“What is that place?” asked Jake. That he said nothing of the person in the window left me dumbstruck. Had he not seem them?
“A little shanty or something.” Jane nodded towards it. “Let's have a look.”
“W-Wait,” I said, grabbing her shoulder and pulling her back a step. “There's someone there.” I leaned to one side, squaring the structure in my sights. “There's someone looking at us through the window.”
Jane firmed up, brought the gun to her chest. “In the window?”
I nodded. Even as I stood there, still some yards away, I could see the barest outline of a person in that window—the very edges of a face. The distance did nothing to dilute the power of their stare. It wasn't the idea of encountering someone in this remote forest that left my knees shaking. I'd been prepared for the possibility of running into Eli Lancaster or one of his friends; of finding myself face-to-face with the Occupant. What really inspired fear in me was the sight of someone else, someone unexpected, dwelling in that long-forgotten shack. We could have wandered for hours—days—through these woods and never seen another living soul, and yet here we were, approaching a worm-eaten structure as old as the Civil War, and there was someone inside. No, they weren't merely inside the place—someone was squirming in that darkness, breathing it in and looking out at us in the same way a nocturnal animal might peer out of a hole in the ground before setting out on its first hunt of the night.
It became clear that my companions weren't seeing what I was seeing. They took a few cautious steps forward, closing the distance, and then took turns giving me the side eye. “You sure there's someone in there?” asked Jane.
I gave a quick nod, staying on their heels. The person in the window had receded further into the darkness, but in the shifting light I could still make out the powdery silhouette of an observer. Ten, twenty paces brought them into uncertain relief; I thought I spied a long nose, large, dark eyes, tightly pursed lips. A pale face pinched hastily into a mound of clay.
I clumsily pulled my gun from its holster, the weight of it taking me by surprise once again. I almost dropped it. Holding it low, I followed behind Jane as she hooked towards what appeared to be a doorway set into the side of the structure. Jake spared me a nervous look, probably wondering if I intended to use the gun on whatever lurked inside the shack.
Like me, he was wondering if I had the balls to shoot a living thing.
If I had what it took to kill Elizabeth.
All you have to do is point and squeeze the trigger, I reminded myself, making an effort to suppress my breathing.
Jane paused outside the entrance to the shack, gave me a quick nod and then—gun at the ready and finger seeking out the trigger—she stepped inside.
11
There wasn't a lot of ground to cover in the little shack, and even before Jane broke out one of the flashlights and angrily canvassed the space, it was clear from the doorway that there was no one inside.
I couldn't explain what I'd seen—what I'd thought I'd seen—but that the others resented me for my frequent false alarms was becoming clear. “Not a soul,” muttered Jane, casting her light into the corners, across the battered floors. It was unlikely that the warped planks would support our weight, and so we didn't go very far, lingering near the door. Much of the space was hung in spider's silk. The roof had partially caved and the branch of a tree jutted a few feet into the shanty by way of the breach. In a corner of the room, piled in what seemed to me a natural fashion, were the bones of an animal who'd wandered in and died. I couldn't tell what kind, though in that moment the sight of any bones—any reminder of death, really—was not at all comforting.
“Was it Elizabeth?” asked Jake, stepping back outside and looking eagerly about the shack. “Do you think it was her?”
I rubbed at my face, a dull ache forming behind my eyes. The person I'd seen had been hard to make out from a distance, and I'd lost sight of them completely as we'd edged towards the door. Now that I'd had a look inside, I felt silly, but had you asked me only moments ago I'd have sworn there was someone standing just inside the window, glaring out at us. “It's the Occupant,” I said. “It must be tampering with my perception... making me see things that aren't there.”
Jane arched a brow, lowering her gun as she left the shack. “I'm not so sure about that.” Leaning forward to look me in the eye, she frowned. “You're jumpy, paranoid. I know what I said before, but the Occupant doesn't have to do anything—you're doing a fine job of keeping yourself frightened.”
It was true. I'd been uneasy ever since starting this hike, and the shadowed woods only made it easier to mistake everyday sights for something ominous. “I'm sorry. I'll try and rein it in. But I...”
She motioned to the shack. “You thought you saw someone inside. We had a look. It's empty. Get over it.”
Jake chimed in, looking past the shack with a furrowed brow. “So, what is this thing? Just an old cabin? Are we in Milsbourne now? Have we finally made it?”
Looking down at her compass, which was still acting strangely, Jane set down her bag and hurriedly walked the perimeter of the leaning structure. “I dunno. Didn't see any welcome signs along the way, did you?” she mocked. “We should be getting close, but I'm not sure we've made it yet. Of course, with the compass having gone to shit, I don't even know if we're heading the right way.”
Jake tensed. “W-We're lost?”
She clicked her tongue, threw out a hand as if to silence him, but it was pretty clear she was getting agitated because she'd lost her bearings. “Not quite lost, no. Just... wandering a little.”
“Oh, we're wandering now? That's cool. I'm glad we found some time to take in this lush scenery,” I said. “Why don't we start looking for some moss or animal prints. Those might lead us to civilization, yeah?”
Jane fumed, stopping to jab me in the gut with an extended finger. “Who the fuck are you? Percy Fawcett?” She spit into the sprawling bushes, hands on her hips. “Give me a damn second, all right? We're a little ways from the mines yet. We haven't really even hit any hills so far. The way's been flat, and until just a bit ago I knew we were heading due north. That tells me we've got some ground left to cover, but...” She took a moment to kick the outside of the ramshackle tenement. “We're finding some old buildings. That's a good sign.”
When we'd taken another short break—this time for the sake of our minds, rather than our bodies—Jake and I followed Jane as she struck past the shack and dove once more into what she believed was the northern wilderness. We were only some minutes gone from the little shanty when I turned and found it completely blocked from view by the trees. It had appeared suddenly, almost out of thin air, and had been tucked back into the woods to lie in wait. More than a hundred years had gone by since anyone had lived in it, and another hundred years would likely pass before anyone else would stumble upon it again. Like some rarely seen animal, the shack resumed its clandestine existence, disappearing into the scenery as we moved on.
Though she was an experienced hiker and knew the area well, the forest seemed to be getting to Jane. Several minutes passed and she began to curse the heat, to complain about the bugs and the sometimes discordant songs of the “damned birds”. Jake had largely fallen back to the rear position and was taking special care to look for other structures hidden amongst the trees.
I was back inside my own head, wondering whether I could really trust myself—and whether or not my mindset was a liability for the whole group. It was possible—quite likely—that the Occupant was playing tricks on me, singling me out as a weak link the way it had consistently done on our way into Michigan. Though the entity had once paid Jane's head a visit, she wasn't falling prey to hallucinations, and neither was Jake. Only I kept mistaking commonplace sights for leering specters—only I was assailed by the feeling of foreign eyes.
Jake brushed aside a tall, wavy thing—a bush or overgrown weed—and broke from the pack. “Get a load of this,” he said, kneeling down.
“Another one,” marveled Jake. “We must be getting close.”
Nodding, Jane grunted and urged us onward.
We stepped past the wreckage and kept on, Jane taking a token glance down at her broken compass and narrowly avoiding the urge to throw it to the ground.
We weren't five minutes from the site of the flattened shack when we arrived at what looked to be an old well. It was comprised of flat, grungy stones, a few of which were missing. Any bucket or cover for the thing had been lost long ago.
This, coupled with the shacks we were discovering every mile or so, certainly looked like the remnants of an old mining town.
I approached the well, placing a hand against the grimy exterior stones, and looked inside. From down below, brought into view by a faint veil of sunlight from overhead, a pale, distorted face gawked back up at me. I startled, managed to knock one of the stones into the well in my fright, and watched as the ghastly face—my own, thrown out of proportion in the water's reflection—broke into a series of ripples. The well was rather full, likely due to the recent rains. A stench that reminded me of a flooded basement wafted up from the opening.
“What's the matter?” asked Jake.
I shook my head, said nothing. You're losing it, man. Hold yourself together.
“We're getting close now.” Jane stamped the ground lightly with the sole of her boot. “You feel the change in elevation? We're heading into the hills now. Which means we're probably only a few miles from the mines.” She looked up at the sky, which was only growing dimmer by the moment, and whistled. “Don't know if we're going to get there before dark, though. And I sure as hell don't want to wander these woods in the dead of night.”
“Are we going to set up camp?” I asked. Though the thought of sharing a tent with these two in the humid woods didn't exactly appeal, the thought of laying down to sleep, of blocking out the forest scenery for a time and giving my worried mind a rest, sounded great.
“Not just yet,” she said. “We'll go a little further, see what we find. Maybe once we get up to the top of a hill.”
Leaning forward to center my load on my back, I followed the other two and felt the ground swell gradually beneath my feet. It was time to climb.
* * *
It was difficult to say for sure in the failing light, but I thought I saw something pointing up through the trees. I didn't say anything at first, still unsure whether I could trust my senses, and instead kept an eye on the dark shape that seemed to cut through the woods in the distance. It didn't look like a tree. It looked like the top of a building—possibly a steeple.
“I wish we'd started earlier,” said Jane as we trudged on. We weren't going to make it much further today and she was absorbed in searching for a good place to pitch our tent. We'd need a clearing of some kind, a patch of dry land that was open enough for us to set up the large tent and have a bit of room for a fire besides. Considering the density of the woods, that was a pretty tall order.
At one point, a large squirrel came darting out of a gnarled bush and scampered directly past Jake's feet, sending him into a panic. He wobbled, loosed a yelp and fell on his ass, giving Jane and I the only hit of genuine levity we'd gotten all day. I helped him up, then turned my gaze upward to a break in the foliage where, sure enough, the dark, angular shape still jutted into the sky. Not wanting to piss off my companions, I pointed casually at the sight. “Do you guys see that? It looks like there's some sort of building over there. I think I can see the top of it.”
The two of them studied the canopy in turn and zeroed in on it. “I think I see it. Is that a church steeple?” asked Jake.
I sighed, relieved that this wasn't one of my delusions. There was something substantial waiting for us just ahead—possibly a landmark we could use in determining our exact location.
Jane nodded. “Looks like it.” Pacing forward, she continued searching for a decent spot to pitch the tent. “We can worry about that tomorrow. We may very well be close, but the sun's about to drop out of the sky. Better to hurry and get a camp ready.” We were at the top of a hill—one in a series of many we'd climbed in the past half hour—and were able to find a small clearing at the bottom, a few hundred feet away. The spot, largely clear of trees, was noticeably brighter for the lack of growth, and as we drew closer it appeared drier, too.
“So, do you know a building like that?” asked Jake. “A building with a tall steeple?”
Jane shook her head, focusing instead on the clearing.
“Do you know where we're at right now?” continued Jake.
“Yeah,” was all Jane said.
Jake and I exchanged a glance, had a brief, silent conversation, and it was clear that neither of us really believed her.
Sliding down a particularly steep bit of the hill, Jane steadied herself against a tree and marched into the clearing, hefting her bags off to one side and letting them drop to the grass. Mashing at the ground with her feet, she nodded agreeably. “It's dry enough.” She looked upward, studied the darkening sky. “And not a moment too soon. Let's get the camp set up.”
It became clear rather quickly that I was a complete waste of space when it came to setting up a camp. I'd never done it before. Except for watching shows like Man vs. Wild on TV and living vicariously through Bear Grylls, I'd never seen a proper camp put together. I could count on one hand how many times I'd actually slept outdoors in my life, and most of those times had involved me passing out on frat house lawns, drunk.
Enlisting Jake to help her get the stakes into the ground and the tent thrown together, Jane ordered me to gather wood for a campfire—a task so simple that even I couldn't mess it up. “We need dry material. Some thin, some thick. See what you can find.”
Setting down my bags, I started wandering about the borders of the clearing, looking through the tall grass and picking up twigs and branches, which I broke up into more manageable pieces. Tucking the small load under my arm, I continued searching for tinder until I had trouble keeping hold of it all and started back towards the nearly-pitched tent to drop it off. The sky was losing color fast, shifting from a warm gold to a cold, suffocating blue. The breeze in this spot was almost pleasant, cooler than it had been earlier in the day. If the temperature and humidity dropped, maybe I'd manage some sleep after all.
While walking back into the woods to seek out more firewood, I caught sight once more of that sharp, steeple shape in the distance. It couldn't have been far. From where I stood it looked perhaps half a mile away, though hours walking in the woods and the changes in the elevation had taught me that estimating distance in such a setting was more than a little difficult. Maybe it really was a church, another building left miraculously intact from the days of the miners. I wondered what shape it would be in, whether we'd learn anything from it.
Milsbourne. The abandoned mining town that didn't exist on any modern map. The settlement that'd been reduced to a mere footnote in obscure historical texts, and which seemed to be the place where this nightmare had really begun. Every major player in this tangled web had some connection to Milsbourne—a place that'd largely emptied out in the 1870's. Corvine had known about it. The historian Jamieson Monroe had sought it out—and had disappeared after returning to it. Our dear Elizabeth had been born in this area.
I pulled aside a knot of weeds and picked up a nice, thick branch. Beside it, sticking out of the grass awkwardly, was a white, rigid mass. I knelt down to have a look, and then dropped the firewood I'd been carrying in abject horror.
It was a severed hand. Where it had been wrenched from the wrist—the incredible damage to the blood-damp stump told me i
t had been pulled from the forearm with great force—a tangled mass of clots and severed vessels lay scattered like ribbons.
I held my breath, closed my eyes, tried counting to ten.
You're imagining it. You're being paranoid again. Get ahold of yourself.
I opened my eyes.
It was still there, the fingers splayed.
I rose to my feet and fought the urge to throw up. Shaking my head, I looked back towards the clearing, where Jane was putting the finishing touches on the tent and Jake was drinking from a gallon jug of water.
It's not real. It's not real, damn it!
From behind me there came a sound that frightened me to my core—the kind of sound that millions of years of evolution had programmed human minds to react to. The low, hateful growling of an animal. I turned slowly, spying a dark grey paw, then another, emerging from a thicket of cedars.
A wolf.
I froze, and the beast stared me down. Its teeth—sharp, yellowed, numerous—made an appearance as it loosed another of its growls. The beast crept towards me, was certainly within pouncing distance, when it edged to one side and, sniffing the grass, took up the severed hand in its spittle-flecked maw. Squeezing the pale morsel between its teeth—the fingers almost seeming to writhe and the wrist portion dribbling half-coagulated blood onto the grass—the wolf veered back towards the treeline and vanished into the woods.
Jane, who'd been about to ask me for more wood, had noticed the wolf moments before its departure and rushed over with her gun in hand. “The hell you doing over here, staring at that thing? It could have mauled you. Are you stupid?”
My heart thumped in my chest, the rhythm going a bit haywire. I felt short of breath and the edges of my vision grew dark for a moment. I hadn't been staring at the wolf, exactly. Rather, I'd been staring at the hand it'd gobbled up.
The gore-slick hand in the grass had been real.
I hadn't hallucinated it.
The sickness came. Precious water and flecks of trail mix sloshed into the grass as I wretched.
The Occupant: The Afterlife Investigations #3 Page 6