The Binding

by Nicholas Wolff

  “Just draw somebody else,” she said, attempting not to hiss at the boy. “I don’t care if it’s Superman, for Christ’s sake . . .”

  She heard her own voice screeching. The little heads shot bolt upward all around the room, and two hands shot up. Ms. Sena cursed under her breath. She was letting her anger take control. The dome of silence was shattered.

  Charlie’s confusion mingling with fear in his eyes.

  “Not like that,” she snapped. “Turn the paper over.”

  Charlie did as he was told. And now just stared at the blank side.

  She was going to speak to Mrs. Abruzzi as soon as possible. She’d had enough of little Charlie Bailey. It was time for him to go.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  John Bailey was driving down State Street when his phone buzzed in his pocket. The little screen read Wartham Coll. He stared at in puzzlement—Is someone calling me from administration?—before realizing that all calls from Wartham were labeled with the college and not individual rooms or dorms. He quickly pressed Talk.

  A drifting wave of static sounded in his ear, rising and falling.

  “Detective Bailey,” he said.

  The static dipped, and from the back of it emerged a voice. “Hello?”

  “Yes, this is Detective Bailey. Who am I talking to?”

  Ssssshhhhhhh in his ear. ShhhhhWWWWWOOHHHHHHHHHHH.

  He thought he heard a voice. It was like one of those hearing tests when you’re tensed to pick up anything and you think you detect a ping after it’s sounded.

  “This is . . .” The static rose to a moan. It was like talking to someone in space.

  “Who is this?”

  “Rrrrr . . .”

  John pulled over in front of McGinnis’s Hardware and jammed the car into park. Without the sound of the engine, he could hear deeper into the static.

  “Yeah?”

  “Rrrrrrramo . . .”

  John frowned. It had to be the black girl. “Ramona?”

  “. . . essssss.”

  “Ramona, where are you? The reception is terrible.”

  It was the reception, but it was something in her voice, too, in the middle of that storm of electricity. She sounded a little off. Almost panicked.

  “I saw . . .” SSSSSSSSSNNNNIIIIIISSSHHHHHHHH.

  He banged the phone on the steering wheel. When he brought it back to his ear, the static was trailing off like a departing comet.

  “Ramona? What did you see?”

  “I saw . . .”

  The comet coming back, the hiss beginning to rise, popping in his ear. But there was an echo of a word carved into the noise.

  John felt a little chill sweep over his arms.

  “Did you say ‘Margaret’?” he said.

  “Yessssssss.”

  The flesh on his back puckered and went icy. Ramona’s voice sounded close now, as if she were sitting next to him in the seat. He could hear her breath ruffle in the holes on the phone’s speaker.

  “You mean you dreamt about her,” he said, as if he were consoling his boy after he’d had a nightmare about the oogly-man, which is what Charlie called the boogeyman. The oogly-man had been coming by a lot lately.

  Static beginning to build far off, like a sandstorm building on the horizon. It rose in volume, sweeping forward, and he imagined the sandstorm growing and turning his way, turning the sky black.

  “No,” came the voice, and then the static blotted out the rest.

  He waited for the noise to end. What the fuck is happening at Wartham? Some kind of hysterical mass illness?

  “Ramona?”

  The static crackled, and he now slammed the phone onto his lap before pulling it back up to his ear.

  “Ramona!” he yelled.

  The static cut away, and he took a breath before he heard her say: “Margaret’s not dead anymore.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Chuck Godwin glanced into his living room. His wife, Stephanie, was sitting in the sun-yellow armchair by the fireplace, wearing a black-and-white knit cardigan and tan slacks, her feet bare. Logs crackled in the fire he’d started an hour ago. She was reading a hardcover book, open to about the middle. He couldn’t see the title. He didn’t want to know it anyway.

  “Got to go to Stop & Shop,” he said.

  “What for?” she said without looking up.

  “Milk.”

  Her eyebrows lifted into round arches, but gently. It was one of the first gestures of hers that he remembered. He’d found it so . . . intriguing forty years ago. It did nothing for him now.

  “I thought we had some.”

  Chuck brought his right hand around the doorway. In it was an empty plastic milk jug, the half-gallon size.

  “No.”

  That’s because, two minutes before, he’d poured the milk that had been left in the jug into the kitchen sink, careful to bring the spout close to the drain mouth so as not to make any noise. Now it was his evidence, and he shook it.

  “Oh, okay. Get some cheese, too,” she said, her eyes drifting back to her book. “Muenster.”

  He backed away from the doorway, nodding and jiggling the keys in his pocket.

  “No, Swiss lace!” she called after him.

  He didn’t nod this time.

  Chuck shut the garage door behind him and got in his Volvo station wagon. He turned the car on and sat in the front seat, looking ahead robotically, feeling robotic. The voice was back there, behind the sound of the running motor. The rope was on the front seat where he’d placed it before emptying the milk. The morning sunlight shone through the windshield and caught the top loop. That piece of twine seemed to throb in his temples. It was as if the goddamn thing were hissing . . .

  He put the car in reverse and backed out the opened garage door. The tarmac of the street gleamed wetly between the plots of snow that covered his and his neighbors’ front yards. It was ten on a Monday morning, and the good people of his comfortable and peace-loving section of Northam still seemed to be slumbering deep in their beds.

  He pushed the car into drive and rolled down his street, turning left on Willow, revving the engine as he did so. He checked his watch. It was 10:02 now.

  The hissing was growing louder. Chuck kept his eye on the yellow line that split Willow Street in half and did not look over.

  He was driving toward the Raitliff Woods, the voice growing louder no matter how much he raced the engine. Willow would take him right over to State Street and then the woods. But as he approached Minotaur Avenue, he shot his left foot out and hit the brakes and wrenched the wheel right. He began to breathe heavily.

  Use . . .

  He hit the gas and roared down Minotaur Avenue going 65 mph. Up ahead he saw the sign for 95 South, a shield-shaped glow of green. The road was nearly deserted, swept by spinning drifts of snow blowing in from the east. He hit the gas harder and jetted up the ramp, the Volvo lifting into the air as the road deposited him onto the highway. He landed with a rattle, and the car almost got away from him.

  He looked over at the yellow twine. It was curled luxuriantly, one loop resting on the back of another. He reached over to grab it and to throw the rope in the back, but at the last moment his fingers twitched away and he jerked his hand back into his lap.

  . . . the rope.

  It was a trick of the light. But it had looked like the rope moved as he reached for it. Coiled away.

  “Buck up, Chuck,” he said in the silence of the cab, the only sound the humming of the wheels on the road.

  The hissing rose in his ears. It was crackling now, like static, with words blurred behind it.

  Unexpectedly, he began to pray. “Lord, look down on your wayward son. Lord, look down on me.”

  He was approaching the exit for the next town, coming up fast on his right. He’d lost track of
where he was and leaned forward over the steering wheel to make out the letters. But the sign blurred by so quickly he couldn’t even read it—just a camera flash of green and white. Chuck leaned back and looked at the speedometer. Still 65 and climbing.

  Chuck saw signs, more signs. Was he near Mansfield? Or was he past there, all the way to Attleboro? His phone vibrated in his pocket; surely a text from Stephanie asking him where he was. He pulled his foot off the gas and then suddenly a big Dodge pickup ahead of him veered left and Chuck shot up behind it and nearly rammed the son of a bitch. He went by the Dodge like it wasn’t moving and saw a black hole of a mouth yelling at him in the driver’s window.

  “Buck up. Buck up. Buck up. Lord, look down on me.”

  The words of faith felt so strange on his tongue. He’d never been one for church, but who was powerful enough to fend off the thing worming its way into his brain if not God? He passed a ­tractor-trailer, its mud flaps shooting white spray over his windshield. The speed was increasing again, seemingly of its own volition.

  The Volvo swerved, and then the wheels caught on the wet tarmac and shot off down the straight black line. The needle steady at 70. He couldn’t hear the rope over the sound of the straining engine. He pressed the window button and the glass slid down and a gust of snow blew into the car.

  Chuck stuck out his tongue.

  The wild cacophony of the engine and the snow roaring in his ears drowned out everything else, but then he heard it inside his brain.

  You’re getting close.

  Chuck clawed the inside of the windshield that was frosting over with the snow, rubbing a hole on the fogged-over glass.

  “God, God!” he cried.

  He rubbed a small hole in the fogged glass and saw more signs flying by. Chuck’s eyes were wide, unseeing.

  Very close.

  Something ahead. Something he recognized.

  Here!

  His left foot shot out and stabbed the brakes. The Volvo bucked hard, the rubber screaming SHEEERRRWWWAAAA­AAAAAAAHHH on the wet pavement, and the car fishtailed right. He saw steel railings swimming into view through the passenger window, and past them, a huge valley of deepest blue. Chuck swung the wheel left and the tires squealed through the open window like they were getting ready to blow. He was drifting, drifting, the car like a figure skater flying over the ice. If only . . .

  BBRRRRAAAAANNGGGG! Chuck’s head racked off the door column. The car shuddered violently and then rocketed back across the road. It spun twice in full circles, whipping Chuck into the driver’s door and then down onto the parking brake. He heard a snap, and a stab of pain cut into his side. Finally, the Volvo, groaning and screeching, backed into a curb and seemed to leap a foot into the air before crashing down on the highway, facing back the way he’d come.

  The tractor-trailer went flying by on his right, the driver hitting his horn. The air bags, miraculously, hadn’t deployed, perhaps because the right side of the car had taken the brunt of the impact.

  But if anyone came now, they’d slam into him head-on. The air bag wouldn’t save him.

  The road behind him was empty. Chuck’s left eye was battered shut and beginning to swell. His head felt three feet across, and he could feel bumps on it beginning to blow up like small balloons. His rib cage throbbed on the right side, and something seemed to jab into his lung when he took a deep breath.

  Chuck reached across and grabbed the rope. He pushed the driver’s door, but it was stuck. He bellowed like a trapped bull and slammed his shoulder into it. It sprang open.

  You’re so close. Go.

  The radio was playing the Drifters, “Save the Last Dance for Me.” He hadn’t even realized the thing was on. Chuck pushed the door out farther, cutting his left palm on the broken glass that had sprayed onto the armrest. He got out.

  A Cadillac shot by not three feet from his nose. He had the image of a woman, red lipstick and white skin smudged together into a carnival face. The car slewed by, then braked hard, and he saw it shudder to a stop at the end of the bridge about thirty yards away.

  So that’s where he was. On the Mackinaw Bridge. He grabbed the rope, pushed himself into a standing position, and began to walk across the tarmac. His bare hand reached out for the rounded steel of the top railing.

  The woman stepped out of the Cadillac and stood in the road, watching him.

  The rope was hissing again. And the voice was humming, the words no longer intelligible, just a hymn or a chant. His head was full of music.

  He reached the railing, three thick round beams with a dark abyss behind them where the river valley was swathed in mist. He looked down at the rope in his hand.

  You know what . . .

  Chuck took the end of the rope, the one marked with an old piece of black electrical tape, and held it tightly in his left hand. He felt its grain scratching the palm of his hand as he gripped it tight. He looked out at the void beyond the top railing.

  . . . to do.

  “Yes, I do,” Chuck said out loud. He took the coils of rope and tossed them over the railing, letting the rope fall into the abyss that was sucking snowflakes down into its core. He still held the end with the bit of electrical tape snugly in his right hand.

  The rope fell and then snapped, like a fishing rod with a trout on the end. Chuck felt the length of it swinging in the abyss, like he was falling all down the length of the rope.

  Tie it tie it tie it.

  Chuck’s heartbeat was racing in his ears. His eyes were glazed. The blue air was sucking in the snow, sucking everything down to its icy heart.

  You are . . .

  Chuck opened his mouth wide. He was trying to pop his ears, like you would when descending in a plane on final approach.

  . . . near.

  Chuck roared and shook his head back and forth. If he could just pop his ears and clear his head. He held the rope between his two hands and wrapped the black-taped end around the cold railing. But he hadn’t tied a knot into the loop. It was just hanging there on the steel. The rope wriggled in his hand, alive.

  His ears finally popped.

  Chuck went to tie the rope. The wind was pulling it toward the railing and the void, but he somehow had a nice loop around the top bar.

  “Buck up!” he cried. And suddenly his mind was quiet.

  Chuck bent down convulsively and swept the rope up into his arms, pulling it with short furious jerks. One, two, three, four, the thing came up quickly, only twenty feet long. The end of it slapped him on the cheek and he stepped back.

  His eyes were wide and his mouth shaped into an O of fear. Then Chuck pushed the coils over the bridge, nearly tumbling into the misty depths in his eagerness, letting go of all of it.

  The yellow thing fell, twisting and rippling. Chuck watched it. He swore it was wriggling like a snake.

  “Fuck you,” he said. Then he yelled it, baying like a hound. “FUUUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUUUUUU!”

  He was laughing maniacally. He dropped his hands to his thighs and hunched over, taking big delicious drafts of the cold air into his lungs. He laughed again and turned back toward the road.

  The voice was gone from his head. I believe I have freed myself from this goddamn curse, he thought. Free at last, free at last.

  He whooped again. He looked up the road and saw the woman, who was still standing by the Cadillac, hurriedly get back in her car and start it up. He waved at her, his arm making a wide arc through the air. Have a good day!

  Chuck was literally shaking with giddiness. Thank God Almighty . . . A white sports car went flying by him, and he danced back, still laughing. I’m free at last. He relived the moment again, that sudden spasm of madness. No, of courage!

  Nothing echoed in his head. His mind was clear; he stood still a moment and dared the voices to come back.

  Who knew it could be so simple? All it took was a little br
avery. He had bucked up, just like his father had always told him to.

  As he looked at the railing one last time, he heard the wind beyond the bridge railing. It was moaning, fluting between the little horizontal bars, causing them to thrum and sing. He listened for a minute, then returned to the battered Volvo.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Ramona Best stared at the phone, then closed her eyes. She had done her duty; she’d warned them. So what if she had told a white lie? No, two. She wasn’t at Wartham College, hadn’t been for the last two hours. She was at a rest stop on 95, a quaint little gas station and snack shop in the middle of Connecticut that she’d reached after doing ten mph over the speed limit for the last fifty miles. She’d called the college operator and asked her to put her through to Detective Bailey, since she didn’t have his number, and they had.

  The other white lie was harder to talk about. It was about Margaret. About the way Margaret looked. Ramona Best was already afraid she was losing her mind, and she wasn’t going to tell Bailey about hearing a dead girl talk to her, and the thing she’d learned from listening. Wasn’t seeing Margaret enough?

  She’d made the call from here at the rest stop. The little stone-clad building had shielded her from the traffic flowing south down 95 on this frigid morning, and now she leaned her head up against the side. It felt rough and cool, and it relieved for just a second her burning brain.

  The phone began to buzz, and she knew it was the big, sad-eyed detective calling her back. He’d taken her cell phone number when he came to interrogate her that first time. But she’d already spent far too long in this little rest stop. Ramona slid the phone into her sweats and pulled the hood of her ankle-length black down coat until it drooped over her forehead. She jerked the strings, and the hood went schwirp and closed to a small circle in front of her nose.

  Her car was a ratty old Altima that she’d inherited from her brother before he’d signed up for the air force, the idiot. Raford—both their names began with R, she and Raford, the two children of Edouarine Best—was just as smart as his sister. He could have gotten into any of the colleges she did; when he was a junior in high school and she was a sophomore, Ramona would even leave the brochures on his bed when she sensed a good fit for him. Ramona had collected those brochures like other kids collected comic books or baseball cards. She’d kept them in a big Adidas box under her bed and had read them for pleasure months before choosing Wartham.