Hedge Lake

by Brian Harmon

  “Good thing, too,” said Pete. “Turned out it was the only thing keeping you alive.”

  Eric blinked at him, confused. “What?”

  “Didn’t understand it at first,” said Mrs. Fulrick. “Fucking thing seemed to be killing you, so I assumed it was a dark spirit, maybe even a demon. But it wouldn’t respond at all. Wouldn’t even acknowledge me. Then, fortunately, I happened to see your hand.”

  Eric looked more closely at his red right hand. A long gash ran the width of his palm. He remembered the jellyfish thing at the lake. He’d placed his hand on top of one of its gelatinous tentacles by mistake. The pain was intense. It was then, as he jumped to his feet, that the bloody woman appeared again and forced herself into his mind. And, apparently, into his body as well…

  “Wasn’t the spirit that was killing you,” explained Mrs. Fulrick. “Just the opposite. It was fighting back the toxins, keeping you alive.”

  “Toxins?”

  “You were poisoned,” said Pete. “Something bit your hand.”

  More like stung. The thing had not only looked like a jellyfish, it’d had similar stingers. He’d been well aware of the pain, but it hadn’t occurred to him that the thing might’ve poisoned him.

  “That’s why the spirit wouldn’t leave,” he went on. “And why Mrs. Fulrick couldn’t make it leave.”

  “It wasn’t doing anything wrong,” she explained. “I had no right to make it leave.”

  Eric looked up from his hand, perplexed. The bloody woman had saved his life? “How did you get the toxin out?”

  “That bowl of goop,” said Pete. “It was freaky! She slit your palm with a knife and soaked it.”

  Eric looked again at the gash on his hand. It wasn’t very deep, but it was long and clean. Now that he was looking closer, he could see that the cut was distinct from the swollen and blistered flesh around it.

  “Once the toxins were drawn out,” said Mrs. Fulrick, “the spirit left on its own. You’re one lucky son of a bitch.”

  Eric looked up at her. Deciding not to ask her what her definition of “lucky” was, he instead asked, “Are you some kind of witch?”

  She gave him a foul look. “I am not!” she hissed.

  His keen, observational senses told him that was the wrong sort of thing to say, so he quickly said, “Sorry…”

  She turned and stalked away, carrying the carefully folded plastic into the next room. “Witch…” she murmured. She then muttered something else that Eric didn’t hear, although he was fairly sure the last word in the sentence might have been “prick.”

  Pete shrank back into his chair, looking frightened. In a loud stage whisper, he said, “Dude, don’t be rude!”

  “I’m not being rude!” snapped Eric in the same hushed tone.

  “You called her a witch!”

  “I did not. I asked her if she was a witch. There’s a difference.”

  “It’s still rude!”

  “It is not! One of my best friends is a witch! I happen to like witches! If anything, it was a damn compliment!”

  Eric immediately regretted this little tirade. Pete’s eyes had grown wide again, as if awestruck. “No kidding?” he asked.

  “It’s none of your business,” he snapped, jabbing a finger toward him. “You keep me and my friends off your stupid blog.”

  Pete held up his hands in defense. “Sure. Whatever.”

  Eric looked around the room for the first time and realized that someone was missing. “Where’s Owen?” he asked.

  “He left to go investigate the shadow figure,” said Pete. “A while ago.” His gaze drifted toward the door. “I thought he’d be back by now, actually…”

  “Shadow figure?” He couldn’t remember much of it, but he thought he recalled the two of them talking about shadow figures when they were dragging him here. He hadn’t thought much of it at the time, being possessed by the spirit of a crazed, bloody woman and dying of mutant jellyfish toxins and all…

  “It appeared on one of the cameras,” Pete explained, his voice rising excitedly. “It walked right into the shot and just stood there! We ran down to investigate, but when we got there, there was no sign of him. Instead, we found you.”

  He looked down at his stained hand again and considered this. That was how they found him, he realized. That was the reason they happened to be down there by the lake at that precise moment. It was only dumb luck.

  Or was it?

  Mrs. Fulrick said the bloody woman had possessed his body to save him from the poison of the jellyfish monster. What if another spirit had made itself known on Specter Ten’s camera for the same reason?

  Cordelia said that many of the spirits were angry and confused, warning him that some of them might be dangerous, but she assured him that all of them wanted free of the anomaly. Maybe the shadow figure, like the bloody woman, was helping him. Thinking back now, he recalled the burning man that briefly distracted the hellhound. Could that have been on purpose, too? The effort had ultimately been futile, since the beast had proven to be mostly fireproof, but could that have been the intention? To buy him a few precious seconds to escape?

  There was something encouraging about the idea of a forest full of helpful spirits. But he didn’t intend to trust these ghostly forest dwellers blindly. That weeping woman hadn’t been any help at all, as he recalled.

  Pete’s eyes gravitated toward the door. “Thought he’d be back by now…” he said again.

  Eric found that he wasn’t very concerned about Owen. He’d gone this long without being eaten by something. His incompetence as a paranormal investigator was obviously an excellent tool for warding off dangerous spirits and monsters.

  He stood up and called out to Mrs. Fulrick in the next room. “So how exactly do you know so much about spirit possessions?”

  “I’m a medium,” she replied.

  “Oh.” Eric frowned. He wanted to ask how that was different from being a witch, but he didn’t quite dare. Instead, he said, “So you’re psychic?”

  “Yes,” she replied, sounding very annoyed. “I’m psychic.”

  Psychic was good. Psychic he could work with. “So you know about all the spiritual energy coming off this lake, then.”

  Mrs. Fulrick appeared in the doorway then, staring back at him, a roll of gauze in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other. “What did you say?”

  Suddenly, Eric wasn’t so sure of himself anymore. Sounding about as confident as a shy first-grader, he replied, “The spiritual energy? From the lake? It’s…really thick here. I think…?”

  She stepped toward him, studying him. “You can feel that?”

  “Yeah. I mean, no. I can’t. But I have a friend who can. She told me.”

  “A friend.” She looked dubious.

  “The witch?” asked Pete.

  “No, not the witch,” snapped Eric, shooting him a dirty look. “Another friend.”

  Mrs. Fulrick stared at him, her eyes boring into him.

  “It’s…um…complicated,” he said. At the thought of Isabelle, his hand slipped toward his pocket automatically. But his phone wasn’t there. He checked his other pocket. “Where’s my phone?”

  “On the table,” she replied, gesturing toward the next room. “It kept ringing, so I turned it off. If you don’t like that, tough shit. You weren’t in any condition to talk to anyone.”

  Eric glanced through the doorway and spotted it, right where she said it’d be. He walked over and picked it up, but he didn’t turn it on. His eyes swept the rest of the table instead. It looked like a craft station with newspaper spread over it to protect the surface. There was a large, five gallon bucket filled with twigs and several fat rolls of twine. A bottle of glue and a pair of small pruning shears rested in front of one chair. On the far side of the table, a large, metal bowl held several of the strange balls he’d encountered in the woods where the hellhound ended its chase. “You’re the one who hung those things in the trees,” he realized.

  “I am,�
� admitted Mrs. Fulrick. “What about it?”

  Eric turned to face her. “What are they?”

  She managed to look disinterested. “I forget the name. Something hard to pronounce. An old Indian word.”

  He walked around the table and picked one up, careful in case it was fragile. “I found them earlier. I think they saved my life.”

  “Might have. They’re supposed to dispel negative energy and encourage positive spirits. I’ve hung them over the most sensitive areas in the woods.”

  “Most sensitive areas?”

  “The places where the spirit energy is most turbulent,” she said, sounding irritated again.

  Eric nodded as if he understood this in the least and looked down at the ball again. He turned it over to look at the bottom and heard the things inside rattling. Glancing around, he saw nothing else on the table. “What’s inside?”

  “None of your business,” she snapped.

  Eric looked up at her, surprised.

  “It’s a secret,” she said, looking away as if she realized she’d been rude. “Might not work if I go telling everyone.”

  He returned the strange ball to the bowl. He supposed that was good enough for him, although he didn’t know how she intended to keep it a secret. Eventually someone would just break one open to see what was inside. But he had no intention of being that person. It would be just his luck that breaking one of these little balls would break the spell and immediately summon the hellhound that these things had barely saved him from. It would only be fitting, he supposed. Perfectly karmic.

  Instead, he turned on his cell phone. As soon as it booted up, a text message flashed on the screen: MISS ME?

  Eric was relieved. He’d half-expected to have lost her again.

  He had over two dozen missed calls and several messages. He didn’t think he’d ever had that many missed calls before. He glanced at his watch and was shocked to see that it was already past nine.

  He cursed. “How long have I been here?” He walked to the nearest window and peered out. The daylight was gone. And worse, it looked like there were clouds moving in. Rain would be here soon. And with the rain came the hell…

  “Not nearly long enough for a full recovery,” replied Mrs. Fulrick. “You should probably sleep until at least morning.”

  “Morning,” said Eric, staring up at the sky. “Right. Not exactly an option.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” He glanced down at the phone and thought, Karen?

  TAKEN CARE OF

  That was good. Karen would’ve been worried if he’d simply stopped answering his phone for this long. But Isabelle had known enough to call her and let her know what was up. By now, she knew that he was fine and that there was no need to worry.

  (Of course, she was obviously still trying to call him every few minutes anyway, given the number of missed calls.)

  He lowered the phone and turned to face Mrs. Fulrick again. “Do you have any idea what’s going on here?”

  The old woman’s expression hardened a little. She crossed her skinny arms over her chest. “I don’t,” she told him. “Maybe you can tell me.”

  This caught him off guard. “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Ever since you showed up, the energy around here’s been fluctuating like crazy. It’s like a storm’s brewing. And it all has something to do with you.”

  Something to do with him? Why would his presence cause fluctuations in the lake’s spiritual energy? He hadn’t done anything yet. Except get into trouble. He glanced down at his phone again, but all Isabelle offered him was a question mark. She didn’t know.

  “He told us he had a dream,” said Pete from his chair.

  Eric and Mrs. Fulrick both looked at him, surprised.

  “He said he saw a woman being murdered on the lake. In the winter. That’s why he came here.”

  Eric clenched his teeth. He’d given them that information knowing full well that they would blog about it, but he still didn’t appreciate hearing it come back to him like this. It felt almost like he was being tattled on.

  Mrs. Fulrick turned back to Eric. “Is this true?”

  He glanced at Pete, irritated, and then nodded. “Yeah. It is.”

  “Do you have a lot of dreams like this?”

  “No. I don’t.” It wasn’t a lie. He’d only had one other like it, after all.

  She considered him for a moment, her eyes washing over him, taking him all in as if measuring him.

  “But I know something bad is happening here,” he said. “I know it sounds crazy, but I think there might be something in the lake. Something… I don’t know. Evil.”

  “Something evil in the lake?”

  Eric nodded. He didn’t like how this conversation was going.

  “Sit down,” said Mrs. Fulrick. “Let me wrap that hand.”

  Eric did as he was told and seated himself on the couch again. The house fell silent around them as Mrs. Fulrick wrapped the gauze around his stained and injured hand. Even Pete sat in his chair, his eyes flicking back and forth between them as if he wanted desperately to say something but didn’t quite dare.

  “There is something evil in this lake,” she confirmed. “There always has been.”

  Pete sat up straight. “What?”

  Eric stared at her, surprised. She knew about it?

  “I grew up here. I’ve heard all the stories there are to tell. The ones that’re true. The ones that’re bullshit. All of them. And the ones that aren’t told…the ones nobody lived to tell…those are the stories I dream. It’s always been that way.”

  “You told us there was nothing here!” whined Pete.

  “Shut up,” said Eric.

  Pete sank back down in his chair and closed his mouth.

  To Mrs. Fulrick, Eric said, “You know about all the deaths that’ve happened here.”

  She nodded. She kept her eyes on the gauze as she worked. “Every single one of them. And there’ve been a lot. More than you could know. Hundreds. Going back long before the Europeans first came here.”

  “The woman in my dream…”

  “Real,” she told him. “It’s all real.”

  Eric looked down at his hand as she worked. He’d known as much. After all he’d seen and done, he never had any reason to doubt it, but he’d dared to hold onto a little hope that maybe it didn’t have to be real, that the woman might yet be saved somehow.

  “I dreamed about you, too,” she told him.

  He looked up again. “Me?”

  “I didn’t know it was you. Didn’t really know what you’d look like, did I? Didn’t know if you’d even show up in my lifetime. But I saw you. A stranger, come to walk the secret path into the spirit world and face the evil in the lake.”

  The secret path? Wasn’t that another of Holly’s cryptic clues? Like the purple giant? What was it she’d called it? The invisible footpath? Was that the same thing?

  Eric sighed. “That does sound like the kind of crap I keep getting myself into.”

  She gave a little huff of a laugh. “I didn’t know it was you,” she said again. “It’d been so long… I was just a girl the first time. I actually thought for a while that you might be my Prince Charming come to save the day and carry me away.” She looked up at him, studying him. “You’re not as hot as you were in my fantasies, but you’re not bad.”

  Eric shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He glanced at Pete, but he was no help. He was suddenly very interested in the curtains.

  She shook her head and looked back down at his hand. “But you’re sixty years late. Selfish bastard.”

  “Sorry…” was all he could think to say.

  “No matter. I found my own prince. Didn’t need you, after all. Buried him twenty years ago. I’ll be with him again soon enough.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “Wasn’t anything you did,” she told him.

  “No…I just…I meant…” He decided it was time to just shut his mouth.

  �
��Heart attack. Can’t even say I didn’t see it coming. I knew he had a short life line when I met him. Unlike you. You’ll live long enough.”

  “Long enough for what?”

  She gave him a smug grin. “You’ll find out.”

  Why did everything always have to be so cryptic? He really hated that.

  Mrs. Fulrick secured the wrapping and gave Eric back his hand. “There you go,” she told him. “Not sure you needed it, though. You’re a remarkably fast healer.”

  “I’ve noticed.” Changing the subject, he asked, “Why didn’t you ever leave?”

  She stood up and walked into the kitchen. “Oh, I thought about it. But it wouldn’t do any fucking good. I’d still dream about it, no matter how far I ran. The best I can do is stay here and keep an eye on things. Try to discourage people from snooping around.” She leaned back into the doorway and shot Pete a dirty look. “Of course, most of the dumbasses don’t listen.”

  Pete shrank into the chair a little more. Eric wasn’t sure how he was doing it. He should’ve already filled the thing up, but he just kept going deeper and deeper. It would swallow him entirely before long.

  “And don’t tell any of this to that idiot friend of yours, either,” she warned him.

  Pete shook his head firmly. A startled, “No ma’am!” look in his eyes.

  Eric’s phone rang. It was Karen, of course. He ignored it. (She’d waited this long, she could wait a little longer while he finish talking to Mrs. Fulrick.)

  “So what did your dream tell you?” asked Eric.

  She disappeared back into the kitchen and returned a moment later with a bottle of whiskey and a glass full of ice. “Very little. Only that you’d come. Someday. That you’d have dreams like mine and that there’d be other special things about you, too. You’d find the secret path in the woods and you’d face the evil in the lake. That was all.”

  “Not as helpful as I’d hoped…” Eric admitted.

  “What’ve you found so far?” she asked him as she seated herself on the couch, uncapped the bottle and filled her glass.

  “Lots of ghosts. A nasty hellhound. A crazy looking spaceship of some kind.”