The Possession

by Michael Rutger

  Right where I was standing—which meant she had to be inside the building after all.

  I walked backward, looking up at the window on the first floor. No sign of light, still. I called out, feeling dumb. Certainly loud enough to be heard from within the apartment.

  No sign. I tried phoning, but it wasn’t answered and I didn’t hear the sound of ringing from above. I was heading back toward the door to bang on it again when I saw something.

  The wide street windows of the former general store had been thoroughly whitewashed. During the day it was impossible to see through. But now…for a moment it had seemed like there was a light inside. Not all over, as if a bulb had been switched on—but a small patch.

  Maybe like the screen of a phone?

  I went up close, shielding my eyes with my hands to cut out ambient light in the street. At first all I could see was variegated dark gray, the uneven strokes of a heavy coverage of whitewash on the inside of the glass.

  But then I saw it again. A glow, moving. Deep back in the room.

  I rapped on the window with my knuckle. “Kristy?”

  The light stopped. It dimmed, too—not as if a flashlight had been turned off, but as though it had been slowly turned down to nothing.

  I realized there was a padlock on the door. Which meant, of course, nobody could have come in this way. Feeling stupid, I glanced across at the heavier door giving access to the side stairs up to Kristy’s apartment. The deadbolt was in place. She wasn’t upstairs.

  So it must be her inside the building. And she must have gotten in some other way.

  I walked up to the corner and down the next street. An alleyway ran behind the buildings. Grimy dumpsters, a mistreated office chair, bad smells. I walked past the back of the grocery, two other buildings, the coffee shop—and got to the rear of the building holding Kristy’s apartment.

  There had been two windows here—small, utilitarian. Boarded over long ago. A door between them, not boarded but reinforced. More recently, by the look of it: the wood was weathered but not as gray. Just a regular lock.

  I knocked. No response. I grabbed the handle and gave it an exploratory tug. The latch didn’t seem like it would stand up to concerted effort. Though of course I wasn’t going to break in.

  I heard footsteps and turned to see Ken sauntering along the alley toward me. “Fuck are you up to, Nolan?”

  “Kristy’s in there.”

  “Doing what?”

  “No idea. She’s not responding to calls or knocks.”

  “Well maybe that’s because she’s somewhere she’s not supposed to be.”

  “So then what’s she doing in there?”

  “I asked you that.” He went up to the door and listened. “I can’t hear anything. What makes you think she’s inside?”

  “I saw a light. Through the glass in the front.”

  “To be honest, mate, I only came looking for you to ponce a cigarette. It’s cold and drizzling, so if you’re intending to lay in wait, you’ll be doing it on your own.”

  “Wait for who?” asked a voice.

  Ken and I jumped out of our skins.

  Chapter

  26

  Kristy was standing behind us.

  “Do not ninja up on people like that,” Ken said. “Fuck’s sake. My heart feels like it’s being punched by a little bastard rabbit with metal paws.”

  “Where have you been?” I asked.

  Kristy indicated how she was dressed. Ponytail. AirPods. Head-to-toe Athleta. Running shoes, hence having been able to arrive behind us silently. “Guess, Nolan.”

  “Chess club.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “So why’s your car at the motel?”

  “I came to see if you guys were back. You weren’t. I went for a walk while I waited, realized I should catch up on the run I missed this morning. So I changed and went for it, figured I’d go back for the car later. What’s the big deal?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “I got back, saw Ken sneaking around the corner and wondered what the hell he was up to. What are you doing?”

  “Looking for you. I tried calling. Knocked on your door. Then…tried the Find Your Friends thing.”

  “I’d forgotten we did that.”

  “Well, we did. And it said you were here.”

  “Well, I wasn’t,” she said. “But my phone is. It’s on the table upstairs.”

  “The idea that you and your phone might be in different locations is an explanation I hadn’t thought of.”

  “Still doesn’t explain why you’re creeping around.”

  “Nolan thought he saw somebody inside,” Ken said. “And because of the phone thing, he assumed it must be you.”

  “What would I be doing in there?”

  “We’ve all asked that question now,” I said, irritably, feeling dumb and embarrassed, “and it turns out there’s no answer, because you weren’t.”

  “It’s hard to be sure,” Ken said, “but I think this might be the most boring conversation I’ve ever been part of. I’m unsubscribing. How about we head back to the bar, and—”

  There was a loud crash from inside the building.

  We stared at the door. It sounded like something very heavy had toppled—or been knocked over—in there.

  “That happened before,” Kristy said, quietly. “The night before you got to Birchlake.”

  “And?”

  “Val said she stored stuff in here. She rents the whole building, I think. We should go tell her.”

  “She’s not in the Tap,” I said. “Or, she wasn’t five minutes ago.”

  “In which case, that must be her inside,” Kristy said, “and she could be hurt.”

  “So call the cops,” Ken said.

  Kristy pushed past us and grabbed the door handle. She gave it a tug. Looked at me.

  “Fuck me,” Ken said. “Am I the only person here who understands what the police are for?”

  “Do it,” Kristy told me.

  I hesitated, but only for a moment. Whatever fell over in there had been very big, and landed hard. Kristy has a willingness to get up in the world’s face that I don’t share—I tend to let the world come and find me, and prefer it to make an appointment—but if someone was lying underneath a big heavy thing we couldn’t just call 911 and hope they got here within the hour.

  I braced my foot against the wall and took the handle with both hands. Yanked against it, hard. Then again.

  On the third attempt the jamb splintered and the door opened, so fast it was almost as if something flew out.

  Beyond lay a corridor, almost pitch dark. The far end glowed faintly—streetlights dimly visible through the whitewashing on the main street windows.

  “Superb,” Ken said. “So not only have we schlepped all the way to the arse-end of California and not got a show out of it, we’re now merrily breaking and entering. Can we set fire to a church later? I’ve always wanted to.”

  “You’re only pissed because it wasn’t your idea.”

  “Yeah, I know. Let’s have a look then.” He took a step into the corridor. “Hello?”

  No response. He glanced back at me with an expression that I assumed must be concern. I hadn’t seen his face do anything like that before.

  “Come on,” Kristy said, impatiently, shoving past both of us and into the building.

  “Careful,” I said, as Ken and I followed. “You don’t know what state the boards are in.”

  I got out my phone. Its light showed twenty feet of corridor with grimy walls. A doorway on the left. I poked my head in and saw an old desk, a couple of wooden chairs, a pile of old paperbacks. A bent spatula on the floor.

  A further door on the right revealed another room of the same size. Nothing in it except for an old-looking safe in the corner, most likely from the store’s original incarnation. Curling sheets of paper were thumb-tacked to one wall: staff rosters from its last inhabitants; a poster for a local fair in 1992; a sign telling people not to steal
food from the fridge, specifically singling out a repeat offender called Nick “Thiefboy” Golson. The more personal something left behind, the more it looks like it’s from ten thousand years ago.

  We walked to the end of the corridor and Kristy and I raised our phones to illuminate the space beyond.

  Nobody said anything for a moment.

  The room was forty feet wide, and maybe the same deep. A wooden counter ran along the right side, shelves behind. Both looked, like the safe in back, like they had been there a hundred years. The left side of the room was likewise lined with shelves. Some had things on them. It was hard to tell what they were at first, and our attention was taken by what was in the remaining space.

  The floor area was empty, apart from a stone wall.

  I stepped carefully into the room, directing the phone light more directly on it. The wall was about twelve feet long, maybe three feet high either end, with a pronounced dip in the middle. It looked like a work in progress. It had a pronounced curve. “Is that another one of yours?” Ken asked.

  “Certainly looks that way.”

  “Why is it…inside a building?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Look here,” Kristy said. She’d gone past the wall to the counter, shining her light at the contents of the shelves on the other side. Rocks. Some by themselves, others in collections of two or three. I went to where she stood, noticing that—hidden behind the wall—a few sheets of legal-size paper lay on the floor. I walked around the end of the counter to look at the shelves.

  Each of the rocks had a scrap of paper wedged underneath. A short set of numbers had been written on each. A scan along two of the shelves suggested the notes were all in the same handwriting. “The hell,” Ken asked, “is this all about?”

  I returned to the wall in the middle of the room. Squatted down to look at the sheets of paper. Sketches, more than one per page, most scribbled out. Crescents, wavy lines. A skewed rectangle. A lot of the crossings-out were jagged and hard, as if made in anger or frustration.

  I stood back up. “We should go.”

  Back outside in the alley, I examined the damage to the door frame. The splintering around the lock was minor. You’d have to come up close to see it had been broken.

  “So I guess we now owe somebody a couple hundred bucks,” I said. “To get that fixed.”

  “I’m happy to have the conversation with Val,” Kristy said. “We were doing the right thing. We thought she was hurt in there.” She hesitated. “Though in fact…”

  “Nobody was in there,” Ken said.

  “Which…is weird.”

  “Nolan’s a muppet. He thought he saw someone, or a light, but there was always a chance he could have got it wrong or be on drugs. That’s not the point.”

  Kristy frowned. “Then what? The rocks, or that wall?”

  “Well yeah, partly. But something else. Did you see anything that looked like it had just fallen over?”

  “No.”

  “So what made the noise we heard?”

  We checked Kristy’s apartment. No sign anything had fallen in there, either. Kristy headed for her phone, leaving me and Ken to double-check around the apartment.

  “Expecting something?”

  “No,” she said. “Just checking it’s working.”

  She said she’d shower and then join us in the Tap, and give the Val woman a call in the meantime.

  As Ken and I smoked our way across to the road to the bar, he turned to me. “We all heard that noise.”

  “I know. One of the buildings either side?”

  “No way, mate. And what’s the deal with the rocks?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But remember yesterday, when we were walking back from filming the capper?”

  “You’re right. We saw her. Out there. Near the walls.”

  “Carrying a heavy-looking bag.”

  “But why would anybody steal stones from the walls?” He saw that I’d stopped in the middle of the street. “What?”

  “Look,” I said, turning to indicate in both directions.

  He saw what I saw. Nobody. Empty sidewalks. No lights apart from in the Tap and the liquor store down the street. Nobody was loitering outside it tonight.

  He shrugged. “The weather’s crappy, like Moll said.”

  “But it’s seven thirty in the evening, Ken. Saturday night.”

  “Christ—Nolan.”

  I thought he was just getting impatient with me pointing out what he’d already pointed out, but then he started running toward the Tap—and for him, running fast.

  Chapter

  27

  As she approached the Hixon house Val felt her phone vibrate. The screen showed a number with a 310 area code. Los Angeles. Had to be Kristy Reardon, probably confirming she was leaving in the morning. Good. Calling back could wait. She set off up the drive.

  The oil drums that had been in place since Alaina disappeared had been moved, and as she rounded the last bend to the house, Val could see why.

  She slowed. Stayed back in the dark.

  A car was parked in the space in front of the property. Not Hixon’s truck, which sat beyond. Val recognized the vehicle. The owner was standing with Hixon on the porch, in the sallow glow of the bulb above the front door.

  Val walked up the remaining driveway, staying as far to the side as she could get without having to push through undergrowth. She stopped when she couldn’t progress further without risk of being seen.

  Close enough. She could see through the only window on the side of the house that hadn’t been boarded over. The job was half done, as though Hixon had been disturbed. The two men on the porch were speaking quietly, but she heard enough of the tone and cadence to know the conversation was stilted, men who weren’t actual friends, Hixon waiting the interruption out so he could get on with the task he’d set himself. The four windows on the front of the house—two on each floor—had already been covered.

  Val acknowledged the thinking behind this, and the effort, but knew it was a waste of time. There’s no point building a wall when what you’re afraid of is already inside.

  The uncovered lower half of the side window revealed the living room. Old wallpaper, equally old pictures on the wall. Val recognized the woman in the engraving in the lower middle, and understood the family resemblance between her and the photo of a woman further along the wall, and also to the young girl she could see through the window.

  Alaina Hixon stood in the middle of the room, head bowed. A girl of the same age stood on either side, watching her carefully. Madeline and Nadja Hardaker. Madeline glanced to the side, as though nervous. With the front windows covered, the three girls couldn’t be seen by their fathers on the porch. But that might change if one of the men decided the reunion had gone on long enough and came to say so.

  Val didn’t think that was the only reason Maddy was nervous, however. Nadja also had the look of someone who was realizing that they were in danger of getting way out of their depth.

  Alaina meanwhile had moved her hands so they were palms together, pointing downward. She raised them, still joined, until they were in front of her chest. She slowly rotated her hands about the wrist so the palms were facing front, and then—looking as if she was executing a tai chi move—straightened both arms to the side, until they were both straight, palms out.

  Maddy and Nadja both diffidently took a step forward, until their chests touched Alaina’s palms. The three held this position for a moment, and then Alaina raised her head, turning it to the right, and suddenly spat a ball of red phlegm straight into Nadja’s face.

  The girl blinked, but didn’t move.

  Alaina turned her head to the left and did the same to Madeline. Then faced front, eyes still closed, and stuck her tongue out, downwards, as far as she could.

  Even from where she stood, Val could see that the girl had bitten it, and it was bleeding freely. A large drop of blood slid off the end and dropped to the floor.

  Val f
elt her heart sink and her stomach turn. Pure theater. Who knows where from. Some dumb movie. But doing the wrong thing by mistake didn’t stop it being wrong. Spilt blood always counts.

  A gust of wind writhed through the bushes, curling round their bases, gathering force, then shooting up into the branches of the trees.

  The two men on the porch noticed. “Storm’s on the way,” Bryan Hixon said.

  Hardaker nodded, and called out for his daughters.

  Val glanced back at the window. The three girls were standing with their faces crushed up close together, arms around each other’s shoulders, hands held in tight fists.

  Hardaker lost patience, and went into the house—leaving Hixon outside.

  The wind started to swirl through the undergrowth again, this time slower, more insidious. It felt less like a product of the environment and more like something trying to push past. It swirled in a vortex around Val, thick as water, buffeting her so hard that she had to step rapidly to the side to stop herself from falling over.

  Then it shot up into the trees again, dislodging an explosion of leaves that fell brown and golden around her.

  Then suddenly someone was gripping her shoulder, and Bryan Hixon’s face was right up in hers. Angry, but not only that. Afraid, too. “Get off my property,” he said, in a low, hard voice. “And stay away from my daughter.”

  “Mr. Hixon, you don’t understand.”

  “I understand everything I need to. I’ve been down this fucking road before. She doesn’t need your help. She needs to be left the fuck alone.”

  “You’re going to need help,” Val said. “She’s going to make mistakes. She has already. Can’t you feel it? Let’s talk. Before it’s too late.”

  “We don’t need anybody.” He shoved her, hard. “Go.”

  Val hurried away down the drive before Hardaker and his daughters could come out of the house and see her.