Forest (The Afterlife Investigations Book 2)

by Ambrose Ibsen

  I'd arrived. It'd taken me roughly eight hours on the road to get here, but I'd made it.

  I parked next to a rusted-out Sonata and lit a cigarette. The rain thinned out and then completely stopped, leaving the air scented in moisture. It was a soothing thing taken in tandem with the freshly-cut lawn smell rising from the grounds and the occasional pull from my Viceroy.

  I dialed Elizabeth's number again and looked out to the building before me. It was several stories high and featured a single exterior door on each side. I was parked in the same spot where I'd dropped Jake and Elizabeth off numerous times, and scanned the windows of the building carefully while the phone did its thing. Most of the windows were dark—in fact, only two or three of the windows on this side were lit. The building was probably close to empty; few students had stayed behind over the break.

  The call went to voicemail yet again, but I was distracted from my annoyance by something that materialized on the other side of the glass exit door some fifty or sixty feet ahead of me. It rose up, seemingly from nowhere, and stood in harsh contrast against the orange light coming from inside of the stairwell.

  Someone was looking out at me from that door.

  I blinked; once, twice. Setting down my phone, I took another look at the glass door and tensed.

  The figure was still there.

  18

  I stayed in the car a long while. The rain made a brief reprise, some heavy drops crashing down onto the windshield, before the clouds overhead scattered and the moon made an appearance.

  When I finally stepped out, my shoes sloshing through a puddle, I kept my hand locked around the knife in my pocket and approached the door to Dorchester Hall with my head down. The figure in the glass hadn't moved, but all that time I'd been able to feel their eyes on me.

  I was within twenty feet when I realized who it was.

  “Jake?” I called out, breaking into a jog across the lot and giving the door a tug. Someone had left it propped open with a piece of plastic ripped from a Powerade bottle, and it swung open with ease. Stepping into the stairwell, eyeing Jake up and down, I realized immediately that something was wrong.

  He'd been standing at the door, looking out into the parking lot vacantly. And upon my entrance, he hadn't really moved, hadn't so much as looked up at me. He was still a statue, albeit a panting, red-eyed statue. I thought perhaps his eyes were bloodshot because he'd been up real late, or else smoking pot, but the streaks of dried tears on his cheeks told a different story. He was wearing a damp white sweatshirt for some sports team, though the logo on the front was too faded to say which. His hair was matted down with rain and clung to his forehead. He was wearing another accessory, too, which I didn't recognize.

  A striking black eye.

  “Jake,” I said, taking his shoulder and giving him a jerk.

  He inhaled sharply, looked like he was going to lose his balance, and then winced back what looked like a fresh deluge of tears. Taking a step backward, he supported himself against the handrail and actually looked at me. “Professor.” His voice was distant, weak. It didn't sound like him. Usually he tried to veil his naturally higher voice by speaking with more depth, but what came out of his mouth now was just a feathery whisper.

  “What's the matter?” I asked. I glanced up at the empty stairwell. “Where's Elizabeth?”

  He startled at the mention of the girl's name. Not a good sign.

  Licking his lips, he worked a hand through his hair repeatedly, compulsively. “Uh... uh...”

  “Jake? You're weirding me out, man.” I shook his shoulder again, but he only gave me another slack-jawed look. “What's happened? Where'd you get that shiner?” I licked my lips and stepped closer. “Is Elizabeth all right? Is she up there, in her room?”

  He quivered, but didn't respond except to mumble unintelligibly.

  My fear mounted and my patience was drained. “Goddammit, man!” I slapped him across the face. I'd always wanted to try slapping sense into someone—you see it all the time in the movies—and was surprised when both recognition—and anger—actually resurfaced in his gaze as a result.

  Jake cradled his cheek and frowned. “What...”

  “Earth to Jake. Are you OK? What the hell is going on in that head of yours?”

  He sighed, looking around the stairwell, and then turned to me with the flinching terror of one who'd just recalled something traumatic. “Professor,” he said again. “I don't know what's going on. I, I....”

  I eased him to the stairs, instructed him to sit on the bottom steps. “Start from the beginning,” I said, kneeling beside him. “What happened? I only just got back into town. I tried to get ahold of Elizabeth—have been trying all day, in fact—but she hasn't responded. Where is she?”

  His boyish face went white and he curled in on himself, uttering, “She's gone.”

  “Gone? What do you mean, gone?” I leaned closer. “Tell me what happened.”

  It took him a few moments to gather himself, and when he did, the words suddenly burst out of him like they'd been dammed up. “Last night. She was in my room. We were watching a movie, and... She hadn't been feeling good all day. Kind of sick. She, uh... she had been texting you, you know? And then she told me to wake her if you replied. She went to bed. Fell asleep in my room. I stayed up. I was uh, on my computer, listening to music. Had headphones on. An hour passed. Maybe more. And I... I was going to go to the bathroom when I stood and saw she was sitting up in bed. And she was looking at me. But...” Here, Jake shivered and had to walk himself back from the edge of tears. “Her eyes, professor. They were black. They were pure black. I thought I was having a nightmare. I asked her what was happening, and then I heard all of these whispers in the air. From outside the door... under the bed... inside the closet. The room was full of whispers. At that point, she jumped out at me like an animal. She clocked me in the eye and found her way on top of me, hit me again like she wanted to pound my skull in. I had to throw her off of me, but I almost couldn't do it—she was too strong.

  “When I broke free, she crouched near the door on all fours and stared at me with those black eyes. And she opened her mouth. You know what I heard? It wasn't her voice. Those whispers... all those whispers... they'd been coming out of her mouth that whole time, like she had a thousand people inside her body. She ran out the door, into the hall. I tried to follow, but she disappeared into the night and I couldn't keep up. She was fast. Faster than anyone I've ever seen. She's been gone ever since.”

  My heart throbbed in my chest as I listened to this account. This was what Jane had warned me about. The Occupant had evidently taken a liking to Elizabeth and had decided to hitch a ride. Where they'd gone now was anyone's guess. “OK, so did you call anyone? The cops? Is there anyone looking for her out there? Has anyone seen her since?” I looked down at my phone. “She went missing last night, right? About what time?”

  He shook his head over and over again. “Who could I call?” he asked. “The police wouldn't have believed me. How could they believe me? They'd have thought I'd done something to her.”

  He was right, of course. “Maybe, but you could have still reported her missing. The first twenty-four hours after someone goes missing are the most crucial. Shit, she could be across State lines by now.” I palmed my brow, wicking away some of the cold sweat that'd settled there. “What about her parents?”

  Jake shrugged, like it hadn't even occurred to him. He was slipping back into a daze, and I almost reached out and slapped him again.

  “Well, what have you been doing since then?”

  He just looked at me from behind eyes so tired that they could only have been gained by wandering in feverish fear for the past twenty-four hours, unable to sleep. I figured that was more or less the length of it.

  “We need to find her,” I said, looking back out towards the car. “There's no telling where she's gone, but if we don't find her soon, then...”

  “What'll happen to her?” asked Jake, stumbling momentari
ly back into awareness. “What will that thing do now that it's inside her?”

  The answer to that question depended on the Occupant's whims, I knew, but there was a possibility of things going very, very badly for the girl if we didn't act soon. “I learned a few things while I was away,” I explained. “I don't know what it's up to, but if Elizabeth tickles this thing's fancy, then she might be lost forever.” I nodded up the stairs. “We need to get on this immediately. Can you get ready?”

  He nodded and led me up the stairs, down a silent, carpeted hall, and to his room.

  In college, I'd been quite the slob, but the level of disorder in this room bordered on disaster. Either his fight against the possessed Elizabeth had been messier and more intense than he'd led on, or else—when this was all over with—we were going to have to get Jake on an episode of Hoarders. Baskets full of laundry—clean or dirty, none could say—had been knocked to the floor. Books were strewn about, as were game controllers and handfuls of beverage bottles, some still filled. His bed was unmade, and within a furrow in his knotted comforter were a pair of orange headphones I recognized as Elizabeth's. The curtains over the window had been pulled down and a laptop sat askew on a small desk in the corner.

  Jake took a deep breath and paced over to the desk, grabbing his keys, wallet and phone. From one of the bottles he kept lined up behind his computer, he splashed a bit of water on his face and tried to wake himself up. “Sorry,” he explained, “I've barely slept.”

  My thoughts were chaotic, coming a mile a minute. I had no idea where to begin our search, or how prudent it would be to enlist the help of law enforcement in our search for a girl whose body had been sublet to a deathless entity from the world beyond. I focused on everything I'd learned at Hiawatha, recalled the trunkful of materials I'd brought with me, but then cast those thoughts aside in anger. This was no time to poke around in books, to listen to old tapes. We needed to take action right now. Time was of the essence.

  “Where could she have gone?” I asked. “Is there any place she really liked to go? A place she might have fled to, to be in private? A place where she could be truly alone?”

  Jake stepped back into the hall and waited for me to follow. “Honestly? I have no idea. This whole damn town is empty right now. She could have gone anywhere.” He started down the stairs, throwing open the exterior door. “What does this thing want with her? Why Elizabeth?”

  Why indeed? It was a question I'd been asking myself for the past several minutes. Back at the cabin, I'd assured Jane that she was mistaken—Elizabeth, I'd claimed, had not been “Occupant Material”. But I'd been wrong on that count. Apparently the thing had liked her a whole lot, and had bided its time before taking hold and running off with her. I considered for a moment how this could possibly have happened when I remembered, with a groan, something about Elizabeth's history.

  “Elizabeth died once, didn't she?” I asked.

  Jake looked over at me, startled.

  “When she was a kid. She got hit by a car. And then she got brought back, resuscitated, right? And when she came to, she had her vision. That's what she told me.”

  Jake gave a half-nod, looking uncomfortable. “Uh, well... what about it?”

  I unlocked the car and the two of us piled in. “She's been touched by death. That's the first criteria.”

  Jake didn't bother with a seatbelt, but instead took to kneading his hands as I started the engine. “There's criteria?”

  “That's right. This son of a bitch is pretty discerning. It likes a certain kind of host. One that's been touched by death.” I idled in the parking space a few moments, then continued. “Listen, this is going to seem like a weird question, but... is your girlfriend, uh... regular?”

  His gaze narrowed in confusion. “What, like... her bowel movements, or...?”

  “No! No, I mean... her periods. Is everything, uh... working regularly for her in that department?” To him, I must have seemed like some weirdo or pervert, but the question was an important one.

  “I don't know what that has to do with—”

  “Just answer the damn question, Jake.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Like clockwork. She was, uh... actually complaining last night—thought she could feel her period coming on.”

  OK, so, Elizabeth met two of the criteria. Whether there were more—or whether the Occupant would really try and use her to fulfill its ultimate goals, was uncertain. I pulled out of the lot, looking down a few side roads and wondering which to take. I wished that this could be easy, that we'd see her wandering down one of these dim stretches.

  But nothing in regards to this case was ever easy.

  We were going to have to turn the town inside out to find her.

  And if she'd left town already...

  “God help us,” I muttered.

  19

  There wasn't much to see in Moorlake. We passed dimly-lit bars, weaved through the parking lots of big box stores that sat dark and empty, and probably circled the entire campus, our eyes peeled all the while. Once or twice we spied shambling silhouettes in the distance; they turned out each time to be nothing but drunk college girls on their way back to the dorms.

  I was at a loss.

  I felt, and not without good reason, that this whole thing was my fault. If I hadn't taken Jake and Elizabeth with me into the asylum—if only I'd ignored Dave Thackeray's call—then Elizabeth would still be safe and sound in her room. The Occupant had targeted me, specifically, and had used me to lure Elizabeth to the asylum. The damned thing had probably been watching her for many years, ever since the accident she'd suffered in childhood.

  Jake seemed to agree that this was all my fault, and reminded me of that fact as we drove. “Why'd you have to go to Michigan?” he asked. “All of this shit happened after you left.”

  “This was the kind of thing I'd been hoping to avoid by going up there. That is, I wanted to learn more and make sure we were out of the woods. This thing took advantage of me—of all of us—and struck while I was eight hours away. I'm sorry that I wasn't here to try and stop it, but what could I have done? Judging by that black eye you've got, she's Gennady Golovkin.”

  “Well, where can we go from here? Are we just going to drive around until you run out of gas? Didn't you learn anything useful up in that cabin? Or was the doctor just as clueless as you are?”

  I ignored him. He was worried after his girlfriend, that was all. “There's nothing in town. I don't see any trace of her anywhere. And besides, it's likely she's in hiding, wherever she is. The Occupant probably doesn't want to be found until it's gotten its wish.”

  “Right, which is?” He rolled down his window, combing the dark sidewalks as we sped through a residential area.

  “In short? It wants Elizabeth to give it a human body. Basically, it'll grow inside of her and she'll give birth to it. Don't ask me how it works, because even Corvine didn't know. It never got to that point. When the Occupant took control of Enid, he was the one that dealt the killing blow in the asylum lobby. But it's been waiting ever since that night to try this again, and now it's escaped into the world with a new host.”

  Jake glared at me like I'd just wrapped up a particularly offensive telling of “The Aristocrats”. “You're kidding, right?”

  “No. Those are the cliff notes, but if you want the full version you can listen to Corvine's tapes.” I hooked into a McDonald's parking lot and eased into the drive-thru behind a Subaru. “Want anything? I'm going to need more coffee if I'm going to do this.”

  “No,” he replied.

  When we pulled up, I ordered him one anyhow. He looked haggard, and in those moments when rage and anxiety didn't keep him propped up, I noticed him nodding off. I parked and wrenched the lid off of my cup, blowing on the steamy brew. “We're getting nowhere. I suggest we get ahold of Elizabeth's parents. They should know about this, and if they want to, they can involve the authorities. Moreover, there's a possibility that she's gone back there, to see her folks.” />
  Jake bristled, slurping up some coffee. “Her parents?” He rolled his eyes. “Sounds great.”

  “What's the matter? Are they really so bad?”

  He shook his head. “They're just not a fan of me. Never have been. If we go out there, you should probably talk to them alone.”

  Before setting off, I picked up my phone and searched through a handful of local news sites. It occurred to me that a lone, wandering female with black eyes and a penchant for violence might attract some attention from the population, and I hoped to find some story that had broken in the last twenty-four hours which might give us a hint as to Elizabeth's whereabouts.

  Nope.

  Except for a prediction that the rain was set to make a reappearance over the next few days, everything in Northwest Ohio was apparently peachy.

  “Where do her parents live again?” I asked.

  “Out in Swanton. It's a little ways from here. Probably forty minutes.”

  I groaned. Spending more time in the car sounded miserable, and yet I could hardly walk all the way there. “You know the way well?”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “Get on the highway and I'll tell you the exit.”

  Elizabeth's parents probably hadn't seen or heard from their daughter since before her sudden disappearance, but paying them a visit was the only thing I could think of, short of calling the cops and plastering her face all over milk cartons. This wasn't just a normal missing person's case—it was more sensitive than that. For one, the missing person didn't want to be found.

  And for that matter, she wasn't even wholly a person just now.

  Elizabeth was something else. Something monstrous that defied definition. In any other case I'd have called the police and let them handle it, but none of them knew—or would even believe—anything about what Dr. Corvine had set loose upon the world. Jake and I were alone in this.