Free Dead Level by Sarah Graves

trees. Don’t get lost in it, the driver had advised, and Harold had promised not to. Now he crouched, peering at the marks where they left the road.
    But then it hit him, how ridiculous he was being. Who did he think he was, anyway, Daniel Boone? The only tracking he’d ever tried doing was of customers who didn’t bring video rentals back on time, via the phone numbers (usually fake) and email addresses (likewise) they’d given at the time of their first transactions.
    Even Harold could identify these tracks, though. He followed the grassy trail with his eyes until it bent between an enormous tree stump, twenty feet tall at least, and a moss-covered boulder that was even bigger, lunging up from the earth.
    Then he eyed the marks in the road again, seeing that they obscured small, round pockmarks and runnels that must have been left by last night’s storm; the cabdriver had talked about it. And these other prints he’d been following were on top of the storm traces; that must mean they were more recent.
    From this morning, then. Huh , Harold thought, a prickle of unease shifting the hairs on his neck. He wasn’t as alone out here as he’d thought. Because these prints leading off into the woods weren’t deer tracks, or moose tracks, or even train tracks.
    They were boot prints.
    Marianne … Striding down the trail just off the dirt road leading to the lake, escaped prison inmate Dewey Hooper scowled ferociously as the thought of her hit him yet again.
    She’d put a spell on him, that was the trouble. A hex that kept him thinking about her. Back in prison, he’d been crazy with it: her name, day and night, filling his head, drowning all other thought. Writing it down helped, like emptying a pitcher.
    But it always came back; that, and the memory of her face … He shook his head angrily, forced himself to think of something else. Like freedom, for instance: now that he wasn’t locked in there like some zoo animal, things would surely be better.
    As if to prove it, his right palm began itching. That was a good sign; everyone knew an itchy right hand meant you were going to get money. He was right-handed, too; that doubled the luck and was appropriate for him, besides.
    Right for spite, the old saying went, and he was full of that, wasn’t he? Always had been, but at the moment just being free felt so good, he wasn’t dwelling much on that, either.
    He spotted an acorn on the leaf-mold-covered earth under an oak tree and snatched it up. An acorn in your pocket brought long life, and if, as he fully expected, he found a place to sleep indoors tonight, it would keep lightning out. Now if he would only see two crows, or three butterflies …
    He’d always been superstitious. Even in prison, if anyone spilled salt in the lunchroom, Dewey got some and flung it over his left shoulder. It drove the guards nuts, because some of the guys were so strung out, they’d go off on you for looking cross-eyed at them, never mind taking what they imagined belonged to them, even salt.
    A grin twisted his lips as he continued along the trail, still thinking of them back there: the night-shift guards, their skin the color of dried paste and their guts hanging over their belts on account of all the junk food they gobbled, the sunlight and fresh air they never got. The dayshift officers, stringy as beef jerky and doing their time just as surely as the inmates were, ugly and dead-eyed.
    And the support staff; oh, they were the worst. His smile tightened to a grimace as he recalled the parade of mealymouthed social workers,pinch-faced nurses, and snot-nosed so-called teachers, all bent on improving Dewey whether he liked it or not.
    Scowling at the memory, he spied some apples dangling from an old tree. The land around here had been hardscrabble farms once, small homesteads each with a herd and a henhouse, hayfields and a garden, plus an orchard for pies and applejack. Here and there you’d find a row of those trees still standing,