I must be dreaming again, Ann sickly tried to convince herself. None of this could be real.
Then she turned the next page and saw:
Milly lying upon the slab, naked, drenched in sweat. Her legs were propped up and widely parted. She was pregnant.
Naked women stood about her, gazing down in reverence. But betwixt Milly’s spread legs stood a cloaked figure, with hands out as if to accept something. And next:
The hands holding up a glistening newborn child.
And next:
Ann screamed.
It was the same. Everything. Milly giving birth was identical to the scenario of Ann’s nightmare. And then the final photo, the symbol. The odd double circle looked like a flat slab of stone hanging against a dark wall, but its shape was—
The same, she realized.
It was exactly the same.
“Does it all seem familiar?” queried a cragged voice.
Ann screamed again and dropped the album. She stepped back and stumbled, glaring up in terror.
A figure stepped out of the back of the basement. He’d been there the entire time, watching her from the dark.
The figure took another step: a young man with bizarre short white hair, in jeans, sneakers, and jeans jacket. His face looked extant, lean in some crushed prevalence. He was holding a shotgun.
“Ann Slavik,” he said. He looked at her, as if curious. “My name is Erik Tharp. Though the people around here call me brygorwreccan.”
The shredded voice left no doubt. The same voice that had called her, had warned her on the phone not to come here.
“They’re subcarnates,” he told her. “They’re monsters, all of them. And your mother is their leader.”
Ann tried to speak but her terror damped her voice.
“They enslave men with her power, they sacrifice to pay her homage. They’ve existed for thousands of years, Ann, solely to worship her.”
“H-her? Who?”
Erik Tharp gave her a broken smile. “Of course, you don’t know about it. You weren’t supposed to. You’re part of a bloodline that worships a devil.”
Ann’s head reeled…
“Does it sound impossible?” Erik Tharp continued. “What do you think all that stuff is in those albums? Do you dream, Ann? What do you think those dreams are about? They’re not really dreams, they’re visions—visions of the past to reflect the future.”
Visions of the past, she thought. But what could Melanie’s birth have to do with the future?
“Have you seen any male children in this town? Have you?”
“No,” she said, still staring up. “I looked at the town birth records. It said that all the male children ever born here were put up for adoption.”
“Of course that’s what it said. Heyd has to cover himself.”
“What?”
“The records are falsified, by Heyd. Those kids weren’t put up for adoption. They were sacrificed.”
The word seemed to eddy in her head and grow like a bloodstain.
“Males are not allowed in their bloodline. Any sect member who gives birth to a male must hand it over for immediate sacrifice, to appease her. I ought to know, Ann. I’m the one who used to bury the bodies.”
Ann still couldn’t think right. How could she believe this madness? Erik Tharp was an escaped mental patient. He was certifiably insane. But then she remembered the photo albums…
“I came back to stop this, Ann. I came back to get you and your daughter away from here. That’s the only way.”
“What are you talking about!” Ann finally screamed.
He looked down at her. It seemed painful for him just to talk. “For the last millennium they’ve been breeding themselves for this event, Ann. You and your daughter are part of that event.”
“What event?”
“The Fulluht-Loc,” he answered. “The doefolmon.”
—
Chapter 30
“Doefolmon,” Professor Fredrick said.
Dr. Harold squinted back. “Yes, another of the words that Tharp makes frequent reference to in his sketches. What does it mean?”
Fredrick relit the big pipe. Its carven face depicted vacant agony. “It means, roughly, ‘moon of the devil,’ and it’s another term that proves how thoroughly Tharp researched the Ur-locs before his delusion overtook him. The doefolmon was considered a portent, like a biblical sign, and a precursor to their holiest rite—the Fulluht-Loc.”
Harold’s nose crinkled against the cloying fetor of the tobacco. That, and the queer face on the pipe, harassed his attention.
“It was their incarnation rite,” Professor Fredrick said.
Incarnation. Harold considered the word, and its implications. To make flesh.
“Fulluht is another weird meld of Old Saxon, Old Frisian, and some older Chilternese constituents; it means essentially ‘baptism’ or ‘baptismal,’ and loc, as I’ve said, is a reference to—”
“A female demon,” Harold recalled. “A succubus.”
“Yes. Hence, Fulluht-Loc can be translated as ‘baptism of the succubus.’ It’s the ritual that their entire system of belief revolved around. It’s what they lived for.”
The window framed full dark now; Dr. Harold had been here all day scarcely without realizing it. He could glimpse the moon through the high trees of the campus quadrangle. It seemed pink.
“The basis of their entire religion was offertory,” the old professor went on. “The zeal with which they sacrificed innocents was intensively devout. Everything they did was an offering. Sex. Murder. Cannibalism. They’d even anoint initiates with the blood of sacrifice victims. They’d paint trees with the blood, to mark the territory of the succubus, to make it blessed. The Druids did the same thing centuries later, which might cause you to wonder about the nature of religious influence.”
But Dr. Harold was wondering about a lot more than that. So many questions itched at him now, like stitches healing. “But what you mentioned earlier,” he said. “The ultimate point?”
Fredrick’s ancient face looked grimly amused. “The Fulluht-Loc. The incarnation. According to the legend, this can only occur during the doefolmon, and supposedly the Ur-locs succeeded at it once.”
“The incarnation, you mean?”
“Correct. From what could be translated from their manuscripts, the Ur-locs claimed that a successful incarnation occurred a thousand years ago, just before their race disappeared.”
Dr. Harold contemplated the supposition. No, like Fredrick, he didn’t believe in demons, but…what was he thinking? “I don’t quite follow you. How did this incarnation supposedly come about?”
“Remember what I said before,” Fredrick replied. “Everything the Ur-locs did was an offering. They were devoted to the notion of the bludcynn, or the sanctity of their bloodline. What they offered to the Ardat-Lil, ultimately, was themselves.”
“I still don’t quite—”
“The element of offering, Doctor. Sacrifice. Blood. Faith. Everything. The Fulluht-Loc was an offering of one of their own, a physical gift of substitution. What I’m saying is that, on the doefolmon, one of the Ur-locs’ own bludcynn would become the Ardat-Lil. This was foreseen, mind you, years beforehand, upon the birth of the substituted body.”
“Foreseen by who?”
“By the wifmunuc, the leader. They were supposedly clairvoyant. The doefolmon was considered the holiest time, much like Christians would consider the Second Coming. This was essentially the same thing, the return of their god onto the earth.” Professor Fredrick’s time-worn hand tapped out the pipe again. Behind him, in the office window, the moon was rising. “But what you should find most curious of all,” he amusedly went on, “is the timing.”