The Binding

by Nicholas Wolff

  Margaret’s black poncho shone just in front of Ramona, not twenty feet away, throbbing darkly against the flames. To her left, the bald man slumped, his eyes closed. She could see an angry red line across his pale throat. To her right was the old man, who seemed not to be standing but hanging in the air, like a suit of clothes on a hanger.

  They were staring, transfixed, at the flames. Their lips were moving.

  What were they saying?

  Ramona’s ears buzzed horribly.

  No, I don’t want to know. She sank to her knees. It looked as if some sacrifice was being prepared, some rite that no living thing should see. Ramona gasped for air. But she knew if she raised her voice that something would come hunting her in the forest. The three would turn and then she would be prey. And their knives would be real and their hands would be terribly strong.

  The droning, the voiceless thing, only howled louder.

  The flames licked upward toward the darkened sky. Margaret stepped forward, as did the others. Ramona could see they were approaching something at the fire’s edge, a figure in the snow. They were chanting something, in a language Ramona had never heard. But her eyes were on Margaret’s shoulder, which was blocking the thing at the center. As she got closer, the figure was slowly being revealed. At first Ramona saw brown hair whipping wildly in the wind. The figure was kneeling, head bowed.

  Ramona, dread coursing through her veins, lifted up on her tiptoes and squinted.

  “Please don’t let it be . . .”

  Suddenly the figure lifted his head. His mouth was open as he repeated the chanted words, his cheeks pale as chalk and his red-rimmed eyes staring ahead in a trance.

  “Oh God,” Ramona whispered. “No no no no no no.”

  She began to run blindly through the woods, her lips white with a suppressed cry.

  As she churned through the knee-deep snow, she heard a bloodcurdling scream. A high voice, screaming again and again, the notes rising as if they would never stop.

  Instead of dropping away, the roar grew in her ears as she crashed down the trail. Underneath it was the sound of footsteps and twigs breaking.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Nat stared at the TV screen. A college basketball game was on. Notre Dame–Stanford, tied at 88. A tepid, mistake-filled game.

  Nat watched the Stanford quarterback throw a long bomb. The ball arced in the air, and the camera caught the fans—­thousands of them in the background of the long pass—rising as one. Thousands of people who knew nothing of Northam, Mass., or Charlie or Becca . . .

  He felt odd, restless. Waiting for something to happen.

  Suddenly, a wave of claustrophobia seemed to wash over him. Staying in the condo seemed intolerable; there was no air in the place, and he felt himself starting to hyperventilate. Nat got up quickly, grabbed the Saab keys, and ran for the front door.

  As soon as he emerged from the building and felt the breeze on his face, the feeling of being boxed in the airless apartment dissipated. Now he felt only dread, rising in him until he thought he would shout.

  * * *

  Oh God, oh God, there’s one after me, Ramona thought. Echoing crashing noises from far behind her. Heavy footsteps.

  She saw a tall thick-trunked oak up a ways on her right, and when she got to it, she stepped off the trail and put her back to the tree. Her coat rubbed on the rough bark, and she felt the protection of the huge thing. The forest seemed to echo with the sound of her breathing, and her vision wavered with her rising chest. She listened now.

  Maybe it would shoot right past her. Because she couldn’t outrun it, that was for sure. Ramona closed her eyes and brought her fist up to her lips and pressed it there, her front teeth painfully biting into the flesh so she wouldn’t scream.

  The footsteps slowly grew more distant. It was as if the pursuer were breaking trail to another part of the forest.

  It’s not me they’re after, thought Ramona. It’s someone else. They’re chasing someone else. And guiltily, she said a brief prayer of thanks.

  She brought her bag around and unzipped it, then reached in for her phone. She grabbed it and hit the Talk button. Searching the little message said in the upper right hand corner. No bars.

  “Damn it all,” Ramona said. She listened carefully—hearing only a faraway noise of disturbance in the forest—and pushed away from the tree. She found the path again in the dim forest light and ran on, holding the phone in her right hand.

  Ten minutes later, she saw the red brick of the Walter Power Plant looming through the dark branches. She stopped and brought the phone up. Two bars. She hit Missed Calls, brought up the call from Detective Bailey she’d ignored, and hit Talk.

  “Come on, come on, come on.”

  The number lingered on the screen.

  “Come on, damn it,” she said, giving the phone a shake. Finally the number disappeared and the calling screen came on. A faint ringing could be heard.

  “Pick up, pick up, pick— Detective?”

  A male voice.

  “It’s Ramona Best,” she said.

  “Ramona? What’s going—”

  “I’m in the Raitliff Woods, near where the bonfire’s burning.”

  “Okay. What are you doing up there?”

  “I know who they’re going to kill next. Can you go now, please? Right now.”

  She just blurted it out. No time for messing around. No time left at all.

  She thought, He’s going to ask me who is going to kill someone next, and then she’d have to explain the gathering of the dead people in the Raitliff Woods, and the dreams, and Margaret’s wanting to be allowed to die, even though she was already dead. How can I explain all that? How the fuck—

  Ramona took a deep breath.

  “Who is it?” the voice on the other end said.

  And then Ramona understood. Detective Bailey hadn’t asked who they were, or why someone had to be next, or how she was sure they were going to kill anyone. The police know, she thought. But if they know and it’s still happening, they can’t stop them. Her legs began to shake and she suddenly crouched down.

  “It’s a little boy,” she said.

  * * *

  John dropped the phone and ran toward Charlie’s room.

  He bellowed the boy’s name as he barged into the hallway.

  When he pushed Charlie’s door in, the first thing he saw was the open window and the curtains fluttering in and beyond it the snow, glowing violet.

  * * *

  Nat was sitting on the park bench on State Street where he’d found Becca that day, the day she remembered her family. It was the best memory of her that he possessed. His hand was placed flat on the slats where Becca had been sitting. The steel was cold against his palm.

  He was trying to keep thoughts of what he had to ask her at bay. For one moment longer.

  His cell phone buzzed. He reached into his pocket and pulled it out. John.

  He hit the Talk button.

  John’s voice, hurried, commotion behind it. “They took the boy,” he said.

  Nat found he could not say it: You mean Charlie? “Jesus,” he whispered. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah,” John said finally. “Bring those two over here!” he shouted to someone on the other end.

  There was commotion in the background, the sound of people hurrying. “Nat?”

  “Yeah. I’m here.”

  “We’re going to get them now, Nat. And anything I see moving, I am going to kill on sight.”

  Nat felt his body going cold. “Where are you going?”

  “The Raitliff Woods. Ramona Best said she saw him up there with . . . those things.”

  He glanced up. There was a fire burning in the Raitliff Woods, the same spot he’d seen days ago from his car parked in front of Becca’s house.

  His mind flashed to Capt
ain Markham taking the organs of his young soldiers, and the Haitian translator’s warning that the sacrifices shouldn’t be placed in fire. Or the sorcerer would become stronger.

  It’s coming, he thought. My God, the end is coming.

  * * *

  Ramona took a deep, shaking breath. She’d done her duty.

  The forest was quiet. She could actually hear birds flitting through the branches above, and the deep hum of the power plant was shaking the air again. Like the hum could shift the oxygen molecules, get them to shiver. It was, strangely, like the droning that had filled her ears up in the woods.

  She stepped onto the path and began to walk toward the gate behind the power plant. She would go back to her room. She would lock the door. She would read The Magic Mountain for Professor DeMint’s class on the Continental novel and lose herself in the odd world of Hans Castorp.

  As she drew closer, the powerful hum emitted by the power plant seemed to vibrate in her bones. Something moved off to her left. What she’d thought was a tree trunk wasn’t there anymore, just white space. She was starting to imagine things.

  Ramona chose her steps carefully. She didn’t want to fall and break her leg here on the edge of civilization, stranded out here, yelling at the plant workers to save her. Just make it through the gate and forget about Margaret and everything. Tonight is turkey dinner at the dining hall with all the fixin’s. You deserve . . .

  A figure in front of her. Tall, tall, up close the old man was taller than she remembered. Her vision wobbled with sheer terror, and she saw the bayonet rise in the cold air. Her screaming merging with the deafening hum . . .

  Ramona turned to run, but she was only three steps up the slope when she felt the blade go in and pain sprint through her disguised as blazing heat.

  * * *

  John Bailey twisted his body through the thick underbrush, fifty yards from the tree line. The air was damp in here, clogging his lungs with mist, and the light was bluish gray, eerie. The trees were dripping with water, and the brush underneath his feet sent brittle sounds echoing off the poplars when he broke through an icy patch. He was panting already, kicking his feet through the knee-high snow cover.

  It had taken thirty minutes to get a search party organized. Dusk was falling. One hurried call to dispatch, asking for all first responders available to head to the fire burning in the Raitliff Woods. He’d met them at the tree line, said he had information that his son had been taken and was being kept near the bonfire. That was all he’d said; he’d figure out how to explain the rest once he had Charlie in his arms.

  On his left and right, he could see a broken line of men and a few women—cops, EMTs, and a few firefighters—marching through the oak scrub and pine. The ground was slanting upward. Ramona had said just go toward the fire. The boy would be there.

  Just be strong for a little while longer, Charlie.

  His radio crackled.

  “Let’s tighten it up on the right. Don’t want anyone slipping through.” He looked down the line, but the trees blocked his way.

  “How much further?” a voice said.

  He thumbed the button down. “Should be half a mile.”

  Kick, step, scan. Kick, step, scan.

  Daddy’s coming.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Nat stood on the street in front of the Prescott house. The sky around the rim of trees behind the house was turning a bruised black. He tilted his head up to look at the Raitliff Woods. The fire was still burning up there. Nat watched it. He thought he could hear chanting, blood oaths, but of course that was all in his mind. The fire was a mile away at least. Something or someone is being readied, he thought.

  He walked slowly up the front path, his heels striking loudly on the flagstones. He thought again of finding her and then driving to the airport, buying tickets for the first plane to Buenos Aires. No luggage, nothing but themselves. They would escape, tonight. But he knew in his heart that it was a fantasy. Nothing will ever turn out right again.

  It would end here, in Northam. This is where the bodies were. It couldn’t be any other way.

  There was no sign of Becca here, no light in her window, no note by the door. But he had to find out for sure, because if she wasn’t in the house, she was on the mountain.

  Does she know? he thought. Does she even know what she’s done, or does the traveler keep the blood and the gore and the image of Charlie’s face away from her conscious mind so that she can survive?

  The outline of the lower story of the house was bleeding into the darkness, the edges of the wood siding slowly merging into black. High storm clouds were turning day into night. He reached into his jacket and felt the long knife he’d taken from his kitchen. He’d removed it from the butcher’s block of German chef tools in his apartment. It was barely used, its blade as clean as a mirror. He’d wrapped it in an old T-shirt and stashed it inside his coat in the inside pocket that he once used for a brandy flask at college football games.

  The house felt alive tonight. Its clear cut glass reflected the last rays of the sun as it set behind him. The glass sparkled amid the hideous black shapes of columns and jutting corners. It was as if the house were some malevolent old toad, eyes glimmering, poison in its mouth, silent.

  Nat shivered in his coat. He pulled the coat tighter, then began to walk. The shape of the knife pressed into his ribs.

  He placed his foot on the lowest step, then put his weight on it, then the next. When the third step gave a long drawn-out creak, he saw movement behind the narrow window to the left of the front door.

  Nat Thayer to the rescue, he said to himself. A grim laugh escaped his lips, and he strode to the door and gripped the doorknob. The hairs on his hand stood up.

  He pushed on the door and it drifted back. There were no dust motes in the fading light this time. Just clear hard angles in the blackness.

  Something whispered on the landing above, past the railing, from a place he couldn’t see. A whisper and then a scuttling noise.

  Nat closed the door, his left hand on the knob. As he shut it, the foyer grew dimmer. Only a few faint glimmerings of sunlight reached into the interior of the house. His right hand reached into the inner pocket and gripped the knife’s handle. His fingers slowly closed on the polished wood again and again, and he found himself staring at the warping facets of the window. Now I’m inside the eyes, he thought. I am in the house and the house is in me.

  Something moved behind him. A jolt of fear ran up his back, but he turned slowly.

  You . . .

  It was the voice of his mother. The light contralto of his mother, but hoarse.

  . . . are called.

  Ah, so I was right about Mother, he thought. We’re all links in a chain. How many are here tonight? Is Chase risen up? Is William Prescott?

  A figure stood on the top balcony, a face only, the body lost in interior darkness. The face was thin and bone white, with long black scabs across the cheeks and lips, like it’d been raked by a bird’s talons. Nat recognized the disembodied face from the newspaper photos: Jimmy Stearns. A tremor of horror swept through him, and he found himself unable to speak.

  Jimmy Stearns’s eyes were black, insect eyes set into lifeless gray putty. They stared at Nat, and his flesh crawled as he stared back. Is that what my mother’s eyes looked like when she jerked the steering wheel toward the abyss? he thought.

  The face withdrew, back into the blackness as if submerging in a dark pond.

  You are called.

  A male voice now, deep and guttural. Was it Bule’s?

  He wondered if he’d really heard the voice or if the traveler was in his mind, whispering there.

  “I am called,” he said aloud and he moved forward.

  * * *

  Charlie gripped his Captain America figurine and tried to burrow back into the brush. But the bald man twisted around and grab
bed his neck. He shoved Charlie’s head forward until it was between his knees.

  Twenty feet away the bonfire roared. The people around it . . . he didn’t want to look at them. Their faces were dead faces. They smelled. They were standing, looking at the fire but not looking at the fire. As if they were waiting for a signal.

  The Magician was near, he could tell.

  I don’t want to be here, he said in his mind. I want to go home.

  The flames sucked in air and branches snapped in the pile.

  Magician, let me go home.

  He was afraid the people would go rushing into the fire. And the bald man would take him and carry him in, too. The fire was big as a house. He squirmed back, but the bald man gripped his neck so tight. His fingers came around and pressed on his throat. Choking.

  The Magician’s voice came to him.

  Do you deserve to be saved, Charlie?

  The voice wasn’t friendly. It wasn’t angry; it was just cold.

  Are you angry with me? Charlie said. Did I do something wrong? The goblin . . .

  I asked if you deserved to live, Charlie. Do you think you do?

  Yes, I think so.

  Would you like to live forever?

  Charlie looked at the figures around him. Is that what he meant by live forever? Like them?

  No, thank you. I want to see my daddy.

  The Magician’s laugh—it was scary. Cruel. A bully’s laugh.

  Charlie, you are going to burn.

  Charlie shook his head no, fighting the bald man’s grip.

  No! he cried. No, keep me away from it.

  Charlie dropped Captain America and reached for the bald man’s hands. But the fingers gripping his neck were strong as steel. They didn’t budge.

  He was choking. The fingers pressed into the soft flesh of his throat. Blackness closed in on the edge of his vision.

  Like a little pig roasting. Will you squeal, Charlie? Will you?