Chapter 13 Roxana
ROXANA
It is on shaky legs that I walk out of Silas’s office some time later. My eyes immediately land on Goodwoman Stubbs’ spindly back and the vertebrae protruding from underneath her blouse as she sits on the very edge of her chair.
Shit, I really shouldn’t have aggravated her earlier, should I? Not when she’s one of the few people I know who may be useful to me now.
“Mrs Stubbs,” I address her tentatively, coming to stand before her.
“What is it, dear?” she asks, looking up at me from the keyboard of her archaic computer.
Her tone of voice is notably more reserved than earlier, and there’s new reticence in her eyes, surrounded by spiderwebs of lines and framed by plain, round glasses.
“Do you still ... take interest in the occult?”
She raises her eyebrows in surprise, and the firm line of her mouth slackens. “Why, yes, I do.”
I nod, bothering the leaves of her snake plant. “Could I talk to you? Privately.”
I trap her in my gaze, mercilessly, hoping to intrigue her with the conveyed urgency of my ask.
I feel like we’re sparring with each other, using eye contact.
And I know I’m going to win as I always do in any game of will, because none of my opponents are ever as willing to discomfort me as I am them. Goodwoman Stubbs is no match for me.
“Sure.” Unsurprisingly, she capitulates, laying her glasses aside. “Come with me.”
I follow the dull thud of her pump heels against the flagstone floor, echoing throughout the long, narrow corridors of the building. She leads me up the main staircase and up another, spiral one with an ornate metal railing. She’s taking me to one of the turrets where I have never been before.
We reach a platform with a single door, and she unlocks it with a large key.
The room within is but a snug half-circle with scratched oak floor and peeling wallpaper, no more space in it than to allow for a little table, a half-full water cooler, and a counter with an electric kettle, tea kit, and a couple of mugs.
“Sit down,” she beckons me and then starts making tea for us both without asking me whether I’d like some.
For once, I choose to keep my mouth shut and don’t protest even when she empties three milk pods into my mug before setting it before me.
“Sugar, dear?” she asks, and I shake my head because it doesn’t matter; there’s no way I’m drinking anything that resembles watered-down pavement sludge so strongly in colour.
She sits down herself with her own mug, pursing her lips as she takes the first tepid sip, closing her eyes with almost religious reverence. It’s only when she opens them that she asks me what I wanted to talk to her about.
I take a very deep breath. And then I hardly breathe at all as I tell her, words rushing out of me with the vehemence of a broken dam.
I cannot let myself hesitate because if I do—if I let myself think about how insane I must sound—I won’t be able to ever tell anyone at all, not even unthreatening Goodwoman Stubbs, whose opinion I have no reason to care about.
And so I go on, mechanically presenting “facts” and “evidence”, supporting my “hypothesis” the way I would argue a case at a court of law.
After I finish, an oppressive kind of silence descends, a pregnant pause in the conversation I have just dominated for the better part of half an hour.
Goodwoman Stubbs takes a sip of her tea, no doubt cold by now, and my stomach rolls.
Hard to tell whether that’s from my imagining the sour aftertaste or from anticipating her reaction.
When she does finally speak, her response to my tirade is nothing short of a shock for me. “I doubt that someone like me has anything new to tell someone like you, Roxana née Moroiu.”
My eyebrows shoot up, and she smiles.
“Ah, yes. I studied Carpathian Occultism: A Historical Compendium as part of my research. I’m sure it’s no surprise to you that your ancestors are featured heavily ... the way that Sangrel Morvian seems to pursue women in your family is truly fascinating.”
“Then you don’t think I’m insane?” I gasp gratefully, and for the first time ever I feel something dangerously like affection for Beatrice Stubbs.
“Well, you did have me worried with that new book of yours,” she shoots me a loaded look, and I smile sheepishly. “But when it comes to Sangrel, I absolutely do not!” she assures me with booming vehemence. “How could I, given everything I know about your lineage?”
“Well, I just worried that your interest in ... this stuff ... may be purely theoretical. I wasn’t sure you actually believed any of it,” I say meekly.
“I absolutely do!” she assures me, blotches of pink blooming on her face. “Gravity existed long before Newton discovered it. Just because science can’t explain something yet, it doesn’t mean it’s not real.”
She’s more impassioned and animated than I have ever seen her. Who would have thought that such enthusiasm could dwell in that dry husk of a woman, with her hair up in a tight bun and the thin line of her severe mouth?
“The first thing we must do is establish what it is that the demon wants.”
“What he wants?” I repeat after her.
“Yes. Demonic possession is never random, and it’s never without a purpose.
Historically, demons possessed rulers to exert influence or carry out persecution.
Andrew Wilson, I suspect, was possessed by Sangrel with the intention of ending thirteen lives.
Has Silas, in the active possession state, ever said anything about wanting to kill someone, perhaps? ”
I feel my brow crease with concentration and instantly let up, ever mindful of preventing wrinkles from forming.
“He said nothing like that.” I shake my head. “Nothing about killing. All he keeps talking about is ... oh!”
My eyes nearly pop out of their sockets as I recall Silas’s words from those moments where I now know Sangrel was controlling him.
I’m fucking a son into you is what I’m doing.
I get to pump my seed into you and make you swell with my son.
No, I only make sons.
“Oh fuck!” I swear with a gasp, and Goodwoman Stubbs rewards me with a scowl I have no attention to spare for. “I know exactly what he wants,” I tell her, and her annoyance at my swearing quickly morphs into thrilled curiosity.
“What, dear? What does he want?”
“He wants to get me pregnant! It all makes sense now. From the first moment he got home and wasn’t himself, all he wanted to do was ... well, you know.” I clear my throat, and she nods curtly to indicate that yes, she does know. “And he keeps talking about putting his son into me.”
“Hmm.” She hums, considering my words. “Yes, I suppose that fits. That’s very grave then.”
“Is it?” I raise my eyebrows at her. “I mean, I sure as shit—sorry, I mean I sure don’t want to get pregnant with his demon baby, but is it really grave for anyone else?”
“It is! You must understand that possessing demons are forces rather than entities.” Seeing my confusion, she elaborates.
“The way most people picture it is that the possessed person’s soul and the demon are two mutually exclusive beings residing in one body, fighting each other for control.
But it’s not so. The demon is more like a parasitic force, fusing with the host gradually until he becomes completely dominant in the body, suppressing the human’s soul.
And to do that, he has to use the parts of that human’s soul that are corruptible by his influence.
This means that he can only possess a human to fulfil one specific dictate, and for any other objective, he must possess another. ”
She pauses, letting me process all this.
“By siring a son, Sangrel would achieve his permanent presence in a human body with none of those limitations. A human body with no human soul. A pure demonic power. Do you see why we must stop him at any cost?”
I avoid replying to that by asking, “What exactly do you mean by ‘whatever parts of the human soul that are corruptible by his influence’?”
To keep my hands busy, I set to wrapping the tea bag string around the mug handle before worrying the label, folding its edges into triangles.
“For the possession to work, there has to be something in the human that can be tempted by the demon’s goal. No matter how small, there must have been a part of Andrew Wilson that wanted to kill all those people.”
“Who would’ve thought?” I shake my head incredulously.
“The overall strength and integrity of a person’s character play a role, too.
Let me be blunt, Silas is an easy target.
” Her lips curl with undisguised distaste.
“The fusion won’t take long, especially if his eyes are already changing.
Unless driven out immediately, Sangrel will take over, and then it will no longer be possible to save Silas. ”
She inhales deeply, and something whistles at the back of her nose.
“The important thing is that there is still time,” she continues.
“Exorcisms are only fatal to the possessed person if the fusion of their soul with the demon has progressed too far. When the demon cannot just be driven out of the body but must be ripped violently from the soul, that’s when the host cannot survive.
They can be very safe if performed early enough in the possession process. ”
I nod, wrapping my hands around my mug to warm them up, realising only now how chilly it is in the room.
“What happens if the demon isn’t exorcised? Does he just stay indefinitely?” I enquire.
“No. The demon leaves once the dictate of the possession is fulfilled.”
I mull her words over while she drinks her tea with audible gulps.
“What if the demon can’t fulfil the possession purpose for whatever reason? Can he leave? Or does he need to get himself exorcised?”
I try hard not to focus too much on the minuscule droplets of milky liquid caught up in the fine hairs above her upper lip, giving her a faint moustache.
“The demon would never get himself exorcised voluntarily. Exorcisms are agonising for him and weaken his power. If he can’t fulfil his dictate, he will either stay and keep trying until the host dies of natural causes, or he may retreat through a portal such as the one used to possess in the first place. ”
“The mirror,” I whisper, more to myself than for her benefit.
“Yes. Mirrors are very common as portals because they serve so naturally as doors to the Underworld. They often allow for glimpses into the plane beyond our world, revealing that which connects us to it. Some say that they show our truer form than mirrors that haven’t been cursed.”
Silence stretches between us for the duration of a few wild heartbeats hammering in my ears.
“Mrs Stubbs,” I address her, hesitating. “I’m seeing moments ...” I trail off.
“What moments?” she prompts me, her attention perking up.
“Moments of tenderness.”
Like rose blooms amidst tangles of thorns.
“Moments like Silas and I haven’t shared in years,” I elaborate, seeing her confused expression.
She regards me with a renewed interest, and I feel myself blush and go from tenuous affection straight back to disdain for her.
“What I want to know is ... is that Silas or is that the demon?” I hate her for hearing me ask this.
She licks some of her milk moustache away.
“Hard to tell. The demon cannot do more than harness what is already in the host human’s soul.
In doing so, he may greatly amplify it, overshadowing all else.
He may conquer fears that had until then stood in the way.
But without a seed already present, the demon could never make a rosebush bloom. ”
I flinch as she vaguely echoes my earlier thoughts.
“But on the other hand, the demon is in full control while active in the host ...” she trails off, casting me a puzzling look.
“Meaning everything in those moments is the demon’s will,” I hop on her train of thought, letting it carry me where she did not dare go.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, squaring her shoulders. “We must act fast and find somebody reliable who’ll believe us and perform the exorcism correctly. Until then, you mustn’t give Sangrel any reason to suspect that you know about his presence and ...”
I stop paying attention to her. I already got all the information I wanted from her, and I couldn’t care less for her unsolicited advice. I fix my gaze on the golden rose pinned to her blouse.
“That’s a lovely brooch!” I interrupt her.
I don’t mean it, of course, the brooch is tacky as shit.
But I need to get going, and nothing stops people from blathering on quite like making them realise you’re not listening to them, but in a way that makes it impossible for them to be outright angry with you.
Like paying them a compliment. Ideally, on something that holds sentimental value for them.
“Thank you. It used to be my mother’s,” Goodwoman Stubbs says, touching the rose delicately with her fingers. “I only wear it on special occasions, like her birthday today. She would have been ninety.”
I’m barely able to stop a smug smirk from forming on my face.
“How lovely,” I say with an intentionally insincere smile.
And just as I intended, she’s mumbling something about needing to go. She washes the mugs in the small sink in the corner, and then we both head for the door.
“After you,” I tell her in an insistent tone of voice when we reach the top of that steep, spiral staircase, and I don’t budge until she relents and starts walking down the stairs in front of me.
Soon afterwards, I’m rushing through the corridors, hoping to go unnoticed.
I quickly abandon the thought of visiting the campus pharmacy.
I would surely be recognised, and word could get back to Silas.
Instead, I trot back home, my heels sinking into the water-saturated ground as I take a shortcut across the lawn.
I hop into our car and drive all the way to Keswick.