It wasn’t pouring. Not like in the vision. Not yet. But it was more than a sprinkle. The rain fell in slow, heavy drops. Soon, however, he knew it would become a heavy downpour. Once it began, how long would he have? Minutes? Seconds?
It was possible that it would stop again before the real rain came. It was possible that this lighter rain would keep up for the majority of the remaining night. It was even possible that it was going to downpour several times before morning. This didn’t necessarily mean that the end was nigh. But even if he were to get so lucky, time was still stacked against him. At most, he only had a few hours left before morning. The vision had taken place in the dead of night. There was no sign of the approaching dawn.
He pulled the hood of the poncho up over his head and kept walking.
Ahead of him, the queer trees receded completely and the terrain began to descend steeply into a wide valley. The hour hand of the compass was whirling. All around him, the mist continued to grow thicker.
He was close.
The cell phone chimed at him: HURTS
Eric’s heart jumped in his chest. “What’s wrong?”
SRRY
CANT
“Are you okay? Talk to me!”
IM FINE
JUSTGO ON
Just go on. Right. Because it was that simple to ignore the fact that one of his closest friends was clearly in distress. He didn’t like this. He’d never known Isabelle to have trouble sending him messages. She didn’t make typographical errors. But they both knew this might happen. The spiritual energy had been getting to her all night. And now that he was approaching the source of the distortions, that energy had grown so strong that she couldn’t even think straight. She was barely able to form the words over the line.
She’d be okay. She was strong. Far stronger than him, he was sure. She could endure. The best thing he could do for her was get to the bottom of the triangle as soon as possible and end this so they could leave. Then everything would be fine.
He hoped…
Careful not to fall and break his neck, he made his way down the steep, rocky slope.
The compass encouraged him forward by spinning even faster. The hour hand was barely visible.
He must be nearing the bottom now. It was getting easier. Fettarsetter told him that the compass was the only thing that could help him find his way to the bottom. Without it, he’d only keep returning to the upper levels again and again. And that had seemed to be true for a long time. It was much easier before now to move upward than it was to go down. But now the opposite seemed to be true. Did he even need the compass now?
The phone rang. It was Holly, of course. She probably wanted to tell him that Isabelle hadn’t checked in. But when he answered it, the phone sputtered and then cut out. He’d finally gone in too deep for cell phone reception.
Right about now, Holly would be informing a very worried Karen that there was nothing they could do but wait for him to return.
He was on his own.
A ledge appeared ahead of him, dropping off into the hazy darkness. He walked up to it and peered down. He could only barely see the ground below him. A rocky slope descended rapidly into the mist. He turned one way and then the other, studying the compass. It was subtle, but it seemed to move faster when he aimed it straight out over the ledge.
He was supposed to go down there.
Fantastic.
He lowered the compass and shined the light along the base of the cliff beneath him. The drop seemed to get a little shallower on the left. He turned and walked in that direction. If he could just find a place where it was a little less of a drop, he’d be able to jump down without too much risk of breaking one or both of his legs. Given the day he’d had so far, he didn’t intend to take unnecessary chances.
It was calmer here, he realized. The voices were both softer and fewer. The shadows had quit dancing around him. Perhaps the dead didn’t come this far down.
But he barely had time to relish the thought when he glimpsed a faint silhouette staggering through the mist to his left.
A voice came with the shape, a low muttering, a distinct cursing, then a long, miserable moan.
Eric stopped walking and stood perfectly still. His hand instinctively went to one of the orbs hanging around his neck. The dead have gone mad down here, he thought with a shiver, and somehow he felt deep in his gut that he very much did not want to meet the owner of this silhouette and voice.
He held his breath.
The silhouette stopped. The voice fell silent. It seemed to study the light in Eric’s hand.
He considered switching it off, but didn’t dare. Without it, he’d be plunged into utter darkness. He wouldn’t be able to see the spirit. He wouldn’t know if it was leaving or creeping toward him. At least if it was on, he’d know what was happening, he’d have a chance to react.
Seconds passed.
His heart was pounding. His stomach felt twisted and hot. Was the rain falling harder now? How much time did he have left?
Just go away!
The figure considered him, even took a step toward him…but then it turned and staggered away, muttering to itself again.
Eric waited until he could no longer hear it and then let out the breath he was holding in a long, shaky sigh.
That was awful.
Keenly aware of the time he was losing, he turned and continued on.
Ahead of him, he caught sight of his way down. There was a place where a large chunk of the ledge had broken off and come to lay at an angle against the cliff wall. It would act as a sort of ramp, allowing him to make the descent in two, much shorter jumps, as long as he was careful.
But as he stepped up to the ledge and prepared to hop down, he paused. He turned and shined the light into the mist around him. The trees had disappeared entirely. He didn’t seem to be in the forest at all anymore. Looking around now, it finally occurred to him where he was.
This was the lake.
He was standing at the bottom of a long slope leading away from the shore, down into the water, and this was the drop-off into the deeper part of the lake.
But where was the water? He thought for a moment that someone had done just as his drunken brother suggested and somehow drained the lake. But that wasn’t what happened here. This land was dry and rocky, dampened only by the falling rain. If it’d recently contained water, he’d probably be wading through countless tons of mud and silt. Wherever he was now, the water wasn’t just gone; it’d never been here in the first place.
The rain began to pick up a little more, reminding him of his looming deadline, and he made his way down to the bottom of the drop-off.
He was descending to the bottom of the lake. Back on the surface, in the world that actually made some sort of sense, this entire area was underwater. If it were to suddenly reappear now, with him here, how far under would he be? Would it be far enough down that the pressure would kill him? Or would it merely cause his eardrums to implode and leave him to drown slowly and in agony?
Eric didn’t think he was quite deep enough for that yet. He’d probably be fine, assuming he could swim to the surface before his breath ran out. But he looked down at the steep slope before him and shuddered as he wondered just how far down he would have to go. How deep was Hedge Lake?
He pushed onward, careful not to slip on the loose rocks lining the lakebed.
Now the rain seemed to be easing up a little. That was good. Every second it hadn’t yet started pouring was one more second between him and the untimely end.
More time passed. It seemed like the lakebed went on and on. It felt like miles. All the while, the mist grew thicker around him, reducing his visibility to a few mere yards.
Finally, he came to a stop. He could see nothing but the same endless, sloping ground and the white haze, but there was something here. A dark shadow seemed to loom over him, the same shadow he’d glimpsed several times since he first arrived at Hedge Lake. Something enormous. Something terrifying. Something ancient.
The Conqueror Worm.
It wasn’t there. Not in any real sense. It existed only on the other side, in another world. But it was perfectly real. And this was the place where it would soon break free.
He slipped the compass back into his pocket with his phone. He didn’t need it anymore. It was clear that this was the place. There was an almost primal terror welling up inside him, as if he’d been born with a natural instinct to recognize it.
Fettarsetter was right, he realized. It was both terrible and amazing. He was torn between horror and awe, too afraid to approach, and yet too enthralled to run away.
“Magnificent,” said a voice over his right shoulder.
Eric didn’t even jump. He’d been hearing voices all night, after all, a great many of them spoken directly into his ears. He didn’t even bother to look. He knew the voice well enough. “I thought you couldn’t get here without the compass.”
“I couldn’t,” replied Fettarsetter. “But that didn’t mean we couldn’t follow someone who did have the compass.”
Now Eric turned and glanced at his unwelcome companion. We?
Fettarsetter was standing just close enough to be seen through the fog, dressed in an expensive-looking raincoat that matched well with his expensive-looking suit. He looked even taller than the previous two times they’d met. (During their first encounter, he’d been standing next to lanky Owen; when next they met, the man never rose from his desk chair.) Eric had to make a conscious effort not to look intimidated.
Beside Fettarsetter stood the hellhound, its mangled head held high, its ember eyes glowing in the darkness.
“So he’s yours,” said Eric. He wasn’t exactly surprised. The pieces all fit. Isabelle said they had the same bad energy. And the last time he saw it, it had been snoozing on its master’s back porch.
“I don’t think I’d call him ‘mine’ exactly. He was a gift from the lake. They all were.”
Eric raised an eyebrow. “‘All?’”
“All the fantastic creatures that wash up out of the lake,” he explained. “I take them. The ones that survive. I’ve always had something of a gift with animals, but when it came to these incredible beasts…” He spread his hands. “They do whatever I want them to. And in return, I keep them alive.”
Eric looked at the hellhound, surprised. Keep them alive? “Wait…what?”
“The environment here is much different from what it is in their world. The journey alone kills most of them. Of the survivors, only a few live more than a few minutes. The lucky ones can survive a few days at most. But once I’ve bonded with them, they can stay alive indefinitely.” He looked down at his four-legged companion. “This one, for example, should’ve died many years ago.”
This explained the creature’s sorry state. It looked like death because its ticket was way overdue for punching. And then there was the business with the burning spirit… That hadn’t done it any good.
“It’s only my power that keeps him from extinguishing.”
Eric stared at the creature’s burning eyes. “Extinguishing?”
“They have a curious biology,” explained Fettarsetter. “They literally run on a sort of furnace, deep inside their guts. It’s fascinating, really. You can actually see the heat and smoke rising from their throats if you look closely.”
Eric recalled the way the ostrich monster fogged up the glass at the cabin with its breath, and the steam that trailed from the shallows walker’s jaws as it rose from the water. It was strange to think that those beasts all had a small inferno burning in their bellies, but anything was possible given that they were from an alien world with a vastly different ecosystem and, for all he knew, entirely different laws of physics.
“They burn even hotter as they get farther past their death, like this one. Even his eyes are glowing now. If kept alive long enough, he might even spontaneously combust.”
That was why Jordan had never noticed the creature’s eyes glowing before. It was a new stage in its torturous existence.
“I should probably just let the miserable thing go, but I can’t. He’s my favorite. I like having him around. He’s very useful.”
Eric had no doubt. Clearly it had the nose of a bloodhound, even in its advanced, zombie-like state. It was how they’d followed him here. It was also why it never seemed to catch up to him. He’d thought it was the triangle that was slowing it down, that the compass was giving him just enough of an advantage to stay ahead of the beast. But the truth was that its master had held it back, giving him time to navigate all the way to the bottom before they revealed themselves to him.
“But we can talk about pets later,” said Fettarsetter, turning his face forward again. “Right now, I think we have a more pressing matter to discuss.”
Eric looked up into the darkness before them. That terrible, shadowy presence loomed over them.
“It’s almost time,” said Fettarsetter.
“I know.”
“You can’t see them, but they’re right in front of us. We couldn’t see them even in broad daylight, but they’re as real as the earth beneath our feet. Tiny tears in the universe, just big enough to create an occasional hiccup when something ventures too close.”
Eric glanced at him. “Like a hellhound or a man-eating fish?”
“Or you and I if we were stupid enough to walk right up to one. It would suck us in like a black hole and spit us out on the other side. The journey alone would almost certainly kill us. In the highly unlikely event that we survived, the harsh atmosphere and unbearable conditions on the other side would finish us off. But if we could survive all that… Well, there’s a whole world over there, isn’t there? The ultimate frontier.”
He made it sound like a trip to Neverland. But Eric was quite content to stay here and grow up. “What about the worm?” he asked.
“The worm is neither here nor there,” replied Fettarsetter. “Neither is it exactly in between.”
Eric blinked several times as he tried to process this. But no matter how hard he tried, it didn’t compute. “You lost me.”
The creepy smile had a matching creepy smirk, it seemed. “No doubt,” he replied.
He didn’t pretend to be smarter than this guy, but he was smart enough to know when he was being insulted. Why did crazy, evil people always have to act like they were so much smarter than him? Did he really look like such an idiot?
“The worm exists in a place that is simultaneously the foundation and the outermost rim of all combined existence.”
“‘Combined existence?’”
“Not merely all the universe, but all the universes that exist, have ever existed and will ever exist.”
“Oh. That makes sense.” It didn’t really, but he wasn’t going to say so. “Except… How can the worm be in the outermost rim of all combined existence if it’s right here?”
“I said it was both the outermost rim and the foundation. It’s the farthest possible point from anywhere and yet it’s also always right beneath our feet.”
“How does that work?”
“It works perfectly well when you abandon the notion that the laws of nature and physics are not the same outside of our limited scope of reality.”
Eric couldn’t argue with that, he guessed. He only barely understood it. If his fascination for books hadn’t included a healthy interest in science fiction, he wasn’t sure he’d have the imagination to grasp any of it.
Fettarsetter looked up at it again. “The worm, like its home, exists ambiguously. It’s out there somewhere, in the distant void at the farthest reaches of all places, but it also shares a sort of orbit with our world and the one on the other side of these tears. We’re all linked together. It’s always been that way.”
“Always?”
“Always.”
Eric ran a hand through his hair as he tried to comprehend all this. “Then how do we get rid of it?”
Fettarsetter turned and looked at Eric now. “Not ‘we,’” he said. “You. Isn’t this what you came to Hedge Lake for?”
Eric turned and stared at him. “What?”
Fettarsetter smiled. Was it possible that it was even creepier than all the smiles that he’d smiled before it? “I knew you’d come, you know.”
Eric didn’t have to feign bewilderment. He was practically bursting with the genuine thing. How the hell could this guy have known he was coming? Even he didn’t know he was coming until he started having the damn dream.
The rain had been reduced to a drizzle, but he barely noticed. His eyes were fixed on Fettarsetter as he turned his face back toward the worm and said, “I have a theory about the universe as we humans know it.” For some reason, it made his skin crawl to hear this man refer to himself as a fellow human. Perhaps he was being a little overly judgmental…but he didn’t think so. “I believe that it’s impossible for our world to survive on its own. We, as a race, should’ve died out by now. But we’re still here.”
“We’re a pretty stubborn species,” offered Eric.
“Yes. But not stubborn enough to survive our own stupidity and greed. Not to mention our ignorance.”
He shrugged. “We’re not all bad.”
“Enough of us are. The fact is that we shouldn’t be here now.”
Eric thought that if this was true then they simply wouldn’t be here now. The very fact that they were standing here having this insane conversation was proof enough that this theory was a load of crap. But he decided not to push his luck by saying so.
“I believe that there are god forces out there. Conscious beings of a higher plane responsible for the continued existence of our flawed race.”
Eric nodded. “God. I think most people believe in Him in some form or another.”
“Maybe,” said Fettarsetter. “I’m not concerned about who or what these god forces are. All I’m looking for is proof that they exist.”
“Proof of God?”
“Or gods. Or sub-gods, or demi-gods. Angels or demons. Something. I’m simply talking about god-like forces. Something greater than man. I’m not here to squabble about religion, Mr. Fortrell.”
“Me either,” Eric quickly agreed. “So you intend to find this proof…um…how, exactly?”
“I’ve already done it,” he replied. “You are the proof.”
Eric stared at him for a moment, bemused. “What?”
“My grand experiment is finally coming to an end.”
“What grand experiment?”
He thrust one long, bony arm out at the empty darkness in front of them. “The worm. It’s attracted to high levels of spiritual energy. The death and tragedy that’s taken place over the centuries, the spirits that have been trapped here, accumulating for millennia. That’s what’s drawing the worm here.”
“Wait…” Eric’s head was spinning. He couldn’t seem to comprehend it. “You knew this was happening?”
Fettarsetter laughed. “I made it happen.”
“What?”
“I’ve been manipulating the events of the triangle for years. I’ve studied it. I was the first to find a way to navigate it, over a hundred years ago.”
Eric had to let this sink in for a moment. “That’s…”
“Impossible? We both know you know better than that.”
Eric closed his mouth. It was true. He did know better. But still… “How?”
“I don’t know. I should’ve died at least two centuries ago, but I just keep going on. It was my first clue that something was amiss in the universe.”
That would be a pretty big clue.
“I was the one who found this lake. I was the one who realized what it was. The natives that were here before me, they sensed the worm. They thought it was a dark god they needed to appease. They practiced human sacrifice for millennia, too ignorant to understand that they were only luring it closer. It was no different than pouring blood into the sea. No god would come, but the sharks would be drawn. The more people they murdered the closer it came, the stronger it felt, the harder they tried to pacify it. They practically eradicated themselves in the process. They were stupid.”
“So you just continued what they started?”
“Oh, I don’t think they started it. The worm, itself, was always here. This is simply the point in our universe that comes closest to it. But something happened here at some point in time, something that stopped the natural flow of spiritual energy. I don’t know what it was, but I think it would have to be something extremely profound. I don’t think the natives were capable of anything like that. I think it must’ve been someone who came before them. Someone…or something…in the distant past…”
Eric recalled Cordelia mentioning something about older, wiser and greater races than man, beings capable of creating gateways between the worlds. Was this what he was talking about? Had some mysterious, powerful race visited this lake in ancient times? Did they do something to this place? Could they be the reason Hedge Lake was now so saturated with spiritual energy?
He remembered Jordan telling him that it was different when you died here, that there was something in the lake that wouldn’t let you go where you were supposed to go. This must’ve been what she was talking about.
“But yes,” said Fettarsetter. “I continued what they started. I tended the spiritual energy here, kept it stoked up, made sure it continued to grow.”
Eric felt numb. “You were Jeremiah Bog…” he realized.
Fettarsetter’s smile was definitely the creepiest one yet. There seemed to be genuine evil behind it. “Him and many more.”
“You killed all those people? For an experiment?”
“More often than not, the triangle killed people on its own, actually. I’m not sure it even needed me. But I did speed things up a bit. Over the years, I cared for it like a garden. I watched it grow. I saw it change.” There was no remorse in his voice. Not even a hint of it. Instead, he actually appeared to grow excited. “As the worm drew closer, the triangle grew deeper. The very landscape began to transform. The lower levels actually resemble the world on the other side now. Did you notice those trees back there? Fascinating things. Some kind of strange hybrid. I think they’re related to a bigger variety I found once when—”
“So you’ve been calling the worm all these years?” blurted Eric, still trying to understand how this man could justify the things he’d done.
Fettarsetter had let himself get carried away talking about his “grand experiment,” but now he composed himself and nodded. “Yes.”
“Why? What can you possibly have to gain from that?”
“Proof, of course. You.”
“What could I possibly prove?”
Fettarsetter sighed. He looked disappointed in him. “The experiment was very simple. I bring the world to the very brink of destruction and then push it over the edge. Not just to the event horizon, but all the way past the point of no return. I can’t hold back. I have to be willing to destroy it all. If the universe works the way I believe it does, then something must happen to put things right again.”
Eric couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He was willing to destroy the entire world for the sake of a stupid theory? This guy was insane! “But you said it was about the worm! You said you’d been waiting your whole life to see it.”
“It is about the worm. It’s the worm that’s going to prove my theory. In the final moments before this world’s utter destruction, something amazing will happen. A miracle. The god-forces will have no choice but to reveal themselves to me, one way or another.”
“And what if you’re wrong?”
“Then the world ends, obviously.”
“And you with it.”
“Maybe. Hard to say. I’ve lived this long without finding death. Maybe I’ll walk away from it. Or maybe I will finally die. And I’ll do it spectacularly. Either way, I call it a win.”
Eric shuddered at the calmness in this man’s voice. He really believed all of this stuff.
It was starting to become clear that he was wrong about Fettarsetter being an agent. If what he was saying was true, he didn’t work for anyone. Even the mysterious, nameless organization, in all their evildoings, wouldn’t have tolerated such a dangerously extreme gamble.
They were evil, not suicidal.
“But I’m not wrong,” said Fettarsetter. “If my theory was correct, then in the eleventh hour something unexpected would happen. And it did. You showed up.”
“Sounds like a coincidence to me,” said Eric.
There was that smirk again. “No. You arrived when you were most needed. And you survived everything I sent to kill you.”
“Wait… That was all you?”
“And you even managed to make it all the way here to the bottom of the triangle.”
“You were trying to kill me?”
“I told you, I had to be willing to do everything in my power to bring about the end. That included stopping anything that might try to prevent me from carrying out my goal. Just like I stopped that couple who came snooping around last December.”
“A couple?”
He shrugged, indifferent. “From Detroit, I think. They rented a cabin from me this past winter. The woman had a gift. A special sense. Naturally, she started snooping around. I thought for a while that she was the one who would prove my theory. But they both died just like everyone else.”
Eric felt sick. He was talking about the bloody woman. He killed her. He killed both of them. It was even his cabin.
“I didn’t think they had anything to do with my theory…but I was wrong, wasn’t I?”
“Were you?”
“Was it her gift that made her different when she died?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Eric, but he didn’t think his poker face was very convincing. The bloody woman was the one who called out to him. Somehow, she’d reached all the way to Creek Bend, all the way into his dreams, to summon him here. She showed him her unspeakable death…her bleak December…and clearly this man knew that. Why else would he have quoted that line from Poe’s most famous poem?
“I kind of think it was,” decided Fettarsetter. Clearly, he wasn’t buying that Eric was too stupid to understand what he was talking about. “I think she was as much a part of it as you are. It just happens that she played her part more than four months after her death.” Again, he smiled that creepy smile and said, “I wonder which side of death you’ll play your part on.”
Eric stood his ground and said nothing. He thought he remained remarkably well-composed, given how terrible that question was.
Fettarsetter narrowed his eyes and considered him. “Where, precisely, did you find that compass?”
Eric’s hand crept instinctively to his pocket, where the watch rested. “I just found it,” he lied. The one major piece of this puzzle that this guy didn’t seem to have was Cordelia. And he wouldn’t be the one to give it to him.
“Hm,” was all Fettarsetter said. Then he turned his attention back to the worm again. “Doesn’t matter. You have it, even though I hid it deep inside the triangle, in a place where no one should ever have been able to find it.”
“Weird,” said Eric, his voice intentionally flat.
“The experiment is almost over,” said Fettarsetter.
“Almost?”
Another of those creepy smirks crossed his face. “Well…” he said. “You still have to actually stop the worm.”
Eric turned and looked at that imposing shadow again. At that moment, the rain began to fall. It came down slowly at first. But it quickly grew into a raging downpour exactly like the one from his vision.