He was going back to Goblin.

He blazed up the highway, pushing the old red truck beyond its stable capabilities. The engine resisted. He had a rain-blurred memory of the officer stumbling back to his car. But Wayne had a good head start.

When the speedometer reached ninety-five, the entire truck was shaking.

16

When Shelly got to The Hedges, she could tell the police had been there. She pulled in fast (the gravel like mud from all the rain; holy shit this rain). She left the lights on, the car running, and ran up to the porch of the little yellow house. The door was open, swinging a little from the wind. When she walked inside she almost tripped over a chair that had been turned over. It was dark inside. She felt along the wall for the lights and found them.

“Holy motherfucker,” she said.

The place was destroyed. She didn’t know one thing about the man who ran The Hedges, but she was pretty sure he didn’t live like this.

Everything that could be turned over was.

Okay, she thought. They didn’t find what they were looking for. They left. Where’d they go, Shelly?

In that moment, Goblin felt infinite. And the cold of infinity settled in her chest.

She hadn’t passed any police cars on the way here. Or had she? The rain was thick. Easily one could have been going the other way, its lights off. Yes, Margot could’ve passed ten feet from her, mother and daughter side by side for a blink in time, then gone again to…wherever they were going.

Shelly started to cry. Not the type of tears that stopped her from moving, though.

She searched some of the fallen objects, broken shards, the man’s life in slices.

When she found a visitors’ log on the ground, the tears came a little harder. The last name listed was written in a handwriting she knew very well.

MARGOT

And then, next to it,

The girl who will solve your Hedges.

Shelly smiled despite the tears. Despite the fear. Kneeling now amid Wayne Sherman’s life, she brought the log close to her face and yelped when she saw a note addressed to herself.

Mommy…we’re going to the North Woods.

It was written fast. A desperate little scratch. Shelly could tell. Shelly knew. Like her little girl was in all the trouble Shelly feared she might be.

The North Woods?

Why did her daughter have to sneak a note to her?

But she knew why.

Margot was a smart girl—thank God Margot was a smart girl. She knew Mommy would figure out to come here, and so she left a note because she was smart and could recognize when she might be in trouble.

Margot was in trouble.

Shelly ran from the house and got back in her car. She tore out of the gravel lot.

The North Woods.