Henry had grown more cautious since the fiasco of Lorraine and the plastic comb. He thought his clients were probably having erotic nightmares. Out of a sense of scientific responsibility, he interviewed the husbands, although he knew in advance what their reactions would be. “I haven’t touched her,” said Frank Morse. “I haven’t been near her for months.” Ralph Hiram broke down. “What can I do? Why does she keep accusing me?” Ford Bissell begged Henry for medication. It was unclear whether he wanted it for Sally or for himself. Like the others, Michel took the blame. “I lost desire and now I have driven her to this hysteria.”
Henry had satisfied himself that the husbands were blameless, but he was not so confident about the nightmare theory. It raised more questions than it answered. Why were so many women having nightmares at the same time? Dreams that were so similar? Had they told one another their dreams, spreading them like gossip, programming one another like people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens and whose accounts were identical to stories circulating in the tabloids? Dreams occurred during sleep. Why did these dreamers insist they were awake throughout, or had been awakened? None of them presented their dreams as a series of distorted visual images; they offered them as lived experience.
Bogged down in uncertainty, Henry was clear on one subject. His parishioners showed the clinical signs of sleep deprivation: unreliable reflexes, short attention span, lapses into incoherence, irritability. For weeks Adele had been tardy, absent, careless, or inattentive. Henry’s clients lost their bearings in mid-sentence. They forgot one-syllable words and proper names. Their volition was diminished. When he asked if they wanted coffee, they were as stumped as if he were waiting for the answer to a calculus problem. Lack of sleep compromised the immune system. Sally had swollen glands and a low-grade fever. A superficial cut on Mariette’s arm kept getting reinfected. Ruth’s rash was, if anything, worse. If people were deprived of good sleep long enough, they misperceived things. They formed paranoid ideas.
Henry was faced with a conundrum. Were these nightmares depriving them of sleep or was sleeplessness engendering delusions of sexual menace? Whichever came first, the bad dreams or the insomnia, he was no closer to finding the cause of either one of them.
If Henry asked himself why his own marriage was still untroubled, he never did so in my presence. He came home from his office and sought me out in the garden. While I inspected the damage from the heat and drought, he followed me up and down the rows of vegetables, reviewing every detail of his client sessions, treating me like a disinterested colleague who had no personal stake in the subject. He followed me so closely that we collided when I stopped to bend over, hunting for a single sound green tomato to ripen on the windowsill, or a few viable chard leaves. Henry seemed to take my unresponsiveness for like-minded clinical detachment, and to congratulate himself on it.
In fact, I had no emotion to spare for my friends’ marital upheavals. I was mourning the loss of my garden. It was over, a month before its time, devastated by unnatural August heat instead of Maine’s late September frosts. Even crops that weathered frost were finished: the leeks were as thin as pencils; the parsnip roots had forked; the Brussels sprouts had cracked and split open. When I went inside, Henry pursued me to the kitchen, still talking at me, blind to the tragedy in the garden, sensitive only to human dramas. I had picked a basket of crab apples from our tree, hoping to salvage something of the summer by making apple jelly. As I handled the fruit I could see I had cherished false hopes. Each apple was spotted and riddled with worm holes. The few unblemished sections had gone mealy.
Henry was standing beside me at the counter, too close to me. He had seen Ralph Hiram that morning. Ruth canceled at the last minute, so Ralph took her session. I was treated to a heartfelt portrayal of Ralph’s stricken innocence, his dismay over Ruth’s vindictiveness. Ralph broke down and wept in front of Henry, who took his tears as proof of sincerity. In his anguish Ralph was ready to admit to any wrongdoing, whether he remembered it or not. Like Lon Chaney’s pitiful werewolf, he begged to be placed in confinement so he could not get out at night. “If I am doing these things,” he cried, “I should be locked up.”
Absorbed in his story, Henry reached for an apple from the basket. He brought it to his mouth and bit into it. I watched him swallow several bites before he noticed its condition. He spit a piece of apple into his palm and looked at me reproachfully, as if I had offered him the rotten apple instead of merely allowing him to eat it. Several times that afternoon I caught him glancing in my direction. At tea and at supper he looked closely at the food I put before him, breaking a cookie into several pieces, spreading mashed potatoes around on his plate in case they happened to be concealing something. It had crossed his mind for the first time in our marriage that he took my good will too much for granted.
Chapter Twenty
On these stifling nights we sat out in the yard on reclining chairs, sipping ice water with lime. Our conversation was lethargic. Every so often one of us remarked that the temperature seemed lower (or higher) than the night before. In late August the northern lights were visible in our latitude. We had watched them for several nights, suspended across the sky like hanging draperies, glinting white with a tinge of blue, the color of glaciers. It was a cooling spectacle. The aurora was brighter and closer this year, as well as more pictorial. Supposedly it coincided with magnetic storms in the upper atmosphere. We had no reception on our home and car radios, only blaring static, but as soon as you drove past the Dry Falls town limits, the stations came back loud and clear. When Michel Roque went up in his plane to drop hay for his animals, he was out of contact with the local airfield at Danville for most of the run.
We were still outdoors at eleven-thirty. The later it grew, the more we were convinced it was cooler, a wishful perception based only on the fact that it was sunless. Neither one of us had the energy to check the thermometer. Henry had turned its face to the wall some weeks ago. It was more unsettling to know the temperature than not to know it. When the telephone rang, I got up to answer it. Hannah might be trying to call me instead of my mother. By the time I struggled out of my chair, the ringing had stopped. It began again while I was still upright and kept on until I reached the instrument, as if the caller were well aware I was dragging my feet.
When I heard Sally’s voice, I assumed she was canceling our date. We were going to a conference in Portland tomorrow, the subject of which was gardening with native plants.
“I know she’s in there,” said Sally, without apologizing for the lateness of the hour. “Her car’s there, but she hasn’t turned the lights on.” At first I thought she meant the lights in Adele’s car, not the garage apartment. Sally scolded me for not listening. “For God’s sake, Cora. She’s been home for six hours!” “She’s exhausted,” I said. “She probably flopped down for a nap. She’ll sleep straight through.”
Sally reminded me that the garage apartment was dark, even in the daytime. Originally intended for a live-in housekeeper who would spend her days in the main house, it faced north and had small windows. The efficiency kitchen and the bathroom were inside rooms, both windowless. I had visited Adele often enough to remember she automatically flipped the light switch when she opened the door. The switch governed a standing lamp next to the sofa and a reading lamp on a table between two armchairs. Without illumination, you stood a good chance of tripping over piles of books for which Adele had no shelf-space. Adele managed to run into them even with the lights on.
“A fuse blew,” I suggested. “The fuse box is in the garage and she was too tired to deal with it.” “I checked the fuses,” said Sally. “There’s nothing wrong with them.” “When did you check them?” “Just now. That’s why I called you.” “I don’t understand. You were in the garage but you didn’t go upstairs?” “I almost did,” she said. “I started to.” It was unlike Sally to be so hesitant. “Hang up and call her,” I ordered, “unless you’d rather sit and stew about it.”
Ther
e was a pause at the other end. Slowly and deliberately, she explained that the phone had been busy, but “the wrong kind of busy.” After several tries she had called the operator, who told her there was trouble on the line and thanked her for reporting it. They would send someone over in the morning. “I’m running out of ideas,” I said. “There’s no way around it. You’ll have to go in. Don’t forget to take your key with you.”
While I waited for an answer, and an end to this roundabout conversation, the answer finally struck me. She wanted us to leave our backyard and our cooling drinks, spring out of our deck chairs like volunteer firemen when the bell sounds, and drive hell-for-leather to her aid. By the time we arrived, roused Adele, and calmed everyone down, it would be close to one-thirty.
Sleep came in cycles. If you violated one cycle, you had to wait for the next one to begin. I clocked our chances of getting to sleep at no earlier than three a.m. “Do you want us to come over?” I asked. Sally consented without thanking me. She was way past caring if I had made the offer in earnest. “Give us fifteen minutes,” I said. “I have to break the news to Henry.”
Sally was waiting for us in the driveway. As hot as it was, she was sitting inside her car with the windows closed. She held a battery-operated lantern on her lap, which lit up the interior with a pallid glow. As we drove by and parked in front of her, she turned off the lantern. I expected her to come out to meet us, but she stayed in the car. Henry tried to open her door, jiggling the handle. She had locked herself in. He jabbed a finger at the glass, pointing at the lock button, until she finally released it. She almost fell getting out of the car. Henry caught her in time. “You go first,” she said, handing him the lantern. He led the way across the gravel drive to an enclosed stone staircase on the far side of the garage. The steps were uneven and gritty from unswept particles deposited by shoes. I was halfway up when Henry reached the landing. Sally hung back, one foot on the ground and one on the bottom step.
The light over the door wasn’t working. Henry flicked the switch several times, then reached up to unscrew the bulb. He held it to his ear and shook it. “It seems all right,” he said, and screwed it in again. This was taking too long. I pushed past him and opened the door. I tried the light switch on the wall. Nothing happened. The lights were out of order, but the refrigerator was humming. The appliances and the lights must be on different circuits. It was Sally’s fault. She said she had checked the fuse box. At this rate we’d be lucky to get to bed before dawn.
The living room was blanketed in darkness. Nothing was visible from the door but the outline of the sofa. Henry came up beside me with the lantern, playing the beam around the room, deepening the shadows. There was a carton of milk on the table and an open jar of peanut butter with a spoon in it. Adele’s duffel-shaped shoulder bag, flap open, spilled crumpled tissues and coins on the kitchen counter. Her long green dress was lying on the braided rug in front of the sofa, where she must have stepped out of it. Henry shone the light along the opposite wall, looking for the bedroom. The bedroom door was slightly ajar, a matter of an inch or so.
Sally had ventured over the threshold. She was less anxious in the dark with us than alone outside. Henry moved toward the bedroom. Sally followed me so closely she tripped on my heels. We were right behind Henry as he grasped the knob and started easing the door open. I discovered I was holding my breath. This stealth was absurd. We were acting like lawbreakers. What would happen if we barged in and startled her? At worst she might scream and take a moment or so to recognize us. I put my shoulder to the door and shoved, breaking Henry’s grip on the knob. The door swung inward, stopping short of the wall. It was a long, narrow room with a window at the farthest end set close to the ceiling, like the windows in basements. A mattress on a wooden platform, the double bed was beneath the window, head to the wall.
Adele was lying across the bed. She had been there all along. The lantern lit up her form in its entirety. She was so tall that her feet would have touched the floor if her knees had not been raised and spread apart. She wore a white slip drawn up to her navel and no article of clothing below it. The straps had slid off her shoulders. Her knees opened wider. Her pelvis rose and fell in a broken rhythm, faster and then slower. The motion drove her backward, until her head hung over the side of the bed. I had seen her naked in the meadow below Hannah’s cabin, too far away to observe that her mount was so prominent or its hairy covering so tropical. In the lantern light we could take the measurement of her clitoris, as fat as a human thumb from knuckle to tip. Her arms were flung sideways, hands outstretched, fingers digging at the bedclothes. She was taking pleasure without touching her body, using secret muscles or imagination, some brand of masturbational yoga. Transported by impending orgasm, she seemed oblivious to our presence. The only thing worse than watching her would be having her catch us at it.
Sally seized my arm and tried to pull me back. Henry’s lantern wavered, dropping its beam to the floor, leaving Adele in modest darkness. We had no need to see this or ever speak of it. It would take all our compassion to forget it. I turned aside, assuming we were of one mind, when the beam moved back to the bed. I put out my hand to appropriate the lantern, but Henry stopped me. He pointed the light directly at Adele’s face. Her lips were trembling. Her brow was contracted. Her eyes were closed but her eyelids were in spasm. We had misjudged her. She was not in charge of the workings of her body. She was deeply asleep and dreaming, a dream that was giving her pain as well as pleasure. The lantern moved back and away from her face. Her pelvis strained upward, mimicking copulation. Lashed to an invisible partner, a lover endowed with the stamina women dream of, she was nearing fulfillment. I watched her with envy, since I had no erotic life and no ability to dream one. Now it seemed a dreamed encounter and a waking one were equal in intensity.
By every standard of decency we should have taken our leave, but we stayed for the climax. When it came, it was accompanied by convincing vocal music—sighs, trills, panting. One moment she was as taut as a bowstring and the next her body collapsed, inert and ungainly, as if she had been thrown on the bed like a bag of laundry. Release came so suddenly we feared her heart, overtaxed, had given out. Henry took a step forward to see if life was still in her. Sally clung to me, whimpering. I tried to break loose, but her embrace restrained me.
At that same moment, clearly visible in the lamplight, a column of black vapor rose up from between Adele’s legs. About the stature and shape of a man, it dissolved from the bottom upward, until all we saw hanging in the air was the contour of a head and shoulders. When the last wisp of black had vanished, Adele stirred and moved her lips. Very slowly, as if underwater, she turned herself over on her side, facing toward us, pushing her fists into her groin as if to bar access. Her breathing was regular and her eyelids were motionless, signs that she had passed into one of the stages of dreamless sleep. A wave of sickness came over me, forcing me to choose between vomiting and losing consciousness. I want to think I staved it off until I knew Adele was uninjured. As I went down I remember trying to understand, as if the matter were of great importance, why it was I, and not Sally, who had fainted.
Three of us saw it, by lantern light. It took us by surprise. Researchers or thrill seekers who set up watch in a haunted house are conditioned by past reports and local legend. They expect to see something, and what they see bears a strong resemblance to previous sightings. We had no expectations. We thought we had intruded on a dreamer and succumbed to a voyeuristic impulse. Otherwise we might have come prepared—brought infrared cameras, spectrometer, and recording equipment. (Had that smoky black shape produced sound? We would never know.) If we had any inkling, we would surely have come protected, armed with crucifixes and holy water. With a little warning Henry might have had the wit to pray, uttering formulas of exorcism.
Did Henry castigate himself because his priestly reflexes had failed him? Quite the opposite. He could not believe his own good luck. He was as keyed up as an investor who had a hot tip on
the stock market. He bustled about, organizing all of us, bringing me around with a good shake and a dose of black coffee. The lights had come on as he was carrying me out of the bedroom. I heard him say, “You see that? Would you call that coincidence?”
He closed Adele’s door, announcing that one of us would look in on her every twenty minutes. He put Sally to work at the dining-room table, writing a description of the apparition while it was fresh in her memory. He sat me up sooner than I wanted to and made me do the same, urging us to close our eyes and form a mental image before we committed words to paper. He sat across from me with a pad on his knee, following his own orders. It did not occur to him that Sally and I might not want to relive the experience. When I tried to picture the scene, I saw nothing but black. My head ached, and I was afraid of bringing on another faint. I was no better at visualization than I was at dreaming, but I didn’t want to admit it to Henry. He would never let me lie down until I got the job done.
Thanks to Henry’s persistence we completed our eyewitness reports within thirty minutes of the sighting, record time in an atmosphere of crisis. We neither emoted nor exchanged impressions until we had finished, so our reactions were as free as possible from collective influence. It was true that Henry had used the term “apparition” in our presence, but “apparition” meant anything that appeared, usually something remarkable. What else could he have called it? In any case, his slip of the tongue did not seem to have contaminated our perceptions. Our accounts, when compared, differed in some particulars. Sally called what she had seen “a darkness” and claimed it “billowed outward,” increasing in size until it enveloped the figure of Adele, obscuring her from view. Henry described a pillar of black vapor, too dense to see through. His account tallied with mine, with one exception. He saw the head, but did not see the lighter spaces where eyes should be (unless I had tacked on this sensational item after the fact). Details aside, we had reached a status quo that satisfied Henry. A black shape had materialized from between Adele’s legs, towered in the air, and evaporated. Henry was certain it had wanted us to see it.
Incubus Page 23
