Possession (8 page)

I cleared my throat. “Dr. Barton, how are you
doing today?” I’d never bothered to greet him in the past. During our previous
sessions, I’d barely mumbled affirmatives when he asked if I wanted a glass of
water.

His expression turned suspicious. “Fine. Are you
ready for our session?”

I straightened my back and clasped my hands in my
lap. I forced a smile onto my face. “Yes, I’m ready.”

He leaned back in his chair, “Let us begin with
your childhood. Tell me something about your family.”

At the word “family,” my hands balled into fists. Memories
flashed before my eyes.

My father
held against his will…a knife raised high in the air…the glint of the blade as
it swung down and slit his throat. Watching a stream of blood pour from my
father’s fatal wound. Being unable to help as he struggled, as the life left
his eyes. My mother, darting across the room, trying to escape. The bullet
tearing through her flesh…her body slumping to the floor…a pool of blood
rushing from her pierced skull.

I closed my eyes and shook my head back and forth,
trying to force the images away.

I can’t talk about my
family. Not to this man.

“Colina, we’ve had”—he flipped through the
pad—“four sessions now, and so far you haven’t told me anything personal
about yourself. How do you expect to get better if you don’t start to explore
your inner feelings?”

I cannot
afford to have this man as my enemy
, I reminded myself. I cleared my
throat, “My family… They’re all dead.”

He knew I’d checked in for attempted suicide after
the death of my family, but the confession coming from my lips got his
interest. He leaned forward, pen posed, ready to scribble. “How did they die?”

I looked away, hot, flustered, and unable to meet
his eyes when I answered. “A madman killed them. He slaughtered my family.”

“Tell me what you are feeling right at this
moment.”

Anger
. A
red-hot anger pounded through my veins. I exploded to my feet, my hands
clenched in fists. I killed the man who had murdered my family, but revenge
didn’t take away the heartache and pain I still felt. I wanted so badly to hurt
Macaven
again
.

I want to kill him again—with my bare hands.

At my sudden movement, the doctor scooted back in
his chair. He reached across his desk for the phone.

I forced myself to take one deep breath after
another.
I need to calm down
. I
needed to do whatever necessary to get out of this session without landing my
butt in restraints.

I sat down and my words came out in a rush. “I’m
sorry, Doctor. I’m still not over their deaths. I apologize for getting so
angry.”

Dr. Barton’s hand floated just above the phone. He
was watching me, waiting for me to explode again.

I gave him a half smile. “I guess it’s one of the
issues I need to work on. My unresolved anger about my family’s death.”

Barton nodded his head, and his hand moved away
from the phone.

I sighed in relief.
Now I just have to keep my head for the rest of the session. I can do
this. I just have to play it smart and keep my cool.

Barton spoke again. “It’s understandable that you
feel anger. It’s a natural emotion to feel in such circumstances. But what we
must do is find a way for you to
channel
your anger. Direct your emotions into a more productive avenue.” He dropped the
pen. His fingers reached up and touched the scab above his eye. “You can’t keep
lashing out. When you do, you’re a danger to yourself and to…to the entire
staff.”

“I completely agree with you.”

“Before we continue on,
I need to ask about your depression.
The nurses
have reported back to me that you’ve been doing remarkably well. How is your
depression today, if you had to rate it from one to ten?”

I had the feeling that saying I had no depression would
be pushing it, so I answered, “It’s a two. A two or a three.”

He picked up the pen and started scribbling on the
pad. “Good. And the voices? Have you heard any voices since the shock therapy?”

I had. The words
help me
had rung out when I was in the common room. But they
weren’t imaginary voices. They weren’t voices coming from an unstable mind.
They were spirits trying to communicate with me. I was a death dealer and I
could talk to the dead. But Barton didn’t know that. I had come to the asylum
under the guise of a healer—a healer who had lost her grip on reality.
Healers didn’t communicate with spirits. Healers considered death dealers scum
of the earth.
If I told Barton the truth now, it
might jeopardize all my plans.

I shook my head. “No voices. None whatsoever.”

“Good.” He jotted down something in the pad again.
He reached into his desk and pulled out a tape recorder. “I taped the session
we had right before the procedure.” He hit the
play
button and voices rang out.

It was a girl’s voice, but not mine. “
They’re being killed! Don’t you understand
?”
she pleaded.

The doctor’s voice spoke up on the tape, “
Calm yourself. Who is being killed
?”

There was a moment of silence and then an
unnatural laugh. “
All of them…every last
one of them. They were all killed. Why won’t any of you believe me
?”

“
Colina, I
must insist you stay in your chair
.”

Morgana
.
The words coming out of the tape were hers as she controlled my body and spoke
using my mouth. I felt a chill run down my spine. The doctor would have never
assumed possession. He would have assumed that I was immune, like most healers.
Possession was pretty rare outside of the Death Arts. And if and when it did come
up, the only ones equipped to handle it were the death dealers. He wouldn’t
have thought a slight change in my voice meant I was possessed.

“
Colina, if
you don’t calm down, we’ll have to give you a sedative
.” The doctor's voice
sounded strained this time.

“
You stupid
man. Aren’t you listening to what I’m saying
?” she asked. A long silence
followed her question.

Barton’s voice came on again, though this time it
was calm and reassuring. “
I hear you. I
do. I want to help you, but I can’t unless you let me
.”

Morgana’s voice came out in a whisper. “
Don’t you hear them, Doctor
?”

“
Hear who
?”
Barton asked.

“
They’re
crying out for help. They need our help. You have to help them
.”

Barton answered. “
Colina, please sit down. You need to calm yourself
.” There was the
sound of a chair moving and then I heard Barton’s voice again. “
Nurse, can you ask the orderlies to come in
?”

Morgana cried out. “
Hearts. Beating hearts, can you hear them? Can’t you hear their
screams? Every beat, every scream…don’t you hear them? They’re dying and no one
is doing anything to help them!
”

I could hear a door opening and footsteps. There
was the sound of a struggle, and then silence.

Barton turned off the tape and looked at me. “Do
you have any memory of that session?”

I shook my head. “No.” Barton would think my
memory was affected by the shock therapy, but I knew better. Morgana had
completely taken over my body. She had moved through the asylum using my limbs.
She had spoken to the staff with my mouth. I had no memory of any of it. But I
knew the words Morgana spoke to the doctor were the truth, because ever since
I’d come into the asylum I’d heard the cries of the dead.

They were begging for help. They were crying out for
vengeance.

Somehow I survived the half hour psych session. Dr. Barton gave
me some techniques to help curb my anger, and he wanted me to keep a daily
journal. He assured me that if these measures didn’t work, there were other
ways we could deal with my issues. On the top of his list of “techniques” was medication.
He showed me a list of new pills we could try.

I didn’t want any more meds. A nurse already doled
out a small white paper cup filled with a colorful assortment of pills each day
and night. Yellow pills for anxiety, a pink one for depression, and a blue one
to help me sleep. Most of the patients walking around this place were mental
zombies kept in a fog of medication. It probably made them easier to deal with.

I faked my compliance. I cheeked the pills and
then at the first opportunity flushed them down the toilet.

After the session, the rest of the day went by
painfully slow. There were a few hours spent in the common area—I played
a game of checkers with Andrew. Andrew’s checker playing was as erratic as his
eating habits. After every few moves he would grab a piece off the board and
nervously shuffle it back and forth across the table. Occasionally he would
gleefully pick up a plastic checker and start to jump over all the other
pieces. The only problem? He always did this when it was my turn. I realized
early on that there was no need to keep score. There would be no winner or
loser when playing with this crowd. The game was more a way of keeping my mind
occupied and passing the time. There wasn’t much to do in a place without any
computers or televisions.

Lunch was uneventful and consisted of some
nondescript brown casserole. The highlight of the meal for me was a piece of
apple pie. Unlike the normal fare in this place, the pie was actually quite
good. The crust was flaky and the apples crisp. I spent a few moments eyeing
Andrews’s pie from across the room, but I had nothing to trade for it.
Contraband was a hot commodity around here—mostly candy and snack food,
usually smuggled in by visitors. The staff seemed aware but unconcerned by the stream
of underground currency.

After lunch, I spent an hour outside in the
community garden under the watchful eye of a half-dozen staff. Pulling weeds in
the sun was actually the most relaxing part of my day. It reminded me of my
childhood, of time spent helping my mother in her herb garden. I’d always
enjoyed growing things. The garden was therapeutic, but also had a practical
purpose. They used the vegetables and herbs they grew as part of our meals.

Garden time was followed by a mandatory group walk
around the grounds for twenty minutes, and then it was back to the common room
and more board games—this time chess. I played one game with my
ever-vigilant
shadow, Caroline. I won the first game, she the second.

When the sun began to set, we marched off to the
cafeteria again, this time for dinner. I choked down a decent portion of soggy
meatloaf and sticky mashed potatoes. When dinner was finally over, the nurse
escorted me back to my room. Finally, I was free of my shadow. I watched her
walk out of my room, locking the door behind her.

I pulled three packets of salt out of my pocket
and carefully tore them open, sprinkling as much as I could across my doorway
and along the windowsill. Was it enough to keep the choking ghost away? I hoped
so. It had never bothered me before. Sure, I’d heard people talking about it,
and every so often felt a chill late at night as though something might be in
the room with me, but it’d never come forth or tried to harm me. But then I’d
lost my memory…and it attacked. I hoped it would leave me alone now that my
memories were back, but I wouldn’t count on it. My encounter with the spirit
had been a terrifying experience I didn’t want to repeat.

I went over to the bed and lay down. Boring
monotony filled my day, just like every other day I’d spent in here. Each day I
was just biding time until Mildred would come and release me from my cell. The
witching hour had always been a time I’d looked to with trepidation, but now it
was the only time I was truly happy. The only time Luke and I could be
together. I closed my eyes and willed the minutes to fly by.

* * *

When we got to Luke’s room, he was walking slowly back and
forth across the floor. I ran to him. He held me tight within his arms.

Mildred spoke from the doorway. “I’ll leave you two
lovebirds alone. But don’t worry. I’ll be back before you turn into a frog.”
She actually croaked a few times like a frog before closing the door behind
her.

He whispered in my ear. “What did you do today?”

I answered, my head still against his chest. “Ate
a few awful meals and had a therapy session with Dr. Barton.”

“How did that go?”

I laughed. “Not well. He wants me to take a
zillion more pills if I can’t find outlets to curb my anger.”

He took a step back and gave me a smile. “Are you
still flushing them down the toilet?”

“I am. I can’t believe how drugged up they try to
keep people in this place.” I reached down and put my hand into his. “Oh, and I
spent time in the garden. There are some wildflowers growing at the far end.”

Sadness filled his eyes. “Darla loves wildflowers.
Anytime she saw some she would pick them and put them in vases all over the
house.”

I knew he missed his sister. I reached up and
touched his cheek. “You could go back to them. Be with your family again.”

He started to shake his head and pull away.

My words rushed out. “If you blame this all on me,
your family and your guild might come to accept you now, the way you are.”

“Colina, I’m not leaving you.”

“But your family—”

He held up his hand. “One day they’ll come around.
They just need some time to get their minds around what happened.”

“They think I’m a monster.”

“They’ve never seen anyone with the kind of magic
you have. No one has ever been able to raise the dead or force spirits to cross
over. Once they realize everything that happened wasn’t your fault—”

I interrupted him. “But it was. It
was
all my fault. If I hadn’t been so
rash, so focused on avenging my family…”

His hand came up and caressed my cheek. “You lost
your family. You watched them get murdered before your very eyes. You were full
of pain and anger when you came to the magic shop looking to learn the Death Arts.
Anyone who went through what you did would have felt the same.”

I let out a harsh laugh. “Would they have come to
you, looking to learn dark magic so they could kill
their enemies
?”

“You had men coming after you. No one in your clan
was strong enough to fend them off. If you hadn’t come to us, eventually those
madmen would have taken you. And when you refused to go along with
Macaven’s
plans, he would’ve sacrificed you like he did the
others.”

The “others” Luke was referring to were the seven
people Macaven killed and blamed on the Redeemers simply because they refused
to become part of his twisted coven. “I would have refused him.”

“And given the chance, he would have killed you.
By becoming a death dealer, you
survived
.”

I lowered my head, unable to meet his eyes. “I
became a killer.”

His fingers came up and lifted my chin. “You did
an impossible thing. You went through the rituals in a matter of days. No one
has ever done that. You didn’t have time to train, to get used to your new
powers, or to adjust to the changes that came over you.”

“There’s violence and darkness in me now.” My
voice was filled with self-pity.

Sadness filled his eyes. “You can’t touch the other
side and come back unaffected.”

“But half the time I still feel so out of control!”

“That’ll change with time. Control is not
something you can expect to happen overnight.”

He was right. Most people trained for a long
time
to go through the rituals and learn
spells. They had time to prepare and adjust. I’d
been thrown
into the fire without any preparation, but I’d survived.

He reached up and brushed my bangs off my face.
“We don’t have a lot of time together. I don’t want to spend it talking about
things we can’t control.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t want to talk at all. I just want to be
with you.” He leaned in and kissed me.

My lips touched his. The kiss started gentle and
soft, but then it turned more passionate. There was an urgency to it. I tried
not to think, to only react, but a part of me was acutely aware that the lips I
was kissing felt different. They
were
different. His lips suddenly broke away from mine. “Open your eyes,” he
demanded.

I looked into the face that wasn’t his. I concentrated
on his eyes. In those eyes, I could see Luke staring back at me.

“We’ve never talked about this,” he said
awkwardly, looking at his hands. “I’m in a different body.”

“I know.”

“But it has to be strange for you. Like now, when
we kissed. For me, I’m kissing
you
.
It feels the same for me. But for you…it has to be different.” His hands
gestured down to his body and his voice became strained. “
He’s
different.”

Luke’s voice and movements were the same, but his
face, his body, even the arms that embraced me…they were all different. It
did
feel different, but I was trying to
get used to it. I felt uncomfortable standing there talking about it. I didn’t
know what I was supposed to say. I didn’t know how to make it all right. “Nothing
matters but that we are together.”

“I want us to be together. I want to be closer to
you, but I know it’s going to take some adjustment. It’s going to take time for
both of us to get used to the new me.”

My hand came up and touched his cheek. I remembered
thinking Dean was hot before regaining my memories. It was true: he was good-looking.
But what mattered more was that
behind
those eyes was the guy I loved. It didn’t matter what he looked like—Luke
was there and we were finally together. “Mildred will be back soon.”

His arms came up and wrapped around me again.
“Right now, I want to stop thinking. I just want to hold you in my arms.”

I pressed my head against his chest, relieved to
avoid eye contact. I could hear his heartbeat.

Dean’s heartbeat. It was Dean’s heartbeat for now,
but soon we would find the spell that would allow Luke to completely take over
Dean’s body.

* * *

Mildred came back as promised. Luke and I said our
good-byes. I hated leaving him. Maybe he’ll be strong enough in a few more days
to try and make an escape.

Mildred and I headed back down the deserted halls.
As we passed a set of offices, I stopped, a question on my mind. “Let me take a
quick look at a few of those books in Barton’s office.”

Mildred shook her head and kept walking. “Not
tonight, child, it’s too late. I need to get you back to your room.”

I called after her. “We’re running out of time!
You know as well as I do that the longer we stay in this place, the more we’re
in danger. Someone’s killing the patients and Luke needs to gain his strength
back so we can get out of here”

She stopped and did a little jig, a wide smile on
her face. “I wondered when you were going to bring up those murders again. So
you believe me about Sabrina?”

“Yes, I believe you.” Before Morgana had possessed
me I had slowly come around to believing Mildred’s wild accusations of murder.
There were too many unexplained deaths. Too many spirits calling out for
vengeance. And now Sabrina was dead. The young girl had been a devout Catholic.
A girl who prayed over each meal, before bed, and on Sundays. Someone who even
carried a set of rosary beads in her pocket. “Sabrina would never have hung
herself. She would never commit suicide.”

Mildred nodded in agreement. “I think it’s the
orderlies. One of them, or maybe
all
of them.”

“We need to get out of here before one of us gets
hurt.” I was no longer going to be reckless. I wasn’t going to put Luke’s life
in danger again. Whatever was going on in this place, it had nothing to do with
me.

Mildred’s expression turned angry. “So you’re going
to just wash your hands of the whole business? Act like it doesn’t matter that
folks in here are getting killed?”

Mildred was a pleasant, if not slightly unhinged,
woman when she was happy, but I knew she had a wicked temper. When set off, her
anger terrified even the meanest orderlies. I lifted my hands in surrender. “I
don’t know what you think we can do to stop it. The smart thing to do is get
out of here, and once we’re on the outside we can contact the authorities and tell
them what we suspect.” Even as I said the words I felt guilty. People were
being killed and all I was concerned about was getting our necks out of this
place in one piece. But I had to be selfish. Going after a killer was reckless
and foolish, and the last time I had been foolish and reckless Luke had died.

She made a fist with her right hand and slapped it
hard against the palm of her left.
“
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all
murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of
trumpets
.” She gave me a triumphant look
. “Voltaire
said that.”

And with just one
comment, Mildred had taken the conversation out to left field. “Okay…” I muttered.
Shaking my head, I wondered yet again how much of a full deck she was playing
with. “I don’t think we can go to the cops now, because the cops are not going
to believe a bunch of supposedly crazy patients who tell them there are murders
going on in the insane asylum.”