The Possession

by Michael Rutger

  Ken went charging into them like a sheriff trying to break up a bar fight. “Out the way, you demon arseholes.”

  That backfired quickly. The “people” around us changed from feeling as if they were anticipating something to seeming like they’d decided it had already arrived. In the shape of me and Ken.

  Faces turned our way. Most of the lights in the roof—which now looked even more like fluorescent lights—blinked off. We were jostled, pushed toward the side of the road.

  “Christ,” Ken said, swatting at something. A child. It was throwing itself at him, and with the press of bodies around us, very hard to push away. “Look, bugger off.”

  It looked up at him—at us—and smiled broadly. Its face was moon-shaped and pale and its mouth was full of sharp gray teeth. It grabbed hold of Ken with both hands, its fingers far too long.

  “It’s not a kid, Ken,” I shouted, as I grabbed it around the throat and shook it. The other things around us responded as though I had grabbed hold of a child, however. Something large and hard banged into me from behind, shoving me up against Ken. The smaller thing let go of him and started trying to bite me instead.

  Ken punched it hard in the temple. It made no difference. It was like having a four-foot piranha with legs trying to take a chunk out of you.

  There was chanting all around us now. Very loud, in a complex rhythm, or two at once. One that was heavy, slow—the other lighter, faster, like a melody line. And something was coming toward us through the crowd. It was making a different kind of noise.

  Two notes together, harsh, like screaming.

  I managed to throw the smaller thing back and grabbed Ken’s shoulder, trying to pull him away with me. I had no idea where to go, no clue what might constitute shelter in this situation. Possibly nowhere, but anywhere had to be better than being confronted with whatever was making the sound that was getting closer and closer.

  The bodies around us were elongating, changing. Some “people” growing taller. Others wider. Heads staying the same size on bodies that were grossly distorting. Ken and I were now face-to-face, shoved up against each other.

  “Ken, we’ve got to get out of this.”

  “I know, mate.”

  I twisted my head around, trying to tune out the screaming noise, looking for something—anything—that might help. It felt increasingly unlikely we’d be able to get out from under the things pressing in all around, starting to loom over us. I was starting to panic. It was like claustrophobia but worse—hemmed in and crushed by a darkness that had things in it. I felt something biting at my hand but couldn’t look down to see what it was…so I just slammed my knee into it as hard as I could. It was getting hotter, too, partly from the press of bodies—but I could also smell smoke.

  I felt my hair being tugged from behind—really hard, like something was trying to pull my head off. “Nolan.”

  Molly’s voice.

  “Is that you? Really?” I twisted my head an inch—all I could manage—and caught a glimpse of her blond hair. And behind her, someone with shorter gray hair. Val. “Ken,” I shouted. “Grab hold of me.”

  “I can’t move my arms, mate.”

  “Do it. And you two—form a circle, heads together.”

  It took a few seconds to shove and elbow the swarming things aside, but then it was done—and for a moment the crush around us felt a bit less tight. “Back up,” Val shouted, leaning into me. “I’ll push—Molly, you too.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  I braced myself and pushed backward. I could feel Ken doing the same. Meanwhile Molly and Val shoved us from the front. The momentary advantage from being together started to fade, and I could feel panic beginning to rise quickly again. Not just in me. In all of us. The things knew it, too, and started chanting louder.

  But we kept slowly moving backward, in a growing cacophony of noise—it seemed like it was getting darker and darker, at least on the sides. Then I realized we’d been retreating into a recessed doorway.

  “Now,” Val shouted—and she and Molly shoved us.

  There was a moment of resistance and then something opened behind our backs.

  Ken and I went sprawling. Val tumbled forward too, but Molly kept her feet and turned to slam the door shut.

  It was quiet. None of the things were in there. It smelled of dust and was half full of rocks. As Ken and I got to our feet, I realized where we were. The former department store. It didn’t look like something out of a souk or market. It looked exactly as it had the night before, when Ken, Kristy, and I broke in.

  Outside, shapes were still crowded up against the window and the door. “Why aren’t they coming in?”

  “We’re not really here,” I reminded him.

  “Whatever, Nolan.”

  Val pointed at the rocks. “Fragments of the original wall. Tiny sections I’ve managed to put back together, as they should be, or as best I can, from Sister von Tessen’s notes. It’s weak, and it’s not really here, of course, but the fact I know it exists is holding them away for now.”

  “Rebuilding that wall may have been a mistake,” I said.

  “Oh,” Val said, angrily. “Why?”

  “Because you’ve built a new wall, effectively. And I doubt you have any understanding of how the shape of it affected things here in town.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Kristy heard or felt something happening down here before Alaina even came back. What if that’s when it started? What if the shape you made here was a door?”

  Val blinked at me. “I…”

  “Whatever,” Ken said. “I’m glad you did. It saved us.”

  “No it hasn’t,” I said. “Or not for long. What was the last thing you remember, Molly, before you found yourself here?”

  She frowned, trying to recall. “Val slumped over. I was sitting on the hatch to the cellar, because…” Her face fell. “Oh God. Pierre was trying to get in.”

  “Right,” I said. “Now we’re here, and all that’s left there is five unconscious bodies. With no one to stop him.”

  Chapter

  56

  Principal Broecker was sitting in the living room of his house. He was alone.

  Ryder was in his room. The days when he’d regularly stay downstairs after dinner were long gone—though he’d linger an hour or two, once in a while. Dan knew there was likely a hidden reason on those occasions, that those nights weren’t entirely random and their child was feeling uncertain about something, or insecure, or simply young. Dan had the sense not to ask. When a fourteen-year-old wants parental company you just let them have it, rather than risk scaring them away.

  It was barely nine o’clock, but his wife was already in bed. Usually she stayed up as late as he did, reading by the fire. Tonight she’d abruptly said she was tired and gone ahead, as though at a level below the conscious she’d decided to retreat from the world, turn her back.

  Dan felt very awake. Some of this was a churning feeling of guilt. Partly for being short with Kristy Reardon in their conversation. He knew that had come about because of a far larger guilt, also, concerning Alaina Hixon.

  He’d heard the rumors. Of course. Though parents often treat a principal like a policeman, becoming circumspect in behavior and speech in the fear that they will be judged, others are different. Especially older residents, those whose families had been there for generations. They understand that the teacher is one of the archetypal building blocks of a town. Teacher, preacher, doctor, lawman—the pillars that make a place real, as structuring as a church or main street. If one of those people is new in town, the elders will sometimes let things slip. To inform, to bring them up to speed.

  And so he’d heard it suggested that Alaina’s mother killed herself, and that depression and years of drinking had not been the only cause. That she had spent years performing her secret role, the fifth essential pillar of community, the one that’s seldom acknowledged out loud—because nobody believes in that stuff
anymore. Or so we claim. In the end it burned her out. As, he’d further heard it implied (by Bob Maskill, who owned the motel on the edge of town), the mantle had also eventually consumed Alaina’s grandmother, though she’d at least made it into her seventies before suffering a massive stroke. On a night long ago.

  A night like this.

  And so Dan’s decision to cover witchcraft in his elective—after Alaina had signed on—had not been an accident. He’d hoped it might help, provide a way of showing her that her family’s tendency had a place in history, and a venerable one—whether it was real or not. Back then he’d been convinced it wasn’t real. He was far from sure of that tonight. Perhaps it didn’t even have to be one or the other. He’d long ago learned the concept of polysemy, the observation that words and phrases could mean more than one thing. That they often meant several things at the same time, in layers of simultaneous and coexistent meaning.

  “Dad?”

  Dan looked up. Ryder was standing in the doorway. For a moment Dan saw a six-year-old, awake in the night, needing to be walked upstairs and coaxed back to sleep, a child who cared a very great deal about dinosaurs and wanted to tell his father all about them, all the time, even if that father was busy or tired. But Dan also saw the gangling young man who already understood computers and phones far better than he ever would. And he realized: reality is polysemic, too.

  “What is it?”

  “Maddy. And Nadja.”

  “Are they okay?”

  “I think so. But…they’re really freaked out. And their parents aren’t home.”

  Dan considered saying something bland and going upstairs, putting in earplugs, getting in bed beside his wife and pretending nothing was happening.

  But it was too late for that. “Okay,” he said.

  He got his coat from the rack. Not because he was sure he could do anything, or that it would be safe for him to even try. But because when children are scared, that’s what grown-ups do. You try to help.

  Otherwise there’s already no point to you.

  He managed to convince Ryder to stay at home. To be there for his mother, in case she woke.

  He drove through town along dark, rainy streets, keeping his eyes firmly on the road. There were noises in the sky, and not all of the shadows seemed to be behaving as they should. He ignored them and the sense that things were tracking his progress, loping alongside in the mist. Especially ignoring the strong impression that something was riding on the roof of the car.

  He parked in front of the Hardaker house and knocked on the front door. It opened almost immediately.

  Maddy and Nadja stood just inside, tall shadows in candlelight. Dan felt a beat of disquiet. Not just because of what was going on tonight—but because the young often instill that feeling in their elders. The next thing coming down the road of history, the one that will eventually sideline you into old age and irrelevance. That sense teenagers have of being unknowable, untamed, of coming from some other place and not being susceptible to control.

  “We’re scared,” Maddy said, however.

  “We don’t know what to do to stop this,” Nadja added. Again Dan saw a version of what he’d seen in his own home. This time, a pair of ten-year-olds wearing grown-up bodies. “You have to do something.”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “But you have to.”

  “I’m a dusty old book, Nadja. Neither of you believe I’m actually real, do you, or that any grown-up is. You may even be right.”

  “But we have to do something. Or she’s going to hurt people.”

  “I know. Come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “To find Alaina.”

  “But then what?”

  “Then you talk to her,” he said. “She’s not going to listen to anything I say. It’s you she needs.”

  “She does not. She hates us.”

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  “But what can we do?”

  “You have to pull her back. Or else go onward with her.”

  “What? But why?”

  “Because you’re her friends. And nobody can do life by themselves.”

  Chapter

  57

  What are we going to do?”

  “We’ve got to get back to Olsen’s,” Ken said.

  He looked at Val for confirmation, but she shook her head. “We’re all still in Olsen’s, physically,” she said. “I don’t see how you can travel to somewhere if you’re already there.”

  “You know, for an alleged expert on witches and demons and stuff, you’ve been surprisingly little help.”

  The crowds outside were buffeting harder against the windows. It didn’t feel like it would be long before something broke. The sad scrap of wall in here could be all that was keeping the exterior of the building—or at least the panes of glass—intact. The walls of this building weren’t even real—just the lingering defenses we still had up in our minds against the things outside. The more Ken hassled Val, the weaker those defenses would become.

  “She’s doing everything she can, Ken.”

  “We don’t know this stuff works anymore,” Val shouted. She was pissed, and scared. Ken was being more in-your-face than usual—because he was also pretty scared. The knowledge that we were all lying on a floor unconscious and unprotected was hard to take calmly. “Most of us assumed the whole flying demons deal was a metaphor. Or at least that you’d be able to see them, and fight properly. Not that you’d wind up lost in your head and unable to get out.”

  “Stop talking,” I said. “Please.”

  Val glared at me. “Seriously?”

  “He means ‘let me think,’ love,” Ken snapped. “And we should. We need out-of-the box thinking right now, and Nolan’s brain is further outside the box than most.”

  “It actually kind of is,” Moll said.

  Something in what I’d last thought, and something in what Val had last said, were trying to make sense together in my brain, like two strangers in a bar glancing each other’s way. There was a crawling sensation along the back of my neck that was making it hard to think, however, and a faint but acrid smell—that, and the three people urgently waiting for me to say something, along with the sound of things thumping around on the tiles of the roof above.

  Except…there was no roof above. Or not an external one, anyway. There was the apartment Kristy had stayed in. If I was hearing something on a roof, it was the roof of Olsen’s.

  And with that realization came a moment of near clarity.

  “Moll, Val,” I said. “First, we need to check this place is secure. Ken and I broke in here last night. Let’s make sure nothing can get in the back door.”

  “Christ,” Moll said. “Good point.” She and Val headed quickly into the corridor.

  “Nolan,” Ken said, “even if it’s locked, in our heads or whatever, it’s not going to work against—”

  “I know,” I said, quickly. “I just didn’t want them to try to follow me. And you’re not going to, either.”

  “Follow you where?”

  “Val said we’re stuck in our own minds. But that’s not right. At least not individual minds. The four of us are in the same place right now. It’s a shared place.”

  “Okay, but so?”

  “It’s not just ours. There’s stuff we’re seeing that’s nothing to do with us, and that means it’s coming from somewhere else. Or someone. I’m beginning to think Kristy was right about what she said out there. I’m going after her.”

  “You have no clue where she is, mate.”

  “I know.”

  “And the town is crammed with demons.”

  “I’m aware of that also.”

  “So what exactly are you going to do?”

  “No idea.”

  “Excellent. Knew you’d have a coherent plan.”

  I heard Molly and Val trying the door at the back and knew I didn’t have much time. “Ken…”

  “If you’re not back in fifteen minutes�
�”

  I reached for the handle on the door. “Stay here.”

  “Bugger that, Nolan. Do what you can—and do it fast, or I’m coming after you. And don’t die out there, because that would just be annoying.”

  I opened the door, slipped outside. Then realized everything had changed.

  The market stalls were gone, along with everything else. No people. No animals. Just a wide, open concourse. Tiled, dirty. On the other side of the street, vacant storefronts with big, grimy windows. A ceiling a few feet above my head. Most of the lights in it were broken. The space was murky, cold, and very unwelcoming. Tendrils of mist clung to the shadow spaces, moving as though they had muscles and bones.

  I turned back to the door and found it barred. It had once been a clothing store, glass across the whole frontage, now painted over. A big red sign saying GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE. I grabbed the handles, shook hard. They wouldn’t open. Rapped on the glass. No response from inside. I was on my own now.

  As I headed out into the street it became more clear what this place was. An abandoned mall. The large cross was still there, but no longer made of stone. Now it looked more like a piece of civic art, fashioned from twisted, rusting iron. It stood in an ornamental pool with small fountains evenly spaced around it. The pool was dry.

  The mist was thicker on the other side. The street continued to look like a concourse, with side arms branching out. The first of these on the left was about the same position as the street Kristy had run away down. Did that mean she’d still be along there somewhere?

  I ran up to it and looked. More abandoned storefronts. The mist was thick along there. There was something else about it that made me hesitate to enter, but I couldn’t figure out what.

  “Nolan.”

  A man’s voice.

  I turned. Nobody there. Not close to me, anyway. On the other side of the fountain, way down the street, I could see people again now. They weren’t heading my way. They didn’t even seem aware of me. They were wandering slowly around the concourse, shambling.