Incubi

by Edward Lee

  Jack pointed to the cop on one knee. “What’s his problem?”

  “See for yourself. Fifth floor. Lieutenant Eliot’s there.”

  “Any press people show up, tell them it’s a domestic. And get yourselves squared away. You’re cops, not garbage men.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jack stalked toward the high-rise. He was one to talk: long hair, ragman clothes, unshaven. Uniforms hated brass. You usually had to be a prick to get anything out of them. But these two guys looked like they just seen a ghost. Maybe they have, Jack thought. He stepped off the elevator onto the fifth floor and headed down the hall.

  The familiar scent touched him at once. Faint. Cloying.

  Fresh blood.

  Randy Eliot leaned off the wall. He always wore good clothes, like a TV detective. But tonight the face didn’t match the fine, tailored suit. Randy Eliot’s face looked cracked.

  “You’ve never seen anything like it,” was all he said.

  “Who reported it?” Jack inquired.

  “Old guy in the next unit. Said he heard whining, and some ruckus. The super unlocked the door for us.”

  Jack looked at the doorframe. The safety chain was broken.

  “That’s right,” Randy confirmed. “Locked from the inside. We broke it to get in. The perp went out the back slider.”

  Jack eyed the chain, then Randy. “But we’re five stories up.”

  “The perp must’ve rappelled down. He left through the slider, over the balcony. That’s all I know.”

  The apartment was quaint, uncluttered. It made him think of Veronica and then he knew why. Framed pictures hung all over the walls — pastels and watercolors, originals. An artist, Jack realized. A lot of the pictures looked first-rate.

  Flashes popped down the short hall. A tech was fuming the handle of the slider, squinting over a Sirchie UV light. He said nothing as Jack stepped onto the balcony.

  Five goddamn stories, he thought, peering over the rail. Two more techs mounted field spots below, to check for impressions in the wet ground. It had rained all afternoon. The perp had either worked his way down terrace to terrace or had used a rope and somehow unhooked it afterward. Jack tried to visualize this but drew only shifting blanks.

  Randy took him back through the unit. The place had “the feel.” Any bad 64 had it, the mystic backwash of atmosphere projected into the investigator’s perceptions. Its tightness rose in Jack’s gut; he felt something like static on his skin. He knew it before he even saw it. The feel was all over the place.

  “In there,” Randy said. “I’ll wait if you don’t mind.”

  Another stone-faced tech in red overalls was shooting the bedroom with a modified Nikon F. The flash snapped like lightning. New blood swam in the air, and a strangely clean redolence. Death in here, the feel itched in Jack’s head. Come on in.

  Jack stepped into the bedroom.

  “Aw, Christ,” he croaked.

  He felt nailed to the wall. The blood shouted at him, bellowed in his face. It was everywhere. He blinked with each pop of the tech’s flash, and the image seemed to lurch closer. The bed looked drenched, sodden as a sponge in a pail of red paint. This was more than murder, it was a fête. Red shapes, like slashes, adorned the clean white walls. Some looked like words, others like symbols.

  Above the headboard, four words stood out:

  HERE IS MY LOVE

  Love, Jack mused. In slow horror, his eyes moved to the bed.

  White rope fastened her wrists and ankles to the posts. She was blindfolded with tape, and gagged — of course, the whining heard by the neighbor. Again, Jack tried to picture the killer, but his instincts, oddly, did not show him a psychopath. Jack could tell the victim had been pretty. The perp had very tenderly gutted her; he’d taken his time. Organs had been teased, caressed, reveled in for their warmth. Ropes of entrails had been reeled out of her sliced gut and adorned about the body like garlands. Her cheeks had been kissed by scarlet lips. Scarlet handprints lingered on her breasts. The epitaph proved the truth: This was not murder. It was an act of love.

  Jack swallowed something hard. “Any prints?”

  “Plenty,” the tech said. “The guy didn’t wear gloves. Lots of ridges on her hooters, and in the stuff he wrote on the walls.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Some pubes, definitely not hers. We’ll know more once Beck signs her off and gets her into the shop.”

  Randy stood at the door, looking away. “She was single, lived alone. Cash in her wallet, bunch of jewelry in the drawers, all untouched. The guy next door says he thinks he heard them enter, three-fifteen or so. The whining sopped about three-thirty.”

  “That’s it?”

  “’Fraid so for now. Might as well let TSD take it from here.”

  Jack nodded. He felt dizzy and sick. In his mind all he could see was the girl twitching against her bonds as the blade divided her abdominal wall. He saw the red hands on her breasts, the red lips kissing her.

  Randy pointed to the back wall. “Check that shit out.”

  Jack hadn’t even noticed it, too caught up in what lay on the drenched bed. More strange writing emblazoned the white wall, and another design.

  “What the fuck is it?”

  It was a triangle painted in blood, with a scarlet star drawn at each of its three points.

  Written below the design was a single word:

  AORISTA

  Chapter 3

  “I wonder what Khoronos is like in bed,” Ginny reflected.

  Veronica glanced up from her packing.

  “Jealous already?”

  “Shut up,” Veronica said.

  Ginny laughed. “I got invited first, you know. But I’ve always been one to share with my friends.”

  “You’re making some pretty big plans, aren’t you? We haven’t even left yet. Besides, for all we know, he’s married.”

  “Don’t even think such a disgusting thing!”

  Veronica had confirmed her reservation by the number on the card. A woman, who must’ve been Khoronos’ secretary, had curtly given her directions. She and Ginny decided to drive up together.

  “What do you think Amy Vandersteen’s like?” Ginny posed.

  “I saw her on Signature once. She’s an asshole.”

  “Most good directors are.”

  “And what about these two guys?” Veronica asked, putting panties into her Samsonite. “The poet and sculptor?” (Two guys picked up the painting, Stewie had told her earlier. “Young but kind of gruff. They gave me a receipt, loaded up Vertiginous Red, and drove away.” Then Stewie, who made no secret of his bisexuality, flashed his famous grin. “I wouldn’t mind going the rounds with them, though. They were what you female types call hunks. Serious baskets, if you know what I mean.” “Not only are you a pimp, Stewie,” she’d informed him, “you’re a horny dog.” “Woof, woof,” he’d replied.)

  “We’ll find out when we get there, won’t we?” Ginny complained, “but we’ll never get there if you don’t hurry up and finish packing!”

  It was a combination of unconventional tangents that gave Ginny Thiel her attractiveness. She was a little overweight, but in a cute way, not fat, just fleshily robust; she’d always been told that she wore it in the right places. She was about 5’5”. A fresh gleam in her face betrayed her age — thirty — such that she often still got carded in bars. Large brown eyes peeked out from under bangs as severe as Stewie’s; her hair was black and cut straight at the neckline. She’d been married and divorced twice; she’d dumped her first husband, and her second husband had dumped her, which was about the same time she started to become successful. She often claimed that her failed marriages were the best things to ever happen to her professionally. “If my marriages hadn’t turned to shit, what would I write about?” she’d said once. She and Veronica had been friends since junior high.

  Stewie came back in, having loaded Veronica’s first suitcase into Ginny’s 450. “I can’t believe you girls are doing th
is. Talk about spur-of-the-moment.”

  “It’s about identifying our self-actualization,” Ginny said, “but you wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  “Oh, is that what it’s about?” Stewie laughed, gold chains glittering about his neck. Tails of light shimmered on his knee-high boots. “I think the female sex drive might have a little bit to do with it too.”

  “That’s another thing you don’t know about, and Jesus Christ, Stewie, would you please get rid of those ridiculous boots?”

  “You two just don’t want to admit that you’ve got the hots for this Khoronos guy.”

  “I have no problem admitting that,” Ginny said.

  “Neither do I,” Veronica added, then blushed.

  Stewie grinned at her. “And what’s old Jackie boy say about that?”

  “I told you, we broke up—”

  “You mean you dumped him,” Stewie cut in.

  Veronica wanted to kick him.

  “You ought to least call him,” Stewie suggested. “Let him know you’re on your way.”

  “Stewie, don’t be a butthole,” Ginny said. “Why should she call him? They broke up.”

  “It just might be nice to give him a call,” Stewie addressed Veronica, ignoring Ginny. “He still worries about you.”

  It was weird the way men were. Jack hated Stewie, and Stewie hated Jack, but as far as their former relationship went, Stewie was all for it. He constantly inferred that Jack was good for her and she for him. It didn’t make much sense, but Veronica knew that’s how Stewie felt.

  She looked sadly to the phone. I should call him.

  “Don’t,” Ginny said. “He’s history. He’s out of your life now. It’s stupid to call him.”

  “Well, we’re still friends,” Veronica hemmed.

  “Former lovers can never be friends. Get real.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” Stewie warned. “She’s a bitter, socio-anarchistic feminist nihilist.”

  “I wish I had a dick so I could tell you to suck it.”

  “Both of you shut up!” Veronica nearly screamed. She decided not to call. Ginny was probably right. What purpose would it serve now?

  They packed the rest of their things into Ginny’s car.

  “When are you coming back?” Stewie asked.

  Veronica looked unassured to Ginny, “I don’t really know.”

  “We’ll come back whenever,” Ginny grandly answered.

  “That tells me a lot,” Stewie razzed. “I do have my client’s business interests to manage, you know.”

  “You have your vanity to manage, through representing a famous artist,” Ginny balked. “That’s all you have.”

  “I’ll call you every night,” Veronica promised. “Keep working on those Abrams people for the book thing, and push for the show at MFA. I want that one bad.”

  “Have no fear, O beloved business interest.” Stewie jokingly kissed her fingertips. “Your future is in my hands.”

  “Thank God the rest of her isn’t.” Ginny started the car. “And lose the boots, Stewie. The Musketeers are dead.”

  “I’ll give them to you for Christmas, along with a new vibrator, which you’re obviously in need of.”

  “Would you two please stop it?” Veronica pleaded.

  “Have fun girls,” Stewie offered.

  He watched the car pull out of the lot and disappear. He stared after them for quite some time. It was just a morose feeling, like a sudden shadow on a sunny day. The feeling, for some reason, that he would never see them again.

  * * *

  Twice they had to stop for deer. My God, my God, was all Veronica could think. She’d never seen deer for real in her life.

  Ginny, typically, had forgotten her directions. They used the ones Veronica had gotten from the secretary on the phone. The place was an hour or so out of the city, in the northern part of the county. Long, winding lanes took them up the ridge through forests and orchards and quiet little homes set back off the road. Seeing all this at once, Veronica came to a chilling conclusion — her artist’s sanctuary had made her forget that beauty like this existed. What is beauty? the existential instructors had always asked. Beauty is what your work must always communicate. Beauty is not what you can see, it’s what you feel. In her paintings, she’d always tried to find beauty through emotions — through human things. But this was different beauty: the trees, the landscape, the blue sky, and all that those things summated visually as a result. Even the silence was beautiful, the air, the spaces between the poplars and pines. Veronica felt lost for a moment, adrift in awe.

  “I haven’t been laid in two weeks,” Ginny announced.

  The comment’s frankness blew Veronica’s muse to bits. Was Ginny making another innuendo? To Khoronos?

  “Thank God I brought rubbers,” Ginny added.

  Her intentions were plain. Veronica’s own sex life had been rather shunted before Jack. She’d always felt it inappropriate for a woman to be anticipatory, but now she wondered why. It had been a terrifying decade. Before AIDS it was herpes, and before herpes a dozen different strains of VD. Jack had been the only lover in her life she’d not used condoms with, because the department required drug and STD tests every six months. It wasn’t easy for a woman to feel safe nowadays, but it was a pretty safe bet when a guy pulled out five years worth of negative blood analysis reports from the county health services department. Yes, bringing condoms made Ginny’s intentions plain, but Veronica could not help but blush. Secreted into her own suitcase was a twelve-box of Trojan ribbed. This was the first time she’d even admitted it to herself. Ginny’s not the only one with anticipations.

  Ginny was rambling on behind the wheel, “I mean, I can’t even sit down without squirming. You know what I’m talking about? I’m…mushy.”

  “And crude.”

  “Crude? What about you? Isn’t that why you broke up with Jack? Because you weren’t sexually fulfilled?”

  “No, it is n—” But the rest never left her mouth. “It was a bunch of things,” she said instead. She didn’t dare tell Ginny about her own condoms. “Maybe we’re just a pair of sluts and don’t know it.”

  “There’s no such thing as a slut, Vern. There are only women who like to come and say so, and women who like to come but don’t say so.”

  “That’s pretty thin wisdom from an acclaimed novelist.”

  “Not thin. Concise. Axiomatic.”

  Ginny always got the last word, and it was usually a big one.

  More of the world passed behind them. Ginny’s orange 450SL sucked down onto the blacktop through each winding turn. Then Veronica, without even knowing why, asked, “Have you ever, uh—”

  “Have I ever uh what?”

  “Have you ever done anything…with a girl?”

  Ginny’s eyes thinned. “Are you making a pass at me?”

  “No!” Veronica exclaimed. Why did I ask that? “I just—”

  “Yes,” Ginny said.

  Veronica felt her face turn pink. What had compelled her to ask such a personal thing?

  “I did once,” Ginny continued. “Some girl I met at a mixer in college. I didn’t even know her. It was funny. We were doing shots of ouzo and next thing I know we’re in bed.”

  Veronica didn’t know how to place the next question, nor did she understand its necessity. “Was it good?”

  Ginny’s face looked calm. “In a lot of ways it was real good. I didn’t really want to do it, but I did it anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you think? You’re an artist. Why do you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily do?”

  “I don’t know,” Veronica said.

  “Experience. All of life is experience. Isn’t that what gives artists — writers, painters, or whatever — their desire to create? It doesn’t matter if the experience is good or bad, wise or stupid — that’s irrelevant. Without experience, and the curiosity behind it, we’d have nothing to give our art meaning.”

  Experience. The word
echoed in Veronica’s head.

  “I probably came ten times,” Ginny said.

  “Any guilt?”

  “Why should I feel guilty? It’s a free country. People can do what they want and what they feel.”

  Veronica fell silent. Suddenly she felt guilty. But why? For dumping Jack? For flying away from conformity? Or was it more?

  “You still love him, don’t you?” Ginny asked.

  “I don’t—”

  “Vern, the guy’s a washed-up gumshoe. That case he had last year, that Longford guy, it put a zinger on his head. You don’t need the frustration of being involved with a guy who can’t cope with his own life.”

  Was that it? Frustration? No, she felt sure.

  “He drinks way too much, smokes three packs of Camels a day. If he lives to be forty it’ll be a miracle of science. Plus, he’s belligerent and narrow-minded.”

  Veronica didn’t want to hear this, but—

  “But you still love him,” Ginny said. “It’s all over you.”

  More confusion. Experience, was all she could think.

  The road wound up. The 450’s 5.6 liter V-8 purred. Later Ginny asked, “Why did you ask me if I’d ever been with a girl?”

  More silence. More of the world blurred past. Then Veronica ventured: “Do you believe in premonitions?”

  “Oh, God!” Ginny broke up behind the wheel. “You’re a trip, Vern! A real trip!”

  They both laughed the rest of the way to the estate.

  * * *

  It seemed queerly out of place: a white Bauhaus monolith in the middle of the woods. Dada, Veronica thought: she hated reactionary architecture. Its lambency blared like an eyesore. Who would build such a thing, here of all places? Rigid geometries and hard ninety-degree angles composed an edifice that appeared dropped from the sky. Gunslit windows and a black door rose like a disparate face as they pulled up the long drive.

  “Jesus,” Ginny whispered. She slowed to a stop. The house’s whiteness seemed to vibrate like blurred vision. As they went to retrieve their bags, the black front door clicked open.

  Veronica and Ginny froze.

  “Ms. Polk, Ms. Thiel,” greeted Erim Khoronos from the front step. He wore a pure white suit that seemed to shimmer with the building’s lambent walls.