Succubi

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Chapter 23

Sr. Harold barely heard his patients. All afternoon, his mind kept straying, re-examining thoughts and images, and homing back to the disturbed psych ward artwork of Erik Tharp.

It ate at him. After his last private patient had left, Dr. Harold went right back into the bag of Tharp’s hospital records. The accounts, the bizarre drawings and words, were all he had to go on. Invented languages were nothing new to psychiatry; they accompanied many acknowledged psych profiles: tripolar schizophrenics, referential neurotics, autistics, etc. But Tharp fell into none of those categories. Dr. Harold looked more closely at the sketches. He found a clear coherence in theme, something ritualistic, which paralleled Tharp’s transcripted accounts when interviewed by Dr. Greene. Tharp had also very coherently applied the cryptic vocabulary to each drawing. Demons, Dr. Harold mused. Tharp said they worshipped a demon. He thumbed back through the pads, to attempt a correlation between the most often repeated words and what their corresponding sketches depicted. Peow and wreccan seemed to relate to the male caricatures, while loc and liloc obviously denoted the women. Brygorwreccan was the word Tharp had consistently applied to himself, the self-portrait with the shovel. Then came wihan and husl, which were always written around a scene depicting a clear ritual act, violence, murder.

The demon was the keystone. Doefolmon, hustig, Fulluht-Loc. These words implied an event in the sketches, a repeated event. But why was the latter capitalized? Fulluht-Loc, he pondered. An event more significant than the others?

I’m a psychiatrist, not a demonologist, he reminded himself. Perhaps he was attempting to decrypt Tharp’s delusions from the wrong angle. Tharp possessed a delusional sexual phobia.

Most phobias and hallucinotic fugue-themes had some basis in truth, something the patient had heard or read, seen on TV. Objectify, Dr. Harold thought now, staring at the pads. Rituals. Sacrifices. Cults. He wondered. The sketches seemed almost mythological; they possessed a tone, a hint of something ancient, clandestine. Semicircles of figures in the woods, beneath the moon, naked, bowing. Worshipping something, he finished. Like the Druids or the Aztecs.

It wasn’t much to go on, but he could think of no other avenue by which to proceed. He flipped through the phone book, to the department listings at the university.

I don’t know anything about this kind of stuff, Dr. Harold reckoned. So I’ll find someone who does.

«« — »»

By midafternoon, Ann was bored. She felt useless, uninvolved. Melanie was with her friends, Martin was off writing. Everyone but Ann was busy with something. She lingered about the house and yard. She still hadn’t seen her mother around—another involvement—but that probably worked out for the best. Ann wished she had something useful to do, like help out with her father or something, pull weeds, paint the shutters, anything. She called her associate at the firm to find out how everything was going, and she was disappointed when he said, “Fine, Ann. Everything’s fine. Depositions are out, we’re firing back ’rogs a mile a minute, and JAX Avionics wants to settle before trial. Don’t worry about a thing.” She hung up, depressed.

She went for a walk through town. Maybe she’d run into Melanie and meet some of these friends of hers. But the streets stood idle as usual. A lot of cars were parked around the town hall; Ann’s mother, no doubt, was conducting another of her endless council meetings. It infuriated Ann how easily her mother went on with the moving parts of her life while Ann’s father lay dying. Perhaps that was just part of being realistic. Around the corner she saw several little girls playing near the woods. It reminded her how few children there seemed to be in Lockwood. She caught herself staring, and the little girls stared back. Then they broke and ran away, giggling. Next thing she knew, Ann was walking into the general store.

“Hi, Ann,” Maedeen looked up from behind the counter and smiled. “How are you today?”

“Fine,” Ann said. But why had she come in here? To begin with, Maedeen was not exactly her favorite person. “I’m just sort of wandering around. Where is everyone?”

“Town Hall. Today’s the monthly advisory council meeting. How’s your dad?”

“The same.” Saying that was a more refined way of saying the truth. He’s still dying. She browsed around the knickknacks, and sundries: quilts, handmade candles, porcelain dolls. Did people buy enough of this stuff to support the store? Behind the counter, Maedeen was typing. Further back, Ann noticed a room full of tall file cabinets. “I’ll be with you in a minute,” Maedeen said, concentrating on her task. Then she zipped the page out of the old manual machine. “I’m also the town clerk,” she informed Ann. “Whenever there’s a meeting I have to prepare the minutes from the previous month, and I’m late.”

“Town clerk?” Ann queried.

“Yeah, aside from running the store, I keep all the town records on file.” She pointed to the little room full of cabinets. “In there.”

Now it made more sense. The store was just a local formality. Maedeen supported herself as a clerk.

“I have to run these over to your mother. Would you like to come?”

“Oh, no thanks.”

“Could you keep an eye on things for me? I’ll only be a few minutes.”

“Sure,” Ann said. Maedeen left with the sheaf of papers, the cowbell jangling after her. Alone now, Ann’s faint jealousy resurfaced. What could Martin see in her anyway, if he saw anything at all? I’m better looking than her, Ann childishly affirmed to herself. Maedeen was short and rather tomboyish, or tom-womanish, in this case. She always wore faded jeans and plain blouses, flip-flops. Melanie had told her that Maedeen’s husband had died. Ann wondered when, and why. She casually scanned the big glass bowls of candy along the counter, when she noticed the small framed picture amid Maedeen’s typewriter clutter. She knew she shouldn’t but she did anyway. She walked around the counter. She glanced out the front window; Maedeen was still heading briskly for the town square. Ann then went to the typewriter desk and picked up the picture. The snapshot showed Maedeen, a decade younger, sitting on a couch with a little girl—Wendlyn, her daughter. But in her arms, Maedeen held a naked baby. The baby was a boy.

Just like Milly. A baby boy.

This was very weird. Like Milly, Maedeen had only mentioned a daughter when they’d met. She’d said nothing about having a boy too. Why?

Don’t, she thought. It’s none of your business. Yet the lawyer in her couldn’t resist. She’d said she kept the town records here, hadn’t she? Ann glanced again out the window, to make sure it was safe. Then she went into the file room.

It didn’t take her long. BIRTH RECORDS, one drawer was clearly marked. She opened the drawer and began to rummage. What if someone comes in and sees me? But she ignored the suggestion. Her curiosity burned her. The files were alphabetical. FOST, MAEDEEN. Ann opened it and found a certificate of birth. But just one. FOST, WENDLYN. It was dated seventeen years ago. The signature of the delivering doctor was Ashby Heyd. There was no record of a boy being born. When Ann dug out Milly’s file, she found the same thing. Only Rena’s birth certificate.

So who were the baby boys? Were they relatives’ children?

Before Ann closed the drawer, she noticed a different colored folder in the very back. It possessed no heading. Ann picked it up, opened it.

Stared.

Several sheets of old paper. A typed list. MALE BIRTHS, the top of the sheet read.

She thumbed down the list of chronological dates.

FOST, MAEDEEN, MC 1-12-80, relinquished for adoption 1-23-80.

MC? Ann thought. Male child? It had to be.