Trine
“I’m not letting the three of you tie me to bed again,” I say.
I’m driving them back to my apartment in my car, which is way shittier than their rental, and none of them are saying anything. The part that I hate is that they all seem worried about it.
About me.
I don’t know exactly what happened, but they convinced me that they needed to go back to my place for the discovery phase of the service. When I told them I couldn’t afford to pay for any of it, they told me not to be ridiculous. Apparently, I don’t have to pay. So at least I got that going for me, which is something.
Can’t pay my rent on time, but I somehow won a free exorcism.
Lucky me.
“Tell us everything,” Luke says. He’s in the passenger seat, and Misha and Rei are reviewing their notes in the backseat. I don’t know why—I don’t know what they could’ve missed—and I feel completely put on the spot, but if they’re going to be able to stop the dreams, then I suppose I should help them.
And I’m totally freaked out that the holy water affected my skin in the first place. I don’t think they were trying to trick me. I think they are genuinely trying to help, but it scares me that I need their help in the first place. I might not remember how the exorcism started, but I remember how it ended.
I definitely don’t want to end up in that place again.
“I don’t know what to tell you that I haven’t told you before,” I say. “Like I said, my life’s pretty boring.”
“What about your mom?” Luke asks. “You said something about ending up like her. What did that mean?”
I shake my head, trying to get rid of the thought. There’s only one thing that scares me more than having to live through that ordeal again, and that’s ending up like my mother. “She…we kind of lost her when I was a teenager,” I say. “I mean, she’s still alive, we’re just...”
“What?” Luke asks when I trail off.
“Well, I don’t talk to her,” I say. “I haven’t for five years.”
“It’s okay,” Luke says. His hand hovers over my knee, and for a second, I think he’s going to squeeze it reassuringly. He doesn’t. He stops just short of that, and his hands land on his lap instead. “We’re not going to judge you, Trine. We’re on your side. But you have to let us in.”
I look ahead, at the road. I try not to talk much about my mom, mostly because it makes me sad, and I don’t want other people to have to deal with it. But he’s asking, and it might be relevant, so I try to shake that off and keep my voice steady as I speak.
“My mom was always, I don’t know, quirky. My parents got together when they were older. My mom made a small fortune by being in the corporate world and when the start-up she worked for blew up, they bought her out. She already had a master’s degree in business administration, but she went back for her PhD in Folklore, which is an extremely small field of study. And when we moved into our house in Jonesville, we did all sorts of rituals—things to keep spirits away. From different cultures. When I was very little, she framed it as something she was trying to teach me about. Like this was just her way of teaching me how things worked around the world.”
I take a sharp left into the street that takes us to the downtown area of the city.
“I’m guessing that wasn’t it?” Luke asks softly.
I notice that Misha and Rei have both stopped talking. They’re listening closely. I glance at the rearview mirror, and my back straightens as I realize that Rei is subtly taking notes. I don’t know how much I like that, but I can’t exactly tell him to stop.
They’re supposed to be helping me. I should probably get used to this. One day, maybe.
“No, that wasn’t it,” I say. “It got more extreme as I got older. She would wake up from night terrors, stopped leaving the house. She went to church. My mom was raised agnostic, so it wasn’t her thing at all. My dad was really worried about her. One day, she left. She checked herself into some sort of facility, and it was…I was turning fourteen the week after that. Anyway, she just left a note. Said that if she stayed she was going to hurt us, and she wasn’t going to let herself do that, so she left. My dad was furious. They got divorced, and he fought her for custody. When my mom got out of the wellness spa she was in, she was a new person. Bought a beautiful house on five acres. She kept trying to get me to live with her, but it was too late. And the last time I saw her, she told me that I would get possessed like her, and I was going to end up hurting the people I loved if I didn’t get help. So I said she was crazy, took the box of shit she gave me, and drove back to Orlando. And that was the last time I ever saw her.”
Luke nods. “Have you spoken to her since?”
“Once. When my dad died,” I say. “My dad was sick for a long time. He knew it was coming, so he’d made arrangements for himself, but it was still brutal. She went to the service and stayed in the back while I gave the eulogy. When I was leaving, she asked if we could talk. She spoke to me for like half an hour, but I’d be lying if I told you I could remember any of it. I don’t remember shit.”
Luke glances back at the other two for a second before he says anything. “You said she gave you a box of stuff,” he says. “Do you still have that by any chance?”
For the first time in what feels like the entire night, I smile. “I’ll do you one better than that,” I say. “I don’t just have it. I turned it into an album with my friends.”