couch cushions, and decided I should call 911 instead of Mick. But I couldn’t get my hand to reach for it; my whole arm was clenched, my whole body.
The writhing gave way to a tingling, as if my whole body was falling asleep the way a foot can. I expected to drop to the ground, but, miraculously, I stayed on my feet while the tingling turned to a thick numbness. I thought I might be having a stroke. I was falling away, losing all sensation.
A sound passed between my lips, a guttural “
It was just like the experience I’d had when I was dead, only I was in my own body instead of Lyndsay’s.
I felt myself rise from the couch, then look down at my legs. My hand touched one leg, then the other. The hand was quavering so violently it was a blur.
I tried to cry out, to scream in terror, but couldn’t.
I heard myself laugh. It was a loose, blubbery laugh, and it was the last sound I wanted to make. I watched myself step away from the couch, put my hands on my hips, and start kicking my legs. They kicked and sprung in a spastic, rubbery parody of dance, the movements utterly unfamiliar to me.
“Diddle de diddle de dee,” I sang, my chest hitching, my voice a dead croak.
Just as it began to dawn on me that the dance I was doing was a jig—an Irish jig—I turned my face to the ceiling, spread my arms and croaked, “I got me legs.”
Me legs. I wanted to run screaming from the room, to escape this twisted marionette show.
Me legs.
My body stopped dancing. “And now.” Even through the thick guttural zombie belch there was no mistaking Grandpa’s accent.
I was taken upstairs to my studio, to the drafting table, to the strip I’d just finished.
“You little shit,” my mouth said. I watched my grandfather yank a pair of scissors out of a drawer with my hand. “Thieving little shit.” He stabbed the strip, hit Wolfie in the face, driving the scissors into the wooden table. “I’ll fix you.” He pulled the scissors out, brought them down again, and again, stabbing and cursing, until the images were obliterated. When he was finished he retrieved a thumb tack and tried to pin the ruined strip to the wall, but his hands were shaking too badly and he dropped the tack.
The tips of my fingers began to tingle. It was subtle at first, then it ran up my arms. I was feeling something again. It got stronger, until it felt like electric eels in my blood. I balled my hands into spastic fists.
Now that I had my mouth back, I screamed.
CHAPTER 14
The doorbell rang three times before I heard it. It rang a fourth before I could muster the strength to say, “Come in.”
Mick found me at the kitchen table, a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a shot glass in front of me. I’d completely forgotten that he was going to come by.
“All right, Finn?” he said. I was still shaking; I felt colder than the night I was pulled out of the reservoir. Could that have been just over a month ago? That was utterly inconceivable.
“I don’t need a psychiatrist,” I said. “I need an exorcist.” Or was it a delusion? Maybe I was a deeply disturbed individual. That was very possible. In fact, it seemed almost probable when I considered the alternative.
Mick pulled out a chair and sat. “What happened to you?” His voice was soft, calming, the tone you use to comfort someone who’s been raped. Which was not far off. I felt violated. I’d been ripped from my own body, pushed to a place where you go in your nightmares, where you try to open your mouth to scream but can’t find your own mouth.
“What happened?” he repeated.
I couldn’t explain. It would take too many words, too many strange words. Finally, I said simply, “My grandfather visited me.”
Mick nodded, not in understanding but to encourage me to continue. Then he frowned. “Hang on, I thought your grandfather was dead.”
“He is.”
He clapped my shoulder, went to the cabinets, and rooted around, returning a moment later with a mug. He poured himself a drink.
“Can you turn on more lights?” I asked. It had been dark for hours, but I’d been too afraid to move about the house. Grandpa was hiding in every dark corner.
“Yeah,” Mick said. His chair scraped the linoleum. “Which?”
“All of them.”
Without a word Mick went into the living room and turned on the lights. In the brighter light the kitchen spun slightly, the results of half a bottle of Jack. Mick disappeared upstairs.
“Bloody hell,” I heard him mutter.
He returned holding the strip. I looked away—I didn’t want to see it. It was evidence that I hadn’t imagined it all.
“This was good,” Mick said. “Why did you ruin it?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then who did?”
I shrugged helplessly. “Grandpa.” I could still hear him breathing through my nose as he slashed with the scissors. He’d clutched the scissors in his fist the way a child does, just as he’d held a pencil when he was alive.
Mick studied me. “Why don’t you take your time, tell me when you’re ready?” He poured me another shot of whiskey. I downed it.
Grandpa was in me right now. That’s what this had all been about from that first twitch in my throat—it was Grandpa, inside me, struggling to get out.
But that was impossible. It just didn’t make sense. I dragged my hands down my face. Who could help me? I was beginning to doubt Corinne could. What if this was real? What if Grandpa had somehow crawled out of the grave and inside me?
I froze, my hand clutching the glass. Suddenly the experience I’d had while I was dead came into tighter focus. I’d been dead, so I’d taken up residence in some unsuspecting person, the way Grandpa was in me. Maybe Lyndsay had felt a twitching in her throat when I tried to speak.
Finally, I opened my mouth. “My grandfather took control of me. All of me. He did that—” I pointed to the ruined strip on the kitchen table.
Mick stared at the strip, his lip curled in disgust, or maybe disbelief. “You mean, he actually took control of your body?”
“Yeah.”
He pressed the balls of his hands against his eyes. “I’ve got to tell you, Finn, this is crazy shit you’re talking.”
“There are dead people inside us,” I said, rolling right over his skepticism. “The voices are the dead people taking control for a moment.”
“Christ, don’t say that,” Mick said. He cupped his hands over his ears, propped his elbows on the table. “You’re going to give me another bleeding heart attack.”
I reached for the remote and scrolled until I found the news report I’d recorded. “Have you seen this?”
It was only a two-minute piece. They showed people blurting in zombie-speak, their faces in silhouette to protect their identities. A psychiatrist said that cases had been cropping up in the greater Atlanta area for the past few weeks. They hadn’t figured out what it was, but believed it was a form of post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by the anthrax attack. He estimated there were several hundred to several thousand cases.
