The Demon Lover (12 page)

“If he is real,” I said to myself out loud, “then I’d better find out all I can about him.”

No one stopped to look at the teacher frozen on the path talking to herself. They probably thought I was talking on a cell phone earset. I wondered how long I could hide my craziness though, if I’d really come to believe in incubi. As long as I could, I’d better use the library to find out all I could about my own personal incubus.

I’d researched demon lovers before but never with an eye to proving they existed. For that, I’d come to the right place. The Fairwick College Library’s folklore collection was vast. In fact, there was a whole room dedicated to fairy tales and folklore, named the Angus Fraser Room.

Much I already knew: the incubus was a demon in male form who lay with sleeping women, sometimes to have children (Merlin was the oft-cited example of a child born of an incubus and a human woman), but most often to drain the woman of her vital life force.

Well, I hadn’t gotten pregnant and up until this morning I’d felt just fine … although I had been losing weight …

A feeling of pressure on the chest often accompanied the visitation.

Yes, I’d felt that, but there was probably a physiological explanation for that breathless sensation during sleep. Asthma, perhaps, or sleep apnea …

The oldest tradition I could find came from ancient Sumeria. Gilgamesh’s father was said to be the incubus Lilu (I recalled that Soheila Lilly had mentioned him), but he existed in many cultures by many names: El Trauco in Chile, the alp in Germany, Popo Bawa in Zanzibar, the liderc in Hungary, and the Celtic Ganconer, who was also called a love talker. That, I recalled, was the name of the incubus in the Briggs Hall triptych.

I’d read before that one way to get rid of the incubus was through exorcism, but now I learned that if that didn’t work (and apparently it didn’t often enough), one could try iron locks on the doors and windows.

Is that why Brock Olsen had put new iron locks on my doors and windows and hung that cast-iron dream catcher in my window? I blushed at the thought that he knew about the demon lover and looked around the library, wondering who else might know I was having sex with a demon on a nightly basis, but the only other person in the Angus Fraser room was a ponytailed boy with his head pillowed on an open art history textbook, sound asleep.

I read on in A. E. Forster’s
Compendium of Folk-Lore and Demonology
that in Swedish homes virtuous housewives hung up charms made of birch branches and juniper sprigs tied with red ribbon to ward off the advances of the demon lover.

Just like Brock’s little air fresheners.

But the best way to send away an incubus was to confront him directly.

It takes an enormous effort to speak during the incubus’s visitation, but if the victim can summon the preternatural will to speak and ask him to identify himself, then the incubus is sure to flee forever
.

I raised my head from the book and stared over the head of my sleeping companion out the leaded glass window at red and gold leaves falling in the quad.

Who are you?
I had asked.

The lozenges of wavy glass swam before me. I supposed I should feel pleased with myself for summoning “the preternatural will to speak,” but all I felt was bereft.

ELEVEN

T
he demon lover didn’t appear that night … or the night after that, or the night after that.

I should have been grateful, but instead I was restless. I lay awake watching the shadows of branches quivering in the moonlight until the moon passed over my house and the moonlight faded. Then, since I still couldn’t sleep, I would pad barefoot into the spare room and take one of Dahlia LaMotte’s handwritten manuscripts back to bed with me. I read them quickly and uncritically, devouring the lurid tales of governesses and brooding masters, orphans and mysterious benefactors, with the added bonus material of extended sex scenes.

The demon lover insinuated himself into every one of Dahlia’s books just as he insinuated himself between the legs of her heroines … and under their skin. In each book the heroine found herself addicted to a demon lover.

I crave him as an opium addict longs for his pipe
, India Wilde exclaimed in
The Far Moor. He is my opium. I inhale him and he comes to life. I take him inside me and I come to life. He is my life. Without him I would wither and die
.

As I began to fear I would if I couldn’t shake off his hold on me.

I would read until the gray shadows of dawn fell where moonlight had fallen before. Then I would go out jogging before classes, choosing the woods again for my route. I ran as far as the honeysuckle thicket where I’d stop and listen for a moment to the thickly intertwined branches rubbing against one another in the breeze. I would listen for birds caught in the underbrush, but the thicket was empty and melancholy. I thought of the painting in Briggs Hall of all those fairies and demons marching out of this world and into another through a thicket like this one and felt a peculiar tug at my heart. What would it feel like to leave one’s home and wander for eternity through an ever-tightening maze, the passage back narrower and more twisting with each passing year? It was a strangely evocative metaphor for exile that haunted me on my cool-down walks back to the house with the feeling that I, too, was an exile. Not from my old life in New York City—that I hardly missed at all—but from the demon lover I’d scared away.

Although the long runs and colder weather should have increased my appetite I found myself eating less in those first weeks of October. It was just as well since Phoenix abruptly stopped cooking.

“Do you mind?” she asked, handing me the takeout menus for the local pizzeria and Chinese restaurant. “I’m a little swamped right now reading my students’ work. They’re really on fire, especially Mara.”

“Does she write about her experiences in Bosnia?”

“Sort of. She’s writing a parable that
stands
for her real-life experiences, which are too painful for her to face. I’m encouraging her to keep writing the parable with the hope that she’ll eventually confront the real facts of her life—as I urge all my students to do—but the parable itself is so vivid and violent, so
disturbing
, I can only begin to imagine how horrendous the truth behind it is.”

“Really? Do you think you should show it to anyone … 
professional?
” I was thinking of the shooting at Virginia Tech a few years ago and the violently disturbed writing the shooter had submitted to his creative writing classes, which might have, if it had been seen by a mental health professional, given a warning. But Phoenix was appalled by my suggestion.

“Oh no! I’d lose her trust entirely! I’ve promised her I won’t show it to anyone until we’ve worked on it together. I’m meeting with her every day to go over her drafts.” Phoenix held up a two-inch thick purple folder. “So I’m sure I’ve got the situation under control.”

I wondered how well she had it under control. I’d been so absorbed in my own obsession that I hadn’t noticed right away how absorbed Phoenix was in hers. She was always reading Mara’s work. When I came down at dawn for my runs I’d find her asleep on the library couch with the purple folder lying open beside her, red-marked pages strewn all over the floor like blood splatter. When I passed her coming into Fraser Hall in the afternoon she was always clutching the purple folder.

Once, delayed in the hall by a student asking for an extension on a paper, I passed by Phoenix’s room fifteen minutes into the class and noticed that the teacherless room was full of students texting and playing games on their fancy cell phones. I caught Nicky Ballard’s eye and motioned for her to come out into the hall.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Is Phoenix here?”

“So to speak,” Nicky said, biting her lip, which I noticed was chapped and peeling. She also looked like she’d lost more weight. Guiltily I recalled that I’d meant to keep an eye on her, but I’d been too deep in my own funk to notice how bad she looked. “She’s in her office with Mara having another ‘writing conference.’ ” Nicky made air quotes with her fingers—the nails of which were bitten down to the quick. “We’re supposed to be working on our memoirs until she calls us in for conference, but she never gets around to anyone but Mara.”

“Uh-oh, that must not be going over so well. Has anyone complained to the dean?”

Nicky shrugged. “I don’t think anyone wants to. The little bit of Mara’s writing that she reads out loud in class is so … 
painful
. No one wants to complain about the time Phoenix devotes to her.”

“But it’s not fair for one student to shanghai the whole class …” I began, but then, seeing how uncomfortable Nicky looked, changed tack. “How are you doing? Are you adjusting okay to Fairwick?”

She shrugged again—a gesture which I was beginning to see had become a sort of nervous tic for her. “There’s a lot of work. I keep trying to explain to Ben that I can’t hang out all the time because I have more work than him, but then he just accuses me of lording it over him for being at my ‘fancy private college.’ ” She air quoted again and I wondered how much of Nicky’s new life required the ironic distance of finger brackets.

“It’s hard on a relationship when one partner—especially the female one—is more successful.” I was thinking of how hard Paul tried not to mind when I’d gotten into Columbia and again when my thesis got a big commercial publishing contract and he had to rewrite his at his advisor’s request. “But that doesn’t mean you should feel guilty or not take full advantage of the opportunities you’ve earned. If Ben really cares about you he’ll understand.”

Nicky nodded, but she looked like she was about to cry. “Yeah, but the girls at community college don’t have to stay in the library on Saturday night. How long will it be before he figures out it’s easier to hang out with one of them?”

I sighed. Of course I’d wondered the same thing with Paul—not that UCLA was community college, but L.A. was full of leggy blondes and surfer chicks who weren’t three thousand miles away. To keep myself from being tortured by jealous fantasies I’d had to shut off a part of my brain—and, I had to admit, a piece of my heart. I worried sometimes that the result was that I didn’t love him as much. Sometimes I wondered if I had ever really loved him enough or if Annie was right—that if I really loved him I’d have found a way to be with him. Lately when we talked at night I found myself impatient to get off the phone. I should have been counting the days until his arrival on Thanksgiving, but instead I was mooning over a phantom lover. Was that why I’d summoned the demon lover—because I wasn’t satisfied by Paul? And was the reason I’d never been satisfied by Paul that I’d been measuring him against the fairytale prince of my teenaged fantasies?

“If it’s meant to work out it will,” I said, wishing I could think of less lame advice to offer Nicky. But she nodded as if I’d said something sage.

“Thanks, Professor McFay. It’s nice of you to spend the time talking to me. I know you must be busy.”

Guiltily I thought about the stack of ungraded papers lying on my desk at home and the ones weighing down the messenger bag strapped across my chest. I’d been feeling so despondent that I’d let myself get behind in my work.

“I do have your last essays to grade,” I said, patting my bag. “I’d better be going … but, please, if you need to talk …”

“Thanks, professor. I will.”

Nicky went back into class and I headed across campus. Although it was only the last week in October, most of the leaves had fallen from the trees already and it was cold enough for a winter coat—but I hadn’t worn one. I was wearing the Armani tweed blazer, turtleneck, skinny jeans, and thigh-high boots that were my favorite fall outfit. Back in the city it got me through the season to Christmas, but here I saw I was going to have to put on a down coat and long underwear by Thanksgiving. I was so cold crossing the quad that I decided to pop into the library and do some work there. Every time I tried to grade papers at home I ended up in the spare room reading a Dahlia LaMotte novel. Maybe working in the library would give me the discipline I needed to finish grading these papers.

In the library I set myself to grading essays, managing only marginally better to concentrate on what my students had to say about
The Mysteries of Udolpho
and
Northanger Abbey
than I had at the house. Every few sentences I would look up and stare out the window at the bare trees on the quad and feel a pang of sadness, as if someone I’d loved had just died. What was wrong with me? I wondered, forcing myself to stare back down at a paper. I’d never been so unfocused. Was I really going through some kind of withdrawal from the demon lover? Or was I coming down with something? I read the next paper with a head full of imagined ailments: swine flu, Lyme disease, and early-onset Alzheimer’s danced through my head. Maybe the demon lover visitations were a symptom of a brain tumor.

As if to confirm my worst fears, when I looked back down at the paper in front of me the print doubled and swam. Blurry vision—wasn’t that a symptom of stroke? I closed my eyes and laid my head down on the table. The polished wood felt cool on my forehead. No wonder that student had been sleeping here the last time I came; it was a perfect place to sleep, quiet but for a low, barely audible hum that must have been the ventilation system but sounded like a swarm of insects …

I must have fallen asleep. I was in a crowd walking across an endless, rolling meadow. My legs and feet hurt as if I’d been walking for miles. I looked down and saw that my feet were bare in the wet grass. My legs were scratched and bleeding, my dress torn to tatters around my knees. I was alarmed at the sight. I shouldn’t be bleeding; my flesh shouldn’t tear. I began to fall … as if the awareness of my flesh’s vulnerability had robbed me of the last vestige of my strength and will. I would lie down right here in the dew-damp grass and sleep. No matter if the horde stampeded over me; let them trample me into the ground until I was dust beneath their feet and I seeped into the earth. As I fell I could hear horses—
the Riders
—and knew I’d be ground to dust all the sooner beneath their hooves.
Fine, let me go back to the earth
 
… But then a shadow fell across me and I looked up. A figure on a white horse was leaning down toward me, reaching out his hands. I took his hands and he pulled me up into the saddle in front of him. He wrapped his arms around me, chafing my bare, cold skin. My dress, drenched and shredded, barely covered me. He pulled me back against him and I felt him harden with desire for me. I knew we had to go … that there wasn’t time … but our desire for each other was too strong. He steered his mount into the woods, deep into a glade that was covered by intertwining branches … like a chapel.

“I’d have married you in a church,” he whispered in my ear as he pulled me from the horse and laid me on the soft grass, “but this will have to do.”

He traced the line of my jaw with one finger and pressed it between my lips. “You are mine,” he said, sliding his finger down my throat to my left breast. He drew circles around the nipple, the wetness tingling in the misty air, inscribing a spiral pattern over my heart, all the while keeping his eyes locked on mine.

“Yes,” I moaned, arching my hips against him while he hovered a tantalizing inch above me. “We belong to each other. We always have and always will.”

Still keeping his eyes locked on mine he pushed the last tatters of my dress up around my hips and pushed himself against me. His face, backlit by the sun-tangled branches, glowed gold, his eyes glowing the same green as the deep woods that surrounded us. As he came inside me it was as if the woods were entering me … The gold sunlight exploding through the green branches obliterating everything else … even his flesh and, I saw as I reached for him, my flesh as well. I could see the sun and the branches right through my hand. We were dissolving into each other …

I startled awake, my face pressed against a damp patch on the wooden table, and sat up, swiping at my mouth, hoping no one had seen me drooling in my sleep. But that hope was dashed. Elizabeth Book was sitting across from me, her cool elegance making me feel even more bedraggled and embarrassed.

She smiled but her eyes looked sad. “You were dreaming,” she said.

“I fell asleep while grading papers.” I swept together the pile of papers that were strewn across the table. I must have scattered them as I reached for him … Dear God, had Dean Book heard me moan or call out a name? Only I hadn’t called his name … although I was sure I’d have known it in the dream. I had
known
him. As well as I knew myself. Only how well was that? Who had I been in the dream?

“Have you been having disturbing dreams?” Liz asked.

I looked up from the papers and met her cool blue gaze. I felt the blood surge in my face at the thought that she somehow knew exactly what kind of dreams I’d been having. Dreams in which I made love until my flesh melted. “No,” I said. “Not unless you count dreaming about ungraded papers as disturbing. I’m afraid I’ve fallen a bit behind.” I smiled ruefully and hoped she thought my embarrassment was from being caught literally sleeping on the job and not from having a depraved sex life with a demonic being. “But I promise I’ll catch up and be more on the ball in the future.”