Page 122 of The Furies

“But before you go,” she said, “there’s something you must do.”

And she spoke the final words.

In the glass, the child laid its hand upon her, and Sarah felt a coldness at her shoulder.

And then it was gone.

CHAPTER LIII

Gilman Veale had driven north, pausing only to refill the tank of the Civic when the warning light came on. His picture, he knew, was already being circulated. Come daylight he would have to be off the road and in a place of safety. He and Pantuff had split non-perishable food and other supplies—medicines, a pair of little camping stoves, sleeping bags, spare clothing from Goodwill—between the trunks of the Civic and the Chrysler, with the option of consolidating again later if they were forced to abandon one car or the other. Veale knew the Maine woods some, because he’d sought refuge there in the past—not from the law, just from other folk: Stockholm, New Sweden, Long Lake, Cross Lake, those were the locales with which he was familiar. If he went deep enough, he could find an abandoned trailer or an old camp and bury himself until some of the fuss died down. The Civic would have to be disposed of; he didn’t trust the seller to remain quiet once it emerged that the car had been sold to a murderer. Worse came to worst, he’d make a run for the Canadian border; it was porous, and he could cross on foot. He still had some contacts in Montréal and Québec, but Canada had no shortage of places in which a man could curl up and pupate before emerging again in a different guise.

Veale continued along Route 1, through Littleton, Monticello, Bridgewater, and Presque Isle. Just before Caribou, he headed west, taking roads barely mapped until the sun began to touch the trees. Near Carson, he found what he was looking for: a cottage with boarded-up windows and a hole in its roof, on land with a FOR LEASE sign so old it might as well have been written in Sanskrit. He parked the car out of sight of the road, and broke into the house through a back window. It smelled of decay, but a couple of the rooms were dry and habitable. He unrolled the sleeping bag, made a pillow from some old sweaters, and slept until night came around again.

* * *

VEALE WOKE TO THE sound of movement. It was too big for a rodent, and too rhythmic: more like skipping, or dancing. The child had come.

“I did what you asked,” he said.

The child had been with him when he’d cut Pantuff’s throat, standing at the foot of the bed while Veale used the blade. He’d made it quick because Pantuff had never done anything to irk him beyond choosing to target the wrong woman. Even that wasn’t his fault, because how was Pantuff to know that a cookie tin might contain a soul? In return for killing Pantuff, Veale had hoped the child might leave him in peace. He had no intention of bothering Nate Sawyer’s widow again, or didn’t think so. Then again, he had to admit he was a changeable man.

Now the child was before him. He had not seen it move. One second it was in the corner, the next so near that he could glimpse the holes where its eyes should have been, and smell the cemetery dirt on it. Softly it closed a hand on his and led him from the room. He walked with it to the woodshed at the back of the property, and there it showed him the length of rope. The rope was tinged with green, but not yet rotten. It would take his weight.

As he formed the noose, Veale recalled words spoken to him as a much younger man: “Son, the only thing that’s gonna beat you to the cemetery is the headlights on the hearse.” He tried and failed to recall the speaker’s name. He could remember the face, lined and world-weary, but that was all. Some lawman, now with the dead. Veale had lived longer than many might have expected, although like most men he had hoped to live longer still.

He retrieved a chair from what had once been a kitchen and positioned it beneath a tree. He tested a branch, found it satisfactory, and tied the rope. As he placed the noose around his neck, the child circled. He thought he could hear it singing. Its form was clearer to him now, less chimerical as his state drew nearer to its own, and he could see the girl it once had been. In his final moments he thought his eyes were deceiving him, because the shade of another child appeared behind the first, this one blond where the other was dark, her face a ruin of blood. The circling ceased, and the two children stood hand in hand, the forest growing still around them as though at their bidding. He wondered what was waiting for him on the other side. He prayed it would not be them.

Gilman Veale kicked the chair and set about the inevitable business of dying.