The Binding

by Nicholas Wolff

  “Fuck,” he said finally. “John—”

  “Take it easy, bro.”

  “Listen to me. Even if it’s her . . .”

  “Nat, I know—”

  “No, you don’t. Even if it’s her, it’s not really her. Okay? Do you hear what I’m saying?”

  “I hear you. But Nat, listen to me . . . what if she’s the one?”

  A feeling of horror spread through Nat’s mind like black ink. “The one what?”

  “Nat. The traveler.”

  “Don’t you think I’d know?” Nat practically shouted.

  There was a pause. Nat knew what John was thinking. Chase Prescott—the murderer. The random murderer who’d gone off to Williamstown and shot innocent people in cold blood, people he didn’t even know. But at least one of his victims turned out to be the great-great-nephew of Private DeMott of the Marine squadron in Haiti.

  Maybe the traveler had passed through the Prescott family like a snake dropping down branches of a tree. Using one member of the family, then killing him off and finding another host. Nestled in that gloom-ridden house. Orchestrating the deaths of the twelve families, including the Prescotts. History repeating itself every generation, over and over.

  Now Becca was the last one.

  “Nat?” John’s voice was quiet again. The gentle giant. Worried about his little boy. Worried about Becca causing Charlie to hang him—

  Nat shut the thought out.

  “Meet me at her house,” Nat said tersely. “It’ll be quicker.”

  “All right,” John said. Nat heard the ignition kick in in the background.

  Nat put down the phone and closed his eyes. He began to shake. What if it’s true? How am I to know?

  He could not shake the depression sweeping through his mind. It was as if a black hood had been thrown over his head. It’s not just that the worst will come true, he thought. But I am part of the darkness that is coming.

  I invited evil into my life, he thought, and now I have to pay the price. Nat opened his mouth but nothing came out. He felt his skin go cold. He suddenly cupped his hand over his mouth.

  The worst part isn’t here yet, but it’s coming, he thought. It’s coming it’s coming it’s coming.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Nat was waiting in his car, the driver-side window down to get some air, when John pulled up. Snow drifted down lazily like confetti. His friend’s Malibu pulled in front of the Prescott driveway. Old cop trick, he knew. Block the exit, but make it seem casual.

  John approached the car, slapping a long black flashlight against his thigh. Nat watched him come.

  “You okay?” John said, leaning on the Saab’s door.

  “Yeah.”

  Nat took a deep breath, turned the key in the ignition to give the Saab some power, and slid the driver’s window up against the snow. He got out of the car, taking a deep breath, the air so cold it had a taste, like raw peppermint.

  “You look like shit, buddy,” John said, a sorrowful smile on his face.

  “I know.”

  “I can do this if you want to stay out here.”

  “No,” Nat said grimly. “I’m okay.”

  They walked up the path toward the house.

  Nat glanced up. 96 Endicott looked shabby in the light. It needed a fresh coat of paint. Was the thing already decaying now that Walter was gone? How odd to think that this malicious place needed primer and varnish just like any ordinary house.

  “You think she’s in here?” John said as they stepped onto the porch.

  “Probably. She only goes out . . .”

  He didn’t finish the sentence. They approached the door.

  “Can I see it?” Nat asked as they paused in front of the entrance.

  John searched in the pocket of his thin L.L.Bean jacket. He pulled out something silver on a thin chain and handed it to Nat.

  It was cold in his hand. He flipped it over to the little scene stamped on the front and studied it closely. St. Christopher was wading across a river, a shaggy-looking tree just behind him. There was a mountain in the background, topped with snow. It didn’t look like a mass-produced item; he’d never seen one like this before. The craftsmanship evident in the details spoke of something that was handmade. The silversmith had been a good one—you could feel the exhaustion in St. Christopher’s thin body, the concern in his eyes. Will we make it? Can I save this child? An acknowledgment that the world’s dangers were real.

  Is this some kind of macabre joke? Nat thought. St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, get it? Of travelers. Is it a family heirloom, given to each host in turn? Nat frowned fiercely. He had the urge to turn and fling the piece of silver off into the snowbanks, get it away from him.

  “Ring the bell,” Nat said, handing the medal back. “Let her know we’re coming.”

  John pushed the button, but there was no answer. He tried the door; it was unlocked, and he swung it back noiselessly. They went inside. The air in the lobby was filled with dust motes, and John coughed. It’s like a mausoleum, Nat thought, a place of the dead. The sounds of their footsteps traveled back to them from the interior of the house.

  “Becca?” Nat called.

  “She can hear us from down here?” John said.

  “Should be,” Nat answered, staring up at the second-floor landing, which seemed to waver behind a curtain of dust motes. John shone his flashlight up there, but the dust only reflected the beam back.

  “Why isn’t she answering?” Nat said. He went up the stairs, moving quickly for the second floor. He could hear John close behind.

  Nat got down the hallway in five long strides, the wood sagging behind him and the sounds of his pounding footsteps filling the passageway. He reached the door, the gouges there still visible. He pounded on the fractured wood.

  “Becca, open up.”

  Nothing, just an eerie stillness. A watchful stillness.

  “Becca, it’s me.”

  “I gotta do this,” he heard John say, and before he could turn, he saw John’s thick leg snap toward the door and kick it. The door let out a metallic shriek and shuddered inward.

  Nat walked inside. The bed was made up, the curtains pulled, and the room dark and empty. John got on his knees and shone his flashlight under the bed. Nothing. They searched the rest of the room in thirty seconds.

  The house was echoing. Neutral.

  Ten minutes later, when they came out, John took a deep breath, let it out, and looked up and down the street. The house was completely empty.

  “Where could she have gone?”

  Nat stamped some heat back into his feet. The porch echoed hollowly.

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t have any friends that I know of.”

  “Let’s check the grounds.”

  They tramped down the porch and turned down the driveway toward the back.

  The search of the grounds took them another twenty minutes. Nothing.

  They walked slowly up the drive and back to their cars.

  “I’m going home,” John said. “Fuck, I wanted to find her.”

  Nat knew he was thinking of Charlie. Becca was out there now, and in his bones, John now considered Becca the traveler. Nat worried about what John—the new incarnation of John, whose hands shook and who answered the door with gun drawn—would do if he encountered the girl.

  “It’s not her, John,” Nat said. “He might have guided her, but I feel—”

  “She’s a murder suspect, Nat,” John said, his voice flat. “Call me if you hear anything.” He got into his car.

  Nat walked to the Saab, the shadows gathering on the street and lights going on in the houses down the block. John roared away without waving. As he swept past, Nat saw John’s face frozen into a mask of determination.

  Nat opened the car door and climbed in. The
slick leather of the driver’s seat was cold. He started the engine and waited a moment or two, letting the air out of the vents get hot. Then he drove away, looking at the windows of the nearby houses to see if there were faces in them.

  He got to the corner of Endicott Street. The air was pumping warm, and he felt himself relax for the first time in a couple of hours. He made the turn onto State and hit the accelerator and listened to the turbo kick in.

  Suddenly, he spoke.

  “It’s okay now,” he said.

  There was no response. Nat’s eyes went wide, and he jerked around, turning to look at the space behind the front seats. The coat he’d thrown in the back was still there. He reached over and touched it as his eyes went back to the road.

  It stirred under his hand. He let out a shaky breath.

  The pale face of Becca Prescott rose in his rearview mirror.

  “Nat,” she said.

  The look in her eyes in the rearview mirror. Was it love? Gratitude? Or something darker—like triumph?

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  ramona Best walked away from her dorm, crossing the quad quickly toward its little-used northeast corner, which led toward the college power plant. She could see a dirty column of smoke rising from behind the Rossmore science building. Behind it lay the plant, which marked the far edge of the college grounds, and beyond that was the Raitliff Woods, ascending slowly away from the college, its trees just visible through the mist rising from the twin stacks that funneled smoke into the frigid air.

  Ramona hurried down the path and reached the gap between the dining hall and the science building. The plant was straight ahead, a squat old brick building with an arched entrance that said Wartham Power above it, and in front was a new forest green Ford pickup with the Wartham seal on its side. There was a gate somewhere back here, Ramona knew, an opening in the red brick wall where workers brought in supplies, lumber, carpeting, and paint to keep the dorms looking respectable. She prayed it was open.

  Ramona approached the plant and turned left along the path that paralleled the building’s facade. There was no one back here; the path was empty, lit by a single black street lamp that glowed hazily in the gloom. Ramona angled off the path and plunged into the pine trees that lined the side of the plant. From the building to her left came a deep humming noise that seemed to vibrate the molecules of the air around her. Her teeth caught the vibration and began to ache. She clamped them tight, ducking beneath the pine branches and heading toward the Raitliff Woods.

  I have to go there, she said to herself. I have to see once and for all. To see if the little boy is real or a dream, and why Margaret is calling me.

  Ten steps later, Ramona emerged from the tree line. She was at the brick wall, which rose up only five feet away. Ramona followed the wall and soon came to the plant’s gravel-covered backyard. Twenty-five feet away was a large gap in the brick, with a chain-link gate large enough to let a large truck through. A chain and heavy padlock hung loose where the two arms of the gate met. Ramona hurried toward it.

  She pulled one arm of the gate, and it swung back with a metal rasp. Ramona ducked through the gap, and she was through the fence, beyond the wall. There was a snowy margin of a dozen yards or so between the brick perimeter and the ragged tree line of the Raitliff Woods. She headed straight in, her feet finding a path between two giant Douglas firs.

  Once Ramona passed ten feet into the forest, the trees seemed to close behind her, like a curtain being pulled, shutting out the gray sunlight. The sounds of cars driving along the nearby Route 9 had disappeared, as if muffled by thick cloth. The feeling of open space was cut off. She could see someone had come this way recently—the trail in the dim light was touched here and there by a muddy brown where a boot had gone through the snow. The wind moved down the incline she was climbing, buffeting her face and causing her lips to go cold after a few minutes.

  She felt she was in two places, her body down here walking through the knee-deep snow, with bristles raking her jeans and spiky brown burrs sticking to them, gusts of white breath appearing before her. But she was up there, too, above the trees, flying as in her dream. Because she knew the way. She recognized this part of the forest. How can that be? I’ve never been here, and yet I know where I’m going.

  She’d expected to hear Margaret as she got closer, for she knew now that this was where Margaret and the others gathered. This is where the undead stay when they aren’t roaming the city, she said to herself.

  Why can’t I hear her?

  Suddenly a spasm of terror cut off the thought. What if Margaret was too frightened to speak? What if she could bring me here but couldn’t communicate, only let me see?

  A bird cry cut through the muffled air. Ramona stopped, her heart beating fast. She cupped her hands to her mouth to blow hot air onto them, but instead they closed over her lips, stifling a shriek.

  She looked back the way she’d come. The little path seemed to have been swallowed up in darkness. She couldn’t see the trail cut through the white snow. Only trees. Straight and stark, the blacks of their trunks rich and lustrous. Suddenly she ducked behind one and sat down abruptly, her back to the rough bark.

  * * *

  Nat waited at a stop sign. A pale blue Suburban rusting at the wheel wells made a left ahead of him, and Nat eased down on the gas pedal. He swung into a right turn and kept the Saab under 30 mph.

  He circled back toward the Prescott house. Becca was quiet in the backseat, resting her head just below the window. There was an off chance they’d cross paths with John, and Nat didn’t want him seeing the girl. He thought of what he was doing as protective custody. Get John away from the house. Get Becca back to her room. Make sure the place was locked up.

  He made another right onto Endicott Street and rolled up to the Prescott house. John’s car was nowhere to be seen.

  He turned. Becca was there, whole, alive, sane—and disturbingly beautiful. Why didn’t he ask her if she wanted to leave Northam with him, fly to Argentina? What was here for them except misery?

  But something told him they couldn’t run from what was pursuing them. It had to be faced here, and soon.

  Becca was reaching for the door handle, her eyes on the house.

  “I’ll walk you in,” he said.

  “Raised to be a gentleman,” she said, a hint of mockery in her voice.

  He laughed. He got out, came around the car, and together they walked up the path. Becca slipped her arm through the crook of his elbow, and gently leaned on him. They walked slowly in silence. Becca opened the front door, and Nat followed her into the house.

  Five minutes later, he emerged again and, after a quick glance at the sky, hurried down to the Saab.

  * * *

  Ramona sat, listening. How long had she been sitting here? The sun through the trees seemed higher in the sky, but she felt like time had stopped as soon as she entered the forest.

  She had to go on. She could hear a roaring sound ahead of her, upslope. It was like there was some kind of dynamo ahead, a secret and powerful thing hidden in the forest, and it was sucking her toward it.

  She didn’t know if she could do it. She thought of Zuela and Ray-ray, her brother. She couldn’t die up here in these stupid woods and leave them alone.

  “God, please help me,” she said. The cold was rising up her back, and her teeth chattered slightly as she whispered.

  Finally, she gritted her teeth, cursed Margaret, and rose unsteadily. Girls from Roosevelt don’t scare, she thought. What’s a little old forest to a girl who’s traveled down Nassau Road at midnight?

  She began walking.

  The angle of the ground rose ahead of Ramona. She bent forward at the waist, and her breaths began to shorten. Shards of dull light began appearing through the tree cover. She walked for twenty minutes, looking only at the trail ahead of her.

  Finally, she felt the
ground begin to level off a bit. The clearing was not too far away now, she knew, perhaps thirty yards. She imagined the grass swaying. Ten steps later, she caught a glimpse of brightness ahead. Just like in the dream. But this was different. Something was burning ahead. Was a part of the forest in flames? Or was it a bonfire?

  Ramona stepped quickly off the pathway into the stand of maples to her left. She touched one to steady herself, and her hand came away oily with sap and water. Ramona flinched. She began to creep ahead, trying to dampen the crump of her boots as they moved through the snow. She peered ahead at the blazing field, ducking her head. A pall of cold seemed to enter her chest as the clearing came closer.

  What are you bringing me here to see, Margaret?

  She spotted a gap in the maples three or four yards ahead. A bright rectangle of light seemed to be floating beyond the trees, suspended, alight.

  Everything was so quiet here in the clearing. No voices, just the buffeting sound of the wind.

  What have you brought me here to see?! she felt like screaming.

  She saw three figures ahead. The three from the dream, but completely real and present now: the old man, the bald man, and Margaret Post.

  They were standing at the edges of the clearing, one on each side, the far side hidden from her sight. Margaret in her black poncho in front of Ramona.

  Ramona walked to the last tree before the clearing and hugged it, peeking around its jagged bark trunk and regarding each of the three in turn.

  Her heart was beating so loud that her vision shook. They are real, Ramona thought. Not figments of my imagination. Able to turn and chase any dull-witted old girl they care to.

  But the light in the center of the clearing. She knew what it was now. Not grass lit by some mysterious light. She could hear the crackling of timber in the flames. They were standing around a giant bonfire, logs piled higher than the top of Margaret’s head. The flames sent out a cracking roar—the sound she’d heard on her approach—as they burned.