What was Eli's game? Was he on the Occupant's side, seeking to protect it? It seemed like a real possibility. Why else would he be so secretive? For that matter, how did his family line figure into all of this—why did the Occupant have such a strong taste for the women of the Lancaster lineage?
If Eli Lancaster wasn't going to talk—and I felt sure he wasn't—then we had nowhere else to look for answers but in old Milsbourne itself. It wasn't likely that a worm-eaten, abandoned mining town in the middle of the woods would yield much in the way of clues, however Eli's insistence that we stay away inspired in me a minor hope that we'd find some lead worth following there.
“Get some sleep,” ordered Jane, marching back to her room. “We're setting out in the morning. Early.”
Jake and I didn't feel much like sleeping just then—believe me, nothing wakes you up like having a gun shoved in your face—but somehow, a few minutes after dimming the lights, we were both able to drift off. I extended the leg rest and fell asleep with my hands in my lap, open-mouthed. Snoring till an hour past dawn, I awoke to a parched tongue, sore throat, and to Jane's cutting gaze. The look in her eyes was every bit as intense as it'd been the night before—rather than sleep, it seemed to me she'd stayed up all night stoking the flames of her anger.
She tossed a foil-wrapped pair of toaster pastries at me and Jake and then started pouring fresh coffee into mugs. “Get your asses up. Got work to do.”
8
Jane devised the day's itinerary over Pop-Tarts and strong coffee.
She stuffed bags full of the gear she had on hand and explained that we'd have to make a pitstop at a general store some twenty miles away for a few other items. Among the things she'd already owned were knives, backpacks, guns, ammunition, jugs of purified water and boxes of edibles such as protein bars and beef jerky. There was also a large tent—big enough, she insisted, to fit all three of us comfortably.
Hauling these bags into the bed of her truck, Jane returned to the kitchen table and slurped up a mouthful of coffee as she drew an invisible map across the table with her finger. I didn't know what landmarks she was describing but it was clear she was able to picture it all very clearly in her mind. “I know a route into the woods that should keep us pretty well-hidden most of the way.” She tapped one corner of the table and began to trace a more or less straight line some distance in. “It'll be a half-day march till we get to the mines, and even then, we may have to go farther still in order to hit the right town. I don't know that I've ever been to Milsbourne, so we'll have to keep our eyes peeled for any useful landmarks.” She drew a circle with her fingertip at the table's center. “Now, once we get there, we're going to establish a camp. We'll find some dry land, preferably up on the hills where we'll have a good vantage point. That'll help us keep an eye out for Eli and his thugs—or anything else we might encounter in the woods.”
The way she said that last part, I knew she wasn't much concerned about bears or wolves.
She continued. “I don't know what Eli is going to be doing in the woods, if he's gone there at all. If he has, then it's possible he and his goons will get the jump on the Occupant. Maybe they'll put her down and save us the trouble.” Ignoring Jake's protestations, she lectured on. “Otherwise, maybe we'll luck out and the ol' girl will cut down all of those bastards, tiring herself out. I wouldn't mind an easy target.”
I was confident that Jane knew the woods and that she'd be able to get us where we needed to go. What I feared, though, was what we'd actually do once we got there. For starters, I'd been briefly lost in the woods at night, and knew how easy it was to fall sway to a paralyzing terror. Once we set foot within that forest, we were on the Occupant's turf—would be as helpless as we'd been while wandering blind in Chaythe Asylum.
Then there was the threat posed by Eli. I had no doubt that he'd make good on his promise to gun us down if we crossed paths in the woods. What his motivations were—whether he was aligned with the Occupant or against it—I couldn't be sure, but that he and his men represented a potent danger was a given. The absolute worst thing I could think of would be to wander into the woods in the hopes of saving Elizabeth only to get gunned down by one of those assholes. Talk about anti-climactic.
It was decided that Jake would be our pack mule, and the bulk of the supplies were packed onto his back for a quick test run. He managed to carry his load without complaint, though whether his muscular frame would be able to manage a half-day's hike under such weigh remained to be seen. Jane talked up his strength, made fun of me for being comparatively puny, though in her assigning him the role of mule, I suspected she had an ulterior motive.
It'd been clear for some time that Jane and Jake didn't see eye to eye on the matter of how to deal with Elizabeth. For her part, Jane probably thought it best to weigh Jake down, to handicap him, so that—in the event of an encounter with the thing—she'd be able to outrun him and take down the Occupant without opposition.
Jake wanted to save his girlfriend, to find some way to exorcise the Occupant so that we could bring Elizabeth home with us. Jane, on the other hand, wanted to kill her, and wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger if the opportunity presented itself. I saw the reason behind both stances but, forced to choose right then and there, would not have been able to put myself in either camp. Elizabeth was a student of mine, and I felt responsible, at least partially, for this mess she was now in. Still, allowing her to live—and allowing the Occupant to use her body—would result in horrors hitherto only whispered of.
For the hundredth time—or maybe the thousandth—I tried not to think of that inevitable decision and instead focused on the plan Jane was hatching. When she'd mapped out the route in her head, estimated our general time of arrival in the proximity of what she expected would be Milsbourne, she led us out to the truck. Our next stop was the general store.
We rode on in silence. I thought to switch on the radio—to turn on a news program to figure out what was going on in the world, at least—but Jane batted my hand away from the dial and we sat quietly instead. When we finally arrived at the general store, which reminded me of some antiquated trading post straight out of a western movie, Jane hesitated before letting us out of the truck. “Come on,” she said after a brief pause. “I'll need help carrying stuff.”
The squat building lacked air conditioning. That wouldn't have been a problem for me, except that I'd gotten a nice dose of the spring warmth on the ride in and felt like I was overheating. Three big windows spanned the front wall of the place, and on the other side of them I spied a long counter, atop which was perched a single cash register. It was a black, metallic thing—nothing digital about it. Standing at the counter was a rough-looking bearded man. He was leafing through a newspaper and glanced up at us only briefly as we stepped inside. A ragged length of yarn with a pair of rusted bells on one end was tied to the inside of the door, and they jingled discordantly as we shuffled in.
This “general store” had a little bit of everything on its dusty, sagging shelves. There were tinned foods, basic camping supplies, a limited selection of fishing rods and lures, a large, humming cooler packed with tubs of bait worms, bottles of cheap beer well past their sell-by dates and other junk. It wasn't exactly a Whole Foods.
Jane led us towards the back, our shoes squeaking against the dirty, bubbling linoleum, and to a section stocked with miscellaneous electronic goods. She scooped up a few packs of Duracells to keep our flashlights going. In the meantime, I perused the other stuff on offer. There was a lone boombox—big, black and rectangular—gathering dust on the uppermost shelf. The model on the front of the sun-bleached box looked sort of like Vanilla Ice in his prime, and the boombox itself was probably at least as old. There were a few newer items to be found—handheld radios, charging cables for cell phones long out of production. On the next shelf over were several boxes of Topps baseball cards—dated to 1997—and a Scottie Pippen action figure, posed mid-dunk.
I was about to delve into the next she
lf, burdened with Petoskey stones and cheap plastic beach toys, when Jane thrust a handful of items into my hand. “What's this stuff for?” I asked. She'd handed me a few bottles with faded labels, a pack of what looked to be band-aids, and more.
“A makeshift first-aid kit,” she said. “Bandages, pain killers. Some bottles of rubbing alcohol, iodine. Gauze, tape. You'll be carrying this stuff.”
“The team medic. I like it.” I followed her to the next aisle, where she sized up a few boxes of cereal and tins of tuna. Either the contents were as worn out as the containers, or else Jane decided the food she'd packed was good enough, because she decided not to buy any. She led us to the register, taking a couple of bills from a billfold and handing them to the bearded man behind the counter, who looked at the junk in my hands and did some mental math. When he'd finished calculating the cost of our purchases, he leaned on the register, hit some button on it three or four times, and opened the drawer to fish out some change. Handing Jane a few small bills and nickels, he shut the drawer with his hip and we left. Not a word had been exchanged—no “have a nice day” or anything of the kind.
We were back out in the sunlight, walking to the truck. “Think this place is on Yelp?” I asked Jake.
He grinned.
Jane took a few moments packing all of the new acquisitions into our bags and then threw open the passenger side door, waving us in. “Let's get to it,” she said.
We both knew what that meant. I couldn't help but drag my feet as I approached the truck. Great. It's time to re-enter those dark woods again.
It was a lovely day for a hike, and under any other circumstances I might've been jazzed about spending the day outdoors. Though the sunlight was a little too warm for my likes, the breeze was pleasant and the skies were clear. I put on my seatbelt as I sat between Jake and our grim-faced driver, and reminded myself of what we'd be faced with when the sun set some hours from now.
I looked to the roadside, to the clustered trees that popped up in virtually every direction. Where there was no road or building, there were trees.
And in between those trees, very soon, would grow a maddening darkness.
The truck started onto the main road, weaving a bit as Jane pulled open a bottle of water and took a deep drink.
“How far are we? From this path you're talking about?” I asked.
Jane answered without missing a beat, like she'd been doing the arithmetic in her head at that very moment. “Forty minutes. It's a little roundabout, but it should get us to where we're going.”
A part of me wished the starting point for our hike was closer; forty minutes was a lot of time to sit and think about all of the things that could go wrong.
Jake was on a similar wave-length, hands sandwiched between his knees and gaze pasted to the green, fluttering scenery outside the window. There wasn't enough room for all of us to exist comfortably in the cabin of the truck, but to his credit, he didn't complain about being cooped up against me. Stretching his long legs as best he could, he sighed and asked no one in particular, “Do you think she's OK?”
“I'm sure Elizabeth's fine,” was my reply, delivered so fast I wasn't even sure I bought it myself.
Jane chortled. “Fine? I doubt it.”
Jake and I looked to her—he with alarm, I with annoyance.
“What do you think she's going through?” asked Jake. “You were possessed by the Occupant once, right? But now you're OK. What was it like, back then?”
Jane scratched at her scalp like she was fixing to uproot her blonde locks, evidently bothered by the question—or the remembrance—but she quickly composed herself and placed both hands on the wheel. “It's, uh... It was different in my case,” she said, giving Jake a sidelong glance. “It didn't want me. Not the way it wanted Enid, or your girlie. I wasn't a good fit. But it did take up residence for a little while. Off and on.” She tapped her forehead. “While it was in there, it was unlike anything I've ever experienced. Imagine being smothered inside your own body.” She shuddered, taking a pack of cigarettes from her pocket but then putting them back. “What she's going through must be loads worse, though.”
“Why's that?” asked Jake.
“Because it wants her for keeps.”
Jane's words hung in the air for some time. I tried to think of something I could say to ease Jake's worry, but came up empty-handed. Nothing was going to help this shit sandwich go down.
“What happens if...” Jake trailed off, but Jane knew more or less where he was going.
“If the Occupant uses her to make itself a new body? I don't know, but I have a guess. Whatever happens, I don't imagine it's going to be good for the host, you know?” She shook her head, eased into a right turn. “A thing like that will probably kill its host. I'm not even sure it'll be a pregnancy in the usual sense—could take nine months, could take less. But even if she somehow survived all of this, your girlfriend isn't going to be the same person. Once that thing has been inside of you, it ruins you. Believe me, I know first-hand. I've been through a lot of shit in my life, but till my dying day I'll never be able to fully put the Occupant behind me.”
“Elizabeth is a fighter,” said Jake. His voice wavered like he didn't really buy it, so he said it a second time, more forcefully. “She's a fighter. I think she'll pull through. We just need to get to her and maybe try an exorcism.”
“An exorcism?” I fought back the urge to laugh. “I'll give Father Merrin a call.”
Jane simply shook her head. “There's no exorcising the Occupant, kid. The Occupant, in some small way, exists in all of us. It's in that dark space—the one in the corner of your eye—always looking out. It doesn't sleep. The only thing we can do—and the only thing the girl would want us to do—is put her down.”
Whether Jake had finally made peace with this, or whether he was deep in thought, searching for some as yet unnamed alternative, I couldn't be sure.
Meanwhile, the foliage flanking both sides of the road was getting thicker.
9
We arrived at our destination.
Getting there involved a bit of off-roading. Jane took the pickup down a dirt path that wound some miles off of a main road, and then into a narrow corridor of overgrown grass, at the end of which was something like a dirt parking lot. The recent rain had left this patch of ground rather wet, and the dense tree cover had kept the bulk of the moisture in place, resulting in a thick layer of shoe-grasping mud.
She threw the truck into park and nodded at the scene through the windshield. “This will take us to where we want to go. A good eight or nine hours north and we'll hit the edge of the mines. Could be a little farther than that before we hit Milsbourne; I've only gone up this way once or twice, and never to look specifically for a town.”
Jake and I stepped out, stretching our legs. I leaned against the side of the vehicle, worked my knees and shoulders till they cracked. Draping a backpack over one shoulder and a loosely-packed duffel full of medical supplies across my chest, I took a deep breath. The stuff didn't feel too heavy and I imagined it wouldn't slow me down.
The way ahead was curiously dark, the thick foliage swaying in the breeze but admitting very little sunlight. The path ahead was one of perpetual dusk. It was a stretch to call this area “virginal”, and yet as I scanned our surroundings, the three of us and the dirty truck we'd brought were the only aberrations. There wasn't a candy wrapper, a soda bottle to be seen. The trees, their roots threading the ground like fat veins, looked as though they'd been undisturbed for ages, and in the shadow their limbs bobbed up and down, almost as though they were taking turns peering down at us.
I didn't have long to marvel at our surroundings. The gravity of our mission intruded, and within minutes we were walking into the woods. Jane had a bag strapped to her back and a rifle in her hand. Before leaving the truck, she gave me her handgun—helped me strap it to my chest despite my complete lack of experience with firearms. Jane insisted that more than one of us needed armed, and she gave
me a crash course in how to use it, even though the thought left me somewhat nervous.
“The safety's off. You only point it at something you want to kill. Squeeze the trigger, don't pull it. There's a good bit of recoil, too, so be prepared for that. It comes out of the holster real smooth—make sure to get used to its weight in your hand.” She tightened the holster around my shoulder and made me hold the gun till I had the grip right. “And always keep a round in the chamber,” she added, racking the slide.
I'd never fired a gun in my life and was more than a little uneasy with such a massive piece strapped to my chest. If push came to shove, I wasn't sure I'd be able to use it with any proficiency. Frankly, I expected to be more a liability with it than anything. At more than one junction, Jake offered to carry the handgun instead. He'd done some work with his dad at the firing range and knew the basics. Jane absolutely refused to let him handle it, though, and I knew why.
She didn't want him getting in the way. If she let him hold onto the gun, there was every chance Jake would turn it on her when the time for action finally came—rather than on our target.
Feeling like Rambo, I straightened the straps on my back pack to keep from brushing against the holster and fell into step behind Jane.
The ground was soupy in places; there were patches of overgrown grass, of dirt, gravel, but everywhere we stepped the recent rains made for soft, damp terrain. Clustered around the bases of trees, I spied large, pale mushrooms whose mist-covered lobes bloomed chaotically. Moss stained many of the trees in layers so thick they must have been decades in the making. A number of birds bobbed and weaved about the treetops, but were reduced to black, winged smears by the oppressive shadow.
The Occupant: The Afterlife Investigations #3 Page 4