Chapter 11
The bathroom was old the house was old, from, the late 1800's and the fixtures were from ancient times. There was a shower, but ... Cathy stepped into the homemade enclosure of tin and a shower curtain, and surveyed the plastic water pipes that led up through the ceiling. She tentatively turned on the "hot."
A weak spray developed slowly, of warm water. Cathy shrugged and took up a big bar of homemade soap. She lathered herself thoroughly.
The widow came into the bathroom, naked, but with Henry's muscle set and expression, and voice. "I rigged up that shower ten years ago. Got a roof tank that heats in the sun. Water keeps hot long enough into the dark to provide what we need."
Cathy said, "It's not very hot now."
"That's cause I just pumped the tank full before you ran over here. That water'll be too hot to stand under in a couple of hours."
The widow came into the small shower stall with Cathy. "This old body needs a wash, too. Don't waste the water. You can pump the tank full afterward. It doesn't take but a few minutes."
Cathy resented the intrusion. She had to stand pressed against the widow to share the weak spray. She said petulantly, "Why don't you have an electric pump?"
"Costs too much. Threw out the electric heater and saved ten dollars a month on electricity." The widow's big hands lathered and moved to Cathy's beautiful little breasts. "I love to feel your sweet titties, Cathy. Doing this makes me want to satisfy you again. You enjoy my loving so nice."
Cathy scowled. "Please ... Henry ... don't. I'm sore. That big thing. ... "
"Oh. I understand. That is a lot of man for a little girl like you to take. And you sure took it! I can see where you'd get sore inside." Henry didn't stop fondling Cathy's breasts. Her nipples were poking out again, being excited further, spreading the warmth.
He continued, "But you know, before I died, Gretchen used to love my other kind of lovemaking, which I cannot give to her now. But it would be a pleasure for me to give you that loving, Cathy, with Gretchen's agreement."
Cathy said weakly. "No, please. ... "
The widow surfaced for a few seconds to say, "Child, you let Henry pleasure you. He drove me wild with his mouth when he had a body. I want him to use our body now to give you that pleasure. It'll sure make you want to stay with us if anything will."
Henry took over the body again. The switches were very quick. Cathy was coming to accept the reality of the widow Gretchen Martin/Henry Martin schizophrenia ... the sharing of the woman's body by the two personas. The voices were so different, and the expressions and muscle fixes were so different!
Except ... Cathy knew Henry wasn't really real. He was a recreation by the widow's grief-stricken mind, a solution to the problem of intense loneliness and need. A denial of death.
Cathy recoiled from the other's touch. "I want to leave!"
"No, you come on, now. I'll show you how nice it can be. Nothing wrong with it, Cathy. Doesn't do no harm to anybody." He turned off the water.
Henry took Cathy's hand and towed her out of the shower, down the short hall, to the bedroom. "Get on the bed and let your legs hang over the edge. That's it ... that's fine ... now hold your knees up ... hug your knees ... show me your pretty little pink pussy."
Cathy closed her eyes and shivered with self-loathing and revulsion as the woman's mouth came to her slit. It was Henry but it was really the crazy widow doing it or was it? Cathy squeezed tears from her tightly closed eyes. It was crazy, too. for going along with it, for humoring the woman, for letting everybody dominate her like this. Even a ghost male could dominate her!
Yet the mouth was doing sweet, licking, sucking things to her slit. The woman's fingers held the vulva lips apart and her tongue licked tantalizingly in the wet. pink gorge, and flicked knowingly over the taut, sensitive clitoris.
Cathy clutched her knees to her chin and quivered with surging, ticklish, fizzing pleasure. This was a different kind of pleasure from fucking. It was a delightful pleasure Chris had given her that night in the Knebel farmhouse.
Cathy's belly began to flutter. She hissed with the keen rapture.
She tried not to think of who was doing this to her. She tried not to think of doing it to the widow. For Cathy expected that Henry would expect her to do it to the widow in his place.
Was it the widow who wanted it from her? Was all this Henry business an elaborate fake by a depraved, lustful old woman?
Cathy's mind seemed to melt. She began to pant into a swiftly escalating orgasm. How sweet it was! How intense! She trembled and keened in her throat.
The glowing, fizzing rapture receded from the peak, but continued on a high level. The woman continued to lick and suck in special places.
Cathy knew another climax was on the way. She could feel it gathering in her guts, in the peculiar buzzing tickling sensation that glowed in her loins ... tightening ... coming!
They heard the tinkle of breaking glass, the thudding, splitting sound of yielding wood.
Cathy screamed, "He's back! He's breaking in!"
The widow surged to her feet. Naked, still damp from the shower, she mouthed an o' i and went for the half-open bedroom door. "' , blow that bastard. ... " She ran heavily for the kitchen where the shotgun lay, forgotten, on the table.
Cathy was shaking. She was immobile, cuddled up in a fetal ball, whimpering, wanting to die, wanting to escape, wanting to kill, wanting to be somewhere else!
Fred was in the living room, bellowing, "YOU COME TO ME, GIRL! WIDOW! YOU KEEP OUT OF. ... "
"Git out of our house, Fred Dietz, or I'll blow your guts out!"
"WHAT YOU DOING NAKED? YOU BEEN DOING THINGS WITH MY GIRL? YOU widow hadn't had the courage or the need to shoot him. Maybe Henry had prevented her. The widow had him to keep her company why kill for Cathy?
Cathy felt betrayed. She felt weird relieved. Happy! She ran through the house to the bedroom, grabbed a pair of jeans and a shirt from the closet and, panting, screaming to herself, ran out the back door toward the truck.
Fred was so close! He was yelling she heard fragments over her own desperate breathing as she groped frantically for the key. She whined and sobbed and her fingers closed over the key box. She pulled it free of the steel frame and ran three steps to the pickup's cab. She bolted into the cab and fumbled the key into the ignition. The engine turned over.
Her mouth was dry and fuzzy. Her stomach was icky with terror. She made sounds and wasn't aware of them.
Fred was only a few yards away. "Git outa there! Git out!"
The engine caught! She revved it and slammed into low.
The truck leaped forward. Cathy looked around and saw Fred angling to intercept her. She twisted the wheel and gunned the pickup in a power turn. The right-hand wheels lifted a few inches.
Fred tried to throw his shotgun into the rear of the open bed pickup, but misjudged. The gun landed in the dust. He cursed and scrambled to intercept Cathy again.
She found herself in danger of hitting the house. She turned sharply the other way, heading for the gap between the barn and the tractor shed.
Fred managed to gather his last reserves of strength and sprint after her. He had an angle.
Cathy floor-boarded the gas pedal. The truck roared between the shed and barn. She veered left and looked around to see where he was.
To her horror, she saw him clinging to the tailgate, one leg up and in.
She screamed and veered left and right sharply, trying to throw him off. She bumped into the fields, jouncing and rocking, but he clung tight, and was managing to climb into the back.
Cathy steered with one hand and reached over to roll up the passenger side window. Then her window. She locked the doors.
She steered for the farmyard again, and roared out onto the road. As Fred pounded on the rear window of the cab and shouted over the roar of the engine and the wind, she gripped the wheel tightly and kept the pickup racing at over 60 miles per hour.
Cathy didn't know where she was going. She made a turn onto Crazy Owl Road. She blinked fast, and a lightheadedness came to her. She laughed. She screamed over her shoulder at her father, "Now I've got you, you son of a bitch!"
She roared up the bluff road. She was breathing deep and fast, hyperventilating. Her eyes were huge, dilated. She was happy! She felt almost completed. Crazy Owl Lookout was only a few curves ahead.
Fred didn't realize what was going to happen until the racing truck was too close to the guard rail for him to leap free.
Cathy had the throttle to the floor. She saw the rail swept toward her heard the impact, felt the shock and then the truck was hurtling over the edge.
Two hundred feet below was a tumble of rocks and boulders.
In those first free-fall seconds, Cathy was at peace. Everything was equal, now. With instantaneous clarity and honesty she acknowledged that she had tried to kill her mother and had succeeded. She'd wanted her father and had gotten him! One thing had led to another. She had done everything she'd been told to do. Consciously and unconsciously. Wasn't this what her mother and father had wanted?
It was only in the last split-second before the terrible impact, before death, that Cathy realized she had been subtly programmed by the pair of half-insane people who had brought her into the world and raised her.
Her mother had been crazy, too.
She hated them both for what they had done to her!
It wasn't fair! It wasn't. ...