The Demonologia Biblica

by Wilde, Barbie

  They would sleep that way until they woke.

  Yes, she would keep her face for as long as the babies needed. To show her children that ugliness was not evidenced on the outside.

  It was inside.

  She pulled a thin sheet over them and kissed each in turn. She backed quietly from the room: a guest room in her parent’s house.

  Rebecca went next to the small room she’d claimed for herself and opened her laptop.

  She checked her reflection in the mirror over the dresser next to the bed. She smiled hard and her face cracked a little, thin lines of blood coming to the surface.

  Rebecca had always been superior to all her friends in every way and she did her best to never let them forget it. Now she was going to prove her superiority again and show one good friend in particular what sacrifice really meant.

  She dialed Caroline’s number in France.

  N Is For Nickar

  Falsche See, On The North German Plain

  Mark West

  The Novotel, lit from below by spotlights hidden in shrubbery, stood stark against the darkening sky. Rays of dying sunlight reflected off some of the windows, cutting an orange swathe across the upper storeys of the building.

  As pleasant as the hotel was, Jeremy Watson couldn’t wait to see the back of it. He’d been here, in the little town of Ungeheuerdorf for a week now and was fed up with its lack of facilities, the limited menu in the restaurant and the fact that everything was closed up by eight at night.

  Klara Shafer’s bright red Ford Ka was parked under the Novotel sign and Jeremy smiled as he pulled up next to it. He got out of his car and Klara got out of hers at the same time.

  “We meet again, Fräulein,” he said. It was corny - and he wasn’t even sure she was aware of the film - but it amused him.

  Sunlight caught her hair, making the blonde glow a warm orange, illuminating stray strands. Klara was beautiful, tall with fine hair that draped to her shoulders and a narrow face with the lightest of laughter lines around her pale eyes. And now she was his partner, though he couldn’t quite believe it - him, with his unruly brown hair, too-big nose and a face that somebody had once told him exuded a slept-in charm.

  “Yes, Mr Watson,” she replied, smiling, “we do.”

  They both worked for Brooks Pageant, a multi-national accounting firm, though had been no more than voices on a phone before his conference.

  English, with German parents, Klara worked in the London office and was one of Jeremy’s main contacts. Conversations had led to friendship, a link-up on Facebook and when the conference had been announced to be held at the Kiel office, he was thrilled she was attending too. Within moments of meeting her and realising the photographs just didn’t do her justice, he knew that something was going to happen and, for once, he wasn’t wrong. So in that awful town that time appeared to have forgotten, twenty miles up country from Kiel with the Baltic Sea lapping at its shores, the two friends became lovers.

  Klara held her hand out for him to take and he did so with relish, loving the feel of her cool, smooth skin against his. He glanced around, to see if any of their colleagues were about as they had to be careful. Company policy was strict on inter-office unions - senior management severely frowned upon them - so although they slept together every night, Jeremy retired to his own room before dawn.

  “So, my lovely lady, what are we doing tonight?”

  Klara glanced at her watch. “Some of the girls from my team want to have a final meal in the restaurant, as lousy as it might be and I can’t really turn them down. But we can go out afterwards if you want, perhaps find a nice little inn and have a snog.”

  “We’ve been out most nights and not found a nice little inn,” Jeremy said.

  “Well by my reckoning, I’ve got an hour before dinner so I estimate that gives us at least fifty minutes for some serious snogging.”

  “And more?”

  She let go of his hand and walked away, smiling over her shoulder. “Oh much more,” she said, “much more.”

  Jeremy laughed and rushed to catch her up.

  ***

  It was over an hour later that Jeremy stepped out of the lift onto the third floor landing.

  They had started with kissing but the anticipation of a day spent together, not able to touch or properly communicate quickly led to caressing, then undressing and they made love on the wide bed. In the warm afterglow, she lay on her back and he on his side and she idly ran her fingers through his hair.

  “This will work when we get home, won’t it?” she asked.

  “Why wouldn’t it?”

  Klara paused for a moment or two, then gave a nervous little laugh.

  “You’re right, sorry, I’m just being silly. I always feel a bit melancholic on the come-down.” She shifted on the bed, angling her body to see the clock. “Shit, I’m late.”

  Now he walked along the thickly carpeted corridor, looking at the bland artworks on the walls without really seeing them, tapping his pass-card against his thigh. He’d decided not to go to the restaurant but wait, maybe try and grab something on their trip out later.

  The corridor took a sharp left and as he turned the corner, he saw a woman walking towards him. She was tall, with white blonde hair that was braided up on her head and carried herself with a quiet elegance. She was wearing a gypsy blouse, a long black skirt with a short white apron, a basket under her arm.

  “Guten Abend,” she said, the faintest hint of a smile playing at her lips.

  “Guten Abend, Fräulein,” he replied, exhausting most of his German in one go.

  “Ich hoffe, Sie haben einen schönen Abend,” she added.

  He picked up a few of the words but most passed him by so he nodded and hoped she hadn’t asked him to buy anything. A reflection caught his eye and he looked at her skirt, where clear liquid was dripping off the hem. The corner of her apron was wet.

  “You have spilled something,” he said, pointing at her skirt.

  She frowned, so he pointed again. She looked down, then back at him. “Water,” he shrugged, “aqua?” No, what was the German for water? Wass? Wasser? “Wasser?” he suggested.

  “Wasser?” she asked, still frowning.

  He waved his hand, said “Nicht darum kümmern,” which he hoped did really mean don’t worry about it and wasn’t a trick phrase he’d been taught, smiled and kept walking. As they passed each other, he got a quick, distinct scent of water - the cool, fresh spray of the ocean - and then it was gone.

  Jeremy got to his door and slid the passkey into the lock. The door clicked and he pushed it, turning to glance down the corridor. The woman was at the corner, standing still, looking in his direction. He nodded at her and went in, closing and locking the door behind him.

  ***

  It was almost seven thirty before Jeremy’s mobile rang. The screen showed a picture of a smiling Klara, her hair dishevelled, her eyes and smile wide. He’d taken it one morning, as he was leaving to go back to his own room.

  “Hey,” she asked, “I’m done here, you have you eaten?”

  “No, I don’t fancy anything.”

  “Well, shall we go out?”

  “Of course.”

  “Meet you in the car park in five minutes.”

  He went to the loo, cleaned his teeth and rushed down to the foyer. The receptionist looked up at him and smiled.

  “Guten abend,” he said.

  The receptionist, her hair pulled back sharply from her face and tied into a tight bun on top of her head, kept smiling. “Vorsicht, mein Herr,” she replied, “vorsichtig sein, der Wassergeister.”

  “Eh?” Wasser was water, what then were geisters?

  The telephone rang before she could respond, so she smiled at him before answering it. Jeremy frowned and went through the doors.

  Klara pulled out of the Novotel car park. It was dark now, with a three-quarter moon seeming to hang just behind the hotel, surrounded by a pale panoply of stars.

  Traffic was li
ght on the A212 and Klara got up to the speed limit quickly.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go and have a look at a lake tonight.”

  “Okay.”

  “We passed it the other night, looking for that restaurant and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to see it. Look at the water and listen to the waves and the wildlife, away from city lights and noise. We don’t have to stay long.” She turned to face him, smiling coyly. “And we could kiss by the water’s edge.”

  Once away from the town limits of Ungeheurdorf, the darkness pressed against the car windows. The moon cast a pale shadow across the fields, but there were few street lights and hardly any traffic moving in the opposite direction. Signs appeared out of the gloom, were visible and unreadable for moments, before disappearing again. Jeremy didn’t know the German word for lakes, unless it was something to do with wasser.

  “You know,” suddenly keen to share what had happened. “I saw a peculiar thing on the way back to my room.”

  “You shouldn’t look in those mirrors in the lift,” Klara said, laughed at her own joke and then put her hand on Jeremy’s knee. “Sorry, only fooling.”

  He laughed sarcastically. “No, I saw a woman in the corridor, a maid or something because she was wearing an apron, but it was wet. I tried to tell her but couldn’t make her understand me.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Nothing, we spoke briefly and passed each other, then when I was unlocking my door, I saw her at the corner and she seemed to be watching me.”

  “Watching you?”

  “Yes, I think, I don’t know. I nodded and then went into the room.”

  “And that was it?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Strange,” Klara replied.

  They drove in silence, holding hands. Occasionally there’d be a flash of eyes from the hedgerow or a large moth shining as it flew into the headlights, but they saw no other traffic.

  The headlights caught another sign, which read ‘Falsche See’. “That’s it,” Klara said and slowed down.

  The turn-off, to their left, was a hundred yards or so beyond the sign. Klara turned into it and put on her full-beams, which cut into the darkness with ease. They were on a narrow ribbon of tarmac, bordered by low grassy verges that were filled with wild flowers and nettles. Klara leaned forward, concentrating hard, as they seemed to weave around trees that were draped in pale, muted colours.

  The road straightened as they drove between two old wooden fence posts and then they could see the lake stretching out ahead of them. Dark trees were just barely visible in the light and the moon hung above them, casting a shimmery glow that snaked across the water.

  The tarmac stopped at a low ridge of kerb-stones. Beyond them, there was a thin patch of scrubby grass before a slight slope - a beach, perhaps? - covered with stones that ran to the water’s edge. To his right, the verge and trees were butted up to the roadway and they spread away in a curve, surrounding the lake as best he could see and coming back around on Klara’s side. The water was calm, with the slightest of waves that were small, almost as if they couldn’t be bothered to make a sound with no-one watching.

  Klara unclipped her seatbelt and Jeremy looked at her. Through her window, he could see that the treeline was closer to the car on her side, as if she’d parked off-centre to the lake.

  She got out and the slight whittle of the door hinge sounded a lot louder here than it had in the Novotel car park. Klara leaned down. “Come on,” she said.

  Jeremy got out. There was a chill in the air and he pulled his fleece together. The sky seemed impossibly dark, the stars impossibly white and he had to turn around to see the yellow haze of pollution over Ungeheuerdorf and Kiel, beyond. The trees were mainly Beech, very tall with slender pale trunks, narrow crowns and erect branches. They were packed together, seeming to almost form a wall beyond the natural bowl of the lake and whatever lay beyond them. Ferns grew in the gaps between, edging close to but not quite crossing over the verges.

  Klara walked around the car, her footsteps loud and echoing.

  “I can’t hear anything,” said Jeremy, looking around. “There’s nothing, no aeroplanes, no traffic noise, not even wind in the trees, just the waves.”

  “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  He smiled at her and took her hand. “Yes, it is.”

  “After the shitty work week we’ve had, what’s happened with us and standing here makes everything worth it, doesn’t it?”

  Jeremy was just about to reply when a snatch of music drifted to them. He turned in the direction he thought it came from but could see nothing.

  “That sounds like a harp,” said Klara.

  “It does. Maybe there’s something beyond those trees, a parking area or something.”

  “It has to be, nobody’s going to drag a harp out here for practise.”

  The music rose and rolled, seeming to fill the lake area with a melody that came and went. Jeremy looked around again. He hadn’t noticed any other turn-offs on the road and the single lane they’d driven down hadn’t branched off at any point. “I wonder where they are?”

  “The far side of the lake?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Jeremy, “the road doesn’t go round.”

  The music swelled briefly then petered out into silence. “Well,” said Klara, “that’s sorted that.”

  She took his hand and led him to the front of the car, turned and hugged him hard. She kissed him quickly on the lips and he tried to embrace her, pulling her tighter to make it something more. Klara giggled and slipped from his grip, backing slowly over the kerb stones and smiling all the time. She leaned forward, beckoned him with her index fingers and turned and ran onto the beach when he gave chase.

  He caught her at the water’s edge, his hands around her waist. He pulled her up and back towards him and she reached up, her hands going behind his head so that they were hugging awkwardly. He let her go and she turned around. She looked so radiant in the moonlight and the glow from the car headlamps, laughter on her lips and adventure in her eyes. He kissed her.

  She kissed him back properly, their tongues meeting, hands exploring. He reached down, meaning to undo her coat but she was already there, flipping the buttons with her thumb and index finger.

  The music came again, swelling around them as if they were lovers in a film. Klara pulled back, looking around, her lips set in a thin line. Jeremy glanced behind him. His eyes were getting used to the depleted light and he could now see the trunks of the first few lines of trees.

  “I don’t like this.” Her voice wavered. “The sound’s all round, it’s not coming from anywhere in particular.”

  Jeremy turned in a complete circle but saw no-one else. “We’re alone,” he stated.

  “Listen,” said Klara, “this might sound stupid, I’m thirty five years old and should know better, but I think it’s a bit eerie here. Do you mind if we go?”

  Jeremy nodded. He’d been thinking exactly the same thing, though he probably wouldn’t have said anything if Klara hadn’t. “No, let’s go.”

  He took her hand and they walked up the stony beach. The sound of a splash came from behind them and Klara stopped, but didn’t turn around. There was another splash. Jeremy turned slowly, wrestling his right hand away from Klara. There were two large ripples, slowly fanning out across the lake, one to their left towards the treeline, one further back.

  “What is it?”

  “There’s nothing there.”

  “What were the splashes?”

  “I don’t know, something could have dropped perhaps.”

  “From the trees?”

  Jeremy looked at the fading ripples. If something had come from the trees, it must have been thrown. “No,” he said.

  Klara turned slowly. “I don’t like this.”

  “Let’s get back to the car.”

  There was another loud splash and Klara let out a surprised cry. She gripped Jeremy’s hand tight enough to make h
im wince. He watched the lake, quickly found the ripples but couldn’t see what had caused it.

  “It’s just kids,” he said, “messing about. Maybe they heard us and have been throwing things over the trees.”

  The headlights on the Ka went out and music filled the space again, seeming to emanate from the Ford. Jeremy looked up at the car but couldn’t see any movement around it. Klara looked at him. “What happened?”

  “Maybe there’s a timer,” he suggested, not even believing the words as he spoke them, “that shuts the lights off so it doesn’t drain the battery.”

  “But the music, that doesn’t sound like a radio show to me.”

  The harp music got louder. “This way,” said Jeremy and he pulled Klara towards him, backing them to the trees. “Let’s keep out of the way and see what’s happening.”

  “What do you mean, what do you thinks happening? Why shouldn’t we go back to the car?”

  “I don’t know, come on.”

  It only took them a few moments to reach the verge and Jeremy stumbled up it. He pulled Klara along behind him and stopped against a sturdy Beech trunk.

  The moment they were out of sight, the music got louder and there was another splash. From his vantage point, Jeremy was able to pinpoint it straight away. He watched, eyes wide, as a shape appeared from the grey surface.

  It was a head. It disappeared beneath the surface, then rose up a few yards in front, closer to the other side of the lake from where they were. Disappear, appear, all the time moving away from them.

  “That’s quick swimming,” he whispered.

  Klara was crouching by his side, her hands clamped over her mouth, her eyes wide. She looked at him and he held his finger against his lips.

  The swimmer reached the side of the lake and pulled themselves out of the water. Jeremy saw a flash of breast in the moonlight. The woman pulled herself out further but didn’t appear to have legs, just a wide fleshy mass which looked a little like a tail.