Edward Lee - Succubi

Erik sat back down. “I could handle that, though. Sometimes they made me look in the mirror. And they always made me watch the hustig.”

“The what?”

“The rituals. Watching those was worse than torture.”

“Why didn’t you just leave?”

“Couldn’t. The closer you are to them, the more power they have over you.”

“I see,” Dr. Greene said. “But let’s backtrack a minute, okay? We were talking about your voice. What exactly did they do?”

“Oh, yeah. They stuck an awl in my throat.”

“As punishment for insubordination?”

“Yeah.”

“Erik, the night you were arrested, you told the police that muggers stuck an awl in your throat.”

“I lied.”

“Why?”

“I was scared. I didn’t know what was happening. But I know now, so I can tell the truth and it won’t matter.”

“Why doesn’t it matter?”

Erik laughed. “Because I’m in a mental hospital now. They don’t care what I say because they know no one will believe me. They’re the ones who got me put here.”

“Erik, the police caught you burying bodies in a field off Route 154. Do you deny that?”

“No,” Erik Tharp said. “That was my job. After a hüsl, I had to bury the bodies. They decided I was too hard to control, so after the last hustig, they told the cops where I’d be. The whole thing was a setup.”

“Okay, Erik. Tell me more about the bodies. Some of them were children, babies. Why did you kill them? For the hüsls?”

“No, no, I didn’t kill any of them, I just buried them, and, yeah, I snatched some people, sure, but I never killed anyone.”

“You snatched people?”

“I abducted people for them, that was my job too. Hitchhikers, runaways, people like that, people who weren’t local.”

“What about the babies, Erik? Did you abduct the babies too?”

“No.”

“Then who did?”

“No one. They weren’t abductions.”

“Then—”

“I don’t want to talk about the babies anymore.”

Dr. Greene nodded. “All right, Erik. Tell me about the—”

“I don’t want to talk about anything anymore.”

Erik Tharp put his head down on the table and began to cry.

Dr. Harold ejected the tape. Now he knew exactly what Dr. Greene meant. Erik Tharp displayed no signs of story-mixing, referencing, or even lying. Most clinical psychiatrists could spot lying in a matter of minutes by gauging facial inflections via question structure. Only a pathological mind set could repress such inflections, and Erik Tharp clearly was not pathological.

Next were transcripts of a court authorized narcoanalysis, a process in which all conscious mental barriers were dropped with hypnotic drugs. “T” was for Tharp. “G” was for Greene. A light dose of a drug called scopolamine maintained unconsciousness without dropping most brain wave activity. It was even harder to lie under narcoanalysis.

G: How many people did you kill, Erik?

T: None.

G: Why were you burying bodies?

T: Bludcynn.

G: Erik, were you part of a satanic cult?

T: Dohtor.

G: What?

T: Dother fo Dother.

G: Erik, tell me about the cult.

T: Hüsl. Blood. Bludcynn. Dother fo Dother. I am peow. I am wreccan. We are all wreccan for the face in the mirror.

G: What do you see in the mirror, Erik?

T: Hell.

G: You see hell?

T: Her.

G: Who?

(patient begins to convulse. A waves erratic.)

T: They make us wreccan for her. I am wreccan. I have no soul.

G: What happened to your soul, Erik?

T: They gave it to her. They fuck.

(A waves still jumping. Heart rate 121.)

T: They fuck us and make us wreccan. For her.

G: Erik, who is her?

T: Dohtor.

G: Erik, what is dohtor?

T: Dother fo Dother. Liiiiii… Liiiiii… Liiiii

(Patient’s eyes are open, lacrimation evident. Heart rate 148.)

T: I am brygorwreccan, I am digger. Scierors cut, cokkers cook. We are hüslpegns. We work for them. They eat, they fuck, they kill—for her.

G: Who is her, Erik?

T: Liiiiii… Liiiiii… Arrrrrrdaaaaa—

(Patient screams. A waves cessate to REM levels, heart rate drops steadily, Narcoanalysis suspended as patient no longer responds.)

Two weeks later they’d attempted hypnosynthesis: hypnotic vocal commands in conjunction with fluctuating doses of sodium amobarbital, which kept the patient’s subconscious accessible without inducing high autonomic responses. The idea was to solicit the patient in the first or second stage of sleep, which weren’t dream stages.

T: They practiced these rituals.

G: What kind of rituals, Erik?

T: They worshipped this…thing.

G: Yes?

T: This…demon.

G: Tell me about the demon, Erik.

T: They made me watch, they made us all watch.

(Patient’s voice is regulated, monotonal. Heart rate 67.)

G: What did they make you watch, Erik?

T: They cut people up alive. They hate all outsiders.

G: Why do they hate outsiders, Erik?

T: They hate anyone out of the bludcynn, especially men.

G: Because of the demon? They hate men because of the demon?

T: It lives on hate.

G: What lives on hate, Erik? The demon?

T: They like to cause pain, because it likes pain.

G: Who, Erik? The cult? The demon?

T: They like to cut cocks off of guys.

(Interviewer pauses.)

G: What?

T: They eat people after they’re done torturing them. They cut off their heads and make us cook the heads. On feks they’d sacrifice kids. It was all part of the preparation.

G: Preparation for what, Erik?

T: The Fulluht Loc.

G: What’s that, Erik? I don’t know what that is.

T: They love to fuck. They love to fuck and kill people, torture people. That’s their power—fucking. It’s in their eyes. Their eyes are like the mirror. They make you look in their eyes while they’re fucking you. Lots of times they made us fuck corpses, ’cause it gets them off.

(Interviewer pauses. Patient is trembling, perspiring.)

G: Tell me about the fulluht, Erik.

T: I buried the bodies when the feks were over. That was my job. It was also my job to bring in the hüsls.

G: What’s a hüsl, Erik?

T: They cooked heads.

G: What?

T: Girls they pretty much just sacrificed. They’d chain them up downstairs, save them for the important hustigs.

G: What’s a hustig, Erik?

T: They did the worst shit to the guys. Guys were their fun. They hate men because it hates men.

G: Erik, I want you to tell me about the terms you’re using. Tell me about fulluht, wîhan, hüsl. What do these words mean?

T: Fucking is their power. That’s how they worship her.

G: The demon, you mean. What’s the demon’s name?

T: I got a lot of hüsls picking up hitchhikers or drunks. Girls I got mainly hitchhiking.

G: Erik, let’s backtrack a little, okay?

T: I’d bring these guys down, usually at gunpoint. Sometimes I’d have to knock them out. The munucs would take it from there.

G: What’s a munuc, Erik? Is a munuc someone in the cult?

T: They’d fuck these guys, and sometimes they’d kill him while they were fucking him, they really got off on that. The wifmunuc loved it, she’d do it all the time.

G: Is the wifmunuc the leader of the cult?

T: This guy, the wreccans held him down and they cut the guy’s cock off just like that, and then the scierors skinned him right there on the slab, and I swear to God this poor guy was still alive when they tossed him in the fire. They did all kinds of awful shit like that, things you wouldn’t believe, like sometimes the scierors’d cut a guy open while the munucs were fucking him, and a lot of times the wifford would sit on a guy’s face so he couldn’t see what was going on while the other munucs took turns blowing him, and then just like that they’d cut his cock off, he’d never even know it was coming, and he’s shooting blood all over the place running around screaming and then they’d throw the guy right into the fire, and I’ll tell you something, it takes a while for a guy to die in a fire pit, I’ve seen them lashing around in there screaming their heads off while they’re turning black, and a lot of times they’d try to crawl out and the munucs would just laugh it up and order the cokkers to push him back in, it’s a sight I’ll tell you seeing some poor guy sizzling alive in the pit and screaming and screaming and the girls in the pens would be watching this and they’d be screaming too there was so much screaming man screaming and shrieking and the munucs laughing it was so bad you couldn’t think it was so bad sometimes you’d just want to die…