Daniel Hecht - Land of Echoes

"All relationships are long-distance," he told her.

She was still awake when the front desk called to tell her that a package had arrived for her. When they sent it up, she found it was an overstuffed manila envelope from Mason, with a terse note scrawled on the front: Some materials you might find useful.

She opened it to find a two-inch stack of photocopied articles about possession. The top page featured a medieval woodcut of some saint exorcising a naked victim who lay on the ground with a snake or worm coiling endlessly out of his mouth.

She read through the first few pages, a historical survey of possession compiled by somebody or other. Typically, symptoms came in cycles, periods of normalcy giving way to "fits" in which the victim fell down, went into convulsions, made contorted movements, screamed and shrieked, "displayed a frightening and horrible countenance" that often included an alarmingly extended tongue. Other classical symptoms: vomiting up strange objects such as toads, stones, broken glass, pins, worms. Breathing problems such as choking, coughing, wheezing. Foaming at the mouth, foul body smell, speaking in tongues, speaking in an altered voice. Blasphemy, hypersexuality.

She turned hurriedly past that section to the summary of purported causes. Historically, the victim was thought to be inhabited by a demon or "unclean spirit," a Satanic entity conjured or inflicted by someone nearby, usually an old woman or man who was thought to be a witch. Such accusations often resulted in the torture and execution of the accused, usually by burning or crushing. In later centuries, medical explanations came into favor, with the torture reserved for the victim: physical "purging" treatments such as whipping, immersion in ice water, lifelong incarceration in madhouses, exotic drug therapies. Toward the end of this list were the modern interpretations: epilepsy, hysteria, schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder. Though the recent perspective was more enlightened, contemporary cures didn't strike Cree as all that improved: electroshock therapy, lobotomy, mind-altering pharmaceuticals.

Feeling shaky, she put the stack on the desk. The woodcut bothered her: its dark, blocky rendering, the agonized victim, the serpent demon's nasty face. She knew she should read more tonight, but she didn't feel up for it. Instead, she put the whole pile back in its envelope as if that would contain the superstition and terror, keep it from getting loose in the room.

Thanks loads, Mason, she thought.

Her beer had gone flat and metallic-tasting from sitting so long in its can, but she finished it, welcoming the soothing effect of the alcohol. The numbing effect, whatever.

She dialed Joyce's number, got her answering machine, left a message asking her to coordinate with Ed and fly down as soon as she could. Then she turned out the lights and got into bed. Sleep didn't come for a long time. The fat envelope waiting on the desk bothered her. She thought about Paul and about the odd oscillations between doubt and warmth they'd just been through. Then she wondered about what Ed had said, about just where the line between preoccupation and obsession was, and, further up the spectrum, the line between obsession and possession. There wasn't any easy answer.

Later, closer to the void, she wondered where Joyce was. Where Tommy Keeday was. Where Cree Black was.

Julieta drove like a bat out of hell. But everyone drove fast out here, Cree noticed. The distances were long, the horizons endlessly unfolding in low swells of bare, rocky earth, largely unchanging. If you didn't put the pedal down, you might think you weren't moving at all.

They'd left the university at one o'clock, after Cree's obligatory participation in a morning panel session and a speakers' luncheon with the UNM psych faculty. The way Julieta drove the Oak Springs School pickup, they covered the distance from Albuquerque to Gallup in under two hours. In Gallup, they stopped at a restaurant supply wholesaler to load the bed of the truck with paper towels and cafeteria napkins, six big bales wrapped in plastic that now nattered and flapped in the wind. They cut north on Route 666 and turned west on Route 264 toward Window Rock for the last hour of the drive.

After spending a week on the Hopi reservation, four years ago, Cree knew that the Big Rez of the Navajo was a separate world in more ways than one. The formal treaty borders enclosed an area as big as New England, but even that was little more than an island on the Colorado Plateau, isolated from more populated regions by a million square miles of deserts and mountains that stretched from central Mexico up the backbone of the continent. It was big enough to resist not only physical but also social change, and the Native American reservation lands were the home of cultures in many ways thousands of years as well as thousands of miles removed from the rest of the country.

Dr. Tsosie had driven ahead in his own truck earlier, and Cree had looked forward to her three hours alone with Julieta as a chance to talk.

Cree gave her a general idea of how PRA conducted an investigation: Ed and his high tech, Joyce and her historical and forensic detective work, Cree's own brand of psychological analysis and empathic communion. She did her best to make it sound routine, avoiding the scary stuff.

"Each line of inquiry supports the others. Often, when I'm… making contact, my impressions are ambiguous. Most locations are layered with lingering human experiences from different periods, so it can be hard for me to pin down what's relevant and what isn't. And it can take me a while to progress from feeling vague moods and auras and sensations to actually seeing a ghost or living its thoughts and feelings. My goal is to know what motivates the entity, figure out why it's there, what remains unresolved for it. But sometimes my intuitive experience of its world is not enough. That's where Ed and Joyce's work, and my own interviewing, comes into play. Having some hard information helps me identify the ghost. Once I know who it is, how it died, and so on, it's easier for me to determine why it's here-what motivates it and which living person figures in its compulsions. There's almost invariably a connection of some kind between the ghost and the witnesses or other people in the vicinity of a haunting. Once we know what that link is, we have a better chance of setting the ghost free."

To her surprise, Julieta didn't voice skepticism about these far-fetched points. But none of it seemed to soothe her, either. A strange reserve and tension remained between them, and the closer they got to Oak Springs School, the more she seemed to close off.

Still, when Cree prompted her with questions, Julieta was generally forthcoming.

She'd been born and raised in Santa Fe, an only child. Her mother was of Mexican descent, mostly, while her father's ancestors were black Irish; both families had been in the area for a long time. Her father had owned a heavy-equipment supply company that involved big money but always seemed to be overextended and in trouble. They were proud and respected but still very much striving, proving themselves, and therefore very-overly, Julieta admitted-conscious of symbols of wealth and status.

"I only mention that as an explanation for the stupid things I did when I was younger," Julieta said.

"More stupid than the things everybody does when they're young?"

"Probably."

Julieta explained: When she was fifteen, she began trying out for modeling jobs. She had always been told she was gorgeous, and ever since she was thirteen, seeing herself mirrored in the eyes of men, she could almost believe it. From modeling, it was a short step to beauty contests. Her parents were as suckered as she was by the incentives the pageants offered: prizes, scholarships, a chance to meet the rich and famous, a line in your resume that would help nail lucrative modeling work. At first it was easy. She won some of the local pageants, did modeling for more prestigious agencies, and then felt confident enough to compete for the title of Miss New Mexico in 1982. She spent all the money she'd saved on the tailored evening gown and bathing suit and the deportment coaching everybody said she'd need. Preparing for the contest took almost a year, during which every hour outside of school was occupied with exercising, fitting clothes, going to the orthodontist, practicing her smile and posture, pursuing the community service that would perk up her citizenship score. When at last the competition began, it was a whirlwind that completely carried her away. She entered the last stages utterly self-brainwashed into believing that this was her destiny, the absolute best and only course for her life. That winning really, really mattered. That win it she certainly would.