Now wasn't the time to worry about that, of course. We were still trying to figure out that “survival” thing and I realized it probably wasn't a good idea for me to get my hopes up on that front. Any fears I had that were contingent on my survival were pretty damn premature.
After a lot of hemming and hawing, Jane took us to her place. She lived on a remote stretch of land several miles from the dirt road that had first led me to her uncle's cabin, in a weatherbeaten double-wide. Jane Corvine was not used to having guests, it soon became clear. She had to move a bunch of crap out of her living room to make space for us, and when that was through she offered us the sofa and recliner to crash on.
But first she ordered us to shower.
Jake and I took turns using the cramped shower stall in her bathroom, dashing on flowery soaps and shampoo which—under the circumstances—smelled incredible when compared to the reek of the road we'd brought with us. Jane threw our clothes in the dryer and when the two of us were reasonably clean and fresh she broke into her stock of Wonder Bread and whipped us up a pair of PB & J's.
“Just like mom used to make,” I declared as I dug in.
Jane wasn't in a joking mood, though. She was elsewhere, marching through the trailer, room to room, as if searching for something. She finally found it in her bedroom—a black handgun. I don't know what kind—I don't know a thing about firearms—but judging by its size I didn't doubt that a single shot from it would probably knock a man's head from his shoulders. She placed it in a shoulder holster and zipped a jacket up over it.
“What's that for?” I asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
“When you're rooting around in the trash you need to take precautions to protect yourself from the junkyard dogs,” she replied, as if that was any way to answer. “I'm going into town.”
“What for?” asked Jake, the sandwich sticking to the roof of his mouth and making his voice slurred.
“Gonna try and find me someone who knows about this town, Milsbourne. I think I know a guy who might be able to help. He's lived here all his life, does a lot of hiking.” She stepped into a pair of black boots and sat down to lace them. “You two need to stay here. Get some rest. You're useless to me if you're half-asleep.”
She was right, of course. “You know,” I began, “I've been seeing things. Terrible things. I told you, while we were heading up north, the Occupant kept popping up. Sometimes it was close, seemed real—other times I thought I was just losing my mind. It's hard to know what's real, but I think the paranoia's been getting to me.”
Jane crossed her legs, munching on a heel of bread. “It may not be paranoia at all,” she replied. “Else I've been paranoid for decades now.” The bread didn't seem like it was going to go down easily, and she chased it with a glug of tap water. “I'll be honest with you, I had a dream last night—longer and more vivid than any I'd had in years—of the Occupant.” She nodded, gaze growing a bit distant. “I get them sometimes. After that thing has lived in your head, you can't help but have flashbacks now and then. It never leaves you. Remember how I told you that? But... last night, I was sleeping in my bed. Woke up out of a dead sleep to find the thing standing in the corner of my room. It didn't have a body, or even a real shape to it. It was just like a shadow, but... the eyes... the mouth... they were there. I never had the least doubt of what I was looking at. And it just stood there, real still, like a statue, watching me as I slept. Watching and watching. I about jumped out of my skin, but I told myself the same thing you did. 'It's a dream. It's paranoia.' Well, when I next opened my eyes, it was standing right next to me, closer than you are now, and was just staring straight down at me. Those eyes... those holes it's got, through which you can see the world beyond, they were all over me, rummaging around in my mind, my soul, even though it never laid a hand on me. When I got out of bed this morning... when I felt brave enough to get out from beneath the covers, I suspected something was going on. I'm not surprised you called, honestly.”
Jake set his half-eaten sandwich down on his paper plate and spent some time glancing about the room, no doubt searching for that ominous shadow figure Jane had described.
I'd heard enough of her dream-borne horrors and changed the subject to something I felt was more actionable. “What's the connection between Enid and Elizabeth? They have the same last name—Lancaster. Do you know any Lancasters? Are they associated with Milsbourne, maybe?”
Jane didn't have an answer and just shrugged. “Maybe. I guess we'll see. Truth be told, though my uncle talked about how much the Occupant liked her, how it could have grown in her, he never told me where he'd met Enid. Maybe she was in the asylum already and he just found a good subject in the pool of crazies available to him there.” She started for the door. “But if the Occupant has taken hold of Elizabeth in this way, then it's getting ready to emerge into the world.” She shot me a knowing glance.
“It's going to use her—going to use her womb so that it can be born into the world, right?” I asked.
She nodded. “If things have gone this far, I can only imagine that the Occupant has everything it needs and is running to Milsbourne to let the bun in its oven grow.” Glancing at Jake, she arched a silver brow. “Did you fuck her recently?”
I admit, Jake and I both blushed.
“Did you fuck the girl?” repeated Jane.
Jake was evasive, but eventually answered in the affirmative. “Well, yeah...”
“Well, I hope you enjoyed it, because you may have just given the thing exactly what it wanted.” Jane picked up her keys and prepared to leave.
“Hold up,” blurted Jake. “Just because Elizabeth has come to Michigan, that doesn't necessarily mean that... that she's pregnant.” He looked to me, something pleading in his gaze. “The other girl, Enid, tried running from the asylum. Maybe she was headed to Milsbourne, too, right? But was she pregnant?” He ended on a high note, like he'd just pulled off some clever checkmate, but Jane was quick to offer a gruff reply.
“As a matter of fact, she was.”
I got out of my chair and choked down the bite of sandwich in my mouth. “Wait, Enid was pregnant? You didn't say anything about that the last time we spoke. You said that things hadn't progressed that far.”
Now it was Jane's turn to blush. She gave a weak shrug, like her omission was no big deal. “I didn't see what it mattered. In Enid's case, nothing came of it. She was struck down by my uncle before she could escape, so what did it matter?”
“Fine, but who was the father?” I asked. Though, truthfully, I already had a suspicion.
Jane leveled her steely gaze on me and shook her head in disbelief. “What, can't you guess?” She bit her lower lip and then turned back towards the door. “He let slip that he'd decided to give it a try... because the Occupant asked him to, of course.”
“Dr. Corvine? He... he impregnated Enid?” asked Jake.
If that was truly the case, then there was a whole new face on the matter. The Occupant had been very close to getting what it wanted back in 1989. Had it not been for Corvine's interference on the night of the Third Ward Incident, the entity would have scored its much-wanted physical body long ago. I pictured the dark, subterrane chamber at Chaythe Asylum, the one where Enid had been subjected to numerous experiments. While under the influence of experimental drugs, the poor girl had likely been subjected to much more...
“So, Dr. Corvine got her pregnant and then the Occupant took hold of Enid... It had her mind, her body and it tried to escape that night, probably to Milsbourne, where it would be able to forge itself a physical body?” I asked.
“No, the goddamn Pope did. Are you deaf or just stupid, professor?” she barked back at me. “Don't mess with anything that doesn't belong to you, and don't go anywhere. I'll be back in a while. Get some sleep. You two look like shit.” With that, she was out the door, slamming it behind her and hastily locking it.
Jake and I were left in stunned silence.
4
We weren't thirty minu
tes into our mandated nap time when Jake looked over at me from the sofa and asked, “We're not really going to kill her, are we?”
I really didn't want to talk about it. For starters, the idea of killing Elizabeth Morrissey, no matter what'd taken up residence inside of her, turned my stomach. More than that, I didn't want to be thinking about the Occupant at all—I wanted, craved, sleep. His broaching of that difficult subject got my mental machinery running again and a handful of questions started bouncing around what should have been a quiet and empty mind.
“It's too early to worry about that,” I said. “We still have to find her, still have to learn more about this town and what the Occupant really is. There could be some other way out, so don't fret.”
That wasn't good enough for Jake, who rolled onto his stomach and buried his face in the sofa cushion. “But... but what if she's pregnant?” he asked. “What if... what if she's carrying, like... my kid?”
I stood up, pawing at my burning eyes, and walked into the kitchen to scavenge in the fridge. I zeroed in on an ice cold bottle of Labatt Blue that Jane had likely been saving and, doing the cost-benefit analysis, decided it was worth the risk of pissing her off and popped the top. “If you were worried about that, then you should have wrapped it up,” I replied. “But anyway, whatever she's carrying... let's just say it isn't a kid. Not in the traditional sense, anyway. It's a body fit for the Occupant, get it?” I took a glug of beer. The date on the bottle was more than a month passed, but it was still drinkable. “We'll find some way to fix this. We're bringing Elizabeth home with us, come Hell or high water. There's no sense in losing sleep over it, OK?”
Jake nodded, seemed to finally agree, but losing sleep was exactly what he chose to do, rolling onto his back to stare at the ceiling. “Can we trust this lady?” he asked.
“Jane?” I leaned back in the recliner, a splotchy olive green thing, until the leg rest popped out. “We can trust her, yeah. As much as we can trust anyone in the world about this. Why? You know someone else with first-hand experience in the matter?”
He frowned. “It's not that. I mean... the Occupant was in her, once. Right? She still sees it sometimes, is still affected by it. So... do you think that she can actually be trusted, or is the Occupant just using her to manipulate us?”
“You've watched too many horror films,” I said. “To my knowledge, she was the first to make real contact with the Occupant, but it couldn't use her to fulfill its goals. She wasn't fertile. And anyhow, the Occupant has certain criteria. It likes a certain kind of host. Enid and Elizabeth both made the grade, so it stands to reason there's something about these Lancaster ladies that gets the monster going.” I meditated over a mouthful of beer, continuing the thread of conversation in my head. But, what?
Elizabeth and Enid had a last name in common, but were they related by blood? It was too early to say, but I had a feeling it was so.
Jake drifted off after a time, snoring peacefully with his hands behind his head.
Sleep wasn't so kind to me, however. It stood me up.
I finished the beer, got rid of the empty, and then camped out in the chair waiting for the fatigue to overpower me. Instead, I found my gaze wandering about the room, where I began to notice things. The light coming from between the blinds in the living room was thinning. The wind was picking up, and with it came a fresh burst of rain—each drop of which could be heard against the tin roof. There were other sounds, too. The occasional creak I couldn't place; the odd vocal sound—human or animal I couldn't be sure—ringing out from the wilderness just outside.
Jake didn't stir. If his ears picked up anything, he gave no sign of it. Not for the first time, I envied him. I wished that I could shut my eyes and dive into a carefree sleep, cutting away from the inside of this trailer whose scenery seemed to be slowly closing in around me.
The blinds shifted—probably due to a draft—but at their very borders I thought I glanced squinting eyes peering in at me from out in the dusk. The chair made a terrible squeal—a death rattle—as I leaned back further and tried to get comfortable. Something, a spring perhaps, seemed to shift beneath me, to dig into my ass of its own accord, and I couldn't help but picture something inhabiting the small space underneath the chair, preparing to lash out at me from beneath the olive green skirting.
Stop being so paranoid. You need to sleep. For once, you're in a safe place. The thing is in Milsbourne now—it hasn't followed you. Not all the way here. Relax.
No sooner did I train myself to avoid the noises of this unfamiliar place did I begin to feel that I was being watched. The feeling took hold slowly; so slowly that I couldn't be sure I was in its grip until it had closed around me with unendurable tightness. My heart kicked around in my chest like it needed to break out and have a look around the room itself. I clawed at the arm rests of the recliner as though it were a dentist's chair, but I'll be damned if I saw anything that should have inspired such a reaction in me. The room was still, silent. A bit darker now that night was setting in, but there was nothing awry.
The hairs on my arms started sticking up, each of them combing through the air like tiny feelers and becoming trained on the threat that my other stupid, unrefined mammalian senses had overlooked. I shut my eyes, but as I did so my ears picked up something like footsteps. Slow, shuffling, but deliberate footsteps. Forcing my eyes open once more, I looked to the window, watched as the blinds were sent rocking by the draft. I caught only my own frightened reflection on the edge of the glass.
The sound of footsteps had ceased. I sucked in a deep breath, let my body uncoil against the recliner. See? You imagined it.
Just then, a new noise registered.
The trying of the doorknob.
It rattled in the stillness, the sound capturing my attention at once. I verified it with my sight as well—the copper knob was moving from side to side, throwing off hints of light from the fixture over the kitchen table.
My fear became absolute.
It's here. It's come for us.
Staggering out of the chair as the knob continued its rattling, I dove nearly headfirst into the garbage can and dug out the empty beer bottle I'd tossed away earlier. Clutching it tightly in my hand, I stood beside the door, ready to clock any intruder with it, and held my breath.
“Jake...” I whispered. “It's here.”
He didn't wake up.
I was going to have to face this on my own.
5
A key slid into the lock and, moments later, Jane came in through the door, eyeing me first with surprise, and then extreme annoyance. Patting the gun I knew to be strapped to her chest, she shook her head. “Put that shit down, you idiot. Why aren't you sleeping? You're losing your damn mind.”
I dropped the beer bottle back into the garbage bin with a sheepish smile. “Sorry. I thought I heard something... I just haven't been the same since all of this started.”
She shut the door and then proceeded to take off her jacket, getting to business right away while I tried to shake off my embarrassment. “I spoke to a few old-timers in town. None knew of a place called Milsbourne—except for one, Paul Coleman, who seemed to me awfully shifty when I brought it up. I plied him with a couple of beers and asked again when his buddies left the bar, but even then he didn't want to talk. I had to shake him down. He only told me a bit. He says there is a place by that name in the woods—that he knows it because he could supposedly trace his bloodline all the way back to some miners who once lived out that way. But he went on to say that sensible folk don't have any business going there, and he wouldn't tell me where it was except to give me a real general outline. I already knew it was in the hills, near the old copper mines, and he didn't help me narrow things down at all with his hushed talk.” She eyed the empty beer bottle in the trash wistfully, like she wished she'd gotten to it before I had.
“So, that's it, huh?” It was good to know that there were some people in the area who were acquainted with Milsbourne, but I really felt as tho
ugh we'd taken a few steps back in learning that those same people weren't willing to discuss it. “Seems like getting straight talk on this old town is going to be like sniffing out the real deal on Area 51, huh?”
“So it seems,” replied Jane, leaning against the counter and crossing her arms. “Anyhow, we're setting out in the morning. I know the general area. If we're lucky, we'll find it. Lots of ghost towns out there left forgotten in these woods, but you never know.”
I agreed, but for one caveat. “Sure, but shouldn't we set out now?” I asked. “Time is in short supply, Jane. My student is out there getting ready to birth some monstrosity into the world and I think that we should—”
“I don't give a damn what you think,” she countered, pointing at the recliner. “It's night time. The Occupant has every advantage over us in the dark. Hell, it's got every advantage in the daylight, too, but at least we can see where the fuck we're going during the day. Getting lost in those woods at night is no joke. Plus, your dumb ass needs to get some sleep. Pronto. Make like the boy over there and rest. I won't have you holding me back tomorrow.”
“Yeah, fine,” I replied. Dropping into the recliner, I stretched out and rested my hands in my lap.
Jane paused between the kitchen and living room and eyed Jake narrowly. Nodding at him, she asked in a low voice, “Can we trust him?”
“Who, Jake? Yeah, of course we can trust him. He's been mixed up in this with me from the very beginning. And it's his girlfriend we're looking for,” I said.
“That's what I'm afraid of.” Jane paced through the living room, stopping outside one of the bedrooms and shooting me daggers. “When the time comes, we're going to have to do whatever it takes to stop that thing. You do understand that, right? There's no room for error... no room for mercy.” Her jaw tensed. “If he gets in the way...”
“I understand. I think he'll be fine,” I replied. “He's a good kid. Strong. I think we should explore every option, Jane, but if it comes down to that... he'll make the right choice and not interfere.”
The Occupant: The Afterlife Investigations #3 Page 2
