“Oh. Not too late.”
“After the fireworks, though, right? I know Mom was trying to get her home earlier, but I think Ollie needs some more time out of this place, y’know? She’s stuck here all the damned time taking care of Dad. So, you’re good to go?”
“As soon as I see Olivia.”
He gave me a thumbs-up much like Olivia had the first time I’d parted from her and headed for the door. “You wait here. I’ll get her and send her out. Mom will be all over you if I don’t and you guys will never get out of here.”
I stood at the edge of the walkway to the front door, a little stunned and wound up with nerves as the young man went inside the house. In a few minutes, Olivia came trotting out with a backpack in one hand and a tote bag slung over her shoulder. She stopped short when she saw it was me and I watched the conflicting emotions storm over her—surprise, disappointment, excitement, worry. . . .
“Hey,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“I know you’re expecting someone else, but I need to talk to you.”
She closed the distance to me and bit her lip as she looked up into my face. “I’m sorry—I didn’t have a chance to bring you more of Dad’s notebooks. Mom hasn’t let me out of her sight.”
“How’s your dad doing?”
“He’s . . . well, not good. Really restless. It’s been harsh and it makes my mom kind of crazy. She’s been really wound up and I swear now she’s not even eating—she looks like a skeleton. I’m worried about her. And don’t say I need to watch my own weight—I know I’m too thin. I didn’t used to be. . . .”
That was a detail I’d let slip my mind again until she mentioned it: All the patients and their caregivers were dangerously skinny. They were all starving, like Hazzard’s victims. Even the ones who ate regularly were being drained by the proximity to Limos. That situation would only worsen and spread if Limos and Hazzard were successful. “It’s not your fault, Olivia, but I think it’s one of the side effects of what’s happening to your dad. And that’s one of the reasons we need to stop it as soon as we can.”
“I’m trying. I kind of feel guilty that I’m going out. . . . My brothers, Peter and Darryl, are here, though, so they’re going to hang with her and Dad for a while. Let me, y’know, get some sun.” She lit up suddenly. “Hey! I could get one of those notebooks for you now! Peter could help me. That’s my big brother, who you met just now—he’s totally cool.”
The sudden flip in her attitude was something I’d seen before when people try to deny the horror of a situation they can’t seem to get out of. I put out my hand to stop her from turning and running back into the house. “I didn’t come about the notebooks. I figured it out. What I need is for you to come to a séance tonight. I don’t know the time and place yet, but if you can come, I think we can fix this problem. For good.”
“Tonight?” She looked stricken. “But . . . it’s the Fourth of July! I practically had to sell my soul to get out of the house. Mom’s going to freak. . . .”
I felt a stab of panic as I thought of what an excellent opportunity Independence Day offered to Hazzard and Limos, with the hundreds or even thousands of people who would be all over the waterfront to hang out at the park, eat junk food, ride the carousel on Pier 57, and watch the fireworks display over Elliott Bay. No doubt there would be a long line to get on the Great Wheel and see at least a few minutes of the display from the unobstructed height, through the Wheel’s swinging glass gondolas. I swallowed my swelling fear before it could infect Olivia and said, “Don’t tell her. Do you have a cell phone?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah.” She gave the word two syllables, somehow.
“Give me the number and I’ll call you when I have the details. It’ll be later, maybe after the fireworks. But this is important and I’m sorry it’s messing up your plans—you need to come when I say. This is the key to everything.”
She sighed, her jaw muscles bunching as she fought her fear and disappointment. Then she rolled her eyes and sighed again, settling. “All right. For my dad. But this has to work. Please say it’s going to work. . . .” Tears lined the bottom of her eyelids, swelling on the pale fringe of her lashes.
I wasn’t sure—I never am—but I lied for her. “It will. With your help.”
She bit her lip and then launched a hug-tackle at my midsection. “We’re going to save him. Thank you! You’re the best!” Then she backed off self-consciously. “Oh. I’m sorry. That was, like, really overboard, wasn’t it? Oh, God . . .”
I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “It’s just fine. You’re fine. It’ll all be good. Now—phone number?”
She was startled, then she gave a nervous laugh and dug a card out of her tote bag. It was a tiny slip of heavy, plasticized paper with her name and phone number on one side and a close-up black-and-white photo of a ragged toe shoe on the other. I DANCE, THEREFORE I AM was printed in white script over the shoe. She handed it to me. “There. That’s the number.”
I looked the card over with a curious frown.
“I had them made when I thought I was going to be doing a lot of auditions and stuff,” Olivia explained, blushing with a touch of embarrassment. “Kind of silly, huh?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve just never seen such a small card before—we didn’t do these in my day.”
She shrugged and looked uncomfortable. “Umm . . . well, anyway . . . It’s going to be really loud out on the pier, so you maybe better text me as early as you can, to be sure I get the message in time.”
“The pier? Are you going out to the waterfront?”
“Yeah, to the park with a couple of the girls and one of the instructors from the ballet studio. Mom wouldn’t let me go without ‘a responsible adult’ to watch us. But it’s really just Delphia’s mom and she’s cool.”
Now this was a quandary: I didn’t want to frighten her or her friends, but I also didn’t want to ignore the danger if things didn’t go as I thought they would—I didn’t know what time Hazzard and Limos would move their ghosts toward the Wheel. I bit my lip for a second and Olivia noticed my hesitation.
“Yeah? Something wrong?”
“No. But there could be a problem with the Great Wheel tonight. Were your friends planning on riding it?”
“I don’t know. Delphia’s scared of heights, but that doesn’t mean the rest wouldn’t want to go up. If the line’s not, like, horrendous. Do you know something . . . ? Is it bad?” She looked scared now.
I wanted to tell her the truth and I wanted to lie, too. I wanted her to be safe—which she might not be with or without me. “I don’t know,” I said.
She studied my face for a moment or two, then she nodded. “If they really, really want to go, I don’t think I can stop them, but I’ll get them to go early, not later, if that makes a difference.”
“It could,” I said, thinking an attack on the Wheel would be more likely later, when the crowds were thickest.
“Then that’s what we’ll do. And I’ll come whenever you tell me to—unless I need a ride. Then it might take a while.”
“I can pick you up if you’re OK with that.”
She shrugged. “Hey, I’m already going out ghostbusting, so I guess I’m pretty good with all kinds of crazy stuff. Don’t tell my mom, though. She will freak.”
I laughed a little. “Believe me, I won’t tell her.”
She glanced around me and grinned. “There’s Delphia! I’m gone! See you later!”
And she darted off before anything could change, embracing the momentary freedom, running from home as much as toward her friend. I had to swallow hard to keep on breathing normally as I watched her go. I hoped with every fiber of my being that I wasn’t lying, that it would all be OK.
I trudged back to my truck and headed for the care home where Delamar was. I hoped talking to Levi wouldn’t leave me in knots like this. I hadn’t thought that Lily would be the easy one. Even convincing Stymak to try again had to be less uncomfortable t
han telling half lies to Olivia Sterling.
I drove back into central Seattle and parked a few blocks from the hospital so I could walk for a while outdoors in the patchwork sunshine. The weather was typical for Seattle—neither hot nor cold, with clouds that rolled over the sun and then cleared away again after dropping a smattering of rain. It was such a common phenomenon here that the weathermen had a name for it: sun breaks. I was wearing a light jacket and didn’t mind the sun’s game of hide-and-seek; my confidence was suddenly staggering and even with time seeming to fly away from me, I felt the need to be in the normal world with all its mess and inconvenience for just a while longer before I plunged back into the darkness of the situation and faced the séance and everything that went with it. A misty drizzle came down for a minute or so, then dissipated in sudden steam as a hole broke in the cloud cover and the sun stuck a beam of light through to warm the sidewalk.
I sat on a cement bench beside a little triangle of lawn and closed my eyes for a moment, feeling the sun warm me. It was three o’clock on Independence Day but I didn’t feel particularly celebratory or patriotic. I especially felt no connection to James Purlis’s idea of patriotism, which had moved him to do horrible things not for his country’s sake but for the government and some twisted idea about worldly power. Surely that wasn’t what “love of country” was supposed to be?
If some act is wrong it is simply wrong, no matter who tells you to do it or for what grand motive. It seemed to me that a true patriot and decent human being rejects doing wrong and puts the ideals on which the country is founded ahead of the directives of government bureaucrats. If the government is off the rails, you don’t keep on riding the train to destruction—you certainly don’t push it there on your own; you start hauling the other way as hard as you can. That was what Quinton was doing, quietly and without any help or recognition, trying to pull things back toward that delicate state of balance. It was a strange and huge undertaking, but whether I approved of his Don Quixote way of going at it or not, I had to let him do it. Where would I be if Purlis’s ideas won? Branded a monster—a nonhuman with no rights—and put in a cage to be experimented on? That flew in the face of what I’d always taken for granted here—all that high-flown Founding Fathers business about people being inherently free and self-determined, endowed with rights just because they were human. I shuddered, imagining the alternative—the end result of what Purlis would do, starting first in Europe and then back here.
As loony as it sounded, it meant I had to do a Don Quixote act myself and dismantle this conspiracy of ghosts. I turned my mind to that, trying not to dwell on my own bizarre and complicated family problems instead of the more immediate situation. I only hoped Hazzard and Limos would hold off tonight until Carlos was available. I thought it was likely that they would, since the ghosts would be exhausted from their exertions the previous night and, although Limos and Hazzard were also drawing strength through the rest of the patients’ families, their energy would be low for a while after their last effort. If they were going to have the strength to do something drastic to the Great Wheel, it would probably be after dark, but I didn’t know how long after sunset they would come.
And I still needed to talk to Levi Westman.
I got up and walked on, banishing the sense that I was taking on more than I could manage. I probably was, but I didn’t feel there was an alternative to trying. And I didn’t have time to formulate a better plan. I’d just have to make the one I had work.
I walked into the building and had no trouble getting up to Jordan Delamar’s room. It was a holiday, so I wasn’t surprised to find Westman sitting next to Delamar’s bed once again. He had the television on, but wasn’t paying any attention to it. Instead, he was bending over to study Delamar’s arm.
“Hello,” I said from the doorway.
Westman jerked upright and turned around, eyes wide. He relaxed when he saw me. “Oh. It’s you.”
“Yeah, just me. How’s Jordy today?”
He shook his head, looking worried. “I’m not sure. He’s restless and the . . . rash is pretty bad today.” He motioned me in and pointed at the welts on Delamar’s arm. “What is that?” he whispered.
I looked at the angry red lines that ran from the edge of the pajama sleeve Westman had pushed up to the shoulder all the way into Delamar’s palm where a Ferris wheel had been scribed. Along the arm what looked like clouds boiled and rushed toward the wheel. The coils of the clouds looked disturbingly like anguished faces. Westman lifted the other sleeve to reveal another picture—this one stylized waves with tumbling tops that looked uncomfortably like teeth also facing toward the palm. There was the number ten in this palm. If he had cradled his hands together, the clouds and water would have been converging on the tiny wheel at ten. I didn’t need to be very clever to figure that one out.
My expression clearly revealed my dismay. Westman stared at me as if on the verge of tears. “What is it?”
Here was another of those times I debated whether I should lie, but as I needed his help, I thought it would be better not to. “I . . . it’s a sort of warning.”
“About what? Is something going to happen to Jordy?”
“Something is going to happen to a lot of people, including Jordy,” I said. From what Carlos had said about the effect of being forced out of their bodies, I knew there had already been damage done to the living souls of Delamar, Sterling, and Goss. I doubted that they would be able to just slip back into place while the ghosts were busy doing the bidding of Hazzard and Limos. They might even be dragged along and destroyed by the psychic carnage that would reign over the Great Wheel if I couldn’t stop this horrifying plan.
My fears surely showed on my face. Westman looked panicked as he said, “Why? Why Jordy?”
“It’s not because he’s Jordy; it’s because he’s been . . . occupied by ghosts. And the ghosts are tied to this event. If it goes off as someone plans, a lot of people will die, and the ghosts will be burned up like fuel.”
“Jordy’s not dead. He’s not a ghost.”
I was relieved that he seemed to have no problem with the concept of ghosts and possession, but it was a lot to swallow anyhow, and the news didn’t get better. “No, he’s still here, but . . . without control of his body, he’s not really anchored anymore and he may not be able to resist being taken along in this storm.” I pointed at the clouds of faces. Then I looked at Westman. Did he believe me? It certainly sounded crazy.
He peered at me with narrowed eyes, his lips pursing and unpursing as he thought about what I’d said. But remarkably, he didn’t reject it or me. “You’re saying that this . . . this stuff that’s been happening to Jordy is ghosts, trying to warn us about something. This event? Whatever it is.”
I nodded, giving the smallest of mental pushes to incline him to believe what I was saying. It was cheating and I felt bad about it, but I needed his cooperation and understanding. Was that as bad as what Quinton’s dad did? Not in degree but in kind? I wasn’t sure, but I hoped it wasn’t. I couldn’t claim to have no agenda, but I did think mine was better than Purlis’s.
“Crazy,” Westman said. He sat down, shaking his head. “I’d say it couldn’t be true, but I’ve sat here every day since . . . I don’t even know when anymore, and watched this stuff happening, these words showing up on his skin, this restlessness, the helplessness . . . and I know he’s begging for help, but I can’t seem to give it to him. And you come along and say it’s ghosts. And I don’t even think that’s impossible anymore. But how can I do this? How can I keep on sitting here and watching this when it’s not even my Jordy there, reaching out?”
“But it is, in a way. It’s not just because Jordan is injured, but because he allows them to come through him,” I said. I didn’t really know if this was true, but I hoped it was. “He may have had no choice originally, but I think he wants this to end as much as they do, so he lets them come. Look at how clear this is. This writing isn’t even like it was a day or two ago�
��it’s stronger and more fluid. We need to help him.”
“What am I supposed to do? I’ve already done everything!” Westman said, his voice thick with frustration and mental anguish.
“I have a plan. It is going to sound totally nuts, but I believe it will work.”
Westman gazed at me as if I’d promised him the earth and heaven, too. “What is it? What do I do?”
“You come to a séance tonight.”
He pulled back from me, scowling. “Séance?”
“If there are ghosts, doesn’t it make sense that a séance is the way to talk to them, to force them to let go of Jordan and change their plans?”
“I . . . I guess,” he said with a conflicted shrug.
“This message on his arms,” I said, carefully pointing to the whole stream of information leading to his two upturned palms, “appears to say that two forces will converge on this object at ten o’clock. That’s my best guess and it fits with information I’ve had from other sources. This event could kill hundreds of people. And we can stop it if you will come and help me and the other families of these patients to talk to the ghosts. Please.”
He seemed dazed and exhausted, blinking at me as if he didn’t quite see me. “Family,” he murmured. “I wish . . . we had a family. Were a family. This . . . this is killing me, to be cut off from him and from being together by such incomprehensible things, such wild insanity I can’t conceive or contain.” A tear escaped from his eye and rolled down his cheek. “You have me at your mercy. I can’t fight anymore. I’ll try anything. Tell me where to be and when and I’ll be there.”
I felt no elation, only hollow pain at his complete lack of resistance. The situation had broken him and anyone could have used him to their own ends at this point. I hated what I was doing to him and I had to do it. If it worked, maybe he’d get his lover back. I hoped that would be the case and despaired that it might not. And time felt so short, so very short. . . .
“It will be nine o’clock,” I guessed, judging from the number in Delamar’s left palm and giving us an hour to reach into the Grey and put a halt to this before the situation became too dire to stop. “I’ll call you and tell you where in Seattle. Can you work with that?”
Possession Page 29