Possessed

by Stephanie Doyle

  When had the gift changed? It was bad enough hearing the voices; she’d learned to cope with that, even control it to some extent. Now she was some freak ghost conductor. It was maddening.

  An image of Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost, inflating with the spirit of a dead husband, mocked her. There was nothing funny about this. This wasn’t what she wanted.

  She’d never wanted any of it. A steady dribble of rain began to pelt the top of her head. Lifting her face to it, she felt the sting of the cold on her cheeks, but it made her feel cleaner.

  In front of her, the street was filled with normal people. Lots of normal people-young people it appeared-moving from one bar to the next. Second Street, which was just a block off of South Street, was busy every night of the week but more so on the weekend. Once people were done shopping for the strange and unusual on South Street, they would make their way to a bar to show off the strange and unusual purchases, flirt and pass time with friends. When it got late and they got drunk, they would make their way back to Pat’s King of Steaks for a cheese steak wit’ Whiz.

  Like wings and beer, it was a Philly tradition.

  One that she no longer let herself be a part of. There was a time when her younger coworkers at whatever meaningless job she had would invite her out after work. Inevitably, they figured out that she was different. Ultimately, the invitations would stop. Then one day one of those coworkers, who had once told her she should come and hang out with him, would call her up on the phone and fire her.

  She shouldn’t have been surprised that her talent had mutated without her knowing it, because she was so damn removed from everyone. What the hell was she going to do now? She’d built a life designed to maintain some control over her world: few possessions, few friends and simple jobs that allowed her to use her gift without being overwhelmed by it.

  Now she had to add avoiding all physical contact? It was as if she were building her own prison, stone by stone. A prison that would be far worse than anything she’d experienced in the asylum. Knowing there were no answers forthcoming, Cass pushed off the wall at her back and made her way across the cobbled sidewalk to the crosswalk.

  Thoughts of Dr. Farver and the Institute of Psychical Studies floated through her consciousness, but she rejected the notion. She wasn’t going back there. Yes, he might be able to help her set up a controlled environment to start testing what was happening to her, but in the end he wouldn’t believe it was real.

  Dr. Farver had other ideas concerning her special talent. None of them had anything to do with the dead.

  Spotting her bike, where she’d left it chained to a parking meter, Cass stepped toward it, then stopped. A tingling sensation on the back of her neck was sounding the alarm.

  Instantly she scanned the street, trying to see who might be her point of contact. But everyone was still bustling along seemingly without noticing the woman standing near the edge of the street. She concentrated on forming the room.

  Across two lanes of traffic on the other side of the street, Cass saw a figure in an oversize hooded sweatshirt and baggy jeans stop abruptly. The hood was pulled low over the person’s head, so Cass couldn’t make out any features-for that matter, couldn’t even tell if it was a man or woman.

  However, she could feel a set of eyes on her, staring. The sensation unnerved her so much that she moved out of the light of the streetlamp, allowing the night to keep her in the dark.

  A burst of sharp pain stabbed her between the eyes as the door to her room opened without her consent.

  On the other side of it was the monster.

  Chapter 8

  Cass focused on her breathing and tried not to panic as she saw the monster draw nearer. In her mind she acted as she had before, moving across the room in an attempt to close the door and shut it out. But by the time she got there, the hooves of the beast were already wedged into a space between the door and its frame. It pushed against her, forcing her back into the room.

  It was so close this time. Its nose was pushed up against its face like a pig’s snout, and two large fangs hung down over its mouth, dripping with spit.

  What do you want?

  It tilted back its head and shouted. The noise penetrated her whole body, shaking her internal organs. Sha-a Uh-h-h!

  Cass couldn’t decipher the answer to her silent question. She didn’t even know why she had tried. She listened to voices from the other side. Before now, it had never occurred to her to speak back.

  The monstrous thing moved steadily forward into the room, past the defenses she’d constructed. Slinking back, she thought to avoid contact altogether until she could…Do what? Escape? Was that possible from a room she had created?

  Before she could formulate an answer, a beefy arm swung at her and missed. Then its other arm came at her, and this time she felt the contact against her ribs. Or at least that was how her mind interpreted it. The power of the impact was like nothing she had ever experienced. It was if she had been hit with a baseball bat. She could barely think beyond the pain.

  Only, she needed to think. The monster hadn’t just come of its own accord; it had to have been brought. That’s the way it had always worked. And at the moment that she’d felt the sensation on the back of her neck, she’d seen someone. Across the street.

  Cass tried to turn her attention to what her eyes saw. A crowd on either side of her. A smattering of people in front of her. And there, beyond the sidewalk, on the other side of the road, was the figure in the hooded sweatshirt standing rooted in place. Staring at her.

  It was an ominous stare, but before she could think about why, another swing from the monster hit her in the face. Her concentration divided between what she saw in her mind and what she needed to see in front of her, Cass couldn’t mount any resistance against the powerful beast. Another blow rocked her to her foundation, and, inside the room, she fell to her knees. Her palms were flat against the smooth, white surface of the room, but inexplicably she felt the scrape of stone under her fingers and small pebbles digging into her palms.

  This wasn’t right. She was in trouble.

  Inside the room, she lifted her head, trying to find the monster’s position to determine where the next attack would come from. It was moving toward her again, and she wondered if another blow might kill her. If that was even possible. She’d never come close to experiencing anything like this before.

  Her focus shifting again, her eyes widened as two beams of light flashed at her, forcing her back to the world of the living. In less than an instant, Cass determined she was not on the sidewalk but was in the middle of the street instead. She had to move. A car wouldn’t see her on her hands and knees. The twin beams of light grew larger.

  Mentally, she closed her eyes against the monster, deciding that facing the physical danger was more imperative than facing the spiritual one. She tried crawling forward, but she felt the presence of the monster block her path. Cass couldn’t fight off the need to stop. The only way out was to turn around. To run from it.

  The sound of the car’s engine paired with the bright lights compelled her to move faster. She scrambled backward, trying to get to her feet, using her hands to push herself up and out of the way.

  The car was louder, a near roar in her ear. Or was that the monster shouting again, moving closer for the final blow?

  Don’t look at it, she ordered herself. Just move.

  Her legs felt sluggish. Her whole body, which she’d honed to be lean and strong, able to withstand the punishment of connecting with the dead, worked against her now as she tried to stand. So she pushed harder. Finally making it to her feet, she managed to stumble back, but it was too late. The car was there, practically on top of her, only a few feet away. A blaring horn announced that it had seen her, but it wasn’t going to be able to stop in time. The squeal of brakes indicated as much.

  It was going to hit her.

  Suddenly, Cass felt something clamp around her arm. She was being pulled. Hard. So hard that she flew backward a co
uple of feet onto her ass and watched from the cobblestone sidewalk as the car screeched to a halt well past the spot where she would have been standing if she hadn’t been yanked out of the way.

  “What’s the matter, you crazy bitch!” the driver called through his open window. “Are you drunk? I could have killed you.”

  A cranky older man, who evidently felt that almost dying wasn’t enough of a punishment, decided to take the time to roll down the car window and yell at her for almost getting killed. Evidently satisfied that he’d scared her, he put up the window and continued on his way.

  “What in the hell were you doing?”

  Malcolm McDonough crouched down next to her. It took Cass a few seconds to process that he was the person who had dragged her out of the way. It took a few seconds after that to realize that whatever had sent her to her knees in the middle of the street was gone.

  Without answering him, she looked up and searched the other side of the road, looking for the figure in the hooded sweatshirt. He was gone, too. Only a gaggle of gapers stood around staring at her as she lay sprawled on the sidewalk. No doubt wondering, like the driver, if she was drunk. Why else would a person throw herself into the middle of a busy street?

  Malcolm reached out to cup her face, his thumb brushing against her cheek. He squinted as if trying to see by the dim light of the streetlamp. “Did you hurt yourself when you fell?”

  Her tongue felt thick inside her mouth, almost as if she had had too much to drink. She waited a moment for the adrenaline to leak out of her system so she could catch her breath. The monster was gone. The person under the hood was gone, but at least now she suspected how the monster was getting through. There had been someone on the other side of the street. Watching her. The monster wasn’t penetrating the barrier between life and death on its own.

  “I said, are you hurt?”

  Cass blinked a few times and then turned to him. “No. Help me up, please.”

  He stood, and she noted he wore the same jeans and dark sweater from this morning. He stretched out a hand and she took it, then felt herself being lifted to her feet with the same strength he’d used to pull her out of the car’s path. Her hand made contact with his chest and she felt the soft material of the sweater and a hard wall underneath it.

  Immediately, she drew her hand back. She couldn’t touch him. She couldn’t touch anyone anymore.

  Finally, the strangeness of his sudden appearance registered.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I think I get to ask the questions,” he said. “What happened? You were standing there and then you just doubled over. People called out to you, but it’s like you couldn’t hear them and then you fell into the middle of the street like someone had pushed you.”

  Cass didn’t need the instant replay. She still hurt from the monster, and alongside the pain was the frustration of feeling like she was onto something. Why had that person in the sweatshirt stopped so abruptly? Could it have simply been someone from the coffeehouse who had recognized her? Or more than that? How was he connected to the monster? Too many questions without answers.

  There was no point in mentioning any of this to McDonough. He wouldn’t understand and the last thing she wanted to do was create a false connection between what had just happened and his sister’s death.

  “I need to get home,” she finally said, choosing not to deal with why Malcolm had been there in the first place. She had too much to think about. Not the least of which was how the monster had gotten past the door. It seemed, to her horror, that whatever distance she’d been able to keep between the real world and the other world was fast coming to an end.

  “Okay.” He took her elbow in his hand and guided her down the sidewalk and around the corner to where he’d parked his SAAB. She was only a step away from the car when she heard the sound of his remote disengaging the locks and starting the engine. This wasn’t what she meant.

  “No. My bike. I have to…”

  “It’s chained up. It will be safe for a while. I’ll drop you off then come back for it.”

  She didn’t question the logistics of how that was all going to work. She didn’t even put up a mild protest. Defeated, wounded from battle, all she could handle was the idea of putting one foot in front of the other.

  He circled the car, opened the passenger door and poured her into the bucket leather seat. When she didn’t move, he was forced to bend over her to secure the seat belt for her. She pressed herself back, but even the threat of touching him wasn’t enough to motivate her to fasten the seat belt herself.

  Never before had she been so drained from contact. Then again, never before had she seen someone who had been murdered. Never before had she lost her only friend. Tears threatened to surface as she considered the ramifications of losing Dougie. With him in her life she was simply a solitary person. Without him she was alone.

  But what he’d done she couldn’t forgive. If he’d been honest about it the next day, she could have believed that he had been just as surprised and disgusted by what had happened as she’d been. That the whole thing had simply been an accident brought on by her gift. But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d done everything in his power to maintain their friendship while at the same time trying to work his way back into her bed.

  No, not her bed. Claire’s bed.

  The betrayal cut deeply. Before this, Cass would have said that Dougie wasn’t capable of such deception. Now she felt as if she’d never really known who he was. He’d taken that away, too.

  Refusing to cry, as it served little purpose and tended to give her a headache when it was all over, Cass closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing.

  Malcolm situated himself behind the wheel and moved the SAAB out into traffic. Cass tried not to dwell on why she was letting him shuffle her around like a rag doll he’d picked up off the street when she’d been stubborn about letting Dougie pick up her half of the check.

  He hadn’t answered what he was doing there, and the idea that it could have been a coincidence seemed too far-fetched. But she had no energy left in her to ask. Beyond the pain that was sapping her strength was the cold-blooded fear.

  What the hell was happening to her?

  The luxury vehicle moved with precision through the narrow, car-lined streets, and, before Cass had a chance to look up, she felt him once again parallel parking the car with a skill she couldn’t help but admire.

  They’d stopped. Cass figured that was her cue to get out, but she was overcome by a sense of inertia. Her legs felt weighted and her arms were numb.

  Next to her, Malcolm said nothing but instead got out of the car and came around to her side.

  The heavy sweater she’d worn to meet Dougie downtown was now soaked and plastered against a too-thin chemise, which was also wet and stuck to her body. The cold penetrated to her bones. Involuntarily, she shivered.

  “Do I need to carry you?”

  She turned her head and saw that he was leaning over her, his face close to hers. His eyes assessing her condition. He didn’t force her to answer quickly, nor did he immediately take the decision out of her hands as Dougie might have done. She appreciated that. However, since the choice was hers, she naturally had to make the tough call. For that she cursed him.

  “I can do it. Back off.”

  He moved away to give her some space and watched her carefully while she used the car door and frame to help lift herself out. Her ribs hurt, throbbed, really, and she had trouble taking a deep breath. But she made it up and onto her feet. When she buckled slightly, he was there with an arm for her to lean on.

  “Keys.”

  This time he didn’t ask but rather held out his hand, expecting he would get them. She decided the points he earned by not hauling her out of the car instantly were lost. Unfortunately, she wasn’t in a place to argue.

  Cass fished inside her jeans pocket for the key ring that held only a few keys. None of which were for her bike. It had a starter button on it. Her bike.
The thing she would need to get to her new job every day. Once she found one. She’d just left it out there on the street.

  “I need to go back and get my bike.”

  “I told you I would have it taken care of.”

  She handed him the keys and thought about why she should believe him, but she didn’t really see that she had a choice. She was in no shape to put up another fight tonight. First Dougie, then that thing.

  Not that she’d actually put up a fight against either of them. She ran from Dougie, and the monster…well, she’d gotten creamed. In addition to everything else that needed to be considered, she was going to have to add that one to the list. She was a poor excuse for a fighter.

  He unlocked the door, pushed it open, then stepped back so she could enter first. Typical of his manners. Cass moved past him and went inside and reached out to hit the switch that would illuminate the kitchen. Before the light went on, she saw the red button blinking on her phone, letting her know she had a message waiting.

  Maybe Kevin had called back to say he’d changed his mind. The coffeehouse was pretty shy on staff now that so many had gone back to college. Yeah, right. Like the light was going to be good news, given her recent track record. Cass decided to ignore it. She moved gingerly, shuffling to where her bright red futon waited for her. Cautiously, she settled into the cushion.

  It was okay, she thought. She was safe now. The beast was gone. She was home. There was blessed silence in her head.

  “You need to get out of that sweater.”

  Just not blessed silence in her living room. How could she have forgotten he was there? He needed to go. She couldn’t handle a visit from Lauren in her current shape, and the longer he stayed, the more likely it would become.

  “Look, I appreciate what you did, but I’m sort of wiped so…”

  Dismissing her obvious brush-off, he shut the door behind him and leaned against the island that bordered her living room, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression pensive.