I hear, “Miss! Miss!” The shadow? Or is it just the radio?
I want to see who is standing there on the other side of my cracked windshield. I can’t see anything. The headlights are out. My phone buzzes and buzzes like a trapped insect skimming a windowpane.
“Miss? Miss?”
Possessed
by Naomi Hirahara
Mount Hermon
It was cabin time: sharing and praying. Karen Abe was sitting on the floor when one of the girls got up from the circle and stared out from the wire netting of their open-air windows.
“I think something’s going on in Twenty-One,” she said.
A chill went up Karen’s spine. Lisa Tanizaki was in Cabin Twenty-One. They were best friends — or at least that’s what other people at Paradise Park Camp would say. They lived three blocks away from each other in the San Fernando Valley, and had always gone to New Hope Church. Every summer they went to a Japanese American Christian camp here in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Karen was assigned Cabin Twenty with Rachel Kubota from their same school, plus four girls from Monterey Park, whom she referred to as the Lukewarms — and their cabin leader, Wendy Kanegoe, a sophomore at Cal State LA.
Wendy tried to call the Lukewarm back to the circle and focus. But then she also rose and looked outside. The rest of them followed, Karen at the rear, leaving their Living Bibles and the tan-covered four-scripture law tracks on the ratty carpet.
Every light was on in cabin Twenty-One. It glowed yellow with a tinge of algae green. Outside, flashlights from spectators blazed dots in the darkness. Karen inhaled the grapefruit burn of Douglas fir and smoke from the nearby campfire.
“Some girl’s getting exorcized,” a chubby boy in shorts called out from the dirt pathway. He was new to camp. Karen had heard that he had just accepted Christ at group worship last night.
The Lukewarms squealed and gathered tightly as if that would keep them safe.
The boy waited a few minutes as if he expected them to join him. When no one did, he disappeared across the way to see what was happening.
“The Catholics call it exorcism, but Christians don’t,” Rachel said. Rachel’s father was the minister of New Hope. Lisa’s grandparents had been in the same World War II camp as Rachel’s.
“If you’re born again, you can’t be demon-possessed,” Wendy assured them. “The Devil has no hold on you.” Wendy, always the good cabin leader, was steady and calm.
“But you can be oppressed,” Rachel said.
“What does that mean?” a Lukewarm asked.
“That a demon can attach to you,” Karen said. “They can’t take over, but they can still bother you. They can enter through a weak spot.”
Rachel squinted her eyes as if she was reassessing Karen’s level of spirituality.
Before Karen could say anything more, the chubby boy in shorts was back standing in front of their cabin. She began to realize that he had a crush on someone in the cabin.
“It’s Lisa Tanizaki,” the boy called out. “They want Karen Abe to come to Cabin Twenty-One.”
“Why?” Karen tightened her fists. The boy said her name as if he knew her. He didn’t know her.
“You’re her best friend, right? They think you can help.”
The Lukewarms made room for Karen to get through the door.
“I’ll go with you,” Wendy said, pressing lightly on her elbow.
“And I’ll take care of things here,” Rachel volunteered.
What a kiss-ass, Karen thought.
Wendy wrapped Karen’s hand around the crook of her arm and together they walked down the stairs of the cabin, the screen door flapping behind them.
As they crossed the dirt walkway, something crackled and then landed on her white long-sleeve T-shirt. “Shit! What is that?” Karen felt her throat closing up. She hated bugs, especially spiders and cockroaches. But this one was worse because she didn’t know what it was.
The boy pointed his flashlight at Karen’s T-shirt. It was about an inch long with six legs and white stripes on its back. “Oh, it’s a Mount Hermon june beetle. I think they’re endangered.”
Of course this nerd would know about bugs. “God, get it off me!”
The boy started slapping at her body, even grazing her breasts in their A-cup bra. Karen pushed him away.
“It’s okay.” Wendy put herself between the two campers. “They don’t bite.”
They examined Karen’s T-shirt with Wendy’s soft flashlight. No bug.
“What is wrong with you?” Karen frowned at the new boy. His bare legs were caked with a layer of pink.
“It’s just calamine lotion. Got into some poison oak today.”
You better not’ve given me your poison oak, Karen thought to herself. She silently swore at him, noticing Wendy giving her a sideways glance.
The three of them continued walking through the crowd of high school campers, most of them in college sweatshirts, their faces frozen. Someone murmured that the local hospital had been called and an ambulance was on its way.
They were greeted at the door of Cabin Twenty-One by its cabin leader, a skinny young woman with her hair tied back in a ponytail. Karen recognized her as Wendy’s good friend Tammy. The two leaders awkwardly embraced, their stiff, thin bodies knocking together.
Karen continued through the porch to the bunkbeds. The room smelled of barf, and Karen stifled a retch.
There were grown-ups surrounding the far bunkbeds. Camp admins, all men in polo shirts embroidered with the camp Christian cross ablaze above a redwood tree, were absorbed in their walkie-talkies. As they quickly huddled for an impromptu meeting, the view to the bottom bunk opened. From a distance, Lisa Tanizaki looked like sleeping beauty in her baby-blue UCLA T-shirt.
But as Karen got closer, she saw there were streaks of vomit on Lisa’s cheek. Her eyes were half-open, as if she was watching everything transpire in front of her.
“No, young lady, you’ll have to stay in the other room,” a walkie-talkie man stopped Karen. She looked down and saw a dark circle on the rug.
“I’m her friend. Karen Abe. I was told to come here.”
“We’ll get you when we need you,” he said, practically pushing her back out onto the enclosed porch.
“Lisa was acting weird, like she was high,” a voice said from a corner of the porch.
In the dark, Karen spied someone else from New Hope: Jacob Conner. He was hapa, half and half. In certain contexts he looked more white, in others, Japanese. Here he seemed otherworldly. An elf. An angel.
“What are you doing here?”
Jacob paused before answering. “Lisa forgot her jacket in the hall after worship. I was here to bring it back.”
That’s a lame excuse. Weren’t you here to spy on her, make sure she kept her mouth shut?
Cabin Twenty-One leader Tammy’s back was turned toward them, but Karen could still overhear her talking to Wendy: “Her body got all stiff like a board. She was grinding her teeth.”
“Sounds like The Exorcist to me,” the poison-oak boy said to Jacob and Karen. “You know, there are Satan worshippers up here in these mountains.”
The back of Karen’s neck tingled like when a tine of a fork accidentally hit the middle of a cavity.
“Shut up, Carl,” said Jacob. He was acting tough, but Karen saw right through it.
“No, really. I even saw something when I was hiking around Mount Hermon.”
Karen’s body lurched. So this stupid boy Carl was in Mount Hermon today too; did he see anything?
Carl couldn’t shut up: “I went to this clearing and there was a pentagram carved into the rock floor. And stones piled up at each point of the star.”