Succubi Read online

  But neither would Erik. They’d seen to that.

  Erik knew what they were doing. He’d been one of their ilk once. Brygorwreccan. Digger.

  I’ve got to get through, he thought.

  “You don’t hurry it up, you’ll have to do it twice,” Duke informed him.

  There were four classes of patients here. Precaution, Class I, Class II, and Class III. Precautions were restricted to the observation dorm. Mostly autistics and suicidals. Two techs were in the room at all times, and most of the pats remained restrained, either in Posey bed nets or Bard Parker straitjackets. Class I’s couldn’t leave A Building, the main wing; their world was a dorm and a dayroom. But Class II’s got to live in B Building and were allowed to eat in the cafeteria. II’s also enjoyed the luxury of supervised field trips, outside volleyball, and full roam of Buildings B through E. They could go to the rec unit which had a library, a music room, and an automat—provided they signed out with a tech or a Class III patient.

  Last week Erik had passed his board review for Class II status. And Duke had been Class III for almost a year.

  The two of them made a deal.

  Another luxury of the higher class status was that you got to use the pay phone in the rec unit anytime between 9 a.m. and 10 p.m. Duke’s deal was this: he’d use his Class III escort privilege to take Erik to the pay phone, and he’d also give him change to make calls. Duke had an uncle who sent him money and cigarettes every month. In the automat II’s and III’s could buy anything they wanted from the machines: microwave sandwiches, candy bars, Cokes. The Diebold magnetometer at the entrance would prevent any sharp metal objects like bottle caps and pop tops from being brought back into the dorm. “So here’s the deal,” Duke had proposed. “One trip to the phone and thirty-five cents per nut.”

  The first few times had been awful, but Erik forced himself to get used to it. He had money on the outside, but there was no one to bring it to him. How else could he earn money here? Several times Duke refused to pay. “Not till you get it right, fairy. Keep your lips over the teeth.” Eventually, Erik learned to “get it right.”

  “Just ’cause I let you do it,” Duke had once verified, “I don’t want you thinking I’m some kind of faggot. I think about all the chicks I reamed while you’re gettin’ down on it.”

  Duke was what the doctors called a “stage sociopath with unipolar hypererotic tendencies.” He bragged about the sex crimes of his past. He’d raped dozens of girls, mostly “bar rednecks and druggers,” he called them.

  “Killed a lot of them too.”

  “Why?” Erik had queried with his shredded voice.

  “Aw, shit, fairy. Killing them’s the best part. Ain’t no kick if ya don’t kill ’em.” He’d cackled laughter. “One time I picked up this skinny blond bitch. I got her in the back of my van, see, and I’m cornholing the shit out of her. Man, she was so fucked up on drugs she didn’t know which way was up; I coulda stuck a leg of lamb up her ass. Anyway, just as I’m gettin’ ready to come, I blow the back of her head off with my Ruger Redhawk.”

  “That’s disgusting, man,” Erik replied. “You’re a fuckin’ monster.”

  “Look who’s talking,” Duke came back. “You snuff a bunch of babies and you call me a monster. The fact is, bitch, we’re all monsters on the inside.”

  It was almost funny the way he’d said that. Erik knew some people who were monsters on the outside as well.

  Please be home, he prayed. The change fell into the slot. He held his breath as he dialed.

  “Got a big nut for my bitch tonight,” Duke said, and laughed.

  The phone was ringing.

  Please be home.

  —and ringing—

  Jesus, please.

  Twenty rings later, he hung up. He retrieved the quarter and dime.

  “Who you callin’ anyway?”

  Destiny, he thought. “Just someone.”

  Duke chuckled. “Don’t matter none to me.”

  “Listen, Duke, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  “Fuck talking, fairy. You’re out of time. Ping Pong’s startin’ and you got something to take care of first.”

  “It’s important, man. It’s about the lawn contractors.”

  “The fuckin’ what?”

  “The people who cut the grass. They come out every day with their mowers and do the hospital grounds. They park right out—”

  “Quit stallin’, faggot.” Duke shoved him toward the hall. “You’re just tryin’ to get out of the suck.”

  They left the rec unit and crossed to B Building via the promenade. It was dark now. Above the trees, Erik could see the moon.

  Almost spring, he realized.

  The moon was pink.

  They signed back in on the ward after walking through the metal detector and passing their change through in a plastic bucket. “No Ping Pong tonight, Duke?” one of the techs asked. Duke was the champ. “I’ll be in. Gotta hang a piss first.” But Erik was already walking down the hall.

  “How’s your eye?” Jeff asked. Jeff was a delusional narcomaniac.

  “My eye?” Erik grated back.

  “Yeah, I saw it hanging out of its socket yesterday. I was concerned that your brain might get infected.”

  You had to go along with these people. “Oh, right. It’s fine now. I just popped it right back in.”

  “Good, good,” Jeff said, and shuffled away.

  Nurse Walsh was tapping up a needle full of chlorpromazine in the med station while a bunch of burly techs four pointed Christofer the hydrophobe. “Four pointing” was just more psych ward rhetoric. “We’ll four point you if you don’t cooperate” was a polite way of saying, “These goons will pin you to the fucking floor if you don’t stop acting like an asshole.” “Tech assisted med administration” was executed when a patient “physically resisted chemical therapy.”

  In the dayroom several pats were vegged out on the couch. Ten years of antipsychotics will take the zing out of anyone. All they made Erik take were mild tricyclics, none of the heavy stuff like Stelazine or Prolixin. “Zombie pills,” the pats called them. Many of the heavily drugged patients had to take large doses of Cogentin in conjunction with their psych meds, to offset the accompanying dyskinesia.

  He went into the john, into the stall. You could always tell a psych ward bathroom from a normal one: there were never any locks on the stall doors, and the graffiti took diverse turns. “Do the Thorazine shuffle,” someone had written. “God stole my brain but He can have it,” and, “ECT, what a rush!”

  Erik sat down and waited. He tried to concentrate on his plan, the lawn contractors, the supervisor, but the ideas kept slipping away. Sometimes he couldn’t think right.

  But he could always remember.

  Them.

  Their sleek bodies, their breasts and legs—all flawless. The things they did to him, and the things they made him do. Blud. Mete. You are the meat of our spirit, Erik. Feed us. They’d consumed him, hadn’t they? With their kisses and their sex?

  “Them,” he whispered.

  He could still see them clearly as if they were standing before him.

  But it was none of them that stood before him now. This was no midnight grove on the holy solstice—this was a psych ward toilet stall. There was none of that; the heralds were gone.

  It was Duke who stood before him now. Grinning. Fat. The rasp of the zipper, however familiar, made Erik wince.

  “Do it good, fairy, or else it’s no more phone calls…”

  «« — »»

  Later, Erik sat in his dorm. They were really cells, but they called them dorms. They called the ward a “unit,” and they called drugs “meds.” They called escape “elopement.” They had names for everything. Manacles were “restraints.” Jerking off was “autoerotic manipulation,” and shooting the bull was “vocalization.”

  The steel mesh over his window was a “safety barrier.” In the window he could see the moon, and the moon was pink.
<
br />   The ruckus of Ping Pong could be heard from the dayroom. Someone was playing piano. The television blared inanities.

  Erik doodled in his pad. They didn’t call it doodling, of course. They called it “occupational therapy.” He drew fairly well, he was left handed. He’d read that left handed people were three times more likely to be creative. They were also three times more likely to be mentally ill. Something about inverted brain hemispheres, and a bigger corpus callosum, whatever that was. He drew the moon, and figures looking up to it. He drew their bodies to scrupulous detail. What he could never bring himself to sketch, though, were their faces.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t remember their faces, it was that he did.

  Around the sketch he scribed the glyph. The night mirror, he thought. How many times had he looked into it and seen the most unspeakable things?

  My God, he thought, but behind the thought he was sure he heard their warm, viscid laughter, like beating wings, like screams in a canyon.

  He looked at the moon. The moon was pink.

  Beneath the sketches, and with no conscious thought at all, he scribbled one word:

  liloc

  —

  Chapter 3

  The dream was vivid, hot—it always was.

  “Dooer, dooer.”

  It was always the same: the back arching up and waves of moans. The tense legs spread ever-wide, the swollen belly stretched pinprick tight and pushing…pushing…pushing forth…

  Then the image of the cup, like a chalice, and the emblem on its bowl like a squashed double circle.

  She sensed flame behind her, a fireplace perhaps. She sensed warmth. Firelight flickered on the pocked brick walls as shadows hovered. A larger version of the emblem seemed suspended in the background, much larger. And again she heard the bizarre words:

  “Dooer, dooer.”

  She was dreaming of her daughter’s birth, she knew. Birth was painful, yet she felt no pain. All she felt was the wonder of creation, for it was a wonder, wasn’t it? Her own warm belly displacing life into the world? It was a joyous thing.

  Joyous, yes. So why did the dream always transform to nightmare?

  The figures surrounded her; they seemed cloaked or enshadowed. Soft hands stroked the tense sweating skin. For a time they were all her eyes could focus on. The hands. They caressed her not just in comfort but also—somehow—in adoration. Here was where the dream lost its wonder. Soon the hands grew too ardent. They were fondling her. They stroked the enflamed breasts, the quivering belly. They ran up and down the parted, shining thighs. The belly continued to quiver and push. No faces could be seen, only the hands, but soon heads lowered. Tongues began to lap up the hot sweat which ran in rivulets. Soft lips kissed her eyes, her forehead, her throat. Tongues churned over her clitoris. Voracious mouths sucked milk from her breasts.

  The images wrenched her; they were revolting, obscene. Wake up! Wake up! she commanded herself. She could not move. She could not speak.

  Her orgasm was obvious, a lewd and clenching irony in time with the very contractions of birth. Behind her she sensed frenzied motion. She heard grunts, moans—

  —then screams.

  Screams?

  But they weren’t her screams, were they?

  She glimpsed dim figures tossing bundles onto a crackling fire. Still more figures seemed to wield knives or hatchets. The figures seemed palsied, numb. She heard chopping sounds.

  The dream’s eye rose to a high vantage point; the circle moved away. Naked backs clustered about the childbirth table. Now only a lone, hooded shape stood between the spread legs. It looked down, as if in reverence, at the wet, bloated belly. The belly was pink.

  Moans rose up, and excited squeals. The firelight danced. The chopping sounds thunked on and on, on and on…

  “Dooer, dooer,” spake the hooded shape.

  The belly shivered, collapsing.

  A baby began to cry.

  «« — »»

  Ann awoke suddenly, lost of breath. The dream, she thought. The nightmare. She reached blindly for Martin, but he wasn’t there. The digital clock read 4:12 a.m.

  Did she always have the dream at the same time, or did she imagine that? Months now, and nearly every night. Beneath her felt sodden, and her mind swam. The dream sickened her, not just the glaring, pornographic imagery, but what it must say about some part of her subconscious. She didn’t like to think like that—she was a lawyer. She didn’t like to contemplate a part of herself that she couldn’t break down, assimilate, and recognize structurally.

  She knew the dream was about Melanie’s birth. The abstractions—the bizarre words, the emblem on the chalice and the wall, the firelight, etc.—were what Dr. Harold termed “subconscious detritus.” “Dreams are always outwardly symbolic, Ms. Slavik, subjectivities surrounding a concrete point. The birth of your daughter, in other words, surrounded by encryptions. You’re here to find a means to expose those encryptions, and to identify them, after which we can determine how they relate to the central notion of the dream.”

  Ann couldn’t imagine such a notion, but she suspected, quite grimly, that much of this “detritus” was sexual. She’d told Dr. Harold everything about herself that he asked, except one detail. She was having orgasms in her sleep. The wetness, as well as the acute vaginal sensitivity upon waking, left no doubt. Worse was that these “dream orgasms” had proved her only orgasmic release for some time. Martin was by far the best lover of her life, yet she hadn’t had an orgasm with him for as long as she’d been having the nightmare. This worried her very much.

  Everything did.

  Yuck, she thought, and got up in the darkness. Her nightgown stuck to her, she felt doused in slime, and the coldness of her sweat shriveled her nipples.

  She padded down the hall and peeked into her daughter’s room. Melanie lay asleep amid a turmoil of sheets. The sheets were black and so were the walls. “Killing Joke,” one big poster read. Her favorite group. Martin had taken her to see them last year. Ann vowed one day to go to one of these wild concerts with her, but the more she determined to get involved with her daughter’s joys, the more impossible it seemed to achieve. Not trying hard enough, she lamented. She knew this neglect was part of Melanie’s seclusion. Growing up without a father was tough for a kid, and with a mother submerged at work six, sometimes seven days a week made it even tougher. Dr. Harold informed her that Melanie’s “alternative” tastes reflected a “self developed” identity. Most seventeen year olds read Tiger Beat and watched sitcoms. Melanie read Poe and watched Polanski.

  Sleepy eyes fluttered open. “Mom?”

  “Hi, honey.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Shh. Go back to sleep.”

  Melanie shifted under the covers. “I love you, Mom.”

  “I love you too. Go back to sleep.”

  Ann closed the door.

  She worried too much, she knew that. Melanie was coming of age, and Ann often had a hard time reckoning that. It had caused some awful arguments in the past—Melanie had run away several times, all of which were Ann’s own doing. She lost herself too often. The last time, it had taken Martin two days to find her, while Ann had been in the office working on counterlitigation for Air National. Ann’s success as an attorney haunted her with her failure as a mother.

  Tonight she’d promised things would change, but would this prove another failure? To think so would crush her. The trip to Paris would bring them together; it would start the relationship that should’ve started properly seventeen years ago. Too late’s better than nothing, she considered.

  Through the living room now, and soft darkness. She stepped into Martin’s moonlit den. The drapes billowed around the open French doors. Indeed, Martin stood on the terrace. Often she’d find him here, in wee hours when he couldn’t sleep, looking down into the city, the water, the docks. Always looking for something. Tonight, though, he stood straight in his robe, staring up at the sky.

  “Martin?”

&nb
sp; No reply. Staring. He looked sad or confused.

  He turned, startled. His cigarette fell. “What’s wrong?”

  “I—” she said.

  He hugged her at once. “I know. The dream again. You were—”

  “I’m sorry I woke you.”

  “You didn’t,” he lied. “I just couldn’t sleep. Too much caffeine.”

  Suddenly, she was crying. She hated that. His arms encircled her more tightly then. “You can cry,” he whispered. “It’s all right.”

  Oh, God, I can’t stand this. She felt out of control, which was her greatest fear. “What’s wrong with me?”

  “Nothing. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”

  He closed the door, sealing out the night, then led her back to the bedroom. Martin hugged her once more at the foot of the bed, and then she was hugging him back, clinging to him as if to a ledge. He was a ledge. He was the only thing that kept her from dropping into blackness.

  “I love you,” he said. “Everything will be all right.”

  My whole life is falling apart, she thought.

  His robe fell to the floor. He crawled into bed with her and covered her up, then draped an arm about her. That vital contact, his warm body against hers, was all that made her feel safe from herself.

  “I love you,” he said.

  But the safety was false. In a moment she fell back to sleep, and back into the bowels of the dream.

  «« — »»

  “I was sick. The doctor said I almost died.”

  “Interesting,” Dr. Harold observed. He chuckled. “I mean, it’s not interesting that you almost died. The parallel, I mean.”

  “Parallel?” Ann asked.

  Dr. Herman Harold’s office looked more like a rich man’s study. It was darkly appointed in fine paneling, oak and cherry furniture, plush dark carpet. High bookcases consumed one entire wall, their shelves curiously lacking psychiatric texts. Instead, tomes of classic literature filled the cases. Only a single copy of The American Journal of Psychiatry gave any clue that this was a headshrinker’s office. No proverbial couch could be found.