The Possessions

by Sara Flannery Murphy

  “I had trouble sleeping at the lake,” Viv says. “We’d come back from the restaurant. Sylvia had gone to her own place. Henry was still awake, in the other room. I couldn’t get comfortable. I have a hard time falling asleep without Henry around. When he travels for work, it’s terrible.”

  This is as much for Viv as for me. There’s a lulling quality to her voice that reminds me of my clients recounting their loved ones’ deaths, sitting in Room 12. Memories that have been worried over in secret, handled until they’ve grown a calcified layer of fear and doubt. It’s a relief to put a story like this into words, to feel a stranger’s eyes dissolve the thick coating and reveal the raw, soft core.

  “The shouting wasn’t clear at first,” Viv says. “Like a TV in the other room. I’d fallen asleep and woken up. Maybe they woke me up. I don’t know what time it was. And I was lying there, listening, and I started tuning in to these angry voices. The words weren’t clear, but I recognized the voices. Sylvia’s, mostly.” A shaky breath. “It was hard to tell if they were somewhere outside my window, or if I was hearing them all the way from their own cabin. Sound was different near the lake. You could hear everything.”

  I see the flat expanse of the water, the words glancing across the surface like tossed stones.

  don’t do this

  you don’t have to do this

  we can still fix it

  “The next morning, when everything happened, I was in shock,” Viv continues, and I snap back to focus. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it. About the fight. And I wondered . . .”

  “Did you tell anybody else about this, Viv?” I ask when it’s clear she won’t go on.

  “No,” she says. “I still don’t know what I heard. It could have been my imagination. A dream. And Patrick had just lost Sylvia. How could I point fingers?”

  My apartment complex is so quiet tonight. As if everyone else has been spirited away behind my back, leaving rows upon rows of empty rooms. Stretching high above my head, sinking below my feet. My body solitary in the center.

  “I tried to be there for Patrick for the first few months after it happened,” Viv says. “I hated turning my back on him. But every time I was with him, I’d wonder and wonder. I felt like he could see right through me.” She pauses. “He’s withdrawn more and more. It makes me feel better, as bad as that sounds.”

  Visible through a crack in the blinds, a car slides into the parking lot. The silhouettes of the passengers are revealed as the interior light comes on: stiff and unmoving, propped inside the car like dolls. Then they start moving, their gestures casual as they unbuckle their seatbelts. The light inside the car fades into blackness.

  “Can you think of a reason the Braddocks would have been fighting?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” Viv says. “No. Not really. Henry has told me—he’s told me the gossip. That Patrick wasn’t faithful to Sylvia. I never would have guessed. Sylvia was good at putting on a brave face. It never even seemed like an act.”

  Standing from the bed, I move to the bureau, touching each object in turn.

  “Now I’m looking back on everything else,” Viv says. “That one memory ruins the others. Was any of it real? I’m so stupid I couldn’t even tell.” A damp, wrung-out laugh. “I wish I could go back to remembering them the way I used to. I want those memories back.”

  I shift the objects from one place to the next, rearranging them like a slide puzzle. Wedding photo, pregnancy test, lipstick, lotuses. Lipstick, wedding photo, pregnancy test, lotuses. Wedding photo, lipstick, pregnancy test, lotuses. I run my finger over the envelope of lotuses, then move it from its fixed position at the end of the Braddocks’ story to the beginning.

  “Can’t you do anything?” Viv asks.

  “Do you want me to help him?” I ask. “Or find out what happened?”

  She must catch the anger in my voice. The line goes dead.

  TWENTY-SIX

  My client scratches at his exposed forearm, leaving thin white trails along his skin; I find myself staring at them, mesmerized. “Four years,” he says, half to himself.

  I glance at him. “Since your wife’s death, Mr. Deehan?” I ask.

  A curt, distracted nod. “And since I started coming here. To you.” He scratches at his chin this time, plucking at a reddish mark just beneath his lip. A wound from shaving, maybe. Mr. Deehan’s dressed less formally today, switching out his generic jacket and tie for jeans, a T-shirt. “It’s our anniversary, in a way,” he says.

  I smile, trying to match his levity without acknowledging the undercurrent of desperation I hear in his voice. “In a way,” I say.

  “Barbara and I were only married for three years,” he says. “That means I’ve been coming here longer than I was with her.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “I was thinking how strange it is,” he says. “We met later in life than some of our friends. The relationship was always rocky. We’d both dated around a lot. We got used to always looking for something better. I’d see Barb looking at me sometimes and I figured she was thinking, why him? Out of all the men she could have been with.” Mr. Deehan clasps and unclasps his hands, winds his fingers together and then grips his knees.

  “Before the accident, we weren’t doing so well. She would take off for a weekend with her parents or her sister. A few times every month, we’d discuss divorce. She even scheduled a meeting with an attorney. But then we’d make up. It got to be part of our routine. I stopped thinking it would change. It had turned into a waiting game, almost. When would one of our fights stick? When would I come home and find all her stuff gone?”

  On my wrist, the diamond tennis bracelet glimmers with rows of stones, tucked together tight and sharp as a zipper. A row of tiny teeth.

  “If the accident hadn’t happened—” Mr. Deehan says. He pauses, running the blade of his thumbnail against the red mark. “I don’t know where we’d be now. I don’t know if Barbara and I would have kept hanging on. Maybe she’d be long gone. Maybe I’d be walking around the house and it would be as empty as it is now, and I wouldn’t even know where to find her. This place—” He looks around Room 12, bleary-eyed, as if I’ve pulled off his blindfold after a long journey. “Well. When she’s here, I always know just where to find her.”

  The clear sparkle of the bracelet makes me think of crunching ice chips between my molars. The freezing, painful sting of it.

  “It’s a real comfort,” he says.

  “Shall we begin?” I ask.

  The word comfort lodges in my head as I swallow the lotus.

  I knock. The night air is deep and warm, leftover humidity tacky on my skin. In the distance, a police siren wails before dropping off into a series of short chirps.

  Ana waits at my elbow, jittery, a large canvas bag slung over her shoulder. Her hair has already started to darken at the roots, a fine line spilling along the part. She wears her Elysian Society dress like a child forced into itchy formal clothes; she keeps plucking at the straps.

  “I don’t know how I ever put up with this thing,” she says to me, catching my gaze.

  The peephole flickers. A second later, Dora unlocks the door, leaning in the door frame with her arms crossed over her chest. She’s unfamiliar: sweatpants, a T-shirt with an unraveling hem. Her gaze moves blankly over Ana’s newly blond hair before her eyes click with recognition.

  “Thanks for letting us come here, Dora,” I say. “I promise we’ll be quick.”

  “It’s not a problem,” she says. She opens the door wider. I understand how she feels: that this space isn’t hers to control, that its boundaries are negotiable. I was relying on this. “I thought you were gone,” Dora says to Ana, uncertain.

  “Almost gone,” Ana says. “Not just yet.”

  Standing in the living room, I absorb the Sycamore apartment. It all looks the same. Taupe walls. Cloudy light fixtures that produce a weak glow, like ambient light straggling in from somewhere else. The same wilted couch, the same cardboard-thin
dining table. I realize with an ugly pinch that my current apartment isn’t any more substantial than this one.

  Behind me, Ana clears her throat. “Edie tells me that you’ve been finding things around here,” she says to Dora, slipping the bag off her shoulder and resting it against the wall. “From the previous tenants.”

  Dora’s been collecting everything in a bathroom drawer. Now, she lines her findings on the Formica countertop like sacrificial offerings on an altar. Two bobby pins, one green-gold, the other black. A tube of antibacterial ointment. A bottle of nail polish. Looking over Ana’s shoulder, I relax. None of these items ever belonged to me.

  Ana’s fingers hover over the objects; she reaches for the nail polish bottle. She turns it around and around in her hand, as if searching for a tangible sign of its previous owner. The bottle is small, containing barely enough to cover all ten fingernails.

  “That was stuck in an air vent,” Dora volunteers. “I found it when I got the AC to work.”

  “You moved in during March?” I ask her, and she nods. “Thisbe left not too long before that. Just a month or so. There wouldn’t have been many tenants between her and you.”

  Ana unscrews the cap, begins painting the nail of her left pointer finger. The polish is gelatinous and tarry, forming small bubbles and sliding clumps. When Ana’s finished, her single red nail looks like a wound: clotted with red gore, as if the nail has been yanked out.

  In the living room, Ana takes the two flimsy chairs from the table and places them, facing each other, in the center of the floor. She sits with her knees together, her back very straight. I start to sit across from her.

  “What are you doing?” Ana asks. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” When I stare, she tilts her chin toward the bag she brought with her. “Tie me up.”

  “You’re joking,” I say blankly.

  “I brought rope,” Ana says. “Not exactly glamorous, but it’ll get the job done. We don’t need to be all formal. It’s just us girls.” She winks, but there’s a paleness to her skin, a layer fine as frost. It’s this sign of fear that makes me realize she’s serious.

  “Ana, there’s no need—” I start.

  But Dora has brushed past me. She stoops to retrieve a coil of cheap rope from inside the bag: shiny yellow, slithering through her hands. I watch mutely as Dora moves to where Ana sits. Brisk as if she’s rearranging a piece of furniture, she pushes Ana’s left forearm against the back beam of the chair. Ana doesn’t resist. Dora begins looping the rope around her arm.

  “I told you, I’ll be taking two lotuses,” Ana says to me. “And whatever happened to Hopeful Doe—well, it wasn’t pretty. It’s safer this way.”

  After a second, I join them, tying Ana’s other arm against the chair. Her arm is so thin, the skin so soft, that it surprises me. She’s always seemed more solid than this, all coiled and restless strength.

  Maybe Ana catches a change in my expression. She makes eye contact with me briefly. “Don’t try to cop a feel, Edie,” she says. “This isn’t a date, you know.”

  I tie an efficient knot and move back to sit across from her.

  Dora holds the lotuses up to Ana’s lips, one at a time, and slips them inside. She reaches for the glass, tilting it against Ana’s mouth. There’s something gentle about the ritual, like a bedtime between a mother and a child. I watch the jump of Ana’s throat as she swallows.

  “Think of Thisbe.” I recognize the smoothness of Ana’s voice. It’s the tone I use with clients. A voice from nowhere. “Think of Laura.”

  I think of her. Thisbe’s face running with tears. Her wispy hair, earnest eyes. The police sketch, with its soft beauty showing through the inexpert lines like a miracle; the photo Ana showed me, the drab gray scale of heavy makeup.

  The temperature in the room gutters. The hairs on my arms rise. I’m cold, then too hot. The air is drawn tighter around my skin, clamping down. Dora hovers near the door. I should tell her to go to safety, but selfishly, I want another ordinary body in the room with me, someone singular and rooted to the same world I am.

  “Laura?” I ask.

  Across from me, the body stirs. The eyes open. They’re unfocused, blinking at the room around us. The lips wilt open: the darkness inside is layered and deep.

  The mouth opens wider as she shifts her jaw experimentally. I imagine another woman’s fingers creeping up her throat. Gentle and exploring, prodding the inside of her mouth and then retreating, pulled back to where the other woman is waiting.

  “Laura,” I say again.

  The eyes meet mine with a slow, dragging effort. “I know you,” she says. A voice that’s unsettlingly familiar, like a stranger performing an uneven imitation of Ana. A flawless syllable followed by a skewed one. I hadn’t expected her to sound so much like Ana; it would be easier if she spoke in a voice I’d never hear again.

  “I know you,” she says again. “You never talk to me. But I see you.”

  “And I’ve seen you,” I say. “Do you know this place we’re in?”

  “It’s where I stay,” she says, throwing a weaving glance around the apartment. Her gaze catches on Dora: there’s a strange moment of silence as they study each other. Then the body in the chair moves. Just a shudder of movement, jerking her arms forward until the ropes restrain them.

  Dora and I look at each other.

  “Is it your home?” I ask, trying to redirect the body’s attention.

  “Not home,” she says. “But where I stay.”

  “What do they call you, Laura?” I ask.

  She shakes her head, pressing her arms against the restraints again.

  I try again. “Does the name Thisbe mean anything to you?”

  Her eyes drift down to her lap.

  “Thisbe?” I ask, more insistent.

  “I hate that name.” Her anger flashes across the room. Dora cringes.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I hesitate. “Laura, can you share a memory with me? Try to remember if there was anyone who threatened you. Anyone who frightened you.”

  “These aren’t my hands,” she says. “Whose are they?” She rolls her wrists, her hands twisting with the movement. “Doesn’t she want them back? Tell her that I have them for her.”

  “Was there anybody who made you feel scared?” Desperation rises in my chest.

  “I just want my own hands back,” Laura says. Her voice is shifting, rising. Higher pitched and younger. And it’s as if her voice is a visible presence in the room, a shimmering heat wave that distorts her face, turning Ana’s features too soft.

  “I understand,” I say. “I’m a body too.”

  “She took them.”

  “Who took them?” Dora, this time. Her voice is small and fragile.

  Again, the body jerks against the ropes. I realize how thin the restraints are, and how halfheartedly the knots have been tied. Dora and I were still seeing the whole thing as a game.

  “Please,” I say. “We’re helping you.”

  She stops moving. “She took them,” Laura says. “She wouldn’t take my body off. And nobody would help me.”

  “You channeled a client’s loved one,” I say. “Something went wrong. She wouldn’t leave. Is that it?” I remember the rumor that grew after Thisbe, so insubstantial I could brush it away like a cobweb. “You were possessed,” I say.

  “It’s my fault,” she says, shutting her eyes.

  “It’s not your fault.” I’m surprised at the roughness of my voice. “This wasn’t supposed to happen to you.”

  Her eyes snap open. “It could happen to you too.”

  “Who hurt your body?” Dora asks. “Was it a client?”

  Coldness runs down my spine. “Dora,” I say, a sharp, instinctive reprimand, and the air around us stretches and strains.

  “What?” She’s wounded, surprised. “We need to know.”

  In the chair, Laura tilts her head with a slight smile, confused as a child as she listens.

  “You’re right,” I rel
ent, forcing myself to focus. My mind becomes clear as a winter sky, still as deep water. “Try to remember,” I say to Laura. “Remember his name.”

  “Leave me alone,” the body says.

  “We need to know,” I say. “It’s important—”

  “It’s too late.”

  She wrenches against the restraints. One of the ropes sags loose around her arm. It slides to the floor with a loose rustle, a thump. Dora makes a strangled noise that I feel inside my own throat. The body looks down at the snake-like yellow coil on the floor.

  I force myself to stay seated, not showing my panic. “We’re on your side,” I say to her.

  “It’s too late,” she repeats as she stands. In one quick movement, she wrenches her other arm free.

  “Who did this to you?” I ask, and the answer is just inside my mind, pounding like a headache. I will her to say it, to say the name, push it out into the room. Put it between us.

  “You know,” she says. “You must know.”

  She closes the space between us, reaching out an experimental hand to graze Ana’s blunt-cut fingernails against my skin.

  Fear tightens everything inside me. Though Ana’s body seemed small and light a few minutes ago, the woman in front of me brims with chaos. Laura has no stake in the world I occupy; she’s all animal confusion, brimming anger.

  She takes a step toward me. Then another. She falls into a kneeling position next to me. Her skin against mine is cold. My fear rises to a shrieking peak, and then, just as suddenly, it dissolves. I feel a strange tenderness.

  “You can help me,” she says. “Help me take it off.” She holds out her arm, running the opposite hand down the fine skin of her forearm. I think she’s left a deep scratch in Ana’s flesh until my mind unscrambles the image. Streaks of nail polish, that’s all. “Help me,” she repeats, her gauzy pupils focused on mine.

  I could peel her like fruit. Slip my fingernails under Ana’s skin and tug the flesh aside neatly to reveal Laura Holmes. Thisbe, in her white Elysian Society dress. Or a living version of the sketch, Hopeful Doe, face deformed with the subtle misinterpretations of the artist.