31 - The Case of the Haunted Whore

"I have heard of a necklace like that," Roberta said, as she rose to fetch the next candle. The wind had died again, as though the night held its breath. "It was part of a matching pair. The other takes the form of a gold vulva, on a smaller chain to be worn at wrist or ankle. I have seen it once—and the woman who owns it told me its story. I call this

THE CASE OF THE HAUNTED WHORE

I was called to come to the house by the railroad. The ladies of the house were out and about, or doing their webstreams. Every room was well-soundproofed, I heard nothing as I walked through the door. One of the young women, with about a dozen piercings in her lips and nose and ears, guided me toward the Lady's office.

She was dressed in black, with a black veil hiding her face. There was an old-fashioned antique wooden desk, and a modern computer atop it. The wood-paneled walls were covered with small framed photographs of naked women. The oldest were daguerrotypes. The newest were crisp color photos.

"Thank you for coming. One of our occupants," the Lady said, "is having a problem I would like you to look into."

Her voice was somehow ageless. She could have been twenty-five or seventy-five. The fact that she had asked me to come, knowing my interests, said much. I nodded, and she rose, guiding me up the central stairwell. It was a three-story house, but there was a garret room, accessed by an attic stair. Snug, with sloping walls that were the roof, criss-crossed by beams. Most of the space was taken up by a single bed and a large window.

A woman lay there. Young, Black, wearing only an old-fashioned, long-sleeved nightgown that had been bunched up over the waist so that we could see her shaven vulva. The gown was wet with her sweat, clinging to her full breasts, and she convulsed, her swollen labia spasming uncontrollably.

A webcam recorded the whole thing.

"Normal shifts are four hours," the Lady said. "Requests, masturbation, toys. Sometimes a little girl-on-girl, depending on whether anyone feels like it. We realized something was wrong when Nissa didn't come down for dinner. She's been streaming for twelve hours straight. And cumming for almost that long. We would have called the doctor, but...look."

The Lady did not have to point. I could see it. The imprint of an invisible hand squeezing one brown breast. The way the wet pussy squelched and gaped as if three fingers slid inside, the throbbing clitoris moving as if rubbed in small, slow circles. Nissa's eyes were rolled up in her head, and the words that came out of her mouth were not in English.

But I recognized it.

"Lady," I asked. "Is Nissa Jewish?"

"Not that I am aware of," she said.

"Because that the most perfect stream of Hebrew profanity I have ever heard," I told her.

I conducted a brief but thorough search of the room, at least as thorough as I could with Nissa writhing on the bed. The other ladies in the house brought her bottles of gatorade, dribbled lube on her obviously sore and swollen pussy. There was concern on those faces, not necessarily for Nissa herself, but for the worry that perhaps it could happen to them.

The Lady explained that the garret room had been closed for nearly six decades, after an unfortunate incident—it had formerly been used for BDSM scenarios, and I could still see the manacles and chains hanging from the walls. Simultaneous heart attack of both the sex worker—whose name had been Edith Liebowitz—and her client, whose name was long forgotten. No one had wanted to use the room after that, until Nissa came in. Everything had been fine for a week, until...

"She found something," I said firmly, as I pried up a loose floorboard. There was a small book in Jewish, a pale ivory dildo, and a jewelry box. Empty. I flicked through the book. It was a tractate, a commentary on the Talmud, though not one I recognized. The name Asherah repeated throughout, which I thought significant.

"I think," I said. "I need to review the beginning of her stream."

We descended back to the Lady's office. She was quiet, but there was a sensation of restlessness about her. Or perhaps thoughtfulness. As the stream played, she seemed to be casting her mind back to earlier days, even as I watched a young, beautiful black woman try to seduce the people on the other side of the camera, slowly drawing her nightgown up to she the fine crease betwen her thighs, spreading her labia open with her fingers, demonstrating her excellent muscular control as the inner walls convulsed and squeezed, until clear fluid tricks down over her anus. All the time those brown eyes seemed to make love to me through the camera, and those lips proclaimed how much she wanted to feel my touch.

"Edith was religious. It might sound strange for a sex worker to have faith, but many do. Some take comfort in the idea that they can be redeemed of their sins; others have turned to the neo-pagan religions and see their actions as an embrace of their spirituality and femininity. Edith was different. I always had the feeling that she was working toward some ultimate goal, though what I never knew..."

She went to the wall and removed a black-and-white picture, taken in the garret room, with a naked woman in chains. Not a spot of dust on it. I saw a small woman with an intense gaze, staring directly at the camera. Between her breasts hung what looked like a small phallus on a chain, and at her wrist, nearly hidden by the iron manacle, something else.

I looked back to the stream. There was a glint of gold at Nissa's wrist. Her body had begun to buck and heave, hands no longer touching herself, a Jewish song moaned out between her lips.

"Back up there," I said. "I think I know what the problem is."

The gold chain was tight against Nissa's right wrist, cutting into the flesh. But there was lube at hand. The Lady herself held the young Black woman down as I eased the golden chain with its small dangling vulva pendant off of her hand. As soon as it slipped off her fingers, Nissa simply collapsed into the natural sleep of **** sexual exhaustion. One of the girls brought her an ice pack for her cooch.

Back in the office, I laid the gold pendant on the photograph on the Lady's desk. Up close, we could see that it was one and the same.

"She must have kept that there, in her secret place," the Lady said. "All this time. I remember now when she first obtained them...a gift from a client from what was then the Mandate of Palestine. A woman, an archaeologist who had found it somewhere in the Holy Land. We were open to such clients, even back then. The other girls were a bit jealous, I think, but Edith simply smiled. She had such energy too her, in those days. Now, perhaps, I see why."

"But what happened to the necklace?" I asked.

"I had thought," the Lady said, "that we buried it with her."

By agreement, the Lady kept the necklace, hidden behind Edith's photograph. The book I took with me, and perhaps there is the other part of the puzzle. The tractate was concerned with what Jewish religion was like before it was strictly monotheist. Asherah was the female consort and counterpart of Yahweh. The tractate was a sumbling attempt to recreate that ancient worship, the union of male and female energies...and there was a warning, in Edith's own hand, written on the blank last page:

"They are like two poles of a magnet. Too long or too far apart, and the balance is lost."

Roberta sighed, and held up her candle.

"Perhaps, someday, the two amulets will be reunited. I don't know what will happen then...but I am sure it will make a fascinating story."

So saying, she blew out the candle. And the night grew that much darker.