by Edward Lee
“You’re gonna be my best nut yet,” he promised her. “Oh, yeah, you sure as shit are. I can tell just by lookin’ at ya.”
He opened his trousers and withdrew himself. Suddenly, his stench stupefied her. Dried blood matted his pubic hair.
Then he plugged the revolver into her navel.
“That faggot Tharp, he used to blow me for quarters. Always makin’ phone calls. He was calling you, wasn’t he?”
Look at the moon tonight. Ann remembered the words. She nodded tensely.
“Why?” Duke Belluxi asked, and pinched a nipple.
Doefolmon, she thought. Fulluht-Loc.
Duke laughed. “Doesn’t matter none to me. Now, don’t take this personal, honeybunch, but it’s best if you’re dyin’ slow while I’m boppin’ ya. Gives me a better nut—know what I mean?”
Ann tremored in her paresis. Duke cocked the big, clunky revolver, growing erect in time with his pulse. Through the front bay window, the moon shimmered pinkly.
Ann prepared to die. She closed her eyes
Then the awful weight was gone.
Ann turned where she lay, looking ahead. Duke Belluxi was being dragged across the carpet by…something. Ann caught glimpses of faces, flesh. Duke thrashed as he was pinned to the floor by quick, snatching hands. Abruptly, he was screaming in hoarse bursts. What’s happening? Ann dumbly wondered. She felt in shock. Duke’s heels and palms pummeled the floor, his body arching up. Two fingers sharp as masonry nails sank promptly into his eyes. Two more clawlike hands ripped his trousers off. Ann could only stare frozen at the dreamlike sequence of horror…
Two shapely, concupiscent bodies knelt over Duke with grins like shards of glass. A long taloned finger raised a skewered eyeball to a needle-toothed mouth. The eyeball was eaten whole, like a grape. Humor was licked off the elegant finger. Lust-swollen breasts shined over the atrocity. Ann could only continue to catch glimpses at first. Pale pendants swayed as Duke’s body twitched with vigor. The figures persisted in their delighted butchery—Duke’s abdomen was laid open, exposing glistening organs. Blood flew like spaghetti and sauce. The closest figure grinned down at Duke’s genitals. A mouth like a knifecut in fresh meat opened heinously wide; rows of glassine teeth sparkled. A moment later, the mouth lowered, gritting down. Duke’s penis and testicles were quickly eaten out of the apex of his groin. A river of blood gushed onto the carpet.
Then the first figure’s mouth spread likewise. The top of Duke’s skull was bitten off. Orbs of brain glimmered. Duke Belluxi died in flinching convulsions, atop a blanket of his own blood and offal.
Holy Mother of G—
The two figures looked at Ann. They seemed amused. Ann’s mind crumpled at the impact of recognition. One figure straightened up on her knees, her nipple ends erect as coat pegs; she chortled, smearing Duke Belluxi’s blood over her breasts and abdomen like some luxurious lotion. The other figure was sloppily eating gobbets of Duke’s brains out of the cranial vault.
Milly. Maedeen, Ann realized. But…
It was something she apprehended rather than saw, a recognition that somehow reared beneath the tainted features: pronglike taloned hands and feet, elongated heads, bottomless, primeval eyes.
Not women, Ann’s thoughts verified. Things.
Maedeen rummaged for plump morsels amid Duke’s plundered gut, while Milly rather greedily slurped blood and spinal fluid out of the emptied skull. They paused only briefly to grin at Ann.
By now her incomprehension turned her limp. Laughter followed her as she was dragged away suddenly from behind. She was being helped up, urged out the back door into darkness. She was insensible.
“Come on!” a voice bellowed at her. Rough hands shook her at her shoulders. “Snap out of it!”
Ann’s eyes roved up, focused on the plump face in moonlight. It was Chief Bard.
“It’s tonight, Ann! We’ve got to get you out of here!”
Her awareness returned in pieces, in slabs. “What…”
“They’re succubi, Ann. They’re part of a cult that’s as old as civilization,” Bard told her, dragging her now toward the woods behind the house.
“Then it’s all true,” Ann muttered. “Everything Tharp said—”
“Yes!”
“They want Melanie to be the physical body of—”
“Come on!” he yelled again.
But the voice stopped them in their tracks. They turned, staring. In the sliding glass door, Maedeen stood looking after them. She was holding what appeared to be one of Duke Belluxi’s lungs. Even at this distance, Ann could see the chaotic features of her transformed face, and the teeth glittering like chisel blades.
“Bring her back, Bard!” croaked the inhuman voice. “You can’t get away from us! You can never get away!”
Bard yanked her on through the brambles. The moon followed them like a distended, pink face. “I’m one of their helots,” he panted to explain, “but they never fully initiated me because they needed someone on the outside. I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to watch any more innocent people die for their devil. It’s your mother, Ann—she’s the wifmunuc. They’ve all been waiting for this day for the last—”
Thousand years, Ann finished in thought. Tharp had said the same thinly. But—
“Melanie,” she said “We have to get Melanie.”
“Melanie’s lost! She’s part of the bludcynn now. She’s not your daughter anymore, she’s hers!”
Ann pulled against him. “I’m not leaving Melanie!”
“I might be able to get her later,” Bard said. “But the most important thing right now is to get you as far away from the cirice as possible. If they don’t have you when the moon goes into complete apogee, then the Fulluht-Loc can’t take place.”
Could he really get Melanie back, or was he just placating her? Ann couldn’t think of a way to resist him; he was saving her life, after all. She supposed all she could do was hope and pray.
He’d parked his police cruiser at the end of Senlac Street, in the dark. He was sweating, harried. He rushed her into the passenger side, jumped in himself, and gunned the engine.
He paused on the shift. “It’s all true, Ann.”
“I…I know.”
“And I’m sorry.”
Ann tilted her head. He’d saved her life. What did he have to be sorry about?
His chubby face turned to her. “I’m very, very sorry.”
“But I’m not.” rose the voice from the darkness of the backseat.
Ann flailed, screaming. Bard’s fat hands grappled at her. He clamped her head in the crook of his elbow. She shrieked at the sharp deep prick of pain.
“Well done, Chief.” Dr. Ashby Heyd’s face emerged into the pink fight. “There, fine.” He gingerly withdrew the hypodermic needle from her neck. “That’s a good girl,” he said.
—
Chapter 34
Dr. Harold didn’t know what he was thinking. He’d stopped only briefly at his house—for his gun. Clinical psychiatrists easily received state gun permits. But what do I need a gun for? he queried himself.
What did he expect?
The highway seemed to thwart him, its abandonment, its wide, open darkness—or something. His high beams stretched out ahead of the car only to be sucked up by interminable black.
He did not try to calculate the coincidences, and the facts, that had been revealed to him tonight. What am I thinking? the question returned. It seemed fat, like a dull, protracted headache. What do I think I’m going to do? He felt certain that Tharp had already returned to Lockwood, that he was there now.
But where does that leave me?
He could call the police, but what would he tell them? That Tharp had gone back to the locale of his crimes to prevent the incarnation of a female demon? They’d be committing me, he considered. Besides, the authorities had ignored his and Greene’s early recommendations. Why should they listen now?
Maybe I should listen to myself.
The moon seemed to p
ace him, its odd pink light flittering through lone stands of trees. The light and the constant drone of the tires threatened to lull him at the wheel, or hypnotize him. Yes, he felt thwarted, he felt pushing upward against some bizarre mental gravity that was bent on repelling him. Paranoia, he dismissed. He felt he was racing against something, but he couldn’t imagine what. Time, perhaps, or unprecedented fears.
Or impossibilities, he thought.
The moon was so full now it looked pregnant in its raw light; it looked heavy enough to drag itself out of the sky and fall to earth. Doefolmon, the strange word came to his head. Moon of the devil.
And another word, a name: Ardat-Lil.
He could not erase the image from his memory. It seemed indelible—the sheer beauty wed into the features of sheer repugnance, sheer evil. Most religions were born out of reaction to other religions; their roots were obvious. But the Ur-locs? Pre- Christian? Even pre-Druidic? What bizarre sociology could’ve created such an idea?
Dr. Harold did not attempt to contemplate an answer.
He felt sick in increments, waning as the car droned on into the inclement dark. The pinkened moonlight on his face felt warm, humid. He could see it still, Tharp’s harrowing psych ward sketch transposing into a vision of stunning clarity: the perfect hourglass physique, the large and perfect breasts, and then the bestial three-fingered hands with talons like meat hooks, and—
The face, he remembered.
—a black, thinly stretched maw full of stalactitic teeth.
How long had he been driving now? It seemed like all night, or a week of nights. Perhaps he’d been driving in circles, his sense of direction perverted by Tharp’s perverted imagery.
Perhaps I’ve died and gone to hell, and this is how I am to spend eternity, driving forever in darkness.
Then the big green road sign flashed in the headlights, a beacon to his relief.
LOCKWOOD, 15 MILES.
The moon shimmered beyond the sign, beyond the night.
Beyond the world.
And beyond the eye of Dr. Harold’s mind, the dark sketch of the creature seemed to turn to flesh and smile.
—
Chapter 35
The dream is vivid, hot—it always is.
“Dooer, dooer “
“It’s 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 senses flame behind her, a fireplace perhaps. She senses warmth. Firelight flickers on the pocked rock walls as shadows hover. A larger version of the emblem seems suspended in the background, much larger. And again she hears the bizarre words:
“Dooer, dooer.”
She’s dreaming of her daughter’s birth. Birth is painful, yet she feels no pain. All she feels is the wonder of creation, for it is a wonder isn’t it? Her own warm belly displacing new life into the world? It’s a joyous thing.
Joyous, yes. So why does the dream always revert to nightmare?
The figures surround her, they seem cloaked or enshadowed. Soft hands stroke the tense sweating skin. For a time, they are all Ann’s eyes can focus on. The hands. They caress her not just in comfort but also—somehow—in adoration. Here is where the dream loses its wonder. Soon the hands grow too ardent. They are fondling her. They stroke the enflamed breasts, the quivering belly. They run up and down the parted, shining thighs. The belly continues to quiver and push. No faces can be seen, only the hands, but soon heads lower. Tongues begin to lap up the hot sweat which runs in rivulets. Soft lips kiss her eyes, her forehead, her throat. Tongues churn over her clitoris, and voracious mouths suck milk from her breasts.
The images wrench her, they’re revolting, obscene. Wake up! she commands herself. Wake up, wake up! She cannot move. She cannot speak.
Her orgasm is obvious, a lewd and clenching irony in time with the very contractions of birth. Behind her she senses frenzied motion. She hears grunts, moans—
—then screams.
Screams?
But they aren’t her screams, are they?
She glimpses dim figures tossing bundles onto a crackling fire. Still more figures seem to wield knives or hatchets. The figures seem palsied, numb. She hears chopping sounds.
The dream’s eye rises to a high vantage point; the circle moves away. Naked backs cluster about the childbirth table. Now only a lone, hooded shape stands between the spread legs. It looks down, as if in reverence, at the wet, bloated belly. The belly is pink.
Moans drift up, and excited squeals. The firelight dances. The chopping sounds thunk on and on, on and on…
“Dooer, dooer,” bids the hooded shape.
The belly shivers, collapsing.
A baby begins to cry.
«« — »»
“Ann, Ann?” queried the familiar voice.
Ann’s eyes opened, but at first she saw nothing. Soft murmurs seemed to hover about her like vapor. Color shifted—orange—and she sensed a pleasant pulse of heat. Again she’d had the nightmare of Melanie’s birth…but where was she? She knew she couldn’t be in bed. Beneath her felt cold, hard, like stone. Then, as suddenly as her realizations—
Slup-slup-slup…
Her vision blanked again, bringing the image of crimson vertigo.
The wide knife plunging down—
Slup-slup-slup…
“Ann. Wake up.”
The face formed, a reverse dissolve. It was Dr. Heyd.
Her eyes at last came into focus. Cloaked and hooded figures surrounded her, looking serenely down. Ann’s gaze panned. One by one she recognized the ovaled faces: all of Lockwood’s elderwomen. Around each of their necks hung a pale pendant, like a piece of stone on a white cord. At Ann’s feet stood Maedeen and Milly, and standing between them, in a cloak not of sackcloth but of black silk, was Ann’s mother.
Ann couldn’t move from where she lay, though she felt no lashings of any kind. She was completely naked before them all. It felt as though ghosts squirmed over her, holding her down.
In the background, more figures busied themselves. Shadows bent to stoke the flames within a great brick furnace. They were all men, she could see, and they seemed faltering, devoid of all will. Another man poured some dark fluid from a vessel into a large earthen cup. A chalice.
The women lowered their hoods, their eyes wide in some deep intent. The man passed the cup to Ann’s mother. The man was Martin.
He did not look at her at all.
“Blud fo cuppe,” the wifmunuc intoned. “Nis heofonrice, bute nisfan.”
The coven responded: “Us macain wîhan, o Modor. Us macain fulluht with êower blud.”
The chalice was passed around, each woman mouthing a silent prayer, then sipping. When the chalice had made the entire circle, the wifmunuc, Ann’s mother, consumed the rest of its contents.
Engraved along the cup’s rim, the glyph could be seen—the weird double circle. And when Ann’s mother bent to set the chalice down, Ann saw the glyph again, a much larger version, behind the circle. It was not a carving, she noticed, but a large slab of flat stone hanging from the rear wall. Ann’s eyes could only remain fixed ahead. The wifmunuc turned around, her hands splayed. Then she leaned forward and kissed the great rectangular slab of stone.
“O Mother, Holy Sister, Holy Daughter—”
“Bless us on this holy night.”
Now the heat swelled to a prickling intensity. Ann felt sweat gather liberally between her breasts and trickle down her sides. Her sex felt tingling, but from what? Her breasts felt enflamed with desire.
“Receive this offering…”
But there was no desire in her heart, only a misshapen terror. Receive this offering… She shivered in the heat as she realized what it was she lay upon: a stone altar.
Receive this offering—
A stone altar, a sacrificial slab
. The kin sacrifice, she remembered Tharp’s words just before he’d died. This rock slab was what Ann was to be sacrificed upon, by her own daughter.
It’s like a trigger to the whole ritual, Tharp had said. The final offering to the Ardat-Lil.
The coven grinned down at her. From either side, Milly and Maedeen touched her daintily, as though her naked flesh were iconic. Her mother remained at the foot of the altar. Her silken mentel was so fine as to be partly transparent. The woman’s body showed through the sheer material. Though close to sixty now, her large dark-nippled breasts scarcely sagged at all. Her body had remained firm, robust.
“You’ve been dreaming, haven’t you?” the wifmunuc inquired.
Now the recurring nightmare came together: Melanie’s birth as a foreshadow to this night. Through her mother’s malefic ploy, Ann had given birth to a child destined to become a monster.
“Yes,” the woman said. “You’ve been shown all along. Do you understand now? You are a keystone to history. Do you understand how important you are?”
Ann still felt rooted to the slab, but she could lean up to look her mother back square in the face. “You want Melanie for this madness!” she screamed.
“Dother fo Dother,” Milly said.
“Daughter of the Daughter,” Maedeen translated.
“Our savior,” Ann’s mother added. “Our deliverer.”
“This is crazy!” Ann spat. “You’re all crazy!”
“Through this holiest night, our god will come among us in the flesh, Ann. To bless us for the next thousand years.”
Behind her, Dr. Heyd opened a long thin box. From the box, Martin and Chief Bard lifted a gossamer-like gown of the purest, sheerest white.
“Rise,” Ann’s mother said.
Ann’s paralysis loosened. She felt like a puppet being risen by wires. The elderwomen guided her off the altar, urged her forward. Her arms raised by no volition of her own. Then the stunning paralysis returned. She stood upright but could move no further.