The Occupant: The Afterlife Investigations #3 Read online

  The Occupant

  The Afterlife Investigations #3

  Ambrose Ibsen

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Thank you for reading!

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2017 by Ambrose Ibsen

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  1

  Up to this point in my life, I'd never hitchhiked. It'd been one of those things my mother had always warned me about. One was likely to end up in Buffalo Bill's backseat, in Jack the Ripper's windowless van, she'd maintained.

  Of course, when you're wandering down the long, empty roads of the Upper Peninsula near dawn, you haven't got much choice but to hike your thumb out.

  Some miles into our wandering, our bodies chilled by the rain, Jake and I were picked up by a kindly gentleman, about sixty years old, who was on his way to the lower half of Michigan to visit his grandkids. He flashed his lights at us and wheeled his SUV to the right side of the road. He took a quick look at us in his side mirror before unlocking his doors. I don't know what criteria he used in picking up hitchhikers, but it seemed we passed his sniff test. It helped that the two of us looked pathetic, our clothes and hair matted against our bodies like we were drowned rats.

  “Car trouble?” asked the man as we sidled up to the side of the SUV.

  A co-ed possessed by an entity from beyond the world of the dead had torched my Cavalier and everything in it. I supposed that such things, rare though they are, fell beneath the umbrella of 'car trouble', and I gave him a nod.

  “Where are you headed?” he asked. He had a toothpick in his mouth and was listening to something loud and jazzy. Despite my fatigue, I recognized the playing of the Wynton Kelly Trio and had to stifle a laugh. Hearing bits and pieces of Smokin' at the Half-Note streaming out of this guy's window in the middle of Nowhere, Michigan, was surreal to me.

  Jake gave the man a puppy dog look that said, “We'll go anywhere warm and dry,” and before we knew it the guy was waving us in. He didn't mind that our rain-soaked clothing would dampen his interior—the back of the SUV, it turned out, had been well-worn by an energetic little dog, a beagle bewilderingly named 'Peanuts'—and asked that we make ourselves at home. He offered to drive us to the nearest highway rest stop, offered to let us use his cell phone, and even bought Jake and I a meal and a hot coffee once we got there.

  Jake and I said as little as we could get away with while sitting in the back seat of the SUV. Wynton Kelly tickled the ivories, Peanuts the beagle wandered between my lap and Jake's, and I tell you, petting that dog was the only comfort either of us had known for a good, long while. The driver, whose name I learned was Derrick, asked us a few questions about our travels, talked about the weather, but wasn't bothered when we gave him half-formed answers.

  I spun him some yarn about how we'd been planning to go camping. I mentioned the car fire, but acted bewildered as to its source, and then cracked a joke about how I'd just put new tires on the thing.

  “You'd be surprised,” said Derrick as he navigated the winding roads. “A lot of abandoned cars in these parts. The UP... it's a place where things, and people, sometimes come for the express purpose of getting lost.” The trees cast the pavement in dense shadow. The sun was playing hard to get and had been doing so since dawn. Now and then it would peer out from behind the shield of rainclouds in the sky, only to duck back into the mess of grey. I swear, the sky as glimpsed through the sunroof looked like Rembrandt's Storm on the Sea of Galilee. Judging by his carefree inflection, Derrick hadn't meant anything with that remark—he was just making conversation.

  But Jake and I shuddered all the same.

  We'd come looking for something long-abandoned to these dense woods—a mining town largely vacated in the 1870's called Milsbourne. It was there we'd hoped to find some answers to our numerous questions. Questions that had brought us all the way from the Chaythe Asylum, out of Ohio, and into remote northern Michigan.

  The search for those answers looked like it was going to cost us everything, though.

  Jake looked shell-shocked. He palmed at his cell phone every now and then, staring down at it with a tremulous fear that plagued his hands and throat, but didn't so much as switch it on. He'd gotten a text from Elizabeth—from the monstrosity lurking within her—and just hadn't been the same since.

  It'd been an invitation. Or, perhaps, a challenge.

  Won't you join me in Milsbourne?

  The beastly thing was on to us—had been for a while—and had thought nothing of destroying the car to leave us stranded.

  But it hadn't killed us.

  It could have overpowered us both as we fled through the woods, scared out of our wits, but was content to simply frighten. Why had that been? What did it want to show us in forgotten Milsbourne?

  Derrick let us out at the rest stop, fixed us up with a pair of large coffees and a breakfast at the adjacent McDonald's, and then set off. I thanked him profusely, could have hugged the man like he was my own father, and then Jake and I set about demolishing the food before us in the well-lit dining area. Our clothes had begun to dry, leaving the fabric starchy in places and the skin beneath wrinkled.

  When the food was gone, we had no choice but to face the elephant in the room, to turn our harried minds to other matters that, even in the daylight hours, made our blood run cold.

  “Where do we go from here?” asked Jake. The food had brought his color back, and he sucked down the hot coffee, black, in an effort to regain some of the warmth he'd lost on our rainy death march.

  I looked past him, spying my haggard reflection in the window. My hair was sticking up in frizzy cowlicks and I looked like I was wearing eye black. “I dunno,” I replied. “Maybe we should run out there, try and flag down Derrick. Hanging out with him and his grandkids sounds damn fine compared to sticking around here.”

  Jake rolled his eyes. “No, seriously. What happens now that... that Elizabeth has made it to Milsbourne?” His girlfriend's name—Elizabeth—left his lips without the usual loving affectation. He said it almost phonetically, like he was trying to pronounce the scientific name of some venomous snake, and I couldn't blame him. “Are we too late?”

  I plucked the lid off of my coffee and stared down into the pool of black. The steam rose up and washed over my face as I took a sip. “Nah. We're not too late. At least, I don't think we are. That thing led us here, but it's not through with us yet. It wants us to meet it in Milsbourne. Until we find the old ghost town, until it meets us face-to-face there for some kind of final showdown, this won't end.”

  “This isn't some kind of action movie,” he pleaded. “What final showdown could this thing possibly want? It could have killed
us a hundred times by now. Once it wrecked the car it could have snapped our heads off, no problem.”

  I nodded. “Yup. Which means it's still got something in store for us and is waiting until we hike into Milsbourne to reveal it. Don't ask me what.” I balled up my hash brown wrapper and made a free-throw into a nearby garbage can. I missed. “As to what's next, that's a tough question. We're going to need some help. We've got no supplies, no map, no car.” I held out my palm. “Let me see your phone.”

  Jake handed it to me with obvious reticence. His flush cheeks sank into a frown and his youthful eyes, darkened by a lack of sleep, narrowed on the device's unlit screen. “What are you gonna do?”

  I switched on the phone and watched it power up completely before answering him. When all systems were go and there were no more ominous text messages waiting for us from the Occupant, I flagged down a woman in a McDonald's uniform and asked her if she knew the address. Jotting it down on a napkin, I dialed 4-1-1 and waited for an operator to answer. “There's someone who may be able to help,” I told him, rapping upon the tabletop with my fingers.

  2

  Jane Corvine was not happy to hear from me.

  At the sound of my voice—at my very utterance of “Hello”—she'd barked into the phone like a pit bull raring to maul a mailman. I held my ground, though. “Jane, I'm not calling you to catch up, I'm calling because it's important. Things are happening and we need your help. There's no one else I can turn to in this.”

  The woman seethed. “I seem to remember telling you that I never wanted to hear from you again. I suppose I owe you a bullet for this phone call, don't I? How did you even get this number?”

  I ignored her and pressed on. “I'm calling about the Occupant,” I stressed. “It's on the move.”

  Jane scoffed. “No shit. And I'll bet it hitched a ride in that student of yours, didn't it?” Jane had warned me about the possibility of Elizabeth falling under the Occupant's sway. There was no pride in her voice as she said it—no “I told you so.” “What's happened, then?”

  “It led us all the way up here, to Michigan,” I explained. “But there's more. It seems to be gearing up for something. I've learned a few things since we last spoke and I want to touch base with you. If anyone can help us stop this thing, it's you.” I paused. “I wouldn't call you without a good reason. The Occupant is about to get what it wants unless we move. Quickly.”

  For what seemed an eternity, Jane weighed my words. Finally, she conceded. “All right. I'll give you an address where we can meet. Where you coming from?”

  I couldn't help but snicker. “Actually, it's funny you ask. We're experiencing a bit of car trouble, so... I was wondering if maybe you could—”

  “Jesus,” she muttered. “Well, where are your asses at, then? And who's with ya? You keep saying 'we'. Who's tagging along, and can we trust them?”

  “Oh, it's one of my students, Jake. The Occupant took a liking to his girlfriend. He's fine. No worries there.”

  Jane grumbled. She didn't sound too thrilled about involving another outsider in this affair—either that, or she was still pissed about having to drive out to pick us up. “OK, and where are you now?”

  I gave her the address to the rest stop and let her do a bit of mental math.

  “All right. I'll be there in about an hour,” she answered. And then she cut the line.

  “Is she coming?” asked Jake.

  I nodded. “Should be here within an hour.” I reclined in my seat, had a look around the restaurant, and wondered if I could get away with a discrete nap while waiting for our ride. My head was beginning to pound and the caffeine wasn't doing anything for me anymore. My feet, too, were mighty sore, and my shoes were still damp. “When she gets here,” I added, “don't talk to her unless you have to, all right? She doesn't like to chat. Not a very friendly lady.”

  Jake took his orders and busied himself by getting rid of the trash on our table. With that, he plopped down in the chair beside me and we watched the rain fall through the window, nodding off intermittently while waiting for Jane to show up. Eventually she did, pulling up to the restaurant in a black pickup.

  She rolled her window down a touch, peering in at us from the parking lot.

  I nudged Jake awake. “She's here.”

  We set out into the rain to meet her.

  * * *

  “Tell me everything,” she demanded. “Every last detail.”

  Jane's truck was a dingy thing. Once, probably, it'd been a top of the line truck, but one too many rainy days with the windows open had left the leather interior thoroughly cracked. There was a smell in the cabin that was hard to trace—something between wet dog and warmed-over skunk—but there weren't any animals inside I could blame it on. The ash tray up near the steering wheel was crammed with spent butts.

  Before regaling her with everything I'd learned since our last meeting, I forced her to surrender one of her precious Marlboro Reds, and took several puffs while trying to get my thoughts straight.

  I told her about how I'd found Jake, left in a daze after being attacked by Elizabeth. I told her about our meeting with Elizabeth's parents—both the queer call we'd gotten while there, and what we'd learned of Elizabeth's true heritage. She was a Lancaster, like Enid had been, and had apparently been born in Michigan near a small ghost town called Milsbourne. The name of the town meant nothing to Jane, which surprised me. I then told her about our trip to the university library, where we'd discovered her uncle, the notorious W. R. Corvine, had checked out—and never returned—the only book in the library's extensive catalog that dealt with Milsbourne. From there, I covered our consultation with professor John Prince, who'd shared with us some tidbits about a fellow academic, Jamieson Monroe, who'd gone looking for the ghost town out of scholarly interest and had ended up finding something there that'd ruined his previously ironclad mind.

  “All roads are pointing to Milsbourne,” I said. “With general directions provided by John Prince, we set out for the UP and arrived here yesterday evening. The Occupant messed with us all the while. It showed up on the side of the road, in the woods... We were close to Milsbourne, and were going to set out into the forest at first light in search of it, when the Occupant lured us away from the car. We were very nearly lost in the woods, and when we found our way out, we discovered my car on fire. Everything in it—including the map where I'd marked down Milsbourne's coordinates—was lost in the blaze. We had to hitchhike to this rest stop and the rest is history.”

  Jane listened with a deep-set grimace, hands balanced atop the wheel. Raking a hand through her short, blonde hair, she appeared at a loss for words. It turned out I was mistaken, though, because she promptly replied, “You two fucked up.”

  “Yeah, as if I wasn't aware of that,” I muttered, putting out my cigarette. “Now the question is, what's waiting for us in Milsbourne? How does an old mining town play into this? Your uncle looked into Milsbourne, seemed to have an interest in it. Did he say why? Did he ever mention the place?”

  She shook her head. “Never breathed a word of it to me. I wasn't his secretary, you know. He told me what he wanted me to know, but he didn't leave behind a detailed outline of all he knew.” She rubbed at her temples, clenching her jaw against a jolt of fear or annoyance—I couldn't tell which. “Might be something in those papers you took from the cabin. Did you look through them?”

  “The ones that went up in flame along with the car?” I chuckled. “We leafed through them before coming up north. There wasn't anything related to Milsbourne in them that we could find, no. But if there was, it's gone now.”

  “The research is gone, too, huh?” She looked ready to spit. “Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be?” With a sigh, she added, “I told you I never wanted to see you again, and I meant it.”

  “Well, why'd you show up, then? Why pick us up?” I shot back. “It's because you want to wipe this thing off the face of the planet too, am I right? So, let's cut the shit and get moving. We nee
d to find out where Milsbourne is at. I feel like the Occupant has been trying to lure us out there. I don't know why, but it didn't attack us, didn't kill us, when it had the chance. That must mean it wants us to do something for it. Something that can only be realized in Milsbourne. What do you think?”

  “I think we're up Shit Creek with no paddle,” she uttered. Looking out the rain-flecked window and fogging it up with a heavy sigh, she continued. “I know the area you were poking around in. I know of the mines, the hills. Of course, that doesn't mean I know just where this old town is at. There are a lot of towns buried out there in the trees, you know? In order to find the right one, we're going to have to do some digging, ask around, and find someone who knows their shit.”

  There was then a brief silence, which Jake pounced on and promptly broke like a porcelain vase. “What are we going to do once we find Elizabeth?” he asked, the edge in his voice betraying hope. “How can we save her?”

  Jane turned to look at him, sent him a gaze of ice that left him withering against his seat. “I'll tell you what we're going to do,” she said, pointing at her forehead. “I'm going to put a bullet 'tween her eyes.”

  3

  I had no supplies, no map. I didn't even have a car, or a fresh change of underwear.

  Even if we managed the best case scenario—that of rescuing Elizabeth, sending the Occupant back to where it came from and returning to Moorlake in time for classes, I was still majorly fucked. I didn't have the money to replace my old beater and wasn't even sure that I could buy a cheeseburger without my credit cards bumping their limits. I'd spent a lot of money over the past several days without thinking about it, purchasing necessities. But when all was said and done, if I didn't end up dying beforehand, I was set to face another nightmare—that of utter poverty—upon my return home.