by Alex Gordon
“No.”
“Please?”
Corey wheeled. “No.” Another apologetic wave. “We appreciate the offer, but this isn’t your problem.” He gave her one last, long look. “I’m afraid you picked a bad day to come to Gideon.” With that, he left, pulling the door closed after him.
Lauren listened to the rattle of keys, the metal slip of the dead bolt. She walked to the front window and watched Corey’s truck back out of the driveway and disappear from sight, then unlocked the door and pushed it open, just to make sure he hadn’t trapped her. Closed it again and locked it, and sensed the resonances of a strange house. Now the patter of rain on the roof reminded her of the skitter of footsteps, the scrape of branches against wood siding, the scratch of claws.
Lauren swore, pushed open the glass doors, and walked out on the deck. Scanned the roof. Of course, there was nothing to see but shingles glistening in the watery daylight, tree branches shuddering with each sweep of wind.
Then she looked toward the river and the bare woods beyond. Sometimes a finch or a cardinal would flit past, or a squirrel would pop up from behind a log. Normal forest sights and sounds. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Are you out there, Connie Petersbury? Lauren wondered if the woman wore protection from the wet and cold, a waterproof coat, a hat and gloves. Or had she gone wandering in her indoor clothes, wool and cotton and flannel, that held on to moisture like a sponge, trapped the cold and kept it close. One fall in the river would be enough, a slip in a shallow pool. A person could perish from hypothermia in fifty-degree temperatures if enough things went wrong, and things tended to go wrong in the wilderness. Especially if you were distraught. Not paying attention.
Lauren went back inside and started her search for the sorts of things an outdoorsman like Dylan Corey would have on hand. Compasses. Radios. Utility knives. Whistles. Tried not to think about the hiking pack she kept stashed in the trunk of her car, the nylon bag filled with fatwood sticks and matches, small tools and water and high-calorie snacks. Perfect for a search, for warming up and feeding a scared woman as they waited for rescue. All locked away in Loll’s garage, where they were of no use to anyone.
No use kicking myself now. From the living room, she moved on to Corey’s bedroom. It proved just as bare, the only furniture an old dresser and a full-size bed covered with a homemade quilt. As she hunted through the dresser, she pulled out the drawers and turned them over, on the lookout for her dad’s sign. But she found no X-centered circles, only the imprint of a commercial furniture maker. She also kept an eye out for oddities, bits of knotted string or scraps of paper filled with weird doodles. Are you one of Gideon’s witches, Mr. Corey? If he was, he had left behind no obvious evidence.
Lauren dug a waterproof windshirt and matching pants out of the closet and pulled them on. Added a cherry-red vest, then caught sight of her bulky form in the dresser mirror.
I look ridiculous. She was going to hike through woods outside a small town, not the depths of an Olympic Peninsula rain forest. But even as she argued with herself, she stuffed more warm clothes and extra socks in a backpack freed from the closet shelf. Liberated first-aid supplies from the bathroom. Moved on to the kitchen, and gathered a carving knife, scissors, protein bars. A roll of bright yellow tape, the sort that forest crews used to mark burn zones. Checked her watch again, and calculated the daylight remaining.
Do you believe that a place can be bad? Corey’s words echoed in her head as she removed her father’s book from her handbag and tucked it into the front pocket of the backpack, then packed everything else. All except the knife, which she tucked into her belt, and the roll of tape, which she shoved over her hand and up her arm like a bracelet.
She left the house through a side door and walked down the sloping front yard to the wheel-rutted excuse for a road. Heard nothing but the crunch of her footsteps and the rush of the river, muffled by distance and damp air. Took out her phone, watched the display flicker and the bars flat-line, felt a physical ache as she shoved it back in her pocket. She never realized how much she could miss the damn thing, how she had come to depend on it.
Now she squinted into the woods past the dead end of the road. Winter-killed leaves and undergrowth meant clear lines of sight—she guessed a quarter-mile visibility or more before fallen limbs and the rise and fall of the land finally blocked her view. Which way’s north? She scanned the sky, picked out the fuzzy light of the sun smeared behind cloud like a broken egg yolk. Four hours of daylight left, two if she figured in the existing murk.
Do you believe that a place can be bad?
Just before Lauren entered the woods, she thought about digging out one of the wire circlets, just to have it to hold on to. Instead, she yanked a few leaves of dead grass from a clump at her feet and fashioned them into an X-centered circle. A few twists of the wrist and done. She could have made one in her sleep at this point.
She took a step forward, then stopped. A buzzing filled her head like the sounds of insects on a summer’s day, and the urge to turn around and walk back to the house grabbed her and held on tight.
Do you believe that a place can be bad?
“Yes.” Lauren slipped the knife out of her belt and headed down the slope toward the river.
Lauren’s nerves steadied as she ventured deeper into the woods, quieted by the wet crunch of undergrowth beneath her boots and the occasional squirrel sighting. Nothing bad would happen if she could still see squirrels. The jumpy little critters would be the first to scatter if anything dangerous showed up.
She followed a path that ran along the river, stopping every so often to mark her trail by twisting a length of the tape around a branch. It felt colder here—she could sense the temperature drop even through the vest and jackets. The air smelled dank, like a crawl space long closed, and though dried leaves fluttered and mist fingered through the treetops, she couldn’t feel the breeze that drove them.
Lauren looked back toward Corey’s house, and found she had already lost sight of it. Odd. She had been walking only a few minutes, in a straight line heading north—she should still have been able to see the bluff. Backtrack. She could still see the last piece of tape she had placed, the neon yellow bright against the dull brown of wood and dead foliage. But even so, she may have veered in the wrong direction or taken a wrong turn.
She checked her watch, and stared. According to the time, she had already been walking for well over an hour. Time-zone change—I forgot to switch from Mountain to Central when I left Rapid City. No, that wasn’t it—she remembered setting her watch ahead the previous day. Besides, if she had forgotten to do so, it would read an hour earlier, not later.
She looked in all directions, then back the way she had come. The woods seemed different now. Shifted shadows. Strange trees.
She flinched as a squirrel shot across her path. “You lied to me,” she called after it as it vanished into the brush. “Some alarm you turned out to be.” She started to turn and continue walking, but stopped when one of the trees drew her eye. A storm-blasted trunk half hidden by surrounding growth, it looked like a figure dressed in a robe or long coat. A lone branch stuck out from one side and angled downward, as though it held a stick or cane in one hand.
Is that you, Mr. Lumpy? Lauren stared at the tree until the mists parted and weak sun washed over it, highlighting the shattered branches, the peeling bark. Just a dead thing. Even so, she looked back at it every so often until the downward slope of the land blocked it from view.
Another curve of the trail. Another strip of tape. Below, the river tumbled, the water hazed with mud and debris. Lauren scanned the banks for any sign that someone had been there before her, tracks in the mud or a shoe or piece of clothing. She had no idea how long Connie Petersbury had been missing, whether she had been gone for a few hours or a few days. But now she understood the concerns of Corey and the other men. These weren’t the same woods she had seen from Corey’s deck. This was not a good place.
She s
queezed the grass circlet, and felt it crackle. Opened her hand, and saw the thing had dried up, powdered like ash. She wiped away the mess and kept walking. Even her own protections couldn’t help her. She truly was on her own.
As Lauren ventured deeper into the woods, she lost sight of the river. Trees closed in from all sides, limbs crisscrossing overhead and blocking what little sunlight managed to work through the clouds. The trail vanished, leaving her to scramble over fallen branches and wade through undergrowth that reached past her knees. No sound but the crumpled paper crackle of her footsteps. No movement. Even the squirrels had disappeared.
Get out of here now. Lauren turned and tried to walk back the way she had come. But trees blocked her path—as she tried to push through them, branches snagged her clothes, scraped her face.
She stopped, backed up, collided with another tree. Where had they come from—they had been close, yes, but not as close as this. Not close enough to touch.
Lauren forced herself still even as a branch shuddered, then drew across her throat like a knife blade. Something tugged at her hair, and she grabbed it and yanked, swearing at the needling pain as strands gave way at the roots. Looked down at the mess wrapped around her fingers.
Tape. The same yellow tape she had been using to mark her trail. I brushed against a piece after I hung it, and it stuck to my hair. She told herself that as she turned and saw the strips hanging from the bare branches, fluttering like strange leaves. The blood-smeared strip that she had hung after cutting her hand on the jagged edge of a stump, and the one she had made by sticking two shorter pieces together. The one she had knotted through needle-thin stalks of shrubbery, so that it twisted like a corkscrew.
Lauren held her breath, listened for the sound of footsteps. Watched for any motion or flicker in the shadows. Someone followed her, some creep who had spotted her in Gideon or seen her leave Corey’s house. He guessed the direction she would take, collected the tape strips, and hung them where she would be sure to find them.
“I know you’re out there.” She slipped the knife from her belt. “You can go to hell.” Her voice shook, and she stabbed the blade in the nearest tree trunk again and again, trying to shake out the fear. That she had become lost. That someone hunted her, someone, or something, that she couldn’t see, couldn’t hear.
Couldn’t fight.
“Come out, come out, whoever you are!” Lauren pressed against the trees, using them like a wall to shield her back. “Whatever you are.” The sky had gone rose and indigo, coloring the filtered light hazy red.
She tightened her grip on the knife. Waited.
A buzzing in her head—that’s what she thought at first. Then the sound deepened, broke into bits that formed into words.
“—spread out—take my—join hands—”
Voices. Normal, human voices. Lauren pushed through the trees, stopped at the edge of a clearing that she would have sworn had not been there a few minutes before. Beyond, the land sloped down to a ravine, a place of waist-high brown grasses shot through with winter-stripped bushes.
People stood there in a circle. Twenty-five, maybe thirty—Lauren recognized the men from the diner, Zeke and Phil and Lolly. Deena, who stood between two other younger women at the far side of the circle.
And at the near edge, deep in conversation with a tall, thin, older woman, stood Dylan Corey.
Lauren tucked the knife back in her belt and trotted down the slope. “I know you told me to stay put, but I thought you could use some more help.” She slowed and waited for Corey to look at her, but he continued talking to the woman, his voice low and rushed, his eyes downcast.
Lauren watched the pair confer, their heads bent close. The woman talked now while Corey nodded—the exchange had boss instructs employee written all over it. Mistress Waycross, I presume? Lauren edged closer. “Hello? I don’t mean to interrupt, but—” She waved, tried to catch Corey’s eye, but he continued to ignore her.
“Excuse me.” Lauren tugged Corey’s jacket sleeve—tried to tug Corey’s sleeve—but the heavy cloth slipped like silk through her fingers.
She tried again.
Again, the cloth slid from her grasp.
Corey frowned, looked down at his sleeve, pulled at the cuff. Looked up at Lauren, then past her toward the woods.
“What’s wrong, Dylan?” Waycross looked in Lauren’s direction as well, her sharp blue gaze searching, but never settling. Matt Mullin’s Gin, the thin, long face aged, the skin weathered, cheeks reddened from the chill. Steel-gray hair, trimmed into a mess of unruly waves. “What do you see?”
“Nothing. I just—” Corey shook his head. “Nothing.”
“I’m standing right in front of you.” Lauren waved her hand in front of Corey’s face. Caught a glimpse of the shirt collar that poked out from beneath his jacket, saw that the green-and-black flannel had been replaced by brick-red corduroy. Why would he have changed in the short time since she had last seen him? He wasn’t wearing that jacket when he left the house either. And the orange vest was nowhere to be seen.
“What the hell?” Lauren stood back and watched as Waycross and Corey held hands and joined the rest of the circle, whose members all fell silent and drew up straight, attention locked on Waycross like an orchestra’s on their conductor.
“My Lady.” Waycross’s voice shuddered as though she spoke into a headwind. “Your children have lost their way.” She raised her hands above her head, the rest of the circle following suit. “Help us find them.”
For a long minute, nothing happened. Then the air above the ring of raised hands hazed and turned golden, like mist in the glow of a streetlight. As time passed, the color deepened, grew opaque. Bubbles formed atop the ring, as though the light boiled.
Then one bubble sent forth a shoot—it grew slowly at first, then picked up speed until it stretched for fifty yards or more. It slashed back and forth in wind-whipped fury, then detached from the ring. Another shoot followed. A third. As the last of them burst forth, the first few darted into the woods—one shot over Lauren’s head, and she heard the crackle in the air, felt the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.
They didn’t drift, these feelers, but moved with a purpose, fanning out, probing through branches and under debris like dogs tracking a scent. Lauren took off after the closest one. She knew that the woods she had entered back at Corey’s house were not the ones she ran through now. But the feelers had come from the place she needed to return to. They might lead her to Connie, guide them both back to safety.
There were no trails in these wooded depths, only trees, leafless and dry. Tumbled stumps, gnarled roots like misshapen limbs. A floor of dead foliage that released the weighty stench of decay as Lauren trod through it—every few strides, she felt her boots sink, and tried not to imagine what she had stepped into. All the while, the light tendril wove out and around, probed and prodded from the tops of trees to the forest floor.
Lauren looked over her shoulder, saw nothing but shadow and gloom. She had expected someone to catch up to her by now, but she saw no one, heard no voices or sounds of running. Maybe I’m doing it wrong. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to follow the light, but wait for it to find Connie Petersbury and lead her back to the clearing. Too late now. The trees had closed in after her, blocking the remaining daylight, and her escape route.
Above, the light continued to dip and dance, filling the air with the ozone reek of an approaching storm. Then, with a sound like a finger skimming the rim of a glass, it swooped low and vanished over a rise.
Lauren ran as best she could as branches battered her and the forest-floor mess sucked at her boots. She swore as she looked over the edge of the rise and found it sloped into yet another ravine, this one tree-filled and as dark as a tomb.
Then she heard, in the distance, an oh-so-familiar sound, fresh and alive. The rush and tumble of running water.
The river. Lauren scrambled over the rise and down, half running and half sliding, backpack banging against her
shoulder. At the bottom, she met a wall of bushes, with leaves like razors and thorns as long and thick as fingers, that stretched in either direction as far as she could see. She dragged the backpack around and held it in front of her face, tucked her hands in the canvas folds, wished like hell she had leather gloves instead of the thin knitted things she was wearing, then pushed through.
The bushes proved less of a problem than she feared, the leaves shearing away and most of the thorns snapping on impact. But one of the hard spikes drilled through the back of her glove, pierced deep enough to draw blood. She felt the sting, the warm trickle.
Lauren stuffed a tissue into the glove to cover the wound, adjusted the backpack, and brushed mangled leaves and thorns from her clothes. Then she searched for the light—scanned the treetops, listened for the sing, sniffed the air—but it had vanished, abandoning her to the gathering dark. That left the river as her lifeline. It ran past Corey’s house—if it still behaved according to real-world rules, she could follow it back there.
But what if it didn’t?
She followed the sound of moving water through the trees and into a clearing. Scattered bricks littered the area. A chimney. The cracked remains of a concrete slab. A house had stood there once, had either burned or been demolished years before. The woods crowded the overgrown yard on three sides. Along the fourth flowed the river, now a ribbon of molasses-dark water that parted silently around rocks and debris and lapped heavily against the banks.
Lauren walked to the water’s edge, then followed the current. Every so often she heard rustling in the bushes on the bank opposite, as if something paced her. But when she stopped and tried to see what it was, the noise ceased.
She knew time passed, but even so, she took off her watch and shoved it in her pocket. Time makes no sense here, so why keep track? She came to a bend where the river narrowed and became more like a stream—if someone on the other side reached out, they could have joined hands. Again, she heard rustling in the bushes that lined the opposite bank—she quickened her pace, rounded the corner—
