14 comments/ 21522 views/ 30 favorites Olivia and Owen By: Serafina1210 This is my first attempt in the "Incest/Taboo" category here at Literotica. It's a ghost story, much more romance than romp. If you like that kind of thing, read on: if not, feel free to skip this story - I won't be insulted. The town depicted here actually exists, as does the company that operates there. The tiny cemetery is real, too - I saw it some years ago while visiting friends in the area. Out of respect for those buried there and their families, I have taken the precaution of changing its location: it is a beautiful and fragile place, now on privately owned land. All the characters in this story, both living and dead, are entirely fictional. Although the story contains reminiscences of childhood, only adults participate in the action, either present or remembered. Tags: Twins, Oral sex, Straight sex, Group sex, Murder, Ghosts, Spectrophilia. * * * 1. The ghosts of Schuyler Any of the citizens of Schuyler, Virginia, will happily point out the places that figure in the television series "The Waltons," which is based on life in that small town. They'll show you the family home, the Baptist church, the store, and the high school (now a museum) - but few can direct you to the tiny graveyard hidden just a couple of miles away. This graveyard was once the property of the Alberene Stone Company, which has operated in the neighborhood since the 1880s. The company has changed hands several times and sold off most of its property to developers: it's a small operation now. But in the early days, when demand for soapstone washtubs and lab benches was high, it employed thousands. You can still see evidence of the former industrial glory of this area in the abandoned quarries that pock the land, the huge rough-cut chunks of soapstone scattered through the woods and fields, and the cracker-box houses the company used to put up for its workers. If you worked for Alberene and had nowhere else to be buried, they'd bury you in this graveyard at company expense. They'd supply a little tin cross with a place for a paper label. They'd even supply a bit of isinglass to protect the label from the elements until your family had scraped together enough to buy a proper headstone. Some families managed to swing the headstones, and some crafted their own markers out of soapstone - but a number of tin crosses remain even now, the paper labels too faded to read, the people buried under them forgotten by all but the dead. My brother, who lives in bucolic retirement near Schuyler, happened upon the graveyard while hiking in the woods, asked around, and, with some effort, got the story. He told me about the place and the rumors that it was haunted by a pair of ghosts - a young couple. I decided to come down from New York during my summer break and spend a month visiting him and investigating. I'm an anthropologist, and ghosts interest me. You can't truly understand the living unless you get to know the dead. It's a tricky business, seeing ghosts, because they've gotten a lot less substantial over the years. Centuries ago, people believed ghosts to be as corporeal as we are, but now most of those who believe in them at all think of them as spirits without substance, misty but less material than mist, nearly impossible to see. Don't get me wrong: the ghosts themselves haven't changed. Rather, our relationship to them is different. They're less important to us than they used to be, so we don't look for them and, not looking, we don't see them when they're right in front of us. And we've become about as uninteresting to them as they are to us, so that a ghost who's been dead for a long time can start to have trouble seeing us. I hear there are ghosts who deny the existence of living people. But ghosts are all around us, all the time, and it's quite possible to see them, get their attention, and communicate with them. If you visit the Schuyler graveyard, I suggest you go on a moonlit night, because ghosts are easiest to see by moonlight. Still, don't expect to see anything right away. First you may notice a kind of altered quality of the light, as if a moonbeam were shining up instead of down. Or, if the summer night is humid, you may spot a vague area of mist moving almost imperceptibly through the still air. Perhaps you'll hear a step in the leaf clutter that doesn't sound quite like a deer, or a rustling from one of the surrounding trees that reminds you, just faintly, of a human voice. If you notice any of these things, focus your attention there. You may have spotted your first ghost. I'd done my homework. I'd made daily trips from my brother's rambling old farmhouse to the nearby University of Virginia Library, where I combed through archived company records and old newspapers until, after weeks of bleary-eyed searching, I came up with a hypothesis about who they were. Owen and Olivia Cross, son and daughter of Zachary Cross, murdered in July 1927 by one Earl Wilson, who, in the precipitate way of justice in those days, had gone to the electric chair for the crime in October of the same year. Newspaper accounts didn't have much more to say about the matter. In the 1920s, the doings of country folk weren't all that interesting to the mostly urban people who read newspapers. This story wouldn't have gotten as much play as it did if the victims hadn't been twins, born on the same day in the summer of 1908. 2. The townsfolk's story "I just had to mention the names and the story came tumbling out," said Frank, stretching out his long legs as we relaxed with after-dinner drinks. Of course it did. Frank's people skills were legendary. He never forgot a name, and he could strike up a conversation with anyone he met - bank tellers, politicians, taciturn mountain folk - and soon have their whole life story. He'd parlayed his remarkable personality into a lucrative career as a defense attorney, charming judges and juries in the service of the criminal classes of our nation's capital. After ten years defending ever wealthier malefactors, he'd landed the dream client - a venture capitalist accused of poisoning his wife. At the end of a long and headline-grabbing trial, the client had walked away with his freedom, and my brother had walked away with half his client's fortune. Frank packed it in after that. Great lawyer though he was, neither he nor his wife Gina had ever been particularly ambitious or comfortable in the city: they had met in college, where they'd belonged to the same hiking club, and they'd bonded over their love of the outdoors. So when they'd found themselves in possession of a fortune, they'd spent a piece of it on a big old house on several hundred acres of wooded hills. They'd endeared themselves to the locals by spending lavishly to fix the place up. They'd hunted, fished, hiked, and gardened. And then, a year after they'd moved to Schuyler, Gina had been killed in a collision with a quarry truck. Now thirty-nine years old, Frank had been living by himself for about six months. "They began their lives under a cloud of tragedy," Frank began. "Their father was one of the skilled laborers, a stonecutter, almost an artist. He did a lot of the special orders: you know, bowls, bookends, figurines. People say he was pious, sensitive, and high-strung. Their mother, a fragile beauty, died in childbed: her last act in this life was to give them their alliterating names. "Zachary was distraught after the mother's death, not quite up to the job of raising them alone, and the town sort of adopted the twins, as little towns will. Everyone looked after them, and they repaid the community for that care by being perfect children: they were fair-skinned and flaxen-haired, ideal Scotch-Irish mountain types, and they were intelligent, friendly, and well behaved." "There's got to have been a worm in the rosebud," I said. "If there was, nobody remembers it. In the collective memory, they were golden children, universally loved." "How about Earl?" "He was well liked too. He was the son of a foreman, so well off by town standards. But not an evil overbearing overlord type - just a nice guy. No one knows when Earl first started looking at Olivia as a marriage prospect, but the feeling seems to be that they would have made a good match. By the time Olivia was sixteen, she and Earl were taking walks together, with Owen along as chaperone." "Got to love that old-fashioned dating," I laughed. "What they wouldn't have given for some alone time at a drive-in movie," he said. "Anyway, when Olivia was sixteen, Zachary sent her off to a secretarial school in Winchester, where she lived with an aunt. The idea was that she'd pick up the skills she needed to come back and work for the company. But some say Zachary, and Earl's parents too, thought things between their kids were heating up too fast, and they decided to separate them - not to break them up so much as to slow them down. Anyway, Earl was sent off for a year of school in Richmond, and Owen went to work at the quarry." "No trouble between Owen and Earl?" I asked. "Twins, you know . . ." Frank smiled ruefully. "I'm never going to stop asking you to forgive me for being the overbearing brother," he said. "And I'm never going to stop telling you there's nothing to forgive," I answered, a little impatiently. "Sure, you were a jerk - briefly. Then you got yourself under control. When I broke up with George it had nothing to do with you. He just wasn't my type." "I've always wondered what your type is," said Frank. "Tall, dark, and handsome, of course," I said with a smile, attempting to deflect the topic. "There's been no shortage of tall, dark, and handsome men prowling around you," he said, "but you've turned up your nose at all of them." "Maybe I'm not the marrying sort," I said. "Maybe I don't like men all that much." "Oh, come on," he said. "I know you better than that." I said, "It isn't all that easy being married to a twin, you know. Maybe women are better at it than men. Gina never gave any hint that she saw me as competition, but men . . ." "Do they run away when they find out you have a twin brother?" "More like they drift away. Or maybe I'm the one who drifts away. It's hard to match the intimacy of twins in a romantic relationship." "So I am to blame," he said with a wry smile. "Nothing I've done - just my existence." "Maybe," I said, trying to make my own smile reassuring, "but I wouldn't trade you for any of the men I've dated. Now back to the story. Boys with twin sisters have been known to be overprotective, though you weren't. Was Owen?" "If he was, it's been forgotten. It sounds like Earl and Owen were good friends. So anyway, Olivia returned to Schuyler in the spring of 1927, eighteen years old now, and went to work at the Alberene Stone Company. Earl went right back to courting her. Zachary seemed easy about it - if they'd married at eighteen or nineteen, that would've been pretty normal. Owen and Olivia turned nineteen on the eighth of July. And on the tenth, Earl blew them both away as they were walking near his father's house on Rockfish River Road. Two shotgun shells - his and hers. Then he walked to his house, called the Nelson County sheriff - his father was one of the few people in town with a telephone - and waited." "There was never a trial," I said. "Nope. He said he'd done it, he didn't put up any defense at all, and when the time came for sentencing he said he was ready to meet his maker." I said, "If he ever explained himself, it didn't get in the newspapers." "They say he never did explain. He left them all to guess. It took them only three months to get around to executing him, and he kept his counsel in the meantime." "Jesus," I said. "Zachary left here in September and went to work at a quarry up in Greene County," said Frank, "but he couldn't outrun his grief. Just two days after Earl went to the electric chair, he put the business end of a shotgun in his mouth and blew the top of his head off." 3. To the graveyard Frank wasn't comfortable with my plan. "Some of the neighborhood boys hang out and drink on an old logging road off the Howardsville Turnpike," he said. "It's just a quarter mile away. They're a rough lot: I'd rather you didn't run into them." "I'll bet they don't go to the graveyard," I said. "They probably don't even know about it. They won't know I'm there." We'd taken precautions. We would approach the graveyard from the house of some of Frank's friends, in the opposite direction from the logging road. My phone didn't work in this neighborhood, so I'd acquired one that did. Frank would walk me along the footpath to the graveyard and then retreat to his friends' house. I'd phone if there was trouble or when I was ready to leave. To me the precautions seemed a bit much. I'd spent plenty of nights among the dead. They didn't scare me, and neither did beer-drinking boys. The graveyard was small, less than a hundred feet on a side, and entirely surrounded by forest. Part of it had been kept clear by the families of those buried there; the rest was a tangle of bushes and vines, and trees had grown up among the graves. In the middle of the overgrown part I had found two identical soapstone markers side by side. Perhaps names had once been carved on them, but if so, rain and wind had long since erased the writing from the soft stone. Still, I was sure I'd found Olivia and Owen's graves - the markers would have been Zachary's work. Surveying the graveyard during the day, I had picked out a spot at the edge, from which I could keep an eye on these two graves. By ten thirty I had settled in. It was the eighth of July, the twins' birthday, and the night was clear. Light from the moon, which was just four days from full, filtered softly through the trees. Far away I could hear the voices of the drinking boys, but I doubted the ghosts cared any more about them than I did. It won't do to let your mind wander when you're watching for ghosts: they'll slip by you while you're reviewing your yesterday or planning your tomorrow. I worked on keeping my mind clear and my senses awake. I had been there a bit more than an hour when I heard a rustling in the leaves behind me. It might have been an animal, but I didn't think so. I turned and caught sight of something moving - too briefly to make out what it was. Then I was alone again. I was sure I'd seen one or more of the ghosts, and I was just as sure I wouldn't see them again tonight. I called my brother, who soon came with a flashlight. The next night I sat in the same place, but turned sideways so I could see either the graveyard or the spot where I thought I'd seen the ghosts. The moon was closer to full, but the night was partly cloudy, so it was harder to see. I waited. Again the rustling came, and in the same spot. I didn't turn towards it immediately, but counted to ten and then turned my head slowly. The figures were indistinct, as if made of smoke, and yet unmistakably human. One was male, the other female. They were slender, and they gave the impression of youth. They were kissing, arms wound about each other. Startled, I gasped and raised my hand to my mouth - and they were gone. I knew the way back now, so I didn't trouble Frank to come and get me. "There's no doubt about it, Frank," I said an hour later as we sat with our nightcaps in his comfortable living room. "But what does it mean?" "Maybe it's Olivia and Earl," said Frank. "Earl is buried in a prison cemetery outside Richmond," I said. "Most ghosts are averse to travel. Besides, would you kiss a person who'd blown a huge hole in you?" "Good point," said Frank. "Maybe it's not Olivia and Owen at all. Maybe it's some other couple." "Maybe," I said. That night I slept little, haunted by my memory of the kissing ghosts. The third night was the tenth of July, the anniversary of Olivia and Owen's slaying. The night was clear and the moon just two days from full. I sat facing the place where the lovers had appeared the last two nights. I could see why they liked it: it was clear of growth, except for leaves and soft mosses. If I were going to make love in the woods, I'd likely choose that spot. I held perfectly still as the boy and girl came to the clearing, holding hands. They were more distinct tonight than they'd been the night before, but still uncertain and unreal, fuzzing at the edges like figures on a very old and malfunctioning television. He was dressed in a loose-fitting white shirt and worn rumpled trousers held up with buttons and suspenders; she wore a below-knee summer dress with a floral pattern. They stood in the clearing, embraced, and kissed. They spoke some words I couldn't make out and kissed again, their manner awkward and frantic, as if they hadn't had much practice at this. They were both laughing as the girl said something, pushed the boy to the ground, and fell on top of him. Cradling his head in her hands, she kissed him again, and he put his arms around her and pulled her to him tightly. How happy they looked, and how passionate! I resisted the urge to look away from this private moment. If I so much as turned my head, I might end the scene. The boy rolled the girl over, pinning her to the ground: now it was her turn to embrace him and pull him to her for a kiss, laughing and squirming under him with delight. My heart was beating faster, affected as much by their joy as by the sexiness of the scene. Now she rolled him over and sat up, resting her weight on his knees. More serious now, he spoke some words that to me were an indistinct whisper. She nodded, as if he'd asked a question, and undid his belt; he raised himself up on his elbows to watch what she was doing. She opened his pants and pulled out his erect penis. Holding it in her hand, she slid down his legs, dress flowing around her, bent over, and put him into her mouth, holding the base of him with her hand. She looked awkward and tentative, as if this was a thing she'd never done or seen done. They grew less awkward as the minutes went by. Sometimes she'd stop long enough to say something, and they'd both laugh, or he'd say something to make her laugh, and she'd give his shaft a little lick before going on with her work. Then, quite abruptly, they stopped. They got up, the boy fastened his pants, and they left the clearing together. An hour later I was saying, "I'm sure of it, Frank. They were almost as distinct as you are right now, and she was performing fellatio on him." "Then they can't be your twins," he said. "You'll have to find out who else is in that graveyard. Back to the library . . ." "They looked as much like each other as we do, Frank," I said. "Anybody would look at them and say they're brother and sister." Frank was silent for a minute. Then he said, "Well, if they're the twins, we can guess easily enough why Earl killed them." "If they're the twins, I'll find out," I said. "How are you going to do that?" "Ask them, of course." That night, in bed, I couldn't dismiss the image of the lovers in the graveyard. My heart went out to them - with sympathy, with yearning to know them, talk to them, find out their story and what was in their hearts. I confess that I was turned on, too, remembering the handsome young man's erection, the young woman's mouth closed around it as it slid between her pretty lips, the way he thrust upwards into her, gently, somehow, and lovingly. Were they the twins? I still believed they were, and I was appalled by what I'd seen them doing. And yet their joy was infectious: there was something so innocent, so appealing about them, that it was hard to hold onto the thought that what they were doing was taboo. And I couldn't help myself - I put my hand into my nightie and masturbated. I don't think I would have slept that night if I hadn't. Olivia and Owen The next night, the couple repeated what they had done the night before - the same acts, though their mood now was somber and passionate instead of lighthearted. They were even more substantial now. I could hear their movements more clearly, their sighs and moans, their words of love. Again they stopped without having sex, and without the boy having an orgasm. Again they stood up, and the boy fastened his pants. As they turned to go, I said, very softly, "Olivia? Owen?" 4. The twins' story They turned to look at me. "Who're you?" said the boy. "My name is Angie," I said, "and I've come a long way to talk to you. Can you spare me a few minutes?" "Was you watching us?" said the girl. "Yes," I said. "I'm sorry." She hesitated a few seconds and then said, "It don't matter." I expected her to say something like that. Our notions of privacy are derived, ultimately, from concerns about status and reputation, and the dead are beyond caring what the living think of them. The boy said, "Why d'you want to talk to us?" I said, "I collect stories, and I'm betting yours is an interesting one." "You write for Black Mask?" he asked. "Andy Shiflett loaned me a copy of that once, and it was nifty." "Something maybe a little like that," I said. "Will you talk to me?" They exchanged a look, and she said, "Okay." "Why don't you sit?" I said, gesturing at the ground in front of me. "We don't get tired," said the boy. "I know," I said, "but it would be easier for me if you were sitting." They exchanged a look again, and then sat so we formed an intimate little circle. I said, "Did I get your names right? Olivia and Owen Cross?" "Yes, ma'am," said Owen. "That's us. What do you want to know about us?" "Well," I said, "I'd like to know how you became lovers, and pretty much anything else you'd like to tell me about your lives. And I'd like to know how you met your end." As we'd been talking, they had been growing more distinct. Now they seemed as real and solid as any living person. "We's twins," Olivia began. "I know," I said. "I am too. I have a twin brother." Olivia looked at me with a new interest. "So you know," she said. "When you're growing up with a twin, you spend about every minute of every day together. You don't know nobody in the world better than you know your twin. There ain't nothing in the world that feels more right than being together." "That's right," I said. "That was my experience too." "We done everything together," said Owen. "We played with the same toys when we was little, and we played ball together when we got older. We even played together with Via's dolls. Folks didn't think nothing of it. They just thought we was cute." Olivia said, "They didn't think nothing of it that we liked to play together more than we liked to play with other boys and girls. They understood, twins are like that." "We had friends and all," said Owen. "But we couldn't be friends with boys that couldn't stand girls or girls that thought boys was icky." "Was Earl a childhood friend?" I asked, wanting to drive the story forward but nervous about upsetting them. But they both brightened up at the mention of Earl. "Yes, ma'am," said Owen. "We was friends with Earl as far back as we can remember. Earl, and Dottie, and a few others. We was the boys and girls club. I guess they's all dead now." "You died eighty-seven years ago," I said. "You'd be a hundred and six if you were alive now." "It don't seem that long," said Owen. I said to Olivia, "People in town say Earl was sweet on you. They still remember how he courted you." Olivia hesitated, then said, "I liked Earl. He was our best friend. But I didn't like him that way." "When did the two of you find yourself starting to like each other that way?" "It's hard to say," said Owen. "When you're growing up a twin, it feels so natural to touch each other, like there ain't nothing secret about your bodies. There ain't nothing dirty about it: when you're little, you don't know nothing about that kind of thing. But then when you get older you start to feel like there's something wrong, and you ain't supposed to touch. But you still want to." "I know," I said. I remembered that awkward age when I had to become, in a way, estranged from the person closest to me. Olivia said, "We'd wait till Daddy was away, or asleep, and we'd just sit together and talk, you know? Touching? Starting when we was fourteen or so. We didn't do nothing wrong, we didn't kiss or nothing like that. We just wanted to be able to hold hands, like, or sit with our knees touching." Owen continued, "It was when we was sixteen that we was sitting on the sofa talking and holding hands, when Daddy come into the room - we didn't know he was home, or we wouldn't have done it. We knowed he didn't like it. He took one look at us and turned and left the room." "And before I knowed it," said Olivia, "I was living with Aunt Pauline up to Winchester and going to a secretarial academy." Owen said, "She was there for two years. She only come home twice, for Christmas, and Daddy watched us like a hawk then. We wrote to each other, but we had to be careful what we said, because they was reading our letters. Still, I could tell how Via missed me, and I missed her too." "I got back home in spring of twenty-seven," Olivia continued, "and went to work for Alberene, in the office. Taking dictation. Typing. I liked the work, and the pay was good. Earl was there, too. They had him doing different jobs, learning how the company worked. He was going to be a manager. Owen was working in the quarry." "That was hard, hot work," said Owen, "but I liked it." "We tried not to touch each other," said Olivia, "because we knowed Daddy didn't like it. He didn't want to leave us alone: he'd kind of hang around when we was together, or we'd see him looking at us through doors and windows." Owen said, "Sometimes we'd hear him sort of muttering to himself. I worried he was going round the bend." "Everything picked up where it left off with Earl," said Olivia. "He'd come calling in the afternoon, asking to go for walks. He was the same nice guy, and I liked him the same way as before. Finally he up and told me he was sweet on me, and asked would I marry him. He was kind of hopeless like when he said it, like he knowed what the answer was, and why, but he had to ask anyways." "She told him she'd always be his friend," said Owen, "but she couldn't be his wife. She just didn't love him that way. He said he'd always be her friend, too, and if she ever wanted him to be more, he'd be ready." "So he took it well?" "Yeah," said Olivia. "He took it real well. Earl was so sweet." "What changed him?" I asked. "What do you mean?" she said, looking puzzled. "Why did he shoot you?" "Earl didn't never shoot us," she said. My heart skipped a beat. "I guess I got the story wrong," I said. "So tell me what happened." "It was the day after Earl asked me to marry him," said Olivia, "and we was just turned nineteen. We was sitting on the back stoop talking about Earl. We was holding hands." Owen said, "I asked why she wouldn't marry Earl, because he was a good fellow and a good match, and he was real stuck on her." Olivia said, "I said I wouldn't never marry, because I couldn't love nobody, and when he asked why, I said I knowed I couldn't never be as close to nobody as I was to him." "I realized right there that I felt the same way," said Owen, "and that was why I hadn't gone courting - not Dottie, not Alice. They was all pretty, and good catches, and they'd started to smile at me that way, you know, but I didn't want none of them." "He told me that," said Olivia, "sitting there on the back stoop, holding hands, and it come to me that maybe Owen was the one I loved. His hand felt so good in mine, I asked him if he'd kiss me." "She was cute about it," said Owen with a smile. "She said, you know, like an experiment, to see if kissing feels good. Maybe we just wasn't cut out for loving. So I kissed her." "Nothing ever felt so good before," said Olivia. "It was like suddenly I was ten times as alive as I'd ever been in my life. The moon was almost full, like tonight, and it seemed ten times as bright as it ever was." Owen said, "I felt like my body was full to bursting with something sweet like honey, or bright like sunshine." "We kissed and kissed," said Olivia, "till I got up and pulled him out into the backyard. I pushed him down on the ground and got on top of him to kiss him some more, just like what you seen us do tonight." "We rolled on the ground, kissing and kissing, till she sat up on me, and undid my pants, and . . ." "I put his willy in my mouth," Olivia giggled. "How did you get the idea to do that?" I asked. "Lots of girls do it now, but I hear they didn't do it so much back then." She said, "Some of the girls at the secretarial academy talked about doing it, and it sounded like fun. I thought I'd never felt nothing so wonderful. I held him in my mouth, and sucked him, and ran my tongue up and down him." "It was amazing how good it felt," said Owen, "and I knew there wasn't nobody else that could ever make me feel that way. I just propped myself up on my elbows and watched her - I'd never seen such a beautiful sight, like it was meant to be." "And that's when I heard the click of somebody racking a shotgun behind me," said Olivia. "I looked around - it was Daddy. He said just one word, 'abomination,' and then he shot me. It hurt bad, and it made a huge hole in my side." "He shot me in the chest," said Owen. "Then he turned around and went inside without saying another word." "We was there a little while," said Olivia. "We stood together, holding hands and looking at our bodies. They was a big mess. I'd fell with my head in Owen's lap, and Owen had fell backwards so he was laying on his back. There was blood all over us and all around us." "Then Earl come along," said Owen. "His house wasn't far away, and I guess he heard the shotgun blast. He stood there a long time, looking at us. Then he rolled Olivia off me and fastened my pants. He drug us out to the road and laid us there, me on my back and Olivia face down, sort of like the way we was in the backyard, but side by side. I guess he didn't want folks to find us the way we was. Then he left us, and nothing else happened till the sheriff got there. We didn't pay much attention after that. We was already starting to lose interest in the world of the living." "Still, we stayed near our bodies. The Coroner had us for a while, and then they brung us here," said Olivia. "And we been here ever since." "It's a nice place," said Owen. "It was all logged out when they put us here - bare land. But the trees has all grown up now - it's real pretty." "Quiet, too," said Olivia. "And the other folks here is nice." I had a hundred questions to ask them, but I was agitated, emotions boiling inside me. "May I come and visit you again tomorrow night?" I asked. They exchanged a look again; then Olivia shrugged and said, "Sure." 5. The trouble with sex "You have to see them to understand how completely not disgusting they are," I said. "They're just kids - they were nineteen when they died, and they're still nineteen now. And they're pretty and sweet. Sure, what they did was wrong, when they were alive, sort of - they didn't go all the way. But how bad is it now? They love each other, they're happy together, and what they do seems beautiful and innocent." We were working in Frank's garden, weeding on either side of a row of tomatoes. The July sun was hot, and we were both wearing big floppy hats and sweating in baggy khakis. "Okay," said Frank. He was working with great concentration, face set. "What they were saying resonated with me, in a funny way," I said. "About the time when it started to be not okay to, you know, share a bed, bathe together, or just touch, hold hands, wrestle in the grass - things we did when we were small, before touching started to seem personal in a different way. Do you remember that awkwardness?" "Yeah." Frank's face softened a little. "You matured faster than I did and started to seem stand-offish. I didn't quite understand it, even though Mom and Dad tried to explain it to me. Adolescence was hard." I said, "At least until you figured out how much all the girls liked you." Frank laughed. "Did you ever notice how all my girlfriends looked a bit like you?" "I used to wonder if it was my imagination - and after all, Italian-American girls were what you had available there in our neighborhood. But yeah - Gina used to joke that you'd married your twin." We worked quietly for a while. I was sorry I'd told him what Gina had said. The air between us was dense with unsaid things. Finally Frank said, "Tomorrow's Sunday. Why don't we drive up to Charlottesville and go to church? Get a nice lunch afterwards?" "Why, Frank?" I said. "We're both lapsed Catholics. We haven't been to church in ages." "I want to remember what it was like being a kid. I think maybe going to church would help." That night I was in the graveyard again. I expected it to be my last visit: only two more days in Virginia, and then I'd go home to New York. Olivia and Owen again performed their strange not-quite sex act, apparently undisturbed by my presence. Then they came to sit with me. "What you do," I said, "your lovemaking. You can feel the physical pleasure, right?" "Oh, yeah!" said Owen enthusiastically, and Olivia nodded vigorously. "But you don't ever do more than that? Go all the way?" "We don't know how," said Olivia. "We was virgins when we died." "If you could learn, though - then you could do it?" "Sure they could," said a man who'd come up to our group - the suddenness of his appearance startled me. He would have been about fifty when he died - maybe younger, because work in the quarries aged you fast. He was lean, almost emaciated, and dark-haired. "Me and the missus do it all the time." "Angie," said Olivia, "this is Mr. Harrington. He was buried here just a year after us, and his wife a couple years later." "I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Harrington," I said. "Call me George," he said. "Me and Beth tried to learn these young 'uns how to do it, but they couldn't catch on." "It's hard to learn new things when you're dead," said Owen ruefully. George said, "You living folk are always in a hurry, changing and going places. We done all our changing, and we got where we're going." "Do you never change or learn?" "We used to learn the names of newcomers, before they stopped burying here. We learned your name, Angie," said Olivia proudly. "It's the how-to things that's hard," said George. "These kids like to hear me sing 'Big Rock Candy Mountain,' but they can't learn it." "There was a record of it made after we died," said Owen. "Fella come through here a few years ago and learned me a song," said George. "A hiker. Nice fella, not afraid of ghosts at all. Want to hear it?" "Sure," I said. He started to sing off-key, "Hey, Jude, don't make it bad . . ." I laughed. "Okay, so you can learn." "We can learn from living folks," said George, "and even so it ain't easy. I had to sing along with that fella a couple a times. I wasn't gonna learn it by hearing it only the once." "Let me ask you," I said to Olivia and Owen. "If you could learn to make love, would you want to do it? Or are you happy the way you are?" Owen took Olivia's hand and said, "It's the onliest thing we do want to learn." Olivia said, "We would've done it that night, if Daddy hadn't a killt us first." I said, "Did you ever hear what happened to Earl and your father?" "We ain't seen Daddy since he come here and put some little soapstone markers on our graves," said Olivia. "He stayed here, and cried a while, and then went away. We didn't let him see us." "Earl took the blame for your killings," I said. "The state executed him later that year. And your father committed suicide." I told them the few details I knew. They were quiet for a while. Then Owen said, "Well, if that don't beat all." "Do you have any idea why Earl would have taken the blame?" I asked. Olivia said, "I think maybe he didn't want to live no more, after me and Owen was gone." "It's a hard way to commit suicide, though," I said. "It's the way you might do it if you really hated yourself." "Maybe he did," said Owen. After the twins had left, George lingered, blocking the path that led back to Frank's friends' house. Grinning, he said, "That hiker told me about you modern dolls, how you's all trollops. You could learn 'em, sure enough. You could show that boy how to put his dick in a nice warm fur pie and come there and make a girl come. Then he could fuck that sweet sister of his for the rest of eternity, just like me and the missus." "In theory," I snapped, and brushed past him, switching on my flashlight. "In theory," he mocked, and a few seconds later, as I was retreating around a bend, he shouted, "Be a thousand year before anybody else come along as could do it!" He was right - the ghosts and I were real enough to each other that physical relations were possible. But of course the idea was absurd. The next day Frank took me to a pretty old Catholic church in downtown Charlottesville. He was right that it would make us feel like children again. The stained glass, the ritual, and the Eucharist all put me in mind of Sundays when Mom and Dad would shepherd us down the aisle and into a pew, and we'd feel small and cared for and, somehow, strangely, free. After church we had an outdoor lunch on a street that had been closed off to make a tree-shaded pedestrian mall. We talked about our gentle, indulgent parents and the childhood we'd shared in our leafy, prosperous Connecticut suburb - worlds and eternities away from the poor, hard world of the stoneworkers. But we had this in common with Olivia and Owen: we'd known the intimacy they'd spoken of, the sense, as children, that it was perfectly natural for us to do everything together, to touch and be easy with each other's bodies. The loss of that paradise is inevitable - for identical twins as well as fraternal ones like Frank and me. We have to make our separate ways in the world and pursue our separate careers and loves. And for boy-girl twins, the beginning of that process of separation can be cruel, as the familiarity of childhood becomes, all too suddenly, taboo. We bought a week's worth of groceries and took the slow back way down to Schuyler, along the Old Lynchburg Road, through lush woodlands and tiny crossroad villages, past three-century-old farms. Back at Frank's house, we did our separate things for what was left of the afternoon, made and ate dinner, and afterwards sat together on his big screened porch, on a swinging seat under a lazily turning fan. I said, "I hope I didn't upset you, mentioning what Gina said about your marriage. She was just joking, you know." "It's okay," he said. "But you can pack a lot of truth into a joke. She never said it to me, but I knew it anyway. She understood better than I did that our marriage was as much about you as her, and she made herself live with that understanding because she loved me. I loved her, too. She was fun, and beautiful, and we had shared interests. But I've regretted, every day since she died, that I never managed to love her quite as much as she loved me." His left arm lay on the arm of the porch swing, his right hand on his thigh. I put my hand on his, squeezed his fingers, and let it rest there, enjoying the warmth and moisture of his skin, pleased that he was willing to be comforted this way, with my touch. Cooled by the overhead fan, we watched the shadows lengthen over his garden. Olivia and Owen 6. In the bath We sat together in silence for a while. Then I said, "They were sitting just like this. Owen and Olivia, I mean, on a love seat in their tiny house. Their father saw them holding hands, feared the worst, and sent Olivia off to Winchester. I wonder if his doing that planted the idea that they could be lovers." "Maybe so," he said. "But I'll bet they always wanted to, even if they didn't know it. Something was going to trigger the conscious thought and the act. If it hadn't been the dad sending Olivia to Winchester, it would have been something else. Everything they did tempted fate." I was intensely aware of the way we were touching - his skin seemed hot, and it was an effort not to take my hand away. Something was moving inside me, under my breasts. After perhaps a minute of silence Frank said, "Do you think it was an accident, the way Gina died?" "Of course it was," I said, surprised by the sudden change of subject. "She was distracted, talking on the phone, and crossed the center line . . ." "She never used her phone when she was driving," he said, "especially on these country roads. It was a rule with her. There's no way she would have lost control of her car, right there on a straight stretch of Rockfish River Road where you can see what's coming a half mile away. I was glad the insurance company believed it was an accident, but I never did for even a minute." I turned towards him now. "No, Frank. She wouldn't do that. She wasn't like that." "We had a nice friendship masquerading as a marriage," he said. "It was pleasant, and polite, and cool, and it wasn't enough for her. She knew she'd thrown her life away on me, because the only woman I was able to love was the one I could never, ever have." "No, Frank," I said, but I knew that what he was saying was true, because the same was true for me. It was my tragedy and his. Back in 1927 it had been the death of four people. Suddenly it seemed perfectly likely that it had been the death of Gina in 2014. "Yes, Angie," he said. He turned to me and caught my hands in his. His eyes held mine: I couldn't look away. "Let's tempt fate," he said. "Let's do the things they stopped us doing when we got too old. Let's take a bath together and sleep in the same bed." I was frightened. "No, Frank," I began, trying to pull my hand away, but he held it tighter. "It doesn't have to be sexual," he said. "It can be perfectly innocent. And no one will know. How many secrets have we kept together over the years? That business with Mr. De Luca's roses, the time we tried to learn to smoke . . ." I laughed. "The Homecoming caper, the ding in Mr. Wilson's windshield . . ." He leapt up and pulled me to my feet. "One more secret," he said. "Let's take a bath." He towed me into the house, up the stairs, through his bedroom and into the adjoining bathroom, where he sat on the rim of a big claw-foot tub - the kind that's comfortable on both ends - and turned on the water. I stood watching, awkward and nervous. "Bubble bath," he said. "That's what we need, but I don't have any." "Shampoo," I said. He took a bottle from a wire rack under the shower-head and drizzled some into the stream from the faucet. Soon there was a thick white layer of bubbles on the surface of the rising water. He looked at me and said, "Now we take our clothes off." I stood there, frozen, as he took his shirt off. His chest was strong and trim, with a spray of black hair - he had a hiker's body. Numbly, with clumsy fingers, I unbuttoned my blouse and took it off. He took off his pants and stood in front of me wearing nothing but briefs. I couldn't make my fingers do the next thing. He said, "What if I step out of the room for a few seconds. You can finish undressing, get into the tub, and then call." "Okay," I said. He left the bathroom: knowing he was standing just outside the door, I was still self-conscious, but quickly took off my pants, bra, and panties, got into the tub, and when I was sure I was covered by the layer of bubbles, called, "Okay, Frank." He came in and stepped out of his briefs. I saw his nakedness for just a few seconds: his fine, strong body - and his penis, which had been so tiny and kind of funny when we were small and now looked so big and dangerous. And then he was in the tub. I was sitting with my feet drawn in, arms around my knees. He leaned back, toes touching mine. "I wish we had some toys," he said, smiling. "Remember the little animals that squirted?" I laughed and relaxed a little. "We made them do battle. And there were the boats of course, and the letters we stuck to the side of the tub . . ." "The tea set - so much stuff! But no rubber duckies." "We were so rich, compared to Owen and Olivia," I said. "I wonder if they even had a bathtub, let alone a big bucket of bath toys." "I bet they washed in a basin in cold weather. In the summer they'd swim in the Rockfish River. They couldn't afford swimsuits - they skinny dipped." I said, "Down, boy. Enough naughty thoughts." "What naughty thoughts?" he said. "It was all innocent, swimming naked. Just like it was innocent when we bathed together. Just like it's innocent now." The shampoo bubbles hadn't lasted long - there were just patches here and there, scarcely concealing our nakedness. He looked into my face as he spoke, and I forced myself to hold his gaze, but at the edge of my vision I could make out the patch of his dark hair, ghostly under the milky water. I wondered if he could see my hard nipples or, down lower, my warm, insistent sex. "It's not innocent, Frank," I said, "what we're doing now. You're grown up. You're naked. You're . . ." I was tongue-tied. What came to mind was that no man in the world was more compelling, that I was mesmerized by his fit, well-muscled body, that his naked manhood, so close to me, made me faint, and his brown eyes seemed to be looking right into the center of me - but I couldn't say such things, so I settled for lamely concluding ". . . a man." "Yes," he said, a little deflated. "I can't escape that, being a man, and you can't escape being a woman - a beautiful woman. I feel the gravitational attraction of you." He looked down into the bathwater for a moment. Then he raised his head, features tense, eyes smoldering. He took my hand and stood up suddenly, pulling me to my feet. He clasped me to him with strong arms, and I was weak, with no power to resist. His body was hot - so much skin against my skin! The soapy water was slick and sensuous between us, and his manhood stirred and pressed against my mound. I raised my face to his: his eyes and mouth were so close - oh, his gravity was strong too! His tan skin, his clean, soapy smell mixed with a hint of sweat, the sound of water dripping from our naked bodies - all of it overwhelmed my senses. My heart raced, and I couldn't breathe. I put my hands behind his head and pulled him down to me, fingers in his thick hair. We kissed, a kiss like I'd never known - warm, moist, and bursting with life, like long-ago summers. Excitement raced through every part of me: my nipples hard against his chest, my fingers slipping over his wet skin, my stomach, my damp sex . . . I was electrified, and I could sense the same passion in him, the way his lips moved, his hands in my hair, on my neck, my shoulders, exploring my back and - oh, yes! - my bottom. I wanted him as I'd never wanted anything in my life. But we couldn't - we just couldn't. My desire terrified me. Didn't Olivia and Owen prove that it was death to go where both of us so badly longed to go? I buried my face in his chest and sobbed, "Oh, Frank, what'll we do?" "I want you," he murmured into my hair. "I want you, too," I said, "but we can't . . ." "We can," he said. "Put aside your fear. Do it for love, do it for fun . . ." "It's not that simple," I said. "It can be, if you let it," he said. "We love each other, and we're a man and a woman. Let's do what men and women do - what Olivia and Owen do." In an instant, his hand on my skin seemed to scald me, and terror rushed up inside me. "No, Frank," I cried, pushed away from him, leapt out of the tub, and grabbed a towel. Frank was calling, "Wait, Angie!" as I dashed out of the bathroom. I ran to my bedroom, locked myself in, and toweled off, breasts heaving with my sobs. Within a few seconds he was knocking on the door, saying "Angie! I'm sorry! Let's talk." "I don't want to talk, Frank," I said, pulling on my robe. "Go away." "I didn't mean it the way it sounded," he pleaded. "Open the door." "Leave me alone, Frank," I said, picturing him naked and dripping in the hallway. He must have gone away, because it was quiet after that. I flung myself on the bed and cried. I was shocked by what we both wanted to do, afraid for the future of our relationship - and, I have to admit, disappointed that he had given up a little too easily. I crawled into bed; and as I calmed down, memories intruded of Frank's fine body, that dark patch half-hidden under the water, and the heady feeling of desiring and being desired. I was tense, aroused, and feverish. I tossed and turned for a long time before I finally fell into a fitful sleep. 7. Back to the graveyard The morning light brought shame with it - for my taboo desires, for my fear, and for what now seemed a childish reaction to my confused emotions. I crept downstairs to the kitchen, hoping Frank wouldn't be up yet, but expecting to find him seething with anger at my irrational behavior. He was at the breakfast table, hunched over a cup of black coffee. He looked up and said, "Forgive me?" I said, "Yes, Frank, if you'll forgive me. I was just afraid. I'm sorry." He said, "We came close to doing something crazy last night. It must have been the full moon." I said, "But the danger is past, right? I'm feeling calmer now, and you look calmer." "I am," he said. "Nothing like realizing you've been a jerk to steady the nerves." "Stop beating yourself up," I said. "Besides, when you mentioned what Owen and Olivia do, that gave me an idea. They said it was Olivia who wanted to do it - she'd heard about it at secretarial school. But good girls didn't do oral sex in 1927 - maybe in the cities, but not here in the Virginia hills. I'm not sure I believe the girls at school talked about it, or that she would have volunteered to do it if they did." "So you think he talked her into it?" "No offense intended, but isn't that the way it usually works?" "I guess it is at that," he said. "But if he did," I said, "why didn't they tell the truth about it? And I'm still not satisfied about why Earl confessed to the murder." "I guess you'll have to cross-examine them," he said. "Do you mind if I come along when you do? I'd like to meet your ghosts." We spent a quiet day and evening at Frank's place - reading, walking, working in his garden. At a little before eleven o'clock that night, as we were walking the path to the graveyard, I said, "If you've just been humoring me, you won't see them. You have to be sure they're there, and even so, they'll probably be indistinct at first. When they've become real enough to you, then you can talk to them." Frank said, "You've made a believer of me. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to see them." "I'll touch you when they appear, so you'll know when to start looking," I said. We sat together facing the place where Owen and Olivia liked to do their lovemaking. It was around a quarter of an hour before they arrived. They both smiled at me, glanced at Frank, and smiled more widely. They'd guessed who he was. I touched Frank's arm, and he responded by taking my hand and holding it. The twins did what they'd done before, not embarrassed by Frank's presence. When they were finished, they came and sat with us. "This is Frank, my brother," I said. "I guessed," said Olivia. "The two of you looks a lot alike." "Can you see and hear them, Frank?" I asked. "I can see you pretty distinctly," he said, "and I can hear you fairly well. Did you say we looked alike?" "Yeah," said Owen. "You look like brother and sister, same way me and Via do." I said, "I have to go home to New York tomorrow, so this will be my last visit." "I'll miss you, Angie," said Olivia. "I'll miss you both," I said. "I've enjoyed getting to know you. Do you mind if I ask you one or two more questions?" "We don't mind," said Olivia. "It's about Earl," I said. "I still think it's strange, the way he took the blame and let the state kill him. I wonder if you have any more thoughts about why he did it." Owen and Olivia glanced at each other; then Owen said, "We talked about it, but we can't figure it either. We don't know why he done it." "Let me take a guess," I said. "Olivia, you said you heard the girls at the secretarial academy talking about giving oral sex, and that made you want to do it, but that's not right, is it? You got the idea from Owen, didn't you? You did it because he wanted you to." Now their glances seemed nervous. Olivia didn't answer, but waited to hear what else I had to say. "And, Owen, you got the idea from Earl. When the three of you walked out together, it wasn't Earl and Olivia, with you as chaperone, was it? It was you Earl was after: Olivia was the chaperone. And then when Olivia was away, you let Earl do it." They hesitated, and I said, "You know, it's not a bad thing anymore, being gay - homosexual - what did you call it in 1927?" "A faggot," said Owen. I flinched at the word. "Anyway, it's not a bad thing the way it was then. You can't harm him, talking about it, or yourself either." Owen sighed and said, "Yeah, I let him put it in his mouth. Earl was going to a boy's school in Richmond that first year Via was up at Winchester, and when he come back he was the same good fellow, but he wanted to do that thing, and other things, too, that I wouldn't let him do. At first I thought it was just horsing around, but then on that last day he told me he loved me. It wasn't him asking Via to marry him, the way we told it; it was him saying he wanted to be my girl. I thought that was disgusting, and I told him if he wanted to be my friend he shouldn't never talk like that again." Olivia said, "That night Owen told me all about Earl, and we talked about love - like we told you before. And we kissed, and I pulled him out into the backyard like I said . . . and he asked me would I do what Earl did." Frank said, "When Earl found you, he put it all together from the way you were lying. He had to be devastated, seeing the man he loved and a good friend dead like that, and he blamed himself because the two of you had been doing a thing he'd taught Owen. It's a classic reason for a false confession." "That sounds like Earl," said Owen. "Everybody liked him, but he was always kind of sad." I said, "When he figured out he was gay, probably during his year in Richmond, that must have been hard. Society was homophobic back then, and a lot of gay people hated themselves, too. Between the guilt and self-loathing, it's not hard to understand what he did." "I hope he's at rest now," said Olivia. "Poor little Earl," came a mocking voice from the direction of the graveyard. Startled, Frank leapt to his feet as George emerged from the woods. "What I want to know is what'll we do for these kids." I said, "Frank, this is George, who has a way of sneaking up on a conversation." Recovering quickly, Frank grinned and said, "Glad to meet you, George." "Pleased to meet you," said George gruffly, and then turned to me and said, "You thought about what I said? You come back here to help these kids?" "Help us how?" asked Owen. "Learn you to poke that sweet sister of yours," said George. "She could learn you to do it. Maybe this here Frank could help out too." "I can't do that, George," I said. "You can't, or you don't want to? Afraid you're going to get a dose of the clap? Scared you're gonna be possessed by an evil spirit?" George waggled his hands on either side of his head and said "Woo, woo," playing the cartoon ghost. "I mean I can't," I said. Olivia said, "Be nice, Mr. Harrington: these folks is our guests." Ignoring her, George said, "I get it. I heard tell about you city girls - a lot of you likes other girls. Are you one of them perverts?" "Mr. Harrington!" Olivia scolded. Frank stirred beside me, but I reached up, took his hand, and said, "Sit down, Frank." He sat: you can't win a fight with a ghost. Angry, but keeping myself under control, I said, "That hiker who taught you the song convinced you that all modern women are whores, but we're not. I can't teach Olivia and Owen how to make love because I don't know how myself. They know more about it than I do." Everyone fell silent at this. Then finally Frank said, "Jesus, Angie, I had no idea." I said, "Don't make it sound like I've got the plague, Frank. I'm just . . . inexperienced, is all." George said, "I'm sorry, ma'am. I didn't mean no disrespect . . ." "Don't think about it, George," I said. Frank said, "You haven't even done what Olivia and Owen do?" I shook my head, embarrassed now that I'd told my secret. Olivia, sitting opposite me in our little circle, reached over and laid her hand on mine. Her touch was strange: she was corporeal, and her skin was pliable, but as if made of some otherworldly metal instead of flesh. It was hot and cold together, and I could sense life under the surface, but not the life of warm, pumping blood. It was something else, intense and wild, like the whirling inferno inside a star. Her touch terrified me, but it was thrilling at the same time. She said, "You've got time to learn, Angie. Lots of time. I'm glad I learned to do that one thing before me and Owen died. I didn't want to do it when he asked me - I thought it was dirty and wicked, and I felt like God wouldn't love me no more if I did a thing like that. "But I made myself take it out of his pants. And when I looked at it, it was so big and hard and scary - I didn't never see anything like it before, with the skin sliding over the top of it like a mouth opening up, and a kind of pink wetness underneath. I thought it would be the death of me, like a poisonous snake. I was so scared of putting that awful thing in my mouth that I was breathing hard and my heart was pounding like to die. I couldn't have done it if it wasn't Owen, and I loved and trusted him." She was speaking in an excited whisper now. "But I made myself do it, and when my lips touched the top of him, where he was so smooth and moist, it was like heat spread from where my lips touched him all through me, and my skin was hot all over, and my breasts tingled, and I got wet down in my private place. And when he sighed and moved his hips under me, it was like he was talking to me with his body, like his muscle and his hardness and all his life and strength was telling me he loved me." "That was the truth, too," Owen said. Olivia continued, "It was pure love pouring into me through my lips and tongue. I knowed then that I'd do anything he wanted, anything at all, and he'd do anything for me. We done the same thing every night since then. We kiss each other on the lips, and I kiss his willy, and it still feels the same after all this time, scary, but like love." 8. The lesson While Olivia was speaking, my hand, which had been resting on Frank's arm, slipped into his. Her words aroused me, but filled me with shame, too. When I'd seen her doing what she was talking about, it had seemed beautiful, but when Frank had wanted me to do the same thing, I'd thought it was dirty and degrading. But now I remembered the brief glimpse I'd gotten of Frank's penis, so thick and manly: oh, why hadn't I overcome my fear! I wanted to feel the skin of it on my lips. I wanted the experience Olivia had had and the experience she yearned to have.