- Chapter 8 -

38.4K 1.4K 100
                                    

No one wants to think that bad things happen to good people. It's frightening, isn't it? That God has no discretion, that whether you are the proudest saint or the lowliest pauper, terrible things will come upon you and not even grant you the mercy of death. If you had only been a little better, only a little more disciplined, a little more devoted, a little more faithful in God. If you had shut your mouth, done as you were told, followed the rules, confessed your sins, then maybe, just maybe . . . those bad things would not have happened.

I told myself I was not a good person. Bad things did not happen to good people. It was the only thing that could give me hope.


Mary was furious to see me return to the Doll House without my escort, sopping wet and covered in mud. She raged as Mary-Ann dried me off with warm towels, seeming to shake the very walls with her fury.

"Sending one of my girls out in the rain, how dare he, the bastard!" Mary smoked as she paced, dropping her ashes all over the dull wood floor. I sat dejectedly on the stairs, shivering slightly as Mary-Ann struggled to unlace my corset and peel me from my sopping attire. I had not managed to say much since I returned, not that Mary made it easy.

"I'm fixin' to make him pay double!" she cried. "Double the price, mark my words! The nerve-"

"Mary..." I muttered. Mary-Anne pulled my wet cotton shirt from my shivering skin, my bedraggled hair dripping down my back.

"I've let him get too comfortable, far too comfortable!" Mary shook her fist at the walls, as if it was they who had robbed her. "Letting him summon girls to his house whenever he damn-well-pleased, well, no more-"

"Mary!"

The woman finally turned to me, eyes wide in surprise, as if she had forgotten I was there at all. "What on earth are you on about, girl?"

"Just don't make me work with him again," I said softly. "Please."

Mary came over to me, and grasped my hands in hers in her best mimicry of a concerned mother hen. "My dear girl, if he forced himself on you-"

"No," I said quickly. "It...wasn't...that..." Mary-Anne was giving me a pitying look too, and I sighed heavily. "Just don't make me work with him. Please. I don't want to see him again. He...frightened me."

Both Marys exchanged a heavy look. If something had frightened me - Samara, the girl with no fear, the mad one, the house's little devil in angel's clothing - then they took it seriously indeed. The Madame nodded, more gravely than I had expected.

"Very well," she said. "If he calls on you again, I'll make damned sure he knows you're not available."

I breathed a sigh of relief, and let Mary-Anne continue to strip me before I was allowed upstairs and my wet clothes put away in the kitchen to dry. I knew Damian had done nothing wrong...at least...I could not find it in me to fault him. He had done nothing to me that I had been unwilling to do, quite the opposite in fact. I had...enjoyed him. I had enjoyed the caning, his infuriatingly haughty looks, his mystery and his allure. In truth, I did want to see him again. I wished I could.

But somewhere along the way as I had run home in the cold and rain, I had realized something that chilled me to my core.

As I sat in my room that night, naked and exhausted in front of my mirror, I ran my fingers over the scars that marked me. My memory of their making was patchy, at best. I remembered the knife cutting into my flesh. I remembered Dr. Carnickey whispering, "It must be deep enough to scar, dear. Now, now, don't fret so..."

There were lines in intricate geometric patterns, straight and binding across my ribs, slanted across my breasts, circling in a great ring around my belly. And there were runes, in a language I had never seen and certainly could not read, snaked along every line. A language I had never seen...until I found the knife in Damian Hearst's desk.

The runes were so eerily familiar because they were alike to those I saw whenever I took a hateful glance at my naked self in the mirror. They were the runes Dr. Carnickey had put in me, after I went to him desperate and alone for help. I still did not know their true purpose, but I knew that as each cut was made, the voices had come. With every mark into my flesh they had grown louder.

Had that been when the mental break occurred? When my mind could no longer handle the pain and fear, and thus had shattered, creating voices that were cruel and inclined me to violence? But then I had always been mad, at least a little. I had always had my sadistic fantasies, my masochistic inclinations, my perverted desires.

My father once told me that was why I suffered: because I was a girl so contrary to what God would want of me. Only in submission to God, to my husband, to the wills of others, could I find happiness.

I had resisted submission with everything in me...until Damian Hearst gave me that choice.

But the way he had looked at those scars had rattled me. A man who could laugh through pain, who claimed to have seen horrors, a doctor, a well-educated man had looked upon my marks and been struck immediately afraid. But why? What secret did he know to put him in fear of me?

I did not truly want to know the answer. I was terrified to even question it.

In Lily Dale, many folks believed in evil spirits - things they called shades, demons, or the oldest amongst them called Windago. Some said they were as real as the wolves that hunted in the nearby forests, others insisted they were not corporeal, but existed within some spiritual plane that only a few could see. They were the ones who had tempted Christ in the desert, and they would tempt humans too - with lies, deceit, cruelty, seduction. They would weave words into one's mind, slowly winding their webs until the unsuspecting victim was theirs.

My Father said God did not allow demons to torment the faithful, only those who had been cast out forever from his flock. I did not know if I believed in God anymore.

But demons...I hoped desperately I would not have to believe. I would rather be ill...than hunted.

A/N: Two movies that really inspired me for this story were The Secretary and A Dangerous Method

Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.

A/N: Two movies that really inspired me for this story were The Secretary and A Dangerous Method. Both are such great films and deliciously kinky, hehehe ♡ Have you seen either one of them? What did you think? 

Don't forget to leave a vote, loves! 

Love & Exorcisms | 18+ | COMPLETE |Where stories live. Discover now