“Call out to it, Jane,” I said, my hands growing sweaty as I gripped the rifle. I didn't want to hurt Elizabeth any more, didn't want to keep this torture session going. “Invite it in. Think back to those days in the cabin, to the chair. Your uncle would strap you in and you'd sit in the darkness, eyes and ears covered. You remember what it felt like, don't you? You remember sensing it in the room—seeing it, but not with your eyes. And then it would take hold of you. Speak through you. Try to remember.”
I was talking out of my ass, hoping that this speech of mine would help her get into the proper mindset. Jane remained on the floor, eyes squeezed shut as though she were focusing on blocking me out, but didn't say a word.
Elizabeth's eyes began to change again. They were darkening. Her lips parted and from deep inside her there trickled the cries of the dead, escaping sporadically like a balloon leaking air. I was going to have to injure her again. It was all I could do to keep the Occupant from completely overtaking her. Gulping and steeling my resolve, I singled out another of her fingers and, raising the rifle over my head, ground it against the stone.
Lurching and spitting, the Occupant's malformed features began to fade and Elizabeth's tear-dampened face came back into view. Jake was looking on in horror. Every time I moved to hit her, he had to fight the urge to snatch the gun away from me. He hesitated only because it looked to be having some effect. This time, when Elizabeth burst to the surface, he knelt beside her, cupped her aching hands in his, and tried to lend his support. “It's me, babe. We're going to help you, OK? Just hold on. Don't let it back in. I know you have it in you—fight! Don't let it inside.”
Shaking with disgust, I let the gun droop to my side and looked to Jane, queasy. “J-Jane, I... I don't want to hit her again. Are you feeling anything?”
Jane Corvine met my gaze.
Her eyes were the color of India ink.
23
The transfer had worked.
So, looking into Jane's ebon eyes, why didn't I feel successful?
Her body hitched forward and she groaned like a spike of pain had just been driven through her midsection. Bucking against her restraints, she grit her teeth. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and when her mouth opened, I felt myself transported back in time.
Back at Corvine's cabin, I'd listened to his recordings of the Hiawatha sessions. I'd heard young Janie's protestations and crying jags on those tapes, and the voice I was now listening to in the abandoned church was eerily similar. Jane sobbed, “I can feel it... I can feel it inside of me again!” She sounded just like a little girl, and the knowledge that I'd bound her up and subjected her to this violation, like her uncle had done, made me ill. “It's in me again,” she said, black eyes springing wide open and a torrent of tears seeping from their borders. “It's like... it's like it never left...”
At the same time, Elizabeth was staring up at the broken roof of the church, trying to catch her breath. She'd said nothing since snapping out of her possessed state, and whenever she looked to Jake, still kneeling at her side, there wasn't much recognition in her gaze. I feared that maybe the Occupant's time in her had led to some atrophy of her mind—to some change we hadn't anticipated, but a few moments later, she coughed his name, “J-Jake?” and I felt a twinge of relief.
We'd managed to coerce the Occupant into Jane's body. There was only one thing left to do, and that was to run. Jake and I had discussed this part. We were to pick up Elizabeth and run as far from the church as our legs would allow. We knew, generally, that we had to head south, and Jane had given us her compass to use, suspecting that it would function again when the Occupant's presence was no longer so strong as to interfere with it.
Jane, who was currently bound up, was to try and keep the Occupant inside of her, distracted, until it finally fled her, as it always did during her sessions with her uncle. When the spirit left her body, unable to seize Elizabeth, who would be too far away by then, Jane would inch to a corner of the church, where Jake had hidden a folding knife that she could use to cut herself free of the rope. Once she'd done that, she'd be free to leave the woods as well. Provided that we all made it out, we planned to wait at her truck, or else make it to the nearest road and hitchhike to a local rest stop, where we'd meet up.
Filled with adrenaline and knowing that time was of the essence, I thanked Jane and moved to pick up Elizabeth. “You're doing great, Jane. Keep it inside of you, don't let it out. We're getting out of here.”
Jake and I lifted Elizabeth, her body mostly limp. Even if we'd cut her free, she'd have been too weak to walk on her own. Carrying her through the dense woods was going to be a logistical nightmare, and the three of us were going to get hurt plenty while trying to manage it. But it didn't matter. When we'd secured a tight hold on her, we started for the door.
And I would have made it all the way outside then if I hadn't heard Jane suddenly coughing.
She hacked terribly, like her lungs were about to burst out of her mouth, and then her coughing turned into choking.
I blanched, looking to Jake. “Something's wrong with Jane,” I said.
He didn't look back, but instead picked up his pace, dragging me through the door. “Doesn't matter, we need to go,” he said.
I couldn't do that, and he knew it. I stopped in my tracks, lowering Elizabeth's legs to the ground. “Can you carry her on your own?” I asked. “At least, for a little while? I need to make sure she's all right.”
Jake eyed me sternly. He didn't want to slow down for anything, to risk losing Elizabeth again, and I couldn't blame him. But I also couldn't let Jane suffer after all she'd done for us. I ignored him, returning to the church and dropping down beside Jane, who was writhing on the floor, the veins in her neck sticking way out.
“Jane!” I shouted. “What's the matter? Are you all right? Breathe!” I tried to sit her up, but her body was thrashing too terribly. A sucking sound, as of air trying to get past some sort of bolus trapped in her throat, could be heard with her every attempt to breathe. She was choking on something, but I couldn't say what. Scrambling for a flashlight, I wrenched her mouth open with one hand and tried to take a look at her throat, hoping I'd be able to pluck out whatever was blocking her airway. “Damn it,” I said, fussing over the flashlight. “Stay with me, Jane. I'm no good at the Heimlich.”
Finally, the flashlight came on, and I was able to take a look inside of Jane's mouth. The gold crowns on her molars threw back some of the light, and a moment's glance told me her mouth was clear. Deeper down, though, at the entrance to her throat, just behind her uvula, I could see something.
It was narrow and fleshy.
And it was moving.
I jerked away from her in disgust. Taking another glance into her throat, and supporting Jane's lolling head on my arm, I found several moving objects coming up out of her throat.
They were fingers, and they all belonged to the same hand.
Three, then four digits eased through the channel of soft tissue comprising her throat, all of them vying to burst out of her mouth. I jumped back, letting her hit the ground, and crawled so that I bumped into the edge of the doorway. Jake eyed me with annoyance from outside. “What are you doing in there? We need to hurry up!”
Suddenly, Jane sat up, but not of her own volition. As though she had another body somehow stowed away in her frame, something inside of her was calling the shots, thrusting her into a seated position. Her eyes, huge and pitch-colored, turned to study me, and a smile graced her lips. “Didn't you know?” asked the Occupant from inside her body. Her lips weren't moving. “I never wanted this one.”
Jane's entire body began to shake. Though bound at the limbs, she managed to fall to one side and then inch across the floor towards me like a worm. Convulsing all the while, whimpering, Jane had come within three feet of me when a dark liquid began to run in thick streams from her eyes, ears and nose.
Blood.
Her pale face illuminated by the moonlight drifting in from the church ent
rance, she stared up at me with her black eyes, cheeks stained in blood. And then—with a final cry—she lowered her head till her face met the floor. Jane grew still.
I knew Jane Corvine was dead before I even reached out to nudge her. I tried picking her up, shaking her, but nothing I did could reignite the spark of life that'd just gone out in her eyes. Rolling her over, I saw—with no little horror—that her eyes had returned to normal. The Occupant, having destroyed her, had left her body.
No sooner did I note the change in Jane's eyes did I hear a ruckus outside the church. Jake yelped, and something else—an animal, I thought—howled in anger.
I staggered out into the moonlight and watched as Elizabeth's eyes went dark.
She wasn't Elizabeth anymore.
Jake had let go of her, and had fallen to the ground. “W-What...” When he became sure that the Occupant still couldn't break out of its restraints—though for how long that would be the case was impossible to say—he looked up at me with unveiled fury. “Why did you stop? Why did you have to turn back?”
I glanced down at the Occupant and the damned thing looked up at me in return. There was something knowing in its gaze, something of satisfaction in having foiled our plot and killed Jane. “Jane is dead,” I muttered. “It killed her.”
Jake paused, but his anger rose to the fore again within an instant. “That's... that's not my problem!” he shouted. “We were supposed to get Elizabeth out of here while she was tied up in the church! We had a plan, professor. We had a plan!” His face was red, and his lips were dripping now with spittle. He fought his way to a standing position and jabbed a finger at me. “You did this. You let it back into her! We should have followed the plan, professor!”
I was feeling a lot of things in that moment. Jake was right, of course. Maybe, just maybe, if I'd stayed with him and helped him get Elizabeth away from the church, we would have saved her. I felt immense guilt, too, for what had happened to Jane. She'd spent her entire adult life running from the shadows of her past, and because I'd dragged her back into this madness she'd died at the hands of the very thing that had hounded her. The Occupant had done it, but the blood was on my hands. Everything that had happened in these woods could in some way be traced back to my involvement. If I'd never taken part, if I'd never come here, then all of us could have been safe, could have gone on living.
But for all the sadness and guilt I felt, I still hadn't lost sight of the mission.
There was still a job to do.
“You're right,” I said, “and I'm sorry, Jake. We had a plan. It didn't work. So,” I continued, drawing my gun, “it's time that we follow plan-B.”
There was no alternative left to us. Elizabeth Morrissey had to die. I took no joy in the act of killing, would regret it till my dying day, but I knew it had to be done. Like W. R. Corvine and Jamieson Monroe before me, this was my mission, my one chance to set things right. Corvine, having realized his terrible mistakes, had killed his patient, Enid, and had hoped to find a permanent solution to the problem of the Occupant before his death. Jamieson Monroe, having learned about the true nature of the Lancaster curse, had come back to Milsbourne, seeking to murder every descendant of that cursed line he could find—not because he was a bloodthirsty savage, but because, like me, he'd understood his responsibility to the human race.
I pointed the gun at the Occupant. From this range, I couldn't miss. Hot tears filled my eyes, blurring my vision. The specter, knowing what was coming, tried to move, tried to roll away, but I pinned it to the ground with my foot. “Elizabeth, I'm sorry,” I said.
I pulled the trigger.
But not before Jake managed to step in front of me and clock me across the jaw.
I fell to the ground, my eyes rolling into the back of my head as I strained to hold onto consciousness. Teeth had been loosened by that blow, and I could taste blood welling in my cheek, where my molars had dug in. Jake was a big guy, a whole head taller than me, and he hit like one. My body told me to move, that I needed to get up and defend myself against the blow that must surely be coming. But I was too slow. The punch had left me dazed and I could hardly even sit up.
That was when I noticed it.
I'd dropped the damn gun.
Looking around dizzily, patting the grass as though I were looking for a lost contact lens, I tried to find the firearm. Expecting Jake to pounce on me at any moment, I looked upward and focused my blurry vision just ahead, where I found him kneeling beside the Occupant. The Occupant, thank Christ, was still tied up, right where I'd left it. I wasn't sure if my bullet had hit the mark.
When I could finally stand without feeling like I'd black out, I located the gun, which had fallen into a patch of tall grass near the church's memorial plaque, and then approached the pair cautiously to examine my work.
The result was not at all what I'd expected.
There was a rapidly-growing pool of blood between Jake and the Occupant, but to my horror, I soon saw it wasn't coming from the latter.
Jake, in his haste to keep me from firing, had taken the bullet. It'd run through his thigh, leaving a nice, big hole in his jeans from which blood freely gurgled. The Occupant, like a black-eyed cat, had managed to roll onto its stomach, and was excitedly lapping up the blood from the grass. I felt my knees go weak, and I fell for a second time as I watched Jake grimace through the pain. “J-Jake...”
He looked up at me, clutching his leg, and simply shook his head. The blood flow didn't slow in the least. One couldn't survive a shot like that, certainly not all the way out here in the wilderness. I'd probably gotten him in the femoral artery. His entire blood supply would end up in the grass within minutes.
I got up, motioned to the church, where we'd stashed all of our supplies. “I'll... I'll get the first aid kit...”
He winced, doubled over so that his face met the bloodied grass. When he looked up at me next, he looked every bit the demon as his girlfriend, his face running crimson. Summoning up his remaining strength, he managed to stand—which only increased the flow—and charged at me like a rampaging gorilla. “You... you did this! You did all of this!” He belted me with a blood-soaked fist and I crumpled to the ground. I made no effort to stop him, to defend myself. I was too stunned, and besides, I knew in my heart that I deserved it. He was right to hate me, to blame me, to kill me, if he so chose.
Jake reared up to kick me but lost his balance. He fell flat onto his back and I knew then that he'd never get back up. His chest heaving, he stared up at the moon, cursing me. I apologized to him repeatedly, but if he heard me he made no sign. After a while, his chest no longer moved, and his lips ceased their curses.
That left me and the Occupant.
They say misery loves company, and the Occupant was misery incarnate. Not a moment after the life had gone from Jake, I heard the specter loose a throaty chuckle. The very sound cut through my gut-churning sadness and roused in me a profound anger. I marched over to the thing and, wiping the tears from my eyes, pointed the gun right at it. “This ends here,” I said, squeezing the trigger.
There was a click.
A quiet, impotent click.
I studied the gun in surprise, stupefied, and then tried pulling the trigger again. And again. It wouldn't fire.I racked the slide. Still nothing. I'd run out of ammo.
The Occupant laughed again. “I guess it doesn't end here,” came the voice from below me. “It never ends.”
I cast the gun away and marched back into the church, where I took up the folding knife we'd hid for Jane's use. Pulling it open, I rushed back to the Occupant and wondered where best to plunge it. The black-eyed thing stared at me, as if it knew I didn't have the stones to slice Elizabeth's throat. Killing with a gun was relatively easy. You could do it from a distance; point and click. To use a knife, one had to get up-close and personal. I brandished the knife, toyed with the idea of sticking the specter in the heart, but ultimately put it away. “You're coming with me,” I said. We're going to end this in the hil
ls, like the people of this town did the last time you reared your head.”
The Occupant did not move to resist me as I took hold of its arms and began to drag it away from the church. But it did speak. From behind me, its words wormed their way into my ear. “It never ends,” it reminded me.
24
I knew I was on the right path when the rows of cabins came into view. Dragging my captive behind me like a bag of cement, I trudged through woods and clearings alike. The Occupant didn't make a sound, didn't fight me. I supposed that it could have summoned up a boiling rain to scald me had it wanted to, but it didn't. This, I theorized, was due to some kind of spiritual tiredness on its part—or else it was a party trick it only liked to break out once every century. The entity had been through a lot—it had been forced to shift between two different bodies that night, and had been chased out of Elizabeth on more than one occasion due to our meddling. It had seemingly accepted its fate.
Or else it was planning something.
We left the cabins behind and began ascending the hills I knew to lead to the mines. Passing weathered equipment, small outcroppings of rock, the fog came rolling in and remained stuck in dense patches wherever the ground dipped. The moon was high, had grown brighter since our time outside the church, almost as though it'd come a little closer to the Earth to watch me out of curiosity.
“What is it you want?” I asked, slowing just a bit as the climb tired me out. I hefted the Occupant up the hill like a slab of beef and then continued dragging it by the wrists when I'd sufficiently recovered. “Why are you doing this? Why are you even in this world of ours?”
The specter didn't respond, except to study me with its obsidian eyes.
I dragged it further, reaching hilltops that sprouted formations of jagged rock. We were getting close. Finding the mineshaft where Sarah Lancaster had met her end would be difficult, but at that moment I'd have settled for any old shaft.
The Occupant: The Afterlife Investigations #3 Page 14