Incubi

by Edward Lee

  They were interesting arguments, at any rate. Jack found Ginny’s invitation in a basket of letters by the phone. It was close to identical to Veronica’s. Then be began his search. No purloined missives this time. Again, he didn’t really know what he was looking for. He snooped around the kitchen counter, any place where she might’ve written something down when she called to confirm. Ho! Contraband! he thought. In a drawer under some address books he found a little bag of marijuana. Shame on you, Ginny. He could not resist. He emptied the bag into the drain and refilled it with an equal portion of McCormick’s oregano from the spice rack. See how high you get on that, honey.

  Next, the bedroom. This was irredeemable; he was enjoying it. Plowing through Ginny’s privacy gave him a perverse thrill. No, this was definitely not ethical, but what was the harm? It wasn’t like he was going to steal anything, or pull a whiz on the gorgeous beige carpet. Nevertheless, he imagined himself doing the most juvenile things: jumping up and down on the bed, moving the furniture around, writing “Kilroy was here” on the bathroom mirror. A few good squirts of whipped cream under the silk bedsheets would be nice. Or, hey, how about salt in the sugar bowl?

  Time to grow up, he concluded. The underwear drawer revealed a surprising predilection toward panties of the crotchless variety. Holy-moly! he thought when he opened the next drawer. Ginny’s House of 1000 Delights. The drawer contained vibrators, electric ben-wa balls, numerous prods, probes, and ticklers and a few things that Jack, even in his wildest imagination, could not put a name to. They looked like alien appendages. One looked like the snout of a star-nosed mole. Another seemed to have tentacles. Jesus Christ, did women actually put these things into themselves? How could they keep a straight face? Last was a knurled black dildo over a foot long.

  Jack had to strain not to laugh. You learn something new every day, he told himself. But next he opened the nightstand drawer, and groaned deep. A small night flask lay within; apparently Ginny wasn’t averse to a nip in the wee hours. Probably Scotch, Jack thought. Probably Fiddich. Had fate placed the flask there, to test him? Had God? The flask’s silver finish glimmered like a high sun. Jack watched his hand reach for it.

  “No,” he said. “I…will not.”

  He didn’t touch it.

  Beside the flask lay a small notepad, the top sheet of which was askew with Ginny’s cramped handwriting. At the head of the page she’d written the name Khoronos.

  Jack picked up the pad and read.

  An address, followed by what seemed to be directions to someplace in the northern end of the county.

  * * *

  “All gone.”

  It was a familiar lament, and always a brightly horrific one. Being up felt great except when she realized that coming down meant staying down. The three grams she’d brought were gone. It hadn’t even lasted three days.

  Amy Vandersteen lay back and let the hot pipe fall out of her hand, just as her dreams had, and her life. Yeah, all gone, she thought. Everything…gone.

  How long would her name last? A year? A couple of years? Her last movie had been a smash, and she had future deals for millions. So far, no one knew it was all a lie.

  She couldn’t work anymore, she couldn’t focus. The things that had once meant the most to her — her craft, her art—had taken a backseat to her need. She hadn’t even lasted a week on her latest picture; she’d broken down on the set. Cocaine-related psychomimetic shock, the doctors had said. The screenwriter and assistant director had been the ones who finished the film, not Amy. Amy had been at a rehab clinic in Houston.

  She tried to quit many times, but time was circumstance, and circumstance always reclaimed her in the end. Her secret drug dependency loomed behind every door, around every corner — her future’s shadow — waiting for her with a smile. She pretended she could handle it. But how much longer could she wear this mask when the mask was melting every day?

  That’s why she’d come here, to Khoronos’ estate, to immerse herself in the convictions of her past and save her from the future. She thought sure that the sheer artistic power of Erim’s presence would embolden her, would give her the strength to stand up again and create.

  Another dead end. Each time she fired up, she watched more of herself die. There was always a trade-off; the more she fed herself with the euphoric, hot vapors, the more completely her spirit starved.

  Nobody likes me, she realized. The concession seemed so pitiful it was almost funny. But how could anyone like her? She wore her pretending like armor: no one must get to the real her. She wanted so much for Ginny and Veronica to like her; their closeness gave her strength — the cumulative power of womanhood — but even that was not strong enough to save her. Nothing was. Amy knew that now.

  Nothing, she lamented.

  Next, she was up. She was walking out of the house, into the backyard. She felt summoned by something, the need, perhaps, to be free of the mansion’s walls, which reminded her of the walls she’d built around her life. The warm night’s open space took the edge off some of her comedown. Suddenly she felt like running, breaking free into the beautiful gulf of night. I’ll run forever, she thought. I’ll never stop. I’ll run to the end of the world.

  The fantasy seemed nearly absolving.

  “Over here.”

  Amy glanced to the back of the yard. A figure in white stood by the fence beyond the pool. It seemed to hover in place, an illusion caused by the soft moonlight floating on the water.

  “Run!” the figure bid. “Follow me!”

  The figure disappeared through the open gate into the woods. It was just a game, Amy realized. She didn’t care. She ran after.

  The dark path twisted through dense, tall trees. She felt blissful somehow, chasing a stranger through the woods. The moon lit the narrow path with dapples of light. As her feet propelled her forward, she thought of a steadicam scene in one of her movies. The determined protagonist in wistful pursuit of the truth. What a wonderful symbol! Chasing the pure white of revelation through darkness. To what would the mad chase lead?

  The white figure blurred just ahead, vanishing around each bend. Who was he? Where was he taking her? These questions occurred to her but to no real significance. She was the protagonist, chasing truth. That’s all that mattered.

  Around the next bend, the figure was gone.

  Where could he be hiding? Behind the trees? Amy slowed to a cautious walk, peering ahead. Another twist in the story. Suddenly the truth evades the steadfast protagonist, leaving her to wander amid the darkness of her own uncertainly. She’d been led deliberately to the point of being lost; now she must find her own way out. The symbol of every woman’s plight: alone, in darkness.

  She walked ahead one step at a time, watching, listening, her hands splayed as if feeling for trip wires. An owl hooted, and she nearly shrieked. Unseen animals rustled in the woods, sensing her presence. The protagonist as trespasser, delving into unknown terrains.

  When she rounded the next bend, the kiosk appeared.

  It looked like a latticework of crystal in the moonlight. Khoronos had shown it to her the morning she’d arrived. Was that who beckoned her now? Khoronos? The figure stood in wait of her, directly in the kiosk’s center.

  The end of the chase, Amy pondered. The protagonist finds what she seeks at the end of her own darkness.

  Herself.

  She saw herself standing in the kiosk, beautiful and naked in the moonlight. Radiant. Pure. Her smile was bright, like the sun. it was the Amy Vandersteen of the past, not the present. The real woman, not the slave. The tranquility before the storm. The artist uncorrupted.

  The words tolled like distant bells. Before you can love others, you must learn to love yourself.

  This impossibility did not distract her. She shed her clothes as she crossed the kiosk’s wooden floor, until she was standing before herself.

  “Come to me,” her past said to her present. The figure’s arms opened to her. “We must free ourselves.”

  Was
this a flashback? A hallucinotic jag triggered by years of drug abuse? She remained rooted in the moment’s image, and its meaning. Nothing could be so important. Nothing in the world.

  The final scene. Close-up of protag’s face, eyes wide half in fear, half in wonder. She feels the summons, the space between them drawing in. This is the ultimate moment of self-awareness, where the woman of flesh becomes wed to the woman of spirit. At last the protagonist finds what she’s been looking for. Her perfect self. Her womanhood undefiled.

  “Kiss me,” the image said.

  Amy and Amy embraced. She felt a surge like electricity as her flesh made contact with her flesh. Her cheek brushed her cheek. Her hands caressed her buttocks, and her breasts pressed against her breasts.

  “Save me,” she whispered into her own ear.

  At last the protagonist makes love to herself.

  Their embrace tightened. Amy closed her eyes—

  pater terrae

  and kissed—

  per me

  her own—

  terram ambula

  lips.

  “Aorista,” the image croaked.

  Amy’s eyes shot open. She gagged as the foot-long tongue slid down her throat, and the penis, even longer, opened the moist rim of her sex and burrowed up straight into her womb. Her nerves pulsed like gorging veins, every muscle in her body flexing against the instantaneous avalanche of her own orgasms, and next she was lowered quickly to the kiosk’s moon-drenched floor, and her legs were pushed back as the penetration deepened in and out of her flesh, each thrust giving her a new climax which hammered the breath out of her chest with sensations of pleasure she could never even have conceived, and when her suitor’s own orgasm burst, endless cold gouts pumping into her loins, all she could see was the face of this unholy deception, this ruse of night—

  Not her own face at all.

  It was a devil’s face.

  Chapter 29

  “Jesus Christ!” Faye exclaimed. “Where have you been?”

  Jack looked up from the kitchen table, startled. “I—”

  “I’ve been sitting in that goddamn bar for hours.” She set her briefcase on the table, less than gracefully, and sat down. “We didn’t know where you were.”

  “I just got back,” he said meaninglessly.

  “From where? Another bar?”

  “No,” was all he said.

  Lay off, she thought. The last thing he needs right now is you yelling at him. “I was worried, that’s all,” she said more quietly. Did that sound trite? Did that sound girlie? “I heard about what happened, Jack. About the case. I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.”

  Jack shrugged. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. It doesn’t matter. I was burned-out and out of control, and they needed someone to blame the no-progress investigation on when the press got wind of the case. Two birds with one stone.”

  “What are you going to do about—”

  “About my drinking?” He smiled forlornly. “Quit. No choice. And, no, I haven’t had anything today.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask that,” she said.

  He held the odd, skewed smile and lit a cigarette. “There’s this snide chump named Noyle running the case now. He’ll probably abandon the ritual angle as a basis of the investigation.”

  “In other words, I’m out of a job.”

  “Looks that way. I’ll find out tomorrow. Just give everything you’ve got to him, and that’ll be it.”

  That’ll be it. At least she’d gotten to do something different for a few days. “Craig said he saw Susan Lynn’s murderers.”

  “Yeah,” Jack acknowledged, “and he must’ve also told you that they were in the bar several hours but no one remembers their faces.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s interesting. I found out some more stuff today. The aorists believed they were the devil’s greatest disciples. Satan supposedly blessed the faithful. The sects even had litanies and prayers of protection that they recited before they went out and did their deeds. There’s a lot of documentation that you might find amusing.”

  “Why?”

  “From what you just said, Craig can’t make a description of the killers, even though he was in the same room with them for hours. Remember our deacon spy, Michael Bari? He lived with the aorists for weeks, but after he escaped, he couldn’t remember any of their names, descriptions, where they lived. He couldn’t even remember which church they used for their rituals. There’s a lot of similar testimony in the Catholic archival records of the late 1400s, when Rome made a serious effort to infiltrate the sects.”

  Jack tapped an ash. “Kind of makes you wonder.”

  “And there’s more. Several of the Slavic cults, like the one Michael Bari infiltrated, worshiped the incubus Baalzephon, the demon of passion and creativity. Baalzephon seems to have direct counterparts in other demonologies, some dating as far back as 3500 B.C. You name it, the Aztecs, the Burmese, the Assyrian Ashipus, even the American Indians and the Druids — they all recognized an incubus demon who presided over human passion and creativity, just like Baalzephon. It says somewhere in the Bible that evil is relative. Well…they weren’t kidding.”

  Jack seemed depressed now, either by the complexities of Faye’s research or by the fact that he’d been dropped from the Triangle case. Perhaps she shouldn’t even be mentioning it now. “Baalzephon,” he muttered, indeed half amused. “The Father of the Earth. I wonder where these people came up with this stuff.”

  “It was all counter-worship,” she said. “Stuff they invented as a spiritual revolt against their oppressors, the same old story told different ways down through the ages. Same thing as Santa Claus.”

  “Yeah, but Santa doesn’t generally eviscerate women,” Jack pointed out. “What about this incarnation business? Did you find out anything more about that?”

  “A little. The aorists paid homage to their apostate demons by sacrifice and incarnation — in other words, substituting themselves through surrogates. This gave the demon a momentary opportunity to be flesh on earth. Baalzephon’s sects went further, though. They practiced sacrificial incarnation rites year round as a general homage. But once a year they executed a more specific rite that involved selective sacrifices. They believed that the triangle was a doorway, or something like an interplanar dumbwaiter. They’d do three incarnation sacrifices first, girls who would please Baalzephon specifically — passionate, attractive, and creative girls — then they’d sacrifice a fourth girl right in the triangle. This possibly triggered a nonsurrogotic incarnation—”

  “Baalzephon himself makes an appearance, you mean.”

  “Yes, to bless his worshipers in the flesh and to have intercourse outside the territory he’d been condemned to for eternity. This was the ultimate slight to God, a demonological loophole. The end of the rite was called the ‘transposition,’ where the fourth victim transposes into Baalzephon’s space.”

  “You mean…”

  “The fourth victim physically enters Hell through the impresa. I haven’t found out exactly why, but one of the texts mentioned that Baalzephon likes to take a human wife on a yearly basis.”

  Jack winced. “This is some crazy shit, Faye.”

  “Sure it is. And the craziest part is that your killers are doing the same things that Baalzephon’s sects did six hundred years ago. It’s almost to a tee.”

  Jack brewed on it awhile. Then, perhaps unconsciously, he mumbled, “Devils.”

  “What?”

  “We had a second witness, a dock bum. He said the killers leaving Susan Lynn’s condo were devils. Not men. Devils.”

  “I wouldn’t put much stock in a bum’s observations.”

  “I’m not. It’s just that this case gets freakier and freakier.”

  He was brooding again, rubbing his face in what he felt was his failure. But that wasn’t all; Faye knew that. She’d known it the instant she stepped into the kitchen.

  “But there’s something else bothering you, isn’t there?” she ask
ed. “It’s not just the murders, and your being dropped from the investigation. There’s something else.”

  Jack looked up at her.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  He told her everything then, and the details he’d never mentioned. He told her how this Stewie person had come to him with his worries, how Veronica had seemingly disappeared. He told her about this “retreat” she’d gone on at some rich dilettante’s estate, and how he’d broken into Veronica’s apartment, and a friend’s, to try to find out exactly where they were. He told her about the directions he’d found.

  “And you’re going to go there,” Faye said rather than asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s not my business, really. I should just give the directions to Stewie, let him go.”

  “You should go,” Faye said. It was very abrupt. But what would possess her to say that, to encourage this man, who she possibly loved, to seek out a woman who had rejected him? The past always hurt — this Faye knew from experience. Perhaps she felt complicit with him.

  The following silence made her uncomfortable. An inkling told her to leave. Just get up, say goodbye and good luck, and leave. But she couldn’t. Veronica had left him. Faye would not, even if her presence meant nothing.

  All she wanted was to do something for him.

  What, though?

  “What do you want out of life, Jack?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. A drink would be a good start.”

  “I’m serious.”

  Here came back the doleful smile, mirth in the face of defeat. “I have no idea. What about you?”

  Faye couldn’t tell him. She said good night and went to bed.

  The brittle yellow streetlight from Main Street seeped into her room. She lay awake on her bed. What did she think she was going to do? The ceiling extended as a grainy, infinite terrain, just as her mind felt.

  She heard Jack go up the stairs. She waited awhile, a half hour, perhaps, to give him time. Next, she herself glided barefoot up the steps, her nightgown like mist about her body. She quietly opened his door and stepped in. She skimmed off her nightgown and felt licked by the tinted dark.