The Guide

A TV show host discovers the truth about "The Guide."

Edwina Barrington looked directly into the camera as the theme music slowly faded away and intoned, “Tonight’s episode of Paranormal Investigators is very special to me for several reasons. First of all, it is Halloween night, and that makes any paranormal investigation special. But secondly and much more importantly for me, this is the site and the phenomenon that began it all for me. This is where I first became interested in the paranormal. We are in my home town, and tonight we shall investigate ‘The Guide.’”

The camera pulled back to show her standing in a small grotto-like park. She was on a stone path that led to a small cave cut into the dark limestone hillside. “This park in the center of town has been here since the city was first founded,” she said. “The cave itself has been here much longer than that. And The Guide has been here since... well, according to the local legends, since the beginning of time.”

She walked slowly up the path and stopped at a large stone set in the hillside where the path turned toward the cave. “As near as we can tell,” she said pointing down at the stone, “this stone is over 3000 years old. The glyphs that are deeply carved into it are a warning. We can’t be sure of the exact translation, but it says something like ‘Beware the Touch of the Siren. Her Song Will Seize Your Mind.’”

The scene switched to a second camera that showed the entrance to the cave at the end of the short path from where Edwina stood. “The stone calls her ‘The Siren,’” she said, “but the local legends which are at least as old as the stone, call her ‘The Guide.’”

“The Guide has been described both as extremely beautiful and as horrific. She is said to release inner urges in people that are so overwhelming that no one who has been touched by The Guide is left unscathed. Some are dead. Most are completely insane. The few survivors who have any shred of sanity left are completely changed. They refuse to say exactly what happened or describe The Guide or what she did to them, but they are changed forever.”

She chuckled, “A nun once became a stripper after meeting The Guide.” The camera focused on her face as she raised her eyebrows and gave the exaggerated frown that was her trademark. “But on the other hand,” she continued with a laugh, “there are at least two recorded cases where prostitutes became nuns.”

She pointed to the ground just outside the cave’s entrance. “The grass here grows very lush and soft and no weeds seem to ever sprout in this small bed. ... and it is a bed. Two paranormal investigators say that the power of this cave stems from ancient pagan fertility rites which were performed here, and that is what keeps the grass so green and weed free. Scientists who studied this phenomenon recently said it is merely the pH of the soil being so exactly what grass needs. They took some of the soil back to their lab with them, however, and weeds grew easily in their test patch. The same weed seeds, planted here, died.

“My personal belief is that The Guide is a poor soul who has been trapped here perhaps since mankind first walked upon these shores.” She turned to the camera and stepped to the side to allow a graphic to appear on the screen beside her. It was a book with her face on the front cover.

“As I explain in my latest book,” she said, “To release a trapped soul, the first step is to learn his or her name.” She pointed to the air where the word “Name” would be inserted in post-production.

“The next step is to establish communication.” Another point to where the word “Communication” would appear on the screen.

“And the third step is getting the trapped soul to understand what has happened to it.” In post-production, the word “Understanding” would appear on the screen as the third step of the process.

“Often times,” she said, looking very serious, “just explaining to the trapped soul that they are a trapped soul is sufficient. Once they realize that they are dead and are trapped between the levels of existence, they will know that they need to move on.
“However, there is often some unresolved issue that is holding them back. So, the final step,” she said as she pointed toward the bottom of the screen, “is resolution and direction.” The words “Resolution” and “Direction” would complete the list.

“I help them,” she said as she appeared to look over the list, “resolve whatever it is that has trapped them between the levels of existence and then help them find their way to the next level.”

Edwina returned to the center of the scene and faced the camera. “How we will be able to discover The Guide’s name or what is trapping her here, I do not know.  I also do not know whether or not she will be able to understand me since she seems to be from such an ancient time, but I am hoping that she will be able to understand my intent even if she does not recognize my language.”

She walked to the entrance to the cave and then looked back at the camera and whispered. “All of this depends, however, on The Guide appearing for us here on this Halloween night.”

She walked back up the path as she continued her explanation in a more normal tone of voice. “There is no specific time that The Guide appears, but the most powerful appearances have always been on Halloween. That nun who became a stripper was here as part of an exorcism team that was going to purify the place and drive the demons from the park. They took up positions on the outside of the cave on Halloween night, armed with their Bibles and their holy water and their special oils and their faith. In the morning, however, all of that was gone along with their clothing when they stumbled out of the cave. Their bodies bore all the signs of an orgy, and their minds were destroyed.

“Tonight, I am going to attempt to meet The Guide in safety. What little we know from survivors is that The Guide reaches out to them and they are unable to control themselves, but are drawn into her arms and into the cave itself.”

She held out her arms as if she were pulling the viewers to her bosom. “My crew,” she said as she pointed into the foliage, “is setting up remote cameras in the cave and all around this path.”

She then laughed. “They will be safely in the control truck parked outside the park. I will be tied securely to that tree.” She pointed to a stout Oak near the entrance to the cave.

“Like Odysseus tied to the mast, I will be able to hear the Siren’s song, but will not be pulled into her clutches. Hopefully, I will be able to describe what I see and maybe get to the bottom of this phenomenon.”

She had reached the tree and now stood next to it. “Tonight,” she said, “The Guide will be shown to the world. There are no accurate descriptions of The Guide, but everyone with enough mind left to describe her has said that she was a naked woman.” She smiled at the camera, “So, if we find a naked female spirit wandering around, it’s probably her.”

The camera then panned back for a very wide shot as two men in bluejeans approached Edwina carrying large coils of dark-colored rope. The rope looked relatively soft, but it was thick and obviously very strong. She stood with her back against the tree and they began winding the rope around her body and the tree trunk. When they were finished, she was wrapped securely from her ankles to her neck. “This is actually rather comfortable,” she said to the camera which was once again trained on her face. “If The Guide appears, there is no way that I can go to her or reach out to her.”

She dropped her voice to a slow whisper. “Now all we have to do is wait.”

And wait they did. Edwina’s assistants tied her to the tree just before dark, several hours later it was approaching midnight and nothing had happened except several bugs had landed on her face and a small something stung her on the neck. Other than the nuisance bugs, it was so uneventful, that she found herself fighting sleep.

Despite her best efforts she found her head dropping forward. A buzzing in her earpiece brought her back to full wakefulness. “What time is it?” she asked her crew. After repeating herself several times and getting no response, she said, “It looks like my earpiece has crapped out. One of you is going to have to come out and replace it for me.”

Several minutes later, when noone had come to replace her defective equipment she said, “I hope you aren’t asleep in there! If something happens tonight and you don’t get it on tape, I am going to be extremely pissed.” There was still no response and no one came to change the defective equipment.

The clouds opened and the moon shone brightly in the little grotto. ‘That will make a good shot,’ she thought. ‘The low light cameras should even be able to pick up colors in that light. Now all we need is for The Guide to show up.’

She settled back into waiting. “At least you chose soft ropes, Teddy,” she said aloud, talking to her chief roady. “They aren’t scraping my breasts or irritating my nipples.”

She paused, a look of shock and confusion on her face. “Why am I feeling the ropes on my breasts?” she asked aloud. Her habit of narrating everything overruled her sense of immodesty in saying what she had just said.

She wiggled in her bindings and felt the rope rub against the skin on her legs. She also felt the rope move against the skin of her abdomen and even felt it brush her pubic hair back and forth with her movements. She was naked beneath the ropes!

“You’d better be recording all this!” she said emphatically. “There is some weird shit going on and you had better not be missing it. My clothes have disappeared.”

The ropes were soft, but any minor movement of her body caused them to rub across her nipples and her thighs and her mound. “Oh shit,” she said aloud.

As she struggled against the ropes the sensations began to overwhelm her. She began almost chanting, “Oh shit, Oh shit, Oh SHIT!” Her voice now sounded more like desperation than anger.

Her body was also starting to move on its own. She could feel herself attempting to thrust up against the ropes to gain more sensation. Her juices were flooding the top of her thighs. She could feel herself responding to each little movement of the rope against her skin and she could not hold her body still.

She could not believe how aroused she was. She wanted to cum... no, she needed to cum... no, she needed to cum more desperately that she had ever in her entire life needed to cum.

“Oh God,” she screamed aloud, “I need to cum so badly.” Then, in what she hoped was a much more controlled voice she said, “We’ll have to edit that out, or at least bleep it.”

The sensations continued to build within her. Her need was becoming overwhelming. “I need to cum!” she screamed out again. “Somebody untie me or fuck me or do something to me! I will do anything if you just let me cum!”

She screamed again, “I need to cum!! I need to cum!!!!!”

And then she was standing on the path, walking toward the mouth of the cave. The ropes were gone, but not her need. Her body burned as if it were on fire. She could see three figures walking toward her dressed in black. She took the arm of the woman, and suddenly the woman screamed and began tearing at her clothing. As soon as the woman was naked, she began posing and displaying her body to her companions.

The same thing happened when she touched the two men. They tore at their clothing until they were naked. Then they jumped at her and dragged her down to the grass. Both men screamed and yelled as if in pain as they thrust their engorged pricks into her cunt... and into her ass... and into her mouth.  She could feel herself draining them, but even after they were lying senseless on the floor of the cave– “How did I get in here?” she thought... even after they were lying senseless on the floor of the cave her lust continued to increase.

She saw a young man at the entrance of the cave. “Fuck me!” she yelled at him. “Fuck me now!”

He answered in a language that she did not quite understand, but he understood her need, or at least her naked body. He was young, and virile, and performed well, but again, she left him senseless on the floor of the cave as her need continued to build within her.

She tried to find her crew, or at least get back to the tree, or to the park, but the cave seemed to go on forever. She would think she was at the entrance only to find herself back inside. She was sure that she saw a young man rutting with a tarty-looking young woman in the grass, but when she stepped out to speak to them, they were all suddenly back in the cave.

The man tried his best, but again he was left an empty husk on the floor of the cave. The young woman, however, experienced what had to have been a mind-altering orgasm. She continued to scream, “Oh, God! Oh, God!” for several moments following her tremendous climax. Then she fell to her knees facing the open mouth of the cave and bowed low saying, “Forgive me. I have seen the error of my ways. I will become a nun!”

Events began to run together. Dozens, if not hundreds of people fell at her touch. She copulated with men and women of all shapes and sizes, colors and descriptions, but each act merely increased her desire. She fucked, sucked and buggered again and again and again and again, but found no relief from her burning desire and lust. Then there was a swirling darkness and Edwina was once again back at the entrance to the cave.

It was dark. A bright moon filled the grotto, but the trees were different. There were big, old trees where there should have been young saplings and the tree to which she had been bound was now an open circle of grass. A strangely-dressed man was standing in front of her.

“Edwina!” he called out. “Edwina Barrington!”

She turned toward him. “You must stand still!” he yelled again. His voice was strangely loud, but distorted, as though amplified through some poorly-working amplifier. “When you move,” the loud voice said, “you move through both space and time.”

He held up a small object and a video screen of some sort appeared in the air between them. On it was the cover of her book, “Edwina Barrington’s Complete Guide to Paranormal Phenomena”.

“Can you see the book?” the voice asked.

She nodded, and the voice said, “Read your words on page 174.”

The image on the projected video flipped rapidly to that page. She began to read a highlighted paragraph from the section on The Origins of Paranormal Phenomena. It read, “When someone dies in a surprising or very cruel or unusual way, often times their death imprints itself on a place. From that time on that place echoes that death and the trauma of that death, perhaps for centuries to come.”

The pages again flipped rapidly and another highlighted paragraph appeared. “If there are extreme unresolved issues at the time of the person’s death, they may linger at the place of their death looking to resolve that which they could not resolve in their lifetime.”

The loud voice again spoke, “You were right, but not totally right. If conditions are extreme enough, the echo goes not only into the future, but also into the past.”

Something else appeared in the video projection. It was veiled with a smoky haze so that it could not be read. “No matter how frightening this next piece is, DO NOT MOVE!” said the loud voice. “If you move you will move in space and time and we may not be able to reach you again. Do you understand?”

She slowly nodded her head, even though she did not really understand.
The video cleared. It was a newspaper and the image was a close up of the name of the paper and the date. It was the local paper, and it was dated tomorrow, November 1. The image slowly panned down to the feature article of the paper. The publicity photo that she used with all of her press releases took up half of the top portion of the page. Alongside it was a headline in very large type, “HOMETOWN PARANORMAL INVESTIGATOR DIES AT HAUNTED CAVE PARK.”

She screamed and started to turn. Her feet wanted to run, but the loud voice was yelling “Stand still! Stand still! You will be lost if you move again!”

She turned back to the strange video projection that still flickered  in the air in front of her. The image panned down to the article itself. It read, “A freak accident claimed the life of paranormal investigator Edwina Barrington as she attempted to unravel the mystery of The Guide who has for centuries haunted the cave and the downtown park that surrounds it. Ms. Barrington had been wrapped in soft ropes to prevent her from being drawn into the cave by The Guide, who is said to have a lure similar to a Siren.

“The Guide, however, was not the cause of Edwina Barrington’s death. Instead her death was caused by a very small, very rare spider. Normally the bite of this spider produces a painful wound and possibly requires a hospital stay. A bite at the base of the neck such as she suffered would be much more dangerous, but still not fatal. However, Ms. Barrington was violently allergic to the spider’s venom. The location of the bite, combined with her allergic reaction caused extreme swelling in one portion of her brain. That swelling lead to her death before her crew realized that she was in trouble.”

The image panned further down the article to another highlighted section. “Tabloid newspapers and various websites have reported that the inflamation in her brain affected that area responsible for sexual stimulation and she died screaming, ‘Let me cum! Let me cum! Let me cum!’ but neither the police nor her production company will verify that claim.”

Edwina stood still in shock at what she had just read. “You are dead,” said the loud voice. “You are trapped between levels of existence.”

She stared at the man in the strange clothing. “I was trying to release The Guide.” she said weakly as sort of an explanation of the events recorded in the article.

“You ARE The Guide,” the voice answered. “And I know what you need to be released. I am going to push something across the ground toward you. Do not touch it until I am no longer in contact with it. Otherwise you will be blasted through the barriers to another time.”
She watched as he carefully placed something on the ground and pushed it along the path toward her with a long pole of some sort. “This is an erotic neural stimulator,” he said. “It has been adjusted to emit psychic frequencies that you should be able to feel. It will give you what you need to pass on to the next level of existence.”

Edwina waited until the pole, or whatever it was, was withdrawn, and then she reached down and picked up the package. There was strange writing on the box that looked vaguely like English, but many of the words were spelled strangely and there were additional letters that were meaningless to her.

The intent of the object in the box, however, was obvious. It was a dildo mounted on a vaginal shield of some sort. There was a sticker on one portion of the shield with the picture of a light switch on it and an arrow pointing to a small red dot. There was also a small tube of something that was apparently a lube of some sort.

She smeared the lube on the dildo and inserted it into her aching cunt. When she touched the red dot it began to vibrate and then to move within her. For the first time since leaving the tree, she could actually feel sexual stimulation rather than just an increase in her lust. She immediately began panting and sobbing.

“Yes, Yes!” she screamed, and then the neural stimulators kicked in. It was as if every sexual experience in her life was suddenly drawn into that one instant of time. The orgasm did not begin in any one part of the her body, but instead exploded throughout her entire body and mind simultaneously. All of the sexual tension from that night and all of the sexual tension she had drawn into herself throughout her travels through time was suddenly released in one unbelievably  powerful and violent orgasm.

She screamed out in release. With that scream, there was a tremendous burst of light and Edwina Barrington disappeared forever from this plane of existence. The echos of her known as The Guide would continue to appear occasionally throughout time, but she was now released. The echos themselves would eventually fade. They had already lost most of their power.

The man in the strange clothing turned toward one of the small orbs floating in the air around him. As he spoke, his words were instantly translated into thousands of languages. On the “Old Earth” voice channel, he was saying, “Tonight, on this Old Earth day called Halloween, we have solved the centuries-old mystery of The Guide. And to do it we used the 500 year old writings of The Guide herself.”

He held out his hand and a holographic image of Edwina’s book appeared. Then video of her standing in the park on that night began to play. The words “Name, Communication, Understanding, Resolution and Direction” appeared with subtitles in the same strange letters that had been on the neural stimulator’s box.

The Old Earth voice channel continued, “We discovered her name through the research of my excellent staff. Those same researchers determined that we could communicate with her here at the entrance to this cave, but only at this one time of the Earth year. We got her to understand what she was and where she was. And we resolved the issue that was trapping her between levels of existence.”

He paused and let the book slowly disappear from his hand. “She has been released,” he said solemnly.

He then laughed and said, “We weren’t too sure about trying to release a trapped soul with a psychic orgasm. That is something that has never been done before, but we were sure that is what she needed. So we tried it, and it worked.”

He laughed again, “And she took the erotic neural stimulator with her, so she is probably one very happy and satisfied spirit wherever she is now.”

Music started to play in the background and several different orbs buzzed around his head emitting various colors of flashing light. “One more mystery of the universe has been solved.” he said, and then after a dramatic pause he turned toward one of the orbs and continued with, “That finishes it for tonight. Until next time, this is Burl Starlight reminding you ‘We don’t know everything about this vast Galaxy of ours.’”

The music changed and he turned to face a different orb. “So join us next time as we investigate more ‘Psychic Mysteries of Old Earth’ right here on neural channel 147 point 83 slash 9.”

 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
END OF STORY
 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

You can also leave feedback & comments for this story on the Plaza Forum

30.10.14