A group of college students are fascinated by the creepy old house down the block. Would it be wise to try to make some money off its reputation? Come along for a sexy tale of tricks, treats, costumes, ghosts and witches.

Brownie, Coop and I met in fourth grade and had been friends ever since. Ms. Zimmerman was unconventional and arranged the students alphabetically by first name instead of last name like all the other teachers, so we three boys named Matthew got put at the same table. For a while, we tried calling ourselves “Matt,” “Matty” and “Matthew,” but that didn’t stick. For the most part we were “Matt B.,” “Matt C.” and “Matt R.” I kind of liked that, because my name came out sounding like “Matter,” which is still a nickname I use with most people.

Unfortunately, the other guys decided they wanted to go by last names, which was okay if you’re Cooper or Browne, but not so great when your family name is Rose. It was bad enough with everybody calling me a flower, but then Coop decided that Brownie’s E shouldn’t be silent, and that led to them inevitably calling me Rosie. I tried getting back at them by calling them Chicken Coop and Junior Girl Scout, but neither of those nicknames caught on with the other kids.

I cried a lot in middle school. My dad tried to show me that our name could be very masculine by turning me into a major Pete Rose fan, making me wear an official jacket all the time and even got me the stupid bowl haircut. It didn’t help. He thought maybe Rosey Grier would be better, but after I found an interview where he talked about knitting, I vetoed that plan. He just couldn’t find any athletes named Rose except guys from a long time ago, so I gave up on that. I just worked to develop a thicker skin.

By the time we got to high school, we’d pretty much stopped seeing each other all that often. For the most part we kept to our own cliques. Puberty had been very kind to Coop and he turned out big and tall and strong, and he gravitated to hanging with the jocks. He was a second-string lineman on the football team, not very coordinated but he looked the part.

Brownie’s hormones were just as active, but they were making him the first guy in our class who needed a shave. It also must have amped up his pheremones or something, because he was real popular with the girls and just generally charming with everyone. He ended up getting elected president of our class a couple times. He joined all the clubs for the popular kids, and was pretty much on Easy Street.

As for me, I was on the lowest rung of the social ladder. I wasn’t smart enough to be a nerd, but I was still a dork. I was in the concert band, the drama club and the A/V crew. I really liked messing with audio equipment and tried not to notice how unpopular my hobbies were. I was scrawny and never really filled out much., and very awkward around people.

Then in our junior year of high school, I started getting harassed. Every few days I’d go to open my locker, and there inside would be a red silk rose. I got my hopes up by imagining that some girl was my secret admirer, but then one day I didn’t hide it fast enough and someone in the hall saw and pointed, and said they thought it was one of those “panty roses.” I didn’t know what that meant, so I stood confused while they grabbed the rose and ripped it off the stem and unrolled it and I saw that the fake rose was really a pair of lacy red satin panties.

A girl wouldn’t be sending me panties unless they were her own, and these were new and clean, so it wasn’t an admirer, just some asshole making fun of my name. Once I found out they were panties, I was torn. Instead of throwing them out like I had been, part of me wanted to keep them. I’d have been able to imagine them on some girl, and then touch them when I was masturbating and make it sexier. I only ended up keeping a few.

But then on Valentine’s Day, they kicked it up a notch. My locker had been completely filled with them, and they just kept spilling out. While my attention was on cleaning up the mess, I didn’t notice the sign taped to the back of my locker door. On fancy lacy stationery, in big red magic marker letters it said, “Roses for my Rose, the best Cocksucker in the school!”

The kids around started laughing and pointing and whispering amongst themselves, and then this guy Jimmy Riley comes over to me with his hand on his zipper and nods towards the sign and asks me how much. I looked up from the pile of panty roses I was hopelessly trying to contain and saw the sign. I lost it. I just started bawling my eyes out and then I stood up and screamed furiously that I had had enough of that shit and I wasn’t going to take anymore, and I just wanted to know who the hell had been sending me the fucking panties and why the fuck they were doing it.

I got in trouble for shouting and swearing and got five week’s detention. Three days into my punishment, I was joined by Brownie and Coop of all people. We passed a couple notes where they apologized for not having my back before, but it had been taken care of. Brownie had caught Eddie D’Amico bragging about “driving that little pansy nuts,” and he didn’t even have a reason. He just thought that dweebs like me were there to be messed with. But Brownie told Coop and he went after Eddie and said he was going to beat the crap out of him. Eddie got so scared he wet his pants right there in front of everyone, so Coop didn’t actually have to hit him.

But it was enough that when Eddie told on them they both got thrown in the dungeon. I thought it was great that my friends remembered me. We all got kicked out of our respective clubs and teams to boot. On the plus side we started hanging out with each other again, but it also threw a wrench into Coop and Brownie’s college applications.

That’s how we all ended up going to State, and part of me felt a little guilty about the other guys having to be there with me. In our freshman dorm, Coop and I were roommates and Brownie lived next door with a guy from Canada who moved off campus in October and didn’t tell the dorm office so he effectively had his own room.

Brownie’s charm didn’t work quite as well on college women as it had on high school girls, so when Coop got a girlfriend in the spring semester they switched rooms so he could have the single. Jess was pretty cool. She was a cute redhead from Oregon who was majoring in environmental science. I never did find out how she ended up going to a third-rate school in the middle of Massachusetts.

My favorite neighbors were The Fox Twins, Betsy and Lisa. They lived on our floor and they had me come over to help hook up their stereo, since I’d mentioned my electronics hobby in the orientation meeting where the RA got everyone on the hall together and made us each say something about ourselves.

They were tall, slender blondes with clear blue eyes and really pale skin. Their parents must have had a crazy sense of humor, since they named identical twins Elizabeth Lynne and Elisabeth Lynn. The girls liked to play the whole twin thing for all it was worth, having two of everything in their closet so they could always dress in matching outfits. They were sometimes a little too close, like when they’d get free drinks in bars by making out.

I spent enough time with them that I was one of like six people on campus who could tell them apart. I developed a major crush on Betsy but for some reason the few times Brownie and I doubled with them for concerts and stuff I ended up getting paired with Lisa. She was nice and all, but her sister was the one I wanted. Betsy just had a different attitude about things; she was planning to get her poli sci degree and go work for a non-profit to make the world a better place. Lisa was more practical and thought about going to law school.

At the end of our freshman year, we were already sick of living in the dorm. So when Brownie said we could pool our money and rent a big house in town, Coop and I jumped at the idea. But the places we could afford all looked like crap. We told our realtor the kind of place we were looking for, and she showed us this great four-bedroom place in an older neighborhood. Even if we could get a fourth person to split the rent, it still would be really steep, but we said we’d find a way.

Brownie said I should ask the twins if they wanted to move off-campus. I didn’t think they’d go for it, but it was definitely worth a shot. The one downside to leaving the dorm would be not having girls around, not to ogle or anything like that, but just to have a feminine presence in our lives. Imagine my surprise when they actually agreed to do it. My goddess would be living in the same house! I was overjoyed.

And then Coop told us that Jess would be coming along and sharing his room, which seemed kind of quick to me, but what do I know about having a girlfriend? That made it a six-way split on the rent, so there’d be no problem affording it. We thought everything would be smooth sailing from there. How naíve we were.

***

With getting everyone settled in, unpacking and getting ready for school, it took a while for us to notice that something was just a little off in our new neighborhood. At first it was just a nagging feeling of unease, but after spending a weekend staying in and working around the house, I figured it out. Everything seemed normal and fine until I happened to look out a window into the front yard, and then I would be filled with a profound sense of dread.

It took me a little longer to find out what it was out there that was so unsettling. At first I thought it was something to do with the ancient oak tree in front of the house next door — it was so full of grackles that it looked a little creepy. But that was just regular creepy, not sublimely creepy. Then I caught something in the corner of my eye and a shudder ran through me.

Some experimenting showed me that from the right angle I could see the top of a house behind the one directly across from us. It was taller and must have been on a higher ground to be so visible. There was a round tower or garret or whatever you call it projecting out from its upper storey at an odd angle that didn’t seem physically possible. You couldn’t look at it directly without getting vertigo.

I made sure to avoid looking in that direction and for the most part I was okay, but the uneasy feeling didn’t go away completely. In the back of my mind I knew that house was still there, and I could still picture it vividly.

I tried to warn my housemates when they came home, but I probably would have been better off keeping quiet. As soon as I told them not to look at the bizarre house behind the neighbors, they all started looking for it. And one by one, as I heard the girls shriek or the guys groan, I knew they’d found it.

We all took different approaches toward dealing with it. Jess would make Coop close all the blinds in the house every time they came home. Their room was the master bedroom and it had a bay window right in the front. She put up blackout curtains and lost the entire view just because part of it was disturbing.

The twins’ room was in the back of the house, and their solution was to just avoid the front rooms during the daytime. They took to leaving in the morning from the kitchen door, even though it was further from their parking spot. I thought they were sleepwalking the first time I caught them going down the stairs with their eyes closed to keep from looking out the window at the top of the stairwell.

My room was also in the back, (I shared a wall with the twins and sometimes I heard noises that would make me wonder if they were doing something more than sleeping in their double bed, but that’s not really relevant.) so my windows weren’t a problem. I just worked on keeping from looking in the wrong direction through willpower alone.

Brownie took the complete opposite approach. He put all his spare time into learning more about this mysterious house. He found the road that led over there and went to see the rest of it. Then he did some research into the local archives to find out more about its history and whose house it was. Every day he’d try to share some new tidbit with the rest of us, but we mainly just wanted to forget the place existed.

Brownie, the twins and I went out for a pizza and he was driving us home and took a different route back. We went the long way around the other end of Summer Street and took a left onto this little road where that didn’t seem as modernized. He explained that back in the colonial days when that part of town was the village of Verity, it was the way to the meeting house. He pointed out the empty lot where it used to be. Beyond that was a really old cemetery, and then past that was The House.

I spotted it before the girls in the back seat and told them not to look. Then I read Brownie the riot act. He stopped the car and got out, taking the keys with him. I had to follow him if I wanted to keep yelling at him. He was to show me that the place had a really interesting history, but I didn’t want to hear it; I was too mad at him for tricking us.

I heard the car doors and then the twins came over to where we were arguing. Lisa put her hand on my shoulder and said that the house really wasn’t so bad from up close. She even thought it was kind of interesting. Betsy came up behind me on the other side and told me I didn’t need to be so mad. So then I had to stop yelling at Brownie no matter how much he deserved it. You just don’t disobey your Dream Girl. I tried to smile and told him I was done yelling, but he took that as permission to tell us all the whole history of The House.

***

Brownie had spent some time at the library rummaging through old journals, and his old charm was in top form when he talked with Miss Bitterly, the president of the local Historical Society. He managed to put together a fairly detailed account of the house.

The original village parsonage, a simple three-room cottage, had been built on the site in 1641. In 1687, the minister died and a new one came down from Boston. Jeremiah Trumbull stirred up the fear of God in the people of Verity, and the town began to prosper like never before. He was a bachelor, but kept up a correspondence with a girl he’d known in the city, the daughter of one of his wealthier congregants.

In the spring of 1690, Prudence Edwards came to Verity to visit her swain. She was sweet and lovely and the entire village fell just as much in love with her. She was not quite as enamored of Verity, and in particular found his little hovel to be quite beneath her city-bred tastes although she tried to hide her disappointment.

The congregation worked together to gather funds for a major construction project, then made improvements to the parsonage. They brought in a master carpenter, a Dutchman who’d worked down in New Haven to make a plan, and then many hands set to work building an extension on the house that essentially involved making the shell of a larger house around the original one. It grew into a rather impressive manse, with three chimneys and a gabled second storey and even a full porch across the front. They named the new edifice Prudence House, officially after the Cardinal Virtue but everyone knew they were naming it in honor of the beautiful girl they hoped would be living in it.

In the fall of that year, they sent for her just before the harvest. She thought the house was perfect, and agreed to be married to Reverend Trumbull within a month. The whole surrounding county turned out for the wedding. It wasn’t the traditional floral exuberance of a spring wedding, but it did have the distinct color and tone of a New England autumn.

The newlyweds settled in to a delightful new life together, and Prudence was very popular in the village. She showed a talent for languages, discussing changes to her house with the carpenter in fluent Dutch, using their native tongue with the French traders that came by every so often, and teaching some of the village children some German Christmas songs. When a band of unfamiliar Wampanoags showed up at the edge of the village, she was able to work out a way of communicating with them to figure out what brought them; it turned out their people had had a fire and they’d lost some of their harvest and were looking to trade.

She also had a knack for numbers. When helping with some of the village’s accounts, she was able to keep accurate totals in her head faster than the clerk could work the figures out on paper. By today’s standards she’d probably be considered a genius, but by theirs she was unusual and remarkable and restricted by the roles a woman was allowed to play in their society.

In 1692, the happy couple was elated to become pregnant, but when the baby came out on a cold November morning, the joy turned to sorrow. Accounts described the newborn as “a hideous two-headed creature,” what were probably really conjoined twin girls, or perhaps a mutation or severe anomaly. At any rate, the midwife panicked and fled. Rumors spread like wildfire through the village about the demon baby born to the Reverend’s wife.

One version of the story says he was trying to baptize the evil out of the infant they had named Temperance. Another says he just wanted to be rid of her. But they agree that Jeremiah took his firstborn to the river and needed to cut a hole in the ice before he could hold her (or them) underwater until they drowned.

Prudence was heartbroken, but her tragedy didn’t end there. The mob decided that she must have been consorting with the Devil to have borne such a monstrosity. Too many people insisted that she needed to be punished for her apparent sins. They held a trial and all of her intellectual gifts were presented as evidence that she was in league with demons.

Worst of all, her husband was her judge and prosecutor instead of sympathetically defending her. He even claimed that she’d bewitched him into falling in love with her.
She was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging in the third week of 1693. Jeremiah’s sermons took a major “Fire and Brimstone” turn after that, and he never remarried. It’s said his heart had also frozen that day in the icy river.

The minister who followed Trumbull, Caleb Johnstone, preached much in the same vein. He was a lifelong bachelor who lived alone in the large house and didn’t even bother heating most of the rooms. An older pastor Arthur Bannister took over for Johnstone, and shortly after moving into Prudence House his wife had a heart attack, but it wasn’t seen as anything other than a sad coincidence at the time.

But the next residents were Reverend Thomas Lowell and his family. He and his wife Emily and their three children seemed to be settling into the House nicely at first, but Emily got badly burned in the kitchen after four months in the house and was left horribly disfigured. Two years later, their fourteen-year-old daughter Rebecca fell down the stairs and broke her neck.

Prudence House seemed to be collecting deaths. After the Revolution they had three more preachers living there, and some kind of tragedy occurred for each one. There was such a strong sense of evil associated with the house that when the meeting house burned down in 1843, the congregation mostly moved to the new church in Butcher’s Crossing, and they sold Prudence House to a rich banker.

After the new owner William Hale had lived there for several months he decided to make some changes to try to erase all the negativity associated with the place. He added a third story, built a carriage house, and expanded out the back of the kitchen to make better quarters for servants. But then he went South to make a profit from Reconstruction and left the house vacant for a few years.

Hale returned with Lynette Clayton, a bride he’d found in Georgia and their new baby Imogene, along with Candice, a nursemaid who had been Lynette’s back when she was still a slave. When Candice moved into Prudence House, she felt that the place contained an angry spirit, and dedicated herself to keeping her mistress and her young charge safe. She used a number of secret tricks to keep the spirit at bay, and life was relatively normal. Candice lived to a ripe old age and died when Imogene was away at finishing school. Lynette was sent away to a sanitarium shortly thereafter. It is said that she had tried to set fire to the house. Imogene did not want to inherit the house after her father passed, and she sold it.

It changed hands several times in the beginning of the twentieth century, with no one choosing to live there for very long. During Prohibition, it had been owned by a bootlegger who operated a speakeasy, and when he went to jail it remained vacant for many years. In 1976, the Bicentennial celebration caused a renewed interest in American history amongst the general public, and Miss Bitterly’s group had purchased Prudence House in the hope of turning it into a museum.

They did some work remodeling and modernizing the place, but it had to close after the cleaning woman drowned in a rain cistern in the cellar, where she shouldn’t have been cleaning anyway. They’d tried reopening the place several times, but none of the volunteers would work for more than one day.

I thought the whole story was too absurd to be real, and Brownie was probably just trying to tease the twins. They actually did seem moved by his words, and Lisa was even weeping a little. We walked around the grounds and peeked in a few windows. When we started getting uncomfortable, he finally agreed to drive us home.

***

In the last week of September, we were hanging around the living room watching late night cable and a local ad came on promising “The Scariest Haunted House Anywhere” would be opening for the Halloween season over in Preston. Betsy made a comment that if we wanted to go to a haunted house, we had a real one just down the next block. Brownie got a weird look in his eye, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time.

But a few days later he gathered all the housemates into the living room for a meeting. He said he’d come up with a plan for how we could all make a bunch of extra money, since we’d all been complaining about finances in one way or another.

He said that we ought to rent out Prudence House for October and run it as a Halloween haunted house. We’d only need a few costumes and props and some ambient sounds, and we could be good to go. Most of the work would be already done for us since the house already had a reputation for being haunted. All we’d have to do is tell the actual story in an entertaining way.

He even had some details worked out. He’d already spoken with Miss Bitterly about renting the place, and had asked at town hall about what kind of permits would be required. It would cost $600 plus a he estimated a few hundred for extras, so if each of the six of us chipped in $150 we should have enough. Then if we opened the place on weekends and Friday nights through October, we’d only need to average $70 per day to break even. If we charged $8 a head (about the same as the movies) we’d be profitable if we only had ten patrons each day.

We talked about it, and it sounded a little shaky as far as business plans go. Coop seemed into it, and Jess agreed and thought it might be fun. It felt like Betsy and Lisa were just eager to see the inside of the house and thought $150 wouldn’t be too bad a price to pay for the opportunity. Ever since Brownie had told them all about the place, they seemed to have a strong empathy for poor baby Temperance and her twin. I think they hoped she was the ghost that was haunting the place. I expected that it would all end in a terrible mess, but I seemed to be outnumbered, so I caved in and went along with the plan.

We pooled our moneys and the next day Brownie got a lease from Miss Bitterly and applied for permits. The day after that, we all went over at lunchtime and checked the place out. He’d gotten a key so we had no problem getting in.

It didn’t seem as weird as I was expecting. It was old, and dusty, and smelled a little, but for the most part it seemed like a house. There were some changes the museum people had obviously made, but they would suit our purposes wonderfully. The place had relatively modern wiring, and although most of the plumbing wasn’t up to code, there were a pair of functional restrooms on the first floor.

They’d also installed a counter in the foyer where we could set up our greeter to collect their money and usher them into the house. A space off to the right probably would have been their gift shop or something, and we could let people wait in there before we had a guide come to start their tour of the house.

We decided that we’d have a “wicked witch” taking the money and selling some traditional old-fashioned Halloween refreshments like popcorn balls and candy apples, and warm spiced cider. The witch would tell the beginning of the story of Prudence House and show them through the study and the front parlor and then “summon a spirit” by opening a door to show one of the twins in a ghostly costume.

That twin would then take the tour up the stairs to the second floor, take them through the bedrooms, the sewing room, and the music room. She’d then take the group to the stairs and tell them she’d meet them on the third floor, but really the other twin would be there. And then she’d take them through the playroom, the library and the upstairs maid’s room, and then send them down the back stairs to the kitchen. In there, Coop would be dressed as an angry Grim Reaper and chase them out of the house.

I was assigned the job of taking Brownie’s notes on the house’s history and writing a narrative for the guides to follow. I thought I did a decent job. I decided that the wicked witch would also be named Prudence, and she could say “Welcome to my house,” and then tell the people about original Prudence. I thought I did a decent job. I even wrote two versions of the script; one for earlier in the day when we’d be doing the show for little kids, and one for later at night when we wouldn’t let in anyone under thirteen.

I also worked on assembling a system with speakers in various locations, and put together a mix of spooky music and sound effects that we could play throughout the house to set the right ambiance. I thought that would be the end of my responsibilities on the project.

I’d thought they were talking about Jess playing the “wicked witch,” but it turned out she had to work weekends for her work-study program. They actually wanted me in the role of the witch, since I had a minor in theatre. It was the fault of my counselor, who thought I could get over my terminal shyness by forcing myself to be in public speaking situations, but I mostly liked working on the backstage crew.

I really didn’t want to do it, but I did owe Brownie and Coop big time, and I was really the only one of us who could believably pass as a witch. Finally I figured that being an old hag would be okay, so I agreed to do it.

Somewhere in between accepting the job and going through with it, the girls had been talking and changed the role. Instead of an ugly old witch, they thought we should have a young and pretty witch greeting our customers. They thought it would be more reassuring for the little kids, and might get more of the teenagers to tell their friends and come back for more.

I said no way, but when three cute girls are trying to make you do something, and one of them is all you ever wanted in the world, and another one is her identical twin sister, what chance did I have?

***

So that’s how I ended up four days later being “fitted for my costume” by the three girls. They brought me into the big bathroom in our house and had me take my clothes off. I was really embarrassed about being in my underwear in front of them, so they joined in and stripped to their underwear too. It was funny that Betsy and Lisa still matched, wearing identical bras and panties. They then put on yellow rubber gloves like your mom uses to wash dishes and it made them look even sexier.

They were going to work on taking the hair off my body, so I had to get completely naked and stand in the tub. I got self-conscious and tried to cover myself with my hands, and said that it would only be fair if they joined in. I very nearly passed out when they called my bluff and the bras and panties came off. Jess did keep her underwear on, since she didn’t want Coop to get upset with me.

Betsy and Lisa even had identical moles on their left butt cheeks. I didn’t think that was even possible; at least one of them was probably a tattoo, which seemed like taking the twin thing just a little too far. And then they turned around and I saw two matching perfectly triangular bikini areas, and four magnificent breasts, and my brain stopped working.

Jess stuffed my hair into a shower cap, and then I had to stand with my arms straight out and my legs spread, like that famous DaVinci drawing. Each twin took one side of my body and smeared a strong smelling lotion all over the surface of my skin. And I do mean all over. It drove me absolutely wild when their fingers ran over my tender parts.

I had to stand there for a few minutes until it started to tingle, and then they rubbed me down with wet washcloths, and all my body hair came off. They used the handheld shower hose and rinsed me off with cold water. After being lightly patted dry, the twins took off their rubber gloves and gently massaged a soothing lotion into my stinging skin.

That just proved way too sensual for me, and Jess pointed out that the erection I was then sporting would be totally out of place on a female witch, and told the twins to “take care of it.” On each side of me, Betsy and Lisa began to stroke one of my aching and reddened nipples with one hand and used the other hand to fondle my tingling genitals. They were perfectly synchronized and must have done something similar before. It was completely out of nowhere and I was too turned on to have any time to react to the total strangeness of it all

Their upper hands moved to hold my shoulders in place, and their lips took over on my nipples. A fleeting thought ran through my head, wondering if Prudence ever got a chance to nurse her twins. I felt something touching me, and it seemed like Jess was pressing her breasts against my back. The twins bit down a little and really pinched hard, and jerked me faster until I exploded completely.

As soon as I was flaccid they cleaned me off with a fresh washcloth and had me sit on a towel on the toilet lid. Something was rattling and tickling the top of my shoulders and it got worse when I turned my head to look. Jess let me look in a hand mirror to see that she had pierced my ears while I was distracted. The earrings were very elaborate and looked appropriately gothic.

I now had these black metal posts going through my lobes with dark red crystals in the center. Three chains went down from that part to suspend a semicircular or crescent shaped piece in that same black metal, worked to look kind of like lace. Four teardrop-shaped red crystals hung from the bottom of that part.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to be stuck wearing them for the entire month of October, and Jess explained that they could detach the chains and leave me with simple black studs with red stones when I wanted to be out of costume. It wasn’t my usual style, but there were other guys on campus with earrings and she promised I wouldn’t seem too out of place.

Jess had this paper with a diagram and some instructions for pushing my testicles up into the space they originally came out of when I was little. Lisa was very willing to try to help me, but Jess insisted that I be able to do it myself in case I had to go to the bathroom while wearing my costume. It took me a while to figure out what they meant, but I got my parts safely hidden away. It was uncomfortable, like the feeling you get a half hour or so after getting kicked in the crotch.

They had me step into this special undergarment that would keep me flattened out. It was like a pair of black thong panties with extra-strong elastic. I was okay with wearing panties as long as they weren’t red like the ones that humiliated me so long ago. Jess explained that they’d gone to this store in Auburn that sells everything a dude who wants to look like a chick could possibly need, and that “gaff” was just the beginning.

The next thing they put me in was a black satin corset with a zipper in front and laces in the back. It was scalloped out in the front with underwires that would go beneath breasts if I had them. And bizarrely when they tightened up the laces I actually got boobs! It was like the “Freshman Fifteen” flabby pounds that I’d gained the previous year were all squeezed in and pushed out over the top of the corset to a cute set of little girly boobies. The twins liked the look, too. They gave my reddened and swollen nipples a few more tweaks, but then Jess told them they could put their lingerie on since I already had mine.

I was a little disappointed that they’d be getting dressed, until they came back in wearing sexy little white lacy things that somehow made them sexier than when they were naked. Jess was putting this strong-smelling shampoo in my hair so my eyes were closed, but when I looked up I saw two lovely angels standing before me. Jess put the shower cap back over my hair and turned on a portable kitchen timer.

Lisa and Betsy went to work using this magic liquid powder stuff to make my fingernails longer, and Jess used clippers and files and buffers and pointy sticks on my toes before painting them a shiny jet black. I had two coats of nail polish on my feet and one on my hands when the timer went ding.

They helped me sit on the floor hanging my head over the edge of the tub. They got the shower hose back out and gave my hair a thorough rinsing. I was pulled up to a standing position and then led back to my seat. My hair got toweled dry and I got another look in the mirror. My hair was now a kind of purple-maroon color. It seemed to go well with the spooky black fingernails.

I had no idea how I was going to hide it when I went to class, but it was too late to do anything about it. They rolled my hair into hot curlers and put a hairnet over them. Then they finished the manicure and pedicure. They put this tinted topcoat over the nail polish, so they looked black from most angles, but when the light hit them right, there was a blood-red iridescent sheen to them.

Lisa took hold of my itty bitty titties and pulled, while Jess untied the laces of my corset only to pull them tighter and then retie them. It gave me an even smaller feminine waist and I think my bust was up to nearly A cups. I finally got to leave the bathroom, and I was glad the other guys weren’t home to catch us in the hallway. We went into the girls’ room, where the rest of our clothes were.

The twins sat on the edge of their bed and rolled filmy white stockings up their legs and clipped them onto garters that hung from their bustiers. Jess had a pair of fancy black ones for me, with a spider web pattern to their weave. I tried to do it myself, but my fancy fingernails got in the way and I couldn’t even open the package. A twin on each leg helped me get them on. My feet went into a sexy pair of black lace-up ankle boots with delicate 3” heels. Betsy and Lisa put on knee-high white ones that made their legs look incredible! I didn’t want to think about how my own legs looked.

Jess sprayed a lightly floral deodorant under my arms and then it was time to put on my first bra. It was more black satin, and had little pads in the cups to push my little booblets up and squish them together. It was a strange feeling to look down and see my own cleavage, and then she stuck more little pads in there to make my chest look even bigger. I stepped into a petticoat of black lace and netting that Jess tied around my waist, and then she pulled a pretty black slip down over my head. The twins got white petticoats of their own, but no slips.

My dress was red velvet with black lace trim. It had wide lace bell cuffs at the end of the sleeves and black ribbons that crisscrossed in the front to make it even cleavagier. The skirt part had a slit that could be strategically arranged to show off all the lacy layers underneath. The dresses the twins wore were strapless white gauzy things that seemed more like fancy underwear than dresses.

Jess brought up three chairs from the kitchen and had us sit in a row while she did our makeup. It gave me an odd sense of pride when she said I didn’t need the false eyelashes the girls were getting and volumizing mascara would be enough. She went through a bunch of liquids and powders and tubes and pastes, and I lost track of what was what. All I was sure of was that she seemed to spend way too long painfully plucking my eyebrows.

Jess finished up by spraying a puff of gardenia-scented perfume behind my ears and down my front. She hung a necklace around my throat that was in the same style as my earrings. The hairnet came off and she got my hair out of the curlers. She brushed it out a little and made a couple little cuts with a pair of scissors, and then put on a little headpiece that hung another one of those red crystals right in the center of my forehead. Jess gave me a couple tips on how to fix my powder and lipstick and I tried to get a look at myself in the little compact mirror before she put all the implements into a little bag that tied onto a little button at my hip.

She brought me over to a full-length mirror and when I opened my eyes I got my first good look at what she’d done. I saw a gorgeous Goth girl with a hot body in a tight dress. Darkly lined eyes with smoky sultry lids peeked out from under a lovely mass of wavy burgundy hair that was nothing like my old mullety brown mop. Bright red kissable lips stood out in sharp contrast to her pale complexion. I couldn’t help but stare at her heaving bosom as she hyperventilated. I needed to sit down and practice breathing in a corset.

Betsy and Lisa looked even lovelier. They had that same heavy-eyeliner, pallid face Goth look, but Jess had made them look even spookier by shading their eyes to appear more sunken, and giving them black lipstick to amplify the effect of bloodlessness. All three of us got long flowing hooded cloaks to wear instead of coats over our outfits, mine in black and theirs in white.

We went over to Prudence House to meet the guys, to rehearse some of our parts. I wasn’t confident about driving in heels so we took Betsy and Lisa’s car. Jess said she felt plain compared to the other three babes in the car, and I wasn’t sure how to react. On the one hand I liked that my disguise was impenetrable, but on the other I didn’t want Betsy to think of me as less than a man.

I’d spent enough time watching girls that I could figure out how to walk like a woman by copying them. It was just a matter of hanging my arms loosely at the elbow, swiveling my hips as I moved my legs, and taking tiny steps. We got out of the car and I followed the legitimate girls up the steps and across the porch to the front door.

Brownie saw me first, and he said “Damn, Rosie! You’re a fox!” Coop let out a little whistle and told Jess she was lucky he saw her first. I was totally embarrassed by all the attention. Lisa gave me a sneaky pinch on the ass and whispered that I looked cute when I blushed.

We had the electricity turned on, and the boys had already checked the fusebox. We’d decided not to buy fuel oil, and were using electric space heaters in some rooms. We thought that having some chilly spaces would help add to the haunted house aspect, since “everyone knows” that you feel cold when a ghost walks by you.

The front space with the main entrance and the waiting room would be heated. I liked that, since I’d be working there most of the time. I gave my opening speech for the others, and the breathless whisper the corset forced me into made me sound sexy and passably female. I did the kids’ version of my speech first, and then went into the one for the older crowd, with more romance and violence. When I finished, they applauded.

I then took them through the first couple of rooms for my part of the tour. I set up the underlying tragedy of Prudence Trumbull and explained about how her misfortune tainted the house that bore her name for all the generations that followed. Lisa pinched my butt again, or someone else did since she was getting into place for her part.

I did my little “summoning a helpful spirit” bit, including the special rhythmic knock we’d worked out, and Betsy opened the door. It was one made for servants entering the dining room, so you couldn’t tell it was a door until it opened. It was a great special effect, and we didn’t need any fancy Halloween stuff to do it.

Betsy and Lisa both knew their whole part, so they could switch off when they got bored. They spoke all their lines in unison, which was cool and creepy, and it was too bad they couldn’t do that in the real show. I’d assigned the various historical deaths to the different bedrooms pretty much at random, and the twins told the story with the right amount of pathos and melancholy. It was so sad I had to check with Jess to see if I could weep without getting raccoon eyes. Fortunately my makeup was waterproof.

Brownie actually put his arm around me when he saw how moved I was by the story, but he got a big static shock when he touched my shoulder and had to pull his hand away. There must have been something about the fabric of my cloak that built up a charge. Speaking of cloaks, I mentioned that the ghostly duo should probably keep theirs on for the kids’ tours, and got really bashful when it turned out I was the only one who’d noticed how their wispy white dresses showed prominent nipplage in the chilly spaces.

Betsy calmed my embarrassment with a “Thanks, Girlfriend!” and slipped a couple fingers into my bodice to see if the cold rooms were giving me any difficulties. I was seriously pushing the elastic on that gaff thing to its limit, as my Best Friend was prevented from trying to stand up and take notice of her attention. I also had to focus to remember how to breathe without passing out.

We got to the part where the girls would be switching off and they ran ahead, the rest of us followed on up to the third floor. I was the last in line, but I still felt like someone was behind me. It was hard to shake it off. The twins started the second part of their presentation, taking us into rooms where the guys had set up our spooky props. In the playroom, we had a jack-in-the-box that the tour guide could trigger to pop by remote control. It would be sure to trigger a startle response.

In the library, which as it turns out was the round tower room that started our interest in the place, there were spiraling bookcases running around all the walls. Our gimmick in there was a hidden wire that would move a rolling ladder along the stacks to a spot where another motor would make a book fall off the shelf. And it was a trick book that could only land open to an old woodcut image of a grinning skull-faced Angel of Death.

That would trigger the guide to urge the tour group to flee before the House decided that someone else needed to die. The twins led us through another secret door into the chambermaids’ quarters, and ushered us down the back stairs. They emptied out in the kitchen. Coop wasn’t even in his costume and hadn’t gotten into place for his cue, but he still disappeared into the shadowy corner, and I got a little scared when he jumped out and said his lines about being called to slay all who remained in the house. He’d only be working the late shows for the older kids. For the young ones, the twin would follow them down the stairs and just tell them it was time for the living to leave, and she would have to return from where she’d come, and then walk thorough a hidden door in the back of the kitchen.

On the whole the rehearsal went well. I was also supposed to work on setting up the sound system, but that was kind of hard to do with the way I was dressed. I ended up directing Coop and Brownie on where to put stuff, which was kind of fun except for that they kept calling me “Ma’am” or “Miss Rose.” It was kind of weird when Brownie pinched his thumb in a cupboard door and wanted me to kiss it better. I did to humor him, but there was another big static spark. It zapped me a little, but he acted like it seriously hurt him. He looked at me funny and blamed me for building up too much charge. I said it was his fault since the twins had been touching me without getting shocked, and one of them pinched me again to punctuate my point, but she was gone before I could call her as a witness.

We got everything set up and I tested the music and stuff and it seemed like it would go okay. Brownie was supposed to be running the board, but he wouldn’t let me show him what to do, since we’d have to touch buttons together. I had to show Jess how it worked, and then she did it for Brownie with me out of the room. I thought he was just being silly, but it worked without any static problems.

It was late when we finished, and I got outvoted when everyone else wanted to go out to dinner. We went to Paisan’s Spaghetti House and I had to pretend I was a real girl. I didn’t have any money with me, and Brownie said he’d pay for me. I kidded him that I didn’t put out on the first date, and he’d have to behave himself if he even wanted a good night kiss. He remembered the “shock treatment” he’d gotten earlier and said he wouldn’t be trying to get anywhere with me.

I was very nervous, and had to eat tiny bites to keep from being found out and had to excuse myself in the middle of the meal to go to the bathroom. The girls all came with me and made sure the coast was clear in the ladies’ room for me. We even took turns in the stalls. They gave me a little advice for how to deal with all the clothing in my way, and Lisa even needed to come in and show me how to unfasten my garters. She went further and ran them under my panties and refastened them so I wouldn’t need her help again when I was done.

It was scary doing my business with my hands full with all my layers of skirts; I couldn’t see what I was doing. And like a good girl I had to wipe myself when I was done. Then my poor little guys had to get shoved up in there again, and I had to pull my panty up with one hand and hold everything in with the other and still not drop my dress in the toilet. Female clothes are way too complicated.

When we got home, Lisa and Betsy helped me clean all my makeup off, and gave me a hand getting undressed. Lisa offered to lend me a nightgown if I wanted to have an all-girl sleepover in their bed. I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, or if she was just kidding, so I told her I needed to get up early and turned down the invitation.

***

I got a few weird looks in my classes, and I had to explain what we were doing, but it kind of ended up as providing some publicity for our show. We were expecting just to get townies, but now word of mouth on campus was growing. The school paper asked for an interview, but we put them off until our permit came through.

We had both Miss Bitterly and a town safety inspector over one morning for a run-through of our show. The inspector didn’t find any violations and approved our permit, and while we weren’t absolutely historically accurate, Miss Bitterly thought we were paying decent tribute to the legend of Prudence House. We got full approval.

The housemates voted and made me stay in costume and had the school paper guys come over that afternoon. They sent both a reporter and a photographer, and they took a few pictures of the house, and some of me. I explained that we were opening a haunted house amusement in an actual haunted house, or at least one with a legitimate reputation of being haunted, and told the guy a rough version of the story of Prudence. He seemed interested, but he also seemed interested in looking down my dress. I considered telling him my real name, but figured it would be better for business if potential customers thought they could come see some hot chick. I simply stayed in character and said that for the time being he could call me Prudence the Witch. I think I might have smiled too much or something, because he slipped me his number as he was leaving.

With official paperwork, we took out an ad in the local paper. Following the pattern established with the school article, we decided to play up the “hot chicks” angle. Betsy edited together a photo of me in full costume on the left, and Lisa on the right, flanking a smaller image of Prudence House in the middle. At the top it said “Experience a Real Haunted House” and at the bottom it gave the address and our hours of operation and prices.

The first day we were open was a Saturday. We didn’t get too many kids coming through in the afternoon, but the ones that did seemed to be having fun. We also sold a lot of candy apples. One flaw in our setup is that I had to lock up the cashbox and the refreshments before starting every tour. It was awkward, but there really wasn’t a better way to do it.

The last group of kids we had that first day included one sweet little girl that started crying halfway through Lisa’s section. She was set up for texting Betsy to tell her details about the tour groups, but she had no way to talk to me. Betsy had to come running down the back stairs to get me, and then I went up to fetch poor little Susie. I picked her up and she gave me a big hug and said I was a pretty lady. I said that it was okay for even big girls like her to cry sometimes, so she didn’t need to be embarrassed. Fortunately her mom was in our waiting area, and I winked and told her that Susie had been worried that she’d be lonely waiting by herself, and wanted to come join her. Mom thanked me and said I’d make an excellent mother myself some day.

We broke for dinner and the boys worked on setting up the stuff for the older show. I held down the fort by just eating a salad at my desk so I could keep an eye on the door. A sadly sweet piece of music came on the speaker, and I turned it up to listen to it better. I closed my eyes and sat back in my chair and just let my mind wander.

I had a strange kind of daydream. I was still wearing my costume, but it fit a little differently somehow. I wasn’t in the house. There was a floor under my feet but I didn’t see any walls or floor; there was some kind of mist or fog in the way. I could hear the music playing, but I couldn’t see where it was coming from. A tall man in an old-fashioned looking black suit walked out of the fog toward me. He was a well-built ruggedly handsome man but with a sadness behind his eyes. He had long sideburns but no other facial hair and his hair was a little long.

He bowed and asked if I wanted to dance. For some odd reason I said yes. His hand was surprisingly soft, and he led me through something that wasn’t quite a waltz. It seemed more like a folk dance, but I knew exactly how to do my part. I felt kind of sad when the music ended and he let me go. Before releasing my hand, he brought it to his lips and I felt a tingle in my skin and a rush in my heart. I could even sense my vagina starting to moisten — wait, what? I was imagining myself as a woman! This costume was totally messing with my mind. I snapped out of the reverie and saw that I was standing in the middle of the room.

I noticed Brownie standing in the corner and he applauded, saying that I was quite a dancer. I hadn’t been just imagining a dance; I’d been actually dancing. It was really bizarre, and I tried to be mad at Brownie but it really wasn’t his fault. I just stuck my tongue out at him and pouted. He said, “Is that tongue a promise or a threat, Rosie?” I tried not to laugh too hard when he tripped as he left the room. He said that things were almost ready for the evening crowd.

The first mature tour group was mostly high school kids, but there were a couple older ones. The three girls shot daggers at me, as their boyfriends all kept constant eye-to-breast contact. I went through my lines anyway, and they started almost paying attention, but I was grateful when I got to pass them off to Betsy. I was still kind of shaken from my dream/fantasy/whatever it was.

The next couple of tours were pretty much the same, but then I got a surprise. The reporter from the school paper showed up, and kept hitting on me the whole time. He said stuff like if the original Prudence was half as pretty as me her husband was a fool for letting them kill her, and he kept following me very close, so he could brush up against me. When it came time for him to go off with Lisa, he quickly turned around and stole a kiss from me.

I was so steamed at him for doing that. He had to run up the stairs to catch up with the group, and somehow he lost his footing while trying to take them two at a time and he came tumbling down. His foot ended up in an unnatural position, and we had to call an ambulance to take him away. Just in case, we sent everyone else home and shut down for the night.

We went through the house making sure all the heaters got shut down and the lights were all off, and sat in the front room to talk about what we were going to do. When Brownie put the plan together to open the place he didn’t include getting insurance. If that reporter guy sued us, we could lose everything, and probably Miss Bitterly’s group would, too. Lisa joked that since he liked me so much, maybe I could convince him not to sue if I agreed to go out with him. At least I hope she was joking.

I said there was no way I’d be doing anything with that guy and in the corner of my eye, I thought I saw an angry face suddenly smile. I said that it was fun while it lasted and we hadn’t come anywhere near making our money back, but maybe it would be better for everyone if we just shut down for good and never came back. It then suddenly started raining heavily. There was even a flash of lightning and the lights went out in the room we were in.

We decided we’d just go home and continue the discussion, but the front door was stuck.
It didn’t seem safe to go wandering around this big spooky house in the dark. Coop tried to call Jess to have her bring us a light, but his cell wasn’t working. The rest of us tried and none were working. This sudden storm must have taken out a tower.

I remembered that there was a flashlight in my toolbox, but I’d left it with my gear in the sound room we’d set up in a closet on the second floor. I volunteered to try to go get it. Coop tried to say that he’d do it; I think he was having trouble remembering I was really a guy. I said that I was the only one who knew exactly where everything in the toolbox was so I was the best to go do this. Lisa and Betsy each gave me a kiss for luck and I was on my way.

I didn’t want to trip on the staircase that had taken out my wannabe boyfriend, so I took the steps slowly and clung to the railing. But I did that old thing at the top of the stairs where you pick up your foot but there are no more steps, and I lost my balance. I went crashing forward into the hallway and bumped my head and blacked out.

When I came to I put my hand to my forehead and there was no lump or anything. I seemed fine. But then I looked around and realized I wasn’t in a dark house anymore. I was sitting on the ground, on slightly damp grass. The guy I’d danced with was standing over me. He reached a hand to help me to my feet, and there was that tingle again, that extended to places I shouldn’t have had.

He said there was something he needed to show me before we could continue. He led me down a hillside and along a well-worn path. There was a large crowd of people gathered around something. It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the flickering torchlight. Then I saw that we were in something like a village square, gathered around a large platform.

A man standing there who could have been the twin of my companion, and a woman knelt at his feet. He forced her to stand, and a rope was pulled down and a loop brought over her head. I realized that the platform was a gallows. The man spoke, “Prudence Edwards, you have been found guilty of conspiring with the forces of Darkness, and sentence to hang until dead. Do you have any last words to say before God before His judgment is carried out upon you?”

She looked up at him with plaintive eyes. “I’ve consorted with naught but you, Husband. If there be a demon in this household it is not I. I’ve broken no promises; if I’ve sinned it is only that I have loved you too well. I beg of you, please don’t do this. You’ll never find another who will give her heart to you as completely as I have. I pray that your soul shall not be at peace until you have found another love as great for you as mine.”

This was Prudence, so the guy with her, the guy beside me, must be Jeremiah Trumbull. We’d thought she was the one haunting the house, but we were wrong. I looked over at the man next to me and his eyes were crying. The guy up on the gallows pulled the lever and my companion squeezed his eyes shut.

He whispered to me in a ragged voice, “My Dear, this was my the moment of my greatest victory and also of my greatest defeat. I needed to show you this memory that I may be completely honest with you. Long have I sought solace in the arms of another, but you are first who did not flee my embrace.”

He seemed so sad that I reached out to take him in my arms and hold him. He collapsed into me and turned his face to mine in a hungry kiss. I felt my heart go out to him and let my lips part to accept his probing tongue. Suddenly we were back on the hillside and he pushed me back onto the grass. He removed his jacket and lay on his side next to me.

His fingers toyed with the laces at my bodice, and my hand dealt with the silver buttons on his shirt. Somehow my undergarments had become much less elaborate, since as soon as I’d been unlaced my voluptuous bosom spilled out. His soft hands played across my sensitive areolas and thick, engorged nipples. He brought his lips to one of them and suckled me gently. I ran my fingernails through the dense thatch on his chest.

The scene changed again and he lifted me up to place me on the bed. I felt a growing urgency to have him inside me! I shimmied out of my skirts and he wasted no time unfastening his breeches. I was slippery and waiting for him. He was firm and standing proud and ready. I kissed him and asked that he be gentle with me, as it was my first time.

His strong hands grasped my slender waist, and he guided his manliness between my eager lips. Even as he tore me open, I smiled up at him, letting him know I was completely willing to be his. He thrust into me and I felt like I was on fire, and again and the ground erupted, and again and the stars were ripped from the heavens, and then I could feel our hearts were both soaring together.

***

I woke up on the floor of what had once been the master bedroom. My head was throbbing, my costume had been shredded, and I was dripping with sweat. I saw that the lights were back on, and I heard the voices of my friends. I called out hoarsely where I was and tried to find a way to cover my nakedness. I pulled my cloak around me and hoped it would be enough to keep Brownie from staring at my breasts.