The Binding

by Nicholas Wolff

  Wasn’t it better to work the case himself? Bringing in a colleague would be to leave Becca alone, defenseless. That he couldn’t do.

  At least admit there were things here he couldn’t completely explain. Begin there. That was the only way to fully protect her.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Ramona was watching one of those Real Housewives shows. It was a morning marathon, and she’d lost track of which city she was watching now: Was it Orange County or Beverly Hills? The people were definitely vulgar and very tan either way.

  The fridge powered on with its sudden, seizing noise, and Ramona settled deeper into Zuela’s leather couch. The woman bought quality, Ramona thought. The phone rang every other day with A1 Collections on the caller ID or some other creditor looking for money, but that didn’t stop Zuela. Her TV was Sony—Ramona had tried in vain to convince her that Panasonic now made better electronics, but you couldn’t tell the woman anything. Sony had been king in the ’90s, when her tastes seemed to have frozen in place, and so Sony it was. The couch was probably from Macy’s. Her luggage was two pieces of leather Louis Vuitton. That was all she owned. Zuela could go to Russia in October and she’d fit every damn thing she needed in those two pieces. If it didn’t fit, it didn’t go.

  Ramona’s eyelids began to weigh down. The fridge was humming loudly, filling the room with its comforting tones. She channel surfed for a few minutes, settling on a blond man dressed like a New York dandy who appraised a vase for $8,000. Ramona whistled. But as the show moved on to a Civil War–era pistol supposedly carried by General Sherman, the sleep man began to whisper in her ear.

  Just twenty minutes. We’ll get up fresh and juicy for the essay.

  Ramona began to drift off, catching her eyelids closing and forcing them back open. Was Margaret coming tonight? A ripple of fear coursed through her mind as her eyelids fluttered again and closed.

  The dream again, the one of flying above the Raitliff Woods. The stars seemed to be farther away in the sky, and the mountains massed hugely to her left, the ridges of them covered with the little saw teeth of pine trees, just visible against the blue-black sky. The sound of rushing wind came into her ears and, yes, she was above that clearing in the woods again, but the air was colder and the night darker than before.

  I didn’t even have to travel, Ramona said to herself, still half conscious, slumped on Zuela’s leather couch. Direct flight to Wartham tonight. But the sarcasm faded and she groaned slightly on the couch. She shivered, and her finger plucked at the green-and-yellow knit throw that lay across her legs. The air in her dream was a frigid stream. Oh God, why does it have to be so cold?

  She didn’t want to look down. Fear now, like a shiver in her blood. But the adrenaline that coursed through her veins wasn’t enough to wake her up and only made the stars glimmer a little more brightly as she sank completely into the dream.

  Margaret’s down there. Don’t. Make. Eye. Contact. Just observe.

  But her neck muscles grew tired and suddenly her head slumped down and she was closer to the earth than she had been the night before. The clearing glowed, the grass a pale green. It seemed the ground was being swept by some white fire, or was that the moonlight?

  Margaret’s voice came to her from a long way off.

  One of . . .

  Ramona tried not to listen. Oh God, you bitch, leave me alone. Just leave me ALONE.

  This wasn’t the Margaret she’d known asking for help. This was evil Margaret. Taunting Margaret.

  The clearing was surrounded by tall pines, throwing their thick shadows straight down, as if there were a powerful source of light just above Ramona. At first it was pitch black on that perimeter and Ramona’s mind rebelled. There was nothing there. Nothing, Margaret, shut up now. Just shut up. Her eyes darted to the periphery of the clearing, the dark edge of the square.

  But then shapes began to appear out of the blackness at the border, shapes that had been there all along, waiting—heads down, Ramona sensed. There were three of them. Margaret and two others, but not the old man and the bald man this time. Two others.

  Margaret’s voice droning, like static on a radio with the station coming closer. Syllables coming clear.

  One of these—

  NO! NO! Margaret, I don’t want to know who they are.

  But she couldn’t stop it. A nimbus of light flickered around the first figure, and Ramona saw a tall black-haired man, handsome and thin, in his thirties maybe. His eyes were closed, but Ramona was sure she’d never seen him before. And then the light faded.

  Ramona was mute, too afraid to talk now. Show me the other two, she said, because she knew that she had no power to resist, that the faces would be shown to her whether she willed it or not.

  The second one came into view on the side of the clearing nearest the mountains, and with a start Ramona thought . . . I think I know him.

  The light peaked, and suddenly it was the sad walrus face of that detective who had come to see her. What was his name? John Bailey. Down in the clearing he was wearing the same tan shirt and dark coat that he’d had on when he came to interview Ramona at Wartham. His head was bowed and his hair ruffled in the frigid air. He seemed to be swaying in the wind.

  A thought flashed into Ramona’s head, a thought so horrible that she at first tried to block it out. But it demanded entry. What if I’m supplying these people? What if they are all coming out of my mind and I’ve doomed them? What if the next face in the clearing is the next person I think of and I bring them into this nightmare just because they entered my mind? That would mean . . .

  Oh God, don’t let the next one be Zuela.

  Because she knew that it wasn’t good to be in the border of the clearing. The thin whine of horror that was screaming way in the back of her mind let her know that.

  Do you even know who this is, Margaret? Ramona whispered to herself. He’s a detective. He’s trying to help you, you stupid bitch.

  One of these is . . .

  A light pulsed from just beneath her. Ramona tried to keep her eyes on Margaret, but a heavy magnet pulled them down. To the border opposite the detective. Someone was standing there, smaller than all the rest.

  A little boy, not more than six or seven years old. His eyes were closed. He had a mop of brown hair, and his shoulders were slumped dejectedly.

  A child? Oh, please no. I never saw that boy in my life. Margaret, who is he?

  One of these is . . . The voice a little clearer, like your favorite radio station as you drove home from college, getting stronger and stronger and bringing back memories of high school dances. But she didn’t want to hear the rest.

  The little boy’s eyes fluttered open.

  A voice came into her head, a thin scream: Please don’t let him get me!

  Suddenly the light faded and the border was dark and the white fire danced over the grass. And the malignant power of the place seemed to rise like a metal hum in her ears.

  One of these is next.

  Ramona groaned. She felt the stream underneath her grow unbearably cold, and something tugged on the pad of her right index finger, a nubby fabric. She clutched at it, but the metal hum was calling her back. Come see . . .

  She willed her finger forward, and it reached, the knuckle painful as it unclenched.

  . . . which one.

  A thread tickled the pad of her finger, and Ramona hooked it and pulled. The whine rose and blasted into her ears and she felt a blackness behind it. Oh God, wake up. Ramona, open your goddamn eyes or you won’t—

  Ramona yanked the fabric and suddenly she came awake. She was breathing hard, and looked around the room in the house in Roosevelt, her eyes wide with adrenalized fear. She was still sitting on the couch, and her finger had hooked the knit throw and pulled it up to her chest.

  “What if I told you . . .”

  The TV was still on, showing A
ntiques Roadshow. A painting stood on an easel, and a white-haired woman dressed in a red-and-black sweater was holding her hands up to her cheeks in anticipation.

  “. . . that I would appraise this one at twenty-five thousand . . .”

  The fridge motor kicked off and the sound died away. Ramona pulled the throw up to her chin and took in a deep, rattling breath. She stared at the TV, her expression growing harder.

  Goddamn you, Margaret, she thought. You think you can scare me all the way from Massachusetts?

  Ramona’s lips set in a hard line, and her eyes narrowed. Look at me, scared of my own shadow. I might as well go down to the bodega and get some garlic and make a necklace, maybe spread some salt all through Zuela’s house to protect us from the haunts.

  Suddenly, she threw off the yarn blanket and slapped the power button on the remote.

  That little boy, she thought. Something is looking for him, the thing that killed Margaret.

  She closed her eyes, and the lids were rimmed with tears that mixed with the mascara she’d put on that morning.

  But it wasn’t just the little boy. She’d had enough of Roosevelt, of reality TV, of Nollywood movies. Her future ran through Wartham College. There was no way around it. If she allowed herself to be scared off, she would never get her diploma and she would be another promising child of the ghetto who’d given up.

  Ramona Best decided that it was quite enough, thank you. She was going back to Wartham. Tomorrow.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Nat’s eyes shut tightly. A cart was coming down the hall, unseen. It had a bad wheel, and the wheel was making a whirring, clattering noise that only grew louder as it approached his office. Nat frowned and got up to slam his door. Dr. Jennifer Greene walking by, a clipboard swinging in her left hand. Her eyebrow went up, and she swerved toward his office.

  “Hey there.”

  Nat gave a wan smile and let the door stand open.

  “Dr. Greene,” he said, walking back to his chair.

  “Dr. Thayer.” Jennifer Greene slipped inside his office and leaned just to the left of the door. “Any progress with your Cotard girl?”

  Nat glanced at the computer. “Actually, no. I wish I had more to report.”

  “Is she still insisting that her relatives are imposters?”

  “Yep.”

  Greene’s eyes narrowed. Nat tried to arrange his face into some kind of normative expression; he wanted to confide in her, but at the same time he feared exposing Becca.

  “Well, that aside,” Jennifer said finally, “you look like shit, my friend. Are you okay?”

  For a moment, the urge to reveal all to his colleague flooded through Nat like a splash of sunshine through an unshuttered window.

  “Nat?”

  Just to say the words and make the whole thing normal, to make it an odd clinical experience that could be analyzed and categorized. That would lift a pressing weight off his shoulders.

  “I, uh, I’m fine.”

  “Bullshit,” she sang out.

  “No, really, I am.” Nat reached forward and hit a few strokes on the laptop keyboard. “Maybe in a couple of weeks when I get a better handle on what I’ve got, we can talk.”

  “You sure? It’d be your show all the way, you know. I’m just interested.”

  “I know. I know you are. Thanks.”

  Jennifer shrugged, lifted off the wall, and slipped out of the office with a wave.

  Nat sat back at his desk. The cursor was blinking. Nat began to write.

  I am in love with Becca Prescott.

  He stared at this line and let it stand. After a minute’s pause, he began typing again.

  She’s nineteen, recently orphaned, possibly psychotic, certainly depressed, and under my treatment. I have not informed my superiors at Mass Memorial about my consultations or opened a case file in her name. I realize this violates the oath I took as a doctor.

  But, oddly enough, these aren’t my main concerns. If Becca were an ordinary case, those would be my only concerns. I would have terminated the relationship long ago and formalized her treatment. But we’re far past that now. There are worse possibilities than having my license revoked and my career ruined. Those things seem to matter less and less. I don’t really care if they happen now.

  Nat read what he’d written and frowned in annoyance. After so many years of cauterizing his emotions—no, denying their actual existence—he found it hard to express exactly what he was feeling. It was like writing a description of a country he’d never been to. He stabbed the keys in frustration.

  What I want to know: Is this what love feels like, a kind of warm electricity that swarms in your chest when you think of the other person? Does love make your body feel light? Do you suddenly have the belief that you can feel what she feels, across distances, as if by telepathy? Or is this something else? It’s ridiculous, but I’m being completely serious. Do you feel that you can anticipate her moods, to know what her face will look like when you enter a room? And to feel as if there is a part of you, a channel, a connection that stays open, like an exposed nerve, except when you’re with her, when the circuit is completed and your energy flows in a closed loop that is rarely verbal or even describable?

  I’ve never felt anything like this, and it’s frightening, to be honest. Because there is another possibility besides a normal romantic relationship between two people, and that possibility is that Becca was murdered and was brought back to life as something else. This opens up a range of possibilities too terrible to contemplate. But I have to contemplate them. A crisis is coming. More people may die if I do not act. I need to know what I’m dealing with.

  If Becca is inhabited, partly possessed or whatever the hell you want to call it, if this kind of thing exists and that’s what I’m facing, then there is no guarantee that my thoughts and feelings haven’t been—

  Nat paused. Affected? Infected? What was the right term? A dark, fierce expression played across his face and he finally wrote altered, and then continued.

  I haven’t abandoned the idea that Becca is suffering from a psychiatric illness. She may very well be. But, at the moment, that is not the clearest danger to her health. The deaths of Margaret Post and Walter Prescott are evidence that there is a predator at work. The attempt to gain access to her room the other night is clear evidence that the predator wants to harm Becca. Perhaps her awareness of this intention has triggered or intensified an existing disorder inside Becca. To ignore the possibility of some kind of the supernatural is, in this very rare case, to do a disservice to my patient.

  If we allow for this possibility, what can we say about it? It’s intelligent. Tactical. (What else can you call Becca’s visit to the house of the dead girl’s parents?) It’s aware of forces that endanger it. That would have to include me.

  He stared at the last line, his eyes questioning and his forehead deeply set with worry wrinkles. Then he started again.

  No, I cannot believe this. I cannot believe that what I feel has anything to do with evil. At the very least, I love Becca. But what about when she is being unduly influenced—in whatever way—by something that is evil? What then?

  Two weeks ago, I would have given six or eight perfectly good reasons why human intelligence can’t inhabit a different person. Cannot possibly influence the minds of others to the point of having them commit murder. We have many examples of people who thought this was true: cases of supposed demonic possession, schizophrenia, paranoia. Even the National Enquirer has stories about aliens stealing people’s brains.

  But what if, lost in all those ridiculous stories, there were those rare—or not so rare—cases of true possession? And we’ve been missing them all along, from Monsieur Cotard to the Vatican to the rest of us? The interview with the nzombe professor said great sorcerers are born, not made, and born infrequently. Could it be that the true cases of nzom
bes have been hiding among the insane, camouflaged by a science that thought it knew everything but was missing a pattern in the most extreme cases?

  I can’t believe I’m writing this, but it seems possible. How else can I explain what I’ve seen? When the discipline’s answers are no longer adequate, you have to search elsewhere. And that’s where I am, far past the frontiers of everything I’ve learned and dreading what comes next. There is the sensation of falling . . .

  Maybe I’m losing my mind. That would be another possibility, and would in fact explain quite a lot. But John has seen what I’ve seen and he can’t explain it either. How can a cop and a psychiatrist both lose touch with reality at the same time, on the same case? It’s not logical.

  Perhaps if I’d been in love before, I could compare the two states and detect any oddities. Do a comparative study. (But perhaps this thing knows this, and it is my “opening,” my blind spot, that I’ve never felt so strongly about someone else and so will mistake his probings for something they aren’t.) But I haven’t.

  It doesn’t matter if the monster has Becca, watches over her, intends to do evil through her. I know what her eyes said. She is still in there somewhere, even if the thing controls most of her mind. I can’t leave her as a hostage.

  So, this is the present status: I have no idea what is happening. And I don’t know what the traveler can do. I don’t know if the sorcerer’s spirit is really here in Northam. I am seeing only the appearances of things.

  And yet I have to go forward. I have to save Becca.

  Nat stared at what he’d written. The wobbly cart was coming back again, from the other direction this time, the noise of the wheel slowly building to a crescendo in the hallway. But he didn’t hear it this time; his eyes were alight with the white glow of the screen.