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“Same, sheriff.”
The wolf headed after his prey.
I took the appropriate turn back to Lisa's, except, twenty minutes later, picked up I-84 Westbound instead. Whatever followed me to the hardware store may have seen me lugging bags this afternoon and already determined where I was staying, but I couldn’t knowingly bring trouble home, not to mention I wanted to prevent additions to the Otherworld’s guest list. If my car wasn’t in the lot and the sheriff was hunting the accomplices, perhaps Lisa and Wyatt were safe another night.
I wished I didn't have to lie to them.
Instead, as mile markers ticked past, green flashes on an empty roadway, I informed Lisa I’d taken a room at the Hartford Marriott. She oohed, teased and 100% would not believe me when I swore the sheriff was sleeping in his own bed.
By the New York state border I was certain no one had followed, especially once the car behind me had kept straight as I turned off the exit and hit the backroads. The name of this particular stretch of Appalachian Trail I didn’t know, but the location featured several smaller loops for casual hikers and a stunning overlook of the Hudson River. There was a small park entrance three miles farther marked by the typical ‘closed at dusk’ signage. If you wanted a lower, less scenic trail, you could follow a creek’s slow bleed into the main river. Those trails were marked by notched bark and widened dirt shoulders: no trail openings, no closings. I counted three, then pulled over and cut the engine.
The road was a quiet blue beneath the vast Milky Way. I cracked the windows, waited forty minutes watching and listening for the slightest hint of trouble.
The sheriff claimed werewolves were the dominant species of the north, not the only species. Alone in the forest where rescue would not come fast, easy, or at all; myths and legends crept from the gallery of my imagination. Demons were never far from artists. In a witching hour filled with twinkling stars and towering pines, fiends and black magic specters climbed from their gilded frames and tapestries to haunt me.
I told myself I didn’t have to walk the woods. Chickening out was acceptable given the circumstance, but I had to know and needed the night. Daylight brought a higher risk of human interference.
I slipped my grandmother's gun into my purse, leaving it unzipped for access, then exited the vehicle and popped the trunk under the night’s nebulous stillness and the crunch of pine needles. I always carried extra cotton and powder free nitrile gloves for handling delicate pieces during conservation consultations on the road. I stuffed a pair of each into my purse. After dropping batteries into my new flashlight, I flicked it off, shouldered the shovel, and started up the nearest footpath. A hundred yards in, I located the boulder Gram and I had used as a marker and broke from the trail.
Except the first night, I’d never come after sunset, hadn’t returned at all since Gram died. Walking off trail amongst the sundown sounds and smells made for a writhing knot in my stomach, but light might attract unwanted attention.
Spring was alive with insects, frogs, and owls, so different than the summer evening all those years ago when thunderheads loomed dry and baleful over the parched landscape. In the sway of branch and bough, I could almost hear Gram urging me to hold my gaze low.
If fear won, it’d be over. The vines and forest debris would give way to the flick of an arrowhead tail, a pale sneer, a scrape of horns. I’d be back in the car speeding toward Connecticut without uncovering the truth.
I stuck to flipping on the flashlight as needed for better footing or if the crackle of brush drew close; luckily my worst encounter was a squinting opossum. The rushing burble of moving water strengthened. Ahead, a stream rode a path wide and deep, funneled through layers of stone and boulders to reach the river at a photogenic crossing.
There was one tree here often skirted, Grandma had said, one hikers found no rest beside, for it seemed Maleficent herself had crowned it a mocking tribute to the parents of Sleeping Beauty. The tree had withstood a thousand storms, bore blistered bark from lightning strikes, and permitted to live within its thorned shade none but the most toxic of weeds.
She’d been exaggerating, but the spindly, twisted branches of the locust variant pricked my memory just the same. Back then, lightning flashed overhead, illuminating massive branches and curled leaves. Tonight, my light flashed on and up, roved over gnarled bark and thorns. I oriented myself toward the stream and paced from the trunk outward.
Northern Monkshood had overgrown the location, glossy emerald stalks in the spring, but I knew it was right from the marker. Leaning the flashlight against the tree and my purse nearby, I pushed the point of the shovel underneath the vaguely dove-shaped rock. Shadows stretched like beckoning claws as I overturned the anonymous grave marker.
The first time, we’d worked a hard dust and harder sweat. Tonight, the soil was moist and soft, as if this particular hell wanted to be raised.
Gram had taken me out from under the tree, promised I'd be safe, that we were okay now, then asked if I was brave enough to help.
When we'd finished digging, we carried a plywood crate from her truck, laid it among the roots and checked the depth. I was sweating; my arms hurt from shoveling, my belly from fear, and my eyes from crying.
Promising we were almost done, she made the final, leveling adjustments. If I wanted, and used gloves, she warned, I could lay a purple wildflower on the box.
She returned a good hour later, stooped and stumbling, a blanketed mass heavy around her shoulders in a position she’d later taught me called a fireman’s carry. More than once I heard the rustle and slip of leaves as she made her way beneath the sharp branches. With an exhausted grunt of effort she dropped the body to the ground and sat beside it, chest heaving, white as a cotton sheet. A dark, malodorous stain had dribbled through part of the blanket and into the fabric of her shirt.
I sat, weeds gripped in my gloved palm, watching with confusion, anger, and astonishment, as she recovered her strength and pulled a pocket mirror and tube of lipstick from her backpack.
“Love put him here,” she told me, using the light of the storm-plagued heavens as a guide to outline her lips in luscious pink. “Don't want him to forget. Don't want you to forget. It was love.”
She leaned over and kissed his blanketed forehead.
???
Cross-legged on the ground, alone with my memories, I caught my breath. My arms ached, the stitches throbbed, but I felt too exhausted and cold-hearted to cry. The shovel lay balanced in a mound of upturned dirt and broken moss. I closed my eyes, gathering a fresh round of strength, and pried the lid.
The wood cracked in a brittle snap. A thin haze of dust floated into the starlight.
Once mine, the blanket, the last blanket to know the touch of my mother as she tucked me in, lay tattered and stiff in decay. Etched into the stained fabric were a faded lipstick kiss and greyed husks of wolfsbane.
I slipped my fingers into the nitrile gloves, then those into the white cotton pair and positioned myself over the body.
