Possession (3 page)

I reeled back a few steps.

“Turn on the recorder!” Stymak yelled.

“I can’t see it! You turn it on!” I shouted back, swiping thick, sticky oil paint off my face and hoping nothing else was winging my way while I was temporarily blind. You wouldn’t think oil and pigment would sting so much. . . .

I could hear Stymak and Goss scrambling around me to get to the table where the digital recorder lay. An alarm was going off from one of the machines monitoring Julianne’s bodily functions. I held still in spite of an urge to help—which in my state would be no help at all; I didn’t want to blunder into the machines by mistake and I could feel the paint starting to burn my eye. I really needed to get to the sink without falling into anyone’s path or crashing into anything vital, but I couldn’t find the bathroom without aid. I cursed my inability to get out of my own damned way, much less get a look at what was happening to Julianne Goss. I squeezed my eyes closed and took a deep breath, shutting out the distractions in the room as I sank into the Grey.

Even with my eyes closed, the ghost world lay bright before me, all white fog and colored light reflecting on clouds of lucid steam. I wound around the churning movement of people and the bright tangles that were ghosts in the room, heading toward the dull heaviness of man-made walls, searching for a sink. The uproar and activity distracted me a little, so I stumbled a bit, hearing the bustle and chatter of the people behind me as I searched for the bathroom. Julianne Goss continued to speak flowing, foreign-sounding words while her sister and the medium argued with the nurse.

I bumped through a doorway into a room that felt much colder and harder than the bedroom, found a sink by feel, and washed off as much of the oily goop as I could, wiping more of it away with a towel. I blinked and looked up into the bathroom mirror, seeing moth-wing streaks on my cheekbones that my swiping with the towel had left behind. My eyes were watering and I blinked some more to clear my vision. It didn’t help much, but I could at least see somewhat more normally. I’d still have to rely on my Grey sight to see any details, though, and that wasn’t usually an accurate view of the world. But it might be helpful, since, after all, it was ghosts I was here to see.

When I got back to the bedroom, the hubbub had died away. The alarm was no longer squealing and no one was shouting. Julianne had flopped back into her bed, silent and sleeping, the paintbrush she’d wielded now dropped to the floor, leaving a new blob of color among the others on the plastic sheeting under her bed. Lily was hovering close to the bed as the nurse took Julianne’s temperature. Stymak leaned against a table nearby, wearing headphones and poking at his digital recorder. Between and around them all lay a swarming sea of ghost-stuff boiling with faces that appeared and dissolved again, and sudden extrusions of body parts that fell away into silver mist after a moment’s manifestation. I wanted to see the people in the room better as well, but my left eye stung too badly to make the strain of peering at them seem fun, so I resigned myself to looking primarily at the ghosts.

There were quite a few, mostly the sort of thin, colorless things that haven’t much will of their own left, if any—repeaters, I call them—who continue to go through the same loop of memory over and over endlessly. I was surprised to see so many of them, since they aren’t the sort to go wandering around looking for someone to talk to; usually they just sit in the place their memory loop had lodged and run through the motions until something wipes them away. These had moved from wherever they were usually stuck and clustered around Julianne Goss, continuing their endless loops—walking, talking, and gesturing out of context. There were a few brighter, more colorful ghosts in the misty sea of spirits and I knew they were more likely to have some information I could use—if I could get them to talk to me. So far none of them had turned any attention my way, which was unusual, since specters are usually attracted to me. But these just pressed close to Julianne.

“Someel vague . . .” the ghosts muttered.

“What?” I asked.

Someone touched my shoulder and I jumped, turning away from the voice and squinting to see who in the normal world had grabbed me. The nurse peered at my face from a few inches away, her breath smelling of lemon-flavored candies and the glimmer of a gold chain peeping from under her collar. “What happened?” she demanded. “Your eye is red and irritated and it looks like some swelling is coming on.” She hesitated before she asked, “Did Julianne hit you with something?”

“The paintbrush,” I said.

“Eyewash.”

“No, really, the paintbrush,” I repeated.

Wrothen gave an irritated sigh. “Back you go to the bathroom. You need to rinse that eye properly or it’ll get worse. You have any idea what nasty chemicals are in paint? Come on.”

She wasn’t anywhere near my height, but we probably weighed about the same, and she had no difficulty turning me around and dragging me back to the sink. Stocky, bossy women have a towing advantage over bemused beanpole chicks like me. I also couldn’t get over feeling it’s just wrong to belt a nurse in the chops.

Wrothen pushed me down to sit on the edge of the bathtub, draped a towel around my shoulders, and did mildly uncomfortable things to my eye involving a lot of liquid that managed to dribble into my ears, the corners of my mouth, and down onto my shirt and jeans in spite of precautions. But it did take the worst of the sting away.

“Well,” she huffed as she puttered around me, “at least we don’t have to listen to Mr. Stymak’s ‘ghost recording’ while we’re in here.”

“You don’t want to hear it?” I asked.

“I do not. I hear quite enough from him and his digital recorder as it is.”

“So you don’t believe Miss Goss is, umm . . .”

“Possessed? Frankly, I don’t know what’s going on and I certainly won’t go flinging words like that around in a sickroom. It only makes people upset. There’s plenty of things to worry about here without adding demons into the mix.”

“What do you think is causing Miss Goss’s unexpected activity?” I had to splutter around a fall of bitter liquid.

“Sorry,” Wrothen said, patting some of the eyewash off my face. “I said I don’t know and I don’t. If I had any idea what’s going on with any of the patients that are experiencing this, I’d do something about it. But you see I’m not able to. In Miss Goss’s state she shouldn’t be able to sit up and start painting or babble crazy words that mean nothing.”

Was she implying there were more PVS patients like Julianne? I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want to shut down her current chattiness on the case at hand. “How long has this been going on?” I asked as she poured more liquid over my eyes. I couldn’t decide if it was terrifying or just creepy.

“I can’t discuss it.”

“I’m not interested in the case details, just how long she’s been doing odd things.”

“I’m not sure. I haven’t been here the whole time. She was already painting when I started on the case.”

“What about the other patients?”

“What other patients?” she replied, sounding defensive.

“You said other patients are experiencing this. What other patients? How many?”

She hesitated, scowling.

“I’m not asking for names or details, but surely the fact there are other patients going through what Miss Goss is experiencing is unusual. How many are there?”

Wrothen looked stormy, but a tiny spark leapt off her aura. “I’ve only heard of two.” She gave me a quelling look so pointed I could see it even in my bleary state. “And it’s not something I’ll discuss further.”

Chastened, I changed tack. “Well, then, how long have you worked for Ms. Goss—for the patient’s sister?”

Wrothen patted at my face again, wiping off excess eyewash. “A little more than three months. Blink, please. How does that feel?”

I blinked and my vision cleared a bit, but it was still a little blurry and some of the irritation remained. I told her so.

“You need to see your doctor. He might want to give you something in case there’s some damage.” She whisked off the towel and started to shoo me back into the other room.

I stopped and turned back. “Wait,” I said. “These other patients—”

Wrothen gave me a hard look. “I can’t give you any information about that.”

“I just think it’s interesting that there are others. I thought this sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“It
doesn’t
happen. Vegetative patients don’t just sit up and start . . . painting pictures, or writing nonsense, or speaking in tongues. Or talking. Now excuse me. I have to mark up the chart and send a note to the doctor about this incident. Don’t put too much store by what that ‘medium’ says—or Ms. Goss. She’s under his spell and I think it’s terrible the way he’s preying on her fears.” She brushed past me, leaving me in the bathroom with a wet face, stinging eyes, and a host of questions.

In a moment I returned to the bedroom. Things were still a little blurry and the Grey persisted more than I liked, but I could see the living people in the room a bit more clearly. Wrothen had gone to a small desk on wheels near the monitors and was working at a computer keyboard. Lillian Goss and Richard Stymak were bending over the white table, listening to the digital recorder through small headphones. I wondered why they weren’t using earbuds, but I suppose some people don’t care for sticking things in their ears—or they’d been intimidated out of doing so by Wrothen, who I imagined wouldn’t approve of earbuds just on principle.

I went to the table and loomed until they noticed me and looked up from their concentrated staring at the recorder—the way one does when there’s nothing to look at and too much to hear. Lily Goss glanced up first and motioned at Stymak to stop the playback. Then they both pulled off their headphones and blinked at me.

“Have you . . . got any idea what’s happening to my sister?” Goss asked.

“Well, not really. Not yet. I need to know more—to observe more—which is not possible at the moment. The paint that got into my eye seems to have messed up my vision. I’d like to come back after I’ve seen a doctor and discuss this with you both. And I’d like to hear that recording.” I doubted it was going to be case-breaking—since that kind of thing only happens in TV shows—but I wanted all the data I could get.

“I can make you a copy,” Stymak offered.

“Could you e-mail the file?”

He nodded. “I sure can. It’s large, but if I can’t e-mail it, I’ll send you a secure link you can use to download it. I’ve got more if you want them.”

Yep, he was definitely a geek. My turn to nod. “All right. But let’s start with just the one, thanks.” I turned back to Lily. “I’ll call you to coordinate a time to return, if that’s OK with you.”

“Oh. Yes. Of course. I . . . I’m the only one here from four to midnight. . . .”

“I understand. I’ll be in touch, but probably not tonight. Get some rest, Ms. Goss.” I found myself patting her shoulder—a ridiculous gesture I didn’t usually indulge in—and turning away to let myself out, but she rushed to walk with me.

As she opened the front door, Lily Goss touched my arm in a hesitant fashion. “Umm . . . I’m sorry . . . about your eye.”

“I’m sure it’s not a major injury and it was an accident.”

“I’m not. Sure, that is. Julie’s been . . . unpredictable lately. She didn’t used to talk. Now she babbles like you heard today. And she’s never thrown anything before. I am—truly—sorry.”

I wished she’d mentioned the talking and throwing things earlier, but I only said, “Nothing to be sorry for. I’m not quitting. I’ll be back.”

She bit her lip and nodded, frowning and disbelieving me. But I would be back—I wanted to know what was going on with Julianne as much as she did. There were ghosts, and there was something guiding her actions—if not actually possessing her body, which I wasn’t quite sure of.

I did, however, need to do something about my eye. The longer I let it go, the more the sting came back. Unlike another Greywalker I’d met, I had no desire to give up my sight—either Grey or normal. I’d gotten used to seeing the invisible, but it was not an adequate substitute for the normal view.

My eyes were watering badly by the time I got in to see my doctor, who sent me to an ophthalmologist for some kind of chemical test, who in turn sent me back to Dr. Skelleher with the results—dealing with the labyrinth of health care and insurance can be a royal pain in the ass, not to mention the time it takes.

Skelleher’s an odd young duck, but he understands my situation as much as any medical professional is ever likely to and he doesn’t believe there’s a pill for every problem. He gave my eyes a good looking-over and read through the ophthalmologist’s report. He always looked rumpled and sleepless, though a bit less so than usual today—his spiky hair might actually have been styled that way rather than having happened by accident. He had a small following of ghosts standing just behind him everywhere he went. They didn’t seem hostile and he was oblivious to them and any dampening effect they might have had; his aura was bright and colorful, shifting through gold and pink and shimmering, pale blue. Maybe he finally had a girlfriend—or a boyfriend; I had no idea what revved his engine. Whatever it was, he was tired, but pretty content with his life, which is something I rarely get to see.

He plopped onto the backless stool and took a deep breath before giving me the news. “You have some chemical irritation to the lid and sclera. It’s fairly mild, but it’s going to feel uncomfortable and itchy for a few days and may cause you to have some minor vision problems—blurry vision, watering, and so on. Like the ophthalmologist, I’d advise you to rest your eyes as much as possible, but I know you’ll ignore that. Try anyhow. Dr. Michaels prescribed some drops for the pain and some ointment to clear up the irritation, which you need to use twice a day, as I’m sure he told you. If the irritation doesn’t clear up with these meds, I’ll have to insist on your going back to Dr. Michaels. And I know you don’t like to do that. Also, don’t rub your eye. At all. Use the drops and make sure you
pat
any excess or tears off with a tissue. No wiping with your fingertips or the corner of your shirt or stuff like that.