by Brian Harmon
NOT EXACTLY. MORE LIKE A WAVE MOVING THROUGH THE ENERGY
Eric struggled to understand this. A wave moving through the energy… “What the hell does that mean?”
I’M NOT SURE
Eric frowned at the phone.
I NEED TIME TO THINK ABOUT IT
“I’m not sure how much time we have left. You heard Holly.”
I DID. AND I AGREE WITH HER. SOMETHING REALLY BAD IS DEFINITELY GOING TO HAPPEN HERE. EVEN I CAN FEEL IT
Eric looked out across the yard, searching the trees on the far side for any sign of the shadow man, the little boy or the bloody woman. As he turned to look down the driveway again, however, he snapped his head back toward the house.
It stood there beside him, a tidy home in the woods, quiet and unassuming. But for just a second there… “Did you see that?”
I DON’T SEE ANYTHING, REMEMBER
“You know what I mean.”
I DON’T FEEL ANYTHING EITHER. BUT I CAN SEE WHAT YOU THOUGHT YOU SAW. AND IT’S CREEPY
It was creepy. For just a brief moment, glimpsed in his peripheral vision, that house had looked completely different. It’d looked like a burned shell of itself, a gutted corpse of a house ravaged by a terrible fire.
He could almost smell the smoke on the air.
He stared at the house for a moment, half-expecting it to transform into a charred husk before his very eyes, but it stubbornly remained exactly as it was. Instead, something moved in the corner of his eye again and he turned to see a woman strolling across the lawn in a long, red dress and a yellow sunhat.
She didn’t look at him. In fact, she didn’t seem to notice him at all, even though he was standing there in plain view. He didn’t bother calling out to her, either. It was clear that something was not right about her. For one thing, her long, red dress was blowing in the wind and she was holding her hat in place to keep it from being carried away. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t have been strange at all, but the only wind that Eric could feel was a light breeze that barely stirred his hair.
He blinked hard as he tried to wrap his head around the bizarre sight.
The woman strolled across the driveway and toward the forest beyond. When she was about twenty yards away, she began to fade. She came and went for a moment, as if some kind of haze were obscuring her, a morning fog, perhaps. Then she was gone.
Eric stared after her.
THAT WAS FREAKY!
Freaky, yes. And creepy enough to make the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. But he wasn’t frightened by it. It wasn’t even something he hadn’t seen before. There was no mistake that what he’d just seen was a ghost.
RESIDUAL
He nodded. “Right.” Harmless, intangible, barely there at all. The last time he’d encountered a residual image was two summers ago, at an abandoned factory. The ghosts in that endless darkness weren’t real, but only a projection of the past summoned by an agent he’d called “the foggy man.” That same man could make himself appear and disappear at will and could even conjure golems.
A man with powers like that could really mess with people’s heads.
Something moved at the far right side of his field of vision and he looked up to see two little girls running among the trees, both of them in little, light sundresses. They were there for just a moment, and then, like the woman in the red dress, they grew hazy, phasing in and out of sight for a moment, before disappearing.
This was what Holly had meant by the people who wander in the mist.
He turned back to his left, scanning the trees for any more ghosts, and was surprised to find a little cabin standing there in the trees. Far more rustic than the house, it looked like the kind of building that might have stood here a hundred years ago or more.
He was sure it wasn’t there a moment ago.
An unseen, too?
NO, said Isabelle. I DON’T FEEL ANYTHING UNSEEN
As soon as he read this, he looked up in time to see the cabin fade away, revealing a gap in the tall trees where it once stood. The unseen were structures and areas that, for reasons not entirely understood, rendered themselves invisible to most people. They didn’t disappear. Instead, they were essentially ignored by anyone who happened by. People walked right by them, even going out of their way to circle around them, oblivious even to the extra time and energy it took to avoid bumping into them. It wasn’t just the building but the space it took up, too. When this cabin disappeared, the land it sat on remained, a footprint revealing where it once was.
Another residual. It wasn’t limited to people. Things could be pulled from the past, too. Inside that factory, the foggy man had produced machinery and tools to add to the confusion. He’d even provided residual lighting, illuminating the rooms and corridors in spite of the lack of power.
Perhaps this, too, was the work of a powerful agent.
When he turned back, he found that the house was gone. Nothing remained but a crumbling foundation. If he remained long enough, it stood to reason that the house would cycle in and out, occasionally revealing its charred face as well.
All things considered, he thought he was starting to get the hang of this weirdness. He wasn’t fooled into fearing these spooky phantoms. He’d done this all before.
But he didn’t have time to pat himself on the back. As he looked out over the now completely overgrown driveway, he caught sight of a dark shape stalking out of the woods toward him.
Big and black, its muzzle low to the ground, its teeth bared. It was no dog, or even wolf. Its fur was black and matted like the hide of something dead. A hideous stench floated across the air, making his stomach flop in his belly.
There were no words for the deep-down dread that filled his heart as he stared back at the beast. It was more than just carnal fear. There was something so dreadful about this thing that he could feel it all the way down to his soul.
One word flitted through his terrified mind: Hellhound.
Chapter Eleven
Even from where he stood, Eric could see that there was something dreadfully wrong with the beast’s eyes. They didn’t glow red, as Pete had described them. Instead, they looked like empty, blind sockets oozing gore down either side of its toothy snout. And yet, it still seemed to stare at him, fixing him in a murderous death-gaze.
In spite of the late-April warmth, he could see the creature’s breath on the air as if it were deep winter. Either the air surrounding the gruesome thing was experiencing a ghostly deep-freeze or that was hellish smoke curling from its nostrils and boiling from its snarling jaws.
He didn’t waste time trying to decide which was more likely. Either possibility was perfectly terrifying. And he didn’t need his ever-so-optimistic imagination to know what was going to happen to him if he continued to stand there in the open, staring stupidly at the monster. The problem was, he quickly realized, that there was nowhere to go. He was in the middle of nowhere, deep in a secluded forest, far from any kind of help.
He couldn’t even make a run for the house because it wasn’t really there. Like the people he’d found here, it was nothing more than a memory, an intangible glimpse of the past, barely a ghost of a ghost. It would only vanish the moment he reached it.
With nowhere to go, fleeing wasn’t much of an option. As soon as he took off, the thing was certain to launch into pursuit. As powerfully built as this creature was, he had no hope of outrunning it, but he very much doubted that playing dead would save him, either.
He needed to find a fast exit. A tree to climb. A rocky crevice to squirm into. Anything…
He took a cautious step backward, inching away from the beast, hoping to gain a few more feet, but with a blood-chilling snarl the hellhound charged.
Eric fled. Half screaming and half uttering a string of incoherent curses in a voice far less masculine than he’d later admit, he ran headlong into the forest from which he’d come.
This was not how things were supposed to go. Holly told him he’d be fine as long as he didn’t make
any stupid mistakes. Where the hell did he go wrong? Why was he about to be devoured by a demonic dog?
He could hear the thing snarling at his heels. Any second now it would sink its fangs into one of his legs and drag him to the ground, tearing him to pieces. It would be an agonizing and violent death. The scene he’d leave behind would be gruesome. He’d make a terrible mess. He certainly wasn’t going to have an open-casket funeral. They might not even have to dig a full-sized hole to plant him in.
It never ceased to amaze him the strange things that crossed his mind in these moments of dire peril. It was almost as amazing as how often he found himself in dire peril these days. He’d lost count of the number of times he should’ve died by now, whether by the claws and teeth of a savage beast or at the hands of a psychotic lunatic or simply burned to ash by a jinn. But there always seemed to be some last-moment miracle. Sometimes the threat just disappeared for one reason or another. Other times, some sort of unexpected aid would drop into his lap at the very last moment. Sometimes, even he didn’t understand how he survived the ordeal.
He’d begun to think that there really might be some greater force out there watching over him. But it was a lousy guardian angel who kept letting him get into these predicaments in the first place, in his humble opinion.
This time, his imminent death was not so much called off as merely interrupted.
Directly in front of him, there appeared a vision so utterly horrible and disturbing that he very nearly stumbled to a stop, giving himself to the snarling hellhound. Running straight at him was the ghostly form of a burning man, his clothes and flesh charred away, his skeleton face screaming.
By some incredible power, be it pure luck or divine guidance or something between the two, he managed to not turn tail and run back into the waiting jaws of the pursuing beast. Instead, he managed a sharp, ninety-degree turn and threw himself to the ground.
The hellhound snapped at his heels, but only managed to skid to a halt in the dirt and leaves before the burning man raced right through the monster, igniting its matted fur in the process and turning it into a living torch.
Eric rolled to the side and looked up. The burning man ran off into the forest, unfazed by its encounter with the demon hound, a trail of fiery footprints trailing behind him. The beast, on the other hand, hadn’t fared so well. It was thrashing around, snapping its jaws and uttering awful, agonized shrieks. Its entire body was engulfed in towering flames, as if its fur had been soaked in kerosene, transforming it into a howling bonfire.
He didn’t envy the beast, of course, but neither did he feel much sympathy. Maybe he was just funny that way.
He rose to his feet and backed away, cautious of the violent flames. If the thing suddenly bolted, he wanted to be on his feet and well clear. But when he snapped a twig beneath his shoe, the hellhound suddenly stopped thrashing and turned its smoldering face toward him.
He froze.
Suddenly, and incomprehensibly, the beast rose to its feet and snarled at him again. No longer did it seem even remotely concerned about the fact that its body was burning. That, apparently was only a minor thing. It began moving toward him, a great, muscular form at the center of a raging inferno.
“Oh, come on!” he shouted at the stubborn beast.
The hellhound lunged.
Eric fled once again. Once again, he was cursing. Once again, his voice was embarrassingly soprano.
He’d been in a lot of bad situations, but this was just downright unfair.
He should’ve seen it coming. It was a hellhound, after all. But he still wasn’t sure if he believed in a traditional, fiery pit of torment kind of hell. Pete had used the word “hellhound” when he described the things people had seen in this area, and it was a word that had fit the beast perfectly, right down to those strange curls of smoke rising from its drooling muzzle. But he’d never really considered that the thing might actually have come from hell. And he still didn’t. At best, it was some kind of rare and unbecoming wolf hybrid. At worst, it was the creation of a devilishly creative psychopath with the same mysterious ability to summon monsters as other people he’d had the misfortune of facing. (Not all that unbelievable when one considered that his greatest allies were a young girl who resided outside of time and inside his head and a young witch.)
Given all the weirdness he’d found out there, why wouldn’t a creature that appeared to be a hellhound continue to stalk him even when set afire?
He seriously had to get with the times.
At least now he’d made it into the trees. He veered left and right, darting around and between trunks, trying to find a path that was too winding or too narrow for the monster to follow, buying him precious seconds.
Looking for a tree he could climb was out of the question. Besides the fact that he’d never been all that good of a climber, he was fairly sure that Eric in a tree plus burning hellhound equaled Eric in a burning tree. That wasn’t much of an improvement over his current situation.
The strategy seemed to be working. Although he could hear the thing behind him, snarling and snorting and snapping its jaws, it hadn’t yet caught him. The trees were slowing it down. And it probably also didn’t hurt that the flames were almost certainly fouling up the thing’s senses. It had to be hard to track prey with your nose on fire. Or at least, he thought it would be hard. He’d never tried.
He dared a glance back. He usually regretted doing this when he was being chased by something terrifying. Rather than be heartened by the fact that he was outpacing the threat, he usually discovered that he was in even more imminent danger than he cared to realize. This time was no exception. The hellhound was right on his tail, its teeth still missing him by only bare inches. Any second now, it would catch him.
It had almost extinguished itself by now, but the fire had done its damage. It may well have been a hellhound, but it was not fireproof. Its matted fur was burned completely away. Its naked flesh was cracked and charred, like a blackened hotdog left too long on a barbeque grill. Its face was a skeletal horror, with empty, oozing eye sockets and a deadly landscape of huge, sharp teeth. It didn’t look like it should still be alive, and yet it appeared utterly undeterred by any pain.
His fear that he could not possibly run any faster quickly proved to be unfounded. It seemed that with the proper motivation, he had truly Olympic track and field skills.
But he couldn’t keep this up forever. Unlike the hellhound, his body could only take so much abuse. After a while, exhaustion would overtake him. He wouldn’t be able to keep up this pace. The thing would catch him. And he was still out here in these woods, still miles from anywhere. He didn’t even know which way he was running. There could be nothing in front of him but endless forest for hundreds of miles.
Ahead of him, he glimpsed a pair of smaller trees growing close together. He steered toward it and shouldered between them, hoping that the blinded beast would collide with it and have to circle around, buying him a few seconds more, but as soon as he was on the other side of the trees, he tripped over a jutting rock and fell sprawling onto the forest floor.
It was over.
He’d finally run out of luck.
Chapter Twelve
A long time seemed to pass as Eric lay there on the cold ground, curled into a tense ball, his face and throat and other vital parts protected, waiting for the demonic beast to tear off the first chunk of his flesh. He even had time to wonder where the monster would start. His legs? His arm? Or would it start with his back, beginning its gruesome meal with his kidney and working its way through the soft bits?
But soon he realized that not only was he still alive long after he should’ve perished, but the entire forest had fallen quiet around him. There were no snarls, no growls, no howls. The monster had fallen utterly silent.
He opened his eyes and timidly looked around.
No hellhound.
It was gone, vanished back into the forest as quickly and as mysteriously as it had come, leaving him alone
once more in the forest.
He sat up and looked around. This kind of thing happened more often than he would’ve ever believed. But he still had trouble processing it. His fear was perfectly real. His heart was racing. It was impossible to relax. He expected to turn around any second and find the thing crouched behind a tree, grinning its skeletal teeth at him.
Just kidding! Let’s eat!
But the beast was gone.
He remained remarkably unscathed. He’d even managed not to soil his pants, which always pleased him. He was batting a thousand on that particular scorecard. Not once in all these terrifying encounters had he ever lost control of a bodily function. In that light, his habit of screaming a little too much like a girl during these encounters didn’t seem quite so humiliating.
Slowly, his body still shaking with adrenaline, still scanning the surrounding trees for the threat he couldn’t quite believe had really vanished, he rose to his feet.
The question on his mind was obvious. Why had the hellhound vanished?
Something caught his eye and he looked up into the branches above him. There, dangling by a string, was a strange little orb of woven twigs and grass.
Gazing upward now, he saw that there were dozens of them, all of them about the size of a softball, each one gently swaying in the breeze.
“Aw hell,” he muttered. “I think I’ve seen this movie…”
It was probably nothing. Probably those Specter Ten kids screwing around out here, trying to make it look scary. But it was still creepy.
Besides… Something made that hellhound go away. Was it possible that it was these eerie little orbs? They were only twigs and grass…
He reached into his pocket and withdrew his cell phone again.
YOU KNOW, I NEVER DID LIKE HORROR MOVIES
“Ever hear of anything like this before?”
NOT EXACTLY LIKE THIS, replied Isabelle. BUT I MET A GUY ONCE WHO FOUND A BARN WITH HUNDREDS OF SQUASH HANGING FROM THE RAFTERS. EACH ONE WAS CARVED INTO A SCREAMING FACE