Unnatural Lover Boxed Set #1 Read online

  "I'm sorry. I just didn't want you doing this alone, not on my account," Amanda replied. She glanced passed him and into the dark room. Nothing moved but for the falling rain outside. "I was in here when I heard the noises, and I know I turned the light on before I left it."

  The stranger frowned and tried the light switch. Nothing happened either way that he flipped it.

  "Looks like the bulb died. Maybe it got more scared than you," he teased.

  Amanda froze for a moment, and then the corners of her mouth twitched up into a smile. After these harrowing days of terror, she now found something which had been frightened even worse than her. A garbled laugh sputtered from her lips, and then her whole body began to shake while she tried to contain the insane mirth bubbling up inside of her. She couldn't stop herself, but tears rained down on their own and soaked her face with their salty presence. Her legs shook, and she sunk down onto the floor to keep herself from falling. There, safe on the ground and relieved at the feel of the soft carpet beneath her, she clutched her head in her hands and wept. The stranger was taken back by her extreme show of emotion.

  "Oh, not that, miss. I can't stand to see someone crying on my account." He leaned down and rubbed her back. "Come on, miss, I know it wasn't that funny, but I didn't mean anything by it."

  "It's not your fault, it's me," she blubbered out. Even as she spoke the insanity was leaving her. Soon she was her own person again, calm, collected, but still scared. "I guess I've just made a mess of myself these last few days and this was the final straw."

  "That camel must have been loaded pretty heavy already. You got problems with your boyfriend or something?"

  "What? Oh no, Tony and I are fine." She didn't want him to get back those ideas of her having an abusive relationship. However, she didn't want to spill her troubles, the sane ones, to someone who was practically a stranger. "It's just been other things. Life."

  "Well, that does drive everyone to distraction, doesn't it?" He turned to the rest of the hall and stepped forward to inspect those areas. That's when he tripped and nearly tumbled head-first onto the floor. "What in the world?"

  They both looked down on the ground and saw the rock laying there, as innocent as rocks ever were after they tried to injure someone. The stranger reached down to pick it up, but Amanda was too fast for him. Her fingers wrapped around the stone and she hugged it to herself. He gave her an odd look for the way she'd swooped in, but she returned his expression with a shaky smile.

  "My stupid rock. I swear the dumb thing rolls around by itself."

  "Yes, well, let's get the rest of this place looked over before something really does try to kill us."

  Amanda clung onto the stone for the rest of the search, which was found to be a waste of time. She wasn't disappointed to find nothing, and neither was her companion. They turned on all the lights and searched every corner and every room in the entire apartment. There wasn't any sign of a break-in, just a lot of dust, a not uncommon occurrence in a bachelor pad. By the time their task was done it was ten minutes till five.

  "I'm glad to say it, but it looks like you were just hearing things," the man commented to his young protege.

  "You have no idea how glad I am to hear you say that," she assured him.

  "Well, how about that glass of water? Still up for it?"

  "Actually, I was thinking of making dinner for my boyfriend. He gets off work at five and I was going to surprise him with spaghetti."

  "Sounds like a good meal, and a good time for me to get out of here. Wouldn't want to be caught and have to explain all this to him." The man gave her a wink. "He'd probably think you were cheating on him."

  "I really appreciate the help. You were really nice in putting up with my stupid imagination," Amanda thanked him. He nodded his head and smiled.

  "You just make sure to keep the windows locked and the lights on before it gets dark. Might help avoid these things later."

  "Oh, wait!" She grabbed onto his sleeve. "I haven't even told you my name. It's Amanda Steiner."

  "Glad to meet you, Miss Steiner. I'm Professor Ward."

  Amanda was sure she hadn't heard his name right.

  "C-could you repeat that?"

  "Professor Ward." He held out his hand for her to take. "Shouldn't we shake hands before we part?"

  "But no, that can't be true. There's just no way." Amanda felt as though she had entered into a reality that was twisting and warping itself to fit the wishes of some demented soul. First there was that haunted rock, and now this coincidence which she believed was not a chance of fate, but rather the plans of some being. "You should be dead."

  The Professor Ward from the early fifties had already been a man of middle age when he'd taken the group of students up to the mountain. There was no way he would still be alive, much less as spry as this stranger here. More to the point, he was exactly the right age to be the real instructor.

  "Come, come, don't you even want a shake hands with me?" He stepped toward her, but Amanda slowly shook her head, and backed away from him. "I'm not a zombie, I swear." He laughed at his own joke, but his voice rang false in her ears. There was a grating of something hidden beneath the intonations of every word, as though a spring was being tightened to the point where it would explode out from the pressure.

  "You are him, aren't you? The one from the article." She glanced passed him to the freedom of the open hall, but his body blocked her escape. Amanda jumped when the person chuckled.

  "You could say I am, and I'm something completely different." The professor looked down and placed his hands palms down against his chest. "Yes, something not flesh and blood, but much more. A part of a great being with a greater purpose than my feeble grasping of false hypothesis and blinding scientific prejudice." He lifted his eyes to look at Amanda, and she reeled back when she saw their color was now a coal black. "But you hold no such imperfections. To us you are pure, and we see you now as one sees an endless possibility."

  "Us?" Amanda didn't understand what he was talking about. There was no one here but the two of them.

  Amanda gasped and stumbled back when she beheld a change in the creature. She could no longer call it a man, for it began to take on a shape very inhuman. His arms broke out from the sleeves and stretched across the entrance. The trousers suffered the same fate as they exploded across the seams, and out poured an oozing mass of black tar. The mess puddled at his feet and the thing's clothes soon followed, exposing the full horror of the changed body.

  The chest, blackened with the ooze, bubbled and boiled over itself and onto the carpet. The great flapping arms stretched and thinned out backwards to entirely cover the door and her only chance at freedom. Small shoots of tendrils burst out from every part of the form and entrapped her in a large circle where its puss slunk along the floor ever closer to her feet. The figure was now some undefinable creature, but not unknown.

  For Amanda this monster was very familiar to her, if not explainable. It was the thing from Arkaham Mountain, come down to torment her until her sanity was driven to the far corners of her mind. Tendrils licked at her heels and she found her safe, open space diminishing foot by foot. The creature reared up and hovered over her, its long shadow stretching out to engulf her in its clutches. Those long, thin arms reached out to grab at her and absorb her into the indescribable mass of darkness which made up its body. She clutched at the sides of her head and violently whipped her hair to and fro. This wasn't happening, this couldn't be real.

  And she was right. It wasn't real.

  Amanda writhed and squirmed in the computer chair until it slid out from beneath her. She was promptly ejected to the soft carpet floor, but on the way down her flailing hands hit the edge of the desk. The young woman thrashed against tendrils which were no longer there and a creature which had only existed in her nightmare. Her eyes were the first to realize the horrible dream had vanished and been replaced by the normalcy of Tony's bedroom.

  She stopped her floundering, and slowly
sat up to glimpse the empty room and listen to the quiet apartment. There was no Professor Ward turned giant creature, nor any indication that she had ever left the computer chair. Amanda wrapped her arms around herself and winced when she noticed her hurt digits. Rather than cursing the stinging pain in her fingers, she cradled her bruised hands against herself and silently thanked God for such a sign.

  The pain told her she was not only alive, but awake.

  Amanda, all smiles and jubilation, caught the edge of the desk and raised herself back into the chair. In her dozing the computer had also gone to sleep, and she moved the mouse to awaken the technological beast. There on the screen was the article about Professor Ward and his students, the inspiration for her maddening dream.

  Then her eyes caught something at the bottom on the website, just a hint of a photo relating to the article. Unbidden Amanda's finger set itself onto the mouse scrolling wheel. She slowly scrolled down the page and revealed a picture of the professor with his students. Amanda's eyes widened and her mouth dropped open in a scream which begged to pour forth, but her vocal chords were stuck. The figure at the back of the students, the one marked as the professor, was the exact man from her dream.

  That's when she noticed the rock sitting beside the computer tower.

  Amanda shot up from the chair so fast that the thing tipped over and crashed onto the floor. The mouse went flying as far as its short cord would allow and hung limp on the right side of the computer desk. She stumbled back and didn't stop until her legs hit the edge of Tony's bed, which caused her limbs to buckle. She plopped down onto the covers with her eyes still firmly stuck on the stone. Frantic thoughts rushed through her mind, many too panicked and garbled to make out but a few she plucked from the chaos.

  The stone hadn't been there when she'd fallen asleep, so how had it come to lay there? Had that been the cause of her terrible nightmare?

  The weight of her dream doubled, and Amanda tried frantically to grasp onto the smallest details. Much as she loathed to recall any of the dream, she felt there may be something significant in what she'd seen and heard. That possibly, hidden in the terrifying depths of her nightmare, there were answers which were greater than anything she had found in those old newspaper articles.

  Most important was the conversation she'd had with the creature, the thing that called himself Professor Ward. The creature had referred to itself as the man, and yet it wasn't, like a mere phantom or echo of the original. The rock no doubt had a hand in projecting the image into her mind since she hadn't any idea what he looked like before noticing the photograph, but she couldn't fathom how the thing had reached into her mind. After all, it was still a rock, an inanimate object which sat there and did nothing.

  With the flurry of thoughts and ideas, all of which led to nothing concrete, Amanda felt exhaustion settle over her. She reached up and rubbed the back of her neck.

  Then she froze. Her hand hit something on her skin, an indentation that hadn't been there before. Her fingers were shaking while they slowly glided over the bump. She could feel the elasticity of fresh skin dip beneath her touch and then spring back when she pulled away. A wound had been opened there, but not any longer. The hole had been opened and closed, all in the short space of a hellish dream.

  Amanda couldn't help the rising panic in her mind. Her fingers, once gentle against the fresh wound, now pawed at it as though she could tear all evidence of it out of her body. Frustrated that it continued to mock her, she reached up with her other hand and tore away her hair. Strands floated down to the floor while she pawed and scratched at her neck. She felt like Lady Macbeth, the wicked woman caught up in a murder of her own making and with the proof of blood, real and imagined, forever on her hands.

  "Get off. Please get off," began her mantra. She wanted it gone, needed it gone. There had to be some way of removing all these memories, dreams and wounds from herself, some mind bleach that would eradicate these horrible images and holes.

  They wouldn't disappear. She was still stuck in this reality with a tear into her nightmares that kept pulling her inside and warping what she thought was real and fake. Tears choked with bitter frustration streamed down her face and her hands slipped down to her sides. She fell to her knees with an expression of disbelief and resignation. There wasn't any way she could defeat this thing which scratched at her mind with its horrible visions and twisted realities. The only light in this dark insanity was the feeling of exuberance she'd experienced when the creature had taken her to it.

  Amanda slowly reached up and lightly touched the wound on her neck. In the small amount of time since her hand had fallen away, the skin had tightened and no longer felt young and fresh. Then she looked up at the rock, that innocent object which held unknown answers to questions in her mind that she couldn't form.

  "Why are you doing this to me?" she asked the stone. She was given no reply from the possessed mass of pebbles and sand. "What did I do to deserve this? What can I do to get you to go away?" Still there was no sign, and her shoulders slumped. Amanda knew this was silly of her to plead to a rock, but she felt rather than knew that this piece of black earth was some messenger sent from the creature. It was a caretaker for her, but she knew it only as a foe.

  Then her eyes were directed beyond the stone to the wall behind the computer desk, and there hung a clock. The face showed the time as almost four. Her dream had been ahead of schedule, thus she still had an hour before Tony's return. She hardly felt like pushing herself to even stand, much less put on a show for her boyfriend. She would be all smiles and laughter, but inside there would be only weeping and moaning against these memories of the last few days.

  But it wouldn't be the pleasant moaning like she'd done only last night.

  "What the hell?" Amanda whispered to herself. Her tilted her head and her face wrinkled into a frown. She had little idea where that thought had sprang from, possibly the deepest parts of her perverse, lustful mind. The part which craved the loving touches and full embraces of that most detestable creature, like a woman whipped into submission by a man who loved her beyond his capacity to think clearly.

  Amanda knocked her palm against her head, intent on driving those thoughts from her mind. Unfortunately they had already effected her body, for she felt the area between her legs heat up with that insatiable need that only the creature could bring out of her. She shuddered when she imagined those soft, slinky arms wrapping around her naked form. A shudder ran through her body and her breaths came out in soft, raspy whispers. Unbidden her eyes grew heavy and half-lidded, and her limbs forsook her pleas for action.

  Amanda knew she needed to hurry from this room and from these strange sensations. There would only be a repeat of her rendezvous with the creature in her bed, and she couldn't allow that. She didn't want the thing to hold so much sway over her desires that she would crave its embrace enough to seek it out. That would mean she'd return to that cursed mountain with all its horrors.

  Unfortunately her body was no longer her own. She couldn't call on her legs to carry her out into the hall anymore than she could stop her hand from reaching up and rubbing the cloth between the valley of her breasts. Her chest heaved up and down with his quick breaths. She sought release from the rising frustration inside her by massaging her fingers over her pert, covered nipples. The world swirled around her as the lust overcame her sense of sight. Everything faded into the background, everything but that accursed rock.

  That stood out on the desk as though the very sand and pebbles within it glowed through some sort of reaction. She knew the thing was reacting to her sudden swelling of emotions, there could be no other reason for its sudden light. Amanda couldn't move, couldn't react while she watched the glow from the rock grow stronger. Deep, thick shadows emerged from every surface of the stone and stretched themselves out into the air.

  She watched them as one watches the snake charmers perform their feats or the magicians their tricks. The swaying motions of those shadows were mesmerizing,
and she felt herself moving back and forth with the silent rhythm. She leaned back and felt her shirt tighten as her breasts heeded a silent calling from the shadows. The heat inside of her flared up and she groaned when the delicious warmth glided over her body in soft, stroking waves.

  The tendrils leaned over and sloped down off the desk. They wound their way across the carpet to where she sat beside the bed. She placed her hands palms-down on the floor and leaned her swollen breasts out to tempt the creature. The arms snaked faster through the fibers and slithered up her arms, and she shivered at the delicious chill of their sleek bodies against her skin. They pooled around her and beneath her, and through her haze of lust she was reminded of the cabin floor.

  Then the slim arms stretched their way up her back and legs. They pressed and massaged her muscles with their twisting, teasing movements. Those on her arms slipped beneath her shirt and swooped down to fall out of the neckline of her shirt. They brushed up against her breasts, and the limbs on her back unclasped her bra. Her mounds, partially free of their captivity, swung down into the pools of shadows which waited beneath them on her chest. Her breasts were swallowed by those dark tendrils, and she groaned when her nipples were touched and bit by mouths she could not see, but only feel.

  Her shirt was the first victim of the creature's growing impatience. The seams along her short sleeves tore under the strain of the shadows' bulging presence on her skin. Then the side stitching burst open and the tendrils poured out of the rips like a cascading waterfall of dark, thick water. In a few moments her whole shirt fell away and her bra soon slipped from her shoulders and down her arms to the floor. She reveled at the refreshing feeling of the cool air against her bare skin, but the creature was quick to cover the entirety of her upper body in its soft, sensual embraces.

  She groaned when she felt her pants button come undone, and the creature slithered into her wet panties. The waistband around her pants bulged out against the welcome intruder's presence while at her ankles the tendrils slithered up her legs. She shifted against the floor when she felt her thickening, expanding hips push up against the sides of her pants, straining for freedom from their confinement. Then the seams along the pants stretched and pulled against the thing's push, and she was grateful when the clothing finally split open. She was now completely naked except for the thin, white panties covering her moist, heated spot.