, very suggestible," I continued gently. "That's how I can hypnotize you so easily."

Brenda shook her head. "It's not like that at all. I KNOW when you've given me a suggestion during a trance. I can... feel it. I never, ever fight it because... well, because... I like obeying you. I NEED to obey you. But I know when you've implanted a feeling in me. Like last night with Dee. I know that you made me have those feelings. But I always surrender to them. Always. Because it's what you want, and because... because... I like to surrender."

This was a bit of a revelation. I wasn't entirely sure I believed it, but I saw no reason to argue the point. "Okay," I said, "so YOU talked in your sleep, and it was Dee who heard and had a copycat dream."

Dee suddenly couldn't make eye contact. She was hiding something. I looked at her curiously. "Dee?"

"I..." She looked guilty. "I can... Sometimes, I can... see Willie. I can go to her. And I can take Brenda with me. When I'm dreaming, it's easy."

I shook my head. "Oh, Dee. That's just... crazy."

"It's true, Freddy," my wife stated. "In the dreams, Dee and I are just... there. We're not really participating. We're just there, watching Willie."

I couldn't think of anything to say. There was some sort of mental unbalance at work here. Had the hypnosis contributed to this?

"Please, Freddy. Please don't look at us like that. We're not going crazy. It really happened!"

"Okay," I said softly, perhaps a bit too sadly. What was I going to do? What sort of psychosis was this? I'd never had any experience with mental disorder. I decided to humor them. "What were these dreams about?"

"Well," Brenda said, "in the first one, she was just sitting there, in some sort of strange room. It had funny green wallpaper, with wooden strips running down the walls. And there was a couch that was sort of built into one wall."

"And a bed that took up nearly the whole bedroom, past the open door," Dee chimed in. "The kitchen was part of the room she was in, but the whole house looked..."

"Small," Brenda continued. "And Willie was just sitting there. And that's all she did."

"That's all she EVER does," Dee said, almost crying from the remembered emotion. "That's all she does all day long. She just sits there. Nothing to do. Nowhere to go. No one to talk to. Oh, Master, she's so horribly, terribly SAD!" Maxine, sensing the emotion, put her head in Dee's lap and whined softly.

"And then she looked at us," Brenda continued. "And she said: 'What are you doing here?' And I... we... woke up."

I could only gawk at them. Brenda, fearing a comment from me, hurried on. "And the next time we slept together, we had another dream. We were in the same place, the same room in the same little house. And Willie was sitting at a table playing a game of solitaire with a strange deck of cards. The cards were..."

"Too big," Dee went on. "And they didn't have numbers, though I couldn't see them very clearly. I didn't recognize the game..." She glanced at Brenda, who shook her head. "And she picked them all up, all the cards that she'd dealt, and she laid out some more, and she leaned over and put her eyes just inches from them, as if she couldn't see them properly any other way, and suddenly she gasped, and then she..."

"Started crying," Brenda continued. "And she cried and cried. But then she saw us, standing there watching her, and she said 'You again!' and we woke up.

"We have to help her!" Dee sobbed.

This was worse than I thought. My psychiatrist fishing buddy on campus sprang to mind. Maybe I could take the girls to him. I might as well get the whole story, though. "And last night?" I asked. "What was your dream last night?"

They exchanged one of their "looks" before Brenda turned back to me and took a deep breath. "We were in Willie's dream," she began. "She was asleep, and she was dreaming; And we were IN her dream. It was a terrible! It was about... a tree."

A tree? My mind immediately went to my own dream last night. This stuff couldn't be real. Things like this just didn't happen.

And suddenly, thunder boomed loudly. We all turned toward the west, and I beheld one of the most impressive meteorological sights I've ever seen in my life.

The sky had been darkening for some time now, both with the coming of the storm and with the late evening sun setting behind the towering clouds. This campsite was on a clearing that extended all the way to the lake, and so we had an unobstructed view of western sky. Massive nimbus extended to spectacular heights over our heads, and the last few rays of sunlight streaked their tops. But down low, along the far shore of the lake, a long, black, roiling, ominous roll cloud stretched from the northern horizon to the southern, as far as the eye could see. It was, by far, of the most powerful gust front I've ever set eyes on. It looked like a massive steam roller barreling directly toward us. As we looked, the trees on the opposite lake shore were lost from view in the inky blackness of the churning horizontal cylindrical cloud. Maxine started barking.

Dee grabbed Brenda's arm with both hands. "It's happening, Brenda! Now! We have to do it now!"

I stood, mesmerized at the sight of the approaching storm. I glanced at them curiously. "Do what?"

Brenda tore her eyes from the spectacular sight, turned to me, and stripped her t-shirt over her head. "We have to make love, Freddy."

I looked at her dumbfounded. As I did so, to my utter and abject amazement, Dee pulled her shirt over her head as well. The wind was picking up, and it was raising goose flesh on their exposed skin. Brenda began fumbling with her bra strap behind her back. This was so incredibly UNLIKE them that it took me a long moment to react. Normally, they were both painfully shy. It was just part of their nature (and perhaps one that I kept at the fore of their psyches through hypnotic reinforcement because I found it sexually stimulating). I glanced around, nervously. There were a couple other people within our viewing, but I doubted if they could see us in the gathering gloom. And they all seemed to be gawking at the rapidly approaching gust front, which would be upon us in just a few minutes. I grabbed Brenda's discarded t-shirt and held it out to her.

"Brenda, for God's sake, put this back on. We need to get in the truck. There's a storm coming!"

She popped the catch on the bra strap and pulled it off. "No, Freddy, in the tent! I need you! WE need you! We need to do it now!"

Dee, topless now as well, unzipped the front flap on the tent, stepped inside, sat on the air mattress and began taking off her shorts. "Hurry!" she urged.

Brenda reacted by pressing herself against me, nibbling on my ear, and then whispering provocatively into it. "Please, Freddy! Now! We need you!"

"What in the world?!"

She gripped my hand, the one holding the discarded t-shirt, and pulled me toward the tent.

"Tell me what's going on!" I demanded.

"Later. Please. Please, Freddy!"

Maxine jumped through the door into the tent just before us and lay down next to the mattress, her assigned sleeping spot for the night. I turned and sat heavily on the air mattress as Brenda turned to zip the tent's door back up from the inside and Dee attacked my belt buckle and the snap on my jeans.

"This is crazy," I told them. "All hell's about to break loose out there. I'm not sure this tent is going to be adequate." In resignation, I began unbuttoning my shirt, but Dee reached up and put a hand on my chest, stopping me.

"Let us do that, Master. Lie back. Let us do the work. Please." She managed to work my pants and underwear down over my hips, and then pushed me backward. I lay on my back. Brenda, completely naked now, stood over me, watching, as Dee lowered her face and took my manhood into her sucking mouth.

"At least let me take my shoes off," I moaned, but then gave in entirely to the overzealous pregnant lady sucking my cock. They ignored me. I couldn't figure it out. They'd both seemed so... sane... this morning when I went to work. What in the world had gotten into them?

The walls of the tent began rippling in the growing wind. Thunder boomed. It was growing very dark. Brenda produced a glow-stick from somewhere and broke it, shaking it a few times, and the interior of the tent was suddenly bathed in an eerie green light. The sucking mouth left my cock, and as if it were choreographed, Brenda lowered her cunt to my fleshy pole. She was extremely wet, and she slid all the way to the base in one easy motion, groaning loudly. Then she just sat there, unmoving, eyes closed, seemingly lost in the sensation.