Chapter 5 – Spiders
She tasted like desperation and electricity.
There was a feral urgency to the stranger’s kisses and searching hands as she continued to grasp Lane tighter. For someone who appeared inches away from death a moment ago, the girl had suddenly sprung to life with strength to spare. Her soaking wet, nude body grappled onto an aroused and disoriented Lane. He was far from his long lost virginity. But, in this particular moment, his higher brain still functioned faster than the one between his legs.
With a gentle hand, Lane attempted to push himself back far enough to gasp for air; “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the gesture, but maybe dinner first? Or, your name?”
“There isn’t time,” she pleaded, “Everything is already set in motion.”
She wrapped her arms ever tighter around Lane’s neck. He could feel the girl’s whole body shudder as their tongues colliding once more. There was an undeniable physical reciprocity from Lane, but the exchange was mentally one-sided.
Lane knew the motions. His lips knew how deep and how gentle to push against his partners’.The bare bones basics. However, Lane’s mind continued to drift away from the moment. He was busy looking for signs of trauma, injury, running through the script of how to best aid this girl: heatstroke, delirium, overdose? What did he need to do to make sure she survived before help arrived?
What did she mean by, ‘Marked?’
Lane broke off from the kiss and started searching the girl for marks, wounds, scratches in earnest. Her pearl white body appeared physically undamaged. Her modest chest heaved as she panted for breath. His hands continued to hold the woman at bay to better examine his patient, but she was stronger. Far stronger than she appeared.
Her grip tightened, drawing the well intentioned boy into her snare. While Lane’s mind was distracted in the academic, physical care of this stranger, the young woman proceeded to pull Lane’s leather belt from its loops with one hand.
She savagely rolled Lane onto his back with a growl and a moan. The sheer strength and animalistic want in her eyes were finally seen for what they were: intimidating. Lane’s attempt to lean forward was easily and quickly thwarted by the woman pinning his shoulders down onto the cedar spa deck, hard. The force nearly knocked the wind out of him. Her shaking hands tore apart the buttons holding Lane’s fly together before peeling his jeans down to his hips.
“You know,” Lane said breathlessly, “You may not be as helpless as you’ve claimed.”
From this angle, her eyes were clearly dilated; black saucers fixed upon Lane’s. With trembling lips, the stranger spoke, “I am marked. You have to help me. Help me. Please. P-please, Lane—” She planted another deep kiss onto his lips, then several rapid, passionless kisses greedily inhaling his taste down his chest.
Lane clamped the sides of her head in both his hands, trying to hold the girl from going down further. “I am Lane, yes. And your name?”
“Alice,” She spat out with distain, “There’s no time left. He’ll be here any moment.”
Alice shook free from Lane’s hands. Her long silvery hair, like tinsel, slipped through his fingers and shone in the refracted light, dancing off the churning bathwater. Her hands kept Lane pinned down at the waist and chest. Her head swiftly dove down equal to his hips. Her teeth bit hold of, then wrenching down the seam of his boxers.
What would Luna do in this situation? Lane thought as he felt himself pass through the girl’s lips. Her head bobbed feverishly. He hadn’t even been fully conscious of becoming erect until Alice had taken his length in her mouth. Perhaps he should take Uncle Dan’s advice, ‘Live in the moment?’ After all, this was a rather unique moment.
Obviously, an exciting moment, to say the least. On average, it took time for any of his relationships to bloom into something physical. Sure, Lane and Luna had occasionally pursued partners for both casual and continued relationships. Never could Lane recall ever pouncing on someone in the heat of the moment without so much as an introduction.
She didn’t wait for consent, Lane gasped as a jolt of discomfort finally struck his higher brain. The rest of his body finally conceded to the idea of escape even as many sharp teeth held Lane’s valuables captive.
“Alice, wait!” Lane yowled. She opened her mouth wide, grinning, delirious, as she readjusted her hips and positioned her sex directly over his. Lane watched as Alice’s silvery trail rubbed uncomfortably close to his exposed shaft.
Before she could guide his hardened cock into herself, Lane kicked himself out from under Alice. His body slid across the slick floor for about a foot backward until skidding to a sudden stop. He reached down and swiftly pulled his boxers and jeans back up to his waist. His fingers had just managed to deftly button his fly back up, uncomfortably maneuvering his erection back into his pants, only for Alice to reach out and grab hold of Lane’s hands, prying them apart.
“Lane,” Alice growled, “You have know idea what he’ll do to me.”
Lane regained some semblance of self-control. He remembered his training, like an automatic light flipping on, and easily slipped from Alice’s grip. Both hands shot up, wrists angled toward the ceiling, then swiftly back down. Now it was Lane who braced both Alice’s hands together. Not too tight, but with enough force to keep her still. She may have been unnaturally strong, but the careful application of leverage and basic physics had halted Alice’s ravenous advance… For the moment.
“Alice, I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in, but I’d feel more comfortable if we resolved whatever threat is coming before we get any further… Involved.” Lane was nearly hyperventilating, soaked, and still uncomfortably aroused. He couldn’t think of a more compromised position to be in. He could barely think at all. Another shallow breath and he managed to force out a polite proposition; “How about we get dressed and talk about how exactly you’re marked? You have my undivided attention and help.”
Lane desperately attempted to regain his composure.
It wasn’t working.
It didn’t help that Alice’s change in countenance was so abrupt that it stung worse than her open palm as it collided against his face.
Before he could even register the break, Alice had slipped from Lane’s grasp and struck him so hard, he nearly doubled over onto the floor. He held a hand to his burning cheek and heard Alice’s bare feet slap against the wet cedar floorboards. One of the bathroom stall doors opened and slammed shut. Then, the soft howl of tears broke the silence.
Daylight, and a strong pine scent carried on sharp breeze that shook the trees gradually brought Lane out of his state of panic.
He’d caught his breath, breaking from a jog to a sudden stop at the gray steps across from the bathhouse, Lane propped himself up on the wooden railing. He cracked his knuckles and counted backward from ten. He needed to get centered, but anxiety coursed through his body like a downed power line in a storm: wild, dangerous, and disconnected.
“Howdy, Lane!” Came a familiar, ecstatic voice approaching the cabins from the crooked white sand path.
Lane nearly jumped out of his skin. He forced his heart rate to descend to a steady beat. Socializing was always a chore. This was tantamount to torture. Lane could only manage a pitiful wave as Jude Abidalli continued forward.
The man practically had a spring in his step, “Glad you could finally make it,” he beamed.
“Finally?” Lane panted out, “I’m… We got here an hour early?” Lane checked his watch. He rubbed his temples in disbelief. An hour late? No. That was impossible. He couldn’t have been in the bathhouse for a full hour. Why he’d only just left Apollena when—
Luna! He’d left to go get her pain medication a whole hour ago? Lane dropped further from feeling anxious to an absolute wreck. How could he have spent an hour with some stranger while his sister was counting on him?
“Whoa, somebody just had sex!” Came Apollena’s way-too-boisterous voice behind Jude.
Both men now turned to watch as Apollena waddled her way up the path toward them. She didn’t follow the snaking path as Jude had, but simply proceeded forward in a straight line to the grey railing beside Lane.
Lane scrambled to turn the conversation around, “Jude, my apologies, we had arrived here early. My sister needed some pain meds. I must have got turned around… Or, lost track of time. Where is everybody meeting?”
There was a moment of weighted silence as Jude’s grinning face examined Lane. With a click of his tongue and chortle, the camp director stated, “The infirmary is to the left of the Great Lodge. That’s where you left your Jeep out front, right? In the camper drop-off section?”
“Yeah, that’s us,” Lane admitted. Good, he sighed internally. We’re moving past whatever just happened in the bathhouse. Which was nothing. Nothing happened, he lied to himself.
Apollena had already strolled up the steps to stand beside Lane. She ruffled her brother’s damp hair and looked Jude over casually. Cocking her head to one side, she asked, “What’s up with your shirt there, Jude?”
Lane blinked back the last of his panicked stricken nerves and inspected the camp director’s outfit for the first time: what he should have done immediately.
This guy look like he wandered out of a magazine advertisement. Tan hiking boots, unscuffed. Tattered, soot-covered blue jean designer shorts. Expensive. Black soil and spilled ink covered the graphic t-shirt of a lion; one of those creepy, photo-realistic screen prints of a male lion, mid roar, stretched to fit across the entire front.
Jude smiled and halfheartedly attempted to wipe away some of the grime. “Well, good news and bad news. The good news is, our newly finished patio deck on the great lodge is finished. We’ll have meals outside under the sun and stars. Bad news: a family of raccoons found themselves trapped in the vents inside the lodge. They died. A whole family, dead, mucking up the air filters. So, Doc and I—that’s our groundskeeper here—we had to crawl in and fish ’em out.”
Luna glanced at Lane and raised an eyebrow. Convenient.
“Dead raccoons?” Lane repeated, skeptically.
Jude shrugged, “Happens. Possums, raccoons, little critters just love getting into places they don’t belong and make a mess of things. What can you do?”
Luna threw up her arms in mock bewilderment, “Fish ’em out of the vents, I guess?”
“Exactly,” Jude boomed enthusiastically and snapped his fingers in agreement.
“So, about that shirt then?” Lane queried once more. Those eyes of the lion, albeit a photo shopped facsimile covered in mysterious ink, continued to burn into Lane’s mind. There was something too overtly unnatural about the shirt, something blatantly sinister.
“You are indeed correct,” Jude agreed, “We can’t kick off the summer orientation looking like this. Gross, right? But, now that you’re all finally here and accounted for, we can start our camp counselor meeting. Why don’t you two go park your car in the staff lot, then meet everyone down at the LakeView Amphitheater? Let’s bring that Trillion Pines magic to life!” Jude took several bounding steps away before halting, pivoting, and making an awkward dash back to Lane.
As the camp director closed the distance between himself and Lane, the proximity between the two felt unnervingly familiar: an unearned familiarity that crawled over Lane’s and into Lane’s skin through the gap between his fingernails.
In a mock whisper, Jude added his post script, “By the way, bud,” his whisper held an unnerving giddiness, “This is a family camp. Best to keep those ‘urges’ under control, if you catch my drift?”
Lane was about to protest, but Jude had already given him a firm pat on the back and sprinted back down the dirt trail toward the Great Lodge. The twins waited a moment to confer after the camp director turned the corner out of ear shot and disappeared through the trees.
Apollena smirked, “So, who was she?”
“Who was she?” Lane repeated, still shocked, fighting against the current of his mind to process the two most uncomfortable interactions he’d just experienced.
“Don’t play dumb,” Luna scoffed, poking her brother in the side. “The girl? The one who gave you the crazy hickey and the dazzling ABF Hair. Or…” Luna gasped with excitement, “Have you finally popped your man-cherry? Has our Lane found another young-man worthy of his love? If so, Katarina owes me money. I should call our little gear head before the week’s end too…” Luna patted herself down, then realized she’d left her phone in the Jeep to charge.
Lane looked behind him, hesitant to even acknowledge the bathhouse. His fingers traced the bite mark Luna had poked. Lane hadn’t even noticed she bit him. He wasn’t terribly concerned about his mark, but certainly rattled at what she’d alluded too…
I’m marked, Alice had claimed.
Lane kept his eyes fixed on the heavy cedar door; “No. There’s no boy. When there is, you’ll be the first to know. Second, yeah, I caught her name—”
Luna gasped and fanned her face with her hand like an old southern belle, laying the French accent on thick, “Tomber des nues, Lane, what has become of my dear brother? Barely an introduction before you just mount up and give it to ‘em raw!’”
“That’s not what went down, Ursa Minor,” Lane tone was hushed and heavy. He clenched his fist as if at any minute, the girl with the silver hair would reemerge and resume her attack. That’s what it felt like, after all. That was far from a romantic encounter. What Lane had heard was a cry for help and he’d failed to provide any meaningful aid.
What’s worse was that the scene kept playing on repeat; a cry for help, a response from Lane, and the failure that followed. It kept looping, again, and again. Each pass across his mind the regret beat him deeper and deeper into the ground.
Lane couldn’t escape what was coming and the universe intended to drive him like a stake into the ground until properly buried.
Omens. Marks. The panther, the wolf, and now the lion? A lion at least. There was something going on behind the scenes and the roots of madness were beginning to take hold. He’d have to break his promise. No rest for the wicked. He’d have to solve this new mystery, or let this madness take hold and have its way with him.
Fucking mysteries: fated to follow the twins till the ends of the earth. Until their family line was finally, fully dissolved.
Luna took hold of Lane’s shoulder. Her playful tone vanished, replaced with a protective almost animalistic growl, “She’s still in there, no?”
Lane nodded.
They both watched the door intently for a moment more, then Apollena took off like a shot. Before Lane could protest, his sister had already reached the door and shoved it open with her shoulder. Luna stood in the entryway like a hound; scanning, sniffing, waiting to sink her teeth into her prey.
There was no one to be found.
“Nothing,” Apollena whispered, disappointed.
Lane had gathered enough courage to approach the door frame of the bathhouse and stood behind his sister; “She was here. In the stall.” Lane pointed.
Without turning to acknowledge his presence, Apollena agreed; “I believe you.” She pointed at the slim, open window above the bank of toilets. One was opened slightly wider than the others. Lane desperately wanted to reach for a fresh page on one of his palm-sized notebooks and outline the facts, suspect description, motives… but he couldn’t.
Lane’s mind desperately needed to be reorganized and focus on some kind of task, but all he could think of was the electric shock from the girl’s tongue forcing its way down his swollen head and surging through him.
“We should get going,” Luna whispered. She turned to her brother and placed a gentle hand on his cheek, “You’re going to be okay.”
He nodded. Another lie.
Together, The Twins jogged back to the cul-de-sac in front of the Great Lodge. Back to their Jeep. Lane could tell Apollena was livid, but her anger wasn’t directed toward her brother. If anything, she’d laugh it off and say he needed a good lay to unwind his perpetually uptight mind. What had them both fuming was the inevitable truth; there was no escaping their fate.
Another unholy mystery had once again settled over them like a thunderstorm, ready to release its fury.
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