Текст книги "Rushed"

Автор книги: Brian Harmon

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

“I wish I could tell you it’s the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen, but this guy’s not even close to the same level of freak as Altrusk.”

“Are you really serious?  I mean, really?  This isn’t some stupid practical joke?”

“Because everybody knows what a mean practical joker I am?”

“Well…  No.  I guess not.  I just…  I mean…  This is weird, okay?”

“I know it’s weird.  I’m the one out in the damn leaky boat without any oars!”

“Eric, this is really messed up.  Maybe we should come find you.”

“No.  You can’t.  I don’t even know where I am right now.  I could be hundreds of miles away.  And it’s way too dangerous to come the way I did.  There’s way worse things than that pissed-off monkey blocking the path.”  Specifically, he was thinking of the resort monster waiting to devour anyone who passed through the kitchen to use the stairs to Altrusk’s yard.  “Just get my car back home for me, okay?  I’m going to have to go.  I have to bail the water out of my boat again.”

“You’re really in a damn boat?  Really?”

Eric held the phone out over the water as he splashed with his free hand.  “This is the sound of me paddling a goddamn boat with my hands,” he said loudly enough for his voice to carry to the receiver.  Putting the phone back to his ear, he said, “Good enough?”

“I believe you.”

“Good.  Now really, I’ve got to hang up before I sink.”

“You’re going to call me back, right?  Tell me what’s going on?”

“Call Karen.  She’ll catch you up.  She can send you some more pictures, too.”

“No shit?”

“None at all.  Now I’ve got to go.”

“Okay…”

Eric hung up the phone, considered it for a moment, and then snapped a quick picture of himself giving a thumbs-up against the backdrop of the lake.  He sent the picture to Paul and then pocketed the phone and began splashing water out of the bottom of the boat.

When he’d rid himself of as much lake water as he could, he sat up and looked around.

He was still a long way from the far shore.  And he had no idea what might await him when he finally reached it.

As he dipped his hand into the water again, his eyes drifted back to the dock and the path that led into the forest behind it.  Over the tops of the trees, he could just see one of the highest peaks of Altrusk’s house.

It still felt wrong that he was leaving Isabelle.

But he had no idea how to help her.  All he could do was hope that someday he could find a way to come back for her.

It was the only thing that made it bearable.

Chapter Fifteen

Eric eventually found that by stretching out over the bow of the boat and dipping both hands into the water on either side, he was actually able to propel the craft at a more respectable speed.

The downside was, of course, that the bow of the boat was hardly designed for comfort.  It was especially uncomfortable on his left shoulder, where the resort monster slashed him as it tumbled off the roof of the Altrusk house.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been on the water now.  At least an hour, he was sure, maybe much closer to two.  His exposed arms and the back of his neck were beginning to get sunburned.  With no warning that he was about to embark on such an adventure, he’d had no more opportunity to apply sunscreen than he’d had to retrieve the first aid kit from the PT Cruiser’s glove box.

He was about to take a break, perhaps bail some more water, when suddenly the bottom of the boat ground against the bottom of the lake.

Surprised by this abrupt end to his forward momentum, he sat up and looked around.  The lake was no longer a lake at all.  It had suddenly transformed itself into a marsh.  Huge trees loomed ahead of him, creating a dense canopy that plunged the surface of the water into eerie shadow.  Looking back the way he’d come, he saw that there were more trees behind him that he did not remember passing.  He could not see the dock at all.

Checking his phone, he saw that he no longer had reception.  He’d drifted back into the gray zone.

Yet these trees were familiar.  He’d seen them in his dream.  He searched the water around him and then saw it there, the other boat, drifting lazily between two trees, abandoned by the foggy man as he continued forward through the marsh on foot, just as he now recalled having done in his dream.

He peered over the side of the boat, down into the water.  It was obviously only a few inches deep if the boat had run aground, but the mud and silt made it impossible to see anything down there.  The stagnant stench of rotting vegetable matter rose up around him.

This was going to suck.

A lot.

Consigning himself to the unpleasant task at hand, Eric clumsily stepped out of the boat and stood up in several inches of mud and soggy leaves.

To say that trudging forward was unpleasant was akin to saying that gas prices seemed a smidge high.  The air here was heavy with humidity.  Every step was a labored effort, and produced a foul odor that seemed to wrap him in an inescapable cloud of stench, making it nearly impossible to catch a fresh breath.  His mind insisted on torturing him with thoughts of fat leeches and venomous serpents.  It didn’t matter that there were no dangerous water snakes in Wisconsin.  In his stubborn mind, even alligators and crocodiles, vicious snapping turtles and anacondas as large as freight trains prowled these waters.

After all, he’d been fairly sure there were no nasty-tempered apes in Wisconsin, either, until a short while ago.  His cell phone confirmed that he wasn’t entirely still in the world he knew.  Who could possibly say what kinds of things might call these strange waters home?  With every step he expected something mean and ravenous to spring up from the mire and sink vicious teeth into his flesh, or simply drag him screaming down into the murky depths, never to be found.

In his dream, he’d waded through these very same waters and recalled seeing nothing stirring beneath the surface.  But he also did not yet recall exiting the marsh, so there was still time to remember something terrifying.  It would probably return to him only when it was too late.  And even if the dream never revealed a monstrous danger lurking in the bog, it did not necessarily mean that it wasn’t there.  After all, the dream did not warn him of the toothy ape or the coyote-deer.  And for all he knew, the foggy man may have left him another surprise hidden somewhere in the mud.

But step-after-step, he found nothing waiting to rend his flesh and crush his bones.

After another half-hour of sloshing through the reeking muck, a memory did return, however.  In his dream, he saw a strange shape moving purposefully through the water, too large to be any known snake or turtle.

The memory now returned to him, Eric scanned the area for the same shape, but it was nowhere to be seen.

He pushed on, eyes wide open.

The trees drew closer together as he walked, the canopy above him denser, mottling the sunlight upon the surface of the foul water.  More and more frequently, his feet struck the roots, threatening to trip him and send him sprawling into the muck, but somehow he managed to keep his footing.

His legs ached.  Bugs swarmed around him.  Mosquitoes threatened to bleed him dry.  The humidity was stifling.  And still he could see no end to this miserable marsh.

The creature in his dream wandered off and did not return.

How was it, he wondered, that a scary swamp would prove to be free of monsters determined to devour him (with the notable exception of the damned mosquitoes) while a farmhouse and a nudist resort nearly killed him?

Finally, he came to an area where the earth rose above the surface of the water in places, allowing him to walk on dry land for brief periods of time.  It was on one of these small islets that he stopped and sat with his back against a tree, resting his weary legs.

He checked his cell phone, confirmed that there was still no signal, and then snapped a picture of his surroundings to add to his scrapbook of crazy things he saw and did on his twisted wonderland adventure.

It was odd, now, to think that he started this insanity in a cornfield.

Cursing, he slapped at another mosquito and then glanced up in time to see an enormous shadow pass overhead.

Leaping to his feet, he looked up to see what appeared to be a massive black bird soaring past above the trees and out toward the lake from which he’d come.

He could see very little detail through the branches, and might have mistaken it for a small and extremely low-flying plane if it wasn’t utterly silent.

Not caring to be carried off like a field mouse, and not daring to assume that it would do no such thing should it see him, he stepped out into the water and continued on his way, his eyes drifting repeatedly to the sky as he went.

He didn’t recall seeing a giant bird in his dream, which was weird, now that he was thinking about it, since the bird theme was the only part of the dream he could even remotely remember until he found the barn at the far end of Annette’s field.

The trees grew denser still, crowding together until he had to struggle over their tangled roots and squeeze between their fat trunks.

Then, just as abruptly as he’d run the boat aground and found himself within the marsh, he stumbled out from between the trees and found himself once again in a cornfield.

“The hell?” he muttered, looking back at the crowded trees behind him.  From here, he could see no sign that any marsh existed, only a dense thicket of trees, all of which were native Wisconsin pines and oaks and maples.  He couldn’t seem to remember when the swamp cypresses ended, but he must have been pushing his way through a genuine Wisconsin forest for at least the past few minutes.

Even the humidity had vanished.  Although the air remained hot, it was a much dryer and more bearable heat.

In his dream, he’d had the exact same experience.  Therefore, he was confident that he was still where he was supposed to be.  And checking his phone, he found that he had his signal back.

He also had thirteen missed calls and a text message that read, WHERE ARE YOU?

He should call Karen.  She was clearly worried.  But he was sure that if he just waited a few minutes, she would call him.  And, as it turned out, he had barely started pushing his way through the corn when it began to vibrate impatiently in his pocket.

“What happened to you?”

“Sorry.  I was off-world for a while there.”

“You’ve been waiting your whole life to be able to say something like that, haven’t you?”

“Actually, yes.”

“I couldn’t find anything about an Isaac Altrusk.  But I didn’t have time to search too hard.”

Eric wasn’t sure what good it would do anyway.  The Altrusk house was well behind him now.  He doubted he’d ever see it again.  And poor Isabelle…

“How’s the cake?” he asked, not caring to dwell on the poor girl he’d been forced to leave behind.

“Coming along.”

“Get the pies done?”

“Yeah.  I’ve got cookies in the oven now.”

“I should leave you alone more often.”

“No, you shouldn’t.  So where are you now?”

“Back in a cornfield.”

“Oh.  Beats a leaky boat.”

“It does.”

“So you got across the lake okay?”

“Lake turned into a swamp.  Had to hoof it through the bog.”

“Yuck.  Better you than me.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t have made it.”

“Oh you think so?”

“I know so.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.  It ruined my shoes.”

“Oh.  Yeah, I wouldn’t’ve made it.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Piss off any more monkeys?”

“Not yet.  Saw a big bird though.  Huge.  Like a plane.”

“Scary.”

“It was.”

“Well I’m glad you’re okay.”

“So am I.”

“Paul called me, said you told him I could tell him what was up.”

“I did.”

“He was freaking out about your monkey picture.”

Eric smiled.  “That got his attention.”

“Yes, it most certainly did.”

“So you told him my story?”

“Uh huh.  Sent him those other pictures, too.”

“Good.  He won’t think I’m crazy anymore.”

“No.  I’m pretty sure he believes you now.”

“Good.  Did he find the PT Cruiser?”

“Yeah.  Him and Kevin were parked by it when he called.  They should be on their way back with it now.”

“Excellent.”

Eric stepped out of the corn and found himself standing on another dirt road, nearly identical to the one where this strange adventure first began.  He almost expected he had come full circle, that soon he would find himself back at either the barn or Annette’s backyard gate.

“So any idea where you’re going now?” asked Karen.

“Nope.  Stupid dream’s still only coming back to me as things happen.  But I found a road through the corn, so at least I’m not walking completely blind.”

In his dream, he’d turned right, so he started walking in that direction.  Hopefully, he wouldn’t walk five miles only to recall that, in his dream, he’d found a dead end and had to turn back.

“I’m going to hang up and see where this road goes.”

“Okay.  Call me soon.”

He didn’t know why she continued to tell him that.  She knew damn well it would be her who called him.  It always was.

Eric stuffed the phone back into his pocket and continued walking.  A few hundred yards ahead, the corn on his left gave way to pasture and a barbwire fence separated him from a few dozen cows.

He was studying the animals for any sign that they may turn around and bare huge sets of angry gorilla teeth at him or some other terrifying thing, but they appeared to be nothing more than ordinary cows.

His phone rang again.

Grumbling, he answered it.  It was Paul.

“What’s going on?  You still stuck in that boat?”

“No, I ran out of lake, had to get out and wade through a swamp.  Now I think I’m back in Wisconsin.  I see cows.”

“Sounds like Wisconsin.”

“Have any trouble finding the Cruiser?”

“Nope.  It was right where you said it was.  Safe and sound.”

“Good.  Where are you now?”

“Kevin’s on his way back to your house with the Cruiser.  I stuck around to do a little snooping.”

Eric stopped walking.  “You’re doing what?”

“I checked out that old lady’s house.  What did Karen say her name was?  Annette?”

“What the hell are you doing at Annette’s house?  How did you even find it?”

“Karen said you followed the river and found a path.  I went looking for it.”

Karen apparently hadn’t skimped on the details.

“Why would you do that?”

“Why not?  She wasn’t home.  Nobody answered the door.”

“You’re not missing anything.  She kept talking about her husband, how he was probably going to die soon.  Then I found out he’s been dead a while already.  Not a cheerful chatter.  You really don’t want to have a conversation with her.  I told you to pick up the car and take it home, not try to follow me.  I specifically told you not to try and follow me.”

“Relax.  I’m just having a look.”

“There’s nothing to see!  Things didn’t start getting completely weird until I walked through the barn and by then it was too late to turn around!  If you go there, you’ll be stuck.  And then we’ll have to find someone to go get your car.”

“You really think I can’t go back through the barn?”

“I was told a lot of things I don’t have any reason to doubt.  One of them was that if you go back through the barn the other way, you might not come out at all.  If you go through the barn like I did…”  Eric closed his eyes.  “Tell me you didn’t already find the barn.”

“It was kind of hard to miss once you made it through the corn.”

“Damn it, Paul…”

“The things in there were way freakier in person than in your pictures.  What the hell was in that boarded-up stall?  I couldn’t see in.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m at the end of the driveway in front of that old house.  There’s a paved road with no shoulders, no center line.  I had to come all the way down here to find a signal so I could call you.”

“Listen to me,” Eric said.  “Do not go back there.  Just start walking.  Try and figure out where you are.  Don’t go back into the barn and sure as hell don’t go into the house.”

“I wouldn’t know how to get into the farmhouse.  In case you forgot, there’s a tractor parked in the door.”

Well, it was good to know he hadn’t imagined that.  Although he found himself wondering why Grant hadn’t moved the tractor.  Maybe he busted something when he plowed through the porch.

“I’m serious.  You saw what was in the barn.  You know I was telling the truth.”

“I do.  I took some pictures of my own, even.  God, those things in the stalls were nasty!”

“Then you have to believe me when I say you could die out there.”

“Okay.  I get it.”

“Really?  Because you said you got it last time I talked to you and now you’re stranded fifty miles from your car.”

“Really.  Don’t lecture me.  I’m just trying to help.”

“How is you getting yourself killed going to help me?”

“I’m not going to get myself killed.  Did I really go fifty miles?”

“I don’t know.  You need to listen to me.  You’re in danger.  Inside that farmhouse is an old wardrobe with a monster inside it.  If not for Grant and that tractor, I’d be dead right now!  That thing will hunt you relentlessly until it kills you unless you can find a distraction big enough to break its focus, which—believe me—is not easy to do when you’re running for your life and scared out of your skull!”

“Okay.  Fine.  But what did you do next?”

“You don’t need to know what I did next!  You need to start walking and you need to keep walking!  Just leave.  And then you can start thinking about how you’re going to get home.”

“Karen said you made your way to the nudist resort from here.”

“Seriously?  The nudists?  Still?  There’s no one there, Paul!  Get over it!”

“I know there’s no one there.  But Karen said you made your way there from here and all you found along the way was those weird dog-things that you told her were harmless.”

“Taylor told me they were harmless.  I don’t know for sure that he was telling me the truth.  And I don’t know that there isn’t something else out there in those woods, something that is dangerous.  A big, red, pissed off ape, maybe?”

“Just calm down and listen to me.”

“I’m not going to calm down!  Like I don’t have enough to deal with out here without worrying that you’re going to go poking around in all the places I was almost killed today because you won’t believe me when I say it’s not safe!”

“I do believe you!  That’s the whole fucking point!  I’m not cool with just sitting around all day and waiting for my little brother to call and tell me he’s still alive, okay?”

Eric ran a hand through his hair.  He wasn’t sure what to say, so he remained quiet.

“This is some really weird shit,” Paul went on.  “I needed to check it out for myself, okay?  It’s not about me not trusting you.  I mean, think about it.  All these things you’re seeing…  None of it should be possible.  But not only is it real, you’re out in the middle of it all.  What would you do if you were me?  If I was out there and you were just the guy who was picking up the car, what would you do?”

Eric remained silent.  He couldn’t deny that Paul was right.  If their positions had been switched, he would have gone through the barn, even if he knew it meant ending up stranded.

“Well?”

“Fine.  But if you were in my place—”

“I’d be pretty pissed about you following me.  I know.”

“Good.”

“But I want to go to the resort.”

“I’m telling you, you’d make a terrible nudist.”

“I know, but besides that…  I figure that resort…  What was it called?”

“Gold Sunshine Resort.”

“Gold Sunshine.  Stupid name.”

“I have heard better names.”

“I don’t have a clue where I am now, but I think Kevin could probably find Gold Sunshine Resort and pick me up.”

“There’s a monster inside the biggest building there.  It almost killed me.  Tore up my shoulder pretty bad.  I only survived by dumb luck.  It’s blocking the only way forward.  Even if you did survive, the next stop is the lake.  I took the last boat.  No going around it unless you want to run into the monkey with the huge teeth.  And he doesn’t get over things quickly.  Also, I might’ve insulted his parentage.”

“So the resort’s as far as I could go.  Got it.  I’ll call Kevin, see if he can find the address.”

“The place closed in nineteen-seventy-eight.  He might not be able to look up the address on the internet.”

“He’ll figure it out.  If not, I’ll find my way to the highway like I did here and find somewhere to ask for directions.”

Eric didn’t like the idea of Paul wandering around in the fissure.  It simply didn’t seem like a good idea, no matter how he rationalized it.

“So how do I get there from here?”

“You swear to me you won’t go any farther than the resort, and you won’t go into the biggest building.”

“I won’t.  I promise.”

“You better not.  I swear to God if you go near that building I’ll see to it you never taste Karen’s chocolate truffle cheesecake again.”

“You wouldn’t!”  Karen’s chocolate truffle cheesecake was Paul’s favorite desert.  She made it every holiday.  And she made him one every year for his birthday.  He couldn’t get enough of it.

“I would.  In a heartbeat.  Don’t push me on this.  She’ll side with me when I tell her you’re out here with me.”

“Fine.  I swear.”

“Really?”

“Really.  You already said the way is blocked.  I believe you.  I’ve been to the barn.  Those things in there were scary as hell.  Shit, the barn itself was scary as hell.  I mean, it just kept going!  I’m really not interested in running into anything that’s actually dangerous.”

“I can’t say for sure there’s not something dangerous waiting for you anyway.  Anything could be hiding out there.  You’ll have to be careful.”

“I will.”

Eric sighed.  “I’d really rather you just walk home from there.”

“Noted.  Just tell me where to go next.”

“There’s a little tool shed backed up into the woods.  The path is behind it.  When it gets too overgrown, you’ll have to look carefully to find the next path.  It’s hard to see.  You’ll have to take the bridge.  Hope you like heights.”

“What kind of heights are we talking about?”

“You’ll just have to see for yourself, I guess.”

“Nice.  I’m going to get off of here and call Kevin.”

“Be careful.”

“I will.  Bye.”

“Bye.”

Eric pocketed the phone again and continued walking.  He didn’t like that Paul was here in the fissure.  It worried him.  But on the other hand, at least he’d validated his experience in the barn.  As crazy as all this was, he would not have been surprised to hear that no such barn existed and that everything he’d experienced today had all been inside his own head.

It was like Karen finding Isabelle on the missing persons list and connecting her to a real Gold Sunshine Resort.  It didn’t prove that someone wasn’t messing with his mind, but at least it was some measure of evidence in favor of his sanity.

Add to these things the pictures he’d taken and he could at least remain confident about the soundness of his mind.

He squinted up at the hot sun, wiped the sweat from his face again and continued on toward whatever mysteries awaited him ahead.

He watched the cows as he walked.  He’d never been particularly fond of cattle, or any farm animals for that matter.  They smelled terrible.  They were filthy.  They drew flies.  He preferred them fully prepared and placed neatly on his plate with a side of vegetables and a potato.  But now he was simply happy that they weren’t throwing stones at him.

In fact, given all that he’d been through, all that he’d seen, they looked almost majestic standing out there.

Then the one closest to him lifted its tail and took a crap right in front of him.

Of course.

Eric moved on, his eyes fixed on the road before him again.

He wondered how much farther he’d have to go.  For that matter, how far had he actually gone?  Grant told him that his trip through the mutant livestock barn had carried him some fifty miles northwest.  Taylor later informed him that he’d traveled another eighty-five miles due north after crossing the gorge on that terrifying bridge.  Since then, he’d passed through that shadowy otherworld twice, once past the Altrusk house and once through the marsh.

But as far as he knew, he didn’t jump forward when he passed the stunted corn in Annette’s field.  So maybe he hadn’t jumped those last two times, either.

Or maybe he was all the way in Canada by now.

Thinking back on it, he recalled Karen’s assertion that it was almost noon when his watch and phone had only read a little later than half-past ten.  At some point, it seemed that he’d lost more than an hour.

Could that be true?  If the fissure could distort space in such a way that he was flung forward fifty and eighty-five miles at a stretch, why couldn’t time scrunch down so that the minutes had passed considerably more quickly inside Altrusk’s house?

He didn’t have time to consider it further.  Movement caught his eye to his left and he glanced over in time to see several of the cows running from the far corner of the field as if something had spooked them.

On an ordinary day, he would not have thought anything about it.  On an ordinary day, there simply wouldn’t have been any reason to think anything about it.  But today had been no ordinary day by any stretch of the imagination.  Today, he would be a fool not to be concerned about what might have spooked the cows.

Shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand, he scanned the far corner of the field, but he could see nothing more than corn beyond the fence.

Perhaps the cows were just restless.  Or perhaps one of them had stirred up a hornet’s nest or a rattlesnake.

Or perhaps there was something extremely unpleasant in the corn.

He remembered the first cornfield, between Annette’s back yard and the mutant barn, the sickly, stunted corn that was his first glimpse of the strange effects of the fissure.  He’d heard something moving in the corn, something he couldn’t quite see, something that had filled him with dread that he assumed, stupidly, was senseless.

Now he wondered again what it was that had moved in the corn back in that field.  And he wondered if it was here, too.

He turned and scanned the field behind him, listening.

Suddenly, it felt like something was watching him.  Was that simple paranoia?  His imagination running away from him just because he’d begun to think about these things?

He needed to get a hold of himself.

If there was something truly dangerous in this area, would a farmer be able to keep his cows here?  It didn’t seem likely.  And a quick glance at his phone revealed that he still had a signal.  He wasn’t in that other world right now.

He stood in the middle of the road, as still as possible, forcing himself to breathe slowly and listen.

Seconds ticked away.  Nothing moved in the nearby corn.  The cows settled across the field and returned to their grazing.

It was okay.

He was fine.

He looked back out across the field and saw a dark shape standing by the fence, watching him.