Edward Lee - Incubi

Knife , she realized in drugged terror. It’s a knife.

Her carrier stopped beside the second cloaked figure. The candles sizzled slightly. They were black and crudely fashioned, releasing an oily fetor to the damp air. Veronica felt drenched in her own sweat, tremoring.

Then another figure entered the chancel.

Veronica stared.

The third figure faced the altar, murmuring something like an incantation . He’s praying , she thought. It reminded her of her childhood. Church. The minister standing with his back to the congregation as he spoke the offertory and raised the sacraments. But this figure was no minister, and it was not bread and wine that he raised.

It was the black knife.

It’s Khoronos , Veronica realized.

“ Pater terrae,” he whispered, though the whisper rang like a metal bell in the dank, underground church. “Accept these meager gifts so that we may remain worthy in your sight.”

“World without end,” incarnated the two others.

“To you we give our faith forever.”

“Accept our gifts. Sanctify us and keep us safe…”

Khoronos turned, his hooded faced diced by candlelight. His hands clasped the earthen jar to his chest.

“Welcome, Veronica,” he whispered very softly.

His cassock came unsashed.

Veronica screamed.

No penis could be seen between Khoronos’ legs. There was only a severed stump peeking out above the testicles.

“What should I do?”

Craig was starting to get addled. He poured two Windex shooters for a pair of dolts with glasses, then came back to her. “How can I tell you what to do if you don’t tell me what’s going on?”

“You’d never believe me,” Faye muttered.

“Whatever he’s off doing, don’t worry about it.”

How could she not worry? Jack was alone, against uncertain odds. “I’ll call his partner, Randy.”

“Jack can take care of himself,” Craig said. He had three taps running and was mixing drinks at the same time, somehow without spilling a drop. “That’s your problem, Faye. You never have faith in anyone.”

The statement slapped her in her face. “How the hell do you know!” she objected loudly enough to turn a few heads.

“I’m a barkeep, Faye. Barkeeps know everything.” He grinned, lit a Marlboro. “How can you expect to have faith in people when you don’t even have faith in yourself?”

Faye stared through the brazen comment. But was he right? Why couldn’t she just leave things be? Jack had to know what he was doing better than she did.

Craig was jockeying; the bar was full now, standing room only. Lots of rowdy regulars, and lots of couples. A row of girls sat up at the bar, to fawn over Craig, and right next to Faye was a guy in a white shirt writing something on a bar napkin. Suddenly he looked at her. Faye recognized the shattered look in his eyes. It was the same look she’d seen in Jack’s eyes the first night she met him. It was the same look she’d seen in her own for a year. Broken pieces. “My girlfriend broke up with me tonight,” the guy drunkenly lamented. “I was going to marry her.”

“Sorry to hear it,” Faye offered.

The broken pieces glimmered. “I still love her,” he said.

Eventually two friends took him out of the bar; he was clearly too drunk to drive. But he left the napkin he’d been writing on. Faye glanced at it. It’s a poem, she realized.

It read: My gut feels empty, my heart is black. I’d do anything to have you back. So shall it be — you’ve cut the tether, but my love for you goes on forever .

Faye could reckon this, despite the bad verse. For a year, her heart felt black, her gut felt like a bottomless pit of loss. Did Jack feel the same way now? Was that why he’d rushed to find Veronica? Or had she really been tricked by murderers?

She admitted the odds were just too wild. But the name , she reminded herself. The word. Khoronos.

Craig frowned when some man with banged hair swaggered in. He wore boots up to his knees, and a black T-shirt with an abstract picture on it. “Veronica Polk,” the shirt read. “The Pickman Gallery.”

“Thanks for the nickel tip the other night, Stewie,” Craig said. “The door’s that way.”

The guy shoved out a ten. “Just get me a drink.”

Faye approached him. “Are you Stewie, Jack’s friend?”

Stewie laughed. “Let’s just say an acquaintance. Friend seems a bit of an overstatement.”

“And you’re also Veronica’s agent?”

Stewie peered at her. “That’s right. She disappeared last week. Jack was supposed to find her, but it figures he never came through.”

“Yesterday he found out where Khoronos lives,” Faye stated.

Stewie’s eyes spread over his drink. “How…”

“He’s on his way there now.”

Suddenly Stewie was frantic. “What do you know about it?”

“Everything,” Faye said.

After that, she said a lot more.

“ Goddamn!” Jack yelled. He was parked off the shoulder, motor running. The minute he’d gotten what he thought was the right grid, he got lost. The TI-DM kept spitting out the wrong frames.

Every county police vehicle now was fitted with a data monitor, a simple LCD system that was uplinked to the county mainframe. It sported a small screen and keyboard, and was manufactured by Texas Instruments. With it, an officer could run an MVA or warrant check without having to wait for dispatcher processing. An officer could also run any street address in the county and bring up the proper map grid on the screen. But so far Jack had punched up the address and locate-command three times and had gotten three different grids.

“Piece of shit! ” he yelled, and smacked the wheel. He entered the address again and got another wrong frame. If the computer was down, the screen would say so. It could also be what they called a “bad lay”—some aspect of the terrain obstructing the radio relay — but that only happened in the snow or during a thunderstorm. Tonight, though, the sky was crystal clear.

It goddamn figures , he thought. There were some high forest belts up this way, and some mountains. Maybe the signal was bouncing. He drove up to higher ground, then punched up the address again. The screen flashed another wrong grid. Again, he felt thwarted, that fate or bad luck or something was deliberately standing in his way. At this rate, I’ll have to sequence the entire grid system frame by frame, he thought, wanting to be sick. Khoronos’ address must be on a pipestem that was not on the paper map. But it would have to be on the computer; the geographic survey was upgraded every day. So where the hell was it?

One more time, he decided. This time he got a notorious relay malfunction called a “slide”; the screen flashed an entire grid block —twelve different frames in a few seconds. “Motherless piece of shit!” he yelled. He wanted to punch the screen or rip the whole system out and leave it in the street.

He lit a Camel and let his anger beat down. Then he glanced at the last grid frame.

Bingo. The screen logged the road he was on right now. The pipestem to Khoronos’ lot sat just a hundred feet before him.

This is it.

He idled up. Here the residences sat back off the road. Long driveways led deep into the woods, and a mailbox marked each drive. Jack aimed his remote spot onto each one, checking the addresses. He could’ve laughed: Khoronos’ address was skipped. I do not believe this shit . He backed up to the last marked drive and pulled in. As suspected, the driveway proceeded past the address on the mailbox.