Possessed (Pagan Light Book 1)

by JoAnne Keltner

  Jason was staring at his book and mutilating the corners. It didn’t look like he was reading because his eyes weren’t moving. They had been fixated on the same spot for the past two minutes.

  She took a deep breath. “Jas? There’s something I need to tell you.”

  His eyes shifted toward her.

  “You have to promise you won’t tell anyone. Not a soul. Not even Trish or Zeta.”

  “Promise,” he said, sullenly.

  “You don’t sound convincing.”

  “I’m not sure I want to hear it.”

  “It’s nothing to do with you. It’s me. It’s something I did a long time ago. I haven’t told anyone, but I think it’ll help you understand where I’m coming from. You have to promise not to tell anyone because what I did was really bad.”

  “You did something really bad? That’s hard to believe.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yeah, I promise.”

  She tapped her pen against the dining room table.

  “What?” Jason asked.

  She clenched the pen with both hands. “I lied. I lied about seeing the Virgin.”

  Jason’s mouth dropped open. “You’re not psychic?”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, I’m not all holy like everyone thought I was. I didn’t see the Virgin. I made it up so Father Dmitriev wouldn’t think I was possessed and excommunicate Babu, Grandma, and me.”

  “But, you are psychic? You predicted the fire, didn’t you?”

  “I saw the fire, but I really didn’t know what it meant. I was scared to death. There I was, screaming about a fire that no one else could see, and Father D. accuses me of being possessed. The best I could do was say the Virgin gave me a sign that the church was going to catch fire. But then, two weeks later, it did, and Stephanie died. And everyone thought I was someone special, when all I am is a liar.”

  “So what? What’s it matter how the vision came to you? You saw it. That’s what matters.”

  “Because I lied.” She couldn’t believe he wasn’t getting this. “And I had this weird experience in a church. I spat the Holy Eucharist to the floor, for goodness sake. I disrupted the liturgy, and then I defrauded everyone. The way I look at it, I’m pretty much going to hell in a hand basket.”

  “You’re such an ass,” Jason said. “It makes you special. It makes you gifted. Why do you keep shrugging that off? If I had that ability, my dad wouldn’t catch me by surprise and back hand me.”

  She couldn’t believe it. She had risked her integrity, and he brushed it off. “Jason. You don’t need this so-called gift to avert your father’s anger. You know what you have to do. And I know what I have to do. I gave him three days to go for help. If he doesn’t get his act together, I’m turning him in.”

  “You can’t. You promised.”

  “Sometimes, I think you like being hurt.” Why did she say that? Another observation from her great ability?

  Jason stuffed his book into his backpack.

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I don’t need your sympathy or your confessions to make me feel better.” He stood up, hooked a backpack strap over his shoulder, and headed to the front door.

  She followed him. “Where’re you going?”

  “Home.” He flung open the front door and walked out into the cold, dark evening.

  “Jas, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”

  He awkwardly descended the steps, one foot at a time but faster than usual.

  “If he hurts you, call me,” she said.

  She realized he had a long walk home, so she grabbed her trench coat, satchel, and keys. By the time she started the car and drove off to look for him, Jason was no longer on this block or the next.

  She drove slowly down Main Street, but she didn’t see him there either. Doubling back down the side streets, she saw him—at Trish’s door.

  ***

  In the middle of the night, Jackie awoke in a cold sweat from a dream about Holy Resurrection. In the dream, she was standing in front of the congregation, lying to them about her vision.

  She couldn’t fall back to sleep. Her chest ached, and her thoughts shifted to Jason and Trish. A scene played in her head: Trish comforting Jason, wrapping her arms around him. An innocent kiss on his forehead, his cheek, and then near his mouth.

  Trish made out with him. Jackie felt it in her soul.

  Why was she so jealous? Jason was her best friend. He should be allowed to have a romantic relationship with anyone he wanted.

  But what if she lost him for good?

  She planned to touch his shoulder tomorrow in American Lit. Then, she’d know if something happened between him and Trish and if Trish was what he wanted. She’d know, too, if she and Jason could still be friends.

  Chapter 11

  Practically the whole cheerleading squad, including Sandra, was gathered by Sean Perry’s black Pontiac in the school parking lot. Sean unzipped his varsity jacket and raised his jersey to show his scar from the Oktoberfest stabbing. The cheerleaders gasped with rapture.

  Give me a break, Jackie thought. Never be well again? He looked better than ever, and he was eating this shit up.

  Entering American Lit, she paused by Jason’s desk. A heavy application of eyeliner was smeared under his eyes to hide his black eye, no doubt. At this moment, she didn’t care what went on between him and Trish, she just wanted to know that they were still friends.

  “Jas,” she said.

  He leaned forward and rested his forehead on his folded arms.

  With a ton of weight crushing her chest, she slowly reached for him. He felt miles away. When she was an inch from touching his shoulder, Mr. Davis said, “Ms. Turov, do you mind? I’d like to start class now.”

  She retracted her hand, tears stinging her eyes.

  Mr. Davis looked haggard again, and if she remembered correctly, he was wearing the same shirt he wore yesterday.

  She tuned Mr. Davis out for the rest of class. Her focus was on Jason. As she fought back tears, she told herself that this day was bound to come, that he would find himself a real girlfriend. She didn’t expect things to end badly between them, though. She really screwed up.

  In study hall, she sat down next to Trish, but not too close. Jackie didn’t want to know what went on between Trish and Jason. She had seen enough through her own imaginings.

  Trish was reading a romance novel. She looked at Jackie with narrow, heavily mascaraed eyes and then redirected her gaze to her book.

  There was no use in her and Trish not being friends. Trish won fair and square. “Did you do the Transcendentalist assignment?” Jackie asked.

  Trish’s blood-red lips puckered.

  “The American Lit assignment, did you do it?”

  “What? Are you my mother?” She raised the paperback close to her face and continued to read.

  “I just asked. I—Are you mad at me too?”

  Trish looked at her like she should know.

  “What did Jason tell you?”

  “He said you’re the coldest, shut-off bitch he’s ever known.” The corner of her mouth turned upward in a sinister smile.

  “Those don’t sound like Jason’s words.”

  “I paraphrased.”

  Okay, you won, Jackie thought. She grimaced and then opened her notebook and trig book and started the exercises on page one hundred and thirty, but she couldn’t concentrate. Her mind kept going over her conversation with Jason. She was honest about what she had said. Didn’t honesty count for anything?

  ***

  At the lockers, Trish was still gloating.

  Zeta pressed her cheek to the side of the open locker door. “What’s with her?” she whispered to Jackie. “She’s been acting really strange lately. Like, psycho strange.”

  Jackie didn’t want to think about it anymore. The whole situation was making her sick. “Ask her yourself.”

  Zeta shut her locker and turned to Trish. “Hey, Trish. What’s up?”


  “Ask Jackie,” Trish said.

  “I just set Jason straight on what I thought about him,” Jackie said to Zeta.

  “Ha,” Trish spouted. “That he likes to be hurt?” Her eyebrows arched in delight.

  Zeta stepped back and leaned against her locker.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt him by telling him he likes to get hurt,” Jackie said. “I was simply stating what I’ve observed.”

  “Oh, Ms. Observation. Ms. Don’t-Touch-Me,” Trish said, moving her hands around for special effect, like a wizard casting a spell. “Ms. Stay-Away-From-Me. Ms. I’m-Too-Sensitive-To-Be-Around-People.” Her aura was black, and a devilish glow burned in her eyes. The energy coming from her scared the hell out of Jackie.

  Students at their lockers turned around to look at them. Others passing through the hall stopped and watched. Trish was drawing a crowd.

  “You’re right,” Jackie said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.” She slammed her locker door shut. She was hoping that this would end their little spat and the crowd would clear. But when she turned to head to class, she was blocked by a wall of students who didn’t look like they were ready to move.

  “You’re nothing but a fake,” Trish shouted.

  Jackie’s heart stopped, and the blood in her face plunged to her feet.

  “She lied,” Trish said. “She never saw the Virgin.”

  Jason told.

  Everyone was staring at Jackie. Their poisonous energy was making her sick. She needed to get out of there.

  She shoved through the crowd. As she brushed against rigid bodies, hostile energy stung her shoulders. In the back of the crowd, she bumped into Sandra. Her aura was black, too, and her venomous eyes locked onto hers.

  “Freak,” she hissed.

  Sandra’s toxic emotions surged through Jackie’s nervous system, making her heart race. She felt like heaving. She ran to the C-building bathroom, but there was a yellow ribbon stretched across the entrance and a paper sign taped to the wall reading, “Out of Order.”

  She touched the cinder block doorframe. It was icy cold. Impressions of sadness and lost hope soaked into her hand and seeped through her body, adding to the poisonous energy. Now, she was really going to puke.

  She tore the ribbon and splashed through water. The bathroom was cast in a blue hue, even though the walls were painted red. She rushed to the first stall and dropped to her knees. She held on to the cold porcelain as her jeans soaked up water, and she choked on dry heaves. Her body shook violently. She wanted to lie down, but everything was wet.

  She was going to die. She had to get out of here. Go to the nurse’s office.

  With her hands on the toilet bowl rim, she pushed herself up, but her knees were so weak, they folded, and she collapsed into water.

  I’ll never get out of here.

  Blood trickled from her wrists. How did I…? It’s a vision. She squeezed her eyes shut. “Please, go away,” she whispered.

  When she opened her eyes, her jeans and the water were crimson, and her wrists bloodied. She leveraged her arm against the toilet paper dispenser and grabbed the edge of the stall to lift herself up. Blood ran down her arm and dripped from her elbow. With her knees trembling, she held onto the top of the stall wall for support and pushed open the door. Just as she let go of the wall and stepped out, her knees gave way. The room went black.

  Chapter 12

  Jackie was lying on a slab—no, a cot, a thin cotton blanket over her. Her clothes were wet and cold. A poster of the respiratory system hung on the wall above a metal desk. She was in the nurse’s office. How did she get here?

  “Finally,” Nurse Seneca said. She patted a pile of clothes. “Your mother dropped these off.”

  “My mother was here?” Mom didn’t need to be dealing with this. Jackie sat up. Her head was spinning. She clenched the edge of the cot to keep from tipping over.

  “Relax,” Nurse Seneca said. “It’s not like you’re in the dean’s office.”

  She checked her wrists, which were totally unscathed, thank goodness.

  “You need to get out of those wet clothes. I can help you, if it’s okay. I don’t want you falling over and cracking your head open.”

  Jackie’s teeth clattered. She eyed the sweater that Mom had brought. “I can do it. Is she still here?”

  “No. She had to get back to work. She said to call her when you’re ready to go home.”

  “I wish you hadn’t called her.”

  “Sorry, those are the rules.”

  Jackie tugged her shirt over her head, but she could only pull it square with her elbows. She was stuck and in the dark, until Nurse Seneca tugged the shirt and handed it to her.

  Nurse Seneca looked at her curiously. “When was your last menstrual period?”

  It took Jackie a few seconds before she realized what Nurse Seneca was insinuating. “Whoa! I seriously doubt I’m pregnant, unless it’s an immaculate conception.”

  “I thought, maybe, because you didn’t want your mom involved you were…”

  “Not the problem.” She tossed her wet shirt to the side and then slipped her arms into warm sweater sleeves.

  “Can you stand up?”

  Jackie nodded. She adjusted her sweater and scooted to the edge of the cot. Her head spun when she looked at the floor. “Still woozy.”

  “Let me help.” Nurse Seneca held Jackie’s arm while Jackie slid off the cot.

  Jackie’s bare feet pressed against the cold floor. Using Nurse Seneca for support, she peeled off her jeans. Her thighs were splotchy and cold. With Nurse Seneca’s help, Jackie stepped into her dry jeans, one leg at a time. Then, Nurse Seneca helped her back onto the cot.

  Jackie worked her cold, damp foot into a dry sock while Nurse Seneca stuck a thermometer in Jackie’s ear.

  It beeped.

  “One hundred point one,” she said. “You really should follow up with your doctor.”

  Like he’d have a cure for her problem. “Sure,” Jackie said. She put on her other sock.

  “You might be coming down with something. If you’re still sick Sunday, I suggest taking Monday off. We don’t need an epidemic at Ravenwood High. We’re already having a hard time stretching our funding. I’ll call your mom.”

  “Great.”

  Nurse Seneca made Jackie rest on the cot until her mom showed, which wasn’t until four forty-five when the after-school activity buses were lined up.

  ***

  At home, Jackie sat in bed with her cell phone by her side. She wondered if Jason had heard about what had happened to her. Even if he was still pissed, he could at least call and apologize for telling Trish her secret.

  By now, the whole school must know that she lied about seeing the Virgin. She couldn’t believe Jason told when he promised not to. Maybe it just came out when he was crying on Trish’s shoulder—another scenario Jackie tried to push out of her mind. But Trish told out of spite. What had gotten into her? She was more than her usual, broody self. She was sinister.

  Jackie sunk her head into the pillow and closed her eyes, her mind settling into sleep.

  A minute later, her cell phone rang, thrusting her back into worry mode. It was Zeta.

  “You had me freaked out,” Zeta said. “Your face was in the water when I found you. You could have drowned.”

  Jackie’s mouth opened, but no words came out, like there was a concrete wall between her brain and tongue.

  “You’re not preggers, are you?”

  The wall crumbled. “Can’t I pass out without everyone questioning my virginity? Everyone’s emotions made me sick. I needed to run somewhere and throw up.”

  “You picked the wrong bathroom. Everybody’s saying that you saw the ghost of Julie Dickenson. She committed suey in there in the seventies, high on LSD. Mrs. Stinko told her Home Ec girls about it. Word spread fast.”

  Why couldn’t Mrs. Zinko keep her mouth shut? Like she needed more shit spread about her. “I didn’t see anything. I just passed out.”


  “You know, the janitors can’t plug that leak.”

  “It’s not a leak. The faucet won’t shut off.”

  “Because the place is haunted. They say that Julie slashed her wrist and then held it under running water, bleeding herself down the drain.”

  Jackie felt like passing out, again. “Would you stop?”

  “So don’t tell me you didn’t feel anything when you were in there.”

  “I felt like heaving.”

  “Jackie. Why do you do that? Pretend you’re like… normal?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. Is Jason still pissed at me?”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  “His dad’s been going ballistic on him and his mom. Could you check on him tomorrow?”

  “If I see one mark on Jason, I’ll go to his house myself and kick his dad in the ass.”

  “What we need to do is convince him to go for help.”

  “Yeah, or that. But if his dad isn’t going to stop, he’s got to get what’s coming to him. Hey, I got another call coming in. Call you later.”

  Mom pushed open the bedroom door, a bed tray with a bowl of steaming something in her hands. It smelled like chicken noodle soup. “Courtesy of Babu,” she said, a bright expression on her face.

  Mom had been taking her passing out at school pretty well.

  “I should get sick more often,” Jackie said.

  Mom placed the bed tray across Jackie’s legs. “Babu’s specialty, cures even a broken heart. That’s what Grandma used to tell me.”