Alraune Mandragora Ch. 04

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Stories in the Dark.
5k words
4.54
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Part 4 of the 4 part series

Updated 09/22/2022
Created 11/29/2011
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I'd like to thank the readers who waited patiently for this chapter. Your encouraging words are much appreciated.

*****

As daylight faded, rain clouds were gathering. Marna peered through the warped glass of one of the ancient cloister's many windows as the deep dark clouds rolled in. These clouds usually brought thunder. She hoped that her mother and father, who were riding back to the family farm to the south, wouldn't be caught out in poor weather. Even so, Marna liked summer storms.

Marna knit by the window in peace. One of the nuns, Sister Ursula, sat across the wide hall mending a robe sent up from the priory down the hill. The Culrose Monastery was actually made up of two cloisters. The priests and monks dwelt in the more recent cloister and church down the hill, and the sisters kept the old cloister higher up past the treeline. No one who passed the church would know of the old cloister, hidden in the pines. It was a safe place, and Marna always felt comfortable there.

The sisters kept the ancient place from becoming a ruin. It was a holy place; as long as it remained standing it would be a home for these women. Marna had lived among them for over a month, but she had yet to talk to all of the sisters at length. A few of them seemed very shy indeed. Sister Margaret, the abbess of the small nunnery, was always friendly but reluctant to engage Marna in any lengthy conversation. Marna's curiosity regarding Sister Margaret grew as this distant treatment continued. During the rare glimpses of eye contact Marna received from Sister Margaret, it seemed that something was in the air. Something was left unsaid.

Marna thought about all of this while she continued knitting. Eventually she tired of the tedious activity and rose from her window seat. She would need to get some sleep before conducting her nightly trip to the secret library. She feigned a yawn and a stretch.

"Good night and God bless, Sister Ursula." Marna said before leaving.

"And you," Ursula replied, "God bless and rest well."

Marna retreated downstairs to the quiet sanctum of her room. It was comfortable enough down in the cellar, but often more than a bit cold. Marna felt relief as she found a bath had been drawn for her in the stone tub sunk into one wall. Steam rose from the hot water, waiting to warm Marna's body. Marna closed the door to her room and removed her robe. She shivered as goosebumps rose all across her flesh. She stepped into the tub, relishing the feeling of her cold skin meeting the hot water. Submerging her obscenely voluptuous body into the water, Marna let out a hefty sigh of pleasure.

Marna had, before coming to the abbey, gained unnatural amounts of weight in mere months. As usual, The Devil had been blamed for this aberration of the flesh. Nothing holy could come of a girl with a body that would make grown men go mad with lust at the sight of her. Marna hadn't merely filled out, she had become an unearthly pillar of sexual magnetism. Her breasts stood out like two massive orbs, just waiting to be tapped by hungry mouths. Her hips and buttocks were plump and wrapped in the tight white silk of her flesh. All this rested on Marna's still-slender frame, giving her proportions that were simply uncanny. Marna's own mother had balked at the covetable nature of her daughter's newfound curvature.

Marna was about to pour another ladleful of water over her shoulders, when she felt eyes behind her. She spun around in her tub to find her room empty. Still, the fact that she wasn't alone was clear to her somehow. She crouched down into the tub as if to hide her nakedness from the empty room. Marna continued to scan her room with wide eyes for several minutes, certain that she was being watched. She relaxed in a sitting position in the tub and continued her bath slowly, warily. The unseen presence would not leave her.

Marna decided that if some spectre haunted her during her bath time, there was nothing she could do about it. She stood and let the water drip from her body, and the feeling that she was not alone only intensified. She felt her cheeks blush in her timidness and could not help but turn her body away from the room. Marna caught herself doing this and giggled. Her flesh bounced deliciously as she laughed, as if her body were one great bubble just waiting to pop.

Eventually Marna decided that her mind was playing tricks on her and finished her bath. She dried herself and brushed her long golden hair while sitting naked on her bed. She found her flour sack under her pillow and checked it to see if it contained enough candles to last a few hours. One great big tallow remained. She examined it and decided that it was good for at least four hours. That would have to be enough for tonight, Marna decided.

She pulled her robes about her body and wrapped them tightly closed. A few of the sisters had fashioned some special robes for her, and she could not help but notice how they hid the contours of her body very well. Marna teased herself that she looked like a fat old nun when she wore the robes; but they were very comfortable and warm.

Marna had become accustomed to the stairs and hallways within the old cloister and was able to make her way through them silently. She was also familiar with all the usual noises that the place made while it was sleeping, and so was not surprised by any of them. Sometimes she wondered what a few of the noises were, but she decided that since they all happened almost nightly, the noises must be perfectly harmless.

Tonight, there was the added rumble of distant thunder. Marna managed to close the hallway door silently as she made her way out into the middle of the cloister and across the gardens. A sparse rain was falling, but Marna knew that it could turn into a great summer shower at a moments notice. She hurried through the garden quietly to the other wall. Once inside, she began her twisting, turning route that snaked through a decrepit part of the cloister and into the northern tower. Once within the shelter of a stairway, Marna pulled the cover off of her lantern and let the candle within light her way. This was the way she came to the secret library every night.

Down in the undercroft, Marna was nearly there. A stairway that lay cleverly tucked between two pillars led upward again. This was the only way in or out of the room that had become a storage for some of the oldest books Marna would ever see. She set her lantern down on a small pedestal and pulled her hood back. It was always so comforting to her to be there, alone in the bowels of that old place. To Marna's knowledge, Sister Mira was the only other person who knew of this forgotten library. Since showing Marna the way just over a week before, Marna hadn't heard Sister Mira utter a word about the place. It seemed that it was Marna's home away from home for the time being.

Above her and far away, thunder sounded across the valley. Down in the stone walled library it sounded even more ominous to Marna. She shivered. Then a sound met her ears that made her shiver more violently. Someone was walking through the undercroft below.

The footsteps rang out loudly and echoed off of the ancient limestone arches. Whoever was coming made no effort to do it quietly. Marna backed away from the blackness of the doorway and watched as the glow of another candle lit the walls of the passage outside. The flame came into view as the bearer mounted the steps. Shadows were thrown here and there, but ultimately the light from the large candle revealed that it was carried by none other than Sister Margaret herself. She entered the small library and stood just inside the arched doorway.

"Good evening, My dear." Sister Margaret said with warmth that surprised Marna as much as soothed her. "Please, don't stand on my account. Sit, child."

Marna found a seat on one of the squat stone benches that rose from the floor and folded her hands in her lap. The room was lit quite well now by both her candle lantern and the large beeswax altar candle that Sister Margaret bore. Even so, the Abbess took to producing more candles from the folds of her robes and setting them in small sconces on the wall. These she lit until four more lights bathed the books and Marna's anxious expression alike in warm, golden candlelight.

"Quite a night, isn't it?" Margaret asked, placing the candle she had been holding in an iron candlestick that lived in one corner.

Marna didn't know how to reply. "Y-yes... I like thunder." Marna stammered.

Sister Margaret put her hands behind her back and began to walk slowly through the room, admiring the books. "I hope you like our library. I don't think Sister Mira has told anyone else about it. It's just as well; word travels, even in and out of convents. If any of the priests heard about this collection, it would probably be confiscated."

"But we are hardly a convent," Sister Margaret continued, turning back towards Marna, "as you may well have gathered by now."

Marna gave a thoughtful look up and away from Sister Margaret and then chirped a reply. "No, I hadn't noticed anything like that."

"Well, it's true." Sister Margaret resumed her slow pacing, looking down at the plain tiles on the floor. "We may look a proper convent, but actually this gathering of sisters represents a bit of an afterthought. We are all of us outcasts of a sort, sent here from other churches who felt we needed to be reassigned." Margaret tsked at this, and continued. "Still, we function as a nunnery should, and save this old place from desolation, even if it is to be desolation for us."

"Ah, but I know you appreciate the solitude offered here." Sister Margaret's voice resumed its calming tone. "And I think your presence has made us all a bit more cheerful. It's nice having some young blood among us." She looked down at Marna suddenly, appraisingly.

Marna swallowed as quietly as she could.

"But now I think it is time for questions, Marna." Margaret mercifully resumed her circuit of the room, looking away from Marna's troubled face. "When we were made aware of your condition by the will of your mother and father, they insisted that you were pitched into some sort of trouble. Apparently you had been beset upon by some fiendish plot and were suffering physically as a result. Is this true?"

Marna looked about the room as if for an answer. "I suspect that my condition was because of my appetite, Sister Margaret."

Sister Margaret laughed softly at this, and not in a chiding way. "Marna, my dear, I'm afraid that I cannot believe it possible. No, there is truth behind that hunted look of yours. There is a story I should like to hear. Maybe it would be good of me to offer up a story of my own first, if you would listen."

"Of course, Sister Margaret." Marna was relieved by this idea.

"Well then." Margaret cleared her throat with a slight cough and began. "When I was around your age, I lived in a village not far from yours called Bethnel. Do you know it?"

Marna nodded.

"Ah," Margaret continued. "Well when I was a young girl all those years ago, I suffered a terrible tragedy when my mother and father were burnt to death in our family home. I escaped and was cared for at hospital until I was adopted by our village minister and his wife. I lived happily, except for the burden of the minister's wife. She disliked me from the start, as she stood with those in the village who believed that it was I who set fire to my family home. Some called me the devil's child, some called me worse than that. This pressure became so much so that my life ceased to be happy and I found myself under a constant discouragement at my lot."

"So it is with outcasts, I began to live up to the slander that was cast against me. Any chance to get away from the village was fine in my eyes; and so I spent a lot of my time in the fields and beyond. The forests became my friends. As far as the village was concerned the fact that I spent so much time out and about only served to prove my wickedness. Well, I did find happiness in the forest."

Sister Margaret sat down on the stone bench opposite Marna. From there she continued to pause, looking at Marna's face. Marna looked back at Sister Margaret warily. The older woman continued her story, confident in her captive audience.

"Then one day, out in the forest, I met a man quite mad." Sister Margaret's voice dropped in volume a bit, softened slightly at this dramatic turn in her story. "He was as handsome as he was mad, which made his presence even more bizarre to me then. After trying to make sense of him and his advances towards me, I fled. He did not chase me, not then. The next day I left home and sought him out, traveling many miles to the same place he had been. There in the same grove of tree and vine he had been the day before stood the handsome, mad man. I didn't know why I was drawn to that place again, but I certainly was."

Sister Margaret bowed her head slightly, as if remembering untold parts of her story. "At some length, after I had been returning to him every day for many weeks, a mob met me on my return to the village. It was believed by all concerned that my change in appearance was due to dealings with the dark one himself. Indeed, my body had changed in a way most bizarre. I had not given my change any consideration. I felt quite oblivious to much of what was happening those days."

"Well, the minister would not accept me, and he was the most sympathetic of them all. I was put out on the street. The women of the village rallied and chased me past the fields and away. They threatened to burn me as a witch, a harlot of hell. I escaped easily and made my way back to my man of the forest."

"He was there, of course. The two of us would hold congress there in the grove; sometimes I think it would go for days but I can't be sure." Sister Margaret's voice took on a shade of regret. "I can't be sure of any of it. Soon the village had formed a mob once more, and they hunted me down with dogs. They found my grove, and when they did they held me fast and began to set the forest to blaze. I collapsed in my excitement and lost consciousness. I still have not the slightest idea what transpired afterwards, but I awoke days later in a boarding house, many miles from my home village, as if it had all been some bizarre dream. I had been abandoned, and as soon as I was able I was sent to a convent and began my life, more or less, as you see it now."

Sister Margaret looked into Marna's eyes. Marna felt obliged to give some word of condolence.

"That is awful. I hope it does not haunt you terribly." Marna responded.

"Oh, I do not hold grudges to the superstitious nature of my neighbors back at Bethnel. I know how worried I must have made them. But..." Sister Margaret looked away from Marna's face then, "I have waited so long, and I never hoped to find anything that would set me at ease. Now you come to us, Marna, and I can't help but beg you to tell me what you know. Have we... a connection?"

Marna suddenly felt a wave of pity for the woman before her. "I know not. I have not known your suffering. My story is... different."

Sister Margaret stood and began to pace again. "Well, my story does have a bit more, where our similarities may be concerned. You see, I have been attempting an investigation for many years. I have gone against the church on many separate occasions, entering libraries and stores of books in secret. In my travels I have come across many an interesting document. But of all the reading that interested me, the book that gives me the most hope lies there, on the shelf that you so neatly put to order."

Sister Margaret pointed towards the books that Marna had gathered on one shelf. They were the ones that looked as if they had been read recently. Sister Margaret strode to the shelf and pulled a tattered old book that had been bound using blackened leather. She opened the book and thrust it into Marna's hands.

"See there," Sister Margaret said, "A discovery of another age, when men of the cloth were explorers in an extensive fashion. It seems that there dwelt in forests far to the east a demon that fed upon men. The demon was known to the people of that region as Mandragora."

Sister Margaret allowed Marna to pour over the pages. There was an image rendered in ink that was to portray the creature which had several names, or so it seemed. Marna could not read the text as it was in a language foreign to her. The likeness depicted on the page was what struck Marna to her very core. It would have been a strange image indeed, if it had not seemed so familiar to Marna. She said nothing as Sister Margaret continued.

"Apparently they thought it was some sort of mandrake root. I am sure you know well the harmless and simple nature of this vegetation, the mandrake." Sister Margaret continued in earnest. "The book goes on to explain that the demon would take the body of a woman and beguile men into its clutches. You may have heard of similar legends from elsewhere."

Marna turned the page to find a different image staring back at her, one of a man wrapped up in the clutches of a terrible plant. The vines were wrapped about his feet and the ground was red with blood..

"Alraune is the name it was given in another age, by a different people. Still, the account of both are similar. The demon Mandragora seems to run rampant. What neither of the stories provide is any information regarding the people involved; whether they lived or died. " Sister margaret's head bowed.

Marna closed the book and set it aside. "Have you found anything else?" She inquired.

"The book, as with some of these others, is full of accounts regarding various terrors. You can see for yourself. I have no reason not to believe that all of it is true, now that I have seen several of the things spoken of only in whispered legend. I have traveled to many dark places to conduct searches; all in vain. It wasn't until I heard of you, Marna, a girl who was growing unnaturally before the grace of god, that I found hope again."

She sat down next to Marna and folded her hands in her lap. "When I first saw you, I felt something. It was as if I was being spoken to by the voice of my long lost mother. Something was calling to me. I can only assume it was you."

Marna looked into Sister Margaret's eyes. In the light of the candles they shown clear and brilliant. "Marna." Margaret pleaded. "Please tell me."

Marna looked into the distance, as if she was hearing a distant bell. "You have been missed, Sister Margaret. We share the same secret."

Sister Margaret shed a single tear then.

"Did you... change? As I have?" Marna asked. "I still know very little, although I feel my mind has been opened like the breaking of a dam." Marna reached up to wipe the tear from Sister Margaret's face as she said this. Sister Margaret closed her eyes as she was touched, as if it pained her.

"I was transformed, yes." Margaret disclosed, "Yet perhaps not as you have been."

"Show me." Marna instructed simply.

As if bid to disrobe by the voice of god himself, Sister Margaret stood and unfastened her raiment. After a few deft movements, her head covering came off, and a shower of silver hair fell about her shoulders. This simple transformation impressed Marna greatly.

"Sister Margaret," said Marna, awestruck, "you are beautiful!."

Sister Margaret unfastened and opened the robes that had hid her body from the eyes of all others for over twenty years. Her skin was like white marble in the candlelight. Her body was highly muscled, almost beyond femininity. Not at all the body of a woman her age. Sister Margaret was blessed with an impossible magnificence of physique. The robes fell and the golden light struck her body from all sides, accenting the strong and graceful contours.

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