False Memory

Susan had been particularly fascinated by the legend of the incubus. This evil spirit visited women in their sleep and had sex with them while they dreamed.

Fascination had never become conviction. She hadn’t descended so far into superstition that she had slept with copies of the Bible at all four corners of her bed or while wearing a necklace of garlic.

Ultimately, she ceased researching the supernatural, because as she delved into those irrational realms, her agoraphobia intensified.

By sitting down to a banquet of unreason, she seemed to be feeding the sick part of her psyche in which her inexplicable fear thrived.

Her glass of Merlot was half empty. She refilled it.

Carrying the wine with her, Susan set out on a circuit of the apartment, to ascertain that all possible entrances were secured.

Both windows in the dining room faced the residence next door, which crowded close to Susan’s house. They were locked.

In the living room, she switched off the lamps. She sat in an armchair, sipping Merlot, while her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

Although her phobia had progressed until she had difficulty looking at the daylight world even through windows, she could still tolerate the night view when the sky was overcast, when no deep sea of stars awaited her contemplation. In weather like this, she never failed to test herself, for she worried that if she didn’t exercise her weak muscle of courage, it would atrophy altogether.

When her night vision improved and the Merlot lubricated the little engine of fortitude in her heart, she went to the middle pane of the three big ocean-facing windows. After a brief hesitation and a deep breath, she raised the pleated shade.

Immediately in front of the house, the paved promenade lay under the false frost of widely separated streetlamps. Though the hour was not yet late, the promenade was nearly deserted in the January chill. A young couple skated by on Rollerblades. A cat scurried from one drift of shadows to another.

Thin tendrils of mist wound between the few palm trees and the streetlamps. In the still air, the fronds hung motionless, so the creeping mist seemed to be alive, advancing with silent menace.

Susan couldn’t see much of the night-cloaked beach. She could not see the Pacific at all: A bank of dense fog had advanced as far as the shore, where it could be glimpsed only intermittently — high, gray, like a towering tsunami flash-frozen an instant before it would have smashed across the coast. The lazy mist writhed off the face of the fog bank, as cold steam rises off a block of dry ice.

With the stars lost above the low clouds, with darkness and fog partitioning the world into small spaces, Susan should have been able to stand at the window for hours, insulated from her fear, but her heart began to race. Agoraphobia was not the cause of her sudden apprehension; rather, she was overcome by a sense of being watched.

Since the night assaults had begun, she was increasingly plagued by this new anxiety. Scopophobia: fear of being watched.

Surely, however, this wasn’t just another phobia, not just an unreasonable fear, but an entirely rational one. If her phantom rapist was real, he must at times keep her home under surveillance, to be sure that he’d find her alone when he paid a visit.

Nevertheless, she was concerned about acquiring new layers of fear atop her agoraphobia, until eventually she would be bound up like an Egyptian mummy, wrapped by smothering shrouds of anxiety, paralyzed and effectively embalmed alive.

The promenade was deserted. The palm boles weren’t wide enough to conceal anyone.

He's out there.

For three nights in a row, Susan hadn’t been assaulted. This all too human incubus was due. He exhibited a pattern of need, more regular than — but as reliable as — the pull of the moon on the blood tides of a werewolf.

Often she had tried to stay awake on the nights she expected him. When she succeeded, exhausted and grainy-eyed by dawn, he never showed. Usually, if her willpower failed her and she dozed off, he paid a visit. Once, she fell asleep fully dressed, in an armchair, and she woke fully dressed, but in bed, with the faint scent of his sweat clinging to her and with his hateful, sticky issue clotted in her panties. He seemed to know, by some sixth sense, when she was sleeping and most vulnerable.

He's out there.

On the generally flat beach, a few low dunes rose at the outer limit of visibility, curving smoothly away into darkness and mist. An observer might be watching from behind one of them, although he would have to be lying prone in the sand to remain hidden.

She felt his gaze upon her. Or thought she felt it.

Susan quickly lowered the pleated shade, covering the window.