Possession (14 page)

I looked down at the hand covering mine. It felt
warm and comforting, but it wasn’t Luke’s. At the moment it was Dean’s. Feeling
self-conscious, I gently pulled my hand out of his. I looked over at Andrew,
who was sitting across the room. My eyes went to the pouch around his neck. “I
wonder if we can get a protection pouch. Contraband is one of the daytime
janitor’s specialties. But I don’t have anything to trade.”

“What kind of things do they trade?”

“Any type of food. Deck of cards. Spells. You name
it, they trade it.”

“And money?” Dean asked.

I nodded my head. “Money is a great equalizer in
here.”

“Good.” He gave me another smile. “I know where I
can get some.”

* * *

After lunch, they ushered us out into the garden for
a little therapeutic work in the dirt. It was a large patch, over an acre of
land. Neatly tended rows of nearly ripe fruits and vegetables were taken care
of by the more capable patients.

It was a beautiful day, and the warm sun soaked
into me, easing away the dark chill that seemed to permeate the asylum no
matter the temperature. I felt tension that I hadn’t been aware of unclenching
from around my heart. The forest that backed the hospital hugged us with dark
foreboding, but it was easy to keep your eyes on the green growing things and
forget—for the moment—about possession and murder.

I watched Mildred picking weeds over in the far
corner of the garden. Mildred usually stayed clear of me during the day. Her
mind was always more focused at night. I had asked her several times what had
brought her to this place in the daylight hours and she’d never been able to
give a clear answer. Once, I’d overheard some of the nurses talking about her. Years
ago her young daughter had drowned in a lake not far from their house. Shortly
after the tragedy, Mildred tried to take her own life. Someone found her before
the pills kicked in, but shortly after the suicide attempt, she had a complete
mental breakdown. Apparently Mildred blamed herself for her daughter’s death,
and she never got over it.

When I first met Mildred, our conversations were
nonsensical. But as time progressed, especially in the evenings, she started to
open up to me. When I’d finally explained why I’d come and how I was attempting
to bring Luke back, she’d offered her help. She knew what it was like to lose
someone, and had she been able to do it, I know she would’ve tried to bring her
own daughter back. I’d assured her more than a few times that I’d never felt
her daughter’s presence. If her daughter was around, she wasn’t talking to me.
Mildred took the silence as a sign that her daughter had crossed over to the
light. I hoped she was right. No one should have to live with the knowledge that
their loved one was stuck in between.

Mildred helped me, and in exchange I’d promised to
take her with us when we escaped. What she would do once she was on the outside,
I had no idea. If nothing else, I could send her on to my clan with a note
asking them to give her sanctuary. In the note, I might try to explain why I
wouldn’t be coming back. I wouldn't tell the clan the truth about what happened
to me—there was no way they would understand. Instead, I would make up
some lie and hope they’d eventually come to accept my absence.

My immediate family was dead, but I had uncles,
aunts, and a couple dozen cousins. I ran my fingers through the dirt. I missed
being part of a large community. There was a comfort in being part of a group
that you had grown up with. Now it was just Luke and me against the world.
No,
I corrected myself,
it’s Luke, me, and Dean.

Dean
. I
wasn’t sure how this whole thing was going to play out. Dean was keeping something
from me, and I had no idea what it was. I wanted to trust him, I really did,
but my gut was telling me I had to watch my back, especially when he was
around. So far Dean had offered to help Luke and me, but I still wasn't clear
on why. He should be trying to force Luke out. He should be ratting me out to
the hospital staff. One word from him about how I’d come into this place under
false circumstances and the staff would turn me out, or worse—pass me
over to the Phoenix Guild.

I glanced over to Dean, who was in the garden a
few rows up. He was picking tomatoes and putting them into a round basket. When
Dean had taken back partial possession of his body, his recovery seemed to
speed up. Maybe it was just the combined efforts of Dean and Luke, but moving
from a wheelchair to easy coordination in just a few days was still incredible.
I decided that I needed to make learning more about Dean a priority. He seemed
willing to spend time talking to me, so in theory it should be easy enough to
keep steering the conversation back to him.

I was watching him move effortlessly around the
garden when suddenly the urge to go into the forest hit me with so much
strength that it actually knocked the breath out of me. I fell back onto the
grass as though I’d been physically struck. My head turned toward the forest.
She’s out there, calling to me.
I pushed
myself off the ground and starting walking toward the trees. We were supposed
to stay in the garden area—the forest was off-limits. In the back of my
mind, I knew one of the half-dozen staff out here watching us would probably
stop me before I made it to the forest’s edge, especially since the fence was
on the other side of the trees, but I didn’t care. The urgency inside me was so
strong that I could barely think.
She
needs me to find her.

I started to jog and turned with surprise when a
hand clamped down on my shoulder.

“What are you doing?” It was Dean. I looked into
his face, trying to comprehend what he was saying. My mind was so full of
her
and the need to find her that I
couldn't seem to focus.

I shook off his grip and started to run toward the
trees. I broke through the bushes and branches and made my way deeper into the
forest. She was there, only a few feet away. I felt it in every fiber of
my being. I fell to my knees and started clawing the dirt with my fingers.

“Colina, what are you doing?” Dean shouted at me.

I can hear
her screams
. “Help me!” I pleaded to Dean as I dug in the soil, trying to
reach her.

Dean watched me for a long moment, his face filled
with concern, but then he knelt down beside me and started to dig. “What's this
about? The orderlies saw you make a break for it. They’re just seconds behind
us.”

I didn't care about anything but digging. And then
my fingers curled around it. I yanked with all my strength and it came loose. I
raised it in the air.

It was a skull. I looked into the empty eye
sockets and let out a bloodcurdling scream.

* * *

There was pain—a hot, white, blinding pain that shot
through my whole body. My heart started to pound in my chest. The ache shot
through me again. My body felt as though it was on fire. There was an awful
pressure on my chest, like someone was sitting on me, but the white-cloaked
figure was still standing, dancing a few feet away in the moonlight. The
pressure got worse, crushing me hard enough that I couldn’t catch my breath.
And then the figure stepped toward me. The hood of the cloak lowered. It was a
man. He hovered over me and the pain came again, so much pain I could no longer
think, could no longer function.

The figure moved away and raised something in the
air. Something that was quivering, moving. The sound of beating filled the
night. Another wave of pain raced through me, this time even more intense. I
opened my mouth and a scream ripped from my throat. The beating got louder. I shrieked
again.

A ray of moonlight crossed his hands and I could
see it clearly. It was my heart—he held my beating heart in his hands.
The pain was there again, so intense this time that I thought I would pass out,
but I didn’t. I stayed conscious, withering in agony.

He stopped speaking. The night was silent. He lowered
my heart toward his face. Red blood dripped down, gliding along his fingers and
across his wrists. Each time my heart beat, each time it quivered, more pain
raced through me. He opened his mouth, and with ferocious glee, placed my still-beating
heart between his teeth and tore off a piece. Horrific pain ripped through me.
It filled every inch of me, consumed me. He took another bite, and a gush of
blood oozed out of his mouth and down his chin. It dripped onto the dirt below
him.

And with one more bite, my heart stopped beating.

I could no longer breathe. All of the air inside
me was sucked out as if a giant wave carried it away into the night. The wave swirled
out of the ether sea to surround me—it glided across my face and my neck.
It spiraled up into the sky and then came crashing down against me. This time
when it rose it took the very essence of my being with it. It tore my soul from
my body and spun it in a wild tornado up into the night sky. I screamed again,
but no sound came out of my lips this time. I was above my body now, floating
and looking down at it. Vacant eyes stared up at me. My chest no longer rose
and fell. There was no longer life within me, but the pain was still there. It
still beat inside me. It consumed the part of me that was still here, the part
of me that was being pulled toward him.

I watched as he put my mangled heart aside, wrapped
in a cloth and placed gently within a black bag. I watched from above as he dug
a hole, and the sound of shoveling filled the air. After some time he finished
the hole and rolled my body into it before slowly filling it up again. One
shovelful of dirt at a time landed on my body, slowly covering and concealing
it entirely below the ground.

He began to walk away, dragging my spirit along
with him, like a leaf on the current as he moved through the woods. He headed
toward the asylum, and without a glance backward, walked away from my grave.

* * *

I opened my eyes to find two
orderlies dragging me across the grass.

“It’s just a misunderstanding. Let her go!” Dean
was beside us. Strain showed in his expression. “Colina, tell them you weren’t
trying to escape.”

One of the orderlies shouted, “Shut your trap. Do
you think I'm happy having to chase this little harpy through the brush?”

I recognized the voice. I turned my head and my
stomach dropped as I recognized the men who had me—they were the same
ones who forced water and pills down my throat in solitary confinement.

The other orderly laughed. “She can cool her heels
in a padded cell for a while.”

They’re taking me back
there
. They’re going to stick me in a straitjacket and drug me
again. At the thought, I lost it. I began to struggle against them. I yelled, I
kicked, I bit. They were stronger than I was, but that didn’t stop me. I arched
back, bucking in the air, twisting my body, trying to force myself free.

I heard Dean yell, “Don’t!” Something hard slammed
against my head, and everything around me went black.

* * *

I woke up. I was lying on a bed, my arms stretched out on
either side of me. Around each wrist was a leather restraint. Dr. Barton stood
at the foot of the bed, clipboard in hand. Nurse Harrington was at his side.

The doctor came around the side of the bed. “Good,
you’re awake. How are you feeling?”

The side of my head felt bruised. There was a
pounding in my temples. I didn’t bother to try and sit up; the restraints would
keep me on my back anyway. “What happened?”

“The orderlies had no choice. They had to keep you
from hurting yourself.”

So they smashed me in the head and knocked me out?
I wasn’t trying to hurt myself, but I knew better than to voice my opinions.
When it came to sides, the doctor was clearly with the orderlies.

Dr. Barton looked down at his clipboard. “
Unfortunately
while you were struggling
with the orderlies, you fell hard to the ground and hit your head.”

He’s lying.
I can hear it in his voice. He knows they hurt me.
I clearly remembered
feeling something—
a fist?—
come
down against the side of my head. I didn’t bother responding this time.

He looked over at the nurse. “I think we may have
to try the shock therapy again. Sometimes it takes two or three sessions before
we see a lasting improvement in a patient.”

This time I found my voice, but I couldn’t keep
the panic out of it. “Y-you want to do shock therapy on me?
Again
?”

He nodded his head, took out a pen, and started
scribbling notes. “Yes, I think it might be best if we go through the procedure
again. Your behavior of late seems to warrant a more radical approach than therapy
and drugs alone. I was hoping that, after the first time, we could help you
maintain a balance with the medications, but after this last incident I don’t
see that we’ve much choice but to try the procedure a second time. Especially
since we initially saw such a vast improvement in you.”

“I don’t want you shooting electricity through me,”
I whispered, trying to force myself to stay calm.
Getting hysterical is not going to help, Colina. You already lost it
once in the garden, and look what happened.

“The voltage for
electroconvulsive therapy isn’t extreme.” He
gave me a reassuring smile. “It’s only seventy to a hundred and ten volts. I
assure you, it’s a perfectly safe procedure. The current only runs through you
for a half a second to a second.”

“Last
time you did it, I had no memory of who I was.”

“Your
memory loss was not permanent. Mental fogginess, some memory loss… Yes, these
things can be expected, but as you yourself experienced, they are temporary.
Within a few days you had your memory back. You were clearheaded. Your
depression significantly decreased, as did the violent outbursts. I think you
have to agree that after this recent incident, we may have no other course of
action.”