Chapter 1

The old chest was found in a layer of peat on one of my properties by a crew which was excavating the peat for later sale as fertilizer. There was once a peat bog there long ago that had dried up and been covered over by normal soil in the centuries afterward. Since it was on one of my properties, they sent it to me to decide what to do with it.

Something about the chest intrigued me -- the properties of the peat had preserved it remarkably, and someone had sealed it carefully and completely. Whatever was inside had been kept like a little time capsule, sealed from whenever it had been placed in that old, long-ago bog. When I say sealed, I don’t just mean closed tightly, someone had used lead to cover every seam, and had made peculiar signs and sigils in that lead for good measure.

I figured the find would be of interest to scholars, so I had ultra-high-resolution pictures carefully taken of each side and sent them to a group of anthropology and historical researchers at nearby prestigious Arkham University.

After a few days, I got a call from the lead researcher that the markings did not match anything known, and, in fact, didn’t seem to resemble any known symbolism or language.

There was something that rattled inside the chest when it was moved, as if there was something solid, relatively small and loose inside. I decided to try the least invasive way I could to discover what lay within the chest that had been sealed for well over 500 years. We’d drill a tiny hole and insert a fiberoptic camera while the chest was in an oxygen-free inert gas environment.

It took about two weeks to build the room to do it in and assemble the necessary equipment. During this time, my wife got home from a business trip and took an interest in the chest. Everyone’s interest was in high gear by the time the procedure began. The only people physically present were myself, my wife, and the researcher operating the equipment, and we were located outside the chamber separated from us by crystal clear plexiglass four inches thick. A large team of researchers and scholars watched the video feed remotely at the university.

After about two minutes of slowly and carefully drilling the hole with the remote high-speed drill, an incredibly small fiberoptic camera with a light conduct through several fibers to either side was carefully fed in through the hole.

At first, we thought we had another Al Capone’s Vault situation, because it appeared that there was nothing actually in the chest. After several minutes, though, we caught a glimpse of something that looked like it might be a ruby off to one side.

The researcher took a few minutes to maneuver the camera around to get a look at it. As what looked to be a red, faceted jewel appeared momentarily on our video feed, there was a flash, and something terrible happened. First, the remote video was lost as the flash happened, and I felt the most awful tearing sensation throughout my body. I heard my wife gasp, and I must have made a similar noise, myself. The researcher abruptly pulled out the camera on its cable, activated the tool that injected the hole with a sealant, and turned to us and said goodbye. He left quickly as we were trying to decide if we were all right, and wondering exactly what had happened. We would later discover that the researcher had vanished, never to be seen again. He didn’t take anything, didn’t say anything to anyone else, he just vanished once the door had closed behind him. He didn’t even show up on the security video surveillance of the property.

Bettina and I were dizzy and weak, and had trouble standing for several minutes. We looked at each other and knew that the other wasn’t “okay” without needing to ask.

“What ... what happened?” Bettina asked me. I shrugged and shook my head, as I had no clue. I did know, and I mean “know” with every fiber of my being, that the chest needed to be lost again, where no one could ever find it.

My phone rang, and I thumbed on the speakerphone function and answered it.

“Mr. Cartwright? We didn’t see anything, the video just died. Was there nothing at all inside?” came the voice of Dr. Lyons from the university.

“Uh, no, no it was empty,” I heard myself say.

“A shame,” Lyons said, “at least the chest itself was interesting.”

“I guess,” I said. “I’ll call you later, I think. Right now I need a drink.”

“I understand, sir. Well, thank you for going to all this trouble! We’ll keep studying the markings and see if they lead us anywhere. You have a good night, sir.”

“You, too,” I answered, reaching unsteadily for my wife. The phone line went dead, and I said, “Honey, are you okay? I feel ... I feel terrible. I feel like part of me got ripped out by the roots!”

Bettina nodded. “I feel so weak! Bed, I need to lie down, rest.”

“Me, too. I don’t know if I can get there, though. I think I may fall down!”

We helped each other up, and then to the door, then through it. That door was thick, steel, and looked more like a bank vault door than anything else. I hit the close and lock switch, and didn’t even care to see that it closed and locked as it was supposed to.

Bettina and I stumbled to the elevator, and leaned against the walls holding each other as it ascended past several floors of basement, passed my office on the main floor, then opened in our bedroom. We stumbled to the bed and fell into it, exhausted.

I came to awareness naked, lying on my back on some kind of cushy floor surrounded by a glaring white circle. I moaned, and carefully looked around. The air was neither hot nor cold, but whatever I was lying on was both soft and firm at the same time. I saw my wife laying similarly about six or seven feet away, also surrounded by a glaring white circle. I lifted my head to look around, and discovered that there was a lot of white nothing around us. The floor and walls and ceiling, if there were any, and all matched each other exactly. The only things that stood out were my wife and I, everything else was just white. I carefully sat up.

“Bettina?” I called. “Can you hear me?”

“Uhhh,” moaned my wife. “Jimmy? Is that you?” I saw her raise her head a bit and then drop it back down. “Ooh, my head!”

“Yeah, me too,” I said. “Where are we?”

“Huh?” She pushed herself up into a sitting position herself, and looked around blearily.

“You look like hell,” she said, looking at me, then around. “This is weird...”

I got up to my feet, and started toward her, but came up short at the glowing circle’s inner edge when I didn’t quite hit something, a perfectly smooth curved wall. I put my hand to it, only to have it slide away to the side, following the curve of the wall. There was something there, but the surface was incredibly slick, completely frictionless. I carefully traced the inner perimeter of the circle. I was completely enclosed. The floor was soft under my feet, like walking on a soft, squishy mattress, but the sensation was odd. I’d never felt anything like it before. There wasn’t anything to pull or tear, just soft, ungrippable surface.

“I’m inside something I can’t quite touch. I can’t get to you,” I said.

Bettina struggled to her feet and found moments later that she, too, was enclosed in exactly the same fashion.

I spent about an hour trying to figure some way out. If there was one, I couldn’t find it. My head and body began to hurt less, but there was nothing to do. What I wanted most was to reach my wife, to hug her, and let her know I loved her. Time passed with no way to mark it, and I’m sure it felt like we had been there longer than we actually had been in objective time.

We waited. We had no idea what we were waiting for, but there was nothing else to do. I told her I loved her, and she said she loved me. After an eternity, we lay down, wishing we could touch, hug, embrace, comfort each other. Finally, in that changeless place, we slept.

I woke in bed cuddles up with my wife. We hadn’t even managed to take our shoes off before passing out the night before, let alone our clothes. I still felt that odd, hollow feeling, like part of me was missing. I kissed Bettina on the ear, and she woke.

“Oh ... wow. That was unpleasant,” she said, then looking at my face, said, “I meant ... what, yesterday? Earlier? What time is it?”

“6:25 ... AM from the looks if it,” I answered. “How are you feeling?”

She looked at me for a moment as she went through an internal inventory. “Not great,” she said. I feel kind of empty, or something.”

“Yeah, me too,” I agreed. “Maybe we should get something to eat?”

“I guess.”

We stood, still a bit unsteady, and went to the elevator, which was still open. We went down to my office, and then down the hall to the kitchen. Marguerite, our longtime housekeeper/au pair/all-around domestic savior looked up as we came in.

“You two do not look well,” she said. “Did you sleep in your clothes? That’s odd, even for you! Let me get you some food! An omelette, some toast, and definitely some juice to start, then coffee?”

Bettina nodded and thanked her. We both sat down heavily at the table as Marguerite busied herself at the refrigerator. Moments later, she placed a glass of juice in front of each of us and commanded sternly, “Drink!”

We did. It helped a bit.

As she cooked the omelettes, Marguerite asked, “I suppose it did not go well last night? This mysterious chest?”

“Very disappointing,” Bettina said. “Perfectly empty.”

Something niggled at my awareness. “We thought there was something for a moment, red? Reflective? Something ... but when we got the camera turned around there was nothing. Just empty. And after all the build-up, we were so disappointed we just went straight to bed.”

“In your clothes?”

“We were tired and disappointed. We just wanted to lie down after all the excitement, and then the disappointment,” said Bettina.

“Yeah, we were ... tired? Something ... we needed to rest,” I said, trying to sort through some scattered impressions and memories of the evening before and make some sense of them. There seemed to be things missing somehow. Bettina’s explanation seemed to fit, but not exactly, and it just felt somehow incomplete. I could only recall impressions of things. I’d swear I had caught a glimpse of something, but the vague memory seemed to evaporate even as I reached for it. “Now I know how Geraldo Rivera felt during Al Capone’s Vault.”

“Well, what are you going to do with that chest now? Have the researchers study it?” asked Marguerite.

“I am going to make sure it gets lost where no one will ever find it again,” I said firmly.

Bettina looked at me, surprised. “Why?”

“Just a feeling. A very strong feeling. It would be bad for anyone else to find it. I can’t explain, so don’t ask, okay?”

She shrugged. “Okay.”

Marguerite placed the omelettes in front of us, and I suddenly realized I was very hungry. Apparently Bettina was, too, as we wolfed them down even though they were still steaming hot.

Bettina and I sat close together, and we touched a lot more than usual. She felt just out of reach, and I was constantly touching her to reassure myself that I could, as did she.

As we finished breakfast, Bettina talked about our daughter’s upcoming homecoming. Bettina was very much looking forward to it, I could tell. Stephanie was due home from her second semester at college for the summer in a week’s time, and it had been her first year away from home.

After breakfast, I decided to go to my office and make a couple of calls about the chest, but as I stood to go, felt a sudden pang. “Come with me?” I asked my wife.

“Okay,” she said, giving no argument about having her own things to do, which these days was unheard-of. I think she felt it too, that need to stay close today, even though our different schedules usually tended to keep us moving in different directions.

We adjourned to my office, and she sat at my desk as I called a trustworthy manager from one of Florida land reclamation operations. I arranged to have our personal jet pick him up and remain on standby until he met with me here at the house. He was expected to arrive late that afternoon.

Bettina and I spent the day together, and were almost constantly in physical contact. We hadn’t hugged, held hands, and stroked skin like teenagers in love for years, but suddenly, there we were. It was somehow less sexual than you’d likely expect, but much more about the reassurance of the other’s presence.

When evening arrived, it brought Wilson. Wilson had been with me for many years, and was completely trustworthy to faithfully perform any special or sensitive matters as long as they weren’t illegal. In all the time he’d been with me, he had taken care of some peculiar issues for me, including locating and securing the engagement ring I had given my wife when I proposed. This included finding the right diamond with the right clarity and weight, convincing a jewelry designer who had retired to produce one more unique masterpiece and doing all of this under the radar so my soon-to-be fiancee wouldn’t learn of my plans to propose through the press. It did get to the press afterwards, of course, complete with photos of the ring and an interview with the designer explaining how he was convinced to do a favor for an old friend. He later made a lot of money from people using his design, as it was an impressively beautiful ring.

Bettina and I took Wilson to the basement, opened the vault, and I told him I wanted the chest carefully hidden where no one could find it. He made a few suggestions, we decided on several spots, and he left with the chest in his arms covered by a canvas bag. By morning it would be lost forever. I felt a great weight lift from me -- that thing was a threat, evil somehow, even if I didn’t know how, or why I knew that. I had a feeling that if we kept it, that evil would spread. People would want to open it, and that was beyond a bad idea, it would be a catastrophe. I was particularly happy that I could never find it again.

Bettina and I went to bed early, and we made love for the first time in weeks. Afterwards, we slept.

When we woke, I discovered I was not alone in my ... what, ‘cell?’ I don’t know what you’d call something with no walls you could see or touch but that you couldn’t leave. There was a youngish-looking naked woman standing nearby. I looked over to find my wife still sleeping in her ... cell, alone.

“You’re awake! Wonderful! Good morning, Jimmy!” she smiled. Her voice was familiar, and a moment later, I realized why. She was ... no, she appeared to be, my mother. My actual mother had died four years ago. She looked to be about the age when she would have given birth to me. She had the same piercing green eyes that had been my mother’s, eyes I remembered so very well, as my mother had once had very expressive eyes.

“Who are you? What do you want?” I asked.

“I’m your mother, Jimmy. Beyond that, I don’t know.”

“My mother is dead,” I said in a flat voice. I heard Bettina stir, and realized she was watching. Bettina had known Mother, and had been with me at her bedside when Mom passed.

“I know. I remember.” she said, and shivered. “Clearly. If it will make you feel better, call me Jessica. That’s my name.”

“That’s my mother’s name,” I replied tersely.

“Look, it really is all I know,” said the woman. “Well, that’s not really true, I know what your favorite food is, and the name of your best friends in every grade, and what you did with the crayon behind the blue chair when you were three. All that sort of stuff. But as for who I am, I’m your mother. For all intents and purposes.” she said.

“Whose intents and purposes?” I asked.

“No idea,” she said, so like my mother it was spooky. “I’m going to sit down, now.”

“Where are we, Jessica?” asked Bettina.

Jessica looked over, “I supposed ‘here’ is not the answer you want, is it Betty?”

“You know it isn’t, and only his mother was ever allowed to call me ‘Betty.’” snapped Bettina. “And you are not she. I was there when she died.”

“Are you sure you aren’t dead too?” asked Jessica, cocking her head to one side. Thinking ‘Jessica’ did make it easier, I thought.

“I don’t think we are,” said Bettina. “I can feel that we aren’t.”

I nodded. She was right. I was alive. “I remember the chest, and the camera, and there was something like a red gem, sparkly, to one side. We turned the camera, and there was a flash. Then we woke up here,” I said, slowly.

Bettina nodded agreement. “Maybe we’re inside it? The gem?”

I considered. “It could be. This is nothing like the real world I know.”

The figure of my mother had a smile on her face. “Interesting,” she said. “How long has it been since you ate or drank anything?”

“No idea,” I said. “It seems like days, but I’m not hungry or thirsty, and I have no idea of the time, or even if it is moving in the same way here. There is no frame of reference, no cues. No watch,” I said, glancing at my wrist.

Jessica laughed. “I guess that does leave us guessing, doesn’t it?”

“Certainly the two of us. You, I’m not so sure about.”

“Jimmy, I don’t have any idea about any of this.”

“No offense, Jessica, but you are naked, and the you I remember would curl up and die rather than be naked in front of me,” I said.

She looked down at herself. “You’re right. Something has changed. I actually feel pretty and, I don’t know ... liberated -- I looked good at this age, didn’t I? You did see me naked once, but you were too young to remember it. I used to walk around like this all the time at home, at least until you were three or so, and you got too old for me to do that. From then on, things began to droop and sag a bit, more and more every year. No woman likes to show her age, does she Bett ... Bettina?”

“I’d prefer a robe, now. I was fine before.” Bettina growled.

“See?” asked Jessica.

Well, this was just like my Mom, frankly. “So someone made you out of my head? My memories of you?”

Jessica sighed. “Jimmy, I have no idea. I’m just ... me. I remember everything up to dying of lung cancer from smoking for decades. I don’t remember anything else. Why would I be here, if you aren’t dead?”

“No idea, Mo ... Jessica.” I corrected myself.

“Please sit down, Jimmy. I’m staring at your pee-pee in this position.”

“My... ? Sorry,” I sat down.

“You certainly grew up, didn’t you?” she teased.

I rolled my eyes.

“Hey, the last time I saw it you were four, and I was still wiping your bottom. You learned how to do that for yourself early. I was so proud!”

I looked to Bettina with what must have been a pleading look.

“I think that’s enough, Jessica,” said Bettina firmly. “You are not being helpful, and you are not acting like the Jessica I remember. The Jessica I knew would never be such an ass to Jimmy, though she certainly had the capability. You are not Jessica.”

Jessica looked at Bettina coolly. “I supposed you’re right, though you didn’t know me at this age. I had quite an attitude then. It is easy to slip back into that self. I mean, look at me, I’m younger than my own son. Imagine what it would be like to be the you that you were at twenty-three!” She turned to me. “I’m sorry, son. I shouldn’t be giving you a hard time. Believe it or not, you remind me a lot of my father, and I always gave him a lot of sass.” She stopped cold, and then looked away. “It was a ... an odd relationahip.” She looked pained, and admitted, “He was a ... a bit of a pervert.”

Bettina gasped, and said “Oh!” and I realized Mom’s relationship with her father would have been seen as scandalous. She’d walked around naked until I was three? He had died when I was five, and there had followed a chaotic time in our lives. It made sense, given a few of the things I knew about him.

“I’m not your father, Jessica,” I said, “and your relationship with me was never anything but proper.”

“Yes. I’m proud of that. It took a lot of therapy, and me actually learning what ‘normal’ really was. Did you know?”

I considered. My mother had seen a doctor twice a week all through my childhood, times when I was cared for by nannies or babysitters when I wasn’t in school. Marguerite, our maid, wasn’t able to do that for some reason. My stomach felt odd. She needed that much therapy, and needed to learn through it what ‘normal’ was?

She still wouldn’t meet my eyes. I reached over and put my hand on her shoulder, and she held her cheek to it. “I had no idea,” I said.

“Good. That’s good. I wanted it that way for you. It happened to him, too.”

Oh. Oh! Oh, fuck. I felt the penny that had dropped roll around my mental feet uncomfortably.

“It was a family secret for many generations. I decided to put an end to it,” she said. “I’m sorry. Being naked, and you looking like him and ... all, it just ... I just slipped back into old times. My father ... he was still having sex with me when I looked like this. He did that right up until six months before he died. It was ... just the way it was in our family.”

“I ... see.”

“I doubt it, but as I said, that’s good. That means I was successful, I broke the chain.”

“The things you learn when you’re naked in a cell with your reconstructed mother and your wife,” I said.

Bettina snorted.

I grinned ruefully at her.

“Where did you come from? What is the last thing you remember before this, being here?”

She closed her eyes with a look of pain. “Trying to breathe, exhaustion, Bettina kissed my forehead as you held my hand. Everything hurt. The pain drugs weren’t enough to stop the pain anymore, but they wouldn’t give me more because they said more would kill me, as if that mattered. All I had the energy to do was to try to draw another breath, and then ... I didn’t anymore. And I’m here.”

“I remember,” I said. I did. Those were the last moments of my mother’s life. It was one of the hardest moments of mine.

“From that moment to a little while ago, there’s nothing. Then, there you were. For a moment I thought you were Daddy. I don’t remember anything between. Of course, if someone or something recreated me out of your memories, I don’t guess there would be. On the other hand, I feel a definite sense of self, of me being me. Wait a minute! You said you had no idea about me and Dad, so that would mean I have to be me, the real me, right?”

“Not necessarily,” said Bettina. “It might have never happened, or he might have noticed something subconsciously. Or, this may not really be happening. Or it may just be back-story, something constructed to fill a void in his knowledge or memories.”

“Thanks, Betty. For a minute there I thought I might really exist,” Jessica said with sarcasm, then she turned and looked about, thoughtful. “I don’t know, maybe this is what comes next.”

I shrugged. I didn’t know, I was tired, and I really wanted to be where I could physically touch my wife. I tried to lean back where I could see her, and slid down the barrier. That in itself was frustrating! There wasn’t even a sense of touching anything, just a slide to the side. I groaned as I sat up, pushing against the floor.

“God, you even sound like him, making those old man noises like that!” exclaimed Jessica.

Bettina’s voice asked the question I’d been avoiding even thinking. “Jessica, is your father Jimmy’s biological father?”

Mom froze. My heart thudded in my chest. Slowly, slowly, Mom glanced at me, and our eyes locked. An expression filled her face, a blend of shame, and love, and grief, and pride in me. “Yes,” was all she said.

“And my father ... the man who died in the war? You made him up?” I asked.

“No, the man himself was quite real. He was a ... a friend. He would have married me if Daddy allowed it and he hadn’t gotten killed. He knew I was pregnant, which is why he mentioned you, the baby I mean, in the letters I showed you. He didn’t know who the real father was. I would have married him. He was a good man, a good friend. He would have made a great father.”

“And you and your father...”

“Until about six months before he died, and he couldn’t anymore. I ... lost ... three babies. Miscarriages.” She wiped at a tear that was threatening to roll down a cheek. “He was ... very fucked up. It had happened to him, too, you see. He told me his mother and her father, and it goes back and back. No one knows how many were born of incest. Most, I think. I guess only the mothers could be sure, and not always then. But it is the reason for some of the family traits and health problems. It’s also why the family line has so few branches. A lot of the kids died, never made it to term, or were too sickly to thrive. Only the very strongest survived.” Tears were running down her face.

“Why? Why did ... so many, for so long?”

“No one knows. No one talked about it much, not to me, anyway. Daddy got really drunk one night ... he never drank ... the night he told me, the night it started. He said it had to be this way.”

“Did you love him, or hate him?” I asked as I took the crying woman in my arms.

“Oh, I loved him! I was ashamed of what we did, but I loved my Daddy! He was really all I had, the only man I...” she wept.

“And your mother?”

“His mother, raised by his childhood sweetheart, whom he married. He ... his mother died young, but not before teaching him in the family ... tradition. As his father watched. She started when he ... oh, Jimmy, this goes so far back... ! With just enough new blood to keep the family line alive.” She froze, then looked me in the eyes. “You never ... not with Stephanie, right?”

“Of course not!” I said firmly, and heard Bettina repeat my words half a second later.

“Good! Good! Maybe we broke the chain!”

Really, all this was too much. “Why the fuck are we here?” I demanded of the air, irritably, the frustration boiling over. Hearing that everything you’d based your life on was a lie really cuts the legs out from under you.

There was no answer, not even an echo.

I woke spooning with my wife, feeling her deep and even breathing, warm body pressed against mine. She smelled good, with a unique feminine skin scent all her own mixed with the fading scent of her shampoo. I had a case of morning wood, pressed up against her sex from behind. Even as close as we were, I still felt a need to touch more of her, like I was reaching out to her somehow, and she just wasn’t close enough. It was a most peculiar feeling. Somehow, I felt lost and frustrated inside, though I had no reason for it.

Bettina stirred in my arms, and then wiggled her butt against me provocatively with a giggle. “You feel good,” she said.

“Mmm, so do you,” I replied.

“Jimmy? I had a dream about your mother. She was young and she seemed troubled. She was talking to you about something, something dark and painful,” she said.

“Oh?”

“I can’t quite remember it now. But you had this look on your face ... like she told you, I dunno, like she was an ax murderer or something.”

I considered, “I woke up with this feeling, all lost, kind of, and frustrated. I feel like something is very wrong, but I don’t have any idea what it could be.”

“You think it has to do with that empty chest,” she said, knowing how I think.

“I don’t know what else it could be,” I said. “Something about is has unsettled me deeply.”

“Well, I think we should do something to take your mind off of it,” she smiled, and gave a slow grind against me. I kissed and nuzzled her ear, and slid my hands up to cup her breasts from behind, finding her nipples already hard.

She rolled over and climbed atop me, sliding my cock into her already wet pussy. I made a happy sound in my throat and ground against her a bit -- this was our favorite sexual positition, with her atop me. We began making love slowly, and she gazed into my eyes hungrily with her deep, warm brown ones as she rocked atop me. I toyed with and lightly pinched her nipples as we moved in rhythm. I could not be closer to her -- hell, I was inside her -- but I still felt a strange yearning for her, like she was still just out of reach. “I love you,” I told her, looking deeply into her eyes.

She grinned, and said, “I love you, too! Feel me, fill me, cum for me, my baby! Fill mama up with your cum!”

Something arced deep in my brain, and I found myself erupting into her warm, clutching slipperiness with a yell. We both were cumming, hard, and I felt her inner muscles grip and pull me even deeper within her, rippling along my cock as they did. Her back arched, her head thrown back as she ground herself into me as I thrust upward deep into her. Finally, she fell forward onto me, with me still buried deep within her as we panted.

As we caught our breath, I looked at her and asked, “So what was that about? ‘Mama’? Where did that come from?”

“I don’t know, it just seemed hot at the time ... and you seemed to enjoy it!”

“I did, I think,” I acknowledged. Maybe it was just the unexpectedness. You don’t normally say anything at all during sex! Well, not like that, I mean.”