The girl proved The Hedges were no match for this.

He felt for the key at his pocket, found it still there, and continued. Deeper.

He believed he must have lost the officer tailing him already. In a place like this, one turn could do the trick. One decision. But Wayne was a long way from slowing down.

By then, the bark blended in with the night. Wayne’s eyes had adjusted but only so far. The trunks seemed to grow out of the ground as he approached, insane life sprouting before him. Like ten thousand black bushmasters turned to stone. It smelled fresh in there, but fresh like fresh meat. Or fresh like the air just before a sea-storm hits. The thick odor of animal fear and self-preservation. Deer, squirrels, wolverines, wolves, and Great Owls sensing, perhaps, an inevitable wave of violence.

If the police caught him, that was.

Or perhaps the life in the woods, or the woods themselves, sensed the key he carried.

Old wives’ tales.

Perhaps. But Wayne himself had held on to it, wanting to believe it could rattle the ghosts of Goblin, turn the city inside out, destabilize the place. Mayor Blackwater spoke of finding it one day, but Wayne didn’t know whether the man meant it or not.

An unexpected thought struck him then: Had Wayne hidden the key as a fuck-you to Goblin? Did he want the city to be unstable because it was here that Molly died in her sleep?

Wayne, in the midst of his trouble, felt proud. He had built something that he could at least compare to these incredible woods, one of the hallmarks of the very city he’d repudiated by hiding its key. He wished he had come through them before. He wished he could stop and study them.

He heard movement behind him and believed it was the officer with the shards of glass in his face. It was impossible to consider that the officer had taken the same turns Wayne had, so many by now, and yet that’s what Wayne considered.

He touched the key once more and thought,

You thought it was hidden well before? Try to find it in this place…

21

When the car carrying Margot reached the northwest entrance, she saw a second cruiser running with its lights on. The caravan that had gone from The Hedges to the North Woods had four cars of its own, and when they parked alongside Wayne’s packed truck it looked like a midnight corral. The rain and subsequent fog gave the headlights a depth Margot didn’t want to look into.

The entrance to the North Woods was lit up and Margot tried to slink deeper into the seat.

But the Goblin Police did not seem afraid.

The officers were out of their cars, standing before the entrance. Their tall silhouettes made shadows on the trees.