Incubus

by Ann Arensberg

  Henry proceeded to the altar with his retinue behind him. They kneeled at the altar rail, waiting to receive the Eucharist. Henry recited the service from memory, almost inaudibly, blessing the bread and wine, taking Communion in both kinds himself before he pressed the wafers in their upraised palms and held the cup to their parted lips. When very elderly or disabled parishioners came to church, Henry went down from the chancel to serve them where they were sitting. He was advancing on me with the chalice and paten, taking me for one of their kind, entitled to compassion because of my infirmity. I shook my head and compressed my lips, resisting him. He dipped the wafer in the cup and made me swallow it the way you medicate an animal, pulling down my lower jaw, thrusting the wafer onto the back of my tongue, massaging my throat.

  They had another piece of business to attend to before the curtain went up. They made their way toward the font, where Henry took the box of common salt from Sally and poured a measure in his open palm. Extending his free hand over the salt, he spoke, for once, in a voice that carried throughout the interior. “Creature of earth, adore your creator, that you may be purified.” Casting the salt into the water, he continued to pray in language that was new to me. “God our Father, Lord of Angels and of men, bless this salt for health of the body and this water for health of the soul. Drive out from the place where they are used every vestige of darkness and artifice of evil, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.”

  As the group turned away from the font, I wondered where they would go next. How did they know what to do, and in what order? Were they making it up as they went along? Voiceless, I was forced to be a spectator, unable to warn Henry that his framework was too narrow. The kingdom of the Christian god was our planet Earth and the stellar system of which Earth was a part. The devils Henry was preparing to banish were part of the Christian scheme, incubus devils who corrupted women’s souls by lechery. But the shape-changers I had encountered came from the multiverse outside our system and, as such, were not subject to the power of canon law. Face to face with them, Henry’s magic was irrelevant. It was mummery and nonsense, as pointless as sending twenty thousand children on a crusade against the Saracen infidel or a troupe of French actors into Zululand to entertain the natives with a production of Racine.

  The ancient and terrible rite of banishment was part of the Christian ministry of healing. What was its cure rate over time and history? Was it more or less successful than the placebo effect, which accounted for recovery from disease in thirty percent of all cases? In an exorcism everything depended on the faith of the practitioner. Any flaw in his belief, or that of his assistants, affected the outcome of the ritual. Even if these were ordinary Christian devils, who were bound to play by the book, how could I rely on Henry? He had all but decided to leave the priesthood. How steadfast were the others? Walter had no religion. Ruth and Sally were Sunday Christians. Emily’s garden was her church. I had left myself out of the equation. I was only a Christian by marriage.

  Perhaps it was my own thinking that was too narrow. These Visitors were accomplished iconographers. They had usurped many human symbols for their purposes. If they had made crucifixes bleed and the sun spiral earthward at Fatima, it was certainly within their powers to put on horns and impersonate demons. Some, or all, of the Devil’s age-old tricks may have been their doing: cattle sickening, crops failing; springs drying up; bread refusing to rise in the oven; women writhing in sexual frenzy on their beds, copulating with unseen partners. When they assumed the role of devils, with a devil’s limitations, might they not be caught in the trap the Church had devised for their prototypes? If this were the case, the odds against Henry were slightly diminished.

  It was sometime around four in the morning, leaving us three hours or so until daybreak. Plenty of time for all hell to break loose. What kind of violence was Henry anticipating? What kind of incident would set his awesome machinery in motion? Would he know it when he saw it or be taken by surprise? I thought he was destined for disappointment. It was hard to imagine any drama taking place in this barn-like area with its unatmospheric lighting. At least the hall was empty, except for the six of us. Henry would be spared the ordeal of public humiliation.

  They were kneeling at the altar rail, all in a row, like swallows on a telephone line. I was weak in the middle and could barely keep my eyes open. Henry stood up abruptly and turned to face the pews, alerted by some sound that had escaped me. The church door was half open, letting in more sounds—the slap of shoes on stone steps, a grumble of voices, the crunch of tires on gravel, more than one set of tires, cars filling up the parking lot.

  Hiram Baldwin was the first one to enter, wearing a raincoat over striped pajama bottoms. When he saw the church was set up for a service, he paused to remove his old canvas fishing hat. He put a cautionary finger to his lips and waved the rest of the crowd in, a procession of neighbors and townspeople, dazed and underslept, frowning at the strong white light. Like evacuees from an area of danger, they had come away in a hurry, putting on whatever garments were closest to hand, grabbing children, valuables, pets, sundry items of food.

  Ella Macklin, the postmistress, was clasping her jewelry box. The Schwartzes from across the street had their shepherd dog on a leash. The Tapleys from next door lugged two cat carriers, containing one black domestic shorthair and a thirty-pound Maine Coon. Jane and Frank Morse came in with the baby in a sling on Frank’s chest. Between them they could barely manage the baby’s carryall, overflowing with cans of formula, diapers, ointments, plush toys, and rubber teethers. Michel Roque had brought a newspaper, thick enough to be the Sunday edition; Mariette, a lunch basket with a thermos bottle and a loaf of her bread. Their teenage twins lagged behind, sulky and red-eyed, their hair rolled up in plastic curlers.

  I saw the Dragos, back from their holiday. It had done Lorraine no good. Her limp was more pronounced and her eyes were hollow. I saw Mary Fran Rawls and her mother, holding Mary Fran’s little boy by the hand, so tired he seemed to be sleepwalking. I saw the Crofts, the Smalleys, and Ford Bissell, helping his father into a pew. In a short time the church looked like a Red Cross shelter. The townspeople were settling in for the duration, pouring coffee, sharing food, changing babies. Henry moved among them, ushering them to seats, lending a hand with heavy bags and fractious children, passing out candles as he did at evening services (white tapers with a paper collar to keep hot wax from dripping on the fingers), urging them to make themselves comfortable until the night was over.

  Still they filed in—Ernie Silver; Edna Merrifield; Charlie and Phoebe Gerstel; John Crowley, who ran the livery stables; Clark Harmon, the Congregational minister, pushing his crippled wife’s wheelchair. There were people of many persuasions—from Roman Catholics to unbelievers—outnumbering the lapsed and practicing Episcopalians. There were people of many professions—the lawyer, the doctor, the beautician, the town selectmen, the merchants on Main Street, the crew from Schmidt’s garage on Route 243 with their families. Most of them lived in the village, but some, like the Dragos and the Roques, had come down from the countryside. There were friends and acquaintances, newcomers I had not yet met formally, and a half-dozen faces I had never seen before—houseguests, possibly, or transients staying at the White Corner Inn or the Lily Pond Cabins.

  We got all kinds of transients in Dry Falls—honeymooners, outdoors people, retired couples touring New England, and salesmen on the road. At second glance, the strangers in the church seemed to belong in the last category. They were dressed for business in dark suits that shed wrinkles, plain white shirts, and thin neckties. I thought I recognized a couple of them, but only because their features were so bland and undistinguished, the kind that elude description and frustrate policemen questioning witnesses to a crime. They sat apart from one another and a few seats away from their neighbors. When his row filled up, one of them moved to an emptier pew. Their faces were expressionless, betraying none of the emotions shared by the rest of the community. A murmur of voices ran through the chu
rch, not so loud as to be disrespectful, considering the setting. All eyes were on Henry, who had stepped inside the ring of candles with his white-clad acolytes. He moved to the center and they joined hands around him, forming a circle within a circle.

  What accounted for this wholesale evacuation? What had driven our neighbors to seek protection on these premises? Something had unnerved them. There was an atmosphere of apprehension that had the power to ripen into panic. I could see it in the way they sat too close together, craving physical contact in spite of the oppressive heat, in the strangely passive way they waited, focusing on the activity in the chancel, as if Henry held the remedy for their troubles. I could see it in the way they avoided me. No one sat in the front pew on either side of the aisle, or in the pew behind me. When I glanced around, no one met my eyes.

  Directly in back of me in the third row were Ella Macklin and Trudy Newell, the town clerk. Trudy’s black leather purse was stuffed with papers that looked like legal documents or insurance policies, as if she had emptied her strongbox before she left home. Both women had been widowed in the past year and were unused to living alone. It was generally known that Ella called the state police barracks several times a month to report suspicious noises after dark, and that Trudy slept with all the lights on. They were talking in stage whispers, much easier to overhear than a normal speaking voice.

  From what I could piece together they had been awakened from a deep sleep by a loud crack and a sizzling sound, as if lightning had struck a nearby tree. They discovered the power had gone out. They checked their fuse boxes (Trudy’s, mercifully, was in the kitchen, not the basement), but no fuses had blown. When they called the electric company’s emergency number, the operator reported that there was no outage in their area; all systems were fully operative. Trudy called Ella, then Ella called Jim Turtle, the first selectman. Jim had already had a showdown with a supervisor, who said he didn’t care if Jim was the Governor of Maine; he wasn’t sending anyone out to Dry Falls when there was nothing showing on the computer. All over town households were hearing the same message with varying degrees of alarm, until Hiram Baldwin, cruising up and down the streets in his truck looking for a dangling power line, drove past St. Anthony’s, all lit up like a Christmas tree.

  That wasn’t enough to start a general exodus to the church. Reports poured in, relayed from telephone to telephone, of lights coming back on spontaneously, bulbs naked and shaded burning with a faint dull glow, too dim to contribute to visibility. People turned off the main switch at their fuse boxes, but the lights kept burning. Some of the braver ones unplugged a lamp and unscrewed the bulb. The bulb continued to glow in their hands until trembling fingers dropped it and it burst with a pop! into dozens of gleaming fragments. In every house in the village, television screens lit up by themselves, at first with a pattern of snow, then with the ghost of a picture. With one foot out the door and one eye on the flickering image, Ella claimed she saw something on the screen that wasn’t part of any regular program. “It was hateful, Trudy,” she repeated, “it was hateful.” “It was a______,” she mumbled, dropping her voice to a genuine whisper at the climactic moment.

  The rest of their dialogue was lost to me. Captivated by this fabulous narrative of magical lightbulbs and preempted broadcasts, I nearly turned around to question them. What germ of truth was embedded in this snowball of hyperbole? It took many hands to weave a collective fantasy. How many versions of the events were being shared all over the church, adding more and more colorful strands to the fabrication, some taken from movies or the tabloids, some from science and horror fiction, some from hearsay, imagination, or honest misperception? Competition entered into the process: who would win the prize for having the most grueling experience? Between them, they were concocting a modern myth or fairy tale, but with the supernatural agencies as yet unidentified. Until the powers behind these happenings were revealed, the story would remain at the level of local legend, to be transcribed by Ruth Hiram and distributed in pamphlet form to regional souvenir shops.

  From the center of the circle Henry stretched out his arms to the congregation. He was beginning mildly enough, with a collect for aid against perils taken from the daily order of evening prayer. “Lighten our darkness we beseech thee, O Lord; defend us by thy mercy from the dangers of this night.” He had a fine voice, but he was not projecting it. I could hear him in the front row by cocking an ear. The people in the back would only see his lips moving. He was not performing an ordinary church service. He was enacting a ritual that happened to have an audience but did not require one.

  My eyes were grainy with fatigue. Was it my vision dimming, or the house lights? I looked around and saw the assembly beginning to light their tapers. They thought the dimming effect was part of the ritual, but I knew there was no one in the wings operating the switches. Or no one acting on Henry’s instructions. The faces of the crowd looked more relaxed. Dealing with the candles gave them something to do, a channel for their anxieties. The Roque twins were yawning. Mary Fran held her candle in one hand and her rosary in the other. Trudy had already spilled wax on her skirt by tilting her candle and Ella was scolding her for it. None of the traveling salesmen was holding a taper. Dressed so alike, they might have been in uniform. Perhaps they weren’t salesmen at all, but members of a religious sect who found the customs of our church idolatrous.

  I had counted six or seven travelers when the crowd filed in. Now their numbers had grown. There were ten rows of pews on either side of the center aisle. Except for the two empty rows at the front where I sat alone, one of them was seated at either end of every pew. There were more of them standing at the back, arms at their sides, unnaturally erect, as if they were in drill formation. Their ranks had swelled from half a dozen to over forty. Was there a sales convention going on in the vicinity, or a revival meeting at the Bible camp near Windham? I had a curious notion they were blocking the exits—at the pews, at the rear, at the church door. The door was shrouded in shadows. If they were there, they were invisible.

  Henry dropped to his knees inside the circle. His attendants followed his example. His face was set with lines of grief and perplexity. For a moment his voice rose above the murmur of the crowd. “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?”

  The congregation fell silent. When they resumed their conversations, I thought I heard a note of unrest. They could swallow a certain amount of mumbo-jumbo as long as their leader was strong and confident. “Does he know what he’s doing?” whispered Trudy. “I don’t like it either,” answered Ella. The grumbling died down when Henry got to his feet again, although the words he spoke were not reassuring. “Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief.” Henry raised the gold crucifix over his head, then pointed it low and in front of him. I looked sideways to see where he was aiming.

  The travelers had occupied the two front pews across the aisle. The pews sat twelve people, packed in tightly. Had some of the others come forward? I looked behind me. They were still in their places. Two dozen more had been added to their forces, as if they had multiplied spontaneously. Without thinking, I lifted the long candle beside me and stood it upright between my knees.

  The travelers rose as a body. Their movements were laborious, inhibited. The exertion was not mirrored in their faces. Viewed in a mass, their faces were less than ordinary. They were almost rudimentary: mouths drawn in a lipless line, eyes too rounded, flattened noses showing too much nostril, hair so fine and ink-black it might have been painted on their heads. The few I had seen from a distance looked merely similar. At close range, every face was identical, as if they had been cast from a single mold. Reproduction among warm-blooded mammals gives rise to variations in form, not uniformity. I knew what they were. How had I not known them immediately?

  Watching them rise, the congregation took a cue from them. Behind me people struggled to their feet, trying to participate in the unfamiliar ceremony. It was an uneven showing. Some were too exh
austed to get up, some already asleep, some too burdened by belongings or babies to make the effort. I stood up along with those who could manage it, holding onto the candle as if it were bound to me. Henry raised the cross above his head like the Archangel Michael uplifting his sword of flame. The acolytes circled around him at a quickening tempo, a crude, flat-footed dance of their own inspiration. As they wheeled around him, going clockwise, then counterclockwise, feet drumming on the chancel paving stones, Henry held forth in a powerful voice, recomposing scripture: “Woe to them by whom offenses come! Whoso offends my children who believe in me, it would be better that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea. Wherefore if your hand or your foot offend you, cut them off; for it is better to go through life maimed than having two hands or feet to be cast into everlasting hellfire.”

  Among the congregation his words provoked a broken murmur, equal parts of fear and rebellion. I saw people turn to each other, questioning the wisdom of staying in this place, touching the handles of suitcases and baskets, making ready for flight into the open. If the crowd was preparing to retreat, the travelers were pressing forward. Their goal was the sanctuary. Some of them had pushed beyond the pews into the crossing below the chancel steps. For now their advances were checked by Henry’s operations. Every pass of the crucifix unbalanced them, bending them backwards like rows of saplings in the wind. If Henry could stand his ground they would topple, uprooted, littering the ground, a heap of inanimate lumber. The skin of Henry’s face was shining, lit by a radiance no source within the church could have kindled. Was the light in his face the reflection of God’s own countenance? Then surely we were winning.