by Jeff Strand
Mindy nodded. "I'm for that. We'll take it in shifts. Maybe two people at a time, just to be safe."
The others agreed immediately, except for Jean, who said nothing.
"We can barricade the doors," said Barbara. "That's a good starting point."
They all grew silent for a few moments. Lee's haunted expression faded, and he got an ornery smile on his face. "So who knows a few good ghost stories?"
Jean practically exploded. "You think this is fucking funny?" She stood up, knocking Tommy aside without even seeming to notice it. Barbara looked at the woman and ground her teeth together. Jean was not finished with her rant. "I lost my husband earlier today! We're stuck in the middle of this goddamned dump, which is in the middle of this fucking forest full of fucking monsters and you want to crack jokes? Fuck you!"
Lee glanced at Jean for a moment and shook his head. His lips pressed together firmly.
Barbara looked from one to the other, wondering what she could say to defuse the situation.
Mindy stared only at her hands as she spoke. "You should have shot her, Lee."
Jean's head snapped around fast enough to cause whiplash. "What the fuck did you say?"
"I said he should have shot you. It would have been a mercy killing."
Jean sputtered in return, her mouth gaping open and snapping closed a dozen times.
"You think you're the only one, is that it? You lost your husband? I lost my son. So don't you dare whine about how shitty your life is. We all get it."
Jean didn't answer. Instead she settled back against the desk and leaned her head back. She closed her eyes and acted as if none of them were there.
Lee coughed softly. "Everyone get some rest. Who wants to join me on watch?"
Barbara settled in as best she could, while Mindy and Lee took the first watch. She did not sleep. Exhausted as she was, she had trouble believing she'd ever sleep again.
* * *
But they slept, most of them, as well as was possible in the cramped, spooky quarters. Tommy tried to join them, but after a while he sat up because he could feel the nightmares coming. They were trying to sneak into his head when nobody was looking, and he didn't trust them to stay away.
Nightmares were always trying to do things to him. Like what they were doing to his parents. Mom and Dad would go to bed at night and sometimes he'd hear them when the nightmares got to them. He could hear them crying out, or arguing because of the bad dreams.
Mr. Lee was talking in his sleep. Aunt Jean was crying, but he couldn't tell if she was awake or not. She'd been crying a lot. He wished he could help her, but he was afraid to move. The Gray Man might get him if he moved. Everybody else called him Brad, but to Tommy, he was the Gray Man. Mostly because his skin had lost all of its tan and gone a sickly shade of gray. Miss Tina was worried about him and kept checking on him and saying she loved him, but Tommy wasn't worried about him.
He was worried about the thing inside of him. Tommy couldn't see it, but he could smell it. So could everyone else when they got close to the Gray Man, but they kept looking around like the smell was coming from somewhere else. Tommy knew better. He'd walked around the room a few times earlier, and he knew the stinky mold scent came from the Gray Man as surely as he knew that his uncle was dead and the nice lady, Becca, was dead too.
Tommy closed his eyes for a second and then opened them again, wishing that he was back in his bed. Even if Mommy and Daddy were fighting, it would be better than this place.
Something moved off to his left, where the Gray Man had been resting. He heard a dripping noise, like water trickling from a busted pipe—Daddy had fixed one of those last year and he still remembered the sounds—and then the smell from the Gray Man came along, stronger than before.
Tommy tried to make a noise, but no sound came from his mouth. His voice was frozen.
The Gray Man moved again, letting off more wet noises. It sounded like his clothes were soaked, and the stench of mildew grew so strong that it made Tommy's nose wrinkle.
Tommy held his breath.
"Tommy?" The voice was faint, a hint of a whisper that he knew no one else would hear. "Tommy, can you help me? I'm very cold. I can't see."
The Gray Man was speaking to him. Tommy's skin crawled and he bit his bottom lip to make sure he didn't make a sound. The Gray Man's hand moved closer, reaching for him. Tommy had stayed in the same spot for most of the time they'd been in the building, except when Mr. Lee took him to go pee outside. Now he was back at his seat at the desk, and perched on the rolling chair. He slid off the seat as quietly as he could, avoiding the clammy hand that reached for him.
He wanted to wake Aunt Jean. She would know what to do. All he had to do was remember where she was, because it was too dark to see her anywhere. He wanted to call out for her, but ever since he'd seen the...
...his mind refused to let him remember what had happened to Becca and the others. He could remember them and that they were dead, but beyond that, he could manage nothing...
...well, ever since he'd been lost in the woods, he couldn't make himself talk.
Tommy took exactly two steps backward and tripped over his own foot in the darkness. He fell, pin-wheeling his arms, and slammed the edge of his head into the desk with an audible crack.
He winced and closed his eyes as the pain lashed through his skull and made his eyes water. His hands moved up in a futile effort to protect the spot where he'd just done himself harm.
The Gray Man stopped moving, stopped whispering, and even the wet sounds from around his body ceased.
Tommy whimpered, his mind's eye showing him a small smile spreading on the Gray Man's face, his head tilted as he listened for another sound.
"Tommy, are you there?"
Tommy felt the bump on his head, half expecting to feel the moist heat of blood, like that time a year ago when he'd dropped the cookie jar and it broke against him. Instead he merely felt the sting of the growing lump. When he was certain he wasn't going to bleed all over himself, he tentatively tried standing. Aside from a brief dizziness, everything seemed to be working.
Tommy reached out with his hand and felt the edge of the desk. This time he'd be smarter and move slowly. Moving around without being able to see was harder than he would have expected, because at home he always had his nightlight.
The desk worked just fine for keeping him going in the right direction. He took a careful step and then another, feeling more confident about being able to avoid the Gray Man.
The hand that covered his was cold and wet. The skin felt like the flesh of a rotting peach, and leaked something obscene across his knuckles.
Tommy flinched back, but the Gray Man's fingers closed over his wrist with a damp squelch.
"There you are, Tommy..."
Oh, how he wished he could scream.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Mark finished with his backups and dropped the bundle of memory sticks into his pocket. The miracles of modern technology: four years' worth of research and notes, more man-hours than he even wanted to think about, and all of it fit easily into his pocket. Well, the autopsied ogre didn't, but all of the notes and pictures did.
He moved to the next door down the hallway just in time to see Hannah finishing up. She was in an office that did not, technically, belong to her, but they had to salvage everything they could. "Got it?" she asked.
Mark nodded. "Yeah. All of it."
"Good."
"What the hell happened? There've never been any problems in the past and all at once, everything that can go wrong does!"
Hannah shrugged her shoulders and looked out the window, though there was nothing new to see. "We've never gone this far into the forest, either. There's a reason we've got all the safety features on the trams, Mark. You know that better than anybody."
"I just have to believe that there's something more going on than a really inconvenient systems failure. I mean, come on, Hannah, in four years not so much as a rabid squirrel has come
out of that forest. Now we have ogres charging the building? It doesn't make sense!"
"Preaching to the choir, Mark."
"It's just crazy."
"Still preaching to the choir, Mark."
Mark sighed. "We better get back to the control room before someone figures out what we've been doing."
Hannah put a hand on his and chuckled. "I think we'll be okay. We're protecting H.F.E. assets."
"Yeah, but I don't want them suddenly deciding they have to do a security check when we leave."
"Hey, we could always tell them we were making out..."
Mark laughed off her comment, which was much easier than it would have been under normal circumstances. But he'd just watched giant ogres murder a bunch of heavily armed soldiers, which had something of a cold shower effect on his libido.
"Either way, the sooner we talk to Steve, the sooner he'll tell us to get the hell out of here," he said. "I'm dedicated to my work, but I'm not going to be one of those researchers who drives into a tornado."
Hannah nodded, and they headed back to the control room.
They got there at a quiet moment. No new insanity had ensued. Steve was already talking with Laurie Schaefer from the public relations arena and two men that Mark assumed were lawyers. Thick as thieves, he thought.
There were fewer people in the office than there had been earlier. Hopefully the others were someplace far from the forest by now, perhaps Rhode Island. Mark walked over to the east side of the control center and looked out at the parking lot. Mostly empty. In fact, there probably weren't many people left behind that weren't in this room. Good.
Hannah had stopped to talk with Steve and his cronies. She looked his way with an anxious expression on her face. He quickly moved over to where they were all standing. "So what's the latest joyful news, guys?"
Steve looked at the two lawyers and then over at Laurie, who was looking as stressed as a crippled mouse in a mountain lion's paws.
"Well, Mark, you saw what those ogres did. Gonna be hard to put a positive spin on that for the media, especially since they killed some members of the media. No news on the tourists that were in the forest. We have Mullins flying around the perimeter right now, to make sure that all of the critters are staying within the boundaries, because these two," Steve waved his hand to indicate the lawyers, "tell me that we could be held liable if anything gets out of there and attacks someone else."
"How can you be held liable? It's not like you invited them in. Booth just owns the land."
One of the lawyers, who looked like he sucked on extra-tart lemons every day, shook his head. "It isn't that easy. As the owners of the land, H.F. Enterprises is responsible for whatever happens on the property. Kind of like the owners of a pit bull that gets loose."
"But we don't own the ogres. We own the land."
"Sufficient safety precautions were not taken. Kind of like the owners of a supermarket where somebody slips and falls on a patch of mop water."
"We took every reasonable safety precaution."
"But they didn't work. Kind of like—"
"Okay, okay, I'm not even involved in this part of the company. I just study the monsters. Do what you need to do."
"I'm on your side," Lemon Sucker reminded him. "We'll find a way out of this, although right now we're presuming that the tourists inside the forest are all alive and well. If they aren't, that could cause, ah, additional concern."
"Y'think?"
The lawyer gave Mark a cold smile. "We should talk soon. Obviously, the person responsible for studying the creatures would have been responsible for predicting their potentially deadly behavior, right?"
Mark wanted to punch him in the face, but elected not to. Great. He could end up spending the rest of his life in prison for negligence.
"At this point, H.F. Enterprises still has a chance," said the lawyer. "Clearly, the security personnel were well aware of the possible danger, and the media placed themselves in harm's way. If the tourists are fine, we may be fine. Assuming that the remaining forest inhabitants stay put. The town of Dover's Point is only a few miles away, as you know."
Mark turned to Steve. "So, has Mullins seen anything yet?"
Steve shook his head. "Thankfully, no. It looks like they're still staying inside the perimeter of the forest for now."
"So what are we doing to get the tourists out?"
Steve opened his mouth to answer and then stared past Mark, his mouth hanging wide and his eyes bugging. "What the hell?"
Mark and Hannah and the cronies all turned to look where Steve was staring. Mark felt his mouth drop open and stared, petrified by what he saw.
Twenty-five feet from the edge of the forest, a tree was rising from the ground. It thrust into the air, spilling arid topsoil as branches grew from the thickening trunk.
"No way." Hannah's voice shook. "Just...no way."
"Oh, shit," Mark said. This was so very bad. The Haunted Forest hadn't had a single new tree pop up since it came into existence. Nothing grew to replace the trees they cleared out to make room for the tram path. The forest hadn't expanded by a single inch in four years.
Now there was a brand-new tree. Within thirty seconds, it had grown to the same height as the others, as if it had stood there for centuries.
But this one wasn't a pine tree. It had the shape of an oak, but it was black. Twisted.
Before anyone else could add their own "No way" or "Oh, shit" style of comments, the ground shook again. It was a slight tremor at best, but this time the vibrations were accompanied by another tree thrusting out of the ground.
And then another.
And then another.
Mark watched, his pulse pounding in his temples, as four more trees broke the ground and rose toward the heavens. No two were remotely alike and none of them were from a genus he knew.
Steve's cell phone rang. Without taking his eyes off the new trees, Steve answered. "No. I know. It's happening here, too. How far out do they go, so far?" Steve nodded his head and sighed. "Thanks, Mullins. Keep me posted."
Steve killed off the call and moved himself to the closest available chair. He dropped into it as if all of his bones had suddenly turned to liquid.
Everybody stared at him expectantly. After about ten seconds, Steve spoke, calmly, almost resignedly. "Well, ladies and gentlemen, the forest is now growing in all directions. We're all nicely fucked."
* * *
Barbara's eyes opened wide in the darkness.
I've gone blind!
No, no, you were asleep. Your eyes just need to adjust to the gloom.
Instead of letting her eyes adjust, she clicked the switch on the halogen flashlight in her hands. Then she really went blind as the searing white light assaulted her retinas.
"Ow!" Tina's voice was shrill. "Careful with that damned thing." Tina's eyes were squinted nearly shut and her hand moved to block the beam that turned her pasty white. Barbara apologized under her breath as she moved the light away from Tina and into the room.
The light was still strong, for which she was thankful, despite the blue spots she was currently seeing.
Behind the blue spots, she could see Jean curled into a fetal position on the floor. Moving the light, she saw Brad holding Tommy in his hands, his mouth stretched to an impossible level as he prepared to bite the boy's face off.
But as the light shone directly on him, Brad flinched and the deep black pools of his eyes narrowed in a field of pale gray mold that had covered his skin and his clothing alike. The mold even covered his tongue, but it had taken his teeth away. Where his incisors should have been, there were wavering pink protrusions that had reached out to flicker along Tommy's face.
Tina cut loose with a scream loud enough to rattle the walls and promptly dropped the rifle Barbara had let her carry.
Barbara screamed too and almost dropped the flashlight. Considering the day's events, waking up to the sight of something trying to eat Tommy was not altogether unexpected. Waking up to th
e sight of Brad trying to eat Tommy...now that was something she wasn't quite ready for.
Tommy flailed around madly, his tiny face gone ghostly white and his eyes rolling in his head. He'd peed himself, and though his mouth was open for a scream, no sound came out of him.
Tina stepped toward the couple and shook her head, her eyes even wider than Tommy's. "Brad? Is that you?"
"Tina, honey, I feel a lot better now. Right as rain." Brad tried to smile, but the wiggling pink cilia that had replaced his teeth took a lot of the charm out of it.
The door flew open. Lee and Mindy burst inside the office.
Jean woke up and called for Tommy. She called a second time, a lot louder, when she saw where he was.
Mindy didn't hesitate. She yanked a large framed picture of President Bush off the wall, rushed forward, and drove the edge of it into Brad's head.
"Get the hell away from him!" Mindy's voice was almost a roar.
Brad dropped Tommy immediately and turned his head to face Mindy. To Barbara's knowledge, no one could turn their neck that far without doing themselves permanent injury, but Brad managed it just fine. She could see where the picture frame had creased his skull. Ol' George Junior's face was obscured by the darker gray, gelid crap that had exploded from the inside of Brad's head, but the president's smile was still in place as his photograph wobbled back and forth inside of the wound.
Mindy staggered back and tried to get away from Brad. She didn't get far before his fuzzy gray hands grabbed her shoulders.
Tina picked up the rifle and started toward her husband. "Brad, you put her down! Put her down right now!" Her voice was too high; her eyes were too wide.
"Busy right now, Hon. Give me a minute." Brad's voice sounded phlegmy and the words were distorted. The wobbly picture kept on bobbing along as the shape of his head changed. The small tendrils that had replaced his teeth spread out and lashed onto Mindy's head, catching in her hair and slapping against her face. Mindy screamed again.
