by Juliet Dark
I crossed out Phoenix’s comment and wrote: I love the images in your writing. Why don’t you try some poems?
Then I took out the Xeroxed copy I’d made of the list of the people who had died in the Ulster & Clare Great Crash of ’93. I’d start researching each of the names this week. It was one thing to tell Nicky to move on from her ghosts, but until I found the “ghost” who had cursed her she was going to be trapped in that moldering house.
The one student whose work I didn’t get to read was Mara Marinca. The purple folder containing her memoir in progress was missing. I spoke to Liz about it and she called Phoenix’s mother to see if Phoenix had the folder when she checked into McLean, but Mrs. Middlefield insisted that she didn’t. “She kept asking us to send for that girl’s writing, but of course we told her we couldn’t.”
I searched the whole house for the folder—or any stray scrap of Mara’s writing. I recalled seeing the folder in the library before I went to class the day Phoenix was taken away. Perhaps if she had thought that someone—the demon, she’d said—was trying to break in to steal the papers she might have hidden them. But as hard as I looked the only things I found of Phoenix’s were half-empty liquor bottles stashed in a dozen clever hiding places.
I saved Mara’s conference for last on Monday, dreading the moment when I’d have to tell her that everything she’d written that semester was missing.
“Phoenix spoke very highly of your writing ability,” I told her. “If you print out another copy I’ll be happy to read it.”
“Print out?” Mara asked, her pale, tea-colored eyes staring at me dumbly.
I suppressed a twinge of impatience. Her command of English certainly seemed to come and go randomly.
“Yes, from your computer. If you don’t have a printer I believe you can send a file to the campus printing center. Or you could just send me a copy by email.”
“But I don’t make my writing on the computer. I make it with pen. On paper.”
“Oh,” I said, my heart sinking. “I don’t suppose you made copies.”
Mara shook her head. “I never thought that was necessary. These things I wrote … they were just …” Mara pinched her fingers together and made a series of loops in the air. For a moment I imagined I saw writing in the air—strange runic symbols that hovered like fireflies—but then I blinked and the images faded. “How do you say? Scribbles?”
“Phoenix didn’t think they were scribbles,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “She was quite taken with what you wrote.”
Mara smiled sadly. “I am afraid so taken she was taken away. Maybe it is not so good for me to write about the terrible things I have seen. Perhaps putting them into words makes them more real and does no one good.”
“But it won’t do you any good to keep those things inside. Perhaps you should talk to someone. Dr. Lilly, for instance.”
Mara sniffed. “I have spoken to her, but she doesn’t understand.”
It seemed to me that Soheila Lilly was exactly the person who would understand the anguish of exile, but like many young people Mara didn’t think an older person could understand her experiences. “How about Flonia Rugova?” I asked. “She’s from Albania, which is close to your country.”
Mara cast her eyes down as she often did when her homeland was alluded to, but when she glanced up her eyes were narrowed with interest. “Hm … perhaps you are right. Flonia and I might have much in common and it would be nice to have someone to talk to. Nicolette is very busy now with her boyfriend, Benjamin. She doesn’t even come back to our room at night … oh!” Mara clapped her hand to her mouth. “Perhaps I should not have said that. I do not want to get Nicolette in trouble.”
“It’s okay, Mara. I don’t think Fairwick has a curfew. But I can see how that might be lonely for you. Maybe you should try to make some new friends … get to know some of the other students better.”
Mara gave me the biggest smile I’d ever seen on her—or on anyone else, for that matter. Her mouth was unusually wide … and full of really bad teeth. “Yes, that is what I’ll do. Starting with Flonia Rugova. And as for the writing class … would it be okay if I didn’t hand anything in for a while? Just until I decide what I want to write?”
“I suppose that will be all right until Phoenix’s replacement arrives,” I said uneasily. I didn’t like the idea of letting a student off the hook so readily. But then, she had done more than her share already and it would give the other students a chance to get their work read. And besides, I guiltily admitted to myself, at least now I’d be spared reading about the horrors that she’d lived through.
I didn’t feel so easy about my conference with Mara afterward. I spent that night restlessly prowling through my empty house, haunted by the feeling that something was really wrong with the girl and determined to find her folder if it was still in the house. The fact that I didn’t really want to read it just made me look all the harder to assuage my conscience. I looked everywhere that Phoenix might think to hide papers—through the kitchen cabinets and the china hutches, behind the books in the library, between the stacks of Dahlia LaMotte’s manuscripts, in my own desk (checking again that the one locked drawer was still locked even though it was much too small to hold Mara’s folder) and closets, and, finally, in the attic.
I left the attic until last because I didn’t like going up there alone. I had a feeling that if the incubus were lurking anywhere in the house that’s where he’d be—beneath the steeply pitched roof, among the tea chests and forlorn broken furniture. When I switched on the light and the overhead bulb popped I had to resist the urge to give up, but I made myself go downstairs for one of the battery-operated lanterns Dory Browne had given me in case of any more power outages. I came back holding the lantern over my head, sweeping its light across the dusty floor and into every nook and cranny. I’d covered most of the area when the light swept into the far west eave … and a scrap of shadow skittered across the floor.
I nearly dropped the lantern. Instead I swung it in the direction the shadow had sped, sending the shadow-thing scurrying into an open tea chest. My heart hammering, I pounced on the tea chest and slammed the lid. Whatever was inside flung itself up against the lid, making a sickening thump that reverberated inside my own chest.
Shit, what now? Should I lock the chest and bring it to Liz Book?
But then I remembered that the tea chests, built to keep precious tea leaves dry on long ocean voyages, were airtight. If I’d caught something alive in there it would be dead by the time I brought it to Liz’s house.
Which shouldn’t be a problem. If it was the incubus then he couldn’t suffocate … right? And if it was an animal that had taken up residence in my attic then I was best rid of it … right?
Another thump rattled the box. Whatever was inside, it was mad. Or afraid.
Shit.
I balanced the lantern on top of a nearby broken chair so that its light shone onto the lid of the tea chest. Then, crouching on my toes so that I could move fast, I put a hand on either side of the box and lifted the lid.
Two beady black eyes set in a tiny furry face stared up at me. If the creature had moved a centimeter I would have screamed and run, but the mouse sat perfectly still on its haunches holding its tiny pink paws up in front of the white ruff on its chest as if it were praying for leniency—a posture that struck me as familiar. I peered over at the mouse’s tail and saw a short stump instead.
“It’s you!” I said. “The tailless doormouse. You didn’t explode!”
The mouse cocked its head and twitched its small pink ears. It was, I had to admit, kind of cute.
“I’m glad you survived,” I said, feeling a little stupid addressing a mouse, but hey, I’d done stranger things lately. “I’m sorry your little friends didn’t.”
The mouse squeaked and rubbed a tiny paw across its face, as if washing itself … or brushing away a tear.
“Aw, are you crying?” I put my hand into the
tea chest, palm up. “Come here, little guy. I won’t hurt you.”
The mouse looked at my hand for a few long seconds, then stretched its neck toward it and sniffed at my fingertips, which were still blistered from when I’d grabbed him during the exorcism. What if it bit me? Could magical-iron-doormice-come-to-life carry rabies? But the mouse didn’t bite me. Instead he licked my blistered fingertips and crawled into my hand. Then he turned around twice and curled up into a ball, tucked the stub of his tail beneath his haunches, rested his pink nose on top of his paws, and looked up at me.
I laughed. “Okay, you’re pretty darn cute. Let’s go get you something to eat.”
I named him Ralph after the mouse in Beverly Cleary’s The Mouse and the Motorcycle, one of my favorite books when I was growing up. Ralph the Doormouse—it had a nice ring to it. After I fed him some cheese, lettuce, and carrots, I took him back upstairs in a basket lined with a dishtowel. I put him on my desk while I made my nightly call to Paul. He curled up and listened with one eye open as I told Paul about my conference with Mara.
“It sounds like she’s trying to get out of doing any more work for the semester. You can’t be so easy on your students, Cal. They’ll walk all over you.”
We’d had this argument before. Paul had only been teaching for a couple of years, but already he seemed burned out by the emotional demands his students made on him. I had to agree that in this era of email and texting, the self-esteem generation could be demanding and annoying to deal with (I’d actually had students at Columbia who wanted to know why I didn’t buy an iPhone or BlackBerry so I could answer their emails immediately), but it was really only a handful of students who acted as if they were entitled to their professor’s undivided attention. Paul treated every student as a potential threat to his time and tenure opportunities. Sometimes I wondered if he’d be happier in a line of work that didn’t involve teaching.
When I said good night to Paul, I saw that Ralph had fallen asleep. I left his basket on the desk and went to bed. I suppose it was an indicator of how lonely I’d felt since Phoenix left that having a mouse sleeping in my room made me feel better.
I reached for a student paper to read before going to sleep but picked up instead one of Dahlia LaMotte’s notebooks. I wasn’t sure that reading erotica was what I needed right now, but I just couldn’t bear to read another student paper—and I was pretty hooked on The Viking Raider. It was the only manuscript I’d read so far in which the sex with a human character was as exciting as the sex with the incubus. I had just gotten to the part where the Viking raider realizes that his captive Irish lass is being visited nightly by a night-mare.
“You are mareitt, lass, ridden nightly by the demon mare. I can see it in your eyes and …” He reached under my tunic and roughly clasped the tender engorged flesh between my legs. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to pretend I was elsewhere. “Aye, your sex is swollen with him. Your maidenhood I’ve been saving for your intended. If he’s broken it …”
Swearing in his own language he slipped his finger into me and my knees went weak. I bit my lip to keep from moaning and giving him the idea that what he did pleasured me. It was just that I was tender there from the visitations of this thing he called a night-mare.
“Ah, you’re still a maiden, lass, thank Odin. I’ll still have my ransom price off ye—but we’ve got a wee problem.”
He had removed his hand from inside me but now he was stroking my buttocks, squeezing the flesh with his big calloused hands. He pushed himself against me until my back was pressed up against the hard stone ledge of my cell’s only window and I could feel the equally stone hard ridge of his manhood straining against my belly. He lifted my hips up onto the ledge, pressing me against the iron bars and spreading my thighs. Now I felt the tip of his manhood prodding against my sex, which throbbed in answer to his thrusts. I whimpered with the effort not to moan and clenched my thighs to keep from arching up to enclose him inside me. Traitor flesh! Even when the nightmare rode me I hadn’t longed to be filled as I did now.
I opened my eyes and saw he was studying my face.
“Aye, lass, I want it, too. I want to come inside you and fill you to the brim. I want you to ride my cock as the night-mare rides you.” He caressed my face and it was that tenderness that broke me. I wrapped my arms around him and slid my hands down to his iron-hard haunches, which were straining with the effort not to impale me. I pulled him toward me, arching my hips to meet his thrusts. I felt his hot flesh touch mine, the head of his engorged rod grazing my swollen sex … and then I felt the cold slap of air as he stepped back. A mocking smile spread on his lips.
“Not this time, lass. I must protect my investment. But let’s see what we can do for ye so you no longer need the night-mare’s attentions.”
He knelt down on his knees and buried that cruel mocking smile between my legs. His lips met my nether lips in a deep kiss. His tongue probed where his manhood wanted to go and could not. He sucked on my flesh as a boy sucks a ripe peach down to the pit … He reached into the very pit of my dark yearning. His tongue rammed hard against the weir that dammed my deepest, darkest longings and broke it, releasing the sweet wild flood. When I’d spilled myself into his mouth he stood and wiped his face with the back of his hand.
“I think the night-mare will leave you alone now, lass.” And then he left me, drained and empty as a rind when the fruit has been sucked dry.
I put down Dahlia’s notebook and turned out the light. Moonlight spilled into the room as if it had been held back by a dam and was now released, but it was barren cold moonlight and the shadows stood rigid and still, as cold and unmoving as iron bars. I shivered and burrowed deeper under the covers, feeling as discarded as Dahlia’s Irish lass.
TWENTY-ONE
The next morning I heard Brock outside shoveling my driveway. I grabbed Ralph and ran downstairs to show him to him, only remembering halfway down the stairs the salacious passage I had read last night. I hesitated, feeling embarrassed. Did Brock have any idea that Dahlia had used him as a model for one of her most passionate heroes? Would he know I’d been reading those scenes? But when I opened the door the look he gave me was so open and innocent I dismissed those thoughts. He was a kind, straightforward man. No wonder Dahlia had liked him. When I showed him Ralph he was amazed and delighted that his creation had come to life.
“When I forged the doormice I added a spark from Muspelheim, the primeval fire from whence came the stars and the planets, so that they would be powerful enough to protect you, but I never dreamed one would actually come to life. You must have sparked his life force somehow …” He looked at me with the same admiration with which I’d seen him regard Drew Brees after completing eight passes in a row. “He’s devoted to protecting you now.”
I was glad to have a loyal companion, but I didn’t see how a mouse was going to be able to do much against most threats.
When I got back inside I sat Ralph in the teacup on my desk and checked my email. I was relieved to see one from Liz Book telling me she’d found a replacement for Phoenix. An Irish poet, Liam Doyle, whose name was vaguely familiar to me. I Googled him and saw that he’d done his undergraduate work at Trinity College in Dublin (where he’d won several poetry awards) and his DLitt at Oxford (where he’d been awarded a fellowship and honors for his thesis on the Romantic poets). He’d published two books of poetry with a small publisher called Snow Shoe Press. The picture on Snow Shoe’s website showed an earnest, bookish-looking man with shaggy dark hair hanging over thick square glasses.
I clicked on a link for the Mistletoe Poetry House in Klamath, Oregon, and found this profile for him:
Liam Doyle, the prominent poet, was the Spring 2001 Zalman Bronsky Writer-in-Residence at the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania. Liam has held visiting appointments at Macalaster College in Minnesota and Bates College in Maine. His interests are nineteenth-century Romantic poetry, the poetry of exiles and expatriates, and nat
ure poetry. He spent the last eighteen months teaching poetry in an inner-city high school in Baltimore.I emailed Liz back that I was happy she’d found a poet for the job because that would be great for Nicky Ballard. Did she still need me to take over today’s class?
By the time I’d showered and dressed she’d emailed me back to say that Professor Doyle planned to be up by the beginning of this afternoon’s class (“He was in New York City for a Wordsworth conference, wasn’t that lucky?”) but would I mind meeting him after class to give him the students’ papers.
I emailed back that I’d be happy to, but wouldn’t he rather I meet him before class to give him the papers and tell him a little about the students?
No, Liz wrote back immediately, he says that he likes to meet his new students without any preconceptions.
Pretty idealistic, I typed back to Liz, and then, afraid that I might have come off as cynical, added, He sounds great. Still unsure if I sounded snarky, I added a smiley emoticon.
“No preconceptions, huh?” I muttered to Ralph, who was still curled up in his basket. “Who is this guy?”
Ralph yawned and stretched, performing a miniature downward facing dog that was just about the cutest thing I’d ever seen. Since Ralph didn’t have anything to add, I decided to answer my own question. I still had Liam Doyle’s Google results up on the screen and I saw that he had a Facebook page. I clicked it, expecting it would be blocked, but it wasn’t. Good. I wouldn’t have to friend him to look at his profile. The picture on his wall didn’t give me a much better idea of what he looked like than his author photo did. It showed a dark-haired man in profile, the corduroy collar of his Barbour raincoat turned up covering the lower part of his face, rain-misted hair covering up most of the other half. He was gazing into the distance at a breathtaking view of mountains and lakes. The Lake Country, I deduced, from the fact that he listed “Hiking in the Lake Country” as one of his interests, along with playing the lute and studying languages.
