by Brian Harmon
“Root of all evil, that woman.”
“She’s trying to make me crazy. I’m telling you.”
“No doubt a conspiracy,” agreed Eric.
“But really, what’s going on with you? Anybody shoot at you today? You’re still staying away from the strippers, I hope.”
He rolled his eyes. “Nobody’s shot at me today. And shut up about the strippers. I’m tired of hearing about it. There aren’t any strippers around here.”
“Just checking.”
“And now you’ve checked, so you’re done.”
“Tell me everything.”
“Everything’s a long story. It’s really weird up here.”
“Summarize it.”
Eric sighed and began counting off the strangeness on the fingers of his free hand. “It started with the weird dream. Then I found the Hedge Lake Triangle. There’s mysterious disappearances, monster sightings, visions of apocalyptic doom…” Having reached five, he closed his fist and began again. “I see dead people. There’s an evil Fester Sweater guy. I got chased by a burning hellhound. UFO shoots lightning bolts at me. Crazy people everywhere I go. And…let’s see… Oh yeah, there’s a creepy-ass cat that keeps following me around.”
“Ah. I see…” replied Paul.
“Do you?”
“Well, no…”
“Didn’t think so.” He didn’t even try to fit in his bizarre meeting with the enigmatic Cordelia in her weird, yellow house.
“Maybe you should have Isabelle tell me what’s been going on.”
“Isabelle hasn’t been feeling so good today.”
“Isabelle can get sick?”
“No. She can’t. It’s the lake. It’s giving off some kind of spiritual energy that’s overwhelming her.”
“That…doesn’t sound good.”
“I know it doesn’t.”
“Are you all right to be there? I mean, it’s not like radiation or something, is it?”
“No. I… I don’t think so… I mean, I can’t feel it at all. Just Isabelle.” But he hadn’t really thought about it until now. Was it safe to be out here? What if it wasn’t just spiritual energy? What if it was some kind of radiation?
“You’re not going to come home with a third eye sticking out of your elbow or something, are you?”
“I’m sure I’m fine,” insisted Eric. “It’s just spiritual energy. Isabelle says it’s perfectly common.” But now he found his thoughts lingering on the strange, silvery spaceship that had chased him through the forest, shooting lightning bolts at him. Wasn’t that what some of those so-called experts were always claiming? That UFOs gave off tremendous amounts of dangerous radiation?
Stupid Paul and his stupid stuff he was always saying…
“If you’re sure.”
“I am.”
“I still think I should come help.”
“Forget it. You don’t have time. Hell’s going to rise from the lake tonight when it rains and I have to stop it.”
“What’s rising from the lake?”
“Hell.”
“Like, fire and brimstone? That kind of hell?”
In the background, Eric heard Kevin say, “Eric’s in hell?”
“I guess so,” replied Eric. “Some kind of hell’s coming out of that lake tonight, anyway.”
“Wow.”
“Why’s Eric in hell?” asked Kevin.
Paul ignored him. “So you have to stop hell from breaking loose. Is that all?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Like…really in hell?” pressed Kevin. “Or like how we’re in hell?”
“Shut it,” said Paul. Then to Eric, he said, “Um… How does that work, exactly?”
“I’m still piecing it all together.”
“I see. So you’re going to…stop hell on earth?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, that sounds like a piece of cake.”
“I know, right? I always get the easy jobs.”
“You’re such a slacker,” agreed Paul. “What’re you doing next?”
“I honestly have no idea. I’m kind of wandering around lost right now. I don’t know where I’m supposed to go next.”
“You don’t have any clues you can follow?”
“I did find something,” Eric recalled. He reached into his pocket and withdrew the watch. “But I don’t know how to use it yet.” Looking at it now, he saw that it appeared to be winding down. The second hand was now moving very slowly. Did he need to wind it or something? If so, he had no idea how he was supposed to do it. It didn’t appear to have a winder.
“Hey,” said Paul, sounding hopeful. “I think we might finally be getting ready to go. Maybe…”
Eric peered closer at the watch. Without its face, he could see all the gears inside it. Only a few of them appeared to be turning, although the others might simply be moving too slow for him to properly perceive. Beneath all these gears, barely visible at the bottom of the tiny, complex workings, something sparkled in the sunlight.
“About freaking time!” gasped Paul. “I’ll give you a call later from the hotel.”
“Huh?” Eric was still staring at the watch. There was something peculiar about the sparkly thing. “Yeah,” he replied absently. “Sure. Talk to you then.”
He hung up the phone and turned the watch over. The casing was nothing special. It was smooth, plain brass, without any decorations. It was scuffed, as if it’d been around for a while, but there was nothing about it to tell him how old it was.
A text message chimed on the phone, pulling his attention away from the watch: THAT THING HAS AN ODD ENERGY, TOO
“It does?”
IT’S A LITTLE HARD TO PICK IT OUT IN ALL THAT NOISE, BUT I’M SURE OF IT
“What does it feel like?”
HARD TO SAY, BUT IT’S DIFFERENT FROM EVERYTHING ELSE AROUND THERE
That was probably a good thing, since all the other energy she’d been feeling seemed to be bad. He turned it over again and peered into the gears. “How does a watch help me stop hell from breaking loose?”
I’M REALLY NOT IN THE MOOD FOR RIDDLES RIGHT NOW. MY HEAD HURTS
“Sorry.”
NOT YOUR FAULT
“Take a break. I’ll be fine on my own for a little while.”
OKAY
Eric pocketed the phone. After examining it for a moment longer, he pocketed the watch, too. Then he lifted his head and looked out at the forest in front of him. For a moment, he couldn’t remember what he was doing. Then he remembered. The cat.
But the cat was long gone. He was alone again in these queer woods. But he was fairly sure the little beast was leading him straight ahead.
He glanced around, scanning the nearby trees for any sign of ghostly women, hounds of hell or aliens, and when he was satisfied that he was not about to be attacked again, he continued on through the woods, hoping he was moving in the right direction.
The forest remained empty and unthreatening for most of the next ten minutes. Then the shadow man reappeared. Eric glimpsed him from the corner of his eye, strolling along beside him, appearing and reappearing without any predictable pattern.
He didn’t mind all that much. Of all the things he’d encountered, the shadow man seemed to be among the least threatening. But he remained wary, nonetheless.
His cell phone rang again. This time, it was Karen.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” replied Eric.
“I tried to call earlier, but I got sent straight to your voicemail.”
“Really?” Eric tried to recall where he’d been since he last spoke to her. He hadn’t turned off his phone. “Maybe it was while I was at Cordelia’s house.”
“Cordelia?”
“Nice girl. Kind of mysterious. Said the world was broken and I had to fix it.”
“Wow. Good luck with that.”
“The physical world. As in, the load-bearing wall that’s apparently keeping our world and the next fr
om slamming into each other with catastrophic force.”
“Oh. I see. That’s a much more attainable goal.”
“Yeah. The rest of the world is so not my problem.”
“Dodged the bullet on that one,” agreed Karen. “Did she tell you exactly how you’re supposed to fix the world?”
“Nope. She kind of acted like I was supposed to know what I was doing.”
“I feel safer already.”
“I lost contact with Isabelle while I was there, too.”
“Really? I didn’t think that could happen.”
“Every now and then it does. It happened when I met the gas station attendant, too.”
“Wow. I forgot about him. Do you think there’s a connection?”
“Isabelle thinks there might be, but we couldn’t tell. She kind of rushed me out the door.” Thinking back now, he recalled checking his phone and finding that he still had a signal. Had he lost it only while inside the house? Or had the calls been blocked regardless of reception?
Why was everything so confusing?
“So was this Cordelia woman helpful at all?”
Eric recalled the strange conversation with the odd woman. “I’m not sure yet. She did tell me that there were different levels within the triangle and I’d have to eventually make my way to the bottom. It explains why those goofy investigators couldn’t find a ghost in a Halloween shop. They haven’t found their way inside the triangle, yet.”
“That would explain it, I guess. So you have to go deeper into this triangle thingy?”
“Eventually. But first, I’m supposed to still have business on the surface.”
“What kind of business?”
“She didn’t say,” replied Eric. But he thought it probably had something to do with Fettarsetter. “Maybe Holly should consult her spells again. See if she can see anything new.”
“She’s way ahead of you. She started boiling the water as soon as I told her I was calling you.”
“I’m on it!” Holly shouted in the background.
“She’s on it,” Karen assured him.
“Good.” Ahead of him, Eric saw the first glint of reflected sunlight from the surface of the lake. It appeared he’d finally found his way back. He wondered how far he’d wandered from where he left Owen and Pete, and if they were still playing with their deer butt. “Let me know what she finds.”
“Be careful.”
“I will.”
He hung up the phone and returned it to his pocket.
With the lake waiting just ahead of him like a warm beacon of hope, he glanced back at the forest behind him.
The dead were there.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Bathed in shadows, their faces hidden, they stood motionless, each one staring back at him with unseen eyes. Pete had spoken of evidence for more than a dozen possible deaths that had occurred in this area over the decades, including ten disappearances, two drownings and a tragic fire, but there must have been forty of them here now, each one ghastly and gray despite the mottled sunlight that broke through the dense forest canopy.
Eric knew that he’d witnessed enough these past couple years to be thoroughly used to things like this, yet he let out a shrill yelp and stumbled backward, nearly tripping himself as he staggered away from the silent mob of corpses.
Men, women and children all regarded him from their unnatural gloom. Some of them were dressed in modern clothes. Many more were clothed in older styles, dating back to the turn of the century or before. The most disturbing of the group wore nothing at all, dressed in only the scars of their untimely deaths.
A single glance told Eric everything he needed to know about each and every one of them. They’d all died here in the triangle, many of them long before anyone ever had any idea what a triangle was or that there was anything remotely peculiar about this land. They’d all died violently and senselessly. They’d all suffered. And they’d all died without closure, their bodies undiscovered, their tragic fates never told.
No wonder there was so much spiritual energy here. Eric thought it must ooze right up from the very ground.
He continued backing away. He couldn’t stay here. He couldn’t look upon these lost souls. It was more than fright. It was more than pity. With their dead eyes on him, he could feel their many stagnant emotions bubbling through him. He could feel their anguish, their agony, their sorrow, even their rage. So many terrible feelings clouded his mind, confusing him.
He turned away, ready to flee, and promptly tripped over a fallen branch. He landed sprawled on his belly in the mud and weeds with a grunt and a curse.
This was not the time to be clumsy. This was the time for getting as far away from this place as possible, as quickly as possible. He rose onto his hands and knees, ready to jump to his feet and run, but when he looked up, he found himself crouched before a great, pulsating mass of something large and gelatinous protruding from the water. A huge, glazed eye stared back at him through a veil of buzzing flies only inches from his face.
Startled again, Eric lifted himself onto his hands and began crawling backward. His eyes were fixed on the grotesque creature, a strange mix of jellyfish and giant squid, completely transparent except for its meaty, sac-like organs, huge, egg-shaped eyeballs and a strange series of bony plates that ran the length of its belly. His eyes locked on the bulk of the creature, his mind occupied with nothing more than putting distance between himself and it, he didn’t notice the long, stringy tentacles that lay in limp, deflated coils on the ground. In his hurry, he planted his right hand on one of them, squashing it into the muddy earth, and was immediately rewarded with an intense, stinging pain that blazed like liquid fire against his palm.
Crying out in agony, he stumbled to his feet and staggered back, clutching his wrist in his left hand. Too late, he remembered why he’d originally run away from the woods that he was once again staggering toward and he turned to face the dead once more.
Only one remained.
Long, black hair. Wide, terrifying eyes. An intense and ghastly expression upon her gory face. Drenched in blood, the spectral woman lunged at him for the third time that day and for the third time, she forced herself into his mind.
The world became a blinding chaos of pain and terror. His hand burned as if submerged in boiling water and a great, tearing pain seemed to crawl around inside his head, squirming over his brain so that he felt it piercing him behind his left eye, then in his right ear, then at the base of his skull, then in the middle of his forehead, and relentlessly on and on.
For a moment, he was inside the dream again, running through the biting snow, crying out for help. Then he was standing before the boiling lake again, paralyzed with fear. Then he was somewhere dark and cold, his body…no…what was left of his body…slowly sinking, his aching lungs choked with water…and with blood…
No. Not his. Hers.
The bloody woman drowned, he realized. Even through the blinding pain and terrible visions, he somehow managed to grasp this horrible fact. She was hunted through the cold, half-frozen, exhausted, her body broken upon the ice. She was crushed and mangled, partially devoured, and yet she lived long enough to drown in the icy waters of the lake…
She lived long enough to feel the writhing creatures that would consume her corpse.
Eric cried out in anguish, but he couldn’t tell whether his voice actually escaped his lips or if his cries were only in his head.
Then he was nowhere. Darkness hung thick around him, leaving him blind. The pain became a distant thing. The only noises seemed far away and unimportant. He couldn’t even feel the ground beneath his feet. Time ticked by, second by second, minute by minute. Did hours pass? Days? Or only an instant? He couldn’t be sure.
He wondered if he, too, was drowning.
He tried to call out for Isabelle, but his voice didn’t seem to carry from his lips to his ears. He couldn’t tell if he made any sound at all. And even if he did, she couldn’t reply. He had no phone in this pl
ace. Her voice couldn’t reach him.
But he heard another voice. Distant. Murmuring. The words lost upon the wind, leaving only a whispery droning that was unintelligible, yet strangely familiar, like a distant memory that wouldn’t quite rise to the surface, but would neither sink and be forgotten, a faint but stubborn shadow from an unattainable past.
He staggered forward, confused, his eyes rolling around in their sockets. He couldn’t control them, couldn’t focus. He saw only glances of trees and lake.
Stay out of the water, he reminded himself. Holly says there’s blood in the water. Have to be careful…
Blood. So much blood. She saw it with her own eyes, splashed onto the walls, soaked into the rug. The air was thick with the stench of it. It knotted her stomach and tightened her throat, threatening to make her retch. She especially remembered the way it dripped from the lampshade. That was where her eyes had fallen as the shock of the scene sank in. She never saw his body. She didn’t need to. All that blood… Too much blood…
She knew he was dead.
The pain brought him back. His hand was on fire. It was unbearable.
Clutching at his wrist, he forced his eyes to focus. The entire palm of his hand was swollen and blistered, as if he’d grasped a red-hot iron bar. Just looking at it made him queasy and he had to close his eyes again.
Immediately, he found himself back in that little room, watching the fat drops of crimson blood dangle from the lampshade.
Drip.
It was the night she died. He could feel the icy wind at her back as she stood in the open doorway, frozen in horror. Her mind was racing. She knew now that it was all true. The nightmares. The stories. The legends. She never believed before, but she did now.
But now it was too late. Now he was dead…
Drip.
Eric heard the noise as she did. He turned his head as she did. They glimpsed the shadow in the hallway at the same time. He felt her heart leap. The monster that did this was still here. And now it was coming for her.
The woman turned and fled into the cold, winter evening, and her killer followed. Eric saw the familiar, gloomy sky above, darkening with the coming night. He knew what came next. He knew how this ended.