Secret Sins Ch. 15

"By that point, the Salem Witch Trials were some eighty years in the past, the propagandized fear and paranoia that was spouted to aid in their executions almost forgotten," Seraphine explained, grimly adding, "Almost. It didn't take long for those seeds to sprout up again, right there in Lapointe. It began with parents telling their children not to associate with me anymore. I really never had any close friends anyway, but once the other children began pelting me with rocks and accusing me of being in league with Satan... well, let's just say that my popularity with them went downhill like Nils Nilsen."

"Who?" I asked.

"Nobody," Seraphine said, dismissing this with a shake of her head and the slightest smile before returning to her tale. "Fortunately for me, it was only the children who pelted me with rocks, although they must have gotten the idea that I was a witch from someone, that of course being their parents. Needless to say, I stuck close to home after that, at least during the daytime, and people seemed happy with that, so I was safe. Well, safe from them.

"So the years went by," she sighed, "I stayed close to the farmhouse during the daytime, my only company being Flavien, Adalie and my cats. Heh. At one point, there were fourteen of them scampering around the farm. Flavien wanted to cull my little followers, but I told him no. Those cats were my only real friends, and besides, thanks to them, I doubt there was a mouse within a mile of our farmhouse. Without socialization, I soon became like a little animal myself, and that was alright. Those years were some of the happiest I've ever lived.

"Of course, the other settlers, despite their fear and dislike of me, were curious. People are funny like that. It was like, "stay away from us, but we want to see you, to know what's going on with you." They'd come by, the nosy bastards, wanting to 'visit' so they could see what was up with the local witch and, in time, I had to encourage Flavien and Adalie to run them off when they showed up until they mostly just left me alone.

"But I often roamed the settlement at night, returning again and again to that spot in that field, but I never did figure out its significance until later. However, on my nocturnal forays, I got to know the settlement quite well. The only places I didn't go were the places with dogs, at least not until I found ways to get rid of them. It was fun too, sneaking around in the wee hours, peering into people's windows, entering their outbuildings and eventually their homes. There's no thrill like exploring a house while people are asleep, going through their things and personal belongings... it's almost sexual.

"All this while, my adoptive parents had little control over me. In fact, it took years for them to even realize their authority's impotence, then longer to ascertain that it was specifically me who was circumventing their will. I suppose it spooked them. I really can't blame them for being scared of me, of thinking whatever they had to be thinking, most likely something along the same lines as the rest of the settlement. Like them, they in time began to finally take my mother's claims of being raped by Satan in the fields seriously. I can't even really blame them for doing what they did. Not now. In their place, I suppose I'd have done the same thing.

"On my eighteenth birthday, they told me they had a big birthday surprise for me. They opened the root cellar door and told me it was down there. I was all excited about what the surprise could be and, at the time, I had no reservations whatsoever about dark holes in the ground. Besides, considering my unique position over them I had no reason to suspect anything, so I went down to get my surprise. I got a surprise, alright.

"They slammed the trapdoor down, and I jumped at the sound, finding myself in utter blackness an instant after realizing that they'd removed all the food. I yelled up at them, moved to the short ladder and pushed at the trapdoor, but I couldn't budge it. I think one of them was standing on it while I heard the sound of something heavy scraping across the floor. I yelled some more, and my yelling soon turned to enraged screaming. My screaming finally turned to frightened begging and crying, but they wouldn't let me out. They wouldn't even speak to me. Again, putting myself in their shoes, I really can't blame them for that, either. It wouldn't have helped.

"So, at first I thought this was some sort of punishment for manipulating their authority but, after what might have been a day or two, I realized their true motives. As I said, they'd removed all the food and hadn't even left me so much as a blanket for heat or comfort, not even the proverbial pot to piss in. I cried myself to sleep in the cold dark, waking up to scream some more, begging them to let me out, promising I'd be good and so on. No reply. I couldn't even hear them moving around up there.

"I don't know how long it was... I think I started to lose it. I mean, I was starving to death, and I knew it. I was scared and... I felt so betrayed. The only people I trusted were obviously trying to dispose of me, and I went through some things all alone in that root cellar... My terror got worse and worse until something just... snapped. I can't explain it, but it was like something left me... (siiigh) "You've heard expressions like, 'having the shit scared out of me'?"

I nodded, completely engrossed in her story now.

"Well, that's the best way I can describe it. It's really the only way I can describe it. Something was literally scared right out of me. But after this... change, I... I had no idea how long I'd been down there at this point, no idea how long it'd been since I'd eaten but, lying there, finally calm after this breaking point, I realized without further doubt that they wanted me dead. They only didn't have the nerve or the heart to do it themselves, so they'd meant to starve me to death down there. So, I finally lay still. I was still scared, but there was something else now, something new from within that allowed for a plan to survive this nightmare. So I was as quiet as I could be, the only sound coming from me being my growling stomach as I lay quietly in the dirt, conserving as much energy as I could, smelling the stench of my own waste in that black pit of despair... as my hatred of them, of everyone, mushroomed to unimaginably dark proportions.

"It took a lot of patience. A lot of patience, but they finally came. I heard them coming across the floor above me, pausing in silence for about a minute before they opened the trapdoor. As weak as I felt, every muscle felt jumpy, ready for action, and I was afraid that they'd give me away as I played dead, afraid that I'd start twitching in anticipation of my freedom as one of them descended the short ladder to make sure I was dead. But it worked. Someone bent over me and put a finger to the side of my neck, checking for a pulse.

"In that moment, my rage exploded with my body, incensed that they would do such a thing to me. It was as though I really was dead, but watching the fuckers check to make sure, raging at the injustice of how they'd snuffed me out like they did. But I wasn't dead. I suppose it was surprise that immobilized Flavien as much as the elbow smash to the face. Whatever it was, I was up and on my feet, getting myself up that ladder while Adalie only watched helplessly, probably unwilling to slam it shut again as that would trap Flavien down there with me, or so I thought at the time.

"As for him, he hadn't even gotten back to his feet before I was topside and this, though that particular detail escaped me in the excitement of the moment, was the real reason for why Adalie didn't slam the trapdoor shut. She was shocked at how fast I'd moved. For me, it was like they say about things seemingly happening in slow motion, so I didn't quite appreciate the uh... the timing of it all like she did. Not until I was standing across from her, filthy starving and seething with rage, did I realize that it wasn't natural, the way I'd come up and out of that root cellar. Flavien should have at least been back on his feet by then, but even he was in a state of shock, sitting down there on his ass as he looked up at me, wondering if he'd really just seen me move that fast.

"Of course, I had no time for an intellectual reflection just then. Easily flipping the heavy plank barrier with one hand, I slammed the trapdoor shut, confining one stunned adoptive parent down there. The other, Adalie, only stood in front of me, crossing herself and whispering Psalm thirty-five while staring at me in wide eyed fear.

"I was about to jump her, about to tear her fucking head off in a rage, but only got as far as the trapdoor before I noticed something else that was different. Our eyes had met and, something like before, she fell into a different state. But not exactly like before. This time it was much more pronounced, and this time... I felt it. I could feel her confusion as I stared into her eyes, her into mine. But I could feel more than her confusion. I could feel her, could feel that just below this state of confusion lay her mind and, almost without even trying, I was there. Everything she was opened up for me, her feelings, her fears, all of her loves and hopes... everything. Furthermore, she was helpless. She couldn't move, couldn't act against me, or even tell me to get out of her head as she only stood there, repeating, "Stir up thyself, and wake to my judgement, even unto my cause, my God and my Lord."

"Verse twenty-three of Psalm thirty-five," Seraphine scoffed with a smirk. "Always found that ironic. I might have replied with verse seven: 'For without cause they have hid for me their net in a pit, which without cause they have digged for my soul'.

"So anyway, neither God nor Jesus swooped down from Heaven to save her. No, they just left her there to babble as I came to understand that her mind was caught in a sort of quicksand. I was holding her, barely noticing the frenzied shouts as Flavien began pounding at the trapdoor I was standing on. With most of my blinding rage gone in the face of these incredible new physical and mental realities, I was naturally reminded of the subtle power I'd always had over people's will, and I suppose what I did next came just as naturally.

"I told her to stop reciting Psalm thirty-five, and she stopped immediately, listening as I went on to tell her that she loved me, that she would never entrap me, try to harm me, or allow any harm to come to me. She repeated these things back to me, and I marvelled at how her attitude changed so quickly. And I knew it was real. For her, I mean. From inside her mind, I knew it was real for her. Very suddenly, she really did love me, came forward and took me in her arms, holding me protectively as Flavien was practically having a fit below our feet.

"Adalie was the one who let him out- on my careful instruction, of course. She slowed his advance up the ladder while I stood in a strategic spot to capture his eyes, and it wasn't long before I gave him the new religion. Yet, it was quite some time before I could really trust my conditioning of their minds. This might have been because I'd only just discovered my newfound powers of persuasion, but I suspect it was also because I hated them, feared the intentions towards me that I eventually understood still lay somewhere beneath the surface of said conditioning. Originally, when I first got out of that root cellar, I wanted to kill them. I really only took control of them out of surprise and impromptu experimentation, but I really wanted to kill them for what they'd done to me, had tried to do.

"Mind you, even at the time, a part of me couldn't blame them. They were only acting on behalf of their own interests, believing that they were harbouring the witch that Marie claimed I was, and they only wanted rid of me. I mean, they couldn't even bring themselves to club me when I turned my back, so that obviously says something as to how they felt about me as their adoptive daughter. But none of this changed my feelings towards them. Hey, I'd just turned eighteen, and my birthday present was quite a game changer for my attitude at the time. However understanding I may have been where their motives were concerned, I was the one who was at the wrong end of those motives, and I wasn't exactly brimming with positive feelings towards them. But, after I cooled down, I of course realized that I needed them. That farm, I knew, was my livelihood, and they were an integral part of that as were the oxen and the fields.

"However... It wasn't long after that when I discovered an additional use for them. Once I'd recovered from the shock of what they'd done to me, from the shock of what I could do to them, I began to discover something else that was new, that being my sex drive. It was so odd because before the root cellar, it didn't even exist. After the root cellar... it did. And, boy-o-boy, did it! I soon became obsessed with my body, touching myself, exploring my tits and pussy... my ass. Before long, I wouldn't even bother finding privacy for this and, while my adoptive parents were quite shocked at my sudden tendency to play with myself right in front of them, they were far more concerned when I started becoming curious about their bodies as well. It was actually Flavien's erection when I masturbated in front of him one evening that brought about this curiosity of them.

"I had him take his pants off, much to Adalie's horror. Aside from the farm animals, I'd never seen male genetalia before, and I had to tell Adalie to shut up when she started praying again because I was touching his cock. It was so hard. So nice. Then I had him take the rest of his clothes off, standing there naked for me so I could... see him. Touch him. I touched him everywhere, playing with this and that while Adalie quietly fretted.

"Flavien wasn't too crazy about it either. Well, not at first. He seemed to warm up to my curiosity when I started removing Adalie's clothing for her, much more so when she had to endure the same touching exploration I'd given him. So, I told her to touch me as well, meaning to watch his reaction to this, but completely unprepared for how... how electrifying it would feel to have someone else touching my body in the way I'd been doing. It was... it was just so unexpected, the joy and pleasure of sex with another person, and it turned me on even further to watch Flavien masturbate without even being told while watching his wife play with my clit.

"Needless to say," Seraphine snickered, "that was a long night for all three of us, and a very informative one for me. And as much as I'd love to get into all the lurid details, which I'm sure you're every bit as interested in, my point in all of this is that I'm different from you, and especially other people. I don't see things like you do, never have and never will. I don't mean to shock and frighten you, it's just that... I don't know what I am any more than you do. I don't know what the thing in the basement is, I don't know where I came from, I don't know the purpose of my existence, if any, and I don't know... anything. I'm just here like you are."

She'd said this with a soft tone, the controlled anger over the name her mother had chosen for her gone, but her words were nonetheless final. This was frustrating because, as much as I felt closer to her for having heard this story, as much as I had a better understanding of how she'd see people after her formative years, the fact that she didn't have the answers my values demanded of her did nothing to quiet the demand for them.

"In all this time?" I asked.

"Time doesn't change the facts I know, and those don't add up to any answers. Not today any more than they did two hundred and fifty years ago."

Here, I could only look at her, dazedly allowing her real age to sink in before I could speak again.

"Why did you do this to me?" I asked.

"Because it had to be done for your own sake. Because it's who you are. For now, think of it as a rite of passage."

" ... So... now what?" I pondered, feeling at a strange loss with my 'inheritance' and the previous night's experiment.

"I'm afraid, sweetie pie, that's what I was going to ask you."

"What do you mean?"

With a return of this new, careful attitude towards me that she'd been showing, she replied with a slight shrug, "I've given you your inheritance and I've begun to tell you all that I know, but right now you have all you need to decide... to decide over me or your career. I need to hear something, one way or the other, and I need to hear it soon."

And that was why she was so careful. Before, I was in the dark as to what was going on, and she had control. Now she didn't. But she'd given it up voluntarily, had always planned on doing so, even at the risk of losing me.

"Oh, Donna," I moaned, closing my eyes, trying to blot out the haunting memory of the terrified expression on Roman's face.

Seraphine had said that there was a lot more to tell me, but that I'd probably heard enough for that day. I actually agreed, but we parted on good terms when she returned to the real Donna's house in Harbour Landing by herself so I could have some time to think.

But there was nothing to think about, was there? There was no choice. As much as I didn't want to admit it, I wasn't going to leave her, my beautiful Seraphine. The only trouble was in admitting to what that meant- that my career was second in importance to her. Well, was that so bad? I mean, given a choice between my career and my parents, wouldn't they be more important than my career? Was this any different? Still, to have to give up now, now that I was perfectly poised for everything I'd really wanted, had worked so hard for, was so depressingly unfair that it made me want to cry.

I took a bath, throwing on my little sheer, white nightie afterwards to walk aimlessly around the house, upstairs and down. With no panties or bra to cover what the nightie couldn't, I didn't even care if somebody dropped by and saw me like that, such was my mindset. That kind of thing didn't seem to matter at this crossroads that I'd known was coming. I did that the rest of the day, thinking about a lot of things, drinking and sometimes napping, all the while avoiding the ramifications of the decision that my needs had already made for me.

Friday morning found me fully dressed in my regulation uniform, once again standing just outside my unfinished office, staring thoughtfully at the basement door. Whatever it was that my inheritance brought forth from deep within me knew that I no longer had to fear what was down there. I was still disturbed by it, yes, but not afraid of it. No matter how I felt in regards to whatever it was, it too effectively represented the unknown road that lay ahead of me. Despite this, my mood was good overall, and only a little of that was owed to my Russian breakfast.

When Seraphine walked in, she paused before stepping to my side, both of us regarding the door in silence until she finally spoke.

"It stayed down there in that root cellar, even after I got out. I could feel it. It was like a smell, but I couldn't actually detect it with my nose. It stayed there until after things in the settlement where I grew up went sideways, and then it came with me and my people to where we relocated. I would have forbade root cellars there, just out of personal dislike of them, but they were a necessity, so the vile fucking thing had a place. You just can't imagine how I felt when I first sensed it again.

"So, I learned to live with it. My daughter, Angelique, never sensed it. I asked her without really getting into detail about it, but she seemed to have no awareness of it, and neither did anybody else in the community, but then my granddaughter came along. Coby was... fucked up. Right from the beginning, she was different, but I loved her because she was my granddaughter, the child of my own perfect, beautiful Angelique and, obviously, one of us. Yes, they both had the human taint, but I was in both of them as well, and I loved them like I could love no human. Like I love you.