89 - The Night Terror

Latoya held up her candle, and her smile died. It was a black candle, and there was not much left of it, so the flame seemed to hover an inch above her palm.

"Where my brother shied away, I grew closer. I contacted Mina Wolff. We became friends, and began to meet up weekly for coffee. I think I was her lifeline during those long months, until...well, let me tell it in its proper order. I call this story

THE NIGHT TERROR

"I started sleeping in his house," Mina told me. "I gave up my apartment in town and just moved in. There was a guest bedroom, filled with his books and movies, boxes of tapes from the old days when he was on TV. When mom asked, I told her it was because he needed more care, and I would save so much money not having to pay rent and still getting paid..."

She gnawed on her lip.

"When I first met him, Estovi was an invalid. He couldn't really get around on his own. I'd put him in his chair and he would just sit in it, all day, until I helped him onto the toilet or into the tub or bed. Arms and legs like sticks. Yet at night...I would dream of him. Of those eyes, staring at me. And one night, I woke up and found him standing over me. I had never seen him standing."

"Have you ever felt sleep paralysis? Where you're awake, in the dark, but you can't move your arms and legs. It's like something pressing down on you. He stood over me, naked, even though I had put him to bed in his pajamas, and his pecker was hard and stiff. My gums itched, and I started to salivate at the sight of it. Yet he didn't put his cock in my mouth. Instead, he knelt down and pressed his face between my legs."

"I could hear him slurp. Like sucking soup through a straw. I lay there, utterly helpless, and I could feel the suction in my pussy. Then he was gone, and I was blinking as the alarm went off. I got up and found him in bed, still dressed in his pajamas. I thought it was a dream."

"Except?" I prompted, because I knew there had to be something more.

Mina's jaw worked. "I didn't have my period. I mean, I had the cramps, but not the blood. Not a drop."

We continued to meet. Sometimes, Mina had a strange, distracted air. The changes in her body and bearing become more pronounced. She favored bodices now, showcasing her cleavage, and long skirts. Her once plump lips slowly cushioned out into a permanent pout, her dark skin deepened, and her grey eyes grew more distinct. The dark hair the same, but those silver streaks at her temple grew more pronounced.

"It happened again," Mina said, a month later. "I think it's the blood that draws him. It was just like before. I couldn't move. He was...his body looked different. Still old, but his cock looked bigger. His hair was darker. When he bent over me to feed, I could feel his tongue. like there was something on the tip of his tongue, pushing into me, sucking at me. Like he wanted to taste not just my cunt, but my soul!"

"Are you still sucking his cock?" I asked, though I knew the answer.

"All day. Gag reflex is gone. I can just hold him in my mouth for hours, feel his pulse throb in my throat. It's...really kind of relaxing. Like I can feel his eyes on me, and it's approving. Like the look a man would give to a dog that brought his slippers. When he cums down my throat, it's like he's patting my head and telling me what a good cocksucker I am."

I had been looking into Estovi's background. There wasn't much. An Austro-Hungarian named Vladimir Ferenczy from a town called Estov, which I could not even find on a map; Ellis Island rendered that as Vlad Estovi. The dates didn't match up; and there was an Estovi crypt in Eastside cemetery. His father? His grandfather? Certainly not the man himself. Other than that, Estovi had avoided most public records. Paid his taxes on time. Kept to himself.

"My jaw hurts," she said. "I think he's getting bigger. There are times I can hardly breathe."

"Maybe," I suggested. "We should try an experiment."

To be honest, as strange as Dagon's Hollow might be, I suspected Mina's imagination was overactive, that he obsession with a childhood idol and a sexual fixation on oral sex had morphed into some bizarre psycho-sexual relationship. The old man probably couldn't believe his luck that this twenty-year-old beauty was walking around his house nude and sucking his dick three or four times a day.

But that night, Mina took a razor and cut herself on the inner thigh. Just a little. Enough to draw beads of blood. It wasn't her period, but if it was the blood that drew him, then I reasoned that the little cut would cause her night terror to appear.

I thought that would help her.

Mina did not make our next meeting. Or the second. The third week, as the sun set, a tall young woman entered the diner. Her grey eyes adjusted to the change of light, then found me. I remember her smile, the long dark hair with silver streaks. The smooth, easy walk as she strode towards me.

"Latoya, how are you!"

Her smile was bright and easy, her cocksucking lips plump, the canines very prominent.

I could have told him that. He looked like he had stepped out of the television screens of my youth, the horror host in the flesh, minus his cape.

"Sorry I've been away, I've been working on a new project—Estovi has given me permission to revitalize his brand! A revival of the horror host concept, on the internet. Only this time, I'll be Dr. Maila Lugosi Lee, the Mistress of the Macabre, the Pornographic Psychopomp. Reviewing sexploitation and horror porn movies, in the buff. Continuing his legacy. I can shoot everything from the house! We're going to build a set in the basement. Did you want to come by, see the shooting?"

I was polite, but declined the invitation. Cowardice, perhaps, but my period had just started. Before we parted, I asked the question in my heart.

"Did you have the night terror again?"

Her lips peeled back. Grey eyes seemed to flash. Her tongue slid across those plump lips and almost-fangs. There was something at the tip of her tongue, that I glimpsed for just a moment. A sucker, a sore, a tiny mouth. Then it was gone.

"Yes," she said. "But you know what I found out, Latoya? I like to be scared."

For long weeks afterward, those grey eyes seemed to haunt me as I slept, and I found myself whispering half-remembered prayers, hoping I would wake again in the morning.

"Mina's still doing those shows," Latoya said. "Dr. Boris Lugosi Lee lives on, in a new and more perverted incarnation. It's strange, sometimes, how much she knows about the history of horror films, the stories behind them...and how explicit some of her shows get."

She shuddered, and blew out the candle.