Forest (The Afterlife Investigations Book 2) Page 3

  I didn't know much about what we were dealing with, but I'd learned enough about sensory deprivation in my light reading to try and comfort her. “You were sitting in perfect darkness. In perfect quiet. It was a sensory deprivation situation. You couldn't even move—you'd been strapped down. Your mind, when unable to draw upon your senses, will make things up to fill in the gaps. Hallucinations, if you will. It's not uncommon to hear, or even see things in such cases.”

  Jake scoffed. “Yeah. And that thing that followed us out of the building... I suppose that was just some hallucination too?”

  “I didn't say that,” was my reply. “But anyhow, it doesn't matter.” I leaned against my headrest, sighing. “The only way we're really going to get to the bottom of this is to dig deeper. And that means we're going to have to venture to that cabin. If there's anywhere on Earth we're going to find clues about the man's research—or even the man himself—it's up in Michigan. I'm at a loss for any other leads. The only one I've got is Hiawatha.”

  “Right, well, send us a postcard, will you?” muttered Jake, moving to exit the car.

  Elizabeth held him up, but only to plead with me. “Let's not. We've done enough, professor. We need to call this whole thing quits. Nothing good will come of meddling. I take personal responsibility for what happened at the asylum, but... going further would be unwise. Dangerous, probably.” She pulled her finger from the hole in her jeans and met my gaze earnestly in the rearview mirror. “Please, drop this.”

  I would have liked to drop it.

  Believe me, I really would have.

  For once, the two of them were right. Further investigation was ill-advised. There was no telling what I might encounter up at the cabin. For all I knew Corvine had been dead twenty years and his things all thrown out. It was possible I'd find nothing but bears and wolves up there—or the business-end of a shotgun.

  But I had to go. I really didn't see any other option.

  It was true that I was concerned about the thing we'd set loose from the asylum. The Occupant... It had been lost to Chaythe Asylum for twenty-eight years before the three of us encountered it on the anniversary of the Third Ward Incident and set it free. Something of that kind could be dangerous, and without learning more about it we had no way of knowing precisely what it was or what it might do now.

  My other reasons for pressing the Hiawatha trip were more selfish than that, however.

  Truth was, I wanted this. I was hooked. I'd read and seen too much, asked and pondered too many questions to turn my back on all of this now. The academic in me couldn't turn away from this investigation, not when I sensed myself drawing so close to the truth. Tracing this monstrosity to its fountainhead, however frightening, was as noble and intellectual a pursuit as any. So many details in this tangled web had been thrust into obscurity by the passage of time. To uncover them was to fill in sorely-needed blanks that had left even the authorities puzzled.

  I wasn't just playing detective anymore. My recent life experiences made me uniquely qualified to crack this decades-long mystery. The three of us in this car were the only ones in the world, except for Dr. Corvine himself, who could hope to shine light on what had really happened at Chaythe Asylum.

  And if the other two were opting out, that left me. I'd have to go on alone.

  Ever since the accident on Main—ever since I'd watched that kid die in my arms—I'd felt myself slowly being drawn into something larger than myself. This investigation was it. To plumb its depths and come out the other side with the knowledge I sought—no matter how horrific—was my destiny. Call it superstition, but I felt I had some sort of higher calling to this job. The more I looked at my life over the past several days, the more certain I became that I was merely a piece of this machinery, put into motion for some greater purpose.

  “I'll go myself,” I continued. “I understand your reservations, but no one else should have to encounter what we encountered back at Chaythe. And anyhow, I just have to know.” I ran a hand through my hair, leaving my wavy locks smoothed back. “If one of us doesn't step up to the plate, then this entire thing will simply be lost to time. So, I'm going to do it. I'll let you know how it goes.”

  “Don't do this,” replied Elizabeth. “Don't. We've seen enough. This isn't any of our business. We were wrong to go into the asylum, and we ignored so many warning signs...”

  “But we went in anyhow,” I interjected, wagging my finger at her in the mirror. “And now the genie's out of the bottle. I want to see if it can't be put back.”

  “Best of luck with it,” said Jake, opening the door and stepping out. “Come on, babe.”

  Elizabeth looked to me again, her eyes soft and sad.

  “I'll be gone a day or two, max. I'll call you when I get there,” I said. This seemed to put her at ease, but she kept up the sad puppy look nonetheless.

  “If something happens to you up there, then what?” she asked.

  “Come on, let's go,” said Jake, shielding his face from the rain. “If he wants to go, let him go. We need to wash our hands of this shit, babe.”

  I grinned. “Then put something funny on my tombstone, will you? 'Never Knew Best', or 'Stubborn Ass'. And bring flowers—I happen to like daffodils.”

  She stepped out of the car with a groan and took Jake's hand, fleeing to the dorm entrance. Once they got there, she stopped and studied the car from beneath an awning, and even from that distance I could sense how distraught she was. I gave them a little wave as I fired up the engine. My window was foggy, dappled in fat raindrops, and as I started for the lot exit, their faces appeared blurred and grotesque to me. The rain left their faces looking like dark smears.

  They kept watching the car until I started onto the main drag.

  7

  I mapped out my route. It was a pretty straight shot, and I-75 North would take me most of the way. Problem was that, once I got into the Hiawatha region, things were bound to get complicated. More specifically, the roads that would take me to the cabin, which sat deep in what Google Maps' satellite view displayed as dense forest, were made of dirt, and few of them had names. The odds of my getting lost in the woods once I left the highway were fifty-fifty.

  OK, maybe they were worse than that. I'm not generally known for my sense of direction.

  When I felt fairly confident in my ability to get to the fringe of the forest, I focused my attention on another matter; that is, procuring enough food and other stuff to fuel my trip of one or two days. I'd need quick and easy things to eat, clean water, a flashlight and maybe some bug spray. I considered other things, too—wondered how quickly I could get ahold of a handgun at one of the local shops, but thought better of it when I realized that my eagerness to purchase a firearm might give a well-meaning salesman the wrong impression. I was in no hurry to end up on some government watchlist.

  Perhaps I'd find nothing but a big, empty cabin, some years abandoned and occupied only by spiders and mice. Or maybe I'd find someone living in it—someone completely unrelated to this entire mess. The possibility that this whole thing was a fool's errand, a waste of time and gas, was not insubstantial.

  And yet, there was another possibility, too.

  Maybe I'd get there and find Dr. Corvine himself. He'd be nearly eighty if he was still alive, which was entirely possible. If I tracked him down, would he be willing to talk? Would he lash out at me, keep me from learning more about the terrible things he'd unleashed with his years of savage research?

  I picked up a pocket knife, a cheap one with a spring assist, and hoped it would be sufficient to fend off any threats.

  I stocked up on granola bars and bottled water, too. Canned coffee drinks, trail mix, beef jerky, crackers and a few packs of cigarettes rounded out my supplies nicely. In the outdoors section of the big box store I also snatched up a Maglite, along with a pack of batteries.

  While waiting in line at the checkout, I glanced up at the ceiling to find a large, black security camera peering down at me. It reminded me of
the dead black camera I'd seen hanging from the ceiling back at Chaythe Asylum. I looked away, feeling almost as though I could sense someone watching me through it.

  In fact, it made me feel like a patient in an insane asylum. I could wander freely about the whole world, but from somewhere up above, something was always watching. I pictured dark surveillance rooms, my movements broadcast on a series of screens, and a pale, black-haired silhouette watching closely. Maybe, from that bubble-shaped camera in the ceiling, the Occupant was watching me...

  I actually startled when the cashier finished up with the previous customer and called out to me. “You all set, sir?”

  The car was packed and I was getting ready for bed. Pacing around my living room, the TV on for background noise, I peered through the blinds and wondered, not for the last time, if I shouldn't let this go.

  You could stay home, I thought. You've got a lot of books to read. It would be safer to stay here and relax over the break. You need sleep, you know. You aren't going to get good rest in that car. More likely to end up with a blood clot in your legs than a good night's sleep sprawled across the back seat.

  But the safer option just didn't appeal.

  I wanted to know what this “Occupant” was, and why it existed in this world to begin with.

  I wanted to know why a supposedly brilliant doctor had decided to torture his patients with phobia-inducing drugs after the deaths of his wife and daughter.

  On this latter subject, the demise of Corvine's loved ones, I could find nothing online. The incident had taken place in the late 60's, and my searches brought up zero hits.

  The scene outside my window was dark, but it was eye-wateringly bright compared to the night that would await me in the middle of the Michigan woods. Though I wasn't what you could call “nyctophobic”, I was beginning to develop a real aversion to the dark. Getting lost in a pitch-black asylum for several hours will have that effect.

  I set an alarm on my phone—first for 6 AM, and then for a more forgiving 7 AM—and took a shower. When that was through I dove into bed and tried to get comfortable, but found sleep hard to come by. I was amped—or scared—about what was to come and couldn't seem to get my mind to relax. Whenever I closed my eyes I was presented with scenes from life, from my reading, and it all morphed into a single mass that blurred the lines between reality and fantasy.

  I pictured Jake and Elizabeth watching me depart in the rain, their expressions heavy with worry. I remembered—and even thought I could smell—the inside of the asylum, and the dripping of the shower faucet resembled the constant dripping I'd heard in the shadowed basement of the madhouse. Pale, grotesque faces that scarcely seemed human rose up behind my eyelids, fading into the ether only to be replaced by one more terrifying than the last. One of my neighbors must have been doing some cooking in the apartment beside mine. The sound of meat being forcefully tenderized summoned thoughts of the dead kid—of his body getting creamed by a truck and bouncing down the road.

  A nightcap of Smirnoff finally quieted my mind enough to drift off.

  8

  I've never been much of an outdoorsman. I remember going on fishing trips with my dad and uncle as a wee lad, but aside from that and a single stint at summer camp—where I'd gotten bit up by mosquitos and had been sent home with a fever after playing ultimate frisbee out in the rain—I'd never done anything particularly outdoorsy.

  I wasn't sure how I was going to fare up at Hiawatha. I planned to hang out in my car for the bulk of my stay; I'd be able to sleep and eat in it without too much trouble. Taking a dump without a proper bathroom had me worried, though. I tucked a few rolls of Charmin into my duffel bag before setting out that morning.

  When I'd set up the GPS app on my phone and navigated onto the highway entrance ramp pointing north, I switched on some music—a CD of Placido Domingo's greatest hits I'd picked up secondhand—and didn't stop until I crossed the Ohio-Michigan line.

  On the way, I'd glimpsed a familiar landmark to my left, rising up from its acreage of unkempt grass and staining the horizon.

  Chaythe Asylum.

  I tried to look away, but couldn't seem to avert my eyes. The building was behind me within a minute, but even as it disappeared from view the sour mood it inspired in me lingered on. I wished I could knock the place down, that its owner would dynamite it and scrub every trace of it from the planet. There was nothing in it anymore—just a lot of bad memories—but I still wanted it gone. It was an eyesore, a place stained by the things that had gone on there, and which had—until just recently—lurked within its walls.

  The Occupant.

  The Spanish tenor began into the climax of Una Furtiva Lagrima, his forceful performance, coupled with my remembrance of the ghastly thing, sending my heart into palpitations.

  The crossing-over of this horrific entity had been the result of Corvine's experiments—experiments that'd gone on for some years and which had seen him torture multiple subjects, by the looks of it. On the tape, he'd mentioned a previous subject—someone who'd been experimented on before Enid Lancaster. I wondered, really wondered, if I wasn't going to end up finding a literal closetful of the doctor's skeletons in the cabin.

  Have you ever driven through the Midwest? Now and then you'll spot something interesting just off of the highway, but more often than not you find boring, vast plains, farmland, for tens of miles at a stretch. It gets to be a little hypnotic. All the more so if there aren't a lot of other cars on the road. The scenery was getting to me by the time I approached Detroit, so I stopped at a rest station to splash a little water in my face and take a leak.

  I like to think that the poor lighting of the rest stop bathroom had something to do with it, but as I looked myself over in the mirror I found I looked like shit. My eyes were bloodshot, and my cheeks and neck were rocking quite the stubble. I looked liked a patchy, strung out Father John Misty impersonator. I paced around my car for a few minutes, stretching, enjoying a cigarette and people-watching.

  A few spaces down, a mini-van teeming with kids had pulled up. Every seat in the thing was taken up by a chatty child, except for the front two, where a pair of threadbare-looking parents sat bickering. One or two of the kids looked to be ten or eleven, but the rest were at that age where they acted more like small, ornery animals than human beings. The minute the doors opened, the clan scattered across the parking lot, whining about car sickness. A handful of them wandered to a nearby Pepsi machine and took turns probing the coin slot for quarters.

  Parked just past them was a station wagon. It'd been years since I'd seen one on the road, and this thing, with a garbage bag taped over its rear window, looked as though it should have stayed in the 80's. An elderly man nodded off in the driver's seat while his equally elderly wife hobbled out of the ladies room and paused to smile toothily at the gaggle of rambunctious kids.

  I was getting ready to depart when one of the roaming children, a boy of around Kindergarten age, paced up to my window and squared me in a narrow gaze. “Smoking is bad,” he said with surprising graveness. “My dad says it can kill you.”

  I nodded thoughtfully, putting out my stub of a cigarette. “He's right about that.” I was going to feed him some platitude about how smoking is bad, and how he should never start, but he ran off and rejoined the rest of his family.

  My next stop was just past Detroit, where I visited a Starbucks drive-thru for a big coffee and a chorizo and egg sandwich. I ate it on the go, keeping one eye on the almost empty road ahead and the other on the GPS map. So far, everything was going smoothly. Traffic was light, the weather fair and the local college radio station churning out some decent tunes. I hummed along with an old Elliott Smith song as I started for Flint.

  I fueled up in Saginaw just to play it safe and broke into my box of granola bars, scarfing down two. From that point on I didn't stop again until I reached Mackinaw City about three hours later. I parked at a rest stop and enjoyed a Whopper at the attached Burger King before taking a walk of some t
hirty minutes, reading brochures about attractions in the Upper Peninsula. Fishing, boating and camping were heavily advertised. I discovered an unstaffed informational kiosk stocked with phonebooks, tour pamphlets and fliers about how to obtain fishing and hunting licenses. There was a gift shop inside, too, where a middle-aged man with closely-cropped hair hawked polished Petoskey stones. I walked out with a gaudy Petoskey stone keychain for a mere ten bucks after haggling the merchant down from fifteen.

  When I'd crossed the Mackinac Bridge and marveled sufficiently at its length, I began into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I was getting close now—the GPS predicted I'd hit my destination within the next two and a half hours. The traffic thinned out even further as I built some distance from the bridge, and the scenery, too, began to undergo a striking change.

  Trees.

  Lots and lots of trees started popping up.

  The roads got a little narrower, the trees denser, and I began to feel like I was leaving civilization behind altogether. The sky was dimming, and so I hit the headlights, though it became clear within the next half hour that they weren't going to put much of a dent in the wooded darkness. Trees, ancient and towering, crowded in from every direction, blotting out what remained of the daylight and limiting my view of the road ahead. I followed the road signs, the prompts fed to me by the GPS, but every now and then the signal seemed to get lost in the foliage and I'd have to drive blind for a few minutes.

  While navigating a winding stretch of road, I got a text from Elizabeth, who asked, “Are you OK? Did you make it?” At a deserted 4-way intersection I paused long enough to reply, answering, “Almost there.” It took three attempts for my message to go through. Cell reception was spotty, even here.