It was on a cold, gray day in early March when I boarded the train to visit my friend Henry Amick. We had been boon companions in our University days, days not too far swallowed by the passing of time, and I was eager to renew an acquaintance that graduation and the press of daily life had steadily pulled asunder.
Nonetheless my mood in some measure matched the gloom of the weather, for Amick's letter was of a desperate and dramatic character. He'd always had a strong streak of the Gothic in him--no surprise in a man who had devoted long hours of study to the arts of the medieval alchemists--and the terms of his request for my visit were such as I would assume were meant in comic parody from anyone I did not know so closely. There were strong overtones of fear in his message, and he begged my assistance in an endeavor which he described only in vague allusions, but without which his life and reason would both be forfeit to the temptations of Hell.
I found this especially to be a remarkable choice of phrase because while Amick had always been a strong believer in the supernatural he was also a confirmed agnostic, with little in the way of religious faith of any kind. He did not deny that in the spirit world there might be entities imnical to humanity, but he thought of them as being only that, creatures of a different order of life than mankind. Individuals, perhaps even whole societies of those, might prove to be evil, but never diabolic, never with no greater purpose than the corruption of the human soul. To see a man who'd believed with such a passion that had led to many a voiciferous argument at the coffehouse, and on one notable occasion to an out-and-out brawl between our circle and several theology students, now talking of Hell?
As a metaphor, it rang hollow; Amick's metaphors tended towards classical allusions and to obscure quotations in foreign languages. As a literal statement, it was absurd. This point, and indeed the rest of the letter, cut badly into my happy anticipation towards seeing Amick once more.
It was this reverie of mingled emotions that I was jolted from when, at the very last moment before the train pulled away, the outer door of my compartment was swung open and a young woman all but leapt inside. Though well-dressed and attractive, she showed signs of a faint dishevelment in her attire that hinted at violent exertion; she'd evidently been forced to sprint for the train. She swung a small traveling case up onto the rack and dropped with a sigh of relief onto the seat opposite. I said nothing, but as the train began to move she smiled wryly.
"I suppose I must make for a fine performance," she said with laughing eyes.
"I've nearly missed a train or two in my time," I replied graciously--and truthfully.
"It was vital that I catch this train, not only because it is the last of the day, but because you are traveling by it. I only learned that at the last minute, and came rushing here as fast as I could."
"I don't think that I understand, Miss. You wanted to travel with me, and yet we've never met?"
She nodded again.
"We have Henry Amick in common, you see. My name is Aileen Forester, and Henry and I are engaged to be married."
This revelation was nearly unbelievable, I admit frankly. Miss Forester was a beautiful woman, and not an ethereal and innocent beauty either, but with the kind of face and figure that made impressionable men raise comparisons to Jezebel, Salome, or Helen. She was the kind of young woman who could have "had anyone," in the common parlance, and the very last kind of female I should have expected Henry Amick to attract, or indeed to be attracted to.
"Congratulations, Henry," I murmured wryly, and drew a smile from Miss Forester at the compliment.
"Thank you," she said, brushing back a lock of honey-blonde hair that had escaped her coiffure in her rush for the train, "but I really must apologize for forcing my company on you in this way. I am terribly worried about Henry."
"Oh?" I prompted curiously.
"We are to be married in June, you see, and yet I have had no word from him in over a month! He has abandoned his rooms in the city and returned to his family estate, yet my letters there have received no reply."
"Do you have any idea what it's all about?"
Miss Forester did not reply at once, but bit at her lip, from which I deduced that she did know something, but that it was of a nature she did not feel comfortable discussing. A fiancee could have many such points of knowledge, and in truth Amick might give rise to more. I myself would not necessarily wish to disclose all details of my past associations with the man to a complete stranger lest I be thought mad.
"Well..." she began slowly.
"Yes, Miss Forester?"
"I know that this will sound strange to you, but...are you aware of Henry's researches?"
"Not generally," I remarked. "I have not seen him in some years, as you may know."
She nodded in agreement.
"That makes it so much harder to discuss, though. Henry always had an interest in what he called the 'forgotten sciences.'"
"Alchemy, spiritualism, and so forth?"
Her face lit momentarily.
"Then you do know! He was always poring over some worm-eaten manuscript or another, some book of lore of the grimoire of a medieval sorcerer. It was his one idiosyncracy, but he had the time and funds to spend on such things, so I never worried very much. It seemed a harmless enough hobby." She shuddered delicately, suggesting that her assertions were perhaps ones she'd used in the past to try and convince herself.
"Of late, though," she continued, "Henry had been spending more and more time in his rooms with one book or another. When I inquired as to what he was doing, merely in a conversational way, he spoke to me quite rudely and told me to mind my own affairs! He had become more and more reclusive, until at last he ended by leaving town without word to anyone. I fear that this project he is engaged in, whatever its nature, may be having an effect on Henry's mind, that an avocation is steadily becoming and obsession--if it is not already too late."
"I can see why you are worried."
"That is why, when I learned that Henry had summoned you to assist him, I hastened to join you. Perhaps together we can see what is at the bottom of this, and if necessary save Henry from his own obsessions."
Frowning, I replied, "Unfortunately, Amick's letter swore me to the strictest confidence. I'm not quite sure how far I can go to help."
"Please," she urged, leaning forward slightly, "all I ask is that you bring me with you. If I could only see Henry face-to-face, I'm sure that I could persuade him, if not to abandon whatever it is he is doing, then to at least let me share in it and so alleviate my fears."
"Very well, then. I'll see that you get to speak with him. I'm sure I can arrange that much."
We talked more as the miles wore on. Miss Forester was very much interested in my past association with Amick and the kind of man he'd been in his youth, and so I found the journey quite pleasant as only a man whose conversation a charming girl appears to find fascinating can do.
Indeed, by the time we had reached our station near the close of the afternoon I was half-convinced that the entire matter was one best suited for the commissioners in lunacy. On Miss Forester's side, there was the question of how she could have fallen in love with Amick. He was not physically prepossessing and nearly devoid of charm in the sense as one generally applies it to relations between the sexes, but more important than those was his attitude towards women. The female of the species he regarded as being inferior in the sense of biological limitations to the male, and no group of women did he more harshly judge than those of his own class. How Miss Forester had wrung something from that bitterness to care for deeply I could scarcely understand. Then, on Amick's part there was the sheer madness of, having won Miss Forester's hand, how he now seemed to strive to lose it!
If this assessment seems unduly harsh towards a man I had named friend and companion a scarce five years ago, then I cannot deny it. On the contrary, I was amazed to realize as we disembarked from the train, how easy it was to call Amick's flaws to mind and how difficult a time I had in recalling his better qualities. The condition worried me, for it seemed that my inner mind had heartily taken Miss Forester's side, so charming did I find her, and I was conscious of a definite resentment--strongly tinged with envy--taking hold within me towards my friend Amick.
We hired a horse and trap to drive us out to Amick's estate, although the driver, a morose, black-bearded man, evidenced some trepidation when we named our destination. He offered no specific complaint, though, and I was not inclined to further press the matter. We traveled in silence, neither Miss Forester nor myself wishing to speak before a third person.
The first sight of the house was a relief; I had been expecting some crumbling Gothic pile and instead was greeted by a solid block in a reassuring red brick. The grounds themselves were less calming, with the hedges growing wild. I suspected that were it not winter the lawns would be left all untrimmed and speckled with wildflowers.
The driver left us at the end of the walk and made haste to be on his way, leaving us to carry our own luggage to the front door. There I did not knock or ring, but instead began to feel around the bricks to the upper left of the front door.
"What are you doing?" Miss Forester asked dubiously.
"Amick wrote that he had been forced to discharge his servants, save only a village woman who acts as housekeeper but refuses to live on the premises. He habitually keeps the door locked, but left a key for my use--aha!--here, behind this loose brick." I took out the key, which turned easily in the lock, then replaced it behind the brick.
"Ladies first," I said with a hint of a smile, holding the door open for Miss Forester.
"Thank you," she replied, and proceeded me over the threshold. The door shut behind us, and we found ourselves in an atmosphere of unrelieved gloom. No lamp or candle burned anywhere in sight, in the foyer or the hall beyond, and the gathering twilight meant that what little illumination was to be had from the windows was dim and shadowy. I supposed that with no servants on hand, having lit fires in the remote parts of the house from where Amick worked and slept would be a serious hazard.
Despite the reasons for the unlit condition of the house, I found my soul creep as I searched through rooms and corridors for any sign of my friend. Armorial trophies that marked the family's noble history seemed to loom threateningly out of the darkness, while portraits of men and women in antiquated clothing leered down at me, their white faces seeming to glow in what little illumination was to be found. I grew more and more nervous at the thought that at the end of my search I would find--nothing, that Amick had vanished without trace. This illusion was dispelled at the last only when I threw open a door on the upper story and found myself in a study or small library, its walls laden with books, illuminated by a half-dozen or more lamps and with a roaring fire that made me suddenly aware of the cold I felt both from the ride in the open trap and the search through the unlit, unheated house.
Amick was stooped over a desk at the far end of the room, but at the creak of the hinges as I entered he looked up and all but flew across the room, shouting my name and pumping my hand in an absolute frenzy of relief.
"Thank Heaven you've come!" he exclaimed, surprising me again with his choice of oath. "I had feared that you might not, it has been so many years--but you are here now, and we can begin!"
"Amick, please tell me what this is all about," I urged. "The tone of your letter was so desperate--and now, to see you like this..."
He grinned with a certain wry humor that I recognized from past years.
"I suppose I must look a fright, mustn't I?" In truth, he did; his sallow cheeks were dotted with irregular patches of stubble, his eyes were dark from lack of sleep, his hair long and unkempt, and his clothing much wrinkled and stained. "A month ago, you'd never have recognized this wreck of a man, but I've near damned myself and the effort of wresting free of the trap has taken its toll."
Amick's voice was thick with emotion, and I shuddered at what could have wrought such a change in him.
"I've spent eighteen hours a day here, studying, translating, cross-referencing," he said, sweeping a pointing finger along the serried ranks of books. "I stop only to take enough food to keep me going, and for an absolute minimum of sleep. I daren't sleep, you see--in dreams I am vulnerable, might abandon my protections without knowing it--but of course you don't know what I'm talking about."
"No, I don't," I frankly admitted.
"No reason why you should--I couldn't dare put it in the letter. You'd think me mad, you who took the sane and sensible road in life--work, respect, society. I knew you'd need to see first-hand."
He turned back to the desk and I followed him.
"Perhaps I am mad," he echoed my thoughts. "The strain has been terrible. You see, I've gone much deeper into things since our University days, probed into lore our scientific establishment has cast aside. Only, I've put a foot wrong, lost control! I walled up this house with wards of silver and iron to keep it out, dismissed all the servants to keep them from disrupting my protections, but that was only a stopgap measure," he ranted. "I needed a permanent solution, an exorcism or elixir to send the thing back where it came, so it could trouble me no more!"
"Wait a minute," I said suddenly. "Amick, are you claiming to have conjured up a demon, and that this devil now pursues you?"
"Exactly!" he all but shouted. "Oh, the term 'demon' isn't so accurate as all that--not in the religious sense--but the end result is the same, the result to me. I'd never have brought you down here, never have exposed you to any of this, but I've run into one utterly insurmountable problem. You see, I have found a way to break free of this curse forever, but it requires, it absolutely demands the participation of two separate people." He rounded on me. "Now that you're here, there's no time to waste. We can start at once!"
"Amick, please!" I said, holding up my hands. "You must give me time to absorb this, to make some sense of it all. Your letter was so intemperate of language that we rushed down at once, and now to be greeted by this...Amick, what's wrong?"
He had gone utterly stock-still, frozen in place, and then a single massive tremor ran through his body.
"Did you say...we?" he asked fearfully.
"Yes, Miss Forester and myself."
"I invited no Miss Forester. Where is this woman?"
I realized suddenly that Miss Forester was not beside me, that in fact I could not remember being with her at any point following our entrance into the house--and what was more, until that very moment the significance of that fact had never occurred to me! It was as if, once we'd entered, I had somehow forgotten that she had been there at all.
"Why...she was..."
Amick took a step back from me, the blood draining from his already wan face. His eyes were wide in terror, and his lips trembled as if trying to speak but unable to form words.
Low, rich feminine laughter filled the room. We both spun towards it, and there she was, crouching as if perched on the sill of the casement window. The voluptuous limbs revealed by her scant garb provided an instant's distraction, but only that, for much more noticeable were the horns that crowned her forehead, the barbed tail that snaked down among her legs, and the arching black wings that framed her body, the upper point tipped with a delicate claw like a bat's.
"You got your sacrifice to come to you," she said, her voice rich with triumph. "No small task, that, when you can't leave your own grounds and the locals barely trust you enough to pick up and post a letter."
"You fool!" he screamed at me, spittle flying from his lips. "You let her in!"
She laughed again, sending a sensuous thrill down my spine despite my fear and bewilderment.
"You got rid of your servants, but he is an invited guest, and as such can allow me past your little ward. I'm so glad that I decided to let your letter go to him instead of destroying it. Watching you die of age and fear would have been pleasant, but this is so much better."
Amick reached for me, hand trembling.
"Help me...You have to..."
"He can't help you," the succubus laughed again. "Really, my dear 'master,' just because you can't get a woman of your own, did you really think there wouldn't be consequences for summoning one up to be your slave? What, I wonder, shall I demand from you, now that the tables are turned?"
She descended upon him, her wings flowing out and around him in a parody of an embrace. My courage broke then, or perhaps I found it, for I shook off the paralysis of horror, turned, and fled from the study, crashing pell-mell from the darkened house and running, shrieking, into the night.
I never saw nor heard from my friend Amick again. Nor, I suspect, has anyone else. What his intentions were, I cannot say, though I hope for my soul's sake that what she said was true. For if so, I cannot say that what I unintentionally visited upon him was not, in fact, justice.
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