The Walking

by Bentley Little

  "What?"

  "It's not just the name of the dam, it was the name of the town."

  "What town?"

  Tibbert suddenly looked much older. The sun was streaming through the kitchen window, emphasizing the lines on his face, but that was not what had affected his appearance. It was emotion that had added the weariness of years to his features.

  "We dammed the Rio Verde," he said. "It was about twenty miles downriver of an existing dam, and between the two was a small town.

  Wolf Canyon. The people there fought the dam project tooth and nail, but they lost, the courts ruled in the government's favor every time, and the dam went up. Finally, the project was completed, the governor and some senators and the vice president came out for the grand unveiling, and..." He shook his head. "It was all ready, everything was a go, only Wolf Canyon... the town " He trailed off

  "What happened?" Miles prodded.

  Tibbert leaned forward. "It wasn't evacuated like it was supposed to be. There were people there when they let in the water."

  Miles shook his head. "I don't... I don't understand."

  "We killed them," Tibbert said. "We flooded the town and killed them all."

  The picture was starting to come together, though he still could not claim he understood it.

  Apparently, someone screwed up and forgot to make sure that all of the people were out of the town before water was released from the dam upriver. The water flooded the new reservoir, killing everyone who had not been evacuated. The force of the raging water drove them through the canyon-in many instances knocking them out of their shoes or clothes, breaking their bones--and their existence was only discovered a day later, after the ceremonies were over and the dignitaries were gone, when scuba divers went down to

  examine the new dam and found the bodies crammed against debris screens, mixed in with the mud. All total, over sixty men and women died.

  And now someone or something was taking revenge for it, picking off people who had worked on the project. Supervisors, from what Tibbert told him of the names on the list. People in charge.

  The old man leaned back in his chair, drained his cap of coffee. The expression on his face was unreadable, and though he met Miles' eyes, it was only for a second; then he pretended to focus his attention on a bowling trophy atop the refrigerator.

  It made sense, Miles supposed, but it was fantastic, and the scenario brought up more questions than it answered. It this was some sort of curse, why had it waited until now to kick in? And who was behind it?

  Was this part of some ancient Indian thing, or was it instigated by the relative of one of the people who'd drowned?

  Miles stood, perfunctorily thanked Tibbert for the coffee and for answering his questions, told him he'd be in touch soon with some follow-ups, then quickly hurried out of the house and over to his car.

  On the sidewalk two Asian girls were playing hopscotch, and from the porch Tibbert told them to get the hell away from his house and play in their own yards. The shouting brought Miles' mind back to the here and now, and he turned back toward the old man, still standing on the front steps. "Be careful!" he called out. "You know what's happening. You might be next."

  "Don't worry about me," Tibbert said, but Miles heard the fear beneath the bravado.

  He stepped back up the walk. "You want me to have someone watch you?

  Maybe stake out your place here case something happens?"

  Tibbert shook his head.

  "You have someone you can stay with?"

  "I'll be fine."

  Miles nodded. He wasn't sure that was the case, was not even sure Tibbert himself believed it, but he knew when not to push, and he sensed that the best thing to do right now was to give him a little breathing room. He'd call the old man back in a few hours and check in, see what he wanted not to do after he'd had time to soak this all in and think about it.

  Miles walked out to the car, got in, and started the engine. He gave Tibbert one last look, then pulled into traffic.

  Magic. Curses. Mysterious deaths. It was crazy, but he bought it all, and he realized that what was really throwing him for a loop was the old lady from the mall.

  She's going after the dam builders, too!

  The crazy woman had mistaken him for his father, had called him by his father's name. Did that mean that Bob was somehow connected to all this? Miles refused to credit that. He accepted that some supernatural force was being used to avenge the deaths in Wolf Canyon all those years ago, but linking that to his father's resurrection did not make any sense.

  Or did it?

  He drove out of Monterey Park and onto the Pomona Freeway, troubled.

  Liam Connor pushed open the sliding glass door and walked outside to light up a cigarette. Even with Marina gone, he still felt guilty smoking in the house, and he stood on the back patio, inhaling deeply, staring into the darkness.

  There seemed something strange about tonight. He could not put his finger on it, but it made him antsy. This was already his fifth cigarette of the evening, though he had vowed to limit himself to three a day.

  The backyard was big, but night expanded its parameters even farther.

  Light from the house illuminated the patio and a half-circle section of lawn, but the outer flower bed, the bushes beyond, and the wooden fence that marked the edge of his property were hidden behind a curtain of black that erased all boundaries.

  It was a quiet evening, and the ocean seemed unusually close. The cars on PCH were loud enough for him to differentiate individual vehicles, and he could make out male and female voices from the sidewalk in front of the bar and shops. He could not hear the sound of waves, but he could hear the cries of gulls, and the air was tinged with the briny scent of the sea.

  It occurred to him that he was standing very near the edge of the continent and that, beyond that, water continued halfway around the world, traveling so far that at the other end it was already tomorrow.

  Water.

  He thought of Wolf Canyon.

  There was a sound from the bushes beyond the perimeter of house light, a crack of twig that made him jump. He nearly dropped his cigarette but caught and kept it at the last moment, immediately bringing it to his lips to take a long calming draw

  An apple came rolling out of the darkness.

  Goose bumps appeared instantly on his arms and the skin at the back of his neck. He looked out across the lawn toward the section of blackness from which the apple had come, and another one rolled across the grass toward him, bumping to a stop on the concrete edge of the patio. He heard laughter on the wind, a low giggle barely discernible in the slight breeze that had suddenly materialized.

  He dropped the cigarette, ground it into the cement with his shoe, and turned, reaching for the door handle. He tried to slide the door open, but it was stuck, and though he wiggled it back and forth, jerked it with all his might, the door remained closed, almost as though someone had locked it from inside.

  This was it, he realized. This was the night he was going to die.

  He wanted to cry out, but his throat was constricted, and instead he tried to run around the house to the side yard. If he could just get out to the front, he could dash over to one of his neighbors' houses.

  Or get in the car and drive away.

  But he had not even gotten off the patio before another apple flew out of the darkness. This one did not roll across the lawn but came sailing through the air, hitting him on the side of the face. His head was rocked back by the impact, and the stinging pain made his eye immediately tear up. He looked down at the apple, and it split open at his feet. The individual pieces wriggled off the cement and onto the grass, burrowing into the dirt.

  His heart was thumping wildly in his chest. He had to get out of here before she showed herself, before she emerged from the shadows and attacked him.

  She? How did he know it was a she?

  Because it was a she, just as in his dream, and he thought of the woman's voice harassing him
over the phone

  I'll pull your cock out through your asshole

  --thought once again that he ought to know who she was, that he should understand why this was happening and why she was coming after them.

  The laughter came again, and though it was an evil, unnatural sound, he recognized it as definitely female. He held a hand over his burning left eye and dashed across the grass, past his bedroom window, toward the side of the house.

  She floated toward him out of the darkness.

  She came from the spot toward which he was running rather than the area that had been the source of the apples, and he stopped dead in his tracks. Both eyes were teary now,

  but still he saw how truly terrifying the woman before him was. She was naked, her considerable attributes on full display, but there was nothing even remotely sexy or arousing about her. Her skin was white and dead-looking, and the harsh angularity of the bones in her arms and legs struck him as horribly wrong. Her head did not seem to match her body precisely, and even through his tears he could see the horrible cast of her features, the unearthly anger and rage that had somehow been twisted by will into a mirthless smile. He experienced an immediate abhorrence of her, and he staggered backward, instinctively trying to move away.

  But she kept coming.

  She held in her hand an apple, but she did not offer it to him, did not even speak. Instead, chuckling slyly, she glided directly up to him and shoved the fruit as hard as she could into his mouth.

  His head was slammed back by the blow, and he both heard and felt several of his front teeth shattering and breaking off.

  He dropped to his knees, screaming with the pain, swatting her hand away, spitting out blood and teeth and the small pieces of apple that had been dislodged.

  He looked up at her. He still did not know who she was or why she was doing this, knew only that it was because of what had happened back in Wolf Canyon, and he started crying, blubbering. "It wuth an ack-thident! We didn't know! No one knew!"

  Even as he cried out the words, he understood that they were incomplete, not the whole story. True enough, they hadn't known people remained in the town when they let loose the water, but they knew afterward, and still they did nothing. None of them had stepped forward to take responsibility, and the government had never held any of them accountable for what happened. The whole thing was covered up and forgotten about, and he'd known even then that it

  was wrong. He understood that that was why he was being made to pay now.

  Who was she, though?

  He was not going to find out. He was going to die not knowing.

  Her touch was a cold breeze against his face, and the coldness moved through his bleeding mouth and settled in his throat.

  He could not even scream as he was forced across the lawn into the darkness of the night.

  Jeb stared hard into the mirror, concentrated.

  Nothing.

  He sat back down on the bed, his head hurting. Something had happened to his power. It was as if it was draining slowly out of him---or being drained out of him. He'd noticed it over the past few months, but only in the last week had the effects become obvious enough to be worrisome.

  Now he could not even conjure a simple alternate scene in a mirror.

  Next to him, Harriet roiled over. She opened one eye and smiled lazily, pulling down the covers to expose her naked body. He looked down at her large lolling breasts, at the tangle of thick black hair between her ample thighs.

  "Get back under here," she said. "You paid for the whole night, you might as well take advantage of it."

  Jeb forced himself to smile back at her and lay down, resting his head on the pillow, allowing her to pull the covers over both of them. He never had found a wife or a woman of his own, but since prostitutes had set up shop in town, he had seldom been without companionship when in the mood.

  And he was often in the mood.

  Both he and William had been surprised at the range of occupations followed by those of their ilk. In the beginning there had been only settlers: hardworking men and women willing to do anything in order to get this community started

  and establish new lives for themselves. Back then their conception of the future town had been an idealized one, filled with selfless, caring, dedicated witches like themselves, all of them ready to be assigned the specific tasks and duties that would make Wolf Canyon a real community. But it took all kinds to make a world, and soon the people arriving were not so dedicated, not merely the peaceful and persecuted who were interested in creating an alternate society.

  Now there were drunks and whores and gunfighters and swindlers. The world of witches was no more egalitarian than the world of normal people, and though they were all welcome and accepted, all granted residence by virtue of what they were, it was clear now even to William that some were not as desirable to the community as others.

  Jeb rolled onto his side, feeling Harriet's magic hands grab his manhood and once again bring it back to life. He was never sure if it was her power that reinvigorated him so quickly or if she simply drew the power from him, but whatever the source, her hands were able to arouse him faster than any other woman in town. In fact, faster than any woman since... Since Becky.

  Only Becky hadn't needed to touch him in order for him to become aroused. Just seeing her, just being next to her, just talking to her had excited him in a way that was at once animal simple and spiritually profound.

  "Come on," Harriet said. "Get it in."

  He rolled on top of her, she guided him, and he began moving, circling his hips, grinding against her, gradually increasing the speed. Soon the magic was flowing back and forth, from her to him, from him to her.

  He could sense her excitement reaching its peak, and he began thrusting hard, ttempting to hasten the culmination of his own pleasure.

  She thrust back in return, pressing herself tight against him, and that simple act of greedy desire made him explode.

  He spent himself inside her, spurting with abandon until his loins were emptied, and she held him in, obtaining her own gratification, before finally allowing him to pull out.

  She let out a sigh, looked over at him, smiled. "Maybe I oughta pay you instead."

  He fell asleep happy and contented, and it was only in his dreams that his worries once again reasserted themselves.

  He dreamed that he was freezing, in the snow, and a pile of sticks was front of him and he could not even conjure a fire.

  In the morning, he rode out to the mine, where work had stopped due to a dispute over wages. He thought of the early days, when there had been no wages, no money. Everyone had contributed to the community, and everyone shared equally in the community's bounty. They'd come a long way since then, but he was not sure this was progress. There seemed to be too many factions now. The selfless spirit that had once united them had degenerated into a selfish individualism which threatened to undermine the common goals of the townspeople.

  Jeb hopped off his horse, tethered it to a cottonwood tree. Outside the entrance of the mine, several men were arguing, one burly, bearded fellow shaking his list at another man who removed his hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead. William had chosen Jeb to settle the dispute because of his good relationship with most of the miners, and indeed the argument abated as he approached up the pathway. This close, he could see that the bearded man was Lyle Siddons and the other man was Wade Smith.

  "All right," he said. "Let's settle down. Ain't nothing here we can't work out if we just talk things out in a reasonable way In fact, finding a solution turned out to be easier than he thought. The major bone of contention was that the drill operators felt they should be making more money because their

  job was the only one for which it was not feasible to use magic. The heavy-duty tunneling could be done only with the help of traditional mining equipment, and they felt that they should be compensated for their manual labor. Jeb agreed, and over the protests of some of the others who considered the use of mag
ic in their respective positions to be equally draining, he declared that a standard wage would be i received by all, with those required to perform extra duties getting additional pay. The definition of "extra duties" would be ironed out later, and he did not role out the possibility that it would refer to heavy use of magic as well as physical labor; but for now, he told them, the wage demands would be met and everyone should get back to work.

  There was some minor grumbling, but the drill operators were ecstatic and the complaints from others seemed to be voiced mostly out of obligation. The truth was, they all thought they were performing

  "extra duties," and they could all see the prospect of increased pay in their future, and Jeb left the miners much happier than he had found them.

  Returning to town, he stopped off to tell William. He was starving and could use a drink, but he knew William would want to hear the outcome as soon as possible and to discuss it with the vendors who sold the ore to the government.

  As he rode up to William's house, he saw Isabella, digging in her garden. She waved to him as he passed, smiling against the sun.

  He tipped his hat, nodded.

  He'd never admit it to William, but he'd felt a small surge of pride and the faint seductive tickle of revenge as he'd watched Isabella take care of those three strangers in front of the saloon that day. They were probably not bad men, not in the ordinary sense, but they were ignorant and intolerant, belligerent bigots, the type of people who had for years been persecuting their kind, and it was nice to see them finally get a taste of their own medicine.

  William, of course, had been shocked and outraged, torn in his reaction despite his unwavering devotion to his wife. That's what made him William. But Jeb was more ambivalent, less sure of the morality involved, and while he'd offered his friend a sympathetic ear as always, secretly he'd supported Isabella's actions.

  William's wife was growing on him. He hadn't liked her at first, he could admit that, but unlike most of the other people in town, he had come to appreciate her unusual charms. He supposed it was because he and William were so close. He was the only other person who had really gotten to know her, and he now understood what his friend saw in Isabella. She was not only beautiful but intelligent, and she was not afraid to speak her mind or act on her impulses. He admired that..