Straight to Heaven (29 page)

First, there was my body. I had no injuries. Not so much as a bruise or a scrape. In fact, other than the glass in my hair, there was no evidence that I’d been hit by a car.

“Keep moving,” the prison matron ordered.

I obliged, but walked slowly as I continued to ponder the evidence. Besides my physical proof, there was the strange jail cell and the fact that I’d been allowed to keep my cell phone and purse. In a real prison, I would have been fingerprinted, posed for a mug shot, and had my belongings confiscated. Lastly, there was the hallway I was now walking. Not only was it the longest corridor I’d ever seen, my tired legs told me that I was travelling steadily downhill.

This place I was in, this anonymous bureaucratic building, was nothing like the terrifying images of damnation that the nuns had conjured up when I’d been in Catholic school, but I sure as hell wasn’t in Heaven.

Panicked, I stopped walking again. Fear locked my joints like rigor mortis. I pressed myself against the wall and started to cry.

I was in Hell! The realm where the damned were punished. A place worse than the strange jail cell with the bruiser cellmate. Far worse. I swore I could already feel the Devil’s pitchforks under my fingernails, and his fire blistering the soles of my feet.

“Please,” I begged my guard. My stomach pitched, and I was sure I’d throw up all over that polished linoleum floor. “Don’t make me go.” I was shaking now, violently. My teeth rattled together in my mouth. “I can’t go through with this!”

The guard was slack-jawed with amazement. “What is wrong with you?”

Beyond shame, I dropped to my knees and grabbed her around the legs. “Please, take me back.”

A door opened. “What’s going on out there?” a woman’s voice asked.

“She says she doesn’t want to go.” The guard tried to pry me off her legs, but I clung to her like a toddler who’s had a nightmare.

“Lilith Straight, get in here. Right now! We don’t have time for your silliness.” The owner of the voice stepped into the hallway. She was older than me by about three decades, but her forties-era film-star elegance would have turned a lot of heads. She was like Katharine Hepburn, maybe. Or Grace Kelly. The kind of woman who could wear pearls with a cardigan and look elegant, not prissy. Her hair and makeup were old school – short, permed curls, deep red lipstick and heavy eyebrows – but it worked for her. She was graceful and poised, sexy and chic. In short, she was not the Devil’s torturer.

I let go of the guard’s legs.

“That’s better,” the older woman said. “I’m Miss Spry, your supervisor. Now come along, and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.” She held out a be-ringed hand which I took. She may have looked sixty-something, but her firm grip marked her as a younger woman.

She led me to the door, but I balked, still not convinced that I wasn’t heading for the iron maiden or the rack.

“Come along, Lilith.” She tugged on my hand.

Bracing myself, I stepped through. Instead of finding myself amid the fiery pits of Hell, I entered an office. Not a government bureaucrat-type office with filing cabinets and computers, but a gentlewoman’s study. A delicate writing desk stood in front a pair of French doors overlooking a well-manicured garden. An enormous, potted palm sat near a painted silk screen, and a Persian carpet covered the floor. If this was Hell, then the nuns had gotten it all wrong.

Miss Spry guided me to a chintz-covered chair while she sat behind her desk. She put on a pair of steel-rimmed reading glasses. “Ms. Straight, I will get right to the point. You were hit by a car earlier, but you are not dead. Not quite.”

I felt my mood lift the tiniest bit. Not dead? Was I just in a coma? Or, better yet, drugged up and dreaming? I held my breath, waiting.

“You’re, let us say, in between realms.” She pushed a sheet of monogrammed note paper towards me and drew three dots. “This,” she said, pointing to one, “is where you came from. Call it ‘life’ if you want. This,” she pointed to another, “is where you would have ended up if I hadn’t prevented it. You can think of it as ‘death’.” She drew a line connecting all three dots, making a triangle. “Right now, you’re in the middle.”

“What’s that third one?” I pointed to the dot she hadn’t named.

“Don’t worry about that.”

Not worrying was the last thing I was capable of right now. I just had to know. “But what is it?”

Her eyes went hot. That’s the only word I can think of to describe it. An enraged fire blazed behind them, making it perfectly clear that no matter how much this Miss Spry looked like Katharine Hepburn, she was not. Her unearthly rage instantly rekindled my fears about demons and pitchforks and hellfire. The room, despite its French doors and view of the garden, was not a safe place. I shrank back in my chair.

“We don’t talk about that one,” she said, clearly enunciating each word. I nodded quickly, eager to show her that I did understand.

“Now you are in the center of all this.” She put a little X in the middle of the triangle. Her temper had blown over in an instant, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Not living, not dead. Right.” So what did that make me? A zombie? A vampire?

Miss Spry smiled slightly, as if guessing my thoughts. “My dear, you are a succubus.”

My jaw went slack. A
succubus
?

There was a knock at the door, then the prison guard entered pushing a tea tray. Miss Spry thanked her and began pouring tea from a china pot. She offered me a cookie from a silver tray.

A succubus? In college, I’d taken a course on mythology and remembered that a succubus was a female demon with insatiable sexual desires who slept with men before sucking out their souls. And now
I
was supposed to be one of these creatures? Was this woman kidding me?

“I’m an elementary school teacher,” I told her.

“I know.”

“I haven’t had sex in over a year.”

She pursed her lips. “Let’s just keep that to ourselves, shall we?”

“Look at me,” I insisted. I stood up to give her the full view. Since the divorce, I’d added several extra pounds. I also hadn’t had the money to visit a salon so my roots showed under the dye job and highlights. My nails, once perfectly manicured, were bitten to the quick. “I’m a soccer mom, not a super model.” I had a thought. “Maybe you’re confusing me with my stepsister Jasmine?”

“No, you’re the one,” she said firmly. “My dear, it’s what’s in here that counts.” She tapped the side of her head.

“What’s in here?” My voice was climbing octaves, making me shrill. “What’s in here is trying to make sure that my daughter has clean underwear every day, and that she’s done her homework. And that my niece, Ariel, isn’t going to burn down the house again. And that my sister doesn’t get a hold of my credit cards. And that there’s enough cat litter in the house so that the cat won’t start peeing in the plants…”

“Ms. Straight.”

“And then there’s my ex-husband. Don’t even get me started on him…”

“Ms. Straight!”

I was pacing now, too aggravated to sit still. “And my job. My stupid job. You’d think the school district would want to hire a woman with a master’s degree in women’s studies, but no! How am I supposed to pay bills on a substitute teaching job?”

“Sit down!” The eyes behind Miss Spry’s steel-rimmed glasses glowed hotly.

I sat.

“Now drink your tea, and listen.”

I took the cup with a trembling hand and took a careful sip. After years of living with my stepfather, the tea expert, I consider myself quite an authority, yet I’d never tasted tea like this. It was strong but not bitter. Its rich flavor reminded me of fall leaves, the smell of the first frost, and honey.

“How much do you know about your family?” Miss Spry asked. When I shrugged, she said. “Did you know that your mother was a succubus?”

My mother, the ex-hippie, who claimed that she’d traveled (and slept) with every rock-n-roll legend who’d ever tuned a guitar at Woodstock. My mother who would willingly tell anyone (her hairdresser, her gynecologist, the paper boy) about the time she’d spent with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters aboard their psychedelic bus. My mother whose freak flag could have been the official banner of Haight-Ashbury. My open-yourself-to-all-experiences mother was a succubus.

At last, something that made sense.

She continued. “Your grandmother, too, was a succubus.”

My
grandmother
? I’d never met my grandmother – she’d long died before I was born – but I still couldn’t imagine it.

“As was her mother and her mother and so on. It’s a line of women extending back to Sarah Goodswain.”

Sarah Goodswain? I’d never heard of her. My mother wasn’t one for genealogies, and I wondered if she even knew this information.

“Sarah was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1723 and, in 1744, she was arrested for being a witch.” Miss Spry smiled slightly. “She wasn’t a witch, of course; none of those young women were. But Sarah was a clever girl. She realized that the only way to escape hanging was to do exactly what she’d been accused of and make a deal.”

A deal? With whom, the Devil? Could people actually do that? Then again, I was hardly an expert on religion. Yes, I’d gone to Catholic school, but that place had taught me only two things: (1) everything I did was a sin and (2) I hated God as much as he hated me. When Grace went through a religious phase and asked me about God, I acted like he was a bad boyfriend. “You’re better off without him. Trust me,” was all I’d said.

“So you’re telling me that my great-great something grandmother made a deal with the Devil?”

“We don’t use that word here,” Miss Spry said tartly. “Let’s just say that Sarah made a deal with someone who could get her out of prison and away from Cotton Mather and his father. She promised that she would do the Master’s bidding in return for her freedom. But the Master is clever, too, and he drives a hard bargain.” Miss Spry’s eyes twinkled. Clearly she admired this Master person. “He made Sarah agree that every female descendent in her line would follow her path and become a succubus. And that path, Ms. Straight, has finally led to you.”

I shoved my cup aside, slopping tea over Miss Spry’s spotless desk. “Don’t I get a say in all of this? I mean, a succubus? A demon that sleeps with strange men? No. Way.”

“First of all, you are not a demon. You
house
a demon. The same demon that your mother and grandmother had. In fact, the same demon that Sarah herself had. You are essentially still human, but now a demon shares space inside of you, and gifts you with its powers.”

I started to object, but she held up her hand. “Secondly, a succubus is a seducer, Lilith, not a slut. It isn’t so bad.”

“It’s not so bad! Are you
kidding
me?” I leaned forward in my chair. “What if I refuse?” I might have acted brave, but my legs trembled and my mouth was bone dry.

I expected the older woman’s eyes to go hot again, but instead she smiled. “You may choose not to become a succubus if you wish.”

There was an unspoken ‘but’ at the end of that sentence. I just knew it.

Miss Spry didn’t disappoint me. “But then, of course, you’ll remain here.” She hesitated just a moment. “Dead.”

Dead. The word hit like a jab to the solar plexus, and I sank backwards in my seat. “I can’t be dead! I know I was hit by a car, but still.” I stood up. “I mean, look at me! I look fine. I
feel
fine.” I spun in a little circle. “No injuries. No scars.”

She shrugged. “Believe me. You
are
dead. In fact right now, your broken body is crumpled on the road, and a stray dog is lapping up your blood. But don’t worry. The funeral director will do a fine job of covering up the damage, so your young daughter won’t have to witness the gruesome condition of your corpse. Of course, it won’t prevent her from becoming hysterical when she sees you lying in your coffin.”

Miss Spry’s cunning little smile lit a fire inside me. “You can’t do this!” I lunged across the desk. Miss Spry lifted her hand in defense, throwing me across the room. I hit the wall so hard that all the air in my lungs expelled in a single gasp. My chest ached as I sucked wind.

Miss Spry left her desk to stand over me. Her face was hard; her eyes hot. “You either become a succubus, or you die and the next female takes your place. Either way, the line will continue unbroken. There are no exceptions.”

Die now or allow the Devil to take my soul. It wasn’t much of a choice. Still, I didn’t have to think it over. My mother had abandoned me when I was a child, and I wouldn’t do that to my own daughter. When my lungs reached equilibrium, I gasped, “Fine. I’ll do it.”

Miss Spry nodded. “Good. I’ll return you to your world, and you can resume your life. When I need you, you’ll be summoned. And you
will
come.” I’d spent maybe half an hour with this woman, but I already knew that tone and that expression. Miss Spry would not be crossed. If she said come, I came.

As it turned out, I hadn’t been wrong about what would happen to me in that place; I was just wrong about who would be owning me. It wasn’t the woman in the prison cell after all. No, I was Miss Spry’s bitch.

When I came back to reality, I was standing on the same sidewalk where, seemingly ages ago, I’d been texting Jasmine. My hip ached, either from the impact of the car hitting me or the impact of Miss Spry throwing me against the wall. I couldn’t be sure.

In fact, I couldn’t be sure about any of it. I still had my purse, and my cell phone was in my pocket. Yet, at the same time, I was missing a shoe, my watch was broken, and tire tracks climbed up the side of my slacks. Feeling sick and disoriented, I heaved up my guts all over the clean sidewalk in one of the nicest suburbs in the city.

It was my guess that succubi generally don’t do this as it’s not very attractive.

My head felt strangely empty, like I needed to remember something important. The jail cell, the conversation with Miss Spry, even the taste of the tea…all of these things were pieces to a puzzle I couldn’t solve. I drove numbly, obeying all of the traffic laws out of habit, but not really paying attention to what I was doing.

By the time I got home, it was fully dark, and every light in the townhouse blazed. I sat in the car for several minutes, trying to think of how to explain the missing shoe, the tire tracks up my pant leg, and the fact that I had borrowed Jas’s purse without her permission. At last, I simply gave up and went inside, figuring whatever happened, happened.