18 - Wolffe Women

"Sex and horror go hand in hand," Leroy said, as he threw an arm about Latoya's shoulders. "Fear and lust are both states of excitement. There are moments of pain so intense that they verge on pleasure—and they speak to something primal within us. Some instinct deeper than reason. The animal part of our nature. I know one story about someone who knew more about that than most. This is the story of

WOLFFE WOMEN

Dagon's Hollow was named after a cave. A butte of rock, south of the railway line, with a cave at the base. No one knows how deep it really goes. Today, the land around it is privately owned now, but back when they were laying the rails it was open for anyone to stumble into. Some travelers stayed there overnight, to escape the rain, but damn few—and none would say what it was about the cave that disturbed them so.

The Wolffe family was Silesian. Mrs. Wolffe and her twin daughters, Greta and Lina, were laundresses by trade. They followed the work gangs, took in the washing. Hard, physically demanding work, but they had a wagon of their own, with a Dutch oven, food and clothing, even some books in English and German. Wolffe was a widow, and entertained offers of marriage on a weekly basis. The girls, however, when they came of age, ripened into womanhood that promised to make the dark-haired, strong-armed women truly handsome, with their father's strong jaw and piercing blue eyes.

In time, perhaps, they might have chosen their husbands from among the stalwart farmers who were then moving into the region. Or carried on until they hit St. Louis or New Orleans, and found life in the city. Yet in the end, they went no further than Dagon's Hollow.

Lina awoke in the cave just as one of the men was finishing in her sister. Her left eye was swollen shut, and her mouth was full of blood, teeth loose. She saw Greta's slit split by the dirty man's pecker, maiden's blood smearing his shaft as it went in and out, in and out with all the regularity of a mill-driven water hammer. Her sister's cries were oddly distant, echoing oddly in the confines of the cave as those hairy testicles tensed and seemed to squeeze. When he pulled out, the defiled cunny convulsed, and spat a glob of yellow-white seed out to dribble down over Greta's asshole.

A grunt from above caught Lina's attention. She turned her head and saw another man over her, his face twisted in a mask of pure idiocy. A sudden wetness filled her own pussy, and with a rush the pain came back to her, the searing, piercing pain of her defilement. The **** pulled out. Two more men took their place.

"Ah hell, Clem. You had to let it out in her? You know I hate going in sloppy."

"Jeb Forrest Whitaker, if you don't like sticking your pecker in after me, you shoulda called that coin we flipped right."

Jeb. Clem. Lina filed the names away. She flexed her arms, but they were tied by ropes to stakes pounded into the hard-packed earthen floor of the cave. To her left, Greta struggled against her own stakes. To her right...

A knife was stabbed into Mrs. Wolffe's head. The most terrible thing about this was that she wasn't dead yet. Her eyes blinked slowly. Breathing steady. One eye met Lina's, and a tear rolled down her mother's cheek. Yet Mrs. Wolffe did not move as the third man humped her body. There were six in total. A small fire at the cave mouth gave light, and sent flickering shadows over the walls and roof of Dagon's Hollow. For the first time, Lina saw the strange figures painted on that cave which gave it the name. Sea creatures, so far from the ocean, painted in vivid blues, reds, and greens, marred here and there by the black stain of smoke from campfires and torches.

Mrs. Wolffe died around sunup. Lay still, eyes open, but her chest no longer moving. The men were drunk, idly feeding sticks to the fire, waiting for their pricks to get hard again. They had each had their turn.

"Awooo..." Greta's howl, soft and high-pitched as a pup's first, was echoed and amplified by the cave. It shook the drunken men somewhat fierce. Lina could see it in their eyes, the strange fear as they suddenly stared about into the darkness, hands on guns and knives.

"Awooo..." Lina joined in, though her throat was raw from useless screaming. Their two voices, so alike, seemed to warble together and against each other. Jeb was the first to notice it was the women who were doing it. He hissed and stalked over to where Lina lay.

"You knock that racket off," he said. "Or I'll heat an iron in the fire and burn your cunt to bits, you little whore."

There was a promise in his eyes that this was no idle threat. Lina smiled. Maybe it was the shadows and the firelight that made her teeth look too long. Yet Jeb had fought in Mexico and the Civil War. Grey and grizzled, a lost and masterless man. He didn't scare easy.

Then from deep in the cave came a soft howl. Jeb looked up from Lina, and she saw his dark, sun-tanned face blanche. What flew out of the depths of Dagon's Hollow was white and fast. It caught him in the chest before he could fire, and when his body hit the ground his face was already gone, sizzling faintly, white bone showing where the meat and skin had melted away.

A few of the others got off a shot or two, but it was dark, and they were drunk, scared, and not a one of them was a soldier. The thing from the cave made short work of them.

When it turned to pad back to the Wolffe women, sometimes on four limbs and sometimes on two, its almost human face sniffed at them. The wide, dark eyes were almost as blue as Lina's. From its throat came a small, almost inquisitive sound. She saw the row of teats along its chest, the flaring bat-like ears, the flat nose...and the claws, on what were definitely hands with too many fingers.

"Awooo..." Lina gave a small howl back, not sure what else to say.

The Wolffe women buried their mother not far from the entrance of the cave, the first grave in what would be a private, family cemetery. They parked the wagon there first, and stayed on after the railroad moved, to build the first house on the site. To this day, Dagon's Hollow—the cave, not the town—resides with the Wolffe family. I had this tale from a woman who grew up in that house, and swears the Beast of Dagon's Hollow was real, though what it was and why it spared the women, she would not say.

Leroy raised the candle to his lips—and then, as if the thought occurred to him, moved it over in front of his sister's mouth, so that she blew it out for him.