The Occupant: The Afterlife Investigations #3

by Ibsen, Ambrose

  There was still a lot of fog. It picked up the moonlight and amplified it in a peculiar way. While this did help to illuminate certain pockets of the woods, it gave a false sense of clarity from afar. Due to the fog, I couldn't accurately judge my location, and even clearings would be dangerous since I wouldn't be able to tell what I was heading into. My top priority was finding some safe place to stay the night—rather than covering a lot of ground. Running into these dark woods was stupid. I'd learned that the hard way. If I took another fall like the least one, it would probably kill me.

  I paced on slowly, keeping my eyes peeled for structures in the woods. I wasn't sure what direction I'd fled in, or how close I was to the Milsbourne church, but if I could find it again then perhaps I'd be able to get back to our campsite. I tried studying the sky, searching for the black steeple, but the growth overhead was too thick.

  Limping between trees, swatting at the occasional bug, I stepped out between a couple of conifers and spotted what looked to be a small shack in the distance. It was an encouraging sight—if there was an old habitation out here, then perhaps I wasn't so far from the old mining town after all. I started towards it—excitedly at first, then with a halting caution—trying to gauge what sort of place it was, whether it was uninhabited.

  I'd stepped within twenty feet of it when my intuition told me to back up. The leaning shack—an oversized shed by today's standards—was in hideous shape and looked as though it might topple into a pile of weathered toothpicks with the slightest nudge. The door was missing, and though it was hard to make out in the low light, I thought I could see a narrow window positioned beside it. It wasn't the structure itself that put me off. I'd seen a few of these already. It was the notion that something might be lurking inside, preparing to reach out of that open doorway or window to grab you as you wandered by.

  There was something about that little window, in particular. A darkness within, or separate from, its darkness. Was the moon playing a trick on me, or had I seen something move in the window? I stared ahead, squinted, wondering if it was my imagination. If I focused hard I thought I could see something twisting and swaying in the darkness.

  I took a couple of steps towards it, then wandered off to the side a little, then approached. This awkward dance brought me within a stone's throw of the little abode, and from this proximity, the moonlight more abundant for a thinning in the trees, I could see it in its entirety. It turned out there was nothing in the window except for a dangling knot of spider's silk, at the center of which rested what looked like a hummingbird.

  Satisfied with my inspection of the shack, I left it behind me and pressed on in search of more. I chose my route based on what looked brightest, and followed the larger drifts of moonlit fog in the hopes that they might lead me to more open spaces, like those which might be found in the old town. And as I went, I thought back to the Occupant. It had shown up at our camp, just like Eli had claimed it would.

  Thinking back to the incident at camp, I wondered what the Occupant's endgame was—if it had intended to split up our group so that it might poach us one by one. The thought was too horrifying to even entertain. Nothing the Occupant did made any sense to me, and not even Jane, who'd had a more intimate connection with it, could explain what its true motives were.

  Stumbling over a large root in the fog, I cursed under my breath and had a look around. The moon was still high in the sky, bearing down on the forest. It was strange to think that elsewhere in the world, other people—oblivious to my plight—might look up at that same moon under very different circumstances—from their back yards or balconies, taking in the cool breeze.

  Whether it was from the fog or from somewhere deeper in the woods, I couldn't say, but as I stood there I felt someone's eyes pressing into me like a gun tucked into the small of my back. I must have looked like a baby rabbit sensing an oncoming hawk before it moved in, looking from side to side, pawing feebly at tree branches and fog to try and get a look at what my gut told me was coming. Someone was watching me intently, but I couldn't see them no matter where I looked.

  Next came the noise. A low chorus of moans and wails emanating from the woods to my back, in the direction of the shack I'd just left behind. Like nails on a chalkboard the murmurings of the dead struck my ears and set me on edge. The Occupant was drawing near. I had no option but to keep moving, but I nevertheless faltered as I considered the futility in it. How long could I run? Wouldn't it be easier if I simply gave in, surrendered now? Throwing in the towel seemed perfectly pragmatic to me just then.

  Thankfully, my survival instincts won out and, relying on what little juice I still had left in the tank, I started running again. I wasn't sure where I was going, couldn't see too well even when I came upon a pocket of moonlight, but I prayed I'd get clear of the Occupant and find a good place to hide.

  From behind me, the voices of the dead—streaming from within Elizabeth's body as though it were a loudspeaker—grew louder.

  16

  When I broke into a section of woods where two rows of crumbling wooden cabins stretched on into the distance, I wasn't sure whether it was a sign of good fortune or bad. Lungs burning and legs feeling like they might give out under me, I'd charged through the woods, heedless of any obstacles, and managed to escape, however temporarily, the cacophony issuing from the Occupant. The fog was heavy here, but not so heavy that I couldn't make out the dark, rough edges of a few dozen buildings. Some were completely broken down, mere heaps of lumber, but others had managed to endure. There was something like a road running between the rows of houses, long overgrown with grass, which I quickly started down. The years had blurred the lines—it had never been fully paved—but there were no tall trees here to block out the moon.

  I beat it down the makeshift path, sparing the buildings brief glances as I jogged. Some still had doors to them. One, I couldn't believe, had an unbroken window. After I'd run past ten or fifteen of the things, I found them all to be of similar construction—basic and boxy. These, probably, had been homes to the many families who'd lived in Milsbourne prior to 1870. That any of them still survived was a marvel; that so damn many were still standing, I admit, creeped me out. The air of such a place was at once desolate and yet somehow crowded, for as I passed each and every of the dark cabins I felt as though their tenants had never really left, and were watching me from the windows.

  Listening closely for any signs of the Occupant, I felt what was surely a premature rush of relief when only the sounds of my own frantic steps could be heard to echo against the worm-eaten buildings. Bounding down the grassy road, I looked more of the tenements up and down, wondering what they were like on the inside—if they weren't too unsafe to take shelter in, if they'd make good hiding spots. The road ahead seemed to slowly give way to more forest as I approached the end of the trail. I wasn't sure what awaited me beyond, but needed to stop somewhere and get my head straight. Better yet, if I could stay in one of these cabins till morning without encountering the Occupant, perhaps I could get some much-needed rest.

  Stopping at the end of the road, eyeing the specimens closest to me, I chose the last one on my right side, a squat wooden box whose roof, by some miracle of frontier design, had not completely caved over the years. This one had a door, a solitary window, and looked to be somewhat spacious. The door was especially welcome, because if I could somehow secure it, I'd only have to worry about the Occupant coming in through the window. Sidling up to the cabin after taking one last look at the foggy expanse behind me, I drew my gun and approached the door. If there was a wolf or mountain lion using it for a den, I was about to evict it.

  I reached out and eased the door open. The hinges weren't smooth in the least, sounded like they'd been completely rusted over since the Emancipation Proclamation, and the thick wooden door rumbled stubbornly against my hand as it opened. Pushing at it with my whole body weight, I managed to squeeze inside, where I took a tentative look around the dark room and waited for my eyes to adjust.
A bit of fog had entered through the busted window, gathering about my feet and swirling in the corners. I blinked in the darkness, leaning against the door to shut it once more, and tried to get the lay of the land. There was a fallen chair in one corner, too rickety to sit in. A wood burning stove sat immediately to my left, surrounded in fallen twigs and leaves.

  There was movement.

  Towards the wall opposite the door, I spied a hunched figure. Only their feet were visible in the moonlight. Brown boots. I glimpsed a bit of tattered denim. I was about to approach, brandishing the firearm in clear sight. Before I could even utter, “Who's there?” they suddenly rushed towards me.

  In my surprise, I dropped the gun. Rather than hit the trigger, I accidentally loosened my grip on it and it smashed loudly onto the sunken floors. Scurrying quickly towards me in a sort of wild crawl, the figure in the cabin made a desperate reach for the firearm.

  17

  Without thinking, I kicked the gun away—to a corner of the room where neither of us could hope to reach it quickly—and then delivered a swift kick, knocking the figure onto his side with a grunt. “Who the fuck are you?” I asked.

  Coughing and attempting to right himself, the stranger wiped at his face and looked up at me. I pinned him to the floor with my foot, my heel digging into his chest, and then bent down to have a better look in the moonlight.

  I recognized this face.

  Stepping away and recovering my gun, I slid it into the holster and regarded the man—one of the guys who'd been paling around with Eli Lancaster—cooly. Unless I was mistaken, this man's name was Paul Coleman. He'd been the tight-lipped local that Jane had tried to ply with drinks at a local bar for information related to Milsbourne. It'd been this guy, too, who'd blabbed to Eli about the situation and had led him to Jane's trailer.

  Paul had struck me as the cowardly type the first time I'd ever set eyes on him, and as I appraised him then, in the cabin, this impression was only reinforced. He looked up at me flinchingly, massaging his jaw where my shoe had caught him, and then he scampered back to his spot against the wall—slowly, as if injured—to bask in the darkness.

  “It's Paul, isn't it?” I asked. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  The man took a shuddering breath through his almost toothless mouth. The wispy whitish hair sprouting from his head looked like a wig of fog. He didn't say anything.

  “You were with Eli Lancaster, right?” I took a step towards him, trying to look less threatening than before. “Sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you. I was actually hoping to take shelter in here.”

  Paul kneaded his hands in his lap. “It's following you, eh?” He cleared his throat. “You're a friend of Jane's?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, but we got separated. And that thing, the Occupant... it's been busy. It killed Eli and a lot of his men. I'm surprised you're still alive,” I said. “You might be the only one.”

  “It's because I ran,” he blurted. “I didn't want to come here in the first place. We came to the woods last night shortly after we left Jane's place. Eli was real agitated after that, said we needed to come out into the woods to have a look at things. But once we made it here, into Milsbourne, that thing was waiting for us. And it tore us apart.” His Adam's apple trembled as he spoke. “I saw it descend on us from the treetops like a spider. It was so silent, so slow-moving. And then it opened its mouth. Have you heard it? It sounds like it has a thousand men in its belly, all of them being tortured. The voices coming out of its mouth were...”

  “I need to know,” I said, interrupting his frightened reverie, “if there's some way out of the woods. Can you show me? I'm lost. Don't know my ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to navigating in the wild.”

  Paul shook his head, eyes closing as he sighed. “I know the woods all right, but I won't leave until it's daylight. And anyway, I'll never make it out on this ankle of mine.” He grasped his pant leg and lifted his right leg up as though it were a dead limb, letting it drop to the floor. “I twisted it while I was running away from that thing last night... think I tore something. I stopped in here because it seemed like the safest place to rest and hide, but...” He whispered this next part, and I almost felt as though he were reading from a script of my own thoughts. “Ever since I've entered these woods, I've felt like I'm being watched. It's got eyes everywhere, this thing. You can't escape it.” He cradled himself, looked on the verge of crying.

  “What happened last night? You say that you guys arrived in Milsbourne and she was waiting for you? Did she attack you outright, or did you provoke her?”

  He gulped, apparently pained for the remembrance. “We made it into town, visited the old church. Eli's been a keeper of this place for most of his life, being a Lancaster and all. He said something didn't seem right... Well, it turns out he was right. That thing was waiting for us. It came down from a tree, dropped on us like an animal. And then it started to kill. Some of the guys were so scared they couldn't shoot. They tried running away, like I did. I was a lucky one, but some of those that got caught by the thing probably wished in their final moments they'd never been born at all. It literally broke a man in two, pulled his innards out like yolk of an egg. I saw it drink blood. I saw it eat parts of 'em, too.” Tears spilled down his emaciated cheeks. “It's the devil, plain and simple.”

  I'd seen the gore scattered throughout the woods, so I knew he was telling the truth. Horrified as the three of us had been to find the remains of Lancaster's men, it sounded like Paul's memories of the slaughter were even more nightmarish. Nevertheless, now that I had this man to myself—someone who had claimed to know about Milsbourne's history, but who had been too tight-lipped to speak frankly with Jane in town—I steered the conversation in a different direction. “Jane approached you, wanted to know about Milsbourne. And Eli, before he died, mentioned a Lancaster curse. Now, I understand that you didn't want to talk before, but considering all that's happened, I hope you can give me some answers. I think that my friends and I are closer to solving this thing—and sending that monster back to Hell—than anyone in history. But I'm going to need your help. What can you tell me about all of this—about the town of Milsbourne, the creature out there, about the Lancaster family and the curse that Eli referred to?”

  Paul, surprisingly, looked eager to talk. Maybe, considering how close the specter of death had loomed over the past day, he wanted this to serve as his final confession. “I don't know what good it'll do now, but I'll tell you. I'll tell you everything. Someone ought to know, and if Eli's dead, then it may as well be you.”

  I looked to the window, choked with fog, and then stood near the door, arms crossed. “I'm all ears.”

  18

  Paul began. I did my best not to interrupt him as he told his story.

  “My ancestors came from Milsbourne, were amongst the first to settle there. Like most, the people of my line were miners. The Lancasters, too. Anyone with any kind of close family ties to Milsbourne knows all the stories about the Lancasters. That family's business is something that people have tried to put out of their minds for years, and yet they insist on passing it down generation to generation like some folktale. To hear my father tell it, it all started in the 1860's or thereabouts. The curse, that is.

  “Back in those days there was a man by the name of Joseph Lancaster, a miner. Don't know much about his background, but I imagine he moved up to the UP—to Milsbourne—in search of a job like many others. And believe me, there wasn't no shortage of jobs at that time. The mining trade was booming. Well anyhow, this Joseph Lancaster nearly died one day when the shaft he was working in collapsed. This wasn't such an uncommon thing, mind you. Back in those days, when they didn't have access to modern equipment, miners died pretty often. Lots of 'em buried in these hills, as I understand it. Joseph should have been among them, but for whatever reason, he survived.

  “When a man narrowly avoids death, there are always stories. But this was really something else, because everyone agreed that the
man should've bought the farm after what happened to him. He was deep in the mines when the collapse occurred, was pretty well-buried. It should have been the end of him. The story goes that, while he was delirious and half-dead in the mineshaft, he made contact with something. Some devil that'd lived in the hills since the days of Creation. This thing offered him an out. It offered to save his life—and to give him and his line all the wealth in those hills—in exchange for one of his daughters.

  “Evidently old Joseph took the devil up on his offer, because one day, after the townsfolk had already held a funeral for him and he'd been properly mourned, he comes walking back into town like nothing ever happened. Not a scratch on the sonofabitch. And people talked. Oh, they talked and talked. They welcomed him back, of course, acted happy to see him. But behind closed doors, everyone felt like something was wrong. A man ain't supposed to come back from an accident like that, and long before the truth came out people had their suspicions. Nice though they were to him when they saw him in town, the people of Milsbourne kind of gave him the side eye from then on, didn't trust him.

  “Well, Joseph had a single child, a daughter, named Sarah. Sarah Lancaster was a nice, lovely girl, according to the stories. Probably a teenager, close to marrying age back in those days. Joseph, who no longer worked in the mines after his accident, started doing odd jobs to get by, which apparently gave him a lot of free time. It was then that a few people in town started noticing the trips he was making to the hills—for someone that wasn't working in 'em anymore, he sure was spending a lot of time there. Mostly at night. And mostly, they claimed, with his daughter in tow. Naturally, people asked a lot of questions. They weren't sure why he was doing it, and some people even decided to trail him, to spy on him.