The Possession

by Michael Rutger

  “We’ll get out of your way,” I said. “But we came to ask something. I’m Nolan—and that’s Ken. We have a TV show. Well, YouTube. It’s called The Anomaly Files. It’s about unsolved mysteries. It seemed to us that—”

  “No,” Hixon said. “First up, there’s no mystery. Second, if there was, it’s been solved. Alaina’s home.”

  Ken is not someone who backs down easily. “Which is great, mate. But where’s she been?”

  “In the woods. She’s back. End of story.”

  I could see the sitting room through the window. Mottled walls. An old-looking couch. Some pictures in narrow wood frames, including what looked like an old engraving of a woman. Alaina was in the middle of the room, apparently on the phone, but staring at me.

  I tried a smile. There was no indication that she saw.

  “You’ll want to get back to town,” Hixon said, as he walked back up the steps. “Like I said, it’s going to rain tonight. Tomorrow too. Hard.”

  “Well, if there was a moment of that which wasn’t weird,” Ken said, as we walked away down the road, “then I missed it.”

  “I know, right? What was up with the door thing? I went right up to it last night. Sure, there was a crack. In one of the panes. So why not just cover that one?”

  “He’s not stopping there,” Ken said. “Didn’t you notice? There was a pile of planks over near that shitty armchair. Cut to length to cover the window.”

  “What’s he going to do—board up the entire house? Why?”

  “You got me, mate. And didn’t things seem a little tense for a father and daughter who’ve been reunited?”

  “And another thing. If what he said about last night was true, it wasn’t him who put the message on our window.”

  “I know. Hang on—I’m buzzing.” He pulled his phone out. “Moll,” he said. “We’re heading back. How about—”

  He stopped talking abruptly. Listened.

  “Stay there,” he said. “We’re coming.”

  Chapter

  24

  Gina Wright was in her kitchen, looking out the window. After seven years, the view of their yard was like that old wedding photo on a shelf. A rectangle of grass, flower beds with straggling roses, wooden fence on three sides. A tree, around the base of which—the summer they bought the house, in a fit of new-home enthusiasm—Derek constructed a rustic wooden semicircular seat copied from something he’d seen in a magazine. The idea was it would be somewhere for them to spend cocktail hour, but it fell down the first time they tried. He rebuilt it with a lot more nails, and from time to time it still functioned as a place to perch, though she’d always felt precarious on it. As Derek got slowly heavier he stopped using it altogether, though neither of them mentioned that. He worked later now, too, and so these days Gina conducted weekday cocktail hour by herself, standing here in the kitchen with her glass, or a second, or often third, looking back out onto the yard but only really seeing the fence.

  Today was Saturday, though, and Derek wasn’t at work. He was watching television. Something on PBS—a documentary about the history of American retail, by the sound of it. Who would watch a show like that? Who would even make it?

  She checked the time. A little after six. Putting the meal together would take five minutes, tops, from leftovers and what had come home in a box from the Tap last night.

  So really, she had no reason to be in here. She could go sit on the sofa. It wasn’t like it was some boring sportsball. Derek was a smart guy, perennially fascinated by the world, eager to learn, eager to share. He wasn’t the problem here. Gina wasn’t sure what the problem even was.

  Well hell, yes, she knew.

  She’d allowed herself to get drawn into a situation, step by careless step. It didn’t matter how you tried to dress it up, it was wrong. It was so easy, though. All it took was a quick and apparently loving text to check how Derek’s day was going—his reply to which would confirm he was beavering away at work and would be for a while.

  But that, as she well knew, only made it worse—the fact that it wouldn’t even occur to the affable, perfectly nice guy watching TV in the living room to question what his wife got up to during occasional afternoons.

  So there was that. Normally she managed to compartmentalize it, however, and yet now she felt unsettled. Maybe it was the fact Alaina was back. While she’d been missing, the town felt on crisis alert. Even after the initial shock of her disappearance had started to fade (which was terrible, but the human mind accommodates quickly in order to stay sane) there’d been an alertness. As if everyone was unconsciously waiting for bad news to finally fall.

  But the hammer blow hadn’t come. Alaina was back. Unharmed. And life could go on as before. Perhaps that was what felt strange. Life wasn’t strange anymore and yet continued to feel strange, and that was somehow worse.

  Gina shook her head irritably, helped herself to another glass of wine. Decided to take the bottle and see if Derek wanted more. Like a loving wife should.

  As she left the kitchen she heard a line from the narration of the show Derek was watching—

  “…became an integral part of the social scene of many young teenagers, a forum in which they could both participate in an increasingly consumerist society, and engage in socializing rituals in a relatively safe environment.”

  —and hesitated. It did sound unusually dull. But that could be entertaining, maybe? If they made fun of it together? Even though Gina felt she learned enough about the rituals of young teenagers during the average working week.

  She was still deciding, adrift in the hallway, when Derek turned his head toward the door. “You okay, honey?”

  “Yes, why?”

  He smiled. “Nothing. Just heard you coming. And yes, I would like a splash more Merlot.”

  She went in, committing herself to the space, and leaned over the back of the sofa to refill his glass. The narrator droned on, the screen showing slow panning shots of the interior of airports. “Oh. I thought this was about malls or something.”

  “Nope. The evolution of airport architecture.”

  “Wow. Is it as boring as it sounds?”

  “It’s stunningly dull,” he said. “It’s so bad that it’s got me in its tractor beam and I can’t seem to turn it off.”

  Gina smiled, wondering why she didn’t want to sit next to him. Why the prospect filled her with a faint but very real feeling of repulsion. Even dread.

  “Come,” he said, patting his hand on the sofa. “I’ll put the food together in a while. It’s Saturday. You worked hard all week. Relax.”

  The fact that he’d say that, and sincerely mean it, when he worked much longer and harder hours, made Gina want to punch him. Or herself.

  Thankfully at that moment her phone pinged from the counter in the kitchen. “I’ll just see who that is.”

  She hurried back into the kitchen, anticipating another in the daylong string of texts and Facebook messages from people celebrating Alaina’s return. She could take her time answering, then lay out the food. Derek would likely fall asleep on the couch after dinner. Another day would pass.

  The notification was from Instagram, however. Someone had liked one of her pictures. She barely ever posted. Couldn’t remember the last time, in fact. Some people evidently worked on a slow news cycle. She clicked on the notification out of curiosity. The app loaded, then flipped straight to the picture that somebody had liked.

  Gina nearly dropped the phone.

  It was a photograph of the front of their house. Taken late afternoon, judging by the light. Judging also by the fact that the picture showed the front door being opened, by Gina, to let in a figure that was unquestionably male and equally unquestionably not Derek.

  “Fuck fuck fuck.”

  Gina looked to see who’d liked the picture. Only one person. A collection of letters she didn’t recognize. She noted that the picture had gone up ten minutes before.

  “You say something?” Derek’s voice startled her so muc
h that she almost dropped the phone again.

  “Stubbed my toe.”

  “Klutz. A cute klutz, though.”

  “That’s me! I’ll be through in a second!”

  She hurriedly deleted the photograph. She recognized the previous picture—a photo of the MISSING poster for Alaina, ten days previously: they’d all done it in the period immediately after she disappeared, posting on all the social media they could, in case it helped.

  Gina hurried to the sink, convinced she was going to throw up. Stood bent over until the feeling passed, settling instead into a deep, grinding feeling in her guts.

  She grabbed a glass from the drainboard and drank a lot of water, thinking hard. There were two things she needed to do right away. She used the phone to go to her Instagram account and change her password.

  Then she went to the bathroom, locked the door, and used a little-known messaging app to send an urgent DM.

  Chapter

  ​25

  Molly was in the middle of the motel lot. Two cars were parked there. One was mine. The other was Kristy’s rental.

  “Kristy’s here?”

  “No,” Molly said. “That’s what’s weird. Well, one thing.”

  Ken and I had walked back to town as fast as we could. All he’d said was Moll sounded “freaked out.”

  “Is this to do with what you thought you saw in your shower yesterday?” I’d told Ken about this on the way.

  “No,” she said. “And I saw it.”

  “Moll, love,” Ken said. “Just tell us what’s up.”

  “When I got back I thought I’d find Pierre. Hang with him. But he wasn’t around, and it started drizzling, so I wound up in my room. And basically I fell asleep. I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  She hesitated. “I was sitting on the bed with my laptop, leaning back against the headboard. Doing the accounts for this trip. Then it was half an hour later. So, I fell asleep. And I woke feeling cold. And I was sitting there on the bed, looking across the room, and it all seemed very…red. The murky red bedspread. That crappy faux-wood paneling. The red-brown carpet. I didn’t like it. You know? It’s all just all very dark and very red. I hate it.”

  I glanced at Ken, expecting to see him looking bemused. In fact, it seemed like he knew what Molly meant.

  “So I thought I’d try Pierre again,” she said. “I came out, saw Kristy’s car. I thought that might mean you were here, Nolan, so I tried your room first because it’s closer. No response. Or from Ken’s. So I went back to Plan A and knocked on Pierre’s. Still not there. This time, I really banged on it. He’s not there, Nolan.”

  “Okay, Moll,” I said. I was finding it hard to understand why this was such a big deal. “So he’s not there. They’ve probably gone to get something to eat.”

  “Or drink,” Ken said, pointedly. “Did you try phoning?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Three times. No answer.”

  I took out my phone. There was an email notification on the screen. “Ah, here we go. Incoming from Kristy. This’ll…Oh. It’s from a couple hours ago.”

  “And you’ve only just noticed?”

  “It literally just came in,” I said, as I loaded up the email. “Probably sent it from somewhere with crappy signal, and it got held up. Oh. She’s…okay, well, she’s very much not on board for doing a show about Alaina.”

  “Good,” Molly said.

  “The idea’s dead in the water anyway,” Ken told her. “Her dad told us to bugger off, and without her it’d be like doing a show about the pyramids without showing any pyramids. Which I admit would not be beneath us. Stop dicking around and call Kristy, Nolan. Find out if Pierre’s with her.”

  It rang for a while, and then her voicemail message cut in. I tried again. Same result.

  Molly frowned at me. “She’s not answering either?”

  I checked out Kristy’s car, establishing it had been locked, and peering in through the windows. The interior looked like a vehicle piloted by Kristy always did. A high-tech water bottle in the cupholder, but otherwise as though it had recently rolled off the production line and then been cleaned again, to be sure. Ken and Molly came to join me.

  We stood in silence for a moment, then all turned together to look at the forest.

  “I don’t see it,” I said, a couple of minutes later. We were a few yards into the trees now. It was dark and quiet. “Kristy has zero interest in these woods.”

  “She might now, though,” Ken said. “Alaina spent all that time somewhere.”

  “But she emailed a couple hours ago, saying the story’s over, and to leave it. Her exact words.”

  “You heard her last night. If Pierre found something that made it look like maybe she was right, and Alaina wasn’t wandering around in here by herself, then Kristy might decide it’s back on again.”

  “But Pierre wasn’t here when I got back,” Molly said.

  “So he comes out of the trees as she’s parking. Tells her what he’s found. Kristy’s on it like a pack of rats. Back into the woods they go.”

  I remembered another option. Feeling a little sheepish, I fired up the Find Your Friends app. The others watched the screen with me as it said LOCATING, and the wait symbol whirled slowly around. And then stopped. “Location not available.”

  “Hate to point this out, Nolan, but you’re separated. Have been for a while. It’s not out of the question that she might have de-friended you on that.”

  “She did,” I said. “I did too. Of course. But we put each other back a few weeks ago.”

  “Sweet. In which case, that’s pretty much proof they’re in the woods, mate. Those girls earlier said the data signal’s fucked in there. With no data, her phone can’t update the server with its position. Thus, location not found.”

  He was right. But I still took a couple of steps deeper into the woods and called out Kristy’s name. Loud.

  Molly and Ken both jumped. “Christ, Nolan.”

  “Shh.”

  We listened. Nobody called back.

  We could have taken our pick of the seating in the Tap’s restaurant. There was only one person behind the bar—the young guy from the previous nights—and he didn’t have his work cut out for him. It was early, sure, but it still seemed kind of empty for a Saturday night. A few couples, widely spread out, not talking much.

  We bought drinks and sat in a booth. “Not exactly a carnival atmosphere,” Ken said.

  “It’s cold and dark and wet outside,” Molly said.

  “All the more reason to go indoors and drink and raise merry hell. And also—last night a missing child came home. You’d think that might lift the spirits, wouldn’t you?”

  As I watched, the young bar dude behind the bar got his phone out, looked at something, thrust it back in his pocket. He didn’t look happy. Nobody did.

  “Where the heck have you been?”

  I turned to see Molly was talking to Pierre, who’d just come in. “The motel,” he said.

  “You just got back?”

  Pierre looked confused. “No. I’ve been there for, like, an hour.” He checked his watch. “Two, in fact. Fell asleep sitting in the chair. Just woke up. Wondered where everybody was, then I remembered what Ken and Nolan are like and realized there was only one possible answer.”

  “But I banged on your door,” Molly insisted. “Hard. How can you not have heard? Or when I called you?”

  “Must have been a deep sleep, I guess,” Pierre said. He seemed pretty vague. “I didn’t get much last night. My room was really cold.”

  “Have you seen Kristy?” I asked. “Or know where she is?”

  “Nope,” he said. “Why? Should I?”

  “She’s not answering her phone either.”

  “No clue, I’m afraid. Who wants a drink?”

  I went up to the bar with him, and asked the bar dude if he’d seen someone answering Kristy’s description.

  “I know who you mean,” he said. “But no. Not today.”
r />   “Kind of quiet here tonight, isn’t it?”

  “This whole town is a morgue,” he said, his mind on something else.

  I went outside for a cigarette. Mist was coming in from the woods, curling down the street. It was near dark and drizzling and the street was deserted. Small, old towns in the mountains can sometimes seem like sets, especially at night. This did more than most tonight.

  I tried Kristy again. Had another look at the Find Your Friends app, with the same result. There’s something unsettling about technology when it fails. It feels like a promise reneged. You trust the device to put you in contact with somebody, or the one in your car to tell you where to go, as you might once have trusted the gods to bring rain, or your priest to keep the community safe from harm. Then one day, for no obvious reason, they fail you.

  I crossed the street. Even the little grocery market on the corner was closed. Why, early on a Saturday evening? People need organic tofu on the weekend, too. I went over and peered through the window. Nothing to see. Dark shelves.

  As I backed from it, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. A ghost sign, on the high portion of the wall, the remnants of a previous name, now faded almost to invisibility. VANESKI GROCERIES.

  I headed along the street to the building that held Kristy’s apartment. Pressed the buzzer, heard it ring upstairs. Listened for the sound of the upper door to the stairway being opened. Nothing. I decided to try her one last time and then (really) call it done, but saw I still had the previous app up on screen, so jabbed my thumb irritably on the Update button for Find Your Friends instead. The whirly thing plodded dutifully around for a while, as it had every time before, electronic shorthand for “the magic isn’t working.”

  But then it stopped, and a tiny icon of Kristy’s face appeared bang in the middle of the screen. I was sufficiently surprised that it took me a few seconds to work out what it meant. Not only that it’d found her, but also where.