Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 02 (6 page)

 
          
"I
need help," she said. "And not that kind! I've been—" she broke
off. "No. You'll never believe me then—why should you? I don't believe
me—don't you understand? I don't believe me—I don't care—all I want to do is
stop it!"

 
          
She'd
begun to pace, walking back and forth in front of the row of books, her voice
rising as she spoke until she was almost shouting.

 
          
Dylan
looked quizzically toward Truth. Both of them had been forced to baby-sit their
share of cranks while waiting for the campus police to remove them—was this
another? Truth frowned and shook her head a fraction, and sat down at the
table.

 
          
"First
you have to tell us what is troubling you," Truth said with gentle
firmness.

 
          
Winter
paused in her pacing and whirled to face Truth. As she did, two of the cased
magazine sets fell off the shelf behind her; she jumped away from them, looking
first at them and then back at Truth as if she expected at any moment to be
accused of something.

 
          
"I'm
not crazy. Don't you understand? I'm not crazy—that's the whole problem—I'm
not!"

 
          
"Okay,"
said Dylan, not moving from his watchful post beside the door, "you're not
crazy. But you are going to have to tell us what you want."

 
          
Truth
watched the woman gather herself together with an effort. "I want it to
stop," she said, her voice nearly a whisper. "I want it to stop
before someone gets hurt."

 
          
They
couldn't help her, Winter realized with numb despair—and even if they could,
she'd been a fool to believe that anyone would listen past the point where she
told them about
Fall River
. "That's all I want," she repeated plaintively. "For it
to stop."

 
          
"What
is it that you want to stop?" the dark-haired woman seated at the
table—Truth—asked her.

 
          
Winter
stared at her doubtfully. She'd expected someone older—and, frankly, male—when
she'd come demanding to speak with one of the Institute's researchers. This
Dylan Palmer, in his work shirt, jeans, and earring, wasn't quite what she'd
had in mind either, whether he said he was a doctor or not. Someone in a suit,
maybe—someone with authority.

 
          
The authority to cast out demons.

 
          
"Do
you—could you—I need to know ..." The words trembled on the tip of her
tongue, but she could not bring herself to say them. "Can you tell if
someone's possessed?" she finally choked out.

 
          
Blessedly,
neither of them laughed.

 
          
"Possessed
by a devil?" Truth asked, as calmly as if she were discussing the price of
a new bond issue. "Why don't you sit down, Ms. Musgrave?"

 
          
Dylan
walked around the table and pulled out a chair for her. Winter sank into it,
feeling drained of all strength by the effort it had taken to ask that
question. She could be sane, and these things could still be happening—if she
were possessed. It did not even occur to her to consider how desperate she must
be to entertain this possibility.

 
          
"Now,"
Truth
Jourdemayne
said, "start from the
beginning."

 
          
Winter
hesitated. She'd always been a very private person—even when the catchphrase of
the eighties was "Do you want to talk about it?" Winter never had.
Talk frightened her; it made her feel too vulnerable. Even now she didn't want
to talk. She wanted someone to wave a magic wand and make the problem go away.
But they couldn't. Not until she told them what it was.

 
          
"Things
. . . happen," Winter began, but even to her that sounded inadequate. She
waited, but the woman across the table provided no helpful questions, and
finally Winter went on. "To me—no,
around
me. These— things—happen, and I don't have any control over them; I'm not
doing
them—" she didn't think she
was; how could she do things like that to helpless animals; how could anyone?
"—but I can't
stop
them,
either."

 
          
"What
kind of things?" Truth asked, her voice still calm.

 
          
Winter
flinched away from the telling. "They're . . . Look, I have to tell you:
I've been in, in an institution. I had, oh, I guess they used to call it a
nervous breakdown. But I'm not . . . I'm not crazy, you see? And if I am, why
won't somebody just
tell
me I'm
crazy, okay? I could stand that. And not just go around all the time pretending
everything's great, everything's fine, like this is some sort of skinned knee
that's going to get better if I just leave it alone for a while?"

 
          
She
knew her voice was rising hysterically again. She couldn't help it; every time
she managed to stop being afraid even the littlest bit, the rage and
frustration rose to the surface until it took all the self-control she had left
not to merely scream wordlessly and lash out at everything that surrounded her.

 
          
"Why
don't you tell us why you came here, Ms. Musgrave?" Dylan Palmer said.

 
          
"Because
you people are the
ghostbusters
, right? And that's
what I'm dealing with—something that walks through walls and does things that
nobody can do. Following me, and I thought it was my fault, so I— But I'm not
going to take the blame, not if it— So you've got to exorcise me, or whatever
it is you do here, so I can get back to my life!"

 
          
She
could not manage to stay in her chair; she got to her feet again and began to pace,
choking on her fear and rage until her heart was a thick weight in her throat.

 
          
"Ghosts
usually haunt places rather than people, Ms. Musgrave," Dr. Palmer said
calmly. "Why do you think you're being haunted?"

 
          
Winter
waited, but the dark-haired woman—Truth—didn't say anything. But at least
neither of them had laughed. A strange serenity seemed to radiate from Truth
Jourdemayne
, an intangible but real something that Winter
could shelter beneath and draw strength from. She managed to halt her pacing
and press both palms flat on the table. Finally she went on with her story.

 
          
"I'm
staying in the old farmhouse a couple of miles out of
Glastonbury
. I went there after I got out of the
sanatorium," she added, half-defiantly.

 
          
Neither
of the researchers spoke. Winter forced herself to go on, to go faster, to get
to the end of her tale so she could know the worst.

 
          
"Things
happened at
Fall
River
,
at—the sanatorium. Nobody accused me, but they didn't have to. They never
happened to anyone else. Things would disappear—little things, nothing of
value—and show up later in weird places. My room had
french
windows that looked out onto one of the terraces; nobody could keep them
locked; finally they nailed them shut. Nothing worked. The nails kept working
loose."

 
          
A
confused and vivid memory surfaced; a collage of images: the aides
ostentatiously removing their watches before they came into her room;
accusations that she'd broken—oh, she couldn't list the things; the
cof-feemaker
in the
rec
room; the
Coke machine; people blaming her, when she'd never
touched
the things.

 
          
"And
there was something else, too—" but she still couldn't bear to name it
"—but when I left there, all of that stopped."

 
          
"Completely?"
Dr. Palmer asked.

 
          
"Yes.
Although I'm not sure I would have noticed even if it continued, not with no
one there to nag me—" She heard the whine of self-pity in her voice and
stopped. "But then the one thing, the one particular thing, it's started
again and it's worse, and I can't be doing it—I can't—not possibly. ..."

 
          
She
drew a shaking breath. Every nerve and muscle jangled with tension; it was an
effort to keep her teeth from chattering.

 
          
"You
have to tell us what it is that is troubling you, Ms. Musgrave," Truth
said gently, "and even so, we may not be able to help."

 
          
"If
you cannot help me I don't know where else to go," Winter said dully,
"except to drive my car off the nearest cliff." Except she couldn't
even do that, not after yesterday.

 
          
Winter
took a deep breath and reached for the paper bag on the table. "Because of
the—of the thing that happens, last night I tied myself to my bed. This morning
when I got up every door and window in the house was wide open—and there was
this":

 
          
She
upended the bag over the table and shook it. Out fell two hundred fifty feet of
white cotton clothesline, neatly dismembered into three-inch lengths.

           
Both of the researchers from the
Institute went very still, like hunting dogs who have just sighted game.
Finally Dr. Palmer stepped over to the table and picked up one of the pieces.

 
          
"The
cuts are very clean," he said in a neutral voice.

 
          
"I
couldn't do that—not with a knife, or a pair of scissors, or a razor blade. You
tell me what did that," Winter said in a ragged whisper.

 
          
Truth
picked up one of the pieces of line. The severed ends were as neat and crisp
and compressed as the end of a filter-tip cigarette. Only something very
sharp, wielded with great force, could make a cut like that. She pulled several
more of the short pieces toward her and lined them up side by side. Each piece
was the same length as all the others. Exactly.

 
          
She
glanced at Dylan. His face was expressionless, but she could tell he was
excited. The symptoms as Winter Musgrave described them were almost a synopsis
of a classic textbook case of poltergeist possession: doors and windows
mysteriously locked or open,
apportation
of small
objects, and instances of whimsical and nearly impossible vandalism.

 
          
But
the woman bringing these complaints was too old by at least two decades to be a
traditional focus for a poltergeist, and the typical pranks of a "noisy
spirit," while annoying, couldn't be enough on their own to bring an adult
woman to such a fever-pitch of terror.

 
          
"Why
did you tie yourself to the bed, Ms. Musgrave?" Truth asked again.

 
          
"Do
you think I'm crazy?" the woman demanded fiercely. Her eyes blazed
fever-bright with desperation, and Truth sensed the swirling currents of raw
emotion which were the only things keeping her on her feet now.

 
          
"No,"
Truth said, glancing toward Dylan again. He was generally much more charitable
in his assessments of people and their motives than she was, but he was also
scrupulous in his judgments of matters touching on the psychic realm. If Dylan
did not feel that the paranormal was involved he'd have no hesitation about
saying so.

 
          
He
nodded almost imperceptibly. He agreed, then, with Truth's preliminary
assessment.

 
          
"Neither
of us thinks you're crazy, Ms. Musgrave—just frightened. I will not make any
promises, but it is possible that we can help."

 
          
The
chestnut-haired woman across the table sagged wearily into her chair again.
"I keep finding these animals," she said in a flat, exhausted voice.
"Dead. Torn to shreds. Dropped on my doorstep like something the cat might
drag home—only I don't have a cat. And I don't think even a cat would . . .
Anyway. Pigeons. Squirrels. Mice. Some other kind of bird. And yesterday it
started again. And this morning there was—oh, God, I think it was a raccoon or
something. In the kitchen.
In
the
kitchen." She dropped her head into her hands.