Possessed

Talk.”

“Why?” she wanted to know. She found the futon again and was happy to have the length of the apartment between them.

There was a pause as she figured her question stumped him. “Because you claim that this thing was responsible for what happened to you tonight.”

“Yes, but you don’t believe me. You don’t believe I can communicate with the dead. I’m reasonably certain you think I’m nuts. And you wouldn’t be the first. Why should I tell you about something that’s only going to confirm your worst suspicions of me?”

He sipped from the mug that she’d pilfered from the coffeehouse. It had a chip at the top and they’d been about to toss it, which was why she’d considered it fair game. Now she looked on it as part of her severance package.

He said nothing in response to her accusations but, instead, seemed content to sip his tea.

“Please. Just go,” she asked impatiently. “Thank you. I do mean that. That car might have hit me.”

“Would have hit you,” he corrected.

“Maybe, but it’s over now.”

“Is it?”

No. Not by a long shot.

Her silence was answer enough for him. “Look, I don’t believe people can communicate once they’re dead. I don’t believe in ghosts. In fact, I’m not entirely convinced that there is anything at all after death. But if there were, I certainly don’t think anyone living could hear or see someone after they’ve passed. It doesn’t seem right. But…I also don’t think you’re a liar.”

“That’s sort of a logic problem for you, isn’t it?”

His mouth twitched. “It is. But let’s just go with it, okay? Why are you seeing this monster?”

“I don’t know. I can’t be sure,” she whispered. Leaning forward, she placed the mug on the floor and gripped her head with her hands. “It’s never been like this. I hear voices. I see images. When I was a kid…they would just pop into my head with a burst of pain.”

“Pain? It hurts you?”

“Yes, but not too badly. Still, the pain tends to manifest itself on my body. A black eye, a bloody nose.”

“A fat lip,” he finished. “You had one this morning. And a black eye last night.”

“It’s the price of doing business.”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand. I’ve seen other mediums do readings on TV and such. I’ve never heard anyone talk about there being any pain involved.”

“Not everyone’s gift is the same, and not everyone who has the same gift experiences it the same way.”

“You experience pain.”

She smiled weakly. “You have to appreciate how supremely unlucky I am to have gotten stuck with the pain while others are making millions.”

“That welt on your side…that was more than a bruise.”

“What happened tonight wasn’t like anything I’ve ever experienced. This thing…it got inside my room.”

“Your room?”

How did she begin to explain something as complicated as her room to a nonbeliever? His expression, however, was earnest and attentive. A long time ago she’d promised to stop lying about who and what she was. He wouldn’t understand, but she figured if he wanted the answer, she could give it to him.

“The room is nothing more than a mental exercise. Some of the people at the asylum…”

“Asylum?”

Cass cringed. Of course he hadn’t known, and for a second she feared that any credibility she might have gained with him was suddenly lost. It shouldn’t matter. She shouldn’t care that he didn’t believe her, and talking out what happened might be a relief.

“Yes. I was committed. For a time.”

Malcolm nodded, then sipped his tea. “Go on.”

“Anyway, some of the people there helped. They would try to tell me how to control the voices. Of course, for them, it was crazy voices in their head rather than ghosts, but the principle was the same. Then, a friend at the place where I eventually ended up taught me how to conjure the room to create an atmosphere of control. When I feel a…whatever you want to call it…making contact, I form a mental picture of a room inside my head with a door that leaves them on one side and me on the other. It helps me keep things separate, you know?”

“No. But keep going.”

“When the door opens, I see the person on the other side. The dead speak to me, tell me whatever it is they have to say, and when it’s done the door closes.”

“And no one has ever gotten inside.”

“No.”

He shook his head. “But you create the room. You think it up. Why did you let it inside?”

“I couldn’t stop it. The contact was overwhelming. My brain interpreted that as it being inside the room. Attacking me. Hitting me.”

“It hit you in your side. That’s why you have that welt?” He set his mug down behind him on the counter and lifted himself off the stool to pace a small area of her living room. “It doesn’t make sense. This thing isn’t real. Even if it is what you say it is, it’s not a corporeal entity. It can’t touch you.”

“You have to understand that the mind is a truly powerful thing, and it controls our bodies more than we realize. My body simply reacted to the powerful mental image it received.”

“Can you fight back?”

Good question. “I don’t know. I didn’t think about it. It was there and I was afraid. I don’t really know how to fight.”

Malcolm’s eyes fell to the mat and the bands in the corner of the room.

“Yoga and Pilates,” she confirmed. “Great for strength, flexibility and relaxation. Not so good against monsters.”

“Okay. Let’s get back to why you saw it in the first place. How does that work?”

“This has been different, too. Spirits only come to me when I’m close, physically, to the one they want to make contact with. It’s the purpose of a medium.”

“I don’t understand.”

Slightly frustrated at having to explain everything, she paused and tried to clarify her meaning. “Medium means ‘in the middle.’ I’m nothing more than a conduit between someone dead and someone living. But the first time I saw this thing, I was alone in my apartment.”

“You think it just came to you?”

“Maybe. At first I thought it could be someone from my past.”

“You have a monster in your past? You said you had no family.”

Having him say the words triggered a pull in her gut. She thought back to the dream she’d had before it had shown up. She remembered seeing her grandfather. He wanted her to talk to him, but she wouldn’t allow it. It wasn’t the first time he’d tried to contact her and she guessed it wouldn’t be the last, no matter how many times she rejected him. He’d hurt her, yes. Betrayed her. But he wasn’t a monster.

“No, no monster,” she said, more to assure herself than to answer him. “At least none that I know of. And I don’t have a family. My mother left me when I was a baby. I didn’t know her in life to know how she would be in death. Same with my father. My grandparents raised me. My grandmother could never hurt me, but my grandfather…”

“He was cruel?”

“He was strict,” she amended. “He was old-fashioned. He was straitlaced. But he liked to carry caramels in his sweater pocket and read bedtime stories to me. He wasn’t a monster.”

“I bet he also wasn’t the type to believe in special gifts,” Malcolm surmised.

The emotional pain came back in a wave that she tried to shrug off. “No, he wasn’t. For as long as I can remember I’ve heard voices. Whisperings in my head. My grandmother called them my imaginary friends. It wasn’t until puberty that it started to change. I began to understand that the voices were real. One day my grandmother had a friend over who had just lost her husband. It was like he was shouting at me inside my head. Finally, I