Ellen Datlow - Alien Sex

Her voice was as harsh and pompous as usual. St. Jacques had just started to drift off when he was brought wide awake by the first titters and suppressed laughter from not only the girls behind him but from some of the other faculty members. He opened his eyes and looked at Mother Isobel, realizing with a shock that she was staring fixedly and purposefully straight at him, and had probably been doing so the whole time.

“…as the Malleus Maleficarum ’s authors proved beyond the shadow of a doubt,” she was saying. “Unclean spirits known as Incubi can take on the form of any man weak or lustful enough to consent to their urgings. They visit the dreams of young and innocent girls in his shape, to tempt and torment them with the lusts of the flesh and so lead them to perdition….”

One such spirit, she explained grimly, ignoring the giggles and suppressed laughter until they finally died away, had visited the school only the night before, though with God’s help she’d driven it away. But the girls at St. Bernadette’s had been entrusted not just to her personal care, but to the care of the Holy Mother Church—and Christ’s church would not let itself be mocked by Satan and his filthy minions. So she’d called upon Father Sydney to perform an exorcism and rid the school once and for all of the unclean spirit that had sought to invade and pollute it….

Sometime during this rather amazing discourse St. Jacques realized she was talking about him. He wanted to see how Marcia was reacting to Mother Isobel’s tirade, but he couldn’t turn around to look, not with Mother Isobel glaring at him.

Father Sydney had started the exorcism, spraying holy water everywhere. He rushed through a Litany and a Psalm, implored God’s grace, went through a Gospel and some prayers, made the sign of the cross a number of times, then began intoning:

“I exorcise thee, most vile spirit, the very embodiment of our enemy, the entire specter, the whole legion, in the name of Jesus Christ, to get out and flee from this assembly of God’s creatures.

“He Himself commands thee, who has ordered those cast down from the heights of Heaven to the depths of the Earth. He commands thee, He who commanded the sea, the winds, and the tempests.

“Hear, therefore, and fear, O Satan, enemy of the faith, foe to the human race, producer of death, thief of life, destroyer of justice, root of evils, kindler of vices, seducer of men, betrayer of nations, inciter of envy…”

Around “kindler of vices” St. Jacques quit listening. Whatever had happened the night before—and he could no longer deny that something had—he categorically refused to believe that Satan, demons, or anything equally ridiculous had been involved. Nothing of the sort had ever existed or ever could exist, and in any case the exorcism certainly wasn’t having any effect on him.

The only possible explanation, he finally decided, after having gone through and rejected everything else, was telepathy. A sort of organic radio that worked only when the sleeping brain relaxed its normal barriers. It was the logical explanation, too, for all the Inquisition’s witch trials and wild reports of demonic possession. How could the Church, with only humbug, ritual, and authority to offer, compete with people who became gods in their sleep, who could create their own pocket realities and draw other people in to share them? It couldn’t, obviously, and so the Church had tried to kill off all the earlier telepaths. A sort of selective breeding, removing the telepaths from the gene pool so as to produce a race of telepathic deaf-mutes. He was some sort of sport, a genetic throwback.

Father Sydney was still droning on about how God, the Majesty of Christ, God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, aided and abetted by the sacred cross and Holy Apostles Peter and Paul and all the saints united, were going to command the spirit, when it finally struck St. Jacques that what had happened the night before had been real. Not the classroom, no, but he’d been somewhere, in a private reality that he himself had created. And even though his anxiety had drawn Mother Isobel into that reality and so ruined everything, Marcia and the rest had been ready to do whatever he wanted them to—

And still would. Because, he was instinctively certain, he was the one who controlled and shaped the reality he’d created. He was the telepath, the one who could enter people’s dreams and reshape them the way he wanted, and no one could stop him. Even Mother Isobel had only been playing the part he’d chosen for her.

No one could ever even prove he was responsible. He would always be lying peacefully asleep in his bed, with Veronica there by his side.

They’d married while she was a sophomore in college and looked a lot like Terri and June looked now, when he’d still been convinced he had a brilliant professorial career ahead of him. She’d been conservative, a devout Catholic, though given to transient mystical and psychic enthusiasms—geomancy, positive thinking, even self-hypnosis—that had made him think her basic ideas were much more malleable than they really were. He’d married her in the confidence that a few years of concentrated exposure to his vastly superior way of thinking would be enough to turn her ideas completely around. But in fact, by the time the third and final college at which he’d taught refused to renew his one-year contract he’d given up trying to impose himself in either his career or marriage, allowed himself to sink unprotesting into what he recognized as Thoreau’s prototypical life of quiet desperation. Veronica took care of him, mothered him almost, and though they had nothing in common and she often irritated him, he liked her well enough. She was generous and indulgent and still attractive for her age, though their sex life had dwindled over the years to what they both had come to see as a sort of hygienic minimum. He loved his comfort and security too well to risk losing them; he knew he had too little glamour or enthusiasm to hope that he could find himself someone better by leaving her. She believed in marriage until death; he was too settled, despairing, and lazy to carry on extramarital affairs behind her back, and he had no desire to hurt her pointlessly.

But if he could have his affairs, his perfect fantasy adventures, without leaving her side… It was the perfect solution. Or would be, if he could deal with Mother Isobel.

The priest was finishing up:

“Therefore, O impious one, go out. Go out, thou scoundrel, go out with all thy deceits, because God has willed that man be his temple.

“But why dost thou delay longer here?

“Give honor to God, the Father Almighty, to whom every knee is bent.

“Give place to the Lord Jesus Christ”—and here Father Sydney sketched the sign of the cross in the air a final time—“who shed for man his most precious blood.”

The exorcism was over. St. Jacques exhaled, realized he’d been holding his breath, that he’d actually been afraid something would happen to him. If telepathy was real, then perhaps the Church’s ceremonies could focus a congregation’s latent telepathic powers against people like himself…. But in any case, the exorcism had done him no harm.

Still, he should get some books, find out as much as he could about incubi. To protect himself from Mother Isobel, if for no other reason.

Mother Isobel announced there’d be a short faculty meeting after lunch, then dismissed the assembly.

As he turned to leave, St. Jacques saw Marcia staring at him from the back of the chapel. He had enough time to seize the expression on her face before she realized he was looking at her: no longer the loathing and contempt she’d affected before her friends, but rather a troubled, confused, almost terrified look.