Incubi - Edward Lee.wps

by phuc

  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 asked. "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.

  "Jack?" she whispered. She leaned over, shook him gently. He snapped awake, frightened for a moment, then gazed up.

  "Faye?"

  "Shh," she said. "Don't say anything." She pulled the covers off. She sat on his belly and opened her hands on his chest.

  Oh, God. What now? What would he think of this? Had she come in here just to fuck him? That might only make him feel worse.

  Give him something, anything. Something he can't have anymore.

  Even in the dark his eyes shone plainly with uncertainty.

  She ran her hands up his chest. "You can pretend," she said.

  "What do you m "

  "You can pretend that I'm her."

  His eyes stared up.

  "You can pretend that I'm Veronica."

  "No "

  "Shh." She took his hands and placed them on her breasts. "Pretend that I'm Veronica. Call me her name."

  "No. That would hurt you."

  She leaned down and kissed him. "I'm Veronica." She kissed him again and he kissed back. She reached behind and felt him.

  Was this so false? What else could she do for him? Sure, it was a fantasy that would be dust in the morning, but in the gift, if only for a night or only a moment, she could give him back a sliver of the past he'd lost. She pondered the irony. It was surrogatism in a sense, wasn't it? It was transposition. She was transposing herself with someone else, for him.

  She kissed him more fervently now, more wetly. His penis felt hot, hard. "I'm Veronica," she whispered again. "Make love to me, Jack. Make love to me like you used to."

  She slid back on his belly and guided him in. The sensation nearly shocked her, to suddenly be occupied by his flesh. Should she pretend too? Should she pretend that Jack was her own dead love? The idea never crossed her mind. To Faye, he was what he was in reality. He was Jack.

  "I'm Veronica, and I still love you."

  He let the fantasy take him then. He surrendered. "I love you too," he whispered. He rolled her over in the bed, drawing his thrusts slowly in and out. She wrapped her legs around him
at once, and her arms. She liked his weight on her, and the steady movement cocooned within her limbs.

  She was shivering now, as the slow, precise thrusts grew more forceful.

  Her impending orgasm seemed to hover, watching her. He moaned in her ear when she squeezed him with her sex. "I still love you, Jack," she whispered, and squeezed again as hard as she could, and then the delicious pressure in her loins broke and she came, and one more squeeze and he came too, spurting the gentle heat into her sex, whispering things, undecipherable endearments, and when he was done, when he had expended the last of himself into her, he whispered,