by Brian Harmon
Spooky darted around a boulder and Eric followed. On the other side, he was startled by a familiar shape lying on the forest floor. It was the ostrich-stein, its jaws still glistening with its former master’s blood.
The creature hissed at him, but there wasn’t much fight left in it. Like the hellhound, its death was long overdue.
Eric felt a strange pang of pity for the creature. It was mixed in with the far-less-strange feelings of fear and revulsion that had been there since the first time he glimpsed the thing, but it was there. A small part of him wished there was something he could do for these poor creatures, but he knew that all he could possibly do for them was allow them their well-deserved deaths.
Spooky gave an impatient cry.
Eric hurried after him.
“Mrs. Fulrick said something about those orbs dispelling negative energy,” recalled Isabelle. “There must’ve been something inside the portals, something that was mostly negative energy.”
Eric again recalled Fettarsetter telling him that something had been done in the distant past to disrupt the flow of energy, but he couldn’t begin to imagine what that something might’ve been. “If you say so. I just threw the strange balls into the invisible hole.”
“How did you even know to do that?”
“I think a ghost told me.”
“Oh.”
Eric checked the watch again. It was clumsy, switching back and forth between the watch and the phone, but he managed to find a way to hold them both in his left hand without dropping either, leaving his right hand free to aim the flashlight. (It helped that he didn’t need to worry about holding the phone so that Isabelle could hear his voice.) The hands were moving even slower now. He was getting closer, but he still had far to go. “A better question,” he said into the phone, “is why did it make the worm stop?”
“Obviously it has something to do with the spiritual energy that’s draining out of the triangle.”
“Oh. Yeah,” he panted. “Obviously.”
Isabelle ignored him. “It has to be going somewhere,” she reasoned. “Maybe into the world on the other side of those portals. Maybe the worm’s following it.”
“Maybe.” Eric could almost imagine the worm letting go of this world and turning to sink its teeth in the other one for a few centuries. Maybe that was how it was supposed to be. Maybe that was how the worlds were properly balanced.
He could feel that shiver again. It was everywhere. It was in the ground beneath his feet. It was in the air he breathed. It was in the trees and rocks he passed. A deep, aching dread grew within him with each desperate step he took.
He wasn’t going to make it. It was more than weary pessimism. A strange, deep-down certainty was growing within him. The triangle was collapsing in on itself and he wasn’t fast enough to escape it.
Keeping his eyes on the cat, he forced himself to run faster.
“You can do this,” Isabelle told him. “I know you can. Just keep running.”
But Eric wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep running. He was exhausted. He was gasping for breath. A painful stitch pierced his side.
Ahead of him, Spooky darted between two tree trunks and then vanished.
Eric stopped at these trees and swept the light across the area. “Spooky?”
He tried to calm his heavy breathing, tried to listen for the sound of a small cry.
“Um…kitty?”
Not good.
“Eric?” Isabelle’s voice was shrill with panic.
He glanced down at the watch. The hour hand had slowed to a crawl, but the other hands were still spinning. He was still well inside the triangle.
Spooky had appeared and disappeared repeatedly all night, but he had the distinct feeling that he hadn’t done it on purpose this time.
A veil had closed between them.
He was trapped inside, with only the compass to show him the way out. And that shiver was growing only stronger. The whole world seemed to be trembling around him.
“Isabelle…”
“Just keep running,” she told him. “You’ve got to keep trying. Remember Delphinium’s promise.”
Delphinium’s promise. As long as he remained true to himself, he’d always return to Karen. He’d definitely been true to himself. He hadn’t done anything careless. He could think of not one single thing he could’ve done differently. And yet he simply didn’t know the way out.
Somewhere in the distance, he heard a noise. A great, hollow boom, as if bombs were going off somewhere over the horizon.
He turned and shined his light out into the forest behind him. The mist had thinned to a faint haze, but now, suddenly, there was a wall of fog barreling toward him, plowing over the trees.
The fog was death.
Isabelle screamed at him to run and he did. He turned his back on the approaching fog and ran for his very life. But there was nowhere to go. He was lost.
When he glanced over his shoulder, the mist was right behind him.
Chapter Forty-One
Eric wished there was time to say something meaningful to Isabelle, some kind of comforting message to pass on to Karen. But even if he found the time, he didn’t have the breath. And he was never very good with that sort of thing anyway.
The fog was death. It was what happened when the separate layers of a triangle began to collapse onto one another, when two worlds suddenly found themselves coexisting on the same plane.
He had no idea how he knew this, but he did. He knew it as certainly as he’d ever known anything in his life. Just as he knew that he would die the moment the fog overtook him, which wouldn’t be more than a few seconds.
“Eric!” cried a familiar voice from somewhere up ahead. “This way! Hurry!”
In front of him was a narrow gully carved between two rocky bluffs. In the center of this gully, the darkness swirled strangely, as if all the falling rain were looping around itself in that one place, creating a sort of vortex of water and shadow.
There were times when you stopped and seriously asked yourself if you should listen to a strange voice summoning you into a creepy, black portal. This wasn’t one of those times. Eric ran straight up the middle, as fast and as hard as his legs would carry him.
The fog overtook him as he ran. The world turned to white cotton around him. He felt the dampness wrap around him. And he felt something tingle across his skin, an unpleasant sensation, similar to the crackle of static electricity, but distinctly different, and far less pleasant.
Something reached out and grabbed him. He felt himself being hurled forward.
Then he was lying on the ground. That strange fog blew across him like a damp wind and was gone.
The strange shivering had finally stopped.
Eric looked up to find himself lying on the dark forest floor, covered in mud, with rain falling down around him.
“Are you okay?”
Still gasping for breath, Eric sat up. “I think so…”
“That’s good. That was a close one.”
He looked at the watch and found that the hands had stopped. He was back on the surface. He was safe.
“So did you find what you were looking for?” asked Jordan.
Eric turned to face her. She was kneeling beside him, her clothes drenched in the rain, water running down her cheeks, smiling her gentle smile. “I think I did.”
“I figured you would.”
“What’re you…what’re you doing here?”
“I told you I was going to help you. I promised.”
Eric wiped the rain from his face with the back of his hand. He was exhausted. It was hard to even think straight. “We dropped you off at home.”
“I came back. I really don’t like being told what to do.”
He stared at her for a moment, his sluggish mind struggling to keep up. “What did you do? How did I get here?”
“The remaining spirits made a door for you. Good thing, too. You almost didn’t make it back at all.”
“How do…? Wait…” Eric rose to his feet. “Wait…” he said again. “Who are you?”
She stood up and faced him. “I’m Jordan Holstep, remember? Did you hit your head while you were down there?”
Eric stared at her. “I heard you call out to me.”
“Uh huh.”
He shook his head. “It was you… You were the voice under the lake. You told me to use the orbs.”
She shrugged. “You didn’t look like you were going to figure it out on your own. For a teacher, you’re not very smart.”
“And you did it once before, too. After the exorcism. When I fell asleep and had that dream…”
“You were going to sleep all night. I had to wake you up.”
“No…” He shook his head again, more firmly this time. “No… You’re not…”
“Dead?” she asked, looking up at him. “Of course I am.”
Eric felt his heart sink. “But…Ned…”
She giggled at this. “Ned’s a nice guy, but he doesn’t know as much about things as he thinks he does. He was right about the portals under the lake. But he obviously wouldn’t know a ghost if he was talking to one.”
He was still shaking his head. “Specter Ten?”
She cocked her head and raised an eyebrow. “You really think those guys really know anything about ghosts?”
“I guess not…”
“Strangers around here don’t tend to think much about me. To them, I’ve always just been another little girl. It’s only the locals who notice something’s weird. Especially Mrs. Fulrick. Because she knows things like that.”
He supposed she probably did. “But you’re not in the triangle. Cordelia said the ghosts didn’t go to the surface.”
“She said the ghosts couldn’t harm you on the surface. And I didn’t. None of us did.”
She was right, he realized. Even the bloody woman had done nothing but help in her own, twisted way.
“Wait… You know Cordelia, then?”
“We all do,” she said.
You all do? thought Eric. What did she mean by that? This was so much to take in. He could barely stand it. He rubbed his eyes wearily. “But… How did you…?”
“Die?” She shrugged. “It was a long time ago. It’s okay. It doesn’t matter.”
Again, he shook his head. “No.” He looked at her, really looked at her, for the first time, studying her. The rain still ran down her face. She kept blinking it away as it ran into her eyes. Her dark blonde hair looked black in the gloom. A few strands had come loose from her braids and were plastered to her forehead and cheeks. Her blue tee shirt was soaked and clinging to her. Her knees were muddy where she’d knelt beside him. He could even see the indentions she’d left in the mud at her feet. In every way that he could see, she was as real as he was.
Except that she didn’t shiver, he realized. In spite of the chilling rain pouring down on her, in spite of the fact that he was chilled almost to the bone, she didn’t seem to feel the cold at all.
“It’s okay, Eric. It’s over now. You saved us all. I can finally leave this place.”
“Leave this place?” repeated Eric. “But… What about your mom?”
She frowned. “My mom left a long time ago.”
“She left?”
“I told you she was sick. I won’t see her again in this world.”
He kept shaking his head. He couldn’t help it. It didn’t make sense. “Then…whose house did we drop you off at?”
“It was mine. A long time ago. But it’s been someone else’s house for years.”
That explained why her mother never checked in on her, why she was able to freely roam the forest. She was dead, too. Or else she’d been taken away to a hospital or nursing home somewhere to await her lonely end.
Eric felt profoundly sad. He didn’t like this. He didn’t want things to be this way.
“It’s okay,” she said again. “You beat Mr. Fettarsetter, and I got to see it. I told you he was a creep.”
“You did,” he agreed. He looked back at the forest and recalled Fettarsetter’s dismembered corpse bragging about being right. The memory was disturbingly gruesome, even by Eric’s standards. But the psycho was gone now. Had death finally found him? Or was he still alive and buried forever at the bottom of the triangle, doomed to languish there until the end of time? Either way, he wouldn’t harm anyone else ever again.
“And you stopped the worm,” added Jordan.
“I did. I don’t know how, but I did.”
“When you threw the orbs into the portal, you essentially gave the spirits permission to leave.”
“I did?”
Jordan smiled. “There was something trapped in those portals. It was keeping the people who died here from entering the spiritways.”
“Spiritways?” This was all so confusing.
“It’s like a highway for the dead. When most people die, they’re immediately swept away by it and carried off to where they belong. But for some reason the spirits here were stranded. It’s why everything was so wrong here.”
Eric thought he understood…
“But now you’ve opened the gates. The spirits are free. All but a few are moving on now.”
“Not all of them?”
She cocked her head to the side again. “A few of them still seem to have some business in this world, I guess. But the rest are leaving as fast as they can go. And without them, there’s no reason for the worm to keep burrowing. It’ll look elsewhere for food from now on.”
Food? Eric recalled each of the spirits that had cried out, Don’t let it take me! after their encounter with him. Was that what they meant? Was that what they wanted him to save them from? He remembered wondering if the worm fed on the spiritual energy of the triangle, but it never occurred to him that perhaps the worm might feed on the actual spirits.
He wasn’t sure he understood any of this, but he didn’t say so. Instead, he just said, “I’m so sorry…”
“Why? Because I’m dead? Not really your fault.”
“I’m… I’m just sorry.”
“Well stop it. I just wanted to say thanks. You were really fun to hang around with.”
“You’re welcome…I guess…”
“You’re really cool, for a teacher.”
Eric actually laughed a little.
Now her smile melted and her expression turned serious. “Listen, there’s something I need to tell you. I said earlier that I thought I’d heard of Creek Bend before. I finally remembered. There’s something hidden there. A secret.”
“If you’re talking about that schoolhouse…”
“No. Not that secret. That was only a small part of it. What happened there in the past… It didn’t stay in the past. It kept happening. And it’s still happening today. Eventually, you’re going to have to stop it. Just like you stopped the worm tonight.”
Eric stared at her. He had no reason to doubt anything she said. It was no less crazy than his escape from the collapsing triangle just a moment ago.
“But before you can do that, you’ll have to find Euphemia Blue.”
“Euphemia Blue?” asked Eric. “Who’s that?”
Jordan smiled. “That’s for you to find out, silly, not for me to tell you.”
“Oh. I see.” Although, of course, he didn’t.
“Find Euphemia,” she instructed, “and the rest will begin to fall in place.”
Eric nodded. “Okay. Got it. I guess.”
“And hold onto that compass. You’ll need it again.”
He looked down at the watch. He was still holding it in his hand with the phone. “Sure. I’ll do that.”
Her expression grew sad. “I’ve got to go now,” she announced.
“What? No.”
“I’m sorry. But I’ll see you again someday. In a happier place. I promise.”
And with that, Jordan Holstep was gone, melted into thin air along with all the other oddities of the triangle.
He stood there for a mo
ment in the pouring rain, trying to take it all in. He might’ve cried if he wasn’t so tired.
Remembering Pete’s phone, he lifted it to his ear and said, “She was just another spirit.”
“I know,” said Isabelle.
“She was just a little girl…”
“So was I. You saved her just like you saved me. She just happened to be a little more lost than I was.”
Eric forced himself to take a deep breath. It was all so much to take in.
“It’s okay,” she assured him. “Let’s get out of here, okay? Not all the spiritual energy’s drained away yet. It’s still giving me a headache.”
Eric nodded. “Let’s go home.”
Chapter Forty-Two
By the time Eric finally found his way back to Mrs. Fulrick’s yard, the rain had stopped and the first glow of dawn could be seen in the western sky.
Mrs. Fulrick and Pete were both waiting for him on the porch.
“Took your sweet time getting back, didn’t you?” she said.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” was all he could think to tell her.
“I don’t have to ask how it went. I felt it. All the bad suddenly just…went away.”
Eric nodded. Isabelle had felt it, too. Even he’d felt it, to a smaller degree.
“I take it the spirits were bound here somehow. That was what was causing all the trouble.”
“Something like that,” Eric agreed.
“I felt them disperse. All at once. It was such a rush, I damn near fainted cold.”
“It was scary,” said Pete. “I thought she was having a stroke or something.”
Mrs. Fulrick ignored him. “Come on inside. I got your clothes washed and dried.”
Eric nodded and followed her into the house. He took off his wet shoes at the door and she handed him his clothes, all of them neatly folded and stacked. He stared at his Fruit of the Loom briefs sitting right on top of the pile, managing to feel embarrassed even through his exhaustion. When she took the clothes from him, they were wadded in a wet ball. He’d forgotten they were in there. “Thanks,” he said, and he made his way to the bathroom to change.