The Occupant: The Afterlife Investigations #3

by Ibsen, Ambrose

  “Eli,” she said, “What happened?” She looked around the church, studied the punctured roof, the other side of the altar, the entrance.

  “What happened to you and your friends?” asked Jake. “Did... did the wolves get to you?”

  At this, Eli finally replied. “What did this is no longer here,” he said in a frail voice, like he couldn't take a full breath. “But I tell you one thing... it wasn't a damn wolf.”

  Jane nodded, having guessed long ago what was responsible for all of the carnage, and placed a hand upon his shoulder. “Let's have a better look at that wound in your side,” she said. “Come away from there, let's get you patched up. We have a first aid kit with us.” The awful frown on her face as she glanced down at the wound—and the pool of blood Eli was sitting in—told me that it was much worse than it looked from where I was sitting, and that nothing in the first aid kit was going to do anything for him.

  “No,” gasped Eli, balling his hand into a fist and nearly inserting it into the wound like a knot of gauze. “I've... I've come to make my final peace. There ain't nothing to be done. I just...” He made an effort to breathe deeply, but he couldn't get the air into him. His lungs sounded so wet they may as well have been full of chowder. “I pray that God will forgive me... forgive my line...”

  “Forgive you for what?” I asked, letting the gun rest in my lap. I licked my lips, the air tasting like a mix of antique mall dust, rain and blood.

  Eli spared me a narrow glance, turning his head ever so slightly. “The curse of my forebears...” he said with a wince.

  The curse of his forebears? I thought. What's that supposed to mean? Before I could question him further, Jane spoke up.

  “Where has it gone?” she asked. “The thing that did this to you? Where did it go, Eli?”

  The man shook his head, taking his time to reply. “It's gone now...” he began before a fit of coughing overtook him.

  Jake didn't wait for the hacking to cease and manhandled the guy, tugging him off of his knees. Eli's hand slipped and a torrent of gore pulsed forth from the awful wound on his flank. I only glimpsed it for a minute in the beam of my flashlight—he was quick to reapply his hand to it—but the wound, strange though it was, looked to me like a deep bite mark. The outer edge had about it the sort of ragged character that I'd seen in a severe dog bite as a child. When teeth meet flesh, they have a way of tearing the meat away that you can't reproduce with a bladed weapon. I was chilled by the implication but didn't say anything as Jake shook him down. “What do you mean, it's gone now?” he demanded, looking straight into the man's vacant eyes. “Did you hurt her? Kill her?”

  Slumping back onto one of his elbows, chest rising and falling as he tried to catch his breath, Eli shook his head. “N-No, it's waiting for you.”

  “Where?” asked Jane, shooting Jake daggers and pulling him carefully away.

  Eli grit his teeth as a fresh wave of pain coursed through him. Looking upward, through the break in the roof, he stared at the starlit sky. “You won't have to wonder where it's gone,” he coughed. “It'll come for you... all of you... one by one.” His lips grew wet with a sheen of bloody mucous. “During the day, it hides in the Earth like an animal. But at night, it moves as it pleases. It'll be out. Soon.” He blinked tiredly at the night sky, spoke dreamily, like a father dozing off while trying to tell his kids a bedtime story.

  The story was left unfinished. Those were the last words that Eli Lancaster ever spoke. Having lost too much blood and drawn too little breath, he let go of the wound in his side and eased himself onto his back, dying moments later with his eyes wide open.

  “Hold on, stay with me,” said Jane, trying to shake some life into the man. Realizing it was no use, she carefully stood and leveled the rifle at her side. “Goddammit, Eli.”

  The three of us said nothing for a long while, merely standing in the dark, silent church as we processed Eli's final words. It's waiting for you. It'll come for you. All of you. One by one. It hides in the Earth like an animal by day, moves at night. You won't have to wonder where it's gone. It'll come for you. I couldn't make heads or tails of Eli's parting remarks, and in any other situation I'd have convinced myself that these had merely been the ramblings of a dying man, left insane by fear and blood loss. Eli's description of his killer differed somewhat from the Occupant's habits. And then he'd gone on about his “family's curse”. What role did the Lancaster lineage play in this?

  “What was he talking about?” asked Jake, gripping his Maglite like a club and stepping over Eli's body. “What hides in the Earth... and comes out at night?”

  Jane acted like she didn't hear him. She made certain not to step in the pool of Eli's blood and then walked slowly towards the church entrance, her boots thumping on the dirty stone floors.

  Jake and I followed her out into the night, nerves still ratcheted. “He talked about a curse—a family curse. How did the Lancasters get mixed up in all of this?” I asked.

  Jane simply shook her head. “Why don't you go in there and ask him? He was probably the only man alive who could answer that question.”

  The woods around us felt unnaturally still. The wind stopped blowing for several beats and a stifling, weighty quietude settled upon us like a sandbag. I felt like the gravity on Earth had just doubled in strength as I fell into step behind Jane. She was heading back up the hill, looking to return to camp.

  “What are we going to do now?” asked Jake. I thought I heard his teeth chattering.

  “We're going back to camp,” replied Jane. “To wait.”

  Jake looked to her with wide eyes. “Wait for what?”

  Without turning to face him, Jane pushed through the treeline and focused on climbing the hill. “According to Eli, we're going to have a visitor pretty soon.”

  As we walked, I thought back to the wound on Eli's abdomen. “Did you get a look at that wound? I didn't get too close, but if you ask me, it looked almost like something took a bite out of him. Real deep. Teeth marks.”

  “Maybe,” was all Jane said.

  “Like, an animal bite? You think Eli got bit by an animal?” asked Jake. The hint of hope in his voice—the hope of finding a scapegoat for all of this carnage that would exonerate his girlfriend—was grating to hear. “What kind of animal do you think it was? A bear? A wolf, maybe?”

  “Don't get your hopes up,” I replied. “It's too early to rule anything out, but... he said it wasn't a wolf that did it. If he'd stayed alive just a few more minutes then maybe we'd have gotten him to talk a little sense. He was unclear.” I tried picturing Elizabeth Morrissey as the apex predator responsible for delivering that mortal wound—her orange hair soaked in blood, a hunk of pulsing, living human flesh between her teeth—but it was too grotesque and unbelievable to imagine. “What do you think, Jane?”

  She shook her head. “The only thing I know is that I don't know anything.” Jane sighed, reaching the top of the hill before us, and stepping around some of the human confetti we'd seen on our way to the church. If there was any silver lining to be found in the massacre of those men, it was that the positioning of their entrails made it much easier for us to find our way back to camp.

  “Are we going to move our camp?” Jake stared down at the meaty wreckage with a shudder. “Is it safe for us to camp so close to all of these bodies? I thought you said that wild animals might be a problem...”

  “There's nowhere safe in these woods,” Jane shot back. “I thought you knew that coming in. There's nowhere to run to, no escape. And the last thing I'm worried about is a wild animal. Animals respond to bullets, kid. What we're after... or what's after us... Well, just ask Eli Lancaster how that worked out for him. No sense in moving the camp. Trouble's on its way no matter where we go.” In our silence, Jane continued, thinking aloud. “I wonder if we can't find some way out of here. There might be a shortcut... if I can just get the compass to work, I can try and get us going south, maybe southeast. There are some major roads if you go far enoug
h that way...”

  To hear Jane of all people consider fleeing the woods just about robbed me of all my fight. Despite the lack of any present danger, my heart began to skip around in my chest. Panic set in, icing up my limbs and sending a shiver down my spine. The air was still humid, but with the sun having gone down the forest's warmth was beginning to wane. As a result, I thought I could make out small pockets of fog forming here and there, hanging where the trees were most dense.

  We made it back to camp and were surprised to find nothing out of place. For once, fate had been kind to us. We picked up some of the wood I'd dropped and carried it to the middle of the clearing, however Jane soon decided it wasn't worth starting a fire and urged us to head into the tent. She advised us to eat, drink and sleep, though it soon became apparent that none of us could stand the thought of food after all we'd seen.

  “We'll sleep in two-hour shifts,” she said. “You two sleep first. If something happens, I'll wake you. One of us has to be up at all times.” Jane looked to me sternly. “Don't leave the tent. If you think you see something, tell me. But don't go off on your own.”

  We sat cross-legged in the tent, each of us taking a corner. There was more than enough room for us to stretch out, and the grass in this particular spot made sleeping on the ground more comfortable than I'd expected. Jake was the first to drift off. His body had shut down on him after carrying the bulk of our things during the day's hike.

  Jane and I, though, would need to work towards sleep.

  The tent was practically pitch dark. I couldn't see my hand in front of my face, but from certain of the seams around the zippered entrance, traces of moonlight did make it through. I stared upward, hands on my belly, and tried to calm myself by doing some deep breathing. “Jane,” I said quietly, “you're freezing me out. What do you think about all of this—the things Eli said, what happened to his men? What's going on in these woods and how is it tied to his bloodline?”

  Jane was pensive for a while. I could hear her shift as she tucked her knees beneath her chin and exhaled. “I don't know,” she replied. Her voice, in the darkness, was quiet and soothing. It reminded me in a small way of my grandmother's voice. When I was little, I spent a lot of time being babysat by my grandmother while my parents worked. Some nights, she'd tuck me in and read me a story. If I had trouble sleeping, she'd sit at the foot of my bed, in the dark, watching over me until I managed to drift off. Something about the current situation, strange through it was, reminded me of those long-passed days. I almost thought to tell her so, but knew Jane would just laugh and call me an idiot.

  “The Occupant was inside of me, and it taught me about the nature of life and death. But I don't know everything there is to know. I don't know its history. It's possible that the Occupant was here on Earth before I came into the picture. And perhaps, when my uncle was busy groping for someone to speak to in the world beyond, he got its attention—got tangled in the web. The drugs, the experiments... my uncle opened the door and let it into the world. That's what I've always believed. If he'd never done that, then I doubt we'd be here in the woods, searching for the girl. But somehow, Eli and his ancestors seem to have a history with it, so it's possible that the thing was here long before that. Maybe the Occupant originally came from out here...” She trailed off.

  “OK, so maybe your uncle wasn't the one who opened the door. Maybe he's just the one who showed it the way.” I actually managed a yawn. “Question is, how does one close the door? Is it possible?”

  “Get some sleep,” she said, effectively ending the conversation.

  I rolled onto my side and worked on doing just that. It took some time, but as I closed my eyes and stretched out across the plastic floor, feeling the tall grass shift beneath me, my mind and body seemingly got together, realized how damn sore I was for the half-day death march we'd made, and I zonked out.

  14

  I dreamt of my grandmother while sleeping in that tent.

  The scenery was dark, but for a time I could feel the soft mattress, the flannel linens of my childhood bed, and could make out the general outline of my old bedroom back home. A shelf lined in action figures and picture books stood out across from the bed. I spied the trunk on the floor, lid sitting half-open for the mound of toys inside, and a thin, yellow light that shifted as though it were reflected through water came from the crack in the door, giving me just enough light to see by.

  At the foot of my bed, taking a deep breath and sitting up to keep from nodding off, was my grandmother. Her grey, curly hair had been combed back after a shower, and the smell of her talcum-scented body wash came in strong—a scent I hadn't experienced in a long time. After her death I'd kept a half-used bottle of the stuff in my bedside table, and would sometimes take a whiff, just to remind myself of her. She turned to me, her features partially illuminated by the hall light, and spared me a little smile that said, “Go on, get some sleep.”

  I looked up at the ceiling, feeling—for the first time in many years—truly at peace. The softness of the covers, of my pillow, made me feel like I was sinking into a pile of feathers and my eyes began to grow heavy. Feeling my grandmother sitting at the end of my bed, near my feet, I felt secure. She hummed a soft tune, rocking very slightly as she repositioned herself.

  Then, like a switch had been flipped, the scene changed and an ulcerating worry dropped into my gut. Eyes open, scaling the walls of my bedroom, looking over the rows of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the wall, I sensed there was something very wrong in the room, but I couldn't pinpoint it.

  There was silence. The light from the hall continued to shift, but the color seemed to transition from gold to orange. Then red.

  Yes, I could see it now. Looking to the door, which still sat ajar, the light pouring in from the other side was red.

  There was a shifting at the foot of my bed as my grandmother went to stand up. I looked to her, wanted to ask her to stay, but I nearly bit down on my own tongue when I found someone else had taken her place. Bathed in shadow, save for an outline rendered in violent red, was an unfamiliar figure. A man, judging by his firm and imposing carriage. Broad shoulders were highlighted in red, and the barest hints of a face—stern and grey—were visible from where I lay.

  My chest became host to a tremor as my heart began to thud violently and my lungs felt suddenly withered to husks. Clawing at the bedclothes, which felt scratchy now, and impossibly heavy, I stared up at the figure and mouthed a name.

  Corvine.

  The man standing in my room, looking down at me, was Dr. Corvine.

  Where the first scene had seemed like nothing more than a happy, vivid memory, this second act convinced me that I was descending into a nightmare. The knowledge did nothing to help me break out of it, however. No amount of lucidity could shatter the illusion. I was a captive in my own head, forced to sit through whatever debauched fantasy my imagination wished to conjure up.

  Staring down at me, obscured by darkness, Corvine's voice entered my head. It sounded just like it had on the tapes I'd listened to back at his cabin, as though his voice box had been replaced by a Sony Walkman. “It is for good reason that men fear the dark. Our kind are transient, hopeless things. Things destined to live and die, leaving nary an echo in the yawning corridor of eons.”

  Beneath a floorboard in Corvine's cabin, I'd found a box full of tapes and papers. Among them had been a handwritten note—a rather dramatic and seemingly hopeless one. Corvine now stood before me, and recited it verbatim. The last lines were most striking, though, and lingered in the back of my mind even as wakefulness stole over me.

  The door has been opened. It's already too late.

  Was this simply a mad dream; the product of a mind overwhelmed by fatigue? Or had Corvine reached out to me from beyond to remind me of this message he'd left hidden in his cabin?

  I snapped awake with a groan, sitting upright. I found myself in the tent, the plastic floor of the thing damp with my sweat. The material, a light blue color, was t
hin enough towards the front that I could see the moonlight—quite bright at this hour—shining through it. The movement of the trees gave the impression of flow and movement, similar to the light I'd seen in my dream.

  Jake was snoring peacefully, and beside him was Jane, sitting exactly where I'd last seen her, with her head lolling to one side. She'd had it, was unable to remain awake any longer. So much for shift-sleeping.

  I rummaged blindly through my bag for a bottle of water and chugged it, preparing to go back to sleep, when a new sign of movement outside the tent caught my eye. The bright moonlight shifted in such a way as to accommodate the shadow of a someone who presently made a silent advance towards the tent. There were no sounds of snapping twigs, of rusting leaves or grass—as the visitor paused before the front end of the tent and knelt down there was only dead silence.

  Unnatural, impossible silence, as if the person outside the tent was weightless.

  Every muscle in my body tensed and it took everything I had to reach over and nudge Jane with my foot. She came to immediately, blinking away her fatigue, and shot me hard glance. “What?” she sighed.

  From outside, the front flap of the tent began to unzip. The silhouetted figure, jet black and rendered starkly against the light blue material, was trying to get inside.

  * * *

  Jane had her gun pointed directly at the shadow in the next moment. “W-Who's there? Hands off the tent, else I'm gonna shoot!”

  The unzipping did not cease, didn't even slow.

  As the front flap of the tent was half-undone and a pale, white arm entered into view from behind it, Jane made good on her threat and fired two rounds.