Chapter Twenty-Four
If Maggie were less stubborn, she would have doubled over and started complaining thoroughly about their current situation.
Her calves and thighs burned with the effort of walking through the forest, and her sneakers were already soaked through with mud.
But whenever Arthur would turn around to ask if she was doing okay, she would plaster a hopefully cheerful grin on her face and say something along the lines of “Of course! Why wouldn’t I be okay!
” before resuming a steady stream of complaints in her head.
At least the mist had cleared, bringing with it the warm sunshine of early summer.
Maggie had taken off her heavy fleece, wrapping the sleeves through her backpack straps so it hung behind her.
The Wilds felt significantly less frightening when they weren’t shrouded in an impenetrable mist. Maggie even found herself admiring the forest.
Off the trail, the trees were dense, and the ground was covered in what remained of autumn’s leaves, long rotted, and pine needles.
Between the pine, birch, and oak trees, scrubby bushes were filled with chittering birds.
Fallen logs, covered in ivy and oyster mushrooms, crisscrossed the swampy soil.
Yellow bog flowers with sharp petals and fuzzy stamens dotted the peat.
Everything sprung forth with June’s impossible bright green.
It was a color that Maggie forgot every year until it returned, only to be stunned by its electric hue once again.
“You know,” Maggie began, trying to disguise the labored sound of her breathing, “I was expecting to run into more ghouls out here.”
“That’s because the trail is warded.” Arthur gestured to a carving in one of the trees.
Sure enough, there was a rune every ten feet or so.
She remembered reading somewhere that park rangers acted as wardsmiths for the uninhabited Wilds, but she didn’t realize every trail was protected.
“That’s also why we aren’t leaving the trail until we absolutely have to.
I expect things will get a little bit more interesting when we cross the Dismal and have to go search for the gloaming creeper off trail. ”
Arthur stopped and consulted a map he pulled from his pocket.
“I think we have another forty minutes of walking before we get to the stretch of the Dismal that Dr. Silva suggested. Once we get to this warded spot here”—he pointed to a picnic area with tables and campsites—“we’ll have to leave the trail and follow the river to the east. When we’re done, we’ll come back and camp here. ”
Maggie knew they would have to leave the trail eventually, but she didn’t love the idea of walking through the forest with only the rune painted over her heart for protection.
They walked a little longer, both lost in thought.
Maggie wasn’t sure what preoccupied Arthur, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the ghouls and wraiths and banshees that surely were lying in wait just out of sight.
As she ran through the possibilities, each of them more terrifying than the last, she nearly bumped into Arthur, who had stopped in the middle of the trail.
“We’re here.” There was a slight note of what she thought might be trepidation in his voice.
Arthur slid his backpack around and reached inside, shuffling items in a way that seemed impossible for the pack’s size. Maggie watched as he pulled out an entirely too-large baseball bat and set it against a tree. “Did you install an interdimensional pocket on that thing?”
Arthur had a gleam in his eye when he looked up. “How else did you think I was packing enough supplies for our campsite tonight? You really should have let me carry your backpack.”
She tried to be annoyed at him—her back was very sweaty at this point—but she was too interested in whatever he’d done to that bag. “Can I see it?” she asked hungrily.
She’d read about the possibility of installing interdimensional storage pockets on something as small and portable as a backpack, but she’d never seen it done.
A locker or closet that rarely moved, sure, but not something you could carry around.
Arthur tossed the pack to her, which moved through the air as if it were empty, and she grabbed it, feeling nothing but the fabric in her hands as she swung it across her shoulders. “This is so cool!”
She brought it back around and put her arm inside up to the elbow before she felt what it contained. She stuck her head through the opening, and it was cavernous, at least the size of the large cedar chest she had at the foot of her bed.
“Why do you have wine in here, Arthur? Didn’t you call these ‘essentials’?”
“Wine is essential!” came his voice, muffled by the fabric of the pack.
She lifted her head slowly, looking up to see his satisfied grin. “Did you bring marshmallows and graham crackers, too?”
“What if I did?”
“Maybe this trek through the Wilds will be worth it if you build me a campfire and make me s’mores, then.” She stuffed her own bag into Arthur’s pack and then tossed it back to him.
He laughed as he caught it and then reached in to pull out a second bat.
He threw it to her, and she was glad her reflexes were working, as she managed to catch it.
“I armed the bats with repellent runes,” he explained.
“Hopefully we don’t have to use them, but you won’t even have to come in contact with anything for it to work.
A close swing will do the trick, so don’t worry too much about your aim. ”
“Lucky for you, I played softball in high school.” Maggie swung the bat around for effect, showing off coordination she wasn’t sure she still had, since she’d last played on a team fifteen years ago. But it was just like riding a bike, apparently.
“I knew there was a reason fate put us together in that office.”
When they reached the picnic area, they stood at the edge of a small wooden bridge that crossed the Dismal.
The river itself was babbling, small fish darting in the water and catching the sunlight in glimmering flashes.
“The second we cross through the wards, we’re going to attract attention,” Maggie said.
Arthur nodded, as if she had put to words what he was thinking in that moment, too.
Arthur pointed to a spot where the river curved to the right, about twenty feet away. “There’s a copse of trees up ahead. Let’s start there.”
Maggie took a deep breath, scanning the trees for any evidence of fantasmia that might be waiting for them. She shivered with a nervous thrill. “The faster we cross the wards, the faster we get back.”
Without another word, they both took a step off the path. They didn’t wait to see whether their crossing the wards attracted any attention, they just walked as quickly as they could through the brush toward the grove.
“Shit,” Maggie muttered when she reached the first tree.
Of course it couldn’t have been so easy, but Maggie had hoped for things to go their way, for once.
There wasn’t a single vine on the north side of the trees, no hint of gloaming creeper, but the soil at the tree roots was upturned.
Maggie squatted and touched the damp, loamy dirt. “What did this?”
“Let’s keep going,” Arthur said, voice tight, not turning his gaze away from the trees around them. The only sound was the babbling of the Dismal and their deep breaths.
They went from tree to tree, oak after birch after pine, finding the same upturned soil.
The longer they searched, the more Maggie’s hands shook.
A cold wash of fear cascaded over her, like the shivering palpable fright she’d felt within the pall.
An animal instinct drove her to look around the too-quiet forest, scanning the spaces between the trees.
“Something isn’t right, Arthur,” she whispered, trying to keep the fear out of her voice and failing.
Arthur walked on, but Maggie couldn’t lift her foot, couldn’t bring herself to go forward.
“Arthur!” She wanted to yell it, but it came out again like a whisper, and he couldn’t hear her over the sound of the Dismal’s current beside them.
Ahead, he crouched down in front of a sassafras tree that was about fifteen yards away. Too far from her.
He reached down to the soil and pulled up a long vine, its leaves a dark green, nearly black.
Maggie could see its stem was the earthy purple they were looking for.
He looked back and began to say something, but instead his mouth contorted into a curse, and feeling came crashing into Maggie all at once.
A hissing screech echoed through the woods, a sound that seeped into Maggie like venom.
Above her, a figure sped through the trees.
She caught only glimpses of it through the leaves—sallow skin; deep red, animal eyes; a hand with fingernails like claws, sharpened into points, holding an already wilting bundle of gloaming creeper with dangling, exposed roots.
It laid a trap for us. And the monster screeched again, revealing a mouth full of dagger teeth stained dark that made Maggie’s heart drop.
Though she had heard the sound for weeks at a distance, it was nothing like the agony of hearing a banshee’s scream up close.
She brought her hands up to her ears and pressed them in, trying to find some relief, but it did little to muffle the wail.
When there was finally a break in its cry, Maggie looked around and saw Arthur on the ground, holding his hands against the sides of his head.
He grimaced in pain and Maggie didn’t think, she just ran toward him, tripping over roots and underbrush.
She urged herself forward, trying to get to Arthur before the banshee, and lifting her bat in a fluid motion.
It was the only graceful thing she managed, though, as low branches scraped across her skin, and she nearly skidded on a bank of mud.