As he lifted one to his eye, it slipped from his hand and disappeared into a puddle of muddy water.
“Damn it!” he cursed, hunching over.
He sank his hands into the watery hole, digging into the mud, but couldn’t find the rock. He brushed over sodden leaves and twigs.
The torrent of rain continued, casting leaves from the trees and sending branches plummeting to the earth.
Above him, a crow squawked.
He shielded his eyes from the rain and stared at the dark bird perched in an ancient-looking oak tree. The tree’s limbs were fat and gnarled.
Mack studied the bird. Something white poked from its mouth, and after several seconds, he knew it was the white stone he’d dropped in the puddle.
“How the-” he started, but the bird took flight and disappeared into the forest.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he grumbled as the bird vanished.
Lightning cracked the sky and a boom of thunder shook the trees. Mack half-expected to see a tree burst into flames.
“A forest fire,” he grouched. “That’d just make my day.”
Though no fire could take hold in the rain drenching the Stoneroot Forest. A spark would vanish before it ever lit orange.
As he trudged on, Mack missed his dog. He’d left her at the cabin, fearing she’d get lost or worse in the woods. But now, as the rain fell and the wind began to howl, he dreaded continuing alone.
He’d set off in the late morning when the sun had been high and the day promised blue skies. But now, evening approached. He had an hour before the sun would set.
“Just a little further,” he decided. He checked the compass, continuing north.
The temperature had dropped, and Mack’s teeth chattered as he walked. He flexed and released his toes, trying to drive the icy numbness out of his extremities.
He stopped again, fumbled through the stones, pressing each to his eye. Wilderness in every direction.
“This is a fool’s mission,” he mumbled, and turned back.
Diane had implied the same thing when he’d told her of his plan to trek into the woods and search for Corey’s cabin with the hag stones. She insisted that finding George Corey’s daughter would be a better use of his time, but he disagreed. Now he wished he’d listened to her.
He turned back toward his cabin, but the needle on the compass continued to point due north. He shifted in a circle. Every direction read north.
“Rain must have got it,” he mumbled, needing to say the lie out loud. He tucked the compass in his pocket and shuffled in the direction he believed his cabin stood.
After several minutes, he pulled out the compass. Again, no matter which direction he aimed it, the little needle pointed north.
Another flash of lightning, followed almost immediately by a crash of thunder, split the sky, and Mack jumped, startled. He slipped on the wet leaves and went down on his butt.
He sat, stunned, gazing into the slowly darkening forest.
The shadows beneath the trees deepened and Mack realized with the night, the deeper cold would come. The killing cold, his Uncle Byron used to call it when they hunted the Stoneroot Forest in the winter.
Mack knew he could die in the forest.
In the spring, someone would find him much the same way as he had found George.
Mack, at least, would not have a knife in his ribs.
The cold earth seeped through his saturated pants, and he had the hysterical notion of lying down and taking a nap. He would drown.
He thought of Diane then, and the tilt of her eyes when she’d said goodbye to him the day before. He saw fear in her expression.
“Should ‘a kissed her,” he said. And had he known he might never get another chance; he would have done just that. “But I’m grateful,” he told the sky, water running into his eyes and mouth. “I’m grateful for every second I had with you, Diane. Even the bad times were some of the best of my life.”
He took out the stones and lifted one to his eye, but his numb fingers dropped the bag and he watched the flat, white stones disappear into the mucky earth.
He swore, but his curse had no heart.
Mack had grown tired, wet and heavy, and too exhausted to care if he ever made it out of the Stoneroot Forest.
He lifted the final stone to his eye and gaped at the scene beyond the hole.
A small cabin hunched in the forest before him. A curl of smoke floated from the chimney, mingling with the rain above.
When he took the stone from his eye, the cabin vanished and an endless, murky forest reappeared. He lifted it back up and squinted through the tiny hole at the cabin.
Struggling to his feet, the other stones forgotten, Mack walked toward the log house, not daring to remove the stone pressed to his eye for fear it would disappear.
Only when his hand closed upon the doorknob did he take the stone away. The cabin door remained before him, real and solid. He turned the handle and fell inside.
The cabin was rustic, but warm. A woven red rug lay in the center of a wood floor. A bed of straw covered in blankets, the frame fashioned from large knobby branches, stood against the wall. Two crude chairs sat near a crackling fire.
Mack found a basin of drinking water in the kitchen and dipped a copper ladle into the dark water, drinking several cups before stumbling to a chair and collapsing into it.
A sound startled him, and he turned to see the crow from the forest watching him from its single good eye. In the firelight, Mack could see the milky glaze over its other eye.
The bird stood on a branch inside the cabin.
As Mack watched, it dropped the stone from its mouth onto the table, where five other similar stones already lay. The small leather pouch rested beside them.
Mack blinked at the stones, his eyes growing heavy in the heat. He peeled off his soggy clothes, dropping them on the floor and glancing again at the bird. It shuddered, its wings slick from the rain dripping from its shining black feathers.
Pulling an itchy wool blanket from the bed, Mack leaned his head back and drifted into sleep.
He woke to find a tall man in the chair opposite him. A man with hair as black as the crow’s feathers and eyes to match.
Mack knew he was the ghost, the dead man in the woods, and yet here the man sat, skin pink in the fire glow, watching Mack with his steady dark eyes.
“You’re dead, though,” Mack muttered drowsily.
George’s eyes glanced up at him, and they were no longer dark holes in the man’s face. They were kind eyes.
“What is death, my friend?” Corey asked.
“Dead, gone. I saw your bones in the ground,” Mack murmured.
“And you believe you saw George Corey in the ground? All that George Corey was, in those raggedy bones? Could all of Mack Gallagher be contained therein?”
“You’re confusing me,” Mack sighed.
Warmth radiated from the hearth and cast George in shimmering light. The heat warped the edges. Nothing was sharp. It all seemed to flow and curve.
“Why do you think you found me, Mack?” George asked.
“Because my dog smelled your carcass,” Mack drawled.
George chuckled.
“She did, yes. But what if I told you, you set her on that path? I called out to you, and you came.”
“But you couldn’t have because you were dead. You are dead…” he trailed off and let his head fall back.
“The living are so concerned with the dead,” George said. “Mack, I called out to you and you answered the call. You are bound to my service, and I cannot set you free until you have fulfilled your purpose. A very long time ago, you and I made a deal. I saved your life. Now it is time to repay your debt.”
Mack looked at the man again, his head lolling to the side.