Tremble: Erotic Tales of the Mystical and Sinister

“Lord of the Harvest, make the dance (orgy?) complete / And immortal joy, eternal youth, shall be thy wealth,” he read aloud as undramatically as he could.

“Then it is fatum. You must transcribe the last three stanzas as accurately as possible so the real dance can begin.”

“The real dance, Lady Whistle?”

“The reenactment, Mr. Sizzlehorn. The reenactment.”

As January exhaled its frosty breath, giving way to the slightly more hopeful month of February, Alistair finished the sketching of ten objects: three small bronzes, three plates with erotic scenes painted upon them, one hand mirror, two lamps (the wick emerging from the tip of the phallus), and one Hellenistic herm with the obligatory erection. Each drawing took several days and at the end of each week he visited Lady Whistle’s townhouse to hand his work over to Toby. The valet would then gleefully fill in the blank areas McPhee had insisted upon. The first time he saw Toby sketching in an enormous phallus with dismaying expertise, the archaeologist had protested, shocked

that Lady Whistle should be so flippant regarding the explicit commands of his employer.

“Dr. McPhee was most adamant,” he exclaimed. “He assured me that if the depictions were literal they would never be exhibited at the museum. He was concerned about their impact upon the Christian soul, Lady Whistle.”

The aristocrat merely laughed.

“Does the Christian soul lack the facility for Eros, sir? I think not. And as Eros lives within the body, as does the soul, I would argue that both are God-given and thereby equally deserve celebration.”

“Perhaps. But do you not want the catalogue to be displayed?”

“Naturally. And one day it shall be, in all its full glory, to be looked upon by eyes far less prejudiced and more enlightened than our own. Besides, to allow such omissions is to undermine the intention of the objects themselves.”

“But what shall I say to Dr. McPhee?” Alistair’s heart sank; in his mind’s eye he could already see his diminutive employer imploding with rage.

“Say nothing. I shall tell him I am keeping each completed drawing to be bound in a set, and when he wishes to look upon it I shall have a plethora of excuses to take us into eternity.”

“But that would be a lie, my lady.”

“Not a lie but a strategy. You would do well to learn the craft, Alistair,” she retorted, her black eyes shining. The archaeologist couldn’t help but grow heady at her use of his Christian name.

He had also finished the translation of a second stanza and was working on the third. The second verse sat beneath a scenario in which thirteen participants were arranged in a star formation, fornicating in ways Alistair had never imagined possible. Several times he had to turn the scroll upside down to work out which organ was entering which orifice—always keeping in mind McPhee’s instruction to maintain a scientific perspective at all times.

There were six chimeras of goat and human—three female, three male—and six humans. The thirteenth figure was an enigma. Alistair had studied the bearded youthful figure over and over. He was the only fully clad person in the entire mural and the archaeologist couldn’t work out whether he was victim or victor, priest or god. The figure had a feminine beauty, even bearded, and wore a wreath of vine leaves. He was the pivotal element in each tableau. Alistair could only assume that it was Dionysus himself. Whatever the case, it was clear that the thirteenth figure was an observer of the orgy, not a participant—that was, until the fourth tableau.

One evening Lady Whistle joined him in the study. Demurely dressed in gray jersey, her hair coiled in a fine net, she came armed with tracing paper and a set of fine pencils wrapped in a roll of linen.

“Please excuse my intrusion, Mr. Sizzlehorn. I have an astrological intuition I wish to act upon. I hope I will not disturb you.”

Disturb him? She distracted him to the point of despair, he thought, trying hard not to stare at her ankles or bosom.

“Of course not, my lady,” he replied curtly as she settled herself on the other side of the desk and pulled the drawing of the first tableau toward her.

Alistair watched surreptitiously as she placed the tracing paper over the figures sprawled in a starfish configuration, a tangle of vaginal, oral, and anal stimulation. She traced their outlines then, with a ruler, joined them with straight lines. A set of points began to emerge.

Fascinated, Alistair abandoned all pretense of his own work and watched as she reached up to the bookcase and pulled down a large manual entitled Astrological and Astral Formations of the Northern Skies. She opened it to an entry marked Jupiter in the sign of Sagittarius in the fifth house. It showed an illustration of the placement of the planets joined by a series of lines. Carefully she placed the tracing over it. The orgiastic formation almost exactly matched the placement of the stars. Shaken, Alistair dropped his pen.

“As I thought,” Lady Whistle murmured, “the mural is a depiction of a spring rite. The thirteenth figure is the young Dionysus, Dendrites, a manifestation that translates as tree-youth—to burst into leaf or blossom—a representation of the spring equinox. Now, I wager that if I trace the next three segments of the mural they will move progressively closer to the exact position of the first day of the astrological year.”

Carefully her hand, its long pale fingers grasped around the pencil, sketched in the figures. She had the dispassion of a mathematician, Alistair noted, marveling at the scientific precision she displayed as she bit her lower lip in concentration.

The tracing of the fourth segment proved to be not quite a match for the correct star formation. Alistair looked at the fourth stanza, which he had just finished translating. A hypothesis that had been forming in his subconsciousness suddenly articulated itself.

“There’s a fifth segment missing. I’m sure of it!” he blurted out.

“A fifth section of the mural?” Lady Whistle asked cautiously.

“And with it the fifth stanza. Look carefully…” His excitement caused him to dispense with the etiquette of formal address.

He pointed to the outer edge of the scroll. On close inspection the margin between it and the fourth tableau did seem unnaturally wide. Lady Whistle followed his gesture but did not appear as perturbed by the idea as Alistair imagined she would be.