1 Chapter 1 - Geneva
My god, what have I done?
I was running, my lungs heaving, my legs numb from the water that wicked up around my knees and into my shoes. I didn't know where I was running or quite why.
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The room was dark. The only sound was breathing and the occasional rustle of clothing or the creak of a chair. They were all waiting for the spirits. I lit a single candle by me and sat. A maid tied my wrists to the arms of the chair in knots I would expect a sailor to know, not a maid. Regardless, it was necessary.
I felt the presences in my body like the feeling of a sneeze coming on. A chill ran up my neck and into my shoulders as it took me.
It was male. That was all I knew. I am mostly unconscious over the duration of their time in my body. But he frightened me. Why, I didn't know.
My mouth began to speak. Some foreign words (Gaelic, perhaps) were directed at a woman in the back of the room, others in English to the man next to her. The spirit's voice pressed at the inside of my throat in a deep baritone which I had never heard. He was new, someone I hadn't channeled before.
I heard a gasp through the crowd, though I hadn't heard what my mouth had said. I felt myself double over and begin to gnaw at the ropes that bound my wrists. The roughness against my gums was painful and I started to fight back.
"You're hurting!" I cried with my mind. "This is not how you are to treat my body!"
"I will treat it as I please. You won't want it back!" The voice shouted through my mouth.
The crowd gasped again. They had no idea what was going on, but I knew that I couldn't let up.
"But if you insist, give me a half an hour. Then, your body is yours," the man said, quieter so only I could hear. Then, blackness.
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The shore. I couldn't run anymore. My body screamed at me. I could barely hear the police in the distance. Or maybe it was the blood pounding in my ears and the voices of angry spirits filling my head. I had little time regardless. Should I swim and pray that I am given asylum wherever I end up? Should I run along the shore in hopes of outrunning them? Losing them? Or would it be better to surrender and let them have me? I wasn't running because I was guilty. I was running because it was my fault.
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The candle was long snuffed. I woke in darkness so complete that I wasn't even sure if my eyes were open. I groped about to find that I was lying face down on the floor. It felt like the area rug in the room I had held the circle in. I pushed myself up and stood, still blind in the dark. Like a child, I tripped and knocked my way to a door. When I opened it, I nearly screamed. Every person in attendance was on the floor, their necks and limbs in odd, impossible angles, still-open eyes wide with fear long past. I couldn't smell the heat from their bodies and, upon looking away, I could see it was morning. I dared not look down, but I could feel my dress and hands were sticky and crisping with congealed and dried blood.
There was a knock on the front door. I ran.
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No. I wouldn't let them have me. It wasn't my fault that I couldn't control him. It wasn't my fault that they all died. I did what I could but it wasn't enough. But why would they believe me?
I walked to the end of the pier. The morning mist was still thick and swirling across the surface of the water. It was deep here, calm and unsuspecting save for the jagged. This was my escape.
I stripped down to my shift and tried to comfort myself. It wouldn't hurt - I was too numb for that. But I wouldn't let them have me and I knew there was no way to make them believe me.
I felt invisible hands pulling me away from the edge, voices crying. I didn't listen. They were the ones who got me into this, so I was the only one able to get out of it. My eyes filled with tears and I fell.
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The darkness was familiar; comforting even. Was it death? I had wondered it many times before. Darkness that keeps your mind from even thinking of light and color. Darkness that made you forget what your body felt like.
It was the only thing that was mine since childhood and it was my death.
