The Demon Lover (11 page)

It was the same loop that Dahlia LaMotte had found.

Anyone glancing at a bibliography of Dahlia LaMotte could tell she had been prolific, but only by reading her handwritten drafts could you tell she had been
possessed
. She dated each entry so I could tell how much she had written in a day. On average she wrote about forty pages—in a miniscule hand on thin ruled lines—but some days she wrote sixty or more. Sometimes when she came to the end of a notebook she had continued writing in the margins and even between the lines of the filled pages. On the days she wrote the most her usually neat handwriting became nearly indecipherable, as if her pen were skipping across the page like a stone skimming the surface of a pond, barely touching the water.

The content on those days when she wrote the most was different from her other writing.
The Dark Stranger
, the published version, was full of sexuality seething just below the surface. A young woman—penniless, orphaned, friendless Violet Grey—comes to Lion’s Keep, a secluded estate on the Cornish coast, to work as a governess to the young sister of William Dougall, a brooding man whose behavior becomes increasingly strange and threatening. Accidents befall Violet, from which she is saved by a mysterious figure in a black cloak—the dark stranger of the title. She becomes convinced that Dougall is trying to kill her, although the reasons, involving inheritance, mistaken identities, and mislaid letters, are never exactly clear and are the biggest pitfall of the plot. Violet comes to believe that the dark stranger who saves her is the ghost of Dougall’s long-lost brother—the good brother who should have inherited Lion’s Keep. She begins to dream about him at night and to imagine that he visits her in her room (the castle is full of secret passageways and hidden doors). There’s a persistent eroticism in these passages that’s heightened by the stranger’s ambiguous identity. Sometimes he is masked, sometimes he assumes the face of William Dougall. At the end it is revealed that William Dougall
is
the dark stranger. He has treated Violet brusquely because a curse on all mistresses of Lion’s Keep makes him reluctant to fall in love. He has appeared in her room to protect her from the illegitimate son of Dougall’s dead brother, who stands to inherit the estate if Dougall dies childless. Of course it is Dougall whom Violet has loved all along—he is the dark stranger, still potent in his sexual mystery, but reformed enough to make a proper bridegroom by the last page of the book. He is the Beast with the witch’s curse lifted, Mr. Rochester redeemed by his attempt to save his mad wife’s life from the fire.

The sexual tension in
The Dark Stranger
was powerful, but it was always below the surface. Dougall appears in Violet’s room but never touches her.

Not so in Dahlia’s handwritten drafts. The scene I’d already read, in which Violet is ravaged by an invisible stranger in the linen closet was one of several in which a “dark stranger” makes love to her. In the manuscript, the dark stranger schtupps Violet Grey in every corner of Lion’s Keep, from the linen closet to the butler’s pantry, “his thrusts rattling the Wedgwood teacups,” to the gamekeeper’s cottage where he “laid me down on the rough wooden boards and cleaved me with his gleaming shaft.” To the modern reader it’s clear that the visitations of the dark stranger reflect Violet’s sublimated sexual longing for William Dougall, whom she cannot allow herself to love as long as she believes he is evil. But Violet believes that the dark stranger is an incubus. The housekeeper, Mrs. Eaves, reinforces this theory by telling her a local folktale about a youth turned into a demon by the Fairy Queen. Only when William Dougall declares his love for her at the end of the book is Violet able to renounce the incubus—her dark stranger—in order to marry her mortal lover.

The night I finished reading the handwritten draft of
The Dark Stranger
, I lay awake for a long time thinking about Violet’s dark stranger and my demon lover, reluctant to give in to sleep. I had tried to tell myself that my dreams had come from reading Dahlia LaMotte’s sex scenes combined with the atmosphere of this old house; that the moonlight lover was the grown-up, X-rated version of my childhood fairytale prince. But the dreams had begun before I started reading Dahlia’s rough drafts and my fairytale prince had never frightened me the way this creature did. I kept going around in circles looking for the answer, but try as I might, I couldn’t find a rational explanation for how I’d shared the same erotic dream as a fictional character created a hundred years ago. The effort wore me out. I slipped into sleep at last.

When he arrived I was waiting for him. The shadow branches reached and swelled, the moonlight crested above me, brilliant in its whiteness, but I kept my eyes open against the painfully bright light. I watched him take shape above me. For the first time I realized that he took shape because I watched him, he took his first breath only after he blew into my mouth and drew breath from me … Would he move if I didn’t move first? I kept myself still even though every cell in my body was pulled to every cell of the dark matter he was made of. His eyes met mine … and widened with surprise.

“Who are you?” I asked, shocked that I had the power to speak.

But not as shocked as he was.

I saw the look of amazement spread across his face … a face that had never looked so complete or so beautiful before … and then he was gone. The moonlight drew back into the shadows with a hoarse rasp like a wave dragging over rough shingle, and then the shadows themselves shriveled and shrank and vanished like smoke. I was left gasping like a fish flung onto the shore by an angry retreating tide.

TEN

I
woke up the next morning cranky and bad-tempered. I had a headache and felt like I was coming down with the flu. I thought a hot shower would make me feel better but when I turned it on I found that there was nothing but ice cold water; the hot water heater, which the house inspector had certified as sound, must have been broken. Making a mental note to call Brock, I made a pot of coffee, only to discover that the milk had gone sour. When I tried to toast some leftover scones the toaster oven short-circuited, caught fire, and burned them to a crisp before I could put the fire out.

I decided to walk to campus hoping the air and exercise would heal my bad mood, but the minute I got outside I realized that the balmy Indian Summer weather had come to an abrupt end. It must have been under forty. I persevered, determined not to be a wuss about the cold, but ten minutes from the house it started to rain … or sleet, actually. The frozen rain needled my face and the back of my neck. I was soaked and frozen by the time I made it to the college center, where I stopped to buy a bagel and coffee. I was late for class and spent the first ten minutes complaining to a confused group of students about the inferiority of bagels outside the New York metropolitan area and the absurdity of sleet in October.

I’d planned to show
Rebecca
in class but when I slid the DVD into the disk drive, my computer made a grinding noise and then spit the DVD out with a hiss. I swore—and heard a few students giggle at my use of the Anglo-Saxon invective—and pushed the DVD back in. A blue spark flew out of the disk drive and jolted me. My laptop moaned like a sick cat. I felt my eyes pricking with tears at the injustice of the world turning against me. I’m not sure what I would have done next if Nicky Ballard hadn’t appeared at my side and gently taken over.

“Here, let me. I’ve worked at campus tech support for a couple of years and can usually figure this stuff out.” Nicky tapped in a few commands on my laptop and within minutes my Mac was purring and playing the movie.

I thanked Nicky and she gave me a rare smile. It was then that I noticed that she had lost weight. Her round face had thinned out, revealing sculpted cheekbones. Her bangs were brushed to the side, showing off a high forehead and wide turquoise eyes. She looked pretty—but I felt a pang of concern. Although it was typical for freshmen to gain weight, I’d also seen some turn anorexic under the academic and social stresses of college. I made a note to talk to her after class and settled in to watch the movie.

The minute of thinking of someone other than myself had put my bad mood in perspective, but as I watched the movie I felt annoyance growing again. I liked to show
Rebecca
because the novel was a classic reworking of Gothic themes and the Hitchcock film was beautiful and moody. But the truth was that the second Mrs. de Winter (the poor woman didn’t even rate a first name) was a ninny. It was painful to watch her quailing under the imperious Mrs. Danvers and hiding broken china away like a guilty child.

I dismissed the class after half the movie and told them they should finish reading the book before the next class. “Which ends differently than the movie so don’t think you can get away with not reading it.” Then, on a sudden impulse, I added: “Ask yourself this: What would you have done in the second Mrs. de Winter’s shoes—or in the shoes of any of the heroines we’ve seen so far this year? Do these women have to be so helpless?”

I caught Mara’s eyes on me as I gave this assignment. Instead of her usual reverent gaze she looked puzzled and I realized that I’d asked the question angrily.
Shit
, I really must be losing it.

I had decided to put off talking to Nicky Ballard until another day, but as she walked by me she stopped and said:

“I’d fire Mrs. Danvers.”

“What?”

“If I was the second Mrs. de Winter. That’s the first thing I’d do. Then I’d give all Rebecca’s things to the Salvation Army—or whatever the British equivalent was—and redecorate. Then I’d tell Max that if he wanted to make our marriage work he’d better get over his dead wife and start paying attention to me.”

“Good girl,” I said.

“But what would you do when you found out how Rebecca died?” A voice came from the door. It was Mara, who’d been waiting in the doorway for her roommate.

“I’d say good riddance and make sure no one ever found that boat.” There was a sudden hardness in Nicky’s eyes that took me by surprise.

“Nicky, could you stay for a moment and show me how you fixed my computer?” I asked with a disingenuous smile, and then, turning to Mara: “You’d better go on to class. I don’t want to make you late.”

“But Nicky’s in the same class …”

“You can tell Phoenix she’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Mara left reluctantly, giving Nicky a worried glance over her shoulder. I wondered if she’d noticed the change in Nicky as well. While Nicky went though the steps she’d taken to fix my computer, I studied her more closely. I could see that in addition to the lost weight her eyes were feverish and her skin was pale.

“Thanks, Nicky. You were a real lifesaver. Can I call you if I have problems at home with it?”

“Sure. Like I said, I’ve worked in tech support for years …”

“But aren’t you a freshman?”

“Yeah, but I live here in town and I got the job the summer after my sophomore year in high school. One of my teachers recommended me because I was always fixing the high school’s computers. I got to know Dean Book …” Nicky smiled and lowered her voice. “For a smart lady she didn’t know the first thing about computers. She suggested I apply to college here. I’d been planning to go to the SUNY over in Oneonta, but Dean Book told me about the scholarship program and, well … here I am.”

“And you’re liking it so far?”

“Well, it’s a little strange. All my life I’ve watched the college teachers in town and they all seemed like they came from another world. Like that English teacher, Miss Eldritch. Have you ever watched how she walks? She kinda floats. And those creepy Russian professors … Do you know that they all live together in a scary old Victorian mansion on top of the hill? It’s all shuttered up during the day and you never see any of them except at night. Even their classes are at night. Kids in town say they’re part of some kinky sex triangle …” Nicky blushed. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be disrespectful. It’s just weird to have spent all my life on one side and now I’m on the other—like Alice through the looking glass, you know?”

I nodded. I thought I knew what Nicky’s problem was now. She was trying to cope with a social class change on top of all the normal adjustments to college. Dean Book had said in my interview that the town and gown relations were cordial, but I bet those relations looked different to the kids who delivered the pizzas and their parents who fixed the plumbing and mopped the dormitory floors.

“How do your parents feel about you going to Fairwick?” I asked.

“Um … there’s just my mom and my grandmother, whom we live with. My grandmother was happy about it and my mom, well, she said as long as she didn’t have to pay for anything it was okay by her, but I’d better be sure to study something practical and come out with a paying job and not waste my time with a lot of artsy-fartsy nonsense. Sorry …” Her voice cracked and I realized that this long breathless speech was a hedge against tears. “You don’t want to know all this.”

I put my hand on Nicky’s arm, which felt alarmingly thin. “Sure I do, Nicky. I lost my parents when I was little and was raised by my grandmother.” I guessed by the way her eyes flicked to mine that it must be Nicky’s grandmother who was doing most of the
raising
at her home.

“She made sure I didn’t want for anything,” I went on. This was what I always said about my grandmother, as if I were afraid she was somewhere nearby, eavesdropping on my assessment of her guardianship. “But of course she was much older and couldn’t really relate to a teenager.” An image of my grandmother, her mouth squared with disapproval when I showed up for tea at her club in jeans, flashed before my eyes. I shoved it aside. “So I know it’s hard being around people with intact families.”

Nicky nodded, a tear spilling down her cheek. She batted at it with the sleeve of her sweatshirt which she’d pulled over her hand. “I think that’s why Dean Book chose Mara for my roommate. Mara’s lost everything. My problems seem really miniscule compared to what she’s been through.”

“I guess that it’s always good to put your problems in perspective,” I said, thinking with embarrassment of my own snit this morning. “But as my friend Annie’s mother always said, ‘When
your
shoe pinches, it hurts
you.
’ It’s natural that you should feel stressed out in a new environment and need someone to talk to … How about your friends from high school, are they still around?”

“Just my boyfriend, Benny. He and I had planned to go to SUNY Oneonta together, but when I got the scholarship he decided to stay here and go to the community college. I told him he was being stupid, that we could see each other on weekends and he shouldn’t be making sacrifices for me, but then he said someone had to make some sacrifices or we might as well just hang it up. So now he’s here in town, miserable at the CC and, of course, blaming me for that.”

“I hope you know that’s not fair, Nicky. He made that decision, not you.” Thank God, I thought, that Paul and I hadn’t gone down that road. I understood now why Nicky looked so miserable and fatigued. Between the lack of support from her family, her boyfriend guilt-tripping her about his own lack of ambition and stupid choices, and the academic stress of college, it was a wonder she was holding it together at all.

“Look,” I said, “if you ever need to talk, don’t hesitate to come to me. I live right near campus …”

“In the old LaMotte house,” Nicky said, brightening a bit. “I used to play in the woods behind there when I was little. I always thought it was the prettiest house in town. I’m glad someone’s living there again. No matter what anyone says about it being haunted.”

The boost I’d gotten by attending to Nicky’s troubles instead of my own was gone by the time I left Fraser Hall, shot down by Nicky’s innocent comment about Honeysuckle House being haunted and the conversation after. I tried to dismiss it as harmless local gossip. An old house left empty for many years, once inhabited by an eccentric woman writer—no wonder it had gained the reputation of being haunted. But it was what Nicky said next that had set my teeth on edge. I’d asked her if the townspeople thought that the house was haunted by Dahlia LaMotte.

“No,” she’d answered, “they say it’s haunted by her lover.”

“Her lover? But I thought Dahlia LaMotte was a recluse.”

“Yeah, but people say that the reason she locked herself away in that house was because she had a secret lover. There were stories of a man seen standing in the woods behind her house and then a man’s silhouette in her bedroom window. Some people say she was engaged to a man who jilted her and that she’d killed him and his ghost was the figure they saw at the window.”

I snorted. “I believe William Faulkner wrote a story along those lines. It’s called ‘A Rose for Emily.’ ” I tried to laugh off the story as I left Nicky at the door to Phoenix’s class and walked briskly across the quad, but I was remembering the man-shaped pillar of mist at the edge of the woods and picturing the face of the man in my dreams—the man who had fled as soon as I confronted him. The truth was that I’d been in a foul mood all morning because the dream had ended before the demon lover made love to me.

I froze on the path—so abruptly that a boy humming to the tune on his iPod bumped into me—at that realization. What was wrong with me? Was my actual sex life so dismal that I’d become addicted to a fantasy?

Because that was all it was, wasn’t it? A fantasy.

Except what I’d experienced last night—that moment of recognition and shock in his eyes—hadn’t felt like a fantasy or a dream; it had felt as real as the broad-trunked sycamore tree to my right and its yellow leaves drifting down around me, and as solid as the granite towers of the library rising up at the end of the path.

It struck me suddenly as odd that although I’d written about supernatural creatures—vampires, fairies, incubi—I’d never once stopped to think they might be real. Or that the creature who had been making love to me every night was real. He was a fairy tale, just like the fairy tales my parents had read me at bedtime, a more sophisticated kind of “bedtime” story. I’d dismissed my fairytale prince in my adolescent dreams as a manifestation of grief over the loss of my parents. I’d analyzed the incubus’s appearance in Dahlia LaMotte’s novel as a symbol of Violet Grey’s sublimated longing. I’d treated the appearance of the demon lover in literature as a psychological manifestation, a literary trope, a symbol of repressed longing, domination fantasies, or rebellion against the status quo. But what if Dahlia wrote about a demon lover because she’d been visited by one? And what if the same demon lover was the creature who had visited my dreams when I was young? After all, the fairy tale he had told about a boy stolen by fairies was almost the same as the story Soheila had told me about the demon lover in the triptych. What if my fairytale prince had returned now to consummate our relationship?

What if the demon lover was real?

I stood still for another few minutes, measured by the clock on the library tower, which tolled the hour while I waited for the return of rationality that would dismiss such a notion. Students in sweatshirts and down vests walked around me, leaves fell, squirrels plucked acorns from the ground and swished their tails at me, but the idea that the man who made love to me in my dreams was somehow real didn’t go away.