The first time I saw Delilah’s true form was an accident. It was the only time I was grateful I’d stayed conscious during those dry bone English lectures in college. It was Ovid and Hyginis who said the original sirens were friends of Persephone, the poor soul snatched up by Hades, forced to spend a season in the underworld. Ovid assumed they were good friends, loyal women turned into halflings. Transformed, they wore the head of a woman and the body of birds. The wings were gifts to help set their abducted friend free.
But Hyginis had a darker vision. He said the transformation was a punishment. That the grieving mother, Demeter, cursed the jealous girls for not protecting their friend, her daughter during the abduction. She blamed them for the rupturing of her family and cursed the women to spend their lives as half human, half serpent or fish. From some craggy island in the middle of the Mediterranean, halfway between Africa and Europe, the legend of the sirens was born.
But I was following the wrong legend. Delilah was something else, something more ancient.
Delilah wanted a drink. When I returned to our spot under the balcony, she was gone.
I went searching. I know it’s not attractive to be possessive of what was never yours and never would be, but that night I did not feel like being evolved. I wanted to find her, so she could drink the bourbon before the ice melted, the drink I stood in line to get. I wanted to find her so she could bless me with a smile, approval, any kind of sign that I would be in her company again.
When I stumbled into the storage room, a wet, panting sound drifted above the music’s dull thud.
“Delilah?”
I walked in and a sharp iron scent assaulted me. I strained to see. The walls bled red. Claw marks covered the wall. His or hers, I could not tell. The strange metallic scent I smelled was that of someone dying. There is honesty in murder.
“It doesn’t have to hurt,” she said. The bearded man was slumped beneath her, his eyelashes twitched until they stopped. Lilah’s lips were stained as if she’d been eating strawberries. “Doesn’t even need to be blood.” She stared at me. “I just like the taste.” Horror must have flickered in my eyes. She offered a wry smile, a lifeless explanation. “My sisters would not approve.”
Fear gripped me. I concentrated to slow my breathing, to make my vocal cords work.
“Is that why you don’t see them anymore? Why they went away?” I managed.
“Creative differences,” she said. Her voice steely. “You could say we broke up. Like the Supremes. I’m the star now.”
I had the feeling that she always was. Even as she drained whatever melodies and harmonies she could from the man’s throat, the deejay played her song. She finished wiping her mouth then joined the chorus, adding impossible runs that no record label had ever recorded.
“You can’t give them everything,” she said, smiling. “Got to save some for you.” A berry-sized crimson stain rested above the mole on her chest. She sniffed. As far as anyone knew, could have been a nosebleed. She rose and adjusted the glimmering halter top. Her golden harem pants shimmered around her hips.
“Don’t look so mournful, Frankie,” Delilah said. “Yes, Simeon was talented, but he was on his way out.” She held up his limp arm. Track marks and cuts like jagged railroads all along the stiffening flesh. She reached for me and I recoiled. I couldn’t forget the young man’s face. She took the drink instead. Blood and lipstick stained the high ball glass.
I watched her, frozen. Unsure if I should run or stay.
It was not the blood that killed them. It was the heartbeat, the life force in it. Delilah took their first music, the heart drum, that unique rhythm we are all born with, and then, she took the last. All of it. She told me later that she had stopped stalking churches and choirs. “Too much practice,” she said. “Neverending rehearsals. Hollow hallelujahs.” She stalked amateur nights, but they brought too much attention, so she settled on nightclubs.
Satiated, Delilah’s face switches textures and tone. First she is a diamond, now her face is the shape of the moon.
“I need water.” She doesn’t wait to see if I will follow her.
Looking at the budding singer’s lifeless body, I knew then why nightclubs were her favorite haunting grounds. Anonymous hook-ups and no real-world connections. She could feed and still have time to dance until her feet went numb. And of course, vanity. The deejays played her record on constant rotation with the most popular beats, Donna and Diana. They called her the Never Can Say Goodbye Girl because Delilah could dance all night. She shut the club down with her rhythm and song. Killed it every time.
Hers was a visceral music. The kind of hard-won grace that came from speaking across elements, living across time. She opened the door. When a cone of light revealed the second body slumped in the corner, I knew I needed to get away. After spending most of the night with her, I was running out of time. But she leapt on me. The glass crashed to the floor. My arm felt as if she had wrenched it off. Her breath was overly sweet, the opposite of rot.
“Just because I can’t feed from you doesn’t mean I won’t kill you,” she said.
I could feel her hunger across the stale cigarette air. Her angled bones pierced the darkness, paralyzed me where I stood.
She was on my throat before I could cry out. Her hands burned me. She released her palm, leaving me rubbing the slightly blistered flesh. “We will get along fine, Frankie, as long as you do what I say. I don’t want to hurt you. Let’s keep this cool.” She nodded her head toward the door.
“What about them?” I stammered.
“A bad trip. Won’t be the first.”
It wasn’t the last.
We walked past men grinding in the strobe and black lights. Their hips were all shadow and sound. The whole scene was raw and delicate. Pressed bone to bone, each breathless body swelled into a wave of desire. Red lips, eyes pretending to be flowers. That night on the dance floor, she held me like I had never been held, as if my every movement was necessary. She made me forget the dead eyes hidden in the darkness. We danced on until I was delirious. Her laughter rang through me. Finally, Delilah hurried out of the club, just a few steps from sunlight. I avoided my reflection in the mirrored hall. Guilt betrayed by my own ravenous glare.
After that night the mood was different. It wasn’t about dancing but feeling the energy of the place so it could stay with me forever. The sound that could not be replicated, the lights. Being with Delilah, as dangerous as it was, became its own intoxicating drug for me. She made me feel powerful, glamorous, seen, needed in a way I had never been before or since.
But some friendships eat you alive. Some love is stolen by water, carries you away except for the bloodied hands that held you.
Avenues emptied hours ago, the sidewalks wrapped in secrets, we skulked along in silence until we reached the great steps that led to the water. We were in Battery Park, the southernmost tip of the island. Delilah said the Atlantic was a grey bowl of sound and need. That there were layers of want and memory. She said if she wanted she could strike its rim like a singing bowl, call her sisters and they would return to her. Said she could still hear them singing, not through blood but in water. The sound of grief made her wish they never came here.
“Where did you come from?” I asked. The air was cold against my face. Her eyes look tear-stained, scabs falling from a wound.
“A place I am not sure I can return to.”
“Why don’t you want to be with your sisters?” I asked again. She usually dodged this question. Her answer surprised me.
“I’d rather die than meet their judgment,” she said. “They take the joy out of this cursed life, what joy there is.”
“Can you die?” Delilah did not answer. She took so much from life. I wondered if death was something she even feared. The white bolero on her shoulders trembled like moth wings. She ripped the garment off and leapt into the ocean.
“Lilah!”
She disappeared under the water. Moonlight stripes raked the ocean’s sur
face. I held myself, shook, my jaw locked from shock. Her absence triggered a strange withdrawal in me, a separate grief that broke free. Who was I without the shroud I wore, the bodies I carried? Delilah was the shadow who walked with me, the valley I feared and could not escape. I called her name a few more times then turned to go. I had no destination in mind. Wherever I was going I had already been.
Behind me a keening sound erupted, water churned. Something burst from the ocean’s floor.
If it wasn’t for the expression in their eyes, defiance, oblivion, I would not have recognized the creature that rose from the waters. Stories tell of ships and men dashed against the rocks, but what I saw that night was the nature of stone itself. Hard, iridescent metallic scales covered what used to be toned brown skin. Gone were the delicate bones under soft flesh. Water droplets dripped from long golden feathers. Neither an angel nor a demon, they were another creature for which I had no words. The wind howled as they rose. Wings, scales, the twin-tailed serpent, not fully dragon, not fully fish.
I knew it was Delilah from the way the creature hovered over me. I wanted to scream but no sounds emerged, just the choked silence that comes when fear takes over your body, even your breathing. When she surfaced from the waters I wanted to look away, but she was like a sun forever rising. She reflected her own light. There was a wholeness in her irregularities. The oddness was better than beauty, how she chose traits from species found on land and sea. Her bird-like mouth was shaped as if she wanted to say something but there was nothing to be said. I knew Delilah was a monster. I saw her monstrous appetite for reaping talents she never sowed. But when she took another shape, so did my fear.
I watched her circle the air, the night filled with music culled from the centuries, from the lives of other humans I could never know. She sang as if she had ten throats instead of one. I covered my ears. The weight of what was stolen crushed me, the songs these long dead voices never sang, the strings never plucked, the drums of gods forgotten across time.
Delilah wanted a witness, an accomplice, but her eyes told me that she wanted something else, too. She had revealed her face to me but not her real motives. She came from deep ocean or dark cosmos. There was no way to be sure and she would not tell. It wasn’t until later when I realized what Delilah wanted was a stooge.
* * *
Radiant plumage full and thick, she extended powerful wings. She still wore the guise of a woman’s body, but her arms and breasts were tattooed with golden symbols I could not read. She held each of the two-serpent’s tails up in her hands as if they were long braids and hovered over me. Her eyes flashed, daring me to follow, then with an impossible note, Delilah screeched and disappeared behind the clouds.
Terrified, I was afraid to move. I waited, my whole heart in my throat and wondered how she lost—if she had ever known—the meaning of kindness. She took so much. Generous isn’t a word anyone would use to describe Delilah Divine. But she had a seductive charm, charisma. Being with her was like being all the things you knew you would never be.
How did I ever believe that she cared for me? But believe I did. My thoughts churned, chaotic as the first waters. Frozen in fear, I waited for her to emerge from the clouds. Waves upon waves crashed against the walled park, the sound ominous. I shivered. No sign of her disturbed the parting clouds, the moonlit sky. I exhaled, hoping it was safe to go. When my mind gave my body permission to move, I ran.
Dancing shoes aren’t made for marathons, but I didn’t care about that. I pounded the pavement as if my whole world depended on it. Remembering the look in her eyes, I knew it did. I tore past the huge gray granite pilons that dotted the plaza. I never spent much time in that part of the city, and I knew if I survived that night, I wouldn’t want to return again. The park was deserted. The wisps of trees made strange shapes across the night, but when I ran headlong into the shadow of giant wings, I nearly had a stroke. Unlike Delilah, this bronze eagle remained still, perched on its huge black granite pedestal. I wiped my eyes and continued running out of the lonely park until I finally reached State Street. Gasping for air, my lungs burned in my chest. I stumbled past an overturned trash bin, looking for the subway when I heard a familiar voice up ahead.
“Don’t move. Sing for me.”
Naked, her body glistened, still wet from the ocean or her transformation. I could not tell which, but the fear on the suited man’s eyes was unmistakable. Delilah held him by his throat with one hand. Her hair dripped down her back. A briefcase was tossed on the street. Another man, his companion, held onto his arm, weeping.
“We don’t have any money!”
“Did I ask for money? I said sing.” Delilah’s voice was low, menacing. The skin on her back rippled, remnants of the golden fish scales shimmered in the night. I tried to will my breathing to stillness. It was the first time I did not want her attention.
“But I can’t sing. I don’t know any songs,” the suited man said, coughing. He struggled to speak over Delilah’s iron grip.
“Then you better think of something quick,” she said.
The poor man began to hum out of tune. “What a fool believes…”
“Please don’t,” the weeping man cried.
“…no wise man has the power…”
Delilah’s fingers tightened around his neck, press at his windpipe.
“No!” the other cries and sobs. “… to reason away what seems to be …” The sobbing one’s voice was frightened but sure. His notes more solid and confident than his lover’s.
Delilah pushed the suited weeping man away and held the sobbing one’s throat. “Tolerable but …” He faltered, stops, tries again louder this time, the notes crack under Delilah’s crushing vice grip.
She takes his neck and squeezes it until his voice is a sieve. All the pain he feels, and his lover’s, seeps into the air. There was no music worthy enough for Delilah to take, but she took this man’s life anyway. I want to close my eyes and unsee the way his body crumples to the ground, a lifeless doll. Unhear his lover’s scream. I want to walk through the shadows and streetlights to a night that is all mine. A night without Delilah.
She takes the dying man’s jacket from his body, even as he lay in his lover’s arms. The sobbing man keeps rocking him back and forth. “Why? Why would you do this?” She strokes tears from his cheek. He cringes. She loosens his tie. Unloops the dark, silk fabric from around his neck. Takes it. Ties it around her throat.
“Because I can.”
When she rises to walk away, she turns and looks straight at me. Hidden in shadow, behind thick undergrowth and bushes, my heart stops.
“Time to go, Frankie.”
The sound of my name on her tongue made me recoil. I stumbled out of the darkness and left what remained of my courage in the night’s mouth.
* * *
Night after night I returned. From 54, the Garage, GG’s Barnum Room to the moving sets of Xenon and my pre-Delilah favorite, Infinity, where it all came to a fiery end. How could I have known? When she returned from feeding, her mouth slick, eyes glazed, almost giddy, she never questioned what I did to take my mind off the murders. As long as I helped cover her tracks, made the straight lines look crooked, the zigs zag, I thought she didn’t really care about what I did. So, I danced with many partners and took more drugs than I ever had. She wasn’t the only one wearing a tiny canister on a ring of gold around their neck. I needed a little more each time I cleaned up after her “bad trips.” I had no idea how much music was stolen from our world, how many futures. I did not have the stomach to count them. I wondered how long Delilah had plundered the world, stealing the songs that might heal whole nations. And for what? She sang beautifully but why should her voice be the only one? Wasn’t the world room enough for multitudes?
With each new rising star snuffed out by her insatiable appetite, her voice became even more astonishing. She had depths that came from having lived and devoured many lives. I found myself seeking solace elsewhere. New partners to erase the ho
rror I witnessed. Each night we danced as if time was our servant. Like Lilah’s beauty, I knew it was a lie. Tomorrow morning could never save us.
I had just tucked a number in my back pocket when I heard her unmistakable voice behind me.
“So, this is who you’ve been hiding.”
Thierry, my dance partner looked confused. Just another lonely soul looking for absolution. I knew Delilah did not love me, yet she had begun to watch me as if she did.
“Let’s go,” she said.
“But I’m just getting started.” I didn’t want to be alone with her. Not now. Not anymore if I was honest. She frowned. I returned the hat I’d borrowed from my new friend and watched them escape to the dance floor. There was always another dance partner waiting. Everyone looked happy except for Delilah and me, locked in a dangerous dance.
She watched Thierry disappear in a cloud of smoke.
“This place is dead. I need some air, water.”
I hailed a cab and we rode in silence all the way down to the river. Traffic was light, still early yet. The sky over the Hudson looked foreign on the other side of the dark window. Sirens swept by but Delilah didn’t even blink. We’d all become numb to them. As she leaned against my shoulder I tried to disappear into the corner of the cab. The cool glass felt good against my skin.
Clearly I had listened too closely to her music and yet not close enough. The night she found me lost in another body’s symphony, her interest shifted. She knew I had once loved her, as inexplicable and unrequited as it was, but the monotony of murder had dulled that ache.
Was it now Lilah’s turn to wait for the words that end affairs, break hearts? She knew better than most that speeches begun with words of love ended in heartbreak. How many times over the years had she pretended? Like any killer, Delilah needed to feel good before she tore your heart out. But a monster like Lilah didn’t need a ruse to be let off the hook. She was the hook.
Anger sliced through the cab’s cigarette smoke-filled air.
The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction (2021) Page 35
