Incubus

by Carol Goodman

  “Plastic deer,” I said, yawning, “and it’s the Tumble Inn.”

  “Yeah, well it does sound pretty unbearable. I bet it’s freezing in the winter, too. Still, better not burn your bridges until you’ve got a firm offer in the city. I’m sure you’ll think of a way to keep your options open.”

  We talked a little more and then said good night. When I turned off my phone a wave of dejection swept over me as random as the gusts of damp air that were coming through the open bedroom window. I supposed it was just the strain of maintaining a long distance relationship – the uncertainly of not knowing when we’d ever manage to be together for longer than the summer or winter vacation. But then we’d known what we were getting into when we agreed, during our senior year of college, that neither of us would compromise our careers for “the relationship.” We’d done better than most of our friends and we had a good chance of ending up on the same side of the country next year. Really, it made sense for me to hold out for the job at N.Y.U. If Dean Book offered me the job I’d find some way to hold her off and then I’d call N.Y.U. and tell them I had another offer. Maybe that would propel them into giving me the job.

  The decision made, I felt a weight lift off me, a lessening of tension that made a space for sleep to enter. As I began to drift off my last thought was that I should get up and close the window to keep the rain from coming in … but I was already too far gone to move.

  I couldn’t move. I should get up and close the window but I couldn’t move an inch. There was a weight settled on my chest, pinning me to the bed, pushing me deep into the soft mattress, which surrounded me in an enveloping embrace. I couldn’t move a muscle or draw in a breath. Even my eyelids were pasted shut. I struggled to open them against the light.

  Light?

  The rain had stopped. Instead of wet gusts of air, moonlight streamed through the windows. It was the moonlight that had pinned me to the bed. I could see it spilling across the wide pine planks, a white shaft carrying on its back the shadows of tree branches that quivered in the breeze, trembling to reach me. I recalled the tangled trees and shrubs surrounding Honeysuckle House and had the confused impression that the moonlight was coming from there. There was something wrong with that idea, but I was too tired to figure it out and the moonlight was so bright I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. They fluttered shut and I saw him. The shadow man from my teenage dreams. With him came the scent of honeysuckle and salt air I remembered from those dreams and the longing I’d always felt. He stood on the threshold between shadow and moonlight, where he always hesitated …

  He stepped forward into the moonlight. It was him, the man from the house across the way. I forced my eyes open and he was still there, hovering above me, looking down at me, his face thrown into shadow by the moonlight cascading over his back like a silver cape. I could only see the places the moonlight touched: the plane of one cheekbone as his head tilted sideways, a lock of his hair falling over his brow, the blade of his shoulder. Each piece of him took shape and weight as the moonlight touched it. It was as if he were made of shadow and the moonlight was the knife sculpting him into being, each stroke of the knife giving him form … and weight.

  The moonlight sculpted a rib and I felt his chest press down onto mine, it rounded a hip and it settled onto my pelvis, it carved the length of a muscular leg and it pressed against the length of my legs.

  I gasped … or tried to. My mouth opened, but I couldn’t draw breath because of the weight on my chest. His lips, pearly wet, parted and he blew into my mouth. My lungs expanded beneath his weight. When I exhaled he sucked in my breath and his weight turned from cold marble into warm living flesh. Moving flesh. I felt his chest rise and lower against mine, felt his hips grind into his mine, his strong legs part mine … He inhaled a long draft of my breath and I felt him harden against me. He rocked against me, pushing his breath into my lungs just as he pushed himself between my legs and then inside of me. He felt like a wave crashing over me, a moonlit wave that sucked me down below the surf and pulled me out to sea, onto a crest, and then back under again … and again and again and again. We rocked to the rhythm of the ocean until I lost all sense of what was me and what was him, until we were the wave cresting, then crashing onto the flat hard sand.

  Then I lay panting like a drowning person, slicked in sweat, alone on the bed in a pool of liquid moonlight.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I AWOKE THE next morning with the bone-melting contentment that follows a night of really good sex – quickly followed by a rush of shame at the realization that the sex had all been inside my own head. I had been embarrassed by the dreams I’d had as a teenager, but they’d never gone this far. The shadow man had always stayed on the threshold between dark and light. He’d never come forward … or come inside me the way this creature had. I’d never felt sore between my legs …

  I got up quickly, eager to clear the fuzzy from my head and bloodstream. I didn’t have time to languish in erotic daydreams. Dean Book would be calling later this morning and I had to decide what to say to her if she offered me the job. Plus, I wanted to get inside Honeysuckle House before I left. I hadn’t spent the whole night wallowing in X-rated fantasies. Sometime in the night I’d had an idea for an essay on Dahlia LaMotte’s work, maybe even something longer … I’d scribbled something in my notebook, which I always kept beside my bed. I looked at it now.

  The threshold, I’d scrawled in great loopy script across a blank page, between shadow and moonlight. Now if I could only remember what that meant.

  I decided to take a jog to clear my head. One part of my dream that I hadn’t imagined was the clearing weather. Crisp, dry, sunlit air poured through the open window where moonlight had spilled last night. When I pulled open the curtains I was greeted with a fresh-washed blue sky. The hedge across the street sparkled in the sun. There were bright flashes of pink and red amidst the branches, long tubular blooms that looked like an exotic strain of honeysuckle. Oddly, though, I noticed that there were no tree branches near my window, nothing that could have cast the shadows I’d seen last night. Even that part had been a dream.

  I shrugged off the memory of those ghostly branches and pulled on sweatpants,

  T-shirt and sneakers. I padded downstairs as quietly as I could on the creaking wooden steps, even though I was the only guest staying at the inn. I wondered if Diana was up making breakfast, but I didn’t hear any noise from the kitchen. I checked my watch … 6:15. Breakfast at the Hart Brake Inn was served at 8:30. I had plenty of time for a long run and a shower.

  While I stretched out my leg muscles on the porch I thought about possible routes to take. The campus would be a logical choice but somehow I didn’t want to run into Dean Book in my jogging clothes. I could head down toward town, but then I’d have to stop for stop signs and traffic. In the city I jogged in Van Cortlandt Park where there were dirt cross-country trails that were kinder on my knee joints.

  There was a dirt path here, I remembered, that went into the woods behind Honeysuckle House. I didn’t know how far it went, but since the woods went on for miles surely the trail would too. I could find out if the woods were as inspiring as Dean Book thought they were.

  I crossed the street at an easy lope, slowing at the entrance to the path to adjust my eyes to the woods’ diminished light. Even after I’d become accustomed to the light though, I kept the pace slow so I could keep an eye on the unfamiliar terrain to avoid tripping on roots or branches. The surface of the path was fairly smooth, however, and pleasantly springy – as if it had once been a bog. It curved slightly to the north. From the map I’d glanced at yesterday I imagined that the trail circled around the boundary of campus. I decided to run for twenty minutes – about two miles at my current pace – turn back, run another ten minutes and then walk the last mile back to cool down.

  For the first mile I rehearsed various polite ways of asking for time to consider a job offer should I receive one from Dean Book. Then my mind went pleasantly bla
nk and I noticed how good the clean mountain air felt moving in and out of my lungs. The ground beneath my feet was so springy my knees hadn’t twinged once. I picked up the pace, feeling that little endorphin kick that made getting up at the crack of dawn to run worth it. What a great place to run! If I lived in Honeysuckle House this trail would be right outside my door. I could run here every morning.

  But I wasn’t going to live in Honeysuckle House. Where had that idea come from? Even if I took the Fairwick job, what would I need with a big old house?

  Though it would be nice to finally have room enough for all my books and shoes. Every year I had to choose which to put in storage.

  I laughed out loud at the idea that I might take a job for adequate storage space. The woods echoed back the sound. The trees were lower here on this part of the path. They weren’t even trees anymore, really, more like very tall overgrown shrubs that sprang over the path and intertwined to form an arched colonnade, some eight or nine feet above the ground, decorated with great looping swags of vines and sprigged with white and yellow flowers which smelled—

  I pulled what felt like a gallon of air into my lungs.

  —delicious!

  The honeysuckle shrubs and vines that Silas LaMotte had planted around his house had spread over a mile into the woods! The whole house must smell of them. At night the breeze from the woods would blow through the open windows and fill the rooms with their scent.

  At the thought of a bedroom filled with moonlight and honeysuckle, images from last night’s dream came flooding back to me: shadow branches borne across the floor on a shaft of moonlight, the light carving a man out of those shadows, the shadow man making love to me like a wave …

  Of course. The man in my dream was a demon lover. The demon lover always came in dreams. One of its names was mare, from which we derived the word nightmare. (Although what I’d experienced last night hadn’t felt anything like a nightmare.)

  I had been writing about the demon lover in literature for years. In truth, I’d started writing about it because of the dreams. Only the dreams had gone away as I catalogued and studied the species of incubus and demon lover, vampire and phantom. Why had the dreams come back now?

  It was the house. Honeysuckle House. An abandoned Queen Anne Victorian, overgrown with shrubs and vines, a beautiful man’s face carved above its door. It was my glimpse of the house that had conjured the mirage I’d seen in the rain, and it was that image that had come to me in my dream. I remembered, too, that in the dream I’d had the sense that the moonlight was coming from across the street. The house had haunted me. And why not? In Gothic novels the house was always a major character in its own right – the Castle of Otranto, Thornfield Hall, Manderley – and often it was the moment of crossing the threshold of the house that began the heroine’s adventure.

  A line from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces occurred to me: “it is only by advancing beyond those bounds … that the individual passes, either alive or in death, into a new zone of experience.”

  That’s why I had scrawled that note about thresholds last night. The doorway of the house was the threshold of adventure for the heroine of a Gothic novel, especially for women like Emily Dickinson or Dahlia LaMotte who had totally confined themselves to their houses. It would be interesting to write about the influence living in Honeysuckle House had had on Dahlia LaMotte’s work. I ran faster as I spooled out the idea, my feet barely touching the ground. I’d call it The Threshold between Moonlight and …

  One moment I was mid stride, soaring free of the earth, the next I was flat on the ground, face in the dirt, the wind knocked out of me. I gulped for air, but the ground was pressing too hard on my chest. I had the confused notion that the ground itself had risen up to slam into my chest. It was pressing against my chest, my mouth, my nose … dragging me down into the darkness. Dimly I felt my fingers clawing at the soft, warm earth. I was sinking …

  He was rising to meet me, emerging out of the darkness as if rising out of dark water. The face of the man who’d come to me on the moonlight last night. His features were clearer this time, but not because there was more light to see him by (it was very, very dark where he was) but because there was more of him to see. He was growing, becoming more solid. As if to reward me for this insight he smiled. His beautiful lips parted and came closer until they touched my lips and pushed them open. His tongue flicked into my mouth – hot and wet. I felt myself go hot and wet between my legs where I was still sore from last night, so overcome with desire I felt myself sinking into that blackness … then he breathed into my mouth.

  The air seared my lungs, but I gulped greedy mouthfuls of it. With the oxygen came consciousness. I opened my eyes. I was lying on my back, looking up at a tangled canopy of honeysuckle vines. They formed a vaulted green chapel starred with white and yellow flowers. Like a wedding chapel, I found myself thinking dazedly, still panting from the erotic force of that kiss. Or a funeral chapel if I hadn’t caught my breath.

  I ran my hands over my chest, feeling for broken ribs, but everything seemed to be intact. Then I slowly pushed myself up into a sitting position and wiggled my toes. My right ankle felt a little tender, but otherwise I seemed remarkably unscathed. How had I fallen anyway? I looked around the path behind me for a root or branch that could have tripped me, but the ground was clear. Apparently I’d stumbled over my own two feet.

  Abashed at my own clumsiness – and by the direction my imagination seemed to be taking me since last night’s dream. I got slowly to my feet, slapping dirt from my sweatpants. I gingerly stretched my arms over my head and then bent down to touch my toes. I was going to be sore from the fall and from stopping so abruptly without a cool down, but I seemed to be okay. I wasn’t going to be running any more today, though. I’d have to walk back.

  I looked at my watch. It was 7:10. I’d run for almost a whole hour and at a pretty fast pace. Damn, I could be four miles from the Inn! I’d better start walking. I turned to go … and turned again. I turned in a circle twice before admitting that I couldn’t tell which way I’d come. I examined the dirt path for my own footprints, but somewhere along the way it had gone from soft loam to dirt packed so hard that it didn’t show footprints. Surely when I fell though … I squatted on the ground and stared at the dirt for an impression of my body. Nothing.

  I stood up again – too fast. My head spun. Maybe I’d hit it in the fall and I had a concussion. That would explain the confusion and the hallucination of the face. I couldn’t really be lost in the woods, could I?

  I took a deep breath, willing myself to be calm. I could figure this out. I’d been heading north. All I had to do was find the sun and I’d know where east was and then I just had to go south. Easy enough. But when I peered into the woods I couldn’t see further than a few feet. The honeysuckle shrubs and vines formed a dense underbrush that I couldn’t see through to the sky. I was in an enormous thicket.

  And I wasn’t alone.

  Something was moving in the underbrush a few feet off the trail. I could hear it thrashing against the dry branches.

  “Hello?” I called … and then felt stupid. I pushed a branch down to see better. The branches and vines were so intertwined that when I moved one branch the whole shrubbery creaked and moaned. It was like a wicker basket, I thought, or a nest …

  Just as I thought the word nest my fingers grazed something soft and furry.

  I snatched back my hand, imagining I’d found a mouse nest in the branches, but if it was a mouse nest it was a long-abandoned one. Tiny bones fell to the ground at my feet.

  The thrashing in the underbrush quickened. Something was trapped. I felt a sickening drop in my stomach. This nasty thicket was sucking the life out of some poor defenseless animal. As it would you, an insinuating voice whispered in my ear.

  Angry now, I tore at the vines and branches, some of which had thorns, tunneling into the underbrush. The trapped creature thrashed harder at my approach, whether because it sensed
help was coming or thought the hunter had arrived, I didn’t know. Not knowing made me more frantic to reach it – to free it. An awful apprehension that it might be wounded came over me, mixed with the fear that it might strike at me when I reached it. A logical voice in my brain told me that I was crazy to approach a trapped wild animal, but I didn’t seem to be listening to that voice.

  I pulled an armful of prickly berry-heavy vine out of the way and something flew past me. It startled me so badly that I plopped down on my rear, but it was only a bird … a small black bird that flew a few feet before crashing to the ground. Could this little thing really have caused so much noise? But the thicket was quiet now so I supposed it must have been. It had thrashed so hard that it had injured its wing. I moved toward it to see if it could fly and it turned and looked at me with keen yellow eyes. We stared at each other for a long still moment and then it hopped a few inches away from me, flapped its wings, and took off. At the same moment I noticed that sun was slanting across the path, coming from the hole in the shrubbery on my right.

  That was east. The bird had gone north. I looked down the path in the direction it had gone, but it had vanished into the trees. Then I turned around and headed south.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT WAS 8:30 when I got back to the road. I saw Honeysuckle House first. Its shutters and windows were open. White lace curtains billowed in and out of the open windows, fluttering among the honeysuckle vines. The house looked like it was breathing. The realtor must have come over early to air it out before showing it to me. I felt a pang of guilt at making her go to the trouble when I had no intention of buying it.

  Or was it a pang of regret?

  I should, by all rights, have been more determined than ever to get out of here after my mishap of the morning, but even though I was sore and tired – and hungry – I also felt curiously elated. The fall had been painful – but that kiss! When had Paul last – or ever – kissed me like that? It had made me feel … alive. The smells of coffee, eggs and maple syrup coming from across the road nearly made me break into a run – but I restrained myself out of respect for my sore muscles.