Possession

to the two now-empty chairs nearest us and watched the woman stumble and nearly fall into the one just vacated by Simba.

I got a cup of water for her rather than coffee, since I figured that although she looked exhausted, she didn’t need to be any further wound up. She clutched the cup in both hands, her shoulders hunched. Her skin had a sallow cast over its natural lightly bronzed color, and blue shadows of worry smeared her eye sockets. She peered at me like a frightened cat from under a bed.

I sat down and started the conversation since it seemed like she wasn’t ready to. I did my best to give the impression I was earnest, honest, and safe to talk to. “I’m Harper Blaine and I am a friend of Phoebe’s. I’m also a private investigator and I help people with problems. What’s your name and what can I help you with?”

“I—my name is Lillian Goss,” she said. “Lily. Phoebe says . . .” Her gaze darted around, looking up at me, then down, then side to side in nervous jumps. “She says you see ghosts.”

I was a little surprised: Phoebe hadn’t seemed entirely convinced when we’d had “the talk” about my weird abilities and the grief that they had caused her in the past. Of course, she might have still been mad at me; it was hard to tell precisely what Phoebe was thinking when she was displeased. “Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked.

“I don’t. Or I didn’t. Or—I don’t know. But I believe in God and I believe in the Devil and I believe that whatever has my sister isn’t either one of those.”

I blinked, but I didn’t balk. “‘Has’? I’m not sure I understand. Something . . . that isn’t God or the Devil has . . . taken your sister? Is your sister missing?”

“No. Or yes. She’s . . . not home anymore. But someone else is.”

“Someone else is in your sister’s house?”

“Not her house—her body.”

“You’re talking about possession.”

“Yes.”

I felt . . . well, the British would say “gobsmacked,” but I wasn’t sure that was quite right, either. I just sat still and tried to get my brain around it.

She watched me absorb the idea and took my well-schooled poker face as rejection. She looked at the floor, her hands squeezing the cup so hard that the plastic sides deformed with a popping sound that made her start and gasp. “You don’t believe me!”

“Yes, I do. But why have you come to the conclusion that someone or something other than her own self is occupying her body? That’s quite a leap for most people. In fact, most people wouldn’t even consider that it might be the action of demons or the Devil. . . .”

“It’s not the Devil! God—my God—wouldn’t let that happen! He doesn’t just—just throw people away. He is loving and forgiving and Julie loves him just as I do. He wouldn’t—”

I stretched my hand out toward her, placating. “Ms. Goss, it wasn’t my intention to offend you. I’m only surprised. Please tell me what makes you think some entity has control of her body.”

She bit her lip, clamping down on sobbing breaths. She wheezed and snorted for a moment before she regained some control and was able to speak. “My sister is in what they call a persistent vegetative state—a PVS. She’s not really awake, even when she has her eyes open and seems to be looking around. She breathes on her own and sometimes she laughs or cries, but the doctors and nurses tell me it’s not real joy or sadness, just an involuntary function of whatever’s still working in her brain. She can’t do anything but lie in bed or sit in an armchair. The doctors say if her state doesn’t change soon, it never will; she’ll just deteriorate slowly until she dies.

“But a while ago she sat up on her own and she started drawing or painting something on her bedspread —”

“With what?” I asked. “With her fingers?”

“Yes, at first. I thought she was getting better, but that’s not it. She just paints. She doesn’t improve. The machines indicate that she’s not doing anything—that her brain isn’t sending these signals that move her body—but she’s sitting up and painting. I started bringing her brushes and supplies so she wouldn’t use food or blood on the bed. . . . Now she just sits up at random times and paints. And then she lies down and whatever spark she had in her goes away again. The machines say she never did anything. Her blood pressure and breathing go up, but that’s all. But these paintings . . . they’re real paintings—not crazy smeary things.”

“Is it the paintings themselves that distress you?”

“No. She paints landscapes but they’re . . . they’re odd. Someplace you almost know but can’t name. She paints them—it’s not a hoax or a prank. But it’s not her . . . it’s not her doing it.” Goss gulped a sob and tried to drink from the crushed cup, getting water down the front of her blouse for her pains.

I took the cup from her hand and fetched her a new one along with some paper towels to mop up the mess. Flustered, she patted at herself, looking embarrassed and finally hiding behind her cup of water for a few sips. Once she’d settled down again, I encouraged her to continue her tale.

“You’ve seen her do this?” I asked. “The painting.”

“Yes. She lives with me now—if you can call what she’s doing ‘living.’ I sit with her all the time. Night and day. Everything is falling apart, but I don’t know what else to do. Nurses come twice a day to help me, but she doesn’t move or do anything unless she’s painting. There are so many machines . . . but they all just beep quietly away as if she’s only lying there like always. And now it’s getting worse.”

“In what way?”

“She paints all the time, so many hours, and not all the same kind of paintings anymore. Now it’s like there’s more than one person painting. Even when she should be sleeping, she sits up and paints. If I take the brush away from her, she just grabs something else—or uses her fingers—and goes back to painting. Some of the nurses don’t want to come anymore—it freaks them out to be with her. The doctor said I was imagining things, until she started doing it in the exam room. Now even he’s spooked. And all the time she’s doing it, it’s as if her arm is moving without the rest of her doing anything. She’ll move her head around, open and close her eyes, laugh, cry . . . wet herself . . . and keep on painting. It’s like she isn’t the one painting at all. It’s just her body being moved around by someone else. Like a puppet.”

“Does she finish the paintings?”

“Not always. But she paints faster now, like she’s racing—or whoever is inside her is rushing to finish before they have to leave again. If she doesn’t finish one the same day she starts it, she’ll never finish it at all. She just goes on to the next painting. Sometimes she’ll do three in a day.”

“I think I need to meet your sister.”

Lily Goss’s face seemed to flower with hope. “Then, you’ll help me? You’ll find out who or what is possessing Julianne?”

I had to shake my head. “I can’t guarantee that. I don’t know what’s happening to your sister or if it’s really in my purview. There are some things I can’t do anything about. If this really is some kind of possession, then you need to talk to your priest.”

She gaped and looked on the verge of crying, her aura turning a bleak, muddy green that seemed to drip downward like rain. “No . . . I already talked to Father Nybeck! He can’t help me! It’s outside his role or something. He said he can’t help me . . . won’t. Don’t—don’t say you won’t, either. Please.”

She crushed the second plastic cup, sending a gout of water into her lap. She jumped up with a sob and I think she would have bolted if I hadn’t caught her shoulders and steadied her. She felt like a bundle of dry twigs barely held together by her rumpled clothes, and I was too conscious that I loomed over her, but there was little I could do to make myself smaller. I braced her and held her still, saying, “Miss Goss, I didn’t say I wouldn’t help. I said I might not be able to.”

She looked back up at me, her lip trembling and her jaw twitching as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t remember the words.

“It’s all right. I’m not saying no. I’m saying let’s go see.”

“Right now?”

“If you’re comfortable with it, sure.”

She didn’t hesitate. “Yes. I live just up the street and we can walk it in a few minutes.”

I convinced her to ride with me in the Land Rover—I didn’t want to have to walk back to the bookstore later in the chancy weather we’d been having.