The Binding

by Nicholas Wolff

  Ramona saw the glow of Northam—she knew it from the town square and the stores along State Street—and began to descend. A swell of homesickness. Shit, I miss it, I really do.

  But though she felt awake, she couldn’t end the dream. She began to panic, thinking that if she couldn’t escape, then this was really happening to her.

  She drifted down farther and saw the walls of Wartham, a brick-red line snaking in a rough circle. No, no. Go past it.

  And she did. She breathed easier as she soared past, and then the roads disappeared and beneath her were acres of tall pine. She realized she was floating over the Raitliff Woods.

  A thin icicle of fear seemed to slice through her chest. She’d only been here once, and that was during a hike freshman year. Hiking was something that white people did, she’d realized then, white people from cities who came to colleges near the great outdoors and wanted to feel like they were Henry David Thoreau. But black people from the city don’t ever want to see the woods, especially not with a bunch of crackers they didn’t know. The woods were for lynchings and secret meetings, for hillbillies with eager axes.

  Now that feeling came back to her. Entrapment. Her breathing sped up, and her pulse throbbed in her ears. She was drawing lower, and the branches of the trees were reaching up to take her in. A spasm of fear went through Ramona’s body, and she cried out, Nooooo! But now she was in a dream, because the voice that she heard in her ears was the ugly moan of a nightmare.

  The wind whispered in her ears. She passed the outstretched branch of an evil-looking tree, and she was above a clearing. A rectangular clearing that looked like it had been cut out of the woods a long time ago. A place you could only find from the air unless you stumbled on it while walking. She heard the grass sigh and swish underneath her, a wind seemed to be driving it back and forth. And then she saw the figures.

  There were three people in the middle of the clearing. They were standing together, holding hands, heads bowed in the light pouring down from an unseen moon. They were in a trance, unmoving. Their bone-white hands touched, laced into one another. Two of them wore black, and their clothes fluttered in the wind.

  Ramona could hear whispering. They were whispering to one another.

  One of the heads turned up. It was Margaret, poor Margaret with her pale skin. But in the dream, her eyes were black now and searching. Searching for Ramona.

  Ramona sensed danger building like static in her ears. Margaret’s face wasn’t sad and beseeching, Help me. It was hard, the eyes washed by a dark sheen.

  This wasn’t lost Margaret asking Ramona to help her. No, something was different. This was bad Margaret.

  Don’t let her see me, Ramona thought. She writhed, trying to pull her body away from the sky above the clearing. She felt that if Margaret’s gaze fell on her, she would plummet to the earth, into the middle of their circle, and then the three figures would fall on her.

  The other two were men: a tall, gray-haired old man who looked like an actor who played kindly grandfathers on TV and a bald man with bulging, yellowish eyes. But she went back immediately to Margaret.

  The dead girl’s eyes seemed to search the air above her, as if she sensed Ramona up there, but then Margaret turned her gaze toward the earth. And the whispering began again, like rat claws scurrying in the attic. Tchhh-tchhh-tchhh.

  As much as she wanted to tear herself away, Ramona suddenly felt the need to know what they were saying. Are they talking about me? she thought. Are they making plans?

  The wind ruffled in her ears.

  Her eyes went to Margaret, and she watched the words form on her mouth. All she could hear was the moaning of the wind, but as she watched, she realized they were repeating a few words, over and over. The bluish lips seemed to loom up in her vision.

  Ramona followed the words, which seemed to echo in her own head.

  The the the the . . .

  Ramona couldn’t decipher the next words. She waited for the chant to return to the beginning, as her bones seemed to turn to ice.

  I want to go now. But I can’t. I can’t turn away.

  She watched the lips.

  The . . . cut . . .

  The wind shrieked. Margaret chanted louder now. Ramona could feel it. She watched the lips in terror.

  The cut throat . . .

  Please don’t say that, Ramona thought. Plea—

  . . . is silent.

  Ramona looked at the bald man.

  The cut throat . . .

  Now the old man.

  . . . is silent.

  She took in the old man’s whole face, the swelling bruise on the left eye, the purplish discoloration of his skin.

  Alive and not alive.

  The cut throat . . .

  Ramona couldn’t take it. She squeezed her eyes shut. But the words echoed in her head.

  . . . issilentissilentissilent.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  It started with Margaret Post,” Nat said to John.

  They were holed up in John’s cubicle at department headquarters, hung over from the night before. They’d already studied the autopsy photos of William Prescott for twenty minutes, and had spent the last thirty trying to chart a course of action. The office was mostly deserted, with only a uniformed cop wandering in once in a while on the way to the lockers.

  “Maybe we should begin with her,” Nat continued. “So I want you to tell me about the damn security tape.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Nat.”

  “Just tell me. Nothing will surprise me at this point, believe me.”

  John had watched the tape so many times that the details were sharp in his mind.

  “We can go down to the evidence room and look at it. It’s on a disc . . .”

  “Just tell me. I want to hear it from you.”

  John took a sip of his Dr Pepper.

  The camera faced west along Hanover Road, he explained to Nat, the street that ran parallel to Wartham’s curving stone wall on the west side of town. Anyone approaching from the west, the direction of downtown and the Shan, would have to come along Hanover, then make a sharp right into the college entrance, where the security guard sat all night in his little lighted box. You could even see the glow from the sentry box on the lower left edge of the black-and-white film. The entrance itself wasn’t visible: the camera was placed on a pole to the left of the entrance and had recorded the minutes leading up to Margaret’s death.

  Margaret first appeared in the video in the soft wash of a streetlight at 12:50:24 a.m., the time appearing in the lower left of the video image. She was walking along Hanover Road, the bushes that fronted the wall to her right, the street a few feet to her left.

  Margaret approached the college entrance. She was moving briskly, her hands in her pockets, and even in black-and-white, her face was deathly white.

  She’d seen something out there, John had thought the first time he saw it. And she’s trying, trying very hard, not to run. In her hunched shoulders and the way her head and shoulders seemed to be drawn in to her body, expecting a blow from behind, John could feel a barely controlled terror.

  “Why didn’t you run, Margaret?” he’d whispered as he watched that first time.

  She moved, head down, closer to the camera. She glanced left across the street, and John could sense the panic in her throat. She knew she was being followed.

  But then, inexplicably, her pace slackened. It was as if she’d started sleepwalking. Her legs began to slow and her eyes slowly closed, as if she were climbing the last few steps to the summit of a mountain and her lungs were about to burst.

  What are you doing? What’s holding you back? thought John for the twentieth time as he told Nat the story. Run, goddamn it, just run for the fucking entrance. The guard is twenty yards away. If you scream, he will hear you and come running. He has a can of mace issued by
the college and a Louisville Slugger that the dean of students doesn’t even know about leaning up against the wall of his little white sentry box. I’ve held that Louisville Slugger in my hand. It would have bought you sixty seconds, all you needed . . .

  Why didn’t you scream?

  Finally, Margaret was standing stock-still. The numbers to the left ran on and on, 12:51, then 52. And still Margaret stood as if some force field had her in its grip.

  At 12:52:11, the shadow along the wall began to swell. There were shrubs there, underneath the tall pines that soared above the level of Wartham’s stone wall, and it was hard to tell where the bushes ended and the shadow began. But you could just feel the image there growing darker and bigger, creeping along the wall, but without being able to see the shape throwing it.

  Margaret’s face was twitching, the eyes unblinking, but it looked like there was a tic near her right eye. She knew. John had read about rabbits that became so transfixed with terror that they stared helplessly at the fox, watching their murderer approach inch by inch, their bodies shaking with a fear so profound that it paralyzed them. Margaret had the same look. Her eyes were wide open but unfocused.

  Now, 12:53:02, the chanting began. Margaret’s lips opened and closed mechanically. She appeared to be repeating something. A cold tremor ran up his spine every time he watched the tape.

  When he had the lab blow the footage up to the greatest possible magnification before it collapsed into a bunch of shifting pixels, the mouth became a huge hole, opening and closing. It was forming a few words. But which ones? He’d had a lip-reader from Boston come in and look at the tape, but she’d given up after three hours. The image of her mouth was too grainy at high magnification and too far away at the lower ones. What was Margaret saying to herself as her killer crept slowly along the wall and she could feel her skin pucker and her heart race with pure fear? Was she chanting something to protect herself?

  Or was she begging for her life?

  Please? Pleasepleaseplease?

  The shadow grew larger, lengthening against the wall, and Margaret slowly swiveled to face it. 12:53:45. Now her face was turned away from the camera, and all John could see were her shoulders slowly inching higher. Her hands came forward as if to push the black shadow away, to keep it off her.

  Turn and run, Margaret. Now.

  This is your last chance. Just tear your eyes away from whatever thing is in that shadow and run.

  This was the moment that haunted him.

  Instead of running, she began to walk toward it.

  All John could compare it to was a girl being pulled on an invisible rope into some dark cave where she knows a monster awaits. Okay, so there was no actual rope, but even with her back turned, something inside Margaret was resisting as her body staggered forward. It slowly pulled her toward her own death. Later, he found the toes of her leather shoes were scraped, as if she’d been physically dragged along the sidewalk.

  John finished the story with that detail.

  The sound of a metal door slamming from the locker room. Nat’s eyes were lost in thought.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Jimmy Stearns made his way down the sidewalk that curled toward the county building up on the left. He could see the gray stone of the place, glowing under yellow lights.

  Jimmy wanted to be back at home, watching History’s Mysteries, his favorite show. He wished he were sitting in his old recliner with his favorite meal: cold slices of ham and hot mac and cheese. But he’d forgotten his paycheck in his work pants and he needed to settle the electric bill. With only thirty-four dollars in his checking account, he had to make a deposit, or the lights—and the TV—would stop working. If he deposited the check into his bank’s ATM, it would be credited to his account immediately.

  He’d had to go back to the morgue. He didn’t like to go in late at night. It embarrassed him. What if Dr. Hobart was there working on a body? He felt like a trespasser, even though he had every right to claim his check.

  He rubbed his hands together as he made the turn onto the stone pathway that led to the building. He paused for a second. Should he just wait until tomorrow? But the thought of sitting alone in his room if the lights went out, well, that scared him. He would be like one of those corpses down in the lockers, staring at the black ceiling above him.

  No, he couldn’t do that.

  As he got closer, Jimmy noticed a light was on in the third window. That was Elizabeth Dyer’s office. A smile appeared on Jimmy’s face, and he thought about the Christmas party and how he’d nearly gotten the nerve up to ask her to dance to that Bon Jovi song. Next time he would.

  He walked toward the morgue door, watching the warm light glow in Elizabeth’s office.

  * * *

  A mist was sweeping over the Shan as Nat parked in front of the Prescott house. He’d left John behind in his cubicle to come talk to Becca. The Saab windshield was covered in dew that appeared as soon as he shut the wipers off. Within ten seconds, the windows were covered in tiny droplets, the cold from them frosting the glass so that Nat couldn’t see out any of them. The only sound was the soft whoosh of the water hitting the metal and glass and the mist storm moving west toward the city.

  He glanced out the passenger-side window. The house was just a dark blur in the window, its shape melted, moving as the mist pressed against the window and droplets ran down the glass. Its outline kept shifting murkily, the roofline tilting up, the lines of the porch flexing in and out with the running water, but its dark mass remained.

  He was willing himself to get out of the Saab when something in the night sky caught his eye through the windshield. He gripped the leather of the steering wheel and pulled himself forward. Something was glowing off in the distance, but not in the sky. It was on a rise, deep in the Raitliff Woods, maybe two miles away. Glowing deep orange and red, with a smudge of gray-brown smoke hanging above it.

  Someone made a fire in the forest, he thought. I’ve never seen that before. He stared, fascinated, at the fire surrounded by banks of dark trees that smudged together into one dark gray wall.

  Strange, Nat thought. Hunters?

  He got out and slammed the door. The house was solid again, its dark blacks and greens now shiny and hard in the rain, its edges sharp, its gutters dripping. It stood as cold as a tomb. Nat climbed the steps.

  He felt the knob; the door was open. He pushed and the door fell back, soundlessly. The light inside the entrance hall was gray, as if the mist had penetrated through the window. He took a breath, steeling himself, and walked directly to the stairway, turning left and quickly heading up. He made the landing, turned, and stepped fast up the remaining eight stairs. Then he was on the second floor, his hand on the cool banister. The hallway was dark. He didn’t believe anymore that there were lights up here, except for the one at her door.

  “Becca?” he called out. No response. The house seemed to drink up the sound of his voice, returning no echo.

  He walked down the hall, hearing the sound of his heels striking the floor as darkness rose up on both sides. He’d counted last time: fourteen steps to make it to her door. Why hadn’t he brought a flashlight? His steps echoed. He counted eight, ten, twelve—he reached out and felt the fur of the mounted head he’d never seen.

  Nat breathed out. But somehow he felt the house had let him arrive at the door without any incidents. Stupid. He had to stop thinking this way, giving the house this power.

  Nat knocked on the Becca’s mangled bedroom door. The outside locks were undone and Becca must have been waiting for him because the inside ones snapped immediately and the door edged open. Her profile glowed in the beams of a light to her left. She was staring at him. His heart beat loudly in his ears.

  She was lovely, her brown eyes and that half-flattened nose. She was wearing a thin ivory blouse and jeans.

  “Hi, Becca.”

  Becca tur
ned and walked away without answering, leaving the door ajar. He pushed his way in and found the room just as he’d remembered it: the books untouched, the colored bottles of perfume each at the same angle to one another, the dappling sound of water droplets thrown against the glass window. There was a feeling of sanctuary here. Not only for Becca but for him, too.

  Becca’s eyes were ringed underneath by dark circles. When she sat and turned to look at him, he could read them clearly. Why do you keep coming here? they said.

  “I wanted to see you,” he said.

  She turned toward the window. She was looking out, down at the yard.

  Nat sat in the room’s only chair. “I wanted to tell you that I believe you.”

  He dropped his head and stared at his hands, but he could feel her gaze turned on him.

  “You believe . . . what?”

  “Everything. I believe that you are . . . under the power of someone else.”

  “That I died?”

  “No!” His voice caught. “No. I’ve read up on this.”

  She looked, of all things, amused. “You read up on this?”

  “Yes.”

  She turned back to the window. “And?”

  “I want to know about him.”

  “Who?”

  “The man who tried to kill you.” He couldn’t say anything more. He felt as though he didn’t really need to speak. Everything between them was known somehow. “Is he . . . here now?”

  “Here?” she said. “He’s always here. Nearby. But now he’s roaming somewhere else.”

  “You can feel that?”

  She glanced at her hands and nodded.

  “Do you know who he is?”

  “Dr. Thayer,” she said, a smile curling the corner of her lips.

  “Nat.”

  “Nat.”

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “You’re so eager. You think that by knowing his name you can get rid of him?”