CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

You nearly beat the crap out of me," Harry said. His face bore thin red markings around the eyes and nose. He sweated profusely. "I thought it was a seizure. At first. It was like trying to help a grizzly."

"Sorry," I said, feeling awkward apologizing for something that I wasn't even sure had come from me. "I can't believe it."

I felt as if something had been torn out of me against my will. I felt raped in some awful way.

Cold and torn and used by something that had pressed its way into my body.

It was a feeling of insanity.

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Was I going crazy? Was this a sign? Was it stress?

I tried to remember the stories that my father had told of Granny and how she'd had her spells when she'd start talking to people who weren't there; or when my grandfather had tried to set a hearth fire in the gas oven and nearly blown up Hawthorn altogether but for the quick thinking on my father's part.

But those were old-age diseases-those were dementias that came after seventy.

They weren't this.

Part of me genuinely could not believe it.

Part of me even harbored a damning hope that Harry had made it up and would tell me in a moment that it was a big joke. That he'd scraped up his own face, punched himself with the back of the flashlight, and was having a good one at my expense so soon after my father's murder.

"Let's get back to the house," he said, easing up on my neck and chest.

He stood up and offered me his hand. "I don't know what the hell just happened, but you look like you should lie down on something other than mud."

Once I felt well enough to stand, I decided that I wasn't going to go back to the house.

Not just yet.

I had grown a bit worried about Brooke's nocturnal ramblings through the rooms of the house, and I didn't want to add yet another disturbance to her life if I could help it.

Harry offered to drive me to his digs in the village-he'd 243

inherited both the Burnley Gazette office and the house in which it existed. He had a big fat Jeep Grand Cherokee that was about seven years old and seemed like it had the crap kicked out of it in dents and nicks-the roof itself had a dent that made it seem as if an elephant had fallen on it. "I got it cheap. One of the rich guys got in a wreck up island two summers ago," he told me. Then he laughed. "Christ, I can't believe I'm talking about this car. All I'm thinking about is what just happened."

When we got to his office, the first thing he did was get a bottle of aged Scotch from the middle file drawer by his desk.

"None for me," I said.

"You sure?"

"Okay. Okay. Maybe just a little."

"It's for me, Christ almighty," he said. He filled a tumbler with the brown liquid and drank half of it back before coming up for air. Then he filled a mug about half full and brought it over to me.

The warm fire of the Scotch was a nice antidote to the ice I'd been feeling in my flesh.

"How bad was it?" I asked.

He pointed to the scratches on his face and around his throat. A dark bruise on his wrist where I'd apparently tried to tear his arm off. "And you tried to bite me," he said. "You practically knocked the wind out of me, Nemo. I'm not sure how, but you did."

"Shit."

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"Any idea why?"

"No."

"You said you'd get all of us," he said. "And then you knocked the flashlight out of my hand." He made a motion with his arm as if he were physically trying to remember what I had done. He moved his arms slowly and cocked his head to the side. "Then you ... you reached up and tore my glasses off. Somewhere in there, your fingernails went into my face.

Not sure when you hit my lip. And you socked me a good one right here."

He tapped a finger just below his left eye. The skin around it had grown darker.

"Jesus. I'm sorry. Jesus."

"Ever have seizures?"

"None that I know of."

"Ever have a scan done? MRI?"

"No."

"When was the last time you had a physical?"

I shrugged. "College. Junior year."

"Any accidents?"

"Like what?"

"Anything that would cause trauma to your head?"

"Nothing. Accident free. I guess I fell on the sidewalk once down in Virginia. It was muddy. I slipped and hit my knee and elbow. Hard.

That's the only thing I can think of."

"Didn't you get hurt on the ice once?"

"Oh, yeah. You mean when we were fourteen? Yeah, I fell and cracked my head open."

"But you were checked after that."

"Nothing beyond some stitches."

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He took another swig of Scotch. "You didn't even sound like you."

"Who'd I sound like?"

"No idea. Someone different." As an afterthought, Harry Withers added,

"A woman."

He went over it again:

"So, I'm looking around. I was crouching down, and I hear this noise.

Well, maybe not much of a noise. It's like a high-pitched sound. I smell smoke, but I'm not sure why. Except it's an old smokehouse and it's winter, and you know how sometimes those old stone houses can reek of smoke if they've ever had it. Only you say something right at that moment, and I'm ignoring you-you say something I don't quite understand.

Now that I think of it, it was as if your tongue was heavy in your mouth, like you'd been shot up with Novocain. I turn my head back, Nemo, and you're standing over me. The freaky thing about it is that not a second before, you were across the room. I know it's a small room, but I would've heard you. But it was as if you suddenly were just standing over me.

"I'm not one to get startled over nothing, but I have to admit, my mouth went dry when I saw you, and I felt something in the air, as if the weather had changed outside, or as if there were static electricity.

Maybe the feeling you're supposed to get when lightning is about to hit where you're standing. That's what it felt like. And I look up at you. I can't quite

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see your face. It's not so dark with you right there that I can't see your face at all. But you seem funny, and I'm a little freaked, and I hold the flashlight up, and that's when you knock it out of my hand. But I see your face for a second, and Nemo, it ain't your face, buddy. It's someone else, it's like you took off a mask. I don't know what was so different, but you looked angry, and your lips seemed different.

"And then I stood up, and you were whispering something over and over again. I said, 'Nemo?' and you started in on all that stuff, and it's just not you, Nemo. I know you too well, and it's not you at all. You clawed at my face and my glasses went flying, and I had to shove you as hard as I could, which is why your head probably hurts a little, since you hit the wall and went down.

"It was like ..." he said, finishing with a last sip of Scotch.

"Like?"

He smacked his lips. Shook his head. He nearly grinned when he said it.

"It's gonna sound crazy. But it was like you were possessed."

I thought for half a second he had said "obsessed." Then I remembered that Harry had been the superstitious one. He had always believed there were ghosts on the island-at least as a boy. I had figured he had outgrown this, but based on mentioning possession, I assumed he still believed that there were ghosts. And that they got inside people.

As if reading my mind, he said, "It's probably just stress. Anxiety. All the crap you've been going through since you got back."

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I nodded.

He leaned forward slightly, staring at me with an intensity that made him seem a bit maniacal. "We gotta go back there, bud. This time with a tape recorder."

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I agreed to go back to the smokehouse with Harry.

I didn't want to go in there again.

I didn't want to feel it.

Not a terrible feeling, or a fear of being out of control.

I had been turned on in the smokehouse. I had felt an arousal the likes of which I can only call sexual, but which seemed more encompassing than that.

It had been like some kind of high within my bloodstream, and when I finally tried to figure it out, I realized:

I had felt like a lad again, on the cusp of pleasure and a rare, nearly erotic feeling that all my burdens in life had been lifted.

It was like taking a hit of a really powerful drug that made 250

the user feel euphoria, excitement, and a liberation from gravity itself.

Harry and I trudged up one late afternoon, about three or so, with flashlights, and a digital voice recorder that Harry usually used when interviewing some old salt or corporate CEO who vacationed up island.

"Just talk normally. It'll pick up all kinds of sounds. It's a sensitive bit of machinery," he said.

Unlocking the door to the smokehouse, he made an "after you" gesture with his hands.

I stepped inside, and nothing happened. I stood in the smokehouse, closed my eyes for a second or two because I did feel anxious just being there.

I guess it was during those few seconds that something did indeed happen, because when I opened my eyes-it was little more than a blink-my watch-and Harry-told me that twenty minutes had gone by.

And it was all on tape.

"It's fantastic!" he said, with the glee of a boy. "Oh my God, is this ever amazing! It gave me goosebumps, standing there. It was absolutely chilling!" "Harry?" I asked.

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He pressed the play button on the small cylindrical machine.

"Who are you?" Harry's voice on the tape.

Silence. I glanced at Harry, but he kept his eyes on the recorder.

Five minutes or more passed. I tried to block out all other sounds in the room, and any from outside the window. I was sure I could hear the whirr of the tape itself. I leaned slightly forward as if I might miss whatever it was that he was so keen on. I imagined myself standing there, eyes closed, in some kind of trance.

And then something changed on the tape. Like a small mouse scurrying in a corner. Just a whisper of a noise.

I tried to focus all attention on that small sound.

And then it exploded.

"LET ME OUT!" The scream was so loud it was nearly distorted on the tape. "LET ME OUT! PLEASE! OH GOD! LET ME OUT! DON'T DO THIS TO ME!

PLEASE! OH GOD!

LET ME GO! PLEASE SOMEBODY LET ME OUT! GOD

HELP ME! GOD HELP ME!"

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