Forest (The Afterlife Investigations Book 2)

by Ambrose Ibsen

  “The subject has not responded well to the newest formulation of the drug. It causes terrible outbursts—the worst I've yet seen—and though I feel she is inching towards a real milestone, the terror the compound induces is too much for her to handle. As a result, I've decided to administer small doses and to do so less often, lest the stress of our work break her. In the meantime, I've asked her to spend the evening drawing what it is she thought she saw. She claims more than once to have sensed a third occupant in the room with us, to have seen it by way of her 'spectral eye', and I asked her to draw it. It resulted in a sketch, low on detail, that she will have to elaborate on after future encounters.

  “The chemist from which I procured the compound took the liberty of adding still more of the nootropic compounds, believing that some would have a therapeutic effect and counterbalance the phobia of darkness that it causes. The inclusion of a hefty dose of L-Theanine, he supposed, would soothe her. It did not.

  “She has claimed that this entity in the room wishes to speak, to share some message, and yet the chorus of voices issuing from beyond the edge of normal human detection are deafening to her. A stronger connection with this third 'occupant' must be made—if it exists at all—if she is to hear the message it seeks to relay.”

  During the next recording, Corvine discussed Janie's reaction to a new formulation of the compound, which he dubbed SPN—004. By the end of the recording, I thought I detected something of giddiness in his voice. I lit a cigarette and took a seat in the chair, puffing away as I listened.

  “After the initial dose of the new compound—SPN—004—I was concerned after the subject's safety. Her usual fear of the dark persisted. In fact, it intensified, leaving her nonverbal for some time. She entered something of a semi-conscious state and I was preparing to cut the session short when suddenly she began to communicate with something. A connection had been made

  “She alerted me to the presence of the third occupant, and asked me to remove the headphones so that it might hear through her ears. I complied, and was then prompted to ask my questions. I inquired, naturally, after Geneva and Lacey—asked whether I could speak to them, but was told in no uncertain terms that such a thing was impossible at this time. Wondering if this wasn't merely an act, I decided to test the entity. With the subject's eyes still blindfolded, I walked over to my desk, took up a piece of paper and wrote the number '4' on the back. I then asked the subject—who acted during this period as an intermediary between myself and the third occupant—what number was on the paper, which I had folded and placed into my back pocket.

  “It knew. It knew that I had written the number '4'. From that moment on, the answers to my questions were clipped—one or two word things, mostly yes's and no's. I tested it again near the end of the session—or planned to. My idea had been to write a short sentence on a piece of paper, a sequence of words, and then to ask the occupant what it was I'd written. I'd no sooner placed pen to paper when the thing spoke to me. 'The better to see you with'. I dropped my pen, and I must admit to being shaken, for I'd intended to write the phrase, 'What big eyes you have.' I had not managed to do so before the occupant had somehow plumbed the depths of my mind and responded. I learned better than to test the thing again. It requires no testing—it is genuine, whatever it is.

  During the next session I will endeavor to capture some of my dialogue with it.”

  I'd seen this movie before—the one where the spooky outsider, up to no good, demonstrates preternatural knowledge. If getting his mind read by the Occupant wasn't enough to turn Corvine away from his experiments, then nothing was. I flicked some ash onto the floor, figuring old Corvine wouldn't mind, and kept on listening.

  Nothing had prepared me for the session to come, however.

  “The experiment is in progress. The subject is seated, appears rather sedate. She has just made contact with an entity she insists is in the room with us, and will act as a conduit so that I may converse with it. First, can you hear me?”

  “Yes.” The voice came presumably from Janie's mouth, but it didn't sound like her. Not a bit. It was a deeper voice. I hesitate to call it demonic, but listening to that voice echoing through the empty cabin made my guts squirm.

  “Very good. And what name do you go by?” continued Corvine.

  At this question, there was only silence.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  A long pause while Corvine came to grips with the fact that this entity didn't want to share its name. “You will answer my questions truthfully?”

  “Yes.”

  The doctor cleared his throat. “I wish to speak to my wife and daughter. Their names are Geneva and Lacey. Can you help me do so?”

  “No.”

  “You can't?”

  “Not yet.”

  I heard Corvine's sharp inhalation as he considered this. “Why is that?” he asked. “Is there something you need?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “A body.”

  I stomped out my cigarette, fidgeting in my seat uncontrollably. The husky, inhuman voice on the recording was getting to me. I was thankful that I wasn't listening to this with headphones on. In the background—in the empty space when neither Corvine nor the Occupant spoke—I thought I could hear something else. Was it animal noise from outside the cabin? Was Janie making sounds—crying, perhaps? Leaning forward, I thought it sounded like a chorus of wails... an undercurrent of choked cries.

  “Can you hear them?” asked the thing speaking through Janie.

  “Hear what?”

  The entity did not reply.

  The session ended soon thereafter, with Janie bursting into tears. That was the end of that tape. Its other side was apparently left blank.

  I'd heard plenty, though.

  The Occupant had let Corvine know up front what it wanted.

  A body.

  I tried to make some sense of this, but the dynamics of the situation made about as much sense to me as Calculus. Something—A ghost? A lost spirit? Something... else?—wanted to leave the world beyond and enter a new body. Corvine, it seemed, was on board, because the entity claimed it would let him speak to his loved ones again. But how could such a thing even come to pass? By what process could a presence like this one come to inhabit a human body? And for that matter, what would happen once it did?

  I needed some fresh air. Throwing open the cabin door I marched outside and ate a quick snack, walking circuits around the car. Had Corvine really been so desperate to reach out to his family that he was willing to work with the thing that owned the distorted voice coming out of his niece? If history had taught me anything, it appeared that he had been, but this was a Faustian bargain if ever I'd seen one. The Occupant was looking for some quid pro quo—I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine—and I had trouble believing that a man like Corvine would fall for it. He must have known, even then, that he was messing with things he couldn't control. Already he'd broken most every law in the book by drugging his niece and using her as a medium through which he could contact otherworldly beings.

  What had happened to Corvine and Janie? Was the doctor still out there somewhere, carrying out this terrible work? And as for his niece, had she met the same fate as Enid Lancaster at Chaythe Asylum? There was no telling, and as I paced about the grounds, I wasn't sure I'd ever get a proper answer.

  The morning was slowly fading into afternoon. I needed to listen to the rest of the tapes and get moving. No way in hell was I going to spend another night in these woods.

  14

  I'm just going to come out and say it. Taking a crap in the woods sucks. After squatting at the treeline and hoping I wouldn't get mauled by a black bear while doing my business, I cleaned up and retrieved the tape player.

  And then I came back outside.

  I'd had enough of that gloomy little space, of those walls that seemed to collect and amplify the terrible voice I'd heard on tape. I walked a short distance
away, to a space behind the cabin where I found a tree trunk to sit on. It was probably here that Corvine had chopped his firewood back in the day—a suspicion that was only driven home further by the discovery of a rusted axe in the tall grass nearby. Sitting in one of the few areas in view that allowed for direct sunlight, I breathed a sigh of relief and loaded up the next tape, setting the player in the grass.

  During the next session, Corvine sounded upset. It was hard to put my finger on it, but his speech was slower than usual, and seemed weighed down by barely-veiled annoyance. He discussed a break of some days and how he tasked Janie with drawing the thing that she had seen. She claimed to have nightmares about it every night, and even on days when she did not receive the compound her mental state seemed to be off. He claimed that her fear of the dark was no longer abating, and wondered if a long-term abstinence period was not necessary to reset her tolerance to darkness. He rattled off on this with little evident concern for his niece. He was just mad that his experiments had to be put on hold.

  The anger in his voice was more pronounced when, a few days later, he dictated about a snag in his work. Janie was no longer interested in participating—and had not been for some time. Despite Corvine's assurances and bribes, she would no longer take the drug willingly, and had to be force-fed. During daylight hours he had to keep a close eye on her, considering her a flight risk, and mentioned how happy he was that he'd chosen this remote area in which to conduct his research, stating, “Thankfully, there is nowhere for her to run. The secrets of our work are safe here.”

  He mentioned also an incident during a late-night experiment where, somehow becoming free of her restraints mid-session, Janie had managed to pry off her blindfold. When Corvine had rushed to replace it, he'd noticed by the light of his flashlight a strange and frightening change in the girl's eyes. They'd been completely black. “Pools of ink,” the doctor had called them. He hadn't been able to pin down any medical reason for the change, and reported that at the session's end, when the drug's half-life had passed, her eyes did return to normal. This incident reminded me of something a former orderly at Chaythe Asylum had told me about Enid Lancaster on the night of the Third Ward Incident. Enid's eyes had been black as well.

  His next recorded entry took place some days later, and he bitched about Janie right from the get-go. “She nearly escaped today when I proposed another session. I don't know where she thinks she's going to go, and certainly no one would believe her if she made it out of the woods. Nevertheless, she is only an asset to me so long as she continues participating in the experiments. When they have run their course, something will have to be done to ensure her silence.”

  That didn't bode well.

  “Sessions with the Occupant have hit a dead-end. I have been informed after this last that the subject is not a suitable fit. As to what criteria the entity requires in a host I am at a loss. It has not been forthcoming about its needs, stating simply a riddle of some kind. When asked what it requires in its host, it replies simply—and without fail—'twenty-eight.' I am unsure of what this means and have asked, but I never receive clarification. I suspect that, in its current state, the Occupant is limited to short bursts of speech. Its connection with the subject is not so strong that it can speak at length. It would appear that the subject has reached the limits of her usefulness, however. I will have to move onto another if new ground is to be broken on this matter. This leaves me in a difficult position. How best to handle the current subject and apply the research gleaned from our sessions to a new, more suitable subject?”

  I stopped the tape. Standing up, I walked through the tall grass and into the woods, the canopy fluttering in an earthy breeze. Weak streams of light met the underbrush, only to vanish as the leaves returned to stillness. I'd been wondering for some time what had happened to Corvine's first subject, but I was getting to the point where I felt I had a clear idea of her fate.

  Somewhere out here, in this no-man's land, it was possible that Janie Corvine was dead and buried. In all the research I'd done prior to this trip, I'd learned nothing about her—almost as though she'd been snuffed out after taking part in the experiments. Corvine had alluded to the remoteness of this place, about how the secrets of his work would remain safe here.

  If there's one thing dead people are really good at, it's not blabbing. Corvine hadn't hesitated to turn his niece into a guinea pig, and I doubted that he'd had any trouble in shutting her up permanently. I looked back to the stump where the tape recorder sat, glimpsed the rusted edge of the ax I'd found. It was easy to picture the stern-faced doctor taking a crack at a young, defenseless girl with that ax and then burying her somewhere in this wilderness.

  The question was: Where?

  Moreover, I knew the fate of Corvine's second—and more famous—subject. Enid Lancaster had been killed on the night of the Third Ward Incident while trying to break out through the front entrance of the asylum. The doctor, if memory served, had been there that night—had held a session with Enid a few hours before the power had gone out and her killing spree had begun. Had Corvine anticipated this violent outburst and murdered his patient before she could escape into the world and wreak more havoc?

  I took a deep breath and decided to get out of there. I'd gather the tapes, the books and papers, and then I'd book it to the nearest paved road. Hopefully I'd get some cell reception on the way so that I could let Elizabeth and Jake know about all I'd found. Possibly I'd stay put, call the cops, and share with them what I knew. If there was a body out there in the woods, then they'd need to know about it.

  I returned to the cabin, scooping up the books and paperwork on the desk and carrying some of it out to my trunk, where I tossed it in pell-mell. I was about to return for more when a rustling to my back made me freeze. It was the crunching of a twig from somewhere in the woods behind me. I turned, looked over my shoulder, but couldn't see anyone there. A deer? A bear? I took a slow step towards the cabin, thinking I'd just been hearing things, and prepared to grab up the rest of Corvine's stuff.

  That was when the gunshot rang out. A bullet sailed through the air and sank into the chassis of my Cavalier, and I hit the ground so fast and hard I knocked the wind out of myself.

  Footsteps—hard and unmistakable—issued from the woods.

  This forest was going to be home to a second body—mine—if I didn't get the hell out of there. I reached into my back pocket for my knife, but remembered I'd left it sitting in the cupholder the night before. They say you should never bring a knife to a gunfight, but at that moment I have to say that the knife would have been a welcome addition. I certainly wasn't looking forward to warding off a gunman with my bare hands.

  The footsteps stopped close by and I felt a presence looming behind me. I turned to look, but froze when the barrel of a shotgun pressed hard against the small of my back.

  The instructions were clear enough, and I obeyed them, giving the dirt path an eskimo kiss.

  “Don't move.”

  15

  “Don't make any sudden movements,” I was further warned.

  I didn't need told twice.

  “What are you doing here?” The voice was female. Middle aged, at least, though I couldn't get a look at her without having my torso ripped apart by her boomstick. When I hesitated to answer, she repeated herself. “I asked you a question. What are you doing here?”

  That was a question with a long, long answer. Rather than show my hand, I muttered, “I was just driving through. This lovely little cabin caught my eye and I thought I'd have a look around. Great place. Very rustic.”

  The shotgun cozied up to my back even harder. She wasn't buying it. “Bullshit.”

  I held my breath, waited for the gunshot to come, for my entrails to become one with the road.

  “You're taking things from the cabin. Why?”

  The gun barrel eased up just enough to allow me to take a deep breath. “Truthfully? You wouldn't believe me if I told you.” I caught the barest glimpse of the
woman in my periphery. Dark clothing—looked something like a uniform. Police? A forest ranger, maybe? “I'll put it all back though, if that's what you want. I'd just really prefer not to get shot today.”

  She mulled it over. I felt her reach down and pat my pockets, and after a time she nudged me in the side with the heel of her boot. “Roll over. Keep your hands above your head.”

  I did as I was told, rolling onto my back.

  I'd been held up by a uniformed, thickset woman with short blonde hair. There may have been a streak of grey running through it, but I couldn't be sure from where I lay. I scanned her uniform for some kind of badge but was unable find one. The outfit she wore seemed more like hunting garb the more I studied it. Dark camouflage. I guess I was in season.

  “Let me ask you again,” she said when she'd looked me over and ensured that I was unarmed. “Who the hell are you and why are you poking around here?”

  “I'm a college professor,” I began. “My name is Stephen Barlow. I teach down at Moorlake University, in Ohio. I came up here to do some research. And if you must shoot me, please aim for the head. The bastards declined to give me a benefits package.”

  Her jaw could be seen to tighten at my reply. “Research? What kind?”

  “I didn't mean any harm. I came here looking for the man who used to own this cabin. It looked abandoned—I wasn't aware that I was trespassing.”

  “Trespassing is the least of your worries,” she spat. “What are you doing here, and hurry up, because I'm tired of asking.”

  “I came here looking for a doctor by the name of Corvine. He was involved with some controversial experiments in the 70's and 80's. I wanted to see if he was still out here, or if I could find some of his research. Unfortunately, me and a few of my students experienced the fruits of his labors first-hand, and I came looking for answers.” I closed my eyes, wondering how insane all of that would sound.