Page 5 of The Bane Witch

5

Syracuse

What if I get there and she’s not alive? Or she moved? I have nowhere else to go and less than thirty dollars to my name. If I show up and she’s not there… I scrub these anxious thoughts from my mind. After more than seven hours of driving, and a few spent sleeping in a Walmart parking lot, the fuel tank is idling near empty, but I’ve made it as far as Syracuse. I dare not take Don’s car farther. I pull into an old cemetery at the edge of the city—a lonely, rolling expanse of graves and historic vaults, the bones of people who mattered once—and park along a gravel road. If she’s not there when I arrive, maybe I can find my way to the Canadian border—it’s close enough. But even with a whole country between us, I can still feel Henry breathing down my neck, feverishly close, as if he’s been hiding in my shadow all along.

I kill the engine, leaving the keys in the ignition, and pop the trunk. The graveyard feels deserted, these tombs too old for visitors, people who are no longer missed. Around back, I rifle through his suitcase full of business attire and men’s toiletries, luxurious frivolities like a leather necktie case and hundred-dollar eye serum. I hadn’t pegged him for an aging metrosexual. I grab a striped button-down with short sleeves when a small leather box catches my eye. Unzipping it, I discover it’s a jewelry case. There’s a flashy money clip inside, clamped around another fifty-six dollars. I guess I didn’t need to put all those chips and roasted peanuts on Don’s Shell card after all. There’s also a gold signet ring, stamped with a compass design, a tiny blue stone winking at its center. I study the ring. It glints in the breaking sunlight, radiant. I know real gold when I see it. I quickly pocket it with the cash and close the trunk, careful to wipe anything I’ve touched before I go.

I climb to a tomb with gothic arches across the front and slip inside the stone pillars, quickly swapping the Florida T-shirt for the button-down, which I knot at my waist. I stuff the tee through the tomb’s gate, letting it drop into the shadows on the other side, and step out into the morning. The cemetery spreads out in all directions unhindered, its green hills crested by historic mausoleums and ornate headstones. I’m not sure which direction to take. Mature trees poke through the landscape, obscuring the view, and the newborn sun washes everything ocher.

I start straight ahead when a man in a green jumpsuit with a hedge trimmer calls out to me. “Hey! This your car? You can’t park here.”

I pick up my pace, hopeful he hasn’t seen my face. He must be a groundskeeper, maintenance on an early shift.

“Lady! You can’t leave this car here,” he calls. “They got rules.”

I can’t exactly run with a broken foot, but I shuffle away as quickly as possible, tearing through small clusters of trees and family burial plots, winding between hills and graves, trying to lose him. I have no sense of where I’m going, but eventually I scramble down a slope and into the back parking lot of a university campus, losing myself among a meager scattering of early-bird students. I can’t stay here in Syracuse, where I’ve ditched the car. My need to get out of the city is almost as strong as it was in Charleston.

It’s cool here, and my arms dimple with goose bumps as I think. I see a girl with wide eyes and a dark ponytail walking by, a latte and a stack of books in her hands. I tug at the sleeve of her crochet cardigan. “Hey, can you tell me where the bus station is?”

She slows but doesn’t stop, pulling her sleeve away, frowning at me as she marches on.

Another girl is on a nearby bench, digging through her backpack. I decide she looks kind and hobble toward her. The boot is already wearing me thin and beginning to itch. I sit beside her. “Looking for something?”

She looks up, her face round and open, trusting. The kind that smiles easily. Her long dark hair is pulled back on both sides. “My vape. I can’t find it. Probably left it in my room.” She rises, determined to go locate it.

“Wait!” I say, before she can leave. “Do you know where the regional bus station is?”

Her eyes fall to the boot. “It’s by Onondaga Lake,” she says. “Northside.” She pauses. “You need a ride somewhere?”

I should say no. Don taught me that. But the truth is, I’m exhausted. “I’m headed north,” I tell her. “I just need to get to the station.”

“Come on,” she says. “You’d have to cross the freeway. It’s dangerous, especially with that thing on. I can take you.”

Grateful, I follow her to a plain brick building—presumably her dormitory—with a full parking lot in front. She stops beside a blue Jeep. “You need help getting in?” she asks as she opens the door.

I wave her away.

She presses out a thin smile and climbs in the driver’s seat. Without traffic, we cross the city in minutes. She pulls up to the curb and puts the Jeep in park. “There isn’t much up north. You got family that way?”

I nod. “Yeah, actually. Crow Lake. You heard of it?”

She shakes her head.

“It’s a small town. Er, village,” I tell her.

“You don’t know?” she asks, one eyebrow inching higher.

I shake my head. “I’ve never been before,” I say before climbing out and turning to close the door.

“Just watch out,” she tells me, her round eyes going glossy. “They got a man up that way. Likes to choke people.” She holds her hands around an imaginary neck to demonstrate.

Cold sweat trickles down my middle back, Henry’s lips at my ear, curling into a smile. Boo.

“A killer,” she enunciates. “Hiding in the mountains.”

I click the passenger door closed, unable to speak, and she drives off with a wave. Glued to the curb, I try to shake my husband’s phantom, the sense that even here, he is watching. But Henry can’t possibly know where I am. He’s back in Charleston, thinking I am dead, gliding along the bottom of the Cooper River where I belong. The man in the mountains is someone else. Another version of Henry, perhaps, sucking his oxygen from the mouths of women. Another predator. But he’s got nothing to do with me.

I make my way inside to the counter to buy a ticket, praying I have enough money. “One seat for Crow Lake,” I tell the woman. Above me, a TV informs the near empty station of a grisly murder scene discovered recently on a mountain trail. Saranac Strangler Strikes Again the headline beneath the reporter reads.

“No stop in Crow Lake,” the woman says.

“What’s closest?” I ask, glancing back at the TV.

“The madman of the mountains continues to terrorize the peaceful hamlets and lakeside communities of the Adirondacks,” the reporter is droning. “With this latest victim bringing his body count to a total of four. Police say women should be extremely cautious, particularly along the lonely trails and stretches of road that crisscross this scenic area.”

For a split second, I think I see her—the crook of an arm against the leaves, a blond ringlet twisting in a subtle breeze, her body strewn across a clearing, the surrounding trees gathered as witnesses. And then, like darts hitting a board, three more, each in such rapid succession I hardly register them. Black hair. A jutting collarbone. Freckles pale and purpling. They pass through me like wind, leaving behind a hollow cavity where they were. A place inside me that is no longer mine.

I look back to the woman behind the counter, her large earrings glinting silver under the fluorescent lights as she shakes her head. “I hope they catch that sicko soon.” She meets my eye. “He strangles them first. Chokes the life right out of them before doing things to the bodies.”

I swallow hard and refuse to question what she means by doing things because I already know. Henry’s sweaty face pumps over me, eyes staring through mine until he sees what he is looking for, the bit that’s missing, the danger in its place, and he finally erupts in climax. How much easier it would be for him if he didn’t have all that life getting in his way.

“We can get you to Saranac Lake,” the woman says. “Stops at the market on River Street.”

My eyes flick to the television screen and back. “That’ll work.” I’ll figure the rest out from there.

She passes me a printed ticket after I pay her all the cash I have left, getting twenty-three cents in change. I’m well and truly broke now. The leftover snacks from my last fill-up will have to tide me over until I arrive. Her fingers linger as I go to slide the ticket toward me. “You be careful up there,” she says. “You’re just his type.”

“Thank you,” I say as I wrestle the ticket from her, an eerie intuition crawling over me. I start to walk away before turning back. “What do you mean I’m his type?”

Her eyes level on me. “A woman,” she says. “Alone.”