Hitchers

CHAPTER 14

The doorbell rang three times before I heard it. It rang a fourth before I could muster the strength to say, “Come in.”

Mick found me at the kitchen table, a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a shot glass in front of me. I’d completely forgotten that he was going to come by.

“All right, Finn?” he said. I was still shaking; I felt colder than the night I was pulled out of the reservoir. Could that have been just over a month ago? That was utterly inconceivable.

“I don’t need a psychiatrist,” I said. “I need an exorcist.” Or was it a delusion? Maybe I was a deeply disturbed individual. That was very possible. In fact, it seemed almost probable when I considered the alternative.

Mick pulled out a chair and sat. “What happened to you?” His voice was soft, calming, the tone you use to comfort someone who’s been raped. Which was not far off. I felt violated. I’d been ripped from my own body, pushed to a place where you go in your nightmares, where you try to open your mouth to scream but can’t find your own mouth.

“What happened?” he repeated.

I couldn’t explain. It would take too many words, too many strange words. Finally, I said simply, “My grandfather visited me.”

Mick nodded, not in understanding but to encourage me to continue. Then he frowned. “Hang on, I thought your grandfather was dead.”

“He is.”

He clapped my shoulder, went to the cabinets, and rooted around, returning a moment later with a mug. He poured himself a drink.

“Can you turn on more lights?” I asked. It had been dark for hours, but I’d been too afraid to move about the house. Grandpa was hiding in every dark corner.

“Yeah,” Mick said. His chair scraped the linoleum. “Which?”

“All of them.”

Without a word Mick went into the living room and turned on the lights. In the brighter light the kitchen spun slightly, the results of half a bottle of Jack. Mick disappeared upstairs.

“Bloody hell,” I heard him mutter.

He returned holding the strip. I looked away—I didn’t want to see it. It was evidence that I hadn’t imagined it all.

“This was good,” Mick said. “Why did you ruin it?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then who did?”

I shrugged helplessly. “Grandpa.” I could still hear him breathing through my nose as he slashed with the scissors. He’d clutched the scissors in his fist the way a child does, just as he’d held a pencil when he was alive.

Mick studied me. “Why don’t you take your time, tell me when you’re ready?” He poured me another shot of whiskey. I downed it.

Grandpa was in me right now. That’s what this had all been about from that first twitch in my throat—it was Grandpa, inside me, struggling to get out.

But that was impossible. It just didn’t make sense. I dragged my hands down my face. Who could help me? I was beginning to doubt Corinne could. What if this was real? What if Grandpa had somehow crawled out of the grave and inside me?

I froze, my hand clutching the glass. Suddenly the experience I’d had while I was dead came into tighter focus. I’d been dead, so I’d taken up residence in some unsuspecting person, the way Grandpa was in me. Maybe Lyndsay had felt a twitching in her throat when I tried to speak.

Finally, I opened my mouth. “My grandfather took control of me. All of me. He did that—” I pointed to the ruined strip on the kitchen table.

Mick stared at the strip, his lip curled in disgust, or maybe disbelief. “You mean, he actually took control of your body?”

“Yeah.”

He pressed the balls of his hands against his eyes. “I’ve got to tell you, Finn, this is crazy shit you’re talking.”

“There are dead people inside us,” I said, rolling right over his skepticism. “The voices are the dead people taking control for a moment.”

“Christ, don’t say that,” Mick said. He cupped his hands over his ears, propped his elbows on the table. “You’re going to give me another bleeding heart attack.”

I reached for the remote and scrolled until I found the news report I’d recorded. “Have you seen this?”

It was only a two-minute piece. They showed people blurting in zombie-speak, their faces in silhouette to protect their identities. A psychiatrist said that cases had been cropping up in the greater Atlanta area for the past few weeks. They hadn’t figured out what it was, but believed it was a form of post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by the anthrax attack. He estimated there were several hundred to several thousand cases.

I turned away from the TV

“You really think we’re possessed?” Mick asked. “All of us? Thousands of us?” Mick clutched at my elbow. “Are you sure you didn’t imagine the whole thing? Were you on anything?”

“I’m not sure of my own name right now. But I was completely sober.” I gestured toward the ruined strip, once again saw my hand reaching for the scissors, stabbing, furious. “And it would have to be one hell of a delusion for me to do that, don’t you think?”

Hadn’t Grandpa been furious even before he saw the strip? He had, hadn’t he? I thought back, tried to reconstruct the events. He’d danced a jig. Much as that was out of character for someone as joyless as my grandfather, it made sense. He’d spent the last fifty years of his life in a wheelchair. Having control of legs that worked, that he could feel, would be wonderful. As soon as he stopped dancing, he said, “And now.” Then he went straight for the strip.

He’d already known about it.

“He’s watching us right now. Through my eyes.” I shut my mouth. It sounded so paranoid.

Mick froze, his eyes wide. “What do you mean?”

I told him how Grandpa had known about the strips even before he set (my) eyes on them.

“Do you see what he’s saying about me? Do you see? How can you take his side?” Mick said. He clenched his eyes closed, reached toward the ceiling, fingers clawed. “Christ, I can’t take this any more.”

I stared through the dark amber of the Jack Daniel’s bottle at the pads of my fingertips, debating whether to drink more. I was probably close to vomit territory.

“Wait a minute. Have you noticed that you haven’t blurted once since I got here?” Mick asked.

He was right; I’d been so freaked out I’d forgotten about the voice. “I haven’t blurted since it happened. That must have been two hours before you got here.”

Mick leapt from his chair. “Maybe that’s it. Whatever it is,” he churned his hands through the options, “a dead person, a nervous tick, whatever, works its way to the surface, takes you over for a spell, and then goes on its way.”

There was a certain logic to that. Some viruses waited hidden in cells until they finally showed themselves, then they were driven out of the body.

“God, I hope you’re right,” I said.