Authors: Catrina Burgess
Possession
Possession
The Dark Rituals
Book Two
By Catrina Burgess
Table
of Contents
For Dad. You taught me that
anything was possible and to
never fear
failure. Because of you, each time I fail, I get up, I brush myself off, and I
try again.
I felt weightless, like a feather on the wind. I was
floating above a room, looking down at a body lying on a table. There were
other people in the room, three or four folks all dressed in blue. Someone
rushed through a door, also wearing blue.
Everyone turned toward the newcomer, and someone
spoke up. “Doctor, the patient is under.”
“Good. Let us proceed,” the doctor said in a deep
and decidedly male voice.
At his words, frantic activity began. I floated
closer. Hands were attaching wires onto the forehead of the girl on the table,
and something was shoved into her mouth. The sound of beeping filled the room
as nurses turned on machines.
The doctor spoke again. “Okay people, let’s get
this show on the road. Nurse Harrington, you can begin.”
Someone leaned over one of the machines, and the
left foot of the person on the table started to twitch wildly. Then, it
stopped.
“Once more,” the doctor said.
The foot violently twitched again, but oddly the
rest of the body was as still as a statue.
Colorful lights appeared around me. They began to
swirl and bounce against me, and the air became thick and heavy. I felt a tug
in the very center of my being. And then another one, this time stronger.
I was being pulled down.
I struggled to stay afloat, but whatever had ahold
of me was forcing me downward. I plunged, spiraling toward the body on the
table, waiting, expecting any moment to feel the impact when I slammed into it.
But instead, right before I was about to make contact, everything around me
went black.
* * *
I opened my eyes, and a bright light blazing overhead caused
a sharp, white-hot pain to race across my temples. I closed my eyes and then
opened them again, this time more slowly. My right hand shielded my face
against the light as I sat up.
Where am I?
The people in blue, the doctor, the beeping
machines… A
hospital?
The word echoed
through my mind. I looked around, expecting to see the normal things you’d see
in a hospital room: another patient in a bed, a window, beeping machines. There
was none of that. The room I was in was small. The walls were white and covered
in a thick padding. There was no window—instead fluorescent lights shone
overhead, and the steel door was so thick it looked like it could keep out an army.
Who am I?
As the thought slid across my brain, my pain
increased. I ignored it and strained to remember something about myself. No
words, images, or memories floated up. There was nothing there. Nothing but a
deep, dark emptiness. Panic rose from the pit of my stomach.
Where am I?
The pain in my head eased, and I slid off the bed
onto my feet. I felt weak, and my legs were shaking. I moved slowly toward the
door. I stood before it, my hands running over its cold, smooth surface. There
wasn’t any handle I could see—at least, not on my side. And then it
dawned on me.
The door wouldn’t keep people out, but it
would
do an excellent job of keeping me
in. I was here alone in this strange room.
As
what? A patient? A prisoner?
At that last thought, an unreasonable amount of fright
filled me. I found myself pounding on the door, screaming, begging to be let
out.
Silence met my cries.
I lost track of how long I stood there banging. My
fists were bruised by the time exhaustion set in, and I had to stop.
I moved back to the only piece of furniture in the
room. It looked like a hospital bed with a metal handle on either side, but
there was something else dangling down both sides. I reached over and lifted a
strap. At the end of the strap was a leather cuff. Soft white material lined
the inside of the cuff.
Restraints
.
These were restraints used to keep someone in the bed.
I looked at my left wrist and saw the slight
outline of a bruise. It wrapped all the way around.
I’ve been in
this bed, restrained
.
I had obviously fought against those restraints
hard enough to bruise myself.
What is going
on? Where am I? Who am I?
The last thought barely crossed my mind when the
pain hit, harder this time. It was a burning pain that shot between my eyes and
made me cry out. I fell back against the bed, unable to move, to think, to open
my eyes. The only thing that existed at that moment was the pain, throbbing
through my head and pounding at my temples. The agony seemed to go on forever. It
slowly began to ease up, and soon I was able to function again.
Sweat ran down my face. I wiped my hand across my
forehead and forced myself back to my feet. More than my legs shook now—my
whole body trembled. I forced myself to take a deep breath and think.
There has to be a way out through that door.
I moved toward it, and this time a slot at the bottom opened. Shocked, I took a
step back and watched as a red plastic tray slid through the opening. It held a
plastic bowl full of some kind of brown food and a plastic cup filled with
liquid. There were no utensils. The smell of food had my stomach grumbling.
I was starving, as though I hadn’t eaten in days.
I bent down and burned my fingers shoveling the brown mush into my mouth. It
tasted better than it looked. When the bowl was empty, I picked up the cup and
took a sniff. No smell. I took a small sip.
Water
.
I gulped it down, not lifting the cup from my lips until it was empty. I was
still hungry and thirsty.
I need more
food, more water.
I pounded on the door.
“Is anyone there? I need more food! Anyone there?”
No one answered back.
There was nowhere to go but back to the bed. I lie
staring at the wall, trying to figure out what was going on. Time passed, but I
had no idea how much—there was no clock on the wall, no shadows shifting
across the room to let me know if it was day or night. Eventually, I fell
asleep.
The noise of keys jingling in a lock woke me some
time later. I watched the door slowly swing open. A man and a woman walked into
the room. The woman held a clipboard. Her brown hair was neatly pinned up into
a bun. She had on a white uniform and thick-soled white shoes. She looked like
a nurse.
My gaze shifted to the man. There was nothing odd
or frightening about his appearance. He looked like an average man in his
fifties dressed in a white coat. He had short black hair that was graying at
the temples, a trimmed black beard, and thick black glasses. But as I looked at
him, I felt a terrible panic rise from the pit of my stomach. Under his gaze,
my hands began to shake. I clasped them tightly together and straightened my
back. Whoever these people were, they could give me the answers I desperately
needed.
“Colina, how are you feeling?”
He was speaking to me. He was saying the name as
though it belonged to me. “Is that who I am? Is my name Colina?”
He looked over at the woman and then back at me.
“It’s natural to have some memory problems after the procedure. Do you know
where you are?”
I shook my head and looked around the room. “Where
am I?”
“The Silver Bell Hospital,” he answered.
“Was I in an accident?”
“No, there was no accident.”
I started to get off the bed, but the sudden
movement caused pain to rush across my temples again. I leaned back and
resisted the urge to close my eyes.
“Headaches are normal after the procedure. I’ll
have one of the nurses bring you something for the pain.” He turned toward the
woman. “Nurse, may I see her chart?”
“Yes, Dr. Barton.” She handed him the clipboard.
I blinked in confusion, looking down at my clasped
hands.
Procedure?
He took out a pen from the pocket of his coat and
began to write something down before flipping through the chart. “How is your sadness?
If you can rate it, give me a number one through ten, with one being not much and
ten representing overwhelming. What level would you say it is today?”
My sadness?
I didn’t understand what he was saying.
He was watching me closely now. “It’s normal after
the procedure to have some short-term memory loss. Some confusion. Not to
worry, it’s only temporary.” He turned to walk away, but stopped and spoke over
his shoulder. “We’ll check back with you tomorrow to see if your memory has
cleared up and the nurse will bring you something for the headaches.”
“Wait—what did you do to me?” I demanded.
He turned back toward me. “As you know, the
medication wasn’t working, so we needed to try a different approach…a different
treatment for the depression.”
“Depression?”
He nodded and flipped through the chart again.
“Depression. The manic behavior.” He looked up from the chart. “Are you still
hearing voices?”
“Voices?” My brain seemed to have slowed down, and
I was having a hard time comprehending what he was saying.
“My hope is that the electroshock therapy will
curb the depression and bring an end to the voices. You were an excellent
candidate for it, and the procedure went extremely well.”
I might have felt like a mental zombie, but the
words
electroshock therapy
finally
penetrated the brain fog. “You gave me
electroshock
therapy
?”
“That’s correct. Now just rest and relax—everything
will be clearer soon.”
“You gave me electroshock therapy.” They’d sent
volts of electricity shooting through me in an attempt to modify my behavior. Panic
rose inside me again. I wanted to get out. I wanted to leave this room and this
place immediately. I moved off the bed and headed toward the door.
The doctor reached out and grabbed my arm. I tried
to pull away from him, but his grip was tight. I started to shuffle backward,
hoping the weight of my body would break me free from his grasp, but he was
stronger than he looked. He dropped the chart and grabbed me with his other
hand. He now had both hands wrapped around my arms.
I twisted and pulled
hard, and was suddenly free. But only for a moment. He came up behind me and
grabbed me in a bear hug. His arms wrapped around me. The feel of his body
against mine sent fear racing through me. He hadn’t done anything to me, not
that I could remember. I didn’t know why I should be so frightened of this man,
but I was. I started to struggle again. I kicked at his shins, screamed, and
fought. I
needed
to get free.
“Nurse, call the orderlies.” The doctor’s voice
sounded strained.
I got one hand free. I spun around, reached up,
and scratched at his face. My nails slid down his forehead.
A look came into his eyes—it was like
watching something dark slowly rising up—and as it surfaced, his face
contorted into an expression of pure rage. I froze in shock.
New hands grabbed at me. Two men were now on
either side, restraining me.
The doctor’s expression was back to normal. “Calm
yourself, my dear. Nurse, I think we need to give her a sedative to help calm
her down.”
The nurse walked toward me, and I shook my head
and raised my hand, trying to look unthreatening even through my panic. “No, no
sedative.”
“Everything is fine. You’ll feel better in just a
minute,” the nurse said. She reached out and grabbed my arm. I felt a sharp
prick as the needle slid under my skin. A few seconds later, the world began to
narrow.
It’s not a
hospital. They don’t give electroshock treatments to people in hospitals.
I could feel myself falling. The doctor said I
suffered from depression and had been hearing voices.
Insane
asylum. I’m in an asylum.
The words rang through my head as everything
around me started to get fuzzy. I felt myself slipping into blackness.
* * *
He
was beside me.
His presence felt warm and reassuring. “It’ll be all right,” his voice
whispered in the dark.
A feeling of contentment washed over me.
“I’m with you. I’ll never leave you,” he promised.
He would stay with me forever.
I tried to conjure his name, but my brain felt sluggish.
His voice turned urgent. “You have to get out of
here.”
“I don’t want to leave. I’m comfortable.” I was.
Having him close made me feel safe.
“Leave. You must escape this place. You’re in
danger.”
“I don’t understand.” I felt him move away from
me. “Don’t go—stay with me.”
“I’ll always be with you,” his voice echoed in the
blackness, and then he disappeared.
* * *
This time when I woke, I was sitting in a chair next to a
window. A blanket lay across my legs. I was in a wheelchair.
A voice spoke from behind me. “Finally, you’re
awake.”
I tried to talk, but my throat was dry.
A woman stepped in front of me and handed me a
glass of water. “Here you go. This will help.”
I took a sip of water. The nurse from before
dressed all in white, but this woman wore a yellow blouse and a red-and-yellow-striped
skirt that fell below her knees.
“You were distraught. They gave you something to
calm you down. You were out for quite some time,” she said.
“Do I know you?”
She reached out and patted my hand. “I’m Rachel. You
don’t remember me?”
I started to shake my head, but the pain came back—a
hot, white flash that forced my eyes closed.
“They said your memory might be affected by the
treatment.”
I opened my eyes. “Electroshock therapy.”
She sat down in a chair
close by
. “That’s right. There’s nothing to be
worried about
. The whole thing is perfectly
safe, though they did say that you might have some trouble with your memory.
You might have headaches. Are you in pain now?”