Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2023 18:35:07 -0500
From: Jacob Schwann <cobschwann@gmail.com>
Subject: PEN&COB #2 bisexual incest

PEN&COB #2     Welcome! This revision of earlier Nifty bisexual incest et
al. submissions is in the manner of Victorian erotica, being soft and
slow as well as hard and fast.
Herein are recounted the amorous misadventures of young Cobby, his sister
Penny, and their family and friends.
All communications read; and in the main answered
Jacob Cygnet Schwann III (JCS)
cobschwann@gmail.com
Support Nifty!
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WELCOME  TO   PEN & COB   PART ONE:  `F~O~R~E~P~L~A~Y'   -    LETTERS
#2 - #11,   THE FIRST OF THREE AROUSING SELECTIONS OF CYGNET-SCHWANN
FAMILY MISSIVES WHICH REFLECT THE YOUTHS' INITIAL EVER-MOUNTING INTEREST
IN PROCREATIVE FUNCTIONS
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Letter #2: The Parsonage
Epistler: Jacob Cygnet Schwann
Date: November, 1937
Place: The Parsonage beyond Shallow Lake, Grey County
Jacob now age 17, and Cousin Steven age 24, encounter the past at the
Parsonage.

Dear Uncle Doctor-

"The touch and feel of all the dirty little details"...,

...as requested, I start the tale of our youthful `dirty little details'
in this Letter #2. Let us begin with an event as recent as the autumn of
1937. Then we can return by way of other letters to the 1920's and early
1930's, and even before that.
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Letter #2:  The Parsonage     Chapter I

"VROOOM vrooom! Brmmm brmmm...!"

...Cousin Steven laughed like a banshee, mimicking the sounds of the great
'31 Peerless Custom Eight. He was at the wheel of his father's long,
silver-grey motorcar. We sped past decaying old farms, greasy
filling-stations, rundown guest-homes, and crumbling bungalows. Outworn
autos dawdled along the Garafraxa Road.

Our revenant adventure began that sterling late fall day. Crisp, cool,
clear - even as portentous clouds gathered in the northwest. We were on a
toot, Steven and I. A toot to explore the haunted `Parsonage'. My old
family home was some distance from Owen Sound, in the north of Grey
County. We had just passed the low hills above Hepworth Creek, beyond the
sawmill at Shallow Lake. Nestling close beside him in the front seat, I
laughed like a popinjay. I squawked and looked out the side and front and
back windows to gaze at sights, both new and recalled from the past.

"Steven, it looks exactly as I remember. And also completely,
absolutely, entirely, totally new."

"Well, my `dearest' Jacob, after all, your own family was `driven
out' by the Vigilantes when you were `but a lad'." Steven had a
manner of emphasizing his speech as if he were declaiming on-stage,
forever in the limelight. "There have been `changes' in this
countryside.  And - In -- `You'!  I may most verily `attest' to
that!"

He gave me a wink and a flick of his classic, long-coiffed brown hair. I
nodded. He was right. We both knew it was so. I looked over my shoulder
at the back seat in the roomy passenger compartment of the Peerless. I
inhaled that satisfying aroma of waxed leather and napped cloth. There on
the headliner, the fabric-lined ceiling over the broad back seat, hung
the shiny metal speculum-mirror. That had reflected Steven's "First
Penetration of The Boy" - which was me at age thirteen -- almost five
years earlier. And I did remember. My body remembered. My skin thrilled
and my dick lifted and my ass puckered. I recalled every instant of
Steven's and my earliest time together back there, back then. [Letters
#22, 23  ]

On that long-ago night, the battery courtesy lights had been aglow. The
small flower brackets, now empty, had been redolent with the heady
fragrance of tiny lilly-of-the-valley. Ahh...! Steven had undressed me bit
by bit. He had settled me down onto my back on the rear seat. He had
leaned over me. He had stroked my boney ribs down to my naked hips.
Steven had brushed the backs of my thighs.

"I do love to run my `man hands' along a `princely lad," he had
sighed in triumph. "Oh Jacob, I do luxuriate in the feel of the `First
Penetration of a Young Boy'."

Wide-eyed, I had stared up at that metal mirror. I had watched the thews
and sinews of Steven's sculpted back stretching and tensing and leaning
to cover skinny me. Agape, I had mouthed a silent, `Oh, Yes-s-s...,'
closing my eyes in anticipation....  I had opened myself to feel every
inch of him sliding in. The strong, warm rod spreading, expanding,
filling me. My eyeballs had about popped out of their sockets...

..."AAHHH...!"

Now on this day, more than four years later, I snuggled close against my
cousin. He looked good and felt good and --sniff!- smelled good. My hand
stroked the shirt sleeve over his lean arm and strong, slender shoulder.
He was a natural athlete, musician, actor and gay deceiver. For sure we
were `kissing cousins' from birth. But I became Steven's `Little
Brother' and he my `Big Brother' at our clan's summertime Cainan Lake
Camp when I had turned eleven. And there we began our adventure from
being sporting "Special Friends" to ideal "Heavenly Lovers". [Letters
#8, 9, 12, 22, 23, 41 ]
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Letter #2:  Chapter II

For Steven and I were close...,

...even kissing-cousins. We were of the extended families of the Cainan
Faith Community. We recalled those legends of unrighteousness and incest
which led to the banishment of the Biblical Cain and Canaan from their
homelands so long ago.
{~CAIN: "Fugitive and vagabond shalt thou be in the earth." [Beginnings:
4:12]  God cursed the fratricidal wanderer, having been the first
incestuous byblow by brother Adam out of sister Eve.
~CANAAN: "Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be."
[Beginnings 9:25]  After the Ark, the drunken vintner Noah sodomized his
young grandson Canaan - son by Ham out of their granddam Neemah - then
cursed the lad to wander forever.}

Within the Cainan Faith Community, I was of the Cygnet Schwann clan,
Steven was of the Drake lineage. Our outcast bands of inbred relatives
had long ago been driven off like gypsy tinkers and traders. We had fled
our origins by Red Lake in Newfoundland on to the Green Mountains and
then across the Niagara Escarpment. Our people had given up the old ways
of `Holy-Incest' or `Eidolon-Incest' and the sequent Occult Sciences
and Black Arts. That is, at least as far as the authorities were
concerned. Our tribe became but another large group of deviant
undesirables. Our forebears attempted to live below the notice of such
`protectors' of society as the vicious Black Coat Incest Vigilantes.

"Whoa.... Steven, head to the right here."

He swerved the big car off the macadam highway from Owen Sound. We
jounced onto the old dirt shunpike away from the town of Shallow Lake. I
fell against Steven with glee. Abandoned pasture land curved upwards on
either side of us. The threatened overcast began to dominate the late
Indian Summer sky.

"And why, my `dear' boy," asked Steven, "are you and I making this
trip `in truth'? I know that your `chick is pecking at the shell' and
will soon hatch. I look forward to your telling me, when you can."

Steven was right. I was traveling to my old family homestead to look for
an answer. My problem was that I did not yet know my own question. It had
something to do with learning more of the spectral lore of our
forefathers. To be specific, the last wishes of my long dead Grandfather
Josiah. As a lad of fourteen, Josiah had spawned my father upon his own
younger sister, Magdalena. And, nine months later he was strung up and
burned at the Rendering Tree near Mount Forest for the crime of incest.
[Letter #6  ]

To deflect Steven's inquiries, I first stroked his gorgeous, wind-blown
hair. My fingers felt of his long neck. Then across his sturdy shoulders
and within his open collar. His blousy roseate shirt lay open on the
center of his chest and showed a descending sliver of skin. There sported
a fine chain suspending a princely pear-shaped pearl. This tapped onto
the erotic potential of his male décolletage to reveal curves - the lines
of crisp, precise pectorals.

He gave an approving nod. He was, by the way, a most handsome young man.
He had fine dark eyes, brown hair, and a slender, well-knit, thewy
figure, taller than the average. Steven had those dark, deep-set eyes,
which were devastating in their sincerity. Every time he cast a sidelong
glimpse my way, all the blood in my veins began to glow. I felt him dive
deep into my heart. And give a lift to my groin.

"Ah, young Jacob," Steven sighed, "your hand sets me `on fire';
sweeter, softer than any possible `woman's kiss'...

"... - excepting those of `our two little sisters' ', most assuredly!"
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Letter #2:  Chapter III

We drove further...,

...into that lonesome and curious country. Jagged ridges walled off tiny
hollows. This made for places like many others in Grey County -- remote,
clannish, and foreboding. The fall foliage had faded, and the forest
trees were all one dark, dusky drear. The sedge below them caught the
last of the slanting sunbeams. We progressed along another half-mile
through a muddy crossroads.

Simple wood-framed buildings were built on old fieldstone foundations set
along the sides of the rutted track. We turned to look at the few locals
spying on our passage. A bit out of the way there was a beat-up,
1920's-something one-ton pickup, a grimy coal-black Chevy with one
remaining headlight. Three scrawny, squinty-eyed rustics sat scrunched in
the front seat. One was wrapped in a shiny, black, oil-cloth cloak as
they passed a jug back and forth. They turned their scowling eyes in a
slow tracking of us as we passed.

"Hmm..., harmless enough," grunted Steven.

"Oh...," I burst out, "if only you knew as much about these country
folk as I do. If you'd been brought up with them, listened to their
stories and heard their beliefs, you wouldn't be so haughty about things
that aren't, well, quite-right things."

"Let us not ask these `hill-town' folks for directions," Steven
sighed. "Here one indeed does feels confronted by `forbidden things'
with which it would be better to have `nothing' to do."

Steven accelerated until we were well beyond that by-road, then we
resumed our dawdling. I pressed my nose into the side of his neck and
inhaled his slight scent of dewy musk. As he drove, he felt my hand steal
over his body. I began the operational challenge of undoing the buttons
of his trousers, one at a time.

"Ah...," he sighed. " `And Priapus, `re-awakened', has lifted his
head'."

Earlier, we had read to each other from the great erotic works of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And our prattle tended to replicate
those arch tones. Steven kept his left hand on the steering wheel. With
his right he insisted on returning my favors in the gentlest way.

"Aw Steven," I sighed, "how did you ever notice me? I'm just a scraggy
kid with bonfire-red hair, scrawny neck, bony shoulders, narrow chest,
skinny belly, thin thighs.... How am I so lucky as to be with you now? Why
me?"

" `Child', you say? Ha! Even when you had just turned eleven, at Camp
Cainan when we met, you were strikingly boy-handsome, like a favorite of
the gods -- a Ganymede to Zeus. A lively figure, you were pretty and
forthright in a not-yet-manly way. And now six years later, ah, my long,
lean, ever so perfect `Sexy-Slim'....  You persist in seeing yourself as
though you have come but `half-formed' out of that `shell' of yours.
I've heard you speak of yourself as a `fledgling', `scrawny',
`incomplete', only a `puerile person'. When in fact, my dear Jacob,
you are muscled like a young Native. You have the `perfect form' of an
aspirant Olympic sprinter, a budding matador, a principal dancer, a
beloved ἐρώμενος - er�"menos  of perfection. You might even be courted by
dolphins! Now that is not the only reason why I love you. But, my dear, I
cannot tell a lie. I do severely love you for your `bodily perfection'
- your biteable buttocks, your burgeoning body, your slim stiletto-like
manhood. Mmm..., yum! Would that you could see it. And, I must say, if you
are nothing but a callow `Child' of seventeen, then I myself must be a
doddery `Old Man'...,

..."aadvancing into twenty-four years of age."
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Letter #2:  Chapter IV

I loved Steven....

...He had versatility, steadiness, and that kind of arrogance which,
arising from excellence, adds up to charisma. Now his hand was at my hot
groin. Something was bent and clasped and grasped which made me faint
with lusty hope. He encouraged me to attend to his own crotch.

"Ah my boy, you're nearing `my true buck-home'."

How I wished I could pretend that I was coming to my own `true home'.
But the Shallow Lake Parsonage `home' we were heading toward had
banished my family years before. My thoughts sank lower than any
fantasies of some peaceful and sunlit countryside. My eye saw into the
gloomy and treacherous land of low shrubs, swampy bogs, broken by the
serrated and, to me, sinister hills.

At my direction, Steven swung the Peerless hard left onto a rutted road
as it emerged from a wooded hillside. This was our route toward the
Parsonage. Was that a vehicle some distance behind us? We curved upward
through a steep dirt lane potholed by decades of farm wagons. The
oppressive high banks on either side were ugly with heavy, dreary,
dripping moss and drooping, dying ferns. It was as though they were
calling forth a dark, dank night. I must have said something out loud,
for Steven corrected me in his playful, overdramatic voice.

"Ah, but I believe, `my dear' Jacob, that any `official' tourist
guidebook of this area, if it existed, would strive to more `cheerfully
and elegantly' describe this `foliage' rather as `bronzing bracken'
and `mottled bramble', gleaming in the light of the `setting sun'."

Steven's mock-theatricality always made me hoot. We laughed at other
things I cannot remember. We cackled so hard that Steven convulsed on a
chuckle. He came near driving the great car into a ditch.

"Easy to do, anyhow," I teased, "given that we take up most of the
rutted byway with this eight-cylinder behemoth."

Something set us off on new gales of giggles. Steven about doubled over
as he slammed one foot on the brake and with the other searched for the
clutch. Our peerless Peerless four-door sedan stalled to a dead stop,
smack in the middle of the empty country road. For whatever reason, this
sent us both into gales of air-hungering laughter. That was compounded by
my snuggling closer to Steven, sniffing his sweet sweat.

With one arm about his shoulder, I engaged my other hand in extensive
explorative `crotch surgery'. That is, performing palpation,
manipulation, and dissection-- in the sense of undoing the buttons -- on
the fly of his pants. I made much headway within the fabric caverns of
his slacks. It was obvious that I had aroused and enticed the one-eyed
Minotaur monster from within this crural labyrinth. The hooded head,
smelling salty and sweet, peeked glistening forth into the light. The
Beast commenced to shed its preputial helmet and to shimmer in the
solitary setting sunbeam which shot into the front seat of the car.

"My dear Jacob," Steven queried, "how may we proceed with my
`prior-parts' so appallingly `exposed'?"

Steven answered his own question by firing up our luxurious four-wheeled
beast. He drove perhaps twenty yards to a farm lane leading onto a
meadow. It had been stripped of its second cutting of hay. Amidst our
cheers and laughter, he humped the car at speed over the bounding
terrain. It came to rest at the side of the field. We were behind some
fading trees, more or less out of sight from any eyes that might pry from
the roadway. In a moment of silence we inhaled the fresh, grassy scent.
Our gazes took in the peaceful beauty of the mown hayfield, the
encircling gilded foliage, and the lowering sky overhead. The setting sun
advanced upon the horizon, bestowing all creation with the beauty...,

...of an alpenglow afternoon.
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Letter #2:  Chapter V

I locked eyes with Steven....

...In an instant the lust in his gaze mirrored mine. A belt was released.
A shirt unbuttoned and tugged loose. His belly and chest were of classic
Greek gymnastic perfection, and demanded to be explored. He stretched
back against the driver's seat, opening his lap and the unwrapped
treasure that sported within. I pressed my lips on his flexing breast,
arms, legs, thighs. I felt his crisp pubic curls on my cheeks and neck.
He offered his stiff young man-cock to me.

"For you, Little Brother," he sighed.

I grinned. I reached for the pulsing erection. Steven clasped the curls
of my frowsy red head in his hands. I felt the shivers going through his
body. His nerves were on edge. I gave Steven a brief glance, then lowered
my head. I lapped the clear, gluey pungence from the crown of his cock,
pursing my lips upon it. This electrified Steven, he could not keep
quiet. I felt shivers go through his body. My head bobbed over Steven's
erection. Then the whole column was within my mouth.  Steven sidled his
hand between us and released my thin cob from my trousers.

"Ah, your `Sexy-Slim'. Such a nice slender `boy-bone'," he
announced between gasps.

The slurping noises I made while drooling over Steven's cock mingled
with his cries and moans of pleasure. I sucked him. I nibbled, even bit
him.

Steven begged a most plaintive query, "And will `he' suck `his'
balls too?"

Amidst my ministrations, I glanced up at Steven. Not losing a beat on my
sucking, and using my free hand, I indicated that Steven should raise
himself up. This was so I might better draw on his enticing ball-sack. He
pushed off with his feet. He hoisted himself high in the driver's seat.
My mouth drooling, I let go of his `tall-one'. His saliva-shiny
erection slapped upon his tight, film-star tummy. He pushed against the
seat back by almost standing on tiptoe. His pants dropped down to
midthigh. My nose ground its way along the scrotal raphe and crura to
inhale the heady man odor. I began to lick his tight scrotum with its
flourish of fine wavy hair. I savored the pungent, waxy, taste of groin
goodness.

"Oh..., yes...," Steven groaned.

I maneuvered with care to take Steven's bag into my mouth. I took first
one, and then the other tender orb to suck on. All the while I hummed the
wordless melody of Bach's "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God", a trick I
had learned from a dead relative's letter. [Letter #7  ] My breath's
droning, organ-like vibrations, tremolo and tuba, gave rise to Steven's
ever-increasing groans. I released his balls. A teardrop of clear fluid
oozed from the tiny slit in his cockhead. I licked the tart, slick
emollient. Steven reeled with sensory overload. He rocked his hips back
and forth. He let out a loud moan as my mouth again glided over his cock.

"Ah-h-h, Great Cainan...!"  chirped Steven. "Great Mother! Oh, the
earth shakes! Ah, Jacob my love, that feels amazing. We should really get
this on film. You've got to come to Toronto and do this on the movie
set. But no! No! No - then we'd get arrested, imprisoned, and deported
or worse. So..., right here, right now - our `discretion' is indeed
`the better part of valor'."

Steven grasped my head as though to try and make me stop. Yet his phallus
lurched in my mouth. I pressed it with my lips, my cheeks, and my tongue.
My movements were more and more rapid. Of a sudden he gasped aloud. He
stood on his toes, back up against the seat.

"Great Mother, Cobby. Aw, Jacob.... Cousin.... Sexy-Slim.... Oh.... Little
brother....

...I'm so gonna blow...."
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Letter #2:  Chapter VI

I kept my eyes...,

...on the anguish and elation and beauty reflected in Steven's face. His
were the yells of a maniac now. He gripped my head in his fists, and
jerked like a terrier on a leash.

He groaned.  "Enough! Stop! Enough!"

A thrill passed over him. He writhed. Jets of warm, acrid fluid filled my
mouth. He convulsed.

"Stop....  Stop...," he shouted, shutting his eyes and panting.

I struggled to contain the sudden massive ejaculations of the youth's
bountiful, bitter-sweet cum. It spurted into my mouth faster than I could
swallow it down. Almost as loud were my unexpected
regurging-gagging-retching coughs. Tears flooded my eyes while streams of
Steven's creamy cum trailed from the corners of my mouth. I worked to
gulp down the river of semen pouring forth from my lover's cock.

He clasped me with his arms. My cousin was spent. In a near exhausted
state, he sagged back onto the front seat. He panted for air in big
gulps. I let the wilting cock slip from my battered lips. I swiped my
tongue inside my mouth to savor the remaining cum. We shared a
tongue-stabbing kiss. Then I sat back on the seat to gaze at my stunned
lover. He stared back at me.

"Jacob...," Cousin Steven sighed all unawares. "You are amazing. I..., I
love you."

I grinned and asked, "So then, did I do okay? Is that what you wanted?"
I dabbed his offered handkerchief to his crotch and my chin. "Whew,
Steven! You never made that much before. I almost drowned in the stuff."

Steven blushed and grinned a wide smile. He nodded his head. With one
hand he played with me. He drew my foreskin back and forth like a second
skin about my glans. A finger began to caress my scrotum. I arched my
butt forward and then his hand slid further under my bum. As he probed,
he sought my secret center. His finger felt, and found, and slipped into
my hole. The yearning thrill I felt grew more intense - a craving so
insatiable that it changed to pain. I whimpered. My heart pounded: the
mysterious yearning, then ... ahh!... the recurring, thrilling, orgiastic
terror.

An abundant ejaculation rose slow and painful through me, again and
again. My body staggered; my mind reeled with the recurring remembrance.
Lost - sinking in the ecstatic psychal swamp; tropical, moist, wet. Arms
and legs thrashing in thick gelatinous slime, fusty, fetid. Gasping,
gulping. Amidst the profuse discharge, my mind's eye was taken by the
familiar, terrifying image of the broken, burned, bony Death's-Head. As
always, the skull's sulfurous, blackened cranium and mandible bore the
live, pale face of that beautiful teener boy, beseeching me with dark
ox-eyes. Shaken, I sobbed. And I cried out in joy. Such a peak orgasm for
me. My own private, spectral, death-delight, as from earliest intense
phantasmal times. And what ejaculations since! As always, I was faint
with harrowing horror and ecstatic pleasure. I was beat. A lifeless mass,
I fell upon my cousin Steven.

I stammered, "Ste-Ste-Steven, look! Look at all you have brought forth
from me."

My precipitous prick had popped. My flowing cum gave me a sodden lap. So
much. Steven drew me to him. He held me. I felt his heart in his chest
beating against mine. Our nerves relaxed. We kissed deep. And as always I
said nothing of my ejaculatory hallucination event -- my eidolon event.
We fell back, exhausted, watching the soft gloaming sky illumine the
threatening clouds. A ragged line of geese passed overhead, silhouetted
against the background of darkening grey, heading south and west toward
the light. This was another happiest day of my life with Steven.

And.... Well, we were young. So, in two shakes of a lamb's tail we were
laughing and driving the big Peerless Custom Eight back onto the road and
on our way. Things to do; places to go.

"Whee!  What a day!  Let's be off."

I glanced back -- Wha...? - grimy black truck? - beneath trees? - behind
brush? -- saw us? Not all that thrives in shadow is bad, I hoped. Still,
much that hides in darkness does so to keep its evil hidden from all
eyes....
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     reviewed to VII  1:28pm  12-4-23

Letter #2:  Chapter VII

Rising now...,

...we passed over a narrow, stone bridge and skirted a lazy stream which
flowed down amid grey boulders. I knew that stream. The road wound up the
valley dense with low oaks and maples and pines. We drove through drifts
of fresh fallen leaves. Fall was upon us. A tinge of melancholy lay upon
this countryside. And on me. I had begged Steven to bring me back here to
my origins, to Grey County and Shallow Lake. I wanted to explore my own
stock and bloodline. We were searching for the old Parsonage, my
childhood home. I wanted the answer.

The road in front of us followed the stream. The slanting rays of a low
setting sun turned the water into a thread of gold among the abandoned
fields and tangled woodlands. It grew bleaker and wilder. It was all
uncertain, promising a dismal and dark night, cold and cheerless.

"Aha," Steven sighed. "In such a plain as this, one might find the
`heinous' towns of Sodom and Gomorrah -- `alluring, appalling, and
weird'."

Of a sudden, we looked down into a hazy, cuplike depression patched with
stunted oaks and firs. They had been twisted and bent by the fury of
winter storms. Steven pointed: There! A ruined manor house - the
Parsonage! Like a demon dream rivaling reality, the Victorian tower rose
against the misty forested hills, holding darkness within. It had stood
so for perhaps a hundred years and might stand for a hundred more.

Steven muttered a mysterious murmur, "Ah, `Der Wanderer über dem
Nebelmeer'."

We drove beside crumbling stone walls covered with ivy and briars. Thick
brush lined the road and a canopy of leaves formed a sort of cocoon
overhead. Word was, that if you stumbled across any local hill-people in
these woods - they were up to no good. It was the kind of place one did
not go without pistol and knife -- although we had neither. The track
itself was not easy to find. It lay off the narrow, winding stretch of
dirt road that almost seemed to make an abrupt end at a grassy clearing.
Then, overgrown by the thorny wild rose bushes -- `Rosa acicularis',
their pink aromatic blossoms shed weeks earlier - the lane was before us.

Steven turned and eased the great automobile amid masses of dead leaves.
Old pines shot their branches in a somber tunnel over our heads. A huge
oak had fallen and now blocked the drive. Steven and I got out of the
car. He took my arm. It was as if I were walking in a trance, without
knowing where my steps were taking me. There to our right, among the
trees and brushwood, huddled the decayed remains of the burned-out stone
chapel. This was left a crippled ruin of grey rock and bared ribs of
rafters. It had once been a secret sharing place for me and my younger
sister Penelope. A place for touching and exploring, all so forbidden and
all so long ago. Steven and I looked up the long, dark drive. The
Parsonage glimmered like a ghost in the moonlight at the far end.

"~Ooo~ooo~ooO~...," Steven moaned an eerie, laughing warble.  "Ah,
`departed spirits'! Most certainly a `haunted house', now in its
faded glory. How it skulks at the end of the drive, a veritable essay in
Victorian Gothic at its worst. Yet surely this was once a model of
`comfort and hospitality' when it cradled and sheltered members of our
families. Now, of course, this place must `swarm' with ghosts.
`Ghosts!' 'GHOSTS!' "  he giggled. "And I shall be most
`disenchanted'...,

..."if we do not grapple with ghoulish ghosts."
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Letter #2;  Chapter VIII

Steven held my hand....

...We stumbled up the path toward the manse.

" `Hark unto me', young Jacob," Steven spoke in grave, dramatic
tones. "For here before the `great house' lies this low, granite,
`stone marker'. Do observe! Carvings from the most ancient of days...:
`The Oblong and The Oval'. Hmm.... Closer inspection reveals these to be
`The Phallus and The Vulva', memorializing representations of our
interbred family's `Male -- Female Genitalia' and carved with
`characteristic candor' as talismans of our enseamed clans'
`endogamous reproductive strengths'."

Yet Steven and I were too afraid, for the moment, to venture into the
great house. There was something grim and weird about the dead silence
that reigned in the dusk. And something so depressing about the
loneliness and desperation of the place. We gazed at the tall, narrow,
red, stained-glass casements about the ground level. Above, on the upper
floors, every window was secured and shuttered and bolted tight against
the outside world. Every single one.

In the gloaming we lit our lights -- his lantern and my candle. Our
muscles were tense and ready for instant retreat. We crept ever-so-slow
with quickened pulses, talking in whispers, ears alert to catch the
slightest sound. We tiptoed up the broken steps of the porch and took a
trembling peep. The wind scattered rustling leaves and paper through a
broken window gap. All was dim and somber in the subdued light of lamp
and taper. Past the massive half-hinged front door, long shadows trailed
down the walls. Everywhere hung ragged and abandoned cobwebs.

"Ah, Jacob," rumbled Steven with mock courage, "what a `privilege'
to be in this `exploratory party' with you. For generations our own
'extended' Cygnet and Schwann and Drake families had called this their
`home'. In these rooms they entertained other of our relatives, who
surely always found the `latch string' out and a `welcome' offered.
`Welcome'? I must say that today those `shadows' in the gloom take on
evil looking ghostly forms. Yet surely those are but `accidents' of the
drafts and flames; no doubt only the `shifting effects' of our own
perceptions. Are they not?"

In a bit, familiarity modified our fears. We gave the place a critical
and interested examination. The rooms appeared large, lofty, and raftered
with great beams of age-darkened oak. There were broken tables, chairs,
windows, lamps, peeling wallpaper, gaps in the floorboards, holes in the
walls. The remains of a chandelier dripped with broken strings of
crystals. The huge old-fashioned fireplace sat behind tall, heavy,
cast-iron `fire-dogs'. On the stone hearth there were new ashes. Yellow
newspapers and rusty tin cans were scattered over the wide floor boards.
Steven noted that tramps as well as lovers stayed here.

"Jacob, my boy," Steven sighed in a stage whisper. "The `impalpable'
ashes of your own boyhood `float' in the very air here like microscopic
`animus-motes'."

We rather admired our own boldness -- and wondered at it too.

"Shouldn't we stay together?", I asked.

"Rubbish. You explore on this floor with the candle and I'll go up the
stairs with the lantern. And if I need you -- I'll scream."

I stood alone in the ruins of our old parlor, with the rats squeaking and
the scritch of tree branches scraping at the mullioned windows. Each was
fitted from top to bottom with deep-red panes. I watched the remaining
stained-glass catch and rekindle my candle flame. The red light stripped
everything inside the room of color, just as evening does. There seemed
no shades but the black and the red. A bit woozy, I stared down at the
intricate dimensional parquet patterns of the oak floor boards. I grew
dizzy, lightheaded, feeling faint. My eyes drifted closed...,

...only to snap open.
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Letter #2:  Chapter IX

I could see....

...I did see in the wavering light. I gazed up the ruinous grand
staircase. With a hand at the banister, I placed a foot on the lowest
step. That was something like cutting off any retreat. Yet a dare grew in
my mind. Of course, there was but one result - to make the ascent.
Half-way-up, at the turn of the great stairway, the wall of the landing
showed a pale patch. That was where the family `Grandfather Josiah Wall
Clock' had once chimed the hours. Ah, our Grandfather Josiah -- long ago
done-in at the Rendering Tree for incesting his sister.

...On the second floor I held the flickering taper-light before me. The
house abounded in nooks and corners with closets and passages. As I went
down the hall, there were signs of moldering decay everywhere. Struggling
to breathe, I advanced to the largest closed casement at the very front
of the house. I tore open the shutters and threw up the sash to gaze
about. Clammy night air seeped in the wide open window with the
glimmering moonlight.

...Then by candle-flame I inspected every room. I searched for hours,
shutting each door, every door -- all the doors - as I passed. Shut
tight! To shut out the past, I supposed. I continued to the very top
floor, the third floor. There was that remembered room, the Nursery -- of
cradles and hobby horses and brother-sister bundle-beds. Where Penny,
barely nine, would return distracted after `father-time'. And I, just
ten, reeled from `mother-time'. This empty room had promised me mystery
- but the mystery was a fraud. There was nothing there. I secured the
door, fastening it shut-tight, I climbed up to the empty attic, pulling
doors to, slamming doors behind me.

...Then, just as I had done as a child, I turned and leaned over the
handrail. I looked far down the stairwell into the depths of the manse
below.

...Wait!

...There on the third floor. That room, the old nursery. I stood stiff,
holding my breath, pondering. I was convinced that I had closed the door.
I was certain. Without question, I had closed it. It had been closed when
I left it. It was not closed now. But wide open. Could I have not
noticed? What the...?

...Was that the sound of glass smashing? The scrape of furniture moving?
Were those whispered words? Crying? Wailing? Laughing?

...Was it there? Here? Now?

...Holding my candle before me, I descended back down to the third floor.
I roamed - slow, wary, restless. Whatever my prey was, I would find it.
To my eyes the candle shed wavery shadows onto the walls like tall,
swampy grass. The flickering light revealed skeletal marsh trees, barren;
with dark fenny pools immersing the floor. The house seemed to be the
very kelpy jungle mire of my prey. It was here! Like a great sly jungle
cat, my fierce desire was to intercept and meet it.

...Now I stood in the wide-open doorway. The nursery.  It was empty,
dirty, strewn, ravaged, blighted. Waiting. I was intent. I felt something
deeper, too, a chill wedge of horror driving my raw and sensitive mind.
Some inexplicable `other' was there in the night -- a terrible
something else. It hovered in the space like a choking cloud, and burned
inside. Ah! There! Some body! It was here. HE! He was here.

...I had brought the beast forth from the lair. It was not me, not me,
not me. A hulking, skeletal form, rotten, upright. This was Death. I knew
it. I could feel the crumble of grave soil beneath its scraping fingers;
the weight of dark, moist earth in its mouth and eyes. Yet lithe and
nimble bodied as well. I thrust the candle in its face. The white skull
glistened where it was not charred by fire. While at the same time, a
beardless face, young, strong, handsome, ox-eyed -- a soft-look Adonis
coming near, more near, close passing. Skull and youth in one. Empty
boney eye sockets; black irises with long lashes. Noble nose, and gaping
nasal chasm of bone. Grimacing broken teeth and full-lipped slow smile
opening in boyish laugh. Body scorched and burned, sickening yet bold,
youthful throbbing blood - inviting touch. The gruesome bones. The
beautiful boy. I cried out in horror.

...An osseus claw gripped my shoulder. Dusty digits dug in. Clutch of
skeletal hands and skeletal body crashed me face-down, driving me
procumbent onto the floor boards. All the while virile young fingers
caressed my temples and neck and back with love, inviting me to submit.
The stinking beast - the sweet-smelling boy - one and the same, behind
me. Tremendous skeletal weight at my back - entangled, trammeled up and
snared - suffocating me. The redolent boy's alto voice lulling in my
head, serenading silent songs of love - calming me. The lad eased me face
down, soft-kissing the back of my neck. Moaning and sighing, I opened to
the boy. But the other grasping, dry bones forced me prone, pressing upon
me, driving my legs apart. The boney baculum os-priapi stabbed far down
deep within my backside -- within - again and again. I screamed in terror
and pain. AHHH...!

...Yet it was the gentle boy-body at my rear, upon me. opening me,
caressing me. His hand cossetting my hair. I was held back to front by
him, his face at my neck, his warm breath in my ear like gentle
whispering. I felt him smile against my cheek. His doting eager mouth
nipping at my neck. Like the caring lamia boy `bent warm on amorous
theft', I thought. And I closed my eyes. His warm, firm member -- most
welcome -- ever so gradual, entered me abaft, filling me, satisfying me.
The feel of loving phallus romancing within my bowels. The earth surged
through me; the oceans plowed my breath away. Warm, wet, collapsing joy.
Ahhh..., I called in anguished bliss. The gates of heaven opened.
Gratis-dropping delight. Knuckle-cracking release. Death-deceiving grace.
I gasped in horror as I lay flat. I had been kicked and castoff,
discarded by the skeletal, cruel-grown passion. Yet even then I was
fondled, held and comforted by the boy, and kissed farewell. A peak
prolonged pulsing orgasm coursed up and out and over. So much. So very
much.

... Thus, hours passed. All was a further one of my own private
death-delights as had been from my earliest, intense, post-emanation,
phantasmic times of climax. And so many ejaculations since. I lay
senseless on the nursery floor. No pulse. No breath. Abandoned. Alone.
Weeping. Hours long silence. Pain and soft touch remembered. I waited for
the dawn...,

...or was this the next night?
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Letter #2:  Chapter X

"Jacob...? Jacob my love, are you alright...?"

...The strong, soft hand reassured with a touch on my shoulder. The
manful, warm voice was at my ear. I turned toward Steven; his handsome,
loving face illumined by his lantern.

"My `dear' boy, what has come over you? Here you are still in the
parlor. Are you chilled? You are shaking. You're seated like a `monk',
a `buddha' on the parquet floor, sitting crossed-legged, staring
intensely into your `candle flame'. `Shall I believe that
unsubstantial death is amorous'," my cousin recited, " `and that the
lean abhorred monster keeps thee here in dark to be his paramour?' "

We held each other. My face in his neck. His warm breath in my ear like
gentle whispering. His hand caressed my hair. I felt him smiling against
my cheek.

"Ah, come my young Jacob, let me help you to your feet. Like Webster,
you've seen `the skull beneath the skin'; 'Eidólons!' 'Eidólons!'"

"Is it day? Is it night?" I gasped. How long was it? The moments could
not have lasted as they appeared to me to last. "Is this next morning?"

"Morning? No! It's been but twenty minutes since I left you. You've
been in here the whole time. I ran up and down, checked doors and
`peeked' in every room, even the attic and cellar; there is `nothing'
left in this house. Every door closed; all windows closed, shuttered,
barred, fastened, secured and drawn-to - every single one, just as we
found things. The manse has been trashed, abandoned. A `skulking
carcass' of its former self. Come on, my love. Stand up. Whoa! What did
you do, pee in your pants? They are `sopping'. Ah, I know that
`aromatic odor'! Mushrooms and earth! The sweet, sour `smell of
musk', of your honied cum. So much! What brought that on? Jacob, what
has `happened' to you? But come away back to the car and we'll start
it up and leave. Forever!"

Even in my addled silence, the thought of Immense Cousin Max's sharing
of ancient Galen of Pergamon's wisdom came to mind: " `Triste est omnis
homo post coitum'; `every man is sad after coitus' ". [Letter #9  ]
Hence my feeling weak and dizzy, soaring, sinking, drowning, anxious and
sad after my profuse nuttings. This was the curse upon such an erring
Cygnet-Schwann descendant as I.

Steven hurried me down the path. At some uncertain signal we both turned
to stare back at the manse. Broken moonlight gleamed on all of the
secured and shuttered windows -- save one. That large second-floor hall
window.... Like all the others it had been shut tight. True, I had
imagined raising it in my dream-phantasma. Yet here, now it gaped wide
open for true to the night -- shutters flung aside; sash raised high. We
each turned to the other in query. Steven shook his head in negation. Not
him. How...? Had I...? What if...? Eidolon...? Bogey...? Bugaboo...?

Steven recited: " `Ghosts, wandering here and there, troop home to
churchyards; damnèd spirits all.' "

We moved on. Steven eased the big car in reverse, turning about on the
dirt track to head back the way we had come.

"~ WATCH OUT! ~"

There at the side of the road was that beat-up, grimy-black, one-ton
Chevy pickup. The three silent, predatory, beetle-browed yokels studyied
us when we passed. I looked back as one in a shiny black oil-cloth cloak
fiddled under the hood. The truck engine started in a cloud of exhaust.

" `Black Coat Incest Vigilantes', for sure. Let's get out of here,"
Steven cried.

The great car lurched, labored and lumbered over the dirt road. Steven
glanced in the rear-view mirror. I stared out the back window. Now and
then we caught the flash of that single advancing headlight.

"Steven, do you think...?  Do you think they saw us? Watched us? When we
parked in that meadow and...?"

"They `most assuredly' followed us to the Parsonage. So let us be
`quit' of them."

We slammed along the shunpike back to the Garafraxa Highway. The Peerless
burst onto the macadam at a high speed. The biggest indication of our
velocity was that now insects peppered the windshield like hail. Once in
a while, a large specimen made a huge yellow splat. We were free. Some
miles down the main road Steven pulled our limousine onto the wide
shoulder and maneuvered to a quick stop.

"Okay!" he cried, turning to me. "What's up? What happened?
`Speak!' "

I stared at my handsome cousin in silence. What had happened? What was
up? He himself had seen nothing, not the shadow of a shadow. Yet without
impugning my sanity he accepted the truth as I gave it to him.

"...Bones...."

"Bones?" He shuddered, "I `hate' bones."

"The `Soul of the Bones' has spoken to me...."

Steven jerked his head about. He stared at me. His eyes were piercing,
his nostrils flared, his jaw set. He ended by showing me an awestricken
tenderness which has remained with me as that of the sweetest of human
charities: ~he understood ~he knew.

"The `Soul of the Bones'?", he queried. "HIS bones?" Steven paused,
then continued in a theatrical fever, "Ah then, the gruesomeness
gathers. The ever-damned Victorian Parsonage effectively falls away, like
flesh receding from the skull of a cadaver, and we are deposited in our
hellish, plantless, low landscape of bone and stone. Bone and stone -
places to run, but nowhere to hide."

His silence demanded that I continue.

"On to Newfoundland," I stated. "To Red Lake. To the labrynthine stone
cave on Isle des Morts. Those beautiful boy's bones, my grandfather's
bones, seek to be buried with our ancestors, our Norse-Native ancestors.
And so they shall be."

Steven's eyes widened and sparked with readiness....

...We were to go to Newfoundland!
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Yours truly,
JACOB CYGNET SCHWANN
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[PS: this portion of the Letter #2 story from late 1937 continues later
in Letter #41. In the meantime, the letters #3 to #40, principally from
1929 to 1936, foreshadow and recount the erstwhile profligate adventures
of Cob and Pen and their friends and family.]
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END OF PEN-COB LETTER #2
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