The Dead Lands

by Rick Hautala

  If that was a Hell Hound, she thought, there would be others nearby, and that meant Reverend Wheeler was close by, too. She was too far away from the cemetery to get back there safely. They’d run her down long before she made it, and she couldn’t count on her friendly Reaper to show up just in the nick of the time.

  An intense tingling sensation like an electric current jolted her body as she crouched low to the ground, scanning the dark yard across the street where she had seen the motion. A porch light was on, and a single light shone in one downstairs window, but they weren’t bright enough to illuminate the whole yard. Abby was sure she had seen … something moving in the shadows at the edge of that yard.

  She couldn’t decide if she should get up and run, or stay where she was and hope that whatever it was would go away. Tension built up inside her, and she jumped involuntarily when a large, dark shape moved within the shadows. The growling sound got louder.

  Abby wondered if she would be safe inside Jim’s house.

  Would the Reverend and his Hounds dare pursue here there?

  Even if they struggled right there inside the house, would Jim or his mother have even the faintest idea what was going on?

  Abby was ready to run when the shape burst through a gap in the hedge and leapt into the street. She let out a shriek but also immediately felt a huge sense of relief when she realized it wasn’t a Hell Hound at all. One of the neighbors had let his dog out to “do his business” before he went to bed.

  The night was filled with angry growling and yipping when, in the yard next door, a raccoon suddenly broke cover and ran in a waddling gait down the street. In a wild scramble of paws that clicked on the pavement, the dog—Abby could see now that it was a black Lab—went racing after the raccoon. The front door of the house flung open, and a young man rushed out onto the porch.

  “Rufus! Damnit! Rufus, get back here right now!”

  The dog ignored his master until he whistled shrilly. This stopped the dog in its tracks. He turned and started back, but then looked back and watched, whimpering, as the raccoon waddled around behind the neighbor’s garage and was gone.

  “Bad dog, Rufus!” the man said as the dog sidled up onto the porch. “You’ll wake up the whole neighborhood, you damned fool dog.”

  Relieved, Abby watched them both go back inside. The door shut, and a few seconds later, the light in the living room window winked off, plunging the front yard into darkness.

  Abby moved slowly, keeping to the shadows. Just because this had been a false alarm didn’t mean she was out of danger. Reverend Wheeler could be closing in on her even now. A deep chill ran through the center of her being as she looked up at Jim’s darkened bedroom window. Then, holding her arms out wide as if to embrace the night, she willed herself to rise into the air.

  — 4 —

  “I wasn’t sure you’d make it tonight,” Jim said.

  He was sitting cross-legged on his bed, still wearing the clothes he’d worn that day. It was late. The clock beside his bed read 11:53. He had to get up for school in the morning, but he’d been waiting, hoping Abby would return tonight … and every night.

  “It’s not really safe for me to be out so late,” she said, “but I think I need your help.”

  “Sure,” he said, clasping his hands to his shoulders and rubbing them. “Anything.” The room always got chillier when Abby was there. He didn’t mind it, though. In fact, he rather enjoyed it.

  “I have this friend,” Abby said.

  “Is she dead, too?”

  Abby nodded, and then said the name, “Megan McGowan.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jim said. “I heard something about her on the news or something. She’s the girl who got killed out by the lighthouse, right?”

  “Yes. Did you know her?”

  Jim shook his head. “She didn’t go to my school. She went to that snooty private school over in Cape Elizabeth. So—” He frowned and scratched behind his left ear, looking at her like he was wondering where this was all going.

  Abby told him what she knew about Megan, about what had happened, especially the bit about how Megan’s brother having one of the sneakers his sister had been wearing the day she died, and how the other one had washed up on the shore not far from the cliff where Megan was pushed.

  “Holy shit,” Jim said when she was finished. His face hovered in the darkness like a full moon, shining through a raft of clouds.

  “You’re saying you’re positive this girl—her father killed her?” He heaved a shuddering sigh. “I saw something on the news about it. The police had a suspect, but he killed himself.”

  Abby nodded and said, “I’m certain Megan’s telling the truth now. It took a while to get it out of her. First she said she slipped and fell. Then she said she jumped on purpose because she wanted to kill herself. Finally, she admitted that someone attacked her and pushed her, and that she recognized her father. The thing of it is, I think her missing sneaker is the key to it all.”

  “I don’t see how,” Jim said.

  He wondered if his mother could hear them talking—or at least him—through the wall. She was a sound sleeper, but if she woke up and heard him talking to someone—especially if he was carrying on a one-way conversation—she might begin to wonder.

  “How?” he asked, lowering his voice. “I mean, I don’t see how finding her other sneaker is going to get the police to believe her father did it.”

  Abby stared at him for a long time, her expression utterly blank. Her image began to waver, and Jim was suddenly afraid she was going to disappear.

  “Abby?” he said, relieved when her image became more clearly defined. He still couldn’t get used to the idea of seeing his bedroom wall directly through her, but her beautiful face enthralled him. As much as he tried to deny it, he had to admit he might even be in love with her—a dead girl. He would do anything and everything he could to help her.

  “So what can I do?” he said. “What can we do?”

  “For starters, you could go down to the cliff and get that sneaker if it’s still there.”

  “What good will that do?” Jim shivered at a thought. “What if the police find me with it? They might think I pushed her.”

  Abby’s expression froze again. Jim was sure this was what happened whenever she was thinking, but he also had the clear impression something else had caught her attention and was drawing her away from him.

  “I certainly don’t want you to get into trouble,” Abby said.

  Her face darkened as if a cloud had shifted between her and the streetlight outside. Jim glanced out his bedroom window, jumping when a low, keen howling sound wafted through the night.

  “Did you hear that?” Abby asked, her eyes widening with fear.

  Jim nodded slowly as a tingle of apprehension rippled up his back. Cold sweat broke out across his forehead.

  “I did,” he said. “What was it?” When Abby didn’t answer right away, he added, “Probably just the neighbor’s dog. He lets him out at all hours of the night, and that fu—that idiot barks its fool head off.”

  “No. That wasn’t the neighbor’s dog.”

  She didn’t have to explain. She had already told Jim about Reverend Wheeler’s Hell Hounds, and she was sure that’s what they had heard.

  “You have to go,” Jim said as he leaped off the bed and clenched his fists, ready to defend her. Even he knew the absurdity of that. If Reverend Wheeler was after Abby and wanted to take her, there was nothing he could do to stop him.

  “I do,” Abby said, nodding and then glancing out the window at the night. “But we have to figure out what to do. We have to find a way of letting Megan’s mother or brother or the police know what really happened. I think only then will Megan be able to rest in peace.”

  With that, Abby’s face and figure melted into the darkness; but before she was gone entirely, Jim heard her say so softly it was at the edge of understanding, “I’ll be back.”

  He reached out to where she had been, but when
he closed his hand, it clasped nothing but air. A wild shiver ran up his back as the howling came again, much louder this time.

  Jim ran to his bedroom window and, crouching low, peered outside. At first, he could see nothing—just the quiet street below, lit intermittently by the line of streetlights on the opposite side. But then, on the street between two of his neighbor’s houses, he saw … something.

  He repositioned himself, watching as the shadows moved, dark shifting against dark. He stared so hard his eyes began to water. At first he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. First one—then two—then half a dozen dark blurs that had vague hints of huge dog-shaped shadows blended out of the darkness and moved across the street like rapidly spreading ink stains.

  Run, Abby … Run! he thought, but he didn’t even dare breathe as the shadows melted into the night. Seconds later, the silhouette of an old man, hunched over and wearing a long, flowing cloak, flitted out of the emptiness and crossed the street. Jim held his breath as the shadow followed after the dogs, but then, when he was in the middle of the street, he hesitated.

  A chill wound up inside Jim, and even though he couldn’t make out the figure with any clarity—it kept shifting and changing—he was suddenly convinced that whoever or whatever that was out there was looking at him. Jim’s heart started racing even faster. He wanted to move away from the window, duck out of sight, but he stayed where he was, afraid even the slightest motion would draw the attention of the shadow man lurking down there.

  And then the figure moved, but instead of passing by, it shifted in the direction of Jim’s house.

  A tight, choking sensation took hold of Jim’s throat as he watched the shadow stretch out, reaching toward the front yard. It moved with a hazy, rippling motion, like dark water surging from underground. Jim pressed his face against the cold glass of the window and watched as the indistinct shape reached the foundation of the house and then started shifting up the wall.

  Rigid with panic, Jim pulled away from the window and watched in mute terror as an unaccountable darkness filled the lower half of his window. The two-dimensional shadow was darker than the night as it swept across the floor. It moved toward Jim with apparent purpose, its vaguely human silhouette distorted as though a light shined behind the body that cast the shadow.

  Jim didn’t know if he should run screaming from his room or stay where he was. Could this thing hurt him? Or was it part of another world—a world that couldn’t influence him? He watched in horror as the shadow rippled over his feet and then slid slowly up his body. Biting cold embraced him, and he was dimly aware that a deep, sonorous voice was whispering to him with the harshness of sandpaper rubbing on wood.

  He couldn’t make out any of the words, but his heart stopped when he thought he heard the name “Abby.” His breathing caught in his throat, and he grew dizzy with panic until he heard his pulse start beating again.

  And then the shadow passed over him or around or through him. Somehow, Jim found the strength to turn and watch as the pitch-black, two-dimensional shape passed through his bedroom wall next to the door.

  And then it was gone.

  Abby

  Even though it still scares me to think about it, I wonder all the time what happened to my mother and father. I told you how my father wasn’t what you would call a ‘good’ man, but he was my father, and I loved him in spite of it all. I was just a kid. I didn’t know any better.

  I certainly didn’t know what I know now.

  I’ve learned a lot since I died.

  I’ve met tons of people who have died, and—like what I’m doing with Megan—I try to help them. But I’ve seen how badly people can be to each other, and—believe me, there are some people who have it much worse than my mother and I ever did.

  I’m not saying what my father did was right. I’m just saying that he did the best he could with what he had, and isn’t that all you can do in life? The best you can? I suspect, when my father was growing up, he was treated the same way. All the kids I knew growing up—although there weren’t that many out where I lived—we all got whooped whenever we misbehaved. That’s just the way it was.

  Sure, I agree—it wasn’t fair the way my father treated my mother. It wasn’t right at all. And yes, she probably should have left him when it got so bad her life was in danger, but like him, she just didn’t know any better. People didn’t get divorced back then like they do now. I don’t know which is worse—people staying in horrible, maybe dangerous situations because they can’t or don’t want to end the marriage, or people leaving their spouses for whatever reason.

  To tell you the truth—and I firmly believe this although I don’t know it for sure… I didn’t see it with my own eyes, but I have no doubt that when he died, my father was taken away into the shadows by the Reapers. You can’t live the way he did—bullying anyone, even one single person—and not pay for it after you die.

  As for my mother … well, I know she felt terrible about my father’s death. But he was a victim of his own violence, so as much as I’m sure it grieved her that he was dead, I think she was relieved and maybe even happy when she was finally free of him.

  I know, in her own way, she loved him.

  I don’t know what happened to her after she died, either. I was still alive when she died, and I had no idea back then about anything that happens in the Dead Lands. At the time, I believed what the minister at our church said, that after we die, we either go to Heaven or Hell, depending on how we lived our lives.

  And in the end, maybe that’s still true.

  I don’t know because I can’t get out of the Dead Lands. I have just as little idea about what happens after that than you do. It’s just that, now that I’m dead, I don’t find thinking about it all that scary anymore.

  But I do still miss my parents—both of them, and I wonder about what happened to them when they died.

  I’ll probably never know.

  Chapter 12

  E-mails from the Dead

  —1—

  “I’ll be home for lunch,” Mike called as he walked out the back door, letting it slam shut behind him before either his mother or father could ask where he was going.

  The truth was, he had no idea.

  All he knew was that he had to get out of the house and escape from his mother’s grief and his father’s seething anger. He couldn’t stop feeling as if both of them still blamed him for what had happened to his sister, even though he knew for a fact that he hadn’t had anything to do with it.

  They were going to blame him and load on the guilt, and he would have to carry this around with him for the rest of his life, no matter what he really saw out there that day and no matter what he said because no one was ever going to believe him.

  It was a surprisingly warm day for this late in October. Indian Summer. He crossed the driveway and got his bike from the garage just as the back door swung open. His heart gave a cold squeeze when his father came out and stood by the porch railing, watching him.

  “Where you off to?” he called out, his voice sounding as threatening as thunder on the horizon.

  “Just going for a ride,” he shouted back, his voice quavering.

  His hands were slick with sweat as he squeezed the handlebar grips, and his legs felt like jelly. He was convinced they were going to fold up on him before he could get onto his bike and pedal away. His father’s cold, steady stare bored into his back, making the hairs on the back of his neck stir.

  “Don’t go far,” his father said. “And make damned sure you don’t go out to the lighthouse.”

  Mike nodded. The lighthouse and the cliffs were the last place he wanted to go because he was worried that the person he had seen out there that day, the person who must have pushed Megan off the cliff, might still be out there and might push him off a cliff, too.

  “Just going to Chucky’s,” he said.

  “Be back in an hour,” his father shouted. “You hear me?”

  Mike nodded and started running d
own the driveway alongside his bike. When he was halfway to the street, he leaped up onto the seat and started pedaling as fast as he could to get away.

  He didn’t have to turn around to know that his father had gone through the house and was now either at one of the living room windows or on the front porch, watching him. Even if he wasn’t, Mike could feel his father’s gaze sliding over him like the cold, dry skin of a snake crawling up his back.

  Within seconds, he was out of breath from pedaling so hard. He raced down the street, the wind tearing at his face. The warm autumn air made his eyes water, and he tried to convince himself that’s all it was. He wasn’t really crying, but there was no way Chucky or any other of his friends could see him right now. Even though they all knew his sister had died, he wasn’t going to let them catch him crying. So for the next hour, all he did was race his bike around the block and hope none of his friends saw him or wanted to talk.

  — 2 —

  Sunlight glittered like a million diamonds scattered on the ocean. Blue waves surged gently, whispering like tearing paper as they washed against the shore. Abby could tell it was a nice day because so many people were out walking the beach. Couples holding hands, groups of older people, some walking their dogs and some not, and a few teenagers roamed the beach. A few of the youngest kids—hard souls or idiots—actually splashed around in the water.

  Abby and Megan were sitting on the grassy ridge overlooking Mockingbird Bay. Megan sat there, moving her hand from side to side, watching everything.

  “One thing I still can’t get used to is not casting a shadow,” she said.