When a novel deals on an intellectual level with matters spiritual or supernatural, the urge to try and figure out what the author may be trying to tell us becomes irresistible. I may be wildly wrong, but I feel sure that Ann Arensberg intends some sort of meaning or message in her third novel, Incubus , but I'll be, uh, damned if I know what it is. Not that ambiguity in this arena keeps Incubus from being a successful novel. Cora, in her fifties, is the wife of Henry Lieber, rector of an Episcopal church in Dry Falls, Maine. Henry is a clergyman rapidly running out of, if not faith, then enthusiasm for it.
Strange things begin to occur.
In the middle of April, Dry Falls is hit by a heat wave that, accompanied by a drought, continues through the summer. Henry and the other men of the town lose their sex drive. A large, menacing black dog is seen lurking about. Things then go beyond the dream stage. Henry's is fading, and there are indications that he is trading his doctrinal belief in the supernatural for a fascination with the supernatural's current disgusting manifestations.