Land of Echoes

30

Joyce went off to Window Rock to get a start with the archives at the Navajo History Museum before it closed for the day. Ed arranged to meet Cree at nine-thirty for a second trip to the ravine, then went with Julieta to meet the maintenance staff and get a tour of the electrical system's components in preparation for the exhaustive analysis he'd conduct tomorrow. Lynn was called to tend to a boy who had badly scraped both elbows playing basketball.

Cree spent the evening resting and reading more of the materials Mason and Joyce had provided. It was disquieting stuff in more ways than one.

From what she'd read so far, it was clear that most cases of "possession" from earlier eras were actually examples of clinically definable maladies. Many were obviously epilepsy or schizophrenia, but some were more likely DID, dissociative identity disorder, previously referred to as multiple personality disorder. The condition was believed to be caused by a combination of neurological predisposition and early childhood trauma so severe that the victim "quarantined" aspects of his or her personality, locking them away to escape the pain of coping with the trauma. Most people lived in some degree of forgetfulness or denial, but with DID victims the sequestered parts began to develop independently, to grow and articulate as complete, separate personalities that could emerge under the right triggering circumstances. The supposed "epidemic" of MPD during the 1980s had been discredited as a phenomenon largely created by unscrupulous therapists, but a number of cases, stretching back centuries, held up under scrutiny and made it clear that though very rare, the disorder was real.

At the same time, the inverse was also true: To Cree's eyes, some of those now labeled as MPD/DID sufferers were clearly victims of invasion by a separate, roving, extracorporeal entity.

Again, she had to admire the insight and courage of Mason's basic dictum: No theory of human psychology could be considered accurate or complete unless it accommodated the principle that mind is to some degree independent of brain or body and that the human personality is shaped by psychological and social influences that extend beyond the physical lifetime.

Included in the papers Joyce had provided was one of Mason Ambrose's most famous monographs, published eighteen years ago as a slap in the face to the psychological status quo. Describing five specific, well-documented MPD case studies, he had challenged anyone to offer a single fact that was demonstrably inconsistent with the idea that the victims were in fact possessed by a distinct, externally originating entity. Despite their scorn, his detractors mustered only feeble efforts to refute the idea. Some psychologists had applauded the paper, assuming that Mason intended it only as an ironic argument against current diagnostic criteria for MPD, a way of saying that criteria that didn't permit ready refutation of such a wild theory had to be inadequate. Subsequent developments in the field had reinforced that view, and multiple personality disorder had been dropped from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

Cree, of course, knew that he'd meant it literally.

Mason had relished the ongoing controversy. But now, rereading that first paper in the light of the bedside lamp in the ward room, with desert-dark windows on all three sides, Cree found herself deeply unsettled. Somehow it made the awful stuff more real-the biblical and medieval accounts and the quasi-religious or pseudomedical reports from the last ten centuries. In particular, she couldn't shake that damned woodcut image, the rearing saint above the contorted sufferer, the worm spewing and coiling. Maybe because it echoed too well Tommy's description of the maggots in the sheep.

There was another perspective, Cree knew: the old faiths of the world, the nature religions and shamanic spiritual traditions, like that of the Navajo. For a moment she wished she wasn't so far from a library, then realized she had access to a knowledgeable source. She went to the nurse's office, dialed Paul's home number.

"Hey."

"Hey, yourself," Paul said. "I was hoping it was you."

"You busy?"

"Monday night. I'm busy trying to shed the accumulated stresses of a day of dealing with other people's intractable problems. I've got a tall, slim, sensuous companion named Beaujolais Nouveau who is, shall we say, helping me unwind."

Cree heard a clink of glass, the sound of wine pouring. "Trying to make me jealous? It won't work. I'm calling for professional advice."

"Is that so? I'm kissing her ruby lips even as we speak… mmmm." Paul was in a good mood; this obviously wasn't the first such kiss of the evening.

"Okay, it's working, I'm jealous," Cree said sincerely. A sip of the good grape would be nice, maybe help ease the growing tension she felt. "Listen, I was thinking about a paper you told me you'd written. On the parallels between modern psychotherapy and shamanistic healing practices."

"Aha."

"I'm interested in… well, in possession. I've got a bunch of literature on the Christian/Satanic outlook, and some papers on the parallels between DID and possession. But I'd like to get some perspectives from other traditions."

Paul was quiet for a moment. "So that's what you're dealing with there? Jesus. I hated the idea even when I didn't believe in ghosts. Now… Jesus. That sounds like a scary proposition for a… you know. A person like you, Cree."

"It's a common diagnosis in the Navajo tradition. The entity is often the ghost of a dead ancestor. Is that typical?"

"You know all this better than I do, Cree."

"Indulge me. Refresh my memory."

"It's universal. All over the world, every culture. All the old religions have the same basic idea. In a few traditions, you find some rough equivalent of the demonic entity, but that's rare. I always saw the ancestor thing as a useful metaphor. Struck me as full of resonances with modern psychotherapy-not so different from Freud putting you on the couch and asking about your mother. A way to cope constructively with our unresolved business with our forebears. But it's not always ancestors. The spirit can be any dead person close to the victim. A mother or father can become possessed by the ghost of a dead child. A widow or widower can be possessed by the dead spouse. It's often a blood relative, but not always-a murderer might be possessed by the spirit of his victim."

"Always someone with a connection to the victim, though."

"Yep. Unless it's a deity or nature spirit of some kind."

"What kind of symptoms? Are they consistent in different cultures?"

"Very. But if you want details… well, let me think. It's been a while, Cree." He took another sip of wine and breathed deeply once or twice. "Well, in Melanesia, the possessed person typically speaks in a strange voice, shows glaring eyes, twisting limbs, convulsing body, foam in the throat. The mana-that's the spirit of the dead person-overpowers the victim in fits or cycles, leaving him exhausted, almost comatose. Among the Alarsk Buryat of Siberia, the ancestral spirits are called utcha and manifest first in dreams, getting to the convulsions and strange voices only as they gain greater control. In Nepal, the Tamangs have a term, um… God, I used to know all this stuff… I'd impress my fellow grad students, those of the female persuasion, with it… uh, yeah, iha khoiba mayba. The term means, essentially, 'crazy possession.' As opposed to voluntary possession. Symptoms are typical, your basic convulsive shaking, incoherency, chaotic visions or hallucinations."

"'Voluntary possession'?" The idea was appalling to Cree.

"Oh, sure. For shamans, it's a sought-after state. The shaman surrenders to the spirit to get guidance from the dead. Sometimes the ghost gives him prophetic information-advice on what's going to happen, what people should or shouldn't do, warnings, and so on. Advice on how to heal people, how to settle their unresolved issues. I thought you'd know all about that-isn't that a lot like what you do?"

She hadn't quite thought of it in those terms and wished he hadn't pointed it out. "Let's go back to the involuntary variety. What else? Why do the spirits return? The human type?"

"That's variable. They often come back to seek redress or justice for wrongs. Or to punish the living for offenses-the Tibetan Book of the Dead has a ton of stuff on after-death retribution."

"Terrific. Great."

Paul heard the bleakness in her tone, tried to inject something more hopeful: "But, again, the dead may also have important information to convey. They may be trying to help."

"How nice of them," Cree said acidly. Right now, it was hard to think of spirit invasion as anything but a form of rape.

"Among the Tungas, for example-"

"That's okay, Paul. I get the picture."

"Of course, there are also animal spirits, they're often helping spirits, too. It-"

"This one's human."

"Okay." He was quiet for a minute as her mood really registered. "Do you have to get involved?"

"I'm already 'involved.'"

"And you're… at risk?"

"No doubt."

"You want to tell me what you're dealing with?"

He sounded frustrated and worried, and she wanted to cheer him up. "I can't, Paul. Just be yourself. Who you are. And what you've told me is very helpful. This member of the female persuasion is very impressed."

"Tell me more about that," he said huskily, vamping. "How impressed?"

He was fishing for intimate talk, but she felt confused, unable to find the mood. As she hesitated, a change in the light made her turn. Lynn Pierce had come to the door of the office. Seeing Cree on the phone, she smiled apologetically and passed by as if heading toward the big ward room. But Cree didn't hear the other door open. She must have paused, out of view in the hall.

"Anyway," Cree said briskly, "I better get going now. We'll talk another time, okay?"

Paul grunted, put out by her sudden change of tone. "Privacy issues?"

Lynn Pierce still hadn't gone into the examining room. "Apparently," Cree said drily.