Incubi - Edward Lee.wps (16 page)

Her quickness to dispute him was admirable. Is that what I've done? he wondered. Made my own truth? "Women rationalize too, you know."

"No, we don't," she said. "We adapt."

He looked at her more closely, and at this entire situation. He was naked beneath the sheets, and here sitting on his bed, was a girl he'd met yesterday. Her big T-shirt made a relief of her own nakedness. Her body looked plush, soft. He wondered what it would feel like to just lie down with her and hold her. The idea of sex with her was too alien. Images of Veronica would come back. Jack wasn't the purest person in the world, but he hoped he was honest enough not to use someone for the sake of a dead fantasy. He liked Faye Rowland. She was truthful and straightforward. She was a survivor.

The complete inappropriateness of this was what made it appropriate. He wasn't even surprised.

She stood up and turned off the light. In the darkness he saw her skim off the nightshirt. He held the sheet up for her, and she got in. He put his arm around her.

"It's been a long time for me," she said.

"Me too."

Her hair smelled faintly of soap. She lay right up next to him. "We can if you want to," she said.

"But "

"Let's just sleep. I think that would be better."

"Yeah, we'll just sleep. It's nice, you know, to just sleep with someone."

"Yes, it is."

"I like you."

"I like you, too."

"I guess I just "

"Shh," he whispered. "I know."

She lay her head on his chest, her breasts pressing. Her body felt so warm; the gentle heat lulled him. "Thank you," she said.

"For what?"

She was asleep. Jack drifted off a minute later, caressed by the softness of her body and her heat.

Their dreams would be better this time around.

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The mirror was a wall, proffering a thousand reflections of himself and things greater than himself.

The mirror was more than a wall. It was more than a mirror.

The mirror was the future and the past. It was the whisperer of insuperable truths and the face of all man's lies. It was uteri and bones, incubators and coffins, semen and grave dirt. The mirror was the open arms of history, and he, its son, gazed back in wait of its hallowed embrace.

Again, he thought. Again.

The mirror opened. He stepped into black, descending.

He held a candle in one hand, and a black silk bag in the other. In moments, the narrow steps emptied into the nave.

He moved slowly, lighting each candle with his own. Soon the nave came alive in flickering light. There were one hundred candles in all.

Below, the floor bore the sign: the starred trine. He mused a moment, and thought of the beauty that awaited the faithful. Father of the Earth, he thought. Carry me away.

Suddenly the man was very tired. Wisdom had a price. So did the truth of real spirit. He was a strong man made stronger by the truths that the world had buried eons ago.

He approached the chancel and bowed.

Black candles stood on either side of their altar. Their tiny flames looked back like the Father's eyes. So close, he thought. He was nearly sobbing. The distance between two worlds reduced to a kiss.

He felt joyously light, buoyant.

He picked up the jarra, a stone cup. My love, he thought obscurely. I give thee my love. Then he opened the silk bag.

He removed the dolch.

It gleamed in the dancing light: long, sharp. Beautiful.

Father of the Earth, we do as you have bidden. We give you flesh through blood, we give you body through spirit.

He raised the dolch as if in offering.

Flesh though blood, body through spirit.

He closed his eyes. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

Walk with us, O Father of the Earth. We beseech thee.

He placed the dolch upon the altar.

To thee I bid my faith forever.

He stepped back. He opened his eyes.

Baalzephon, hail! he, Erim Khoronos, thought.

"Aorista!" he whispered aloud.

| |

"You should have heard yourself," Amy Vandersteen said.

And Ginny: "Yeah, we thought someone was murdering you."

The entire account made Veronica feel foolish. They were seated now at the big breakfast table by the pool deck. Last night Ginny and Amy had shaken her awake; she'd been screaming. Even now the nightmare lay like bilge in the bottom of her mind: Jack's corpse making love to her, ejaculating maggots into her sex. At once she felt pale, and pushed her breakfast away.

Ginny delved into her plate of cantaloupe, pineapple chunks, and cottage cheese. Amy Vandersteen picked at hers. "This stuff tastes awful," she remarked of her carrot juice. Veronica agreed.

"But you know," Ginny commented, "we've only been here a few days, and I feel a thousand times more creative. Don't you?"

"Not really," Veronica said.

"I'm always creative," Amy Vandersteen asserted.

Ginny ignored her. "It's the environment, I think. Good food, clean air, serenity. It purifies the soul."

"Where were you all day yesterday?" Veronica asked.

"That's what I mean. Creativity. I was just making some notes for my story, but all of a sudden I felt don't know elevated, I guess. I just started writing. Next thing I know it's midnight. I'd wound up writing the entire first draft."

"I did some sketches," Veronica said lamely. Two nights in a row she'd dreamed of the fire-figure, and she was determined to paint the mood it evoked, the emotion that the figure courted.

Passion pure, unadulterated. It was this same figure of flame, in fact, that had saved her from the nightmare of Jack. She hadn't been able to tell Ginny and Amy that those final screams, just as the figure had touched her, were not screams of horror but of ecstasy. She felt driven now, as an artist, to translate that ecstasy onto the canvas. But how?

The Ecstasy of the Flames, she thought. The project enthralled her. So why couldn't she get started?

She decided she'd talk to Khoronos about it.

"I'm not hungry," Amy Vandersteen complained. Abruptly she stood and slipped out of her terry robe. The white bikini against her white flesh made her look nude. Immediately she dove into the pool. The tiny splash swallowed her.

"Asshole," Ginny muttered.

"Last night she was freebasing coke," Veronica recalled.

"I did it a few times several years ago until a med student I was dating showed me all these research articles on it. Long-term use deregulates your sex drive, sometimes permanently. If there's one thing I can't live without, it's my sex drive."

"She said Khoronos doesn't own the house; it's some friend's of his. Oh, and she said he's from Yugoslavia."

Ginny grinned. "I wonder if he's hung."

"I'm serious. Isn't this whole thing a little funny to you?"

"Funny like how?"

"I don't know. He invites us to this retreat, but we barely ever see him. Yesterday he and his two sidekicks were out on ‘business.' They didn't get back till past midnight. Business, till midnight? Don't you think that's strange?"

"No. He's an eccentric."

"And where does he sleep?" Veronica kept on. "I only counted five bedrooms. Me, you, Amy, Marzen, and Gilles."

"Oooo, what intrigue," Ginny mocked. "Five bedrooms, six people. I could write a best-seller.

Hasn't it occurred to you that this is a very big house and that there are probably other bedrooms in it? Or do you suppose Khoronos sleeps in a coffin?"

"Shut up, Ginny," Veronica suggested.

"You're just frustrated 'cause you're not getting any work done. It happens to me all the time. I'll get a block and my mind wanders. But the best way to cure a creative block is to work your way out of it. Forget about things that don't matter. Forget about the bedrooms, for God's sake. Just get to work."

Veronica didn't know whether to be mad or concessive. Ginny was probably right.

"And now that I've said that," Ginny added, wiping her mouth with a napkin, "I must get back to my typewriter."

"How are things going with you and Gilles?"

Ginny shrugged. "I haven't seen him. And that's good, because I'm too busy with my work right now."

"Too busy?" Now Veronica could've laughed. "Yesterday you said you might be in love with the guy. Today you're too busy?"

"Art is the ultimate conceit, Vern. When people become more important to you than what you create, you're a phony."

Veronica glared.

"Later, kid," Ginny said, and walked away.

The impression left her steaming. More guilt? More jealousy? Ginny was in control of her creative life. Veronica, suddenly, was not. Why? she questioned herself. Was it true that selfishness was prerequisite to true art?

"Hey, Amy," she abruptly called out. "Can I ask you something?"

Amy Vandersteen's wet, white head bobbed in the water. She swam enfeebled, dog-paddling.

That's what she looked like just then, a skinny wet dog in the water. "Sure, sweetheart."

"Is selfishness prerequisite to true art?"

Amy stood up in the low end. Her wet bikini top clung to her small breasts like tissue, showing dark, puckered nipples. "Honey, let me tell you something. True art is selfishness."

"That's the most egotistical shit I've ever heard," Veronica countered.

"Of course it is." Amy Vandersteen grinned like a cat, hip-deep in the water. "And that's my point. You're either a real artist with real creative focus, or you're a fake."

Veronica's fuddled stare fought to stray but couldn't. Her eyes stayed fixed on the slim, sneering figure in the water.

"Which are you, Veronica? Real or fake?"

Veronica stomped off. The worst question of all followed her like a buzzard: Was she more infuriated with Amy Vandersteen or herself? Behind her, the snide woman began to clutzily backstroke across the pool, laughing.

Passion, the word popped oddly into Veronica's head. The heart. Khoronos' words. Real creativity is rooted in the heart.

She jogged back to the house, to look for Khoronos.

«« »»

The alarm clock clattered in Jack's head. He turned, groped about the covers. Faye was gone, but her scent lingered on the pillow.

He got up, showered, and dressed, amazed as well as baffled that he had no hangover. Hangovers had gotten to be something he could count on not having one nearly made him feel estranged.

And now that he thought of it, he hadn't had a drink in over a day.

Downstairs, he chugged orange juice, grimacing. A fruit magnet pinned a note to the fridge door.

Gone to LOC, call you later at your office. Faye. Short and sweet. He wondered how she felt about things now. I slept with her last night, he fully realized. They'd kept their promise, they'd just slept. Did she regret it now, post fact? Jack hoped not. It had been nice sleeping with her, it had been soothing and unstrained and very nice. He'd wakened several times to find themselves entwined in one another. She'd murmured things in her sleep, nuzzling him.

He drove the unmarked to the station, whelmed in thought. Yes, he liked Faye Rowland a lot, and he was attracted to her. Yet the idea of sex with her almost terrified him. He thought of the proverbial bull in the china shop: having sex with Faye would shatter whatever strange bond existed between them. Jack liked the bond.

Besides, sex would remind him of Veronica.

The substation's clean, tiled floors led him to his unclean, cluttered office. But before he could enter, the black mammoth bulk of Deputy Police Commissioner Larrel Olsher rounded the corner. "How you coming on the Triangle case, Jack?"

"Making some progress," Jack said.

"Well, make more progress. You ever heard that shit runs downhill?"

"The axiom rings a bell, Larrel."

"Let me just say that the people upstairs eat a lot. Pretty soon I'm gonna have to carry an umbrella, if you catch my drift."

"Noted," Jack said.

"How's the state researcher working out?"

"Good. She's only been on it a day and she's already digging up a lot of stuff. She's trying to get a line on the ritual."

Olsher's eyes thinned in the frame of the great black face. "How come you don't look hung over?"

"Because I'm not."

"Keep it that way, Jack. And get a haircut."

"Which one?"

"That joke's older than my grandmother."

"Yeah, but it's not as close to retirement as you. Har-har."

"You look like something that walked out of Woodstock."

"My hair is my strength, Larrel. You know, like Samson."

"Samson doesn't work for this department, and if you don't bust the Triangle case, you won't have to worry about hair regulations anymore. If you catch my drift."

"Noted," Jack repeated. Who tinkled in his cornflakes? he wondered.

Olsher began to thump off. "Oh, and you have a visitor."

Jack went into his office. Dr. Karla Panzram sat primly before his desk, her nose crinkled above a Styrofoam cup. "I helped myself to your coffee," she said. "It's terrible."

"Bad coffee fortifies the soul." Jack poured himself a cup. "I'm living proof, right?"

Karla Panzram offered the most indecipherable of smiles. "I just stopped by to tell you I finished checking the recent psych releases and background profiles. Nothing."

"I figured as much," Jack said, and sat down.

"I'm getting some feedback from some of the out-of-state wards and lockups, too. But don't get your hopes up."

"I never get my hopes up, Doctor. It's always the outer angles that let us into a case like this. But at least we know more about our man, thanks to you and TSD, and we're getting closer to the ritual element. Knock on wood."

"That's Druidic."