Kat Richardson - Possession

“This kind of thing happens in . . . say, meningitis cases or head trauma cases and usually resolves one way or the other very quickly. But if the patient’s state doesn’t change—if they don’t wake up and start responding to stimuli after four weeks—we call it a persistent vegetative state, or PVS. To most people it still looks like deep sleep, but the patient may seem to respond to some stimuli and to do things like sigh, laugh, or cry. It may seem like they’re aware, but it’s just autonomic function. They are actually nonresponsive because the brain stem is functioning but higher functions are shut down.”

“So, is this common?”

“Oh no. PVS is rare. Comas aren’t common, so the states that evolve from them are even less so, and most—as I said—resolve long before a persistent state occurs. I’ve never actually seen a case of coma or PVS in my career. Most non-neurologists don’t unless they work in emergency or trauma. And then there are fugue states, which are psychiatric cases of personality disassociation in which the patient has periods of amnesia and denies actions they undertook at that time—not just don’t remember, but actively deny doing them. Fugue states can be related to temporal lobe epilepsy, schizophrenia, and multiple personality disorder,” he added, ticking them off on his fingers.

I shook my head. “That’s not the situation here. The person in question is literally bedridden and seems to be asleep, but she keeps sitting up and painting compulsively. But I have to say, she doesn’t really seem to be ‘there’ when it happens.”

Skelleher stared at me. “You saw this?”

I nodded.

“When?”

“Today. That’s how I got paint in my eye—the patient flipped her brush at me while she was painting, but it was more like she was a puppet being operated by someone else because she didn’t actually open her eyes or seem to respond to anyone in the room. And then she started babbling and lay back down.”

“That’s . . . that’s impossible. Not even in a minimally conscious state would that happen. It has to be a hoax.”

“Unless the home care nurses are in on it, I don’t think so. I hear there may be other PVS patients in town who are doing similar things. . . .”

Skelly seemed appalled. “Really? That’s freaky.”

“You haven’t heard about them?”

“I’m a GP. When would I have time to hear about even the weirdest case that’s not on my ward or watch? I didn’t know there were any PVS patients in the city until you mentioned it. It’s really that rare. If they’re all doing strange things I’d expect the neurologists to be in a lather over it. I’m surprised they haven’t called a conference.”

“Do you think I could talk to the other people involved with those cases . . . ?”

“No. Not through me or any other medical professional. Patient confidentiality is sacrosanct. If you think it’s true and connected to whatever case you’re working, you’ll have to find another way.”

He looked uncomfortable; I understood his position and didn’t push him. I shouldn’t have asked in the first place, but the coincidence of three rare cases that might all be doing the same impossible things set off every investigatory instinct I had, and I had to understand what was usual before I could reasonably judge what wasn’t. I’d have to find the others by myself somehow and determine what was going on, because one strange manifestation is just a case, but three could be, as Auric Goldfinger said, enemy action. And I didn’t have any living enemies that I knew of. Dead and restless ones . . . that I wasn’t so sure of.

Idid get home all right, in spite of my eye. The itching, aching, watering aspects weren’t the worst of it; my left eye simply would not banish the Grey from sight, even when I was surrounded by the filtering effects of glass and steel in my truck. When I’d first become aware of the Grey it had, for a while, been persistently visible until I learned to filter it out. At the moment, no amount of trying would allow me to see without a flickering, color-tangled overlay of the ghost world so long as I had both eyes open. If I closed the injured eye, the vision merely changed intensity, but at least my eye was less raw. I hoped this wasn’t going to last too long. . . .

I felt like a slacker coming home so early, but I wasn’t going to get anything done at the office or on the street with my eye objecting nonstop. As I opened the door to my condo, a furry little blur raced out, crossing my boot and streaking into the hall.

“Ferret!” came a warning cry from inside. Apparently Quinton—my . . . “boyfriend” doesn’t quite cover it, but it’s close enough for most applications—had been hanging out at my place. He often did, but there had been some risky circumstances in his life recently and the frequency and duration of his companionship had become unpredictable.

“Too late,” I called back, dropping my bag and spinning around, hoping to catch the fuzzy miscreant before she managed to get outside, underfoot, or into one of the neighbors’ homes. Visions of the Grey and the normal slid and tipped over each other, making me dizzy, and I wobbled, stumbling into the wall and sliding down to my knees.

“Sneaky little carpet shark!” Quinton charged out and tripped over me, falling face-first onto the carpet outside my door. “Blast!” We both scrambled around, getting only semi-upright before lurching farther along the hall like a pair of gorillas as we tried to snatch the ferret from the floor.

Chaos, the ferret, flipped around, dancing backward out of our grasp, chuckling and chattering at us as if we were the funniest show on earth. Until she backed into a door and her progress came to a sudden halt. For just a moment, her back end attempted to climb vertically up the door, but gravity was still operating and her butt slipped back down, piling into her middle. She sprang up, swiveling to face the new threat, and smacked her nose into the immovable object. With a chirp of surprise, she leapt away from the door, showing it her teeth by waving her open mouth in its direction, and backed straight into Quinton’s scooping hand.

“Got ya! Victory is mine—because I have thumbs and you don’t!”

The ferret stuck her head out of his fist and licked her nose as if this was all very boring.

I put out my hands. “Do you want me to take her?”

“Nope. It was my miscalculation that let her out and I’ll be the one to put her back.” He blinked at my face. “Umm . . . did you have one of those ‘interesting’ days today? Because you look like someone clocked you.”

“Painted me in the eye actually. And yes—a little too interesting. I’ll tell you in a minute. Maybe over a drink.”

Quinton raised his eyebrows.

I nodded. “That kind of day. All right—you carry the furry offender back to ferret prison.”

Chaos was not pleased to be returned to her cage so I could put my things away without tripping over her on my semi-blind side. Ferrets tend to want to dance right in your path and I didn’t want to fall down again or—worse—step on her. But she was tiny, warm, and fuzzy, which went a small distance to making me feel less annoyed.

Quinton let me retire to the couch while he dug up a couple of beers as well as a cool, wet cloth to put on my irritated eye. I did my impression of a slug and slumped on the cushions as if my bones had dissolved, closing my eyes and letting the half-Grey effect of my injury reel forth in silver streamers against the darkness inside my eyelids. I heard Quinton bumping and rattling in the kitchen and saw a glowing energetic mist-shape moving in the persistent Grey that had invaded my mind’s eye. There were several other odd shapes floating about in the limited vision that played out behind my closed lids, but I couldn’t identify who or what they were—ghosts, neighbors, random knots of energy . . . ? They weren’t really doing anything that I could understand, just moving here and there. Only Quinton’s shape seemed to be operating with conscious intent. It drifted over and I felt him nudge my hand with something cool.