The Possession

by Jennifer Armintrout

  I shook the scene away and tried to concentrate on Bella’s instructions. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to notice I’d drifted. “You will be fully conscious of what is happening around you, but you will not be able to control your physical or astral bodies. Once you get there, it will be important that you do not panic.”

  “Get where? Where am I going?” I hadn’t realized bilocation or astral travel or any of the other mind-numbingly boring topics that interested Nathan would be involved, and I certainly wasn’t prepared to actually do any of those things.

  Bella hesitated, looking at Max and Cyrus before saying, “You will be going to the night Marianne died.”

  I waved a dismissive hand in the air and made a plosive sound like a slow leak. “No problem. I’ve been there before.”

  “But you didn’t see it through her eyes,” Cyrus interjected quietly. “Are you sure you can do this? Are you ready to know what it’s like to have Nolen kill you?”

  Though Cyrus’s words sent a shock of horror down my spine, I forced myself to project an illusion of bravery. “Will everyone stop looking like you’re preparing for my funeral? I can handle it.”

  Max looked at Bella, one hand over his mouth as if trying to hold in the words he couldn’t help but say. “I think we should slow down and think about this a little more.”

  “No!” I stamped my foot. “Would everyone stop treating me like I’m so damn fragile? If it’s going to fix Nathan, let’s get it over with!”

  I don’t know why it took a total, public hissy fit to kick my compatriots into gear every time a monumental task was ahead of us, but it was starting to get on my nerves. Of course, that wasn’t fair of me. They probably weren’t as used to harrowing escapes and heart-pounding adventures as I was. It made me feel worldly and a little proud when I looked at it that way, though I would gladly trade it for a few consecutive years of boredom.

  Bella explained the rest of the process to me without sensitivity or second-guessing my ability to participate, and for that I was very grateful. The more she talked, the more I doubted, and the last thing I needed was for them to offer me another out clause.

  At midnight, Max, Bella and I filed down the hall to the bedroom.

  Cyrus hung back, and when I asked him what he would do during the ritual, he shrugged and said, “Take a nap?”

  “I did not think it would be wise to include him, considering he was involved in…well.” Bella cleared her throat and smoothed her shirtfront, then placed her palm flat against the door. “Are we all ready?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” Max said, rolling his head to one side and cracking his neck. “How about you, Carrie?”

  I took a deep breath. I was about to surrender my body completely to a long dead and possibly pissed off ghost-woman, whose husband I had been sleeping with for the past two years. “Let’s do it.”

  Bella pushed open the door and motioned for us to be quiet. Nathan still slept soundly, and I prayed he would continue. We couldn’t afford to have anything go wrong.

  As she had instructed us to do earlier, Max and I took our places: him at Nathan’s bedside, myself kneeling on the floor at the foot of the bed. She walked the perimeter of an irregular circle from one side of the bed to the other, pouring white sand from a clay jug as she did so. The circle broke where it intersected the bed, so she poured the line right over the pillows, as though it were perfectly normal to dump two good handfuls of dirt into someone’s bed.

  Between the four corners of the room she placed four candles. In the little space left within the circle she paced, fanning the smoke from a burning bushel of herbs with a long, brown feather. Then, in a quiet voice that was much less impressive than the mighty shouts of the wizards in the movies, she said simply, “I consecrate this space, seeking only to do good within it.”

  Max’s skeptical gaze met mine, and I pushed back a twinge of unease. This felt too much like a twee game, something a young hippie girl with a guitar would do to invoke a muse. She’s the only one who’s come up with a solution, I reminded myself sternly.

  At each of the candles, she mumbled an incantation asking the spirits of each direction to lend their power to our “circle.” When the candles were lit and the circle consecrated, she handed a thick, white candle to Max and another to me.

  “Hold his hand,” she instructed Max. Then she drew a single quartz point from her pocket and held it over her head. “Badb, Anubis, Hades, Lucifer, Kephas, and all the keepers of the underworld and afterlife in your many names, join us now in this circle.”

  She brought her arm down in a fast arc, kneeling so the crystal connected with the ground. The candle flames flickered, throwing eerie shadows on the walls. It must have been a trick of the light, but I could have sworn I saw the shape of a jackal’s head grow into the shadows of the corner, a raven flicker across the ceiling. My throat went dry. While I’d been busy reassuring everyone I was up to the task at hand, I suppose I hadn’t really thought about how serious things were.

  This is for Nathan, I reminded myself, looking away from the shadowy shapes that seemed to grow and multiply as we stood helplessly beneath them.

  “Bella…” Max’s voice was a hoarse whisper in the silence of the room.

  But it wasn’t silence. A strange, humming tension filled the air, dousing the circle with loud, soundless noise.

  Bella raised a hand to motion for quiet, then began to murmur words of thanks to each entity she’d called forth. Badb, a crone goddess. Anubis, a death god. Hades, lord of the dead. Lucifer, God’s fallen. Satan, if I remembered my Catholic upbringing correctly. I couldn’t see how he would be on our side, if the stories were true. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. I tried to reason with myself that I shouldn’t fear the beings she’d invited in. For all intents and purposes, I was dead myself. Still, I couldn’t ignore the malevolent cloud that seemed to surround me. I imagined a million fingers of darkness closing around my throat, crushing my windpipe, severing arteries. I imagined Cyrus’s claws slitting my throat in the hospital morgue six months earlier. And I wanted to run.

  Max appeared uncomfortable, as well. He clenched his shoulders as if he wanted to rub the back of his neck, but couldn’t, as both his hands were occupied. Nathan began to stir, one long leg sliding from beneath the sheets to drape over the side of the bed. He mumbled something, his voice gaining volume as his struggles continued. Only when he was thrashing and shouting did I recognize what he said. It was the prayer to the Archangel Michael.

  “How are they gonna like that?” Max whispered, as though the deities surrounding us wouldn’t be able to hear him.

  “He is crazed,” Bella reminded Max, or maybe the spirits. “He does not mean to offend.” She raised her voice over Nathan’s fervent prayer. “We humbly beg the release of the soul of Marianne Galbraith, soul-bound through the sacrament of marriage to this man.”

  A chill knife went through my heart at her words. Soul bound. It seemed so much stronger than blood tied. If my heart was destroyed, there would be nothing left binding me to Nathan. Marianne had been gone for years, but her bond with him was still strong enough to control his mind. Strong enough to call her back from the dead.

  When it came down to it, my bond with Nathan could decompose. A human soul…that was eternal. I wanted to vomit.

  “I need Nathan’s consent now,” Bella reminded Max.

  He sputtered and looked at me, then at his friend writhing in panic on the bed. “Bella, I don’t know about this. Carrie doesn’t look so good—”

  “You are here to give consent on his behalf. That is your only function in this circle. If you cannot do this, you should leave!” Bella snapped. Her eyes were hard and furious, but her hands trembled. She was afraid.

  Her fear intensified my own.

  Max swallowed and looked to me. I wanted to communicate with him somehow, but I didn’t know whether I wanted him to stop this or continue. Something paralyzed me. I wondered if Marianne was already inside of
me, if that’s why I couldn’t think clearly or even move my limbs, or if it was just crippling fear and sadness.

  Like a judge’s gavel falling after the pronouncement of a sentence, Max cleared his throat and whispered, “Yes.”

  With a warning noise and a flinty look, Bella stepped forward and lit Max’s candle. Then, turning to me, she asked for my permission, as well.

  Only now could I find my voice. But when I opened my mouth, I didn’t tell them I’d changed my mind, that this wasn’t the way. I opened my mouth and issued a calm, “Yes.”

  And then it was out of my hands. Bella lit my candle, but instead of stepping back to her place, she gripped my wrist and raised the crystal point above her head again. “Keepers of the afterworld, return now the soul of Marianne Galbraith to this circle.”

  Bella’s eyes closed. Her hand burned where it gripped my wrist. Her entire body seemed to vibrate power.

  I kept inhaling huge quantities of air, like a drowning person anticipating being claimed by the waves. It would have helped if I could have known what was happening, but this was, conveniently, the part Bella had left out. The air buzzed with even more tension, if that were possible. As Nathan fervently shouted the Lord’s Prayer, I sent up one of my own.

  When the wait seemed interminable, when it looked as though we had failed, Marianne’s soul entered the circle. I could pinpoint the exact moment her spirit arrived. Nathan’s madness subsided for a moment, then returned as a fierce panic. His body arched from the bed like the string of a drawn bow, and he screamed, the most pitiable sound of pain and fear I’d ever heard. He was terrified he’d hurt her. I couldn’t help but remember the way he’d pinned me to the floor in the shop, threatened me with a chunk of broken glass. He hadn’t been afraid to hurt me.

  Max was visibly shaken. He clasped Nathan’s wrist and turned wide, frightened eyes to Bella. “We have to stop this!”

  “Marianne Galbraith,” Bella shouted over Nathan’s voice. “Take this empty vessel and do with her what you will!”

  Before I could wrench away, she pulled me forward and pressed the crystal to my forehead. The splitting pain couldn’t have been worse if she’d used an ax. The cool, smooth surface of the stone focused the pain into a thread that wound down my spine, into my torso, branching into my limbs. The thread widened, opening like a telescope until I was filled to bursting. There was no room left for me in my body, and the thing kept growing, crowding me farther and farther back.

  My eyes rolled back in my head. The last thing I saw was Max’s face as he screamed, but a tremendous roar filled my ears, thundering over him. Then my vision flared silver and I was falling. It was nothing like the gentle, backward suction I’d experienced when my sires had shared their memories with me. That had been mildly disconcerting. This was nothing but pain and horror. And then, I was gone.

  Standing before the big, oak double doors, Marianne didn’t bother to disguise her observation of the man at her side. My husband is so handsome. I’m nearly a corpse.

  Nolen gave her a smile and squeezed her hand. She knew the smile. It was not the one that had charmed her when she’d been young and pretty and not aching with every step. Not the one that had made her give into him in the stock room of her father’s shop. She hadn’t seen that smile for a year now. Not since the last baby wasn’t born. Not since she’d begun to fall apart.

  No, this was the pity. He would never look at her the way he used to, not even if this “faith healer” did help her.

  “Do I really look all right?” Marianne toyed with the heavy chain around her neck. How many more times will you drag me across the world on my father’s money? How many more cures will I be forced to endure before you let me die?

  “You’re a vision.” He smiled and touched the heavy pendant hanging at her throat. His fingers never touched her flesh. He’d become so good at withholding all but the most sterile of touches. “Although I don’t think this suits you. It’s a decent sign, though. No one would give away a bauble like this on a whim.”

  “Unless it’s meant to be a rejection gift.” The thing was too heavy. Her shoulders ached. What would he do if she collapsed right now and ruined the good impression he hoped to make?

  A faith healer. I’d have to have some first. She hadn’t told him, but she’d given up believing in God. Every night, when he held her hands and they said their prayers, she recited empty words. She was too angry to speak with the Lord or the Virgin Mother. It was considered holy to share Christ’s pain, but on the worst days, when the cancer seemed to be dissolving her very bones with acid claws, she envied him. Christ had only suffered for two days. And it was too cruel to venerate the Blessed Mary. What praise did she deserve? She may have endured the pain of losing a child, but Marianne had lived through that hell five times, and she’d never been able to hold her children. They’d gone to their Golgotha inside of her and ascended into heaven on a rush of blood. The fruit of her own womb was less than holy, the disease that now destroyed her from the inside out.

  Nolen believed, though, that God would send them a miracle, that the future hadn’t been denied, only delayed. To ease his mind, she acted the part of the pious wretch.

  The doors before them opened. Marianne had assumed they’d be meeting with Jacob, Simon and Simon’s beautiful young wife, Elsbeth, as they had the two times they’d both been invited to dine at the mansion. Oh, Nolen had been invited far more often than she. Jacob had taken an almost fatherly interest in him, sending invitations that called Nolen away in the evenings, entreating him to leave his diseased wife at home to rest. She did not know what had transpired those nights, but the group assembled around the table now, bored-looking and beautiful, surprised her. Their gazes all held a strange hunger as every pair of eyes examined her. With a sudden, crashing clarity, she realized something was terribly wrong.

  There wasn’t enough time to bend her intuition into action. Those guests who’d seemed so impressive and imposing a moment before transformed into demons before her eyes. They moved faster than Nolen could and tore her away from him as he tried to shield her.

  Marianne’s world narrowed to a void of claws and fangs. They cut and tore her flesh, but she welcomed the pain. It felt different than the slow burn of the disease devouring her body. Faster. It would be better this way.

  And then she was dying. The thing she’d not been above praying for, even after she’d shunned God, was finally upon her. Vision dimmed, then returned like a tide teasing the shore, but it wasn’t disorienting. In fact, it was disappointing when clarity returned, because she wanted to see what was on the other side of the darkness. Wanted to see if she was damned for her lack of faith, or if she’d be proved correct. The prize at the end of the race seemed so very close when it was cruelly yanked from her grasp. Pain exploded in her head as she connected with the floor. The groping hands had dropped her.

  They were alone with the one she knew as Simon. Nolen was praying, invoking the aid of Mary and the archangel against the demon that embraced him. Simon’s hands caressed her husband like a lover’s hands. Give in to him, she urged wordlessly. It will be finished sooner. He will grow bored and kill you.

  But Simon didn’t intend to rape Nolen. His violation was more sinister. He was gentle and tender, aiming to seduce his unwilling partner into consent, forcing Nolen’s body to betray him, making him take pleasure from unforgivable sin.

  This is my fault. The sadness and regret gripped her then. A fine time to get her heart back, when she lay dying a world away from home.

  Simon took his time with Nolen, and Marianne, too weak to turn away, watched her husband weep as he came, trembling, beneath Simon’s mouth and hands, even as the monster penetrated him.

  “Your husband did this to you, Marianne.” Simon groaned, hissing in pleasure as his hips pumped against Nolen’s body. “Tell him how you hate him for it.”

  She found her voice then, to whisper a weak, “No.” For all she resented him, she loved him. She would not have
him die thinking she’d scorned him. Her gaze lingered for a moment on Nolen’s fingers clutching futilely at the slick marble floor. Then her eyes slipped closed.

  As life continued to slowly ebb from her, Marianne wished for the strength to cry for joy. They would both be gone soon, abused to death at the hands of these monsters. And then she would be free of a worse pain, the pain of walking the earth in a faltering shell, watching her husband transform her from an object of desire to an untouchable martyr in his eyes.

  I have to tell Nathan. The thought startled me, namely because it had rung through my mind so clearly. I remembered instantly where I was, what was happening, but where had I been? I’d seen it all, but it hadn’t been me. Marianne had truly taken me over. Now, as she died in the past, her control slipped.

  Concentrating hard, I felt myself detach a little from her flickering soul. Silvery threads of pain webbed around my mind, but I fought past them. It was like running through knee-deep water, but the struggle was worth it. I heard sounds from my own time, namely, Bella commanding me to stop fighting.

  “It’s important.” I didn’t recognize my own voice. Was it Marianne’s voice, or was I Marianne, not recognizing Carrie’s voice? Where did she end? Where did I begin?

  “I want to die.” I felt the carpet beneath my knees now, at the same time the marble cooled my back. I shook my head. No, I shook Marianne’s head, and she shook mine. I stood on weak legs, while she delighted in my strong ones. “Nolen, I want to die.”

  We were alone in the Soul Eater’s dining room. Nathan’s bed was here, now, with him handcuffed to it, but there was no sign of the madness that had tormented him.

  I touched him with Marianne’s hand and felt his skin beneath my own in another time and place. His throat convulsed as he swallowed, and a tear slid from his eye. “I don’t want to kill you again. I kill you every time I close my eyes.”