Tucker’s Grove (30 page)

“
I
’
ve been planning
this for a while now, getting up my nerve, writing everything down in this…
confession? Testament? The incubus doesn
’
t seem to be able to make the connection between cause and effect, and it does not stop me from writing everything here. Maybe I should mai
l
this stack of papers to the police? No, I don
’
t want to risk having others come up here looking for proof. What if I lost my challenge? What if the incubus made me take a group photograph of the police? God, no.

“
Why don
’
t I just leave this paper on the k
itchen table, out in plain sight? If I could think of a valid reason, I would state it here. But I can
’
t think of anything, except that I can
’
t leave it in an obvious place. Maybe the incubus is stopping me. Perhaps the sight of the shriveled victims here
in the root cellar will make a reader more likely to believe my crazy story.

“
No, I don
’
t know where the incubus comes from. Did the half-paralyzed war photographer summon it, looking for a way to regain some of his vitality lost in the crippling stroke? I
had no chance to ask questions before I shot him.

“
What if some lost deer hunter out in the hills right now is aiming his rifle at me, urged on by the incubus looking for a new caretaker?

“
I
’
ll have to stay away from the windows.

“
I don
’
t know how to des
troy the incubus. I
’
ve searched in old archives, dug through pop-culture paperbacks on black magic, but nothing tells me what I need. My only clue is the camera. It doesn
’
t live in the camera
—
but uses it as a tool, a point of contact to form a link with i
t
s victim, like a straw to s
i
phon off life energy. A soul vampire?

“
But if I can destroy the camera, break the link, then the i
n
cubus will no longer be able to feed. I
’
d be taking away its fangs. It can
’
t escape from its glass prison, and it can
’
t get any n
ew victims. The thing will starve slowly on its shelf…
and I hope I can control it in the meantime.
—
Henry Franklin.”

Will flipped through the handwritten pages, skimming some parts again, then scattered the papers back into the dim root ce
l
lar. Nancy, Chet
, and Beth were rapidly becoming mummies, just like the old woman and her chauffeur.

“
So what the hell
is
an incubus?”
he shouted. His words r
e
fused to echo from the damp earth walls. “
And where is it if it
’
s not in the camera?”
He glared into the dim shad
ows of the pit as if the desiccated victims inside could tell him. “
On a
‘
shelf
’
somewhere?”

A rock ledge on one of the bluffs? And what the hell was a “
glass prison?”

A jar? A jar on a shelf? In the darkroom!

Will sprinted back to the cottage, cold and c
lammy in his soaked clothes. To the studio, the darkroom. His eyes blazed. Will
’
s adrenalin was going to run out soon
—
he knew it. He didn
’
t dare stop for a second because then he might realize how tired he was. And his family was fading fast, being draine
d
….

Will staggered through the darkroom
’
s light baffle, back and forth, until he confronted the eerie contrasts of the red-lit cha
m
ber. “
All right, where the hell are you!”

He snatched jars from the upper shelf, dropping some in the water-filled sink, shaki
ng some, opening some. He had almost cleared the shelf when he noticed one jar hidden in the shadows of the back corner, glowing out of his reach. Will showed his teeth in a half smile, half snarl of triumph. He stood on his toes, grabbed the jar with his
fingertips, drew it toward him. “
Gotcha!”

The dark brown glass felt heavy, warm to the touch. He peered through the side and saw dimly swirling sparkles, like a thousand incandescent lights spiraling in nothingness. The glow brightened as Will watched
—
it w
as feeding on his family, dra
w
ing strength. It had already killed Uncle Henry.

“
Go back to wherever it was you came!”
With both hands Will hurled the jar at the cement floor of the darkroom. But as he released it, half-skimmed words from Henry Franklin
’
s t
estament flashed across his mind
—“
Now at least it is
contained
.”

The glass jar struck the floor and erupted in an explosion of fire and blinding light. The incubus let loose an unearthly roar just beyond the range of Will
’
s hearing as it burst free, seethi
ng and filling the darkroom.

Will found himself lying on the floor, staring up at the inc
u
bus as the dazzle faded from his eyes. The thing was a throbbing cloud of fire and smoke, writhing tentacles of gas strewn with random arcs of blue lightning. The air
felt charged with electri
c
ity, like a thunderstorm ready to burst. One tendril of flaming smoke touched the darkroom shelf with a violent discharge that blasted the wood from the wall. Then the incubus moved toward Will.

On his knees, he scrambled to the
light baffle, to escape. His movement triggered something in the incubus and it rushed fo
r
ward. Will stumbled through the black partitions, zigzagging and stumbling through the maze. He burst into the bare studio, but he didn
’
t know where to go.

Behind him
came an explosion, and he turned to see shards of black-painted wood blasting outward from the darkroom as the incubus cut a straight path
through
the light baffle. Some of the wood caught fire. The incubus paused for a moment. It hovered and pulsed in th
e air as if glaring at Will, then it came at him again.

Will threw papers and boxes at it, but they incinerated on contact with the thing. He tripped over the beam that had fallen on Uncle Henry…
trapping the old man, paralyzing him. The i
n
cubus had somehow
caused that to happen, too.

Then he saw the camera pointing like a specter at the wrec
k
age the incubus had caused. If he destroyed the camera, as Uncle Henry had tried to do, the thing would be unable to feed
—
in fact, it would break the thing
’
s contact wi
th Chet and Nancy, stop it from sucking away any more of their lives. The incubus would eventually starve.

But Will didn
’
t have quite that much time.

On an inspiration, Will leaped for the camera. The thing rushed at him, roaring like all the tornadoes in
Kansas. He snatched up the one remaining glass plate in the leather case and ripped off the black paper wrapping as he rammed the plate into the camera. The incubus hesitated a moment, giving Will time to focus, then it charged forward again.

“
Say
cheese!”
Will thought of the paradox, the contradiction, the infinite loop, the incubus forced to feed on itself. He opened the shutter on the old camera with the strange symbols etched around the lens.

The incubus gave an unearthly shriek as it was sucked into th
e camera. Will leaped away from the wooden tripod. The incubus died into echoes and glimmers of light as it vanished inside the lens. Trapped. Paralyzed.

Before he could let fear overcome him, Will reached under the dark cloth and yanked t
he glass plate from the back. The glass was burning hot in his hands, but he held onto it, gritting his teeth against the pain. His legs felt like lead as he ran back into the ruined darkroom. He dropped the plate into the tray of developer and gasped, st
u
mbling backward and coughing as the developing fluid boiled and steamed.

An image appeared on the plate, but Will couldn
’
t bear to look at it, a horrible smoking writhing thing. He was afraid it would be moving, even when trapped on the glass emulsion. The
image darkened, grew more intense like a frozen roar, and then Will looked again, watching the blackness creep in from the edges. The developer continued its work, finally turning the glass plate completely dark. The acrid smell of photo-chemicals burned
his eyes and nostrils. He waited an extra minute, then pulled the dripping plate out. The glass was still hot and weirdly black all the way through, like obsidian.

Careful not to drop it, he stepped through the wrecked light baffle and into the light of th
e studio. Moving like an automaton now, Will removed the lens from the camera and threw it with all his might, watching the glass shatter against the cinderblock walls of the studio. He didn
’
t know if the incubus was dead, or inert, or just trapped in the
black plate. But it could no longer feed. He tipped over the camera
’
s tripod, then stomped on the wooden box, crushing it to splinters.

Later, he was going to go deep into the forest out back
—
Uncle Henry must have a shovel somewhere
—
and he would bury the g
lass plate far down under the sandy Black Hills soil.

Will
’
s legs refused to support him any longer, and he co
l
lapsed in an awkward position on the cement. His skin turned white, tears and terror came to his eyes, and he couldn
’
t stop his hands from shakin
g.

Sometime later he forced himself to his feet and fearfully went to see Nancy, Chet, and the baby. The shower still pounded down. The boy was sound asleep in a puddle of water on the bathroom floor
—
but it seemed to be a natural sleep of exhau
s
tion, nothi
ng more. The incubus had been tied to itself, forced into a psychic moebius strip
—
Will hadn
’
t dared to hope, but a
p
parently the thing
’
s other ties to his family had been broken. His family would be weak…
but they would recover.

Will carried Chet to the bedr
oom, laying him neatly beside Nancy. He shook her, and she came slowly awake, looking alarmed but deeply exhausted. “
Will? What happened?”
Baby Beth started to cry.

His throat refused to respond to the words he had to say. It was too soon. He couldn
’
t tell
her about the incubus, about Uncle Henry…
it was too soon.

“
Just rest now, Nancy.”
She closed her eyes and seemed pe
r
fectly willing to comply. Will sighed and stood looking at her for a long time before he finally sat down in a chair, and fell asleep.

My best buddy Alan got killed yesterday, demolished by a hit-and-run train. They found his car smashed to pieces, scattered all up and down the embankment like wrapping paper on a Christmas morning.

The Locust Road intersection is well marked, and
I know that, drunk or not, Alan would never have driven into a goddamn freight train. According to the railroad company
’
s schedules, no real train was even
close
to the crossing at that time of night. Late at night, how easy would it be to see an all-blac
k locom
o
tive if it shut off its one-eyed headlight, slavering oil and grin
d
ing red-hot coal in its belly, waiting to pounce on Alan
’
s car as he drove home?

Imagine, coming back from college to be pallbearer for a closed coffin
—
that
’
s the part that really s
ucks. Goddamn it, Alan
—
you were supposed to be best man at my wedding if I ever got married….