Chapter 8
Wake up.
She heard his voice like a memory wrapped in towels and sheets stored in the wardrobe.
Wake up.
He was a handsome guy, a good guy. He had treated her well, spoke to her about poetry and horror stories, lent her books, and showed her his treasures.
Wake up.
They had listened to Serú Girán together. He had a rock band, or a blues, or did he played tango? She couldn’t remember. And his lips had felt sweet when she kissed him.
You know who you are. You’ve always known. It’s okay. We’ve incarnated you here, I need you, I want to apologize. But you have to wake up.
And when she saw the beautiful, perfect smile stretched across his face, memories hit her like a storm of electricity.
She tried to instinctively pull away from the guy standing in front of her. But then she realized two things: they were not alone, and she was not free.
She was tied to a tree that grew in the middle of the very tall room she was in, surrounded by old people dressed in military clothes. They all seemed ancient, their wrinkles crushing their wrinkles, stacked like the pages of an endless book. There were others who appeared to have parts of their bodies sewn together so they wouldn’t fall apart, but all of them, all of them, stared straight ahead with an improper dignity, facing the only one who didn’t wear military attire.
The first thing she thought was that Riddle had dressed like a priest, but without a collar. It was a black habit, and it suited him so well that she wondered how she could have ever seen him dressed like that, like a simple mortal, without suspecting that something didn’t add up. And when he spoke, the military men bowed to him with a mechanical respect.
"You're with us," he whispered, pleased, taking her by the chin. "You're truly with us."
"You told me I would find the answer here," she replied, with more confidence than she felt. "I came here just for that. Why me?"
Riddle laughed, his cold laugh multiplying throughout the room.
"To answer that, we have to go back to the beginning of time," he said with a smile. "But we have all the time in the world."
He crouched down to be face to face with her, then made a gesture with his hands, signaling for her to look up. She looked toward the dome of the room she was in and saw how the tree she was tied to grew and grew, its branches intertwining with the walls, until the tree itself became the structure of the house.
"You’re tied to the very tree in which I created you," he said in his soft, careful voice. "Two hundred thousand millennia ago, when all this was land, was ajó, clay to create. When I freed myself from the celestial prison, thinking I had killed my father, the first thing I did was create you. But you already knew that, it was in the books you took, in one of the Apocryphal Gospels."
She nodded slightly, cautiously, not fully understanding the scope of his words.
"The Devil created humans and sin, and thus condemned them."
Tom barely shook his head, playing with a small knife in his hand.
"No, I didn’t condemn them. I don’t have that power. I freed them," he hissed the word with hatred, with hunger, with anger. "While I was sovereign and reigned, everyone was happy. I gave them spirit, I gave them life, I gave them knowledge and free will. But then, after God found paradise on Earth, he envied it, envied it because he had never thought to build something like that, and he sent it to be destroyed. A divine war broke out, ending with the separation of Earth, from Eden. The world fell to pieces, fragments of humanity scattered here and there. And he condemned me to crawl in the very mud of neglect, in the ajó, where I had created them, now without hands to mold, now without tools to create."
Herminia let out a forced laugh.
"You're telling me the Eden was here, in Argentina?"
Tom smiled as well.
"In fact, I think the physical location of Eden is what today is South Africa. This place was... my creation workshop. My clay, my magic." He stretched out his large, white hands. "I told you I considered myself an artist."
Herminia looked at him, barely understanding the words he was saying, as if a part of her brain had fallen asleep.
"I also mentioned that I was an orphan, freed from my father's will. It was like that, I’ve always been like that, like you, free of any imposed will. But, of course, after such betrayal, God sent his son to Earth to reconquer the hearts I created, to take back the souls that by right belonged to me from the start."
He paused, making a disgusted expression.
"So from here, condemned, for two hundred thousand years, trapped by the lack of my flesh, I could only satisfy myself with the sporadic possession of humans who dared to find me. But it was so painful, so impossible for you and your limited bodies to contain me, that all of them went mad in my attempts to create again, to rebuild. Until human greed saved me. The Germans sought me out, they found me. It took a long time before they were able to incarnate me, give me a physical body, a body with which I could continue creating from this clay that surrounds us. They had to perform a powerful ritual with a woman who was a witch and a sinner, because the body that contained me could only be born from sin. From abuse. And it needed to feed on the blood of its parents. But they succeeded. My witch mother and my abused English father died to give me life, but their souls are saved. In exchange, the Germans asked me for eternal life. And I, being so merciful, granted it to them."
The woman focused on the decayed bodies of the soldiers in front of her, agonizing, containing it, because she felt it, she felt it replicating in the room that surrounded them. She felt the pain, the unwept tears, the desperation in each and every one of the cells of their rotting bodies, the pain, holding back the sorrow, holding back the desire to beg and plead for death.
"They cared for me, fed me all the pain they could give me. I was hungry, after two hundred thousand years of waiting, they provided me with all the blood I asked for, the blood I needed. It was unfortunate for Argentine history, maybe, but it allowed me to grow. I became a giant, I became powerful again. They asked me to continue my work, but they didn’t know what I had learned. My hands should not mold the clay again, no. God separated humans from me by placing an incarnated son on Earth, so I had to do the same to recover them. And so, human, the Antichrist will be able to commune with the blood of the devil, that was rescued in the hidden chamber in the sands of time, and the flesh of the demon. But, just as God placed an angel in human form to give birth to his son, I had to incarnate one of my demons to achieve that task."
Riddle smiled, placing his hand on the girl's stomach, who listened to all of his words completely disconnected from the situation. Every word that passed felt less real, less certain.
"But then, which demon to incarnate? Many refused to become human. As I told you, my reign respects free will. There was only one who wanted to return to its humanity. One of my demons who was, at one point, human. My first creation. The first giver of life, who was created from clay just like Adam, and refused to be his wife. The one who wanted to be free."
Tom's hands moved upward, barely tracing her body with patience and tenderness, finally resting on her face.
"But Lilith, embodying you wasn't easy. You were always headstrong and bossy. None of the embodiments satisfied you, nor did the victims. Many experiments were attempted and failed, and when you finally managed to connect with your new humanity, you vanished."
An uncontrollable impulse of laughter began to escape from Herminia's lips, drawing a sudden look of curiosity from Tom. She scanned the room, the decaying military figures, the serpents slithering across the windows, and the beautiful, demonic face of the man in front of her.
"You've got the wrong person," she insisted, still stifling laughter. "I'm just an ordinary girl. My parents are dentists; I'm not a demon."
If it was true that the man before her, dressed like a cleric, was the Devil himself, maybe she could strike a deal with him. Something to let her go, to restore everything she had lost, something to bring her reality back.
To her surprise, Tom smiled as well.
"You are who you are, just as I am Tom Marvolo Riddle."
Tom's fingers then pressed against her lips, caressing them, as if lost in some place, in some existential plane she could not comprehend. He uttered a forgotten language, a forbidden tongue, and the house trembled—trembled like the snakes outside, waiting for her, guiding her. Then, he spoke in their language once more.
"Deep down, beneath everything you want to be and what you’ve become, you’re there, pulsing, trying to emerge. But you need help—you can’t do it alone. You’ve always been like this, craving independence, only to tangle yourself up in your own freedom. What you need is to bind yourself to someone stronger than you. That’s why you’ve never obeyed any man. That’s why I’m offering you a place by my side. But for that, you must let go of the humanity you’re clinging to. Let me help you."
His hands returned to the dagger he had been wielding, and she realized with horror that he was aiming it at her body.
"I’ll warn you—it’s going to hurt, it will hurt more than anything you’ve ever felt, but it’s necessary."
Herminia’s body convulsed, adrenaline coursing through her veins, but all she could do was kick and writhe as the dagger plunged into her leg. She barely had time to react before Riddle withdrew the weapon—and oh, the stabbing was almost a relief, because as he pulled the blade out and revealed the incision, her flesh split like the Red Sea before Moses, and she felt the unbearable pain rip through her body. Tom’s raised arm threatened to strike again, and then, from that hidden place where she was containing her pain, somewhere between her stomach and her other organs, she screamed in fury. She felt the rage she’d bottled up—the anger over her parents’ deaths, her friends’ deaths, her ex-boyfriend’s death—bursting free, unstoppable like a galloping horse. It struck Riddle in the chest, knocking him down and forcing him to drop the weapon.
And then, from that same place, deep within her gut, she heard her own voice, magnified, powerful, enveloping.
"If you try to harm me again, I’ll grab that same knife and drive it into my belly. I’ll tear the incubus you planted inside me out with my bare hands."
Tom looked at her, smiling as he rose after the fall. He nodded, set the knife aside, and stepped closer to her. She felt his presence flicker in the empty space between them, but his gentle demeanor was limited to pressing his mouth against her bleeding, throbbing thigh. With his saliva and tongue, Herminia felt the wound closing.
He looked up at her from below, his mouth stained with blood and his bright red eyes gleaming.
"As you wish, Lilith."
His fingers brushed the spot where the wound had been, and Herminia shivered as his cold fingertips pressed against her hot, burned skin. His hand slid along the inside of her thigh as he gazed at her intently, unsmiling. She felt pleasure building, inevitable, while disgust coiled within the same sensation. How could she feel aroused in such a moment? How could grief reconcile itself with lust?
"It was very difficult to find you, so complicated to reach you," he continued, moving closer to her core, to her lips. "But I finally found you, marked you, fed you my body and my blood, Lilith. I gave you everything. Do you remember?"
Herminia did remember, and the memory returned, wiping away the oblivion, as his fingers reached their target. With deftness, they pulled aside the bikini she had worn all afternoon, now gritty with sand and sweat.
Tom placed his mouth on her, kissing her with a tenderness unexpected for someone who had just claimed the title of the Devil. He kissed her, and she couldn’t help but moan at the precision of his venomous tongue. When she opened her eyes, she tried to forget that they were surrounded by countless resurrected corpses.
His tongue didn’t suck on her clitoris; no, it circled it, stimulating her without granting the full pleasure of direct contact… Barely brushing it, sending electricity through her body. When he saw her shaking like that, he smiled with complete satisfaction.
While he looked at her, his eyes sparkling, his fiery gaze, his fingers barely brushed the tip of her clitoris in circular motions. Instinctively, she closed her legs, trembling, caught in that fusion of pain and pleasure he exploited so well.
"Please…" she moaned. Her hands burned—she needed to touch him, needed him to touch her, needed even the slightest contact. His fingers traced the entrance of her vagina while his mouth returned to feast on her. He closed his eyes, surrendering to the pleasure as well.
"Please…" she continued, begging, demanding. But the Devil ignored her plea. He kept licking, letting his serpentine tongue glide over her, vibrate against her. The sensitivity built, heralding the cataclysm, announcing—
He pulled away from her body and looked at her, licking his lips, ensuring he didn’t lose her taste.
"Tell me," he said. "Tell me what I want to hear."
She closed her eyes, trying to summon something other than the primal desire to be possessed after so much neglect, after so much pain.
"I don’t know what you want me to say," she replied. Then his long fingers thrust inside her abruptly, and she let out a moan. Yes, please, yes, she cried, as he caressed her from within, moving with purpose, seeking the spot he knew so well. But it wasn’t enough—no, she wanted him.
"Look for it inside yourself," Riddle whispered, his other hand pressing against her racing, beating heart. But what could she feel if not the overwhelming desire to be taken by the person she chose, the one she wanted? She needed this ridiculous, mysterious man—this incarnate devil—to enter her, to make her scream, to make her suffer, to unite their broken bodies after centuries apart. Because she had been his first creation, thas was true. When she first saw him—so beautiful, so grand, so perfect—she felt nothing but fury and betrayal when his delicious mouth declared that she would be given to another.
She could not belong to anyone else, and feeling prostituted and betrayed by the being she loved, she fled. She rebelled and became smoke, like the beach addict, blooming and withering across millennia, finding men who resembled him to satisfy her desire, her anger, to dull all that pain. But it never worked—no, what she had always wanted was him. Him, Tom Riddle, the Devil, the Creator, who had shaped and sculpted her body and soul.
The infinite reproach materialized within her as she demanded,
"Take me! Take me now and forever, and don’t ever lose me again! Don’t you dare give me to anyone else!"
As her furious tears burned down her face, Tom bit his lower lip and closed his eyes, succumbing to the pleasure her words brought him. He watched as his hands unfastened his robes to reveal his long, beautiful, glistening cock. It slid against her lips before pushing inside her forcefully, drawing a scream from her—a scream full of hate—as her trembling body stretched to accommodate him. She heard his moan of pleasure, heard her name panted from his lips, and felt his slow, deliberate movements, his flesh filling her entirely.
"How could I ever give you to someone else," he spat, "when I made you with my desires in mind, with what I wanted."
The pain merged with pleasure, radiating through her entire body as he moved—slowly, deliberately. She moaned his name, sobbing, and he captured her cries in a kiss. Then, completely untamed, he began to thrust into her with force, the impact of the floor reverberating through her body. They reveled in the violence they both so deeply loved.
The thrusts became longer, more furious, more violent, and she involuntarily contracted her muscles, eliciting a groan from him. She saw the fury in his eyes, the anger at not being able to control her, to completely possess her. But he didn’t stop—no, he wouldn’t let her win. Instead, he bit, sucked, letting the tips of his teeth graze her nipples, drawing more spasms from her.
Her body opened and closed; she was so close, so unbearably close. Then the edge of his teeth opened a small wound on her skin, sharp and slicing. As the Devil moved within her, she felt the orgasm explode, shaking her to her core.
Tom let out a soft moan, and she felt the warmth within her, signaling that he had finished as well. Yet he didn’t pull away. He stayed there, inside her, gazing at her intently.
He stroked her hair and spoke in the language only they knew—the lost language.
“I was so foolish not to understand the problem,” he declared. “I was His first creation too. But then, I lost you. You never came back to me.”
She looked at him.
“Let me go,” she demanded. “Maybe then I’ll consider forgiving you.”
Tom smiled and obeyed. His fingers released the bindings, which vanished with a hiss, as though they had been serpents.
“My warnings still stand. You cannot escape me, not again,” he continued, still inside her, embracing her body. “Besides, I know you’ve grown fond of those three humans I haven’t killed yet.”
The pain announced itself in her chest, her humanity weakening her, hollowing her out.
“You didn’t have to be so cruel,” she said, her eyes brimming with tears, her chest empty, excavated.
“Ah, but Lilith, you said it yourself: ‘It is not death but life that disturbs me,’” he recited the markings she left on the little book of the Apocryphal Gospels. “I wasn’t trying to do anything but awaken you. You were far too content in the human life you chose.”
She sighed. The truth was, she had enjoyed her humanity, her vulnerability, the ideas of the new century, where women were no longer bound to men. She had relished being a feminist leader, studying law, and being independent. She had delighted in men’s bodies with complete freedom. Her whims had tied her to the only man she hadn’t fully enjoyed sexually but who seemed to want her sincerely.
“You’re going to give me back everything you took from me,” she ordered, her voice serious and calm. “And we’ll live a normal life. As it should have been from the beginning. You’ll leave your workshop—we can return whenever you like—but you’ll leave it and live with me in the Capital. You’ll let me finish my studies, and in return, I’ll give birth to the Antichrist.”
Tom looked at her, barely able to contain the emotion within him, which materialized in a smile that took over his entire face. He extended his hand.
“It’s a deal.”
Making a deal with the devil wasn’t as hard as one might have expected. She had endured two hundred centuries of consuming sorrows to reach him, again, to reach him. Besides, she had incarnated in the body of an Argentine woman—there was nothing holier or more profane, as the songs that constantly surrounded them proclaimed.
She walked back to the cabin, smelling the salty sea breeze mingling with the scent of the pines. She saw crabs scuttling boldly under the marine night. She climbed over the wooden gate leading to the cabins and walked down the sandy path lined with weeds and cigarette butts. Passing by the windows of Ron’s parents’ room, she caught the mouthwatering aroma of Monica’s cooking announcing her return. Her cat’s meow heralded her arrival, and the heads of her friends popped out from the doorway of the last cabin. Javi, Jime, and Ron couldn’t mask their relief.
She smiled at them as the redhead rushed toward her and wrapped her in a hug, a mix of relief and anger.
“God, Mini, we’ve been looking for you all night. Massera called me—he’s staying here—and he was really worried too because you weren’t answering your phone.”
She smiled at them, infinitely happy and calm. She could be Herminia for them; she could, after all, she had practiced it for the last twenty-three years of her life.
“Sorry, guys. I walked to San Bernardo and couldn’t remember how to get back.”
Making a deal with the devil wasn’t so hard—not when it meant bringing back everyone she had ever loved from the dead.
The breakup had been easy for both of them to digest. Their vacation had been stressful, and Ron agreed with her that they’d rushed into living with his family so early in their relationship.
Introducing Tom was harder. Just a month later, in February, at an impromptu gathering in her backyard, she introduced him to her family and friends. Javi looked at him oddly and later confessed that his name felt familiar, like a memory within a memory, a bad recollection. But to the rest, Tom was a new person. He was thirty, held a doctorate in History, and they had met in Mar de Ajó.
Her mother gave her a disapproving look, one that clearly meant, “It’s too soon to be dating again,” but said nothing. Her father, on the other hand, was surprised by Riddle’s fabricated credentials. (“A Doctor in History? At which university did you earn your degree? Oh, Salamanca? Impressive. And what was your thesis about?”) It was certainly a relief that the devil had witnessed the unfolding of humanity firsthand, allowing him to answer all her father’s questions with ease.
He moved into her apartment in Belgrano. The pregnancy came as unwelcome news to her parents, who feared for her professional future and labeled her as irresponsible. But she graduated on time, her stretched belly catching the rain of confetti and paint during the celebration. Her stomach served as a shield to keep her from being stuffed into the back of a car and paraded around Recoleta.
Massera faced personal misfortune when it leaked to the press that his family had ties to drug trafficking. The protections surrounding him unraveled the moment the devil uncovered his sins. With his parents imprisoned, he stopped messaging her and trying to reenter her life.
And when she woke in the middle of the night, she always checked to make sure he was still there—that he hadn’t vanished, as she so often did, into some millennia-long hiding spot tucked within the folds of history. Seeing him resting, as required by the human part of him tethered to this reality, brought relief back to her body.
Everything was fine.
Two hundred thousand years had passed between the mud and the sand.
He had seen the indigenous people, the Selk'nam, the baqueanos, the gauchos, the Asians, and the Spaniards. He saw countless people being born and dying, he possessed the bodies of children, animals, and men. He felt eternal, thick, angry. And yet, with the fabric of countless millennia clouding his memory, he could not recall a moment when he felt more connected to his immortality than when he saw his son being born.