Incubi

by Edward Lee

  The notion was difficult to pinpoint, but it almost seemed as though Amy had been summoned awake.

  Summoned by what?

  Veronica slid out from Ginny’s embrace, careful not to wake her. She cracked the bedroom door and peeked out. Amy was tiptoeing naked down the dark stairs. Veronica slipped on Ginny’s robe, wondering. Then she edged out toward the landing.

  First light had not yet worked its way inside; downstairs was filled with soft, grainy dark. The house was so silent Veronica could hear herself blink. Amy Vandersteen seemed to be kneeling, searching for something under the couch downstairs. Her pale nakedness made a ghost of her in the murk.

  What is she doing? Veronica thought, peering down.

  Seconds later, she knew.

  It was a tragic sight. The orange glow of the lighter gave it all away. It tinted the room and cast a desperate halo about Amy’s coiffed head. Her face looked pinched shut as she sucked on the tiny pipe, answering the summons, the call of her curse.

  Veronica could not remember the last time she felt this sad. Addict, croaked an unholy voice in her head. In the slender woman’s desperation, Veronica glimpsed all the woe of the world.

  Amy sucked the pipe dry, then lay back. If she’d been oblivious, that would’ve made it more reckonable. But the look on the woman’s face told the whole truth. Hers was a countenance not of euphoria, but of slowly creeping horror. Tears ran down her cheeks as she rode the wave of her high. The glint in her wide-open eyes shone with pure ruin.

  Veronica’s heart felt squeezed up into her throat.

  She went back to the bedroom and looked out the window. What could she do to help Amy? Nothing, she answered. The image remained, an equally sad truth.

  Sunlight struggled to reach above the treetops. It was as though this remote pocket of the earth were flinching against the sun, quailing to keep its veil of night. Did I dream? she wondered. Her memory flinched too, against splinters of images, colors, heat. Yes, she had dreamed…

  The fire-lover had come yet again, her suitor of sleep. It had caressed her with its flames, kissed her, penetrated her. In her sleep she’d wrapped her legs about its blazing torso and…

  The memory scalded her. Bliss. Sheer erotic bliss.

  Goose bumps slid across her skin. She glanced about, hunting for a distraction, when her gaze plopped onto Ginny’s little desk.

  Scribbled notes and correction tapes cluttered around the typewriter. A small stack of sheets had been turned upside down — Ginny’s work in progress. One sheet hung out of the typewriter’s platen in plain sight. Impulse, not premeditation, urged her to read:

  a harrowing spangle of moisture and muse. His gaze swept her away to lush, uncharted planes, chasing her like a sleek bird—

  “Get away from that!”

  Oops. Shamed she turned slowly around, looking down.

  “It’s creative respect, you know.” Ginny was sitting up in bed, glaring. Somehow anger prettied her face. “It’s an unwritten code. One artist never looks at another artist’s work without permission. You know that.”

  “I know,” Veronica peeped. “Sorry.”

  “Then why did you do it?”

  “It was just sitting there. My eyes kind of fell on it. I only read a little.”

  “How would you like it if I went into your room and looked at your stuff without you knowing? Huh?”

  “I said I was sorry. Jesus.”

  Ginny glanced away. Her hair lay tangled about her face in strings. “Where’s Amy?” she asked.

  “Downstairs. She’s freebasing again.”

  “That’s too bad.” Ginny’s sharp smirk saddened. “She’s an asshole, sure, but she’s got a lot of talent and a lot of good ideas. What a waste.”

  It was a cold way to abridge a human life, but it was true. It was a waste. How many great artists had destroyed themselves with drugs?

  “A waste of a lot of passion too.”

  Veronica glanced up. “What?”

  “She’s a wonderful lover.”

  She looked back down again, too quickly. She knew Ginny would get around to it eventually.

  “Well?” Ginny asked.

  “Well what?”

  “Observations, comments… Conclusions?”

  “About last night, you mean?”

  “No, Vern, about last Fourth of July. You know what I mean.”

  Veronica refaced the window, anything to avoid Ginny’s prying gaze. What should she say? What could she say, in truth?

  “Did you like it?”

  “Yes,” Veronica said.

  “Do you regret any of it?”

  “No, but it still bothers me. The whole thing was premeditated. Those guys manipulated the hell out of us.”

  “Bullshit, Vern.” Now Ginny sat on the bed’s edge, uninhibitedly naked. “That’s a cop-out. We can’t blame others for what we do.”

  “It’s not a cop-out,” Veronica objected. But why did she feel so defensive? “You’ve got to admit—”

  “Be real. No one forced you to do what you did last night. No one manipulated you. What happened, happened because we allowed it to. You’re repressing yourself, Vern, which is exactly what Khoronos is trying to teach you not to do.”

  Veronica’s anger began to unreel. “I’m repressing myself? I spent most of the night with my face between your legs, and you call that repression?”

  “It’s repression because you don’t have the courage to admit your own motives for doing it.”

  “Oh, I see. I’m a lesbian but I’m just not admitting it.”

  Ginny shook her head; she smiled dismally. “You really can be stupid when you try hard. Sex has nothing to do with any of this. Don’t you listen to anything Khoronos says?”

  “What is he saying, Ginny? Since I’m so stupid, tell me.”

  “He’s saying that we have to shed our repressions in order to maximize ourselves as artists. Not just sexual repressions, but every repression in regard to every aspect of our lives. To be everything we can be as artists, as creators, we must—”

  “I know,” Veronica sniped. “We must delve into our passions.”

  “Right. And it’s true. Because that’s all that creativity is founded in. Passion.”

  Passion for everything, Veronica finished in thought. Her petty anger was gone, spirited away. She looked down at her shadow thrown across the floor. She thought of herself as two separate entities, one of flesh, the other of shadow, her id, perhaps. That was where her passions lay, in her shadows, and that’s what Khoronos meant yesterday when he’d spoken of her failures. She was keeping her passions in shadow. She must illuminate them to become real.

  “Come back to bed,” Ginny said.

  “I—” Veronica faltered. “I’m not tired.”

  “Neither am I.”

  Veronica let the robe slide off her shoulders. Then she was getting back into bed with her friend.

  * * *

  Jan Beck handed Jack a strip of multicolored paper — the source spectrum from a mass photospectrometer. Under it Jan had written:

  3-[-3-(p-hydrophenyl)-4-chloroxyiphone]-3’-disodium-edetate.

  “That’s the stuff,” Jan said. “The chemical designation.”

  “And you found it in the bloodstreams of both girls?”

  “Yep. Too bad it’s meaningless.”

  It was 7 p.m. now; Jack and Faye stood in the TSD main lab, where they’d arranged to meet after Faye got out of the Library of Congress. Neither had mentioned Jack’s drunken foray of the night before.

  “Meaningless?” Jack countered. “It’s our biggest lead. Once you identify it by name, we can nail down a geographic scheme. Whoever’s making it or selling it can lead us to the killer.”

  “Killers,” Jan Beck reminded. “And that’s the problem. I don’t know if I can identify it by name.”

  “You said it’s not in the CDS and pharmaceutical indexes, right?” Jack asked. “That knocks out about ten thousand possibilities.”

 
“So what? They’re U.S. indexes. It could be a foreign pharmaceutical. It could be homemade.”

  These revelations did not enthuse Jack. He tried to sort his thoughts, smoking. “How much time, Jan?”

  “Cold? Weeks.”

  “I don’t have weeks.”

  Jan Beck laughed. “Captain, unless you can give me something to go on, I’ll have to catalog every index one at a time.”

  “Here’s something you might be able to use,” Faye Rowland interrupted. “I found a bunch of stuff today about drug use among the aorist sects.” She riffled through a sheaf of Xerox sheets. “They used lots of drugs during their rituals; one of them was an aphrodisiac called rootmash. They made it by distilling the pods of a plant called blackapple.” She scanned her underscores. “Taxodium lyrata is the botanical name. The book said it was a cantharadine, whatever that is.”

  “Cantharadine,” Jan said to herself.

  “Sounds like you’ve heard of it,” Jack said.

  “It rings a bell. Give me that.” Jan took Faye’s papers and began to walk away toward her index library.

  “Where are you going?”

  “You gave me something to go on, so now I’m going to go on it.”

  Jack got the message. “Let’s get out of here,” he said to Faye. “Jan likes to be left alone when she works.”

  Faye followed him up the stairs of the county HQ. He seemed remote, or distracted. Then he said, “Sorry about last night.”

  “You won’t last long, drinking like that,” Faye replied.

  “I’m gonna quit.“ Jack smiled at the excuse. “I know, that’s what they all say. But I’m really going to do it.”

  Faye kept quiet.

  As they were about to exit, an ancient sergeant at the main desk stopped them. “Hey, Captain, you got a call from City District.”

  “Thanks.” Jack took the phone. “Cordesman.”

  “Jack, it’s Randy.”

  “How you coming on the interviews?”

  “It’s like what you predicted. Rebecca Black had as many pickups as Shanna Barrington. And we struck out on the ex-husband. He was verifiably out of state during the murder.”

  “Just keep plugging.”

  “Sure, but that’s not why I called. Some guy keeps calling your office, says he knows you. Sounds like a real prick.”

  Stewie, Jack guessed.

  “I’ve got him on the line right now,” Randy said. “How about taking it and getting the guy off my back.”

  “Switch me over,” Jack said. The line transferred, hummed, and clicked. “What do you want, Stewie?”

  “Jackie boy! How’s it going?”

  “Fine until you called. What do you want?”

  “I need to rap with you, paisan.”

  “Well, I don’t want to rap with you, Stewie. I’ve had a taxing day, and talking to you would only make it more taxing.”

  Stewie guffawed. “You never did like me, did you?”

  “No, Stewie, I never did. And I still don’t.”

  “I need to talk to you about Veronica.”

  The name seemed to give Jack an abrupt shove. “What about her?”

  “I think she’s in trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble? I’m listening.”

  “Better if we meet, you know, man-to-man.”

  But what could he mean? What kind of trouble could Veronica be in? “All right, Stewie. Man-to-man.”

  “Or, hell, let’s be honest. Libertine-to-drunk.”

  “How about assailant-to-assault-victim?”

  “Aw, Jackie, that’s so sad. Are you threatening a law-abiding citizen over a police line? Is that wise?”

  “Where and when, Stewie?”

  “How about the Undercroft? In your constant inebriation, it’s probably the only place in town you can find without a map.”

  “I would really love to kick your ass, Stewie, and if this is a bunch of bullshit, I will.”

  “Come on, Jack. An alcoholic wreck like you? You couldn’t even kick your own ass. Now, are we going to bicker like a pair of bête noires, or are we going to rap?”

  “I’ll be there in a half hour.”

  Jack hung up. He looked stolid, vexed.

  “You’ll be where in a half hour?” Faye asked him.

  “I—” Shit, he thought. “The bar.”

  “That’s great, Jack. A minute ago you told me you were going to quit drinking. Now you’re going to the bar. Great.”

  “I’m not going there to drink, Faye.”

  “Of course not. You’re going there to play racquetball. Why else do people go to bars?”

  “It’s something personal. I gotta talk to someone, that’s all. You can come too, if you don’t believe me.”

  “I have better things to do than sit in bars, Jack.” She turned, was walking away. “I have a bunch of material to go over for your murder case, remember? Have fun at the bar.”

  He trotted after her into the parking lot. “Why are you always pissed off at me? I won’t get drunk, I promise.”

  “Don’t promise me, Jack. What do I matter?”

  “You…you matter a lot.”

  “Don’t promise me. Promise yourself.” Faye slammed her car door shut, then drove off.

  Jack watched her big Malibu turn out of the lot. Boy, I could use a drink, he thought, and got into his own car. That was the unique thing about the power of promises. They always dared to be broken.

  * * *

  “All right, Stewie. I’m here.”

  It was not easy for Jack to pull up a stool next to Stewart K. Arlinger. It demanded a placation he didn’t feel capable of. Stewie wore a slate-blue Smiths T-shirt that read “You handsome devil.” He’d recently stylized his black, banged hair with a streak of silver, and most of his white jeans evaded visibility for the cuffed black boots which rose up past mid-thigh. A yellow clove cigarette burned in one hand. Before him stood a tall glass of gin.

  “Good to see you, Jack,” he said through a snide smile.

  Jack sat down. Craig spun a bottle of Seagram’s over his shoulder and caught it behind his back. “The usual, Jack?”

  “No. Soda water. Put a piece of lime in it to make it look like I’m drinking something.”

  “Soda water. Hmm,” Craig remarked. His brow arched, as did the brows of several patrons. I will not break my promise, Jack thought.

  “Graduating to the hard stuff, huh?” Stewie commented.

  “Believe me, Stewie. It’s very difficult for me to be in the same room with you and be sober at the same time.”

  “Let’s just get to business before we get into a fight.”

  “Fine,” Jack said. “I don’t have time to drive you to the emergency room. I’d miss Wheel of Fortune reruns.”

  “You know, Jack, I like you, even in spite of your rampant aggression and alcoholic ill-will. But let me ask you something. Why exactly do you hate my guts?”

  “Plenty of reasons,” Jack was quick to respond. “You’re selfish, greedy, pompous, you make a living off my ex-girlfriend’s work, and you wear boots that come up to your fuckin’ crotch.”

  “All of the above are true, Jack, but let’s try real hard to be adults for a minute — a trying task, in your case. I’m really worried about Veronica.”

  “You said she might be in trouble. How so?”

  “I’m not sure. She’s never been one to shirk her professional responsibilities. Shows, galleries, interviews — all that kind of stuff’s very important to her, the business end of her art. That’s why she has me to manage her career.”

  “Get to the point.”

  “I haven’t heard from her all week.”

  Jack set his drink down and thought about that. Stewie was right. Veronica would never remain out of touch with her manager for so long a time. There had to be a reason.

  “That’s why I’m worried. She’s close to the big time, which is great because she deserves it. But it’s real easy for an artist to fuck up. All you have to do i
s snub a few important people, and that can mean the end of a career. She’s got a lot of things in the fire right now. Art Times wants to interview her. Two major publishers want to do books of her work. I got galleries all over the country who want to put her up. Yesterday the fucking Corcoran calls, they want to do a show too. I don’t know what to tell any of these people. Some of them are important people, Jack. All week long I’ve been telling them I’ll get back to them once Veronica has contacted me. I can’t jerk them off forever. When the fucking Corcoran Gallery calls, you don’t say, “I’ll get back to ya, bub.’”

  This didn’t sound right, none of it did.

  “I’ve got to get ahold of her, Jack. I’ve got to know what she’s got ready to go. If I can’t get back to these galleries with some kind of commitment soon, they’ll write her off. That would be really bad for her future. You got to help me out here, Jackie. My bread and butter’s on the line, and so is hers.”

  “What can I do?” Jack queried.

  “Tell me about this thing she went on with Ginny. She hates my guts too, by the way.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Jack said. “She said it was a creative retreat of some sort, said she wanted to ‘find’ herself. And she said some rich guy was putting her up.”

  “Khoronos,” Stewie said.

  “Yeah. Khoronos. If you ask me, the whole thing sounds pretty fucked up.”

  “We finally agree on something. Do you know where Khoronos lives?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me. I think she was afraid I’d hound her or something. She hit me with all this the night we broke up.”

  Stewie stirred his gin with his finger. He’d grown his pinky nail long and painted it white. “I met him once,” he said.

  Khoronos, Jack thought. Already the rats were coming home to feast, jealousies and the blackest thoughts, all to remind him of what he had lost. “What’s he like?” he asked.

  “Pompous but refined,” Stewie answered. “Something awesome about the way he carries himself and the way he talked. The word ‘scintillating’ comes to mind.”

  Awesome, Jack thought. Scintillating. Excuse me while I puke.

  “And real good-looking,” Stewie was kind enough to continue. He ordered another Sapphire from Craig. “Sharp dresser, tall, well proportioned. Fantastic body.”