Chapter 9

Ramona noticed the subdued demeanor of her children at supper. Gone was their carefree exuberance and the laughter that went with it. She started to ask them what was wrong, but decided not to. In some ways her children seemed like strangers lately, but she chalked that up to puberty and the inner turmoil that all teenagers faced sooner or later as they grew to adulthood.

She had been happy that they were so light-hearted, since she thought that would be a buffer to her announcement that she had some papers for Smith to sign and needed to take them to him that night. The result of her statement, made in passing, was not what she’d expected. She’d expected Debbie to make some snide comment about Smith, or object in some way. She’d expected Robby to just sit, silent, as he did so often when Smith was discussed.

Instead, Debbie turned red and shifted in her chair silently. It was Robby who spoke.

“I thought that was your job,” he said, his fork suspended halfway to his mouth. “Why didn’t you take them to him today?” He, too, looked uncomfortable, but not angry.

Ramona hadn’t thought she’d be questioned like that, and her mind scrabbled for a believable answer.

“Well ... um ... they weren’t ready in time,” she said.

Robby, of course, knew exactly why his mother wanted to go see Smith. And, while the sight of the man rutting into his beautiful mother turned him on, it was also distasteful in some way he couldn’t understand. The image of his mother’s milky white breasts shaking as the man slammed into her was burned into his memory, as was her assent to being impregnated. That just wasn’t the woman who was sitting across the table from him now, and he didn’t want her to go be that woman again.

“So, have him sign them tomorrow,” he said, his voice tinged with surliness.

“I need to process them tomorrow,” said his mother. “And I’m right here, next door. It’ll save time if I take care of them tonight.” She couldn’t understand her children’s resistance to this, and it was a pivotal part of her plan to see her brother more often. She pushed that plan.

“In fact, I plan on seeing him a lot while I’m here at home. It’s so much quicker than driving all the way over here during the day and wading through all those contractors.” It sounded eminently reasonable to her, despite the fact that the bank was only six blocks from the manor.

“Yeah, right,” said Robby heavily.

What was running through his mind was the fact that Smith knew the twins didn’t like him, and that Smith had a piece of information that could ruin things even more than he had ruined things already. It was inevitable, based on what she had been doing with him, that she would see him again. It was also inevitable, in Robby’s mind, that he would tell her what he had seen. At the same time, he hadn’t seemed offended or outraged by what he’d caught them doing, and that seemed odd somehow too. His statement that he meant the siblings no harm also twisted in Robby’s mind, because it didn’t make sense either. Debbie had all but declared war on him, but he acted like nothing was wrong.

Ramona wanted to hear assent from her children ... to have their permission to go next door more or less regularly, and because of that, she heard Robby’s comment as grudging acceptance that her plan did, in fact, make sense. She missed completely the ambivalence flashing across her son’s face.

Ramona made herself wash the dishes before she went to see her brother. While she felt no shame or guilt for what they shared, she knew that her feelings were driving her and she didn’t like the feeling of not being in control. There had been a lot of upheaval in her world of late, and “deciding” what to do and when to do it helped her cope with the sensation of being adrift on a sea with no rudder.

But, as soon as her hands were dry, she picked up her briefcase and sang out that she’d be back in a while. Not waiting for an answer she hurried out to the car. She could have walked, but she felt like driving up to the house would look better in case some passerby saw her enter the estate.

As she sat in the car her pussy was already getting wet.****Debbie had been keeping tabs on her mother, and as soon as she heard the car door slam she ran to her brother’s room. He was lying on the bed, a book open, but his eyes were staring at the ceiling.

“Come on” she said, her voice hushed for some reason. “She’s going over there.”

“Why should we go?” he asked, his voice dull. “We know what she’s going to do.”

“He might tell her!” she snapped. “We have to know if he tells her! Now come on!“

Debbie grabbed his wrist and pulled as he sat up and rolled off the bed. When they got outside she kept pulling him as he tried to lag.

“Come on Robby!” she snarled. “You want me to go by myself?”

For some reason the idea of Debbie being in the house alone ... with Smith there ... didn’t sit well with Robby. He increased his pace. Soon they were slipping through the woods behind the house. It wasn’t dark yet, and they had to wait while they surveyed the back of the house. Even more had changed since the last time they’d been there. The house was beginning to look like a house, rather than the wreck it had been ever since they’d put their eyes on it. Eventually they felt safe in going out into the open to reach the cellar steps.

They darted down into the cellar and stopped only long enough to let their eyes adapt a little bit to the darkness. Then it was through the secret door and down the tunnel to the thick door with the ring on it. They eased it open to minimize the squeal of the hinges. Robby made a mental note for possibly the fifth or sixth time to bring oil with him the next time he came.

At the top of the stairs they stopped, unconsciously trying to get their breathing under control before going further. Debbie stepped forward first. She felt the slight tug as her ankle hit something, but the sensation went away almost immediately as the thread that had been stretched across the narrow hallway snapped. There was the sound of a dull thud up ahead of them somewhere, but no other noises, and they crept forward.

They heard voices in the dining room and stopped to see their mother standing, her briefcase hanging from one hand, her arm straight as Smith, without his disguise this time, kissed her firmly. His right hand cupped her left breast through her blouse.

When the kiss was over she sighed.

“I told the kids there were papers to be signed. I told them I’d have to do that a lot.”

“Much has changed, dear Rami” said the man. “Things may not need to be kept secret much longer. I have much to tell you.”

Both teens took in panicked breaths of air at that, but they had no chance to do more.

“Then tell me in the bedroom,” said their mother salaciously, “as we do what I love most in the world.”

She set down the briefcase and pulled her lover toward the stairs, much like Debbie had pulled her own brother out of the house and toward the manor only moments before. There was more talk, but the kids were already moving toward the staircase that would lead them to the bedroom where they had witnessed what was about to happen again to their mother. They pressed their faces against the peep holes as their mother and Smith entered the room. Debbie’s gut tightened as she saw that her mother’s blouse was already unbuttoned, and that she had worn no bra to go “have papers signed.” Another lie. She’d known it, of course, but the sight of her mother’s real intentions made a knot in her stomach.

Smith, though, was not looking at his lover. Instead, his head swiveled around the room, his eyes low.

“Oh look” he said calmly. “A picture has fallen from the wall.”

“Never mind that Bobby, I need you now,” demanded Ramona, shrugging her blouse off and draping it across a chair. “Wouldn’t you rather look at me than some old picture?” she asked coquettishly.

Now Smith’s eyes went to his sister.

“Most assuredly” he said, smiling. He went to her and leaned over to suckle at an exposed and stiff nipple, his hand smoothing across the buttocks of her slacks. He kissed his way up to Ramona’s lips as her fingers went to the buttons of his own shirt and began undoing them.

Robby, his gut tight too, couldn’t, for some reason, watch his mother being ravished again. He hadn’t yet analyzed the emotions associated with watching his beautiful mother be made love to. He hadn’t yet realized that the twisting in his guts was because some part of him wanted to be the man rutting into her soft, white body. He pushed back from the wall as emotions raced through him and suddenly realized his prick was stone hard. His eyes went to his sister and he automatically retreated into something that brought them both pleasure ... something that made the world feel right. He stepped behind her, reaching around to cup her breasts and press his erection into her buttocks, which were jutted out as she leaned forward to peer through the peep holes.

“What are you doing?“ she hissed.

“I don’t want to watch them,” he said. “I’d rather do this to you.”

His hands slid to her waist and up under her shirt to her own unfettered breasts, feeling for and squeezing her nipples slightly.

“Not here,” she moaned. “Not now.”

She was trying to listen, though, and Smith was saying something. She didn’t have the time to make her brother stop. And the feelings coursing through her loins at what she was witnessing made what he was doing feel wonderful too.

“Shhh,” she said to the wall, even though it was she who was making the most noise. “They’re saying something.”

Robby let his hands play across his sister’s breasts, squeezing them and flicking the nipples, which stood up proudly to be squeezed and flicked. He pulled her shirt up to give his hands room to move without catching in the cloth and bunched it under her arm pits. She ground her buttocks against his hardon and he let his hands slide down her flat stomach to the fastening of her jeans shorts.

“Nooo,” she whined.

“Come on,” he whispered in her ear. “It’ll feel good. What are they saying?”

What Smith was saying was: “Slow down, my sweet. As I said I have much to tell you.”

Ramona wasn’t interested in talk. She wanted her pussy stuffed, and her clitty abused.

“I can’t stay long,” she moaned. “Can’t it wait?”

“I don’t think so,” he said, cupping her breasts, unable himself to keep his hands off her. “I think your children know more than they have admitted.”

That caught Debbie’s full attention and she froze as Robby got her shorts unbuttoned and started to slide his hand into her panties. Her automatic, completely unthinking response was to step to one side with each foot, giving his fingers room to play. But her attention was all on Smith.

“What?” her mood interrupted by mention of her children, Ramona’s passion eased a bit. “What do you mean?”

“I told you someone had been in this house. Now I have reason to believe it’s your children,” he said flatly.

“What?!” asked Ramona, astonished. “That’s impossible!” she said automatically.

Robby, not knowing what was being said, let his middle finger slip between his sister’s slick labia and felt for her joy button while his other hand went back to cup a breast. Debbie, too enraptured by what she was hearing to pass the words along to her brother, held her breath.

“I saw them by the fence this afternoon,” he said.

Debbie felt terror so great that what her brother was doing to her didn’t penetrate her consciousness at all.

“That doesn’t mean they’ve come in this house,” said Ramona. “They’ve played in the woods since they were children.”

“Played...” said Smith. “An interesting word, that.” He looked directly at the bookcase, behind which Debbie and Robby were standing, as if he somehow knew she was there and watching.

Debbie pushed off the wall, against her brother’s unyielding body. His back hit the opposite wall because there was nowhere else for him to go.

“He’s going to tell her,” said Debbie, her voice choked.

“What?” asked Robby, thinking so intently about where his hand were, and how good if felt to feel her butt pressing against him, that he couldn’t concentrate fully on what she’d just said.

Because Debbie had backed up, she didn’t hear what Smith said next. It probably wouldn’t have made any difference anyway, based on what happened next. There wouldn’t have been time to do anything about it.

“Rami, darling, don’t you remember the passages? The secret ways?”

Ramona’s head snapped backward as if she had been slapped. Her last memory of the house was stepping quietly through the secret hallway between the walls, as her parents screamed. They had hidden there as the screams turned to gurgling moans and then stopped. They had waited in the dark until they had heard no noises for a long time. Robert had just barely been able to reach the release that let them through the wall into their parents’ bedroom. There had been bright red spatters everywhere, but they hadn’t understood it was blood. Blood came in small drops, from the prick of a thorn, not in amounts so much that it looked like paint. She remembered her mother’s eyes, open and staring, but her mother wouldn’t say anything. That’s what had frightened Ramona, and when she had started crying.

She shook her head. She hadn’t thought of the secret places in the house for a long long time. She watched as Robert suddenly stepped toward the bookcase and reached for the hidden latch.

Debbie, horrified by what she was sure was about to be told to her mother, leaned forward again just in time to see Smith, facing her, his body only a foot away. There was a loud snap, and then a creak, and the wall in front of her moved away from her face. She fell forward as the support she had been depending on disappeared. Only her brother’s hands, one cupping her naked breast, and the other with its finger buried in her pussy, saved her from falling forward.

She squinted as she was suddenly bathed in light.

“Ahhhh, said Smith in his disguised gravelly voice. “The rabbits have returned.”****Ramona looked unbelievingly at what was exposed when the bookcase swung open on creaking hinges. There, to her astonished gaze, was revealed her daughter, whose shirt was up around her neck. Her arms were out in front of her like she had pushed the bookcase open. Ramona’s mind did a little dancing twist. Something wasn’t right here. She was finally able to process the information that, despite the fact that both of Debbie’s hands were in plain sight, there was a hand cupping one of her naked breasts and another hand that was down in the opening of her shorts, which were unbuttoned and unzipped!

Ramona reeled as the body behind her daughter moved and a head appeared over Debbie’s shoulder she recognized as Robby. The concept that her son was standing behind her daughter, and that he was feeling her breast and had his hand stuck down her pants was strange enough. The fact that they were in the secret passageway of the Nettleton Mansion made it all surreal. Then, the fact that she was standing topless in the same house, and that her children could see that, flipped some switch in her brain that suggested a light nap might be in order. Consciousness left her, her vision fading into black as she crumpled to the floor.