Cheryl’s sense of humor shines in her story, “Possessed”, about a dybbuk. In Jewish mythology, a dybbuk is the often malicious, lost soul of a dead person who can only be released after atoning for sins committed in life. “Possessed” first appeared in the Mesdames anthology, In the Spirit of 13.

POSSESSED

by

Cheryl Freedman

Sara Levine was not happy. In fact, she was irritated, exasperated, and ready to toss her computer out the window of her third-floor flat.

Only a moment ago, she had been ecstatic. Not only had she finally overcome a truly megalithic days-long writer’s block, but the horrible headache that had been plaguing her for the past couple of hours had disappeared, a weird headache that felt as if someone was inside her head, scratching and clawing at her brain.

She looked at the time on her computer screen. Almost 7:15 on a Friday night in late November, which meant that her Monday morning deadline for submitting her essay to a comparative mythology anthology was looming. Now she’d have to spend the whole weekend writing.

On the other hand, Jewish demons have a particular cultural bias that is unique among other demons. They…

Suddenly, the computer screen blanked out. She only had time to think, What the hell? when the cursor reappeared, followed by vostutzichoyvaiizmir.

For a moment she gaped at the screen. She hit the Delete key. Nothing happened. The gobbledygook just sat there, sneering at her. She smashed Delete again, and again nothing.

 Sara had long been convinced that machines, particularly electronic equipment, were out to get her. Her VCR, for instance, would frequently record the wrong program, especially when she had set it for a show she really wanted to see. Or she would carefully program the Nespresso to go on at 8:00 in the morning, only to find cold water sitting in the reservoir when she stumbled into the kitchen at 8:15.

 But her computer had been remarkably cooperative…until now.

Unplugging and replugging in the computer was often the answer, and to Sara’s relief, that worked. Relieved, she had just started to type when ichzolazoyvissenfuntsoresahzespunim appeared on the screen.

She felt her frustration rising and her motivation for writing ebbing. If she did not get down to work again soon, God only knew whether she’d be able to get back to it.

She spent the next eternity trying to make the computer cooperate. Reboot again…gibberish…blinking cursor…reboot… It wasn’t a virus; at least, that’s what her anti-virus app told her.

“I’m cursed,” she moaned.

She began pleading with the computer, “If you let me finish this paper, I’ll never procrastinate again. I won’t mock my ferret when he’s being an idiot. I’ll stick to my diet. I’ll date Jewish guys. I’ll go to shul on the High Holidays. I won’t even get mad at my mother when she phones for the fifth time in an hour.”

But she had the nagging feeling that there was something about the gibberish on the screen that she should understand. It was almost as if she should know what to do…almost…

Trouble, her ferret, nipped at her heels. “Yowp!” she yelped. Reaching down, she grabbed the little animal and brought him up to her face—nose to nose, eyeball to eyeball—as she frequently did to have a talk with him. Trouble was a notoriously poor conversationalist…until now, when he opened his mouth and squeaked, “A nechtiker tog. Got vet shtrofen! Me hot alain ungekocht, traifener bain!”

Sara dropped the little animal. Trouble tumbled bonelessly to the floor, then stood up and continued to chatter. As he squeaked on, she finally realized what had been bothering her about the whole weird sequence of events. The strange writing on the screen, the even stranger speech coming from Trouble’s mouth—holy shit, the language was Yiddish.

“Oh my God! My ferret’s speaking in tongues, my computer’s possessed…and I’m not even on drugs.” And she actually did feel quite calm, a feeling she recognized from the time she had been in a car accident and had been in shock.

Now Sara knew she wasn’t the world’s most observant Jew. The High Holy Days were frequently something that just happened in the fall; Passover was a time to chow down at her parents’ even though she never bothered getting rid of the bread in her own flat; Saturday was a day to go shopping. But if she wasn’t a religious Jew, she was a cultural one and reasonably well-read in Jewish history and folklore.

Books started to teeter precariously on either side of her as she searched the bookshelves for her Yiddish-English dictionary.

 Grabbing Trouble again and holding him up to face her, she demanded, “Who are you?”

 “Ich bin Shlomo Finkel,” the ferret said.

Leafing frantically through her Yiddish phrasebook, Sara found the words she needed. “Ich vais nit Yiddish. Can you speak English?”

 “Yes, why should I not be able to speak English?”

“Because you’ve been speaking, well, actually until now you’ve been typing, in Yiddish,” Sara pointed out. She felt quite proud of herself: It wasn’t everyone who could deal with a possessed computer and a possessed ferret and an interrupted soon-to-be overdue essay with such equanimity.

“I prefer Yiddish because it is my mama loschen—sorry, my mother tongue,” squeaked the ferret. “But I live here in Toronto since my family moved here in 1923—to this very flat, to be precise.”

 “Mr. Finkel, you should pardon my, uh, nosiness, but just out of curiosity, would you be a…uh…?”

“Dybbuk,” the ferret finished the sentence for her. “Yes, I am. I died on November 29, 1937, and have been denied any rest since that time.”

But before Sara could ask Shlomo Finkel’s spirit what he meant, Trouble started squirming and panting in her arms. She knew from previous experience what would come next. “Get out of my ferret right now,” she demanded of the dybbuk. “He’s about to have a seizure.”

“But you must help me,” pleaded the trembling ferret/dybbuk.

 “Back in the computer, then,” Sara ordered.

 “But you can’t type. It’s Shabbos!”

  “My phone. Get into my phone. Then we can talk.” Sara turned on her Samsung.

  “How do I get into the phone?”

  “How should I know? How did you get into my computer? Just do the same thing with the damn phone.”

Trouble relaxed, then squirmed to be let down; obviously Shlomo had departed. After a minute or so, the phone screen lit up and an accented voice said, “I’m in.”

Sara wondered whether having a dybbuk in her phone would prevent the phone from making and receiving calls but didn’t think this was something she could ask tech support. Her immediate objective was to find out what Shlomo wanted and then to send him on his ghostly way ASAP because the deadline for getting her essay to the anthology editor wasn’t going to suddenly disappear.

“So, Shlomo, how about telling me why you’re here.”

“You need to help me, Sara.”

“With what? And why me?”

“I have to find my wife’s body and free her soul that’s trapped there.”

“Whoa! Freeing trapped souls is definitely not my area of expertise. Besides, why is her soul trapped in her body and why is it up to you to free it?”

“Because I murdered her and buried her body without the proper rituals.”

Holy shit, Sara thought. I have a frickin’ murderer in my phone! She felt a stress headache coming on, which reminded her…

 “Did you try to possess me about an hour ago?”

“My apologies, but yes. I couldn’t get in, but your computer seemed to be an extension of you, so I could enter it.”

“But why me? And why did you murder your wife? And why weren’t you caught? And why has it taken so long for you to decide you had to free your wife’s soul? And why ha­—”

“STOP!” the dybbuk interrupted. “Too many questions. Give me a chance to explain, I beg you.

“Our families were friends back in Lithuania. We came to Canada from our small village in 1923 to escape the pogroms. The name of the village is not important because it no longer exists. Both my wife, Malka, and I were young children at the time, and in Toronto, we lived very close to each other in The Ward among all the other Jewish refugees from the old country.

“Malka and I married in 1923 and we moved to Kensington Market, to this very flat you live in now. She got a job as a baker.” His matter-of-fact voice changed. “Oy, and what a baker she was! The most beautifully braided challah, the most delicious bialys, perfectly shaped rugalach—”

“Shlomo,” Sara said, “please, we don’t have all day.” She had the impression that if he had been corporeal and standing before her, he would be shaking his head to get rid of the memories.

 “My apologies again, Sara. Malka was my gentle, beautiful queen. I adored her and she said she adored me. We certainly weren’t wealthy because I couldn’t seem to hold a job, but we were happy…or so I thought.

“Eventually, I found a job in a warehouse, but it meant working mostly at night, and Malka worked during the day, so the only time we really had together was on Shabbos. But it’s hard to hold a marriage together when you see each other for only a day and a half, and Malka found another man…”

 The dybbuk’s voice died away and Sara thought she heard a sob coming from the phone.

 “Well, I found out and didn’t go to work one night. I got drunk and came home and heard my wife and this other man talking. I waited till he left, then confronted Malka who admitted she no longer loved me. So, God forgive me, I stabbed her. It was very late at night, and I managed to get her away from the houses and buried her in some park, I think. I still can’t remember where it was, but somehow I got back home and….”

Yes, those were definitely sobs Sara heard coming from the phone. This was an ages-old story that the dybbuk was telling, but that didn’t make it any less painful to listen to. What was more painful, however, was that time was passing, her deadline was not, and she wasn’t writing.

After a few minutes, she said gently to the phone, “Shlomo, I’m sorry you have to dredge up painful memories, but if we want to find Malka’s body, we have to move on. Did you try to find where you had buried her? Did you somehow let her family know what had happened?”

“Malka’s family was dead, died of the flu in 1919. God forgive me, but I couldn’t bring myself to look for her body, to at least take her to the chevra kadisha to be washed and prepared for a proper burial. I went back to work but never remarried, and when I died in 1937, my soul was condemned to wander the earth until I found my Malka’s body and freed her blameless soul from her earthly remains. You see, you might think my sin was murder, but my greater sin was that I treated her body like a dog’s and didn’t grant her any of the burial rites to let her soul depart.

“Now, Sara, you are my last hope. I’ve entered other bodies since my death, but they were either no help or managed to have me exorcised. But you…I think you can help.”

 Sara wasn’t so sure about that.

“Shlomo, I don’t want to offend you by giving you the details, but I have to do something tomorrow, so why don’t you, I don’t know, sleep – do you sleep? – till tomorrow night and then we’ll work out a plan. I have a friend with the Toronto police, so I’ll ask him about cold cases and we can see if anyone found Malka’s body.”

 The Samsung gave one last sob followed by “Until tomorrow night” from the dybbuk and then silence.

#

Saturday morning arrived, and Sara was on a roll with her writing, even though every time she stopped typing, she thought about Shlomo Finkel’s dilemma and how she could help his and Malka’s souls ascend to Heaven.

By six o’clock Saturday evening, she had finished her third and final draft of the essay and was ready with a potential plan of action.

 “Schlomo,” she said into her phone, “you there?”

The dybbuk must have been waiting for her because he responded immediately and with the anticipated accusation. “You were working today, weren’t you? I tell you, Sara, your soul is in danger if you work on Shabbos.” He gave a bitter laugh. “I apologize. You must have been working because of me, so I willingly take your sin upon myself.”

“Thanks, Shlomo, but not to worry. Tell me about Malka: How tall was she? Was she a large or small woman? What colour was her hair? What was she wearing that night? Did she have any scars or birthmarks?” Sara continued questioning the dybbuk until she was satisfied that she had what she needed to go to her cop friend, Ryan.

“Just one more thing. Do you remember the date when you, uh, did it?” She had a hard time saying bluntly: ‘When did you kill your wife?’ It sounded so crass. “Now let’s come up with a story about why I’m interested in a woman who was murdered in 1932.”

#

“Ryan, you busy at the moment?” Sara asked when her cop friend answered his phone. It was Sunday afternoon, but the Toronto November weather was at its usual gloomy worst, so she hoped to find her friend at home.

 “Not particularly. What’s up, Sara?”

 “Got a cop question for you. Cold cases: How long do you guys keep them on the books?”

“Till they’re solved. Why’re you asking? You kill someone years ago and are wracked with guilt now?” He chuckled but Sara sensed a touch of suspicion behind the laugh.

“Ha, ha, very funny. Killing people isn’t my thing. But seriously, Ry, what about a stabbing that happened in, say, 1932? And the murderer was never caught. Would this murder still be considered a cold case?”

“Are you asking hypothetically, or do you know something about this murder? If you know something, stop right there because what you’re saying now becomes evidence and not something to be discussed between friends on a Sunday afternoon.” The joking tone was gone, replaced now by full-out suspicion.

“Hypothetically,” she said, but she had paused long enough before speaking that Ryan pounced on her hesitation.

“You’re lying, Sara. What the hell have you gotten yourself involved in?”

 Think fast, Sara thought. Do I tell him about the dybbuk or… Or what?

 “You’re correct, Ry, my case is real. The murderer is definitely dead. But we need—”

  “We?”

Sara had never heard her friend sounding so suspicious. Must be an occupational hazard, she thought.

“All right. Are you sitting because there’s an interesting story behind my question? But you have to promise not to tell anyone, not your friends, not your colleagues, no one!”

“You know I can’t make that promise if what’s behind all this mystery is something illegal.”

“Look, someone told me about a man who murdered his wife in 1932. She was cheating on him, he found out, he got drunk, and he killed her. Yes, I know, same old, same old. He managed to get her out of their flat and he buried her somewhere in the Kensington Market area. Probably not the Market itself but likely in a park nearby. He was so bombed that he could never remember where.”

“Okay. Go on. Why are you interested in this case?”

“Hey, I’m being a good citizen. I’m offering to help you clear up a cold case.”

“You’re full of it, Sara.”

“Probably. Will you help me? At least, will you tell me where to go and whom to speak with?”

“Against my better judgement, okay.”

“I owe you big time for this, Ry. Thanks.”

He told her where the truly ancient cold case records were kept, mentioning that there was also a Website where people could look up cold cases, and added that she’d need a detailed description of the victim.

“Been there, done that,” Sara said, listing what she knew about Malka, ending with “and she had an egg-shaped reddish-brown birthmark on the right side of her tush, and a four-inch long burn mark from a bakery accident on the inside of her left forearm.”

#

The Toronto Police Services cold case Website was, as Sara suspected, less than useful because it went back only to 1959. However, the officer she spoke with at police HQ bought her story that she was doing research for a mystery she was writing about a Jane Doe murder case in the early 1930s. After going through a number of cold cases from the thirties, they came to one Sara thought fit Shlomo’s confession.

The officer told her that because the killer had covered the victim’s body with only a thin layer of dirt and leaves, it had been found the day after the murder by some kids playing in the park. They’d notified the police, who picked up the body and tried for months to learn her identity. Eventually, she was declared a Jane Doe and buried in a public cemetery north of Steeles and west of Dufferin.

Wandering through a cemetery looking for an unmarked grave on a cold, overcast day in November wasn’t Sara’s idea of a good time. Nor was she sure she and Shlomo could even locate Malka’s remains because the bodies, as befit their John or Jane Doe status, were buried without markers. The cemetery itself was uncared for, with no discernable paths, long grass, and tree branches lying willy-nilly on the ground. Each step Sara took, phone in hand, made her even more depressed and uncertain.

“We can find her, Sara,” the dybbuk assured her. “We loved each other once, and our souls will reach out to each other. Just watch.”

 And damned if Shlomo wasn’t right, although considering that soul and spirit stuff was his bailiwick that made complete sense, because after an hour or so, the dybbuk shouted, “Stop! We’re here!”

Sara pulled out the pages of Psalms and prayers for the dead she had found online, and she and the dybbuk started reciting, she in English, he in Yiddish: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…” As they prayed, she felt a change in the air, a calmness overlaid with anticipation that something right and holy was about to take place.

They were reciting the last words of the Mourners’ Kaddish: “He who creates peace in His celestial heights, may He create peace for us and for all Israel; and say, Amen,” when Sara sensed something – Malka’s soul? – rising from the ground.

 “Malka! Malka, my love!” cried the dybbuk. “Thank you, Sara.”

  And then the two souls were gone.

THE END