Familiar Spirit

Her work had revealed a small brick fireplace filled with dust, white flakes of gypsum, dead insects, twigs, and the tiny, fragile bones of birds. Sarah picked out the details in the beam of the flashlight, not quite daring to stick her head inside for a better look. She saw a hairy, brown tarantula and nearly dropped the flashlight. On closer inspection, it was clearly dead—but nearly as big as her hand. When she felt fairly certain that nothing living waited for her in the rubble, Sarah used a broom to sweep out the fireplace.

She found nothing of value and the feeling of having been cheated began to rise within her when common sense intervened. Of course the jade figure wouldn’t have been left in the open fireplace. Whoever had blocked it up had almost certainly done so years after the little statue had been hidden. If it was indeed in the fireplace, the only possibility was a loose brick, or perhaps a ledge within the chimney. So when she had swept the hearth clear, Sarah got a butter knife from the kitchen and began to test the spaces between the bricks with it, searching for a brick that could be moved.

She had finished with the floor and started on the brick-lined walls when she found it: a brick gave slightly under the probing blade. Sarah caught her breath and poked the brick more aggressively. It shifted. She ran the knife blade all around the edges and then used the blade to pry the brick up. Finally she had to drop the knife and grasp the protruding brick with her fingers, pulling with all her strength. She ignored the gritty shower of mortar in her face.

A hollow was left, a space deeper than the brick alone could fill. And in that recess was something wrapped in a fraying, yellow cloth; something perhaps six inches long and two across. Scarcely breathing, Sarah reached into the hole and her hand closed about the treasure. She withdrew it and moved away from the fireplace, squatting on her heels and staring at the thing she held. She was afraid to unwrap it. Then she caught a piece of the old, fraying silk between two fingers and unwound it.

An ancient, evil face leered up at her.

The thing was warm in her hand; she felt it move. All over her body the tiny hairs rose, electrified. It was alive. As she stared at it, she saw the tiny face change, just like a living face. The expression now was one of gleeful lust.

“So you’ve seen me at last. What do you think of me?”

A man’s voice, right behind her.

Sarah almost fell over in surprise. Her fingers closed tightly over the little figure and she stood up and whirled around. There was no one there.

“You hold my immortality in your hand. Does it please you?” asked the same silky voice.

Sarah felt the thing she held change within her grasp. Her fingers recognized it first, but she stared down in disbelief and saw that she was holding a man’s penis: alive, engorged with blood, attached to nothing.

She cried out at the sight of it and almost flung it away in repugnance. But she stopped herself. It was a trick. A trick to make her drop it. And she did not intend to let Jade trick her again. Now that she had found the statue she would not let it go until she destroyed it, and destroyed him.

“Don’t you like me? Isn’t this what you wanted? Surely I don’t shock you, my Sarah. You must remember your dreams of me?”

Something flashed in her mind at his words, a kind of déjà entendu, memory without details. Yes, she had dreamed of Jade, she had dreamed of a stranger who knew her better even than she knew herself, and who made endless, potent, intoxicating love to her. Feeling herself blush, Sarah shook her head stubbornly. She didn’t have to admit to her dreams.

“You remember me, Sarah,” said Jade, and she felt his hands caressing her breasts. Sarah caught her breath sharply and looked down in disbelief. There were no hands. No one touched her. And yet she felt the teasing, pleasurable stroking and she could see her nipples stiffening against the fabric of her shirt.

“Stop it,” she said sharply, stepping back. It made no difference to the invisible hands. The thing she held throbbed within her grasp and, absently, she caressed it with her thumb. An instant later she realized what she was doing, and she stopped, but her hand tightened around what still felt like a man’s erect penis. She wouldn’t look at it; she told herself it was illusion, just as when Pete had seemed to become Brian. She tried to remember what the piece of carved jade had looked like and what it should feel like.

“Sarah.” His breath was hot in her ear and she shuddered. “Sarah, I want you.”

The invisible hands moved down to caress her hips, to insinuate themselves between her legs to caress her inner thighs. Even through blue jeans their touch was arousing. Sarah tried to move away, to escape, but there was nowhere to escape to. It wasn’t fair, she thought. Jade was just distracting her, playing on her desires as he had once played on her fears, dividing her body from her mind and leading her astray.