by Leland Mays
Pride and dignity. To Miss Patricia Appleton, those qualities defined a woman. In the designer clothes she wore, in the proud, aloof look she gave the world, she was the very image of a dignified lady.
Patricia was descended from an old, storied New England family. The current recession, however, had dealt her a cruel blow. Forced to sell her Manhattan penthouse at a loss, she had no choice but to move to Hillcrest, the ancient, decaying family manor in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. Along with her maid Dorothy, she determined to ride out this latest reversal of fortune with, of course, pride and dignity.
The lady had just turned thirty, but that was a well-kept secret. She had briefly tried marriage, to a Saltonstall of Boston even, but found it disagreeable. To Patricia, men were, on the whole, coarse and not very bright. Like bubble gum, they soon lost their flavor. Worst of all, it was impossible for Patricia to feel dignified and ladylike while lying flat on her back with a hot, perspiring man atop her.
So it was that she had become a confirmed bachelorette. On a brisk autumn morning, she and Dorothy arrived at Hillcrest Manor. After the movers had brought in their furniture, the maid then set to work dusting and mopping. Toward the end of the day, Patricia invited a distant cousin for dinner. Dorothy commenced preparing the elegant meal expected by people of Patricia's social class.
The lady herself took a shower and began to dress for dinner. She had just put on a silk slip, trimmed in lace. Quite suddenly Patricia noticed a chilling of the room, a coldness that seemed to seep into her bones. "Oh dear," she murmured, closing a casement window that was slightly open.
She returned to her dresser, touching the ends of her perfectly coiffed auburn hair; then, leaned forward and began to apply her lipstick. Without warning, Patricia's derriere was slapped with such force that she nearly lost her balance. Along with the sharp sound of the smack came stinging hot pain that spread throughout her buttocks.
"Ooh!" she yelped. There could be no question. Someone had hauled back and smacked her bottom.
Patricia whirled around, but was quite alone in the room. She ran to the door and looked down the hallway. Again, no one. She continued on to the head of the stairs, now realizing that there was not the least sound in the house. It was as still as a tomb.
"Dorothy!" she called out.
Her fifty-something maid soon appeared, wearing a black and white uniform which, combined with her pasty skin and salt-and-pepper hair, rendered her entirely without color. "Yes Miss Appleton?" she said, surprised to see her mistress only partially dressed.
"Who else is in this house?" asked Patricia.
"Why, no one, just you and myself."
"Are you certain?"
"Oh, for sure. The movers left an hour ago. It's been so quiet since then; creepy almost."
Only then did Patricia recall that she had been standing before a mirror at the time of the smack. Had anyone approached her and her derriere, she would have seen them. Did I imagine it? thought the woman. No. My bottom even now is tingling and still warm. She also realized that the warmth had spread to her entire midsection, and was somehow as bracing as it was unexpected.
Thoroughly perplexed, Patricia returned to her bedroom. She reached under her slip, grasped her silk panties, and pushed them down to her knees. She then drew up the slip and turned so that her back faced the mirror; then, looked over her shoulder to see what the mirror revealed. She saw it clearly. The rosy pink outline of a hand, mostly on her right buttock, but also extending across her cleavage so that part was on her left buttock as well.
Oh, the nerve! she thought. Someone really did smack my bottom. But who, how, and why? The lady was baffled.
Her cousin Geoff and his wife Andrea, both a decade older than she, soon arrived for dinner. Afterwards, the trio adjourned to the library for cordials. Their faces lit by a warm fire in the fireplace, they engaged in desultory conversation, until the room quickly and without warning became enveloped in cold dank air. All three people began to shiver. "My word," said Andrea, "these old houses are so drafty. I'm practically numb. Patricia, could you be a dear and get us some woolen wraps?"
Geoff rose to stoke the fire as Patricia, with a feeling of apprehension, went to the hall closet and returned with wool wraps for all. As she entered the library, one of the wraps, for no apparent reason, fell to the floor. Patricia bent over to retrieve it.
At once came a loud smack! and with it, burning heat and pain throughout Patricia's derriere; the force of a blow that staggered the lady. She gasped in astonishment.
Geoff and Andrea, standing before the fire, had their backs to her. Both turned, Geoff saying, "What was that noise?"
How does a dignified lady tell her friends that someone has rudely slapped her bottom? Especially when no culprit can be accounted for? She cannot, of course. "I ... I didn't hear anything," stammered Patricia, biting her lip as once more the sensual warmth and pain that was somehow pleasure spread to all parts of her hips.
"But you must have," said Andrea. "It sounded like someone getting a hard smack."
"I heard nothing," replied Patricia.
"Well, isn't that the oddest thing," remarked Andrea. "Could it be the house settling? Some strange acoustic phenomenon?"
"It must have been," Patricia said, hoping the couple would not notice that her face was now red. "There's no other explanation."
The next morning, Patricia drove her Lexus to Boston to visit her oldest living relative, great-aunt Lois Appleton, now well into her ninth decade. The old dame's Georgian style house sat, as might be expected, near the top of Beacon Hill. Patricia patiently endured the necessary small talk before getting around to the topic that had propelled her across the length of the Bay State.
"I've been wondering, Aunt Lois," she began, "if you've ever heard any stories of Hillcrest Manor being, well ... haunted?"
The elderly woman, as wrinkled as a prune, her hair a wispy white, smiled. "Why, I'd be surprised if it isn't. An old pile like that; so many things have happened there. And not all of them pleasant or fit to tell about in mixed company, mind you."
Patricia pursed her lips. "Do you know of any ancestors living there who, shall we say, believed in firm discipline? Especially when it came to their wives or maidservants?"
Aunt Lois cackled with laughter. "Ah, we're descended from Puritans, my dear. So we've had no shortage of those gents. Let's see, there was old Enos Appleton, who, the story goes, was chasing the upstairs maid, a birch rod in his hand, when he tripped and fell down the stairs. His neck snapped like a twig, poor fellow. Back in aught-seven, if memory serves."
"Then there was Thomas Appleton, who built Hillcrest way back in 1720. It's said that one stormy night, he bent his wife Bridget over his knee to give her a sound spanking. On the thirteenth whack, according to legend, his heart seized up and the man fell dead, right there on a fine Persian rug. He was just getting warmed up. They had to pry the hairbrush from his cold dead hand."
Patricia shortly returned to Hillcrest. Before leaving Boston, however, she visited an antiquities store, acting entirely on a hunch. She arrived home and went to her bedroom to change. As soon as she had doffed her outer garments, there came again that eerie cold that chilled the room and left Patricia with an inexplicable sense of loneliness. Then came a fearsome smack on her buttocks. Her body exploded with that singular pain that once more unleashed an undercurrent of passion.
Standing shivering in her bra and panties, the lady cried, "Who are you? You cannot do this to me - I'm Patricia Appleton! I order you to stop!"
The empty room offered no reply. It remained as silent as a graveyard at midnight. As quickly as it came, the cold dissipated. Later that night, before going to bed, Patricia laid her antiquities store purchases out on her desk: parchment paper, an inkwell, and a quill pen. She took the pen and wrote her message again:
Who are you? Why are you spanking me?
The lady retired early, drifting in and out of sleep. She heard the distant church bell at Savoy town toll eleven; then, midnight. Suddenly she felt that dreadful cold permeate the room. Her heart pounding, Patricia rose up slightly from her pillow. She could see her breath in the pale moonlight. When she looked to her desk, the quill pen was no longer in its inkwell. Rather, it was moving back and forth across the paper. Held by an unseen hand, the pen was recording a message from beyond the grave.
The woman stared at the pen, transfixed with terror. Shortly, the pen stopped and fell to the desk. Still she gazed at it. What is written there? she wondered. I must know. Yet no force on earth could thrust her out of her warm sanctuary, to cross the freezing room and read the words of a specter. Trembling uncontrollably, she lay back and closed her eyes.
The room became warm again. Mustering her self-control, Patricia was surprised to feel a sense of relief. Something has happened that needed to happen, she thought. Soon she drifted off to sleep.
The first rays of the morning sun struck the parchment as Patricia, having gotten up and drawn her robe tightly around here, at last gazed at it. In a faint, archaic script could be seen the message:
Thou art a fine plump lass, Patricia Appleton, with great brown eyes and a great round rump. Ay, but thy heart is as cold as a tombstone in winter. Would that I could warm thy heart, but I cannot. But by the gods I can warm thy rump, and verily, I am fain to do so!
This is how old Thomas Appleton himself would write, she thought. Is his spirit still here after all this time? What is he trying to tell me? The woman turned and looked thoughtfully out over the estate and beyond. To a forest and pastures and farmhouses; and finally, to the distant town of Savoy. The longer Patricia gazed at the scene, the more she saw.
Within weeks it became the talk of the county. Patricia Appleton, of all people, suddenly visiting the retirement homes; talking to, and comforting, total strangers. Not only that, she raised money to buy new band uniforms for the middle school. And did you know she helped serve the free Thanksgiving dinner to the area's needy? She even smiles at us common townsfolk. What could make such a high-toned duchess like her behave this way?
And she's been seen in the company of the local gentlemen. Her favorite is that architect, Richard Kane, even though the man has a rather sinister reputation, they said. He had earned that reputation by his behavior with the women he dated, especially Elise, owner of the local florist shop. Everyone in town knew of the fierce arguments between the two. And how on some days, Elise would sit in a chair quite gingerly, making vague allusion to how their latest spat had been resolved.
Yet Patricia was drawn to the man's steel blue eyes and firm jaw. There was about him an air of authority. Patricia sensed that he set high standards for any woman in his life, and would be displeased if they were not met. Might, in fact, impose his will on her if necessary.
On a snowy evening just before Christmas, Patricia invited Richard to Hillcrest for dinner. Later, as with her cousin, they retired to the library, content to spend a quiet evening together.
They were standing before a mullioned window, watching the snow gently fall. Richard had one arm around her waist. Patricia sighed contentedly, thinking how happy she had become; relieved that the spectral lord of Hillcrest had ceased to spank her after the message on the parchment. No sooner had this thought crossed her mind when suddenly the room began to grow chilly.
"Odd," remarked Richard, "this room feels like an icebox."
Knowing all too well what it meant, Patricia desperately embraced Richard, drawing her face to within inches of his own. "Oh Richard," she cried, "I want you ..." Startled by her embrace, Richard interrupted, saying. "Yes, darling, and I want you too!"
"No! I need you ..."
"Yes?"
"I need you to give me a good spanking!"
"I've been hoping you'd ..." the man suddenly stopped; then, blinked in abject surprise. "What?"
"You heard me."
"But ... but why?"
"Because if you don't, someone else will!" Patricia cried, her eyes bright and shimmering.
Richard looked at her, open-mouthed. "What on earth are you talking about?"
"It's a long story," Patricia cried, "but listen to me! I've been happy these past months. I've learned how satisfying it is to be a member of the community; to show kindness to others. Someone, I can't say who, used ... well, strong discipline to teach me this lesson." Her eyes gleaming, she went on, "And some part of me liked it, Richard! Welcomed it!"
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