Free Possession by Kat Richardson Page B

cloud of ghosts circled the room, each waiting for its chance to occupy the body of the patient, trying to say something that we couldn’t understand. It wasn’t all I wanted to know, but it was enough for now.
    Olivia brushed past her mother in a flurry of frustration and anger, striding to me and pointing down the hall. I half expected her to leave me to find my own way out, but she came along.
    At the front door, she stopped me with a hand on my arm. She was breathing heavily, as if we’d run to the door. “My mother . . . I’m sorry—she doesn’t understand. She’s afraid.”
    “Of what?”
    “Of losing Dad’s L&I case. If they decide he’s not really . . . vegetative”—she clearly hated the word—“they’ll take back the benefits and we’ll lose the house and stuff.”
    I was familiar with the state Labor and Industries Board and their often hard-nosed and by-the-book attitude toward long-term injury cases. I’d investigated plenty of suspected frauds for them when I was a lot hungrier. They weren’t as bad as some insurance companies, but they weren’t easygoing, either, and a case like this had to seem hinky to them.
    I patted at the stinging fingernail-scrapes on my face. No blood now, though they itched and irritated my skin.
    “I’m sorry—about your face,” Olivia said.
    “It’s nothing. Aren’t you worried about the L&I case, too?”
    Olivia bit her lip. “I am, but I want to help my dad. You saw—”
    “I did. He writes a lot, doesn’t he?”
    She nodded. “Mom used to let him, but now she tries to stop him. She can’t. He keeps on doing it. If he can’t use a pen, he’ll just use his fingers like he’s drawing in the sand. I don’t understand most of what he writes, but it’s not nonsense. You said you could help him—can you?”
    “Not right away. I need to know more.”
    “Is this like the other lady? Like your client?”
    I nodded. “Yes.”
    “What is it? Don’t tell me it’s just muscle spasms. I know what a muscle spasm is and that’s not it.”
    I peered at her. “Do you believe in God?”
    She gave me that look of incredulity and disgust that teenage girls are so good at. “What? Are you some kind of religious nut?”
    “No, I just wanted to know how to express this. I take it you don’t go to church much.”
    “No. So what?” she added, crossing her arms over her too-thin chest.
    I returned my best professional briefing expression. “My client believes her sister is possessed. She’s a religious woman and that’s the word she understands for what seems to be happening. But when I say ‘possessed’ I don’t mean that a demon has taken over the body, but that some other entity is momentarily in control. That’s what I think is happening to her and to your dad. Some other spirit is pushing through, trying to say something but not making itself clear to us.”
    “But what about my dad? Isn’t this my dad trying to talk to us?”
    “I think he’s unable to shove the others aside—they’re stronger than he is and there are a lot of them. They’re very upset and if I can find out why, or who they are, I may be able to solve their problem so they’ll go away and let your dad come back on his own.”
    She pursed her lips and scowled, thinking. “How do you know this shit? How do you know what’s happening to my dad?”
    I sighed. “I can see them—the ghosts.”
    “You’re some kind of psychic, like that chick on TV?”
    I almost laughed. “No. I’m not like that at all.”
    “You can’t make my dad come back? Like, call him to his body or something?”
    “No. That’s not how it works. At least not for me. The human spirit is stubborn. We’re a troublesome bunch. We don’t like to shut up and go away, even when we’re dead. We reshape the whole world to suit us, even the world we can’t see. And something has made these lingering spirits so frantic to speak up that they are bullying people like your dad—the ones who are