Dead Man Walking

by Zach Adams

  “Doesn’t she look like M-mrs. Darcey?” Isaac asked. He stifled a belch into his sleeve. Donny, who had not taken his eyes from the woman since she took her coat off, shrugged.

  “Kind of, I guess,” Donny said. “Hotter though. Maybe it’s the corset. I bet Mrs. Darcey would look good in a corset.” Isaac started to laugh but it turned into a hiccoughing fit.

  “Hic-careful there Don, you’re starting to d-drool a bit,” Isaac said.

  After a quantity of minutes Isaac had lost the ability to keep track of, the other three returned. Dante was red-eyed and dazed, with an arm around Alana for support. Adrian followed several inches to his left, arms crossed, and jaw locked in a scowl. All three smelled like the clouds permeating Donny’s bedroom.

  “You good?” Donny asked Dante. The latter grinned but said nothing.

  “We just want to thank you all again; this will be our last number -!” The singer said into the microphone as the audience returned from the cold. The band once again kicked into gear as she finished her short speech, so Isaac missed the last few words.

  Alana shrunk against Dante and said something into his ear that the others couldn’t make out. He blinked several times and made a deeply concerned look at his own feet while he absorbed what she said.

  “So, ah, hey guys,” Dante said. “Alana needs to like, get going home and whatnot,” He cut himself off with a bout of giggles.

  “So, uh… If y’all want a ride home, now’s the time.” Dante finally continued once he had himself under control. Adrian threw his hands into the air, nearly slapping his brother on the back.

  “Say Adrian, would you be alright with leaving early and driving again? We don’t want to just assume you’ll do things for us,” Adrian muttered under his breath. “Sure, I’d love to, I didn’t want to be here in the first damn place.” No one seemed to notice him. The group headed toward the door, but Isaac stayed behind.

  “Yep, lemme just go grab another one for the road,” Isaac said, waving his friends away. He skipped lopsided back to the drink cart and handed over the last of his cash for another beer.

  “My c-compliments to the V-man, good sir,” Isaac said as he offered a departing fist-bump to the server. Dimitri frowned and looked at the teenager’s knuckles as if they were a moldy sandwich.

  “What’d you say?” The bartender’s voice had a vague hint of a Russian accent. Isaac blinked at him in confusion.

  “You know, your boss, tell him I said h-hic-hello,” Isaac said. As Isaac returned to his friends, Dimitri grabbed a walkie-talkie from his apron pocket and muttered something into it. Isaac vaguely heard the name “Luka”.

  The group left the noisy building and started toward the Luther’s minivan. The hulking doorman called out to Isaac, who spun around on his heels and nearly hit the ice. The rest of the group turned back once they realized who was being called. The teenagers saw the doorman charging on their drunk friend, who happened to be about a third the man’s size. Donny, sensing danger, reached out to pull Isaac back, unaware that his friend was already out of reach.

  Donny slipped and hit the ground as Isaac was lifted by the collar of his shirt. The latter yelped and kicked in all directions, but the hired security was unfazed.

  “You broke the rules,” Luka grunted. His accent was thicker than Dimitri’s, but slightly higher pitched than Isaac might have expected. Every other part of the big guy was thicker than Dimitri, too.

  Luka threw a hairy fist nearly the size of Isaac’s skull into his stomach, cracking the glass bottle which had, until this moment, been forgotten in his jacket pocket. The broken pieces cut both of them, and the thug dropped Isaac out of shock, howling at the glass in his bleeding hand. Isaac slid a few feet away as Luka fell to his knees.

  This… Red alert… Right? Panic slurred.

  Up… Fight…! Rage tried to add.

  Isaac was too disoriented to move, and blood was staining his clothes. Between the alcohol, the cold, and the shock, his brain could barely recognize anything but the pain he was in. He placed a shaky hand on his stomach and lifted it, seeing the red evidence on his fingers. He gave a weak sound that was neither cry nor laugh. Luka spat on the ground and slowly stepped over the ice to resume Isaac’s punishment. The slick ground impeded his progress.

  Before the doorman could make any more openings in their friend, Donny, Dante, and Adrian all lifted Isaac in the air and carried him to the minivan, where Alana waited to open the door.

  The doorman tried to chase after them, but the ice impeded his progress. The teenagers were in the van and Adrian was pulling out of the lot before they could get the back door closed.

  Donny flashed impolite hand gestures at the enraged man through the window as they drove off.

  “Mom keeps a first aid kit under the passenger seat, someone grab it!” Adrian yelled as he obeyed all road laws. Traffic was minimal this late at night, but Adrian wouldn’t risk returning home with the vehicle in any different condition than it had been in when he borrowed it. Alana, the only one present who had actually taken a first aid class, retrieved the kit and pulled Isaac’s shirt up.

  “Oh fuck, that’s gross,” Dante said as he stuck his head out of the open passenger window, fighting back the urge to vomit. Isaac groaned.

  “Be quiet, Dante!” Alana snapped. “It really doesn’t look that bad, Isaac, there’s only a few cuts and I don’t think they’re very deep, but it might be best if we take you to the -”

  “No, no hospital,” Isaac said. “No insurance, Vic would kill me.”

  “Don’t you think he’d be more concerned about you being -?”

  “Just patch me up and bring me home, please!”

  Alana pulled out a nearly empty tube of off-brand ointment and a wide bandage. She applied them as carefully as she could. Isaac’s squirms and the occasional jolt from the van passing over chunks of ice or stone didn’t help matters.

  “At least put some alcohol or peroxide on it when you get home, there’s none in here. In fact, there’s not much of anything in this kit. These cuts need to be disinfected,” Alana told him.

  “Mom has to use the kit a lot,” Dante mumbled as his body tensed involuntarily. Isaac could see Adrian’s jaw clenching in the rear-view mirror at the same time.

  “Wouldn’t the alcohol in the beer, like, cauterize it or whatever?” Donny interjected from the back seat. Alana, Dante, and Isaac all looked at him in some effort to absorb the nonsense he had just contributed. Adrian slowed the vehicle down by several miles per hour in order to avoid overloading his brain. Even the Narrator, reading over the notes for this tale, needed to pause for a minute or three to digest.

  “Just clean it up when you get home, Isaac,” Alana continued, unable to respond to Donny. “I have no clue what you’re going to tell your uncle about your clothes, though.” She pulled Isaac’s shirt, now covered in large blotches of red, back down to cover the injury. With Dante’s assistance, Alana pulled Isaac upright so he could lean against the cold window. He could see that they were around the corner from Uncle Vic’s house.

  Isaac grabbed his cell phone, which he had left on the floor of the van when they arrived, and swiped it open. What he saw on the screen was almost as distressing as his condition.

  11:26PM

  November 29, 2013

  5 missed calls from: Uncle Vic

  Uncle Vic: Need to talk. Stopped at gas station, said they didn’t interview anyone today. What’s up? 5:17PM

  Uncle Vic: Where are you? Come home now. 6:32PM

  Uncle Vic: Going to have a long chat about your behavior recently. 7:42PM

  Uncle Vic: If you won’t be home before midnight, don’t bother. 10:23PM

  Panic was spouting something in Isaac’s head, but he was too drunk to tell what it was saying.

  “Yeah, I don’t know either,” Isaac told Alana.

  Chapter Nine: The Book of L’æsälum

  ?2018?

  Isaac returned to the library the morning after the
alleged hollow incident, rushing through the majority of his daily routine. He struggled to brush off the attack as pure fiction brought on by stress but knew in his gut that it had been real.

  Distracted, Isaac had neglected to change the outfit he had worn the day before, nearly choked on his pill, and said little to Chloe while fleeing the apartment. As usual he saw a blurry person-like shape seated next to his sister, mirroring her goodbye wave, and he blinked it away. As he stepped outside, he felt a light rain falling from the sky, highlighted by another early sunrise.

  “It is freaking December!” Isaac growled to no one as he slid across the frozen lot to his car.

  Panic was certain that the library would be roped off and surrounded by police cars. Rage snickered at him and let Isaac wonder if any more hollow had arrived during his absence. He began to sweat and shake as he wrestled to keep his car under control.

  Isaac finally exhaled when he reached the library. The parking lot was almost completely empty, with no police cars in sight nor any commotion to be heard. He pulled into a parking spot close to the entrance and dashed into the completely peaceful and perfectly normal library.

  Isaac made his way to the checkout desk to find his seat occupied by a backside that wasn’t his.

  Obviously, that backside makes the chair look better than yours ever could, the more obnoxious of the voices in his head commented.

  Hey, do me a favor? Isaac thought irritably in response. Shut the hell up before Olivia sees my face turn red.

  Don’t you think she’ll notice anyway? Panic chimed in.

  Olivia Sheridan, the woman occupying Isaac’s spot was a foot and change shorter than him - she hadn’t bothered to adjust the height of his chair, so her muddy black sneakers dangled a few inches from the ground. She slouched over his desktop, both elbows resting on the desk, her bright red hair pulled back in a hastily assembled ponytail. In one hand she held a steaming cardboard cup of a beverage that smelled like peppermint, while the other zipped across the keyboard quick enough to make Isaac insecure about his own typing skills. The ends of her rolled-up navy blue sleeves cushioned her elbows on the desk. She spun around in the chair when she heard Isaac approaching.

  “Morning, Isaac. You’re here early,” Olivia greeted her employee pleasantly. “Are you feeling alright?” He blinked once, unsure of what she was talking about.

  Isaac’s mind, which had only just started to slow down, suddenly kicked back into overdrive. Time paused while he cycled through a thousand scenarios to explain Olivia’s question, all doing a brilliant job of convincing him that his boss knew about his hollow night and his life was about to become significantly more difficult.

  “Ben told me you had a bit of an accident yesterday,” Olivia elaborated, seeing the confusion on Isaac’s face. Isaac was hit with a wave of relief as he nodded, the concept of language having gone out to lunch.

  Olivia smiled and rose to her feet, silently offering Isaac his usual spot. He thanked her and quickly punched in his employee info in the system.

  As if sensing him begin to relax, Olivia tapped into Isaac’s anxiety again.

  “Did anything else happen yesterday? When I got here, there were even more stains in the carpet around Fiction, all of the clocks had stopped, and every computer Ben and I have checked was having problems.”

  Gulp. “What sort of problems?” Isaac asked.

  “Well, when we turned them on the screens turned bright red. That eventually stopped but then, I know it sounds ridiculous but whenever someone would try to log one in the thing would just laugh at them. Ben doesn’t believe me on it, but that’s what it sounded like. About half of them are working normally now.”

  Isaac idly adjusted a cup of pens, a box of paperclips, and a stapler to give him something other than Olivia’s face to look at. Memories of L’æon, the gang of hollow, and the loose pages all did a mad dash around his brain. Panic was certain that if he made eye contact, Olivia would see all of them. He didn’t meet her gaze, and she got nothing from him but a shrug.

  “I never saw anything,” Isaac mumbled. “Everything was copacetic as canned bees when I left.”

  The boss raised an eyebrow at him. “Canned bees?” Olivia asked. Isaac started to chuckle in embarrassment but hiccoughed in the same instant and choked.

  “Can be, sorry,” Isaac rasped as his eyes began to water. It took every shred of willpower in Isaac’s possession to not tremble, stutter, sweat, squeak, twitch, or indulge any other panicked body language which would tell Olivia something was wrong. If he said anything about last night, he would have to give her the pages he found. That would lead to him explaining as much as he could about what happened, losing his job, and probably getting locked up in a padded cell. That simply wasn’t relevant to his interests at the moment.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re feeling alright,” Olivia finally said. She took a sip of her drink as she left to continue her work.

  As soon as his boss was out of sight, Isaac hid his accidentally stolen library book in the return bin and went about scanning the aisles for anything out of place.

  As he patrolled the shelves, on the lookout for anything out of order, he spotted an open magazine someone had left on a table. Being easily distracted, he stopped and read the first story he saw, buried somewhere in the middle pages.

  Entertainment Mogul Makes Her Way North

  The secretive Lilith, hot off the success of her popular New York nightclub Rozariu Mazăre, is set to open a new location right here in Alaska. Details are few.

  A source close to the enigmatic entrepreneur and film producer, who requested their identity remain confidential, claims to have seen paperwork on multiple properties in the area crossing Lilith’s desk. Among them allegedly are a downtown penthouse, three locally owned bookstores, and a plot of land just outside of Denali National Park. Rumor has it the oddly remote location will be the new RM, with an invite-only grand opening believed to be planned for New Year’s Eve, as well as a shooting location for Lilith’s upcoming film, ‘Remembrance’. Our team has been digging into who could be making the trip for the exclusive event.

  (Continued on the next page. Next story: Senator Seth Darcey (R-NY) Hints at future White House bid)

  Isaac closed the magazine out of boredom.

  “Tabloid trash, who gives a shit,” He muttered to himself as he continued with his work. A few aisles away he heard Beige throwing a fit, and followed the sound hoping for something interesting to watch.

  “… Don’t you dare lie to me, this has you written all over it, Olivia will hear about this…”

  “I’m telling you man; I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about -” Donny’s voice followed.

  A few inches to his left, a blurry gray figure about Donny’s size stood with its arms crossed, facing an identical shape next to Beige. The second shape mimicked Beige himself, leaning forward at an angle and shoving a finger into the face of the accused. Isaac rubbed his eyes underneath his glasses with his knuckles, and the shadows went away.

  “Watch your language, you are on the clock and you need to at least pretend to have some semblance of professionalism, you are getting written up -”

  “Go to hell, I didn’t do anything!”

  Isaac rounded the corner in time to see Beige with a hand raised in the air, glaring at Donny while his cheeks turned bright pink. Isaac jumped to his friend’s defense, impulsively shoving Beige away.

  “What’s going on here?” Isaac demanded.

  “Not that it’s any of your concern, assistant, but your little friend played one of his childish pranks and it nearly injured me and a nearby patron.” Beige spat.

  “I’m telling you; I didn’t do anything!” Donny growled through his teeth. “You were the one not behaving safely.”

  Beige turned to continue telling Donny off, but Olivia approached and interrupted. The three of them repeated the story to her.

  “Donny, did you do something to this step ladder that could inj
ure anyone?” She asked with a sigh. He shook his head, and Beige swore once again that he was lying.

  Thinking of the pages he had found the night before, Isaac said a phrase one of the characters had used under his breath. He lacked the faintest clue what the words actually meant, but his gut told him to say them, and so he did.

  “Ægö qünävím vös hädæö ä sídvë.”

  Beige continued ranting to Olivia. “You know Donald, you know what he does, he pulls stupid pranks like this all the time, these two are in it together and should be suspended, and, and, a-a-and-”

  Beige began to inhale sharply, before a stream of words spilled from him in a single breath.

  “And I was absolutely behaving unsafely on the step ladder to save time and almost fell on top of an elderly woman and I blamed Donny because I was unwilling to damage my spotless record and he was the easiest scapegoat to believe.”

  When Beige finally stopped vomiting words, he flung a hand over his mouth as his eyes widened in shock.

  Donny was struggling not to crack up. Olivia looked furious.

  “Beige,” Their boss said, pointing at his nametag, which he hadn’t noticed had been tampered with, “Come with me to my office, please.” She looked at Isaac and Donny before saying, “Sorry about him, guys.”

  Beige, his face contorted in rage, did as he was told. He glared daggers over his shoulder at the pair as they went.

  Bewildered at the effectiveness of the incantation, Isaac returned to his desk and opened his laptop. While it booted up, he fished a pill and a bottle of water from his backpack and quickly swallowed them.

  So that actually happened, we didn’t dream that, the brain gang said. Guess all that stuff yesterday may not have been all in our head after all?

  Isaac didn’t care much for this line of thought.

  Once he arrived at his desktop screen, which was littered with loose files and folders filled with dozens of incomplete creative projects, he double-clicked the Google Chrome icon. It seemed to take hours to finally open the browser. When it did, Isaac searched the first foreign term on the old pages; Átrí Nä’lún.