Chapter 5 #3
“That possession is complex and advanced and should not be undertaken by novices!” He shouted the last part as Dell turned around in front of Robbie and squatted into a sitting position.
“Ms. Rodgers, please!” Cole cried. He reached out for her, but it was too late.
She’d already sat back, and where a living person would have sat on Robbie’s lap, she sat into him.
It was really a shot in the dark. She had no idea what she was doing, but overlaying her body on top of his seemed like a
logical move.
Based on the sharp jolt she felt, like a fishhook behind her belly button, it must have worked.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What the hell?” She heard Robbie’s voice echoing around like it was trapped inside her own head.
“Did it work?” she said out loud, and looked up at Cole. The dismayed twist of his mouth told her it had.
“Unfortunately,” Cole said.
Dell sprung up from the bench and immediately felt the shift. Robbie’s body was lean and wiry. His legs took longer than hers
to fully deploy, and his vantage point was higher off the ground. She was now looking at Cole’s nose instead of his collarbone.
“Ha! So, this is what it’s like to be tall!” she sang, but it came out in Robbie’s voice.
“What the hell is happening?” She heard Robbie’s voice inside her head again. As soon as he said it, her body folded in half and sharply sat back down.
The hook behind her belly button jolted the other direction, as if she were being yanked backward.
“He’s resisting,” Cole said. He still stood in front of the bench, holding the book and watching with curious eyes. “That’s
why you’re supposed to ease into it. You can’t just sit on him.”
“What would easing into it look like?” Dell asked in Robbie’s voice as she gasped like she’d been punched. She clutched at her middle with his hands.
“Standard prepossession haunting,” Cole said. “Flickering lights, creaking floorboards. Objects put into other places. Little things to let them know you’re there. But those are advanced skills in themselves.”
“Ah yes, the sweet nothings of poltergeists,” she said with another gasp. She felt like he’d kicked her in the shin.
“Get out! Get the hell out!” Robbie shouted inside her head again.
“Try talking to him,” Cole suggested.
“Robbie, stop it!” she commanded in his voice.
“Not out loud,” Cole said. He pointed at her head. “Inside.”
Dell tried to focus over the thrashing going on inside her head—Robbie’s head. Whoever’s head it was, it raged in a tangle
of claws and fists and panic. She used his lungs to take a breath.
“Robbie, it’s me. You don’t have to be afraid.”
“Oh God. Is this the mushrooms talking? I knew I shouldn’t have taken them from Travis.”
“What? No, this isn’t mushrooms. It’s Dell, the woman you see jogging in the park every morning.”
The thrashing paused long enough for her to feel like she got a hand around him.
“Who’s Dell?”
She mentally grumbled. “Ugh. You know who I am. I jog with my best friend, Jason, through this park every morning. You know, the tall guy in spandex
and neon gear?”
He paused again, and she felt like she had her other hand on him. She wasn’t physically grabbing anything, but control of
his body was coming to her in bits and pieces.
“Oh, you’re that chick.”
Dell rolled her eyes but didn’t voice her discontent. She didn’t want to lose whatever ground she was gaining.
“Yes, it’s me. I need your help.”
“Why are you in my head?”
It was a fair question, and one she didn’t really know how to answer.
“Because I’m— I just am. I need to borrow your body for a few minutes, so if you could let me in, I—”
“Borrow my body? What the hell?”
“Yes, okay. I know that sounds weird, but it’s no big deal. I need to talk to Jason, and I can’t at the moment. He’ll recognize
you, and I’m going to talk to him through you. It’s—”
“I knew those mushrooms were a bad idea. This is either a really fucked-up dream, or I am still tripping hard.”
Dell decided to take another approach. “Yes,” she said in a dreamy voice. “This is a trip. You are imagining all this, so you should just sit back and enjoy the ride. Relax. Let me take over . . .”
She let her voice drift off and felt a rigid tension ease.
“This is a weird-ass trip . . .” His voice faded out, and the tension fell away altogether.
Dell blinked and held out her arms—his arms. She waved them around with no resistance. She stood up.
“What happened?” Cole asked.
“He acquiesced,” she said in Robbie’s voice, and smiled. She stepped around Cole, ready to move to the next stage.
“Really?” he asked in shock, and followed her.
“Yep. And I convinced him he’s on drugs and this is all in his head, which, for all I know, is true.”
“Huh,” Cole said. “Interesting approach, although you are most certainly going to get us in trouble.”
“Will you stop with all the worry about getting in trouble? We have much bigger fish to fry at the moment,” she said with a glare over her shoulder.
“I’m just trying to follow the rules,” he defended, and hurried to keep up.
“Yes. I get that about you. Now, come on. The next part of my plan might not be so easy.”