Incubi

“Aw, shit,” Jack scoffed. “Mine was much better than that.” But when he told it, it sounded silly.

“That’s all. That was my nightmare.”

“That’s the name you were screaming,” Faye said. “Veronica.”

Great. Jack smirked and blew smoke at the ceiling.

“We all have our wounds.” Her large breasts showed through the big T-shirt. “But at least they make life interesting.”

“Sure,” Jack said.

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

“Why not?”

She only half looked at him. “Do you still love her?”

What a question. “Yes,” he said.

He stared past her, seeing nothing.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked that. I don’t know why I did. I guess I’m just curious about you.”

“Forget it. At least we know we have something in common.”

She laughed again slightly. “Yeah, we’ve both been dumped.”

“My friend Craig — you met him, the keep at the bar — he says that getting dumped only means you’re better than the other person.”

“Typical male rationalization. No offense, but men have a tendency to change the truth to suit them.”

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.

Chapter 14

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.

Chapter 15

“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