Daniel Hecht - Land of Echoes

"Is that so? I'm kissing her ruby lips even as we speak… mmmm." Paul was in a good mood; this obviously wasn't the first such kiss of the evening.

"Okay, it's working, I'm jealous," Cree said sincerely. A sip of the good grape would be nice, maybe help ease the growing tension she felt. "Listen, I was thinking about a paper you told me you'd written. On the parallels between modern psychotherapy and shamanistic healing practices."

"Aha."

"I'm interested in… well, in possession. I've got a bunch of literature on the Christian/Satanic outlook, and some papers on the parallels between DID and possession. But I'd like to get some perspectives from other traditions."

Paul was quiet for a moment. "So that's what you're dealing with there? Jesus. I hated the idea even when I didn't believe in ghosts. Now… Jesus. That sounds like a scary proposition for a… you know. A person like you, Cree."

"It's a common diagnosis in the Navajo tradition. The entity is often the ghost of a dead ancestor. Is that typical?"

"You know all this better than I do, Cree."

"Indulge me. Refresh my memory."

"It's universal. All over the world, every culture. All the old religions have the same basic idea. In a few traditions, you find some rough equivalent of the demonic entity, but that's rare. I always saw the ancestor thing as a useful metaphor. Struck me as full of resonances with modern psychotherapy-not so different from Freud putting you on the couch and asking about your mother. A way to cope constructively with our unresolved business with our forebears. But it's not always ancestors. The spirit can be any dead person close to the victim. A mother or father can become possessed by the ghost of a dead child. A widow or widower can be possessed by the dead spouse. It's often a blood relative, but not always-a murderer might be possessed by the spirit of his victim."

"Always someone with a connection to the victim, though."

"Yep. Unless it's a deity or nature spirit of some kind."

"What kind of symptoms? Are they consistent in different cultures?"

"Very. But if you want details… well, let me think. It's been a while, Cree." He took another sip of wine and breathed deeply once or twice. "Well, in Melanesia, the possessed person typically speaks in a strange voice, shows glaring eyes, twisting limbs, convulsing body, foam in the throat. The mana-that's the spirit of the dead person-overpowers the victim in fits or cycles, leaving him exhausted, almost comatose. Among the Alarsk Buryat of Siberia, the ancestral spirits are called utcha and manifest first in dreams, getting to the convulsions and strange voices only as they gain greater control. In Nepal, the Tamangs have a term, um… God, I used to know all this stuff… I'd impress my fellow grad students, those of the female persuasion, with it… uh, yeah, iha khoiba mayba. The term means, essentially, 'crazy possession.' As opposed to voluntary possession. Symptoms are typical, your basic convulsive shaking, incoherency, chaotic visions or hallucinations."

"'Voluntary possession'?" The idea was appalling to Cree.

"Oh, sure. For shamans, it's a sought-after state. The shaman surrenders to the spirit to get guidance from the dead. Sometimes the ghost gives him prophetic information-advice on what's going to happen, what people should or shouldn't do, warnings, and so on. Advice on how to heal people, how to settle their unresolved issues. I thought you'd know all about that-isn't that a lot like what you do?"

She hadn't quite thought of it in those terms and wished he hadn't pointed it out. "Let's go back to the involuntary variety. What else? Why do the spirits return? The human type?"

"That's variable. They often come back to seek redress or justice for wrongs. Or to punish the living for offenses-the Tibetan Book of the Dead has a ton of stuff on after-death retribution."

"Terrific. Great."

Paul heard the bleakness in her tone, tried to inject something more hopeful: "But, again, the dead may also have important information to convey. They may be trying to help."

"How nice of them," Cree said acidly. Right now, it was hard to think of spirit invasion as anything but a form of rape.

"Among the Tungas, for example-"

"That's okay, Paul. I get the picture."

"Of course, there are also animal spirits, they're often helping spirits, too. It-"

"This one's human."

"Okay." He was quiet for a minute as her mood really registered. "Do you have to get involved?"

"I'm already 'involved.'"

"And you're… at risk?"

"No doubt."

"You want to tell me what you're dealing with?"

He sounded frustrated and worried, and she wanted to cheer him up. "I can't, Paul. Just be yourself. Who you are. And what you've told me is very helpful. This member of the female persuasion is very impressed."

"Tell me more about that," he said huskily, vamping. "How impressed?"

He was fishing for intimate talk, but she felt confused, unable to find the mood. As she hesitated, a change in the light made her turn. Lynn Pierce had come to the door of the office. Seeing Cree on the phone, she smiled apologetically and passed by as if heading toward the big ward room. But Cree didn't hear the other door open. She must have paused, out of view in the hall.

"Anyway," Cree said briskly, "I better get going now. We'll talk another time, okay?"

Paul grunted, put out by her sudden change of tone. "Privacy issues?"

Lynn Pierce still hadn't gone into the examining room. "Apparently," Cree said drily.

Cree went back to her room and made ready for what promised to be a difficult visit to the ravine later. She spent a half hour doing yoga, and when her thoughts intruded she steered them toward the many good things in her life: the twins, Dee, Edgar and Joyce, hiking in the Cascades range, her friends in the lovely Emerald City. And Paul, she added.

That was the foundation, she reminded herself. The love, the connection. The world was full of dire things, but love managed to endure. That's what sustained you.

And, in fact, the things Paul had told her were helpful. In the face of what she'd seen in Tommy, it was good to be reminded that most supernaturalist spiritual traditions agreed with her outlook: that the entity was not necessarily hostile or malignant. It wasn't just coiling serpents and rearing saints, or adolescent girls rotating their heads and spewing green bile.

Feeling a little better, she put on thick socks and loaded a fanny pack with a couple of energy bars, a bottle of water, and one of the good flashlights Edgar had brought. As an afterthought, she included the small canister of pepper spray Joyce had insisted she carry. By nine-fifteen, she felt almost ready for the night's work.

Then Lynn Pierce came into the ward room.

She drifted across the floor from the hall doorway to stand at the end of Cree's bed, her silver braid thick as a hawser on one shoulder. "Your partner called from the admin building, said to tell you he'd be here in ten minutes."

"Great. I'm just about ready." Cree zipped up the fanny pack and set it on the bed, then began consolidating the possession literature she'd spread on the neighboring bed and table.

Lynn watched with interest, tipping her head to catch glimpses of titles and illustrations. "I've been thinking about what you asked. You're right, I've been around Tommy more than anyone else. And I think maybe I have noticed something that could be important."

"Oh?"

Lynn darted her eyes at Cree, and a little grin moved her mouth. Then she crossed over to one of the beds against the south wall and began straightening the blankets, slightly rumpled from Edgar's sitting on it earlier.

"You're so close to your associates," Lynn said. "They really trust you, don't they? And you them. Really, you're more like friends than business partners, aren't you? It must be nice."