Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 33 - Demon of the Night

That was why he needed a spy. Whom Lilith chose to breed this night demon with was of no importance, so long as it was a truly evil creature. One after his own heart.

So the first part of Lilith’s task was merely pleasant. She found a tempestuous demon who was immediately willing to have sex with the still beautiful female demon. Following this moment of ecstasy, she was ready to visit Linden Avenue.

She landed on the roof. Her talons clutched the ridge while her searching senses sought the best place to leave the offspring she had now given birth to. She held it with one claw: it was nothing but a small, soft egg, no bigger than a cherry and easy to hide.

Her thoughts detected the way she needed to get inside. She searched again, then flew to an upstairs window and made herself thin as a thread. She slipped effortlessly in through a crack above the window-sill, then she was standing in the chosen room.

A young girl, about ten years old, was sleeping there. That didn’t matter. The child would never discover what was in the room, because demons of the night are invisible. They only appear in people’s bad dreams.

High up in one corner of the room was a cupboard that nobody used. It contained a lot of old ornaments from the Ice People’s heyday, when they had inherited priceless treasures from the Meidens and the Paladins. The cupboard was small and open at the front. Lilith moved some of the knick-knacks aside to make a cosy nest for the little egg. She placed it on a blue velvet cushion, putting the beautifully carved ivory bowl that had rested on the pillow next to it.

The job was done. With her thoughts she impressed her offspring with the instruction that it was to report to Tengel the Evil, then she slipped out of the crack under the window.

But Lilith had forgotten something. Or, rather, she wasn’t completely aware of what she was doing.

She didn’t know the identity of the child in the bed.

Of course, she must be a descendant of the Ice People, but she was not one of the stricken nor one of the chosen. So Vanja Lind of the Ice People could be considered harmless.

But in fact she was quite the opposite. She was the daughter of Ulvar, a cursed member of the Ice People, and, more importantly, she was the granddaughter of Lucifer, the Angel of Light, who had fallen from heaven and had become a black angel. Lilith should have known that, but someone else, who didn’t want her to know it, had blurred her insight. The Ice People had many allies now, more than they themselves realized.

In other words: Vanja wasn’t just anybody.

If someone else had been lying in that bed, they wouldn’t have noticed anything. They would have seen only a pillow with a bowl beside it. But Vanja saw more than that.

It was a while before she discovered it, because the cupboard was so tall. She was supposed to dust her room and keep it tidy, but she wasn’t very conscientious about housework. Nobody would ever bother to look at the top of the cupboard. Besides, you could hardly make out the objects that stood up there. She certainly didn’t need to dust the top of the cupboard – that was probably what Lilith had thought too.

One evening, after Vanja had gone to bed, she noticed something greyish up on the high shelf. She frowned. Didn’t that little bowl usually rest on the pillow? Now it was standing next to it and something else, unfamiliar and grey, lay there instead.

Oh, well. Agnete had probably moved things a bit. Except that Agnete, Vanja’s mother, didn’t normally bother about what Vanja’s room looked like. All that mattered to her was that the room was clean and tidy. Her mother would strip the bed and clean the room every Friday and would bring in clean, freshly ironed bed linen. Otherwise, Agnete insisted that the room was Vanja’s private quarters. Being a single mother of an only child wasn’t easy. She wanted to show respect and not seem too domineering. Nor did she treat her own child any differently from her foster-child, Benedikte. Benedikte was Henning’s daughter, and Vanja was Agnete’s. It could have been a delicate situation, but neither girl felt neglected. The family was doing fine.

What on earth was that thing up there? She would have to check during the day when it was lighter.

Vanja fell asleep, and for a while she forgot all about it.

Of course, the cherry-sized egg had grown. On the evening when she first saw it, it was the size of a chicken’s egg, because demon offspring grow fast. When she next became aware of the alien element on the high shelf, she had turned eleven – and by then she couldn’t avoid seeing it!

It was a summer evening and she was awake. In fact, the cupboard hung at such an angle that she couldn’t see the shelf from where she lay – if she wanted to see it, she had to stretch her neck or bend her head back.

This was what she was doing now, and she jerked violently. Were there rats in her room?

It wasn’t a rat. It was something that had climbed up the wall with the speed of lightning and disappeared into the cupboard. Now it was gazing at her with an intense, bright look.

An ugly little doll.

The creature was clearly just as surprised as she was. Vanja lay with her arms stretched over her head and her neck bent back. Yet the creature was just as frozen in its position. Vanja could clearly sense what it was thinking: “Can you see me?” Not “Who are you?” or “Help, is she coming to grab me?” but “Can you see me?” As if it, the creature, didn’t expect Vanja to see it. It was as if the creature thought it was invisible.

Yes, that really seemed to be the case.

The seconds passed, but neither of them moved.

What kind of a creature is it? Vanja thought. Her heart was pounding. Of course, she was frightened. Not just scared out of her wits at meeting something so incredibly strange, but also baffled.

It seemed more like a human child than an animal. It was about the size of a squirrel, with claws instead of nails, and it was naked, with bony limbs and all its ribs visible in its chest. Its face was grotesque, and a normal person would have found it horrible, but Vanja did not. It had narrow yellow eyes with vertical pupils like a cat’s. When Vanja finally moved, the creature opened its mouth, baring a row of pointed white teeth. Between them a tongue appeared, forked like a snake’s. Its skin was a strange green colour and it had prominent, sharp cheekbones. The creature was completely hairless, with two very large ears pointing straight up in the air. The cutest little tail you could imagine, long and pointed, hung over the edge of the shelf on which it sat.

Having gazed intently at this creature for a while and got used to the sight of it, Vanja began to relax. She whispered: “You’re such a charming little fellow!”

Then she smiled warmly. Vanja was a remarkably handsome child.

The creature bared its teeth again. Was that supposed to be a smile? If so, it was the most evil smile in the world.

Vanja sat up in bed facing the cupboard. “Why don’t you come down here? Look, you can lie in my doll’s bed if you like. You must be what I saw once before, and I must say you’ve certainly grown since then. That pillow is much too small for you. Come on, let me make your bed!”

The doll’s bed was just there as decoration in Vanja’s room. She had stopped playing with dolls ages ago.

“If you promise you won’t be nasty to me, I’ll get up and get everything ready for you. If you hop down and jump on my head, then I’ll chuck you out! Understand?”

The snake tongue appeared once more, and the creature let out a hissing sound. It did seem as if the little beast understood what she said, or certainly grasped her meaning.

Keeping one eye in the direction of the cupboard, Vanja put on her slippers and slipped over to the corner where the doll’s bed stood. As she stood on the floor, the little creature stood up, and Vanja could see that her visitor was a little boy.