by Brian Harmon
Eric opened his eyes again and stumbled. Somehow, he was still on his feet, but he wasn’t sure how he’d accomplished this astounding task. He felt like both of his legs had fallen asleep.
This place looked different. How far had he walked? He looked around, but he was alone out here. There was no sign of the thing that stung his hand.
He turned in a drunken circle, struggling to think of how, precisely, he was going to get out of this mess. He heard a noise. A familiar noise. And an odd growling somewhere in the vicinity of his lower belly… Later he might recall this and realize that it was Isabelle, attempting to reach him on his cell phone, trying to bring him back from his nightmarish state, but right now the world was growing hazy around him and he had a hard time recalling what these things meant.
Finally, his legs stopped responding and he fell heavily into the weeds, jarring his injured hand and wrenching from him a painful scream that startled a pair of nearby gulls into flight.
Where was he? What was this place? Why was he in so much pain? He couldn’t seem to remember the answers to any of these questions. His mind felt broken and he didn’t know how to fix it.
There were voices in his head again. Nonsensical mutterings back and forth. A strange sort of conversation.
No.
Not in his head.
People nearby.
He felt hands on him, turning him over, lifting him up, propping him against a nearby trunk.
He was so very tired, but he forced his eyes open and cleared his head enough to recognize the two blurry forms looming over him as Owen and Pete.
Eric blinked hard and some of the haze cleared away.
Owen was saying something about snakes.
“There aren’t any venomous snakes in this area,” argued Pete.
“You don’t know that for sure. A rattlesnake could’ve wandered this far north.”
“That’s pretty unlikely.”
“Or maybe it was someone’s pet cobra that escaped. You never know what could happen.”
Eric groaned.
“Easy,” urged Pete. “What happened?”
He tried to say, “Bloody woman,” but the words came out in a drunken murmur.
“Did he say, ‘blue man?’” asked Owen.
Pete creased his brow and frowned. “What, like the group?”
Eric groaned again and closed his eyes. Even in the state he was currently in, he thought it was fairly likely that he was going to die out here with only these two to help him.
“Something must’ve attacked him,” Owen decided. “Maybe the aliens caught him.”
“Blue aliens,” agreed Pete, as if that solved everything. As if he were an expert on the traumatic subject of blue alien abductions.
“Let’s get him to Fettarsetter,” said Owen. “He’ll know what to do.”
Eric managed to lift his head. “No!” he grunted. “Not Veddersweater! Not him!”
Owen and Pete looked up at each other. “Okay…” said Pete. “Then where?”
“Fulrick,” sighed Eric, struggling to clear the haze from his thoughts again.
“Mrs. Fulrick?” Owen sounded startled. “That old bat hates us!”
“My car,” he pressed, enunciating each word carefully. “Fulrick’s driveway.”
Owen didn’t look sure, but Pete nodded. “It is closer.”
“She’ll probably have us all arrested. You know that, right?”
“We have to do something with him.”
“Fine,” conceded Owen. “Let’s go.”
The two of them lifted Eric to his feet and each took an arm. Together, they trudged into the woods and away from the lake.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The paranormal investigation gurus of Specter Ten talked of blue aliens and shadow people while they half-dragged Eric’s semi-conscious body through the forest. He was in no condition to follow along with the conversation. His thoughts whirled chaotically in his mind, a dizzying cacophony of incoherent, internal mutterings and strange snippets of memory he was quite sure were not his own. And all the while there was a heavy, screaming ball of white-hot agony dangling from the end of his arm where his right hand used to be. Yet even through all of this, he was amazed by his own ability to still be annoyed by these two.
The bloody woman had done something to him. It wasn’t merely a vision this time. He didn’t pretend to understand these things that happened to him, but he was certain that their minds had somehow bonded. He knew things that he shouldn’t know. He’d seen the blood-splashed room. He saw how she came to be in that winter forest, fleeing for her life. These were glimpses inside her, flashes of her last moments on earth.
It was a little cabin in the woods. The kind of place people rented out to a nice couple looking for a quiet weekend away. But this woman hadn’t come here for a romantic getaway. She came here looking for something.
And she found it.
The man whose blood was spilled in that cabin was not her husband. He knew that somehow. He felt it as she stood there in that open doorway, watching the blood drip from the lampshade. He felt it just as she’d felt it when she stood there, however long ago that might’ve been. He wasn’t her husband…but he was someone who meant something to her. A lover, maybe, but he didn’t think so. Not exactly. He was someone she admired. Someone she cared a lot about. Maybe even someone she loved. But something remained between them. Something she never had the chance to find her way around.
That was all Eric knew of him. It was all he’d glimpsed of the man’s existence before the bloody woman closed her mind to him. And yet he felt her loss as if it were his own. He ached deep down in that place where wrenching sorrow took hold of you and refused to let go.
A hard twinge of pain shot down his right arm, making him groan.
“Take it easy, dude,” said Owen. “We’re almost there.”
In his dream-like haze, Eric tried to decide whether they’d really already made their way almost to Mrs. Fulrick’s house or if it was more likely that the kid was lying to him to make him feel better. But he couldn’t make himself focus for long enough to even wager a guess.
Instead, his mind drifted back to the bloody woman’s first vision. The boiling lake. The apocalyptic rise of the unfathomable beast that would unleash hell on earth. How did that fit into it all? That didn’t happen in whatever bleak winter it was when she died on the lake. That was supposed to happen tonight, when the rain came.
No, that definitely wasn’t a part of her unfortunate demise. That was something else. That was… “What she saw on the other side,” he said aloud.
“What’d he say?” asked Pete.
“I didn’t catch it,” replied Owen. “Something about the other side.”
“Oh shit, man!” gasped Pete. Then he raised his voice and yelled into Eric’s ear, “Stay away from the light, dude!”
Eric groaned and drunkenly told him, “Don’ yell’t me!”
“You’d better not die on us!” shouted Owen. “I am not hauling your heavy ass all this way for nothing!”
Eric growled at Owen to stop telling him what to do, but he wasn’t sure if anything more than the growl actually made it out of his mouth.
“Oh man…” grunted Owen. “What if this guy turns into a zombie or something before we get him where we’re going?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Pete told him. “He’d have to finish dying first.”
“That could be like any second, dude! Then how long do we have?”
Eric managed enough coherent thought to make a mental note that if he did die and come back as a zombie, to not expect to find much nutritional value in these guys’ brains.
As Owen and Pete argued about how long it was going to take for his corpse to rise as a zombie, Eric felt the fire in his hand flare hotter. The pain crept farther up his arm, overwhelming him and scattering his thoughts. His mind descended back into the fog.
Now he found himself in a new place.
It was dark h
ere. Eric stared into nothing but pitch-black emptiness. But he wasn’t blind. Somehow, he could see without seeing. He didn’t need his eyes in this place. He could feel the world around him, a wasteland of ruined buildings and shattered earth languishing in eternal darkness.
It was cold, too. The air was frigid, but stagnant, as if the wind didn’t blow here anymore. It was the most inhospitable place he’d ever imagined, and yet there were things living here. He could sense them crawling around in the filthy rubble, rummaging like rats through garbage.
He didn’t understand. What was this place? Where was he?
Why was he here?
Inside his head, he felt a twinge of pain and a memory flashed through his mind. The boiling lake. The great, evil shape rising from unfathomable depths. It brought with it all the fear and dread that he felt the first time he saw it.
Just like that, he realized that this blackness was what came next. This eternally dark wasteland was all that would remain if he didn’t find a way to stop what was happening here.
The burden of this realization was crushing. Could he really be the only thing standing between the world he knew and this one? Did he really have the power to stop this from coming to pass? It didn’t seem possible. He was only one man. He wasn’t even a particularly great man. He couldn’t figure out why the lawnmower was making that noise it made; how could he possibly hope to fix the world?
More pain…
It felt like it had climbed all the way to his armpit. His entire arm was aflame.
“Careful.”
“I am being careful.”
“Then be more careful. God, he really looks like shit. This is bad, dude.”
“He’ll be okay. Just get him up the steps.”
Eric’s eyes fluttered open.
Owen and Pete were dragging him onto a wooden porch by his arms. His feet slid uselessly across the planks. How long had he been unconscious? How far had they come?
He swept his eyes across the porch and spied a wicker chair sitting beside a matching table. Curled up on the seat of the chair was the cat Eric had called spooky. Its head was down as if it were asleep, but its big, yellow eyes were fixed on him, regarding him intently.
They stopped at a door and Pete rang the bell.
“I’m telling you, dude,” Owen whined. “She’s going to be pissed at us.”
“We don’t have a choice,” returned Pete. “He’s, like…dying…or something…”
“Should’ve taken him to Fettarsetter.”
“The guy said no to Fettarsetter. Besides, I don’t like that guy.”
The lock snapped back and the front door swung open. Eric caught a blurry glimpse of the same old woman in her same blue jeans and white shirt. She was demanding to know what they wanted, but she didn’t simply say, “What do you want?” She used a lot of rather unnecessary words as well, including some interesting insinuations about Specter Ten’s private affairs.
It was difficult to follow the conversation exactly. The fog had grown so thick. His thoughts simply refused to focus. Owen and Pete told her how they found Eric sprawled in the grass next to the lake. Mrs. Fulrick informed them that she wasn’t responsible for anything that happened to anyone out here. (Or something to that effect, anyway; all he could really remember was a string of very unladylike profanities and a very unsubtle suggestion that they should haul their drunk friend off her porch before she came back with her gun.)
Eric’s mind floated away again after that. The next time he came back, he realized that someone was forcing one of his eyes open. Mrs. Fulrick was peering back at him, a strange expression on her face.
“Bring him inside. Now.”
“You’ll call him an ambulance?” Pete asked.
“Ambulance won’t do him any fucking good,” she told him. “There. On the couch.”
He faded. When he came back, he was lying on soft cushions. Someone was propping a pillow under his head.
The house was neat and tidy. It smelled like homemade rolls and cinnamon.
“What’s wrong with him?” asked Owen.
Eric struggled to open his eyes and saw Mrs. Fulrick leaning over him, looking down at him.
“He’s possessed,” she replied.
Now Eric managed to open his eyes a little more. Did she say possessed? He made a strangled noise in his throat, the closest he could come to uttering a coherent, “Say what?”
“Possessed?” gasped Owen, sounding like a child who’s just been told he’s going to Disneyland. “Like, by a demon?”
“By something.”
“Can you help him?” asked Pete, managing to butt in before Owen said something stupid about how great that would be for his blog.
“I don’t know.” Mrs. Fulrick stared into Eric’s face. He looked back at her, his eyes weaving in and out of focus. “That would depend on what’s in there, I guess. He looks really bad. How long was he out there?”
“Couldn’t have been that long,” replied Owen.
“He said something about a blue man,” Pete said.
Eric shook his head. “Bloody woman,” he groaned, but his tongue didn’t quite want to cooperate. The words came out drunken again.
Owen leaned over the arm of the couch. “Blood woman?” he interpreted. “Is that what he said?”
Close enough, thought Eric, and let his eyes droop closed again.
Possessed… It made a certain sort of sense, he guessed. It wasn’t just that she’d hit him with another vision. She’d entered his mind and remained there. No wonder he couldn’t think straight. She was inside his mind, screwing with his head…touching his stuff… The bitch!
“Whatever it is, it’s killing him,” said Mrs. Fulrick. “See how pale he is?”
“Can you save him?” asked Pete.
“I can try. What’s his name?”
“Eric.”
Mrs. Fulrick leaned close and lightly smacked his cheek three times. When his eyes fluttered open in response, she said, “You just try and relax, Eric. Save your energy. This might take a while.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Eric wouldn’t recall much of the ordeal that went on inside Mrs. Fulrick’s house that evening. That queer haze grew thicker, making it harder and harder to think, much less remain aware of what was going on around him.
He heard people talking. Mostly Mrs. Fulrick, herself. She sounded agitated. She kept swearing. Occasionally, she shouted at someone to leave, but he didn’t know who these demands were directed at. He hoped not him, since he couldn’t seem to rise from this mental fog, much less from the couch where he lay.
It all seemed to go on for a very long time, but it was difficult to tell for sure.
After a while, he finally fell asleep. But it was not a peaceful sleep. For the first time in a long time (with the exception of the disturbing vision that brought him to this lake in the first place) he dreamed. He dreamed of boiling lakes and bloody cabins, beak-faced skeleton women and blind, burning hellhounds. He dreamed of running for his life in the snow. And finally, he dreamed of gray aliens spiriting him away on their spaceship into the skies, where a passing comet split open the hull and spilled him into the empty depths of space…
Wake up, Eric. You’re running out of time.
Eric opened his eyes. For a moment he lay there, his breath caught in his throat, listening to the silence around him. That voice… Where did he know that voice from?
A strange sensation swirled around inside him, a fleeting familiarity, like déjà vu, that he could almost grasp…but it slipped through his fingers and sank down into the depths of his mind, swirling away like water down a drain, lost as quickly as it was found.
He spent a moment futilely trying to recall what it was, sensing somehow that it was important.
But it was gone.
Then it occurred to him that he was okay. For the first time since his third encounter with the bloody woman, he could think clearly again. In fact, he felt great. Mentally, anyway. Physically, he
felt like he’d spent the day doing heavy manual labor. He was sore and exhausted. But in his head, the fog had lifted.
He started to raise his right hand, which he thought was resting on the floor beside him, and found that it was instead lying in a bowl of thick, reddish liquid that sloshed when he moved.
“Careful!” snapped a stern voice. Mrs. Fulrick stood up from a chair, a towel already clutched in her bony hand. “Don’t make a mess, now!”
Eric stared at the goop on his hand. “What is this stuff?”
“A little home remedy. Never mind what it is.” She seized his hand and wiped it clean with the towel. “There.” She shook her head and carefully picked the bowl up off the floor. “Never dreamed you’d wake up so soon. You must have the metabolism of an ox.”
He sat up and placed his feet on the floor, where plastic had been laid down to protect the carpet from the strange liquid, which he quickly saw had dyed his entire hand red and left it waterlogged and feeling numb. Tentatively, he sniffed it. It smelled awful.
“The stink will go away in a day or two,” she promised as she carried the bowl away.
He decided he didn’t care to know what was in the red liquid.
Pete had been sitting in a chair in the corner, his head propped on one arm, looking bored. Now he was sitting up straight and watching him with interest.
“What happened?” Eric asked.
“You were possessed by a spirit,” Pete told him. “It was freaky. Mrs. Fulrick saw it in your eyes when she examined you. We tried to force it out, exorcism-style, but it didn’t respond at all.”
Eric tried to imagine Mrs. Fulrick, Pete and Owen all standing around him, waving crosses at him and chanting things like, “Be gone, foul demon!” It was a little difficult to comprehend.
Mrs. Fulrick walked back into the room and began carefully gathering up the plastic. “It’s not like the movies,” she told him, as if she’d read his mind. “Possession’s not black and white. Every case is unique. It can take months to find out what works and what doesn’t. And some spirits simply can’t be cast out. There was nothing I could do that would budge the one you had.”