Hell House

Kneeling, Alexandra held out the lion skin sash. The man/thing draped it across his body with reverence.

Then, even more horrified, they watched as she crawled on her hands and knees to his feet, clamored up the strange man's legs, and opened her mouth to swallow his erect cock, which was curved in the same way as the sword Alexandra had used to split the cauldron.

Reaching up, she ran her palms down the front of the stranger's body, feeling out the hard lines of his shoulder, chest, and stomach. The paint on her hands mixed with the fire sweat on his bare skin and left red streaks on his pale skin that stood out like bloody marks in the firelight.

Gripping the backs of the man's thighs, Alexandra swiveled her head and mouth on his protruding cock, her red lips pursed around it, the sound of her sucking audible even over the crackle of the flames in the old barn. 

In one fast motion the stranger ripped the red cloak off of her and threw it away into the fire, fully displaying her naked body all at once.Through the haze of steam rising from the broken remains of the cauldron everyone could see her silhouette, the hard symmetry of her back, and the motions of her shoulders as she worked her head up and down.

Trapped, the 12 church members couldn't look away from the unfolding scene. Their eyes began to water—not from the smoke, but because they couldn't shut them, staring transfixed at what was happening instead. Alexandra threw her hands up against the strange man's body again, and most of them recognized the gesture: supplication, prayer, divine ecstasy.

Her moans made them shiver and, unwittingly and unwillingly, members of the assembly felt their own passions flare. Hairs stood up, mouths went dry, skin broke into gooseflesh, and more than one church member felt an insistent throb deep down inside of themselves that filled with shame and horror but also, undeniably, with desire.

Taking the entirety of the stranger's cock in her hand, Alexandra slid her palm from the tip of it all the way to the base, as if testing it for something. Then she licked it with the tip of her tongue, tasting the salt-sweat from his body. The room was hot, but this was cold, hard, and entirely unnatural—and yet, not in an unpleasant way.

When he began to dribble she opened her mouth again to catch the spill; it sparkled on her tongue and palate, a taste almost impossible to describe. Taking hold of him with both hands now, she fed him to herself, easing her mouth all the way down and letting the cold, hard certainty of this strange body into herself, bobbing her head and letting her tongue slither all along the underside.

As for the stranger, he seemed barely aware of what was happening, saying nothing and doing little, only watching her with a blank expression and reptilian eyes that never blinked. But the muscles of his sinewy arms stood out in the Hell-red light of the fire as he reached out and grabbed hold of her hair, holding her in place with steely strength as she licked and sucked the delicious length of his curved cock with her salacious mouth again an again.

When he came it happened all at once a gush that filled her mouth and dribbled from her lips. Where a few drops landed on her breasts and the rest of her naked body, chills went all the way through her. The room was so hot, but the stranger was cool, unyielding, unrelenting. The fire inside Alexandra's herself grew hotter still.

Standing, she faced the assembly and ran her hands over her naked body, letting her fingers caress and accentuate the lines of her own naked legs and thighs, the plane of her belly, the heavy swell of her naked breasts, and the dappling of the spilled wetness from her mouth.

As they watched, she rubbed the tip of one finger up the length of her thigh and then stuck it into her mouth, pursing her lips and making the same sucking noise she had a moment ago. She looked every man and woman there in the eyes as she did it, and the heat of their own desires fed the flames around them. The fire couldn't hurt Alexandra; it had come from inside of her, and if she laid down in it the flames would lick her naked body clean and send her out spotless and whole.

She let herself cry out as the stranger grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her back against himself. He had cum just a minute ago but was still as hard, ready, and unyielding as ever. She writhed against the unforgiving pillar of his body, again taking note of how the despite eyes of her audience gorged themselves on the way she displayed herself in front of everyone.

The he bent her over so hard and fast that she worried her figure might snap. When he put himself inside of her the sudden coldness of it made her scream, but almost immediately her own body grew heated again, and the wetness between her legs mixed with the juices she'd left on his shaft already before.

One of his strong arms encircled her throat and squeezed, choking her while she was fucked. Alexandra let her eyes roll back in her head and allowed most of her body to go weak, almost limp, leaving just enough of herself rigid to keep from collapsing but otherwise putting up no resistance, either to the stranger or to anything else.

Blocking out everything else as best she could, she tried hard just to feel. No sights, no sounds, no thoughts even, just the feeling of flesh against flesh, bodies and other bodies, compulsion and desire, hot skin and cold skin, one extreme after another, over and over.

After a while she couldn't stand anymore and she let herself fall to the floor. The fire embraced her. There among the flames she lolled and writhed, and the man-thing crouched over her from behind, holding her own and dragging her back against itself, pressing deep inside of her once more as it began to cum again, filling her until overflowing.

She felt some of it dribble down the backs of her thighs, and when it spilled into the flames they hissed and, for a moment, went out. Seconds after it finished it was hard again—not just its cock but all of it, head to toe, always hard, always demanding, and never to be satisfied, because it was an inhuman thing, and its body was only a tool to express a hunger that was never over, without end. That was the real Hell: to indulge forever but never be satisfied with anything, even for a moment.

But her offering had been enough for now—enough to earn what happened next. Throwing up her hands again, Alexandra said, "Oh hear me now: I've praised your name, attended on you, given you rich gifts as befits custom and your station, made the offering of my own flesh, and fulfilled all obligations under the oldest covenants. Now I demand payment: These are my enemies. Rid me of them, oh great king, or hear your name despised."

Silence for a moment. Then one of the church members saids "Alexandra, I know I parked in your reserved space twice over the summer, but the thing that's really important to remember..."

"These are my enemies. Rid me of all of them, but especially..." then she turned and pointed, first at Pastor Usher, still holding the hazelwood staff.

"This one."

Then at Garrett.

"This one."

And finally at Bathsheba Gibbs, who still had not spoken.

"And most of all this one."

Turning back to the man she said, "That's my boon. My due. Will you honor it, or be known forevermore a traitor to your own rites?"

The naked man's serpentine eyes were impossible to read as he looked first at Alexandra, then at the church members one by one. All of them flinched.


And then he seemed to grow, becoming taller and darker. He was dissolving into the smoke of the fire, they realized, and soon he WAS the fire, looming overhead, and the column of flames licked the ceiling of the barn, and suddenly the walls were ablaze too, and everything was alight on all sides.

Men and women screamed, fell over each other, fell into the fire and then rolled in the dirt in a vain effort to beat the fire out but found that it only spread, because soon there was no place anywhere around them that was not the fire already. The flames became everything, everywhere, spreading and consuming, fire on top of fire on top of everything else.

Until, in the end, the Hell House was an inferno.

***

Ex-Pastor Bradbury, keeping a watchful eye for the caravans of parents and children arriving for the opening of the Hell House, saw the fire first, right about one minute after sunset.

At first there was nothing, and then seemingly all at once the barn was a pillar of fire, belching black clouds of smoke like a dragon into the dusky sky like. Horrified, he could only stare for a minute and then, without even thinking to shout a warning to anyone else, he sprinted across the field in the direction of the flames.

There was already a crowd assembled to watch as the building burned, and Bradbury discovered that it was not just the families who came from town who were here, but also most of the cast of the Hell House itself.

They would later say that they did not remember exactly who gave them the warning to evacuate. Only that all of them found themselves leaving the building at the precise moment necessary to escape the fire, which they'd all barely been aware of until they were outside.

The only people not accounted for were the board members, and the pastor. But, even more amazing, as the the fire burned higher and hotter and the crowd backed away for fear that it would be spread, they began to appear one by one, figures from out of the smoky mass.

They were weary and haggard, their face and clothes dark with soot, and many of them were in shock. But although they'd walked right out of the center of the burning building, none of them were hurt in any way that anyone else could see. Only three people didn't appear: Pastor Usher, Thomas Garrett, and Bathsheba Gibbs.

Sifting through the ashes later, no sign of any of them could be found. The fire burned all night, even after members of the volunteer fire department arrived to try to tamp down the flames, but it never spread, consuming the structure of the Hell House entirely and then burning itself out almost immediately after.

Officially, the word was that it was an electrical fire. None of the survivors said anything to contradict that conclusion—in fact, most of them said hardly anything at all. Lily Rougemont would write in awed tones about the "god-given miracle" that prevented any fatalities.

And the official story was indeed that nobody died that Halloween night.

If anybody had asked, they'd have been told that Raymond Usher II abruptly resigned from his ministry over questions about certain church funds that went unaccounted for earlier in the summer, and then immediately moved to another state the week after Halloween. Nobody seemed to remember quite which state, but all agreed it was far away.

Thomas Garrett retired from retirement and started practicing law in another county. Or maybe he finally acted on his lifelong ambition of moving to Alaska and taking up ice fishing year-round? The town gossip varied. His house sat unsold and abandoned for years.

As for Bathsheba Gibbs, the high school simply took out an ad for a new vice principal the first week of November, and nobody talked much about why the job was suddenly and mysteriously vacant.

The remaining members of the church board of directors all resigned the day after the fire. All except for Alexandra, who, in her new role as default board president, immediately reinstated Nathaniel Bradbury as pastor.

The two of them appointed a new board, and by Christmas hardly anyone in town thought to talk much about all of the changes. Ex-ex Pastor Bradbury hosted a Halloween party at the church the next year, and it was very well received. No one proposed a Hell House again.

Truth be known, the pastor's affection for Halloween was somewhat muted compared to what it once had been. Every time that day of the year came around again, he couldn't help but feel troubled by one more thing that happened the night of the fire. For some reason nobody seemed to notice it except for him, even though it happened plain as day in front of everyone.

The last person to leave the burning barn that night was Alexandra Updike; she emerged naked from the flames, her body immaculate and gleaming, and she carried two things with her.

She'd walked right past everyone else—and nobody else had so much as turned an eye in her direction—and straight to Bradbury himself. An then, after handing him everything she carried, without a word she'd walked off into the field.

The things she held that night: in her right hand, a staff of hazelwood, as burnt and blackened as she was not. And in her left hand, the shed skin of a snake, five feet long at least.

The staff Bradbury thrown away, driving it all the way out the county line and losing it in a forest. The burnt smell of it lingered in his car for so long that eventually he'd junked it and bought a new one.

The snakeskin he still had—somehow no place seemed safe enough to dispose of it. He kept it in a drawer in the church office, and made sure never to open that one.

More than once over the years—particularly when he drank, which he did more and more often and more and more by himself—he thought about confronting Alexandra about what really happened the night of the fire. He never did though.

From then on Halloween was a lively event in town every year, and before long most people seemed not to even remember the Hell House at all.