by Debra Dunbar
“You’re lucky you’re alive,” I told him. He nodded, probably thinking I meant the medical experiments, when I actually meant the drugs.
He stared down at his coffee. “They knew who I was. Said I was special. Lucky. I passed out, and when I came to, I was possessed. I felt him in me. Felt him.”
I sat down in a chair and leaned back. “Let’s start with what happened before. What’s the last thing you remember before the ‘medical experiments’?”
He thought for a moment. “I was home. The Miller funeral, so that was Sunday. There was…you’re right. There was a seminar or something. Yes. Facial and bodily reconstruction for difficult cases.”
I nodded. “Do you remember traveling to Baltimore?”
“Flew. We flew. Liz was with me because she had an invitation as well. We might not get many clients needing that sort of restoration in our funeral home, but the idea was that we could hire out to other mortuaries if needed. One of us could remain, and the other act as a consultant, or do the reconstruction on a for-hire basis.”
His voice was stronger, and I could tell the memories were starting to fall into place. I remained silent, not wanting to disrupt his mental process.
“I rented a car.” He lifted a hand and rubbed his head. “Where is the car? Did I return it? Did Liz return it? I can’t remember.”
He was getting agitated again, so I held out a hand to touch his arm. “It’s okay. Stay with what you remember. What happened after you rented the car?”
“We got settled in. Went to dinner.” He tilted his head. “Then the rest is a blurry mishmash. Flashing colored lights? Really loud music? Jasmine. The smell of jasmine was almost overpowering.”
That was probably the bar. And I was assuming the smell of jasmine was the blonde’s perfume. She’d been all over him on the dance floor and lip-locked with him by the bathrooms, so it stands to reason that he would have remembered her scent even if he didn’t remember her.
“Take a sip of your coffee and think for a moment,” I instructed him. “Then tell me the next thing you remember.”
He complied, frowning in thought. “More weird blurry stuff. People in masks bending over me. I couldn’t move. Pain, but not horrible pain. I was so cold. Then I was blazing hot and I felt like I was dying. There were more people in masks and it was dark except for some flickering light, like candles. I smelled jasmine, but also something spicy, and something that kinda smelled like pot.”
I grimaced, immediately thinking flop house. Except at a flop house, I would have assumed the odor of unwashed people and garbage would have overpowered any drug smell.
“Then there was a horrible pain from deep inside me and I felt like I was being ripped apart. I don’t remember anything else for a while after that.” Rick’s voice shook and his hands began to tremble.
I let Rick pull himself together, drinking my coffee in silence. Fulk whined and again climbed up on the couch next to him, curling up close.
“My eyes were closed, but I remember that it seemed much brighter. I heard voices saying that I was special, important. Some were arguing over whether something had worked or not and about whether someone was who he was supposed to be. I don’t know. It really didn’t make sense. I kinda came and went and I’m not sure how much time passed. Sometimes I felt like I was seeing myself through a long tube, or like I was watching myself on TV or something. Then more arguing. The only real thing I remember was waking up freezing cold propped up against a parking meter in what looked like a bad section of town. Some cop was tapping my shoe, telling me I needed to get a move on to the shelter, and that I was lucky I hadn’t froze to death overnight. I couldn’t get up and was trying to tell him about the people in masks. I guess he realized something was wrong because next thing I knew I was in an ambulance and on my way to the hospital.”
I would call to double check at the hotel, but from what Rick said, it sounded like he hadn’t been back since Tuesday night. If that was the case, why hadn’t Liz contacted the police? Maybe in a drunken or drug-induced stupor Rick had texted her and hadn’t remembered? Maybe he was missing all day Wednesday as well as Tuesday night, and this had all happened Thursday? We’d need to talk to Liz to figure out that end of the story, but first I wanted to know more about his alleged possession.
I was ninety-nine percent convinced this guy had been roofied, shot up with drugs, and rolled for everything he had on him, then dumped on the street, but just in case I wanted to hear the rest of his story. Something about him being propped up against a parking meter in a bad section of town sounded too much like the guy I’d stumbled over Tuesday morning for my comfort. And the track marks on his arms looked an awful lot like the ones Tremelay had shown me on that dead man’s autopsy photos.
The only real difference was that Rick wasn’t dead. And he still had all his blood inside him.
“So tell me more about this demon that’s possessing you.”
He looked up at me, despair written all across his face. ““You don’t believe me. The police don’t believe me. I don’t even think that doctor believes me.”
I grimaced, because he was right. Although Kyra had believed him enough that she’d bothered to come to me, and to send him to me.
“Go ahead. I promise I’ll keep an open mind.”
“I don’t know if it’s a demon or not. Whatever it is, it felt evil, like it was trying to take me over, to kill me or beat me down and lock me into a little corner of my mind. It was inside me. There was someone else inside of me. I think…I think he’s still there.”
I leaned forward. “Do you know what the being inside you wanted? Did the others command him to perform some task?”
He shook his head. “I don’t remember what the masked people were saying. They might have been speaking some other language. And I don’t know what the thing inside me wanted other than to stay and not return.”
A demon summoned into a human body would most likely want to leave. Most demons were pissed about being summoned. Well, some acted pissed but secretly liked being this side of the veil. And they all longed to get free and harm or kill their summoner along with having unrestrained access to spreading their evil among humanity. Maybe this was a lesser Goetic demon and he was happy to just be summoned outside the confines of a circle? Perhaps giving him a body to possess was part of the offering the mages made?
If they were mages and this wasn’t just some drug-fueled psychotic break.
“He wanted to stay? You feel like he’s still there inside you? How did you manage to get control over the possession?”
“I think something went wrong. The thing inside me…only a shadow remains. I feel it. I still feel him, but it’s like he’s not enough there to take over. He wants to, but he can’t.” Rick sighed and lowered his head to his hands. “I lied to get out of the hospital so they wouldn’t lock me in the nutty bin or anything, but I want this thing out. I want it gone. I know I sound like a crazy, like I should be wearing a pie plate as a hat muttering about people putting chips in my head, but I swear that’s really how I feel. It’s true. I’m not a drug user. I’m not crazy. I’m a mortician from Massachusetts and the most daring things I’ve done in my life is drive over the speed limit and eat some questionable oysters from a shack on the wharf. Oh, and that one girlfriend in college, but I try not to think about that.”
A failed demon possession? I’d never heard of a demon being partially across the veil. And why summon one into a person? Why not just get them into a circle, detail the terms of their summoning contract, and let them go. If this was a ritual gone wrong, then there would be a whole lot of bodies on the floor, including Rick’s, and a demon terrorizing the city. There wouldn’t be a demon “partially possessing” someone. That was…unheard of.
“The guys in masks—what sort of masks were they? Kyra, I mean Doctor Tremelay said you’d claimed these people did medical experiments on you?”
“I wasn’t sure what to call it,” he confessed. “Like I said,
I was tied down with needles and tubes in my arms. There was blood. It was dark sometimes in the room, but they had masks like you see on doctors in surgery. They had things that looked like robes or surgeon gowns, and things over their hair, and masks, and gloves. It was like a bunch of doctors.”
“Not Halloween masks, or anything?” I was a little weirded out about his mention of blood. That plus the marks in his arms, plus the fact that he’d been dumped on the street were eerily close to Tremelay’s suspected blood-for-money victim. It was too close to be a coincidence, or was it?
“What’s your blood type?” I asked, as a long shot.
“O-positive.”
“Anything unusual or rare about it?”
He shook his head. “Not that I’ve ever been told. I’ve given blood a few times, and they didn’t seem any more excited over getting mine than anyone else at the blood drives.”
So it was a coincidence then. I wondered what they’d done to him besides stolen his ID, money, and cell phone, and kept him a drugged up captive for two days?”
“Did the hospital say anything else about your physical condition? Dehydration? Anemia? A microchip in your brain?”
He shook his head again. “Not that they told me. Whatever they did to me, it wasn’t anything major. Maybe they gave me some drugs that wore off quickly and the hospital couldn’t detect them? Maybe they just took some blood from me for whatever reason? I don’t have any enemies or anyone who would want to do this to freak me out in revenge for anything. I honestly don’t know why, or even really what they did to me.”
“But you have something else inside you. A spirit?” It had to be a spirit, because I couldn’t figure out how it could be a demon.
His eyes lit up with hope. “You do believe me?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed. “I think you honestly believe this happened, but whether it’s some sort of hallucination or not, I can’t be sure. Demon possession does occur, although it’s far rarer than people think, and what you’re describing doesn’t sound like demons. Spirit possession occurs, although I’d think that would happen only among the sensitive. If this thing inside you is a spirit, then the memories of medical testing and losing two days of awareness could be attributed to the spirit that was communicating or possessing you. I don’t know, that isn’t my area of expertise. I do know someone we can consult if you’re going to be in town another few days.”
He shrugged. “Until I can get in touch with my sister, I don’t have any identification, credit cards, money, or anything to even pawn. I won’t be going anywhere but the shelter to sleep tonight.”
I grimaced, realizing that was a priority. I didn’t want the poor guy sleeping in the shelter, but I wasn’t putting him up here in my house, and I certainly didn’t have enough money to go loaning the guy for airfare home or a hotel room. I grabbed my cell phone and he gave me Liz’s number, but once again all I got was her message machine. I left my number and sat back to think, not really wanting to wait around for Liz to call back. For all I knew she’d booked the soonest flight down to Baltimore after hearing Rick’s message and finding he was checked out from the hospital.
“Is there someone else that might be able to help you out?” I asked him. “Other family? Someone at the funeral home?”
Well, not a client, obviously. I was hoping maybe there was an employee there besides his sister. There had to have been if they were both down here for that seminar.
“We don’t have any other family that I know of. I guess I can call Maria at the home. She’s the one who handles the administrative end of things.”
This time I just handed him my cell phone and listened as he instructed Maria where to find his passport and one of the credit cards he’d left behind, and instructed her to send that and some cash overnight to him.”
He turned to me and I stared at him for a moment, then realized he didn’t know where to tell her to send it. I motioned for the phone and gave Maria my address, then hesitated.
“Wait. Tomorrow is Sunday. I’m off, but I wasn’t exactly going to wait around all day for the FedEx guy, and this isn’t the sort of neighborhood you’d want to leave a package at the door.”
“Can I book Rick a room at the Sheraton?” she asked. “I can put your name on the reservation as well. You’d need to sign in and hold the guarantee until the FedEx packet came with his ID and credit card, then he can pay for it.”
I barely knew this guy, but I couldn’t exactly let him stay in a homeless shelter, and this was a better option than putting him up here. I agreed and gave Maria my name. She said she’d take care of everything, thanked me, then said something that made my blood chill.
“Is Liz with him? Paul and I were worried sick when we came in Friday. I figured maybe they stayed in Baltimore to see the sights, but it’s not like one of them to not at least call us and let us know. She must have been going crazy looking for Rick these last few days.”
I glanced over at Rick who went pale at the expression on my face.
“No, she’s not with him. Liz didn’t go back home? You haven’t seen her since Monday? Or heard from her?”
“No.”
I thanked her and hung up, shooting a panicked look Rick’s way.
“I need to take you to the Sheraton anyway to get you checked in. We need to find out what time Liz checked out, and if she left any word where she was going because none of your employees have heard from her since you both left on Monday.”
Chapter 17
I left a note for my mom in case she returned before I did, then I called Tremelay on his cell phone and somehow managed to explain the whole thing, letting him know we not only had a missing person’s case, but the missing person was related to a guy who’d at best case been kidnapped, drugged, and robbed, and worst case had someone summon a spirit into him through some weird medical experiment/occult ceremony.
“Not the weirdest thing I’ve heard in the last four months, Ainsworth,” he’d told me before instructing me to wait with Rick outside the hotel as he wanted to question the guy before we went in and asked the front desk manager very nicely about Liz’s stay.
Even though the hotel had been in Rick’s name, without any ID I was fairly certain they wouldn’t give him any information at all. Nor me. But Tremelay just had to wave a badge and hopefully they’d comply. Hopefully, because I hated to think what might happen to Liz while we waited around to jump through legal hoops.
Worst case scenario, we’d need to wait until tomorrow when Rick’s ID arrived.
Rick was a nervous wreck and I wasn’t much better as we drove to the hotel. He kept bouncing his legs and staring out the window intently, as if he expected to see Liz dragged down a back alley at any moment.
“She’ll be okay.” I was trying to reassure the both of us. “Maybe she left a message at the funeral home and it didn’t go through. Maybe her phone’s on the fritz or broken, or she lost the charger. She probably just stayed and is frantically looking for you. We’ll probably find her at the hotel in her room, and she’ll smack you around for worrying her half to death.”
That got a brief chuckle out of him before the tense expression returned to his face. I knew as well as he did that what I’d suggested was improbable at best. Liz would have money, ID, credit cards. If her phone had broken, she would have called from the hotel, and probably gone to the nearest store to pick up a replacement. There was no reason for her to have gone dark for four days—well, no reason beyond things I didn’t want to contemplate.
Rick had turned up alive, and pretty much okay. I was holding on to that and hoping for the same for Liz. But hope aside, Baltimore wasn’t the safest city, and someone who didn’t know their way around could easily wander into the wrong part of town and find themselves beaten and mugged. But not murdered. Yes, there were a whole lot of murders in Baltimore, but I felt certain that if Liz were a Jane Doe, a victim of a drive by or an angry robber, then the police would have been able to identify her by now and have n
otified…someone.
I felt sick at the thought. If her only relative were Rick and he didn’t have his cell phone, who would they have notified? And it was entirely possible with the holiday that a Jane Doe might still be sitting, waiting.
I hoped for Rick’s sake that wasn’t the case. I prayed with all my might that she’d be found unharmed, and that this would all be some horrible, terrible trip for the pair of them, but that they could go home and get on with their lives.
We pulled into the front parking area of the hotel and managed to find a free spot. Tremelay showed up about ten minutes later, just when I was about ready to jump out and run into the hotel to see if Liz was there. He introduced himself to Rick, and we all stood outside my car in the cold, blocked in by his unmarked sedan, while Rick went over his story again.
“Could she still be in the hotel?” Tremelay asked.
I shrugged. “We called, but they won’t verify guests over the phone for security reasons. I’m assuming not since she hasn’t been in contact with their employees since Monday, but it’s a possibility.”
“Do you think her disappearance has anything to do with what you went through?”
Rick twisted his hands together. “I don’t know. I don’t know who did this to me, what exactly happened, or why. I just assumed I was a random grab, the guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But if they got Liz as well…”
“Dario and I drove her back to the hotel Tuesday night—well actually it was early Wednesday morning,” I told the detective. “We made sure she went inside before we left. I don’t know for sure, but I’m thinking Rick never came back that night, which means Liz would have vanished sometime after we dropped her off. She was planning on calling you the next morning if Rick didn’t show up.”
“And she didn’t.” Tremelay scowled. “Which means either Rick returned, or contacted her before morning, and she vanished later, or she went missing soon after you dropped her off.”
