After Obsession

  My dad’s shoulders loosen. He straightens back up. Gramps eyes him, and then walks past him without a care in the world and comes close to me. “Where is it?”

  I point.

  He grabs it by the edges, careful not to smear the paint. I look from one to the other. Two guys with sleep-tired faces and fight-ready bodies, identical chins, and balding heads. Lean and strong, but so tired.

  Dad says, “Tell us about Courtney, Aimee. Her mom hinted that you thought something was going on, but she wasn’t buying any of it.”

  “Are you going to believe me?” I ask him.

  “I’ll try,” he says.

  I pull the pink folder out of my backpack. “You can start with this. Mrs. Hessler gave it to me.”

  “Mrs. Hessler?” Dad’s eyes get big. “Really?”

  “If you read that, it’ll help.” I choose my words carefully, trying to make like I’m calm. “I think that something from the river is trying to possess Courtney. I think there’s something really bad happening here.”

  Eventually they both go into their bedrooms. I hear my father check every door, every closet, every window until he’s sure the house is secure.

  It’s too hard to try to sleep. My ears are on hyper-alert mode, listening for ghost footsteps. I get up and paint. I’ve barely begun when Alan texts me. YOU OKAY?

  YEP. YOU? I text back. CALL ME?

  I am so glad to hear his voice. We whisper into the phone about Courtney, the rock, the River Man, and what happened in the tree house, which is somehow easier to do on the phone than in person.

  “He’s just trying to scare us,” I say, staring at the two sets of eyes in my painting. They are the same shape, but not the same inside. They are the same form, but not the same intent.

  As I paint, Alan tells me the stuff he’s learned about exorcisms. He’s done most of his research on the Internet and he has one book that had a paragraph about it. He insists that if he’s going to try to exorcise Courtney he has to do it alone, that it’s part of the tradition and process. That freaks me out.

  “I wish you didn’t have to do this on your own.”

  “I can do it.”

  I fumble with a paintbrush. I try to wipe the paint off with some thinner, but it’s ocher and it’s stubborn. “I know.” I drop the brush head-down into the bottle to let it soak.

  Alan says, “What if he tries to hurt you when I’m not there?”

  I turn away from my painting and go back to my laptop, where the images of Alan are still on the screen. He’s the one I’m worried about. “He won’t hurt me. He can’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know.”

  “Red …”

  “Look, it’s not like he has a gun. What has he done? Possessed Courtney. Thrown something at you. Made a huge dirt storm thing. Maybe he leaves a rock in my room, but maybe that’s something else, like Benji playing games or me sleepwalking or some other ghost. Give me a break. Either way, it’s lame.”

  I shut the laptop. I flop over onto my bed and hug my giant tiger. It’s a Princeton tiger. Gramps went to Princeton. The night is dark outside my window. You can’t see Benji’s tree house or the river or anything that could be lurking, but you know it might be there. I pull down the shade and touch the sill where the rock was. No matter how brave I can make myself, sometimes thinking about the darkness and the river and the night, thinking about my mom standing out there that one time … it makes me not quite so brave.

  “I wish you were here,” I say.

  “I wish I was there.”

  I think for a second. “Come over.”

  “What?”

  “Come over. We can protect each other. You could climb up the tree. I could sneak you in.”

  “Your dad will go ballistic.”

  I don’t answer.

  “What if your grandfather catches me? He’ll kill me.”

  I don’t answer.

  “Aimee?”

  I wait. I wait. I think, Please be brave for me, Alan. I wait. I close my eyes but that’s too dark, so I open them again and stare across the room at the painting I’m working on. I need to add more layers to it. I need to add more depth, but I can tell, now, at least, what it’s supposed to be.

  Two women.

  The same.

  But not the same.

  You can tell this by looking in their eyes.

  I say, “I’m scared.”

  I grab the paw of a teddy bear. He’s old. He’s seen a lot of stuff, this teddy. He’s seen me.

  Alan’s voice is husky. “You are?”

  I think about what Courtney said. I think about what I might have inherited. I think about the man from the river who haunts us. I feel so alone, and all I want is someone to wrap his arms around me. Okay, not just someone.

  My voice is tiny. “I’m really scared and there’s … there’s more I should tell you …”

  “Okay. I’m coming over.”

  My phone beeps to let me know I have a text message.

  I’M HERE.

  I am so glad the phone is working tonight. One minute later he’s outside my window. I pop off the screen. He wedges himself through.

  “Tell me Blake never did this,” he whispers.

  “Blake never did this.”

  Alan hugs me to him, kisses the top of my head. I try to mold myself into him, like we’re two pieces of sculpting clay meant to return back together.

  “Aim …” My fingers stretch out across his back. He pushes away a little so that he can see my face. “Aim … you want to tell me what’s going on?”

  I pull away from him. Even though it’s hard, I pull away, and go sit on my bed. He comes across the room, trying not to make noise as he steps. He sits next to me, holds my hand. The bed sinks down with his weight, but it’s good.

  He points to the painting. “That you and your mom?”

  I nod. I try to breathe.

  “Aim?”

  He makes my name a question and I know I have to answer. I know he deserves an answer after driving here in the middle of the night. I try to give him one. “I’m afraid of him, but that’s not what I’m most afraid of.”

  “What are you afraid of then?”

  I point to the painting.

  He pulls in his breath. His fingers tighten around my fingers. “That you’re like your mother?”

  The word comes out all by itself.

  The word comes out even though I don’t want it to.

  The word comes out and it is “Yes.”

  “Aimee.” He soothes quiet words into my hair, rocks me back and forth, back and forth like a baby while I cry. “Aimee, it’s going to be okay. You’re okay. You’re okay.”

  “I know.” I hiccup. “I know.”

  I wipe at my face with my hands. I try to breathe normally, but what is normal? I try to breathe. Gramps’s snores hammer through the walls. Once in a while, a mouse scampers over the roof, scratching, searching for food to eat, places to hide.

  “Courtney thinks I’m crazy or something. She implied it in AP English the other day.”

  “That wasn’t her, that was him. You know that. It’s just him working at your fears.”

  “I don’t want to be crazy,” I say. My dad implied it, too.

  “You aren’t crazy.” Alan’s lips tighten together. Then he opens them again. “ ‘Crazy’ is a stupid word.”

  “I know. Actually, ‘stupid’ is a stupid word.”

  “You’re okay, Aim.”

  I make my fingers relax, trying to understand. I glance at the painting across the room; me and my mom. It’s too much. I hide my face in his shirt. He smells like toothpaste and clean.

  “I don’t think I’m crazy,” I say.

  “Okay.”

  I push away from him. He is not mad. His eyes hold my eyes. “Whatever happens, we will deal with it, Red.”

  The story everyone knows is that my mother killed herself. She had an ax. She walked into a river. She had a mental illness
called bipolar disorder. Sometimes she was regular. Sometimes she wasn’t. But that might not be the truth, not the whole of it, at least. But either way—either way, one thing is sure.

  “She left me,” I say. “My mother left me.”

  “I know,” Alan says. “But she didn’t have a choice. You have a choice, Aimee. You can choose. We can manage this.”

  I half laugh. “ ‘Manage this.’ You sound like a lawyer.”

  He wiggles his eyebrows. He is trying so hard. “I know.”

  I swallow. I swallow five times at least. He just tucks me against him. He presses his lips against my hair, and it’s like he’s pressing promises there. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For finally trusting me.”

  “Alan, that is so sappy.”

  He shrugs. He pulls me back into him. “It’s true.”

  I play punch him, but my heart’s not really in it. “Are you going to freak out about all this?”

  He sniffs in. “Not till tomorrow, probably, when I’m home and you don’t need me. Cool?”

  I snuggle in closer. “Cool.”

  “I’ll stay until you fall asleep,” he whispers. “Then I’m going to sneak out.”

  We flatten ourselves down against the mattress. He puts one arm beneath my shoulder, curls into my side, and pulls his other arm across my lower rib cage, holding on.

  “It’ll be okay.” He is sleepy voiced.

  “Are you sure?”

  I dream all night. I dream of an upturned kayak, hands ripping me apart, water, Alan crumpled on a floor. I dream and dream and dream, and the River Man’s voice echoes through it all, telling me that we will all be his.

  In the morning it’s Alan’s gasp that wakes me up. Sunlight fills the room.

  “Crap!” he mutters. “Crap. Crap. Crap.”

  I sit up straight, trying to figure everything out. He’s throwing open the window, about to slide outside, but something across the room catches his eye.

  “Aim …” His voice is a warning sign.

  I don’t want to look. But I look and my heart stops, really. It stops. Then starts again, hard, painful, pounding. He grabs my arm and pulls me into him, but I’ve already seen.

  Someone—something?—has thrown paint all over the picture of my mother and me. The red of it oozes across our faces, dripping like horror-movie blood. But worse than that is the message printed in scratchy style over the whole thing.

  HE SHOULD NOT BE HERE.

  • 16 •

  ALAN

  “I really, really wish I could believe Benji snuck in here and did that,” I say as I hold Aimee pressed hard against my chest. She shakes her head.

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “No.” This seems way too much for an ornery little brother. At the same time, as weird as it is, it seems kind of tame for the thing that attacked us in the tree house. “Aimee, is it possible that was done by somebody else?”

  “Gramps? No, he wouldn’t—”

  “Not Gramps. I was thinking … well, maybe your mom?”

  She raises her head, her big green eyes wide, but doesn’t say anything.

  “If it was our friend from the river, don’t you think he would have done something … I don’t know, more physical? Like in the tree house? This is messed up, no doubt, but maybe it’s your mom’s spirit telling you something.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing,” she says. “But I don’t see why she’d say you aren’t supposed to be here. Plus, red paint looks like blood. I wish she’d used blue or something.”

  “Well, you did leave the red tube open. I saw that when I came in.” She just stares at me, and it’s so obvious that she’s trying really hard not to freak out, so I try to ease the tension. “Maybe she knows that I have to get out of here before I get you in trouble. My mom’ll have a cow, too, if she wakes up first and I’m not home. I saw a doughnut shop. I’ll take some doughnuts home, eat, and come back to get you.”

  “School?” Her perfect little nose wrinkles up and I almost laugh out loud.

  “I think we need to carry on as close to a normal routine as we can so the parental units aren’t hovering over us. They probably won’t like what we’re going to try to do. We need to be normal, get Courtney home, and then we can fight this thing.” I go to the window.

  “Okay.” She’s still looking up at me. “Maybe she means him—the River Man thing isn’t supposed to be here.”

  “You should put that painting away so no one sees it,” I say, then move as lightly as I can over the short stretch of roof to the edge and jump to the ground below. I stay low and run from the yard, hoping none of Aimee’s menfolk look out their windows at that particular moment.

  I drive to the little doughnut store and buy a dozen assorted doughnuts, then race home. Mom and Aunt Lisa are both up when I get there, but it looks like they haven’t been up long. “Alan, where have you been?” Mom asks. “I thought you were still in bed.”

  “Couldn’t sleep. I got up early and went out. Thought I’d take care of breakfast today.” I put the doughnuts on the table. Aunt Lisa’s face is pale, with dark circles under her watery eyes. “Any news?”

  “She was awake this morning,” Aunt Lisa says. “She talked to me a little, and she seemed like the old Courtney. She asked about you.”

  “She did?”

  “Yes.” Aunt Lisa hesitates, like she isn’t sure she should say anything more.

  “What did she say?”

  Aunt Lisa looks to Mom, then back at me. “She asked me to tell you to be strong. To do what needs to be done.”

  That stands up the hairs on my arms. “She said that?”

  “Alan, what’s going on?” Mom asks. “What did she mean? What are you doing?”

  I think about it. I tried to tell her already, and she wanted no part of it. Would she believe me now, with Courtney’s cryptic message? Probably not. I shrug and shake my head. “I don’t know what she means. She probably had some kind of dream.”

  “That’s what the nurse said,” Aunt Lisa tells me.

  “Are you going to work today?” I ask. Both women nod.

  “Lisa, you shouldn’t,” Mom says. “You should take a nap. Go to the hospital.”

  “They told me there’s nothing I can do there,” she says. “We need the money. If—if something is seriously wrong … well, I might need my sick leave then.”

  “Aunt Lisa, she’s going to be okay,” I promise.

  She nods, then comes around the table and hugs me.

  “Thank you, Alan. Thank you.” Her voice is husky and thick in my ear. “What would I do without you and your mom here?”

  “Move to Oklahoma and watch me play football, probably,” I say, trying desperately to lighten the mood while I hug her back.

  I grab a couple of doughnuts and a bottle of OJ from the fridge and run out the front door, pretending I don’t hear Aunt Lisa telling Mom what a great kid I am.

  Aimee’s dad meets me at the front door of the house. He’s not a big man. I mean, he’s tall, but average build. I suppose the intimidation factor comes from just knowing he’s Aimee’s dad. He opens the door and waves me in.

  “Come on in, Alan,” he says. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you last night. I heard you choked down one of Aimee’s veggie burgers, though. It must be love.”

  “Uhh.” Okay, I wasn’t ready for that, and he has a good laugh over my dumbfounded look before holding out a hand. I shake it, and it’s probably the weakest handshake I’ve ever given. He laughs at me again.

  “I was only kidding,” he says. “I’ll tell you, though, Aimee really seems taken with you. I appreciate you coming up to the house to pick her up and being here to meet the family last night.”

  “I, umm, was glad to do it,” I manage to stammer out. “She’s a great girl.”

  He nods, then his face gets serious. “She’s having a bit of a rough spot right now. Bad dreams and stuff. I don’t know what she’s told you about her
mother. We lost her a while back, and it’s been pretty hard on Aimee.”

  “She told me,” I say.

  He looks at me in a weird way, like he’s surprised Aimee would have already mentioned that. “She told you, huh?”

  “Yes, sir. We’ve, well, we’ve talked a lot.”

  “I see. Well, okay then.” He pauses, and his forehead wrinkles up. He’s wearing a white dress shirt and dark slacks. I suppose he’ll have a tie and suit coat on pretty soon. “Alan, will you promise me something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Be … be good to Aimee, okay?”

  “Yes, sir, I will. I mean, I would never do anything to hurt her.”

  “It’s just that, you’re new here, and I don’t know you,” he says. “It isn’t personal. I trust Aimee’s judgment, and, like I said, she’s really taken to you, so I have to trust you’re a good kid. You seem like a good kid. Just, please understand, she’s still my little girl.”

  “I know,” I say. “I promise, nothing will hurt her while I’m with her.” He gives me a really strange look then, and I realize how dumb that was. Not at all what I meant to say. He just wants me to promise to stay out of her pants. “I just mean, you don’t have to worry about me, Mr. Avery. Aimee is safe with me.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear,” he says, and offers his hand again. This time I grip it hard, like a man is supposed to, and pump it quickly a couple of times.

  “What did you two just agree on?” Aimee asks from the stairs. “Dad, did you just sell me for a goat and a couple of chickens?”

  “You’re worth much more than that, honey,” he says, releasing my hand and turning to face her.

  “I had to throw in a whole cow,” I say. “Gramps wanted it for the steak.”

  Her dad gives a short bark of laughter that he covers up real fast with a hand while winking at me. Aimee just sticks out her tongue.

  “Your colon will thank me for that veggie burger, you know,” she says. “And for all the ones to come.”

  “You two better get to school,” her dad says.

  “Sir, can you tell me anything about my cousin? Aunt Lisa said she was awake and talking this morning.”