synopsis: A reunion of ex-sorority sisters turns into something more.
Note 1: If you are under 18 years of age, this story is not for you. Go away.
Note 2: Anyone who can’t stand a little squick should go away, too. Cheers!
I couldn’t stop staring at Dianne. All the way up into the Appalachians, across the Blue Ridge Parkway, and through the forests beyond, I kept stealing glance after furtive glance at my old college crush.
Of course, I hadn’t known she was a crush back in college. I’d told myself Dianne was just my sorority sister and a close friend...okay, a particularly attractive close friend, but nothing more. It took another decade before I was ready to come out to myself. But once I did, my mind kept circling back and back and back again to Dianne. She’d been everything I could have wanted in a mate, if I hadn’t been too narrow-minded to notice at the time.
Not that my noticing would have made any difference. Dianne was happily straight back then, and she was still happily straight today. In fact, she was married now. They were all married, or had been, except for me.
Ten more years had passed since my self-discovery; and I’d finally decided that, hell, I really was going to see Dianne again. Google located her in a matter of minutes, and she was delighted to get my e-mail. Unfortunately, in her cheerful ignorance, she suggested that we round up some other Eta Pi Lambdas and have a mini-reunion. What could I do but play along?
Anyway, it wasn’t like I had any real hope of hooking up with Dianne. Not that way. And it would be nice just to see her again; to see if she was still as snarkily sexy as I remembered; to see if just possibly...just maybe....
No. I was too much of a realist to believe that could happen, even before getting that e-mail from her with a recent picture of herself. Dianne was just as gorgeous at forty as she had been at twenty, and the picture showed her clinging blissfully to a man every bit as gorgeous as she was. Her honey-blond hair was short and tousled, and her body had filled out just a little, in just the right places.
I tried not to wonder if she was as happy as she seemed, and simply to look forward to meeting her as a friend. Her and the other five she’d been able to round up on short notice. I couldn’t help feeling less excited about seeing them.
We met in Charlottesville, where we’d gone to college, and where Leslie still kept a home. She owned several houses now, thanks to her fortuitous choice of major in the late ‘80’s. The rest of us had looked at what passed for computers back then and looked away, wondering what anyone could possibly see in those clunky, buzzing boxes; but Leslie had seen the future.
And because she had, she could afford to host her ex-sisters in style. A few months earlier Leslie had purchased an abandoned mountain retreat, and she’d just begun to renovate it. So far only a couple of cabins were ready for use, but a couple was one more than we needed. We planned to bunk together in the larger one, and to drink and gab like college girls all weekend long.
After Leslie, Dianne had found four more ex-sisters to join in the reunion. Mary Katherine was a sweet, studious girl who’d grown into a sweet, studious adult—without, as far as I could tell, gaining a single pound. Tonya and Angie hadn’t been so lucky; but then, they’d each had kids.
And Tonya was divorced now: a revelation that gave me quiet delight. I’d always secretly hated her, back in college, and I was less surprised that her husband had left her than that she’d found anyone willing to marry her in the first place.
Shannon’s divorce, though, was a surprise to me. She and her ex had met my freshman year, and they’d hardly left each other’s sight from that point onward. I wondered what had happened between them, but so far, Shannon hadn’t offered any details.
A stranger peering into the rental van wouldn’t have marked me as any different from the others. I looked just as white-bread and ladylike as I ever had; and the stranger might not notice my lack of a wedding ring.
The others had asked me about that, but I’d spent most of my life twisting words to my needs. I told them I just hadn’t found the right man to marry, and they’d left it at that. Thank goodness. Part of me wanted to say more, because part of me always wants to say more. But most of me was just too scared of their reaction. I’d always had a thin skin, even when it came to rejection by strangers. The thought that even one ex-sister might reject me was enough to seal my lips in front of all of them.
I looked around the van again, taking in the frosted hair, the manicured nails, the casually expensive jewelry. Only Angie didn’t completely look the part of an ex-bowhead; she’d come from a small town in Tennessee and had gone right back there after college. But really, she didn’t stand out any more than I did. We were a pretty homogeneous group, then and now. The closest Eta Pi Lambda had ever come to diversifying was Mary Katherine.
Just a bunch of clones, I told myself, thinking of my MC fetish erotica. Homogeneous, that was us. And I was the most “homo” of all. My lips stayed sealed, but for just that moment, they caged a giggle.
The Appalachians in early summer are a maze of cool, green caves and darkly looming rocks.
For the most part, the foliage allowed only glimpses of the panoramas around us, but every scenic overlook was diligently marked - and photographed, mostly by Angie and Mary Katherine. Dianne and I shot each other many a wry glance or an eye roll at the stops...when the cameras weren’t turned toward us, anyway.
Somewhere beyond the national forest, in the depths (heights?) of Highland County, we saw our first sign for Beck’s Peak. The “C” had dropped off the brown background, and Leslie groaningly assured us that it would be fixed before she opened for business. I remembered what she’d told us via e-mail, that this area was lightly populated and little visited, and I wondered how she expected to draw tourists all the way out here. Maybe she’d used up her entire stock of business acumen picking a major.
My puzzlement continued right up to the moment we turned the final corner.
“Welcome to Beck’s Lookout,” Leslie announced; and we found ourselves at the bottom of a smooth, green bowl, cracked wide at the far end to reveal a jaw-dropping range of peaks. A lake of perfect midnight blue lay in the midst of it all, and around the lake stood twenty-four cabins: twenty-two weather-beaten almost to pulp, and two gleamingly restored in what Leslie assured us was the original style. She said she’d found pictures of the old camp in a newspaper article but teasingly refused to say why it had been in the paper.
No problem, I told myself, remembering a host of sodden frat parties. Once she gets a little alcohol in her, she’ll spill her guts like a pro.
“Soooo,” purred Tonya, drawing deeply on her joint. Funny how it had never occurred to me, back in college, that my sisters might smoke anything stronger than cigarettes. Funny how they, understanding my naivet�, had been careful not to smoke around me. And funniest of all how no one, myself included, gave a rat’s ass today. I’d tried pot a handful of times since college and just didn’t care for it, so I turned down the baggie when it was passed around; but it didn’t bother me to see Tonya light up. Or Shannon. Or Dianne. Actually, the faint new glaze in Dianne’s eyes made me squirm.
Of course, my eyes were probably glazed too, from all the tequila I’d downed. I grinned back at Tonya, much more at ease with her now than I had been in college. Her tongue was as sharp as ever, but she hadn’t stabbed any of us with it today. Maybe she’d turned out all right after all.
Tonya’s expression was sly as she held the smoke, then exhaled. “Fuck the stories of husbands and kids and Sunday potlucks. Let’s get down to the dirt. Who’s doing what today, that we’d never have expected them to do back in college?” She looked around the circle, noting the blushes and snickers and zeroing in on the reddest face of all. “MK. You first.”
Mary Katherine gasped, then giggled. But she was just as well lubricated as the rest of us, and even sober, she couldn’t have stood up to Tonya. “Um,” she said softly, tucking her long, dark hair behind one ear. It was a charming gesture. “Um, I’ve got, you know, a rabbit. Not, not a bunny rabbit.”
Tonya gaped for a second, then burst into guffaws.
Mary Katherine buried a grin in her hands as the laugher swelled around her. That was MK all over, imagining that confessing to owning a vibrator was a major revelation. Of course, for her, it probably was.
And what would the group do if I laid my revelation on them? I toyed with the notion, but I wasn’t quite drunk enough to drop that bomb. I wouldn’t let myself get that drunk.
Still, there was something I could say, just to feed my closet exhibitionist. “I’ll go next,” I drawled, and six pairs of eyes swiveled eagerly my way. Back in college, I’d been just as much of a goody-two-shoes as Mary Katherine, and I hadn’t done anything yet to show them how much I’d changed. But there must have been something in my voice, something that made their eyes sparkle and their lips moisten.
“I,” I grinned, swirling the ice in my glass and drawing out the suspense, “write X-rated fetish erotica and post it online.”
Dianne’s face lit eagerly. “Where?!”
I leaned back, blushing despite myself, as the other five clamored for an answer. Most of them had either read or heard me read the stories I wrote in college. Those had been much tamer tales, but they’d still been freaky enough to stick in my friends’ minds. “Uh uh,” I grinned. “That’s all I’m saying.”
For now, I added silently, feeling that old, familiar longing to say more. I wouldn’t, though. There was just too much at stake.
“Oh, come on, Allie,” wheedled Shannon. “You can’t just leave us hanging! You have to at least tell us what kind of fetish erotica it is. Is it something really kinky, like whips and chains?”
I tried (and probably failed) to look enigmatic. “Honey, it’s so kinky, I could give you all a hundred guesses each, and you’d never come close.”
“Ohh, she’s buzzing now,” snickered Tonya. “She’s calling people ‘honey.’ Somebody fix her another margarita and maybe she’ll spill.”
I waved one hand vaguely. “Nah, I’ve had enough. I’m not used to drinking like this anymore.”
“No excuse,” purred Dianne. She leaned across the coffee table and, very intentionally, blew a cloud of fragrant smoke in my face. “Drink up. Then spill.”
I tried not to stare at her lips, pursing so close to mine. “Uh uh,” I managed. “You wouldn’t appreciate this kind of erotica, anyway.”
“And how do you know?” Dianne waggled her eyebrows suggestively, setting off a tiny explosion between my thighs. Blushing again, I stood and headed for the kitchen. I really was going to need another drink.
It was well past midnight now, and the seven of us were squint-eyed, dizzy, and almost as high from laughter as from booze and weed. Our giggles quieted gradually to sighs.
“You know,” said Leslie suddenly, in her best tales-around-the-campfire voice, “it was just about this time of night that it happened, right here on this very spot.”
“Here we go,” I snickered. I’d thought it would take a barrel of booze to pry the story from her, but judging by Leslie’s tone, she’d planned to tell us all along and was only waiting for the right moment.
“Hush,” frowned our hostess, “you’ll spoil the mood.”
I made a quiet “pfft” and winked at Dianne. She winked back.
“Almost a hundred years ago,” Leslie intoned, “this place was known as the Gilman Commune. According to Mama Gilman, it was a private women’s retreat. But according to the only woman who made it back from Beck’s Peak, it was a cult. Or something even worse.”
“Oooooh,” giggled Tonya, waggling her fingers dramatically.
Leslie stuck out her tongue, then gathered a few fake shreds of dignity around her. “Her name was Marietta Pickman. The woman who survived, I mean. Of course, she was in no shape to give her name for several weeks. And even when she’d recovered enough to tell them that, she couldn’t say much more except that she’d ‘sent it back where it came from,’ and they’d gone with it.”
“They who?” slurred Angie. She’d been teetotalling far too long, I told myself.
“They, the other women!” Tonya snapped. She gestured impatiently for the storyteller to continue.
Leslie sighed and went on. “The psychiatrists who examined Marietta said her mind had been permanently turned by hallucinogens—Don’t!” She jabbed a finger at Dianne, who quickly shut her mouth. “Hallucinogens that Mama Gilman had fed her and the other women as part of the rituals she’d led them in, to get them more in touch with nature and, um, something beyond nature.”
She rushed on ahead of the inevitable interruption. “There were other things involved in the rituals, too. Things the newspaper could only hint at, since this was the early 1900’s. And Marietta was probably too far gone to make much sense, anyway. Who knows if any of what she said really happened? But I gather -” and here her voice grew teasing—“there really was a lesbian orgy. Or two. Or ten.”
I exhaled carefully, feeling my nipples slide beneath the fabric of my bra. Reflexively I glanced at Dianne, but her eyes were locked on Leslie.
“Cooool,” breathed Shannon, and I shot her a startled glance. She was sitting beside me, rocking on one heel like a little girl.
Holy shit, I thought, my tequila haze clearing long enough for a flash of inspiration. Maybe I knew why she’d divorced her husband after all.
Shannon’s eyes found mine, then dropped to my tented nipples. I looked quickly back at Leslie.
“Huh,” I snorted, “and I thought I was the only Eta Pi Lambda who made up stories.” It was a pitiful jab, but I had to say something to relieve the pressure of Shannon’s gaze, and that was all I could come up with on short notice.
Leslie shot me a sour look. “I didn’t make it up,” she sniffed. She climbed to her feet and wobbled to the bookcase. “Here, I’ll show you.”
She returned with an old book in her hands: a book so dingy that I couldn’t guess what color it had been when it was new, or even what the title had been. Leslie laid it on the coffee table and lifted the cover. Drunk as I was, I still winced to hear the spine cracking. Once a bibliophile, always a bibliophile.
Inside the front of the book was a collection of newer papers: photocopies and computer printouts. “I got these from the Charlottesville library,” Leslie said, lifting the page on top and turning it around for us to see. It was a newspaper article written in archaic type, punctuated by a blurry, haunting picture. Marietta Pickman had been a beauty (Somehow, I knew they all had been), but her eyes were shadowed and drew me down like an undertow. I looked away dizzily.
Leslie showed us another page, this one a pictureless article with a blaring headline: “Unspeakable Horrors—or Feminine Hysteria?”
Another page: a picture of the cabins itself, the image surprisingly large and clear, captioned, “The Scene of the Incident.”
Leslie showed us one article after another, some with pictures, some without. She didn’t bother to read any of them, but rushed quickly through the stack, then shoved it aside in triumph. “Now, this,” she said, waving the dingy book itself, “is the real proof of the story.”
“Let me guess,” I began, trying to sound blas�; but my heart was already pounding. Deep down inside, part of me already knew where this was heading. The rest of me just hoped it knew.
Leslie cut me off. “No,” she snapped, “Let me show you.” She turned the first page in the book, and the six of us leaned in to stare at the spidery, faded handwriting. I couldn’t make out the title from my position opposite Leslie, but Mary Katherine was beside her and read it aloud.
“Leona Gilman’s Book of Summoning,” she murmured, then looked up with gleaming eyes. “Leslie, where did you get this?”
Leslie smiled, both sly and pleased. At last someone had given her the response she was looking for. “I could tell you I found it beneath the floorboards of this very cabin, when it was being renovated.” She paused to look pointedly at me. “But I said I wasn’t making any of this up, so here’s the truth: I bought it from the library.”
She fanned aside the giggles and protests. “Don’t think it didn’t cost me an arm and a leg. But I bought it. And I’m so glad I did. Here, check this out.” She flipped through the pages, teasing us with sketches of people, plants, and...things...I couldn’t see clearly enough to identify. Leslie knew what she was after, though, and soon enough she stopped and turned the book around.
MK gasped and looked away, but I leaned closer, a grin splitting wide across my flushing face. It felt like every blood vessel in my head was pulsing now, but I couldn’t think clearly enough to analyze the sensation; all I knew was that I liked it.
I glanced around the circle to see if anyone else felt what I did. I couldn’t be sure, in the dim light—was the room getting darker, or was that just my imagination? But my ex-sisters’ eyes were glittering, and several of them did seem to be breathing faster.
Angie giggled, diminishing the mood just a little. “Is that a root or a tentacle?”
“Both,” I mumbled. My lips felt unnaturally thick, and I licked them without thinking.
Dianne chuckled throatily. “That’s one chick who’ll never go back to her rabbit again.”
“Dianne!” Mary Katherine squealed, and that really did break the spell. The spell that might not have caught anyone but me, anyway. And who knew whether I’d been enthralled by the dingy book or the Cuervo Gold?
Dianne shot her a lascivious tch-and-wink. “Sorry, Thumper,” she said; and I knew she, at least, hadn’t been affected. I tried not to feel disappointed.
Leslie flipped a few more pages, and the group let out a collective gasp.
“One, two, three, four -”
Leslie cut off Shannon’s counting. “Sixteen women, at least five plants...well, I think they’re plants. Anyway, I have a feeling Mama Gilman would have drawn more, if she’d had a larger page to draw on.“
“That woman had one hell of an imagination,” Tonya whistled.
“Yeeeeaaaah,” Shannon sighed, and I could swear she was watching me from the corner of her eyes. Feeling suddenly bolder, I turned to stare right at her. My brain was pulsing again, and now my clit had caught the beat.
Tonya and Diane looked at Shannon, too: with amazement rather than arousal. Then Angie drew all our attention away. “Nog, sog, yog, yug - what is that language, Leslie?”
Leslie shrugged blithely. “The librarian who sold me the book said no one had ever figured it out. She thought Mama Gilman just pulled it out of her ass.”
“Out of some orifice, anyway,” Tonya snickered, but her voice was huskier than usual. She leaned closer. “Ny-yiy, shuh-yog -”
“No, no, no.” Leslie waved her to silence, and I was surprised to see how readily Tonya complied. “It’s not like that at all. You have to practice for awhile, but then you begin to sense how it ought to sound, and it just sort of comes naturally.”
She opened her mouth and released a string of syllables I’d have sworn no human tongue could produce. I gaped and shuddered deliciously.
There was a long moment of silence, and the room seemed to grown twice as dark.
“Da fuck?” said Dianne, falling back on one of her favorite old expressions. I wasn’t sure if she was reacting to Leslie’s recital or to the creeping darkness. The darkness I might only be imagining.
Leslie chose the former interpretation, and she repeated the sounds more slowly.
Dianne tried them after her.
“Closer,” said Leslie. “Here, I’ll give it to you a syllable at a time.”
Before long we were all practicing Mama Gilman’s made-up language. And before much longer, I’d taken Shannon’s face in my hands and thrust my tongue between her lips.
Then things really did get dark.