by Brian Harmon
“You should just drain the lake.”
Eric actually stopped walking. “What?”
“Then you can get at whatever’s down there and put a stop to it.”
“I can’t drain the lake. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“No, it’ll be easy as cake. All you gotta do is find a backhoe…”
“Oh, sure. A backhoe. Why not?”
“And you get it over by wherever the dam is…”
“That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.”
“Trust me. I can talk you through it.”
Focusing his eyes on the compass again, Eric continued walking and said, “First of all, where the hell am I supposed to get a backhoe at this time of night?”
The sarcasm of the question clearly going way over his head, Paul considered this for a moment and then replied, “You might find one if you check the cemeteries…”
Eric glanced at the phone, as if he couldn’t believe it was possible for it to transmit such a disturbing suggestion. “I’m not stealing a backhoe from a cemetery!”
“I can totally talk you through starting it. You’ll have it back before anyone misses it.”
Was he really having this conversation? “I’m not stealing a backhoe! Besides, I don’t even think this lake has a dam. I’m pretty sure it’s glacial.”
“We can probably work around that,” decided Paul.
“You’re no help at all when you’re drunk. You know that, right?”
“Well, maybe I wouldn’t have to be drunk if you’d invited me on your little adventure in the first place,” slurred Paul.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“It’s your fault I’m stuck going to this stupid wedding.”
“No it’s not! It’s a wedding! Sometimes you have to go to weddings!”
“I don’t like weddings…” he pouted. “I like going on adventures with you.”
“No you don’t. You suck at going on adventures. You’re always getting into trouble.”
“Am not…”
“Do I need to remind you of the incident with the manikin?”
Paul was quiet for a moment. When he finally spoke, he only said, “No…”
“I didn’t think so.”
“I just want to help.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but you’re not much help when you’re drunk.”
“Guess I’m not.”
Eric looked up from the watch long enough to scan his surroundings for signs of danger. Now Paul had managed to make him feel bad. He sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m just really freaking out over here. I don’t need suggestions. I just need to find this thing and get out of here.”
“I want to help,” said Paul.
“I know. And I guess you are. It’s nice to have a little distraction. Things are really getting crazy. I think—”
“Aw shit…”
Eric stopped, alarmed. “What?”
“Monica just walked in…
“Uh oh.”
“Yeah… I gotta go.”
Shaking his head, Eric ended the call and stuffed the phone back into his pocket. That was the end of that. He wouldn’t have to worry about any more drunk calls from Paul tonight. Once Monica was bothered to actually go out and find her husband, it was pretty well game over.
He didn’t envy his brother at that moment.
Of course, he didn’t pity him much either.
The compass hands were spinning faster now. He was deeper inside the triangle than he’d ever been before. Glancing around, he saw that the trees had thinned more. They looked scrawny and twisted. And the terrain was growing rockier, more barren.
He caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of his eye and turned, startled.
A fat man in torn clothes was rushing toward him, his pudgy arms outstretched. His face was contorted and desperate and frightfully purple, his bloodshot eyes bulging. He looked as if he were choking to death.
Eric cried out, alarmed, and tried to back away, but for a big guy, this purple-faced man was surprisingly fast. Those big, meaty hands clamped down on his shoulders and a new kind of nightmare began.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!
Eric was running through the woods, panting, gasping for air. His legs ached. His sides hurt. He felt as if he couldn’t take another step, and yet he couldn’t stop. He had to keep going.
Oh shit! Oh shit!
Was he saying these words aloud or only in his head? He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t even recall what he was running from.
He squinted up at the sky, confused. The sun was so bright. Wasn’t it supposed to be dark out? He couldn’t quite remember. It was so hard to think. He was so tired. And it was so hot. He was covered in sweat. It ran down his face and dripped from his nose and chin. His shirt was soaked.
It didn’t make any sense. How did he lose the path? He didn’t recall stepping off the trail. It was true that he hadn’t really been paying attention. He was daydreaming. He was thinking about Carla Ankerch and that low-cut blouse she’d worn today, savoring the memory of her ample cleavage, the sultry curves of those magnificent breasts. So perhaps he hadn’t been completely aware of where he was going, but he didn’t think he’d been so distracted that he could’ve wandered off into the wilderness without realizing what he was doing.
How long had he wandered around out here, searching for some sign of civilization, before things began to get to him? The sun was still up, so it couldn’t have been that long, and yet it felt like hours and hours.
Then his mind began playing tricks on him. At least, he thought it was in his mind. It had to be. He couldn’t really be seeing those pale, sunken faces staring back at him from behind the trees. It was only the heat. And the hunger. He was so hungry… He’d missed dinner, after all…
Eric blinked the sweat from his eyes. Except there was no sweat. In fact, he was shivering. His shirt wasn’t soaked with sweat because he wasn’t even wearing a shirt. He was walking around in Mrs. Fulrick’s musty old coveralls. Only his shoes were wet.
The forest was dark.
And who the hell was Carla Ankerch?
He tried to make himself focus. He tried to calm his racing heart. But he couldn’t. Something was after him. Something was chasing him through these woods. He couldn’t see what it was. Every time he looked back, all he could see were swaying branches. But he knew it was there. It was stalking him, hunting him. And when it caught up to him, it would eat him.
He’d never been so afraid in his life.
Why was this happening to him? What had he done to deserve this? Sure, he wasn’t a great person, but who the hell was? He might not be the kind of guy Carla would ever be interested in, but he didn’t deserve to be run down and gutted in the forest like an animal.
This was what he got for trying to be healthy and take up jogging?
(Okay…so he was mostly just walking… You had to start these things slowly!)
Eric clutched at a stitch in his side. But the pain wasn’t real. More accurately, it was real, but it wasn’t his. The pain belonged to the fat man.
He thrust his arms out, trying to shove his attacker away, but there was no longer anyone there. He was alone.
And yet he was still running, still gasping for breath, still desperately wishing he was healthier.
The forest looked strange now. The trees were weird. The trunks were red and bristly. Their limbs twisted strangely through the air, less like branches than like the snaking tendrils of creeping vines, and were covered in tiny, grayish buds that looked more like moss than leaves. They didn’t look like anything he’d ever seen before, not even in pictures.
Where was he? What was this place?
Eric shook his head hard. “Get off of me!” he growled. “Get out of my head!”
But he tripped. He stumbled. He fell. His knee tore on a jagged rock. He crawled to the base of one of the strange trees and looked around, searching the surrounding fo
rest for any sign of his attacker.
“Get out!” he shouted.
Silence in the forest, but for the pounding of his own, terrified heart and his wheezing, gasping breath.
Eric knew it was coming. “I don’t want to see it!” he insisted, still shaking his head. “I don’t want it!”
Too late, he realized that the predator was behind him. Something cold and snake-like slipped around his neck and he was dragged upward, off his feet and into the branches of the strange tree above him.
He dangled there, kicking wildly, clawing at the thing around his neck.
Something in the tree. Something strong. He could feel the muscles tightening around his neck, choking him. He felt its scaly skin beneath his fingers. He could even feel the faint thumping of its pulse.
Eric struggled for breath. He clutched at his throat. He thrashed desperately.
The bright, sunlit world doubled and blurred before his eyes.
He grew weak. He couldn’t hold up his hands anymore. They slipped off the choking branch and fell limp at his sides.
Don’t let it take me!
Cold, silent death fell over him like an icy sheet.
Then he gasped.
He was on his knees in the dark, gulping down the cold, night air.
The fat man was gone.
He stumbled to his feet, coughing, and quickly scanned the surrounding forest with the flashlight. No faces peered back at him. He seemed to be alone, and yet he knew for sure that he wasn’t. They were out there, watching him. And he felt a wave of anger bubbling up his throat at the thought of them lurking in the darkness. “Knock it off!” he shouted into the forest. He cursed at them. He even picked up a rock and threw it, just to emphasize his point. “I don’t want to know how you died!” he shouted at them. “It’s not cool!”
He turned around, rubbing at his neck. It didn’t hurt, of course. He hadn’t really been strangled. It was only in his head, just like his vision of the bloody woman’s death. The injuries didn’t carry over from the visions. He looked down at the compass and tried to remember where he was going, but he was still too upset to think clearly. He turned back again and added, “Respect my personal space!” to his tirade.
He rubbed tiredly at his eyes and tried to make himself calm down.
The cell phone chimed at him.
FEEL BETTER?
“No,” he replied. “I don’t. That was awful.”
YES IT WAS
He physically shook himself as he tried to rid himself of the awful memory of someone else’s death. But the death wasn’t the only thing that had disturbed him. Like the bloody woman’s visions, he’d found himself inside the fat man. He’d shared his thoughts, his feelings. In many ways, he’d been the fat man. And the fat man, whoever he might’ve once been, was a very unhappy man. He led a bitter, discontented life. Eric felt his regrets, his failures, his dismal self-worth. He’d even been thrust into the man’s lewd fantasies about his coworker.
He was literally forced for a moment into a life that was miserable and unsatisfied. And that was proving to be one of those tastes you simply couldn’t scrub out of your mouth.
STAY FOCUSED
“I’m trying,” said Eric.
He aimed the light at the compass and began to walk in a small circle, testing it. When he could see no change, he circled out farther.
“Come on…” he grumbled.
There. The hands (needles?) seemed to be moving faster over here. This was where he needed to be.
He moved on, his mind still gravitating back to the awful experience of strangling to death.
Somewhere behind him, the hellhound howled again. It was getting closer. How long before it caught up with him?
The ground ahead of him grew rockier. Soon, large boulders were reaching up out of the earth, crowding out the red-trunked trees. And as he made his way between two hills, he glimpsed in the beam of the flashlight something that stopped him in his tracks.
There, growing out of the side of a steep, rocky hill, was a familiar-looking red tree with twisting branches and mossy, grayish foliage.
“Oh…” he said. “I see.” He felt a little bad now as he realized that the fat man had only been trying to warn him of something dangerous up ahead.
He’d been so distracted by the awfulness of the dream that it didn’t immediately occur to him that he was actually in a similar predicament as the fat man. They were both wandering around deep inside the triangle. The only difference was that the fat man had no idea that the triangle existed. He didn’t know what was happening to him, or why. Eric was much more prepared. He knew that there were dangers. But there were dangers out here that hadn’t even crossed his mind.
Those trees…
That’s what the fat man was telling him. The predator wasn’t in the tree. The predator was the tree. He’d been strangled by one of those twisting branches.
A shiver raced through him as he imagined stumbling across one of those trees with a rotting, plus-sized corpse still hanging from it.
The cell phone rang. It was Holly again.
“How’re you doing?” she asked.
“I’m…” He was going to say, hanging in there, but given this latest find, he changed his mind and replied only, “Fine. Did you call to tell me not to touch the freaky-looking trees?”
“Um… Not exactly… But that sounds like good advice.”
“It really does.”
“Just…um…don’t touch anything if you can help it.”
“Definitely. So did you want to tell me something?”
“Yes. Don’t let the spirits in.”
Eric stopped walking and frowned at the darkened forest around him. “What?”
“They’re not your enemy. They want you to save them. And they want to help, but you have to fight them. If you let them in, they may never leave.”
He shuddered at the thought of being stuck sharing his body with the fat man for the rest of his life and he promptly scanned the forest to make sure he wasn’t still lurking nearby. “I’m not entirely sure how much control I have over that. These guys keep jumping me and showing me how they died. I’m not going to lie, it’s kind of freaking me out a little.”
“I can see how it might do that,” she said.
“So how do I stop them?”
“You might not be able to stop them.”
Now he was confused. “You just said not to let them in.”
“There’s a difference between having them forced on you and letting them in. If they have something important to tell you, they’ll make themselves heard, but you still need to fight them.”
“Ah. I think I understand.” He looked down at the compass and continued onward.
“I hope so. I’ve never seen it happen, but I’ve heard that spirits who’ve been allowed to anchor themselves inside a host are almost impossible to eject.”
“Even a friendly ghost?”
“Especially a friendly ghost. They’re the ones that get let in.”
That made sense, he guessed. Who would let in a malicious spirit? (God, he longed for the days when this stuff only existed in books and on television.) “Don’t let them in. Got it. Anything else for me?”
“I can see you reaching the bottom of the triangle, but I can’t see what you find there. I’m not sure, but I may not be able to talk to you once you arrive.”
“I don’t doubt it. I’m surprised you’ve been able to talk to me this long. Any chance you can tell me how much farther I have to go?”
“No. It’s hard to see anything. The mist is getting too thick.”
“Yeah, I figured. Thanks.”
“No problem. I’ll call you if I see anything. Bye.”
Eric ended the call and looked down at the compass. It was spinning much faster now. The second hand was nothing but a blur. He was already in pretty deep.
He glanced at the phone again. “How’re you doing?”
STILL HOLDING UP
“Is it bad?
”
PRETTY BAD
PLEASE HURRY
He nodded and stuffed the phone in his pocket. “Fast as I can,” he said. “I promise.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Eric slowly wandered through the bleak, alien forest, descending ever deeper into the mysterious depths of the triangle. The ominous haze grew thicker, seeming to close in around him, and much too soon he felt the first raindrops begin to fall. Just a few. A light sprinkle, a drizzle that came and went. He was all too aware that he was rapidly running out of time, but he had to keep himself focused. One wrong move and he could find himself back in the upper levels of the anomaly, forced to do it all over again.
And all the while the forest changed. The blood-tinged trees had given way completely to the even stranger trees from the fat man’s vision. Everywhere he looked, they loomed over him. But they weren’t as numerous as were the normal trees back at the surface. They weren’t hard to avoid, as long as he didn’t let himself become so immersed in studying the compass that he forgot to watch where he was going, which was a frightfully real danger, given his desperate need to reach the bottom before the heavens opened and poured down their doomsday shower.
This wasn’t the same as what he saw when the fat man invaded his mind. That forest was rocky and more thickly wooded. This area was beginning to look less like a forest than a high-altitude mountain ridge. Some of the boulders protruding from the earth were the size of small houses. Steep, rocky hills rose up on either side of him. The terrain here looked broken and raw.
Two summers ago, when he was deep within the gray areas of the fissure, he’d noticed a similar transformation of the land. The Wisconsin side of the fissure was mostly farm fields and pastures, broken up by occasional forests, but deep within the gray area, as he’d ventured dangerously close to the hellish world on the other side, it had looked less like farm- and woodlands and more like a primitive, mountainous region, noticeably different from this place, but certainly similar.
This was not the same world as the one on the other side of the fissure. This was someplace else. Their similarities were very likely due to the fact that they were both hostile worlds with far less life than our own.