The Incubus

WARNING: The following story is fundamentally erotic in nature, but it is first and foremost a horror story. Unlike some stories in the "erotic horror" category on this site, this story is meant to be genuinely frightening. If you have ever been a victim of sexual violence or someone you know has been a victim of sexual violence, you may find this story disturbing. Reader discretion is advised.

*****

My mother had this weird hobby of collecting really old books. When I was growing up, she had an entire library of full of these massive, ancient tomes, some of them dating back hundreds of years, that she kept in the basement of the large Victorian mansion in which we lived. My sister Agnes and I were sometimes allowed to go down there under our mother's supervision, but we were never allowed to touch any of the books.

Our mother always told us that the books were extremely delicate and expensive and, if we were to touch them, we might accidentally damage them. We trusted our mother and we didn't want to damage her books, so, while she was alive, we always followed her rules and never touched any of them.

Then, when I was twenty-two and Agnes was twenty, our mother unexpectedly passed away in her sleep. This came as a total shock, because she was only forty-four years old and in very good health. We had all expected her to live well into her nineties.

Her death naturally came as a very traumatic experience for both of us, since our father had died before Agnes was even born. I had apparently known him when I was very little, but I couldn't even remember his face. Our mother almost never spoke of him and she kept no pictures of him around the house. Thankfully, Agnes and I still had each other to lean on.

Our mother had no living relatives aside from us, her only offspring. She had no siblings, parents, or even cousins that were still alive. Consequently, she named Agnes and I in her will as the sole inheritors of all her property, including the house, all of her money, and all of her books. We were astonished to find that our mother had been far wealthier than either of us had ever realized. We'd always known she'd had money, but neither of us ever guessed how much she really had.

"How on earth does a relatively obscure freelance writer on medieval history who never wrote a single bestseller become a triple millionaire in just a couple of decades—all while raising two daughters as a single mother?" Agnes asked, gazing in awe at the reports of how much money we had just inherited as we sat at the old dinner table in the dining room.

"What I'm wondering is why she kept us in this crappy old mansion and never moved us into a nicer place, since she had so much money," I scoffed, looking around the dark room, which was illuminated only by a dim ceiling light directly above the table. "This place always creeped me out. It's so old and I've never been able to understand why it's always so dark."

"Maybe she was sentimental," Agnes suggested.

"More likely she just had a massive fetish for old stuff," I muttered under my breath. It was several weeks after our mother's funeral and we had mostly recovered from the shock of her death, so I didn't feel as guilty mocking her as I would have felt if I had done it sooner after her death.

Anyone looking at Agnes and I as we were sitting there would've had a hard time guessing we were full sisters. We both had our mother's pale, milky white skin and her bewitching good looks, but the similarities between us ended there. My hair was long and flaming red, while Agnes's hair was as black as raven. My eyes were emerald green, while hers were icy grey. While her face was completely without the slightest trace of markings, my face was covered in freckles. Though she was two years younger than me, Agnes was taller than me by several inches. We looked more like cousins than sisters.

Suddenly, I heard something.

"Agnes, do you hear that?" I asked.

She looked up from the papers and listened.

"I don't hear anything," she replied, a confused expression on her face.

"It sounds like music coming from the basement," I told her. "Really old, creepy music."

"Mom always loved that medieval choir stuff. Maybe she left some of it playing," Agnes suggested.

"We should go down there and check it out," I decided.

Agnes and I walked through the long, dark hallways of the house to the door to the basement. Sure enough, we heard eerie choral singing in medieval French coming from down there.

"It's so strange," I whispered. "It's been well over a month since Mom died and I don't remember hearing music coming from down there before."

I slowly turned the handle and opened the door. There was no light in the stairwell and the light switch to the light in the basement was at the bottom of the stairs, so we could not see anything. Together, Agnes and I descended the spiral staircase that led into the basement in near complete darkness. When we reached the bottom, I felt around for the light switch and, when I felt it, I turned it on.

Even with the lights on, the basement had always kind of freaked me out. It was a single, very large room with hardwood flooring. The whole room was illuminated by two small lights in the ceiling and there were no windows, so it was always dark down there. It also always seemed ten degrees colder than the rest of the house, so I had obviously made sure to put on a sweatshirt before I went down there.

The walls were lined with old, wooden bookshelves that were completely filled with old books. All of the bookshelves were neatly organized. At the far end of the room stood an antique desk with a desk lamp on it and a bookshelf over it. Strangely, the desk lamp had been left on and there was a single book sitting on the desk, opened to a certain page.

I was very confused by this, so I walked over to the desk. Agnes followed after me. I looked down at the centuries-old handwritten manuscript that had been left lying open. Then I looked over at Agnes, who seemed equally surprised by the turned-on desk light and the open book as I was.

"Did you come down here at any point and put this book here or turn the desk light on?" I asked her.

"No. Never," she replied, shaking her head. "Mom must have left it like this before she died."

"That's so strange," I remarked. "She was always such a neat freak. I don't think she ever left a book lying out or a light on the entire time we were living with her. She'd always yell at me to put all my things away as soon as I was done with them."

I sat down in the desk chair and carefully examined the book. I could tell that it was extraordinarily old. The pages were enormous sheets of vellum parchment with the words handwritten on them using ink in beautiful calligraphic script.

"Maybe she left it here for us to find," I suggested.

I partially closed the book, holding the page with my hand, so I could look at the cover to see what the titled was. To my surprise, there was no title. The book's ancient, leather cover was impressed with intricate gold designs, but there was no title. I turned back to the page the book had been left open to.

"What does it say?" Agnes asked.

"It's talking about these things called 'incubi,'" I told her. "It says they are demons that appear in the forms of extraordinarily handsome men and they seduce women. It says they are extraordinarily talented lovemakers, beyond all human comparison."

I turned the page to see, on the other side, a detailed, full-color, hand-painted illustration of the most gorgeous man I had ever seen in my entire life sitting nude, sprawled across a bed. He was as pale as I was, with long, flaming red curls, emerald green eyes, freckles, thin pencil-shaped eyebrows, a pointed chin, and pointed ears—all of them just like mine. His body was well-toned and athletic and, between his spread legs, rose a massive cock, drawn in such detail that I could even see the veins. Written beside the illustration was a label which read "incubus."

"Ooh la la," Agnes giggled. "Looks like someone just met her dream boyfriend."

"This can't be right," I muttered. "The man—I mean, incubus—in this illustration looks too much like me for this to be coincidence."

"Maybe Mom made this book herself just to screw with us?" Agnes suggested.

"No," I said. "This book is clearly ancient and so is the illustration. The paint is faded in places and it's done in an old style."

"Mom was an expert on old books. I bet she could've forged something like this easily."

"Why would she do that, though?" I asked. "It just doesn't make sense." I continued reading, hoping the page would offer some answers to some of my many questions.

"What does it say?" asked Agnes after a few minutes.

"It's still talking about incubi. It says that they sometimes sire offspring with human women. These offspring are known as cambions. It says that cambions take after their demonic sires, in appearance, in behavior, and in ability. They are usually short of stature, with red hair, green eyes, deathly pale skin, and freckles. They often have abnormally ravenous appetites. They are often unusually charismatic with an irresistible magnetic charm, even as children. They are often abnormally mischievous and love playing harmless pranks—a quality which they often retain even well into adulthood. As adults, they are extraordinarily sexually attractive and have extraordinary sexual appetites. Like their demonic sires, they are exceptionally skilled at lovemaking."

"It sounds like you're just describing yourself, Natalie. Is that really what it says?" Agnes asked.

"Yes. I just read all that straight off the page word-for-word," I replied.

"Wow. It sounds like you might be a camp... camb... How do you say it?"

"Cambion," I told her.

"Yes. A cambion," she finished.

"Look, Anges, this is just some crazy old book," I tried to assure her. "People believed in all kinds of nonsense back in the old days. Doctors used to think a woman's womb had a mind of its own and would wander up and around through the body and cause all kinds of health problems, including even suffocation. That idea was known as the 'wandering womb.' Mom always had a thing for crazy old stuff. There's more no reason to think the stuff in this book is true than the wandering womb. I mean, this is probably just a boatload of medieval superstitious pigshit, right?"

"You don't even sound sure of that yourself," she commented. "I suppose there's only one way to find out if it's real."

I frowned.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"We could try to summon one of these creatures," she suggested.

"Are you out of your mind?" I gasped. "We can't be summoning demons! Have you never seen any movie where they try summoning demons? It never goes well."

"Well, it's probably the only way we'll ever find out the truth about what you are and where you come from. Besides, if these things are real, you're probably at least half one, so they probably won't do anything bad to us."

"That's just wishful thinking," I dismissed, even though I really was curious.

"C'mon, though," she persisted, "even if it is little dangerous, we could use a little danger in our lives. Life's no fun if you don't take any risks."

Finally, my curiosity got the better of me.

"Alright. Fine. We'll do the summoning ritual. I'll bet you it either won't work or we'll get cursed by a demon for life or something."

"Getting cursed by a demon for life is better than getting killed by a demon," said Agnes.

***

Agnes and I gathered all the materials and we performed the ritual exactly as it was described in the book. We followed all the right steps and said all the right incantations.

I would include the information about how we performed the ritual here, but I don't want anyone following in my footsteps for reasons that will soon become obvious, so I won't include the steps here. Suffice it to say that it involved burning various kinds of magic herbs, drawing a bunch of different magic symbols, and reciting a ton of weird, cryptic verses in Latin and Ancient Greek.

After we finished reciting the final verse of the spell in Ancient Greek, there was a moment of awkward silence. No one stirred. We just sat there, waiting for some sign that the spell had worked.

"Did we miss a step or something?" I asked, looking at the book.

I checked three times to make sure we hadn't missed anything. I couldn't find anything that we'd done wrong.

"Well, I guess the spell is just bogus," I decided. "I told you it wouldn't do anything."

At that moment, however, a strange feeling came over me. I don't really know how to explain it, but I felt like I was being intently watched. I had this weird sense that there was a pair of eyeballs somewhere staring at me.

At first, I figured I was just being paranoid. After all, I supposed it was only natural for me to feel uneasy, considering I'd just performed an incantation that was supposed to summon a demon. I don't know who wouldn't feel paranoid after doing something like that. It was on account of this supposition that I decided not to say anything to Agnes about my own feelings of unease.

By this point, it was already evening, so Agnes and I settled into our usual evening routine of watching television in the living room. As we were sitting there on the couch with only the dim, flickering light of the television to see by, my feelings of being watched seemed to grow stronger. I felt almost sure there was an intruder in the house staring at us from the darkness.

"Agnes," I said, interrupting the show we were watching.

"Yeah?" she asked.

"Stop the show. I need to say something important."

"Sure." She took up the remote and paused the show.

"I think there's someone in the house," I said.

"Oh," she responded, biting her lip nervously. "You think so?"

"Yeah. I can't explain it but—"

At that moment, we heard a loud thud come from the kitchen. We both sprang to our feet. I looked around and then looked at Agnes and saw the terrified expression on her face. I was afraid too; my heart was pounding and my mind was racing. I tried to act as though I still had my wits about me, though, because I didn't want the intruder, if there was one and he was watching us, to know that I was afraid.

"Do we go look?" Agnes asked, her voice barely a whisper.

I didn't know what to say. If there really was someone in the house, they certainly already knew we were there, but, on the other hand, I imagined it would probably turn out bad for us if we just walked into the room with the intruder. We could get raped—or worse.

The terrifying thought arose in my head that maybe it wasn't a person in the house; maybe it was a demon that we'd summoned. Or maybe we hadn't really "summoned" the demon at all and it had been there the whole time. Maybe it had killed Mom. That would explain why she died so suddenly and at such an unnaturally young age.

All these terrifying thoughts rushed through my head at once. Finally, after a moment or two of panicked hesitation, I ran towards the kitchen. Agnes followed along after me.

We arrived in the kitchen to find the light on. There was nobody to be seen. If anyone had been there, they had obviously fled.

"Oh God!" Agnes gasped. "Oh God, oh God, oh God! This is terrifying! Someone's in the house! We've go to call the police!"

"Calm down," I told her. "We don't have enough evidence to call the police. I don't remember if we left the lights on in here when we left the room last. It's possible the lights are on because we left them on."

"What about the noise?" Agnes asked.

"That thud could've been made by anything."

"What do we do?"

"We'll stick together and search the whole house. If there's anyone in here, hopefully we'll find them."

We did exactly as I said. We searched every single room of that creepy old house. It took us over an hour to do because the place had so many rooms. We found no trace of anyone.

"Well, that leaves us with a hunch, a thud, and a light we don't remember leaving on as our only evidence for an intruder," I declared. "I still don't feel right, but I don't see enough evidence to say there's been an intruder. We're probably just on edge because of the whole demon-summoning ritual. I mean, we're probably just imagining things."

Even as I spoke, I still felt like I was being watched, but, rationally, I could find no justification for how I felt.

After watching shows for about another hour or so, Agnes and I decided to go off to bed. By this point, it was almost midnight. Even though we'd searched the entire house and not found anything, we were both still feeling scared. Nonetheless, we went off to our separate bedrooms.

When I went in my bedroom, I found the light was still on. I wasn't sure if it was on from when we'd searched the room or if someone else had turned it on, but I was too tired by this point to worry about it.

I took off my shirt and unfastened my bra. Next I removed my pants and my panties and put them all in my dirty clothes hamper. As I was opening my pajama drawer to get out my pajamas to change into, I was surprised to hear my cell phone ring.

"Who the fuck would be calling me this late at night?" I muttered.

Walking across the room totally naked, I picked up my phone and took the call.

"Hello?" I asked. All I got from the other end was dead silence.

"Hello?" Again, I got absolutely no response.

"Hello?" Still nothing.

I was tired, annoyed, and honestly still really freaked out, so I just hung up and plugged my phone in to charge.

I put on my pajamas, turned out the lights, and climbed into bed. As soon as I was under the covers, though, I noticed there was something strange in the bed with me. I jumped up, turned on the light, and found two pairs of my mother's panties lying under my sheets.

This seemed very strange. The only rational explanation I could think of was that they must have somehow gotten mixed in with my sheets in the wash and I must have put them on my bed along with the sheets without noticing them. I couldn't figure out, though, why I hadn't noticed them being in my bed until now.

I was tired and eager for sleep, so I just tossed the panties in with my dirty clothes. I turned off the light again and climbed back under the covers.

I lay there in bed in the dark, tossing and turning with fear, for a good long while. I don't know how long it was, but I just could not get to sleep. I eventually threw off most of my covers because I kept getting unbearably hot.

Eventually, despite the pernicious fears eating away at me, I finally managed to drift off to sleep.

***

I woke up, lying on my back, feeling terrified. I was burning up with heat and my body was utterly drenched in sweat. My heart was pounding as fervently as it would've been if I had just run three miles straight without stopping. I felt like there was pressure on my chest and I was having troubles breathing. I tried to move, but I found I couldn't. I was completely paralyzed. All I could move were my eyes.

I could hear an obnoxious buzzing sound, like the sound of ten thousand flies buzzing all around my head at once. The sound made me feel itchy and uncomfortable. I wanted desperately to swat the flies away, but I couldn't move and I couldn't see any flies. The buzzing grew louder and more persistent. It seemed to be moving too. The buzzing came from just next to one ear one moment and next to the other ear the next. It felt like I was surrounded by a swarm.

Then I heard light footsteps in the hallway, floorboards softly creaking under the sound of stealthy feet. The sound of footsteps grew closer. Soon, I heard someone right outside my bedroom door. By the faint light of the security lights coming in from outside through my bedroom window, I could see the knob on my door handle slowly turning. It squeaked as it turned.