12 – Cultish Investigations

“You guys often drive to creepy old towns with barely enough of a population to field a football team?”

Erika kept her eyes on the road as she carried on her small talk. The cracked and weathered asphalt of the rural roads bobbed and weaved, failing to maintain a straight line for more than a hundred yards. A slight glance to Sofia and the road might curve right out from under them, leaving Erika’s truck careening straight into one of the many trees that lined the paved street.

The overcast skies turned to a proper light storm just after exiting the highway, making visibility poor. They had known the storm was on its way, but given the half-day drive and their already limited timeframe to get this job done, they couldn’t afford any weather delays.

“Me?” Sofia asked.

This time, Erika did take her eyes off the road just for a quick sarcastic glance around her pickup. She was ecstatic about having it back, but it wasn’t exactly spacious. Importantly, it didn’t leak.

Aside from Sofia, the only other occupant was Delilah. Delilah and Nya.

“You think I’m asking the girl who was trapped in a cult her whole life?”

“Thought you were on the radio again,” Sofia muttered to herself. “No. At least, I don’t. But in case you’ve forgotten, I’ve only been around a few months more than you. However, I’ve heard that Leslie and Anna often go off, usually with some of Leslie’s kids like it’s some camping trip.”

“Not Rick?”

Sofia snorted. “You think Rick could stand to be away from his precious computers for a whole weekend?”

That felt a little unfair. “He went to the graveyard and the farm.”

“On short day trips. He isn’t coming with us this time, now is he?” Sofia pressed her finger up her nose like she was adjusting a pair of glasses. “I don’t like to be away from my machines,” she said in a nasally voice that was nothing like how Rick normally spoke.

It did force a small snort from Erika, even if she doubted that was the reason for him skipping out on this little expedition. Depending on how long this took, there was a chance they would have to fly back to meet their deadlines, and Rick simply could not fly because of his sword. That, or Erika had been wondering if Rick was avoiding Leslie—basically the same thing Erika had done with Anna in the wake of The Monk’s attack at the farm.

Erika was about to say something to that effect when she had to slam on her brakes.

A person stood in the middle of the road, head drooped in the rain, an arm extended off to one side. The pickup’s brakes squealed but the water-slick road carried the truck straight into the figure. Erika braced for the thump and crunch of a body hitting her bumper, but felt nothing as the pickup dispersed the wispy figure.

“Fuck!” Erika shouted, slamming both palms against the steering wheel.

Sofia sat in the passenger seat with wide eyes, one hand clawed against the armrest, the other clenching the overhead handle. Delilah muttered a string of profanity under her breath, visibly warring with herself about whether she wanted to peek around the seat or hide out the trouble.

Erika just ground her teeth, heart hammering in her chest. “Fuck,” she hissed again.

“You good?” Sofia asked, unmoving. She didn’t even turn her head, still staring out to the road.

“Fine,” Erika spat out. “Stupid ghost trying to kill me via heart attack. Thought I hit someone.”

“Ghost? I didn’t sense anything.”

“You’ve never sensed it,” Erika said with a heavy breath, feeling her pulse start to return to normal. Focusing on her breathing for a moment triggered a little niggle in the back of her mind. Slowly, she glanced over her shoulder where Delilah finally poked her head out to see what all the fuss was about. “Maybe it isn’t even a ghost. Nya, are there more things like you?”

“There is nothing like Nya,” Delilah answered a little too quickly to have translated the message. At Erika’s raised eyebrow, she shifted a little, shrinking back into her seat. “None of the other aspects sacrificed what she did to gain her relative independence… to the best of her knowledge.”

“That’s not a no…”

“Didn’t The Mind say it was undead or something?” Sofia asked.

Erika didn’t get a chance to answer before the walkie-talkie on her lap crackled with Carter’s voice. “Everything alright? Over.”

Flicking her eyes up to the rear-view mirror, Erika frowned at the old Corolla and its faded yellow headlights illuminating the falling rain. “Just had a little jumpscare,” she said, finger on the button as she finally glanced to the side of the road.

Trees lined the asphalt of this particular rural road, sometimes encroaching almost on top of the pavement. There was a small gap between two trees right where Erika was parked, leading off down a gravel road, muddy from the falling rain. The GPS on her phone said they still had a half hour to go, but the ghost pointed out the single-lane dirt road, canopied by the trees in a floral tunnel.

“There is a small side road here,” Erika continued, frowning at the road. “My ghost pointed it out.”

“Your ghost? Over?”

“You heard me,” Erika answered, backing her truck up just enough to make the turn. “Tell parents and Leslie that we’re headed this way, just to check it out. If there’s nothing down this way after twenty minutes, we’ll head back.”

“Okay. We’ll wait here. Over.”

“Wait!” Delilah yelped. “Did we vote on this? Who voted for the creepy tree road? Not me!”

“Sorry, you’re living in a dictatorship,” Erika said, flashing her highbeams down the gravel road. She didn’t see anything alarming, at least not beyond the creepy nature of the path; no ghosts drifted between the branches and no mummified monsters shambled around like zombies. So, she started forward. “Even Sofia isn’t complaining.”

“Your ghost tends to point out things that have to do with The Mummy,” Sofia said in a resigned tone, utterly unenthusiastic. “If we weren’t here for potential Mummy business, rest assured that I would be complaining a whole lot.”

Erika thought back and could only find two instances where the ghost hadn’t been Mummy-relevant: the graveyard and The Stalker. That… really only made Erika more suspicious that she was possessed by some aspect like Nya.

“Are there other aspects that rebel against the nature of The Mummy?” Erika asked.

“Potentially,” Delilah said after a long pause. “Anything representing an aspect of thought is likely going to be far more independent than something like procreation or consumption. Not all, but some.” She paused a moment, then leaned forward and spoke a little differently—it was hard to put to words, but it was similar to the way The Fixer and Leah would swap, except in her case, it was like she wasn’t translating Nya’s words. “You should check yourself for any surprise tattoos. If you want to know if you’re possessed, I mean.”

“I think I would have noticed, but thanks for the suggestion?” Erika shrugged. Delilah’s tattoo, tip of the crescent moon peeking up above the collar of her tee-shirt, was apparent. The kind of thing that was impossible to miss.

Still, maybe it wasn’t a bad idea to grab a mirror and check out the small of her back or try to see if any tattoo was hiding under her hair.

“There,” Sofia said, pointing a finger to the side of the road.

Welcome to Safe Harbor, Ohio! was carved into a rustic signboard giving off old western vibes. Thick nails held the sign to a living tree, though one looked somewhat dusty and gray, a bit less alive than all the other trees around. Although Erika was fairly certain that was a bad omen, she didn’t point it out for Delilah’s sake.

“That’s the name,” Erika confirmed, frowning at her phone. It still said the fastest available route was back down the road from before. Bringing up the walkie-talkie, she hit the button. “Think we found it. Got a sign here.”

“Okay! Dad says we’re on our way. Over.”

Erika crept the pickup forward, though at a much slower pace to give the Corolla time to catch up.

Not far beyond the sign, the trees thinned out and the dirt ground gave way to a rocky plain. The main salt quarries in Ohio were not just underground, but underneath Lake Erie. This town was several miles away, far south of the lake. Anna had dug up some information online, finding that this plain had once been some kind of salt flat from a tropical ocean eons ago. Surface level and easy to mine, but lacking in volume compared to elsewhere, leading to its abandonment.

The entire road dipped downward beyond the trees, angled into a wide and flat pit of rock. It was as if some massive being came and took a single shovel scoop out of the ground, slicing off the top layer of dirt and forest, exposing the bare stone underneath.

Houses dotted the distance. Small shacks that probably weren’t more than a room or two each, all nestled together in tight but separate clumps. Faint amber light in the windows made them easy to pick out through the rainfall. A few larger buildings, maybe the size of a high school gymnasium, sat far in the back of the little village, with one larger one sprawling out in haphazard lengths, almost looking like a hand with splayed fingers. The illusion of the hand vanished quickly as Erika’s truck finished its descent into the pit, leaving her unable to see anything but the faces of the buildings.

Nobody was outside. Which was perfectly normal for a stormy day. Erika wasn’t looking forward to getting out of her pickup either.

Counting up the houses as Erika drove through, she guessed there were anywhere from thirty to fifty people living in this community, assuming two or three people per house. If all of them started attacking as one, things could get dicey. Delilah… would pass out and Nya would probably eat anyone who tried to hurt her. Sofia had her grenade launcher and Leslie had his carbine, The Fixer was a monster and Erika could hold her own, but it would still be easy to get swarmed.

From asking around a nearby town while stopped for gas, the people here were generally a friendly sort. They kept to themselves mostly, but headed out to buy supplies every now and again. But that friendliness wouldn’t necessarily mean anything if they had any relations with The Monk.

Two other pickups were parked outside the larger building, both looking rugged and used, as though occasional rain were the only washing they ever got. There were no signs of other transportation methods, no cars or bikes, or even horse-drawn carriages. At least there wouldn’t be any car chases.

Erika pulled into a single spot to the side of the other pickups. There wasn’t a designated space for the Corolla, but somehow, in a town like this, she doubted cops would be going around handing out parking tickets.

“The Hall of Memories,” Sofia said, reading from the large sign over the main doors. “Visitors welcome. Think that’s where they’re keeping your creepy dead bodies?”

“Why are they my dead bodies?” Erika muttered, though Hall of Memories did sound like a perfect place to store some mummies. There were no windows in the building, just a solid brick wall that looked like it had been built out of the stone ground it stood on.

As The Fixer pulled up alongside the pickup, Erika grabbed an umbrella out of her armory.

Sofia sighed. “Are you going in there?”

“Why not? Says visitors welcome. I’m a visitor.”

Erika shoved open her door, ducking under her umbrella as her boots crunched against the wet gravel. Delilah started scrambling out of her seat, not wanting to be left behind, so Erika waited and let Delilah under the umbrella with her. Sofia had her own, as did everyone in the other car.

“The GPS was wrong,” The Fixer said, stepping out. They wore the guise of Mister Dice for this outing, on Erika’s insistence. If something did go wrong, she didn’t want her mother in danger.

“Maybe that’s why The Puppet couldn’t get to the place,” Erika said with a shrug. “They didn’t have a spooky ghost pointing them down an easily missed path. Sure didn’t seem like a problem to me—I didn’t even break anything.”

“I didn’t notice any issue either,” The Fixer said slowly, thoughtfully, then got distracted by Carter hopping out of the Corolla. “Stick close to me. Don’t touch anything.”

Carter just grinned, excited to be taken on an adventure for once; one that hopefully wouldn’t end up in a strange hell dimension.

Bethany got out of the car behind him, hurrying to huddle under The Fixer’s umbrella.

“The same goes for you,” Leslie said. “Touch nothing.”

“Yeah, yeah. I heard you the first fifty times. Then the second fifty times. Plus all the warnings on the way here,” Bethany huffed. “Can we get inside already? Or are we not supposed to touch the door either?”

Erika pursed her lips, but didn’t repeat her thoughts that maybe Carter and Bethany should have stayed home even if Piper was out of town on some distant family business and couldn’t watch them. With potential mimics running around Chicago, maybe here was the safer option after all.

They were really just here to mug an old man and run away with his ring. Couldn’t be that hard.

“I got the door,” Erika said, reaching for it. She moved a little slowly, testing for any magical film, but felt nothing before her hand closed around the metal handle. It pushed open with a loud creak.

The air that greeted her was dry as a desert, yet somehow still musty. There was no odor, not even a slight stench of rot despite the mummy propped up on display right in the entrance.

It sat on a wooden chair, posed as if it were sitting for a professional photograph and dressed in a suit to match. Thin, bony hands rested on its crossed knees. Its jaw hung ajar, slanted to one side, and nothing stared out from the empty sockets. The skin looked like it had shrunk against the bones, tight against the skull and hands. A faint white powder, glinting in the overhead lights, covered every inch of exposed skin and even some of the otherwise black suit.

“Woah,” Bethany said, staring from behind Erika. “Hardcore. I’m going to have so many good nightmares.”

Leslie lightly bopped her on the head. “Be respectful. Whatever else this place is, we’re not here to make light of their religion.”

“Yeah, but, like…” Bethany trailed off under Leslie’s withering glare, one made all the more intense by the heavy scarring down half his face. “Okay.”

With a small shake of her head, Erika led the way inside.

There were more bodies. Each propped up on chairs, raised on knee-high pedestals, displayed for the world to see. All were similarly dressed in suits, though posed in various positions. All had that white powder dusted over them.

Everyone else followed behind Erika, fanning out slowly as they spread through the main room. None of them spoke, simply staring around like they couldn’t quite believe how many corpses there were just on display like this. Each little corridor that made up the ‘fingers’ of the ‘hand’ had them sitting out along the walls, packed in side-by-side with just enough room to comfortably stand between. Plaques on thin stone pillars acted like tombstones, complete with dates of birth and death along with a short message to loved ones, a quote, or simply the word Preserved.

“None of them are behind glass,” Sofia muttered. “How do the bugs not eat them alive?”

“Because they’re dead?” Carter answered, sounding confused. “They can’t be eaten alive.”

“I meant… just… how do the bugs not eat them?”

“The salt,” a heavy voice called from across the room. “Bugs aren’t too fond of that much of it.”

Everyone jolted, angling toward the newcomer. Leslie put himself between the man and the children while Delilah ducked behind Erika.

Though startled momentarily, Erika didn’t see much to be so alarmed about. The new guy was just a guy; he was older and somewhat heavyset, wearing a plaid shirt with its sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a long brown apron down his front. The blue Nitrile gloves on his hands were dusted with the same white powder that covered the mummies in the room.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said with a weighty laugh, resting one hand on his stomach. “Didn’t mean to startle. Don’t get many visitors either. I’m Bradford. Bradly Bradford, but I’m not too fond of my given name.”

Erika doubted she would have been happy with a name like that either, but smiled instead of saying anything. “Hey there. You… live here?” she asked, gesturing vaguely around.

“Live here?” He laughed again, though with a hint of nervousness as he glanced around at the various corpses on display. “Got a home down the road. They don’t see much, but I still like a little privacy, you know?”

Erika raised an eyebrow. She meant in general, not literally in this building, but the way he phrased that got her looking around as well. She got a sudden urge to touch the corpses, just to see if she felt any magical films around them. With Bradford now present and watching, she felt like her window of opportunity had slipped past. She doubted she could go poke one without getting torch-and-pitchforked out of the village.

“We were headed out of state when the rain hit—our tires aren’t particularly suited for slick roads,” Leslie said, jumping into the conversation as Erika stalled. “We were hoping to wait it out, if that’s alright. Saw the visitor’s welcome sign and… bit of a shock walking in, I’ll admit.”

Bradford hummed in a curious tone, but nodded happily. “The sign isn’t a lie. Stick around if you like. The Great Hall is a bit more accommodating with seating and food, but it’s also across the way,” he gestured toward the door. “If you don’t want to trudge across muddy ground, you’re welcome to stick around in my parlor.”

“You would be the curator here?” The Fixer asked, looking around the displays as if they were curious.

“Curator, embalmer, mortician, and baker. Small village,” Bradford said with an exaggerated bow. “We all wear many hats. Today, it is that of embalmer.”

“Someone—” Erika stopped herself before she could say anything insensitive. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Might seem strange to outsiders, but nobody is particularly upset.”

“Oh… was the deceased not well liked?”

Bradford slowly shook his head. “Charlie Owens was the most liked man in town, I assure you. He wouldn’t have been voted mayor for the last eighty-odd years otherwise.”

Erika sucked in a short, clipped breath. “Mayor? He was… The mayor died?”

“Well past time too. We all knew it.” Bradford planted his hands on his hips, looking out over the corpses. “The mayor is finally joining the Hall of Memories.”