Forest (The Afterlife Investigations Book 2)

by Ambrose Ibsen

  But it was possible, I wagered, that her parents would be of help. Perhaps Elizabeth had fled back home to hide. Even if they hadn't heard from her, maybe they'd be able to tell me something more about her past or upbringing that would help me connect the dots and figure out what the Occupant sought in its hosts.

  There are a lot of cows and barns in Swanton, but judging from the roadside view after midnight, there's not much more.

  Jake, who was almost too tired to give me solid directions, and who'd spilled more of his coffee onto himself than he'd managed to drink, finally directed me to the house where Elizabeth's parents lived. Their names, he told me, were Dale and Louisa Morrissey. They lived in a large, rectangular thing that I hesitated to call a house. What looked to be stables made up the lower level. Above them there appeared to be three windows, which probably looked out from rooms or apartments. I remembered Elizabeth telling me about this place, about how her parents had taken care of horses here.

  The lawn had only been cut in certain spots near the gravel drive, and the rest looked positively Amazonian. A few large trees, one of which had a frayed tire swing dangling from it, stood in a straight line across the yard, about twenty feet apart. I pictured a young Elizabeth playing on that swing, her orange hair done up in pigtails, her clothes stained in mud and her usual orange headphones dangling from her neck.

  “I'll be back,” I said.

  Jake didn't stir. He was asleep again, and I decided to leave him. If Elizabeth's parents really didn't like him, then there was no sense in bringing him along. He'd only get in the way.

  I started up the gravel drive, a stray cat peeking out from behind a patch of rough, tall grass to mewl, and tried to figure out what I was going to say. “Hi, I'm the professor who encouraged your daughter to visit an abandoned asylum and got her possessed by a monster. Can I come in to chat?”

  This was going to be tough.

  As I drew near, I noticed a light come on in the upstairs. Someone was still awake, at least. From the stables I heard the murmurings of sleepy horses. At the door was a buzzer, which I tapped nervously. The sound it made was harsh, cartoonish, and I thought I heard the horses stir in surprise.

  There was noise in the upstairs. A door closing. Slow footsteps descending the stairs. I heard the deadbolt being unfastened and took a step back, standing up straight and putting on as professional a smile as I could. Seeing as I didn't have any good news to share, I wanted to make my first impression with Elizabeth's folks count.

  A woman in a baggy sweatshirt and matching grey sweatpants answered the door with a mug in her hand. She combed a lock of hair—a greying blonde—behind her ear and smiled awkwardly. She appraised me from a healthy distance, staying more than arm's reach away, in case I was some sort of psycho, and asked in a low voice, “How can I help you?” She glanced for a moment at a watch on her wrist and when her gaze shot back up to me there was understandably an edge of impatience to it.

  “I'm so sorry to bother you,” I began, looking back down the drive at my car, where Jake had slumped back in the passenger seat and was no longer visible. “Erm... My name is Stephen. This will sound strange, but...” I hesitated for longer than was acceptable and she cleared her throat to urge me on.

  I was considering how best to broach the reason for my visit when suddenly I heard footsteps to the back of me.

  It was Jake.

  The woman stepped into the doorway and eyed Jake narrowly. Then, looking to me confusedly, she asked, “Jacob? What're you doing here?” Her gaze bounced between the two of us like a ping pong ball.

  Jake waved to her lazily and stood at my side. “Hey, Mrs. M. How's it going?”

  Zeroing in on Jake, the woman acted like I didn't even exist, and took a step outside, brandishing her mug like a weapon. Some bergamot-scented tea rolled over the edge and onto the ground below. “What're you doing here—especially at such an hour?” she demanded. When answering the door and speaking to me, a perfect stranger, Elizabeth's mother had been relatively cordial. With Jake, though, who she apparently knew quite well, there wasn't any of that. It was straight vitriol, right from the start.

  Jake, having expected this outcome, nudged me aside and stepped up to face the woman, hands in his pockets. “I'm sorry to bug ya, but it's actually pretty important. It's about Elizabeth.”

  She looked past the two of us at my car, frowning. “What? Is she here? Where is she?”

  “That's the thing,” Jake continued with a shrug more casual than the situation warranted. “She's run off again.”

  The mug nearly fell from her grasp. She took some of the piping hot liquid to the knuckles before tossing the remainder onto the ground and setting down the mug in a hurry. Drying her hands off on her pajamas, eyes having widened in alarm, she uttered, “You don't mean...”

  Jake simply nodded.

  I wasn't sure where he was going with this, what shared event in their past he was referencing, but it seemed to be doing the trick, because she promptly stepped aside and ushered us in. “Dale!” she shouted up the stairs. “Get up! It's Elizabeth. She's run off again!”

  20

  We were led up into the lofted apartment. The door at the top of the stairs opened into a modest living room, where a man in a cotton bathrobe—checkered boxers and a white wife beater on beneath—startled at our entrance. He reached towards a little tray beside his recliner and bumped a half-empty can of Busch as his stubby hand sought out the TV remote. Promptly muting what appeared to be a rerun of Survivor, he blinked at us with almost zero recognition. Then, his brow wrinkling and the top of his balding head growing a shade redder, he thrust a finger Jake's way. “What's he doing here, Louisa?”

  Elizabeth's mother shut the door behind her and locked it, appearing roughly ten times as flustered as she had only moments ago, downstairs, judging solely by the way she kept messing with her hair. Rolling up her sleeves, she ignored her husband and instead accosted Jake. “Well, what's happened? When did she leave?”

  I was feeling a little left out. Jake nodded in my direction and filled them in, though his description of events left me scratching my head. “This is professor Barlow, from the university. He was nice enough to give me a ride out here. Anyway, Elizabeth left at some point yesterday. She left me a note, saying that she was going out to look for her parents. Said she'd be back by the end of the break. I don't think she took her phone—I haven't been able to get ahold of her. A friend must've given her a ride, but I don't know who.”

  Louisa sat on the armrest of her husband's recliner, pawing at her cheeks. “Not again...”

  I couldn't help but voice my confusion, and asked Jake, “Wait, Elizabeth wanted someone to bring her here?”

  Jake shot me daggers, a look that said, “No, you idiot. Shut up and play along.” He cleared his throat. “No, she went looking for her birth parents again.”

  Dale sniffed at the air, pulling the edges of his robe closed and crossing his legs. “Elizabeth was adopted, and a few years back she got it into her mind that she needed to know where she came from. Wanted to connect with her birth parents.” He kneaded his hands, met his wife's anxious gaze with one of his own. “She ran away from home for about a week during one summer in high school. Worried us half to death.” The man's gaze firmed up again, and he eyed Jake like a junkyard dog. “She ran off the first time, I seem to recall, because a certain someone put the idea in her head, encouraged her. When the cops tracked her down, Jacob here was the one driving the car.”

  Jake knew how to take his lumps. He didn't deny it, didn't make excuses, but simply continued. “Well, it wasn't me this time. I didn't tell her a thing, didn't take her anywhere. She went off on her own. But you know how she gets when this topic comes up...”

  Louisa looked to be on the verge of pulling out her hair. “We should call the police. Have them search for her.”

  Clicking his tongue, Jake countered, “No, that's not gonna work this time. She's not a teenager anymore. She's a legal ad
ult, and she went out of her own free will. But it's possible we could find her ourselves. I mean, before she gets too deep into this.”

  I was reeling. First of all, I hadn't known Elizabeth to be adopted. She'd never once mentioned such a thing. Beyond that, I wasn't sure where Jake was going with all of this. When we were through here, I was going to have a lot of questions to ask him.

  “She doesn't know where to look,” said Louisa. “She doesn't know anything about her birth parents—because there isn't anything to know. We promised her, a year or two ago, that we'd contact the adoption agency, see if we couldn't get ahold of that information, but they had so little that we didn't think it worthwhile. And anyway, there'd always been an understanding that her parents had been...” She paused, her hands trembling as she took hold of her husband's arm. “Frankly, I don't know why she ever wanted to know about them after what they did to her. They were horrible people.”

  Dale rose from the chair and left the room, shuffling into what looked like a bedroom at the end of a hall. When he returned some minutes later, a crinkled envelope in hand, he cursed under his breath. “This is the best we've got. Only found the mother's name, place of birth.”

  Louisa continued. “When Elizabeth came to us, she was in a bad way. That is, she'd been thoroughly, thoroughly abused by her birth parents. She'd been taken from them by the authorities and placed into foster care after an incident where she'd almost been beaten to death. Her development was somewhat stunted as a result of all the abuse, and she was some years in recovering from the trauma. They'd hurt her so badly she'd slipped briefly into a coma.”

  This sounded eerily familiar to a story I'd heard from Elizabeth before. “She was in a coma?” I asked. “W-Was she blind, Elizabeth?”

  Her parents looked at me like I was insane. “No,” uttered Dale. “Why?”

  I shot Jake a nervous look, which he returned with a squirm of discomfort.

  Louisa elaborated further. “We brought her home at six years old, with the understanding that she had a lot of trauma in her past. She had to undergo years of therapy to block out the things that'd happened to her, and I never expected her to want to know about her birth parents. But then, one day, she started asking about them. And she never stopped.”

  “The boy here,” added Dale, pointing at Jake with the envelope, “helped her out. They took his father's car out on a road trip in search of answers. But we didn't know that. We thought she'd been kidnapped. The two of them ended up getting hauled home after an Amber Alert was issued and we found out about what they'd been getting up to, planning some massive road trip.”

  “We've been through this before,” Jake stressed. “I just want the same thing you guys do—to make sure that Elizabeth is safe, OK? That's why I came to you guys first.”

  Slipping a finger into the envelope and loosing its contents, Dale scanned a photocopied page inside. “Awhile back, we inquired at the adoption agency—filed an official request for more information about her birth parents. They couldn't give us a whole lot. Something about an incomplete record. They had a name, a probable place of birth and that was all.”

  “What did they give you?” asked Jake. “Maybe it'll help us track her down.”

  From the page, Dale read stiffly, “Mother's name, Ophelia Lancaster. Father, unknown. Birthplace, Milsbourne—unincorporated town—Michigan, United States.” He shrugged. “That's all.”

  I froze at the mention of the surname “Lancaster”. “May I see that?” I asked Dale. He looked at me like he was wondering what business of mine this was, but handed it over. I had a look at it myself, the name practically jumping off of the page at me. Ophelia Lancaster.

  Was that supposed to be a coincidence, that Elizabeth's birth mother had just so happened to share Enid's last name? It was entirely possible, I supposed, but I'd gone far down the rabbit hole and knew better than to believe in coincidences. I made a mental note of the paper's contents, committed to memory the name of this birthplace, Milsbourne, and then handed the slip back to Dale.

  “Where's this Milsbourne place at?” asked Jake.

  Louisa shook her head. “As far as we know, it doesn't exist. It might have been a typo.”

  “I should get dressed,” said Dale, tucking the envelope into his pocket and kicking off the slippers he wore. “We need to try and find her. No good will come of her trying to find out more about those people.”

  Louisa agreed, picking up her phone. “I'm going to call the police,” she said. “I want to know if they can help in some way. Maybe they can—”

  “It won't do any good,” replied Jake. “She's a legal adult. They won't go looking for her because she's gone of her own free will. It would be better if I went and found her. I'll bring her back here, I promise. The professor here can give me a lift, and I'll—”

  “No, absolutely not,” spat Dale. “I thank this, uh... professor here for his help in getting you to us, but this is a family matter and you've got no place in it. We'll take care of our daughter. You've done enough. You've never been a very good influence on her, Jacob, and I'd prefer it if you two saw other people.”

  Jake was losing his cool. Fists balled in the pocket of his hoodie, I noticed a vein popping out of his neck. He looked like he was about to lash out and clock the portly guy when, suddenly, Louisa gasped. The phone in her hand had started to ring.

  Staring down at her cell with eyes the size of saucers, Louisa hurriedly picked it up. “H-Hello?”

  “Who is it?” hissed Dale, sidling up to her.

  “It's Elizabeth,” muttered Louisa before continuing the call. “S-Sweetie? Is that you?” She sighed a little, her shaky legs giving way so that she plopped hard onto an olive green love seat. “Oh, sweetheart, I can barely hear you. It sounds like you're calling from a tunnel or something. Are you all right? We were worried sick. Where are you?” There was a long pause as Louisa listened. Then, a faint smile spanned her lips, and she sighed again. “Oh, thank goodness. We were so worried, dear. Your... er, Jacob came by just a little bit ago and told us you'd gone. We were worried half to death!” She spared Jake a frown. “I'm glad you're all right. Would you like to speak to your father?”

  Dale reached for the phone and tried to grab it out of her hands, but she didn't hand it over.

  “What's that?” asked Louisa. “W-Well, yes, he's right here, actually. You want to speak to him?” She sent another sidelong glance Jake's way and then gulped, extending the phone to him. “Elizabeth would like to speak to you.”

  Jake turned a nervous gaze to me, like he wanted to know whether it was OK for him to talk on the phone. I urged him on with a nod and he took the cell from Louisa, placing it to his ear. “Hey, babe,” he said, though his voice was weighed down by suspicion.

  Jake was a big guy, a former athlete with a formidable stature. Blessed with a wide, thick frame and a good deal of muscle, he wasn't exactly the kind of guy you'd ever expect to spook easily. But as he stood there on the phone, his face went a shade paler. He listened for a little while and then, when the speaker conceivably finished relaying its message to him—I wasn't sure that it was really Elizabeth he was speaking to—he handed the phone back mechanically.

  Louisa and Dale took turns speaking on the phone for a few more minutes before hanging up and drawing in deep, relieved breaths. “It turns out she decided not to go after all,” announced Louisa. “She decided she's no longer curious about her birth parents, wants to focus on the here and now, rather than her dark past. I told her I thought that was wise.” She cast Jake a troubled look. “What did she want to say to you?”

  Jake twitched at the question, like he suddenly realized where he was, and fought to regain his composure. “Uh... She said that she wants to see other people...” He shot me a glance that told me he was lying, and then forced a weak smile.

  Dale and Louisa both were surprised by this, but didn't exactly voice their disapproval. Louisa looked like she was going to talk about how it was “just as well�
� that the two young lovers go their separate ways when Jake beat them to the punch.

  “I'm sorry I came by tonight and scared you guys for nothing. Let's go, professor.” We gave hasty goodbyes and were seen out. I marched alongside Jake to the car, who was walking with a slight limp as though he'd been stunned.

  When we'd made it out to the main street and I saw Louisa had closed the door to the house, I floored it. “OK, what the hell just happened in there? How much of that was true and how much of it was lies? Spill it.”

  21

  “Was that really Elizabeth on the phone?” I asked.

  Jake shook his head but said nothing more.

  I worked through everything else we'd discussed at the Morrissey's place, speeding down a dark country road towards God knew where. “All right, so that little yarn Elizabeth spun about her being blind and getting her eyesight back—that was bullshit, huh?”

  “Not entirely,” he muttered. “I mean, she was never blind, no. But she did have a near-death experience. She's always liked to tell stories like that—rile people up. It's her way of approaching the darkness in her past. I guess she gets a kick out of it.”

  “No, for sure, that's hilarious.” I rolled my eyes. “So, what the hell is this about your disappearing with her in search of her birth parents? And why the hell didn't you mention that she'd been adopted?” I struck the wheel, so pissed off that I could have spit at him. “After everything we've been through you just decided to keep me out of the loop? To lie?”

  “Cool it,” he said. “For what it's worth, I never thought that this kind of thing would happen. I didn't expect Elizabeth to end up...” He shuddered and palmed at his black eye. “Once, yes, the two of us went on a trip. I took my dad's car and offered to try and find her birth parents. They lived in a place with a lot of trees, where the houses were mostly cabins, she remembered. And there was something else—a cave. A real deep cave. That was all she remembered about the place—all she hadn't been able to block out—prior to getting shipped out of there.” He shrugged. “Anyway, we were young, and stupid, and I didn't think anything of it. I just wanted her to like me. So, one day, we just started driving. She thought it might have been in the south, maybe in Hocking Hills or something like that. We didn't find the place she'd been born, though, and got caught by the cops before we could make any headway.