EMILY RUSKOVICH

She rode swit ly, thinking that as soon as she made it to her car, she would go to Laura. Laura would help her; she would know what to do. They hadn’t spoken in years, but Abby was sure that the moment Laura heard her voice, she would set aside her pain and anger, and she would tell Abby what she needed to know. She understood intuitively that escaping the woods was not enough, that whatever was following her would continue to follow her through her life until—

Until Laura. Until Laura could halt it in its tracks.

It was Laura, at er all, who had suf ered most all those years ago. Laura whose name had seemed to echo inside the creature’s howl. And, Abby realized now, she had felt Laura’s presence even before she recognized Professor Naughton in the stranger’s face, maybe even before she had seen the stranger at all. Hadn’t Laura been there at the edge of her mind early that morning, when she i rst started up this path? It was as if Laura had been trying to reach her thoughts for a long time.

Several minutes had now passed without a sound

from the creature. So she allowed herself to pause in her light, to stop and listen, to search the air for threats that might be closer.

A hot breeze stirred the pines, and the July light jittered on the needles. There was a moment of quiet, of calm, and, for the irst time, she allowed herself to wonder — a stranger turned lover turned creature, all before her eyes. What if there were more of them?

There was a panic in the leaves then, a panic in the light. Everything around her seemed suddenly deceptive, something other than itself. The deermouse that had skittered along the trail. The stellar jays in the trees. Inside of those harmless creatures — What? More horrible memories. Sinister and thrashing to get out. Memories that could snap awake, alive, with the mere rearrangement of features. Not just the professor. But other people from other times in her life. Other people who had wronged her, or whom she had wronged. She felt them all at once. She felt them in the birds that she could hear, in the insects she couldn’t see. Everywhere. The trail itself seemed to move through her, into her, past her. A little girl she used to taunt — she felt that girl unfurl in a fern. And in the happy screeching of the stellar jays — her brothers, their bright and horrible conniving. Somewhere close by, she couldn’t see it, but she knew: a lizard slept on a rock, but its dreams were those of her poor father, whom she had abandoned slowly and in the most cruel way.

And there was her mother in the snowberries; her irst love in the trees. The girl from college who had killed herself — there she was now, somewhere close by, the terriied heart of a rabbit.

Her boyfriend. She felt him tighten around her inger, the very sapphire suddenly alive with his intentions.

And, everywhere, everywhere, even in the rocks themselves, was Laura.

It can’t be real. It can’t. But that thought was somehow even worse than what was right before her. And briely, against all reason, she hoped to hear the howl again, because running from something horrible and real was easier than standing still inside your mind, throwing your own threats all around you.

Once more, she was lying down the trail. And and in her periphery were the voices of her life, calling, calling. At any moment, the features of the world would crack. Rocks would crumble and unfold into faces. Trunks would split and soten into smiles. Birdsong into taunts and sunlight into weeping.

And the howl — the howl was real! It was there, and it was closer, and it was almost a relief to know exactly what to run from. The professor, the coyote, the bear.

And there, ahead of her, the car.

She let her bike fall to the pavement. She tripped over it in her panic, skinned her knee, stumbled to the door and unlocked it. She got inside, slammed the door and felt relief in the quiet of the car.

She knew where Laura lived. And she turned the key, and began her journey toward her.