EARLY MARCH IN BURNING LAKE, NEW YORK
Veronica Manes, the town’s best-known practicing witch, woke up staring at the blank white sky, snowflakes dusting her cheeks. She was shivering cold, lying on the ground in the dead of winter. She looked around and realized she was way out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by woods and snow.
Veronica struggled to sit up, thinking that she must be dreaming. She took a deep breath, pain flaring inside her head. She blinked a few times and wobbled to her feet. Steel chains clinked. She looked down and realized with a spike of dread that she was shackled to the railroad tracks on the edge of town.
What the hell is going on? How did I get here?
Her throbbing skull made it difficult to think. She was handcuffed to two lengths of steel chain that looped around the railroad tracks—one handcuff per wrist. She twisted and yanked on the cuffs and padlocked chains, desperate to free herself. She knelt down in the snow and clawed at the rusty braces between the rails and rotting wooden ties, to no avail.
Veronica panicked, her heart doing double-flips as she realized the futility of her efforts. She stood up and looked around for a way out of this insanity. Any minute now, somebody was going to pop out of the woods and tell her it was all a joke. A horrible, disgusting prank. Trick or treat.
“Help! Somebody help me!” Her screams slap-echoed through the woods and bounced off the drifts.
The place was remote. There weren’t many houses built near the tracks north of town. A friend of hers lived along the commuter line and was constantly complaining about the noise—the blare of the horn, the clatter of the boxcars, clang, clang, clang.
Veronica scanned the tree line and saw a waft of smoke drifting from a nearby chimney. “Hello, can you hear me? I need help. Somebody help me!” She yanked hard, trying to pull herself free, but each time she jerked on the handcuffs, the rattling steel chains held firm. Her heart rate soared. She knew she was trapped.
Now something even more disturbing caught her eye as she looked down at herself—what kind of weird outfit was she wearing? The world spun for a moment. Veronica couldn’t believe it. She was dressed for Halloween as a caricature of a witch—a long black costume and a tall wide-brimmed hat straight out of The Wizard of Oz. Lying on the ground next to the tracks was a broomstick.
What was going on? Was this some sort of sadistic joke? Her brain was in a fog. Something terrible was happening. She tried to escape by twisting her hands out of the cuffs, but they were tightly ratcheted around her wrists. The metal was ice-cold against her skin.
Now a distant train horn pierced the silence—a familiar warning cushioned by the gently falling snow. She spotted a single headlight through a veil of fog. Life was so beautiful. Everything glowed. “Please stop!” She frantically waved her arms, but the chains would only allow a limited range of motion. “I can’t get away! I’m chained to the tracks! Stop!”
The engineer didn’t see her. The train plowed forward, spitting gravel in its wake. Rumbling and shaking the ground underneath the tracks.
Deep in her gut, Veronica understood that no one was coming to rescue her.
You run and run and try catching up with your life, but then one day time runs out, and this is all you have. One last beautiful morning.
She felt the seismic vibrations underfoot from the deep-bellied rumbling of the oncoming train. The horn blasted its warning. Ornate snowflakes swirled through the air.
At last Veronica understood. All is lost. Let go. Accept.
She performed a simple pagan ritual as the train approached—last rites—then turned her head away from the oncoming locomotive and closed her eyes.