Possession Is Nine-Tenths of the Law

by Possession Is Nine-Tenths of the Law (retail) (epub)

  Maybe I do watch too many movies, he thought.

  The bedroom was empty. The double bed was unmade, the sheets half on the floor. There was a bureau, a vanity, and a wardrobe. There had been posters and paintings on the walls, but someone had torn them all down. The posters had been ripped to shreds, while the paintings—one of them a print of van Gogh’s Sunflowers—lay scattered on the floor, frames busted and glass facings smashed.

  “We haven’t had a chance to clean up,” Bonnie said. She sounded embarrassed, as if the state of the room was the real issue at hand.

  Jerry nodded, looking around. “So where is. . . .” Then he saw the closet door with the straight-back chair wedged under the knob, bracing it closed. He pointed. “You put her in the closet?”

  Bonnie nodded, a little guiltily. “She’d been acting strange all week. Moody. Kind of sulky. She’s always been such a good girl, but the things that came out of her mouth lately. . . .” She shook her head ruefully.

  Sounds like a case of teenage-itis, Jerry thought but didn’t say.

  “It wasn’t until today that she started getting violent,” Bonnie said. “I came upstairs to wake her up. I was worried she was going to be late for her job. She works at the rec centre on weekends—did I tell you that?”

  Jerry nodded.

  “She wouldn’t get out of bed. She told me. . . .” Her face flushed bright red. “I don’t want to repeat what she said.” Tom came up behind her and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I couldn’t believe my little girl would say such things. That’s when I knew something was seriously wrong with her.” She swallowed hard. “Tom must’ve heard her because the next thing I knew he was in the room. She reacted to him like . . . like she’d never seen him before. She attacked him. Tom was able to get a hold of her, and he tried to pin her down on the bed, but she threw him off like it was nothing. I was standing right here and I saw her do it. I thought she was going to come after me next, but she just lay there like she’d fallen asleep or something. Then she let out the most god-awful scream and everything went flying off the walls all at once. Jess came up off the bed—not so much like she jumped, more like something had pushed her from behind—and went straight into the bathroom.” She pointed at the en suite. “I thought maybe she was going to try to kill herself. Cut her wrists or take pills or something. Tom got up and went after her again.”

  “I grabbed her from behind,” Tom said, picking up the story. “It was like holding a bag full of snakes. She was twisting around so much I could barely hold onto her.” He ran a hand down his grizzled cheek, making a rasping sound. “I dragged her back into the room and stuck her in the closet. I didn’t know what else to do. She started banging on the door, and I thought for sure she was going to break right through it. There’s no lock on the door, so I stuck that chair under it. After a while she started to calm down. We tried talking to her through the door, but she wouldn’t answer, and we . . . we didn’t want to let her out. Just in case. . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head.

  “That’s when I called you,” Bonnie said to Jerry. “You have to help us. Please, Mr. Baldwin. You have to help my little girl. You have to. . . .” Her voice wavered and dissolved into sobs.

  Jerry looked from the Pages to the closet door and back again. “I promise I’ll do everything I can to help your daughter,” he said. “But in order to do that, I need both of you to wait outside.”

  Tom didn’t like that, and looked like he was going to argue, but then Bonnie put her hand on his arm and his anger seemed to subside under her grip. She led him out of the room and Felix closed the door gently behind them.

  Jerry wandered over to one of the windows. The bedroom was at the back of the house and the view looked out on an expanse of rolling lawn that extended to dense woods in the distance. It was late October and the trees were stark and skeletal.

  “Can you perform an exorcism through a closed door?” Felix asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jerry said, turning to face the closet. “Never done it before—never seen it done, either—but I would assume so.”

  “You’d assume so?”

  “Well, as long as the possessor can hear me, it should work. Right?”

  Felix stared at him. “Are you telling me or are you asking me?”

  “I’m just curious to hear your opinion.”

  “My opinion?” Felix pressed his lips together so tightly they almost disappeared. “You want my opinion? I think I should have stayed at home.”

  Jerry nodded, not really listening to him. “Yeah, I probably should have Googled that before we left.”

  “You said you knew what you were doing.”

  “I said I have someone who normally does this for me, but since he’s not available, I could probably do it in a pinch. And I stand by that.”

  “That’s not very reassuring, Jer.” Felix started pacing back and forth, running his hand through his hair. “These people have a serious problem. What did you think you were going to do?”

  Jerry shrugged. “Improvise.”

  “Improvise,” Felix said. “You were going to improvise an exorcism.”

  “Sure. People do it all the time.”

  Felix shook his head. “No, Jerry, people don’t do it all the time.”

  “Are you going to help me or not?”

  Felix stopped pacing and appeared to think it over. After a long pause, he said, “Not,” and turned to leave the room.

  Jerry grabbed his arm. “Felix, come on. Don’t leave me like this. I need you.”

  Felix looked at him with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Jerry didn’t mind. He got the same look from women all the time when he cruised the bars. At least until he started working on them. That was the reason most guys went home alone. They didn’t work hard enough. Jerry might’ve had his faults, but laziness wasn’t one of them, and those who knew him would admit he was a pretty good charmer.

  Case in point.

  “Let’s just get this done,” Felix said, pulling out of Jerry’s grip.

  “Thanks, Goose.”

  “And once we’re done, you and I are going to have a long talk about why I’m Goose and you’re Maverick.”

  Jerry and Felix stood in front of the closet door.

  “So we’ll do the exorcism with the door closed,” Jerry said. “Then we’ll check things out—carefully—and if we have to, we’ll do it again.”

  Felix shook his head. “Whatever.”

  Jerry started doing stretches, rolling the stiffness out of his shoulders, tilting his head from side to side until his neck cracked. When he was done he slapped his hands together and said, “Okay, let’s do this thing.”

  He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a book. Felix glanced at it, then did a double-take. He’d expected to see a small, leather-bound volume, the kind with tiny printing on the onionskin pages. The book in Jerry’s hands was much thinner, with a familiar bright yellow cover and diagonal black stripes, and the words—

  “Sweet fuck, Jerry. You brought a CliffsNotes version of the Bible?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Why didn’t you bring a real Bible?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Everyone has a Bible.”

  “I don’t.”

  “But you had the CliffsNotes lying around?”

  “I bought it.”

  “Why didn’t you buy a real Bible?”

  “The CliffsNotes was cheaper.”

  “Oh, Christ.”

  “Ah!” Jerry said. “Speaking of Christ, did you know. . . .” He started flipping pages, and Felix reached out and slapped the book out of his hands.

  “Take it easy!” Jerry said, reaching down to pick it up. “This book has everything we need. There’s a whole section on exorcisms.”

  “But CliffsNotes?” Felix raised his hands like he wanted to throttle Jerry, then let them flop back a
t his sides. “It’s probably going to make things worse.”

  “Hey,” Jerry said, “CliffsNotes saved my life in high school, and they’re going to save June Page’s life today.”

  “Jessica.”

  “What?”

  “The possessed girl. The one you’re going to save. Her name is Jessica.”

  “Right.”

  Felix sighed. “CliffsNotes.”

  “The book doesn’t matter,” Jerry said. “It’s still the Bible even if it’s printed on grocery bags. It’s the words that count.”

  Felix threw up his hands. “That’s it. I’m out of here.”

  “Come on,” Jerry said. “I’ll give you another fifty bucks.”

  “I don’t care about the money, Jer. I’m leaving.”

  “You can’t go.”

  “Why not?”

  “I need your help. Ju—Jessica needs your help.” Jerry paused, as if for effect. “And I have the car keys.”

  Felix came back and turned to face the closet door. “I’m going to regret this. I know it.”

  “Trust me,” Jerry said. “This is going to be chicken feed.”

  “What?”

  “You know, it’s going to be easy.”

  “You mean it’s going to be child’s play. Chicken feed is what you’re paying me.”

  “Right,” Jerry said. “Child’s Play. That was a good movie.”

  Felix shook his head. “We’re going to die. We’re both going to die.”

  Jerry flipped a few pages to a section titled, “The Rite of Exorcism.” Below this it said: “For the original Latin, turn to page 86. For exorcism practices in other countries, turn to page 89. For trivia about the film The Exorcist, turn to page 126.”

  Jerry took a deep breath. “Okay,” he muttered. “Let’s evict some demons.”

  He began to read from the book.

  When he was finished, Jerry closed the book and slapped it against his thigh.

  “There we go,” he said. “All done.”

  Felix gave him a sceptical look. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Jerry said. “I’ve seen Father Bennenwatti do this a hundred times.”

  “A hundred times?”

  “Well, at least a dozen.”

  “Were any of those times through a closed door?”

  “Why are you so hung up on this door thing? You think the power of exorcism can’t penetrate a piece of wood?”

  “Possibly,” Felix said. “Assuming of course that you even possess the power of exorcism.”

  “Is that a joke?” Jerry asked.

  “What?”

  “Possess the power of exorcism? Was that a pun?”

  “No. I just think it takes more than reading from a book to expel a possessor.”

  “I keep telling you, Felix, it’s all about belief. It’s belief that lets a possessor in, and it’s belief that kicks them out.”

  “Save me the lesson, Jer. I just want to know if this particular possessor is gone.”

  Jerry stepped forward and pulled the chair away from the closet door.

  “Let’s find out.”

  Jerry said, “After you.”

  Felix looked at him. “After me what?”

  Jerry gestured. “Open the door.”

  “You open the door. You’re the exorcist.”

  “Yes, and you’re my assistant. So assist me by opening the door.”

  “What are you afraid of?” Felix said.

  “Afraid?” Jerry said. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

  “Then why don’t you open the door?”

  “You want me to open the door? Fine, I’ll open the damn door.”

  Jerry reached out and turned the knob, but before he could pull it open, the door came flying out toward him. It happened so fast he didn’t have time to react, and the edge of the door clipped his shoulder and sent him spinning to the ground. The door struck the wall and rebounded back. It would have closed shut again, but a long, slim arm snaked out and stopped it.

  Jessica Page might have been pretty at one time, but she wasn’t now. Her face had a bloated look like she’d had an allergic reaction to something. Bathing, maybe, Jerry thought, wrinkling his nose at the stink that rolled off her. The funk was so strong he half-expected to see a cloud hanging around her like Pigpen in the Peanuts comics. Her arms and legs were rail-thin, but her stomach was as bloated as her face and pushed against the front of the soiled nightgown she was wearing. Her hair, chestnut brown like her mother’s, hung in dark, greasy tangles around a face that was ashen and etched with blue veins. Her mouth hung open, lips dry and cracked, a glistening strand of saliva dangling off the edge of her stubby chin. Her eyes were half-lidded and filmed over as if with cataracts.

  Felix stared, looking as slack and expressionless as the girl standing before him.

  Jerry yelled, “Close the fucking door!”

  Felix came out of his daze and reached for the door, managed to grab the edge of it, then Jessica Page’s arm snapped out and delivered an open-handed blow to his chest that sent him flying backward across the room. He struck the far wall and crumpled to the floor. Two feet to the left and he would’ve gone through the window.

  Jerry muttered, “Fuck me,” and Jessica’s head snapped around with a loud cracking sound. She took a stiff step toward him, and her leg made the same brutal bone-snapping crack.

  Jerry reached into his jacket pocket and took out the CliffsNotes Bible. He started to open it, then said, “Aw, hell,” and whipped it overhand.

  The book struck Jessica square in the face. It might have been a gust of fresh summer wind for all the effect it had. She continued to advance on him, taking those jerking, stomping steps, like a marionette controlled by a heavy-handed puppeteer. Every movement punctuated by that sharp cracking sound. As if the entity’s presence in the girl’s body was an affront to her entire physiology.

  When she reached Jerry, she crouched down—her knees popping like rifle shots—and raised a hand in front of his face. Her fingers flexed, knuckles crackling, and Jerry thought she meant to gouge out his eyes.

  That might have been the original plan, but Jessica—or the thing controlling her body—sensed movement, and turned her head and looked off across the room.

  Jerry hesitated, then turned his own head and followed the direction of her gaze.

  She was looking at the en suite.

  Then, with another double-pop of cracking kneecaps, she straightened up and started off in that stiff-legged walk.

  Jerry scooted back on his butt, moving around the double bed, until he made it over to where Felix lay slumped on his side. He was groaning something Jerry couldn’t quite make out.

  “What’s that, buddy?”

  Felix touched the back of his head and winced. “I said I fucking hate you.”

  There was a loud clapping sound as Jessica threw the bathroom door closed behind her.

  Jerry got up, dashed over, and tried the knob. Locked.

  Felix climbed unsteadily to his feet and followed. “This is what her parents said she did last time.”

  “They thought she was going to kill herself,” Jerry said. He banged on the door. “Jessica, don’t do it! You have every reason to live!”

  “It’s not Jessica, you moron.” Felix took a step back from the door. “Get out of the way.”

  Jerry moved to the side as Felix rushed forward and slammed his shoulder into the door. It didn’t budge. Felix stepped back and went at it again. And again. He muttered something each time he hit the door.

  “What are you saying?” Jerry asked.

  “I said I really fucking hate you.”

  Felix stepped back for another rush, then froze and stared at something past Jerry’s shoulder.

  Jerry turned and saw Tom and Bonnie Page standing in the bedroom doorway. They wore identica
l expressions of shock.

  Felix asked, “Have you got an axe?”

  Tom’s eyes got small and hard. “You’re not using an axe on my daughter.”

  “The door,” Felix said. “An axe for the door. Your daughter’s locked herself in the bathroom.”

  Tom nodded and took off. Bonnie stood with her hands pressed into her cheeks, her eyes staring wide and wet.

  Jerry tried knocking on the door again. “Jessica, open the door.”

  “I keep telling you, Jer, it’s not her.”

  They stood for a moment, heads cocked toward the door, listening. There was silence from the other side, then, a low, metallic squeak, followed by the loud gushing sound of pouring water.

  “She’s running a bath,” Felix said.

  “She could use one,” Jerry said. He looked toward the doorway where Bonnie stood frozen, then back at the bathroom door. “We don’t have time for the axe.”

  That seemed to spark something in Felix’s mind, and he reached into his pocket and took out a Swiss Army knife. At least Jerry thought that’s what it was. Looking closer, he saw that the symbol on the side wasn’t the white cross logo of the Swiss Army, but rather the badge of the RCMP.

  “What’s that?” Jerry asked.

  “Something a friend made me,” Felix said. He opened one of the tools on the knife, then slid another out of the red plastic housing.

  Jerry stared with something like awe. “Is that a pick? And a tension wrench?” His eyes widened. “Shit, where did you get a Swiss Army knife with lock picking tools?”

  “That’s classified,” Felix said. He bent down to work on the lock.

  “You need to hurry,” Jerry urged him.

  “No problem,” Felix said. “Old house, old locks. I’ll have this open in a jiff.”

  A few moments later, the lock snicked back. Jerry turned the knob and pushed the door open.

  They went in.

  Jessica Page was lying at the bottom of a large claw-foot tub. It was half-filled with water, and more was pouring in from the gushing faucet. Staring at the submerged girl, Jerry was reminded of the alien monster from The Thing, except it had been encased in a block of ice.