27

When Margot exited the woods, her mother put her hands to her mouth and cried out with painful relief.

She had been waiting, scared, parked next to the idling police cruisers for a long time. The northwest entrance was lit like a pumpkin. She knew better than to go inside. A dead Mommy wouldn’t help Margot at all.

“Mommy!” Margot yelled.

They embraced in the lights of the cruiser.

“What did they do to you? What did they do!”

“It’s okay. I’m okay. I tricked them. I lost them in there.”

Shelly studied the scrapes on Margot’s arms and legs. The fear in her daughter’s eyes. The confidence there, too. Then she carried Margot to the car and put her in the passenger seat.

“We’re leaving Goblin, Margot. We’re leaving Goblin for good.”

Shelly pulled the car away from the cruisers.

It took them twenty minutes to reach the city’s southern border.

As they passed between giant topiaries framing the city gates, Margot thought of Wayne Sherman.

Was he okay?

She thought of The Hedges and how she didn’t care that the kids at school would never know that she solved them.

“Good riddance,” Shelly said as they crossed the city limit.

Margot told herself that Wayne probably made it out okay.

After all, he built The Hedges.

If there was anybody that could find his way out of a maze…

Epilogue: Make Yourself at Home

1

Bone white and trembling, fearing for his life, Tom checked the address again: 726 Rolling Hills Drive. It said so right above the arched doorway. It was twelve fourteen. How half an hour had passed within the city was lost on him but he wasn’t thinking of numbers just then. He was thinking of white eyes floating in the back of his truck. He was thinking of a timeless, angry voice that had spoken but one word:

Drive.

He had sixteen minutes of hope left. Sixteen minutes that might see him handing over that very box and whatever it was that came with it. He’d been instructed to destroy the contents of the box once that time was up.

Tom didn’t want to go near the box.

Please, Mr. Crawford, he thought. Answer your door.

He rang the bell.

There was an awning over the front door, or rather, a layer of stone that followed the arch and jutted out, protecting Tom from the merciless downpour.

He rang the bell again. Heard it ring out and echo within.

“Come on,” he said. “Answer the door.”

But no one did.

He looked back to the truck parked in the winding, cobblestone drive. More specifically to the closed door that Tom didn’t want to open.

Had he imagined it all? Did a crouched figure really tell him to drive? And if so…was the figure out of the box? In it? Could it come and go as it pleased? Come and go, in and out of a crate nailed two hundred times over?