The Demon Lover (2 page)

“S
o, Dr. McFay, can you tell me how you first became interested in the sex lives of demon lovers?”

The question was a bit jarring, coming as it did from a silver-chignoned matron in pearls and a pink tweed Chanel suit. But I’d gotten used to questions like these. Since I’d written the bestselling book
Sex Lives of the Demon Lovers
(the title adapted from my thesis,
The Demon Lover in Gothic Literature: Vampires, Beasts, and Incubi
), I’d been on a round of readings, lectures, and, now, job interviews that focused on the
sex
in the title. I had a feeling, though, that Elizabeth Book, as dean of a college with a prominent folklore department, might genuinely be more interested in the
demon lovers
of the title.

It was the folklore department that had brought me to the interview. It certainly wasn’t the college—second-tier Fairwick College, enrollment 1,600 students, 120 full-time faculty, 30 part-time (“We pride ourselves on our excellent teacher to student ratio,” Dr. Book had gushed earlier). Or the town: Fairwick, New York, population 4,203, a faded Catskill village shadowed by mountains and bordered by a thousand acres of virgin forest. A great place if your hobbies were snowshoeing and ice fishing, but not if your tastes ran, as mine did, to catching the O’Keeffe show at the Whitney, shopping at Barneys, and dining out at the new Bobby Flay restaurant.

And it wasn’t that I hadn’t had plenty of other interviews. While most new Ph.D.s had to fight for job offers, because of the publicity surrounding
Sex Lives
I had already had two offers (from tiny colleges in the Midwest that I’d turned down) and serious interest from New York University, my undergraduate alma mater and first choice since I was determined to stay in New York City. Nor was I as financially desperate as many of my friends who had student loans to pay back. A small trust fund left by my parents had paid for college and grad school and I still had a little left over to supplement my teaching income. Still, I wasn’t sure about NYU yet, and Fairwick was worth considering if only for its folklore department. Few colleges had one and I’d been intrigued by the approach the college took, combining anthropology, English, and history into one interdisciplinary department. It jibed well with my interests—fairy tales and Gothic fiction—and it had been refreshing to be interviewed by a committee of cross-discipline professors who were interested in something other than the class I taught on vampires. Not that all of them were fans. An American history professor named Frank Delmarco—a burly guy in a proletarian denim shirt rolled up to show off his muscular, hirsute forearms—had asked me if I didn’t think I was catering to the “lowest common denominator” by appealing to the popular craze for trashy vampire books.

“I teach Byron, Coleridge, and the Brontës in my classes,” I’d replied, returning his condescending smile. “I’d hardly call their work
trash.
”

I hadn’t mentioned that my classes also watched episodes of
Dark Shadows
and read Anne Rice. Or that my own interest in demon lovers wasn’t only scholarly. I was used to academic snobs turning up their noses at my subject area. So I phrased my answer to Elizabeth Book’s question carefully now that we were alone in her office.

“I grew up listening to my mother and father telling Scottish fairytales …” I began, but Dean Book interrupted me.

“Is that where you got your unusual name, Cailleach?” She pronounced it correctly—
Kay-lex
—for a change.

“My father was Scottish,” I explained. “My mother just loved the stories and culture so much that she went to St. Andrew’s, where she met my father. They were archaeologists interested in ancient Celtic customs—that’s how I got the name. But my friends call me Callie.” What I didn’t add was that my parents had died in a plane crash when I was twelve and that I’d gone to live with my grandmother on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Or that I remembered very little of my parents
besides
the fairy tales they told me. Or that the fairy tales had come to seem so real that one of the figures from those stories had haunted my dreams throughout my teens.

Instead I launched into the spiel I’d delivered a dozen times before—for my college essay, grad school interviews, the pitch for my book. How listening to my parents telling those old stories had fostered a love of folklore and fairy tales that had, in turn, inspired me to study the appearance of fairies, demons, and vampires in Romantic and Gothic literature. I had told the story so many times that it had begun to sound false to my ears. But I knew it was all true—or at least it had been when I first started telling it. I
had
felt a passion for the subject when I first realized that the stories my parents had told me when I was little existed in the outside world—or at least pieces of them did. I’d find traces of their stories in fairy tale collections and Gothic novels—from
The Secret Garden
and
The Princess and the Goblin
to
Jane Eyre
and
Dracula
. Perhaps I’d felt that if I could trace these stories down to their origins I would reclaim the childhood I’d lost when they died and I moved in with my conscientious, but decidedly chilly and austere, grandmother. Perhaps, too, I could find a clue to why I had such strange dreams after their deaths, dreams in which a handsome but shadowy young man, who I thought of as my fairytale prince, appeared in my room and told me fairy tales just as my parents had. But instead of becoming clearer, the stories my parents had told me had grown fainter … as if I’d worn them out with use. I’d become a very competent researcher, earned a doctorate, received awards for my thesis, and published a successful book. The dreams had ended, too, as if I’d exorcised them with all that scholarly research and analysis, which had sort of been the point. Hadn’t it? Only with the disappearance of the dreams—and my fairytale prince—the initial spark that had spurred my work had also gone out and I was struggling with ideas for my next book.

I sometimes wondered if the storytellers I documented—the shamans sitting around a campfire, the old women spinning wool as they unfurled their tales—ever grew bored with the stories they told and retold.

But the story still worked.

“You’re just what we’re looking for,” Elizabeth Book said when I’d finished.

Was she actually offering me the job here and now? The other universities where I’d interviewed had waited a seemly ten days to get back to me—and although I’d had two interviews and taught a sample class for NYU, I still wasn’t sure if they were going to hire me. If Dean Book was actually offering me a job, her approach was really refreshing—or a little desperate.

“That’s very flattering,” I began.

Dean Book leaned forward, her long double rope of pearls clicking together, and clasped her hands. “Of course you’ll have had other offers with the popularity of your subject. Vampires are all the rage now, aren’t they? And I imagine Fairwick College must look rather humble after NYU and Columbia, but I urge you to consider us. Folklore has been taught at Fairwick since its inception and the department has been nurtured by such prominent folklorists as Matthew Briggs and Angus Fraser. We take the study of legend and myth very seriously …” She paused, as if too overcome by emotion to go on. Her eyes drifted toward a framed photograph on her desk and for a moment I thought she might cry. But then she squeezed her hands together, turning her knuckles white, and firmed her mouth. “And I think you would find it an inspiration for your work.”

She gave me such a meaningful smile that I felt sure she must know how much trouble I was having with my second book. How for the first time in my life the folklore and fairy tales that had seemed so alive to me felt dull and flat as pasteboard. But of course she couldn’t know that, and she had already moved on to more practical issues.

“The committee does have to meet this afternoon. You’re the last applicant we’re interviewing. And just between you and me and the doorpost, by far the best. You should hear from us by tomorrow morning. You’re staying at the Hart Brake Inn, correct?”

“Yes,” I said, trying not to cringe at the twee name of the B&B. “The owner has been very nice …”

“Diana Hart is a dear friend,” the dean said. “One of the lovely things about teaching here at Fairwick is the good relationship between town and gown. The townspeople are truly good neighbors.”

“That’s nice …” I was unsure of what else to say. None of the other colleges—and certainly not NYU, which had all Manhattan to boast of—had bothered to talk about the amenities of the town. “I certainly appreciate you taking the time to consider my application. It’s a fine college. Anyone would be proud to teach here.”

Dean Book tilted her head and regarded me thoughtfully. Had I sounded too condescending? But then she smiled and stood, holding her hand out. When I placed mine in hers I was surprised at how forcefully she squeezed it. Beneath her pink suit I suspected there beat the heart of a steely-willed administrator.

“I look forward to hearing from you,” I told her.

Walking through the campus, past the ivy-covered Gothic library, under ancient leafy trees, I wondered if I could stand to live here. While the campus was pretty, the town was scruffy and down at the heels. The heights of its culinary pretensions were a handful of pizzerias, a Chinese takeout, and a Greek diner. The shopping choices were a couple of vintagey-studenty boutiques on Main Street and a mall on the highway. I paused at the edge of the campus to gaze out at the view. From up here the town didn’t look too bad, and beyond were forest-covered mountains that would look beautiful in the fall—but by November they would be bare and then snow-covered.

I had to admit I had my heart set on New York City, as did Paul, my boyfriend of eight years. We’d met our sophomore year at NYU. Although he was from Connecticut he was passionate about New York City and we agreed that someday we would live there together. Even when he didn’t get into graduate school in the city he had insisted I go to Columbia while he went to UCLA. Our plan was for him to apply to New York City schools when he finished rewriting his doctoral thesis in economics and got his degree next year. Surely he would tell me to hold out for the NYU offer rather than leave the city now.

But could I really say no to Fairwick if I hadn’t gotten a definite yes from NYU? It would be better if I could find a way to put off my answer to Dean Book. I had until tomorrow morning to think of a delaying tactic.

I continued walking past the high iron gates of the college onto the town road that led to Hart Brake Inn. I could see the blue Victorian house, with its decorative flags and overspilling flowerboxes, from here. The opposite side of the road was bordered by massive pine trees, the beginning of a huge tract of protected state forest. I paused for a moment at the edge of a narrow trail, peering into the shadows. Even though the day was bright the woods were dark. Vines looped from tree to tree, filling every crevice and twisting into curious shapes. This is where all the stories start, I thought, on the edge of a dark wood. Was this why the dean thought that living here would be an inspiration to me? Because the woods were the natural habitat of fairies and demons? I tried to laugh off the idea … but couldn’t quite. A wind came up and blew out of the woods toward me, carrying with it the chill scent of pine needles, damp earth, and something sweet. Honeysuckle? Peering closer, I saw that the shadowy woods were indeed starred with white and yellow flowers. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. The breeze curled around me, tickling the damp at the back of my neck and lifting the ends of my long hair like a hand caressing me. The sensation reminded me of the dreams I’d had as a teenager. A shadowy man would appear at the foot of my bed. The room would fill with the scent of honeysuckle and salt. I’d hear the ocean and be filled with an inchoate longing that I somehow knew was what he was feeling. That he was trapped in the shadows and only I could release him.

The psychiatrist my grandmother had sent me to said the dreams were an expression of grief for my parents, but I’d always found that hard to believe. The feelings I’d had for the shadow man were not at all
filial
.

Now the invisible hand tugged at me and I stepped forward, off the pavement and onto the dirt path. The heels of my boots sank into the soft, loamy soil.

I opened my eyes, stumbling, as if waking from a dream, and started to turn away … That’s when I saw the house. It was hidden from the road by a dense, overgrown hedge. Even without the hedge the house would have been hard to see because it blended in so well with its surroundings. It was a Queen Anne Victorian, its clapboard painted a pale yellow that was peeling in so many places it resembled a cleverly camouflaged butterfly. The roof was slate and furred with moss, the decorative cornices, pointed eaves, and turret were painted a deep pine green. The honeysuckle from the forest had encroached over the porch railings—or, more likely, the honeysuckle from the house’s garden had spread into the woods. The vines and shrubs circling the porch were so thick it looked as though the house were sitting in a nest. I stepped a few feet closer and a breeze stirred a loose vine over the door. It waved to me as though it were beckoning me to come closer.

I looked around to see if there were any signs of habitation, but the driveway was empty, the windows were shuttered, and a green dust, undisturbed by footprints, lay over the porch steps. Such a pretty house to be deserted, I thought. The breeze sighed through the woods as if agreeing. As I got closer I saw that the vergeboard trim along the pointed eaves was beautifully carved with vines and trumpet-shaped flowers. Above the doorway in the pediment was a wood carving of a man’s face, a pagan god of the forest, I thought, from the pinecone wreath resting on his abundant flowing hair. I’d seen a face like it somewhere before … perhaps in a book on forest deities … The same face appeared in the stained-glass fanlight above the front door.