Possession (8 page)

I came up the driveway and looked at the house. One end was unsided and looked as if a renovation project had been given up in midwork and temporarily weatherproofed until it could be completed at a future date that had come and gone some time ago. The Tyvek and plastic were beginning to fray from friction under wind and soaking by rain for longer than they’d been meant to be so exposed. I wondered when the work had stopped—before or after whatever had put Sterling into his current state of lingering ill health.

On my way to the door, the persistent Grey vision on my left became more pronounced until I was seeing the world as two partially overlapped layers—one of the normal sphere and the other of chilly silver fog and ghostlight. The house seemed to melt away on the left, becoming a gleaming wire frame of light and emptiness through which the mist of uncanny things played around knots of colored energy. I knocked on the door that was half there, half memory. Something flickered at the edge of my vision and I started to turn to look for it, but it fell back before I could pick it out from the general psychic noise of the street and a neighborhood full of kids on summer break. Once again I thought I heard the distant rattle and roar of the Guardian Beast, but I saw no sign of it nearby.

My attention was jolted back around as the door opened with the scrape of loose weatherstripping over quarried flagstone. A blond girl, about fifteen years old, stood in the doorway. She was too thin for her gangly height, barefoot, her hair hanging loose almost to her waist, dressed in ragged cutoff jeans and two layers of T-shirts so thin and clinging that I could count her ribs through them. A pall of surly red and dull olive green energy hung on her. I remembered being that thin at her age and cast a glance down, to see the same kind of knobby, bruised, and calloused feet I still had.

She held on to the door and the frame, making a barrier, and shot one hip, tucking her chin down and staring at me as she did. “Yeah?”

“Are you a dancer?” I asked.

Her head came up and interest sparked in her eyes. “Yeah.”

I nodded. “Thought so. Ballet?”

She returned my nod. “And Irish step.”

I pointed at the scar on her right foot that gleamed too white in one world and jagged red in the other. “FHL release?”

“Yeah. About a year ago.”

“Still hurts, doesn’t it.”

“Like a bitch. I’m trying to keep it limber by going barefoot, but sometimes it still hurts.”

“Your PT doesn’t make you wrap the arch?”

She gave a bitter shrug. “Can’t afford to go anymore. Dad’s been sick and it’s eaten all the insurance and most of the cash.”

“Your dad’s Kevin Sterling?”

“Yeah.” She frowned. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Harper Blaine. I’m a private investigator.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh fuck. I can’t believe you people. Dad’s sick. I mean totally ill. He’s not sneaking around doing shit behind your backs. He’s not faking a coma, y’know!”

She started to shove the door closed but I wedged my right leg and shoulder in between the frame and the door. I’m still pretty skinny even though I haven’t danced in ten years or more and I didn’t want my too-prominent collarbones or less-than-perfect knees to take the worst of the impact, so I used the hard toe of my boot as a stopper. The door banged into the leather and rubber and bounced back a little, smacking the girl’s palm.

“Ow!”

“Sorry,” I said, easing through the doorway and putting up one of my hands in a placating gesture. “I’m not with the insurance company or the hospital or any of those people. I don’t believe your dad is faking anything and I’m not here to get him in trouble. My client’s sister is the same way. We’re just trying to figure out what’s happening.”

“You mean, like, why she’s a veggie, like my dad?”

“No—we know why that happened. What we don’t know is why she’s doing weird things.”

The girl narrowed her eyes at me. “What kind of weird things?”

“She paints and she babbles and sometimes she throws things, but she’s not awake when she does it; she’s still in a coma. Does your dad do that kind of thing?”

She closed her eyes as if a burden had been removed. “Oh, man. We thought it was just him.”

Another woman called out from farther back in the house. “Olivia!”

The girl rolled her eyes. “I’m coming, Mom!” She looked at me again, biting her lip and frowning. “I’m not supposed to let you in.”

“I understand. But I want to help my client and if I can help her, that may help your dad. The more I know, the better the chances.”

Olivia sucked a breath in through her teeth, looking conflicted, her energy corona flashing and fluttering red and orange and pink by turns. She made up her mind. “Mom’s going to kill me, but come on. I’ll show you Dad.”

She led me through the foyer and into a half-finished hallway that went down the side of the house toward the back. “It’s kind of messy here. Dad was working on the new garage and stuff when he had his accident and no one’s ever finished it. Probably never will.”

“That sounds rough.”

“It kind of sucks.”

“Sounds it. What’s your dad do?”

“He’s a tunneling engineer—he was working on the waterfront project to replace the viaduct and part of the shaft collapsed and he got buried in the mud.”

“Why was he working on your house if he’s a tunnel guy?”

“He’s Mr. Fix-It. He’s always, like, ‘I can do that better.’ And usually, y’know, yeah. But this time . . .” She shook her head. “Fucking tunnel got him.”

“What are the weird things your dad’s been doing since his accident?”

Her voice got quieter as we walked and the colors around her became increasingly anxious shades of orange. “A while ago, he started writing stuff and then he started saying stuff. It really freaks my mom out. Well, it freaks me out, too, but I figure even though it’s kind of creepy, at least he’s trying. Y’know, somewhere in there he’s still . . . there, y’know?”

“So it makes sense. He’s writing to you and your mom?”

“No. That’s the creepy part. It doesn’t make sense. He’s not talking to us.” She stopped just before an open door and turned around to put a finger to her lips. She turned back and walked through the door, leaving me in the unfinished hall. I could hear the mutter and ping of life-support machines and monitors in the room beyond and see the dark green misery that rolled out of the room like smog.

My intrusive Grey vision left me with a strangely overlaid view of the room beyond the wall. Olivia’s fluttering colors of anxiety and anger buzzed through the cloud-filled space toward a storm front that boiled with ghosts and was pierced by a tight coil of green despair and fear.

“Hey, Mom,” Olivia said.

“What took you so long? Where have you been?” The words came forth strung on spiky orange filaments.

“I just went to the door, like you told me to.” Olivia sounded defensive and I could see her energy colors shifting toward red. It appeared that Olivia’s resentment burned on a short fuse and I wondered if this uncomfortable relationship was a symptom of stress from Sterling’s lingering state or if it had been this way before he was injured.

“You should have come right back. What took you so long and who were you talking to?”

I thought I could hear the eye roll that came with Olivia’s reply. “Mom,” she whined, making the word three syllables long. “Don’t get all over me. This lady was at the door and she said she might be able to help Dad, so I let her in.”

I figured that was my cue to step into the room.

Once through the door, I could see the room wasn’t much different from Julianne Goss’s—the space that had been a large bedroom was now a sickroom filled with machines—except that instead of paintings, drifts and piles of scrawled paper occupied every vertical space that wasn’t filled with equipment or plumbing. Stacks of yellow notepads and boxes of cheap pens lay on one of the rolling tray tables pushed near the large hospital bed. An emaciated form made barely a lump in the blankets on the bed, and had become the focus around which all else flowed, including the churning darkness-and-silver boil of ghosts.

A live middle-aged woman sat alone beside the bed on a desk chair that made her look waifish—not because the chair was so large but because she was so thin. I guessed from her pallor and the way her skin seemed loose over her bones that she’d been much plumper not long ago and her weight loss had been swift and unhealthy. Everything about her had gone dull. As there was no one else in the room, I assumed she was Olivia’s mother.

She looked at me as if she couldn’t imagine where I’d come from. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Harper Blaine, Mrs. Sterling. I work for a woman whose sister is in the same state as your husband.”

She frowned at me. “I don’t understand.”

“I’ve had information that Mr. Sterling has episodes of strange behavior—writing, talking—as if he were awake, but he remains in a vegetative state—”

Mrs. Sterling jumped to her feet and surged toward me. “Who told you that? It’s not true! My Kevin isn’t faking being sick!” She slapped me with all the strength she could muster. Her bony hand felt like a giant bird’s claw striking my cheek, her fingernails leaving tracks on my skin.

I flinched away from her. She shoved me backward, screaming, “Get out! Get out!”

I’m not easy to move, but her anger added force to her efforts and I took an involuntary step backward. Olivia hopped out of our way and for a moment I could see the man in the bed clearly. Most of the ghosts had drawn aside as if disappointed in their efforts, while two foggy forms lingered, pressing inward until the darker of the two had flowed over the man and covered him like a shroud.

The man shivered and his left hand started scrabbling at the covers. “No soup today,” he said.

I stared. Olivia and Mrs. Sterling turned around, frozen for a moment. Then they rushed to the bed. Olivia tried to put a pen in the moving hand, but Mrs. Sterling knocked it aside and clutched her husband’s hand. “It’s just a spasm,” she said, as if she were reassuring herself. “It’s nothing. Just muscles twitching. It means nothing.”

“No, Mom!” Olivia cried, pulling at her. “He’s trying to write. Let go!”

She turned a furious expression on her daughter. “Shut up! Shut up. It’s not true. And you get that woman out of here, Olivia Pearl Sterling. You get her out! Now!” Then she cast a look at me, saying, “Leave us alone! Go the hell away!”

I was already backing into the hallway. I’d seen what I needed, and Mrs. Sterling wasn’t going to be any help, even though the situation seemed the same as at the Goss house: A seeking cloud of ghosts circled the room, each waiting for its chance to occupy the body of the patient, trying to say something that we couldn’t understand. It wasn’t all I wanted to know, but it was enough for now.

Olivia brushed past her mother in a flurry of frustration and anger, striding to me and pointing down the hall. I half expected her to leave me to find my own way out, but she came along.

At the front door, she stopped me with a hand on my arm. She was breathing heavily, as if we’d run to the door. “My mother . . . I’m sorry—she doesn’t understand. She’s afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of losing Dad’s L&I case. If they decide he’s not really . . . vegetative”—she clearly hated the word—“they’ll take back the benefits and we’ll lose the house and stuff.”

I was familiar with the state Labor and Industries Board and their often hard-nosed and by-the-book attitude toward long-term injury cases. I’d investigated plenty of suspected frauds for them when I was a lot hungrier. They weren’t as bad as some insurance companies, but they weren’t easygoing, either, and a case like this had to seem hinky to them.

I patted at the stinging fingernail-scrapes on my face. No blood now, though they itched and irritated my skin.

“I’m sorry—about your face,” Olivia said.

“It’s nothing. Aren’t you worried about the L&I case, too?”

Olivia bit her lip. “I am, but I want to help my dad. You saw—”

“I did. He writes a lot, doesn’t he?”

She nodded. “Mom used to let him, but now she tries to stop him. She can’t. He keeps on doing it. If he can’t use a pen, he’ll just use his fingers like he’s drawing in the sand. I don’t understand most of what he writes, but it’s not nonsense. You said you could help him—can you?”

“Not right away. I need to know more.”

“Is this like the other lady? Like your client?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“What is it? Don’t tell me it’s just muscle spasms. I know what a muscle spasm is and that’s not it.”

I peered at her. “Do you believe in God?”

She gave me that look of incredulity and disgust that teenage girls are so good at. “What? Are you some kind of religious nut?”

“No, I just wanted to know how to express this. I take it you don’t go to church much.”

“No. So what?” she added, crossing her arms over her too-thin chest.

I returned my best professional briefing expression. “My client believes her sister is possessed. She’s a religious woman and that’s the word she understands for what seems to be happening. But when I say ‘possessed’ I don’t mean that a demon has taken over the body, but that some other entity is momentarily in control. That’s what I think is happening to her and to your dad. Some other spirit is pushing through, trying to say something but not making itself clear to us.”

“But what about my dad? Isn’t this my dad trying to talk to us?”

“I think he’s unable to shove the others aside—they’re stronger than he is and there are a lot of them. They’re very upset and if I can find out why, or who they are, I may be able to solve their problem so they’ll go away and let your dad come back on his own.”

She pursed her lips and scowled, thinking. “How do you know this shit? How do you know what’s happening to my dad?”

I sighed. “I can see them—the ghosts.”

“You’re some kind of psychic, like that chick on TV?”

I almost laughed. “No. I’m not like that at all.”

“You can’t make my dad come back? Like, call him to his body or something?”

“No. That’s not how it works. At least not for me. The human spirit is stubborn. We’re a troublesome bunch. We don’t like to shut up and go away, even when we’re dead. We reshape the whole world to suit us, even the world we can’t see. And something has made these lingering spirits so frantic to speak up that they are bullying people like your dad—the ones who are kind of in between here and there.”