Dangerously speeding.

Toward a witch with no teeth.

18

Wayne still had a good lead when he reached the northwest entrance. He parked the truck and left all Molly’s things inside.

“Sorry,” he said, genuinely wanting to carry it all with him.

But he carried only the key.

And he believed he had an advantage on the police in here; he had a history with mazelike trails. As long as they didn’t bring that little girl with them.

When the first cruiser pulled into the open grassy area where Wayne’s car still ran, Wayne was deep in the woods, well past the place he and Molly exchanged vows so long ago.

The key to the city banged against his heart in his chest pocket.

19

Margot asked, “What are you going to do to him if you catch him?”

The officer looked to the rearview mirror and Margot was sure, absolutely sure that his face was about to change, that it was all going to drip from his skull, showing her what the Goblin Police really looked like under all that putty.

It didn’t happen, but Margot was as scared as if it had.

20

Wayne couldn’t help but compare the North Woods to The Hedges. The likeness was remarkable. Distantly, far from the immediacy of running through the woods, he wondered if there was a connection there, as a Gobliner, having tried but failed to create an impenetrable maze of his own.

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?