Possession

TWO

I did get home all right, in spite of my eye. The itching, aching, watering aspects weren’t the worst of it; my left eye simply would not banish the Grey from sight, even when I was surrounded by the filtering effects of glass and steel in my truck. When I’d first become aware of the Grey it had, for a while, been persistently visible until I learned to filter it out. At the moment, no amount of trying would allow me to see without a flickering, color-tangled overlay of the ghost world so long as I had both eyes open. If I closed the injured eye, the vision merely changed intensity, but at least my eye was less raw. I hoped this wasn’t going to last too long. . . .

I felt like a slacker coming home so early, but I wasn’t going to get anything done at the office or on the street with my eye objecting nonstop. As I opened the door to my condo, a furry little blur raced out, crossing my boot and streaking into the hall.

“Ferret!” came a warning cry from inside. Apparently Quinton—my . . . “boyfriend” doesn’t quite cover it, but it’s close enough for most applications—had been hanging out at my place. He often did, but there had been some risky circumstances in his life recently and the frequency and duration of his companionship had become unpredictable.

“Too late,” I called back, dropping my bag and spinning around, hoping to catch the fuzzy miscreant before she managed to get outside, underfoot, or into one of the neighbors’ homes. Visions of the Grey and the normal slid and tipped over each other, making me dizzy, and I wobbled, stumbling into the wall and sliding down to my knees.

“Sneaky little carpet shark!” Quinton charged out and tripped over me, falling face-first onto the carpet outside my door. “Blast!” We both scrambled around, getting only semi-upright before lurching farther along the hall like a pair of gorillas as we tried to snatch the ferret from the floor.

Chaos, the ferret, flipped around, dancing backward out of our grasp, chuckling and chattering at us as if we were the funniest show on earth. Until she backed into a door and her progress came to a sudden halt. For just a moment, her back end attempted to climb vertically up the door, but gravity was still operating and her butt slipped back down, piling into her middle. She sprang up, swiveling to face the new threat, and smacked her nose into the immovable object. With a chirp of surprise, she leapt away from the door, showing it her teeth by waving her open mouth in its direction, and backed straight into Quinton’s scooping hand.

“Got ya! Victory is mine—because I have thumbs and you don’t!”

The ferret stuck her head out of his fist and licked her nose as if this was all very boring.

I put out my hands. “Do you want me to take her?”

“Nope. It was my miscalculation that let her out and I’ll be the one to put her back.” He blinked at my face. “Umm . . . did you have one of those ‘interesting’ days today? Because you look like someone clocked you.”

“Painted me in the eye actually. And yes—a little too interesting. I’ll tell you in a minute. Maybe over a drink.”

Quinton raised his eyebrows.

I nodded. “That kind of day. All right—you carry the furry offender back to ferret prison.”

Chaos was not pleased to be returned to her cage so I could put my things away without tripping over her on my semi-blind side. Ferrets tend to want to dance right in your path and I didn’t want to fall down again or—worse—step on her. But she was tiny, warm, and fuzzy, which went a small distance to making me feel less annoyed.

Quinton let me retire to the couch while he dug up a couple of beers as well as a cool, wet cloth to put on my irritated eye. I did my impression of a slug and slumped on the cushions as if my bones had dissolved, closing my eyes and letting the half-Grey effect of my injury reel forth in silver streamers against the darkness inside my eyelids. I heard Quinton bumping and rattling in the kitchen and saw a glowing energetic mist-shape moving in the persistent Grey that had invaded my mind’s eye. There were several other odd shapes floating about in the limited vision that played out behind my closed lids, but I couldn’t identify who or what they were—ghosts, neighbors, random knots of energy . . . ? They weren’t really doing anything that I could understand, just moving here and there. Only Quinton’s shape seemed to be operating with conscious intent. It drifted over and I felt him nudge my hand with something cool.

“You said you’d like a drink.”

I opened my eyes, finding that the lids seemed heavier than usual, and glanced first up at him, then down to the glass he was holding next to my hand. The small glass had half an inch of amber-gold liquid at the bottom. “Whiskey?”

“It didn’t sound like a mystery beer sort of day,” he replied, alluding to his habit of accepting payment in beer for odd jobs done for various street people we knew around Pioneer Square.

I took the glass. “Definitely not.” While the drink was welcome, I would rather have had the energy to ravish him. A warm sensation in my chest and a wicked glint in his eye gave me the impression he was thinking the same thing. Oh well . . .

He sat next to me as I sipped and covered my free hand with his. “So, what about this day of yours?”

“Well, a client’s sister flipped a blob of paint into my eye. Turns out oil paint has quite a few nasty things in it—before you start: I already saw the doctor—and I need to give the eye a little rest. But I also need to figure out what’s going on with the sister.”

“In what way? She has a habit of flipping paint at people?”

“No. This is kind of delicate ground since I’m breaking confidentiality to discuss it, but I don’t know how else I’m going to get to the bottom of this if I can’t talk to a few people about the case—or cases—but I’ll get to that bit in a minute.”

“I won’t discuss it with anyone.”

I nodded before going on. “OK. The sister is in some kind of vegetative state—kind of like a coma but not. Anyhow, she shouldn’t be doing much of anything beyond lying still, but in the past few months, she’s started sitting up and painting. Even more recently she started babbling. She doesn’t appear to be doing this on her own but rather seems to be either under someone else’s control or channeling a ghost or something that’s using her body for a few minutes at a time before it drops out or gets pushed out. I don’t know anything else yet, but the home care nurse let slip that there are two other cases like this—vegetative patients doing strange things—and Skelly was surprised to hear there were any vegetative patients at all in the area, since it’s very rare, much less that they were doing impossible things.” I paused to sip my drink, appreciating the warm sensation of the liquor making its way down and expanding the calm and security that spread from Quinton’s touch on my hand.

“Now,” I continued, “you know me. I can’t swallow that all of the rare cases in the area are exhibiting the same strange behaviors for unrelated reasons.”

“Mathematically unlikely,” Quinton agreed.

“So there has to be either a link or a related cause. And before I got paint in my eye, I could see that the room was pretty heavily haunted. Most of the ghosts weren’t of the willful variety—there were a lot of displaced repeaters there. I’d like to get in contact with the families of the other PVS patients and find out what’s been happening to them, maybe get to see them and evaluate the ghost situation. The client initially broached the subject as a possible spirit or demonic possession. She’s religious and apparently this is causing her more than the usual crisis experienced by the haunted. Her priest isn’t being very helpful—something about the limits of his role, which is frankly beyond my knowledge and probably not germane.”

Quinton made a disgusted face. “Is he blaming her in some way? Making the situation out to be some kind of punishment for sin?”

“I don’t get that sense, but apparently he, or the church in question, doesn’t support the Catholic idea of demonic possession and exorcism, so she’s mostly been told to sit tight and pray. Which hasn’t been helping, that the client can see. So she’s desperate and very upset and she’s hoping I can figure out what’s going on. What she expects to happen after that is anyone’s guess. I suppose she’ll want to get rid of the unwanted visitors, but she hasn’t said that or how she’d prefer to see it done. She has hired a medium to sit with her sister and try to converse with whoever or whatever is coming around, but the medium hasn’t had a lot of luck. The babbling appears to be the only communication they’re receiving and that seems to be in a foreign language.”

“Wow. Does the sister know any foreign languages?”

“I don’t know, but if so, I’m guessing either it’s not one her sister also knows or it’s not a language at all.” I took another sip of whiskey and sighed, closing my burning eyes again and tilting my head back against the sofa cushions. “The medium took a digital recording of today’s outburst and said he’d send it to me—”

“Wait,” Quinton interrupted me. “A male medium? Isn’t that a bit unusual?”

“I don’t know. As far as I’ve ever seen, mediums are universally charlatans, regardless of gender.”

“Do you really have room to make that accusation, Harper?”

I pressed my lips hard together and didn’t say anything until I’d thought about it first. “I’m not a medium. I don’t act as an intermediary to spirits or wandering souls—which is what a medium supposedly does. I don’t act as a conduit for their voices or actions, either. I don’t even talk to them in that context. So, no. I’m not a medium. But you’re right. My experience isn’t everyone’s and it’s unfair of me to assume that there aren’t people with other skills related to the Grey. I know witches, shape-shifters, necromancers, sorcerers, vampires, shamans, and plenty of others who have some touch with the Grey that is unlike mine. So I should keep an open mind about whether there might be such a thing as a legitimate medium or channeler.” I opened one eye and peered at him. “And that being the case, you should be equally open-minded about the gender of any mediums that might be running around this case. This one is male and blond and a bit on the pudgy side, none of which is part of the stereotype, anyhow.” I closed my eye again.

“And he uses a digital recorder?”

“Even TV ghost hunters have moved on to high technology.”

“Yeah, but they aren’t likely to be hanging around you while I’m distracted by ruining my dad’s career.”

“Is that your latest project?” I asked.

“It’s a frequent enough accusation that I’ve decided to make it my life’s work, if I have to.” He didn’t sound at all jocular about it. Quinton’s relationship with his father was even uglier than mine had been with my mother until a couple of years ago. James Purlis was an unrepentant manipulator and a professional liar—he was a spy, after all. He worked for some covert branch of the government, running the sort of bizarre and creepy projects featuring alien autopsies or psychics attempting to kill goats with the power of their minds that you usually see only on cheesy documentaries running on late-night TV. Except, in his case, the “Ghost Division” wasn’t a scam or a joke and he was deadly serious about it—whatever it was. He had also seemed set on sucking Quinton back into the espionage business ever since he had confirmed that his son wasn’t dead.

That was my fault. If I hadn’t gone off to get myself killed, Quinton wouldn’t have broken his cover and ended up asking his father for help. I tried not to feel bad about it, not because I wasn’t guilty but because Quinton didn’t like it and tended to tell me off. Aren’t we a fun couple? Though I will admit to a certain degree of sinful glee anytime a wrench was thrown into the elder Purlis’s works—more so if I got to throw the wrench, since I’d disliked him from the first moment we met and he knocked me down.

“Your dad’s a jerk,” I said. “And I promise not to fall in love with any pudgy blond mediums or their digital recorders while you’re busy reminding him of that.”

“All right, then.”

“Hey,” I added, peeling open my eyes again and looking at him. “Can I get a promise from you, too?”

His slightly stiff expression broke and he smiled. “Sure. I’d promise you anything.”

“I only want small things. Don’t let him snatch you and if you have to run, let me know you’re not dead. Oh, and that, too.”

“What too?”

“Don’t get dead. I’m the only one in this family who’s allowed to play that game.”

He leaned over and pulled me into his arms. As he spoke, his voice trembled just a little. “That’s a lousy game. Let’s not play it at all.” He squeezed me and I squeezed back, breathless. “And . . . uh . . . what do you mean ‘family’?” he asked. “Is there something I don’t know?”

I puzzled that one for a moment and gasped once I got it. “Oh. No. No imminent pitter-patter of little geek-feet. Just you, me, and about three million ghosts.”

He laughed and I thought he sounded relieved. “Damn, this town’s got more dead people than live ones.”

“Most do.”

“Then we shouldn’t add to the population.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

He kissed me. “You never do.”

“Hey, the last guy I shot was already dead.”

“Come to think of it, the last guy I shot was, too. Although he was a zombie, so does that really count?”

“I vote no. Doesn’t count.”

“I vote for dinner.”

I wriggled a bit in his arms, but didn’t have the energy to push away and look at him—I couldn’t even get my eyes to open properly. “Dinner? How romantic after zombies.”

“I was thinking more of the fact that you sound like you’re about to fall asleep and food might be a good idea.”

I gave up resisting and put my head on his chest. “OK. It is a good idea. Whiskey was probably not. But I still appreciated it. You’re my knight in silicon armor.”

“I think I’d rather be the frisky rogue in stealth motley.”

“How can motley be stealthy?”

“How is a hipster like a cheap hot pad?”

“What?” I asked, not sure I’d heard that correctly. I felt very sleepy. . . .

“I asked you how a hipster is like a hot pad.”

“Umm . . . they both look ridiculous with a mustache?”

“No. They both only think they’re cool.”

“I’m not sure that explains how motley can be stealthy.”

“It doesn’t, but I need to get up and find some food for you. If you’re laughing, it’s easier to change the subject.”

“Oh. I hear there’s some food hiding in the fridge.”

“Was it Chinese food? Because if so, its hiding place was discovered and ravaged by terrorists.”

“Terrorist forks, I presume.”

“Chopsticks. I would never send a lone fork against Chinese leftovers. Totally against all conventions of food warfare.”

I started giggling and could barely say, “So you’re the food terrorist.”

“I admit it. And I’d do it again—for Queen and Country. Or at least for lunch.”

I kept giggling and Quinton let me slump back into my corner of the couch with my eyes still closed while he picked up my whiskey glass and returned to the kitchen. I could follow his movement through the Grey fog version of the room and was content with that, not even sure I was going to be awake whenever food was ready to eat, and pretty sure I wasn’t going to care.

The smell of food perked me up a bit. Quinton persuaded me to move to the kitchen table instead of trying to eat while sitting on the couch on the supposition that I was less likely to suffocate in my dish if I was upright. The ferret was not invited to join us for dinner and she snubbed us by sleeping in her cage the whole time instead.

Quinton brought the case up again once I’d gotten a few bites down. “Do you think your case is a legitimate haunting?”

“Not a haunting, a possession. Although they do fall into the general category of hauntings, in this particular situation the possession doesn’t appear to be related to the location or to an object—which is usually the case with classical hauntings. I’m not that familiar with haunted houses, since I’ve only seen a few personally, but this doesn’t have the same feel at all.”

“Is that why you want to talk to the other patients you heard about? After all, they aren’t your clients.”

“That’s exactly why. If the cases are significantly similar, then I’ll have more information to give my client. It’s really weird that there are so many to begin with and that these are all demonstrating aberrant behavior. Skelly said even one normal PVS case in an area the size of Seattle is rare. So this is freakishly beyond statistical probability. I’m not sure how I’ll find the other patients, though. Skelly had no idea and warned me off of asking anyone to violate patient confidentiality. Which is fine, but it does leave me unsure how to get the info I need.”

“Can you ask the ghosts?”

“Which ghosts? I’m not sure who or what is controlling my client’s sister and I wasn’t able to make any contact in the time I had in the room. They seem very concentrated on the patient. That may be the same problem Stymak—the medium—is having. He may not be able to break into their communication with the patient long enough to get any useful information and has to try to pick through the bits that he can capture on the recordings.”

“Yeah, but he’s at least getting that much. You could try working with him to get the ghosts’ attention and find out who the other patients are. As you pointed out, it’s unlikely that the cases are unrelated, so there should be information about the other patients in the collective knowledge of the ghosts hanging out around your client’s sister.”

“Interesting idea. Can’t hurt.”

I finished up my dinner and felt much better, if still a bit blind. While I was doing dishes, Quinton checked something on the tiny palmtop computer he’d started carrying around and began packing up his things.

“Hey,” I said, “you going somewhere?”

“Yeah. I have to get out and rattle some cages, create some uncertainty, undermine some progress. . . . I may need your help later, but for now I’d better get to it.”

“Will you be back later tonight?” I hoped I didn’t sound too wistful.

“Not tonight. If you get any odd phone calls, act normal and pretend you’ve never heard of me.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Okaayy . . . I can do that, stranger.”

He put on his jacket and slung his backpack onto his shoulders. “Thanks, beautiful.” Then he kissed me and hurried off to wreak some havoc, I supposed. I hoped it wouldn’t come home with him, whatever it was.

It was still light outside, so once I was done with the dishes and had let the ferret out again, I went ahead and called Richard Stymak, who seemed less surprised to hear from me than I might have liked. He offered to meet me at the Goss house the next morning, saying Julianne tended to be less dramatically active in the mornings than she had been today. I decided I’d keep a much closer eye on her nonetheless. Ghosts are unpredictable and I didn’t want to end up with something worse than paint flung at me.