After Obsession Read Free

succubus at birth,
No incubus infect me.
    I say it in bed, but it doesn’t keep the dreams from coming. In them, I’m trapped below water and something evil and bad is sucking my life away. It’s dark. The water weighs on me, heavier and heavier, and in the distance is a wicked, ghostly laugh and a wail that’s me screaming, screaming, screaming. Something reaches for me, lifting me up. At first it’s scary and furry and strong, all muscles and claws and it looks like a cougar, but then it changes into a guy, a huge guy. His dark eyes stare into mine, dark and frightened and wet, but strong somehow, too, determined.
    “We have to save her,” he says.
    “Who?” I ask him. “Who?”
    He goes cougar again and snarls. He is all teeth and noise. I wake up cranky and scared because I know that someone is in danger, but I don’t know who or how to save them, just that I have to find out before it’s too late. Wow, I hate dreams.

• 2 •
    ALAN
     
    “What do you mean you don’t have football here?” I ask.
    Mrs. Wood, the counselor, is speechless for a moment.
    “This is high school. You have to have football.” I look to my mom in the chair beside me. “How can they not have football? Did you know about this?”
    “I’m sorry, Alan,” the counselor says. She really seems upset. She keeps glancing at my mom. “I thought I’d mentioned that.”
    “Mom? You knew, didn’t you? You knew they didn’t have football and you made me move up here anyway. Didn’t you?”
    “I’m sorry, Alan,” she says, crossing her legs. “I did.”
    Back home, in Oklahoma City, a lot of my friends would have cussed out their moms right then and there. As mad as I am, I still can’t do that. I just slump into the chair like a balloon suddenly emptied of air.
    “Alan was second-team all-state in Class 5A last year,” Mom explains. “He’s really good at football. He’s a running back.”
    “Is there another school that has football?” I ask.
    “Not within fifty miles. We have soccer, cross-country, and wrestling,” Mrs. Wood offers.
    “Soccer? I can’t get a football scholarship to OU playing soccer.”
    “Alan has wanted to play football for the University of Oklahoma forever,” Mom explains before turning her attention back to me. “Alan, let’s make the best of this.”
    It wasn’t my idea to come to Maine. Maine? Really, who moves to Maine? Besides my mom, who brought us up here to live with my aunt and cousin now that they are husband- and fatherless. Nobody came to live with us just because I was fatherless, and I’ve been that way all my life.
    “Whatever.” It’s the best concession I can offer. “Put me in cross-country. Do you at least have track in the spring?”
    “Yes.” Mrs. Wood almost fist-pumps, she’s so happy. She puts me in cross-country and track as the computer vomits out the page that is my schedule of classes.
    “Thank you.” Mom is all consolatory smiles. “We just got here over the weekend. My sister’s husband was recently killed—well, lost at sea, I guess. He owned a fishing boat and …”
    “Oh, the Dawn Greeter .” Realization fills Mrs. Wood’s dark eyes. She looks at me and asks, “So, you’re Courtney’s cousin?”
    “Yeah.”
    “She’s a sweet girl,” Mrs. Wood promises. I don’t really know if she is or not. I saw Courtney for a few minutes last night, but other than that we’ve only met twice in our lives. “It was a citywide tragedy when the boat was lost. All the crew was from here in town. Three of our students, including Courtney, lost fathers.”
    “That’s horrible,” Mom says. “I never understood how Lisa dealt with Mike going out to sea every day.”
    “Well, it’s a lifestyle here.” Mrs. Wood’s eyes slide around her office for a moment, looking at pictures of ships and a brass bell mounted above the office door. “I’m sure working men face some kind of danger every day back there in Oklahoma, too.”
    “Yes, but at least