Young Goodman Brown

Disclaimer: All of the characters depicted in this story are 18 years of age or older; one of them at least much older. All of them, including the author, are entirely fictitious.

I woke up that morning with the biggest boner of my life. I sat up in bed and noted that I had to do something about it. My mind was fuzzy, but my cock was as hard as marble and my bladder was threatening to burst. Hastily, I got up and, throwing a robe over myself, slinked down to the bathroom at the end of the hall to relieve myself--one way or both ways. My cock was sticking straight out in front of my shorts and I hoped that neither Ma nor Tabitha as around to catch me like this.

Fortunately, neither of them was and I made it to the bath room okay. I pissed like a racehorse, but my pecker still wouldn't go down—you know how that is--so I had to take charge of it by hand. After a few strokes, I came into a wad of TP and flushed the evidence down the toilet. While I was jacking off, I tried to recall a dream I'd been having moments before waking up. There had been girls in it I remember, lots of them and they were all naked. But rather than enjoying it, I was scared of them and felt like I was in mortal danger. But anything more than that I couldn't recall; the details of the dream started melting away as I became more and more awake.

When I returned to my room, I glanced at the clock on my night stand.

Holy shit! I was going to be late for school. I quickly threw on some clothes and wondered where the hell Tabatha was. Usually, she'd be here by now, banging on my door and threatening me with bodily injury if I didn't get up pronto. I went out into the hallway and called her name.

"Tabitha! Hey, Tabitha, are your there?"

But there was no answer, and that was puzzling. She always comes over here in the morning to get me up (I mean, get me awake), so I wondered if anything had happened to her. Nothing bad I hoped. On the other hand, she's such a pain in the ass.

Tabitha is the girl next door. Although next door is a twenty-minute walk from her farm to ours, but she comes by every morning and we walk to school together. We've known each other all our lives and played together as kids. I'd always sort of thought of her as my sister until we got a little older. At eighteen, she still has quite a boyish figure and it suits her. But with that long raven hair and those hazel eyes, I no longer want to think of her as a sister and I've tried getting a little serious. But she won't have it due to an overwrought sense of morals, and doesn't plan on surrendering her virtue anytime soon. She also had a quick temper and a sharp tongue, which are maybe not her best features.

Maybe she still thinks of me as a brother, although here in rural New England that's not always an impediment to sex. I've tried casting my eyes elsewhere, but all the other girls around here consider me Tabitha's property and keep away, even though I've done everything but hang an Available sign around my neck.

Well, whatever...I had to scoot if I was going to get to school on time. Even though my stomach was grumbling, I didn't have time for breakfast. But I headed down to the kitchen, anyway, planning to grab a piece of toast or something on my way out. I saw Ma there, sitting at the kitchen table and studying her face in that compact mirror she always keeps with her. She'd already laid out the usual breakfast for both of us: bacon, scrambled eggs, hash browns, biscuits and gravy, and a fresh pot of coffee--it's a farmer's breakfast. Hers was partially eaten already, but mine was untouched and steaming away invitingly. It was so tempting, but I just stuck a rasher of bacon in my mouth and headed for the back door.

"Bye, Ma," I mumbled through the bacon.

"Goodman?" she replied. "Where do you think you're going?"

I took the bacon out of my mouth and said, "To school...I'm gonna be late."

"Uh uh, Kiddo." She smiled and shook her head. "There's no school for you today. Remember...the YLF?"

That stopped me in my tracks.

Right... the YLF. I'd totally forgotten that dopy Young Ladies Fair was today. The small local college I attended, Cotton Mather, held one every year around this time, and, as the name implies, it's for female students-only--no men allowed. So we guys have the day off from school when the Fair is going on. I'd totally forgotten. Was I getting forgetful in my old age, even though I'm only twenty?

"Sit down and have your breakfast," Ma said, so I pulled up a chair and fell upon the food in front of me with gusto. No one can cook like my Ma. It's supernatural.

"I guess that's why Tabitha never showed up," I said, pouring myself a cup of Ma's magical brew.

She nodded. "She's on the Committee this year, so she had to be at school early to help set things up. "Goodman, how's my face look to you? Any new wrinkles?"

Ha! As if. Ma, whose name is Rebecca, is an absolutely bewitching woman. She's five-seven, has short, straight blond hair in a page boy cut and sparkling blue eyes. She has a pretty-good figure too, but she always dresses conservatively, usually in loose sweat shirts and Carhartts. She's not fussy about her clothes, but pretty vain about her face. And why shouldn't she be? She has an absolutely beautiful face.

Any new wrinkles? She's never had any old ones.

"Looks fine, Ma," I said with my mouth full.

I'm not one of those oedipal sons you read about, but I really feel proud to have a beautiful mother like her. Still, it puzzles me. Sometimes I think she looks too young. And she never seems to age...hasn't in years. I mean, she looks like she's in her early thirties, but she has to be older than that. If she really was as young as she looks, she'd had to've been a child bride, and while that's not exactly unheard of around here, I don't think that was the case with Ma. But, y'know, just like a woman, she won't admit to her true age, and whenever I ask her how she manages to stay so young-looking, she just smiles at me coyly and says it's magic. Maybe it has something to do with those herbal medicines she cooks up in the barn and sells to the neighbors. (Keep that to yourself, okay?) We don't make much money from this old farm and Ma's potions are about the only thing that keeps the wolf away from our door. Of course, you can bet that plenty of the local wolves have come sniffing around the door of a pretty young widow, but Ma always turns them away. She doesn't seem to be interested in seeing anyone at all, and that suits me just fine.

I don't remember much about my father, Zach. He died not long after I was born. I just have this vague remembrance of a tall, dark man, who looked very tired all the time. I don't even know what he died of. When I asked Ma, she simply said that his body had failed him. "Failed us," she added, which seemed a strange way to put it.

When I finished breakfast, I pushed myself away from the table, got up and said, "Well, I'm off."

Ma had already gathered up her dishes and was washing them in the sink. She came over and took my plate. "Oh? Where to, Goodman?" she asked.

"As long as I have the day off, I thought I'd go into the Village," I replied.

"Well, don't be all day about it," Ma replied. "I wrote up a list of chores I want you to do. It's over there on the fridge," she said, pointing to a scrap of paper on the refrigerator door that was held up by a magnet shaped like a black cat."

Well, that was sort of a bummer.

"...And take your key with you. After I'm done here, I'm locking up the house and going over to Cotton Mather."

"You're going to the Fair?" I asked.

Her response was an exasperated sigh.

"Yes, Morgan wants me to help out."

Morgan was Miz Morgan, the stern old witch who was the Dean of Cotton Mather, a wizened old hag bearing the same stern and rockbound countenance our Pilgrim Fathers (and Mothers) must have had. We call her the Last Puritan, in fact, because of the way she dresses: long skirts that go down to her ankles and collars buttoned up to her chin. Her white hair was usually forced into a tight bun on the top of her head and she wore these square, wire-frame granny glasses. She was a strict disciplinarian; all the male students loathed her and she loathed us back. Oddly enough, though, the girls all liked her. And I think that had to do with the fact that there was something going on with them--some secret we men weren't in on.

Strange, but I'd always thought Morgan and Ma were enemies. Ma had a teaching certificate, and taught at Cotton Mather for awhile, and was even up for the job of Dean, but Morgan waltzed in out of nowhere and took it away from her. After that, Ma quit teaching and concentrated on the farm and her potions. So I was surprised to hear that Ma'd do anything to help old Morgan out; but that woman had a way of bending people to her will. Besides, I guess the YLF, which was a big deal, was more important than what was between Morgan and Ma.

"I won't be back until tomorrow morning," Ma said as she stood by the sink, washing our plates. The YLF goes on all-night, you see. Rumor has it that there's some kind of ceremony that takes place in the woods behind the school at midnight, but the girls are always so tight-lipped about it, so who knows? "Be a good boy and try not to burn the house down," Ma said.

"Ma!" I protested. "What do you think I am? A little kid?"

"Just the opposite, Goodman. I'm worried you might bring a bunch of your hooligan friends over and wreck the place."

"Ma! What are we going to do with all the girls locked-up at school?" I replied. "We're not that gay."

That caused her to laugh out loud and splash dishwater onto the kitchen floor. "Good point," she replied. "I'm sure you're not."

There's this joke about the village of Ayer. It goes like this:

A: Say, did you hear about the guy who suffocated in a phone booth last night?"

B: No, what happened?

A: He couldn't get Ayer.

Pretty dumb, huh?

It's a gag about the historically poor phone service out here in Nowhere, Mass. The business about the phone booth dates it obviously, but even cell phone service hereabouts is sketchy at best.

The subtext of the joke is that Ayer, and its environs, is so far off the beaten path (any beaten path you care to name) that there's absolutely nothing to do here, and I mean nothing. Which is why we all try to run off to Salem, Arkham or any other place that's even a little bit livelier than Ayer every time we get a chance to get away. Like now, with the Festival going on and all.

I didn't really expect that many of the guys would still be hanging around town, but as luck would have it, I did run into three of them: Gershom, Abel and Enoch, in the Rexall. I spotted them in a booth at the back, and they were talking about the Fair.

"What's with that, anyway?" Gershom was asking. "I mean, why is it women-only? Why isn't there a Young Men's Fair, too?"

"A school-sponsored festival for just the male students?" I asked as I made them make room for me in the booth. "So... if there was one, you'd go to it? If it was men only?"

"Hell, no!" he replied. "I ain't that gay. But what's the deal? I've tried to get Abigail to tell me about it, but all she did was put her finger to her lips saying: 'Mum's the word,' and giggle."

Abigail was Gershom's bomb girlfriend. She was a striking beauty, with long blond hair, pouty lips, long—long-- legs and quite an impressive rack. Gershom was a lucky son-of-a-bitch and knew it. She was the captain of the cheerleading squad and president of the 4-H club, which is a really important position in an AG college. And since Gershom was the quarterback of the school's football team, their hooking up was just to be expected.

"What about you, Goodman?" Abel then asked me. "Doesn't your wife ever tell you anything?" They all burst out in merriment.

"Get off it, guys. Tabitha's not my wife," I replied. I have to deal with this all the time. "I wish you'd stop saying things like that. You know we haven't done anything."

"Well...whose fault is that?" Abel replied.

"Goodman's tiny pecker," Gershom said.

"Fuck you guys." I jumped up, pulled down my zipper and started to unroll my cock. "I'll show you who's top log around here!"

"Shit! Cool it, Goodman," Abel said, panicking. "You'll get us thrown out. Who cares what they do. It's just girlie stuff anyway, you know. More power to 'em I say. We get a day off out of it. So since we're footloose and fancy free young studs today, let's decide where we want to go. Who's for Arkham? We could hang around the Miskatonic and pick up some chicks."

"Nah," I said, zipping up and sitting back down. "You don't want to do that. Those Arkham girls are real uggoes. They all have claws and tentacles and stuff."

They laughed, but the Arkham girls do have that reputation.

"How would you know, anyway?" Gershom said. "You seem to live like a monk. And, you know, I've always wondered. You and that stone fox of a mother of yours, all alone in that farmhouse? What do the two of you get up to at night, anyway?"

"I don't like what you're implying." I said that menacingly, although if we were to come to blows, Gershom would pulverize me in a minute. But a man has to stand up for himself and against those who would slander his Ma.

"Hey, relax," the still panicky Abel said, trying to intercede.

"Besides," I countered. "How do you know I'm a monk? I go out of town a lot to get supplies for the farm you know, and there are girls everywhere."

"Where do you go?" Gershom asked.

"Oh...everywhere," I replied nonchalantly. "Sometime as far as Bay Colony."

"Bay Colony?" Gershom said. "You mean Hester Prynne? You've got a girl at Scarlet A? Bullshit!"

Hester Prynne was a big women's finishing school in Bay Colony, and the girls there were renowned.

"Everybody's got a girl at Scarlet A," I replied.

"Is that where you're going?" Abel asked.

"Naw," I replied. "I've got things to do around the farm--fuck it all!"

Abel looked disappointed. I think he was hoping to hitch a ride and get introduced to a Hester Prynne girl, and Gershom shot me a look that said he clearly thought my story about Bay Colony was bullshit.

Just then, Enoch, who'd been pretty quiet until now, said something stupid.

"Hey...what about those stories that the YLF Festival is one big lesbian orgy? What about that secret ceremony they hold in the woods behind the school at midnight?

"Where'd you get that shit?" Gershom asked.

"I heard it from a friend of a friend," Enoch replied.

"In other words...bullshit," Gershom said. "What would make perfectly normal women become lesbos one night out of the year?"

"Well, statistically speaking..." I offered. "Some of them probably already are." I was thinking about those bruisers on Mrs. Hawke's female wrestling team.

"Well, Abigail's no dyke!" Gershom replied angrily. "She'd never get up to something like that!" His face turned red. He's got too much testosterone than is good for a man and a quick temper to boot, so I tried to defuse the situation.

"Whoa...whoa," I said. "Nobody's saying anything like that. Anyway, you're right, Gershom. Those stories are all just bullshit."

"Damn straight!"

"There's one way to find out, you know," Enoch said. "Someone should go up there and check it out."

Well, that was stupid too.

"What? Spy on the Fair?" I said. "That's crazy! What if old Morgan caught you? She's tortured students for less."

"I wasn't saying I should go." Enoch replied. "I was thinking about you."

"Holy Toledo! Why me?" I asked.

"Well, you're the only one of us who's not going out of town..."

"And you're expendable," Gershom added. "Nobody likes you anyway, haw haw!"

"Well then, the feeling's mutual," I said, standing up and washing my hands of these clowns. "Enjoy Arkham, boys. I got stuff to do—farmer stuff. You should try a little of it."

And walked out.

Those guys are assholes—especially Gershom.

I was standing at the crossroads where the path split up. To the right, the road leads to home; to the left, Cotton Mather. Unfortunately, those guys had planted a bug in my ear. I couldn't stop thinking about the Fair now and dangerous thoughts were coming to me. Maybe if took just a quick peek to satisfy my curiosity, you know, it would be okay. And maybe I'd learn something I could hold over those guys too.

So I turned left and headed in the direction of school.

A little historical background:

Around these parts, Salem town is most famous for its witch trials, but we've had 'em here in Ayer too. And they were presided over by none other than that famous witch finder, Cotton Mather himself; still known around here as the Man on Horseback Who Burned the Witches, because...well... he rode into town on a horse, burned a bunch of witches and left—sort of like a Puritan Lone Ranger. There's a statue of him in the town square, erected in sixteen whatever by the grateful town fathers for ridding the town of its witches. It depicts him on that selfsame horse, wearing one of those Pilgrim hats and brandishing a bible in one hand. It's been there forever and generations of pigeons have shit on it.

Nowadays, of course, we don't think of him as such a hero. All that witch burning and stuff was pretty shameful according to modern opinion, and we now figure that the Witch Trials were brought about by either mass hysteria or moldy bread. The most shameful incident in this whole shameful story has got to be how he burnt an obviously innocent woman right here in Ayer. Her name was Goody Close, and, in those days, the litmus test for witches was to make them recite the Lord's Prayer. It was considered a proof of witchcraft if the accused stumbled over the words or forgot some of them (but, heck, I can't even remember them). Goody recited the words flawlessly and they thought they were going to have to let her go, but Mather burned her anyway, citing something he called 'spectral evidence.' He found a man who testified that she had appeared to him in a dream one night and caused his manhood to shrivel up. That kind of spooky testimony was considered good enough to hang a person in those days--or in Goody's case, to light a torch under her.

Goody had been quite rich, and the man who accused her was a relative who inherited all of her property. Out of gratitude, he tore down Goody's house, built a school on top of it and named it after Mather. It's quite an old school, and over the centuries it's been repurposed many times; torn down and rebuilt. Currently it's an agricultural college where we're taught how to lose money by farming.

It's located on a slight rise where four roads used to come together. Traffic patterns have changed over the centuries and the original cross-roads no longer exists, except as three paths that lead to the school and one that leads from the school into the woods in back. The whole area is surrounded by a wire fence on three sides and the aforementioned forest on the fourth. The front gate was locked today, of course, but I knew of a secret hole in the fence behind a bush, which I used every now and then to sneak out of school, but this was the first time I'd ever used it to sneak back in.

Once through the hole, I had to scuttle across the clearing and hide in the landscaping next to the building, hoping that no one inside the building was looking out a window who might spot me. The front entrance was probably locked and maybe even guarded, so I searched around until I found an open window on the east side of the building, that fortunately was the window of a men's bathroom and scrambled through it.