The Possession of Blanche Fealy-Smith (A Flora Cope/John Howard story) Austice/MsBloom

[MsBloom]

Flora Elizabeth Cope

January 1, 1884: Boston Massachusetts.

With only six months left until her twenty first birthday, the day when she would come into her inheritance, a more than respectable sum of money, two houses in England, one in London and another in Maidstone as well as an equal share in the Smith & Son Shipping Company, Flora had begun to plan for her wedding to Dr John Howard, MD, specialised in psychiatry. She had loved him since the day she first heard him speak at a seminar in London two years earlier and he had reciprocated her feelings. When he went back to America she followed, set herself up in an apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, overlooking Harvard University and later that year the couple was engaged to be married.

The two had spent the last evening of 1883 at a ball to raise funds for the institution of psychology and psychiatry by special invitation from John's professor. She had worn an elegant mother-of-pearl silk dress and the two had danced the night away, drunk on champagne and their love for each other. At around 1 am after the fireworks had faded into a mist of smoke hanging over the greater Boston area, they had shared a cab back to her apartment where they had made love until the early hours of morning. John had then left quietly and discreetly and now as the sun had begun to rise Flora sat at the small table near the french balcony, listening to the birds and the sounds of the city awakening.

Her copper hair hung loosely down her shoulders and she had a happy smile on her face. She could still feel his touch on her skin. His scent still lingered in her nose. Even his taste lingered on her lips.
"Miss Cope, there is a gentleman downstairs who says he has an urgent message to deliver, and he will only deliver it to you personally. Shall I let him in?"
It was Miss Lange, Flora's live in maid, who now disturbed her thoughts of the night before.
"Please ask the man to wait in the study and offer him tea. I will be with him as soon as I am properly dressed."

Twenty minutes later Flora appeared in her study to meet a man in a state of dishevelment that suggested he had travelled all through the night.
"Miss Cope I presume," the man said and rose as she entered the room.
"I was told to deliver this letter directly into your hands by Mrs Genevieve Smith of Pleasant Lake. It was said to be most urgent."
The man handed Flora a thin letter with her name in a delicate cursive on the front and asked if he should wait for an instant reply. Flora gave him a nod and asked him to please sit back down and enjoy his tea while she read the letter.

Dear Miss Cope. Please forgive my lack of polite pleasantries but I write to you urgently about your sister Blanche. As you probably know she fell pregnant by her husband some time around All Saints Day. Ever since she has begun to act strangely, which in itself is not unheard of among pregnant women. What is worrisome though is that she has shown terrible mood swings. She can spend days in deep lethargic depression followed by days of restless energy during which she barely sleeps or eats. She has also had fallen prey to seizures of a growing severity and shown tendencies to want to harm her unborn child. More than once she has expressed a wish to terminate the pregnancy because the child, as she says, is not of this world but the spawn of a demon. She often becomes hysterical and on more than one occasion her husband has had to restrain her with ropes to her bed to keep her from harming herself and the unborn child in her womb. The doctor says that while unusual it is not unheard of for some pregnant women to suffer from similar delusions and has prescribed mild sedatives and bed rest, restrained of needed, and under constant supervision. I worry for her health and safety and for that of my unborn grandchild. It is my understanding that both you and your fiance have some degree of medical education and I would urge you both to please consult and give a second opinion. In the light of Blanche's terrible outbursts of infamy, obscenity and increasing violent tendencies I fear that what ails her is beyond the competence of our local doctor who is an old man without insight into more modern findings and medical practises. Urgently Mrs Genevieve Smith

Flora folded the letter and put it back into the envelope.
"Tell Mrs Smith that I will arrive in Pleasant Lake as soon as possible. I must first consult with my fiance," she said and stood up.

Another twenty five minutes later Flora knocked urgently on the door to John's apartment with the letter in hand. Its contents had been more than enough to cause her to worry for her older sister's health and safety, especially if she was, as the letter suggested, in the hands of some old country doctor with little to no experience of neurological illnesses.
"We must leave as immediately as possible John," she said as she handed him the letter to read it for himself.
"I fear my sister might be in serious danger."

 

[MsBloom]

Flora Elizabeth Cope

January 1, 1884: En route to Pleasant Lake.

Flora had anticipated her fiance's haste and had not only packed a small suitcase with a few bare necessities but also changed into clothes more suited for travelling, a dark grey weed suit with trousers with sturdy boots and an ankle length double breasted tweed coat. With it she wore a fedora. She was well aware that this sort of outfit was not considered proper in any way for a lady but it was comfortable for travelling and she knew that her fiance fully accepted her choice and at times even encouraged her to wear such outfits in other circumstances as well.

She had also already acquired a cab that would take them all the way to Pleasant Lake even though it was a long way from Boston certainly at least an eight hour ride at a moderate pace. This would however give Flora ample time to tell John everything about her sister Blanche and so it would not feel like wasted time.

"I suppose I should begin at the very start then. Blanche is only my half sister, from my mother's previous marriage. I do not know the circumstances through which she became available to marry my father, maybe she was widowed, maybe she was divorced. I do not know. Blanche is five years older than I am, making her about your age I suppose. Growing up in England I remember her as being quiet and withdrawn, almost shy you could say and perhaps she wasn't exactly the brightest of students even when she was allowed to study other subjects than needlepoint and household management. Honestly I don't think she was ever really interested in any form of higher, more theoretical, learning. I actually don't recall ever having seen her with a book unless it was for school."

Flora herself had been an avid reader ever since she first learned to read, among her favourite books were the novels by Jane Austen and The Brontë Sisters, though that was not until she was in her early teenage years and Blanche had moved to America to get married.

"Being five years apart, and with quite different interests, I wouldn't say we were all that close growing up. I do remember her as very caring and nurturing though. She often took care of me despite the fact that I was probably more than a handful and I also remember her often complaining that sometimes I was more like a boy than a girl in the things I enjoyed doing, like going hunting with my father for instance, or racing the stable boy at our country house. Still I do think she somehow loved me as a sister and the complaints were mostly for show.

Perhaps Blanche wished that she had been more like myself when she was young, more uninhibited and independent. She has never said as much and it is just a feeling, perhaps I am simply projecting myself onto her, how I would feel if I had been her growing up with a sister like me."

Flora paused and looked out the window at the landscape moving past trying too think about what details about her sister might be relevant to the situation she now found herself in. Flora didn't know much about her sister's medical history as such other than that she had for the most part been a healthy child apart from suffering severe menstruations that had her absolutely debilitated at times even bedridden. Perhaps this was the reason why it had taken as long as it had before she had finally fallen pregnant, at least without miscarrying the child which had happened thrice before. Flora knew this from the letters her sister had written to her over the years.

From the same letters Flora also knew that Blanche was anything but happily married. Her husband was not only much older than she was. Blanche had only just barely turned 17 when she was married to Arthur William Smith who at the time was in his late 20s. Blanche had often complained in her letters about Arthurs excessive taste for carnal pleasures, some of which she suggested between the lines to be most unnatural. At the same time she also mentioned quite often his devotion to the church which in Flora's mind did not make sense as she had always believed religious people to be modest in their desire for sex, some to the point where it was little more than a means to an end of having children. Still, she had no reason to doubt her sister's words. Men were after all, religious or not, creatures of carnal needs, as it was said, most men at least. John was different. Between the herself and her fiance it was usually she that took the initiative.

"Apart from severe menstrual cramps I can't recall her having been especially sickly, nor prone to fantasies, delusions or hysteria," Flora concluded and suggested that perhaps the change in her sister's mental state had somehow been caused by some manner of trauma caused by her husband and his unnatural carnal practises, not that Blanche had ever specified what they were and honestly Flora was not entirely sure she wanted to know.

 

[MsBloom]

Flora Elizabeth Cope

January 1, 1884: Pleasant Lake, Massachusetts.

Flora calmed the maid down enough to get her to tell them what exactly was going on.
"It is absolutely terrible. Your sister, Mrs Smith, she ... she ... is having one of her fits but this is ... so much worse than anything I have seen before. She ... broke loose from her restraints and when she flung herself at the doctor here eyes they ... they were as black as the starless night and the sound that came from her throat, I hesitate to call it a scream or even a growl or howl. It wasn't human. It was barely even of this world and then as the doctor and her husband and two of the servants including the stable boy and the chauffeur tried to subdue and restrain her again she flung them across the room and all the lights went out. I don't know about the others. I only just made it out of there myself."
The poor maid was trembling with fear and her voice barely carried at times. The look on her face and in her eyes was as if she had gazed into the proverbial abyss and seen it gazing back at her. She was however not what Flora would call hysterical only frightened to the point of panic.

Flora held the maid close in her arms to keep her calm, pressing the young woman's head against her bosom while stroking her dishevelled hair. She looked up at John to silently ask him his opinion. It was clear that they would have to enter the house and further investigate what was happening in there.

Just as Flora nodded at John to convey this a horrible sound came from the house and just as the maid had said it was not human, barely of this world. It was a sound unlike any Flora hade ever heard. No beast in the wild made noises like it. As she tried to describe it to herself she failed. It was as if language lacked the ability to. There were simply no words for it.

"Come," Flora said and loosened her embrace of the maid but still held her by the arm.
"We must go inside and find out more. I must see my sister and talk to her husband, her doctor and the other servants."
She did not wait for the maid to consent to being dragged back into the house but rather marched her firmly up the stairs and through the door.

Inside they found Arthur Smith, his parents and an elderly man who introduced himself as Dr. William Bates. From the floor above they heard loud banging noises, scratching and feral screeches, like those of carnivorous birds circling their prey.
"It is good to see you Miss Cope," said Genevieve Smith, Blanche's mother-in-law.
"And you too Dr. Howard. We are at our wits end about Blanche. My son and the doctor only just made it out of her room before the stable boy managed to close and lock the door. He and our butler are now securing the door by blocking it with heavy furniture."
"We have never seen a fit like this one before," Arthur continued and threw a distrusting glance at Dr. Bates.
"I would even dare say that whatever ails my wife it is not any sort of medical condition. It is something more unnatural."
To this the older Mr Smith, Blanche's father-in-law, nodded and then shook his head at his wife.
"I told you we should have consulted the priest instead. What good can these people do, a so called doctor of the mind, a psychiatrist, and whatever Miss Cope is other than poor Blanche's sister."
To this Genevieve gave no reply but rather seemed to shrink in the presence of her husband.

 

[MsBloom]

Flora Elizabeth Cope

January 1, 1884: Pleasant Lake, Massachusetts.

"And perhaps also the child she carries," Flora added in some sort of defense for the old doctor's decision to not sedate Blanche.
Many, if not most, sedatives were after all opium based and to give out high doses was indeed a risk. There had even been cases where people had died from an overdose of it, and from the description of the situation as given by the maid it seemed to Flora that it would indeed have required quite a high dose to calm Blanche down, assuming it would have had any effect at all.

She too was of course sceptical to hearing the older Mr Smith's talk about possessions and had the situation not been as dire as it was she might have laughed at his suggestion of bringing in a priest instead of a psychiatrist. She did however manage to restrain herself but instead gave the elderly man a look of disbelief. It seemed a far too easy explanation to instantly blame all and any deviant behaviour on the possession of demons, assuming one believed in such and Flora did not, nor did John as far as she knew.

Ass her fiance demanded to see the patient right that moment, rather than wait until she had calmed down, she looked to him and in a tone that left no room for debate that she too would go upstairs. It was after all her sister and perhaps the sight of her would bring Blanche's mind back to the real world, snap her out of her fit.

Upstairs she paused briefly as the servants reluctantly removed the furniture blocking the door and then as the door was opened she stood beside John and saw her sister, as much as the dishevelled figure resembled her sister, with her back to them but something was strange about her posture. Her head tilted to the tight at an almost unnatural angle, as if she had lost control of her neck muscles. Her hands hung limp at her sides and it looked to Flora like the posture of a hanged woman at the end of the rope except that there was no rope around her neck and she both her bare feet were firmly on the floor.

"Blanche," she said, following John's request to speak to her.
"It's me, Flora. You mother-in-law says you are unwell.
When Blanche turned around Flora gasped. It looked as if her sister had aged decades. She did not look like a woman in her mid twenties but rather like an old woman well into her sixties, maybe even older still. She extended one of her arms but even as she lifted it up it still appear limp. It almost seemed automated, as if being controlled by an unseen puppeteer.
"Yog Sooo Thothhhhhh," Blanche spoke, if that was the proper term for the rasping noises that escaped her throat.
Her mouth was open but her lips did not appear to move.
"Yog Sooo Thothhhhhh ..." she repeated and her extended arm appeared to be pointing to something behind Flora and John.
However there was nothing behind them but the opposite wall and a portrait of Arthur Smith's grandfather in his younger years.

 

[MsBloom]

Flora Elizabeth Cope

When spoken to again Blanche only stared and pointed vaguely in the general direction of the portrait behind John and Flora.
"Perhaps if I may elaborate a bit," the butler spoke.
"There is a rumour about how every other male generation of the family resemble their grandfather to the point of one being mistaken for the other. The only real clue that the painting here is not of Arthur Smith is the clothes. If you look closely you will noticed that they are far from any modern cut. Also the ship in the background perhaps is a clue as it is an equally obsolete model of ships that no self-respecting trader would use today."
The butler paused and looked at Flora and John as he pointed out the details he had mentioned for clarity. Meanwhile Blanche remained inanimate until another noise was heard leaving her throat, a deep growling noise that quickly faded into a much more human groan and further into a whimper and then, just as Flora turned around to face her sister, Blanche collapsed, her body absolutely limp as Flora only just managed to catch her.

 

[MsBloom]

Flora Elizabeth Cope

After Flora had helped Blanche to her bed Dr. Bates ordered that she needed rest, as if that even had to be said, but Flora wanted to stay at her sister's side. Before she had a chance to suggest that it might be a good idea to have someone she trusted watch over her and to be there when she woke up John called for her to join him outside for a more private discussion away from the family and also from ears that did not seem to take kindly to new ideas.

She agreed that a diary by Blanche's hand might indeed give a deeper insight into what had been going on in the house that the letters had not and so when the two returned to the family now gathered in the salon, refreshing themselves with various alcoholic beverages Flora made the point she had intended to make before John called for her attention and despite protests from both Dr. Bates and from Arthur Smith Flora made her way back up the stairs and into her sister's room.

Where could Flora possibly keep her diary. If it contained accounts of the various forms of abuse and unnatural sexual practices mentioned in the letters then it would certainly not be lying around on her small desk for any and all to see. No, she must have hidden it somewhere. Vaguely remembering that her sister had used to hide her diary there when the two still shared a room many years ago Flora searched under the mattress of the bed, careful not to disturb Blanche too much, though it would probably have taken something extraordinary to wake her from her deep sleep. She found it near the foot of the bed. It was a rather mall notebook bound in dark leather and filled with Blanche's small but tidy italic.

Having first made sure to lock the door she then sat down in an armchair across the room from Blanche's bed and began to read.

 

[MsBloom]

"About Arthur you say," the butler said as he remained standing.
"There is much to tell about young Arthur but I am unsure if any of it would be of any consequence to the state of poor Mrs Smith."
He looked at John with an almost defiant look but to a keen observer a hint of fear might also be discovered behind it. As if he knew things that curled his blood just thinking them, things he did not dare speak, even in the most hushed of whispers.
"You must understand Dr. Howard that I have served three generations of this family and one does not keep a good job like that by being disloyal. Now if there was nothing else?"
The butler barely waited for John to reply before he began to make his way towards the door.

Flora Elizabeth Cope

Upstairs Flora discovered that her sister's diary indeed contained further details into the abuse she had lived through at the hands of her husband. There was mention of unspeakable ad certainly most unnatural acts of sexual intercourse, acts that she could barely even imagine a prostitute performing. And yet, there was something about the way Blanche described these acts that caused a stir in Flora. Some of them were not far from things she herself had at least imagined on late nights while separated from John. She had no difficulty imagining them all being highly traumatic to experience if one did not wish to partake in them.

It was however not the description of these acts that most caught her attention but rather the fact that in one of the entries Blanche wrote about how one night the door to her bedchamber had swung open in the middle of the night and her husband had entered. Or at least she had at first thought it was her husband but before the door closed she had as the light of a full moon had filled the hallway seen the portrait opposite the door. It had been empty and so, Blanche deducted in her diary, the one that had come to her in the night, to take possession of her body and do things to her that she barely dared describe, was not her husband but his grandfather, or rather, his grandfather's portrait come to life.

This must surely have been a hallucination, a trick of lights and her state of not being entirely awake, and perhaps also the result of previous trauma. What mostly caught Flora's eye about the entry was the words: It happened again tonight, at the very beginning of the entry, which indicated that this was a hallucination Blanche had suffered more than once and Flora couldn't help but wonder if this was by her husband's design, if he used his remarkable likeness with his grandfather to ... to do what exactly ... scare his wife our of her senses, to trigger some kind of psychotic episode.

Flora closed the diary and hid it in the pocket of her jacket and took her sister's hand. Blanche was sleeping deeply but soundly. Her breaths were regular and her body relaxed.
"Dear sweet sister. What have they been doing to you all these years. Should I perhaps have intervened sooner, when you began to write to me about the way your husband and his family was treating you. Should I have understood the severity of the situation by what was hinted between the lines of your letters. I need to talk to John. Please excuse me."
Flora then left her sister's room and made her way downstairs to look for her fiance.

 

[MsBloom]

Flora Elizabeth Cope

Of course they had to be hallucinations and while John retold what little there was to tell about his conversation with the butler she wondered what medications Dr. Bates had prescribed for her sister. Or if perhaps any other member of the family could have slipped her some manner of drug, perhaps her husband as part of his unnatural sexual practises. What she couldn't figure our was why Arthur Smith would want his wife to think he was his grandfather, if that was indeed his intention.

As neither of them had been offered a bed for the night the two lovers huddled up on the two-seat couch with Flora resting her head against John's shoulder and fell asleep.

In the morning they were awakened by the same maid that had met them as they arrived. She seemed a lot more calm and collected than she had the night before. In fact Flora got the feeling that it was almost as if it had not actually happened at all.
"If you would both like to join the family in the dining room for breakfast it will be ready soon," she informed them and then with a deeply rooted submission curtseyed and almost backed out of the room as if not wanting to turn her back on them.

"Breakfast does sound like a very good idea indeed," Flora said and stood up to stretch out her body.
"I will ask the family to make up the sofa in Blanche's room for me to sleep on while I stay to support her. And make sure they don't call a priest to exorcise any demons. Hopefully Blanche will be conscious and calm enough to answer a few questions.

After a sturdy breakfast of poached eggs with asparagus, toast, strips of crispy bacon and coffee Flora was shown back up to Blanche's room were indeed the same maid from before was preparing the sofa for her to stay on. Blanche was awake as well but looked tired and weakened. Perhaps under different circumstances Flora would have written her state up to the fact that she was in the early stages of the third trimester, at least by Flora's calculations based on the date of the letter in which Blanche had told her she was pregnant.
"Flora," Blanche said and attempted a smile but it was as if she was too weak to even do that.
"Sister dearest, I am so happy to see you, when did you arrive?"
Flora explained that she and John had arrived late the night before but made no mention of the reason for their arrival, or the state in which they had found Blanche. She wanted to see if Blanche remembered anything without being asked specifically about it.
"I will be staying with you for a while. Maybe even until you have had your child."

When Flora mentioned the child a shadow drew across Blanche's face and she also suddenly looked a lot older for just a moment.
"Dr. Bates says it might be twins. Apparently that's not uncommon in my husband's family. He himself had a twin who died shortly after birth."

 

[MsBloom]

Flora Elizabeth Cope

"Siamese twins you mean?" Flora half asked, half concluded when the maid described the circumstances of Arthur's birth and the death of his twin.
What was a lot more interesting though was the information that he had begun to suffer headaches, as if his brain was too big for his head, an interesting choice of words if indeed they had come from Arthur himself at such an early age. What was of course also interesting and more acutely relevant was the information that they had performed trepanation to relieve his headaches and then years later an exorcism to relieve him of the voice inside his head.

Flora's first instinct was that perhaps it was some kind of tumour growing in Arthur's brain but had it been then he would almost certainly have died before becoming an adult. The voice was perhaps harder to explain but Flora would not be surprised if she had learned that it was caused by having been born attache to a stillborn twin, a way for the young Arthur to deal with the trauma of having had his twin die while they were still in their mother's womb. She also believed that the voice had almost certainly not disappeared but Arthur had learned not to talk about it. She was sure he could still hear his twin inside his head. This was something she would have to try to find out more about. How she was not sure since she certainly couldn't simply ask him, at least not without good reason.

"Is there somewhere safe we can discuss this further," she asked the maid in a hushed whisper.
"I would very much like to know more about Mr Smith's condition. Myself and my fiance are both educated in psychology and such states as what you describe interest us very much, and I cannot help but to wonder if it might not also be connected to my sister's condition. First though I would very much like to have words in private with my sister. If you would both excuse us."
"Certainly Miss."
The maid curtseyed and then left the room in something of a hurry.

 

[MsBloom]

Flora Elizabeth Cope

After both John and the maid had left the room Flora locked the door to avoid any interruptions
"I know it might be most improper and certainly an invasion of your privacy dear sister but I found your diary and took the liberty to read it last night while you were sleeping. You mention your husband's desire for what you called unnatural sexual acts in your letters but I took that to mean much less extreme acts such as having you perform fellatio or even anal penetration but I had not imagined it to be as bad as what you describe in your diary."
It was true that the acts described in Blanche's diary bore similarities to what one might read in libertine novels such as Justine; The Misfortunes of Virtue by the infamous Marquis de Sade and other such works of debauchery, not all of which Flora herself found to be entirely repulsive. Flora was secretly a connoisseur of erotica, among her favourites were among others the anonymously published The Romance of Lust, Venus in Furs by the Austrian author Leopold vi Sacher-Masoch and Gamiani; Two Nights of Excess by an also anonymous author. Flora was certainly not a prude but the tales of flagellation mentioned in Blanche's diary had her appalled, not to mention the less than subtle hints of forced or coerces orgies. What was even more worrisome were the entries where it was obvious that her sister had been drugged in one way or another and woken up in pain but without any recollection of what abuse she had been subjected to.

It was these things Flora had wanted to talk to her sister about without the presence of a man, or a servant, because she believed that Blanche would be much more likely to open up about these things if it was just the two of them. She asked her questions as gently as she could to avoid triggering any trauma or another episode like the one from the evening before and Blanche answered them as calmly as she could. In the end Flora concluded, just as Blanche must have, that it was not entirely certain that the child she was carrying was her husband's. It could have been any number of the men that had come and gone in the shipping company's house in Harwich. Blanche however confided in Flora that she firmly believed it was Arthur's grandfather who had fathered the child.
"I swear Flora, I am not delusional. He really steps out of his painting, and that is why I was given this room as my bedchamber."

---

"How may I help you Sir," asked the young butler of Mr and Mrs Wilson.

 

[MsBloom]

Bernard Wilson was indeed a tall man in his late fifties with greying hair and an impressive imperial moustache.
"I am indeed, more so than I would like to be," he spoke and rather than acknowledging John's desire to ask him a few question offered up what he knew about hiss neighbours.
"Peculiar lot they are, the Smith family. I knew the grandfather of young Arthur. We served together in the war. He was a most peculiar man even back then, always had his nose in some old notebook full of strange drawings and strange scribbling that, from what little I managed to see, looked like some kind of secret code. He always put it away inside his jacket whenever anyone caught him reading it. But that was nothing compared to later in his life. Did you know he was obsessed with old books, foreign books, medieval books. I think he had at least three or four different illustrated bibles in different languages, some as old as the 8th century, at least that's what he claimed. He also had a large collection of esoteric books, books on the occult and ancient, pre-christian religions."
Bernard sucked on his pipe, noticed that it had gone out and thus struck a match to rekindle it.
"A spiritualist too. There were all manner of seances held in that godforsaken house long before that, and all manner of strange people coming and going, some clearly foreign, very foreign, Africans, Arabs, even people from India."
He sucked on his pipe again and then took it out of his mouth and used it to point at John.
"I think that was why young Arthur's father demanded an exorcism when the by started hearing the voice of his stillborn twin. I cannot say for sure what he feared but it was obvious that he was terrified and when people are terrified they tend to turn to God, or some semblance of God, and his representatives on Earth."
Bernard scoffed and smacked his lips.
"Humbug if you ask me but you didn't hear it from me."
He put the pipe back in his mouth and sucked on it again, letting out puffs of smoke as he did.
"I think I understand that you have your reasons for wanting to save poor Blanche, whatever they may be, but my advice to you young man is to get the hell out of there as soon as you can. There is something not right about that house, or the people who live there."

 

[MsBloom]

Flora Elizabeth Cope

Flora did not know what to believe. Growing up she had never known her sister to be one to have a vivid imagination, or for that matter one to easily fall prey to hysteria. Instead she had always been a solid rock of common sense and practicality. Things could of course change and it had after all been almost ten years since last they had had a private conversation, face to face. There was also the fact that their mother had been hospitalised not long after Blanche had been married to Arthur Smith. From what little Flora knew to be facts the doctors had treated her for various nervous illnesses, which was just a more polite way of saying they had treated her for illnesses of the mind. Flora had watched her mother descend into a state where she no longer even recognised her own daughter and barely knew who she was herself anymore. It was this that had inspired Flora to study psychology. She had moved to Boston shortly after her mother's passing since there was nothing, except for real estate and her inheritance, to keep her in England. An inheritance she would gain full access to in just a few short months.

Could Blanche perhaps have somehow inherited their mother's weak mental health, which had not really begun to fail until after the death of Flora's father. It was of course possible but Flora leaned more towards a psychological trauma as the reason for her sister's state, especially after having read her diary. Either way she decided not to trouble her sister by arguing these facts but rather nodded and suggested that Blanche should rest. She had perhaps slept but she still looked quite exhausted from the episode of the night before, an episode Flora more and more began to wish she had actually witnessed in full rather than just having a glimpse and second hand accounts of.

When John returned he would find Flora outside the house with her sister's diary and a note book in which she jotted down her thoughts. There was much in there she wanted to discuss in more detail with John, from the perspective of psychological trauma. When he presented her with the book he had been given by Bernard Wilson, and told her of his conversation with the old man, she looked at it, turning the pages at a speed higher than what she could read at but since the book was mostly written in some sort of code, or perhaps in a language not known to her, she mostly studied the drawings that accompanied the words. Strange symbols of which only a few were known to her, the pentagram for instance, a symbol often associated with witchcraft and magic.
"I understand why he said it wouldn't be of much use to you. It mostly looks like gibberish but there is this."
She pointed at a drawing of a shapeless figure with the words Yog-Sothoth written beneath them.
"Those are the words my sister spoke last night. I am sure of it. And there is something else that bothers me about this book. Why would Grandfather Smith have given this book to his neighbour. If it was to perhaps convince him of the truth behind spiritualism, and I'm not saying I believe it, then why not give him a book he could read and understand rather than one that barely contains a word in English. There is more to this book than meets the eye and I would keep it hidden from the Smith family for now, at least until we can begin to decipher it."

 

[MsBloom]

Flora Elizabeth Cope

"I realise that it might seem that way John," Flora said.
"But consider this; perhaps under the circumstances of Arthur's grandfather having been a spiritualist and certainly a believer in the supernatural and esoteric world that it might be possible that he has not only passed these beliefs onto his son and grandson, and that in turn could mean that in her traumatised state of mind Blanche too could have begun to believe it to the point where, in her fugue states, actually act out as if it was true, as if the supernatural world was real."
Flora paused for a moment to let her words sink in.
"You know only just before I left her to rest she swore to me that she was not delusional and that she believed the proximity of the portrait was the reason why she had been given that particular room as her bedchamber. Of course that is exactly what a delusional person would say and in the end proves nothing. Instead it got me thinking about our mother who ... well ... after my father's death was committed to an institution due to her suffering from nervous illnesses. Perhaps my sister's mind is not as strong as I always thought it to be growing up. She always seemed very down to Earth and grounded in the here and now."
She paused again and took a deep breath, contemplating everything she had read in Blanche's diary and what Blanche herself had had to say about it.

She was just about to speak again when John mentioned bloodletting.
"Certainly not," Flora said and stood up.
"Whatever ails my sister, whether natural or not, bloodletting is not the way to treat her. It is an obsolete and barbaric method. You might just as well allow them to call for a priest and have him perform an exorcism. It is just as likely to cure her as it is to draw her blood. I will not have it."
Flora caught her breath sharply and closed her eyes momentarily as she realised she had not only raised her voice at John but also, actually stomped her foot at him.
"Blanche's condition is one of the mind, not of the blood. I thought you to be more progressive than that John. What she needs is ... someone she can trust to talk to about the trauma she has suffered at the hands of her husband and his friends and business partners, if that was what they were," Flora continued in a much calmer voice and at that moment two and two made four in her head about the orgies her sister had been forced to participate in.
"What if," she continued after a long pause, "they were perhaps some sort of rituals, to summon ... whatever that is," she said and pointed again to the shapeless figure in the book.

 

[MsBloom]

Flora Elizabeth Cope

It was true perhaps that most of the words, once deciphered from the poor penmanship with which they had been scribbled were in English, if perhaps a bit archaic, but there were also a bit of Latin and some language Flora didn't recognise at all, words that actually seemed to be written in a different alphabet as well. It would take time but John was right. The text could be read if one only took the time to. This of course made sense because even if perhaps the older Mr Smith had been able to read both Latin and whatever the other language was it wouldn't make sense to give away a book to someone who couldn't read it, unless of course there were other reasons for the gift, perhaps to hide it.

She looked up surprised at her fiance when he suggested trying an actual summoning ritual from the book. Whether it worked or not was not really her concern but rather the fact that it would probably be just the two of them performing it. And the fact that most such rituals demanded some sort of sacrifice.
"I would, of course I would. But perhaps you should think it through one more time. These things usually require preparation and some kind of ... well ... those who believe say that magic always comes at a price. I'm not saying I believe anything will actually happen, just that if you want to perform a ritual to prove it doesn't then you have to do it right and not rush into it."

 

[MsBloom]

Flora Elizabeth Cope

Flora also spent most of the rest of the day with her nose in various books and little by little as she browsed through the library she began to suspect there was something they were not seeing. All the books she found all seemed very general in the way they referred to the occult and spiritualism. No one who was as dedicated a spiritualist as Arthur Smith Sr was said to have been would settle for such nonsense. True, she herself did not believe in the existence of spirits and demons but even so. These books didn't seem to be even remotely as rare as the one John had been given by Mr Wilson, and he was the supposed spiritualist, not Mr Wilson. She didn't say anything to John but rather got up and went for a walk to think and, subconsciously, as she walked the grounds around the house she also took measure of it. In the back of her mind she was looking for any signs of a hidden room, a hidden library.

By the time she returned it had already begun to get dark and she met John in the library again.
"We could, but are you sure the Smith's won't notice if we start chanting incantations. Also, I have a feeling it won't work that far from the ground. Not that I believe it will work at all but from everything I have read it seems to me that the ritual must be grounded, as in contact with the ground. On my walk I saw a grove of trees about a quarter of a mile behind the house that we might perhaps use. There they won't be able to see or hear us from within the house."

 

[MsBloom]

Flora Elizabeth Cope

Even though she of course did not show it very clearly Flora would be lying if she claimed to not be intrigued by the idea of performing a summoning ritual by moonlight surrounded by bare trees clad in snow. She would also be lying if she were to claim that she was not a little bit hesitant at playing with something neither she nor John fully understood. It was not that she believed in the sort of nonsense described in the book, of course she didn't, but at the same time believing and knowing are two very different things and while they believed neither she nor John knew it to be nothing but humbug and trickery.

With all the preparations done they stood opposite one another across the circle of salt they had made on the ground and began to speak the incantation aloud, repeating it for several minutes until John sighed and concluded that it had not worked and suggesting this was proof that the whole thing was pure superstitious nonsense.
"You did my love," Flora agreed and smiled but not without a vague sensation of unease.
"But now we have at least explored the possibility."

She took his hand and together they walked back to the Smith's house where she bade him goodnight with an extended kiss while pressing her body up against his, signalling that she would like nothing more than to lay with him. Circumstances did not allow it though. John had not even been assigned a room at the house but had to make due with one of the sofas in the library and she was to sleep in her sister's room. Neither location was ideal for love making, especially since they were not married.

 

[MsBloom]

Flora Elizabeth Cope

After a few passionate kisses Flora walked up the stairs to her sister's bedroom, undressed and lay down on the make shift bed that had been prepared for her. She had a hard time falling asleep though. The events of the day kept playing in her head. There was something very strange going on in the house. As she knew from her studies the power of belief was a strong one. Something did not have to actually be real to be dangerous or affect the lives of men and women as long as someone believed it strongly enough even superstitious nonsense such as demons and ghosts could certainly be dangerous.

If for instance Blanche's husband believed the child she carried to be an incarnation of some bizarre creature from another realm of reality then both Blanche and the child (whoever had fathered it) could be in mortal danger once it was born, or perhaps even before then. She realised that the best course of action would be to simply abandon the investigation she and John had begun and take Blanche away from her husband and the house in which she lived with him and his family.

Eventually she felt her eyes begin to drop and she fell asleep to the silence of the country which was so different from what she was used to back in Cambridge. She was soon awakened again by a soft, seductive voice.
"John," she asked still hazy from having been awakened before she was fully rested.
"You know I would like nothing more than to have you in my arms, inside me ... but ... Blanche ..."
She opened her eyes with a smile beginning on her lips, expecting to see the face of her fiance hovering above her but instead it was Blanche's husband's face ... no ... no it was not. It was his grandfather's, his supposedly dead grandfather's face.

She sat up, suddenly wide awake.
"What do you want?" she asked and prepared to scream at the top of her lungs to alert everyone in the house but John more than any of the others.

 

[MsBloom]

Flora Elizabeth Cope

The resemblance to Blanche's husband was uncanny and there was no doubt whatsoever in Flora's mind when he touched her bared thigh, moving his fingers upwards along the inside, that he was also just as real. For a brief moment she even thought that he was indeed Blanche's husband, had it not been that his clothes were old-fashioned and his voice slightly deeper she would probably have believed it was and that he was simply masquerading as his grand father, for whatever reason he might have to do so.

She pondered his question in silence as his fingers crept under under her night dress and closed in on her fanny. Would she remain silent as he abused her just to avoid waking up her sister whom she now had less and less doubt he had impregnated.
"Just do you business and be quick about it then," she said with a sneer and with an attitude of defiance she parted her legs wide open and pulled her night dress up to just below her breasts.