Now and then, I'd hear harsh whispers issuing from inside the thing. The dead were a chattery bunch this night. I tried not to let it get to me, to ignore it, and continued hiking through the hills in search of the mineshaft I'd discovered previously.
My arms ached, felt on the verge of disconnecting from my body, when I finally stumbled upon it. The fog was thick there, but the brightness of the moon lit up the hollows of the pit and brought to light the sun-bleached bones I'd glimpsed my first time round. Pulling the Occupant to the edge of this aperture, I sighed, yanking the knife from my back pocket and opening it. It was a sizable blade, rather sharp, but I hadn't decided yet on how to use it. The thought of carving into a living thing—even so despicable a monstrosity as this one—sent shivers through me.
The Occupant seemed to know it, because staring up at me from the circling fog below, it chuckled. “You haven't got the stones to carve up the girl.”
This moment was thirty years—no, more than a hundred years—in the making. Every move I'd made since I'd decided to visit Chaythe Asylum had led to this. If I could only summon up the courage, I would be returning the Occupant to the place where Joseph Lancaster had first encountered it more than a century and a half ago. I squeezed the knife in my hand and stared down at the captive.
“Why fight it?” asked the Occupant? “You should let me devour you. Untie me, and I'll put you out of your misery. It never ends, so why fight it?”
I was tired of hearing its voice. “Shut up,” I said. “I'm sending you back to where you came from.”
The thing stared up at me, unblinking. “You would kill the girl? No, not you. You don't have it in you.”
My gaze drifted to the Occupant's side, where I'd managed to shoot it the night before. Studying its flesh, I found the wound had mostly healed. That didn't seem possible, but then the parasitical entity probably worked hard at keeping its host alive. Only a mortal injury would be too difficult to mend. If I was going to do this, then I'd have to go all the way—make it so that the Occupant could never heal and use this body again.
I dropped to my knees, shaking. Placing one hand atop the Occupant's head and holding it still, I took the knife firmly in my grasp. “Elizabeth, if you're in there, then I want you to know I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything. I don't want to do this, but I have to set you free.”
The ragged edges of its mouth drooping open, the Occupant replied, “She can't hear you. She's with me. They're all with me.”
It was time.
Overriding my brain's order to stop, to second-guess things, I plunged the knife into the Occupant's throat. Almost immediately, the black eyes and serpent-like maw vanished and Elizabeth Morrissey came to the surface. But there wasn't time to dwell on that. I had to keep going—to hesitate would only prolong her suffering. Warm blood sprang from the new wound, dousing my hands, spraying the rocks.
The blade caught on the thicker bits of her anatomy—the windpipe, certain of the muscles in the throat—but I cleaved through them while screaming at the top of my lungs, and didn't stop hacking until I'd broken through the brainstem, severing the head in its entirety. I didn't dare look at it with any closeness. I merely looked at the neck-down, made sure I'd desecrated the body so that the spirit could never take hold of it again.
It was done.
It was finally done.
I let go of Elizabeth's orange hair and let the head roll over the lip of the chasm, where it bounced to the very bottom. Then, barely able to see straight and my pulse nearly shooting out of my temples, I gave the twitching body a shove into the pit. Elizabeth came to rest in a nest of bleached bones. Eventually, the scavengers would get to her, and her bones would become indistinguishable from the rest at the bottom of that shaft.
Blubbering, I lost all control of my gag reflex and threw up on the ground, heaving until I was dizzy. I then fell onto my side, eyes stinging with wave after wave of tears. How long I remained in that position, I really can't say. It must have been several minutes. Or maybe a couple of hours passed. I couldn't move, couldn't think, and my mind and body suffered a kind of schism as I tried to rationalize what I'd done.
When I finally felt it in myself to move, to distance myself from the pit which now reeked of blood, I felt completely detached from my body. Staring down at my hands, still sticky with her blood, they didn't look like my own. The first shuffling steps I took from the lip of the mineshaft were unsteady, like I'd have to teach myself to walk all over again. My eyes and throat burned for all the tears I'd shed, but now my expression slumped into pure vacancy.
Jane Corvine was dead—killed by the very thing she'd feared most.
Both Jake and Elizabeth were dead as well. When I'd first gotten to know them, they'd approached me because they'd wanted me to show them ghosts. Both had died by my hand in these silent woods. Maybe, I thought, the two of them would become ghosts themselves, and wound wander these hills together till the end of the world.
The Occupant, for all intents and purposes, was a spirit left to wander the forest in search of a new host—a Lancaster—that it would probably never find again.
I'd learned the fate of the enigmatic Dr. Corvine. I'd uncovered the truth about the whereabouts of scholar Jamieson Monroe. I'd amassed an enviable amount of knowledge about the widely-reported Third Ward Incident, and had pieced together the history of abandoned Milsbourne, Michigan—things you couldn't find in any history books.
And now, I was alone. Truly alone. All of the knowledge, all of the intrigue, all of the relationships meant nothing anymore. The plot had run its course and the players had all taken a bow. This was how it ended, I supposed.
I marched into the fog, following the sloping of the hills.
25
My remaining time in the Michigan woods was a blur. I took something of a tour of ruin, revisiting places I'd previously been. I walked by the cabin where Paul Coleman had met his end, and then found my way to the church, where Jake remained on his back, undisturbed, staring eternally at the twinkling stars. I stepped past Jane's body, rifling through the remainder of our rations and loading everything useful into a single pack. I went through her things, took her smokes and remaining cash, and then left the church behind. From there, I passed the clearing where we'd made our camp, spied the warped blue tent that flapped in the wind as if to wave goodbye.
I emptied out the first aid kit and had a look at what it contained. There was a bottle of rubbing alcohol, which I emptied over my busted lip and numerous bumps and scratches. I chewed up seven or eight Acetaminophen tablets and chased them with a swish and spit of hydrogen peroxide, which I hoped would help keep the inside of my cut-up mouth from getting infected.
A compass is surprisingly easy to use. I followed the needle, went south, and finally found my way to a paved road by early afternoon the next day. The thing had worked like a charm, hadn't malfunctioned the way it had when the Occupant had been on the prowl. I walked along that road for several miles. Eventually, a fidgeting truck driver who was probably hopped up on meth and looking for some road head came by and asked if I needed a lift. I pretended not to hear him and he drove off. An hour later, a pair of kids in a Volkswagen, having just wrapped up a camping trip of their own, offered to give me a ride as far as Detroit.
I took them up on it and probably said all of two words the whole way there. After sleeping in their back seat most of the way, I handed them a few bucks and said, “thank you” as they offloaded me at a Detroit Denny's.
* * *
I'm not looking for your pity, your forgiveness. I know what kind of man I am. I know what I did, and I'll live with it the rest of my life. Maybe you'd have handled things differently—would have walked a higher path. Well, congratulations on being so goddamn virtuous. You're above reproach, aren't you? Me? I did what I had to do to prevent further loss, further calamity.
It's easy to act outraged, to balk at the barbarity of my actions. But when push comes to shove, it's much harder to act. Need I re
mind you, I didn't choose to end up in those woods. I was led. I'd been used, manipulated from afar by that damned Occupant. When the end came, I simply did what I had to do, like Corvine and Monroe before me. I put an end to it.
No, I never told anyone about what happened. How could I? Calling the authorities and letting them know about what had gone on in those woods would have only brought attention to the region, and in case you forgot, the Occupant, in some form or another, was still out there. It was better to let sleeping dogs lie, I decided. It wasn't for fear of being punished that I kept my lips shut—frankly, a lethal injection sounds mighty fine to me, most days—I didn't blab because it was the safest thing.
Maybe you're wondering what happened after I returned to civilization, or maybe you're one of those who wrote me off as a murderer, a piece of human garbage unworthy of your headspace. Well, for the curious, I'll tell you up front that things weren't pretty for me when I got back. I spent some days on the road, hitchhiking, and lost my already precarious teaching position at Moorlake University. That's right—the cheap-asses in the administration would have to find some other chump to teach those kids about Chaucer.
There were some questions. Elizabeth's parents got ahold of me at one point. I don't know how. They reached out to the administration and got my email address shortly before I was shit-canned, I supposed. They wrote to me, concerned because they hadn't seen or heard from their daughter since Jake and I had been by their house that night some weeks before. They wanted to know if I knew anything about their whereabouts. I wrote them back, crafting a real nice message about how young people sometimes run off together, and that, wherever they were, I felt sure they were together and happy. I like to think that it wasn't a complete lie.
Shortly thereafter, I couldn't afford to pay my rent and got evicted. I pawned most of my stuff and cashed out standing favors with friends and acquaintances in northwest Ohio. For almost two months, I couch-surfed.
I was down in the Columbus area, staying with a college buddy of mine, Alex, who taught biology at a private university. Tired of seeing me on his sofa, he offered to put in a good word for me at the university—Chapel Institute of Columbus—and even helped me spice up my resume with all kinds of outrageous power talk. After an awkward interview, where I barely held it together, I somehow ended up with a job. I was set to teach full time English. They had a shortage of instructors in their English department and were desperate to bring me on board. Their benefits package was far more comprehensive than the non-existent package at Moorlake U, and I signed on in a heartbeat.
I worked small jobs through the summer, saving up enough for my own apartment and eventually moving out of Alex's place, and then, in late August, started my first term at the Chapel Institute. Things were looking up. For the first time in my adult life, I had a real job, with real benefits. There were stirrings of a social life, too.
Though the months previous had been incredibly hard for me and I still couldn't sleep without a light on, I told myself that all of that—the Occupant, Milsbourne, the asylum, were in the past. That part of my life was over. I'd turned a new page, was ready to live a quiet life and make amends for the transgressions of my past. There were times along the way where I thought I felt those now familiar eyes staring out at me from some unseen abyss; where I found myself in an empty room and could have sworn that someone had only just been there. There were times when the memories had sharp teeth and took a bite out of me and left me curled up in bed for days, waiting for something to emerge from the shadows. I told myself all of that was behind me. That it hadn't been real.
I was wrong.
It never ends.
I'm afraid there's more to tell.
26
My first semester at the Chapel Institute went by without so much as a hiccough.
I got my own office and didn't have to share it with the likes of patronizing, dandruff-ridden Phil. The pay was good, and no students came up to me after lectures to ask me about heading their extracurriculars.
Also, over the course of that first semester, I did something that I'd never much bothered with while teaching back in Moorlake. I got to know my fellow teachers. The other folks in the English department were friendly and happened to be close to me in age. There was Dylan, a creative writing teacher who'd had several stories published in impressive mags like Glitter Train and The New Yorker. There was Tanya, an instructor who happened to be married to the vice dean of the university and who brought in boxes of primo cupcakes from a bakery in downtown Columbus every Monday and Friday. There was Gerald, a former college athlete who'd torn his ACL and lost out on his chance to go pro, and who now taught Comp. 1 and Comp. 2 classes while going out every other night to binge drink at clubs with girls young enough to be his daughters.
And then there was Rose.
Rose Dennings, a freckled brunette just an inch or two shorter than me, who looked something like a Friends-era Courtney Cox, was an associate professor who taught a couple of random poetry and lit courses. Her office was right next to mine, so I'd gotten to know her right from the get-go. She was something of a gossip, had been working at Chapel for just over two years, and knew everything there was to know about the area—from the best campus restaurants to the best places in Columbus to catch a cheap matinee.
One day, early in the semester when I was still struggling to put my old life behind me, she offered to show me around town. We both had the day off and took a cab into Columbus, enjoying a lunch, taking a shuttle to a large mall and then catching a movie. One thing led to another and she ended up spending the night at my new apartment. This became a regular occurrence, and before too long we were the office “item”, a couple cooed at by the others in the English department.
Rose was unlike any other girl I'd ever dated. I'd broken off my last relationship before moving to Moorlake, not wanting to do the long distance thing, and hadn't really connected with anyone there. But from the moment I met Rose—please excuse the cliche—I knew she was different. A whole new breed of woman. We had similar tastes in books and music. Though she loved a good time out on the town, she was just as content to be a homebody, spending a day watching movies on the couch. She drank beer, didn't bother me on the daily to shave, and it's fair to say I fell head over heels for her. Things moved pretty quickly. Our passion flared. By the end of the fall semester, we were talking about the possibility of moving in together.
And so the pieces of a normal, happy life began to fall into place for me. I taught my classes, enjoyed bantering with my co-workers, and spent my evenings with Rose. Some nights, after making love, we'd sit up for hours talking. She'd tell me about her childhood, or about the traveling she'd done during her gap year. Sometimes, looking to me with real curiosity, she'd ask me about my past, about the teaching post I'd held previously and about why I'd moved to Columbus in the first place.
One thing I wasn't ready to do—that I would never be able to do, honestly—was open up to her about my past. Oh, sure, I told her about my upbringing, clear through my own college years, but my time spent teaching at Moorlake U was always a blank spot, something I'd conveniently glaze over. She meant no harm in it, was genuinely curious about my past, but even I didn't care to reflect on those days. They were too fresh, too new, even then. Some nights, when I dreamt, I could still picture the scenery of Chaythe Asylum, or the abandoned buildings of Milsbourne, along with the people I'd explored them with, now deceased.
I wished I could open up to her, but the horrors of those days would be my cross to bear till I drew my last breath. No one could know—the knowledge was dangerous. And anyway, it was all too unbelievable for someone who hadn't actually been involved. Had someone told me about the Occupant before all of this began—about half the shit I'd witnessed back in Moorlake—I wouldn't have believed them. It was simply easier to deflect back to her. “Tell me more about your childhood, your family,” I'd say, and after a flash of disappointment, she'd talk about herself.
I
learned during one such discussion that her family hailed from Michigan originally. “What part?” I asked.
She had her head pressed to my bare chest and had been caught up in listening to my heartbeat. “The Upper Peninsula,” she said. “It's really beautiful up there—lots of trees. Good fishing, since you're on the Great Lakes. Ever been?”
I paused, not knowing how to react. I'd been to the Upper Peninsula, all right. I knew a thing or two about these many trees she was talking about, and I couldn't really recommend them. “You don't say...”
She sensed my discomfort and gave me a pleading look.
“Yeah,” I admitted. “I've been there. Once. Don't have any plans to go back, though. Let's just say I have a lot of bad memories about the place.”
Not long after that, Rose got dressed and set out, having some appointment in the morning that she couldn't be late for. I spent the remainder of the night alone in bed, staring at the ceiling, the lights in my bedroom all on, contemplating my past. I felt an immense guilt for any joy I'd managed to cultivate since moving to Columbus.
Jane Corvine didn't get to experience any joy. Not anymore. Neither did Jake or Elizabeth. Not after what I'd done to them.
I wondered, yet again, whether I'd ever be able to put this behind me, or at least not flinch at the very mention of the State of Michigan.
* * *
The fall semester ended. Everything outside of the occasional bad dream was blissful for me. A month-long winter break was on its way. Rose and I spent a good deal of time together during the first two weeks of the vacation, and then she started preparing for a trip to her parents' place in Dayton where she'd spend the holidays. Around the 20th of December, as she was getting ready to depart on her trip, I invited her to my place for one last night of Chinese takeout and Netflix. I wouldn't see her again till early January, but we promised to chat daily.
The Occupant: The Afterlife Investigations #3 Page 15