Chapter 49
Sabine left Bingham feeling simultaneously unsatisfied and relieved: the former because, having gained access to the Norton home, she was no closer to Mallory—nothing had been awakened, and she could detect no echo of the girl beyond the house, even though Sabine was attuned to her now; and the latter because it would have saddened her to receive confirmation of Mallory’s death, as her efforts would then have focused on helping to locate a body.
Sabine drove north, cutting through the backroads of the Forks into The Plains.
The light was still good, and it was about two and a half hours from Bingham to her home; if she started out by three, she’d be back in Haynesville by six at the latest. She didn’t plan to go walking in the woods, and if she did get out of her car, she would not stray far.
From the media reports, she knew roughly where Scott Theriault’s remains had been found.
The current had carried his body to within sight of the road, where it was spotted lodged between rocks.
She would drive to the spot and there she would stay for as long as she felt comfortable.
Just inside The Plains, she passed a convenience store and gas station on her left, with two cars and a truck parked outside.
The tea she had drunk with Anita Norton was now pressing on her bladder.
She should have asked to use the Nortons’ bathroom before leaving, but she always felt awkward peeing in a stranger’s home.
She made a quick U-turn and returned to the store, which advertised itself as “Small’s Gas & Provisions—The Big Heart of The Plains,” whatever that meant.
She put twenty dollars’ worth of gas in the tank, because even if she didn’t need to fill up now, she would by the time she got halfway home.
Also, if she was going to use the facilities, it was only polite to put some money the proprietor’s way.
As she went inside to pay, she saw another photo of Mallory Norton, but appended to it was a handwritten sign announcing a search scheduled for the following morning, to convene at ten a.m. from Small’s.
Sabine continued to the register, paid, and was directed to the bathroom.
Once she’d done the needful, she asked the man behind the register if anyone was welcome to assist with the search.
“If you can walk and look around at the same time without tripping over your feet, we’d be happy to have you,” he said. He introduced himself as Bennett Small, the owner. “Are you from around here?”
“No, Haynesville. But I know the family.”
Which was true, so far as it went.
“You’ll need a good pair of boots,” said Small. “We’ll supply coffee and pastries, but you might want to bring your own to-go cup.”
Sabine told him she’d do that. Like a lot of Mainers, she kept a spare pair of old boots in her trunk and never went anywhere without a to-go cup.
She returned to her car, and after a pause for reflection, turned south instead of north.
If she wanted to visit the place where Scott Theriault’s body had washed up, tomorrow would do, after the search.
And who knew what she might discover by participating?
At the very least, she’d be able to gain access to regions that might have been inaccessible to her otherwise.
In Bingham, she rented a room for the night at the Motor Inn on Main, close to the banks of the Kennebec, her room looking out over Big Island.
For sustenance, she bought a sandwich, a bag of potato chips, a Milky Way, and two cans of beer at Jimmy’s, the gas station and convenience store a stone’s throw away.
As she walked back to her lodgings, that rain still threatening, she spotted an elderly woman watching her from the wooded island.
Sabine shouldn’t have been able to see her so clearly, not in the dusk, but the woman glowed faintly.
She was wearing a nightgown that reached to her shins, and her feet were bare.
A quadrant of her skull was missing, the edges impossibly neat, but the wound had stopped bleeding a long time before.
Her head moved to follow Sabine’s progress along the road, but Sabine ignored her.
That was what came of being so focused on Mallory Norton, of calling in the hope of receiving a reply: if you sent out a signal, you didn’t know who else might be listening.
Sabine began the process of closing her mind.
She’d been about to do so anyway in preparation for a night’s sleep, but the woman’s appearance made her act sooner.
Sabine had learned early that going to bed with that damned faculty of hers active and engaged was a bad idea.
At best, it made getting to sleep difficult, and at worst—well, she didn’t want to wake in the night to discover that old woman with the ruined head standing by the side of the bed.
“Go on now,” said Sabine. “You’re not the reason I came here.”
She pictured shutters closing, and fingers winding the wick on an old oil lamp, extinguishing the flame.
She was grateful to see the woman’s glow dissipate—and without resistance, because the dead commonly fought.
They didn’t want the shutters to close or the light to go out.
They wanted to be seen and heard, but that was mainly the recent ones.
Those who’d been dead awhile, such as the ruined woman, were more resigned, like starving people grown accustomed to the withholding of food.
They began to give up until, at last, they faded away.
If Sabine returned a year from now and called out to Big Island, perhaps no one would answer.
Nevertheless, back in her room, and before she closed her eyes, she asked—no, label it what it was: prayed—that the woman would find peace.