by Brian Harmon
“You’d better.”
And just like that she was gone. Eric looked down at the screen.
I DID NOT TELL HER YOU BARELY ESCAPED WITH YOUR LIFE! I ONLY TOLD HER YOU GOT AWAY
Eric chuckled. He knew it.
He lowered the phone and stood up. “I need to get going. I don’t have much time.”
Mrs. Fulrick nodded and took the empty coffee cup from him. “I’d say so. Do you need anything?”
“I lost my flashlight.”
“I have one you can borrow.”
“And would it be okay if I used your bathroom before I go?”
Her eyes slid down to his feet and back up again. “Take your shoes off first.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Eric probably could’ve done his business in the forest, but given that he just kept running into ghosts out there (and most of them girls, no less) he was relieved to have the opportunity to take care of things in a proper washroom.
While he was in there, he checked himself over for injuries. That ugly fish had done a number on him with its bony mouth. There were bloody stripes of raw, bruised flesh around his right calf, both thighs and just above his waist, all the places where its bony lips had crushed down on him. It’d even managed to twist his right ankle a little when it first grabbed him. He was probably incredibly fortunate to have escaped without a broken bone, but it was difficult to feel very lucky. Each step pained him just enough to give him a small limp. How much more painful would it become before this horrible night was finally over?
Plus there was water in his ears. He really hated that.
He pulled his pants back on and washed his hands and face.
When he opened the door, Mrs. Fulrick was standing there. “Here,” she told him. “Put these on.” She thrust a pair of old coveralls at him. “They’re men’s, so don’t worry about embarrassing yourself.”
“I’ll just get wet again when the rain starts,” he reasoned.
“I’ve got a poncho you can borrow, too. Should keep you from getting sick long enough to fix things.” She looked down at his bare feet. “But I don’t think I have any shoes that’ll fit you.”
Eric assured her that was fine and then he thanked her and closed the door again. He changed into the coveralls. They smelled a little funny, as if they might’ve been in her basement for a very long time. And it certainly wasn’t very stylish… But at least he wasn’t wandering around soggy, chafing himself.
As he gathered up his wet clothes, he felt a lump in one of his pants pockets. It was the watch Cordelia gave him. He’d almost forgotten about that. What was the point of it? He took it out and looked at it again. It was just an ordinary-looking old pocket watch, except someone had removed the watch face, revealing all the gears.
It wasn’t working at all now. The hands were frozen in place. Probably because he took it with him to the bottom of the lake.
There didn’t appear to be any way to wind it.
He started to slip it into the coveralls pocket with his soggy wallet and keys, but he stopped and looked more closely at it. Was it a watch?
Cordelia told him when he was in her strange, yellow house that this was what he’d come for, suggesting that he’d need it. And there was something he needed now.
The compass.
Was this the very tool that Jeremiah Bog used to navigate to the bottom of the triangle more than a hundred years ago? If so, how did it work? More importantly, had he ruined it by soaking it in the lake?
He gave it a gentle shake, but it didn’t do anything.
Maybe Isabelle would have an idea. Or Holly. Or maybe he’d find the answer somewhere along the way. For now, he slipped it into his pocket.
When he emerged from the bathroom, he found a heavy-duty flashlight and a neatly-folded, yellow poncho sitting next to his and Pete’s phones on the counter.
“You going to need something to eat?” asked Mrs. Fulrick. “You’ve been out there practically all day.”
“I’m really not hungry,” he assured her. And it was true. Any inkling of an appetite he might’ve had was thoroughly quashed by his encounter with the monster fish. Almost getting eaten apparently did that.
Looking back now, that whole ordeal seemed so surreal he could almost believe it had been nothing but a particularly strange nightmare.
Except for those bite marks on his body, of course. He didn’t imagine those.
She reached out and took his clothes. “I’ll get these dry for you,” she told him.
“Huh? No. Don’t go to any trouble.”
“Don’t you tell me what trouble I can and can’t go to.”
“Yes ma’am.”
She took his clothes and left the room with them.
Pete’s phone rang again. Eric picked it up and saw that it was Paul. Puzzled, he accepted the call and put it to his ear. “Hello?”
“Isabelle says you lost your cell phone again,” slurred Paul. “Karen’s gonna be mad at you.”
“Isabelle gave you this number?”
“Karen’s going to be mad,” he said again, ignoring his question.
“It couldn’t be helped,” he growled. “I fell in the lake.”
“How’d you manage to do that?”
“Some kind of monster fish tipped over my boat.”
Without lifting his head, Owen thrust his arm out and pointed in Eric’s general direction. “I told you it could tip over a boat!” he said, his voice muffled against his sleeve.
“Fine,” said Pete, rolling his eyes. “You win.”
“Told you!” Owen repeated. Then he wrapped his arm back around himself and fell silent again.
“Karen’s gonna be mad,” Paul said for the third time.
“Are you still at the bar?” asked Eric.
“Yep! I’m feeling good. How’re you?”
“I feel like I’ve been chewed up and spit back out.”
“You should have something to drink. Make everything better.”
The funny part was that didn’t sound like a bad idea. If only he could forget about all this and go get drunk. That would be great. By morning, maybe he could be blitzed enough to forget the entire unpleasant experience in the lake. Unfortunately, he didn’t have that luxury. He had a worm to stop.
“That’d probably make Karen mad, too, though,” reasoned Paul. “Lots of stuff makes her mad. And she’s scary when she’s mad.”
He had a point there, but Eric wasn’t going to say it aloud.
“But then, she’s kind of hot when she’s scary…”
“Isn’t Keith supposed to be watching you?” he snapped.
“What? Yeah. He’s here. Somewhere…”
“Somewhere?”
“There was a girl here a little while ago. Pretty little thing… I think he was flirting.”
“So you’re unsupervised?”
“I don’ need no supervision,” he insisted, but he pronounced the word, “sooper-sishon”
“Right. You know Monica’s going to kill you, right?”
“Yep.”
“Good.”
“Monica’s hot when she’s mad, too, don’t you think?”
Eric rubbed tiredly at his eyes. “I can’t say I’ve ever noticed.”
“Liar…”
“I’m hanging up now on account of this is the most awkward conversation we’ve ever had.”
“Suit yourself. Call me if things get all weird again.”
“Sure,” said Eric, and he promptly ended the call. Lowering the phone from his ear, he looked at the screen and said, “You gave him this number?”
I JUST CALLED TO LET HIM KNOW YOU DIDN’T HAVE YOUR PHONE! SO HE WOULDN’T WORRY IF YOU DIDN’T PICK UP!
“And you gave him this number.”
HE WANTED IT! HE SOUNDED DRUNK! I REALLY DIDN’T WANT TO TALK TO HIM! I’M SORRY!
Eric sighed. “Fine…”
BUT THAT WAS A PRETTY FUNNY CONVERSATION
“Shut it, you.”
He slipped
the phone into his pocket and looked up. Pete and Mrs. Fulrick were both staring at him. “What?”
Pete threw up his hands. “I didn’t say anything.”
Mrs. Fulrick simply turned and gestured at the table. “Come over here.”
Eric followed her.
Those curious orbs were lying on the table. Seven of them in all. She picked one up. “I told you before that these help dispel negative energy and encourage positive spirits.”
Eric nodded. He remembered.
“You might need some of this where you’re going.” She picked one up. Since he’d been gone, she’d added a length of thin rope to each one, ready for hanging in the trees. Now she slipped that rope over his neck and hung it over his chest. “This might just help keep you alive.”
“Can you tell me anything else about the triangle? Like, where I might want to start looking for this path?”
She shook her head. “The only thing I know about it is that things always feel a bit funny right on the water’s edge.”
That might be helpful. It was somewhere to start, at least.
“Watch your ass,” she told him. “My dreams warned me that things were a lot more restless the closer you got to the evil under the lake. The spirits down there are more troubled. It’s going to be a very dangerous journey.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
“Hopefully that’ll help,” she said, pointing at the little ball dangling from his neck.
Eric cupped it in his hand, considering it for a moment. Then he glanced down at the others on the table. “Do you think one’ll be enough?”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Eric stepped out into Mrs. Fulrick’s front yard, dressed in the musty-smelling, yellow poncho, oversized coveralls and his own soggy, squelching shoes. He took a deep, calming breath. Six of the wooden orbs dangled from his neck now, and he held the seventh in his left hand, taking comfort from the feel of it. Maybe it was foolish, putting faith in something as silly as these little balls, but he didn’t care to take any chances. So far it had been a really bad day. And what he was about to do seriously sucked. He really didn’t want to go out there again. But he couldn’t put it off any longer.
The sky was full overcast. The moonlight was gone. He could smell the approaching rain.
The worm was coming.
He stared out at the dark forest that awaited him, knowing full well the terrors that lurked within and dreading what he was about to do. Deep into that darkness peering, he thought, long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before…
The cat, whose name was Spooky, as far as Eric was concerned, stood on the porch railing, staring at him. It mewled. The cry was curiously interrogative, as if it were asking him if he was ready for this.
The answer, of course, was that he was not. He never would be. No one would be, unless they were utterly insane to begin with.
He slipped the orb around his neck with the others and withdrew Pete’s phone from his pocket.
I’M NOT SURE HOW MUCH HELP I’M GOING TO BE THIS TIME, warned Isabelle. THE DEEPER YOU GO INTO THE MIST, THE HARDER IT IS FOR ME TO THINK. I’M AFRAID I WON’T BE ABLE TO HANDLE IT WHEN YOU REACH THE BOTTOM. I MIGHT NOT BE THERE WHEN YOU FACE THE WORM
“It’s okay,” he told her. “We’re not alone this time, remember? Holly will take over once we’re inside.”
THAT’S GOOD. BUT I’M NOT GIVING UP THAT EASILY. I’LL BE THERE WITH YOU AS MUCH AS I CAN
“I know you will. But don’t overdo it.”
Spooky mewled again. This time, it sounded less like a question than a gripe.
“I’m going. Don’t get your fur in a bunch.”
He set off across the yard, toward the deep shadows of the old trees, the flashlight in one hand, the phone in the other, casting out as much light as possible. Behind him, Spooky hopped down and followed close at his heels.
Within minutes, he was deep in the woods again, away from the welcoming glow of Mrs. Fulrick’s porch light, out where the trees grew smaller and thicker. Here, the spirits began to reveal themselves. Shadows moved around him, flitting in and out of the flashlight’s beam, and whispers floated among the trees, urgent voices with dire messages he couldn’t quite make out.
His flashlight fell on a frightfully pale man dressed in only tattered jeans and work boots. His eyes were deeply sunken. He appeared as if from thin air and vanished just as quickly, but while he was there, he met Eric’s gaze and seemed, for just that moment, pleading. Soon after, he spied a boy, a little older than the blond-haired boy, sitting beneath a tree, his knees drawn up to his face, his big eyes peering back at him over his crossed arms.
Why did they choose to reveal themselves like this now? Did they somehow know what it was he came here for? Did they know that their time trapped here might be coming to an end? Or did they merely anticipate that he would soon be joining them in their endless hell?
Or was it the orbs? Perhaps whatever was inside them was drawing them, luring them out to watch over him, to lend him encouragement.
He liked that idea. He hoped it was that one.
Farther along, he glimpsed a pallid figure moving through the trees, a teenage girl, wearing nothing but a single, muddy shoe and a light scarf around her bruised neck. And when she was gone, he saw an elderly woman standing with her face hidden in her hands, weeping.
IT’S HEARTBREAKING
Eric nodded. It really was. These were lost souls, each of them suffering endlessly when they should have long ago moved on.
He heard the familiar sound of weeping on the wind again, sad and creepy at the same time.
Why was there so much tragedy here? Why did bad things keep happening in this place? More than that, how did it start? He could almost understand misery breeding more misery, but how did this place ever begin to become such a hell on earth?
IT GOES BACK WAY BEFORE THE RECORDED DISAPPEARANCES, agreed Isabelle. AND WAY BEFORE JEREMIAH BOG, TOO. MRS. FULRICK WAS RIGHT. IT GOES BACK AT LEAST TO THE INDIAN TRIBES, IF NOT EVEN EARLIER
“What came before the Indians?”
I DON’T KNOW. BUT IT FEELS TRUE
Eric considered this. Maybe the evil was always here. Maybe this was just an evil place. But why would something like that exist in the first place? Was it just the way the universe was made? Did there have to be evil in the world? Was there some great balance that needed to be kept?
He didn’t care for that idea one bit. For one thing, it suggested that evil was necessary. And he simply couldn’t believe in the impossibility of a world without evil.
Spooky mewled at him again and he glanced down. Odd. This was the first time the cat had stayed with him this long. It usually ran on ahead and promptly vanished.
He reached the end of the woods and stepped out onto the narrow lake shore.
It was quiet. Very quiet. He couldn’t even see any fishing boats out on the water.
MRS. FULRICK WAS RIGHT, decided Isabelle. I DIDN’T NOTICE IT BEFORE BECAUSE IT’S SUBTLE, BUT THE ENERGY FEELS FUNNY THERE, LIKE THERE’S A RIPPLE RUNNING THROUGH IT
Eric didn’t pretend to understand that, but he nodded. Something was different in this area. It was a vague fact, but the best he had to go on. “Now what?”
LOOK AROUND. THERE MUST BE SOMETHING THERE
Eric did look around. But the flashlight revealed nothing more than what he’d expect to find at the edge of a lake. He saw water and weeds and trees and the occasional shadow flitting between the trees. He walked along the water’s edge in one direction, then he turned and walked in the other.
Spooky sat by the water, watching him.
“You know, you’re not much help,” he told the cat.
Spooky didn’t comment.
What was he looking for? How was he supposed to find this secret path? It was clearly a very good secret.
He turned his light on a thicket of trees and glimpsed a familiar face. The blond-haired boy was crouched ther
e, looking back at him.
Eric froze.
The boy was especially timid, for a ghost. Each time before, he’d run away the moment he saw that he’d been noticed. This time, however, he stood his ground.
Seconds passed.
Finally, in as soft and soothing a voice as Eric could manage, he said, “Hey, buddy. You okay?”
The boy didn’t respond. But he turned and looked behind him. Then he looked at Eric again. Their eyes locked for a moment. Then he turned and vanished into the woods.
I THINK THAT WAS THE CLUE YOU WERE WAITING FOR, said Isabelle.
It seemed so. Eric walked over to where the boy had been crouching and shined his light into the forest. He was gone now, of course, but unlike the previous times he’d appeared, he made sure that Eric saw where he was going.
It was as good a place as any to start, so he pushed through the branches and set off into the woods.
Nothing much seemed to happen as he ventured deeper into the forest. But then again, he hadn’t noticed much difference when he stumbled onto Cordelia’s weird, yellow house. It wasn’t until afterward that he noticed the change in the color of the trees and the strange haze in the air.
He’d lost sight of Spooky, but every now and then he heard the cat’s distinct cry, as if to assure him that he hadn’t been abandoned.
Eric was keenly aware of the time that was passing. The wind was picking up a little. The smell of rain was stronger now. If he didn’t find a way in soon, he’d run out of time.
Somewhere in the forest, a woman screamed. Eric froze at the sound. Was that a good sign or a bad one? It was hard to tell anymore. He turned and searched the surrounding forest. He couldn’t even tell which direction it had come from. It could have originated from almost anywhere.
The spirits deeper in the anomaly were more disturbed. According to Fettarsetter, the serial killer named Jeremiah Bog claimed the spirits near the bottom of the triangle had gone mad. It almost made a strange sort of sense. After all, the spirits near the surface had been mostly benign. It was certainly possible that deeper in the madness of the triangle, the emotions of the dead would be more intense. They would be angrier and more fitful, more likely to lash out and hurt him.