Ellen Datlow - Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

“Me no speaka your language,” I replied, suddenly cottoning on to his flighty Scots burr. I barked laughter and slapped him on the arm. “Sorry. I thought… I thought… oh, cocks to it. I’m Shhhhhuh… Sean. Benj told me you were Simon but it’s good to have it confirmed.”

“Hoowazatlassyacuminwi?”

“Her name’s Louise.” I came right back with that one, getting into the swing of it.

“Shizaspankinlassamtellinyi.”

“Too right.” I sensed he was waiting for me to continue. “She’s not with me, if that’s what you’re wondering.” If I’d had my brains in properly, I’d have asked him to be tame on her; she wasn’t ready for some fast talking shagmeister bundling her into his bed. Talking about Louise reminded me that she was here. I caught sight of her standing on the edge of an intense circle, watching the interplay. She looked—God, strange word to use but it summed up her appearance—she looked ripe. Her face was jutting and beautiful, her eyes hungry on everyone. Having finally divested herself of the coat, her breasts hugged the deep collar of her blouse like loaves in an oven besting their tins. No longer the ingénue I’d staggered into adulthood alongside, she appeared confident and armed with secrets, like a soldier returned from a killing field.

But that could have just been the alcohol, twatting around with my head.

I started toward her, eager to let loose some of the thoughts with which I’d been so circumspect that afternoon. I wanted to draw her into the crook of my arm and tell her I’d missed her. Tell her I was sorry.

But then Simon was locked on to her, their bodies flush with each other as they traded words. I watched them flirt, dipping heads against ears so that lips brushed lobes. Yoked together, I watched the tethered jewel at Louise’s throat move with each undulation they created. Violence spread through me. I wish I could have let it come. Louise’s capitulation and Benjie’s hand on my shoulder prevented me. In that moment, Simon was condemned.

Black out.

I surfaced from a terrible dream in which I’d been kissing a woman whose lips were sticky, whose tongue, whenever it emerged to roil against mine, was coated in a clear membrane. She worked my mouth with spidery endeavor, knitting it closed with her adhesive spit. Black eyes burning into mine. When she wrestled with her clothing, to reveal that yawning part of her which would dissolve and ingest me, I lurched away, opening my eyes to dawn as it drizzled the curtains. Bodies were sprawled around me. I hauled myself upright, shuddering with cold and the mother and father of all hangovers. The Fear unzipped its dark little bag and teased me with its contents but I couldn’t remember anything beyond Benjie, me, and a bottle of vodka. My jeans felt stiff against my legs. There was a smear of lipstick on the back of my hand.

I negotiated the snoring corpses till I was on the landing. Benjie’s door was shut. I remembered. Some time in the night I’d gone for a glass of water, opened his bedroom, mistaking it for the kitchen. Louise was straddling Simon in the bed; the hill of coats had slid to the floor. The first thing I saw was the last thing to follow me back to sleep. Her breastbone, slick with sweat, or his saliva, overlaid with a lozenge of pure white light which pulsed with every languid stroke of their lovemaking. There was light elsewhere on her, solidifying in clusters and then dispersing like minute shoals offish only to coalesce once more on her thigh, her mons, her navel. But it was that oval of light on her sternum which transfixed me, even as her eyes met with mine and she flew toward a climax that terrified me for its intensity. Simon was paling beneath her, jerking around: a rabbit mauled by a stoat. His hand reached out, almost desperately. Froth concealed his mouth. Louise was keening, slamming down upon him and baring her teeth, eyes rolled back till I could see their whites. The light inside her intensified and garnered at her core, retreating from the surface of her skin till it was but a milky suggestion deep inside her. Then it sank to where he must have been embedded in her. I couldn’t watch any more, not when she drove her fingers into his mouth to allay his scream.

Was that really how it had happened? My sozzled brain painted a detailed picture, but my dream had seemed equally alive. If it had happened, how could I have been so calm as to close the door on them and get back among the dead in the living room? How could I have returned to sleep?

I thought of the first words Louise had mumbled to me after her abortion all those years ago. She’d said: “I was so close to darkness, it felt like I could never again be close to the light.”

She’d been chasing it ever since. I’d taken it from her and something as simple as a letter had given it back. A letter that had been as much a cry for help as an olive branch. I thought of the places she’d passed through over the years, alternate lands that had claimed her as she drifted, loveless. I thought of how easy it could be to consign someone to such torment. I tried to imagine the hunger that needed to be sated in order to forge a way back.

My hand on the door. It swung inward. The pile of coats was still there. Beneath them, the bed appeared not to have been slept in. The room was still, its occupants gone. I was happy to leave it that way but found myself entering the room. There was a scorched smell. A cigarette burn, probably. I dragged the covers off the bed. A thin plug of mucus, streaked with blood, stained the undersheet.

“Simon?” I said to it.

A sound drew me to the window. She was standing by the streetlamp, which died at that moment. Subtle light crept through the avenue. I heard a milk float play its glassy tunes far away. She was smiling as she waited, holding her coat closed on whatever it was that burned inside her. I sniffed and dug my sweater out of the pile, went down to hold her hand and send her a plea through my lips when I kissed her.

MAY, 1936

“CONNY, HE’S ASKING FOR YOU.” She blinked in the bright wash of morning light and looked up at Geoffrey. His face was pale, making the scar across his cheek look like a slight fold of skin. Conny sat forward in the overstuffed chair. It had seemed the most comfortable chair in the house the night before, but now her back ached. She rubbed sleepers from her eyes. “What time is it?”

“A little past seven.” He stepped back, hands in pockets. “He’s been awake less than half an hour. The nurse is with him.”

“How is he?”

“Not good.”

Conny stood and her head swam. She remembered dreaming, and a half-real tingle in her abdomen. It startled her and she almost asked if William had been writing. But the images fled as soon as she tried to capture them, like ghosts.

She went to the window, stretching, and gazed out at the slope of land that ended at the river a hundred yards below. No dream. They had returned to the House. Her house now. She had smelled the traces of her uncle’s cherry tobacco when they arrived last night, surprisingly clear after all this time.

“I called Dr. Ludi,” Geoffrey said. “I still think we should have taken him to the hospital.”

“That’s not what he wanted. Is there coffee?”

“In his room.”

Conny used the bathroom. Feeling more awake, the dull pain in her back almost gone afterward, she walked down the hall.

William looked like a miniature in the mass of pillows and blankets on the huge canopied bed. Small and bleached. The last few months of illness had etched out his features, robbed him of expression, as if sifting him away. His hair lay matted against his skull and his beard needed trimming and combing.