The Haunted Library, Part I

I shut the door behind me to the largish room too small for all the materials inside it and turned on a lamp I had put on a small table nearby. The door locked shut behind me, secluding me in my office and my job for the duration, and as long as I didn’t fuck up, it would house and feed me and in the end provide a dissertation for me. The Truscott Collection was a miscellaneous mass (indeed, mess) of materials about all the islands of the Caribbean that a wealthy alum had inherited, added to, and then bequeathed to the university twenty years before. Given the nature of academic libraries and the fads and fashions of academia, it was surprising they had gotten around to cataloguing and publishing the publishable parts this soon—and that only because I had learned about it and gotten pressure put on the history department to support me in putting it in order. I sensed strange currents behind the scenes that somehow enabled a mere grad student to run the show, mostly involving considerations of faculty factions, payoffs to my advisors, and a desire to give our lot enough rope to swing freely by the neck.This room was one of any number of empty ones on the floor, for the university was much smaller an academic backwater than it had been a century before and the library had the least prime available space in all the campus buildings; as near as I had discovered, the room had last been used fifteen years before, and the fact that it was available was doubtless another secondary consideration in the project being approved. There were of course no windows, only the buzzing of antiquated fluorescent tubes pitched just so as would drive a body insane inside of a month, but for my next stint of work there was no way around them.I turned on the lights now that I could see. I suspect there was another door earlier halfway down the wall that had been replaced by wall decades before. The room was filled with bookcases and crates of materials, and I had unpacked about a fourth of the materials and made a vague preliminary arrangement of the materials.I walked back to the door and turned off the lamp. When I read materials in the afternoons, I left the main lights off and used just the lamp; I appreciated the silence and darkness of the room about me on my couch. However, mornings were devoted to sifting, and so I set to, emptying another crate onto one of my two tables. For an hour I classified them by island and period; later I would sift them more closely by subject (politics, economy, society, and so on) and make quick notes on the contents at my desk.At 12:30, I decided to take my lunch, so I shut off the main lights and turned on the lamp as I sat wondering about the glass pane in the wall. I had discovered it the week before behind a flimsy wood panel lurking behind a flimsy bookcase. When I moved the bookcase, the panel fell away, showing a window to nowhere. It wasn’t even a mirror, just an oddly dark sheet of glass about a foot on each side about three feet off the floor set firmly in the wall. Doubtless there was a reason for it, for the mysteries of a university are as numerous and ageless as they are trivial, so I just covered it when I left and uncovered it when I turned the lights off about noon. With the lights on it seemed cheaply ominous, like an obvious effect from a low-rent C-level horror flick, but with the lights out the lamp reflected off it to cast interesting patterns on the bookcases. Sadly, the room was so boring that that improved it almost as much as the dark did.About 1:10 the window to nowhere suddenly flashed on. I glanced up at it sharply and put down my food and coffee and stood up to look through it. I saw a room with an antiquated chair that would never sell as an antique and a few odds and ends, and in the middle of the room a man and woman in century-old outfits stood looking at each other. The man was tall and blond, with a green cravat that matched his eyes, while the woman was black, with medium skin and hair done up in a style current about 1910, with a high neckline around a graceful high neck and a brooch at the throat. Her outfit had the usual pinched waist and swelling hips, and she was smiling as the man stared at her with naked lust in his eyes. I was going to take a closer look at the window to somewhere when the man took the woman in his arms and devoured her mouth.I looked around and found a chair that I pulled over to sit before the glass. It was at perfect viewing height, and my eyes widened as their clothing loosened. Soon the woman allowed the top of the dress to fall, displaying a pair of smooth brown swollen breasts, and as the man suckled them, she reached down to his crotch and opened him quickly. He reached down to try to find the join of her thighs, but it was not in evidence beneath the many layers of the dress below the waist. She pushed him away with a smile and sat in the chair; she pulled him to her and stroked him to complete fullness. When he was ready, she took him in her mouth long enough and far enough to lubricate most of his shaft, which was uncut, lightly curved, and throbbing thickly at a good seven inches. She then cradled his length in her cleavage and looked up at him as he looked down at her face and breasts.She held her breasts tight around him with her hands, and he thrust rapidly between her breasts for two minutes. His first rope of cum shot up into her hair and fell along her ear and neck, and the next six welled up onto her chest and neck and collected in her cleavage, running down her belly to her dress. She then pulled back and knelt down to take the rest of his load orally, smiling as he reached down to play with his cum on her skin. He rubbed it into her breasts and then pulled out a handkerchief to wipe up her ear and neck.I was fully erect by this time and close to bursting, but as I was at work I maintained a policy of hands-off. She then made me even more heated as she turned the chair to face the glass and lifted her dress materials to show shapely thighs framing a thicket of black hair, no panties in sight. She raised her knees and spread her thighs wide, allowing me a clear view of her engorged lips, which she rubbed lingeringly until a blond head interposed itself. I then watched in awe as she displayed to me how her body changed as she rose to climax. Throughout I caught her staring into my eyes, letting me see the pleasure the was feeling.She climaxed twice, and then the man rose, dropped his trousers, and crouched above her as he lifted her ankles to his shoulders. They coupled vigorously for ten minutes, and finally he fell back exhausted. She sat there flushed and sweating, her thighs still open to me, her glistening pink center starting to disappear behind her receding lips, a driblet of semen pooling in her dress. He handed her his handkerchief and she wiped up after the man lifted her drew back up over her breasts and did up her buttons; as she wiped her crotch she stared at me quizzically, and then the glow of the window shut off.I went to the door and peeked out, but the wall next to the door was featureless for ten yards or more. I shut the door and walked around but found no door anywhere to what turned out to be a square Ankara bayan escort area backing on the back wall of the library.I walked back to the room and sat there on the couch pondering what I had seen. The outfits were period perfect, as near as I could tell, and the lack of sound and odd lighting seemed thoroughly unnatural. I was unable to concentrate on work, replaying the scenes engraved on my memory, but refused to masturbate myself to relief until after hours. Soon I dozed and dreamed about them, listening as they convinced me they were the ghosts of long-deceased lovers, reenacting their last acts of love before being caught and killed in flagrante delicto.I woke up just after six and with a muttered “shit” hied myself off to my appointment. At 6:30 I knocked on Jacqueline’s door. She quickly opened the door, as usual by now wearing only a T-shirt and shorts, and as I entered she smiled happily. “Thank you for meeting me on short notice.”“I don’t think you have to worry about the test, Jacqueline.”“I want to ace that fucker,” she laughed, and I replied, “I’m sure you will. Still, if it makes you feel more secure…”“I have grad applications coming up soon,” she said, “and I want all my ducks lined up.”“Fair enough.”She poured us some coffee and we went into her room. She shared a small apartment with a fellow English major named Carol who worked the late shift and took only afternoon classes this semester. I watched Jacqueline’s firm body as she walked ahead of me and worried whether I would embarrass myself with yet another raging erection, though Jacqueline was polite enough not to say anything even though I was certain she noticed carefully.I had met Jacqueline at the end of the preceding school year when she worked as a barista at a coffee shop where I perpetrated papers on my laptop for the edification of…well, at the time it seemed no one, really, either myself or my professors. The first time she waited on me at the counter, she asked, “How would you like your coffee?”“As black and bitter as my heart.”“I’m sorry, we don’t serve bitter coffee.”We laughed and the next day learned each other’s names. My first impression was that she was friendly, cute, open, and smart, with a talent for repartee. We had chatted a bit more each time after the second week, and in the evenings she would sit at my table and we would take breaks together as she asked about my papers and told me about her classes.After a month we were chatting thick as thieves about things besides classes, and I was starting to get sweet on a girl four years younger than me, and worse than that, a junior in college. The last time I was interested in juniors in college, I was a junior in high school on a study program, and by the time I was a junior in college I was hilt-deep in a sweet relationship with a woman older than my mother.However, despite my long-standing interest in older women, Jacqueline intrigued me. She was studious and confident, certainly, and she was very attractive, with chestnut hair falling in curls to the middle of her back, firm smallish breasts with nipples that were clearly hard to restrain—or perhaps she simply knew how to bolster her tips by bolstering her tits—and a muscular, solid body. At the time we got to know each other, I was involved with a professor of sociology at a neighboring school I had met at a conference and Jacqueline was in something hot and heavy with a member of the track team, so our relationship was purely friendly; by the time both of us were single, our friendship had solidified and I feared ruining it.At the beginning of the year, after we had caught up on our doings over summer, she smiled coyly and asked, “Would you be willing to tutor me this semester?”“You know I don’t study English.”“I had to put off a couple of history classes that I need to graduate, and I really want a perfect 4.0 when I graduate.”“You have a 4.0?”“Yes,” she said simply.Impressed, I agreed. “Which classes?”“I’ll be doing both semesters of modern European history.”“Why are you doing a survey class? You’re smart. You should know that already.”“I told you I want to make sure I have a 4.0.” We laughed and she added, “It’s the only thing I could really fit in my schedule that wasn’t History of Protestant Thought from Luther to Niebuhr or The Development of the Private Garden in England, 1500-2000. Gawd.”“There’s always the History of the Caribbean, you know.”She made a cute moue, “The one you TA’d in last year, right? But if I took that I would feel immoral asking you to tutor me, and I do so want you for a tutor.”She said this simply and without any flirtatiousness, so it slipped past my immediate consciousness until a few minutes later, when returning to it would have been awkward. By that time, we were chatting about our romantic lives, and she was telling me, “I’m sorry you don’t have a girlfriend any more. It’s hard to survive school without regular sex, you know.”“True, but a woman would be stupid to turn down a better job just for multiple orgasms every other night.”“Yes, she’s very sensible. You can find a man who can give you multiple orgasms anywhere, but a better shot at tenure is a rarity in today’s job market.”I could detect no trace of sarcasm, but in any case she was right on the latter point, so I just nodded and said, “Besides, we weren’t a fit for anything long term.”“Well, that is an important long-term consideration.”We laughed and she asked me about my classes this semester, which were three seminars, and as she was getting ready to return to work made arrangements for our first tutoring session—location, time, duration, and pay. We agreed on her apartment, and from then on I made sure every Wednesday evening was clear for three hours, and by the end of the first tutoring session we agreed they were a great success. Of course, I was constantly bedeviled by her figure and face as she pondered, moved, and smiled in sudden understanding, but never made any improperly suggestive remark…until she started, that is, for she did have an earthy sense of humor and long and varied experience in the bedroom (and, I gathered, every other room of the house and many public institutions), and even then I felt uncomfortable pushing things verbally.At the end of our fourth tutoring session, for example, which was the first that took place in her bedroom, so as not to disturb Carol, she stretched and said, “Thank you, I think I understand it now.” She got up and put her books away in a backpack, which she then put aside for the morrow. “Want some wine?”“I would love some.”“I’ve seen you staring at my bookcase all night. You scholars are all alike! Go ahead and browse.”She went out. I stood up and looked through the books, which were a surprisingly good lot, and then on the bottom shelf I noticed that most of the piles of magazines were old issues of Playboy and Penthouse; the three of each I glanced through were well-thumbed and fell open to revealing pictures and letters.She came in as I was putting them back and she smiled, “Yes, I keep them for old time’s sake.”“Old time’s sake?”“I devoured them when I was a girl. Back in high school.”“Oh?” I raised an eyebrow suggestively and Escort bayan Ankara smiled to take the barb off it.She laughed, “Yeah, it was so interesting looking at pretty women. It was an education seeing what men like—what men are taught to like, rather. Men should read crap like Cosmo, you know, so they can see what women are taught to like. Well, not Cosmo; the chicks running that rag are sick.”“So you didn’t read Playboy for the articles then.”We laughed loudly and she said, “Oh, I read some of them too. But really, the women in Playboy back then, the ones I snagged from my father’s closet and my brothers’ stashes, were so beautiful. It was strange seeing them, and you know, even as a woman I had a bit of desire for them.”“Girl crush, huh?”“Young woman crush. For what they represented. It’s not the best view of sex, but it’s far healthier than shit like Cosmo. Of course, I can’t stand the recent ones. They’re just steps on the ladder for silicone blondes with shaved pubes to a spiritually corrupt modeling career.”“Yeah, what is it with shaved pubes? Prepubescent girls and porn stars have bare pubes. I really don’t want those in my head mixed up together.”She laughed and said, “Exactly. Without hair, you get all sorts of rug burns on both sides! Well, depending where and how you do it…But hair’s there to prevent chafing…and bruising…”“Bruising?” I laughed.She nodded, “If the man’s enthusiastic enough…” We laughed and she added, “Though some men are so dumb they leave bruises around your navel.”After we stopped laughing, I asked, “So when did you start looking at them?”“Oh, let’s see, I was about 15. I was walking through the woods one day…”“Ah, the blessed Woodland Porn Fairy. So many of us boys were so grateful to her for the bounteous blessings she scattered here and there for us.”She laughed, “No, actually, but I can imagine that would have been a godsend in the old days of the Middle Ages when peasant boys like you escaped from the Lord’s demesne…”After we stopped laughing, she continued, “I was walking along and heard some rustling from a place I knew. I knew couples liked to go there but I’d never had the chance to see anything yet.”“Did you eventually?”“A couple of times. No doubt I passed on the wealth a few times myself three years later. –Anyway, I peeked in and saw an older boy masturbating. First time I’d seen an erect penis. It was really cute.”“Cute. Somewhere out there a man’s spirit has been crushed.”We laughed, and she said, “Anyway, he was staring fixedly at a Playboy centerfold. I tracked his face, you might say; he was shifting between her eyes and her breasts and her bush. Light blonde bush, full breasts, and a gorgeous face. I found her later; she’s at the bottom of that pile. I have a special place in my heart for her because of how much pleasure she gave him, and how much pleasure watching him gave me. Anyway, he stared and stared and then spewed all over himself. It was fascinating. And after he wiped up, he did it again with a different picture, a stunning black woman. Found that one too. I tell you, the 80s and 90s had some beautiful women. I made a quick getaway while he took a quick nap and went home to start rooting around a few closets.”“I wonder if anyone wondered where they went.”“They probably routinely stole from each other. No one talked about it, but everyone did it. Certainly my brothers did, going to the bathroom several times whenever female company came over. Jeez. Mom and Dad looked at them together, I gathered, which was…an interesting thought.”“And what exactly did you do with the Playboys?”“Oh, that’s secret! I suppose you’re suggesting that at times I did just like a boy.”“You buried it in a plastic bag in the backyard so your mother wouldn’t find it?”She laughed out loud, “Oh, you poor thing! What a square.”“Me or my mom?”“You decide.”“And Penthouse?”“Well, that was seedier. The women were pretty, yes, but the soft-focus pictures of spread-open coochies was silly. Like romanticizing what was a mile beyond romance by that stage, you know. I loved the letters though.”“They were an education, yes.”“An education in a wide variety of interesting leisure-time activities.”“I dunno, some of my favorites took place at work.”She laughed, “True. –So, who was your first centerfold? The first one whose beauty you celebrated in age-old fashion?”I paused for a moment in shock and then told her. She identified her quickly and said, “Yes, she was a very pretty one. One of the most explicit centerfolds too, as I remember it.”“Yes, it certainly was.”“How old were you when you secured her charms?”“Fifteen.”“Seeing her at that tender age, you’re probably hot-triggered for life.”“Yes, you might be right.”We then finished our wine and I bid my adieu. We had similar conversations probably every other tutoring session, but I was afraid to make a move; her manner was just suggestive enough to bedevil me with the chance of a sweet and glorious success, but just reserved and matter-of-fact enough to cast considerable doubt on her being interested. More important, though, was the possibility of her lodging a complaint; even though she was in a different department, the consequences of my propositioning an undergrad could be catastrophic. I thus decided to bide my time and continue collecting information.That evening I sat in the chair and she sat on her bed. She asked me questions about the effects of Newtonian scientific thought on the French enlightenment, and after the last of a series of long pauses in which my mind galloped back to the library, she said, “You really seem out of it tonight. That’s no good. I asked you specifically to help me prepare for the first test, and you’re the historian, remember? I am the one who is supposed to find the Physiocrats boring, not you. What gives?”I said, “I saw a ghost today, I think.”“A ghost?” Her voice was excited and her eyes shone. “Ooh, I love ghost stories! Take a break and tell me all about it!”“Two ghosts, actually.” She was hanging on every word and I told her about it.“So they were dressed in old-timey clothes?”“Yes.”“Do you think they were old lovers a century ago or more, who could only meet in secret?”“Maybe.”We then chattered animatedly about it, and she said, “So what exactly did they do?”“They had sex.”“Yes, I know. That covers a multitude of sins. What precisely was the charge sheet?”She was staring at me as I thought for a second and then told her in explicit detail everything they had done.“Wow. I wish I could see ghosts like that. Getting a scare at 3 AM because Carol walks past the bathroom mirror when I’m washing my face in the dark is the shittiest ghost story imaginable. I could kill her when she does that.”We laughed and she said, “So, how many times did you masturbate watching them?”“Huh, what? None! It was the library!”“They didn’t let that stop them. Hell, I never let it stop me. Like this one time I came across these two gorgeous men in the stacks taking turns blowing each other. I offered to help but they were gay. Still, they let me watch, mostly because I said if they didn’t I’d tell on them, and you can be sure I did not leave all hot and bothered.”“I never know if you’re telling Bayan escort Ankara the truth or shitting me.”She smiled coyly, “Don’t you wish you knew. –Well, you had an exciting day and no mistake. Now help me study for my test, damnit.”She patted the bed next to her and said, “Look at this passage and explain it to me.”I did so and leaned over to get a closer look. Her hair and skin smelled washed and fresh, and I had a good glimpse down the well of her braless cleavage that I did my best to avoid starting at. I read the passage and pondered it, then explained it to her. She looked at me and asked me, “So, When Turgot said that, he was basically using Newtonian language to express the idea of economic laws.”“You got it in one. Exactly.”“But, they had no real economic laws though.”“Right, just old ideas of political economy from the Greeks and Romans and ideas like that. But remember the chapter on economic ideas.”“Right. Like Francisco de Vitoria.”“Yes.”“And he thought…” As she thought about what he thought, I thought about what I had seen, remembering the female ghost’s swollen breasts standing out firmly before being cupped by her lover’s hand, and then his mouth, before she took his member between them and he covered their firm brownness with white streaks.A minute later I felt a swift elbow deep in my ribs. “Listen, you’re clearly distracted tonight. I need your full attention.”“Sorry.”Fifteen minutes later she finally said in exasperation, “I’m sick of having to compete with your horny ghosts. You really should have jerked off then and there instead of letting yourself stew all day. So here, do it now.” She moved to face me and pulled her T-shirt off. “Jerk off. Get it out of your system and get back to tutoring me.”“No, I can’t,” I said, staring at her firm breasts, not a trace of sag, and her half-erect light brown nipples, wondering if the felt as soft as they looked.“You’ve jerked off to women’s tits all the time. You said so. Now do it.”“No, I don’t want to be the only one having pleasure. It’s not fair.”“Oh, all right, here.” She leaned over and unzipped my pants and pulled out my cock. “Just tell me when you’re about to come.” She then lowered her head and took me quickly inside. She clearly was not in the mood to waste time; she stroked me relentlessly as she circled the head with her tongue and worked me with her lips and mouth, and in a minute I said, “I’m coming.”She nodded and lowered her head until I was buried in her throat. With a scream I began coming, and to my surprise she swallowed every drop. She pulled back and smiled, “There. All better?”“No.”She stroked my still-hard cock and purred, “Well, we’ll have to take care of that, won’t we?” She immediately lowered her head again and gently worked my shaft with her right hand as her left hand played with my balls. I leaned over to feel her breasts, and as I cupped them and tweaked her nipples, she worked me into her throat again. I lasted a little longer, but within five minutes her nose was buried in my pubic hairs as I buried my sperm in her swallowing throat.She sat up and kissed me, and I felt her smile as I made no sudden jerk at the taste of my own cum on her tongue. She leaned back to look at me and said, “Now, will you be able to tutor me effectively?”“Don’t you need…”“I took care of that myself,” she said and raised her left hand, which emitted a familiar odor. I immediately hardened again and she looked down in awe or disappointment, I wasn’t sure which. “Okay, jerk off to my tits this time. My mouth is exhausted.”“Pose for me.”She leaned back and to the side so that her breasts were in profile, and as she stared into my eyes when not watching my cock, she parted her lips slightly and her breathing sped up as my fist pounded more quickly.“You’re in your room looking at a new centerfold,” she started intoning. “I’m your centerfold. You’ve never had a woman before, never held a breast, and my breasts are there for you. All for you. For your pleasure, any time you want to see them. Perfect little breasts, erect nipples that you wish were just for you. These are erect for you. Don’t you wish you could have seen them back then? Don’t you remember how it felt, staring at the beautiful woman you knew you’d never touch, who you wanted so much it made you almost cry? And so you stared at them again and again and again, four or five times in one day? Go on, show me your desire and your yearning, your lust and your release.”And with that my last orgasm of the night was torn out of me by my pounding fist, spraying all over her bedspread and over to her side, with a few drops landing on her belly. She giggled at the mess and said, “Good, let’s get back to work.”And so we did. Her manner had become serious, even frosty, as we wiped up my juices, and after she put her shirt back on she sat next to me and grilled me about the connections between the thought of Montesquieu and Turgot and the policies of Necker, then the problems of decentralization and the opposition of the Parlements, and so on before turning to the rise of parties in the Parliament in England. The immediate distraction ended, I concentrated easily and was again amazed at how clearly she followed the material. When our session ended, she said, “Thank you, you came through at the end. I think I’m ready now.”I leaned over to kiss her, and she pulled back and laughed, “For the test, I mean.” She paused and said, “No, really, not tonight. I’m nervous about the test and I’d be no good. Come to me tomorrow evening and you can help me dry my tears or join my celebration.”“How long have you wanted…?”“I flirted with the idea many times. A month ago I was sure, but I didn’t know of a good way in. I don’t like just hooking up. I don’t like propositioning a guy. I don’t like guys who use lines or just shove their tongues down your throat either. I want something that respects my intelligence but knows I’m sexy too. I wanted it to come about naturally but out of the ordinary. And tonight was perfect. I loved your story about the ghosts. Seducing a woman by making up a ghost story! Yes!! No man has ever done that to me before. You truly outdid yourself, and tomorrow you will reap the rewards for such creativity.”“I didn’t make it up.”She looked at me with open eyes and said, “All the better! We have our own ghosts! We can figure out all about them!”“Yes, let’s!”“Never will a true historian pass up such a chance.” We laughed and she kissed me lightly on the mouth. “Tomorrow, my dear. But, you are disease-free, right?”“Yes. I have a report if you want one.”“How old?”“One week.”“Ooh, for me?”“Well, it was just to be sure, but I was doing it just in case…we started.”“Good. Bring it. I’m on the pill, so we won’t need condoms.” She leaned over and opened her nightstand. “Here.” Her report was three weeks old and gave her a clean bill of health. “I wanted it just in case myself.”I peeked over into the drawer and winked at her. She replied, “I’m a healthy woman with healthy drives.”“Is that why you have two dozen batteries stacked up in there? One week’s supply?”She swatted me, “Asshole, there are only six in there. And yes, that’s two weeks’ supply in a drought like I’ve had.” We laughed and she kissed me again and showed me out. The next evening, a Friday evening, I showed up at seven, and she met me at the door in a loose light green blouse and tight white skirt. Her hair was pulled up to cascade down behind her head, showing off the curve of her jaw into her ears, and she said, “I made dinner for us.”