Dark Possession

by Carol Goodman

  “I’m perfectly fine, I just have to go home right now. Thanks for telling me about the story … and giving me the book … and writing your paper on it … and just—thank you!” I gave Nicky an impetuous hug and fled the room, dodging colleagues and students wishing me a Happy Solstice and a Merry Christmas.

  “Merry Christmas!” I shouted back at them as I escaped out into the frigid air. It had started snowing. “Merry Christmas!” I shouted as I ran across the street, like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life, running down the main street of Bedford Falls, greeting his restored world. I felt the same excitement bubbling in my chest, fizzing around my heart, which I’d thought would never fizz again.

  William appeared to Nan after he’d gone back to Faerie, and he told her a story. Nan had told that story to Mairi—Mary Brodie McGowan—and she’d written it down in a book that Nicky had found in Edinburgh. That story had changed from the story I’d read before Halloween. Maybe William had only sent a final goodbye across time, but even that—one more word from him—would be better than nothing.

  I ran up my porch steps, slipping on a light coating of snow and dropping the keys onto the floor. As I bent to retrieve them, I found myself looking into emerald-green eyes. I had forgotten to leave the outside light on, but the light from my foyer shone through the fanlight, casting a reflection of the stained-glass face on the porch floorboards. Liam’s face, then Bill’s, then William’s, looking at me as though across an ocean of time. Hurry, those eyes said, I am waiting for you.

  I retrieved my keys and opened the door. Without taking my coat off or closing the door behind me, I crossed the foyer into the library. I went to find the book on the shelves, but where I’d last seen it there was an empty slot—or not exactly empty. Ralph was curled up napping where the book had been. I looked down and saw the book lying open on the floor. I knelt and picked it up. It was open to the story of William Duffy. Still kneeling, melting snow dripping from my hair, I read.

  It was the same story I remembered, until I got to the part where the Fairy Queen rides out with her captive. Now a girl named Katy (which I remembered was what the villagers had called the first Cailleach) is waiting at the crossroads to pull William from his horse. He changes into a lion, a snake, and a burning brand, but she holds on to him until he’s human again. The Fairy Queen tells them that if either of them steps into Faerie again, she will pluck out their eyes and hearts and replace them with eyes and heart of wood—the same curse the Fairy Queen had placed on William and me! The story in the book had changed because I had gone back in time. The page shimmered in my hands like moving water, as if it were caught in the flow of time and it might vanish at any moment, but then I saw it was only because my hands were shaking and my vision was blurred by tears. I wiped them away and read on.

  Unlike Tam Lin, the story didn’t end with the hero and heroine reunited. Monsters descend on William Duffy’s village, and he and Katy defeat them with a magic plaid. But they still can’t be together, because Katy must return to her own village to fight their enemies. To buy her passage through Faerie, William sacrifices himself to the Fairy Queen.

  My hands were shaking so badly, the tears flowing so freely by this part of the story, that I was forced to sit on the floor and lean on the bookshelf. I let the book fall in my lap and my head drop into my hands. My poor William! What really broke my heart was that he must have come back to Nan to tell her this story, as if he’d had to explain it to someone to justify the choice he’d made—to willingly become a monster so his beloved could become a heroine. Or perhaps William had told it to Nan so I would understand.

  I looked back down at the book. William says his farewell to Katy, but before he goes, he whispers something in the Fairy Queen’s ear, a condition of his deal. His beloved could not hear what he asked and mayhap she would never know, but I heard this tale from my gran, who heard it from Old Nan Stewart of Ballydoon, who said she had it from …

  “For the love of Mike, Mary Brodie McGowan, spit it out!” I cried, turning the last page so fast I nearly ripped it from its binding.

  … from William himself, who appeared to her in the Greenwood and told her that the boon he asked of the Fairy Queen was this: to give his beloved three chances to gain him back.

  The book nearly slipped out of my benumbed fingers. Three chances? I stared at the words. The rule of three was the most common fairytale device of all. Cinderella goes to the ball three times; Jack climbs his beanstalk three times; Snow White receives three visits from her evil stepmother. Mary McGowan might have added it just to give her story a more satisfying rhythm.

  Or perhaps William really had asked the Fairy Queen to give me three chances to get him back.

  Once for Liam, who I didn’t love enough.

  Twice for Bill, who I loved and saw die.

  Thrice …

  I looked up from the book to the clock on the mantel. It was ten minutes to midnight on the winter solstice. A time, like Halloween, when the fabric between the worlds grew thin. Was William waiting for me in that gauzy membrane between the worlds, waiting for me to pluck him out of limbo as I had dragged him from his fairy steed? Did I really have one more chance to save him? Could I dawdle here a moment longer if I did?

  I ran out the back door, not pausing to change into boots. The snow seeped through my thin party shoes, but I didn’t feel the cold. My heart was knocking against my chest, unbound for the first time since I’d returned from Ballydoon, pounding out a three-beat rhythm. Once for Liam, twice for Bill, thrice for … for whom? William? But hadn’t I already had my chance with William and lost him, too? What if I’d already used up all my chances?

  I skidded to a halt, my heart juddering as if it had gone ahead without me, and looked around at the bare limbs and vines, first blasted when the door was destroyed last summer and then scorched by the Halloween fire. The door wasn’t in these woods anymore. I was the door. I was William’s way back into this world—but how? I could open a door to Faerie, but would he be there?

  I started to walk again, instinctively heading for the glade in the center of the honeysuckle thicket where the door had once been, where Liam and I had stood together a year ago, where Bill had died. Where I’d come back after leaving William. If there was any place where I could make him whole again, this would be it.

  Walking slower now, I noticed something happening to the woods. Draped in snow, the vines looked almost as if they were in bloom, and the dark places between the trees were full of the glint of snow sifting down from the pine boughs. The whole forest was starred with floating orbs of light, like Christmas lights or …

  Looking closer, I saw that the floating lights were tiny winged creatures no larger than fireflies. They flocked around me, gaining in numbers as I walked—a host of tiny fairies accompanying me. As they touched the honeysuckle vines, flowers burst into bloom, filling the snowy woods with a summery scent but also with the smoky peat smell of autumn on the Scottish moors and the wild-heather scent of spring. All of time surrounded me, as if it were happening at once: my time with Liam and then Bill and then William. They were all with me now as I walked through the snow and blossom-laden woods.

  As I remembered the first moonlit, honeysuckle-scented air that had brought Liam to me, the vines around me erupted into bloom. I remembered Bill humming the lullaby his mother had once sung, and the wind in the trees sighed the tune. I remembered the wild heather William had brought me, and the purple blooms broke though the snow-covered ground. My memories brought each time to life because I was the door between those times. I had the power to bring each moment back to life, and if I could do that, I could bring my incubus back—not just one of his incarnations, but all of them. I wanted the wild lover who’d come to me in moonlight and shadow, the kind man who’d fixed my broken heart, and the boy who’d given away his youth so he could become those men. I said their names as I walked through the woods. William, Liam, Bill. William, Liam, Bill. The same name, really. William, I had re
ad once, meant desire. Their last names—Duffy, Doyle, Carey—all meant dark. My dark desire. Come into the light.

  As I stepped into the glade, the moon rose above the trees on the other side. When its light touched the ground, a gust stirred up the snow into a whirlwind. I stood transfixed, barely daring to breathe as the snowflakes moved faster and faster, coalescing into the shape of a man made of moonlight and shadow, of desire and dreams, of joy and pain. He took shape in front of me, but he was still insubstantial. A moment’s errant breeze would blow him out of my life forever. How did I make him flesh … what spark …?

  I felt something tingling in my hand. Looking down, I saw that the scar the Luckenbooth brooch had left in my hand was glowing, the two hearts pulsing as one. This was the spark.

  I reached into the swirling chaos and grabbed his hand, the blood that pumped beneath my flesh igniting his atoms into life. His hand clasped mine. He turned in a flurry of snow, becoming flesh in my arms, green eyes still carrying the primordial spark of the ether from which I’d plucked him.

  “I knew you’d find me,” he said, pulling me into his arms. For a moment I felt the world spinning, but then I looked into his eyes and knew where I wanted it to stop. He crushed his mouth to mine, my flesh to his warm human flesh.

  “You’re really here,” I cried, trying to touch and see all of him at one time. “You’re really …” I stopped, unsure what to call him.

  “Will,” he said, smiling. “Call me Will.”

  Enjoyed Dark Possession?

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  INCUBUS

  Also by Carol Goodman

  The Dark Stranger

  Dahlia LaMotte, unpublished ms.

  Best keep your door locked, Miss.

  The housekeeper’s words came back to me as I readied myself for bed. It seemed a strange warning in a house as isolated as Lion’s Keep where our only neighbors were sea and heath. Had there been trouble with one of the servants – perhaps with that impertinent groom with the roving eyes?

  Or could it be the Master that Mrs. Eaves was worried about? Haughty, remote William Dougall, who had looked down at me from his horse with such icy condescension – a cold look which had paradoxically lit a spit of fire from my toes to the roots of my hair. Surely not. The great William Dougall wouldn’t deign to bother a lowly governess such as myself.

  I locked the door all the same, but left the windows open as it was a warm night and the breeze coming off the ocean felt deliciously cool as I slid between the crisp lavender-scented sheets. I blew out my candle ... and immediately noticed something odd. There was a crack of light at the bottom of the door. Had Mrs. Eaves left a candle burning in the hallway for my benefit? If so, I ought to tell her it wasn’t necessary.

  I threw the sheets off and swung my legs over the side of the bed, preparing to go investigate, but froze before my toes touched the floor. The bar of light at the bottom of the door had been split in two by a shadow as if someone were standing there. As I stared at the door, seeking some other explanation, the brass knob silently began to turn. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. My throat was frozen with fear, as were my limbs, powerless to run from whoever was at the door. All I could do was watch as the knob turned ... and stopped.

  The door didn’t open. It was locked. The knob paused there as if whoever was turning it was deciding what to do next. Would he break the door down?Would he force his way in and then ... what then?

  But he must have decided that breaking down the door would make too much noise. The knob silently revolved back. The shadow disappeared from beneath the door and the light slowly faded.

  I let out a shaky breath, my limbs reduced to quivering jelly now that the moment of crisis was over. Should I go find Mrs. Eaves and tell her what had happened? But tell her what? That I had seen a light, a shadow, a turning knob? Already I mistrusted the evidence of my own senses and I had no wish to look an hysterical child on my first day of service.

  So I crept back into bed, pulling the sheets over me, but kept my eyes on the door. What if he had gone to retrieve a key? I lay like that, rigid beneath the crisp sheets, all my attention riveted to the door, for I don’t know how long. I was sure I would not sleep, but it had been a long day of weary travel and learning new faces and new duties, and the sound of the waves crashing on the shore below the cliff and the scent of saltwater mingled with honeysuckle from the garden were hypnotically soothing ...

  I must have drifted off because when I came to the room was bright with light. I startled awake, thinking the light in the crack below the door had seeped into the room, but then I saw that the light came not from the door, but from the open window. Moonlight spilled in, white as cream, soaking the sheets and my nightgown ... I was wet, too, from the heat ... drenching the whole room except for a pillar of shadow that stood at the window ...

  A pillar shaped like a man.

  For the second time that night I opened my mouth to scream, but my throat was as frozen as if the moonlight was a carapace of ice. I could not see the man’s features, but I knew it must beWilliam Dougall. I recognized that arrogant bearing, those broad shoulders, the slim agility of his hips as he moved forward ...

  He was moving forward, slowly, gliding across the floor so as not to make a sound. He must think I was still asleep. I must let him go on thinking I was asleep. If he knew I was awake he might become violent.

  The master has his moods, Mrs. Eaves had said. Best not to get on the wrong side o’ them.

  I clenched my eyes shut. Perhaps he had only come to look at me, as he had stared down at me from his mount earlier today. Perhaps I could bear it if he’d only come to look ...

  I felt a tug on the sheet that lay over me, a minute movement as if the breeze had lifted it, but then it began to slide down, dragging across my breasts, tugging the placket of my nightgown ... which I’d left unbuttoned because of the warmth of the night. The cool air tickled my bare skin and to my acute embarrassment I felt my nipples harden beneath the thin cloth. I could feel his eyes on me, a prickling sensation that made the hairs on my legs stand up ... my bare legs! My nightgown had ridden up around my hips in my sleep. Cool air licked at my thighs, my calves, and finally, as the sheet slipped away in a soft swoosh that sounded like running water, my toes. I lay, still barely daring to breathe, alert for the slightest sound or movement. If he touched me I would scream. I’d have to. But nothing happened. The breeze played across my skin, teasing the bare places – my breasts, the crook of my arm, the inside of my thigh. At last I couldn’t bear it – I risked a peek through slitted eyes ... and saw nothing. The room was empty.

  Had I imagined the shadow at the window? Perhaps I’d tossed the sheet off myself ... but then I felt something touch the sole of my foot. A breeze warmer than the outside air, warm and moist as breath. The shadow was still there, at the foot of the bed, crouched by my feet, but whether man or dream I could no longer say. The pull it had on me seemed otherworldly. Why else would I lie silent as it breathed on my calf, its breath hot and wet? Why else would I stir only to widen my legs as its breath traveled up my leg? Why else would I close my eyes and give myself over to its rough warmth lapping inch by inch up my thigh? Like a wave lapping at the shore, leaving wet sand as it retreats, and traveling a little further each time it returns. Insinuating itself into the cracks and crevices, wearing away the stony shore. I felt my own stoniness wear away as the warm tongue found its way into my very center and then licked deeper into the depths I didn’t know I had ... deep underwater caverns where the surf rushed and boiled, retreated, lapped again, and filled me. Retreated, lapped again, filled me. I was riding the waves now, born higher and higher. The room was filled with the smell of salt and the roar of the ocean ... and then the wave dashed me down to the strand.

  I opened my eyes and watched the shadow slip away like a retreating tide leaving me wet and spent as a woman drowned. I knew at last what had happened to me. I’d been visited not by William Do
ugall – or any other mortal man – but by an incubus. The demon lover of myth.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “So, Professor McFay, can you tell me how you first became interested in the sex lives of demon lovers?”

  The question was a bit jarring, coming as it did from a silver-chignoned matron in pearls and a pink tweed Chanel suit. But I’d gotten used to questions like these. Since I’d written the bestselling book Sex Lives of the Demon Lovers (the title adapted from my thesis, The Demon Lover in Gothic Literature: Vampires, Beasts and Incubi), I’d been on a round of readings, lectures and, now, job interviews, that focused on the sex in the title. I had a feeling, though, that Elizabeth Book, as chair of Fairwick College’s folklore department, might genuinely be more interested in the demon lovers of the title.

  It was the folklore department that had brought me to the interview. It certainly wasn’t the college – second tier Fairwick College, enrollment 1600 students, 120 full-time faculty, 30 part-time (“We pride ourselves on our excellent teacher-to-student ratio,” Dr. Book had gushed earlier). Or the town: Fairwick, New York, population 4,203, a faded Catskill village shadowed by mountains and bordered by a thousand acres of virgin forest. A great place if your hobbies were snowshoeing and ice fishing, but not if your tastes ran, as mine did, to catching the O’Keeffe show at the Whitney, shopping at Barneys, and dining out at the new Bobby Flay restaurant.

  And it wasn’t that I hadn’t had plenty of other interviews. While most new Ph.Ds had to fight for job offers, because of the publicity surrounding Sex Lives I had already had two offers (from tiny colleges in the Midwest that I’d turned down) and serious interest from New York University, my undergraduate alma mater and first choice since I was determined to stay in New York City. Nor was I as financially desperate as many of my friends who had student loans to pay back. A small trust fund left by my parents had paid for college and grad school and I still had a little left over to supplement my teaching income. Still, I wasn’t sure about N.Y.U. yet, and Fairwick was worth considering if only for its folklore department. Few colleges had one and I’d been intrigued by the approach the college took, combining anthropology, English and history into one interdisciplinary department. It jived well with my interests – fairy tales and gothic fiction – and it had been refreshing to be interviewed by a committee of cross-discipline professors who were interested in something other than the class I taught on vampires. Not that all of them were fans. An American history professor named Frank Delmarco – a burly guy in a proletarian denim shirt rolled up to show off his muscular hirsute forearms – had asked me if I didn’t think I was catering to the “lowest common denominator” by appealing to the popular craze for trashy vampire books.