The Haunting of the Gemini Read Free Page B

I’d gotten through to him with the power of remembrance and love. Then he began to chuckle, and in a different voice—one that sounded like a bucket of stones being dumped into the well of my soul—he said, “You couldn’t save your poor, tormented mother and you want to save me. You will always be a slave to salvation, you pitiful idiot.”
    I know the devil talking when I hear it. I yanked the blanket off him and found myself staring not at the son and father I’d been searching for but some man in his thirties with long blond hair and track marks mapping his arms. That sudden movement attracted the attention of the many homeless people, and they began to move toward me. I knew I had to get out of there. I bolted and was almost away when I ran right into a tall man dressed all in black. He had coal-black eyes and hair, short except for a thin ponytail that hung over his shoulder. He grabbed both of my arms. “You could get hurt stalking people,” he said. He pulled me into him, and I could feel his breath on my cheek. He rubbed his lips up my face to my ear.
    â€œNow we are one,” he whispered. “We are one. Two is one.”
    I wrenched myself free and ran to the subway. The thirty-minute ride back felt like eternity—I had never been so glad to see home. My husband, Will, greeted me at the door and asked me where I’d been.
    â€œI don’t know,” I said, “but something is coming.”

TWO

    I was working too hard. That was all it was, I kept telling myself. That was why this spirit was tugging at the edges of my brain, slipping past the corner of my eye, following me, and then disappearing as soon as I turned to look. Wrong numbers would appear on my cell phone and come back as disconnected when I called them. My voice mail would fill with incoherent messages. There would be knocks on the front door and no one outside when I answered.
    Food that I loved now turned my stomach. I would awaken in the middle of the night and stare at Will, wondering who he was and how I could get him to leave. My friends started to complain that I was acting differently, talking differently, dressing differently. I ate with my hands in restaurants, even fancy ones, which was a breach of etiquette my Southern upbringing would never, ever allow. I would catch myself in outfits that looked more like hooker-chic than my usual modest dress. I would glimpse myself in a mirror and wonder who had styled my hair or put on my makeup. It certainly wasn’t me.
    Jewelry went missing. Not my everyday stuff but expensive pieces I usually wore only once or twice a year. I would find them stashed far in the back of my armoire, under piles of clothes. When I straightened up the house, I would fluff a throw pillow and put it on the left side of a living room armchair. The second I let go of it, it would lift up and smash down on the right side. If I switched it back, the same thing would happen. Music would suddenly start blasting from the turned-off stereo. My cell phone, which I placed fully charged on my bedside table at night, would be completely drained of power every morning. I finally took it back to the store and was told that there was nothing wrong with it.
    Some nights, I would jolt awake from a dead sleep, consumed with overwhelming fear. I felt like I was being watched very closely, as though something were inches from my face. Other nights, I didn’t wake up at all. But in the morning, instead of pajamas, I would awake to find myself in jeans and a T-shirt that reeked of booze and stale cigarette smoke, my feet covered with mud. Where had I been walking?
    I got messages on my phone from strangers telling me that they’d had fun and asking if we could get together again. They never left names, and I quickly got in the habit of deleting them so my family wouldn’t find out. Many of my appointments—both personal and professional—got canceled, and when I