Incarnate Read Free

nobody in the passenger area with its pale green walls and its low chairs on the island of carpet … except that now something was: a circle of seated figures that were altogether too pink, that were turning their blank heads to her. She jerked awake and muttered a description to the microphone, though she wasn’t sure where her sleepy thoughts had turned into a dream. Usually she liked this state, the stream of thoughts and obscure correlations that reminded her of the pages she’d read of a digest of Finnegans Wake, but now it felt uncontrollable, sweeping her toward the precipice of dreams. There was nothing to fear, everyone dreamed, but why did they? Whenever I feel afraid I hold my head whenever I feel afraid I hold my head whenever I feel afraid, over and over an’ dover Andover, an Iron Age settlement near London, but she wasn’t sitting a history examination now, she was back in the sexology office and faking letters as fast as she could, for Danny Swain in stained trousers to collect. That woke her momentarily, wondering why she should have thought that was his name, but now she was in a lecture hall where Joyce was haranguing the audience while Dr. Kent heckled, shouting, “A blind man needs no crutch.” That seemed profoundly meaningful as Molly woke; she would have told the microphone except that she was sinking again into the dark, which seemed impatient now. It was all right, she had the microphone, she could keep in touch as she ventured into the dark.
    She looked up as she took the first step. Either the walls met overhead, high up in the dark, or the sky was utterly lightless. Though the walls were full of windows, not a window was lit, and she couldn’t see a single face in the crowd she was struggling through. Their bodies felt puffy and yielding, they smelled of sodden musty cloth, but she could wake if she had to, if their hands should seize her and drag her back into the dark. Waking was the best means of escape, the only one—but suddenly she was out of the crowd, in a narrow street lit by lamps that dripped black rain. She was in front of a door.
    She mustn’t go in. This was the photograph that was waiting to be taken, the red door where green paint showed through the top left-hand corner of the upper right-hand panel, the dog-faced knocker canted slightly to the left, a brass ring in its mouth. There were six doors in that house, but if there were more— She was shuddering and reaching for the microphone in the hope that telling it would help her understand why she was so afraid, and then she remembered that it could do much more: it would let her find her way back. She raised the microphone to her face and glanced back along the cord. It had snapped.
    The frayed end lay in the gutter, the exposed wires twitching in the water that was streaming toward the drain. She Hung away the microphone, which struck the foot of a streetlamp with a hollow tinny sound. She couldn’t find her way back. There was only one way to go, for someone had opened the door.
    She wanted to turn and run, it didn’t matter where. Worse than nightmare waited beyond the doorway. But the distant frustration was suddenly close, urging her forward, and when at last she managed to make her legs move she found she was stumbling into the house, along the hall, past the staircase where she didn’t dare look up. The knob of the door beyond the stairs felt like a lump of ice in her hand. When the door opened, it seemed to drag her into the room.
    It was a back parlor. A tasseled lampshade turned the walls and floor-length curtains a smoky brown. Antimacas-sars drooped over the chairs and settee that huddled around a gas fire, its orange flames stuttering. China dolls lined up neatly, the tallest in the middle, on the mantelpiece beneath an oval mirror. The room was stifling, she could hardly breathe. Then she saw the figures in the room, and she couldn’t breathe at all.
    They must be life-size dolls. What else could they