The Dead Man: Ring of Knives

'After you,' he said politely, taking Annica's hand and guiding her past the wailing aide. Her hand was small and warm in his, and he held it tightly as he led her down the hall, through the common room, and out into the fog.

# # # # # #

Hooh—ooh, ooh—HOOH.

Hooh—ooh, ooh—HOOH.

'What's that?' Annica pressed close to him as they jogged across the quad's wet grass, heading for the dark line of trees at its north end.

'Just an owl. Don't be scared—everything'll be okay. We're gonna head out the back way, up the meditation path.'

'I'm not scared,' she said. 'One of my wild talents is precognition. You ever heard of precognition? It means I can tell the future. And I can tell the meditation path will be totally deserted at this time of night. So, yeah: I'm fully aware that it's gonna be okay.'

He looked down at her. She'd wept away most of the kohl, and without it she looked a lot younger than he'd thought. Fifteen, maybe? Fourteen?

'You believe me, right?' she asked.

'Of course,' he lied.

But as the two of them tramped through the tall, wet grass, he wasn't at all sure that her confidence in him wasn't just as misplaced.

In the washroom he'd been possessed with a weird certainty: he had to come to her aid; there'd been no question in his mind about it, and once he'd committed to doing so, the solution to every problem after that had appeared to him clearly, larger than life, in three dimensions. It was like how George Brett described his tunnel vision during his hitting streak with the 1980 Kansas City Royals: every pitch looked like a beach ball rolling towards him in slow motion.

Matt wondered if his confidence in the washroom, his quick thinking, were at all related to his accident. He'd been in a few bar fights in the past, mainly with drunks—some friends, some not—who'd been too dumb to know when to quit, and he'd done okay. He'd even done some light boxing at the gym—just sparring, messing around. But he'd never felt so alive, so hyperaware, as in the moments after he'd seen the girl being dragged down the hall on the monitor. Maybe it's my function, he thought. What I'm meant to do. Why I came back.

Or not. Because out in the chilly, vaporous fog, his certainty, his confidence, was quickly ebbing away. Should they—like Dindren—escape through the meditation path, or double back to the parking lot, and so avoid the woods, but risk running into the night shift?

He didn't know. They were probably screwed either way.

Fuck it: head into the woods. Especially since, as they passed the Admin Building, he saw a dark shape in the FA's window, staring out at them. Matt stared back. Something was odd about the shape of its head. Wearing a hat? Who the hell knew. But it turned to watch them pass.

Not good.

'C'mon,' he said, picking up the pace.

'Cold out here,' she said, rubbing her arms as she ran. And then: 'Where are you taking me?'

'Away.'

Hooh—ooh, ooh—HOOH.

Hooh—ooh, ooh—HOOH.

# # # # # #

Soon enough they reached the flagstone path that led into the woods. There was a concrete birdbath on one side of the trail, and from it hung a poster-board sign, which said in puffy letters,

Carthage MHC Proudly Presents

Forest Friends:

Willy Willow and Betty Birch Meet the Head Tree!

Bottom of the Netflix queue for that one, Matt thought as he pulled the girl into the woods. The path grew soft with pine needles, and with less fog to reflect the light, it became darker. Here and there pale shrouds of moonlight shafted between the trunks, leaving jagged shadows on the forest floor.

'I think someone's following us,' the girl said in a strangled voice.

Matt looked over his shoulder. For a split second he saw two coin-sized glimmers, like the reflecting eyes of a cat, then one, then none.

Had they passed behind a tree?

Had they been there at all?

Off to his right he heard a knocking sound, like a woodpecker at work. But did they do that at night? He hadn't thought so.

'Oh my God . . .' Her voice was so high he almost couldn't hear it. He looked where she was looking. To the left, moving behind a deadfall, was someone moving on all fours. Or something.

'About that precognition . . . ,' he said.

'It's not as well developed as my disruption of electrical systems,' she whispered.

He had several responses to that. He didn't say any of them.

Footsteps behind them, fast and light. Matt sped up, dragging the girl by the hand. They rounded a boulder covered in black moss and came to a small clearing containing an amphitheater of cut stone. But between them and the amphitheater was something unexpected: a glowing oak. Someone had strung white Christmas lights all along its thick trunk and low-hanging branches.

The girl began to scream uncontrollably.

Matt almost joined her.

The oak: it wasn't Willy Willow or Betty Birch. It was definitely the Head Tree.

Why?

Because it was hung with heads.

Every bough seemed to have one. Matt recognized the silver-bearded facility administrator, eyes rolled back into his skull, slack jawed, black tongued, bloody chinned. And the dark-skinned CMO with the white mustache, now a lot less dignified than in his portrait in Admin. And the head nurse, her brow still furrowed, her mouth a dismayed slash, her neck hanging in strips from her jaw like the tentacles of a jellyfish. And there were a dozen more dangling from the tree's glowing limbs, garish ornaments for a holiday in hell.

A pattering sound: one of the heads was new, was still dripping.

Matt spotted it, recognized the one dark eye, the slanting teeth, the bee-stung lips . . .

'Dindren,' Matt whispered.

Above him, a flapping sound.

Looked up.

Wings outspread . . . glowing eyes . . .

No time!

Impact.

Darkness.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Matt blinked painfully.

Drew a breath.

Tried to put his hands on his face—and couldn't.

Opened his eyes against the fluorescent glare.

He was in a white room, strapped to a white bed.

Only it wasn't a bed. But it did have a pillow.

And straps.