by Brian Harmon
But Eric couldn’t spend much time pondering these things. He needed to focus on the compass and on those deadly, strangling trees. He needed to keep an eye out for any of the other countless dangers that lurked down here. He needed to keep moving. And it was harder and harder to concentrate in this place…
There were voices here.
They whispered in the darkness. They muttered in his ears. They babbled. They giggled. They wept. They growled. The few words that came to him were nonsense to him, all meaning lost to time.
Making a wide circle around one of the nightmare trees, he glanced to the side and was surprised to find a very old automobile wasting away among the rocks. One side was mashed up against a boulder as if it had crashed there, two of its wheels dangling off the ground.
How the hell did that get here? Did someone actually manage to drive it this far into the triangle?
Unwilling to commit the time to thinking the pointless mystery through, he moved on. But only a few minutes later, he happened upon an entire house. It was an old, wooden structure, with a rusting tin roof, canted dangerously to one side, with several large, granite boulders half-buried in its walls. Crimson, alien trees protruded from two of its windows. The front door hung open, as if inviting him in.
That had not been driven here. Unless it made the trip by tornado from Kansas, in which case poor Dorothy had much worse things to worry about than flying monkeys.
Had the triangle swallowed this house and that car? Had these things somehow slipped through the skins of the anomaly? It would explain their awful condition and their bewildering placements. But how did it happen? When?
The answers, of course, were beyond his ability to find. His eyes fixed on that gaping doorway, half expecting something terrible to peer out at him from that inky darkness, he moved on.
The mist grew thicker still. It was rapidly enveloping him, shrinking his visibility, obscuring the things in the forest. He didn’t like this. What if it grew so thick he wasn’t able to see the compass?
He had to force himself to remain calm. He reminded himself that he was supposed to be here. Cordelia had told him this was his job, that he’d been chosen to do this. He had to believe in her. He simply had no other choice.
The minute hand of the watch was zooming around now. The hour hand was moving as fast as the second hand on an ordinary watch. He was deep inside the anomaly, and the dead were everywhere. Shadows flitted in and out of his flashlight beam. Faces appeared and disappeared in the blink of an eye, almost imagined, but quite real. Voices touched his ears, uttering words he couldn’t understand, but somehow managing to convey their desperation and anguish. It was disturbing beyond words…and yet nothing harmed him as he journeyed onward.
He wondered if it was because of Mrs. Fulrick’s curious orbs. Were they protecting him? Surely there must be some reason he hadn’t been attacked by one of these desperate souls. He simply wasn’t this lucky.
It was impossible to know for sure.
After skirting around one of the boulders, his flashlight fell on the ghostly form of a young man crouched on the rocky ground. He was turned to the side, facing a steep bluff. He was naked and filthy and appeared to be eating something. He made no sound. He wasn’t real, after all. Not in any sense that Eric was used to.
He moved on as quickly as he dared, leaving the ghost to its unearthly meal and trying not to think about the gore that dripped from the young man’s fingers and chin as he ate.
Another man appeared a few minutes later, this one much older, with gray, balding hair. Unlike the previous apparition, he wasn’t naked. He was dressed in clothes from the seventies, complete with a matching hairstyle. He didn’t look particularly bad. His clothes weren’t tattered. He was neither dirty nor soaking wet. He looked like a perfectly ordinary person who happened to have an extremely dated preference in fashion, but he was walking in circles, muttering incoherently and clawing at his face.
Eric moved on again, careful to avoid any possibility of eye contact.
The dead down here were mad, Fettarsetter told him. Those words, passed along from a letter allegedly written by a serial killer more than a hundred years ago, had been creepy when he first heard them, but now they were terrifying beyond words.
What did it mean to be dead and mad? To him, it sounded like an endless, inescapable hell, an eternal nightmare of torment.
Was that the fate that awaited him if he failed? Was that what he had to look forward to if he couldn’t find a way to stop the Conqueror Worm?
No. He couldn’t think about that right now. He needed to focus.
Another half an hour passed. The dead continued their endless, indecipherable chatter. He passed two more houses and three more vehicles in advanced states of decay, all of them apparently having dropped out of the sky and into this hellish landscape. Occasionally he glimpsed a disturbing vision of some poor, lost soul writhing in his or her own personal version of endless torment. Once, he even glimpsed a familiar, spectral form streaking through the forest along a high ridge, engulfed in red-orange flames. And more than once the hellhound let out a fearsome howl to remind him that it was still out there and growing closer with every moment.
Eric began to wonder if this was what hell was like. Except for the fact that he could go for a nice warm fire to shake off the chill that had settled in his bones, he thought this place had pretty much everything a proper hell needed.
He was picturing Fettarsetter dressed up in a red suit with horns and a tail, jabbing a pitchfork at the purple-faced fat man when he was again ambushed by a lurking spirit.
He never saw her coming. She didn’t appear to him like the bloody woman or the fat man in whatever gruesome state she now existed. She was simply there inside his head, filling his mind with a terrible, high-speed slideshow of images.
Something had him by the foot, dragging him backward, into the lake. He could feel the teeth that crushed down around his ankle, teeth grinding so deeply they scratched his bones. He could feel the overwhelming terror as he dug his fingers into the earth, desperate to hold on, but powerless to stop the inevitable.
Then he was at home. Not his home. Her home. With her husband and her children, who would never see her again.
He was at her wedding, walking down the aisle, feeling every bit of the joy she felt that day.
Her memories funneled through his mind at high speed, overwhelming him. He was talking to her sister on the phone. He was sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner. He was on a date. He was feeding a baby. He was shopping.
There didn’t even seem to be a message she was trying to give him. It was as if she simply wanted to offload the entire story of her tragic life in one agonizing instant.
It was Christmas morning. It was the first day of school. It was her high school graduation day. It was the day she broke her collar bone in that car wreck.
Eric pushed her away. He didn’t want these memories. They weren’t his. She had no right to force them on him.
But she was persistent. The images came at him faster and more vividly.
He was in labor. He was at a Halloween party. He was studying for exams.
Get out! he thought with all the force he could muster.
He was having lunch with her best friend.
He was planning a camping trip with her husband.
He was drowning in the lake.
Get the fuck out!
He pushed her again. This time, she vanished.
Eric stood there for a moment, trembling, trying to calm himself.
It was only memories. She couldn’t harm him. In fact, he could almost understand it. She was lost out here, stripped of the life she lived and loved. She only wanted her story to be told. But he wasn’t the one to tell it. He didn’t even know who she was. He didn’t catch her name. They never shared their names. Only their deaths and little snapshots of their lives.
He pitied her. But he couldn’t help her. Not like that.
Eric pushed the wo
man and all of her invading memories from his mind and tried to focus on the task of moving forward, but suddenly it occurred to him that it had begun to rain.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
It wasn’t pouring. Not like in the vision. Not yet. But it was more than a sprinkle. The rain fell in slow, heavy drops. Soon, however, he knew it would become a heavy downpour. Once it began, how long would he have? Minutes? Seconds?
It was possible that it would stop again before the real rain came. It was possible that this lighter rain would keep up for the majority of the remaining night. It was even possible that it was going to downpour several times before morning. This didn’t necessarily mean that the end was nigh. But even if he were to get so lucky, time was still stacked against him. At most, he only had a few hours left before morning. The vision had taken place in the dead of night. There was no sign of the approaching dawn.
He pulled the hood of the poncho up over his head and kept walking.
Ahead of him, the queer trees receded completely and the terrain began to descend steeply into a wide valley. The hour hand of the compass was whirling. All around him, the mist continued to grow thicker.
He was close.
The cell phone chimed at him: HURTS
Eric’s heart jumped in his chest. “What’s wrong?”
SRRY
CANT
“Are you okay? Talk to me!”
IM FINE
JUSTGO ON
Just go on. Right. Because it was that simple to ignore the fact that one of his closest friends was clearly in distress. He didn’t like this. He’d never known Isabelle to have trouble sending him messages. She didn’t make typographical errors. But they both knew this might happen. The spiritual energy had been getting to her all night. And now that he was approaching the source of the distortions, that energy had grown so strong that she couldn’t even think straight. She was barely able to form the words over the line.
She’d be okay. She was strong. Far stronger than him, he was sure. She could endure. The best thing he could do for her was get to the bottom of the triangle as soon as possible and end this so they could leave. Then everything would be fine.
He hoped…
Careful not to fall and break his neck, he made his way down the steep, rocky slope.
The compass encouraged him forward by spinning even faster. The hour hand was barely visible.
He must be nearing the bottom now. It was getting easier. Fettarsetter told him that the compass was the only thing that could help him find his way to the bottom. Without it, he’d only keep returning to the upper levels again and again. And that had seemed to be true for a long time. It was much easier before now to move upward than it was to go down. But now the opposite seemed to be true. Did he even need the compass now?
The phone rang. It was Holly, of course. She probably wanted to tell him that Isabelle hadn’t checked in. But when he answered it, the phone sputtered and then cut out. He’d finally gone in too deep for cell phone reception.
Right about now, Holly would be informing a very worried Karen that there was nothing they could do but wait for him to return.
He was on his own.
A ledge appeared ahead of him, dropping off into the hazy darkness. He walked up to it and peered down. He could only barely see the ground below him. A rocky slope descended rapidly into the mist. He turned one way and then the other, studying the compass. It was subtle, but it seemed to move faster when he aimed it straight out over the ledge.
He was supposed to go down there.
Fantastic.
He lowered the compass and shined the light along the base of the cliff beneath him. The drop seemed to get a little shallower on the left. He turned and walked in that direction. If he could just find a place where it was a little less of a drop, he’d be able to jump down without too much risk of breaking one or both of his legs. Given the day he’d had so far, he didn’t intend to take unnecessary chances.
It was calmer here, he realized. The voices were both softer and fewer. The shadows had quit dancing around him. Perhaps the dead didn’t come this far down.
But he barely had time to relish the thought when he glimpsed a faint silhouette staggering through the mist to his left.
A voice came with the shape, a low muttering, a distinct cursing, then a long, miserable moan.
Eric stopped walking and stood perfectly still. His hand instinctively went to one of the orbs hanging around his neck. The dead have gone mad down here, he thought with a shiver, and somehow he felt deep in his gut that he very much did not want to meet the owner of this silhouette and voice.
He held his breath.
The silhouette stopped. The voice fell silent. It seemed to study the light in Eric’s hand.
He considered switching it off, but didn’t dare. Without it, he’d be plunged into utter darkness. He wouldn’t be able to see the spirit. He wouldn’t know if it was leaving or creeping toward him. At least if it was on, he’d know what was happening, he’d have a chance to react.
Seconds passed.
His heart was pounding. His stomach felt twisted and hot. Was the rain falling harder now? How much time did he have left?
Just go away!
The figure considered him, even took a step toward him…but then it turned and staggered away, muttering to itself again.
Eric waited until he could no longer hear it and then let out the breath he was holding in a long, shaky sigh.
That was awful.
Keenly aware of the time he was losing, he turned and continued on.
Ahead of him, he caught sight of his way down. There was a place where a large chunk of the ledge had broken off and come to lay at an angle against the cliff wall. It would act as a sort of ramp, allowing him to make the descent in two, much shorter jumps, as long as he was careful.
But as he stepped up to the ledge and prepared to hop down, he paused. He turned and shined the light into the mist around him. The trees had disappeared entirely. He didn’t seem to be in the forest at all anymore. Looking around now, it finally occurred to him where he was.
This was the lake.
He was standing at the bottom of a long slope leading away from the shore, down into the water, and this was the drop-off into the deeper part of the lake.
But where was the water? He thought for a moment that someone had done just as his drunken brother suggested and somehow drained the lake. But that wasn’t what happened here. This land was dry and rocky, dampened only by the falling rain. If it’d recently contained water, he’d probably be wading through countless tons of mud and silt. Wherever he was now, the water wasn’t just gone; it’d never been here in the first place.
The rain began to pick up a little more, reminding him of his looming deadline, and he made his way down to the bottom of the drop-off.
He was descending to the bottom of the lake. Back on the surface, in the world that actually made some sort of sense, this entire area was underwater. If it were to suddenly reappear now, with him here, how far under would he be? Would it be far enough down that the pressure would kill him? Or would it merely cause his eardrums to implode and leave him to drown slowly and in agony?
Eric didn’t think he was quite deep enough for that yet. He’d probably be fine, assuming he could swim to the surface before his breath ran out. But he looked down at the steep slope before him and shuddered as he wondered just how far down he would have to go. How deep was Hedge Lake?
He pushed onward, careful not to slip on the loose rocks lining the lakebed.
Now the rain seemed to be easing up a little. That was good. Every second it hadn’t yet started pouring was one more second between him and the untimely end.
More time passed. It seemed like the lakebed went on and on. It felt like miles. All the while, the mist grew thicker around him, reducing his visibility to a few mere yards.
Finally, he came to a stop. He could see nothing but the same endless, sloping ground and the white haze,
but there was something here. A dark shadow seemed to loom over him, the same shadow he’d glimpsed several times since he first arrived at Hedge Lake. Something enormous. Something terrifying. Something ancient.
The Conqueror Worm.
It wasn’t there. Not in any real sense. It existed only on the other side, in another world. But it was perfectly real. And this was the place where it would soon break free.
He slipped the compass back into his pocket with his phone. He didn’t need it anymore. It was clear that this was the place. There was an almost primal terror welling up inside him, as if he’d been born with a natural instinct to recognize it.
Fettarsetter was right, he realized. It was both terrible and amazing. He was torn between horror and awe, too afraid to approach, and yet too enthralled to run away.
“Magnificent,” said a voice over his right shoulder.
Eric didn’t even jump. He’d been hearing voices all night, after all, a great many of them spoken directly into his ears. He didn’t even bother to look. He knew the voice well enough. “I thought you couldn’t get here without the compass.”
“I couldn’t,” replied Fettarsetter. “But that didn’t mean we couldn’t follow someone who did have the compass.”
Now Eric turned and glanced at his unwelcome companion. We?
Fettarsetter was standing just close enough to be seen through the fog, dressed in an expensive-looking raincoat that matched well with his expensive-looking suit. He looked even taller than the previous two times they’d met. (During their first encounter, he’d been standing next to lanky Owen; when next they met, the man never rose from his desk chair.) Eric had to make a conscious effort not to look intimidated.
Beside Fettarsetter stood the hellhound, its mangled head held high, its ember eyes glowing in the darkness.
“So he’s yours,” said Eric. He wasn’t exactly surprised. The pieces all fit. Isabelle said they had the same bad energy. And the last time he saw it, it had been snoozing on its master’s back porch.
“I don’t think I’d call him ‘mine’ exactly. He was a gift from the lake. They all were.”