Chapter Text
He must be going mad. One moment he was listening to his favourite aria, smoking a cigar as he leant against the tent pole, eyes tracing the shimmering leaps of light on the lake, and then the next moment... Dutch blinked a couple of times as he watched the absurd ensemble of characters lined in front of him. He had long suspected that some members of the gang had begun to doubt his sanity, but it was just painful to think they may as well be right.
“What’s going on here!?” He tried to remain calm, no point in panicking just yet. There may yet be a logical explanation for what he saw before him, and even if it was a conjuration of his own imagination there must be a cure for these manner of ailments. “Would you care to tell us, one more time, slowly, and preferably one by one, just who you are and what you are doing here?” He resumed, emboldened by the looks of disbelief cast by the rest of the camp inhabitants as they eyed the four odd looking fellows who claimed to know everyone and more ridiculously spoke as if they were part of the gang.
“Go on!” He barked when no answer came, stepping closer to carefully observe said individuals: three women of various ages, all wearing ill-fitting shirts and trousers, and a man about his own age dressed in a black women’s gown that was a couple of inches too tight for him. It wasn’t the way they dressed that bothered Dutch, rather the resemblance of the clothes to… No, it can’t be! He mentally kicked himself for even entertaining the idea...
“We... we can explain!” The oldest among the women croaked, in a tone that could be hardly mistaken for its close similarity to the drawl of a certain banjo-playing old coot. Dutch’s cold glare immediately switched to her, at which she gulped and smiled a lopsided smile before adding: “you see, we uh... It’s temporary, I swear! It all started when we-”
“Was all his idea!” The busty woman in a plaid shirt interrupted, waving her cavalry hat threateningly at the old woman. “He dragged us into it! Damn the bastard, I swear, Dutch, I had noth-”
“Oh like you weren’t beggin’ to be brought along!” The old woman shot back. “You were the most excited of the bunch!”
“But it was your idea!” The man in the woman’s garb spoke in a deep if a bit subdued voice, shaking his finger at the old woman. “Don’t you think you can get out of this one now! Ain’t that right, Arthur?”
The mention of Arthur - whose absence in the past few days had been palpably felt by the leader of the gang - and the unknown man's subsequent glance towards the woman in the blue shirt standing at the back of the group with half her face hidden beneath what appeared to be Arthur’s hat - good God! - proved too much for Dutch’s patience to bear.
“Silence!” He threw both his hands up, bringing an instant halt to the bickering. “Who. Are. You? How did you came in possession of these clothes?”
“It’s us Dutch!” The old woman stepped forward, casting furtive glances at the members of the gang who at their leader’s signal had started to circle the intruders. “Don’t you recognise us? It’s me, Uncle…” He patted his chest. “Whoopsie, or should I say, heehee, Aunt?”
“AUNT!!!” Dutch nearly exploded, and unable to contain his rage any longer, he lunged for the old woman but gathering his wits in the last moment he changed course and went for the male stranger instead, clasping his collar and shaking it with such ferocity that the bodice ripped, causing the man to shriek and wail like a dishonoured maiden, and Dutch to retreat in utter confusion.
“I think…” Hosea finally interjected, no less perplexed himself, but at least much calmer. “I think what they are trying to imply, unbelievable as it may be, is that they are Uncle... Bill, Miss Grimshaw?” He pointed to each individual, finally moving to the woman in blue, “and Arthur…”
“Arthur!??” Dutch snapped at Hosea, distinctly feeling a vein throbbing on his forehead. “Have you lost your mind, friend?” And as if to demonstrate a point, he pulled the woman in question forward by her black neckerchief and knocked off her hat, only to end up entirely transfixed as he stared into her distressed blue-green eyes, not precisely because of her uncanny likeness to his boy, but... damn, she was exceptionally pretty! A few seconds lapsed before he let go of her, just in time to hear what other members of the gang had to say, one by one as they emerged from their stupor.
“They sure do look like them…” Was Lenny’s contribution, followed by Mary-Beth who nodded in agreement.
Charles, in the meanwhile, picked up Arthur’s hat from the ground and handed it to its owner, having dusted it first. The gesture was received with a grateful half-smile.
“But how can this be?” Strauss asked with no little amount of curiosity. “It must be some sort of joke. Herr Morgan is known to be a rather mischievous young man. I wager he-”
“Well, you see,” Uncle jumped in, seizing this moment of relative calmth to relate what he deemed no doubt to be a most wondrous tale. “Bill and I found this-”
“You did!” Bill protested, but was mostly ignored.
“As I was saying, I found this witch’s shack in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in Ambarino,” Uncle continued, “and told about it to Bill, and we reckoned it’d be mighty funny if we showed it to Susan, in case she missed her coven or somesuch. And so we asked her, nicely, to come and see it for herself... But then big ol’ Morgan happened ‘pon us just as we were fixing to leave the camp, and Susan asked him to come along so they could give us a good thrashing once our hoax was exposed, I suppose, and as you can see it was no bluff, no sirree!”
“I admit I have never felt so ashamed in my life as I do now for having followed these two degenerates,” Susan assumed the role of the speaker once he had sufficiently recovered from his ordeal, sensing an air of growing impatience with Uncle’s ramblings. “And even more so for dragging Mr Morgan into this and to that ominous mountebank’s hovel or whatever it was... Along with all sorts of strange trinkets and furnishings, there was a huge cauldron with a bubbling, smoking grey substance inside,” he grimaced at the memory of the discovery. “It looked awful…”
“Worse than Pearson’s stew?” Sean tried to lighten to mood but was hushed by Karen’s brutal elbow.
“Pheeeewwwww what a smell!” Uncle took the opportunity to take over again. “Like a hundred boiling skunk hides mixed with... uh, owl shit and-”
“And so you decided to drink it?” Hosea asked as mildly as he could manage, chewing the corner of his bottom lip.
“It’s all his fault!” Bill pointed at Arthur, who shrank even more into herself if such a thing was even possible. “He found that parchment with the inscription saying whoever drank the brew his biggest wish would come true!”
“Looks like yours did, Marianne!” Micah, late to join the group, remarked and was set upon by a furious Bill awkwardly held back by Lenny and John, whose head was almost swallowed in Bill’s ample, plush bosom.
“Tsk... never in my life have I felt so stupid,” Susan shook his head dejectedly. “Can’t even blame it on being drunk! Unlike those two idiots…” He looked at Bill and Uncle and sighed. “They fought over who would drink first, and one thing led to another and we all decided we should drink at the same time, and so we did.” He made a motion with his hands then as to suggest the obvious result. “Must have been something about the air in the hut, reckon it was hexed too…”
There was a moment of silence that seemed to last a century whose main cultural product was a symphony by crickets chirping in celebration of the advent of yet another early evening in Clement’s Point.
“And you expect us to believe this story?” Hosea’s narrowed gaze was wary and somewhat bewildered. “To accept that you aren’t a bunch of conmen and women who have somehow got hold of our people and think us stupid enough to believe in witches and bubbling potions? What did you do to them, hmm? They better be alive or…” His frustration mounting, Hosea turned to his partner for support, “Dutch?”
Having been addressed directly, Dutch snapped out of his reverie and finally peeled his eyes off ‘Arthur’ to look at his old friend. “Hmm, yes…” He coughed once before booming in his habitually imperious voice: “Well, friends, there is a very simple way to find out if our guests are telling the truth. I congratulate myself for being an open-minded man who is not in the habit of dismissing hypotheses without having first put them to test. We shall proceed without prejudice and presume there might be a chance they are speaking the truth.” Entirely ignoring Hosea’s questioning glance, he grabbed hold of Arthur’s wrist and pulled her towards him as he made a start for his tent. Stopping midway, Dutch turned to address the gang: “I’ll interrogate this one, as I know Arthur best. Hosea, Reverend, I trust you can find out if this is our own Uncle. Javier, John, I believe you spend the most time with Bill? And I leave Susan to Abigail and Strauss. Best the interviews are conducted separately, we’ll compare notes afterwards.” Without waiting for any commentaries, he paced the few steps left to the tent and having asked Molly, in an almost uncharacteristically gentle tone, to sit with the other girls for a while, he pushed his charge inside the tent, himself following suit, fastening the flaps behind him.
“Sit,” Dutch ordered, gesturing at the cot. His eyes lingered on the young woman as she obeyed, her movements somewhat peculiar as if she expected her body to be much heavier and larger. The way she positioned her feet almost resembled Arthur’s, as did the restless little shifts of her hands on her thighs. She had the same hair colour and length with locks falling just below the soft curve of her jawline. There was no trace of a stubble, of course, but the knife mark was exactly in the same place on her chin. He noticed a blossoming blush on her sunburnt cheeks and reckoned she must have caught sight of him licking his lips as he stared at her slightly parted mouth, bitten cherry-red out of worry no doubt.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, in a much more tender tone than he had intended initially. He pulled a crate and sat in front of her, tilting his head in an attempt to capture her evasive gaze. “I just want to hear the truth.”
“Dutch, I…” she began, but stopped immediately and lowered her eyes, a hand flying to her mouth to catch any further words, alarmed as she appeared to be by either what she was going to say or perhaps her own voice.
“Yes?” He responded with an attentive softness that came to him instinctively, unable to resist the pull of the supplicatingly familiar intonation of his name spoken by an unfamiliar creature. “I’m listening…” He whispered, and having cleared his throat, added: “Tell me what happened. I believe you.” Normally Dutch wouldn’t be so obliging in the course of an interrogation, but at that moment he found himself too distracted by the fact that she hadn’t flinched when he pressed a hand encouragingly to her knee, as if used to the touch.
“I’m sorry, Dutch, I’m such a fool…” The woman began, her tone a bit firmer even if drenched in shame. “It’s just as they said… I’m sure it’s temporary? Reckon it should go away in a few days?” She was hesitant but he could see a glimmer of hope in her lovely eyes when she raised her head slightly, looking for assurance.
“Sure, son,” Dutch smiled, all reassurance, cupping her cheek in the palm of his left hand. “Don’t you worry about nothing now. I’ll take care of it.” He still couldn’t bring himself to believe a word of what she was saying, of course. His reason told him to agree with Strauss; this must be some prank played by Arthur and Uncle, who must have found some poor whores who looked like them and paid them for a little performance. Even so, it didn’t mean he shouldn’t be enjoying himself. Heck, he was even willing to play along and pretend he believed a scenario that was so elaborately presented before him. And so, having made up his mind to momentarily abandon all doubt, Dutch let his fingers slip through the woman’s sandy hair, until his hand came to rest on the back of her neck, which he began massaging ever so slowly in tandem with the circular motion of his fingertips on her thigh. He could feel her tense a little, charming confusion veiling her gaze as if she had somehow been betrayed, before her eyes blew wide open as he leant forward, his hand travelling from her thigh to her belly to push her back steadily.
“Dutch! What are you doing?” The woman protested, panting like a wounded deer as she pushed back against his chest and the hand that moved to circle around her throat. “It’s me, Arthur! Just, damn it... ask some questions if you don’t believe me!”
“And what if I believe you?” Dutch paused, parting his mouth from the curve of her neck, where he was not kissing just yet but taking in her sweet scent as he nibbled and licked, nuzzling her earlobe with his nose. He relished in the shudder than ran through her body as he slid up a bit to whispurr her name: “Hmm, Arthur?” The benefit of ill-fitting clothes was that his right hand could slip quite easily into her trousers and then union suit. A groan left his chest at the heat of her sex when his fingers nestled in its pliant folds.
“Dutch!” She gasped, and tried to fight him off after an instant of dazed surrender following his utterance of her name. She looked obviously frustrated by her own lack of strength, which somehow spurred Dutch on.
“What if I believe that you’re Arthur and still want this?” He hissed, and ignoring her intensified struggles, he pressed his weight on top of her, rocking his hardening bulge against her thigh. “What if I want to fuck you because I believe you’re Arthur?” Not expecting an answer, he claimed her mouth with his, using her shock to push her open with his tongue, growling as he felt her cunt moistening around his fingers. “Can you imagine what this does to me?”
He wasn’t lying. The thought of dominating his beautiful creation in every possible way was enough to drive him mad, let alone acting on it. Besides, he had never seen his usually cocky son this shy and meek, and the novelty of the experience forced his mouth away from her delicious lips to her throat, replacing a hand that was now ripping her shirt open, cupping her breasts, kneading urgently as his teeth latched onto her neck. She tried to claw his hands away, but for some reason she hadn’t screamed yet. Perhaps too ashamed to be seen like that? Or simply not used to screaming? Not that Dutch cared anymore... He was enjoying himself too much, sucking and nibbling on her nipples as he pushed a ringed finger inside her narrow passage, teasing her engorged clit with his thumb, hmmm... Soon she was arching into his embrace and mewling in pure want. Slowly but surely he removed articles of clothing and discarded them on the floor of the tent, all the while licking and caressing bits of uncovered skin. He couldn’t quite tell when she stopped resisting altogether, but by the time he positioned himself between her legs, his leaking cock waiting at her entrance, she seemed to be in a state of complete submission, which he rewarded with a lingering kiss.
Pulling back, he took a moment to savour the spectacle before him: blue eyes half-lidded, cheeks flushed crimson, breasts covered in a film of sweat as they rose and fell rhythmically. His triumphant gaze locked with hers as he pushed in. He didn’t stop until he was fully encased in her tight heat, her sharp sigh prompting him to close his eyes in sheer ecstasy and inhale. The pleasure was incomparable. In a show of gratitude, he gently wiped her tears from the corner of her eyes with the pad of his thumb and brought it to her mouth to suck on, a distraction from the initial pain that was to follow when he started moving.
He took his time at first, leisurely stroking her sensitive nub while he delighted in shallow thrusts. He loved to see his women take pleasure from lovemaking, the power it made him feel over them was heady. But in this case he felt all the more satisfied knowing how guilty Arthur must feel in throes of realising he loved being fucked by the man who had raised him. His hold on him would last eternally now, Dutch surmised, imagining instances in future when only a tiny reminder would suffice to rein in his unruly boy: remember, son?
The backhand elicited a startled gasp from Arthur, whose eyes, glistening with hurt, where now fixed on Dutch again, as they should be. “Look at me when I fuck you,” He warned for good measure, pulling almost out to thrust back in, continuing the trend until he was bucking with vicious intent which drove her almost off the bed. She clung to him even more urgently now, her legs wrapped securely around his hips. He braced her head in his hand when it almost fell off the edge of the bed, pulling her back to him, kissing the side of her head as he murmured sweet nothings in her ear.
“Dutch…”
“Hmm…” He kissed and licked her nipples, biting gently, sighing when her dainty fingers tangled in his hair. “I’m close, darling, do you want it in your mouth or in your cunt?” He barked a laugh in surprise when in response she squeezed her thighs around him, pulling him closer. His laughter coincided with her peak and he had to concentrate very hard not to climax while he continued manipulating her clit in a successful endeavour to prolong her bliss. Feeling the grip of her soft thighs loosening, he flipped her unto her stomach and pushed back inside, holding up her hips with one hand while the other clasped her throat, pushing her head down, both hands squeezing firmly enough to leave bruises. His guttural grunts were loud and animalistic when he spilled inside her, hips snapping forward savagely as his vision went white in rapture. He didn’t pull out immediately, instead pressed his weight down to keep her in check, teeth gripping the back of her neck as one hand massaged her belly gently, the other hand still holding her hips up while he relished the sensation of her walls pulsing around his cock.
Eventually, he turned her so she was resting on her back again, and brought his mouth to the entrance of her sex to lap up their juices, then moving to kiss her, he fed her their mingled taste with his tongue, caressing her all the while.
“So tell me,” Dutch whispered, settling on his side beside Arthur whom he pulled to himself, her back draped against his chest, both panting in unison. He turned her face towards him, her moist blue eyes drowned in his dark depth. “Is this your one true wish?”
He didn’t get to receive an answer, however, as the tent flaps were pushed open and Hosea stepped in. “Dutch, what’s taki…” The old man stood petrified, “...are you... What are you doing!?”
“Care to have a taste, old friend?” Dutch asked nonchalantly, a cruel smile adorning the corner of his lips as he held Arthur still. “Eager to please and obedient... just perfect.” He pecked the damp strands stuck to her temple affectionately, his eyes never leaving Hosea’s. “But we know that already, don’t we?”