Incubus (from Latin incubare, to lie upon): 1. an evil spirit or demon thought in medieval times to lie on women, seeking sexual intercourse; 2. a nightmare.
Succubus: a female demon who preys similarly on sleeping men.
The acclaimed author of Sister Wolf ("A powerful haunting tale"--Jean Strouse, Newsweek) and Group Sex ("A rich and original stunner"--Cleveland Plain Dealer) now gives us her most thrilling and beautifully written novel.
Surrounded by hills and pasturelands, the town of Dry Falls is a thriving agricultural community. The town itself and St. Anthony's, the local church, are deeply rooted in the natural order--blissfully ordinary and uneventful. But suddenly life in Dry Falls begins to go awry. A heat wave spikes in March; a three-month drought blights farms and gardens; animals give birth to monsters; women complain of sexual persecution. As one uncanny incident follows another, the natural order is disrupted. The townspeople seem to be living under a glass bell: the conditions in Dry Falls extend only as far as its borders--over the town line the weather is seasonable and crops ripen on schedule.
Marital discord has reached epidemic proportions. In one-third of the households in town, men have lost sexual desire and the women blame them. Henry Lieber is the rector of St. Anthony's. He is an arch-believer, but his faith in the Christian God is wavering. He seeks proof of the spiritual dimension in any form, and will take it as he finds it. His wife, Cora, an expert cook and gardener, is a self-professed materialist, believing that the natural world is wise and orderly, and that the supernatural is the creation of a morbid mind or the product of wishful thinking.
Evidence of the mysterious evil grows. An outline of the incubus experience gradually emerges. Although the attacker of the townswomen is invisible, every victim refers to it as "he." And it is clear to Henry Lieber, the self-appointed chief investigator, that the Dry Falls invader is both one and many. It takes the shape of traditional entities--an incubus demon, a succubus, a Frankenstein monster, an extraterrestrial, the Blessed Virgin. Its complex and absurd intelligence can masquerade as every kind of supernatural phenomenon.What kind of interaction does it want? Why is Dry Falls the target of demonic infestation? How can Henry Lieber, with his limited Christian magic, prevail against it? There is one thing the townspeople of Dry Falls can be certain of: if one invasion is repelled, another will follow . . .
Incubus is a novel that lures us into its spellbound world and holds us enthralled.
You can trust Cora Whitman. She's a minister's wife, gardener, food writer, and just the kind of narrator that you don't find in most horror novels. She is practical, skeptical, and her matter-of-fact telling of the events that took place in Dry Falls, Maine, makes this incredible story easy to believe.
Incubus begins with Cora Whitman's preface to the "case study" that is the novel. It's an almost scientific warm-up for the paranormal roller coaster that lies ahead. Arensberg's Dry Falls is a typical, small New England community, except during the summer of 1974 when the weather got unusually hot, the rain refused to fall, and the town was gripped by a sinister sexual spirit. The first signs of the incubus were relatively innocent--the town eccentric lost a few hours of her day, husbands became uncharacteristically ardent, schoolgirls saw a "ghost" in a graveyard. As the story progresses, the incubus grows more sinister, until it stirs up a supernatural hurricane with Cora Whitman trapped in its eye.
Arensberg, whose other works include Group Sex and Sister Wolf, has created a sophisticated work of literary horror with Incubus. She raises many questions about religion, marriage, and the supernatural, and handles the subject matter with unflinching objectivity. Her prose is simultaneously elegant and pointed, and her characters both unusual and familiar, making the story irresistible. --Mara Friedman
