by Brian Harmon
Eric recalled the ghostly figures he’d encountered. Even without a picture, he was fairly sure that the boy he’d seen was Robert Kapper. But what about the others? None of these pictures looked anything like the bloodied woman. Nor did any of them resemble the residual woman or children. He supposed the shadow man might be one of the fishermen, but he couldn’t be sure. He hadn’t actually seen the figure’s face. “Were there any other reports for the area? Accidents? Deaths? Non-mysterious tragedies? Anything that might spawn a restless spirit?”
Pete nodded. “There were, as a matter of fact. A couple of drownings. One in ’sixty-eight and another in ’eighty-six.” He grinned. “Ironic, right? But other than that, I didn’t see anything. Oh, except for there was a family back in the early eighties that died in a fire.”
Eric felt his stomach churn a little at this news. A fire? He recalled the residual house in the woods, the way it had transformed itself into a burned husk. And those people he saw… That woman… Those girls…
Jesus…
“And there was a serial killer, too.”
Eric raised an eyebrow. “Serial killer? Seriously?” Was there anything creepy that hadn’t happened on this lake?
“It was over a hundred years ago. Right around nineteen hundred, I guess. Guy named Jeremiah Bog supposedly killed a bunch of women and then disappeared just when the police started to suspect him. But I can’t find any solid articles on it. It could be all made up.”
“That’s possible,” agreed Eric. He hoped it was made up. He had enough to think about without adding a sociopath to the mix. Especially when said sociopath would probably now be among the ghosts lurking in the forest. As if the bloody woman wasn’t enough spectral psychopath for one day. “You’ve really done your homework on this place.”
Pete grinned. “Unlike Owen, I do take this stuff seriously.”
“I can tell.”
“Careful with that, please,” said Pete to Jordan, who had emerged from the van with a camera of some sort and was filming the nearby woods with it.
“I will be,” she promised, barely looking up at him.
This was apparently good enough for Pete, who promptly seemed to forget about the little girl playing with the probably very expensive camera and asked, “Want to see something really cool?” He swiped at the screen a few times and then showed Eric another picture. It was a little blurry, but it seemed to be a picture of the lake. “I took this yesterday. See the shadow under the water?”
Eric took the tablet and looked closely. There did seem to be a shape under the water, now that he was looking. “A rock?” he suggested.
“Can’t be.” He reached over and swiped at the tablet. Another picture slid across the screen, replacing the last. “I took this picture right after it. No shadow. Whatever was there disappeared between the first and second shot.”
Eric nodded. But he wasn’t impressed. It could have been a large fish or a turtle. It could have been a cloud of silt drifting through. Or it could have been a shadow. It could even have just been an odd glitch in the camera. Of all the things it could have been, sea monster was pretty low on his list of possibilities.
“It’s hardly solid evidence, I know,” he said, sounding a little disappointed. “But it’s curious. The blog fans will like it.”
“I’ll bet they will,” agreed Eric. He stared at the photo, thinking. “Have you taken very many pictures like this?”
“Hundreds. We’ve been all around this end of the lake.”
“Can I see them?”
Pete took the tablet and leafed through his files for a moment, then he handed it back to him. Picture after picture of the lake and surrounding area passed before his eyes. After a few dozen, he stopped. “There…” he said, staring down at the image of a narrow cove. He turned it so Pete could see. “Where is this?”
Pete considered the picture. “That’s over by Fettarsetter’s place,” he realized.
That figured. It was the last place he wanted to go.
“What’s so special about it?”
Eric looked at it again. “That’s where my dream took place.”
Pete stared at the screen, his eyes growing larger as he digested this bit of information. “Whoa…”
A loud commotion rose from the nearby forest and Eric and Pete both looked up to see Owen rushing through the forest toward them. “Check it out!” he shouted as he approached them, lifting his handheld camera for them to see. “I got something!”
As Eric, Pete and Jordan all crowded around him—Mandy wasn’t interested, of course—he flipped up the view screen and pressed the play button. A shaky video of the forest began to play.
They waited…
“Look close. It’s easy to miss.”
Obviously it was, because none of them saw anything more than trees and brush bouncing around as Owen stumbled through the forest. Eric kept expecting to see the shadow man flash across the screen, or maybe even a glimpse of the blond-headed boy as he vanished into thin air. But nothing like that happened. As far as he could tell, nothing at all happened. And as soon as nothing had finished happening, it was over.
“Did you see it?” asked Owen, his voice almost shrill with excitement.
“See what?” asked Pete.
Owen gave a frustrated grunt and replayed the clip. “Right there. On the left side, when I stop moving for a second.”
Eric and Pete leaned closer and watched the indicated area more closely. The sickly motion paused as Owen stopped walking and held the camera still for a moment. Something moved from top to bottom, a small, blurry thing.
“Some dust?” asked Pete.
“Jeez, Pete! Am I the only one here with a trained eye for these things?”
“Bug, then?”
“Ladybug?” guessed Jordan.
“It’s not a ladybug,” insisted Owen. “Is that my thermal camera?”
“I’m being careful!” she snapped, and promptly turned and walked away with it before he could take it from her.
“Don’t you break that!”
“I won’t!”
“So what is it, then?” asked Eric, impatient.
Returning his attention to the footage, he proudly declared, “It’s an orb!”
Pete sighed. “It’s not an orb. It’s dust. Or a bug.”
“Or a ladybug,” added Jordan from the far side of camp.
Owen ignored her and fixed his gaze on Pete. He managed to look terribly disappointed in his partner. “That’s what it wants you to think, dude.”
Eric wondered if he might actually have been better off in the company of the bloody woman.
Chapter Sixteen
“It’s not an orb,” said Pete.
“Of course it’s an orb. You just can’t see it on this little screen.”
“I can see it just fine. It’s dust.”
“When I get it up on the computer, you’ll be able to see it.”
“There’s nothing to see!” growled Pete. “It’s just dust! Or maybe a bug.”
“It’s an orb. Eric can see it.”
“Eric doesn’t believe in orbs,” snapped Eric. He was making his way back through the forest, toward the southern tip of the lake. The argument over the stupid orb had managed to get put on pause long enough for Pete to tell Owen about the cove he’d recognized from his dream, and for them to decide that they needed to take him there immediately. They quickly gathered up some equipment and left Mandy and Jordan to watch base camp. Then, as soon as they were on their way, the subject of the orb bounced right back again. “Now shut up back there. You’ll scare away the lizard men.”
“He’s right,” decided Owen. “You need to stop making so much noise!”
Owen scowled at him.
Eric hadn’t been excited for these two to join him. After all the things he’d encountered in these woods, he was worried for their safety. But he’d hoped that maybe their complete ineptitude at finding the monsters that virtually crowded this forest might come i
n handy. With any luck at all, they’d steer clear of them.
And as the argument about the orb dragged on, he found that he was considerably less bothered by the idea of something eating them.
On almost every paranormal investigation show he’d watched, he’d at some point heard them discuss orbs. They were supposedly little balls of light or energy that moved around by themselves. They were thought to be some sort of spiritual manifestation. But whenever they turned up on camera, they were almost always dismissed as dust particles or flying insects illuminated by the infrared.
Owen wasn’t much for scientific deduction. He was only interested in getting something on film for his stupid blog. And to get his creepy boss off his back.
“How far away is this spot?” asked Eric.
“Not far,” promised Pete.
As they made their way closer to the lake, Eric’s phone rang again. It was Karen.
“Catch me up,” she told him as soon as he answered.
He glanced over his shoulder at his bickering companions. Owen was muttering something about the orb. Pete looked an awful lot like he was struggling against the urge to take the camera from him and insert it unceremoniously into someplace it didn’t belong. “I’m with the…um… The investigators.”
“The funny space men?”
“Yeah. Them. Maybe Isabelle can catch you up.”
“She told me you were kicking all sorts of monster butt today.”
Eric chuckled. That was definitely the sort of thing Isabelle would say. “Well, I wouldn’t say that, exactly. More like…um…”
“Hauling your own butt far from the vicinity of the monsters?”
“That probably covers it, yeah.”
“Keep those buns moving,” she told him. “Your insurance policy doesn’t cover you being eaten by monsters.”
“Really? That seems like a pretty glaring omission.”
“Insurance companies. What’re you going to do?”
“I’ll bet they don’t cover alien abductions, either.”
“I’d have to look it up.”
“You probably should. Apparently that’s a real concern out here.”
“You’re joking.”
“Unfortunately not.” Eric glanced back again. Owen and Pete were still arguing about the orb and not paying him any attention. “My new friends here are big believers that the truth is out there.”
“You’re not going to start wearing foil hats are you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You know I hate wearing hats.”
“I can’t believe anyone ever takes that stuff seriously.”
“Well, I have known a few people who could pull off a fedora. But not many.”
“Aliens.”
“Oh, them. Actually, they looked pretty convincing to me.”
This surprised her. “You actually saw them?”
“I saw…something… I should let Isabelle tell you.”
“Have her call me as soon as I hang up.”
“Of course.” Isabelle wouldn’t need to be told. She was listening in. Now she would only be waiting for them to finish their conversation and for Karen to free up the line.
The first thing Isabelle ever asked of Eric when she first contacted him through his cell phone was that he let her call and speak to Karen. Having already bonded to him psychically, she practically already knew her. She knew what a great person she was and how much Eric adored her, and her newfound freedom had made her eager to make as many new friends as she possibly could. Now she and Karen spoke frequently, even when Eric wasn’t off on odd adventures, and they’d grown as close as sisters. Closer, really, given Karen’s turbulent history with her real sister, Joyce.
Isabelle also occasionally served as Karen’s snitch, keeping her informed of her husband’s whereabouts and whether he was getting himself into any kind of trouble. But he could usually trust her to not get him into too much trouble. (Given the choice, she usually sided with Eric.)
“Aliens…” marveled Karen. “That’s just so weird. I thought you were dealing with ghosts this time.”
“Yeah. I’ve got those, too.”
“Aliens and ghosts?”
“And monsters.”
“Wow. Busy day.”
“I know. But if it’s worth doing, I suppose it’s worth overdoing, right?”
“Well…just try not to get eaten, I guess. Or probed…”
“Two things I generally try to avoid,” he assured her, shaking his head. He knew she wouldn’t be able to resist the alien probe thing. She always did find that funny.
“Seriously, though,” she said. “Watch yourself out there. Holly says hell’s still coming to that lake. Whatever that means.”
“I will. And I’ll put a stop to it. I promise.”
“I’ll bet you will. But don’t do anything stupid.”
“Who, me?”
“Yes, you. Have Isabelle call me now.”
“Okay. Bye.”
“Bye.”
He disconnected the call and stuffed the phone back into his pocket. He’d reached the lake. It stretched away from him, its surface calm and smooth. It didn’t look at all like it did in his vision of a rising hell. It was peaceful, tranquil.
He lifted his gaze to the sky above. The clouds remained wispy and sparse. There was still no sign of the coming rain.
He turned and followed the shoreline to the left. A narrow path had been worn through the grass between the trees and the water, showing him the way. “How much farther?” he asked, looking back at Owen and Pete, who seemed to have reached a stalemate in their orb argument.
Pete gestured toward Fettarsetter’s little dock across the narrow tip of the lake. “Probably going to take us a little while. It gets rocky over on that side.”
Eric remembered the rocky terrain from his dream. He scanned the far shore and tried to pick out the correct cove, but they all looked the same from here.
Then he looked back the other way and caught sight of someone wading out into the water much farther down the shore. “Who’s that?” he asked, shading his eyes to see. It wasn’t either of the old fishermen, he was sure.
Owen peered past him. “Who? Oh. That’s whatshisname… Bowie?”
“Mr. Bouven,” corrected Pete.
“Who’s Mr. Bouven?” asked Eric.
“I don’t know,” said Owen. “Conservation guy, or something. He studies the lake. Something about the wildlife.”
“I think he’s a biologist,” said Pete.
“Isn’t that what I said?”
“Not exactly.”
“Whatever. He’s always out there. He takes a lot of water samples. I guess.” He sounded extremely uninterested. Apparently real science was boring.
Although even Eric had to admit that he’d have a hard time getting excited over lake water samples.
He watched the biologist over his shoulder for a moment as he walked on, but it was difficult to tell what he even looked like from here, much less what he was doing.
When he looked back at the path before him, he realized that something was lying on the ground. For a moment, he couldn’t quite tell what he was looking at. Then he saw it for what it was just as the smell hit him.
It was a small deer. Or more accurately, it was half of a small deer. The back half, specifically.
“That’s…probably not good…” he immediately decided, and stopped to scan the forest around him.
Owen and Pete caught up to him and stared at the carcass. Both of them said, “Whoa…”
Eric’s first instinct had been to search for any sign of whatever predator was responsible for this. Owen’s first reaction was to whip out his thermal camera and film the unfortunate creature. Pete began snapping pictures with the tablet.
“Something big had to do this,” announced Owen, as if he were the expert on decapitated deer asses. Maybe he was. Eric didn’t know for sure. But he doubted it. He just liked to sound like he knew what he was talking about. “It’s still
warm. Probably hasn’t been here long.”
Eric didn’t point out that the thing’s pungent odor suggested otherwise. Nor did he point out that it was lying in the sun. It wasn’t worth it.
“We’re definitely looking at a food source.”
“Or a form of cattle mutilation,” suggested Pete. “But with wild animals instead of domestic ones.” He pointed to the bloody end. “Those wounds are extremely clean. And where are the guts?”
Owen nodded. “That’s a good call. Make sure you get lots of pictures. We’ll compare them with other reports.”
Eric might’ve rolled his eyes, except he was using them to continue scanning the forest around them. His first thought was not aliens, but rather the hellhound. That thing was definitely big enough to take down a deer. Besides, he’d seen a few programs on cattle mutilation and he wasn’t convinced there was any such thing. It was far more likely that a predator did this. Possibly a supernatural predator, but a predator nonetheless.
“This is great,” decided Owen. “It’s all adding up.”
Eric glanced at him, baffled. No it wasn’t. Nothing was adding up here. Everything was only getting more and more confusing! There were alien spaceships flying around, ghosts lurking behind every tree and monsters stalking him through the brush. Creepy Fester Sweaters were looming in the shadows and dead things were apparently turning up all over the lake. The sheer absurdity of it all was enough to make him want to scream. And they were obsessing over half a dead deer!
He said none of this aloud. Instead, he only said, “We should probably keep moving. I still want to see that cove.”
“Give us a minute,” said Owen. “This could be important.”
“How could a reeking, dead animal be important?”
Owen sighed as if Eric were stupid. “It’s evidence, dude. It’s like a crime scene. Haven’t you ever watched CSI?”
Eric wanted to tell him that he didn’t think either of them were smart enough to be on CSI, except maybe as dimwitted extras, a pair of paranormal investigators who were killed by a wild animal because they were too stupid to leave the area when they had the chance, perhaps. But he bit his tongue. Hard.
