The sound was deafening, causing me to reach up and clutch my ears—too little, too late. Jake lurched up immediately, taking a seated position, and looked about the tent confusedly as the two shots tore neat holes in the plastic flap. The shadow painted across it had moved in the moments before Jane had pulled the trigger, avoiding the attack, and was now out of sight. Urging me to unholster my weapon, Jane reached forward and gave the flap a hard jerk to the side, glancing out into the moonlit night.
The woods were pitch black, but the clearing we'd chosen to camp in was well-lit by the golden moon above. Despite this light, our visibility was hampered by the presence of a thick fog that had settled in during our brief sleep. The abundant moonlight, when viewed through the lens of this ever-shifting fog, became a disorienting glare. At the edge of the clearing, standing rigidly amidst the columnar trees and visible only for its aberrancy in the scene, was a figure with large, misshapen eyes every bit as dark as the night.
The Occupant.
It had come for us.
Jane left the tent, rifle in hand, and quickly stood up, taking aim. Like she'd been practicing for this encounter her entire life, she squinted through the backlit fog and took a shot.
It went wide.
Jake was the next one out of the tent, shoving me aside and nearly knocking Jane over as he rushed several feet ahead. “B-Babe! Is it... is it you?” Looking out at the trees and singling out the sinister figure with the cavernous eyes and Jack-o'-lantern hack-job mouth, he somehow found it in himself to smile. “It's me! It's Jake. Elizabeth,” he called, extending a hand, “come back to me, babe! You can fight that thing off, I know it! Come back to me!”
I'd gone through a sappy “love can conquer all!” phase in my youth, but this sorry idiot really took the cake. I crawled out into the fog and stood at Jane's side, pointing my gun at the Occupant as though I really knew how to use it. “There's no sense in chatting with her,” I told him. “She's not listening. The Elizabeth you know is gone, Jake.”
I may as well have been talking to myself for all the good it did. Taking a few more steps, arms outstretched, he appealed to the entity once more. “I came for you, Elizabeth. Get rid of that thing, that monster, inside of you! Leave it behind and come to me—I'll protect you, babe. I won't let it find its way into you again. Just... just listen to the sound of my voice. Fight it. Try and fight it!”
The Occupant, taking a slow, sure step out of the woods, glared at him with what I could only guess was animal amusement. With the hollows of its face lit up by the brilliance of the fog, Elizabeth's new inhumanity became abundantly—and chillingly—clear. Though possessed of a human shape, Elizabeth was looking less human to me than ever before. Her stomach was distended like she'd stuffed herself with food to the point of bursting.
I knew what she'd been feasting on—or rather, who—and the sight of that engorged belly made me writhe with fright. Large snakes—pythons and anacondas—sometimes swallowed animals many times their size whole, digesting them over long periods. Let's just say that the snakes wore it better.
Those black, vacant eyes like two holes punched into plaster stared out at us, and a mouth, like a ragged hole cut through a white tablecloth, drooped open in a low laugh. Her face was stained in blood from the eyes down, and her orange hair was matted with it, like she'd spent the day with her face buried in an oozing carcass. How Jake could face such a thing and make his embarrassing overtures was beyond me.
Jane stepped up to the plate, muttering as she took aim, “If Romeo wants to be the bait, then so be it.” With zero hesitation, she unleashed two more rounds, both of them narrowly missing Jake, and nearly connecting with the Occupant, who suddenly tensed. Had it not been for the fog, I'm confident she'd have hit her mark. With the fog throwing off her sight the bullets had veered just shy, and could be heard to sink into trees.
That was the moment when all hell broke loose.
The Occupant, turning its head to an unnatural angle the way I'd seen mantises on nature documentaries do while eyeing prey, glared at Jane with enough venom to kill an elephant. At meeting that gaze, Jane felt herself overpowered even from a distance and lowered her weapon, quivering. In an instant the fight had gone from her and her mind was doubtless crowded with memories of what it had been like, years ago, when this very monstrosity had lived inside her. The more I stared out at the Occupant, shuddered at its hateful visage, the more I sensed something like recognition in its gaze. The thing was looking at her as if to say, “I remember what your soul looks like.”
But it didn't speak. Instead, it ran.
Straight at us.
Darting into the fog at a pace that would have been impossible for Elizabeth alone to reach, the Occupant came swinging, a muffled noise breaking from the hollows of its throat. It was the low, miserable wailing of the world beyond—the “voices of the dead”. As though Elizabeth's insides formed the very borders of the underworld, the sounds of the dead rose up from within her—a murmur at first, and then a full-on flood. Tortured wails, anguished screams drawn from a thousand different mouths, poured out from within the Occupant's rough-cut maw and added weight to the already haze-laden air.
The Occupant was upon Jane before she could hope to aim her gun, leaving her with no option but to use the rifle as a club. Attempting to take a swing with the firearm, Jane reared back only to end up caught in the monstrosity's grasp. A white hand closed around her throat.
The rifle hit the ground with a clack.
Jane lost her balance and fell, but she didn't make it to the grass. Instead, she was lifted by the throat, held aloft so that her face was awash in moonlight.
That was when I made my move. I hadn't practiced for this, wasn't sure I'd do everything right. For a split second I thought of Jane, of what she'd told me. Point and aim. Squeeze the trigger. Raising the gun and taking the Occupant in my sights, I held my breath and, with no little hesitation, pulled the trigger.
The gun went off with a crack, and the resulting recoil sent a shockwave through my arm so that I nearly dropped it. For a time, I didn't even look to see if I'd hit my target; the tingling sensation reaching up to my shoulder, the deafening boom of the shot, the ringing in my ears all came together and slowed my perception.
My first shot, it turned out, did not hit the target. It might have, except that I'd aimed just a bit too high, missing by a hair's breadth. The Occupant was every bit as surprised—or enraged—as I was, and dropped Jane to the ground, where she curled into a coughing mass.
Now I was the one in its sights.
I felt a pull on my arm. It was Jake, dragging me away from the ghastly figure. “C-Come on! We have to run! We've gotta get out of here, man!”
I barely heard him as I stared into that misshapen alabaster face. My legs felt like toothpicks stuck in the earth; as if moving them too suddenly, or in the wrong way, might cause them to snap. When he pulled my arm a second time, it was all I could do to remain on my feet, and I fell into him, the gun hanging limply at my side. The longer the thing stared, the less I could feel my body. As though the Occupant were staring into my blood vessels, damming them up, a numbness washed over me, limb by limb.
The fog deepened, closing in around the Occupant in a dense, white knot. I couldn't hear—or see—Jane any longer and hoped she'd managed to escape while I'd been dazed. From the sky above—a clear, black sky alight with stars—came a sudden burst of rain. A downpour, borne of seemingly thin air, began to strike the very clearing in which we stood, and though I couldn't be sure, I suspected that it ranged no further.
I noticed it first as the drops crashed through the fog and struck the grass with a sizzle—the sound of a pot of water on the stove boiling over. It happened again and again, until the fog was burnt away and the foliage all around us began to wither. Tall grasses crumpled, the tent began to lose its shape, the soil bubbled and an unbearable steam began to rise. I felt drops on my head and neck, my arms.
The rain was scalding hot.
At the center of this downpour, untouched by the burning water, the demoniac thing stared at Jake and I as if daring us to come closer. With boiling rain leaving dime-sized burns wherever it met our bare flesh, we did no such thing, and instead doubled back, covering our heads with our hands and diving beneath the cover of nearby trees. In my periphery, I caught another figure stirring—Jane. She was shielding her face with one hand, and lunged from the direction of the tent with something clutched in the other. A large, fixed blade knife she'd packed in her bag.
Jane had intended to bury this knife in the specter's throat, but the clearing was fast becoming a cauldron of bubbling sludge and she slipped, sending the knife through the top of the Occupant's foot and temporarily staking it to the ground. The thing howled, thrashing like a fish out of water, and the rain suddenly ceased. Hands covered in burning mud and the edges of her face seared and red, Jane barked a single word at the two of us before reclaiming her knife.
“Run.”
I don't know why I ran. I suppose that my animal instincts got the better of me and I just followed Jake, rushing into the dark woods, fleeing that steam-heavy clearing, delirious with fright. There was no telling whether Jane would manage to succeed against the thing on her own, or whether she'd survive the encounter. In retrospect, I wish I'd stayed behind to help her. But instead, Jake and I took off, sprinting into the dark woods without a flashlight, hearts jackhammering in our ears.
Maybe Jane had thought she could handle the Occupant alone. Maybe she'd been trying to protect us—to ensure our survival, and the survival of our mission—and had wanted us to live to fight another day. In the moment, I didn't stop to consider her reasoning, I just followed her directions. I ran like hell, and I didn't stop running until I hit a tree dead-on and knocked myself senseless. Speeding through the forest with no light, with no idea of the landscape that might lie ahead, was dangerous business. In my mad flight I'd accumulated many bumps and scrapes on the trees, and knew Jake was in a similar position. Scrambling back onto my feet, I leaned against a tree and massaged my pulsing temples. “J-Jake... how are you holding up?” I asked. “Did we outrun it?”
He didn't answer.
Trying to catch my breath, my chest aching and my knees wobbly, I leaned up against a tree and cleared my throat. “Jake? Where are you, man?” Realizing I still had the gun in my hand, I tucked it into the holster and waited for a response.
A minute passed. My respirations and pulse slowed enough for me to take in the sounds of my surroundings. It was just as I'd feared though. There weren't any noises for me to take in.
Only silence.
In running from the camp, Jake and I had been separated. Though we'd gone in the same general direction, once robbed of moonlight we'd apparently taken different routes, and at the pace we'd been going it was very possible that we'd put some distance between us. Scanning the canopy for some trace of moonlight, I tried to fight back the queasy terror that now crept into me. “Jake?” I called out.
No reply.
I was alone—and lost—in the middle of the Michigan woods.
Doing my best not to panic, I started walking again, wanting to get as far away from the Occupant as possible. Jake was a strong, fast guy, and had it not been for his unfailing optimism in regards to the Occupant, then he'd stand a great chance of surviving the night. Jane knew the woods, was an experienced hiker, and yet we'd left her behind to tangle with the specter on her own. She was tough as nails and had been through a lot in life, but this time she may have bitten off more than she could chew. As for me, I didn't know a damn thing about survivalism. I spent my days sipping overpriced coffees, reading books and watching films about the great outdoors. I was out of my element. Shit, my element was in another universe completely.
I needed to keep moving. Though I felt confident that I'd escaped the Occupant for the time being, there was always the possibility that it would catch up to me. Woodland terrain and darkness were no hindrance to it, and it would descend on me without my even knowing it if I didn't start walking. If I could find a familiar landmark—perhaps the church we'd seen in Milsbourne—then I could take shelter and, when the time was right, find my way back to the camp, where I hoped to rendezvous with the others.
With this plan in mind, I took off through the trees, feeling my way through the black woods.
Now and then I paused to listen for signs of pursuit. Rustlings made by what I prayed were woodland animals sometimes sounded, but died out just as quickly. I heard a bird break the silence from some ways up, and the buzzing of insects wasn't hard to come by. Relieved that I'd managed to put some ground between myself and the Occupant, I quickened my pace and started up a slight incline, using trees to pull myself along.
What I didn't see coming, thanks to the pervasive darkness, was the drop-off.
I'd been marching along the top of a hill for some minutes when, stepping too far to the right, my foot slipped and—despite some attempts to ground myself—I began tumbling down an especially sharp incline. Hitting trees and rocks along the way, getting the wind knocked out of me, my hands shot out in different directions and tried to find an anchor I could take hold of. Gaining speed, I fell into a log-roll and felt something dense meet my head—a blow that immediately drew blood. Rolling a while longer, I was hardly conscious by the time I arrived at the bottom of the hill, and was left in a crumpled heap beside a cluster of fallen branches. My brow growing slick with blood, I struggled a few times to sit up before finally succumbing to the dizziness.
I was out like a light, and wasn't sure I'd ever wake again.
15
Once, at a college party, I'd gotten drunk. I mean, really drunk. One minute I'd been telling all my best jokes and wandering around my best friend's apartment with a fifth of cheap vodka, hip-thrusting to the music, and the next I'd been spewing all over his kitchen floor. I'd probably been on the verge of alcohol poisoning—that fifth of vodka merely the nightcap to a full day of drinking.
When I came to in the morning, I was still in my buddy's apartment, in his roommate's bed. A number of guys had carried my drunken ass inside, and when they'd been reasonably sure I wouldn't pull a Jimmy Hendrix, they left me there. Years later it made for a funny story, and it taught me not to underestimate the liquor, but there's always been an aspect to it that's unsettled me—the part where I awoke from my vodka coma.
Someone at that party had turned the air conditioner on full blast at some point in the night, so that the first thing I felt upon coming to was sheer cold. It was such a strange thing, coming around that morning. At first, I couldn't move—couldn't even open my eyes. My brain flicked back on like a computer doing a manual reboot, but I was, for at least a few minutes there, a complete vegetable. Then my thoughts kicked in, and my body's sense of temperature, too. What's going on? What's happened to you? I'd asked myself, heart suddenly racing. Why's it so cold? Where are you?
The cold had seeped into me throughout the entire night, making me feel like a specimen on a cooling slab. When my limbs finally thawed enough to move—and they took their damn time, believe me—I was able to sit up, my head still spinning, and get a look at the unfamiliar room. There was sunlight coming in through the window. Everyone else was still asleep, passed out in the other rooms. Minutes later, disturbed at the lengthy blank in my memory, I tried to piece together the night's events, to no avail. I stood up after a while, pinched myself. I probably did it four or five times over the course of that day.
Because, in some way, I'd felt like I'd died. My entire body, my brain, had shut down for the night, and when I'd come to, cold and confused, I'd felt like a revenant being drawn back into the world of the living. There was a small part of me—a part that still remains—that wondered whether I hadn't actually died on that bed, the night of the party. And there's a part of me, too, that wonders whether everything I've experienced since then has been a kind of dream.
Well, waking up in the woods with one motherfucker of
a bump on my head and twigs in my hair after taking a plunge down the side of that hill was much the same. Awareness even returned to me in a similar fashion. There was the stiffness, the coolness like a blanket tucked around my limbs, the temporary inability to open my eyes. When they finally did snap open, I half-expected to see the inside of my friend's apartment.
Instead, I got a look at the thick, swaying canopy. There was a little moonlight peeking through. It was still night-time. The Occupant would still be on the prowl, if Eli Lancaster was to be believed. The realization almost crushed me, though after all that had transpired I have to admit I didn't have much spirit left to lose anyhow, so I took a deep breath and took stock of myself.
By some miracle, my gun remained holstered. I gave it a pat, thankful to have a weapon, and then slowly stood up my battered frame so that I could examine the other resources at my disposal.
Surprise, surprise. I didn't have anything useful. There was a little money in my wallet, but I doubted I could slide a bear a few bucks for a couple of Aspirin. I had a lighter on me, but it was nearly spent. That was all. A flashlight, some food and clean water, would have been grand, but in my escape from the campsite I hadn't had time to gather up essentials.
Or any of Jane's goddamn cigarettes, for that matter. I swear, I'd have traded an icy bottle of Evian for a smoke just then.
My limbs pulsed angrily, and I could tell exactly where, in a few days, some truly eye-catching bruises were going to show up. Nothing seemed broken, though, and except for the soreness in my joints my body didn't seem too averse to walking.
I wondered how the others had fared, how many hours had passed since our encounter with the Occupant. Were they still alive? Were they safe? I felt a pang of guilt for leaving Jane behind, but it was soon overshadowed by my own desire to survive. At present, I needed to worry about numero uno. Internalizing this, I resisted the urge to call out to them—lest I get the Occupant's attention instead—and started walking, slowly.
The Occupant: The Afterlife Investigations #3 Page 9
