The whole unsettling artwork was presented within a massive gilt frame composed of a heavy lintel supported by two substantial Doric-style columns that rested atop a stylobate inscribed with the words “Die Suende,” in stately capitals. In her elaborate frame she was enshrined, deified.
“Die Suende,” whispered Freya under her breath, feeling the incongruity of the words on her tongue.
“It’s German for ‘Sin’.” Freya’s quiet utterance seemed to have roused Ophidia from her contemplative observation of her disquieting likeness. “That’s actually the title of the piece.”
Freya jumped slightly. Ophidia had a knack for catching her off guard. In fact, she was fairly certain Ophidia relished startling her in the same way a cat enjoys playing with its prey before it ultimately dispatches the unfortunate creature.
“So are you going to enlighten me as to why you are the subject of a painting created more than a hundred years ago?”
“Of course,” purred Ophidia. “You’re right. I have been stringing you along. It’s just that I’m afraid we would be all business all the time if I didn’t slow you down a little bit. You know it doesn’t hurt to indulge in life’s little pleasures occasionally, make a little small talk, flirt, satisfy those innocent fantasies you’ve got buried under all that seriousness. You’re a little uptight.”
“Seeing demons can do that to a person.”
“Oh, come now. Do I really look like a demon?”
“Not now.”
Ophidia smirked. “True enough. And as a human you are right to be circumspect in your dealings with the supernatural. But demon implies I’m some sort of fiend straight out of Hell, and I’m nothing so crude as that.”
“Oh, right, excuse me” Freya said with sarcasm. “There’s nothing crude about coming to men in their dreams and having sex with them so you can steal their soul.”
“Ugh,” Ophidia scoffed, “history has given us such a meager reputation. It’s true we do seduce men, and women too, in order to siphon some of their life force, but we only have sex with the truly special ones and we inhabit this world mostly. Dream walking is just a tool in our arsenal.”
“Sure,” Freya said. “I cannot believe I am actually having this conversation right now. A succubus, I mean, seriously? I’m just a college senior who agreed to an interesting job opportunity for some extra cash. I never thought it would lead to all this, this, nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense, actually, it’s just that you are seeing more of the world than you previously thought existed. Welcome to the Verge, my lovely.”
“The what?”
“The Verge is a borderland that surrounds your world. It’s an undiscovered frontier on the edge of human reality wherein exist all the creatures and beings of myth and legend.”
“Okay,” Freya said with uncertainty. “And how did you find your way from there to here?”
“The Verge and your world exist in a symbiotic relationship; one cannot survive without the other. We, the creatures of the Verge, are the dreams and nightmares, gods and devils of the human imagination. We inspire the human spirit to create and in turn that spirit feeds us. The human capacity for creativity and invention is how we came to be; we sprang from the religions, fables, and folklore of centuries past. We were imagined in order to explain any number of phenomena from why the sun rises and sets to why little children should listen to their parents.”
“Once we were brought into being, our survival depended on the continued investment of human belief in us. The more relevant and important we were to the human condition, the more substantial we became. Sometimes, some of us become so significant in the human world that we are actually able to cross over from the Verge. The more we walk in your world, the more we can exercise our power here, and the more people believe in us. We grow stronger in this way, feeding off the faith and superstitions of the human mind.”
“So you came from this fairytale land to Seattle because a bunch of people imagined you were real, like some kind of messed up Santa Claus?”
“It’s not so simple as that, I’m afraid.”
“Look, right now I need some answers that make sense,” said Freya. “There is a madwoman promising to kill me if I don’t deliver some colors she has hinted are not exactly your normal art store material, and you said you could help.”
“I’m getting there,” Ophidia said. “Remember what I said about that painting of Voluptas next door, that the best subjects are the fantasies people actually believe in?”
Freya nodded.
“Well, this painting is by far Stuck’s most well-known piece, and widely regarded as the crowning achievement of his career. It’s not because I’m a succubus, though. It’s because when Stuck painted me he gave me a new identity. He made me the female embodiment of sin.”
Ophidia paused to gauge Freya’s response. The girl simply stared at her blankly, so the succubus continued.
“Let me explain,” Ophidia continued. “You see the story of original sin, and the story of Eve specifically, doesn’t begin with the Bible as some people believe. She has had many incarnations. Some say her origins can be found in ancient Egypt as Wadjet, the protector of gods and kings. Others believe the Minoans summoned her from the Verge as their great snake goddess, the guardian of the home and the embodiment of fertility and the renewal of life. She was a figure of feminine strength then, a defender of women, and worshipped across cultures and time, from east to west and for thousands of millennia.”
A look that Freya thought must be longing suffused Ophidia’s features. It was the first time she seen her as anything but hard and dangerous.
“She was awe-inspiring in those days,” Ophidia went on. “The being who would become Eve was revered for her strength and power and possessed of great external beauty that only minimally reflected the profundity of her nature, a nature that was deeply feminine with all of the complexity that entails: nurturing but fiercely protective, undeniably sensual but in control of her genitive capacity, wise and kind but steadfast in her sense of justice. She was to be respected, not out of fear but out of admiration, for to worship her was to venerate your mothers, your daughters, your sisters, yourself.
“Then the story started to change,” Ophidia said, her eyes clouding over. “The words of a few whispered from ear to ear spread slowly at first, as these things do, from neighbor to neighbor, village to village. Reverence and awe slowly turned to suspicion, distrust, and doubt, as belief in the goddess was slowly but ineluctably eroded by rumor repeated into truth. The dynamic and compelling deity she had been became a fragile, guileless figure in a garden, her symbol the snake.
“In particularly injurious irony, the snake was transformed into the source of her own downfall and, damningly, that of her companion, man. Eve became a powerless figure who succumbs to the serpent’s temptation, the temptation of powers that used to be her own now corrupted into their most base forms. With a bite of that fateful apple she and her hapless male companion were expelled from paradise.
“From that point on the world’s pain and suffering are attributed to Eve and, by extension, all women. Divorced from her power, she is made abject, a figure to be derided, her only redemption found in dumb subservience. At the same time her considerable gifts, now perverted and polluted, are made fearful. The mighty goddess is now effectively split, becoming at once pathetically disenfranchised and wickedly vicious. She is simultaneously disregarded for her triviality and abhorred for her degeneracy. Her story has changed irrevocably.”
Ophidia paused and Freya breathed deeply. She couldn’t fathom where Ophidia was going with this tale, but nothing that had happened to her in the past few days made sense in the reality that she was familiar with. Ophidia began again and Freya listened, deferring her skepticism for the moment.
“Humiliated, vitiated, Eve mourned her former glory,” Ophidia said, “but her fate is tied to human belief and even the most dynamic and compelling deities and monsters of a time and place can fin
d themselves changed beyond recognition or forgotten completely, obliterated by time and circumstance.
“By the time Stuck painted me, the passive obedient Eve had become simply an archetype for the latest troupe of humanity to parade about as an exemplar of acquiescent femininity. There is no room in the Verge for archetypes; they are static and sterile, merely a mannequin upon which social roles are built. When Stuck gave me my new name, when he elevated me from common succubus to a legend with real power in the world of man, I knew that other part of Eve was as good as dead, a withered limb to be amputated.”
Ophidia’s wistful vulnerability of the last few moments evaporated, replaced by the hard edges that Freya was used to seeing her wear.
“But the snake,” she continued, “now that is a different story entirely. The snake I found, suited me rather nicely, as it is alive and well in the minds of humanity. It is a presence that haunts the world, that moves through reality in a way that a vacant simulacrum like Eve cannot.
“Humans fear the snake. They blame it for their original fall from grace and for all the myriad disgraces they suffer upon each other throughout their short, ineffectual lives. They made it the master of a domain of punishment for those same sins, a place of heat and torment. And in their minds the snake’s legend grew like a particularly pernicious weed. It is feared for its promise of fire and brimstone certainly, for its deceitful temptations and pitiless retribution too. But most of all, the snake is feared because, as all the best legends are, it is not just a story, but a reflection of the deepest, truest parts of human existence.
“I found the power assigned to darkness extended across any single culture or time period. There are few things that are universal, but abhorrence for evil and its insidious nature is written deep into the make-up of the human brain. Aligned with the darker side of life, my reach and influence were nearly unlimited.”
Ophidia paused and then, looking directly at Freya, intoned, “Do not doubt. The serpent is a woman and that woman is me.”
For her part, Freya was simply trying to wrap her head around the fantastical history lesson Ophidia had just delivered as matter-of-factly as a professor might recite a lecture to a bunch of undergrads. She wasn’t really in the mood to debate this lunatic on the identity of Sin or the serpent, but Ophidia was looking at her as though she expected some kind of response and it was uncomfortable being the subject of her regard for longer than was absolutely necessary.
“So, you were an ordinary succubus,” Freya said uncertainly, “and then Stuck painted you, gave you a new name, and you magically became the sinful side of Eve with her connections to the devil.”
“Yes,” Ophidia replied, her tone serious, bordering on morose.
“Right, okay. Then how does someone like you find herself working for some mortal like Beldame?”
Ophidia blinked, breaking her laser-like focus on Freya, and continued her perambulations around the cluttered gallery floor. After a few moments she began speaking again.
“It’s a bit complicated,” she said.
“Of course it is,” Freya said, rolling her eyes.
“There’s something that happens to inhabitants of the Verge sometimes,” she explained. “When we are given great power, we become tied to the thing that gives us that power. It’s a phenomenon called ligature. For some they may become connected to a holy book or relic. For others, like myself, we become tied to particularly powerful works of art. We are mighty, but at the same time completely vulnerable to control, for whoever possesses our object possesses us. Again, our very existence and even autonomy are dependent on our human creators.”
“And let me guess,” said Freya, “Beldame owns your painting.”
“Yes,” Ophidia said, her voice heavy. “You see,” she continued, “I am not evil incarnate as one might suppose. As an invention of man, I am only a reflection of the human mind, mercurial and unpredictable. Not good, but not wholly bad either. Beldame, on the other hand, is an aberration, one of those truly evil people born without a soul or a conscience. She has no qualms about the evil she wreaks. She is a sociopath and she has found out the secret of my painting. She knows that she owns me now. The things she has planned for me and for others of my kind cannot be allowed to happen.”
“What can we do about it?” Freya asked. “How can we stop her?”
“There must be a way,” Ophidia said quietly. “It will not be easy. But—”
At that moment a strange sound reverberated through the gallery, like a million bat wings flapping in unison. It sent chills down Freya’s spine.
“He’s here,” Ophidia spat.
“Who is?” Freya asked. She tried to control the panic in her voice.
“An old flame. No time to explain now. I’ll see you again soon. In the meantime don’t tell anyone about our little conversation. Get the colors she’s asked of you, but make sure they don’t fall into her hands first.”
The cold light in Ophidia’s eyes flared.
“But I don’t understand.” Freya’s mind was racing.
“Just get those colors and keep them safe. I’ll find you,” Ophidia said.
She clipped away toward the center of the gallery space. Raising an immaculately manicured hand, she reached out a finger. The red nail polish elongated, stretching itself into a cruel talon, curved and sharp. She pulled her finger down slowly, as though meeting resistance. Suddenly it was as though the space of the gallery itself became a canvas, the edges curling in on themselves to reveal only matte blackness beyond. Ophidia stepped lithely through this rent in the fabric of the world and was gone, the tear disappearing as soon as the spiked heel of her Louboutin was swallowed by that terrifying emptiness.
Freya was breathless. She was filled with a sudden terror as though all of the strange events of the preceding days had twisted together around her heart and squeezed. She was almost home before she even realized that she had been running. When she finally collapsed onto the floor of her apartment, her lungs were burning and her feet ached. She closed her eyes and let sleep take her.
The cold light of the moon flooded the tall windows of her apartment and softly illuminated the place where she lay. A shadow that could have been a cloud passed silently by outside, blotting the moon’s peaceful luminescence bit by bit. The darkness crept silently, almost sensually up her body until it engulfed her face and head. Freya grimaced and then relaxed and the gloom lifted. The moon glowed once again. A sound like a million velvet wings retreated into the night.
Freya steered the car confidently around the long arcing curves of Interstate 90, but the old behemoth wasn’t hers. She didn’t have much use for one in the pedestrian-friendly confines of Capitol Hill, and most of the time that was how she liked it. She couldn’t stand traffic, a problem Seattle was plagued with as more people had caught on to the charm of the place, clogging roads meant to support half the number of drivers. She also hated to pay for parking, gas, and insurance. She was a student with a very modest income, and she had better things to spend her cash on, like spooky bric-a-brac for her little cabinet of curiosities. Despite all that, she’d always enjoyed driving on open roads at high speeds, even better if she was in a powerful car, and it just so happened that at that moment all three of those requirements had come together to produce a most enjoyable little ride to the Cascades, a mountain range just east of Seattle.
Luckily for Freya, her neighbor, old Mrs. Cartwright, was generous enough to lend her the use of her car from time to time in exchange for a little service that Freya provided the tiny wisp of a woman—a weekly delivery of three bottles of Jack Daniels hidden at the bottom of a grocery bag filled with other innocuous-looking food stuffs. Freya never asked questions but she was rather glad the feisty old lady didn’t drive any more. In exchange for her services Freya had full access to the shiny black 1960 Cadillac parked in the creaky old garage adjacent to the alleyway behind the Briar Rose.
In general Freya considered herself to be a green-living, eco-co
nscious steward of the environment, but she had to admit that when she pulled out of the confines of the old parking spot and onto the road she felt like a badass, even if it was behind the wheel of a giant gas-guzzler.
Today, as she steered the sleek car down the mountain highway she felt particularly good despite the fact that she had yet to report back to Dakryma on what she had learned of Beldame’s motives. As her thoughts lingered over her broken promise to the professor, she felt a pang of anxiety. But it quickly dissipated as she focused on the physical beauty of the landscape slipping by, the acres and acres of pines dotted here and there with the red and orange of deciduous trees resplendent in their final autumn glory, a natural kaleidoscope broken only by the steep, craggy precipices of the metamorphic peaks of once-active volcanoes. She’d find him when she got back to Seattle and fill him in. For now, she wanted to get the first color before she lost her nerve.
Her destination today was the small mountain hamlet of Cle Elum where, as a quick Internet search had informed her, she could find the first stop on her list, Stone Lodge Quarry. She pulled off the highway and into the heart of the small town. While not exactly scenic, its low clapboard buildings and dusty awnings did have a certain charm. The few people out on the wide sidewalks stared disinterestedly in her direction but continued on toward their various destinations at a leisurely pace.
While not a lover of the limelight, Freya had secretly hoped that the roaring motor of Mrs. Cartwright’s Caddy would merit more than just a cursory perusal, but the townspeople out and about today seemed more jaded than even the resident hipsters on the Hill. Freya sighed and used both hands and more than a little muscle to persuade her the car to the right and out of town across the Yakima River as the pleasant voice emanating from her Google Maps app directed.
On the Verge Page 7