Possessions

by Holder, Nancy

  I’ ll save you, Julie, I promised, clenching my shaking fists. My heart was beating so fast I was afraid I was going to pass out. I looked around for more cover in case I needed it, and realized that if I leaned to the left and rested my weight on my hand, I would be better hidden from anyone coming the same way I had come. I carefully moved; my hand covered something soft, pushed into it. I almost screamed when I realized it was a freshly dead animal. I smelled the odor, felt the slime. I had to close my eyes for a second to pull myself together.

  “What was that?” Mandy whispered. “Is she here?”

  “I didn’t hear anything.” Julie’s voice was calmer than I would have expected. And a little lower than normal.

  “She’d better show,” Mandy hissed.

  “She will,” Julie murmured.

  Then someone behind me said, “Belle, we’re finished. Come and see.” It was Sangeeta.

  A flashlight flared over Mandy’s horrible face . . . and then hit Julie square on.

  No.

  Her eyes were black.

  No.

  And a white skull flared over her face, blurring as she stared into the flashlight. I saw her features clearly. I clamped my jaw so tightly I almost broke my teeth.

  Mandy rose and started heading toward me. I ducked down and held my breath.

  Oh God, please, don’t let them see me. Please.

  An ice-cold wind washed over me. Tears formed in my eyes. My lungs were aching. I couldn’t breathe.

  “They can’t wait to show you,” Sangeeta said.

  “I’m sure they’ve done a fine job, sweet bee.” Mandy’s voice was behind me. “Can you believe it? I thought this day would never come.”

  Their voices faded. The flashlight bloom disappeared. Julie had been left behind. Were they so sure that she couldn’t escape? Was she tied up?

  There was silence for a few heartbeats. My arm was aching. I was so cold I had to fight to keep my teeth from chattering.

  “Lindsay?” Julie whispered. Her voice was normal. “Lindsay, oh God, if you’re here . . . please help me, please. They’re going to kill me.” She rose slowly, moving toward me; then she stumbled. “Caspi,” she whispered, her voice breaking into deep, heavy sobs.

  I didn’t say anything. Her black eyes had frightened me. Was she Number Seven? Or . . .

  Or was she a replacement for Kiyoko, who was dead? And if she was, then who really was Number Seven—the one they really wanted dead?

  Oh God . . .

  “Lindsay, come quick,” she whispered. “Please. They’re going to set this place on fire.”

  I didn’t speak, didn’t move. I would wait until she went past me and follow her. As she came up the aisle I shrank down, as best I could. I was numb. I felt as though my hair was frozen. Like Kiyoko’s hair, that night.

  Don’t call out. Save me. Hide me. It was the voice inside me.

  Julie was to my right, about five feet away from me, sobbing. She was hunched over, her arms crossed, young and defense-less. . . .

  Please, for the love of God . . .

  . . . And I knew who was Number Seven. The one who didn’t belong. The only one who’d ever noticed the awful reflections, the blacked-out eyes. The only one who’d ever heard voices, smelled smoke.

  Me.

  I was Number Seven.

  Then Julie stopped to my right. My lip quivered. I didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see.

  But I did.

  Julie was staring down at me. She opened her mouth.

  “Julie,” I whispered. “Julie, you . . . you’re possessed. And you . . . you have to get out of here, now. I’ll help you.”

  She took a breath.

  And then she shouted at the top of her lungs, “She’s here!”

  thirty-three

  “Julie, no,” I gasped, as she grabbed me. I slipped away from her easily and ran toward the darkness.

  Just then, Mandy and Sangeeta stepped from it. And Alis, Lara, and Rose as well.

  One: Mandy.

  Two: Lara.

  Three: Julie

  Four: Sangeeta.

  Five: Alis.

  Six: Rose .

  Alis was holding up a Coleman lantern. I heard the hiss of kerosene.

  “So grand of you to accept my invitation,” Mandy cooed, in her Southern accent. She grinned at me, and I could see the toothless jawbones of a skull.

  She cocked her head; the skull seemed to be screaming. I saw rage in the white bones. Dread clamped down on me, squeezing my chest, lashing my jaw shut.

  “Mandy,” I said. “Mandy, this is crazy.”

  “You know that I’m not Mandy,” she said, in her Southern accent. “You know who I am. I’m Belle Johnson.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know that name.”

  The smell of kerosene hit me in the face, so strong I gagged and covered my eyes. I shook my head and tried to bolt, but Lara and Rose darted at me and grabbed my arms. Their hands were icy and their bodies stank like rotten meat. My knees buckled and Rose chuckled.

  “Stop pretending,” Mandy—Belle—said.

  Kerosene.

  Smoke.

  “You’re going to pay.” Belle gestured to Lara and Rose and they began to drag me back the way I had come.

  “I’m not pretending,” I told her. “Pay for what? I don’t know why you’re doing this.”

  “Don’t play dumb,” Lara said. “You know what’s happening. And why.”

  We walked down the corridor, but not down the stairs I had taken. Instead, we continued down a hall draped with so many cobwebs it looked like a cocoon. My left hand was covered with blood and ooze, and I stared at it instead of the things gathered around me. Instead of the white-skull back of Julie’s head, as she walked ahead of me, with Belle, arms around each other’s waists.

  I started to fuzz out, but I forced myself to stay focused. Roast her alive. Why?

  “I haven’t done anything to you,” I said.

  “Hush your mouth, child,” Belle ordered me.

  “Maybe it’s not her.” That was Julie, the merest bit of uncertainty in her tone.

  “Julie, Julie, help me,” I said, but Lara dug her nails into my wrist.

  “You stop it,” Lara demanded.

  The lantern flared over the cobwebs, and then the gaping mouth of a doorless entryway. And then I saw it, whether it was real or in my imagination, I couldn’t say. It was almost like a memory. But it was so real. . . .

  The men.

  The operating table.

  Strapped down.

  Screaming until the chloroform knocks her out and then . . .

  The ice pick.

  Ice.

  Ice.

  Ice.

  And then . . .

  The blood and the—

  Nothingness.

  Must stop it, must stop it . . .

  I bent over and threw up.

  “I can’t go in there,” I begged.

  “Oh, yes, sweet bee,” Belle hissed, whirling on me, grabbing up my hair and yanking back my head. Her skull glowed; her black eyes stared hard. “You remember. You know.”

  “I don’t,” I rasped.

  “Come out, Celia. Damn you to hell for what you did,” Belle said. “You come out and pay.”

  Then they were dragging me into a huge cavern. As we entered, snowflakes tumbled in the lantern light. The ground was covered with dead leaves and rubbish.

  Ten feet ahead of us, a stack of trash and wood stood about five feet high. Newspaper surrounded the base. As I looked at it, Lara reached into the jacket of her parka and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. I had seen them in the photographs in Mandy’s trunk.

  Rose dug in her pocket and pulled out a small rectangular-shaped can. Lighter fluid.

  Alis had a bottle of brandy.

  Sangeeta had a box of kitchen matches.

  “Get it out,” Belle snapped at Julie, who was studying the pile. “Hurry.”

  Alis turned and Julie quickly unzipped her b
ackpack. She pulled out the white head and held it up for all to see. A shining globe of white.

  “Bring it,” Belle ordered her.

  Above the head, Julie’s skull face stared straight at me. And then, for one second, her black eyes turned hazel, and she was Julie. Her lips parted in shock.

  Then her eyes turned black again.

  No one else seemed to have noticed. I kept my eyes fixed on Julie as Lara gathered up my wide, untamed hair and held tight. Alis took over, gripping my arm.

  “Look,” Belle said, holding the white head at my eye level. The thing that had been on my own windowsill night after night since Julie had found it.

  “No,” I whispered.

  “Do it,” Belle said. “Or we’ll make you so sorry . . . ”

  I tried to close my eyes. Tried so hard.

  No. Stop. Don’t. I beg of you. It was as if a voice from inside me was crying out. “Now,” Belle said. “Or after we’re done with you, we’ll kill little Julie.”

  The thing inside Julie smiled at me. But her eyes . . . despite the blackness, they looked . . . sorry?

  Julie, I thought.

  Belle moved the white head closer to my face.

  Don’t look, begged the voice inside me.

  But I couldn’t stop myself.

  In my head, I saw . . . girls in hospital gowns . . . I heard . . .

  My love is like a red, red rose . . .

  Dr. Abernathy. He’s the butcher who mutilates you. . . .

  “I know you’re afraid, Celia,” Belle whispered in a crazy, seething voice. “You know the Devil’s going to eat your soul for supper.” She moved the white head, caressing it slowly with her finger, touching the forehead. Then she set it aside. “Because, dear little Number Seven, you are a mass murderess.”

  Sangeeta screamed, “Set her on fire!”

  “Burn her!” Rose shook her fists at me.

  “I felt the skin melt right off my face, before I died,” Belle whispered, moving the head back and forth, back and forth, like a hypnotist.

  He straps you down.

  Stop.

  “Julie, I’m so sorry,” I said, as I felt myself dissolving. I was going away. Lindsay Cavanaugh 2.0 was falling apart, just like Lindsay 1.0 had.

  “Don’t worry. Your sweet little Julie’s not here,” Julie said.

  “That’s how she came to us, but after that idiot Kiyoko died . . . ”

  “I moved into this one,” Julie said. I heard her, but I couldn’t see her. Couldn’t understand what she—it—was saying. My gaze was riveted to her, this non-Julie. This voice speaking through Julie. “My name is Pearl Magnusen,” she went on. “I was born in 1874. I was sent here because I fell in love with the wrong boy. A farmhand.”

  Mandy-Belle sneered. “They called her sinful, promiscuous. My uncle . . . he tried to force himself on me.” Her voice was strained. “And I fought back, retaining my honor. And they said I killed him because I was bedeviled. . . . ” Her tone hardened. “So they sent me here. To die.”

  “Not me. I’m Lindsay,” I whimpered.

  “They said I was too strong-willed,” Lara said. “Not ladylike.”

  “Come to me. Come to me,” Belle whispered. “Breathe in, breathe out, become one of us.”

  “One of us.” Lara took up the chant.

  “One of us.”

  I felt myself responding. Felt my lungs filling, exhaling. The iciness on my neck.

  It happened that first day, I thought. When I was spying on them. I breathed it in. Breathed her in. I’m tied to this, to them. Somehow.

  “No, no,” I pleaded. “I am Lindsay. I’m Lindsay Cavanaugh.”

  “I loved him,” Julie-Pearl whispered. “My only crime.”

  “You killed us,” Belle insisted.

  “I didn’t mean to,” my voice said. But they weren’t my words. “Please, Belle,” the voice begged—the voice that was mine but not mine. “It wasn’t my fault.”

  I am Celia Reaves. I am Celia. I was no longer Lindsay. Or was I? I didn’t understand.

  “She’s here,” Belle shrieked, rocking with glee and triumph. Her hatred burned her like a firestorm. “Let us proceed, my sweet girls. My sweet bees.”

  They dragged me forward; my legs gave way as Lydia and Martha ran ahead and poured liquids over the wood and trash and Anna and Henrietta dragged me toward the pyre. I knew what they were planning. They would restrain me and set the pile on fire, and watch me burn . . . Because I had let them die in the fire. It was my fault. It was all my fault. But I didn’t know.

  Smoke swirled around us; heat too intense to come from a lantern blistered my skin. Screams echoed through the theater: “The door is locked! The door! Open the door!” But no one was screaming. Yet.

  Belle laughed, fingering the white head again. The model. The dummy. What they used to demonstrate the operations on.

  I gazed across to Pearl, who could not be a party to this. Who would never knowingly harm anyone . . .

  “Dear God,” I begged. “For the love of God . . . ”

  “Burn, burn, burn!” Belle screamed, as Martha snapped the restraining device on my right wrist.

  “No!” Pearl shouted.

  It was a blur: Pearl ran forward, grabbed the white head out of Belle’s hands, and crashed it down on Belle’s head. As the others reacted in confusion, Pearl grabbed the other end of the restraining device. I couldn’t keep control—

  Julie flew with me into the corridor; it was pitch-dark and I was unsure which way to go. The right, theright, therightheright—it was as if my heartbeat was talking to me. Julie was dragging me by the other end of the handcuffs; I was trying to catch up, she was shouting something at me but I couldn’t understand it.

  I smelled fresh smoke.

  I heard screams.

  We flew out of the theater and missed the stairs; I sailed into space and landed on my hands and knees in the snow. Something clicked; then I hurt so badly I saw yellow behind my eyes and acid rose into my throat. Julie jerked me to my feet and I started after her as she shrieked. Through flurries of snow, I saw the cold, blue moon, casting light on nothing but tree branches and rocks; it was as if someone had shoved them together to form a wall while we’d been held captive inside the operating theater.

  “You bitch!” It was Belle, only her voice roared with fury. Demonic shrieking chased after us; heavy footfalls threw snow against the backs of my legs.

  Julie sobbed as she fought to keep up with me.

  “Julie,” I said.

  “I don’t know what happened,” she wept. “I wasn’t myself. I don’t know who I was, what I was doing.”

  We raced on; wind blasted through the trees and the branches sliced at my face. I ran on pure instinct, falling and rolling, as Julie forced me on. My throat was tight and dry. I couldn’t scream no matter how hard I tried.

  We crashed through the trees. The bonfire was blazing, so far away; I couldn’t see the people. The lake spread below us, black and deadly.

  And then I saw a rowboat tied up next to the NO TRESPASSING sign. That’s where he’d wanted me to go. Why was there a boat there? “Julie,” I begged. “Julie, where’s Troy?”

  She looked back at me as she ran down the incline, dragging me behind herself.

  “Water puts us out,” she said. “That’s why . . . Kiyoko drowned. They can’t get to you on the water.”

  She let go of the handcuffs. “Take that boat. Go as fast as you can.”

  “Please, come with me,” I begged her.

  She gestured to the bonfire with her glowing bony hand. “Go and get help.”

  “No! I’m not leaving you, Julie!”

  “This is the best chance,” she said.

  “Kill her!” a voice shrieked on the wind.

  “Kill her, kill her, kill her.”

  The voices reverberated against the trees, sharp as axes, distorted and cunning. We separated, and as Julie—or had it been Pearl talking this whole time?—raced to my right, I scrabbled
over rocks, falling again and again. If I stopped, I’d be dead. I ran on, hampered by my stupid skirt. By then I was so close I could read the letters on the NO TRESPASSING sign, and I put on a fresh burst of speed. It was unnatural; there was no way I could run so fast after what I’d been through.

  I saw the rope tied around the bottom of the sign, and raced to it. It was tied to a white rowboat bobbing in the water with LAKEWOOD ACADEMY painted in dark letters on the side. The boat was half-full of snow. I fell to my knees, fingers plucking at the rope, looking fearfully over my shoulder.

  They were coming. Glowing white shapes elongated and distorted over the bodies of Mandy and the others as they ran toward me. The shapes grew, rising over their heads, blurring and spreading across the sky—skulls and bones and whirls of luminescent fog.

  The rope was too tight; I couldn’t find a loose piece. I briefly considered trying to break the signpost, but knew I couldn’t. I ran to the boat and found the cleat the rope had been wound around, and started working on that.

  The shapes expanded, riding the wind; they crashed forward like waves, like galloping horses. I kept unwinding. Belle was no more than twenty feet away. Beneath the glow of the skull, Mandy’s face was crisscrossed with scratches. Her hands were bleeding. Her clothes had been half-ripped off.

  And still she came. I could smell her—smoke, sweat, and blood—I saw her eye sockets.

  And then the rope went slack. I had unfastened it from the cleat. I let it drop, shoved off, and leaped into the boat. I hit snow. I saw the oars. It took a lifetime to secure them into the oarlocks.

  The boat rocked crazily as freezing water splashed me. I was panicking, unable to coordinate my rowing motions. Oh God, what if I drowned like Kiyoko?

  Belle stood on the shore, not four feet away. “Damn you, Celia, come back!” she shrieked. She started forward.

  “No,” the blazing white skeleton beside her shouted, grabbing onto her. It was Lara—or whoever she really was. “Not in the water.”

  “Let go of me. I curse you to hell,” Belle screamed at her. She slammed herself into Lara, who released her.