Chapter 2

Normally when I wake up with more questions than answers, it’s because I am in the aftermath of a math or calculus class.

Oddly, those thoughts rest easy on my mind. Dreams, though, oh so vivid dreams.

Baptist boys don’t know about succubi. Or succubuses. See?!? We don’t even know how to spell it. Funny that as I write this, Microsoft Word knows.

Who else knows?

Worrisome. Who do you sit down with and say “Hi, my name is Robert and I have a succubus”? I can’t come up with a list.

Wait. Sybil gave me a book. I remember flipping through few pages of confusing writing like if JK Rowling got hit by a medieval thesaurus. Find the book. Silly thought of itself. I know where ALL the books are in my apartment.

No wonder I called it goofy. The materials were modern, but it had been printed and bound to give the look of some sort of ancient document.

This time I paid attention to what I found. Succubi. You get ‘em two ways: either you’re just so depraved and evil that the universe conspires against you, or you have an enemy among the adept, or you have an enemy who can obtain the services of an adept, and you are cursed.

None of the creatures described were anything like Sachiko. Some were everything you’d expect for the spawn of Hell, horrific, rending, drawing, extracting your life-force through that member of your body that was part of your evil in the world.

Others were beauty on the outside, but wanton, destructive on the inside, and the result was death, although according to this book, a person who so dies is not transported straight to Hell as is the guy who brought it on himself.

There’s precious little detail on how to get one, how to get rid of one, what protocols surround living with a succubus as a nightly experience.

And they didn’t teach us anything like this in Sunday School or the Baptist Training Union classes.

I wasn’t sure that talking with Brother Harrison, the minister who runs the Baptist Student Union, was the step I wanted to take.

I pondered. Went to class. Did a bit of study and tutoring at the Student Union. Not everybody’s taking engineering, and a lot of those who aren’t are struggling with the varying levels of math needed for other disciplines. I help a lot of ‘em.

Still, end of the evening, I’m at home, apprehensive about going to bed.

Apprehensive, because part of me WANTS Sachiko to show up and part of me says there’s something spiritually wrong about the situation.

“Sachiko,” I said when she appeared. “You’re here.”

“I am commanded to be here.”

“I like when you’re here.”

“Because I take your essence, Robert?”

“No, because you are soft and warm and beautiful.”

“I am? Some tell me that I am to be an evil thing.”

“You are a beautiful thing.”

“I was sent to make you die, Robert.”

“It’s not working. I feel more alive each day. If I don’t die, do you keep coming?”

“I am commanded.”

“Come lay beside me, Sachiko, little one.”

“I like that, Robert.”

I held her. She seemed so tiny, so beautiful, even fragile.

“I have never held a girl like this, like you, Sachiko.”

“I have never been held like this, Robert. I was being trained of many things between man and woman. It was to be my life. I was attendant to some of the ladies of my madam’s house, but I was being saved for a special customer. My madam would have made much money, gained much stature, she told me.”

“You would have been a prostitute?”

“That is a word you use. It is not the same in the world I come from. Ladies of the house can please men many different ways, including opening themselves to him. What I must do to take your essence is but one of those ways. Song, conversation, meals, many ways.”

“What you do to me ... you did that?”

“You are my first, Robert. This I have told you. You are the first man I have lain with like we do now.”

“I am privileged.”

Her face glowed at the words. “Thank you, Robert. I don’t think I am supposed to be a happiness to you. I am glad that I am. It is something that is for you and me.”

Out on a limb here, Robert. “Must you go? After you...”

“I must. I know of no one who stayed.”

“You know of others?”

“They are there. Commanded as I am.”

“Are the others like you?”

Sadly, “No. some of them are demons that I do not know. Not Japanese. Fierce, ugly ... others are demons, beautiful on the outside, but bad on the inside.”

“And you.”

“I do not understand why I am me. I do not fit. Like it was a mistake. Like a horse was ordered and a bird arrived.”

“I want you to stay...”

“I cannot.”

“Can you kiss me?”

“I have kissed you before.” A butterfly landed on my lips, then she slid slowly down, pulling down my drawers. The first kiss there made me gasp. This time it seemed that she was NOT performing a rote task. I felt as much as heard her humming as her tongue worked magic. The end came with a crescendo and a crash and she was gone.

I only recognize a difference. Class work seems to be no burden at all. I whip through the coursework with new-found ability and energy.

At the end of the day, though, I have decided that there IS someone I can talk with about my condition.

I enter the shop to the sound of a tinkling bell. The lady appears through a beaded curtain, its jewels glittering in the fragmented light coming through the windows.

“Hi. I’m Bud. I don’t know if you remember me...”

“You came here with Sybil. You did not believe.”

“No ma’am, I did not.”

“Yet now you are here.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m a Christian...”

“A man of The Book, are you?”

“I am. Try to be.”

“I know The Book. You know The Book.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“There is truth. But the truth, my friend, is that you can know everything that is in The Book, but not everything is IN The Book.”

“I am learning that.”

“So you come here to ask...”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She pulled a stack of cards out of one of her voluminous sleeves, dealt four, moved one from the top of the deck to the bottom, dealt another, then picked them up.

“You are not here from guile or deception, Robert.”

“I said my name was Bud.”

“Your friends and family call you Bud. Am I your friend now?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“The cards show me you have a night visitor.”

“That is why I’m here. A succubus. What can you tell me?”

“Come, sit, young Bud. Will you take tea?”

“Uh ... normal stuff, right?”

“Nothing that will cause you to leave your body, gain enhanced senses ... Unless you desire...”

“Plain, please. I’m already having enough weirdness in my life.”

“Sit. Close your eyes for a few minutes while the tea steeps. Let your mind bring thoughts together in order that we may talk.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As told, closed my eyes. Incense lent a pleasing, exotic odor. I don’t know where a breeze might arise to move wind chimes, but there was a faint tinkle, a very pleasing succession of notes that changed sequence, but always pleased the ear.

“Bud,” she said gently. “Tea. Do you take sugar? Cream?”

“A little of both, please.”

She served me delicately. Thought crossed my mind. What was that thing about a Japanese Tea Ceremony? Something to ask Sachiko.

She took a sip of her cup, watched me savor mine.

“Now, tell me about your night visitor.”

“She says she’s a succubus...”

“Says? She speaks?”

“Yes. Small, delicate voice in my head, but like I hear the spoken words. Surprising thing is that she is Japanese.”

“Japanese? Curious.”

“It’s what she said.”

“Very curious. Bud, every culture around the world had evil spirits of a sexual nature. Most people know only of the legends of Europe.”

“She says I was cursed.”

A sculpted eyebrow arched. “Cursed.”

“I only know of one person...”

“ ... Sybil,” she finished for me. “Silly girl wanted to go further. Witch, she calls herself. Child playing with fire. I was mistaken about her...”

“She was cute...”

“Her mind ... still a spoiled child. Playing with things...”

“I wouldn’t let myself be one of them. We parted ways.”

“She says you were rude. An unbeliever.”

“I was an unbeliever. Now I’m not sure what to believe.”

“Believe your Book, Christian. Just know that everything is not in The Book.”

“What do I do? About Sachiko?”

“You think of her by name?”

“I do. She talks to me.”

“Interesting. What I know of Succubi does not include conversation with the victim.”

“She told me that she is to take my essence until I die...”

“That is a common thread...”

“She told me that I was young and healthy and would not soon die...”

“You might take comfort in that idea. You will die from her taking your essence, not from a car wreck or poisoning or something else.”

“Interesting. One can infer that?”

“Perhaps. Still. Japanese. That intrigues me greatly. And young and pretty and of good temper. Also intriguing.”

“You got me. I can do semiconductors and relays and a great number of electrical and electronic devices, but nobody’s ever sicced a succubus on anyone I know.”

“I have part of the mystery in my hands, Bud.”

“You do?”

“Yes. I know who sold the spell to Sybil.”

“And that would be...”

“Me. You see those posters on the walls?”

“I do.”

Many people see them as decoration. Some are. Some are not.”

“And Sybil bought a REAL one?” I got up, looked. “Specialty paper, conditioned to look like parchment.” I looked closer. “Offset printing. Possibly a photoprocess master. Hand-inked additions for the initials and marginal notes. Pretty impressive.”

“Sybil has bought many, but she specifically asked about one relating to Succubi. The one I sold her was authentic, as relating to content, but it was in Latin, with marginal notes in Gaelic, according to old Celtic tradition.”