Just keep going. One foot after another. Step by step.
With each step, she felt steadier. She came upon another junction, identical to the one she’d woken up in with one crucial difference. There was a body on the ground. She let the light settle on the body. It was Mike. His forest service cap lay discarded nearby. She drew closer to him. She reached out to nudge him awake, then she felt something and stood up suddenly. It was that feeling she got when Katie had come to her before. Only it wasn’t Katie. It was that thing again. She took a deep breath. She froze to the spot.
“That’s right. Breathe easy, young miss.” The voice came to her in her head. The tightness wrapped around her abdomen. Her insides started to warm in stark contrast to the chilled air around her.
“See our friend there? The caretaker?” The voice was so smug. “I have made use of him over the years. In fact, he quite literally can’t live without me. He’s been quite useful. He’s the best one I’ve had so far. Others came and went. Some of them were so easy to scare. I almost felt sorry for them. There was one silly little man who…”
Maya interrupted. “Look. Is this really necessary?”
“Is what really necessary, young miss?” The voice had a nasty edge this time.
“Is it necessary that you… occupy me? Couldn’t you just talk to me and not, you know, lurk inside me? It’s just us here now, so you don’t need to do this.”
“Be careful, young miss.”
Maya was scared, but tiredness and irritation were crowding out her fear. “Just get outta me. I’ll even say please if that’s what you need to get off and get out. I’ll still listen to what you have to say.”
Silence. She could feel the entity inside her, but it had stilled. She wondered if it was trying to think of its next move. Suddenly, the warmth that had filled her poured out and was replaced with emptiness and cold. She shivered. With a twinge of dread, she realized that she shivered not from the cold around her but from the sudden emptiness inside. She shook her head to try and refocus.
She shone her flashlight around the area but saw nothing until something glimmered in a corner. She turned to get a better look and saw a shimmering light, similar to the one she’d seen whenever Katie was about to make an appearance. Only this didn’t materialize into anything. It remained the same—fuzzy, transparent, and yellowish green in color.
“Well?” the spectral voice boomed out, shaking dirt loose from the walls.
“That’s a little better, but you don’t seem like much,” she said. She hoped her anger was fully masking her fear. She didn’t want this thing to know she was scared.
“Don’t ever trust that you’ve seen everything there is to see, young miss.” The spectral mass began changing shape, slowly at first as if it wanted to make sure Maya was paying attention. Then its metamorphosis accelerated. The spectral mass, in rapid succession, took on the contours and shapes of Penny, Jason, Steve, Mike, Mrs. Forcier, Julie, Katie, and then Maya herself.
Maya took a couple of steps back from the specter, but she didn’t have much room to move. She bumped into the wall, nearly losing her grip on her phone. She watched this thing cycle through other faces, faces she didn’t recognize. They might have been the faces of other caretakers, of other people who had disappeared in the woods. Some wore modern clothes. Others wore outfits from another era.
“Who are you? What do you want with me? Where’s Katie?”
Maya thought she heard Katie’s muffled voice, then nothing.
The entity changed back into Maya’s image, leaving her in the uncomfortable position of possibly having to fight herself.
“My name is Dr. John William Hargreaves.” It looked like her, but it didn’t sound like her. Its voice was deep and low. “You seem scared. Let me tell you about being scared. I was twenty-five when I set foot in France to help in the fight against the Germans in that hellish war to end all wars. I’d only been a qualified doctor for a few years, but I was confident in my skills. Why shouldn’t I do my part over there? But almost every day I was there I felt useless. Disease. Gunshot wounds. Wounds from shrapnel. Blisters and sores from mustard gas.”
As Hargreaves spoke, Maya’s senses became alive to things that she couldn’t see in front of her. Her ears filled with sounds—muted gunfire, explosions, shouting, moaning, and screams that chilled her bones. The odors of gunsmoke, gas, dirt, blood, feces, stale tobacco, and rotting flesh assaulted her nose. And then there was the heart-pounding terror that flooded her body. It made her tremble and sweat profusely. Her breath began to come in short gasps. This was nothing like the fear she’d felt when she first encountered this entity. She’d been scared, yes, but this was something different. She wanted to flee but felt rooted to the spot.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked, covering her ears with her hands.
“I wanted to give you a little taste of what I and the fellows I went over there with felt fighting that war.”
“Stop it. Please.” This was only make-believe, a simulation of the sounds and smells of a war she knew next to nothing about, but Maya was starting to panic. A sense of hopelessness began to take hold of her. She couldn’t let that happen. She’d be no good to Katie if she let hopelessness poison her.
“Fine. I think you understand now,” Hargreaves said.
Instantly, the noxious odors disappeared as did the sounds of warfare and the feeling of terror. The hopelessness, however, stayed.
“You still feel it, don’t you? The sense of futility? Like nothing will ever matter again?” Hargreaves’ voice had a slightly mocking tinge to it.
Maya winced. If Hargreaves were flesh and blood, she would have slapped him. She knew that Hargreaves already knew the answer. He was taunting her now.
“Good. When I returned home from Europe, the sense of futility never left me, but my fiancée Clara and I started planning our wedding. But people, people I knew and loved, began suffering and dying. The flu took my mother, my younger sister, an uncle, and my lovely Clara from me. Nothing I did could save any of them. I was as useless here as I had been in France. Nothing mattered.”
Maya looked around to see if there was anything that could help her get away. Since she’d discovered her affinity for ghosts, she’d viewed it as a gift. This experience was the first time she began to wonder about the downside.
“I brought home a pistol from my time in the Army. I had locked it away when I came home. I didn’t want to see any of the tools of war. I only ever used it for target practice, but after the deaths of so many that I loved, I decided that there was something I could use that pistol for.”
Here the entity paused. Maya felt a sudden uncertainty, but it wasn’t coming from her. It was Hargreaves’ uncertainty she was feeling. He hesitated. It seemed like he didn’t want to go on with his tale.
“You’re not gonna leave me hanging or make me guess what you did with that pistol, are you?”
Having the entity look like her in some ways made the situation easier, if not weirder. She knew she wasn’t looking in a mirror. Her face with the entity’s voice constantly reminded her of who she was really talking to.
Hargreaves resumed, sounding irritated, as though Maya had interrupted him. “In those days, my family didn’t live close to these woods, but it was nothing for me to walk here. I was fit then. One night, I walked here with my pistol. I sat in the woods for some minutes, listening to the woodland sounds. It was a cloudy night. No moonlight. No romance. I made my way to the well. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do exactly, but I had no intention of coming out of the woods alive that night. I decided to climb down into the well. It seemed the only way I could escape the misery for good. There was a little water down there, but even then, I don’t think it had been used in a while. I sat down there in the dark for a bit, wondering if I had the courage to do it. In the end, I found that I did. I ate a bullet. You understand?”
Maya nodded and said, “I do.” She hoped he wouldn’t somehow make her see and hear what he
saw and heard in that moment when he shot himself in the mouth. She braced herself, but nothing came.
“So, you died down in the well. What does that have to do with Katie or any of the others?”
“Oh, that’s an easy one to answer, young miss. I stayed down in that well. I was dead, but I got lonely. I needed companionship. I was surprised at how easy companionship was to come by. So many lonely people would come to the woods and make wishes in the well. You might be surprised, young miss, by how many of them wished to end it all. They hadn’t the nerve to do it themselves, so I gave them a helping hand.”
A sickening thought occurred to Maya.
“Did Katie wish to end it all, as you put it, Dr. Hargreaves?”
The doctor didn’t respond. Maya heard water dripping somewhere. She had braced herself, for what she wasn’t sure, but she was sure that Hargreaves wouldn’t like to be questioned. His certainty seemed unshakeable. Several more moments passed.
A muffled roar full of pain vibrated through the walls. The sound felt strangled. It was silenced as quickly as it began.
“I ended their suffering. I helped all who came to the woods who needed my help. They stayed with me.”
The reality of what had happened to the people who had disappeared over the years in the woods and what most likely happened to Katie started to sink in. And to think it started with the flu pandemic, thought Maya. She’d read a little about the pandemic of 1918 and 1919. She’d even seen a documentary about it. She knew millions had died, but now she knew some had died at this entity’s hands. And at the moment, the entity looked like her.
“Why did you stay in the woods?” asked Maya.
“I don’t know,” said the entity. “Maybe it’s because I killed myself. It’s supposed to be a sin, you know. Forever shut out of God’s grace and all that. I never believed in that stuff. Load of nonsense. I’m a man of science bound by the Hippocratic Oath. I just know I’m here. I know that helping others makes me stronger. I stayed because I had unfinished business in this world.”
“What about Katie? She said she fell down the well. Did you push her?”
Hargreaves laughed, a quiet, chilling laugh. “Oh, I had nothing to do with that. She was just a bit of luck that came my way.”
Maya wondered if Dr. Hargreaves’ hold on the other spirits weakened when his focus was elsewhere, like on her, allowing them to speak and reach out, even if only for a moment.
“What do you want with me? You know there are plans to build houses in this part of the woods. That means more people. It would mean the destruction of some of the woods. Possibly the well. What about that?”
Again, Hargreaves laughed.
“I’ve put a stop to that sort of thing before. They try something like that every so often. I’ll stop them again, but I may not have to, now that I have you.” Dr. Hargreaves, still looking like Maya, floated toward Mike. “I may not need to occupy him anymore either.”
Maya aimed the beam of her phone’s flashlight squarely at the face of the unconscious caretaker. He appeared older, more careworn, more like the age she imagined him to be. She felt a wave of sympathy. He was like a puppet discarded by the puppet master.
“He’s been the best one so far, the most receptive.”
The specter got closer to her. She stood up and backed away a few steps. “Receptive?”
“When I came to him, he welcomed me. Once I had him, I realized why. He hadn’t accomplished much in his life. He’s like so many men who, from the time they’re boys, believe they’re destined for greatness, to be heroes. He was just at the point in his life when he realized that he’d never be a great man. Not a great man like me. I offered him purpose. I told him that he needed to keep our, hmmm, arrangement a secret. He seemed to like that, having a secret. That one little thing, telling him that it was a secret, kept him bound to this place tighter than any threat I could have thought of.”
The entity hung a couple of inches from her face. Maya wanted to back away farther, but she didn’t. She knew she had to be strong. She hoped her friends would find her soon.
“What about Katie?”
“Oh, she’s around. She used to come to the woods so often. She was always so sad when she left. I made it so she wouldn’t leave, that she’d be with me. She’s been one of my favorites. She got away from me a few weeks ago when the bulldozers first arrived but I pulled her right back and then you started showing up and her sister and the others.”
“Can I talk to her? I mean, without you getting inside of me, too. Just her.”
Silence. A shimmering light appeared next to the entity. The light began to take Katie’s shape. She looked fearful and confused.
“Maya? Are you all right?” Katie reached out.
“Yeah. I’m all right. Your sister’s all right, too,” Maya said, hoping she was correct.
Katie began to fade again.
“Stop it!” Maya said. “Don’t go.”
“No…,” Katie said before she disappeared.
“Why did you do that?” yelled Maya. Her anger escalated, and then she couldn’t contain it. She took a swing at the entity. Hitting herself was weird. Her hand passed through her chin. It was soft and ethereal like she was running her hand through a giant mass of glitter. Ripples, like those in a stagnant pond that had just had a rock thrown into it, appeared throughout the entity’s body. They flowed outward. Then they stopped. When Dr. Hargreaves reformed, he took the shape of an older, clean-shaven white man in a three-piece vintage suit. He was nearly solid, only fading slightly below the knees.
“Is this who you really are?” Maya shouted. Dr. Hargreaves nodded.
“You are a horrible person.” Maya’s voice kept getting louder. “You violated me. You didn’t save anyone. You killed them and trapped them like animals. You’re a monster.” She stabbed her finger into Dr. Hargreaves’ chest. More ripples. It didn’t feel like she was touching anything.
Dr. Hargreaves spoke as if Maya hadn’t said a thing. Her angry words hadn’t just fallen on deaf ears. They had fallen on nothing. “I’ve got a proposition for you. Mike’s a bit worn out, as you can see, so I need someone new to call home. You’ll do just fine. In exchange I can stretch out your youth. I can share my power with you.”
Maya wasn’t convinced it was a proposition she would be allowed to decline. She looked around to see which tunnel might give her the best opportunity for escape. All she saw were dirt walls and the still unconscious Mike.
“I’m not a caretaker. I don’t work for the forest service. I can’t help you.”
“Oh, yes you can,” said Dr. Hargreaves. “And I don’t need you to be a caretaker. You and your ability can take me beyond these woods. I know there’s so much to see out there.” He sounded almost wistful.
“Why couldn’t you have left before now? What’s different now? Why now?” Maya started to edge toward the tunnel that branched off to the right. She had no reason to think it was the one that would take her to safety, but it might take her away.
“It’s you, my dear young miss. The caretakers were simply vessels, used for a time until they were done, and it was time for the next one. Then they would join the other spirits I keep here, who feed my power, yes, but who also keep me company.”
Another short shriek emanated from the walls, shaking loose a clump of dirt that crashed down in a corner.
“You’re like a spirit magnet,” continued Dr. Hargreaves. “You don’t have to say magic words or burn candles or incense. It’s just you. You could take me out into the world. These woods have served me well. I’ve been here more than a hundred years. I’ve seen so much, but it is time to continue my work elsewhere.”
A shiver ran down Maya’s spine. Her hair stood on end. Dr. Hargreaves floated closer to her. Maya heard voices, but they weren’t ghostly. They were the voices she’d been waiting to hear.
“I’m pretty sure it’s this way,” said a female voice. “I thought I heard her. Maya, where are you?”
&nbs
p; Chapter Twenty-One
A ghostly reunion
As Julie tromped through the tunnel underneath the barn she could only think of Maya. They had walked so far. She wasn’t sure if they were in a maze fully contained under the barn or if the tunnels threaded their way under the woods. If they broke through the surface now, she wasn’t sure where they would be.
“I wonder how long these tunnels have been here?” Penny asked. She held her video camera in front of her like it was a mask that could protect her.
“Shit!” Jason yelled, his voice going up an octave. “Something just ran over my foot.”
Julie, Steve, and Mrs. Forcier swept the beams of their flashlights all over the tunnel. It was empty. Julie heard a scratching sound, faint, but she definitely heard it.
“Shhh!” Julie took a cautious step forward.
“What was that?” Penny asked.
The scratching noise got louder. Julie turned her flashlight to the wall from where the sound seemed to be coming. Small bits of dirt crumbled down to the ground. Suddenly, holes opened up in the wall. Rats came streaming out. They cascaded out of the wall, dozens of them, possibly hundreds.
“What the fuck?” Jason tried to dance away from the onslaught.
Penny screamed. “Don’t let those little fuckers bite me! They’ve got plague!”
Confusion and alarm reigned. The tunnel was narrow and that, combined with a low ceiling, made maneuvering difficult, if not impossible, around all the rats. There were so many of them.
The mayhem reminded Julie of a concert mosh pit she was in once in college, only with vermin, instead of drunk college students. She started kicking at the rats with a vehemence she didn’t know she had in her. Mrs. Forcier was at her side. Penny, Steve, and Jason weren’t far away, trying to keep the rats at bay. The rats gnashed their teeth and squealed. They were everywhere.
Then Julie realized they weren’t everywhere. Not really. They swarmed only around her and the others, blocking them from moving forward. The rats made no attempt to keep going through the tunnel. When Julie and the gang backed off, the rats held the line, neither advancing nor scurrying away. They just stared with dark red eyes, whiskers twitching, ready to attack.
The Curse of the Old Woods Page 14