Then Comes the Child Read online

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Staring deep into your eyes.”

  “You read too many bad novels.”

  “Probably.”

  “You know what?”

  “Hmm.”

  “We haven’t done a damn thing all day and I’m exhausted.” She sat up. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and she curled against his chest. “Whaddya say we call it an early night?”

  “Sorry, sweetheart, I’ve got to finish the article tonight. Can’t stop when I’m on a roll, you know.”

  “God forbid.”

  He blinked and laughed. “You know,” he said. “I think you’ve been hanging around with me too long; my cynicism is rubbing off on you.”

  She stood, the couch shawl draped over her shoulders. “I’m hungry,” she said.

  He followed her into the kitchen and they ate leftovers from their lunch that afternoon at Monica’s. They went into the bedroom and he tucked her in, gave her a good night kiss and talked with her until she kicked him out.

  He went to the den.

  11.

  Dennis wondered if the chill he felt in the hallway was real or perceived. As soon as he sat at his desk and looked at the position of everything, just as it had been last night, he felt ill at ease.

  “It was a dream,” he muttered. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d dozed off in front of the computer.

  He turned on the desk lamp and turned off the rest of the lights in the office. Alison would have yelled at him that he was going to wreck his eyesight, but he needed just enough light to reduce the glare of the screen. The rest of his office was lined with bookshelves packed (much to Alison’s dismay) in severe disorder from top to bottom. The bar was just a mirrored alcove in the corner. There was a window in the back of the room with a TV and a chair.

  Dennis found himself checking the shadows behind him before he opened the file and got started. His eyes felt drawn to the hallway. He’d deliberately left the light on in the living room so that it wouldn’t be dark out there.

  I want to be able to see if something’s coming.

  Admitting that was true was disturbing in itself, but he wouldn’t dwell on it. He had work to do. He opened the file and re-read what he had written last night.

  Something in the darkness to his left caught his eye. Something gray.

  A figure.

  He looked up.

  She stood in the shadows just outside the reach of his desk lamp. Alison. Naked and pale. She tilted her head and her hair fell over her shoulders in a silken wave. When she smiled, it was more like a grin.

  Dennis froze in his seat. Something inside told him to get up and get out, but something else just as powerful was drawn to the macabre beauty of the figure before him.

  That’s not Alison.

  He knew in his heart that was true. Its face was shaped like hers, but the eyes were darker, almost black. And her expression had never been so...hungry.

  She came fully into the light, but none of its warmth seemed to touch her. Her skin was white with a tinge of blue. Her curves were fuller, the breasts were different. Everything about this creature before him was too perfect.

  “Who...?”

  Who are you? Say it, man.

  What are you?

  The woman that looked like Alison came to him at his desk again. He felt himself become aroused as soon as her fingers began working to open his jeans. He was holding his breath, knowing that this was really happening but not sure how—or if—he wanted to stop it.

  She freed his erection and he felt her slender fingers wrap around him securely and begin stroking him. He swelled in her hands. She climbed atop and guided him into her.

  As soon as she thrust down to drive him deep inside her, Dennis caught his breath at the biting cold that chafed his skin. She was dry as a bone and cold as ice and yet, as she moved above him it was a wild fluid motion, combined with her hypnotic caress and the exquisite look of pleasure upon her face, her lips parted ever so slightly, white teeth barely visible beyond those pink lips, the heaving rise and fall of her breasts as she rode him.

  Instinctively he grabbed her hips and rammed into her as she growled and gasped with a shuddering breath.

  He stood away from the chair and carried her with him to the top of the desk; heedless of whatever lay there. He lifted her onto the desk’s edge and drove into her, gripping the small of her back and guiding her movements. She met his increased intensity with an uncanny matching rhythm that felt better than anything he’d felt before.

  In a shuddering explosion of release, he clutched her and gave a final thrust as he came.

  He opened his eyes and it suddenly occurred to him what he’d done...knowing that this woman—no matter how remarkable—was not his wife.

  Her grin suddenly lengthened, lips stretching, and the bones of her jaw seemed to widen. Her chin sharpened and her eyes.…

  Oh, God, her eyes.

  He was suddenly clutching a black scaly thing in the shape of a woman. Over its shoulders he saw the end of a tail whip at the edges of shadow and it disappeared from view to slither up between his legs. Black wings unfurled, veiny and leathery, pointed and jagged like the black wings of a bat. The wings spread, then curled and folded themselves behind this foul creature before him.

  He realized he was still inside the thing.

  As soon as he tried to pull out, the biting cold suddenly became unbearable. Something that felt like two rows of teeth closed around the base of his scrotum and bit into his groin.

  Dennis gasped in pain and caught his breath.

  The woman-thing suddenly screeched and slapped him with fingers that were sharp like talons and as she dragged her claws across his face, she sliced the skin open in four deep gashes. In the same violent movement she yanked away from him with those cold teeth still tightly gripped. He felt ripping pain as it laid open the flesh of his penis and left him raw.

  He screamed and fell from the chair onto the floor, clutching his groin. He felt the stickiness of blood on his hands as he collapsed on his side and curled up on the floor.

  There was a sudden silence in the room as he caught his breath to scream again. The woman had disappeared. Sparkling spots danced before his eyes and he struggled to maintain consciousness—pain seared him, gripped him—he felt the urge to vomit and choked, gagged until all that was left was stinging bile.

  12.

  The ride to the emergency room was awkward to say the least.

  All he could say on the way there was, “I thought it was you, Ali. I swear to God, it was you.”

  She didn’t say anything. She hardly knew what to say at all. She just kept repeating, “Okay, hang on.”

  All Dennis could do was apply pressure to try and stop the bleeding until they got him stitched and bandaged. Several awkward moments were spent with the doctors as they asked him what the hell happened. They were thinking, he could see, that he’d tried to have sex with a food processor.

  What the hell did happen?

  He had to explain to Alison the best he could in short bursts between visits from the nurses and she looked at him like he was crazy.

  The ride home wasn’t much better.

  Just before they turned down the street to get to the house, she stopped the car at a stop sign and said, “God, Dennis, what the hell were you thinking? It was some other woman...you must know that but, I...I don’t understand what you’re telling me. It sounds crazy. This—” she gestured at his bandaged groin, “is crazy! You know that. I’m sorry you’re hurt, but....” She shook her head and couldn’t finish.

  “I know.” He stared out the window. What could he say?

  This is easily the very worst moment of my recent life, he thought. Making it all the more bitter was the fact that he’d laid on the couch with Alison not more than twelve hours ago in that mythical state of marital bliss.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I really didn’t...” and he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t
lie again and say he thought it was her.

  “Think it was me.” She drove stoically to the house.

  They parked and she helped him inside. He couldn’t walk well due to the nature of the bandages and so he had to hobble in and plant himself on the couch.

  Alison, God bless her, did a fantastic job of taking care of him despite the circumstances. They talked more about it later after it had a chance to sink in, and he explained his experience the night before, too.

  “That’s why you asked me if I’d been in the den?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She was silent for a few, long minutes. “I found the empty bottle of Wild Turkey next to your desk.” She paused. “And another bottle in the wastepaper basket.” She kept her voice even, not wanting to sound accusatory after what he had been through. Whatever the hell he had been through.

  “You think I was drunk? That I made this all up?” Dennis gestured with both hands pointed towards his crotch. “Okay, I can see how I could have some hot drunken fantasy after a few too many drinks, but come on, Ali, shit! Did you see what happened to me? Do you think I could inflict this kind of damage on myself?”

  Alison lowered her eyes and shook her head. She sighed loudly. She didn’t know what to think. “It just doesn’t make any sense, Dennis. It’s all too, too....”

  “Fucked up is what it is. All too fucked up. You go ahead and think it’s the booze if you want. I’m in too much pain to fucking deal with this right now.”

  “Dennis, I....”

  “No. No, don’t say anything else. Just go on to bed and we’ll talk about this when I’m not hurting so bad.”

  Alison hovered around him for a moment, pacing, shifting from one leg to the next, unsure of leaving him alone on the couch. “Goodnight,” she said quietly.

  She left.

  Dennis yanked one of the couch throw pillows from behind his back and threw it across the living room in a rage. “Shit!” he said aloud, and punched the couch cushion he was lying on which jolted his entire body and sent a shockwave of pain coursing through him. He groaned and closed his eyes.

  13.

  Alison ran a bath and undressed, sliding into the tub to wash the invisible and probably imagined E.R. germs from her flesh. She hated hospitals. She had been in too many of them, been poked and prodded by too many specialists. Hospitals only provided her with pain, the possibility of agony and the stench of failure and death. She leaned her head back on the tub ledge, the white, fizzy bubbles hissing in her ears. If only she could wash the night’s events away as easily as she could wash her skin. She laughed. Night’s events. Good grief! What were the night’s events? Hell if she knew.

  She pulled the plug to the tub with her feet, absently watching the silver, metal beaded chain dangle between her toes—lost in thought.

  Toweling off, she pulled on a robe and walked into the bedroom. Dennis sat there in his boxers watching her, eyes flashing with unchecked lust. She laughed. “You should be sleeping.”

  “I heard the bath running.”

  “No, really. You should be sleeping. The doctor said for you to get some rest and....”

  Dennis snatched her in his arms and yanked her close. He grabbed her face and roughly held her chin as he pushed his tongue into her mouth.

  “Dennis, I....”

  He pushed the robe from her shoulders, hands groping her breasts.

  “The doctor said no sex. How can you even feel like doing anything with your....” She stopped and looked at him strangely—eyes staring at his groin and then back to his face that bore deep scratches earlier in the living room. “With your injuries?”

  Dennis smiled but didn’t say anything, only tried to kiss her again. She wriggled from his arms and backed against the wall. “Where are your bandages?” her voice cracked, laden with fear.

  He walked towards her. She turned to make an evasive move, but he planted his arms firmly against the wall on each side of her, and flattened her against the cold, textured plaster that prickled her naked back.

  “Let me go. I don’t like you being this way.”

  One of his hands traced the curves of her body, over her buttocks, over her stomach. He kissed her neck. She shoved against him. “Please! Let me go!”

  His hand explored her warm slit, and he shoved three fingers into her—hard. She gasped, shocked. “Ow!” she protested. “Stop it, damn it!” Alison kicked at him, not wanting to hurt him, but then, something about the way he kept looking at her with an almost a predatory stare sent shivers over her flesh. This wasn’t her husband. This wasn’t Dennis. “Who are you?” she blurted. And then, not caring to know, she hit the man who wore Dennis’ face as hard as she could in the jaw. He flinched slightly and then laughed.

  Not Dennis’ laugh, nor the laugh of any man she knew, but a low, reverberating growl that was more like guttural grunts than laughter. She shuddered involuntarily.

  With a scowl the man that looked like Dennis grabbed her hair and dragged her to the bed. She reached up and tried to hold onto the hair above her scalp, tried to grab onto the man’s wrists, but instead he flung her onto the mattress. Alison kicked her legs and flailed her arms wildly, and then a shocked silence enveloped her. She froze.

  The man, the thing, in front of her, peeled back layers of peachy flesh in two halves, as if the hand of God, or Satan, had reached out and unzipped a suit of skin. From between the falling skin, a beast emerged, black with glistening fangs, and a scaly body. Wings unfolded behind it and a jagged tail whipped to one side like a striking cobra.

  Alison moved her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Her mouth formed a wide O, but her voice choked somewhere in her throat.

  The beast crawled over her, roughly pinning her legs to the mattress—spread wide—and a thick, hard phallus jutted and bobbed from the scaled creature. Realization slammed into Alison’s brain and she let rip an ear-shattering shriek as the horrific beast thrust its huge member deep inside of her.

  She felt as if someone rammed a twelve-inch icicle inside of her. She screamed repeatedly as the hulking thing continued to pump into her.

  Slowly the winged creature ran its barbed tongue over her nipples, biting her flesh. Blood trickled over her and the thing’s talons chewed into her arms as it restrained her. Harder it beat within her. Surely this beast would rip her in two. “Please!” she begged, but it didn’t hear her, wouldn’t hear her, only snorted, grunted, and strained on top of her until at last in a frenzied blast it ejaculated its poison into her, and pulled itself dripping and spent from her folds.

  Alison sobbed. The beast bent over and noisily slurped and lapped at the blood that seeped from the bites across her breasts. And then it smiled.

  She screamed again and again and again.

  The thing suddenly lifted its weight from atop her and dissolved into thin air.

  She rolled from the bed and limped through the hall, screaming insanely towards the living room.

  14.

  On the couch, Dennis awoke, pain flashing through his body as he jumped to his feet. Before him Alison stood screaming, blood pouring from a dozen wounds across her chest and breasts, cuts and abrasions over her belly and thighs and something thick and gelatinous oozing down her legs.

  “My god!” he gasped.

  Alison hugged herself, half-screaming at him with words that were incomplete and jumbled.

  He grabbed her arms. “Tell me what happened!”

  She grew quiet and sucked in a deep breath. She shook her head from side to side, confused. “I don’t know.” Sobbing she leaned her head on his shoulder.

  Dennis felt his heart crash against his ribs, so loud he could feel the blood pounding in his ears with each heartbeat. “Was it a black scaly woman with wings?” he blurted. There he said it. It sounded insane, but he had said it, damn it.

  Alison shivered, her whole body quaking against his. “It was a man. A black, scaly man.” She panted as if out of breath. “With wings. It, it raped me.” The word
s left her lips—but they seemed foreign. Like nothing she ever imagined she’d say. But it had happened; it really had happened. She breathed out in a giant gasp.

  Dennis wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. He didn’t have any words to comfort her. He didn’t have any explanations. He was as afraid and helpless as she was and it scared the hell out of him.

  “It was like some sort of...demon or something. Fangs. Wings. A tail. Oh, my god, Dennis! What happened?” Alison wailed.

  Demon. An idea dawned on him. He pulled her by the hand.

  “Come here,” he said, hobbling through the hall to the bedroom.

  “What? What? I don’t want to go back there!”

  “Just come, it’s gone now, come here, I need to show you something.” He pulled her gently along beside him, hand in hand, and crossed into the bedroom. He walked to his dresser and yanked open a drawer, the bending motion sending new waves of pain through him. He rifled through his socks until he came up with a small, black stone figure and held it out in front of Alison.

  “Was this it?”

  Alison’s hands flew to her mouth and she screamed. “Oh, god!”

  Dennis went to her.

  They embraced for a few moments while she cried. He was acutely aware of the stone figure he held in one hand as they embraced. It seemed to sting his warm flesh with a freezing chill. Suddenly, she flinched. When she pulled her face away from him, he touched a fresh bruise on her cheek.

  Damn it!

  She put a hand to her cheek, and turned to look in the mirror hanging over the dresser. She looked back at the figure in his open hand and with a frown asked, “Where did it come from?” Her brown eyes shone with the pain of what had happened to her. The hurt, the fear, the sudden insecurity of the situation—knowing that they had both been attacked by these...entities that disappeared into thin air. She searched his face for an answer to her question.

  “It’s...a voodoo fertility fetish. It’s called Kokomon, Koko, oh, hell, Kokumuo. That’s it!”