The Possession

Published Internationally by Lachesis Publishing Inc.

Rockland, Ontario, Canada

Copyright © 2014 Jeanine Duval Spikes

Exclusive cover © 2014 Laura Givens

Inside artwork © 2014 Giovanna Lagana

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication

reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,

or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publisher, Lachesis Publishing Inc., is an infringement of the copyright law.

A catalogue record for the print format of this title

is available from the National Library of Canada

ISBN
978-1-927555-44-6

A catalogue record for the Ebook is available

from the National Library of Canada

Ebooks are available for purchase from

www.lachesispublishing.com

ISBN
978-1-927555-43-9

Editor: Joanna D’Angelo

Copyeditor: Giovanna Lagana

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

This is for Blanche Marriott. Friend, mentor, ass-kicker extraordinaire. Your insight, as always, was spot-on. Your support, priceless.

It’s the job of the storyteller to carefully weave the threads of fact and fiction, truth and tale, into a fabric that readers can wrap themselves in and be transported to another life. Gathering those threads would not be possible without the big hearts and generous spirit of people like Jennifer Pictou of the Aroostook Band of the Micmac, and Jason Hawes of The Atlantic Paranormal Society. I thank Jennifer for sharing so many aspects of herself - teacher, student, historian – and in doing so, creating a palpable picture of her people. And I thank Jason, for no question being too stupid and no theory dismissed out of hand. Though TAPS was on the threshold of pushing the paranormal community into the mainstream, he always responded in-depth and honestly.

Sisters of Spirit Anthology

THE POSSESSION

It wasn’t the first time a good idea had come back to bite me in the ass, but I was afraid it might be the last.

The plan had seemed harmless enough. I never intended things to get so out of hand, and I certainly hadn’t expected Zach to get involved. No, wait. If I’m going to tell this tale, write it down so it’s never forgotten, I must tell the truth—the whole truth.

I should start at the beginning . . .

I had always resisted being a redhead.

“My hair is brown,” I’d declare, “with red highlights.”

When you were one of six heads that spilled out onto the sidewalk every morning though, the sun unmercifully spotlighting the fact that you varied in shades from the red section of the crayon box, you eventually had to let that notion go. When I was twelve—we were only four heads bobbing off to Catholic school at the top of the hill by then—Mom tried to soothe me by pointing out my hair was auburn.

Auburn. I’d liked the sound of that. It wasn’t red, it was auburn.

Auburn sounded regal and refined.

So did Daphne Wentworth. That’s my name, but I can tell you truthfully I’m neither regal nor refined. I favor t-shirts and jeans and my battered sneakers. I usually have a basketball in my hands. Or a softball bat. I’m tall, always have been. Do you know what it’s like to go through school like a giraffe above the crowd? Above the
boys
?

But I digress.

My point is, I’m not at all what you’d expect from my name. And what happened to us last summer, what waited at the lighthouse, in that small copse of trees, well . . . you’d never expect that, either.

Not in two hundred years.

*    *    *

His eyes were indigo, the deep blue-black of the open ocean shot through with the heavy gray of a storm. Their color caught me when he turned and tried to walk away from the group of kids gathered to torment him.

The town kids are mean. They stopped him in front of the hardware store, a bag of grass seed slouched heavily over his shoulder. The girls crossed in front of him so that he had to stop. They batted their eyelashes and taunted him while the guys poked at the bag and tried to make him drop it.

They ran off when that big dope Gary O’Malley stuck his finger through the plastic. Only it wasn’t his finger, but a pocketknife pressed against his palm.

“Zach Attack!” Gary crowed as he backed away from the spilling seed, flashing the knife. The group of six then dashed in my direction.

Zach, if that was his name, clamped the hole closed as best he could, stemming the flow enough to carry the bag back into the hardware store.

I stood my ground, making the six slow at the thin alley opening. Chantal Barrett tried to shove past me and glowered, “What’s your problem? Move.”

My eyes narrowed. Blood pumped faster into my veins and my legs weakened, but I held firm.

“Learn some manners,” I snapped, “and grow up!” What they’d done wasn’t right. I could see Chantal got my message.

“Boo-hoo! Why don’t you run on over and help Zach clean up, if you’re so concerned.”

Gary’s jaw dropped. “She’s sticking up for that—”

“Daphne doesn’t know any better, Gary,” Chantal interrupted, covering his words—she thought. She turned a sweetened smile on me. “She doesn’t live here. She’s not one of us.”

Her words had their desired effect. Each of the six snickered in their own way and one-by-one shouldered past me to disappear down the alley.

Chantal the last, she paused and stuck her face into mine. “Mind your business. Or be sorry.”

She hurried down the alley after the others. I glanced at the hardware store, but Zach was long gone.

I made my way to the grocer.

When I got back to the lighthouse, I told Aunt Dwill what had happened, skipping Chantal’s threat. She was pleased, I could tell, though her words were cautious.

“You’re nothing, Daphne, if you can’t stand up for your principles. Just be mindful that every gain has a loss and every victory a cost. Pick your battles, and be sure you’re willing to pay.”

I frowned. She kissed my forehead. “I’ll put this stuff away. Go on out to the cemetery and start clearing. The fresh air will do you good.”

I guess I should explain about my aunt and the lighthouse.

This year is the lighthouse’s two-hundredth birthday. From the moment they struck the first wick, there has always been a Wentworth in charge. By the end of the first year, a Wentworth woman.

The present Wentworth is my aunt Dwill, Official Lighthouse Keeper of the Bay Head Light in Bay Bluffs, Maine. It’s a small town with a big responsibility. You see, the ledges off Bay Head are some of the worst along the northeastern seaboard. And they’re smack in the middle of two of the busiest seaports this side of the Canadian border.

Aunt’s real name is Edwilda, which explained her willingness to let her siblings foist the nickname ‘Dwill’ on her. It’s an old family name, my mom explained to me one day.

Yeah, well it should have stayed that way, in my opinion. Everyone thinks Aunt must be old until they meet her. She’s my mom’s middle sister, in her mid-forties but already a widow. It happened when I was little, and no one really talks about it much.

Anyway, it’s a big place for one person. She sent us pictures after she moved in. Someone took a picture of her on her front porch. Though almost as tall as me, she looked so small in the middle of the three archways, the light tower rising behind her house, the sea swelling in the background to both sides of the picture.

The lighthouse property sat on a promontory, beautiful but isolated. I remember the first time we came up to visit. Only two of my sisters had come. We arrived at dusk. Neither wanted to get out of the car.

“It’s creepy out here,” they whined. “What’s that noise? Why is it so dark? Is that light going to flash all night?”

All that before they even discovered the lighthouse came with the old historic cemetery in the woods. When we left on Sunday, they were happy to go. I stood by the lighthouse in the backyard, leaning on the fence in the growing mist as the fog horn sounded, a deep boom through my chest.

“Will you send me more pictures, Aunt?” I asked when she came out to get me.

What she sent was a picture of me, smiling broadly on the lighthouse’s hurricane deck, a glimpse of the Fresnel lens visible on my right, the sea on my left. We became pen pals of a sort, and in the summer of my thirteenth year, she invited me up for a week.

One week turned into two and that’s how it’s remained ever since.

This year, however, was special and Aunt decided to throw a celebration for the light, complete with a tour and period costumes. She asked if I could come for a couple of months, to help her ready the property. My parents agreed when they learned I’d be working for her and not just ‘wasting my summer’.

So as you can see, I was well-acquainted with Bay Head Light and already more connected to it than I realized.

I stopped by the shed to get some tools. Gloves, definitely. Don’t want my hands in something I can’t identify. A trowel, small hand claw, paper yard waste bag, pruning shears. Equipment gathered, I quickly twisted my hair up, slipped a scrunchie over it, and headed into the woods.

The cemetery wasn’t far and wasn’t scary. Not to me. Just a scattering of old stones with ancient memories written on them. People long gone to another life and no one here who remembers them.

I dropped my canvas shoulder bag of goods on the ground near the gate. Wrought iron and rusted, it leaned into the cemetery boundaries at a precarious angle. Thank God I didn’t have to push it open . . . I’d have probably landed on the ground with a rusted spiral in my gut.

This place was unfamiliar to me, except in passing. Though I’d known of the cemetery’s existence, I’d never gone in. I had too much to do in the land of the living for my short time here. No one ever came out here, so what difference did the overgrowth make?

Aunt begged to differ and insisted I clean the place up. The lighthouse was two hundred years old this summer, she reminded me, and the cemetery belonged to the lighthouse.

So, on a bright June day, I found myself alone in a somewhat decrepit cemetery in a clearing in the woods. I made my way around the ancient stones in an attempt to put off the start of my project. Most were upright and clear enough of the tangle of brush that a portion of the inscription could be read.

One small stone, nearly buried in the overgrown grass at the north corner, caught my eye. I flattened enough of the green to reveal the single word
Sarah
, and beneath it
Age 3 Months
.

Sadness flashed through me, unexpectedly. There were babies buried here?

I slipped the hand pruners from my back pocket where I’d stuck them and carefully snipped the grass down in front of the headstone. I pulled viney growth from the top corner of the stone, revealing a W. and a P.

Sarah W.P.

My hand cramped as I diligently snipped away at the grass, clearing the plot.

The screech of the gate would have warned me . . . had the gate been in better repair. With its useless tilt, however, I never heard him coming. The bag dropping next to me on the mixed pile of living and dead debris announced his presence.

I flipped to the side, tripping myself with my legs, but managed to keep the pruners in front of me. I pointed them into the air in front of my face.

Blue-black eyes studied me, one hand hooked into his pants pocket by the thumb, the other paused in front of him, fingers splayed where it had dropped the bag.