Hemlock Veils

At his side was a soaked woman, small but with eyes wider than the moon on a full night. Regina supported him from his other side.

“Inside,” Eustace ordered, out of breath and managing to pick up his pace with an impaired gait.

Everyone, huddled around him and trying to keep up, spoke at once. “What were you doing out there?” Taggart demanded.

“What’d it do to you?” Brian asked, calling over Regina’s shoulder.

Nicole, voice as shaky as ever, said, “You got it, right, Bathgate?”

They reached the diner, filing in two bodies at a time—a mass of voices and dripping figures. In the chaos, Eustace and the mysterious woman had yet to speak. Eustace leaned on the counter, holding his hand tenderly. The woman, whose breaths came and went in a shudder, stared out the window. Nearly purple lips accented her white face. “You shot him,” she said to herself.

“You’d rather I let it shred you?” Eustace rushed, and that was all it took for silence. Every eye and ear waited for an explanation. But neither of them seemed to realize the crowd was here. Eustace—breaths finally slowing and beard still dripping—stared at the woman with an unreadable, almost cautious expression. He removed his cap.

The silence made the woman turn. Her eyes snapped out of whatever trance she’d been in, for they shot to Eustace’s bloody hand. “Eustace,” she said, rushing to him. “You’re hurt.” It was a wonder how in the world she knew him. Eustace Bathgate didn’t know anyone outside of Hemlock Veils. She looked at Regina, tucking wet brown hair behind her ear with a shaky hand. “Ma’am, do you have a first-aid kit by chance?”

“It’s nothing,” Eustace said before Regina could respond. “Regina, get this one a blanket before we lose her to hypothermia.”

“I don’t exactly carry blankets around here, Eustace,” Regina said, hand on her hip.

The young woman pried Eustace’s fingers open, and he flinched. Blood covered the deep gash on his palm. “It’s not nothing,” she said, as though Eustace’s mother. “This is deep.”

“Must’ve been when it ripped the shotgun from my hand,” he said, trying not to wince.

“Ma’am,” the woman said at Regina again, while Regina still tried to grasp what they’d just said. “Some bandages and antiseptic would come in real handy right now.”

Regina stared her down, trying to get a read. If it wasn’t Eustace in need of assistance, she might tell her to get her own bandages. Something felt strange about the girl being here, as though she’d already turned everything topsy-turvy.

“Fine then,” Regina finally said, walking to the small cupboard behind the counter, the one with all the odds and ends. The first-aid kit she’d put there a couple years ago after Nicole’s incident should still be there somewhere. “You oughta go to the clinic, Eustace,” she said, still searching.

“I’m not waking Doc Ortiz just for a scrape.”

Regina found the kit and slid it across the counter. The woman rummaged through it, pulling out gauze and applicators that looked like large Q-tips.

“You trust this woman to stitch you up?”

The woman’s eyes shot to Regina only briefly. “He won’t need stitches.”

“Oh, you a doctor?”

“A nurse…kind of.” She doused an applicator tip with Betadine and began to apply it to Eustace’s hand, gently. He nearly jumped, then sighed and looked away.

“How are you a nurse…kind of?”

“Yes, I trust this woman,” Eustace said in response to Regina’s earlier question, not allowing the visitor to answer. He sent a warning glance at Regina. Something had to be said about her if Eustace liked her. “Beth here saved my life.”

There it was. Regina couldn’t stop the sensation that came over her at his simple statement. Something comforting, almost a true peace, settled inside her chest, despite her many questions. It was clear everyone else’s curiosity had piqued too, since the only sound came from the package of gauze the woman named Beth opened. Regina’s eyes flitted from Eustace to Beth.

“Saved your life?” asked Deputy Holman, unconvinced.

Eustace gave a single nod. “Everyone, this is Elizabeth Ashton.”

“Bathgate, I swear,” Taggart said, face red and mustache twitching. “If you don’t clue me in on what’s going on here…”

“Sheriff, calm down. Let’s everyone calm down. I promised her a safe place to stay tonight and she’s going to get that. She’s had a long journey, her car’s broken down on Mt. Hood Highway, and she trusted an old fool to get her here.” He paused for effect, looking to all eyes. “An old fool who just so happened to give her face time with the beast. And when I say face time, I mean literal, breathing-in-her-face time. So I think it best we show our respect.”

Nicole gasped, and without realizing it, so had Regina.

***

Violent wind rattled the motel window’s screen. Raindrops smeared across it, hindering Elizabeth’s view. She lay in one of Anita Thurman’s fla

But she wouldn’t know just how spectacular the view from her window was until morning. The motel sat at the top of Red Cedar Loop, which curved above town and, according to the Thurmans, placed it within dangerous reach of the monster. They’d said they never had guests for that reason: everyone was too terrified of the darkened forest her window faced.

She imagined the view, how it would look with a little light and less rain. While lying on her side, she couldn’t remove her mind’s eye from it. Or from him, of the way he looked at her. He was out there somewhere, probably bleeding. Would he survive? Had Hemlock Veils seen the end of their terrorizing beast, who Elizabeth didn’t think was so terrorizing after all?

She would never tell them her secret: that she thought him as harmless as the next resident of Hemlock Veils. They’d think her just as satanic as their beast. She would never try to explain the desperation in his eyes during their stare-down, or the way he gave her a pass. The way he seemed too intelligent to be a ravenous monster. But what was he? Who was he? And why had people in the diner stared at her with awe when Eustace had finished explaining what happened to them?

There were a whole lot of things about this place she didn’t understand. Even the people were a mystery: the way they loved the place they feared. Regina, the woman whose skin was the color of molasses, had seemed most skeptical of her at first. But something changed in her after Eustace’s recounting; whether it was pity for Elizabeth’s encounter with the beast or a strange reverence, Regina welcomed her now. She’d called Bill Thurman herself so he could check her into his vacant five-bedroom motel. Bill had been so excited to have a guest he’d even turned the motel’s neon sign on.

When Elizabeth had searched through her leather shoulder bag for her wallet, to pay Bill, she’d found everything soaked through. But worse, the locket her father had given her many years ago had vanished. She’d removed everything three times, and again when she arrived to her room and hung all her clothes and underwear—and the damned money—over the shower curtain rod to dry; but the locket was gone. She’d had it when leaving California, and that meant it had probably fallen to the sodden forest floor. Probably it came out when she and her bag got tossed over the fallen log.

She willed it to stay put, wherever it was, since it was the only good thing she had left of him. And as she closed her eyes, seeing again the monster with a lost soul, she let herself breathe, truly breathe, for the first time since Willem came smashing through her door one week ago.