Page 60 of The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells
My phone chugs toward the last of its battery power, and I realize I am truly cast off from the world. I’ve cut myself loose, cut away every net and anchor. I’ve wandered far beyond the paths I’ve trodden before, into a wilderness of overgrown trapper trails. With the last trickle of power on my phone, I scrutinize the picture of the map I took in Matthieu’s cabin and have a chilling realization.
The only way out of these mountains is through.
The hour circles toward midnight, the witching hour. I try not to dwell on all the tales in the book, the ones of people vanishing on these mountains. Of women coming back after searching forsomeone lost and never being quite right afterward. I pause to rest for a moment, turning off my head torch so it’s only me and the stars.
Then I hear it.
A low panting, a groan. More animal than human. Stripped down, as bare as I am, all the human veneer scraped away and taken by the mountains.
“Matthieu?” I say, hope beating in my chest. “Matthieu?”
I hold myself still, listening beyond the drum of my own heart.
Then—
“Carrie?”
I gasp, hands flying to my mouth as I stumble around, my gaze raking over everything.
“Carrie, is that you?”
“I—I’m here! Matthieu, I’m here!” I say, tears blurring my words as they thicken in my chest. I fumble for the head torch, switching it on with twitching fingers. “Keep talking, describe what you see, I’m coming.”
Matthieu groans again but begins talking, finding the words for the dark surrounding him, trapping him. I scramble down and, finding a ledge too high to jump, lower myself slowly, easing around the edges—
“Matthieu!” I cry out as I find the shape of him. He’s below the high ledge, like he’s fallen off it, and is sitting in the crook of an exposed tree root. He laughs, panting, as his face tilts toward mine. I’m weeping, shaking with the sheer relief of it being over, this all being over, I’ve found him,I’ve found him—
Then I see it. His leg, all bent and full of angles. The dark sweep of something too similar to blood—
“Carrie, my love, I can’t move.”
Chapter 45
Jess
“Tom, I need you to meet me at the hospital. I need—I need you.”
“What’s wrong? Is it—is it the baby?”
“I’m fine. It’s not me... it’s Cora Morgan’s husband... Howard. He’s had a heart attack. Mum’s picking up Elodie from school.”
“Okay. I’ll meet you there.”
“Cora’s babbling, and I don’t know if I can handle her solo. She keeps saying... Christ, this is hard. I don’t know what to make of it. She thinks Carrie’s missing. She keeps saying she’ll follow him to the mountains and never return. Tom, tell me, did she say anything to you last night about someone she’s met?”
“Yes, she did, but...”
“What? Tom, what did she say?”
“She said something about someone called Matthieu. She was worried about him, wanted to find him. He lives in the mountains, in a cabin—”
“Oh shit.”
“Has anyone heard from her today?”
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”
Chapter 46
