Succubi

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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