Incubus

by Ann Arensberg

  Emily walked back over the meadow to her car, putting one foot in front of the other by an effort of will. She got into the car and turned it around, coasting slowly toward the road. A little way down the road she braked abruptly and turned off the engine. From this position the cabin was invisible. It stood to reason she was invisible from the cabin. There was food and drink in the car, another bag of packaged snacks and a bottle of ginger ale. She could lie across the back seat to sleep, or tilt the front seat backward. In the morning Hannah’s mood might have changed. By morning she would know if Hannah had had a visitor. Emily wanted to be in Hannah’s vicinity rather than alone at home, cut off from the sight of her. As long as she was near her, the pain she felt was the pain of waiting, not of abandonment.

  The light was fading fast. The moon was in its last quarter. When her eyes had adjusted to the gloom, Emily opened the car door slowly, leaving it ajar lest the sound of its closing should carry. She crept up the road, faltering where her feet met loose stones. Her rashness so appalled her that she felt her two legs might not support her. Step by step she ascended, until she saw the roof of the cabin above the rise. She turned left at the edge of the meadow, picking her way toward a stand of dog rose, Rosa canina, a tall, dense shrub well armed with hooked thorns, no place to seek cover. A little farther on was an old lilac, surrounded by unpruned shoots growing up from the base, which formed an adequate barrier to hide behind. From here she could see the whole outline of the cabin against the sky. Behind the windows flickered light from candles as well as the steadier glow of a kerosene lamp. Were the candles auxiliary lighting or a signal? Or was someone inside already, who had approached from the opposite direction through the woods? Emily sank to the ground, bracing herself against the trunk of an oak tree. In this heat, the ground had dried quickly after the downpour. She felt genuinely light-headed from so much indulgence in conjecture, from Hannah’s mistreatment, from the fact that she had staked herself out to spy on her daughter. Every minute brought the chance to turn back. In her lethargy she argued that she had until sunrise to make the decision.

  It may be that Emily fell asleep or, in the turmoil of her emotions, failed to perceive time passing. She could not otherwise account for the hours between midnight and four a.m. When she came to her senses, she was first of all aware of hunger and a crick in her neck; then she noticed that the lights in the cabin were burning no less brightly than before, as if the candles had been replaced or added to. The flickering light evoked human shapes moving restlessly about, an effect, it seemed safe to suppose, of Emily’s state of mind. Any idea of stealing up to look through the windows deserted her. Hannah was not sleeping. She was awake for a purpose not intended for a mother’s knowledge.

  From her infancy Hannah had pulled away from Emily, wriggling out of her arms, refusing the breast. By the third day of her life she had her mother feeding her entirely by bottle. She started to walk so early that she is mentioned in the medical literature, but Emily knew she was impelled by a need to escape from maternal embraces. She tried to run before she walked. Emily watched her topple over again and again, screaming if she tried to pick her up. Once she rolled down the staircase. Blood was pouring out of her nose, but she wouldn’t let Emily near her until she had tried to walk again, and succeeded. Thus Emily was conditioned to believe that Hannah was always in danger. For forty-one years that thought had oppressed her mind. The greater danger, however, lay in acting on the impulse to rescue her. Then as now, Hannah would react to her mother’s concern by rejecting her.

  The night died slowly, like a person with a wasting disease. Emily watched it linger past all hope of remission, fading into transparency. The lights in Hannah’s windows were burning lower, fading along with the darkness. When the sun rose, it would still be several hours before bright morning. If Hannah had been working all night, she might sleep all day. In that gray predawn hour every symptom of aging was more acute. Emily’s neck was in spasm. The joints in her fingers were inflamed. Her knees and ankles were swollen. She lowered herself to the ground and lay flat on her back on a rough surface scattered with twigs and acorn caps. This time she slept deeply and awoke with the sun on her face.

  During the heat wave, which had lasted so long we thought of it as a new weather pattern, the sun felt as hot at nine a.m. as it did at noontime. Until she consulted her wristwatch, Emily was panicked, thinking she had overslept. As it was, she might already have missed various comings and goings up at the cabin. In broad daylight she saw that the door was half open. She was instantly aware that her lurking place was more exposed than she had realized. She ducked behind the oak tree, whose trunk was more than twice her girth. She wondered how long it would be until she could venture back to the car without being detected. A sense of futility overcame her. If Hannah decided to drive into town, she would see Emily’s car. Emily had created a trap for herself. No matter when she went up to the cabin, she was certain to be humiliated and cast out. There was no right moment.

  Emily stepped out from behind the tree and looked up at the cabin. The door was open wider. A paint-stained canvas tarp was spread out on the porch, perhaps to dry. Emily tucked in her shirt and shook grit out of her heavy leather sandals. She couldn’t see the twigs in her hair or the leaf mold on the seat of her skirt; nor was she aware that she carried her hands clasped in front of her as she walked, like a communicant advancing to the altar rail. Hope of forgiveness always lay close to the surface with Emily. If Hannah was awake and moving about, she had broken out of her mood of frozen concentration. Hannah might deal with her roughly, but Emily would welcome interaction of any kind, including discourtesy. As she waded through the tall grass, accompanied by jumping crickets, she was startled by something gliding across the top of her foot. She looked down at the ground and saw a garter snake making his escape. When she looked up again, she saw Hannah coming around from the rear of the cabin. The cabin had no back door. She had climbed out a window.

  Before Emily could call out to her Hannah was heading downhill in the direction of the woods, breaking into a run, running faster and faster until it seemed as if she were being flung downward. Emily started after her, but she was so far behind and her knees were so stiff that she had no chance of overtaking her. At times she actually lost sight of her. As she tottered forward, arms held out straight from the shoulders for balance, her spectacles bounced as high as her eyebrows, momentarily blinding her. In order to see at all she had to pause in her pursuit, giving Hannah a greater and greater advantage. When she halted again, lungs bursting and heart skipping in her chest, she was forty feet or so from Hannah and a little above her. Hannah was racing toward a pool of scarlet, a growth of red flowers with blotched papery petals, some variety of poppy.

  Poppies belonged to a fleeting period in June. By this time in July there should have been nothing left of them but their blue-green seed cases. Among the poppies were yellowing stalks, the foliage of daffodils. In all her trips to the cabin Emily had never noticed a planting of daffodils, sown so close to tall trees that they’d have received less than half a day’s sunlight and should only have bloomed sporadically. On her visits she’d stayed indoors, performing services Hannah hadn’t asked for—changing sheets, fighting cobwebs, sweeping sawdust, arranging pieces of lumber in neat stacks against the walls. When she had finished these tasks, she was not encouraged to prolong her stay, to share refreshment or walk the land. Otherwise there would have been many times during the past month when she could have admired these same poppies toward which Hannah was rushing headlong, as if she were flying to the arms of a lover.

  What kind of attraction propelled her, she who in her youthful tantrums had pulled up her mother’s flowers and trampled them? Nearing the bed of poppies, she reached out with both hands, like a child who is trying to grasp a lovely toy. Before Emily could take a step forward, Hannah plunged into the bed of poppies up to her knees and disappeared from sight. The forest and hillside rang with her shrill voice. Her mother heard her
, and their cries intermingled. Later, Emily said, “It was as if the earth had swallowed her alive.”

  When Emily summoned us to hear her story, Henry, Walter, and Lorraine made more objective listeners than I did. Emily sat on the sofa where she had lain for several weeks, refusing to speak, neglecting her person and her garden. For our meeting she had bathed, put on clean clothes, and prepared a tray of coffee. I could see through the living-room window that she had begun to take the garden in hand. The wheelbarrow was full of weeds, dead blooms, and grass clippings, ready to be added to the compost heap. It was unlike Emily to issue a summons or make any demands on others, but she was greatly altered, like someone who has had a brush with death. Grief had imprinted itself on her deepest nature; grief was her universe.

  While we were sipping coffee, waiting for Lorraine to arrive, I tried to commiserate with her about the heat, which had climbed into the nineties throughout the last few weeks, with no respite at night. Since July 22 no rain had fallen. The corn in its husks was parching before it ripened and the pasture lands had withered. Michel Roque dropped bales of hay from a small plane on the far fields to keep his animals from starving. There were such tight restrictions on the use of town water that lawns browned and gardens were perishing. The ivy climbing the bank building had turned yellow, and the marigolds at the base of the war memorial were burned and blackened, like fragments of metal. Emily looked at me indifferently, unconcerned by any circumstances but her own. Once a faint smile crossed her lips, as if she were gratified that the earth which had seized her daughter was being punished in turn.

  Those of us who were gathered around her found her manner unrecognizable. Her bearing was queenly, unbending. It was so painful for me to hear her recital that I believe I blanked out many details and some of the connecting parts. Henry took my hand and pressed my arm against his chest, as much to keep me from running away as to comfort me. Everything she told us comes back to me in pictures without sound or captions. I see my mother crawling on her hands and knees through the bed of poppies and around it in wider and wider circles, frantic to find a crack in the earth, a pit, the mouth of a cave, exposing herself gladly to the fate that might have claimed Hannah. I see her stumbling through the forest in the gloom cast by giant trees. Her mouth opens and closes, but I cannot hear her calling. Exhausted and desperate, she leaves the woods and returns to the bed of poppies, where she finds a fine-toothed black pocket comb, a masculine accessory. I see her panting up the meadow to the cabin, sagging with fatigue onto Hannah’s cot, pressing a fist against her heart. She picks up her daughter’s paint-stained shirt, buries her face in it. She sees Hannah’s watch on the bedside table, a cheap man’s watch in a steel case with a flexible metal band; she puts it in her pocket, a keepsake, a talisman.

  Then I see her approaching her car, reaching out to grasp the door handle, letting her arm fall back to her side, knowing she is incompetent to drive. I see her slip on a scattering of pebbles in the road and stay down for several moments, the only time she paused for rest during her descent. As she makes her way down she is so given over to grief she wraps her arms around herself, leaning forward as she walks like a person battling a headwind.

  When I was eight years old, I swam too far out and was caught in a crosscurrent. As it carried me past the rocks that formed the cove, I saw my mother go over to the lifeguard, who grabbed a life jacket and jumped into a kayak. While he paddled out to me, I kept my eyes on my mother, afraid to lose sight of her. Other people were racing up and down the beach, waving their arms excitedly, but she stood at the edge of the water, in up to her ankles, waiting impassively. When I was delivered to her in the arms of the proud young lifeguard, she stood me up, wrapped me in a towel, and gave me a cup of hot soup from a thermos jug. After lunch I was allowed to go back in the water, where I played and swam all afternoon until my skin puckered. Had she reacted hysterically, I would have been frightened of the water for life, but I would have known how much she loved me.

  Emily’s narration answered none of our questions. She leaned against the back of the sofa, depleted by the effort. Walter, at least, had no scruples about putting pressure on her, however weakened her condition. His thin face was flushed with temper. Emily’s daughter had been missing for two weeks and she had done nothing. Her inaction was criminally irresponsible. “You have two choices, Emily. Either you go to the police or I will.”

  Henry was torn between several reactions. He was concerned for Hannah’s safety, but he felt Emily needed protection from further shock. He had seen patients at her precarious level of distress take refuge in total withdrawal. The parapsychologist in him took a more detached view of the situation. Already Emily’s memory of the scene was so clouded by emotion as to be unreliable, but he was obliged, in the interests of science, to try and jog it. He went over to the sofa, sat down next to her, and took her hand.

  Unable to withstand this sympathetic gesture, Emily broke down and wept, bitter sobs that arose from her belly and shook her whole body. Henry held her close, stroking her hair until she subsided into hiccups, like a child who is overtired.

  Walter was pacing, narrowing the distance between himself and the telephone on a table by the fireplace. Henry ordered him back to his seat in a tone that was so threatening it momentarily halted Emily’s sobbing. I had been about to intervene myself. Surely we could operate on two planes at once—initiate a practical course of action as well as delve into the mysteries. Emily had made two statements that clashed absurdly: “She has left me,” she said; a little later, “she was taken.” Anyone who knew Hannah and was aware of her chaotic relations with Emily could imagine a scenario in which the daughter ducked out of sight and stayed hidden in order to torment her mother and punish her for spying on her. I would make it my business to call Bobby Court’s sister in South Freeport, Hannah’s high school buddies who still lived in the neighborhood, her last set of housemates in Albany. I believed Hannah would show up eventually, if only because she was working on a commission for a private garden in Biddeford and her patron wanted the piece before Labor Day.

  Walter might be intimidated by Henry, but I excused myself and slipped upstairs. Henry glanced in my direction without trying to stop me. I closed the door to Emily’s bedroom and called Trooper Centrella. When the dispatcher put him through, I gave him a watered-down description of the events, implying that the time frame was very recent. Hannah had quarreled with her mother and run off; it had happened before, would he send a man up to Pughole to look around; Hannah might have met with an accident. Emily—and Hannah—would be furious if they knew I was raising the alarm, but Mark Centrella had met Hannah often enough to know she could be acting out of spite and cussedness. “Your sister’s a great woman,” he said, “but I wouldn’t want to be on her bad side.”

  Lorraine sat apart from the others on the cushioned window seat. Her eyes were closed and in her open palm lay the black rubber comb Emily had found in the bed of poppies. Her eyelids fluttered, but her brow was free of strain. I recognized that she was practicing psychometry, attempting to divine knowledge of the owner of the comb through contact with it. There was a feeling of excitement in the room and a definite odor of complacency such as you might find at a seance or a prayer group, wherever mortal subjects try communing with a higher reality. I don’t think Henry saw me come back in or heard me drag my chair a few feet forward, closer to the inner circle.

  They were addressing the question of whether Hannah had been “taken,” as Emily had put it. Perhaps they had reviewed the evidence of an earthly kidnapping while I was out of the room. If so, they had made short shrift of it. They had wandered quite far from such prosaic considerations as the number of felons, their description, their possible connection with Hannah. They were in the realm of pure speculation and wishful thinking, where dire feelings carried as much weight as observation. “I heard a sound like thunder or an oncoming train,” said Emily. I broke in to remind them that there had been no thunderstorms in the re
gion during that period, nor any railroad line closer than the one through Portland.

  Rather than cast doubt on Emily’s impressions, the facts I advanced seemed to give them added meaning. If nothing in the world accounted for the sounds she had heard, then they must have an otherworldly explanation. “I have never felt such terror,” said Emily. “I was paralyzed by it. I couldn’t get to her.” Henry and Walter nodded in agreement. Apparently the degree of fear experienced by the subject was another indicator of supernatural agency. “I remember looking down,” she continued. “I thought my foot was caught in a root. When I looked up, she was gone.” Emily had omitted this particular detail the first time around. It seemed to rule out a kidnapping. While Emily’s eyes were averted, Hannah would have had time to dash behind a boulder or a tree, but there was scarcely time for a full-dress abduction complete with pouncing, struggling, binding, gagging, and bearing away. If Emily had heard any sounds, she would have looked up instantly.

  I was about to donate this bit of logic to the company, but Henry raised a hand to stop me. Emily had something more to add, another item she had left out of her original statement—a genuine oversight on her part, or an embroidery? “It grew dark,” she said, “as if a cloud were passing over the sun.” As swiftly as any kidnapper stalking his victim, Henry snatched this piece of information and held on to it, leading Emily to make a fuller description of the sudden darkness. She blossomed under his guidance, growing more and more confident. Her story flourished likewise. It was not a cloud across the sun, after all, but a fog that had settled directly in her line of vision, screening the poppy bed. A mass of fog with discrete dimensions, about the size, she proposed, of an old-fashioned wardrobe, like the huge armoire, inherited from Emily’s maternal grandmother, that grazed the ceiling of Hannah’s girlhood bedroom.