Possessed

by Stephanie Doyle

  “You were a kid.”

  Cass stood, too agitated to sit anymore. She turned her back to him since it was easier to finish the story without looking at him. “It got worse. It seemed like everybody I came into contact with had someone on the other side. I tried to tell my grandparents what I was hearing and seeing. All they saw were the bruises. They thought I was purposely hurting myself. Then Gram got sick and things got worse. When she died, she wanted to tell him goodbye through me. I tried to explain it to him, but he just couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe me.”

  “It was him, wasn’t it? Your grandfather who had you committed.”

  Cass nodded. “I was sixteen when he sent me away.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said to her back.

  Cass smiled sadly. “Of course you are. Because there isn’t anything you can do to fix that.”

  “I know and that sucks.”

  She turned around and saw sincerity in his eyes. “I don’t want your pity,” she warned him.

  “Okay.” In a second, the sympathy she’d seen in his eyes was gone, replaced with something that looked suspiciously like a smirk. “I make it a policy to never feel sorry for someone who drives a scooter.”

  Cass chuckled softly and felt her insides shift a little in admiration of his attempt to lighten the mood. She really didn’t want to like him, but it was getting harder.

  “I prefer to call it a minimotorcycle.”

  “Whatever makes you happy. Back to last night. You said at first you thought it might be someone trying to make direct contact. I take it you changed your mind. And what about tonight?”

  “I saw someone. Across the street. A figure in jeans and a bulky hooded sweatshirt. I couldn’t make out any features. But the way he just stopped and seemed to be looking right at me…He could have simply recognized me. I couldn’t really see him.”

  “You think that’s who the monster was trying to make contact with?”

  Cass didn’t know. It all sounded so strange, even to her, who had lived with this ability for as long as she could remember. “I know it seems far-fetched.”

  “Let’s not talk about what seems far-fetched, okay. So you saw this monster through the night,” he stated as if trying to lay out the pieces to a puzzle. “When you were alone. That morning you found a dead body.”

  “A block down the street. I woke up and knew something was wrong.”

  “Then you see this thing again tonight, but this time there is a figure within view that catches your attention. What about the night before last?”

  The night Lauren was killed. Of course he wanted to know. It was a sharp reminder about what he was doing here in the first place. She shook her head. “Sorry. Last night was the first I saw it.”

  He nodded but didn’t comment. His eyes drifted away from her to a spot on the floor. “Are you going to finish your tea? I can warm it up for you.”

  “No, thanks. I won’t sleep tonight. I really need to.”

  “Yeah.” He sighed. “I know what you mean. Are you going to call Brody?”

  His question took her off guard. “Why?”

  “You saw someone who may or may not be connected to-at the very least-the murder this morning. I would think he’d want to know about it.”

  “About a faceless figure across the street? Some crazed monster loose inside my head? I doubt it.”

  “You don’t know that.” He eyed her suspiciously. “What’s the matter? Lover’s quarrel?”

  “He’s not my lover,” she countered, probably a bit too emphatically. She felt a rush of heat in her face and was sure that he didn’t believe her. She didn’t care. The idea of speaking to Dougie again made the nausea from earlier return. No, she wasn’t going to call him. Not tonight. Not until she could forget what he’d done. “If you want to, you call him.”

  “I will.”

  “Can I ask you something about this morning?” she blurted before she could take it back.

  “Okay,” he answered cautiously.

  “When you touched me…”

  “I’m sorry…”

  “I’m not looking for another apology,” she stopped him. “I want to know if you…if you felt something. Through me. You reacted…There was a change in your expression…I’m making a mess of this.”

  “You want to know if I felt some kind of presence? Like all of a sudden Lauren was standing behind me? Watching me and telling me to ‘get a grip’ in the way she used to be able to do with just a soft sigh? If I thought that or felt that then I would have to believe all that stuff I said I didn’t believe in, wouldn’t I?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Naturally I didn’t feel anything. I simply came to my senses.”

  His eyes remained steady on hers, and it seemed that there were about a hundred different things left unsaid between them in that moment. She understood what he was trying to say, but it didn’t make her any happier to know that she’d been right about the change in her gift. Right about Dougie feeling the connection, too.

  “I’m going to leave now. Are you going to be okay on your own?”

  An idea occurred to her, one that she couldn’t believe she was even considering, but she asked him before she could stop herself.

  “Do you want to touch me?”

  The question clearly took him off guard.

  “I’ll let you. You’ve been nice to me. At least tonight. You’re trying so hard to believe me and that means a lot. More than you know. I’ll do this. For you. As drained as I am I’ll let you touch me so you can feel her. So do you?”

  “I do,” he said softly. “I do want to touch you. But not so that I can feel her.”

  Cass let out the breath she was holding. His blue eyes held her completely motionless as the air around them became charged with tension and heat and…wanting.

  “Go try to get some sleep, Cass,” he finally said. “I’ll be back shortly.”

  “You’re not going to look for the person in the sweatshirt? He’s long gone by now.”

  “I don’t doubt it, but I might take a look around the area anyway. Makes me feel like I’m doing something constructive. Like I’m not as completely useless as I know I am. I’ll need the key to your chain and the key to your apartment so I can ride your scooter back and leave it inside.”

  “I’ll wait up.”

  “No, you’ll be asleep in five minutes. The keys.” He held out his hand in a manner that suggested he was used to people doing what he asked. Another sharp reminder, she decided, of the kind of man he was and why she should be wary of him.

  “You know it’s pink,” she told him with a little too much pleasure. “Bright pink.”

  He grimaced. “Yes, I noticed.”

  Cass smiled but quickly quashed it. She absolutely did not want to like him. Reaching into her jeans pocket she extracted her key ring. She saw the coffeeshop’s key and realized she would have to arrange to have it returned. The idea of job hunting the next day resurfaced and only made her that much more weary.

  He took the key ring and listened while she pointed out what opened what. “Go rest, Cass. I’ll be back.”

  She felt Spook and Nosey walk between her legs, rubbing against her. Glancing down, she saw that their faces were pinned on Malcolm, who was walking toward the door. She was sure she was imagining it, but they almost seemed disappointed he was leaving. If she were honest, she was a little disappointed, too.

  “Oh, and the bike…” she started to warn him.

  “The scooter?”

  “Whatever. It shimmies a little if you go too fast.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Have you ever ridden a bike? Because if you don’t know what you’re doing and you crash…”

  “I won’t crash.”

  It irritated her that she was letting him do this in the first place, but the thought of going back outside into the cold rain was so unappealing.

  “I’ll be careful.” He said it like a solemn promise. She figu
red she didn’t have much choice but to trust him.

  “I’ll wait up.”

  He smiled gently and reached out to caress her cheek with his finger. “I’ll be upset if you do. Can I lock this when I leave?”

  “Yes. Just turn the lock and close the door hard. I’ll leave the dead bolt off.”

  He nodded. “I’ll…call you.”

  It was the sort of I’ll call you that sounded more like I plan on never speaking to you again, but she let it go. There might have been a moment there between them that had nothing to do with his sister or her monster, but it made no sense to pursue it. They were from opposite ends of the spectrum and it was best that they stay there.

  Once he returned the bike, there really was no reason for them to speak again. Not unless she had some answers for him. Currently, she was fresh out.

  He opened the door as she stood back. The blinking light on her phone caught his attention and he nudged his chin in that direction. “You’ve got a message.”

  “I know.” She didn’t bother to say that she had no intention of listening to it tonight.

  Malcolm opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something else but then seemed to talk himself out of it. “Take care, Cass.”

  “You, too.”

  He turned the lock on the door and closed it firmly behind him. As promised, she left the dead bolt off, hoping that the criminal element wouldn’t choose this night to test her security system.

  “I don’t know, girls. I think things were easier when I thought he was a rich asshole.”

  Her cats raised their heads to her, then quickly trotted off in the direction of the bedroom, anticipating it was where she was headed next. She thought about camping out on the futon so she would hear him when he returned but figured there wasn’t much else to say.

  The police would do their job and find the killer. Dougie hadn’t been bragging earlier. He knew his job. The ticket would help, Cass was as sure of it as Lauren had been. Which meant she just needed to wait and see if this monster made contact again. Wait and see if her ability was truly changing in a significant way that went beyond being a conduit.

  Beyond channeling…to possession.

  Chapter 10

  Cass woke the next morning and felt a particular satisfaction at seeing her bike in the foyer. He must have known how to handle the scooter. There wasn’t a scratch on it.

  She made a pot of coffee and some eggs, then picked up the paper from the sidewalk. She was going to have to skip the funnies this morning and move straight to the want ads. Sipping her coffee, Cass circled a few potential opportunities while pointedly ignoring the still blinking light on her phone. What would the repercussions be if she chose not to answer it?

  Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good news. Frankly, she wasn’t sure she had the energy to handle anything else. Three days ago she’d been content with her life, her job and her very good friend.

  Today it was as if she didn’t know what way was up. Dougie was the enemy. There was a killer on the loose and possibly connected to her, and all of a sudden she was no longer a medium.

  She was a something else.

  There are those, she knew, who wouldn’t understand the distinction between hearing voices and relaying messages and allowing those voices to possess her. Psychic was an easy word for believers and nonbelievers to wrap their brain around. Of course there were the con artists who blurred the lines by claiming to be all things: clairsentient, clairvoyant, psychic medium and channeler. Not only did they cause damage through their lies, but they also made it that much more difficult for a truly gifted person to explain to a father why it was she could hear his dead grandmother, but she couldn’t find his missing little girl.

  Cataloging her skills had helped Cass to get a grasp on her life. Knowing what she was capable of made it so she could define the ways in which she could help people as well as the types of situations and publicity she wished to avoid.

  The occasional message passed to the person who most needed to hear it. A human lie detector for the police. These were tangible things that she could do by simply listening to and relating the messages from the beyond. Gifts had to be opened and played with, or what was the point of having them in the first place? Dr. Farver always used to say that. Cassandra Allen has a gift.

  But giving up more to the spirits, the ones that up until now had only spoken to her, meant a loss of control of mind and possibly even body that could be dangerous. Hadn’t she fallen into the street? And the welt on her side, that was a definite result of the monster getting too close.

  She wanted this new ability gone. She’d wanted her old abilities gone once upon a time, too. Never happened. No, there was no going back. Only forward. If only she knew for certain how it would all turn out.

  Frustrated and more than annoyed with herself that she’d spent the last half hour dissecting what was happening to her rather than concentrating on her search for a new job, she set the paper down and hit the play button on her answering machine. Moving forward probably meant not being afraid of a phone message.

  “You have one new message…beep…Cassandra, it’s Dr. Farver again. Listen, I understand why you won’t return my calls. I’m…disappointed, but I do understand. I just wanted to say that I hoped if nothing else…well…we could remain friendly if not actual friends. You were here for so long. Mad misses you. I guess I just wanted to be sure that you were all right. I won’t bother you again…beep.”

  The guilt she had felt about erasing his first message returned tenfold. She plopped back down on her single stool and reached for the phone with the intention of returning his call and apologizing. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Maybe she had chosen to walk away from that life and his convictions, but that didn’t mean he’d ever hurt her in any way. She had to find it within herself to stop blaming him just because he didn’t believe her.

  Slowly, she lowered the receiver. The answer was there. Cass needed a way to catalog, examine and diagnose the changes she was experiencing, changes that had started over a year ago, she now accepted. Maybe he wasn’t a believer, but there was no better scientist for the task than Dr. Farver. Plus, he would have access both to the records of thousands of others who shared her symptoms and to his assessments of those people.

  He would also have names. Names of others she might be able to talk to. It was through Dr. Farver that she had met Leandra, another medium who had helped her to refine her mental room to the point where she could open and close herself to contact at will. Dr. Farver hadn’t believed Leandra either, but he understood the inherent value of people with special gifts being able to network. It was, after all, a very small community.

  Putting extra food out for the girls and leaving her bike behind, Cass decided to forgo the polite ritual of a preemptive phone call and head straight for the source. The Institute of Psychical Studies was located in the northwest section of Washington, D.C. It was only about a two-hour train ride away.

  Cass took a cab to 30th Street Station. Inside the spacious building, a beautiful gold angel statue stood bearing the weighty load of humanity while watching over the flood of people who passed under its gaze each day.

  A killer had passed under its watch just a few days ago. Cass wondered if it had noticed.

  She walked up to the counter, preferring to deal with a human to purchase her ticket than a machine. It was late in the morning. Most of the commuter trains had already left, but she was able to secure a seat on the Boston Coach departing Philadelphia at 11:00 a.m.

  Gazing down at the small, white, rectangular ticket, Cass read the name of her train. Like a trolley car, the Boston Coach made the same trip each day up and down the east coast. From Boston to Washington and back, stopping at several cities along the way. Including Baltimore. The Boston Coach had been the name of the train on the ticket found in Lauren’s apartment. Quickly, Cass made a mental note to call Dougie and ask him if he’d made any progress with that.

  That’s when it hit he
r that she couldn’t call him. Not ever again. A paralyzing sadness had her stopping short in the center of the building as if she’d bumped into an invisible brick wall.

  Dougie had been one of the few friends she’d made in this world who wasn’t gifted or dealing with some kind of mental ailment. He’d been nice and normal and…and he’d used her and lied to her.

  If only he could have been honest. She wouldn’t be left with this hollow feeling that their friendship had been nothing more than a ruse to maintain contact with his wife.

  Cass tried to imagine a scenario where he’d told her everything the next morning.

  Yeah, she admitted to herself. It probably would have been just as bad then.

  Of course the easy answer was simply to forget what he’d done and forgive him, but she couldn’t imagine that she would ever feel comfortable with him again. Absolutely, he could never touch her again.

  Some friendship.

  A clicking noise distracted her from her thoughts, and Cass looked up at the old-fashioned schedule board that still turned over the departure times rather than posting them on monitors around the station. The Boston Coach was now boarding on track eleven.

  For two hours she would have nothing to do but sit and think about Dougie, sit and think about what she was going to tell Dr. Farver and sit and think about whether or not she was somehow connected to a killer.

  The good news was that with everything on her mind, she didn’t have to think about Malcolm and what she suspected could have happened last night had he actually reached out to touch her.