Old School Pt. 02

Britt's eyes fluttered open, and she drew a sharp, startled breath.

She stared up at the canopy of the four-poster bed, dotted with golden stars her mother had sewn on years ago, some of those, like her, now hanging by a thread. She was tangled in tangy wet sheets, alternately shivering and sweating. It was still dark and she wondered how long she'd been asleep.

She gingerly sat up and looked around the dimly lit room, her head throbbing as though she'd been out painting the town instead of lying balled in a fetal position for god knows how many hours.

The memory of her inexplicable dive to that cavern, her discovery of Aunt Maggie's skeletal remains deep inside of it, and her own narrow escape, all of this as a passenger in a body hijacked by a spirit, came flooding back. At least now she seemed to have regained possession of her drained middle-aged self.

What time is it? she wondered and she reached for her cell on the night table beside the bed. It lit up and she released a long moan. It was the following night, she'd slept away the entire day. She'd blown off her appointments with the real estate agent and photographer, and worse, the lawyer to sell this bloody haunted mansion.

She was less surprised to find more voicemails and texts, all with the same NYC area code, and she braced herself to finally face the music with the agent she'd been avoiding for over a week now, her promised manuscript nowhere near completion. She sighed: no more bobbing and weaving, dodging and ducking. Her advance would have to be repaid -- at least her mom left her a bit of scratch along with Beelzebub's beach bordello to cover that setback.

Brit drew a deep breath and played the first message from Barb back in New York. The familiar deafening, unctuous voice shattered the evening silence.

"Britt, darling, it's un-fucking-believable! You've done it again! I just read it for the third time! I have no idea what performance enhancing substances you're using down there, but don't stop now! And save some for me! I. LOVE. IT! I want more! Call me!"

What the fuck is she talking about? she thought. She quickly scrolled through the call log and her mouth opened in shock to see a number of calls had been made that day -- to her literary agent, the real estate office and to the lawyer in Marathon. There were also a number of brief calls to a number in the 215 area code -- Philadelphia. And all things considered, Britt would have rather been there, or anywhere else, for that matter.

Her blood boiled when she spotted the text from the realtor thanking her for considering his company's services and that if she changed her mind about taking the property off the market, to please call him first.

Wide awake now though still hung over, Britt got to her feet and padded to the living room where she found her laptop on the coffee table. She flipped it open and quickly scanned her emails, finding one sent to Barb earlier in the day with a text attachment. Her eyes widened as she quickly reviewed an extensive reimagined treatment for her novel and it took a moment to learn the plot had taken a significant turn to the macabre.

She began sobbing frightened breaths as she read page after page outlining the adventures of her detective heroine travelling to a cottage by a lake to solve a cold case, encountering the spirit of the victim who takes possession of her and together they unearth evidence to finally bring a murderer to justice decades after the evil deed. But as they work together it becomes a seduction and the details of their unearthly coupling became a faithful recapitulation of Britt's own sapphic encounters with the woman in the mirror.

She scrolled to the end and encountered a blank screen. It was a work in progress. She sank back into the couch.

"Maggie," she breathed. "What did you do?"

Suddenly letters started appearing on the screen.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF MY WRITING?

Britt leaned forward, head in her hands. Where to begin? "Writing? This isn't writing -- it's reporting!" she howled.

WHAT'S THE OLD MARK TWAIN SAYING? WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW

Britt's fear was finally supplanted by anger and irritation. Drag me to the depths of the ocean and nearly drown me, fine, but do not fuck with my work.

"For starters, can we knock it off with the ALL CAPS?" she snapped. "Unless you're the spirit of Donald Trump sitting on a toilet in hell."

She watched with bemusement as the CAPS LOCK light went off.

Sorry. I'm still getting the hang of computers.

"This isn't a Rand Corporation supercomputer, it's a laptop," Britt said. "And you've apparently been busy. Or was it me?"

We did it together. You showed me how. I did the rest.

Britt frowned and continued to scroll through her adulterated prose, in particular the more adult parts. "So Dixie McClure has gone from a love 'em and leave 'em maneater to pussyhound lesbo gumshoe," she muttered. "I ought to sue you for copyright infringement but you'd probably just possess the judge."

She read more of the familiar intimate details, and in spite of herself, Britt could feel her juices rise and her pussy throb. She could only surmise Barb was sitting in a puddle after she got a gander at the text she'd been sent. No wonder she was almost whistling Dixie in her voicemail.

The screen went blank. Then Maggie returned. I can tell you think it's hot too.

"Where is this going?" Britt demanded, jumping to her feet. "And I don't mean my novel, YOUR novel, whatever this is supposed to be! What do you want from me?"

The screen chattered again. I told you in the cavern. I want you to avenge me.

Britt reached down and slapped the lid closed on the laptop. "How? It's been, what, 40 years since you were murdered? Where do I find this guy? In a senior's home? Do I put a pillow over his face? Poison his prune juice?"

She stood there, hyperventilating, in the darkness. All was silence. She wondered for a moment if Maggie was giving her a timeout. She tried to compose herself and realized she still might be clinging to sanity if she was concerned about losing it.

Britt looked out the window to the driveway and saw the Mustang convertible parked there. The keys waiting for her on the windowsill by the door. Could she make a break for it? Would Maggie stop her?

Please don't go. Don't leave me.

A mournful, quiet voice in the darkness derailed Britt's increasingly desperate train of thought. She had darkly imagined a locked door, four flat tires, hell, even a downed tree across the driveway, to prevent her from getting away. But now she considered that she might still have agency of sorts to walk away on her own, flee from the wi-fi range of this perhaps limited spirit.

But from within her mouldered feelings of betrayal and anger -- Maggie's, not yet hers. "Avenge" her? She was hardly Captain Marvel, just a dumpy middle-aged woman possibly in the fast lane to downtown Dementia.

"How do I even do this?" she whispered. "Where do I start?"

You leave it to me, said the voice. You leave everything to me.

Britt sighed. This was crazy. Maybe she was crazy. Maybe if she cracked open the laptop right now and looked at the novel all she'd find now is All work and no play makes Britt a dull girl. Over and over again. Heeeeere's Brittney!

Maggie heard her. You're not crazy.

Britt chuckled. "Say that to my face."

Okay, I will. Turn around.

Britt felt a shiver run through her. Suddenly she realized she wasn't alone. She felt a presence. She slowly turned. And there, by the bedroom door, stood Maggie.

"Hello Britt."

Bathed in the moonlight streaming through a window she stood, a wiry and petite woman in a red one-piece bathing suit and at once Britt chilled at the realization it was identical to the remains of the suit she'd found in the cavern. Maggie's piercing gaze was balanced with a gentle, winsome smile. Her long, wild, tangled hair cascaded past her shoulders, her small breasts thrust forward proudly, hard nipples evident beneath the straining fabric. She reached out to Britt with a small, open inviting hand.

"Come here, baby," she whispered.

Britt could feel the desire surge within her, even as every instinct in her body screamed resistance. The sight of Maggie should only have stirred terror, fear or at least skepticism, dismissing Maggie as Scrooge wrote off Marley as a blot of mustard or crumb of cheese. But that ghost in chains wasn't trying to get into the old man's nightshirt. Maggie clearly had carnal designs on her.

Until that first night in the beach house, no woman had ever triggered Britt's now long-dormant desire, not even in college where lesbian flings were as common as keggers. She had long coveted men, sought their attention and approval, accepted or rejected them, and loved or at least tolerated them, with their come-on eyes and stale patter, sandpaper beards, nocturnal farting, ball sweat and hairy everythings.

Her gay pal Clara, ripping off Edmund Burke while under the influence of one too many margaritas, once observed, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of lesbianism is for clueless men to go on doing the dumb shit they've always done." It was, granted, a low bar, and whenever a potential conquest could get in a word edgewise to profess they weren't bi or gay, Clara's ready answer with her 100-watt smile was "Not yet!" Britt and the rest of the gang would watch her in action at bars as she insinuated herself with one woman after another on the dancefloor or by the rail, with the batting average of utility infielder.

While Britt admired her game, Clara never had a ghost of a chance with her. But then again, she wasn't a ghost.

Britt was an undone as the blouse that billowed open as she reached out to a woman no longer an apparition. It was Maggie in the flesh, albeit cool to the touch and pale in complexion, drawing her close and guiding Britt's trembling lips down to meet hers. Their mouths sealed, their tongues, furtive at first, dueled and tangled as each moaned their gathering pleasure into the other.

Britt gently freed Maggie of her tight bathing suit, Maggie's high, firm breasts suspended before her having somehow escaped gravity for a couple generations, inviting kisses of introduction. Again Britt encountered cool, salty skin, Maggie's tiny nipples hard as coral as she nibbled on them.

Her ghost lover cooed blissfully from the attention Britt paid to her tits and tummy before she dove deeper into a healthy bush, like a kelp forest concealing a cavern of underworldly delights. Maggie eagerly steered Britt's face to her pussy, but her lover needed no urging -- hers was a voyage of eager discovery. Britt was pushed in so enthusiastically she thought she might be coughing up hairballs for days.

Britt's tongue and lips patrolled the turgid wet folds of Maggie's pussy lips, then teasing the nub of her clit causing Maggie to tremble and buck, effectively raising the dead. Britt's hands gripped Maggie's firm buttocks before drifting down to her muscular thighs and calves. "They must have one helluva gym and juice bar in the afterlife," Britt thought as she ate Maggie out.

Maggie suddenly pulled Britt to her feet and kissed her passionately, tasting the wash of her juices in Britt's mouth and on her face. She pulled Britt to the four-poster bed and with understated power propelled her gasping lover to mattress, sitting atop her like a predator about to tear into her prey.

But Britt was beyond fear and waited anxiously for Maggie to ravish her. Maggie didn't disappoint, moving to Britt's earlobe, then her neck while cupping and squeezing Britt's heavy breasts. She suckled on Britt's broad pink nipples, then circled them with her warm tongue.

Then she went to work on Britt's engorged love petals, and she entered her pussy with one, and then two thrusting fingers. Britt gasped as Maggie expertly plunged deep inside, touching all the bases, driving her to higher and higher levels of excitement.

"More, baby, more!" Britt cried hoarsely, inviting Maggie to call up all of her reserves, fisting her lover with her small hand, the other kneading Britt's generous butt cheeks. Maggie's mouth then descended to Britt's hard quivering clit, and soon Britt could feel a tsunami rising, a thundering orgasm about to release.

When she came, Britt's vision blurred, there was a roar between her ears, every muscle in her body released at once. The bed was soaked. Maggie rose to face her with a sly grin and Britt watched as Maggie tasted each of her fingers, offering her lover the same opportunity. Britt rose to get it straight from the seahorse's mouth.

After their long, wet kiss, Britt released Maggie's lips and looked into her unreadable face. "So, you fucked your way into my soul, is that how this works?"

Maggie smiled and kissed her again. "Something like that. It's time for sleep. We have a lot to do tomorrow."

Britt had more to say, a lot more. But when Maggie pressed her finger to Britt's opening lips, those questions no longer occurred. She closed her eyes, and as the waves of lust receded within her, she fell into a deep sleep.

In the morning Britt awoke and looked about for her midnight lover but wasn't too surprised to find herself alone. It occurred to her it was ever thus -- ghosts and goblins and whatever the hell Maggie purported to be only came out to play at night. The cold light of day was for examining the unlikelihood and illogic of nocturnal submissions and other imagination games that occurred when she was too tired or too frightened to question.

She shuffled into the bathroom and ran a shower, yelping as the first jets of glacier fed water reported to her face and chest. She looked down and saw the war wounds from the previous night's unearthly coupling. Rally stripes across her torso from Maggie's nails, and was that a bite mark on her left boob? Son of a bitch! Or just plain bitch.

As she washed away the sweat, spit and other bodily fluids from her fuck-fatigued body, she thought again that she had been bedded by the spirit of a woman who had slept with her mom decades before. Talk about sloppy seconds, she thought to herself, and the ridiculousness of her situation, after all she had been through in recent history, gave her the giggles.

Because hell, why not? She was even moved to sing a-la Ethel Merman as she lathered up. "I wanna ghoul, just like the ghoul, who fucked my dear old maaaaawm!"

Drying off back in the bedroom, she heard a ring and looked about for her phone, struggling to find it the rats' nest of sheets and clothing scattered across the bed.

Once she found it, she squinted at the screen and recognized the incoming number from the 215 area code.

"Hello," she said hesitantly. The line was quiet. She could hear breathing and wasn't in the mood for crank calls.

"Who is this?" Britt said, adding a little edge to her voice.

"Are you Maggie?" It was a woman, probably a middle-aged one judging from the timbre of the voice. A frightened woman, at that.

Britt swallowed hard. "This is Britt Perry speaking."

"Oh my God, you're Phyll's girl, aren't you?"

"Yes, yes I am. Who the hell are you?"

"Oh I'm sorry, my name is Jamie Winstead, I was one of Maggie's marine biology students. I got to know your mother when she came to visit Maggie and I at Magnolia Key. When we last met you were a wee thing. We played on the beach."

Britt couldn't place her. "Wait a minute, there was a 'Maggie and you'?"

Jamie paused. "We were lovers."

"Of course you were." Britt rose from the bed, her pussy still aching from all the hands-on attention it got the night before. Swell, she thought, yet another lesbian. She was beginning to wonder if there had been a cock market crash that escaped her attention in the news.

"Look, Jamie, I need to talk to about all the calls made to your number yesterday and--"

Jamie cut her off. "Britt, where are you right now?"

"I'm in the beach house at Magnolia Key. Why?"

"Are you alone? Is... is SHE there?"

Britt's heart began racing. "Um, she's... I mean..." The truth was she had no idea which astral plane her lover was currently inhabiting. At the very least, Britt was alone in her thoughts. For the moment.

"Listen to me carefully," Jamie began. "You need to go for a walk. Step outside and head down the beach. Is that burned out old boat house still there down at the bend?"

Britt remembered it from beachcombing earlier that week. "Yeah, it is. Why?"

"I'm going to hang up now -- you call me back when you get there. Yes?"

Before Britt could agree to the plan, the line cut out. Guess I'm going for a walk, she thought.

Ten minutes later Britt was standing beside the rotted ruin that had somehow avoided demolition and redevelopment over the past few decades. Poking inside she found a circle of stones someone had assembled for a firepit and an old mattress dragged there probably by young lovers or old homeless people. Standing in a doorway, she pulled out her phone and dialled Jamie.

She answered on the first ring. "Are you at the boathouse?"

"Yes I am," Britt replied. "Are you going to tell me what's going on?"

She could sense Jamie was gathering her thoughts. "I know what you're dealing with, Britt. I know better than anyone. You have got to get out of there. Now. Before you get hurt. Before somebody gets killed."

Britt scanned the beach, and saw a handful of sunbathers, little kids building sandcastles, a dog loping out into the water to retrieve a thrown stick. Nothing satanic as far as she could see.

"Before who gets killed?"

"The Australian man, the divemaster up the road."

Britt recalled the panic building inside her when she first went to the diveshop and briefly encountered the taller of the two brothers.

"You mean Ted?"

"That's right," Jamie said.

"Are you telling me he's the one responsible for Maggie's murder all those years ago?"

Jamie sighed. "She told me he drowned her in a wreck and her body was never found. He got away with it."

"I found the body," Britt whispered before snapping out of her trance. "Or at least what's left of it. She guided me into a cavern offshore a couple nights ago. It's her."

"I'm sorry you had to go through that."

Wait a minute, Britt thought. "Maggie told you what happened to her? When?"

Jamie sighed and promised a short story. She explained that her relationship with Maggie came to an amicable end after a couple years at the beach house, and they stayed in touch after Jamie moved back to Pennsylvania to complete her education. She learned of Maggie's disappearance from Phyll and a decade later rented the beach house for a summer vacation as a nostalgic return to a place she'd been very happy with the first woman she'd ever loved.

It proved to be more of a flashback than she counted on. And the story of her encounter with her dead lover hit very close to home.

"Oh my gawd Jamie, that happened to me!" Britt blurted.

"The spooky locker in the cellar?"

"Yes, yes!" Britt cried, suddenly noticing what few people were in the vicinity had turned to watch her. She quickly ducked inside the boathouse for privacy, and briefed Jamie on the dive to the cavern and Maggie's plea to be avenged.

The two women were then temporarily speechless, each listening to the other's rasping breaths.

"Did she... did she make love to you?" Jamie finally asked.

Britt closed her eyes. "Yes, yes she did. Like nothing I've ever experienced before. Like an out of body, inner body, fourth-dimensional fucking. I can't even begin to describe it."

"She's seducing you," Jamie said evenly.

Britt absently fingered the red and purple gouge on her chest. So hot it hurt. "She's doing a helluva job, Jamie."

"It's not even her anymore," Jamie insisted. "I remember Maggie as she was. She was a gentle soul, a good lover but not an Olympic level athlete in the sheets. She has an ulterior motive and she needs you, she needs your body, to kill a man so she can finally rest in peace."

Britt soaked that in. "Okay but, pardon me for asking, why is this my problem now? How were you able to get away?"

Jamie chuckled bitterly. "She learned I was of no use to her. Since I left her the first time in Florida, I had a pneumothorax, a collapsed lung. I can't scuba dive anymore, which is a bit of a bummer if you're a marine biologist. But it's a showstopper if you're supposed to be an underwater hitwoman. One day I'm doing the horizontal mambo with a sexy succubus, the next I'm all by my lonesome. I have a story to tell but no one to believe me outside of a psychic. So I packed up and went home."

Britt frowned. "What is it with her that revenge is best served wet?"

"She wanted me, and now you, to do unto others as it was done to her," the woman explained. "Just a little theatrical, I suppose. So forget about throwing a toaster in his bathtub or putting arsenic in his Corona. She wants him drowned and she wants him to know who did it."

Maggie wanted an avenging angel. She wanted Britt to take him down. Literally.

Britt then remembered the call log from the day before, a series of short conversations with Jamie. "What did she tell you yesterday?" she asked eagerly.

Jamie snorted. "I hung up, like, the first three times. Then I realized what was happening and I listened to her."

"My voice?"

"Hers, definitely hers," Jamie said. "She said she would soon be at rest and she wanted me to know..."

Britt could hear Jamie choking up.

"She wanted me to know that she loved me. She begged forgiveness for giving up on me. The good Maggie is still in there. But she's losing, Britt. I don't know what the hell is left in there."

So sad about them, Britt thought impatiently. "She believes I'm going to get it done," she said.

"That's why you have to get out of there. Now! Before she gets the chance to stop you."

Britt nodded. Jamie was right. As despicable as this Ted is, or at least was, it was hardly her place to mete the sort of vengeance Maggie demanded. She thought of the old Greek saying about digging two graves when plotting revenge. Her best-case scenario for escaping a needle in the arm for drowning the man would be winding up in a psychiatric facility for the rest of her natural life. Perhaps Maggie would be up for conjugal visits.

"Britt, you still there?"

That was suddenly a very good question. Because in an instant Britt felt herself transported from the confines of her troubled mind to something completely different. Soaring higher and higher, slipping from the surly bonds until all the world could be surveyed below. She knew it all and then she knew no more. Her phone fell into the sand at her feet.

Jamie persisted. "Britt? Can you hear me?"

A hand reached for the phone and swept the sand and grit from the glass. The woman placed it next to her face.

"Goodbye Jamie. I do love you," she said before putting the phone in her pocket. She turned and began walking back to the beach house.

She passed a couple lolling in the sand, the young man watching her progress up the beach with some undisguised appreciation for the mature female form. He had a thing for cougars. Especially cougars with outstanding butts. His girlfriend turned over, sized up the situation and unleashed a sandstorm at his face.

"Hey, what was that for!?" he sputtered.

"You're a pig!" she explained.

Not quite out of earshot, Maggie smiled to herself. Still got it, she thought. On the way back to the house she considered the flesh she'd annexed. She'd admired and ravished it from the outside, from within she could sense its potential. There was little time to tune the aging vehicle into a killing machine, but a lot could be accomplished with charm and cunning, and with Maggie behind the wheel, anything was possible. She took off her sunglasses and looked up to the sun, drinking in its rays for the first time in forever. And savoured all of it.

That afternoon a familiar face presented herself at the counter of the Down Under diveshop where she was greeted enthusiastically by Bruce and immediately dubbed with a new nickname: Old School. His enthusiasm mounted when she placed the vintage scuba gear he'd recently serviced on the counter and they shook on a deal -- her equipment for free passage and dives for the rest of the week. The old boy couldn't agree fast enough and he summoned Ted from out back to view the spoils.

Ted was delighted as well and couldn't help feeling this sheila was giving him the eye. She had warmed considerably since the last time they met when she seemed a little buggy and nervous. Off the hop she impressed him as a serious, experienced diver but the way she leaned over the counter to give him a panoramic view of her milky jugs -- no doubt about it, she was dying for a root. She was much older and rounder than the girls he usually preferred, but he was no spring chicken himself and it had been a long dry spell. Maybe the old hound ought to be considering old girls.

"Old School" signed up for an afternoon excursion with a small group of divers to a shallow garden site and as the odd person out dove with Ted. Over the course of the dive he found himself convinced he'd met the woman before. First he thought about that chick he'd picked up in a bar years ago in Miami, who took him back to her apartment for a snog and before they could seal the deal he had to flee when her angry husband burst in. Bigger, angry bloke with a crowbar -- Ted had to jump out the window in his jocks and run to his car. Nah, that babe was a little shorter, blonder, much smaller norks.

While tending to his underwater flock, rapping on his tank every time a clueless diver stood on a coral head or poked into places they shouldn't, he kept an eye on Old School. Every time his memory threatened to put the pieces together, a sultry look from her would chase the notion away. But no matter, she seemed equally fascinated with him, and back on the boat she laughed at his tired jokes, and was touchy-feely as she spoke to him. Deep blue eyes you could drown in, he thought.

Ted was thrilled when she returned the next day for a wreck dive and by the time they were back topside, he was convinced she wanted him. The way she held his arm as they proceeded through the hold of the old ganja boat. The way she winked at him when their eyes met. She knew how to handle herself down there and he appreciated her skills in keeping the clownfish in line, almost a spare divemaster on duty to wrangle a group of varying skills and confidence.

As the boat scudded across the waves back to the dock, she stood next to him at the helm making idle talk about other interesting dive sites in the area. He finally leaned in and asked her if she'd be up for dinner later and she was immediately agreeable. They arranged to meet later at a nearby restaurant and bar called the Pink Parrot. Excellent grouper he assured her, and it promised to be a spectacular clear starry night for a long walk down the beach afterwards. And, at the end of that moonlight stroll, he had an apartment upstairs at the shop for a nightcap. Perhaps more. She gushed.

Then he had to ask her. "Love, this isn't a line or anything, but I have this feeling we've met before. Have we?"

Maggie smiled, her menacing eyes concealed behind her shades. She shrugged. "I dunno, Ted. I've been around, I've been with a few guys. But I'm pretty sure I would have remembered a man like you."

Ted shook his head, still puzzled even as his chest and his nethers began to swell. "I'm going to keep thinking on that. I still have a feeling we've crossed paths before, Ms Perry."

She tilted her head at him. "Maybe we met in a past life."

He chuckled nervously. Swell, one of those woo-woo mystical chicks. But, no matter. "Well, if that's true, I sure hope I was nice to you in that one."

Maggie rose on her tippy toes and planted a surprise kiss on his cheek. "Pretty sure you weren't," she said before stepping away and stowing her gear.

Whatever unease Ted felt disappeared as he watched her lean over and tend to her equipment, her ample back 40 on display. He smiled and returned his attention to the waves in front of him. Enough shipwrecks in the gulf already. But he wouldn't be the first sailor distracted by a sultry siren.

Old School, old girl, old dog, new tricks, he thought to himself. It would be a night to remember.

-30-