He couldn’t bring his head up to look at her. Could barely move his neck at all.

He tried to pull away but the hand held tighter. It hurt. It all hurt. He writhed in the dirt, still tied to Molly by his hand. A hand he had volunteered…

There were no words in the story now. Only swirling whites and grays, the look of the Goblin sky before it rained.

Wayne screamed with what breath he had. His veins were dry; a series of empty paths, with nobody there to maintain them.

He thought of The Hedges as he opened his other hand and dropped the key to the city.

It fell to the forest floor.

And everything, all the pain, stopped so suddenly that Wayne barely noticed as Molly gasped.

On all fours now, catching his breath, he saw the key beneath him. Then he saw the hand that reached for it and understood that it was not Molly who had been whispering to him at all.

The eight-fingered hand moved fast. But Wayne saw the wrinkles, the warts, the dried blood.

When he looked up, the witch was gone, and only the darkness of the North Woods remained seated on the stump.

Wayne rose again. He felt along his chest, his legs, his groin, his face, making sure it was all still there, still working, still alive.

Then, understanding vaguely that the key to the city had been stolen by the witch of the North Woods, Wayne Sherman smiled. Goblin might fancy him the master of the maze, but there was nobody who knew the impossible passages of undying pain like the woman he’d just encountered.

Wayne laughed. In the distance he heard what sounded like a bowstring, men yelling. He saw a flash of light.

He remained still, wondering what the fate of Goblin might be with its key in the hands of a witch.

He waited.

He waited.

He waited.

Until he could wait no more. Then he quietly started to make his way back, having left himself a trail of breadcrumbs in the form of right turns, and only right turns, all the way into the black nether heart of the North Woods.

And the closer he got to the exit, the more he thought of the places a man could go, a man whose car was already packed, a man who had already accomplished everything he could in a place that no longer held him.

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!”