Page 6 of The Bane Witch

6

Regis

The sun is disappearing when the bus rolls to a stop before the market in Saranac Lake. My butt is numb after the ten-hour circuitous route—including a healthy layover in Albany—the bus has made of an otherwise three-hour trip, and I’m beginning to shake from low blood sugar. I pause at the door of the bus and turn to the driver. “How far is Crow Lake from here?”

He appears taken aback. “Crow Lake? Thirty miles at least.”

A half-hour’s drive. I mentally calculate how long it would take to walk that far with a broken foot. I’m looking at the better part of the next twenty hours if I don’t stop or slow down. My eyes coast over the hills across the lake, the inclines a foreboding portent. The concern must show on my face because the driver says, “Maybe you can catch a ride with someone.”

The lump of Don’s lifeless body flashes in my mind.

I clamber gracelessly off and stand back as the bus pulls away. Across the still road, and the calm waters of the lake beyond, the white-lined gables of several houses shine softly in the dusk of the trees. Boats are docked along the shore, looking like abandoned toys resting on the water. Even in the fading light, there is a rainbow of color between the elements and the architecture, and I am reminded suddenly of Charleston, my heart tightening around its grief. The feel of the mountains is unmistakable, a quiet, hovering presence, both enormous and close, like being lost and found at the same time.

Feeling faint, I make my way inside the store, fingering packs of powdered doughnuts and sticks of beef jerky with growing need. There’s a large convex mirror in the corner above me to reveal shoplifters, my figure lean and curved against it. I’ll never make the walk to Crow Lake without some food. I glance toward the cashier. My hands tremble. When she turns her back, I grab a handful of cheese and peanut butter cracker packets and try to shove them into my open bag. A couple fall to the floor, plastic crinkling loudly.

She spins around. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing? You gotta pay for those!”

I leave the crackers on the floor and start toward the doors, but a gruff man with arms like tree trunks pushes a dolly stacked with cases of beer in front of the exit. “Going somewhere?”

“I was just—”

“Trying to leave without paying,” the cashier finishes for me.

The man plucks my bag from my arms. Sticking a hand in, he pulls out several cracker packets. His eyebrows flatten into a thick line.

“I can pay,” I blurt. “It’s just—here.” I pull Don’s ring from my pocket and walk over to set it on the counter before the clerk. “I need to barter for a ride. North to Crow Lake. It’s all I’ve got, but it’s worth a lot more than some gas and crackers.”

The clerk picks it up and turns it over in her palm. She looks at the man, but he shakes his head. Setting it down, she says, “Sorry, we only take cash money.”

“I can take you,” a deep voice says from behind. I turn to see another man come up behind me. He snatches the crackers from the beer man as he passes and sets them on the counter beside the ring. “That’s a nice ring. Keep it. I’ll pay.”

I quickly grab the ring and put it away, feeling suddenly self-conscious. The man has a six-pack of beer and a bag of chips in one hand that he also sets down.

“You sure?” the cashier asks him.

He meets my eye. “Positive.”

“Suit yourself,” she says with a shrug.

I slide my crackers off the counter as he pays, taking him in from the corner of my eye. He’s tall with a sandy-colored beard cut close to his jaw and an untucked flannel shirt. His nose has a slightly crooked ridge, the sign of a previous break. His face freckles along the crest of his cheekbones, tawny and worn from the sun. His eyes are gray, but not dull. Something dazzles in them, like colored stones beneath the surface of the water. They remind me of the Cooper River, the taste of mud, the feel of freedom. I want to escape behind them.

When he’s finished, he holds the door for me. “Come on, my truck is just out here.”

I hesitate, then walk briskly outside, anxious to get away from the judgy glare of the cashier. “It’s okay,” I tell him when he follows me out. “I can walk.”

His mouth twitches on one side, and he sets the beer down in the bed of a nearby truck. “Not sure that’s wise,” he tells me. His eyes dart down to my booted foot and back up.

It’s not any wiser to get into a truck with another strange man, attractive though he may be in a wholesome, mountain-grown sort of way. Even if he bought me an armful of crackers. Wasn’t that Don’s excuse after all, that I owed him? I squint past him, thinking he will leave me alone if I don’t say anything, but he just stares, waiting.

Finally, he opens his door and says, “Get in. It’s unlocked.”

I pause, wrestling.

He leans across the seat to open the passenger door and I flinch, a reaction he doesn’t miss. Undoing the glove box, he straightens, watching me through the window of his open door. “Come over here,” he says, pointing to the passenger side. “Look inside.”

His voice is low, gentle, and yet I move only in small, wary steps. As I skirt the ajar door, he says, “The glove box.”

I take my eyes off him at the last possible minute and rest them on the open glove compartment, where a blocky handgun is lying on its side.

“Take it,” he tells me.

It feels like a trick. I don’t move.

His hands go up. “I just want to help you. You’ll never make it to Crow Lake on foot, not with that boot, not in these mountains. I can tell you don’t trust me, so take it. It’s already loaded. If I do anything to hurt you, all you have to do is point and pull the trigger. Understand?”

My lips part, the air whistling between them. The gun should alarm me, but it doesn’t. Instead, it is the way he makes himself vulnerable that unnerves me, like a person bowing at my feet. I reach in and close the glove box. “I trust you.”

His whole body sighs. Pressing his lips together, he dips his head and climbs in the truck. “It’ll take less than an hour,” he tells me. “If the roads are clear.”

“The roads?” I echo.

“There was a big storm up that way last night. Might have knocked over some trees. We’ll see.”

I slide into the truck, biting my lip as a fresh wave of pain crackles through my rib cage. I close the door and watch the lake through the window as we back out.

“I’m Regis, by the way,” he says.

“Acacia,” I tell him.

“Where you from?” he asks as we get onto the road.

I turn from the window to give him a tight smile. “Down south.”

“Well then. Welcome to the Adirondacks.” His face lights with a knowing grin. “You ever been in the woods before?”

The edge of our yard when I was a little girl flashes through my mind, shadowy and striped with pokeweed stems. “Not in a very long time.”

W E DRIVE IN uncomfortable silence for the next half hour or more while I eat my crackers one at a time. Between bites, I sneak little glimpses of him, sucking each detail down with my food, where my stomach warms. His build is neither slim nor stout, but comfortably somewhere in the middle, with well-muscled arms and square shoulders, a broad, toned chest. He has the look of someone who only woke up a couple of hours ago, a little disheveled without being messy, and his presence is as solid as a boulder, as if he is tethered to these mountains, a part of them. I smell fir needles in his hair, the wiry crop of beard, like a man made of the forest with tree sap running through him. It makes me want to roll in him like leaves, pick him from my sweater afterward, laughing.

“Crow Lake, huh?” he says finally. “I can’t imagine you’re here for the underrated trails with a foot like that.”

I shake my head, finishing off the last of my crackers. “Family.”

He nods, scratching at his beard. “Not much else up here, I’m afraid. It’s beautiful, but it takes a certain kind to live here.”

I wonder what he means by a certain kind. “You live in Saranac Lake?”

“I live in the area,” he says, eyes fixed to the road. “I was born in these mountains. I don’t know anything else.”

I’m quiet, trying to imagine what it’s like to know only these rocks and thickets of trees, the stillness of mirror lakes dotting the gaps. An air freshener hangs from his rear-view labeled with the fragrance Black Ice.

“You’re here at the wrong time, you know,” he adds. “You should have come earlier.”

“Oh?” I meet his eyes and have to look away. They are earnest and level and strong. They make me want to lean against him, to feel my muscles unwind one by one.

“Summer’s almost over. The temperature will start dropping in the next few weeks. These mountains will light with a fire of orange and red and yellow. It’ll be the most spectacular autumn you ever saw. Until the snow sets in. Then you’ll wish you were anywhere but here.” His tone says he speaks from experience.

“I don’t know,” I tell him. “Winter might be nice. It doesn’t snow where I’m from very often.”

His smile is laced with irony. He’s having a laugh behind those eyes at my expense. “And where would that be exactly?”

“Texas,” I lie. “Near Austin.”

“Well, Acacia from Near-Austin, Texas, I’m afraid you’re in for a frigid shock.” He rests an elbow on the edge of his door where it meets the window.

“You don’t like winter?” I ask him.

“Me? I love it. It’s my favorite season. It wakes you up, really teaches you what it is to be alive. But I was born and raised here. I got ice in the veins. Newcomers usually have a different reaction.” He studies me as I avoid his gaze. “But if you have family here, maybe you’ll stand half a chance. I give you till Christmas.”

I frown. His certainty makes me want to prove him wrong, to show him I’m his equal. I doubt I’ll be ready to set out on my own in less than five months anyway. I need money, work, a plan—things that take time. But the idea of moving continuously, staying several steps ahead of Henry like a shark that can’t stop swimming lest it drown, appeals to me more and more. I thought once I was out of Charleston, I would feel safe. Instead, I feel harried, a rabbit scented by wolves, never able to let down my guard.

The road turns black, the night thickening around us. Only his headlights cut through it, lighting up the pavement, the trunks of sleeping trees. I think we’re nearly there when the ginger-brown bark of a red pine comes into view, its enormous trunk laid out across the road at an angle, green needles sheeting the pavement.

“Shit,” he says, rolling to a stop. “We’ll have to turn back.”

“Turn back?” That’s not an option for me.

“Can’t pass till it’s cleared. We can try again in the morning.” Regis puts the truck in reverse and starts to back up.

“No. Stop. Just let me out here,” I tell him, panic hitching my voice, pinching my throat. “I can walk the rest of the way.”

He brakes and eyes the hulking boot on my foot. “You’re still at least ten miles out from the edge of Crow Lake,” he tells me.

“It’s fine,” I try to reassure him. “Really. I was gonna walk anyway. You saved me a lot of the trip.” I start to open the door, but he reaches for me.

Instinctively, I lean away, my hand snapping out for the glove box, the gun I know waits inside.

Regis raises his palms. “Listen, it’s really dark out here. Easy to get turned around, even with a road running before you. This is bear and moose country, you know. And worse.”

“Worse?” I quirk a brow, confused.

“There’s a serial killer running the area targeting women. We just found another body this morning,” he says.

The news report in the Syracuse bus station. The warnings. “I thought he was the Saranac Strangler?”

Regis frowns. “That was just the first two victims. The third was found in Tupper Lake, to the west.”

“And the last?” I ask.

“North of here. Off a remote trailhead.”

“I’m not worried,” I lie. It comes out wobbly, uncertain, a table missing a leg. The Saranac Strangler feels like a joke Henry is playing on me, as if he knew what I was planning and decided to beat me at my own game.

“I can drop you at the nearest motel,” he says. “Pick you up in the morning, drive you wherever you want to go. Just please, don’t get out of this truck. Not like this.”

He is pleading like a wounded man, eyes creasing with worry. It stuns me, forces me to rethink, wonder what this means to him, what I mean to him, the stranger he only just met. Most people would wash their hands of me as quickly as possible, feel no responsibility, and never look back. Regis, I realize, is not most people. Regis is unique, special. The thought is like a blast of cold, fresh air. Clearing. Restorative.

I pause, take my hand off the door handle, staring at him frankly. “I don’t have any money.”

“Not a problem,” he says, relieved, a smile inching its way over his face. “I’ll pay.”

But the nearest motel, it turns out, is a lodge off a county road twenty miles from here that is already fully booked when he calls. He puts his phone down, a hangdog expression pulling at the corners of his mouth, and eyes me like an abandoned puppy he has picked up after being told the shelter is full. “Don’t get the wrong idea,” he says after a minute, “but what if I take you to my place? Just until I can get the road cleared and drop you off in Crow Lake. I’ll sleep in the truck if you want. You can lock me out of my own house.”

I watch the way his brows lift and lower when he speaks, as if they are trying to send me a secret message, and the pudge of his bottom lip puckering around the words. I look out the window to where the dark is desperate to get in. A night so complete you could lose yourself in it forever.

“Acacia?” he asks when I don’t respond.

My eyes meet his, wary, spooked. At worst, Regis is an unknown. But out there, in the pitch, is a monster I am very familiar with, a murderer lying in wait. After Henry, I am so tired of fighting. I don’t need to run from the arms of one killer straight into the grasp of another. “Okay,” I tell him. “Take me to your place. One night.”

He nods briskly and swings the truck through a three-point turn, hurtling us back down the road. When we pull off into a dark cove of trees, a pocket of land hidden from the world by a wall of eastern white pine and hemlock, the headlights settle over a small, L-shaped cottage with a storybook stone exterior, quaint chimney jutting up at one end like a schoolhouse bell tower.

“This is it,” he says, beaming, his own little slice of heaven. He hops out of the truck.

I’m climbing down when something catches my eye, glowing faintly near a thick parcel of jewelweed off the corner of the house. I move toward it, crouching down carefully. It’s a mushroom, white as a ghost with a long stem and flat cap, smooth as stone. I’ve never seen anything so ethereal. The hunger I was battling, satiated at last by peanut butter crackers, suddenly flares to life, causing my mouth to fill with saliva. My fingers are inching forward when he stops me.

“I wouldn’t,” he calls, near the hood of the truck. “It’s a destroying angel.”

I look at him. “A what?”

“A mushroom. The pure white ones like that are poisonous. It’ll shut your liver down in a matter of hours. You’ll be dead before daybreak.”

I take a step away from it.

“You wouldn’t be the first to mistake it for something edible. The lack of color makes people think it’s safe. It’s deceptive that way, lures you in. They think the toxic ones are all bright red or orange, but it’s the ones that aren’t obvious that are the deadliest.”

I get to my feet, meeting him near the front door.

“If you’re still hungry, I can cook you something inside,” he says. “I make a mean grilled cheese, best in the forty-six High Peaks.”

I nod my consent as he shoulders the door open and follow him into the house, my eyes lingering only a moment longer on the moon-white skin of the mushroom splitting the dark.

Regis shrugs out of his flannel shirt, an army-green T-shirt beneath clinging to his torso. “Make yourself comfortable,” he says as he pulls an iron skillet from a low cabinet and quickly gets to work on the promised grilled cheese.

I peer from room to room. He lives neat for a man. Not immaculate like Henry—there are jackets crowning the backs of chairs and at least one empty mug left in every room—but the floor is clean, the sink empty of all but a few dishes, the living room confidently arranged for comfort. My eyes travel from the gleaming wood paneling to the butcher-block table to the suede sofa. A small corner cabinet displays a few choice pieces of enamelware. The hearth has a long, half-log mantel set with German beer steins. It looks like Snow White could live here. On a side table, I find a framed picture of a young girl, shiny brown hair in braids, freckles speckling her cheeks, eyes merry. A half-burned candle sits in front. I lift it for a closer look. His daughter, perhaps?

Regis ducks his head into the room. “Ready,” he says, smiling bashfully as though we are old friends, reunited at long last.

I turn, setting the picture back down. His eyes glide over it, falling, sinking behind his brows. “Sorry.” I don’t know what I’m apologizing for.

“My sister,” he tells me. “Once upon a time.”

It is a strange choice of words, as if she belongs to a fairy tale.

“You have siblings?” he asks after I seat myself at the kitchen table and bite into the gooey decadence that is melted cheese combined with toasted bread.

“No.” I feel his gaze on me as I eat and carefully avoid it.

“Children?” he tries again.

I shake my head. By some mysterious divine intervention, a secret chamber inside me where every warning about Henry I never heeded was tucked away, I did not make that particular cardinal error. I send a silent note of gratitude to my innermost self, who kept watch while the rest of me slept.

“Truly a free agent, then,” he comments.

It’s light, not meant to carry the weight I feel in it, but his words sing through me, a free agent.

I inhale the sandwich and Regis takes my plate, cleans it right away, and leaves it on a towel to dry. He turns. “I’m just gonna get some things then go outside.”

“You don’t have to,” I say. It seems wrong to make this man sleep in his truck when he’s been nothing but nice.

He shrugs. “I don’t mind. You’ll sleep better that way.” He slips into his room and back out, a throw blanket over his arm, toothbrush and tube of toothpaste fisted in his hand.

At the door, we pause, staring into each other like mirror images, the night crooning behind him.

“Well, sleep tight,” he says, reaching for the knob, his hand finding my own.

I stand there foolishly, feeling the way his fingers cup mine, not quite able to pull away. The little girl from the picture is suddenly there in my mind, all front teeth and laughter, a crease across the tip of her nose. She floods me with joy, a warmth for this man like the soft light of the sun, filtered through budding trees. None of the horrible flashes I’ve seen before with other men—gasping corpses, crying women. Only a rippling girlish energy like pink lemonade.

He lets go and she fades away. I lock the door behind him.

I SLEEP LIK E the dead and wake with a start. It takes several long, heart-thudding seconds for me to remember where I am. The house is perfectly silent, dust motes dancing like glitter through beams of sunlight, not even the hum of an air conditioner to greet me.

“Regis?”

I walk to the door. It’s still locked. When I turn back, the face of the girl in the photo smiles out at me, a little off-center. Why does he only have a picture of her so young?

At first I think it’s late morning, but the slant of the light is wrong. Disoriented, I look for a clock, but can’t find one. I turn on the television, only to be greeted by another news report. Not morning, evening. I recognize Don’s thermos lying in the grass at the reporter’s feet, and my intestines ball up inside me.

“… And that’s when they found the body, lying here beside the road. The man has been positively identified as Don Rodgers, a high-profile political consultant from Washington, DC. Police are still investigating his cause of death but ask anyone with information to please come forward.”

Someone hammers on the door, and I hit the power button, going to peer out the window. Regis smiles back at me and I let him in. My knees knock with every step, the thermos in the grass an exclamation point at the end of the sentence condemning me. Why did he have to be someone newsworthy? However much I wanted to be a moving target so Henry couldn’t find me, now I want to bury myself somewhere deep and not come out until Don’s flesh is stripped from his bones and the question of how he died submerged under a mountain of ever-piling current events.

“Did you just get up?” he asks, the bright smile he carries flickering like a candle hit by a sudden wind.

I wrap my arms around myself. “What time is it?”

“It’s after six,” he says, peering at me as though I’m another species. “My word, what have you been through?”

I clear my throat. “Can you give me that ride now?”

He sets a paper bag down, pulls out a pack of pork chops and a couple cans of beans. “Thought you might want to eat something first.”

It’s sweet, but all I want is to disappear. “I’m not hungry.”

His mouth flattens, twitches, and reforms itself into another, kinder smile. But I can see he’s disappointed. “No problem. Let me put these away.”

I use his bathroom to brush my teeth, and splash some water over my face and arms, the grime of the river still clinging to me. I used the hand soap last night to wash away the worst of the smell, but wasn’t comfortable enough to take a shower. I comb my fingers through my hair and rearrange it in another tight knot. It’ll be okay, I tell my reflection. She’ll be there. She’ll help you. For confirmation, I conjure the article and picture I found before leaving Charleston of the woman from my childhood standing beside a vintage green-and-red motel sign. The caption read: Myrtle Corbin, owner of the Balsam Motor Inn, found the body Wednesday morning when she went to inquire about her guest. It was seven years old.

The drive is shorter this time, the road clear. Regis explains that he spent most of the day helping the county break up the tree so it could be hauled away. He talks as we drive, amiable, light conversation, the occasional question I answer as succinctly as possible, a kind of happy white noise to fill the time until we pass the WELCOME TO CROW LAKE sign and begin to spot signs of life— a mailbox, a gas station in the distance, a tiny, bustling tavern: the Drunken Moose.

“So, where to? Do you have an address?”

“No,” I tell him. “But I have a name. The Balsam Motor Inn.”

His eyes narrow almost imperceptibly. “What do you want with that place?”

A chill enters the cab of the truck, putting space between us. “I told you; I have family there.”

“Myrtle?” he asks, incredulous. “Myrtle Corbin is your family?”

“Is that a problem?” I can’t miss the layer of disappointment under his tone.

He shakes his head. “No. No, of course not. She just never said she had family, is all.”

But I lean closer to the door as we cross through the town and carry on to Aunt Myrtle’s place. The sun lowers itself in the sky, as if it is racing us to our destination. My companion is suddenly quiet, almost sullen.

When I see the familiar rustic green-and-red sign that reads MOTEL in block letters come into view—neon bright in the dull evening—I grin with relief and roll my window down. Above it, a tree-shaped sign is painted with BALSAM MOTOR INN . A crescent of cozy cabins with low gable roofs, painted brackets, and tea-dark, live-edge siding are set against a thick backdrop of fir trees, a sweet, Christmassy smell dusting the air. At one end, an A-frame rises to an impossible pitch under a dark metal roof like the point of a witch’s hat. Sleepy windows checker the front, their planter boxes crawling with ivy, and a farmhouse door shadowed with glass reveals a darkened interior. Two brightly painted signs hang over it, one reading OFFICE , the other CAFé . I feel like we’ve stumbled into a rundown elven village somewhere in the Bavarian Alps, the pops of green, red, and yellow reminiscent of carnivorous plants.

Regis pulls up in front but leaves the motor running. “This is it,” he says, a knowing cut to his jaw.

I open the door to get out. “Thank you,” I tell him. “For everything.”

“Glad I could help.” He nods. “Will I see you again?” he asks sharply as I close the door.

I lean against the open window. “You know where to find me.”

His eyes linger over me. “Stay out of trouble.” It is authoritative, a command, and also worried, a request. I wonder what trouble I could possibly find out here in the middle of nowhere. Then he pulls away, vanishing into the night.

I make my way to the door of the A-frame but find it locked. Knocking loudly, I step back, hoping she is here. Anyone, really. This is my only hope.

Inside, I see a series of small lights turn on in succession. When the door opens with a tinkle, a tall woman answers with silver-streaked hair dripping over one shoulder in a long plait. Her face is rounder than I remember, her eyes a touch more sunken but just as bright, with full cheeks beneath them and a curling smile. “Dinner was at five. We’re closed now. No vacancy, dear. See the sign?”

She points, and I turn and realize that the lit sign does indeed read NO VACANCY . Only, the NO keeps flickering on and off.

“Blasted sign,” she grumbles. “Try the Gooseneck, in town. They might have a room yet.” She starts to close the door.

I whip out a hand to hold it open, and her eyes flick to mine, troubled. “Aunt Myrtle?” I ask. “Myrtle Corbin?”

Her face falls, contorts, rearranges itself into a whisper of recognition. “Piers? Lily’s girl ?”

The sudden relief hits me with such force I can scarcely stand. I lean against the doorframe. My shoulders tremble and the tears flow as I dash them away. “I have nowhere else to go,” I whisper.

Without hesitation, she pulls the door wide. “I knew you’d show up someday,” she says, motioning me inside. “Come in, child. You’re home now.”