Succubi

A.D. The scant Latin derivations are obvious, from the Roman Occupation of 55 B.C. Old English is a coalescence of tongues, and unique in its incorporation. But this…” He tapped one of the sheafs. “This is unusual.”

“How much of it do you think is invented?” Dr. Harold asked.

“Invented?” The old man looked at him, puzzled. “None of this is invented, Doctor. All of these words are real.”

But that was impossible; he must not understand. “Tharp is an escaped mental patient. We’ve determined that he escaped for a reason specific to his delusion.”

Professor Fredrick looked the part: keen-eyed in his weathered face. Countless digs and years in hostile sun had toughened his skin to the consistency of tanned leather. He was probably sixty but he looked a hundred. On his cragged hand a gold ring glittered, whose mount centered a pebble from Golgotha.

“Is Tharp a professor or language expert?”

“Oh, no,” Dr. Harold replied. “He’s a drug burnout. He never graduated high school.”

Fredrick seemed to smile cynically, if the toughness of his face would permit a smile at all. “That’s difficult for me to believe, Doctor. This mental patient of yours—this drug burnout—is using terms, syntactical structures, and even particularized inflections that are twenty-five hundred years old. And he’s doing it perfectly.”

Dr. Harold looked at him. The old man must be overreacting. Tharp had done well on the standard IQ batteries, but he was essentially uneducated.

“Let me give you some background,” Fredrick offered. His voice, like his face, seemed frayed by the impairment of years. “The island of England is linguistically unique simply because of its geography. The basis of the English language is a direct reflection of the major invasions of the island. The Celts, in 600 B.C.; the Romans, in 55 B.C.; and the Saxons, in 500 A.D. But before the initial Brythonic, or Celtic, invasion, there was another society that we know very little about. They were called the Chilterns, and they had a language all their own. So it is actually the Chiltern language that provides the first root of English.”

“What’s that got to do with Tharp’s vocabulary in those transcripts?”

“It’s not just the vocabulary, Doctor, it’s the syntax too, and the conjugations. Tharp seems better versed in the Chiltern language than the entirety of the archaeological community.”

That’s ridiculous, Harold thought. “Can you translate any of the words?” he asked.

“I can probably translate all of them.” Fredrick pointed to a random page. “This word here, husl—it means to sacrifice. An interesting thing about the Chiltern-influenced forms of Old English is that there was little distinction between common nouns and transitive verbs. Husl is a good example. It also means sacrifice victim.”

“What about wreccan?”

“Slave. The a’s, strangely, are masculine, and o’s are feminine. Hence: male slave.”

“And brygorwreccan?”

“A male slave who digs graves.”

Dr. Harold felt numbly stunned. “Five years ago Tharp was apprehended by police for burying bodies. Some of the bodies were children and infants. We assumed his vocabulary was invented.”

“You assumed wrong,” Professor Fredrick asserted. “All these words are real. Scieror, one who cuts with a knife. Hustig, a general ritual. Fek, festival. Cnif, knife. This is fascinating, and clearly religious.”

Religious? “How so?”

“These words here, oft repeated, loc and liloc. They’re general references to a demon, a female demon. Many pre-Druidic settlements worshipped female demons via ritual sacrifice. The sacrifices frequently involved children, infants.”

This was maddening. How did Tharp, an amotivate and dropout, become this learned in not only an ancient language but in an ancient religious custom? “Look at the rest, here,” he insisted, and dug into his briefcase. “These are Tharp’s sketchpads from the ward. Tell me what you make of them.”

Professor Fredrick opened the first pad, then fell into a concerned silence. For the next twenty minutes he examined one page after another. He seemed to be transfixed.

“What? What’s wrong?” Dr. Harold finally asked.

Professor Fredrick glanced up quizzically. “Ur-locs,” he said.

“What?”

“Several thousand years ago, Doctor, there was an offshoot of the Chiltern race. They were called the Ur- locs. It was an occult society, and one, I might add, that we know very little about. There can be no mistake here. Tharp knows more about the Ur-locs than most archaeology professors.”

Ur-locs, Dr. Harold thought.

“They were one of the most unique societies in history, and the only settlement in England to successfully resist every invasion of the island—the Celts, the Romans, the Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians, even the Normans. We only know about them from the registries left by each invader. Every army that was ever dispatched against the Ur- locs never returned, and the Ur-locs, mind you, were an entirely female-dominated culture.”

That at least explained something. Tharp’s delusion was based on a premise of female superiority. All of the men in the sketches were clearly subservient to a female hierarchy.

“The Ur-locs themselves,” the old man continued, “were small in number, yet somehow they maintained a great power over large male populations. They were served entirely by men enslaved from invading camps or conquered settlements. Men did everything for them: fought their wars, cultivated their foods, built their towns. The Ur-locs reigned over a body of men dozens of times their own size.”

“But…how?”

“Probably just a very clever management of power and fear, like any successful monarchy. And then, of course, there are the legends.”

“What legends?”

Fredrick again attempted a smile. “The registries claim that the Ur-locs were witches and that they used witchcraft to enslave their attackers. That’s where the religious part comes in. The Ur-locs were savagely ritualistic. Their existence revolved around a single religious belief. They sacrificed thousands in appeasement to their god. These people made the Aztecs look like the Girl Scouts.”

So Tharp’s delusion was based on an actual ancient religious system, and that religious system was based on a specific object of belief.

“Tell me about their god,” Dr. Harold inquired next.

“Here, this right here,” Fredrick said. He pointed to the most memorable sketch, the beautiful buxom woman in moonlight whose face was just a maw of needlelike teeth. “They called it the Ardat-Lil. Tharp’s rendition is nearly perfect.”

Dr. Harold looked at the sketch again, and shivered in its obscene impact of perversion and beauty. The flawless hourglass figure and flawless breasts. The taloned feet. The three-fingered claws for hands. And the face, the face…he could only glance at it a moment before having to turn away.

Ur-locs, he thought again in a strange, slow pulse. Ardat- Lil.

Now Professor Fredrick was getting up. Was it the chair that creaked, or his old joints? A small statue of the incubus Baalzephon stared down from a high bookshelf, along with the multi-limbed Bengalian Kali and the squat Babylonian Pazuzu. Fredrick removed a thick, dusty text: Pre-Druidism: A Study of the Mythologies of Angle-Land. “This should enlighten you,” he proposed, and lay the book down at a specific chapter. “Here’s a field summary from an Oxford University dig near Ripon, in the summer of 1983. Quite by accident, the dig uncovered the original Ur-loc ruins. It was tremendous, I can tell you. I personally supervised the dig.” One photo showed several big iron pots. “Fek cauldrons,” he explained. “The Ur-locs were cannibals, and these cauldrons, which they called chettles, were what they cooked their festival meats in.” The next photo showed a great stone slab on plinths. “A ceremonial dolmen, part altar, part sacrifice platform. The Ur-locs iconized dolmens; after a thousand sacrifices, it’s said, they cut the dolmens up and made things out of the pieces: jewelry, tools, religious regalia such as fonts and tribal pendants. The very first dolmen, according to the myth, served as the central icon.