the car—shambling footsteps from behind—all these last sounds and images felt with a resurgence of power—pain, terrible pain and screaming fear!—the darkness strong, peaking before starting to drain away—fading, wasting away—until there was only light…
Inside her, I reeled under the pressure of it all, some of her terror left with me. I willed myself to be calm, aware that if those last sensations had gone on any longer I would have fled the cold flesh that now bound me. I felt myself trembling, even though that wasn’t possible. Her death had been horrible and the suffering had continued even after the heart had stopped.
I steadied myself. I was in a void; nothing else of the woman was left. The body was without any trace of its previous owner.
It was time for me to subjugate it. I prayed for it to be possible.
I settled my mind and it was surprisingly easy to do. Despite everything I’d been witness to that night, despite my fear and anxiety, I soothed my own consciousness by repeating the exercise I had used to travel outside my own body.
Deep, deep breaths (pretend breaths now, obviously), long, long exhalations. Addressing each part of my non-physical form, starting with the absent toes and moving up my non-existent legs, then invisible groin, working my way through my impalpable belly, chest, shoulders, arms right to my indiscernible head, willing them all to relax. Then, instead of commanding myself to move out of my physical form (usually by concentrating on one specific spot near the ceiling of whatever room I was in—mostly the bedroom—and willing my inner self to go there), I forced myself to become part of the vessel I now inhabited. That in life I’d been much bigger than the unfortunate woman seemed to make no difference—I still had to “fill out” her human shape. I felt myself flow into her, strangely expanding rather than shrinking, sensing myself into her muscles and bones and organs. Occasionally, a fragment of her memory would return, but always too weak to linger.
My fingers slipped into hers. My stomach and chest moulded themselves to the inner side of her skin. Bit by bit I took over her shape, feeling my way in, and suffering no discomfort as I did so. Earlier, it had taken Moker practically no time at all to possess his victim, but he’d had more practice than I. Briefly I wondered if this was how demons possessed certain afflicted human beings (I’d never believed in demonic possession before, but these days I’m more susceptible to all manner of possibilities).
Once I felt myself totally absorbed, I endeavoured to move her right hand. I slipped out of her.
Drawing my own hand back again and sliding into her fingers as though they were the digits of a glove, I took more deep breaths and concentrated even harder, thinking of myself as at one with her.
Her hand shifted just a little.
Eventually, taking over the dead woman’s body proved relatively easy (although controlling it was much more difficult). It was a matter of “thinking” myself into what was in essence a vacated property, a kind of Zen thing, if you like. As I mentioned before, it was a matter of being “at one with her”, not quite taking over the lifeless flesh and blood, but becoming part of it; not wearing it, but being it. Because I’d had practice at projecting my inner self to other places outside my “shell”, it wasn’t that difficult for me to project myself into the other person’s body. Difficult to explain, and not that easy to do; but if you already had the knack, it helped.
Now being inside, “fitting” the new body, was all well and good, but getting it to obey my will was something else. I got used to moving the right hand first, then the arm up to the elbow. Getting a reaction from the rest of the body was a little harder, but perseverance paid off. Remember, I was still very shaken, so it took a lot of effort just to calm myself; controlling somebody else’s body needed full concentration. It came though, the ability to govern came gradually at first, and then with a rush. The trick was not to try too hard but to relax and just sink into it.
Sitting up wasn’t so bad, although the alien body felt heavy and cumbersome, but rising to my feet was almost impossible. You see, living inside your own body, adapting to its growth over the years, you’re not aware of its weight so much, but occupying somebody else’s is like trying on a suit of armour—armour that’s made out of lead. You have to get used to it, and even then motion is awkward. Moker had obviously become skilled at it with practice, but even when he had possessed the woman’s corpse, movement had been a little stiff and graceless.
First problem, though, was vision. Everything was blurred through the victim’s eyes and I remembered she had worn glasses, which were now missing, obviously knocked off dining the vicious attack by the scummy threesome. I used both clumsy hands to feel around the concrete step and, although the fingertips were numb, I felt something move. It took a little while to pick up the glasses—it was like wearing thick gloves without individual fingers—and I dropped them more than once. Eventually, I got them over the nose and managed to fumble the side arms through the hair and over the ears. One of the lenses had cracked, but vision improved, not as much as I had hoped, but enough to enable me to find my way around.
I was a mere novice, but I was determined to succeed. I had a plan.
Using the brick wall of the recessed doorway for support and balance, I slowly hauled myself up, rising to my (her) knees first, raising one leg so shin and thigh were at right angles to each other, then, digging my (her) fingers into the indentations between bricks for extra support, I used all my willpower and the woman’s waning strength to stand. (Fortunately for me, she had lost her shoes in the fracas with the three men, so I didn’t have to worry about high heels.) I made it, but instantly fell back against the metal door where I stayed for several minutes, legs spread and firmly rooted to the wide doorstep, the rest of me (her) trembling. With a whole lot of effort, I managed to adjust the woman’s clothing, dragging up panties and hose, buttoning (almost impossible, this, but I persevered) the jacket.
I felt dizzy, as though I was too high off the ground, the feeling you get when you ride a bike or climb onto a horse for the first time. And when I pushed myself away from the door and tried to walk, my legs felt like long stilts.
I fell off the step and had to go through the whole process of rising once again. It was almost but not quite like learning to walk for the first time (I suppose an amputee who has been given prosthetic legs must go through a similar procedure) and, believe me, it wasn’t easy. I stumbled and fell twice more before I reached the street junction.
However, although my gait was clumsy and somewhat perilous, my arms waving in the air for balance, I soon began to get used to walking. By the time I reached the main thoroughfare of Queensway, I resembled only a hopeless drunk.
The journey through the London streets was horrendous. Luckily it was late night, and once I’d moved out of the Queensway area, the sidestreets became darker again and virtually deserted. The few people who did pass me by must have thought I was either drunk or drugged by the way I lurched along and used walls where I could for support. Heads turned, a few people crossed over to the other side of the street before they reached me. A group of young guys laughed at me, yelling insults and suggestions of what we all might do together, but they soon lost interest and went on their way when I ignored them.
One person, an elderly, scruffily dressed man, approached me and asked if I was all right and if he could assist me in any way. I don’t know whether it was my blood-drenched clothes, my battered face, the stench of urine coming from me, or the way I babbled and gurgled as I attempted to reply, that deterred him. Possibly—probably— it was all of these things. He backed off and I stumbled onwards.
It was quite a hike and I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. When the body dies it doesn’t take muscles long to start atrophying, so I was becoming weaker by the minute. The fact that blood had stopped coursing through the arteries was neither here nor there—I wasn’t alive, so I didn’t need it—but the fact that it was settling into my lower legs and feet made it feel as if I were wearing lead boots. Also, the increasing coldness was rendering the corpse ever more stiff. By the time I reached the police station I was moving like Frankenstein’s monster.
All through the journey I had been trying to speak, something that brought me extra stares from infrequent (fortunately) passers-by. To them, not only was I drunk and dishevelled, but I was crazy also.
The idea was to be able to talk coherently when I got to my destination: I had a tale to tell and a name to name. This was an extra hurdle though, and far more difficult than making the body walk. It took a while to produce any noise at all, and then it was only a raspy whispering which sounded something like “Unurrrrgahh”. Not very good, but the best I could do to start with.
I kept trying to pronounce certain words, simple ones at first—“cat, sat, mat”, that kind of thing, but all that came out was: “ca, sa, ma”. I persisted though, struggling to walk, striving to talk. And although in my out-of-body state I had lost all sense of physical feeling (passing through walls and the like were mental sensations), I felt a distinct chill enveloping me. It was like wearing a heavy suit that had been left outside on a frigid winter’s night.
