Daniel Hecht_Cree Black 02 (6 page)

"Cree," Ed said into the silence. His voice had changed, and now he just sounded concerned. Dear Ed: He'd never shown much
stomach for fighting with her. "Listen to me. Let me say one thing. Take a step back, okay? Third person. I'm just a guy in
Seattle whose . . . friend, Cree, does risky things. Okay. But ever since he's known her, she's been very absorbed in her
husband's death, right? Her husband, who appeared to her exactly once for about thirty seconds ten years ago, practically
lives in her. I mean, possession, obsession, where's the line?"

Cree shut her eyes, not wanting to hear this.

He went on, still more quietly: "In any case, we
know
you're vulnerable. You're temperamentally predisposed to this kind of thing. Okay, suppose it's not a monster out of
Damian III
or whatever, fine, maybe it's just a lost personality who's so afraid to die it lives parasitically on any nervous system
it can cling to. So what? You let it into you, you're still
possessed.
And who do Joyce and I and your family go to for help? There's no Cree Black to help us out." He paused and then finished
deliberately: "Cree. If there is one parapsychological phenomenon you personally should absolutely stay away from, it's possession."

'He was right, and there was no logical rebuttal because this wasn't a logical thing. There wasn't really anything she could
say. "Ed," she said fondly.

"What?"

"Nothing. Just
Ed.
"

She listened to his breathing. After a moment she heard a rustling at the other end, Edgar moving papers around on his desk,
then the faint pecking that she knew was him pulling up the calendar on his digital assistant.

"Sunday," he said resignedly. "Couldn't possibly get there before Sunday night."

When the phone rang at ten, she knew who it was before she snatched it off the hook. Her heart was suddenly pounding. "Hello,
you."

Paul chuckled. "Sorry I missed your call. I was up on the roof. Hurricane Isidore's arriving, first big blow of the year.
I had to get the furniture down or it'd end up in Baton Rouge. Luckily it's more rain than wind." His voice was warm with
just a faint luster of sunny Southern vowels, and the sound of it transported her back there, to his rooftop deck where they'd
drunk wine and talked and kissed. The big umbrella and teak table and chairs, the nighttime views of the French Quarter, narrow
streets lined by lovely decrepit buildings and secret courtyards. The lush vegetation of New Orleans and the humid air with
its sleepy, sexual charge.

"How are you?" she asked.

"Well, I was pretty good until I got your message. I had big plans for when you got here."

"Think you can rearrange things so you can take some time in another few weeks?"

"I'll try." His tone suggested he was put out, as he had every right to be. For a clinical psychologist with a highly successful
private practice, it was not easy to carve time away.

"The situation here is a crisis, or I'd never—"

"Somebody else's crisis. Isn't that the key to surviving the psychotherapy business, Cree? Getting some distance on it? I
get people in crisis every week. You learn to put up a little wall that keeps your own life intact, or else—"

"I'm not good with walls."

He made a frustrated sound. "Okay, a levee then. A dike. Just high enough to keep floodwaters out, right? Look, I don't want
to argue about the right metaphor. I miss you. I want to see you. I've been checking the days off my calendar!"

She accepted his chastening, letting a silence give them some distance from their dissonance. "What kind of big plans?" she
asked at last.

"Frankly, very sexy plans that involved superb wine, candlelight, and good music on the stereo. As well as tickets to a couple
of jazz concerts." There was still some reproach in his voice. "Jogging together up at the lake in the morning. Dinner at
Antoine's. Then some more of the wine and candlelight thing."

She thought of his bed in the tall room with its lazy ceiling fan; the fascinating scent of his pillows, his smell overlaid
on clean linen. He had a wonderful body and a sweet physicality, and the urgency was there for both of them. But it hadn't
been easy, either the first time she'd returned or her second visit in midsummer. She'd felt so inexperienced, so confused
by her memories of Mike's body and the lovemaking they'd shared so long ago—a sense of betrayal that she had to fight off.
And Paul had been a man in disarray after his shocking experience in Lafayette Cemetery; she suspected part of him feared
her, as the agent of his shattering transformation—maybe something of what she felt around Mason Ambrose.

And still it had been sweet. Enough to make her ache, thinking about him now.

"That sounds splendid," she said shyly. "I had the same general plan."

He sighed. "So it's a crisis. And it's a case that promises to be instructive?"

"Yes."

"You want to tell me about it?"

"I can't. I don't know enough yet, and if I did it'd be confidential. I'll tell you when I can, I promise."

"Just tell me which way we're going here, Cree. Forward or backward?"

"Forward," she said immediately. "Of course, Paul!" But who really knew where it would go? It was so new. Untested, uncertain.
They were not at the stage where either could say with absolute conviction, with the sweet release that came of confession,
"I love you." And while distance could obstruct the path of love, raising doubts that were unwarranted, it could also nurture
false hopes and illusions that more sustained contact might set straight.

"Forward!" he cried. A cavalry charge.

She laughed with him, and her doubts receded a bit. They talked about other things. Paul said he'd work on his calendar and
let her know when to make reservations. She told him about the conference, about Albuquerque. After a while the sense of intimacy
grew, and the plastic phone became more and more a frustrating impediment. Phones required talk, and talk required thought,
and there were times when rationality was simply not the right process. Reason was based on inquiry, and inquiry was based
on doubt, and doubt was not good for building something between a man and a woman. Your body was often so much wiser.

"What are you thinking?" he asked.

"Long-distance relationships," Cree said. "Miserable, huh?"

"All relationships are long-distance," he told her.

She was still awake when the front desk called to tell her that a package had arrived for her. When they sent it up, she found
it was an overstuffed manila envelope from Mason, with a terse note scrawled on the front:
Some materials you might find useful.

She opened it to find a two-inch stack of photocopied articles about possession. The top page featured a medieval woodcut
of some saint exorcising a naked victim who lay on the ground with a snake or worm coiling endlessly out of his mouth.

She read through the first few pages, a historical survey of possession compiled by somebody or other. Typically, symptoms
came in cycles, periods of normalcy giving way to "fits" in which the victim fell down, went into convulsions, made contorted
movements, screamed and shrieked, "displayed a frightening and horrible countenance" that often included an alarmingly extended
tongue. Other classical symptoms: vomiting up strange objects such as toads, stones, broken glass, pins, worms. Breathing
problems such as choking, coughing, wheezing. Foaming at the mouth, foul body smell, speaking in tongues, speaking in an altered
voice. Blasphemy, hypersexuality.

She turned hurriedly past that section to the summary of purported causes. Historically, the victim was thought to be inhabited
by a demon or "unclean spirit," a Satanic entity conjured or inflicted by someone nearby, usually an old woman or man who
was thought to be a witch. Such accusations often resulted in the torture and execution of the accused, usually by burning
or crushing. In later centuries, medical explanations came into favor, with the torture reserved for the victim: physical
"purging" treatments such as whipping, immersion in ice water, lifelong incarceration in madhouses, exotic drug therapies.
Toward the end of this list were the modern interpretations: epilepsy, hysteria, schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder.
Though the recent perspective was more enlightened, contemporary cures didn't strike Cree as all that improved: electroshock
therapy, lobotomy, mind-altering pharmaceuticals.

Feeling shaky, she put the stack on the desk. The woodcut bothered her: its dark, blocky rendering, the agonized victim, the
serpent demon's nasty face. She knew she should read more tonight, but she didn't feel up for it. Instead, she put the whole
pile back in its envelope as if that would contain the superstition and terror, keep it from getting loose in the room.

Thanks loads, Mason,
she thought.

Her beer had gone flat and metallic-tasting from sitting so long in its can, but she finished it, welcoming the soothing effect
of the alcohol. The numbing effect, whatever.

She dialed Joyce's number, got her answering machine, left a message asking her to coordinate with Ed and fly down as soon
as she could. Then she turned out the lights and got into bed. Sleep didn't come for a long time. The fat envelope waiting
on the desk bothered her. She thought about Paul and about the odd oscillations between doubt and warmth they'd just been
through. Then she wondered about what Ed had said, about just where the line between preoccupation and obsession was, and,
further up the spectrum, the line between obsession and possession. There wasn't any easy answer.

Later, closer to the void, she wondered where Joyce was. Where Tommy Keeday was. Where Cree Black was.

6

JULIETA DROVE like a bat out of hell. But everyone drove fast out here, Cree noticed. The distances were long, the horizons
endlessly unfolding in low swells of bare, rocky earth, largely unchanging. If you didn't put the pedal down, you might think
you weren't moving at all.

They'd left the university at one o'clock, after Cree's obligatory participation in a morning panel session and a speakers'
luncheon with the UNM psych faculty. The way Julieta drove the Oak Springs School pickup, they covered the distance from Albuquerque
to Gallup in under two hours. In Gallup, they stopped at a restaurant supply wholesaler to load the bed of the truck with
paper towels and cafeteria napkins, six big bales wrapped in plastic that now nattered and flapped in the wind. They cut north
on Route 666 and turned west on Route 264 toward Window Rock for the last hour of the drive.

After spending a week on the Hopi reservation, four years ago, Cree knew that the Big Rez of the Navajo was a separate world
in more ways than one. The formal treaty borders enclosed an area as big as New England, but even that was little more than
an island on the Colorado Plateau, isolated from more populated regions by a million square miles of deserts and mountains
that stretched from central Mexico up the backbone of the continent. It was big enough to resist not only physical but also
social change, and the Native American reservation lands were the home of cultures in many ways thousands of years as well
as thousands of miles removed from the rest of the country.

Dr. Tsosie had driven ahead in his own truck earlier, and Cree had looked forward to her three hours alone with Julieta as
a chance to talk.

Cree gave her a general idea of how PRA conducted an investigation: Ed and his high tech, Joyce and her historical and forensic
detective work, Cree's own brand of psychological analysis and empathic communion. She did her best to make it sound routine,
avoiding the scary stuff.

"Each line of inquiry supports the others. Often, when I'm . . . making contact, my impressions are ambiguous. Most locations
are layered with lingering human experiences from different periods, so it can be hard for me to pin down what's relevant
and what isn't. And it can take me a while to progress from feeling vague moods and auras and sensations to actually seeing
a ghost or
living
its thoughts and feelings. My goal is to know what motivates the entity, figure out why it's there, what remains unresolved
for it. But sometimes my intuitive experience of its world is not enough. That's where Ed and Joyce's work, and my own interviewing,
comes into play. Having some hard information helps me identify the ghost. Once I know who it is, how it died, and so on,
it's easier for me to determine why it's here—what motivates it and which living person figures in its compulsions. There's
almost invariably a connection of some kind between the ghost and the witnesses or other people in the vicinity of a haunting.
Once we know what that link is, we have a better chance of setting the ghost free."

To her surprise, Julieta didn't voice skepticism about these far-fetched points. But none of it seemed to soothe her, either.
A strange reserve and tension remained between them, and the closer they got to Oak Springs School, the more she seemed to
close off.

Still, when Cree prompted her with questions, Julieta was generally forthcoming.

She'd been born and raised in Santa Fe, an only child. Her mother was of Mexican descent, mostly, while her father's ancestors
were black Irish; both families had been in the area for a long time. Her father had owned a heavy-equipment supply company
that involved big money but always seemed to be overextended and in trouble. They were proud and respected but still very
much striving, proving themselves, and therefore very—overly, Julieta admitted—conscious of symbols of wealth and status.

"I only mention that as an explanation for the stupid things I did when I was younger," Julieta said.

"More stupid than the things everybody does when they're young?"

"Probably."

Julieta explained: When she was fifteen, she began trying out for modeling jobs. She had always been told she was gorgeous,
and ever since she was thirteen, seeing herself mirrored in the eyes of men, she could almost believe it. From modeling, it
was a short step to beauty contests. Her parents were as suckered as she was by the incentives the pageants offered: prizes,
scholarships, a chance to meet the rich and famous, a line in your resume that would help nail lucrative modeling work. At
first it was easy. She won some of the local pageants, did modeling for more prestigious agencies, and then felt confident
enough to compete for the title of Miss New Mexico in 1982. She spent all the money she'd saved on the tailored evening gown
and bathing suit and the deportment coaching everybody said she'd need. Preparing for the contest took almost a year, during
which every hour outside of school was occupied with exercising, fitting clothes, going to the orthodontist, practicing her
smile and posture, pursuing the community service that would perk up her citizenship score. When at last the competition began,
it was a whirlwind that completely carried her away. She entered the last stages utterly self-brainwashed into believing that
this was her destiny, the absolute best and only course for her life. That winning really, really mattered. That win it she
certainly would.

She made it only to third runner-up.

She tried to smile for the cameras while her heart crash-landed and the tears exploded behind her eyes. The spotlight lingered
on her briefly, impatiently, and for the last time, before it moved on to the more beautiful, talented young women.

"Barely twenty years old," Julieta said. "I felt like the ugly duckling. The instant my name was announced, I had this epiphany
that I'd completely wasted five years of my life, posing with a fake smile and sticking my chest out. By that time I had no
friends. I'd never had
time
for friends, and anyway the kids at high school and UNM all thought I was hopelessly stuck-up. And I realized suddenly just
how completely I'd learned to quantify every aspect of myself I didn't even know what I really liked to
do
or was good at! My only reason for doing anything had always been, 'Gee, I'd better take up ballet or . . . or chess so I'm
more competitive in the talent judging.'"

Maybe that painful epiphany would have driven her to redirect her life, but the pageant of 1982 had yet one more damaging
and lasting effect. At some point, she'd been introduced to Garrett McCarty, one of several corporate bigwigs who'd helped
sponsor the proceedings. He was CEO and sole owner of McCarty Energy, a big thing in western New Mexico, coal and uranium
mining. And Garrett, forty-nine-year-old millionaire, famously eligible twice-divorced bachelor, took an interest in one of
the good-looking pieces of prime stock at the pageant: a dark-haired, blue-eyed Hispanic-Irish girl from suburban Santa Fe.

"Long and short of it, he bowled me over. I was bruised and demoralized after the contest, but when he contacted me I was
handed an instant remedy. He courted me for six months and it was heady—power, money, important people, nice clothes, expensive
cars, good food. I thought, 'Hell, maybe I won the damned thing after all!' When he proposed to me, my father and mother were
ecstatic. Garrett had gotten chummy with Dad, talked about buying tons of equipment from his firm. Marrying him would mean
a guaranteed living for me, grandkids for them, and best of all a way to meet the
real
people, to hobnob with the movers and shakers. Which would prove we were taking our rightful place in the world. And all I
had to do was look nice, keep the smile in place!" Julieta made a face as if she wanted to spit. "I hate talking about it.
It's a tawdry, pathetic soap opera."

"But did you love him? Were you attracted to him? Apart from his money, I mean."

"I don't know. I couldn't tell him apart from his money—hell, I couldn't tell him apart from his Corvette! He was very handsome,
didn't look his age at all. I think I told myself I was in love with him. But it's a long time ago now. The girl who married
Garrett McCarty was a different person. I could just as easily recite the facts of the life of Helen Keller or . . .Mary,
Queen of Scots, and it would feel neither more nor less 'me'!" Julieta looked over at Cree as if checking her response. "I
know I should be able to toss off a wry grin and chuckle at it, but I can't."

"Would it help if I told you about my own youthful follies? I've got plenty—we could probably manage a yuck or two about
'em. My mother says if you haven't got regrets you haven't lived right."

Julieta brought her attention back to driving. "I've got regrets," she said.
Ones you can laugh about later,
Cree had meant to add. She bit her tongue.

They drove without talking for a while, a vertical crease deepening between Julieta's eyebrows. Ten minutes out of Gallup,
she announced that she had another stop to make.

"I don't mean to take up your time with these errands," she apologized. "With drive times the way they are out here, the rule
of thumb is to get several things done on any long trip. This one'll only take a minute."

She turned onto a side road that ran through a spread-out scattering of tiny houses and mobile homes. No trees relieved the
bare-dirt desert; the land stretched in every direction without any notable features. The laundry on the clotheslines, the
satellite dishes on the parched yards, the pairs and trios of playing kids and their tagalong dogs: on one level, not so different
from any neighborhood. But set in this arid moonscape, blasted by the westering sun, the little human outpost struck Cree
as marvelously foreign.

Julieta drove slowly along the hard-packed dirt street. "One of my maintenance staff had to have a hip replacement. Earl Craig.
It's his second. He's been out for three weeks and he's had some complications. He'll need to miss another month or more,
so I had to hire someone to cover. I know he's secretly worried about whether he'll be able to keep his job—employment is
hard to come by out here. So whenever I pass by, I try to stop in to kind of reassure him."

She pulled the truck into a short driveway to a tiny shoe box house. A thickset, midfifties Navajo man sat in a wheelchair
not far from the front door, face tipped to the late-afternoon sun. When he heard the truck, he rotated his chair and a small
dog jumped off his lap and began yapping. Julieta shut off the engine, rummaged behind the seat, and came out with a rumpled
grocery bag full of something heavy.

"You should probably just wait here," Julieta told Cree. "I'll only be a minute."

Earl's face relaxed into a smile as Julieta got out. The little dog sped toward Julieta and without pausing hurtled itself
through the air at her. She clearly wasn't ready for the greeting, but she managed to stoop and catch the dog with one hand.
She winced into a vigorous face licking, then slid the animal down onto one hip and awkwardly carried it back to its master.

Cree couldn't hear what they were saying, but Earl laughed and appeared to be apologizing for his pet. When Julieta set the
bag at his feet, he bent to pull out several paperback books and exclaimed gratefully. Then they talked seriously for a moment, Earl shifting in his chair to point to parts of his hip and thigh, Julieta still holding the
wriggling dog and nodding.

It was only two or three minutes until she handed back the dog, touched Earl's shoulder in farewell, and returned to the truck.
Earl waved good-bye with his free hand and then bent to dig more books out of the bag.

When Julieta climbed back into the truck, she explained quietly to Cree, "Mysteries, thrillers, that's all he'll read. I get
them by the pound from a used paperback place in Albuquerque. Last time I slipped in
Memoirs of a Geisha,
but that didn't go over too well." Remembering that mischief made her grin. "Arthritis. He had a healing Way sung, too. The
Hand Trembler—that's the medicine man who diagnoses illness—blamed it on Earl's walking on the grave of an ancestor. Earl
sincerely and completely believes that, but it didn't stop him from getting high-tech molybdenum joints put in. And if you
asked him whether it was the Way or the surgery that fixed him, he'd credit both. That's pretty typical."

Looking back now, Cree saw Earl differently: to outward appearances, an ordinary middle-aged man in jeans and T-shirt; in
fact, a person who lived in the knowledge he was poised on the brink of infinite mystery.

Another reminder that in coming here she was entering a different world, where nothing was quite what it seemed.

Julieta's expression of contentment remained as she backed the truck out of the driveway. Such a lovely woman, Cree thought.
Such a lovely smile, all the more beautiful for its rarity. She covertly watched Julieta during the quarter-mile drive back
to the highway. By the time they'd turned onto the asphalt again, the lines of worry had returned.