Succubi

by Edward Lee

  Then Wendlyn added, “Let’s give lof.”

  Rena giggled.

  Give lof, Byron thought. It was a slow thought, slow like blood oozing from a wound. Something was happening.

  The three faces—the three grins—seemed to reach into him, drag him down like drugs. They’re kids, he kept thinking. They’re just kids… I can’t…

  They converged, laying him out. His vision seemed detached; he saw only in fragments, diced glimpses. Faces hovered over him, bodies, breasts. The little stone pendants swayed like pendulums as they eagerly clustered about him, unbuttoning his shirt and pants. Their giggling made him sick; soon it didn’t even sound human. It sounded wet, clicking, like voracious eating.

  “The Fulluht-Loc is coming…”

  “The doefolmon…”

  “Give lof! To the Modor!”

  “Wîhan!”

  “Dother fo Dother!”

  They had his penis out, which was already erect, pulsing. Melanie ran her hands up over his chest. Wendlyn was stroking his face, suspending a big nipple over his mouth. And Rena, whose own giggles sounded muffled, was fellating him.

  This was all wrong, part of him knew. It didn’t matter that they’d come on to him. They were teenagers. He could lose his job for this, even go to jail. But that part of him faded. He lay there as if staked to the ground. He couldn’t move.

  “Lots of muscles,” Melanie cooed, rubbing. “He’d make a great wreccan.”

  “Shit on him,” Wendlyn said.

  “He’s big,” Rena stopped long enough to say. “Look!”

  They giggled, appraising his penis whose glans already shined wetly with a glaze of pre-ejaculatory drool.

  Now Rena had his service piece out, a Colt Python. She cocked its gridded hammer, prodded his testicles with the barrel.

  Byron was shivering, terrorized. He felt the cold end of the barrel poke into his scrotum, trace his shaft.

  “Don’t worry, little baby,” Melanie said.

  “We won’t shoot it off,” Wendlyn promised.

  She and Rena traded places. Wendlyn mounted him. “Ooo, you’re right. He’s real big,” she commented, and inserted him into herself. Rena straddled his head, pushing the nearly hairless furrow against his lips. “Lick it, lick it,” she commanded in glee, then began urinating.

  Byron felt pinned down, buried in madness. Hot urine streamed against his face, into his mouth. He couldn’t breathe. Wendlyn rode him ferociously, slamming her hips down against him. Both Byron’s heart and his genitals felt like they would explode at the same time.

  Rena climbed off. Melanie was getting something out from under a log. Wendlyn rode him faster, harder, eyes turned up.

  She shuddered, then shrieked—

  Byron exploded into her sex—

  As Melanie slid the sharpened cnif against his throat, cutting immediately and right to the bone.

  “Wîhan!” Rena celebrated.

  Byron’s blood spurted out of his neck precisely in time with his orgasm. He died a minute or two later, when they began to slice his belly open.

  «« — »»

  Erik scouted the woods. The sun was going down. He had pretty good bearings now. He could even see the Slavik house from here. He’d need to go in soon, but he didn’t dare yet. A big Fleetwood had pulled up as he watched. He didn’t want to go into the house when a lot of people were there. They’d have plenty of preliminary rituals before the actual rite. That should give him enough time.

  He knew the cops were onto him; no doubt Bard had found the brygorwreccan’s body—they knew he was close. He went back deeper into the woods, to conceal himself until it was time.

  But what was that he heard? Erik stopped, poised himself to listen. Voices, it sounded like. Quiet voices.

  He followed, moving as lightly as he could. Soon he thought he detected movement, pale shapes in the darkening light.

  He looked past some trees, into a dell. A girl, naked, was walking away. Two more stooped over something. It didn’t take Erik long to realize that what they were stooping over was a corpse.

  A cop, he thought. They were eviscerating him, putting certain organs into a plastic bag. The thinner girl seemed to be sawing something. This, too, did not surprise Erik. He’d seen it all before. The slender girl sawed off the cop’s head and put it in the bag.

  Wifhands. Younger ones. He thought he recognized them.

  Then they rose. They turned slowly, grinning. Their pendants dangled. Their white flesh was smeared with blood.

  “We know you’re there, Erik,” the older one said.

  Rena Godwin giggled. “We can feel you.”

  The other one was the wifford’s kid, Wendlyn. “Come here.”

  “No,” Erik said. He raised the shotgun. “You bitches don’t have me anymore.”

  The two girls laughed.

  “We have you. You’ve been blessed.”

  “You’ll always be ours.”

  No… I…won’t, he determined. He could feel it already, their pull on his brain, like the moon.

  “Come to us, Erik,” Rena said.

  “The little brygorwreccan.”

  Their young faces beamed, the stare of their eyes sinking into his head like daggers, like cnifs.

  “Come to us.”

  Erik stepped forward. The shotgun was charged, but he scarcely even felt it now. It felt like something he was holding in a dream.

  “Let us give you fulluht. Let us make you holy again.”

  Kill them, he commanded himself. He tried to aim the gun, but his arms barely moved.

  “The doefolmon is coming.”

  “The Fulluht-Loc.”

  “You’ve come back to be with us. We welcome you, Erik. We will take you back into the cirice.”

  No, pounded the thought like hammer to stone. I’ll kill myself first.

  He would, he knew he would. Anything to be free of them. They were so strong against his will, much stronger than before.

  They began to come forward. Wendlyn outstretched her hand, smiling softly. Rena came up behind her.

  Kill them, he demanded of himself. Kill them before they—

  “Little peow. Kneel—”

  —change, he thought.

  Erik squeezed his eyes shut. His mind felt released from a fetter. His forearms shot up, brought the shotgun to bear.

  “No!” Rena shrieked.

  His finger contracted. The shotgun jumped behind a great flash and concussion: ba-BAM!

  The round socked a hole into Wendlyn’s throat. Blood flew out of her like thin, flailing tentacles. Rena, screaming, flew at him with a small glinting æsc.

  He racked another round and fired. The hand holding the spike flew off the end of her arm. He cycled the shotgun once more, raised it to her face.

  Her face…

  His teeth clacked shut.

  The third round of 12-gauge exploded in her face. Her head blew apart in wheeling, wet chunks.

  Gunsmoke shifted up like a ghost. It tinged in his nostrils. Before they change, his thoughts continued to tick. His face felt like a flat plate of stone when he looked down at the two naked forms. Their dark blood pumped slowly into the soil.

  The part of his mind that still belonged to this world told him, You just killed two kids.

  “No, I didn’t,” he answered himself in voice. “I just killed two monsters.”

  He racked another round into the chamber and stalked off back into the darkening forest.

  —

  Chapter 28

  Sooer, dooer, the dark voice groped. The black words seemed to drag her down, deeper, deeper into the strange, chanting labyrinth of the dream.

  Ann awoke in the terrible crimson vertigo, the knife—

  slup-slup-slup

  —sinking to its guard into her abdomen.

  Slup-slup-slup, she heard, wincing. She brought a hand to her flat, sweat-moistened belly. She was naked in bed, drenched. The room was empty. She gasped when she saw the clock: 8:12 p.m.
She’d slept the entire day away, and well into evening.

  She showered in a cold torrent, hoping the spray of water would revive her. She felt terrible, as if hung over or drugged. She shivered as she washed herself, her hand guiding the bar of soap felt like someone else’s hand, like the fluttering hands of the nightmare, roving her, stroking her stretched belly.

  God, was all she could think. She felt haunted; she didn’t even feel real. Each movement as she dressed prodded the worst headache of her life. What was wrong with her? Something was terribly wrong; she could feel it. Something wrong with…everything.

  She must be sick—that was it. She must be coming down with flu; that’s why she’d slept so late. She went downstairs for some juice and heard car doors closing.

  Ann peeked out the sidelight sash of the front door. Her mother’s Fleetwood was backing out the drive. It looked like there were several people in it.

  She frowned. The car drove off. Dusk was settling. A bright, pinkened moon peered over the horizon. It was full.

  Something shattered. Upstairs.

  Ann spun around. She raced up the staircase. Something else shattered. It sounded like glass breaking.

  The heart monitor’s beep down the hall sounded slow, irregular. Ann’s breath lodged in her chest when she spun into her father’s room. Saline bottles lay shattered around the outer rim of the throw rug. The wheeled stands lay toppled over. Ann’s vision rooted to the bed.

  Her father lay sprawled, half over the convalescent rail. Blood dripped out of his arm from where the IV needles had torn out. He was convulsing, his mouth locked open. His eyes bulged as if lidless. Ann could only stare. His right arm, tremoring, began to lift. The crabbed hand unfurled.

  His mouth jittered but no sound came out. He was pointing at her.

  “Oh, Jesus… Dad…”

  His hand fell to the bed. The slow beep-beep-beep of the Lifepak monitor stopped—

  —then flat-lined.

  He’d been leaning over for something. Ann’s wide gaze slowly lowered. The nightstand, she saw. The antique, enameled nightstand seemed to have something on the side facing the bed.

  Writing? she thought. It looked like writing.

  She cast it aside. She quickly dragged him over, leaned down. She attempted CPR as she best knew how. Each downward push against his frail chest pumped a little more blood from the torn IV hole at the inside of his elbow. She craned his head back, pinched shut his nostrils, and blew.

  Nothing.

  The flat line droned on.

  He’s dead, she realized.

  Her downward stare seemed drawn by something. She stared at the side of the drawered nightstand.

  Her father had written something on it. He’d used his own blood:

  Doefolmon

  Leave Melanie, Martin, Everything.

  Get out while you still can.

  «« — »»

  “The Ardat-Lil was a succubus,” Professor Fredrick explained. “Or I should say, the supreme succubus, the first lady of hell.”

  “Succubus,” Dr. Harold repeated the word.

  “A female sex-demon. Many variations exist throughout world mythology, and it’s interesting how many ancient religious modes reflect a reverence to identical gods and anti-gods. The Ardat-Lil is no exception. The Scottish Bheur, the German Brechta, the Scandinavian Agaberte, the Teutonic Alrune, the Egyptian Aldinoch—they’re all names for the same thing. They’re all the Ardat-Lil.”

  Succubus, Dr. Harold thought. The word even sounded evil. It seemed to walk across his groin like a tarantula.

  Professor Fredrick lit a pipe with a face on it, puffing sweet smoke into the air. “The Ardat-Lil has a very racy history. The Ur-locs believed that when the earth was made, half of heaven’s angels were banished. Sound familiar? On the first day of his banishment, Lucifer decided to take a stroll around the earth, which he found, to his complete dissatisfaction, to be inhabited by peace-loving humans who were completely bereft of sin. They all rejected him immediately, and Lucifer, mind you, doesn’t take kindly to rejection. Therefore, he decided to corrupt the human race, by tricking them into turning away from God. This may sound familiar too. Anyway, Lucifer searched for the most beautiful virgin in the world and after six days he found her—a young woman named Ardat. Lucifer promised to make her his queen if she turned away from God, and Ardat, as you’ve probably already guessed, agreed. They sealed the agreement by having intercourse. Ardat became pregnant, and after only six days, gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. This baby eventually bloomed into a woman even more beautiful than her mother, so beautiful that Lucifer deemed any name unworthy of her beauty. She was known simply as the Daughter.”

  “Or the Ardat-Lil,” Dr. Harold supposed.

  “No, not quite. The Daughter was so beautiful that Lucifer, notorious for his hormones, couldn’t resist. She was beautiful, but she wasn’t evil, and Lucifer wanted an evil little girl. So he changed himself into an anonymous man, whom the Daughter fell in love with. It was all a ploy. The Daughter married the man, had intercourse with him, and then she became pregnant. In other words—”

  “Lucifer seduced his own daughter.”

  “Exactly,” Professor Fredrick said. “The Daughter then gave birth to an even more beautiful baby girl, and she turned out to be heinously evil. She was known as the Daughter of the Daughter, or the Ardat-Lil. That’s what this repeated term in Tharp’s sketches refers to.” Professor Fredrick pointed to one.

  Dr. Harold read, beneath a drawing of a woman giving birth on a dolmen, the words Dother fo Dother.

  “The dohtor, or in the Chilternese form, the Dother fo Dother, was half human, half devil, the worst of both parts, and she was therefore condemned by God to eternity in hell. However, like many demons, she was born with the power of incarnation, and it is the bounden duty of all demons to perpetuate evil. Through time, the Ardat-Lil gained followers on earth, human followers, who were granted subcarnate powers in return for their worship. A coven formed—”

  “The Ur-locs,” Dr. Harold conjectured.

  “Right, whose existence revolved solely around the worship of the Ardat-Lil. They served her in many ways, by ritual, by sacrifice and cannibalism, and by eliminating all men from the bloodline, or bludcynn—another word which Tharp refers to quite frequently. The Ur-locs, according to legend, turned men into slaves via something called the sexespelle; it has always been thought that intercourse with a succubus functioned as a pact with the devil. All coven members—wifhands—had the power to become succubi for short periods, during which they seduced men and hence enslaved them. They’d trick men into thinking they were dreaming, have intercourse with them, and that was that. Any man who had sex with a wifhand in the succubi state was lost forever to the coven’s will.”

  “What are these words here?” Dr. Harold asked, pointing to further sketch pages. “Are they all relative to this system of worship?”

  “Oh, yes,” Professor Fredrick answered. “Ælmesse, alms; lof, praise in ceremony; cirice, church. Thane, helot, and peow all mean the same as wreccan: male slave—one who has fallen to the succubi. Wîhan means to make holy. The Ur-locs believed that the only way to make a man holy was to kill him—and often eat him—in homage to the Dother fo Dother.”

  “And these? Wifford? Wifmunuc?”

  “A wifford to the Ur-locs was their version of a verger or a seminarian, a religious hierarch. The wifford was second-in-command of the coven, and in constant training to replace the coven leader upon her death. The leader was called the wifmunuc, the one closest to the deity.”

  Dr. Harold grimly stroked his white mustache. He considered this, and what the old professor had said earlier. What a ghastly vision…

  “Not a pretty topic, I assure you. Despite their obscurity, the Ur-locs proved one of the most savage societies to ever exist.” Professor Fredrick then emptied the smoking guts of his pipe, tap-tap-tapping them into an obsidian ashtray that once served as an Assyrian blood tap. “Ther
e’s a summation, though, in an ultimate respect, I mean.”

  “I’m sorry?” Dr. Harold said.

  “There’s a point to all of this. I don’t believe for a minute that an Ur-loc cult could actually have survived all this time, nor do I believe in the occult. However, I do have an observation to make, which you should find exceedingly uncanny.” Fredrick released a roughened chuckle. “Would you like to hear it?”

  The dying pipe smoke sifted up. From the bookshelves, and from odd perches all about the office, the stone likenesses of demons persisted in their frozen stares. And splayed across the desk lay Tharp’s drawing of the Ardat-Lil, shimmering in its obscene beauty…

  “Yes,” Dr. Harold said. “I’d like to hear it very much.”

  —

  Chapter 29

  Ann fled down the hall, then slowed. Then she stopped. What was she thinking? Her father was dead. With his own blood he’d written a warning. But what did that really mean? Ann stood still in the paneled hall, blinking.

  He’d suffered a massive stroke. He was delirious. He didn’t know what he was doing.

  There.

  She let reality catch up to her. As usual, no one was in the house. What do I do now? It was a good question. What do you do when someone dies? Call an ambulance? A funeral home? Mustn’t a doctor declare him dead first? Ann felt disconnected. It was her father who lay dead in the next room, not some stranger. Oddly, even guiltily, she felt relief.

  His torment’s over, she realized. This was a good thing. What must it have been like for him, immobile and brain-damaged? In death, her father had found the peace that his illness had robbed him of. Now Ann understood why people always said “It’s a blessing” at funerals. Her father’s death was a blessing.

  The acknowledgment made her feel better. She went downstairs and sat on the bottom step, chin in hand. The total lack of sound made the house seem even more empty. How would Melanie take her grandfather’s death? And what would her mother say? But in a moment Ann realized she was reaching for distractions. Above all, what continued to gnaw at her was the same thing that had been gnawing at her for months.