“Fuck,” muttered Jane. “What's the matter with you?”
I pointed to the blood in the grass, but couldn't explain myself for some minutes, when the urge to heave had finally passed.
12
“There was a hand?” asked Jane, sitting me down just inside the tent.
My palms stuck to the plasticky material as I shifted my weight, nodding. “A severed hand, yeah. I don't know whose it was, but it was fairly fresh. Still bleeding a little.”
Jake, white in the face, was squatting beside the meager pile of wood I'd gathered, toying nervously with sticks. He pinched one between his fingers, asking, “Whose could it have been?”
Jane was dissecting me with her gaze. It was clear she didn't fully believe me, and after my previous mishaps, I couldn't fault her for her skepticism.
“Look, you saw the wolf, right?” I challenged. “Unless the wolf was hallucinating too, it snatched up that hand and ran off into the woods. The blood's still out there. You saw it for yourself.”
She nodded, casting her surgical gaze towards the treeline and offering a heavy sigh. “We can't stay here. If there's a body nearby, then it's going to attract all kinds of unwanted attention. And where there's one wolf, there's usually more. A lot more.”
“W-Was it a man's hand?” asked Jake, bottom lip quivering just a touch. “Or was it a woman's?”
“Gee, let me think. You know, the nails were done in Urban Plum polish, and their moisturizer game was definitely on-point. I could have sat there shaking that hand forever,” I scoffed. “Shut the hell up, already. It wasn't your girlfriend's hand, I'm pretty confident of that. If anything... your darling Elizabeth is probably the one that tore it off of someone to begin with.”
“It's possible that the girl got to Lancaster's party,” said Jane. “They probably came into the woods, met the thing and had a fight. If there are chunks of those guys laying around in the woods, then the outcome of said fight is pretty damn clear.”
“We should keep going,” I said. “We should go a little further, while there's still a bit of light out. Maybe we'll find some of them—alive—in that building up ahead, with the steeple.”
Jane crinkled her nose. “No. We should move our camp, but... we don't want to get any closer to this thing so close to nightfall.” She worked her jaw in her hand, clearly conflicted. She wanted to uproot the tent and move out of this area where bears and wolves were likely to come poking around for more scraps, and yet there was nowhere for us to relocate to. This particular clearing had been the only one we'd encountered for miles that was really suited to being a campsite. Heading towards the steepled building—closer to what we presumed was Milsbourne—was a suicide mission to her mind, what with the Occupant running around. But to stay at the camp and wait for the wolves to make a reappearance was equally reckless.
“If we find one of them—one of Eli's guys—maybe they can help us. What do you think? There's power in numbers.” I nodded to the steeple. “Let's check it out. If it's a problem, we can hightail it back here, to camp. It can't be very far. And depending on how sound the building is, we may even be able to get some height and survey the area from above.”
Jane grimaced. “Doesn't seem like larger numbers helped the owner of that lost hand too much.” Despite her reticence, it was clear she saw no other way forward. We needed to figure out what lay ahead, have a look at this landmark that was visible through the trees. Urging us to bring our flashlights along, she hatched a plan. “We'll go on a little further, see what's up. Maybe we'll leave our camp here, maybe we won't, depending on what we find.”
I nodded. “Is it safe for us to leave this stuff here unattended?” I thought back to my Cavalier, to the Occupant's penchant for torching necessary supplies, and wondered if it wouldn't be wise for one of us, maybe Jake, to hang back.
She shook her head. “If we split up, there goes the 'power in numbers'. We stick together.”
With flashlights in hand, the three of us left the camp behind and started into the dusky woods, keeping an eye on the dark steeple looming over the tops of the trees. It was an easy thing to lose sight of, as the canopy often blocked our view of the sky—of anything other than foliage—but we managed to keep on in its general direction, leaning on the last vestiges of daylight to guide us.
We'd have made it there a lot sooner, but we stumbled upon a few things that'd given us pause.
Jane's flashlight illuminated something dangling from a tree branch, swaying in the wind, that I initially took for a strange vine. We had only to take a few steps forward to realize that wasn't the case at all. We were looking at a length of meat, the human kind, which had been left strewn in the treetops by what seemed a freak accident.
Or, maybe, it'd been left intentionally.
The carnage—a pale, bumpy section of human intestine, still glistening with red—was crawling with flies. Whether it belonged to the same person who'd lost their hand we couldn't say; I find it rather hard to identify someone based on the wrinkles of their viscera. Suffice it to say, the three of us took turns studying it in the glow of our flashlights and gave it a wide berth as we staggered on, retching. Even Jane was bothered at the sight, spitting repeatedly onto the ground as if to preempt a wave of vomit.
We'd gone only ten or twenty feet further when Jake stopped in his tracks and glanced up at something sitting in the crook of a half-bald pine. He lost his balance, bumping into me with his linebacker frame, and nearly toppled the both of us. His voice was trapped in his throat for a moment, but once his terror grew large enough to overcome the hitch in his windpipe, he whimpered loudly.
A man's head had been set atop one of the lowermost branches of that tree, balanced against the trunk. The eyes had been taken, leaving only dark hollows that teemed with clots. The mouth, mangled so that it might sit wider than was usually possible, sat open with serpentine unhingedness. It was a hideous sight, the work of something truly barbarous, and yet there appeared to be a reason behind this desecration.
The carefully-placed and mutilated head was a sign, a sign that read: “Turn back from here” in a language that all men—and most animals—are proficient in: Death.
And how I would have liked to heed that warning. I trust that my companions would have, too.
But we were in the middle of the forest. Night would soon be upon us.
There was nowhere to run. One could race for miles—for almost an entire day—through this wilderness and still never find a paved road.
Never in my life—and that includes our evening spent at Chaythe Asylum—had I ever felt so hopelessly trapped as this. The dangers of hunting the Occupant were no longer abstract, theoretical. The entity posed a clear and present danger, and had no trouble in flaunting its talents for killing. The trail of carnage would lead us, probably, to a face-to-face meeting with that terror, and even if we'd wanted to, we'd stranded ourselves in the middle of a vast wilderness with no easy exit plan. We weren't even sure of our exact position—Jane, our guide, was navigating mostly blind due to the compass's malfunction.
Jake regained his balance, but his lips quivered so hard I thought he might end up with a permanent stutter. “T-That guy... was he one of Lancaster's friends?”
Jane, steadying herself, palmed the sweat from her face and pointed at the severed head with her gun. “See that, kid? Get a good look at it. Who do you think did that, huh? Who's responsible for that, do you think?” She looked at him expectantly, wanting to treat this as a teaching moment. “This is what your girlfriend has been up to lately. This is what she's capable of. Still think the best thing is to try and talk with her?”
Jake knew damn well how that head had gotten there, of course. Shifting uncomfortably, he looked back in the direction we'd come. “Maybe... maybe we should go back to the camp,” he suggested. “Going any further would be...”
Jane marched on, unwilling to listen any further.
I followed, knowing we were damned either way, and carefully un
holstered my gun, holding it in my hand like I'd seen characters on TV police procedurals do. Before long, Jake was at my heels, his flashlight sending a quaking beam of yellow light at everything he pointed to.
The sun slipped out of the sky completely, leaving the heavens a back-lit navy color. There was a change in the wind—it felt colder, made me shiver—though I couldn't be sure whether the shivering was truly on account of the breeze.
The gun in my hand felt like shitty insurance. I'd never fired it before, wasn't sure I'd be able to hit a damn thing even if my life depended on it. And anyway, walking through these dense woods, where we knew Elizabeth to lurk, it felt like we were walking through a field full of landmines. I'd seen her strength, her speed, since taking on the Occupant. The monstrosity could steamroll us if it wanted to, and could be hiding behind literally any tree.
I thought there were mushrooms or wildflowers scattered through the undergrowth ahead, but canvassing the ground with my light, I found myself hopping around to avoid bits of human flesh. There was an ear, partially buried in the soil; several teeth; a pair of eyes, whose size and coloration led me to believe they'd come from two distinct—and unwilling—donors. Tree trunks within arm's reach were dashed with streaks of dried blood, as if major vessels had been tapped in a sudden, violent attack. I heard Jake gag, and he buried his nose and mouth in the crook of his arm to block out the gradually intensifying smell of meat and blood left to warm in the humid woods.
We were descending a hill, and at the bottom of it the trees seemed to thin out very slightly.
The carnage did not, however.
Swatches of intestine, like so many links of red sausage garland, festooned the trees. Another decapitated and disfigured head, this one with longer hair that had been tied onto a low-hanging branch so as to make it hang, stared at us with coagulated, empty sockets. Its lower jaw had been pulled off completely—a thing which I accidentally trampled underfoot—and the tongue, wearing a black carpet of flies, seemed to faintly sway, like a beckoning finger.
It was the entrance to Hell itself.
Stunned into silence by these sights, we emerged into something like a clearing. The trees grew further apart here, and up ahead, taking advantage of the space, was a structure much larger than any we'd hitherto seen in the woods. It was boxy and wide, its exterior made of loose hanging boards stained grey by the elements. Its peak, which tapered into a shabby steeple, and a faded concrete plaque commemorating its date of construction—1849—confirmed our earlier suspicions. It was an old church. The plaque read Anima Christi, in faded characters. “Soul of Christ”, if my college Latin could still be trusted. Aside from the date, there was one other bit of text I could still make out on the stone slab. Milsbourne, Michigan.
The building, constructed before the Civil War had even taken place, and some twenty years before the reported abandonment of Milsbourne, was still standing by some miracle. Perhaps the faithful would attribute its longevity to divine intervention, though I have to admit our dire surroundings made it harder than usual for me to pour my faith into anything divine.
But the sight of this church made one thing clear.
We'd arrived.
We took turns looking down at the plaque and pacing cautiously around the exterior of the building. There looked to be only a single entrance, a dark hole where doors had once stood that now looked like a yawning, toothless mouth. Some twenty or more feet above this opening were two broken windows that, in their day, might have been made of stained glass. Like the heads we'd seen positioned throughout the woods, the church looked out blankly into the forest, the broken windows like black, empty sockets.
There was more. Left around the building—in disarray or as intended decoration, I couldn't say—were scraps of men. The ground was dark with blood in several spots, and not far from these clotted puddles, whole, disembodied limbs could be found. Tattered clothing, smooth pieces of tissue likely taken from major organs, and more were stepped over as we made our silent examination of the church.
Meeting the others back out front, near the plaque, I shook my head and said in a low voice, as if a Mass were going on inside, “We're here. This is Milsbourne. It seems the Occupant beat us here, though. Do you think any of Lancaster's crew survived?”
Jake had barely regained his legs. It was clear he'd never seen this kind of butchery in real life. No one outside of war was likely to see this level of savagery, for that matter, and the state of our surroundings made me feel like I'd stepped into a Romero flick. He was taking it harder than Jane and I however, becoming uncommunicative, probably because he was coming to terms with the fact that Elizabeth had done this.
I tried not to focus too much on that aspect. I'd seen a lot of shit recently, but the idea of Elizabeth Morrissey tearing apart a pack of roughs like the ones that'd shown up at Jane's door the night before still boggled the mind.
Jane smoothed back her sweat-slick hair and panned slowly across treeline from which we'd emerged. “I don't know who I'd feel more sorry for,” she began. “The victims or the survivors who'd have to go on living with memories of what went on here.” Her jaw tensed. “It was a bloodbath. I doubt anyone managed to get out alive. If they did, they're probably out there in the woods somewhere, dead or dying from blood loss.” She bent down to examine a drying puddle of blood, several small insects squirming in the red soup.
“Well, either way, this is Milsbourne. We've made it.” I nodded towards the entrance of the church. “Shall we have a look inside?” It occurred to me that I'd been clutching the gun in my hand for quite a while, and my arm was getting sore. I switched hands, flexing my fingers. “The Occupant may still be around here.”
“Wolves, mountain lions, the Occupant. There's something waiting to kill us around every corner,” said Jane, gaining her feet. “We'll have a quick look. After that, we need to rush back to camp. We don't want to get caught out here in the open until we know what the girl's game is. She led us out here, left us quite the trail to follow, but whatever awaits us—”
There was a stirring from somewhere inside the church. A shifting of weight, a vague thumping, drifted from the open doorway.
The sound was like a slap in the face. We all stood bolt upright, weapons in hand, and held our breaths.
Is the Occupant still in there? Has it been waiting for us inside? Jane led us towards the doorway, her finger resting on the trigger, and I could't help but think to myself that a bear or mountain lion would be a far more welcome sight within the church than the thing we'd come to find. Wild animals are capable of savagery, but they only utilize it as a means of survival.
The Occupant had made a game out of killing, and was far more proficient at it than any other creature in this forest.
Jake and I took over flashlight duty, and I held my gun out in front of me, ready to squeeze the trigger at the first sign of movement. We stepped into the doorway and were greeted by an impressive darkness. From this darkness Jake and I dredged up a scene of utter chaos with our lights. Toppled and broken wooden pews; rotten hymnals on the verge of disintegration, breaks in the roof where hints of fresh moonlight seeped in. It might have been God's house, once, but the church of Milsbourne was only a suitable home for spiders at this point. The gaps between many of the wall planks were filled in with decades of gossamer grout.
And there was blood.
Just inside the door, a grayish red for the addition of dust, was a small pool of blood. Further in, seeming to form a staggered trail, were stout rivulets that were rather fresh and vibrant against the light, standing out like crimson beads. Ahead of those, beside what appeared to be a simple altar towards the back, were a couple of smeared handprints, as might be made by a man fleeing on his hands and knees.
The maker of those handprints was curled into a fetal position just ahead, a piece of rebar buried in the side of his skull and his thinking parts still oozing through the tremendous wound.
The stirring reached our ears a second time f
rom the direction of the altar. I pointed my gun and flashlight straight ahead, and very nearly pulled the trigger out of impulse. Jane did the same, and stepping past Jake and I, she growled at the figure who could now be seen to lurk at the foot of the altar. “Hands up.”
The figure at the altar turned around very slightly, and suddenly I blanked.
This wasn't what I'd been expecting.
13
“Eli Lancaster?” uttered Jane in disbelief. She lowered her gun just a tad and took a few paces towards the man, whose face was damp with blood and sweat. He was clutching at his upper arms, and had been kneeling at the altar in a huddled, shuddering mass. “What... what are you doing there?”
The man, wearing only a pair of jeans and pressing a palm against what looked to be a serious wound on his right flank, did not respond. Instead, he sobbed, and a gasping, terrible noise that he'd kept bottled up for too long burst from his throat. His fingertips were pale as he clutched the wound and attempted to keep himself from bleeding out. The man I'd seen at Jane's trailer had been large and imposing. Confident. Eli Lancaster, then, was nothing but a memory now, because the man who cowered in the beams of our flashlights, weeping, was nothing at all like him. They had the same face, the same frame, but this man had been broken.
Jake tried calling out to him, in vain. “S-Sir? Mr. Lancaster? Are you... are you all right?”
Lancaster turned back to the altar, tightening his hold on his own body, and breathed out what sounded like a whispered prayer. A stream of blood dripped between his fingers and hit the floor, resulting in a barely audible splash like a leaky tap.
Remaining silent, Jane approached the altar and knelt down within arm's reach of the man. Waving to Jake and I, she kept the gun fixed on him and had us bring the light a little closer. From there she was able to see the extent of Eli's wound. He only seemed to have one, except for a number of bumps and scrapes, but it was a gusher. Deep and ragged, whatever had gotten him had cleaved through layers of skin and muscle alike. Though I couldn't be sure, I thought I saw the head of a dark organ pulsing beneath his palm as he labored to keep it inside of him. I fell onto my ass and averted my gaze, and was almost carried off on a riptide of nausea when Jane spoke once more.
The Occupant: The Afterlife Investigations #3 Page 7