Succubus

by Rod Foglio

to go to the bathroom. Eileen was worried, and as usual, she told her worries to her neighbor, Dorothy.

  Dorothy and Eileen had grown close over the many years that they lived next door to each other. She was the nosy neighbor who had known that a scene was about to go down when Eileen came home that day to find Curtis cheating. She had seen those two lovers enter the house together, as she had seen him bring home others before. Over the many years since that incident, the two women had become each other’s complete confidants. Eileen always told Dorothy her problems. She told her the regrets she had about Curtis, she confessed her real motive behind marrying her second husband, she complained to her about Candy and now she lamented about Jason. She had never really worried about Jason before. She always had such confidence in him, and was usually partial to bragging about his accomplishments.

  Dorothy was in many ways an ordinary housewife. Her husband earned the money and she busied herself with housework and gossip. Having never worked, she devoted her time to several hobbies, one of which was an interest in the occult. She believed in ghosts and witchcraft and other superstitious things that most of us only have a passing interest in. Often reading literature about the subject, she considered herself an expert. She even knew how to read tarot cards and could interpret somebody’s horoscope. Dorothy took it upon herself to make her own diagnosis of Jason, and she determined that Candy was practicing witchcraft and had bewitched him.

  Now, Eileen had been friends with Dorothy for a very long time, and she didn’t always dismiss her stories about the supernatural. Dorothy had influence over her, and Eileen did believe that such things were possible, even if she herself had never experienced such a situation. From that point on, she was actually on the look out for supernatural evidence.

  At Dorothy’s suggestion, she began to display more religious items around the house and to observe Candy’s reaction. Her reactions were annoyance at best. As Candy lived there longer, she had become more sarcastic, and at one point commented that she might as well be living in a monastery. Eileen couldn’t believe that she would say that. “Well, you’re the one who locks yourself in here all the time,” she shot back at her. “Why don’t you go out and make some friends?”

  “I don’t like to be around people,” was Candy’s curt response to that.

  When Eileen reported that to Dorothy, she responded that of course witches, by their very nature, don’t like to be around people. Dorothy suggested she invite a priest over to the house, and see how the girl reacts to that. So Eileen informed the priest at her parish that Jason was ill, and asked if he could come to the house and give him communion. When he did, Candy found somewhere else to be that day.

  “She never leaves the house, but on the one day a priest comes over, there’s something she has to do,” she quipped to Dorothy the next day.

  “My husband saw her at the pancake house at that time. She was there by herself.”

  “Probably stuffing her face, like she does at home. She eats like a damn pig!”

  “You wouldn’t know it from looking at her. Except for that belly, she’s thin as a rail. Listen, maybe we should call in a psychic. He’ll tell us what she’s all about.”

  “Oh, Dorothy! I don’t believe in that stuff. They’re all crooks.”

  “You’re not getting any answers elsewhere; it’s worth a try isn’t it?”

  “How much will one cost?”

  “About a hundred dollars if we go to him, but he should probably come over to the house so he can examine Jason. That’ll be more.”

  Eileen told her she would think about it.

  After giving it some thought, Eileen did decide to let Dorothy bring a psychic over. It would cost two hundred dollars for him to drive in from Cleveland. Eileen really couldn’t afford it, but she was desperate for answers, and Dorothy assured her he was very good.

  In order to get rid of Candy for the evening, Eileen said she was inviting the priest over again. The lie worked like a charm, and Candy left that evening to “meet with a friend.” The psychic arrived at Dorothy’s house, and she brought him over to Eileen’s. He was a thin and young looking man who spoke with a soft voice and an even softer handshake, the latter of which made her uncomfortable since he held on so long that she suspected he was “reading” her. He didn’t come across as a con-artist with his polite manners, but Eileen knew that the best ones didn’t. He walked around the lower floor of the house before he asked to see Jason. When Eileen took him to Jason’s room, Jason was semi-conscious. He said hello to Jason, who only mumbled back to him, then slipped back into a sound sleep. “Is this how he normally is?” the man asked.

  “Lately, I can barely get him up to eat and bathe now,” she replied.

  The psychic placed his hand on Jason’s chest, and Eileen noticed a worried expression overcome his face. Turning around, he whispered that he would like to look around the room. Eileen nodded her acquiescence. He moved to the large bureau where Candy’s personal items laid on top of, took some of them into his hands and contemplated each one. Finally, he said that he had experienced enough, and told them to go downstairs. As they left the room Jason awoke.

  “Mom!” he shouted out.

  Eileen rushed over to him and asked what it was that he needed.

  “Who was that? Who was touching my chest?”

  “That was just a friend of Dorothy’s. She asked him to check up on you.”

  “I thought it was Candy. Don’t bring anybody else in here. I don’t like to be around people now.”

  Downstairs, the psychic, keeping his voice low, told her that Candy was a demon, who had seduced Jason in order to become impregnated by him and use his life force to provide energy for her baby. “She is a succubus demon. Her baby will be what is called a cambion, a half-demon child who will look innocent enough, but will grow up to do evil.” He said this as if he were serious.

  Dorothy was flabbergasted. “Oh, good Lord! How do we stop her?”

  “You’ll have to separate the two of them. Keep her away from him. That’s the only way. Without his energy to feed it, the baby will die.”

  That was about as much as Eileen could bear. Though she despised Candy, when it came to the impending baby, she was actually quite defensive. Not believing any of it, she said she had heard enough, paid the man, and watched him leave. Now she was angry, having just wasted good money which she could not afford to lose. She wished she hadn’t paid him, and when Dorothy came back inside, she let her have it.

  But Dorothy was convinced that the psychic was correct. “It all makes sense now, don’t you see? You need to investigate her background. See if her story stacks up.”

  After considering Dorothy’s latest suggestion, Eileen figured it couldn’t hurt, so she made a phone call to Candy’s father. Candy didn’t talk much about her family, all Eileen knew was that her mother had died when she was a child, and she had been raised by her grandmother, who according to Candy had died shortly before she met Jason. She had found her father’s phone number in the girl’s address book, which she had long ago snooped into.

  The father proved just as aloof as Candy could be. And even worse, he was slurring his words, leading Eileen to believe that he was drunk when she called. He claimed that he wanted what was best for his daughter, but when she invited him to come and see her, he declined. “Her grandma might wanna see her though. She raised her.”

  “Her grandmother is alive?”

  “Yea, aint nothin’ gonna ever kill that old woman,” he joked.

  Eileen verified that the grandmother’s contact information was still the same as was listed in Candy’s address book. It was, and she was in Erie, only an hour drive away.

  When Eileen relayed this information to Dorothy, her first question was, “Why would she lie about her grandmother being dead?” Eileen wanted to know the answer to that one as well. “We have to go see her,” insisted Dorothy.

  They made the drive to Erie on a cold winter evening, with snow flurries falling sp
oradically as they drove along. Eileen had called ahead of time, and the old woman was shocked that Candy had gotten married and was about to have a baby. The grandmother seemed hurt that Candy would not inform her of this, and was sad that she had cut off contact with her in the past year. When they arrived to her house, a healthy and solid looking elderly woman greeted them, asking them to call her by her first name, Imogen.

  She lived in an old style duplex, with outdated, though well cared for furniture. The house was immaculately clean, which Eileen complemented her on. There were family photos on the wall, but Eileen didn’t recognize any with Candy in them. When Imogen went to get them some coffee, Dorothy made a quick comment about all of the religious icons throughout the place.

  Eileen asked the old woman if she was religious, to which she replied that she was. She was a devout Catholic, and had tried to raise her granddaughter to be as well.

  “What type of child was Candy?” Eileen asked.

  “Candace,” she corrected her. “She was a handful. At least she was when she got older.”

  “How so?”

  “Both of her parents were alcoholics,” Imogen said. “It runs in families, you know.”

  Both Eileen and Dorothy were surprised by this revelation. They did not know Candy to drink alcohol at all.

  “Well,” Eileen said in a comforting tone. “She doesn’t drink at all