“I am the feast that Lilith sucked through her teeth day after day, thriving on each particle of my power which she chewed. Come see my gifts, free now with Lilith’s passing. The feast could be yours.”
These malicious whispers never woke Vespasian, and I never chose to disturb him. Often, I slipped from the bed and went to Randle’s room, but always found him fast asleep and smiling, one thumb sometimes plugged firmly into his mouth.
Then I usually wandered downstairs, but never looked at any uncurtained window. I’d make tea, or coffee, or I’d pour wine, vodka with ice and anything else that seemed handy, listened for moments to the radio, or went to my computer and attempted to write.
Once more climbing into bed, I’d reach for Vespasian’s naked warmth, his strength and just the gentle sound of his breathing being my greatest protection.
Twice the police visited, but once it was simply for the courtesy of informing us that a suspect had been arrested, they were fairly sure he was the killer, he was locked up and they would let us know when the trial came up. Probably a year away. The courts were as slow as the great list of waiting criminals permitted.
So it had been the postman who had died, and on Sunday which was his one day off. Poor man. I’d never liked him, but he seemed honest and punctual. Whoever or whatever had killed him, and with no obvious motive, seemed to have relished the act of murder and that meant suspecting the demons.
I didn’t investigate.
One afternoon early in December, I sat beside the huge fire in the living room, where the flames danced up the chimney, giant logs piled across the iron grate within the inglenook, I could hear the wind whistling outside but a quietness hung within the room like a heaving mist, settling lower until it surrounded me.
I turned quickly, looking for Vespasian, but could see nothing. Randle was already in bed upstairs, but my husband had been stretched in the chair opposite, hands crossed on his chest and eyes closed, not asleep but thinking. Now I couldn’t see him. I knew the mist was between us.
He had been dreaming with the light of the fire, whereas I had been reading beside a table lamp. The five sconces around the walls had also all been alight. And now – suddenly – the lights went out.
My table lamp flickered, popped and died. The other lights in the room flashed over and over in abrupt sequence, and after some minutes of the explosive contrasts, everything went out. Even the fire. The wind whistled down the chimney, and I could hear it whine amongst the ashes.
The flames had gone and the mist closed around me. It was a promise of death. Nothingness.
I sat paralysed, hanging onto the arms of my chair. Again – the whispering. “Sleep, sleep, and sleep for evermore,” whispered the mist.
Then I saw the eyes in the mist, raging scarlet eyes with lids of slime. The eyes dripped, drip, drip, and the slime ran in thick trickles of stench across my toes. I could feel the icy dribble. The mist was clammy. I felt myself drowning. The only thing I could breathe was the thickening mist and the crawling stench. I expected to fall, and then hit the bottom. But the end never came.
At last the paralysis fell away and I leapt from my chair like some wild thing, screaming for Vespasian.
Then I was in his arms and the lights blazed and the fire flamed in huge golden waves up the chimney. My book was upside down on the floor, and I had collapsed against the solid reassurance of those glorious arms, muscle, bone, and as hot as the fire.
I told him haltingly, almost stammering, what I had seen and heard. He had experienced none of it. Not one blink of it.
He kissed my eyes and my eyelids, the tip of my nose, and my mouth, hard and hot. Then he tickled my ear as he said what I’d hoped he would. “This is wrong, my beloved, and I shall not allow it. These creatures cannot enter here, but they are gathering enough strength to overpower the electricity, and even, perhaps, your mind.”
“What I saw didn’t happen?”
“If you saw it, my beloved, it happened to you. The ether carries many things, including visions for the chosen individual. The soldiers born from the sources of evil have the powers you only know from your telephones and your computers. You receive an email, but I will not see it if it is addressed only to you.”
I understood. “Am I so weak? Am I so vulnerable? But you said we weren’t in danger.”
“I cannot be sure,” he told me, his fingers through my hair. “So I will fight further, and eliminate what I had supposed unimportant.”
How the hell can you think demons unimportant? I stuttered, “I think there’s more than there used to be.”
“Very soon,” said Vespasian, “there will be none.”
This was a man who travelled time and who, unbelievably, had learned to love me. When I thought I had seen him slaughtered in medieval England, I returned to my own self and time, now once again without power.
Then he had followed me through the gateway, appearing through the ancient yew tree in the forest near where I used to live, and knowing me as clearly as if I was still his wife. I was already pregnant, and carrying his child.
Randle was born just over three years ago. When new born, I thought him the small round image of his father. Then, as he grew, in many ways he was unusual and in many other ways he was just a gorgeous dark-haired little boy with a delicious smile and bright eyes who learned fast and could already read if the words weren’t too challenging. Once he managed transparent but pronounced trass-pants and asked if he might have some. He invariably slept well and dreamed deep, then enjoyed recounting his dreams in the morning, telling their stories as if such events had genuinely occurred that night.
I had started labour two weeks before expected, and Vespasian had first telephoned the hospital, and then proceeded to hold me and finally deliver our son just as the ambulance turned up. My pains had been severe but so fast, I had no time to do more than grunt as I pushed Randle into the world. Vespasian put the tiny warm bundle into my arms, kissed both our sweaty foreheads, and went to open the door.
Now nestled in the room next to ours, Randle slept with concentrated determination. We used an intercom, but he rarely disturbed us. When Randle began to run as fast as I could, we had decided to buy a larger house. My Cotswold cottage had been minute. Now just a quarter of a mile from our ancient village of Wethawand in Wiltshire, the house was large, the garden was huge, and the demons had found us.
I blinked through those fleeting moments when I wished we had stayed in Gloucestershire. But I suppose any demonic creature would eventually find its intended goal. They had been playing ever since Lilith’s destruction, and needed no more practise.
“Any demon is dangerous,” Vespasian had told me eventually, “but I have the power to protect us all. I cannot protect beyond my walls. They can kill, and they can inhabit any soul already dreaming of evil. The police suspect could have been inhabited by some demonic presence, or the demon itself could have murdered any man inclined towards such inhabitation.”
Christmas was looming. Vespasian trudged out to the great spruce, thick green, standing at the side of the lake’s banks, and took Randle with him. He suggested I come as well and I refused, quite gently as if it hardly mattered, but said I was going to make custard. So they went without me. I knew Vespasian was proving the innocence, the lack of danger and the strength of his own ability to protect us all, but I watched from the window. They hung the tree with fairy lights until it shimmered in silver and every spangle the branches accepted. Randle ran back indoors with a smile that lit his face pink, not silver, and told me, “Mummy, ‘tis evermost bootiful. And not one of them tree shape things could come near. Daddy told ‘em piss off.”
“And they did,” Vespasian smiled. “But I have spoken with some, and I understand just how we’ll eliminate them. After Christmas, and once you decide your own place in this, they’ll be gone. Not entirely easy perhaps, but neither risk nor the possibility of failure will arise.” He looked at me. “So will you come?”
He hadn’t
explained, although it seemed that he thought I should understand. But if he was going, I would too.
“Yes, I’ll come. I don’t need to take ages over that sort of decision. But who can look after Randle?”
“Time,” Vespasian said. “We will leave as he sleeps and will return just one moment later. He’ll neither know we’ve gone, nor see our return.”
That frightened me a little. But I said, “Alright. After Christmas. The New Year, perhaps.”
“How apt,” he smiled. “Although when I lived before, the New Year came in March. But, my beloved, we shall leave at midnight of December the thirty-first.”
“And how long is a moment? Randle can’t ever be alone,” I insisted.
“A moment is whatever I wish it to be,” Vespasian answered. “We will therefore return before one single minute has passed on January the first. And there will be a garden so safe, we will hardly recognise the placid emptiness.”
“We can fix everything so quickly?” I knew he didn’t mean everything might be solved in five minutes, but I wanted to know more.
With a finger tracing the tuck at the side of my mouth, he said, “It may take a year. It may take two years. But I can take your hand and skip the months between, and we will still return almost at the moment of leaving.”
Yet even as we discussed our plans, laughing sometimes, and playing with Randle, other threats swooped into our home.
The Christmas season was not quite over when the long wail of arrival spiralled down our chimney, and when Vespasian strode out onto the wooden decked terrace, I could hear him speaking for long minutes. When he came back into our living room, kicked off his shoes and swung his legs up onto the long-curved sofa, he spoke almost apologetically, “Now there are fourteen. Many have cannibalised others, so making their own power multiply. There is not one which could prove itself stronger than myself. But if, unlikely though it might be, these things bonded and came together, their power would outweigh my own.”
Chapter Three
“They feed off each other. Sucking and swallowing, the one a little stronger will absorb the weaker and become stronger still. Over the stretch of years, one may absorb ten others, and feel himself master. But another, stronger still, will pounce, and the first will be sucked into the being of yet another. No demon claims friends, but those already taken within will sit placid, knowing they will spell part of a mightier force.”
“We have fourteen. Of what?”
“Call them demons, devils, creatures of the dark, Lilith’s orgy, hellion, or any other of a hundred words. Our presence attracts them. Fourteen of the strongest now reside here, watching each other with suspicion, but watching us with greed. And I know exactly how to eliminate such sewerage.”
Scrambling from my cocoon, I stood beside Vespasian at the window. There I stared down at the small lake with its lilies and glorious surrounding maples, now bare, and the willow weeping its loss of leaves at the far end. Beyond that, beyond the bridge and beyond sight in many places, but still within our gates, was a small forest that lined our old and broken stone walls. The largest tree was an oak, but the only leaves were attached to the evergreens, cypress and others, including the silver decorated spruce.
Across the reflections in the water, cross-legged beneath the oak’s enormous bare branches, sat a little old man, head up, staring back at us. He was certainly visible, but he neither was a shadow nor cast one.
I said nothing. Vespasian had opened the window, his arms crossed on the sill. The rimed panes began to crack their ice as the warmth inside hit the freeze outside. Vespasian said softly, “Triumph, my visitor? You have negated your companions?”
The old man clambered upright and straightened his back. His voice was bell-like and didn’t fit his wrinkled face and straggles of white hair from his brow, ears and chin. “Indeed, I triumphed,” the thing said, almost singing. “I am the master of my legion and hold the power of the first ten, which has always been my own within the mighty Being of Lilith, and now the power of Fastoon, now within me, and the power of Laquia, now utterly absorbed, I am thrice endowed.”
I was peeping over Vespasian’s shoulder. “You ate them?” I asked, fascinated.
“I drank them,” the thing replied. “I sucked them dry. Others will fly here for the essence of your own master attracts them. I shall wait and absorb more when they come.”
Smiling, Vespasian spoke, “You are Inbore, the irritation that brings pain with the broken bone and the cough. You are an insect and no demon. Even containing the others, you cannot rise further than a barnacle.”
Although he stood at some distance, I could see the thing’s fury for it darkened and seemed less human. Within its outline I could even see the moving shapes he had absorbed. His hands were red and mis-formed into the shape of acorns, tight little fingers like scales over the knot, and the nails wooden. It opened its mouth and showed vampire teeth, both bloodstained. The drips of blood slipped down the elongated chin and clung to the wisps of white beard.
“The blood,” Vespasian told me casually as though discussing the winter weather, “is a false impression, since all demons are bloodless, and it has eaten nothing else except their capacity for cruelty.”
“I’m going downstairs,” I said. “I need a very strong coffee.” I was huddled in my dressing gown, hands deep in warm pockets.
Following, Vespasian opened the bedroom door for me and both of us strode again into the living room. I checked on Randle first, then went to make the coffee. When I came back with the steaming cups and quickly looked out of the window, the thing appeared to have gone. I sipped at my coffee. Vespasian swallowed his in one gulp. In his medieval lifetime there had been no such thing as coffee. Now he enjoyed it, and tea, even hot chocolate if not too sweet.
It was over his empty cup that he told me, “That thing is not one of the fourteen. It will quickly be sucked dry. So one of those already stronger, will soon become stronger still.” Suddenly I could smell burning, but before I could jump up to check, he caught my hand. “The stink of other worlds, my love. One has trapped the other as I predicted. We once again have fourteen.”
The disgusting stink of it faded but beyond the living room window I could still see the waving shadows and the freeze of malign darkness. Above our house the starlit spangle of a myriad stars still promised beauty, but where our garden should have been was now a plague of evil. I felt sick.
He knew, smiled and lifted my fingers, kissing my hand as once a lord kissed his lady. I sniffed. “How long before we get rid of them all?”
“Just a few days, little one. I must still know the past actions of these creatures. What they absorbed and where they lived. I intend to travel back to some past time when at least three of these can be destroyed, bringing the cluster from fourteen to eleven. And if I destroy each before their entire strength is complete, they will be quick and easy to kill.”
“You can destroy them before they get this terrifying?”
He was still holding my fingers. “Now come to bed, my little one. We will not dream of demons nor permit them to take over our lives.”
“I can’t –” I mumbled. “Not with the clock ticking and my heart beating even louder. For pity’s sake, darling – how can you think of anything else?”
“Like this,” he whispered, smiling.
Back up the dark stairs, footsteps silent on the thick carpet, tip toeing past Randle’s room, then into our own. Vespasian shut our door, and lay on the bed, hands clasped behind his head, one knee bent, and smiled at me silently as I hurried into the attached bathroom. I did not lock the door, we never bothered to do that, but I had closed it. It opened while I was busy cleaning my teeth. Vespasian was naked, I was aware of him only as his arms seemed to surround me and his smile appeared over my shoulder in the mirror. He turned me around and kissed me, my toothpaste against his tongue. He laughed and continued kissing, then pressed me hard back against the tiles and started very slowly to remove my dressing gown.
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As each button surrendered, I felt his long fingers sliding against my skin, warming me, probing and pressing. His eyes were half closed and his breathing was hard and hot in my hair. When I was as naked as him and twice as aroused, he tossed me into his arms and carried me back to bed.
All I wore was the toothpaste. He kissed it from my lips and his mouth then slipped down to my breasts, his hands to my back and then to my buttocks, pressing hard, whispering in my ear. His breath tickled, but the words were so tantalising I stopped breathing. He told me what he’d do and told me in such stunning crude and decisive detail that I gasped. Then what he’d said was what he did.
An hour later we lay naked together, my head against his nipples, exhausted and utterly at peace. A transparent roof of sublime pleasure seemed to protect us. I couldn’t think properly. Murmuring to my ear, his voice was a delicious tickle and the things he said were like the custard on the pudding. The wooden bedposts were heavily carved, but we rarely closed the curtains, cream silk richly embroidered, which rustled in summer when the window was pushed open. Nothing rustled now and the malice outside was gone from my mind.
His voice, always so quiet, was now a whisper. “Each woman has her own curves, each unique and each so precious. Your breasts curve outwards below the nipples, and above the nipples they curve upwards. Yet both curves swell so lovingly, tantalising, each as beautiful as the other.” Still in a trance of delight, I heard him like a distant waterfall.
“Such sweet words.”
“And when I feel your body rise, I wait to feel the first tremble of your coming. Through my fingers, I feel you explode. And then your explosions echo, with a ripple of pleasure continuing like the aftershocks after the volcano blows. Your climax repeats over and over, eight times perhaps, or more if I can touch where I want.” I shivered, the delight rising again. Still naked, lying calm and warm beneath me, he traced down the inside of my thighs. “Must I let you sleep now, my beloved? Then tomorrow shall be another day.”
Dark Weather Page 2