Accepting his marching orders, Jake shook off his fatigue and sat back in the passenger seat, staring down at the phone intently.
One way or another—whether we had to wait till we got to Milsbourne or found her walking on the side of the road—we were going to find Elizabeth. For a time, the two of us were silent, but for once, it wasn't a brooding silence. We were happy. The movement on the GPS app was promising; Elizabeth was still out there somewhere, was probably still alive, and in one piece. After not knowing what'd become of her for so long, this new data made for some welcome news.
We drove on.
Jake refreshed the app consistently, reporting to me any changes in Elizabeth's movements. It turned out there wasn't much for him to report, however; her movements were largely in line with our own, which caused me to look repeatedly into my back seat. It almost felt like she was riding along with us. I kept my eyes peeled for any curious pedestrian along the way, for any stooped, aberrant form limping on the horizon, but there were none. Traffic thinned out to nothing as the sun went down and my headlights could barely punch holes in the dense Michigan darkness.
Every time I glanced down at the map showing Elizabeth's movements, I felt a chill rushing down my spine. The particular movements she made almost made it seem as though she were somehow aware of our route, and was adjusting so as to avoid us. That Elizabeth could see the two of us then—or rather, that the thing that now dwelt in her could—shook me to the marrow. I was reminded of Jane's talk, of her insistence that the Occupant could see the world through my eyes because I'd had a passing acquaintance with death.
It made me want to shut my eyes, to drift into a long, deep sleep.
I stared out at the road ahead, squinting through the murky night. The rain was on its way back, and a series of fat raindrops signaled the start of another downpour. I hit the wipers and held the wheel between my knees, taking a few moments to wipe at my aching brow and to pop a pair of Tylenol I'd picked up for fifty cents at a gas station after lunch. I chased the pills with cold coffee and then coasted into the right lane, slowing down.
The scenery here was desolate. A few large buildings—hulking shells ruined by the years—rose blackly against the skies on both sides of us, their silhouettes given added depth by the faint moonlight. Grass, overgrown to a ludicrous degree, tossed and flopped as the winds picked up. On the shoulder to my right I spied the remnants of a blown tire, some skid marks.
“Do you feel that?” I asked Jake. He'd been staring down at the screen of his phone sleepily, and tapped the refresh button. Glancing up at me, he gave a weak shake of the head. “It feels like we're being watched,” I pressed.
This feeling was nothing new. Paranoia is part and parcel of investigations like this one, and I'd come to know it well. And yet as I squirmed in my seat, the seatbelt suddenly feeling so tight that it might cut into my chest, I couldn't banish the suspicion that there was something to it this time. I shut my eyes, then opened them. Shut them, then opened them. Is something staring out into the world from inside of you? Is that what you're feeling?
I looked into my back seat, glanced into the rearview to survey the miles of dark road we'd left behind. Nothing. The closest headlights were distant, and the lights of the nearest town were further still. We were utterly alone, the two of us, and should have felt like it, but the feeling persisted in the face of this fact anyhow.
Jake frowned as he looked down at the screen. Holding up the phone beside my own, he seemed to compare the map on it to the one I was using to navigate. “Uh... professor, I think...” He nudged me with his elbow. “Look at this. I think we're getting close to her. Like... real close.”
I slowed down further, studying the two maps one after the other. Sure enough, there looked to be some overlap occurring. We were within a mile, give or take, of Elizabeth. She seemed a bit ahead of us, but as best I could tell she was traveling on—or immediately beside—the very road we now found ourselves on. “OK,” I said, making sure there weren't any other cars nearby and tapping the gas. “Let's try and catch up. Keep refreshing it, see if she doesn't do anything weird.”
The rain started falling harder. I cranked up the wipers and turned on the air to keep the windshield from getting fogged up. Staring straight out, I searched for another car, or else a human form, in the murk. None immediately appeared, but Jake's growing discomfort told me that one must be drawing near.
“We're getting closer,” he said, looking at the two maps in turn. “I think...” He looked out his window, tried to see past the crashing rain. “It looks like we're almost on top of each other.”
It was then, as those words left his lips, that something entered into view on our left. My headlights caught the very edge of a human form, and a flash of rain-slick orange hair gave my heart a jolt from the very first. Someone was walking along the shoulder of the road, head down and limbs hanging limp at their sides.
But they were walking backwards.
I skidded to a stop just in time to catch the figure turning towards me. It looked through my window, slipped out of my headlights, and suddenly stopped moving.
Jake and I both saw a young woman with long, orange hair facing us from the shoulder. She was wearing a tattered black T-shirt and a pair of soaked jeans that clung to her legs. She was missing one shoe.
“Elizabeth...” whispered Jake.
He whispered it, rather than shouted it, because he knew, as I did, that the thing standing outside was not Elizabeth.
From behind matted orange hair I spotted two black eyes that stood out from her pale complexion. Her limbs twitched, but not for the damp and the cold. Hers was a body filled by something alien; something that had not yet grown accustomed to its new vessel.
My hands squeezed the wheel and time seemed to slow to a crawl. Jake and I didn't move. Neither did the thing outside my window. We merely stared, waiting for the other to make the first move.
Ultimately, it was the Occupant who reacted first. Taking slow, unsteady steps through the pouring rain, the figure sidled up to the car, to the driver's side door, and placed a hand against the window. Its fingers rapped against the glass as if to get my attention, and a voice drifted in from outside.
“Won't you let me in?”
I couldn't exhale; my breath was trapped in my lungs and my chest began to burn.
“Won't you let me in?” came the voice again, this time from what my ears fancied was a different direction.
The doors were locked, thank God, but as I tried to calm the racing of my heart I knew that a mere door wasn't going to keep this thing out. The rapping continued, and the figure leaned in towards my window, its black eyes widening, staring directly at me.
Then came the tapping at the rear window.
And at the passenger window.
On the roof of the car.
All at once, I saw pale hands rapping against the car from every direction, and a chorus of breathy, wind-borne voices all asking, “Won't you let me in?” Mixed in among them—though it may have only been the howl of the wind—I thought I could make out an undercurrent of terrible wails.
The voices of the dead. I grit my teeth so hard I thought I felt one of my molars crack.
This voice—these voices—were like what I'd heard on one of the tapes. At best, it was a perverse imitation of Elizabeth's voice. At worst, it was the voice of a nightmare made flesh, possessed of a deep, inhuman edge that seeped into my ears like syrup even from outside the car.
“Won't you let me in?” Its tapping on the car from every direction grew louder, more insistent. As though it sported a thousand arms, I found an impossible concentration of hands crowding in from every angle, each of them engaged in a persistent knocking.
Jake didn't move. His face had lost all color and his back was pressed into his seat. He was bolt upright—and all the tiredness was gone from his eyes, too. They'd been thrust open in terror and quivered in their sockets like hard-boiled eggs plucked too soon from the water.
>
I did the only thing I could think of.
I drove.
As I mashed the gas, the Cavalier sprang forward, cutting through the downpour. The spectral forms all around us vanished at once, and the sounds of their tapping fingers were replaced by the near-deafening cacophony of the heavy rain. I swerved, barely managed to keep from hydroplaning, and then gunned it down the road.
For some minutes, while the fright still held sway over us, we did not speak. Now and then Jake would look down at the phone in his limp hand, his thumb moving to refresh the results. I almost warned him not to, didn't really care to know the thing's location, but a minute or two into our flight, he loosed a whimper. “Up... up ahead,” he murmured.
I had only to look ten yards ahead to glimpse the red-haired figure shambling towards the car from the shoulder. I hit the brake, nearly spinning out, and watched in abject horror as the thing, walking backwards through the torrential rain, turned and began crawling onto the hood of my car. Leveling its face against the windshield—so close that its black, featureless eyes might have left smudges—I watched its lips crease into a smile. The wipers bumped against its arms as it stared in on us, palms pressed to the glass.
The voice returned. Louder and deeper this time. It was nothing like Elizabeth's. It was a growling voice—the voice of an animal seeking to mimic the speech of a man. “It's all right,” droned the specter in the windshield. “It's all right. I'm already inside you, aren't I?” With a pale finger, the thing pointed at one of its large, black eyes—and then pulled down its lower lid very slightly to bare the ebon orb in its trembling entirety. “I'm right here. Right. Here.” A nauseous laugh came through the glass and hung in the air. The air in the car was beyond stifling—I couldn't have breathed it if I'd wanted to.
Elizabeth's mouth fell open wide—more like a boa constrictor than a human being—and a fat, pale tongue lashed out against the windshield. It continued to laugh, and from all around us the wailing started up once again. Eyes unblinking, it clung to the hood like an enormous insect.
The Occupant is like the spider that sits in the center of the web.
Somehow, my foot left the brake and I sped down the road, the figure rolling off the hood and disappearing into the darkness. Squeezing the wheel until my palms went raw, I charged down the highway, nearly striking an oncoming semi, which honked as it swerved past. My bald tires skipped over the wet roads and the engine could be heard to make an unpleasant grinding noise as I pushed it to its limits. The needle on my speedometer jolted all the way to the right and I didn't slow down until we'd nearly reached the Mackinac Bridge almost forty minutes later. By that point the car was getting hot and my arms were pulsing for the force with which I'd clutched the wheel.
When we got into Mackinaw City, I parked at a well-lit 24-hour McDonald's and took in the bright fluorescents beaming down from the streetlamps above like a cat soaking up the sun on a windowsill. My entire upper body trembled as I finally let go of the wheel. I absentmindedly sought out my smokes and lighter but only managed to drop both, my hands were shaking so badly.
I turned to Jake. I hadn't spoken to him since we'd gunned it. He'd dropped his phone along the way and was just staring through the windshield, into the McDonald's, completely slack-jawed. His color hadn't fully returned yet.
“Are you OK?” I managed, reaching down and giving his leg a nudge. I pulled my hand away quickly, finding his pant leg damp. He'd pissed himself.
He turned to me, his expression as glassy as it had been when I'd first found him at the dorm upon my return from Hiawatha, and shook his head.
Not that I was surprised. I wasn't doing too well myself. We sat in silence for a long while, waiting for the adrenaline to subside.
26
When we could finally walk and had regained control of our wits, we shuffled into the McDonald's and cleaned up in the restroom. I splashed water onto my face, all but gave myself a bath in the sink, and Jake followed suit, washing his pants and using the electric hand dryer to dry them off. After that, we made our way out to the dining area and I somehow managed to string enough words together to order us a handful of McNuggets and fries that we barely touched.
If anything, we just wanted to sit in that brightly-lit dining room. There were some other people—truckers and late-night travelers—sitting around the place, eating and conversing. They looked at us like we were lepers, probably wondered if we were strung out. I couldn't blame them. Glimpsing myself in the mirror I almost hadn't recognized myself. The fright in the car had almost seemed to age me, to permanently alter my expression. It was some time before I was feeling—and thinking—like myself.
“We're on the right track,” I offered, when conversation finally seemed possible again. “It's headed to Milsbourne. Instead of laying low, the thing decided to come out of the woodwork and scare us. But it fucked up, because now we know what it's really up to.” I was trying really hard to make recent events into some sort of moral victory, and Jake was hearing none of it.
“We don't know anything,” he said, pinching a french fry between his thumb and pointer. “Not a single thing. We crossed State lines on a hunch because we wanted to find Elizabeth, but that thing knew where we were. It found us. Toyed with us. We're still eating out of its hand, walking into some sort of trap.” He ran a hand through his hair. “If it had wanted to hurt us and remain hidden, it would have been able to break through one of the car windows, no problem.”
The Occupant was wheeling around in Elizabeth's body, but like a K Car with a Bugatti engine under the hood, the girl was deceptively powerful. Inhumanly powerful. In some ways we weren't tracing a missing person, but a walking, talking weapon of mass destruction. And that was only the beginning. If the Occupant got its way and managed to score a physical body all its own in this deal, there was no telling what might happen. For all I knew we were going to end up with a full-blown Antichrist situation. Nothing borne of that monstrosity's essence was going to be one of the good guys.
I had to concede that Jake had a point. The list of coincidences we'd encountered had led me to head up North again, but rather than following a trail of breadcrumbs, these leads of ours had all been nefariously linked into a single length of rope, and we had it tied around our necks. It was all we could do to keep from getting dragged to the finish line. We didn't know the Occupant's end-game, or why it was heading into Michigan. We just wanted Elizabeth back.
I pinched the back of my hand, left the skin red. “We're still alive, kid. And even though she's got some major problems, so is Elizabeth. We're going to get through this and everything will be fine. We'll laugh about it someday, honest!” Well, no, that part was a damn lie. No one was ever going to do any laughing about this Occupant business if we somehow managed to pull through. “But, look, we're in a good position. Compared to everyone else in the past thirty years who's been associated with this thing, we have the most knowledge. We've gotten closer to tracing this monster back to its source than anyone. We know about Corvine, we know about this Jamieson Monroe guy. The pieces are going to come together any minute now and we're going to find a way to send that thing back to hell.”
Jake was still unconvinced. “How do we even know that we can do anything for Elizabeth now?” he asked, a faint tremble antagonizing his lower lip. “The last girl who got possessed by the Occupant, Enid, got killed at the asylum. Remember? By the doctor. If he'd known of some other way to help the girl, then why didn't he spare her?”
It was a question worth asking, and I could see where he was going with it from a mile away.
“Are we going to have to kill Elizabeth?” he asked.
“No, no. Knock it off with that nonsense. We're not killing anyone,” I said, keeping my voice down.
“What if there's no other way to stop it?” he challenged. “What then? Are you going to try and do what the doctor did? Bash her brains in?” He was talking a little too loud and attracting the curious gazes of the other patrons.
“That other girl, Enid, who was a host for the Occupant. She tried to escape the asylum after her rampage. Where was she trying to run to?” asked Jake. “Do you think she was trying to leave the asylum so that she could go to Michigan, too?”
I paused to consider. “Yeah, maybe.” Only Enid herself would have been able to answer that question, though Corvine's interest in Milsbourne told me it was a very real possibility. Jake then posed the question that was on my mind.
“What's up there? Why is it drawn to the woods—to this ghost town?”
My imagination had no trouble filling in the nightmarish imagery I expected to find there, but I ultimately shrugged him off. “I don't know yet. And something tells me that, once we get there, we're gonna wish we hadn't found out in the first place. But for now, let's just focus on one thing. Let's get there and see for ourselves.” I stood up and he soon joined me. We hiked out to the car and buckled up. I'd charged my phone briefly inside the McDonald's and put the juiced up device into its dock on my dash so that I could see where I was going. When the map had fully loaded, I pulled out of the lot.
Forest (The Afterlife Investigations Book 2) Page 15