Possessed

by Stephanie Doyle

  “I pulled you out of the way before a car could hit you. Some might call that saving your life.”

  Apparently he wasn’t the type to do that without wanting something for it. Funny. She didn’t expect that of him. Then again what the hell did she know about anything? Just one more by-product of the Doug Brody Betrayal.

  “What do you want?”

  “For now I want you to take off your sweater. It appears to be wool, and it’s soaking wet. You’ll be freezing in a few minutes if you don’t get it off.”

  “I’m a big girl.”

  “Not really.” He moved closer and before she realized what was happening he was leaning over her and tugging at the bottom of the wet wool sweater.

  “Stop it,” she hissed.

  “Lift your arms,” he instructed firmly.

  Her aggravation was extreme. She had no power to make him go away and she knew it. Still, she couldn’t stop trying. “How dare you give me orders in my home? Leave. Now.” She injected into her voice what she hoped was a note of imperiousness that someone of his ilk might respond to.

  “No. Lift your arms.”

  Okay, so her imperious tone needed work.

  Finally, like the child she felt like, Cass obeyed and he pulled the sweater off. However, with it came the white chemise she’d worn underneath the garment to protect her from the scratchy fabric, leaving her in nothing but a simple pink cotton bra. Her nipples, she knew, were hard and pronounced.

  She heard his reaction rather than saw it because her head was still stuck in the neck of the sweater.

  “What the hell…”

  Not exactly the same reaction Dougie’d had when he’d seen her nipples for the first time. Cass felt the sudden release of the fabric as he yanked it over her head and then saw that his attention wasn’t on her breasts but on the side of her body where the monster had struck.

  Of course it hadn’t actually hit her. It had been simply a mental projection that had resulted in a physical manifestation. Like the way she would form a bruise after making contact with the dead. This, however, was a pretty big bruise. Cautiously, she brushed the area with her fingertips. No, this was no bruise. This would have to be classified as a welt.

  “Who did this to you?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” she mumbled, crossing her arms over her chest to conceal the pink bra she wore, as well as her extended nipples.

  Obviously unaffected by her pert breasts, Malcolm’s finger gently traced the red mark that ran along her right rib cage.

  “Is it the cop?” he asked, his voice soft but tight. “I saw him with you at the restaurant, but you left separately. Are you dating him? Do you let him do this to you?”

  That was so typical. As if she would ever let someone do this to her. “You think Dougie beats me?”

  He lifted his hand and brushed back a lock of her bangs, studying the same eye he had squinted at before under the streetlamp. “This, too. The car didn’t do this to you. You weren’t even hit.”

  “Why was that?” she asked.

  Their eyes locked. His hand fell from her face but rested against her uninjured side. His palm was warm and the penetration of heat through her skin made her shiver in a way that had nothing to do with the cold this time.

  He was touching her. Intimately. Only this time there was no ghostly connection. There was, however, a physical one, which was possibly even more threatening. Cass shifted to her side, but his hand moved with her. His eyes were pinned on her and she wondered if his heart was racing nearly as fast as hers.

  This was crazy. It wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted answers. She shifted again and this time, he pulled his hand away. “You just said you saw Dougie with me. You were watching us. Why?”

  He moved and took a seat on the end of the futon. There was a weird sort of intimacy even now that they weren’t touching. Him sitting on the edge of the place where she typically rested her head. It seemed more natural than it should have.

  Deciding that she needed space more than she needed answers, Cass rolled off the other side of the futon away from him. “Forget it.”

  Her knees shook, but she managed to tug her clothes out of his hands and make it down the small hallway to her bedroom. She dumped the sweater in the corner of the room and reached inside her closet lined with shelves to find a T-shirt that she could pull on. She’d never considered herself modest, but the idea of Malcolm seeing her, touching her, in nothing more than her underwear was a bit too much to handle.

  Her cats sat side by side on the bed, their bodies tucked against each other in a way that always made her smile. Popping their heads up, they watched her move about the room. She opened her mouth to coo at them, but saw them turn with synchronicity toward the door.

  “The fact that you’re telling me I don’t have to answer,” he said from the doorway of her bedroom, “leads me to believe you think you already know the answer. Did my sister tell you that, too?”

  The cats got up from their nest and slowly walked to the edge of the bed as if standing guard against the new intruder. Nice of them this time, since last time he’d visited they had stuck to the bedroom. Not that it mattered. Cass didn’t imagine they could be all that effective against a full-grown man anyway, but she appreciated their effort. Right up until Malcolm stepped closer and held out his hand so that they could shamelessly rub their heads up against him.

  “You’re a cat person.”

  “Hardly,” he replied with a hint of a smirk, even while his other hand reached out to stroke the long feline bodies. “Haven’t you heard? Men aren’t supposed to like cats.”

  Rolling her eyes, she made a noise that indicated what she thought about the concept of manliness in general.

  “You didn’t answer my question. Was it my sister that…Did you communicate, or whatever it is you do with her, again?”

  “No. You can relax.” No doubt her earlier encounter with the beast had temporarily drained her of the ability to connect with anyone. Maybe that’s why his touch hadn’t conjured up any kind of connection. Thank God. For a while she could live just among the living.

  “You’re not curious?”

  “I was. Now I’m too sore to be curious.”

  She moved around him and out of the bedroom. Having him there was worse than sitting with him on the futon. But when she got back to the living room, she realized there weren’t a whole lot of other choices. She stood in the middle of her space with her arms crossed over her chest and waited for him to appear.

  “Look, it wasn’t because I suspected you or anything,” he clarified. “I knew this morning that you weren’t involved.”

  “Well, thanks. I think.”

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re…connected.”

  “Connected. There is a nice, safe word. How exactly do you think I’m connected?” she pressed.

  “I don’t know,” he answered tightly. “I don’t know, other than you seem to be the only link to two women who I believe were killed by the same person. You’re also the only thing I can do.”

  His choice of words had her raising her eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

  “I didn’t mean it…I meant that you’re my only way of staying involved. I followed you because, yes, I wanted to see if something else happened. If you stumbled on another dead body. But that didn’t happen.”

  “Nope.”

  “No,” he said carefully. “No dead body. But you did stumble into the middle of the street for no apparent reason. I told you why I followed you. Now you tell me what the hell pushed you into the middle of the street.”

  This time he was the one folding his arms over his chest. They made quite a picture, the two of them standing across from each other, both of them in a you-can’t-touch-me pose. She tilted her head slightly, already predicting how he would handle the truth.

  “What if I told you it was a monster? A monster from the other side hit me and pushed me into the street.”

  “Given everything that�
��s happened today…I would tell you it’s not the strangest damn thing I’ve heard.”

  Chapter 9

  It certainly wasn’t the reaction Cass was expecting. Not that he would laugh outright in her face. He was too polite.

  “A big, beefy, overmuscled monster,” she elaborated, purposefully trying to shake his stoicism. “With huge fangs that hang from its mouth and a nose that’s pushed up against its face like a pig’s. Its eyes are set deep and black and when it opens its mouth…”

  A shudder overtook her body just thinking about the darkness that had permeated her being at the sound of its strange call. So much rage.

  And she had just stood there, figuratively, and taken it. Earlier, Malcolm had suggested that she had let Dougie beat her, and she’d thought the idea ridiculous. But wasn’t that what she had done with that thing?

  She hadn’t even considered fighting back. She didn’t know if she knew how. It wasn’t like she’d been forced to face off bullies at school. She’d been a loner from the start and most had obligingly left her alone. In the asylum, she’d been segmented from the violent population, so no one had been a threat physically to her, although she had gotten into a few pushing matches with a patient over a chair in the rec room. Certainly nothing that had prepared her for what she’d faced in her room.

  She imagined she could deliver a good slap across the face-a gift most women were born with. But no man had ever prompted such an action. Hell, she hadn’t even slapped Dougie.

  “Let me do something,” he said, breaking the silence that had ensued after she could no longer continue with her description. “I’ll make you some tea.”

  Unable to help herself she smiled. “Tea?”

  “I’m told it helps calm people down.”

  “Oh, I get it. You think I’m hysterical.”

  “I think you’re upset, yes. I know you’re in pain. Do you have tea?”

  “In the kitchen,” she said, pointing beyond his shoulder.

  Her cats followed him.

  Traitors.

  Oddly enough, watching him move about her small kitchen, filling her ceramic cow teapot with water, searching for mugs and the tea bags that she kept in the cabinet over the refrigerator, did have a calming effect. Something about the mundane act made her feel normal again.

  “Tell me some more about this monster,” he urged. With two filled mugs in his hands, he stopped in the center of the room. “Why don’t you have any furniture?”

  “I told you before I like to keep things simple.”

  He handed her a mug and then pulled over the lone bar stool adjacent to the counter and sat. “Okay. Talk.”

  “Why?” she wanted to know. She found the futon again and was happy to have the length of the apartment between them.

  There was a pause as she figured her question stumped him. “Because you claim that this thing was responsible for what happened to you tonight.”

  “Yes, but you don’t believe me. You don’t believe I can communicate with the dead. I’m reasonably certain you think I’m nuts. And you wouldn’t be the first. Why should I tell you about something that’s only going to confirm your worst suspicions of me?”

  He sipped from the mug that she’d pilfered from the coffeehouse. It had a chip at the top and they’d been about to toss it, which was why she’d considered it fair game. Now she looked on it as part of her severance package.

  He said nothing in response to her accusations but, instead, seemed content to sip his tea.

  “Please. Just go,” she asked impatiently. “Thank you. I do mean that. That car might have hit me.”

  “Would have hit you,” he corrected.

  “Maybe, but it’s over now.”

  “Is it?”

  No. Not by a long shot.

  Her silence was answer enough for him. “Look, I don’t believe people can communicate once they’re dead. I don’t believe in ghosts. In fact, I’m not entirely convinced that there is anything at all after death. But if there were, I certainly don’t think anyone living could hear or see someone after they’ve passed. It doesn’t seem right. But…I also don’t think you’re a liar.”

  “That’s sort of a logic problem for you, isn’t it?”

  His mouth twitched. “It is. But let’s just go with it, okay? Why are you seeing this monster?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t be sure,” she whispered. Leaning forward, she placed the mug on the floor and gripped her head with her hands. “It’s never been like this. I hear voices. I see images. When I was a kid…they would just pop into my head with a burst of pain.”

  “Pain? It hurts you?”

  “Yes, but not too badly. Still, the pain tends to manifest itself on my body. A black eye, a bloody nose.”

  “A fat lip,” he finished. “You had one this morning. And a black eye last night.”

  “It’s the price of doing business.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t understand. I’ve seen other mediums do readings on TV and such. I’ve never heard anyone talk about there being any pain involved.”

  “Not everyone’s gift is the same, and not everyone who has the same gift experiences it the same way.”

  “You experience pain.”

  She smiled weakly. “You have to appreciate how supremely unlucky I am to have gotten stuck with the pain while others are making millions.”

  “That welt on your side…that was more than a bruise.”

  “What happened tonight wasn’t like anything I’ve ever experienced. This thing…it got inside my room.”

  “Your room?”

  How did she begin to explain something as complicated as her room to a nonbeliever? His expression, however, was earnest and attentive. A long time ago she’d promised to stop lying about who and what she was. He wouldn’t understand, but she figured if he wanted the answer, she could give it to him.

  “The room is nothing more than a mental exercise. Some of the people at the asylum…”

  “Asylum?”

  Cass cringed. Of course he hadn’t known, and for a second she feared that any credibility she might have gained with him was suddenly lost. It shouldn’t matter. She shouldn’t care that he didn’t believe her, and talking out what happened might be a relief.

  “Yes. I was committed. For a time.”

  Malcolm nodded, then sipped his tea. “Go on.”

  “Anyway, some of the people there helped. They would try to tell me how to control the voices. Of course, for them, it was crazy voices in their head rather than ghosts, but the principle was the same. Then, a friend at the place where I eventually ended up taught me how to conjure the room to create an atmosphere of control. When I feel a…whatever you want to call it…making contact, I form a mental picture of a room inside my head with a door that leaves them on one side and me on the other. It helps me keep things separate, you know?”

  “No. But keep going.”

  “When the door opens, I see the person on the other side. The dead speak to me, tell me whatever it is they have to say, and when it’s done the door closes.”

  “And no one has ever gotten inside.”

  “No.”

  He shook his head. “But you create the room. You think it up. Why did you let it inside?”

  “I couldn’t stop it. The contact was overwhelming. My brain interpreted that as it being inside the room. Attacking me. Hitting me.”

  “It hit you in your side. That’s why you have that welt?” He set his mug down behind him on the counter and lifted himself off the stool to pace a small area of her living room. “It doesn’t make sense. This thing isn’t real. Even if it is what you say it is, it’s not a corporeal entity. It can’t touch you.”

  “You have to understand that the mind is a truly powerful thing, and it controls our bodies more than we realize. My body simply reacted to the powerful mental image it received.”

  “Can you fight back?”

  Good question. “I don’t know. I didn’t think about it. It was t
here and I was afraid. I don’t really know how to fight.”

  Malcolm’s eyes fell to the mat and the bands in the corner of the room.

  “Yoga and Pilates,” she confirmed. “Great for strength, flexibility and relaxation. Not so good against monsters.”

  “Okay. Let’s get back to why you saw it in the first place. How does that work?”

  “This has been different, too. Spirits only come to me when I’m close, physically, to the one they want to make contact with. It’s the purpose of a medium.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Slightly frustrated at having to explain everything, she paused and tried to clarify her meaning. “Medium means ‘in the middle.’ I’m nothing more than a conduit between someone dead and someone living. But the first time I saw this thing, I was alone in my apartment.”

  “You think it just came to you?”

  “Maybe. At first I thought it could be someone from my past.”

  “You have a monster in your past? You said you had no family.”

  Having him say the words triggered a pull in her gut. She thought back to the dream she’d had before it had shown up. She remembered seeing her grandfather. He wanted her to talk to him, but she wouldn’t allow it. It wasn’t the first time he’d tried to contact her and she guessed it wouldn’t be the last, no matter how many times she rejected him. He’d hurt her, yes. Betrayed her. But he wasn’t a monster.

  “No, no monster,” she said, more to assure herself than to answer him. “At least none that I know of. And I don’t have a family. My mother left me when I was a baby. I didn’t know her in life to know how she would be in death. Same with my father. My grandparents raised me. My grandmother could never hurt me, but my grandfather…”

  “He was cruel?”

  “He was strict,” she amended. “He was old-fashioned. He was straitlaced. But he liked to carry caramels in his sweater pocket and read bedtime stories to me. He wasn’t a monster.”

  “I bet he also wasn’t the type to believe in special gifts,” Malcolm surmised.

  The emotional pain came back in a wave that she tried to shrug off. “No, he wasn’t. For as long as I can remember I’ve heard voices. Whisperings in my head. My grandmother called them my imaginary friends. It wasn’t until puberty that it started to change. I began to understand that the voices were real. One day my grandmother had a friend over who had just lost her husband. It was like he was shouting at me inside my head. Finally, I stopped and listened to what he was saying. That’s when the pain started. I can tell you, I freaked out my grandmother’s friend. Told her where to find her missing insurance policy. She didn’t know if she wanted to kiss me or run from me. But I couldn’t control it back then. It was like if I didn’t get the words out, it would hurt even worse.”