Infernal Corpse
D. J. Goodman
© 2016 Derek Goodman
One
Megan Howzer stood on the rocky shore of Lake Superior, staring at the choppy, early November waters and wondering if she finally had the courage to jump in and let the frigid waves carry her out to her death.
Not for the first time, Megan reflected on how most people would consider that cowardice, not courage. It was her experience, however, that anyone who said that didn’t understand how depression seemed to work. She’d read somewhere that lots of people started to look outwardly happier right before they committed suicide, much to the chagrin of their grieving family members. It was because they’d finally made the decision to do it, that they knew this unidentifiable pain and numbness was going to end. She suspected that might be bullshit, though. She couldn’t imagine being happy most of the time. Instead, the depression held her down, much like if she were weighted by one of the large rocks she currently stood on. When she was like that, she couldn’t do anything. She could barely leave the house. She had trouble making herself eat. All of existence was a thick curtain she was tangled in. It blinded her and kept her from escaping. So killing herself? That seemed courageous to her. It felt like it might be the only way to rip through that curtain and prove it couldn’t stay wrapped around her.
But it’s not the only way, she thought. Just open up the bottle in your hand and take what’s inside.
She’d driven here directly from the pharmacy, here being the grounds of one of the vacation rental cabins outside of Mucwunaguk, Michigan. Her summer job all throughout high school had been cleaning a number of these cabins between rentals, and she’d come to love this particular stretch of the Michigan coastline. In the winter, it had always been even more of a sanctuary, provided she was willing to brave the treacherous roads and try ignoring the subzero temperatures. The Upper Peninsula didn’t exactly get many tourists at that time of the year, so she knew she could be alone with her thoughts here. It was here she’d first thought about killing herself. It was also here that she’d finally decided to get help. It had only seemed appropriate that, when she made what she was sure would be her last choice between living and dying, she do it in the same place.
It’s okay, the voice in her head said. You can live. Really. She had wondered for a while if this meant she was schizophrenic, but the psychiatrist had told her that particular illness didn’t necessarily work that way, despite what the media said. The voice always sounded to her suspiciously like Angie Zwiersky, the first person Megan had ever had a crush on and the first clue that Megan might be something other than straight. She wasn’t sure why it was Angie’s voice she always heard as the comforting voice of reason, although it probably had something to do with the fact that Angie had been nice to her during a time when no one else had.
According to the doctor, there was nothing wrong with hearing that voice as long as it didn’t tell her to do anything bad. It was a coping mechanism, apparently, one she’d picked up and latched onto over the years, giving that voice its own face in her mind, its own personality and mannerisms. Apparently, in the face of all her mother’s drunken antics over the years, Megan’s mind had decided that the best way to stay sane was to go just a little insane. And it had worked for a time. Then she had dropped out of college after only a year and she was back here, no job, not many friends, no real prospects for the future.
It’s not always going to be like that, the voice said. And the pills in your hand are the first step.
Of course, Megan didn’t expect them to work right away. She wasn’t even sure if they were the ones she needed. She’d never taken this kind of medication before. Megan’s mother had always been saying to her, ever since childhood, that any and all pharmaceuticals were toxic. Never mind that the woman was more than willing to pollute her body with enough vodka to drown a fish, it was prescription medications that were bad. Even now, Megan still thought she could hear that woman whispering to her, saying that would be bad, that she would be a tool of the industrial drug complex or some other such nonsense.
Megan opened the child-proof cap and dumped the prescribed dosage of one capsule into her hand. This shouldn’t be that hard of a decision. When choosing between living and dying, it didn’t make sense that a fear of a couple of little pills would be the thing to keep her from making a decision. But most fears people had weren’t rational. At least she knew where hers came from. A part of her wanted to take the pills just to spite her mother for filling up her mind with garbage and conspiracy theories, but she knew that wasn’t a good enough reason to do it. Whatever she chose here, she had to do it for herself, not for anyone else.
She looked to either side up and down the shoreline. Nothing but rocks, trees, and empty open water as far as she could see. To her left farther down, she could see the gentle rise of the Porcupine Mountains (a title she had always thought was something of a misnomer, since she had seen the Rockies and in comparison these were more like hills with delusions of grandeur). Behind her, past the remains of a long-dormant shoreline campfire and copse of scrubby trees, a path led back to the rental cabin, completely deserted for nearly a month now. There were a few people still in a cabin farther down the shore, she knew, a group of friends taking advantage of the off-season rates before the weather made coming this far into the boonies an impossibility. All this meant she was alone. She hadn’t told anyone where she was going and no one would likely think to look for her here. If she walked into the water, it would probably be hours before anyone missed her. So this was it. After all her hemming and hawing, this was really the moment where she had to choose.
Maybe fighting this really was the more courageous choice. She popped the pill in her mouth and swallowed it dry. It would take several weeks of regular doses before she would likely begin feeling anything other than side effects, yet this still felt like an important moment. This was the moment she decided to keep living.
Megan took a deep breath, the cold air feeling sharp in her lungs. Okay, so she wasn’t going to kill herself. Now was the time to decide where she was going to go from here. Maybe not make plans for her future, since plans had a way of getting fouled up. Goals, then. Things she could strive for. Things she knew it was in her capability of doing. She’d doubted herself for so long that she wasn’t entirely sure what those capabilities were, but she thought now was a good time to start learning.
First, however, she needed to eat and find something to wash down that nasty pill taste. For the first time in what felt like months, she smiled.
You know where you want to go, the voice in her head said. You know who you want to see.
She did indeed. The voice’s original owner, Angie Zwiersky herself, was also part owner of the Gitchigumi Café downtown. She would probably be waitressing right about now. And according to local scuttlebutt, she was not only currently single but had recently come out as bi. Megan wasn’t sure if she had the flirting chops to catch Angie’s eye. What she was sure of was that, after all these years, it was finally time to at least try.
Something exploded farther down the shoreline.
Megan almost lost her precarious balance on the slick rocks. Her sneakers slipped but thankfully found purchase as she pinwheeled her arms crazily. It wasn’t just that the sound startled her. The explosion, while not exactly nearby, had been close enough that she could feel a shockwave in the air. She hadn’t been looking directly toward whatever had exploded, but out of the corner of her eye she’d seen a flash bright enough that she’d had to look away. Once she was sure she wasn’t about to end up in Lake Superior after all and the explosion’s echo had faded out across the lake, she turned in that direction, thinking for sure that she would see something on fire.
> There was no fire, but there was a thin wisp of black smoke curling in the air and getting carried away by the cold wind. It was about a quarter mile west down the shore, closer to the Porcupines. The vacationers had probably heard it, but she doubted they would be close enough to inspect it before Megan herself got there. That left the question, of course, of whether or not she even wanted to investigate.
Angie’s voice told her no, that wasn’t a good idea at all, although it wasn’t very loud. It probably knew saying such a thing wouldn’t work. Megan’s curiosity was too strong, coupled with a fact that this was probably the most exciting thing she would see in Mukwunaguk all winter.
Megan carefully worked her way off the outlier rocks to a more solid section of the shore then ran as best as she could over the stony terrain to the source of the explosion. She couldn’t for the life of her figure out what might have caused it. There shouldn’t have been anything out here flammable, unless the vacationers had left something out that they shouldn’t. At least, whatever it was, it wouldn’t have hurt anybody. The edges of Lake Superior at the beginning of November could feel like an empty land at the very edge of the world. No boats or ships would be crazy enough to be out on the water. Even the roads, not even visible from here through all the trees, would be more or less deserted until they were closer to town.
Whatever the explosion had been, Megan could see from some distance away that it had left something of a crater. It was right at the edge of the shore, a depression in the earth just close enough to the lake that the waves deposited a small amount of water inside it. The closer she got, the better she could hear a hissing noise, almost but not quite like a snake. This gave her pause until she remembered that no snakes would be out in this just-above-freezing temperature. No, the steam rising up with the last of the smoke told her the sounds actual origin. Something in the crater was hot, hot enough to instantly evaporate any water that touched it.
She slowed down, taking this fact in. The distance and the angle were such that she still couldn’t see whatever was in the crater, but her first thought was that it had to be a meteor. The rocks were certainly scattered around it as though there had been an impact. But would a meteor have caused a flash like that? How big would it have to have been for her to feel the shock wave from a quarter mile away?
Megan shoved the pill bottle in the pocket of her coat, all thoughts about whether to live or die gone now in the excitement of the moment. If it was a meteor, maybe she could take it and sell it. There had to be someone that would pay for it. Weren’t there websites that made jewelry out of such things? If nothing else, she could sell it to the Mukwunaguk Historical Society, yet another trinket in their crowded little museum for the tourists to coo over in the summertime.
She thought she heard voices somewhere beyond the trees. That would be the vacationers finally responding to what they had heard. If Megan wanted to get to the meteor first then she would have to move quickly. She wasn’t quite sure yet what she would do with it once she was there, given that it was likely still way too hot to touch, but at least she would have first claim on it.
Megan slowed, though, as she got close enough to see over the shallow lip of the crater. She’d never seen a meteor in person, but she’d always been under the impression that most of them were fairly small, maybe about as big as her fist. Whatever was still smoking and steaming in there, though, was bigger. Much bigger. And while the smoke and steam obscured her vision, she was almost certain that the soot-darkened thing inside was moving.
She stopped, knowing well enough that she didn’t want to deal with any mysterious moving object in a crater. She almost turned around and ran off, knowing full well from years of consuming media what happened to anyone bold enough to investigate mysterious circumstances. Given a few more seconds, that was probably exactly what she would have done, too. But as the temperature in the crater lowered and the hissing was no longer so loud, she thought she could hear something else, a voice.
“Help…”
Holy shit, there was actually a person in that crater.
Any thoughts of self-preservation vanished as she pictured the horrible mutilation that the person might be suffering at this very moment. The voice had sounded female, although hoarse and scratchy like she had been breathing in too much smoke. Maybe it was one of the vacationers after all. Megan had been so lost in her own internal struggle that she wouldn’t have noticed if someone had snuck on down to the shore for a little quiet-time of their own. But if a person was at the center of it, she highly doubted the explosion had been from a meteor.
Megan pulled her smartphone from her pocket, aware that she might need to call 911, yet she wasn’t surprised when she saw that it had no signal. There was a cell tower over on the far side of Mukwunaguk, but here the reception was always spotty. The tourists even kind of liked it that way, the lack of phones making them feel more isolated even in the height of tourist season where every cabin was completely full.
“Help,” she heard again. Even though she was closer now the voice sounded more feeble. Megan suddenly wasn’t sure she wanted to see the state of the woman. Whatever gruesome mess was inside of the crater would probably stay with her forever once she saw it. Yet she couldn’t just ignore a cry for help. Her mother hadn’t taught her much worth learning, but she had at least taught Megan that.
She skidded to a halt at the edge of the crater. She could see now that it was deeper than it had appeared from farther away, also wider. The smoke and steam had subsided enough that she had a fairly clear view inside it, even if that view didn’t make a lot of sense to Megan. There was some water pooling at the bottom now that the thing at the center was no longer quite hot enough to instantly boil it away. And that thing was…well, Megan couldn’t be sure. It definitely had the general shape of a human but there was no way it could be the source of the voice she’d heard. That would require the person to be alive, and nothing could possibly survive what this person had been through. The person’s skin, right along with any clothing they might have been wearing, was charred right through. Megan thought she could see the muscles underneath, but even that was burned black. There were still veins of orange and red cracking through the charred outer husk, giving the illusion that whatever had burned this person was still working its way through the inner flesh. The strange thing was that there was no smell, though. Megan would have expected the smells of blackened skin and singed hair to stink up the air, but Megan smelled nothing more than the fishy tang of the lake water misting through the air.
“Help.” The thing’s dehydrated lips moved. She really was still alive, somehow.
“Oh dear God,” Megan said, again checking her smartphone and fiddling with it in the hope that it had magically added some bars in the last few seconds. It still gave her the X that indicated no signal. Deciding that probably wouldn’t change anytime soon, she put the phone back in her pocket. The only way she was going to get help would be if she ran back to her car and drove until she got back in range of the cell tower. Leaving this woman behind somehow felt wrong though, especially since Megan didn’t see any way she was going to survive more than a few more minutes.
“Just…just wait there,” Megan said, realizing how stupid that sounded even as it left her mouth. This woman was in no condition to go anywhere. She didn’t even look like she could move her limbs. She was curled into a semi-fetal position, and the black and dehydrated muscles made her look like pictures Megan had seen of those mummies that would sometimes be discovered in ice. Megan went to the very edge of the crater and assessed whether or not it would be a good idea to go in. The sides of the crater weren’t so steep that she couldn’t get out, and in terms of depth it would only go up to her belly button. It was filling up with water faster now, though. In less than a minute, the woman would probably drown rather than succumb to the burns. Maybe that would be the more humane thing to let happen, although Megan didn’t think she could force herself just stand by and watch that. At the very
least, she had to try to pull the woman out, maybe even get her to say something about what had happened before she died.
Her skin still looked hot, though, probably too hot to touch. Megan pulled out a pair of winter gloves from inside her coat and put them on. They were rather flimsy and wouldn’t protect her hands for long. They likely would, however, work just long enough to pull the woman out. She didn’t look like she weighed much.
That thought stuck in her mind as Megan carefully stepped down the steep sides into the crater. Maybe it was the burn damage, but there seemed to be something odd about this woman’s proportions. She looked like she hadn’t had an ounce of fat on her body, and she looked smaller than a grown woman should. Holy crap, was this a little girl? No, Megan realized as she got closer. Two large yet still shriveled protrusions from her chest marked this woman as a full adult, or at least a teen who had been well-endowed early. Her back was messed up though in a way Megan couldn’t quite identify, almost as though the woman had been deformed even before whatever happened. These were all details that Megan knew she shouldn’t be dwelling on just now, though. She could wonder what it all meant later, after she’d given the dying woman what little comfort she could and the police were involved.
“Help.” This time the word was barely audible. Megan stooped down in the growing pool of water and leaned her ear in close to hear whatever the woman’s last words might be.
“Please,” Megan said. “Tell me what happened.” She knew this would be a sight that would haunt her for the rest of her life and every moment she stayed here was a little more psychological trauma added to her already heaping pile. Yet she couldn’t leave yet. It was the only right thing to do.
The woman’s lips moved again, but this time no sound came out. Megan moved closer, hoping she might decipher some of what she was saying through lip reading, but there weren’t enough lips left to read. There was, however, something else odd about her mouth. Something strange about her teeth…
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