I watched the thing, looking for a response.
If it could talk, I imagined it would have just now. But it didn’t, which posed problems.
Everything I’d bound thus far, I’d negotiated with.
How the fuck was I about to bind this thing? It was a big, nasty, cunning animal, beast in every respect that a ‘beast’ was a problem for me, and it wasn’t stupid.
Not stupid, but petty. It was content to taunt.
Except it wouldn’t be in a taunting mood, now that I’d shot it.
I’d embrace the fact. It was angry? I’d have to find a way to use the anger.
“Your move, little goblin,” I said.
He stepped back again, and then he roared.
Howled. Screeched. It wasn’t a natural sound. It was a broken, crackling, painful sound, one that made my skin crawl.
That done, it disappeared, fleeing into the thick of the woods.
“Move, Evan,” I said. I hopped over the hedge much the way I’d come.
“What? It’s dangerous.”
“It’s about to get more dangerous. I’m ninety percent sure he just called out to all the other bumps and spooks and ghosts in this forest,” I said. I watched Evan slip over hedge and fence, struggling a bit, helpless to help. “No more stealth.”
“Shouldn’t we go the other way?”
“No,” I said. “Can you tell where he is?”
“He’s hiding. Far, but not that far. Watching and listening.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“It’s… easier to tell. I guess, and I’m right. I went to sleep this afternoon, too tired to keep moving, too hungry… I woke up feeling… not better, but it’s easier to tell.”
You died, I thought, and just like the monster more sensitive, with connections only to his half-devoured prey, you’ve got less flesh in the way of sensing things.
“Alright. He’s sorta far, and he’s watching. Not the worst case scenario,” I said. “There’re just a few moments. Let’s see…”
I drew June, and hacked off a few of the biggest clusters of the holly hedge.
“What’s the worst case scenario?” Evan asked.
“Him running. Getting as far away as he can.”
“That’s not right.”
“Let’s move,” I said. “We gotta get gone before the little guys close the net.”
“Him running is the best thing,” Evan said.
“Not when you’re hunting him,” I said. “Come on.”
4.12
By and large, asking an American how far away something was tended to get an answer in terms of miles. The gas station is a quarter mile that way. Ask a Canadian? Time. The highway is a ten minute drive thataway. Or so the idea went, with exemptions for more civilized areas of the States and less civilized parts of Canada.
When I tried to parse how big the park was, the number of Others present, I thought in terms of time. Time to get away. The amount of time that had passed between each encounter with a ghost or some other Other.
I’d passed maybe one spirit every two to five minutes.
Judging by the number of spirits I could sense by way of connection, now, extrapolating? This park was as big as fuck. A good hour or two on foot, if I didn’t backtrack to where I’d started out.
The net was drawing closed. Not a circle, enclosing me, but a general shape that followed the contours of terrain, streams, hills, cliffs and other stuff that might impede travel.
Not that I could extrapolate anything from the patterns I saw. I wasn’t that smart, for one thing, and there were too many different kinds, following different rules.
Not to mention that the trees were thick enough that I couldn’t make out much twenty feet ahead of me.
I ran, shotgun in hand, branches of holly held to my back by both the coils of chain and my jacket, pricking at my shoulder, neck, and ear.
The first ones to reach me weren’t ghosts, but Faerie. Mangled, savage Faerie, who had made themselves beautiful, used Glamour to change their shape and conform to ideals of beauty, only to find themselves in the Goblin’s clutches, maimed and somehow trapped in his realm. Hair grown long, dirty, clothes in tatters, where years of abuse and survival in the woods hadn’t removed them entirely. Eyes stared at me from behind long greasy hair, the faces and forms I could make out were attractive.
Were it not for the look in their eyes, the fact that they’d been harrowed by years of pain and degradation, the resentment and hate, I might have dismissed them as Hollywood savages. Actors playing roles.
I turned to take a different route, and one broke away from the group, blocking my path.
I remembered what Fell had said. This was a bad place to stop moving.
“The tree people,” Evan said, his eyes on the Faerie.
“Yeah?” I asked. I almost reached out for his hand, then stopped. I took a hard right, pushing through the branches.