The Walking

by Bentley Little

  William looked back at the others, then reached down, picked up a rock, and smashed her head.

  The voice stopped, and the only sounds in the cave were the echoes of her final words. The large chunk of sandstone he had dropped completely covered her face, but the veins of her neck protruded from one end and her wild hair ringed the rock's upper third. Blood was spreading outwards-ping into the sand, bubbling down. William said a few words, increasing the intensity of the fire. Using all of the knowledge and skill he had gained in his nearly seven decades on earth, he bound her to this place, warding off intervention from others, containing what eve self was left of her. "Get out," he ordered everyone. "Leave. Wait for me by the river."

  He rejoined them twenty minutes later, drained and dizzy. They sealed the tomb, all of them working together to cause a landslide that covered the cave entrance, and by the time the sky above them was lightening with the dawn, they had left the cave behind and were trudging back to town.

  In the years left to him, he tried to put the incident behind him, tried to avoid thinking about Isabella at all, but that was impossible.

  She was too entwined with his life, too tied up in the history of this place, and even avoidance of those

  locations most associated with Isabella necessitated thinking about her.

  Was her spirit still here, in the canyon, in the house she had died? He did not know because he made no effort to contact her. Nor, to his knowledge, did anyone else. Such contact could be dangerous, as they were too well aware, and even in Wolf Canyon the magic that had been practiced so freely began to be utilized less and less as they adopted prohibitions on themselves in an attempt to avoid a repetition of the recent past.

  The town faded. Several people left, and no new citizens arrived to take their place. The days of persecution seemed to be gone. Wolf Canyon had outlived its most practical purpose. Looking at it now, looking at it objectively, he saw that it was fear that had brought them together in the first place, fear that had enabled them to forge some semblance of society in this wilderness, not a sense of community, not genuine camaraderie. His dream of a utopian village where those of their kind could live peacefully and happily with each other, away from the evil and corruption of so-called civilization, had been only that--a dream. The foolish wishes of an arrogant and overreaching young man.

  Still, some stayed on, and many of them had kids, and gradually the flight was stemmed, the population leveled off.

  Others settled into the surrounding countryside, hard scrabble ranchers and family farmers who were not driven off or terrorized but were greeted as neighbors. Whether or not these new people were aware of the fact that Wolf Canyon was a town populated by witches, William had no way of knowing. He had given up all claim to authority after killing and entombing Isabella, had not even voted when the town chose its first democratically elected mayor and sheriff.

  He had lived for too long, and when his health began to

  seriously fail, he felt only a profound sense of relief. He was more than ready to go.

  On his deathbed, he had a vision, a glimpse of the future, something that Isabella had claimed to experience quite often but that had never before come to him. There was no one by his bedside. One of the town's women checked in on him every day, brought him meals in the morning, but he had made it clear that he needed no companionship, that he wanted to be left in peace.

  The vision was of a man-made lake, with a wall of smooth stone that rose hundreds of feet to the top of the canyon walls and reined in the waters.

  He understood now the import of Isabella's curse. For the town was buffed beneath the waters and he knew that the witches down there, were doomed, drowned, fated never to leave thanks to her imprecation.

  Several families had left since Isabella's death, and he knew that they had all assumed this invalidated her curse, since she had decreed that no one would be allowed to leave. But meanings were often elude: sive, and he realized now that she had made sure whoever remained in Wolf Canyon at the time this lake was created would be killed.

  He wanted to let the others know, wanted to evacuate the town and place a spell of avoidance around it that would discourage anyone from living here ever again so that Isabella plans could never come to fruition.

  But he could tell no one.

  His breath caught in his throat. He started to choke, stopped breathing.

  He died alone.

  And when he left life behind and crossed over to the other side... She was waiting.

  Cedar City was located at the foot of a series of green mountains. Or mesas. He couldn't tell which, with the low clouds planing off the tops to a uniform flatness. It was colder than in California and drizzly, and the high desert vegetation was all a dark blackish green that suited the day.

  Miles stepped off the small shuttle plane and ran through the mist to the small building serving as the airport terminal. As he should have expected, no rental car was waiting for him, and he called Avis to confirm that one had been re served. He had no choice but to wait at the airport until his vehicle was delivered, and he sat down on one of the stained uncomfortable chairs facing the window. He pulled out the piece of paper on which he'd written the two addresses he'd found last night and unfolded the street map of Cedar City the woman at the counter had given him. The city was small, the streets easily found, and he had no choice but to fold up the map and stare out at the drizzle as he waited for his car.

  Ten minutes later, a red Pontiac Grand Am pulled up to the curb in front of the airport door, followed by a beat-up pickup. The bald, sad-looking man who emerged from the Grand Am had on a white shirt and an Avis name tag, and Miles quickly gathered up his map and briefcase and hurried outside. There was a form to sign, the sad man took down his driver's license and credit card number, then gave Miles the key to the car and ran back to the pickup, hop ping in. The Wuck roared off, splashing water, and Miles

  tossed his briefcase on the passenger seat and headed downtown.

  He hit it on the first try.

  Janet Engstrom was a haggard-looking woman who was probably much younger than she seemed. She lived alone in the front apartment of a single-story complex across the street from the college. Perhaps he should have called In'st, but since he had not, he simply walked up and rang the bell.

  "Are you Janet.Engstrom?" he asked the woman who answered the door.

  She nodded warily. "Yes." I'd like to talk to you about your uncle."

  A shadow passed over her face. "My uncle's dead. I'm

  SO "

  She started to close the door.

  "I know. That's why I'm here."

  Something in his voice must have caught her attention, because she paused.

  "His body's missing, isn't it?"

  "No." "

  "No?"

  "We buried him on Sunday."

  Still, she did not close the door completely, and Miles took that as a good sign.

  "Can I come in? I'd really like to talk to you."

  "About what?"

  "Your uncle. I've come all the way from Los Angeles."

  "You're not a reporter?"

  "No," he assured her quickly. "Nothing like that. I just want to... talk."

  "You know," she said matter-of factly

  He nodded.

  She met his eyes for a second, then glanced away and stepped aside to allow him entrance. The interior of the apartment looked simultaneously as though it had been lived in

  for quite some time and as though she had never fully unpacked after moving.

  She sat down hard on the couch. The features on her face remained immobile, cemented into place, but Miles saw tears welling in her eyes.

  "You know," she said again.

  "Yeah." He sat down next to her. "I know."

  The first tear escaped from the invisible barrier that had been holding it back, and a slew of others followed, rolling out from beneath her long lashes and streaming down the sides of her face.-He reached over to
wipe them away, but she pulled back and stemmed the tide herself, using a thin, graceful finger to clear her cheeks.

  "Are you okay?"

  She nodded, a movement that started another cascade of tears. "It's... it's just that it's been so long since I had someone I could talk to, since..." She looked up at him, tried to smile. "You saw the Insider article?"

  "That's how I found you. I'm a private investigator."

  Her body tensed, and she moved back on the couch, away from him.

  "No, that's my job he explained quickly. that is what I do. It's not why I'm here."

  "Why are you here?"

  "I want to find out about your uncle. I want to find out about my dad." He took a deep breath. "The same thing happened to my father."

  The expression on her face was complex, a look that was at once pained and relieved, frightened and sympathetic, angry and understanding. "I knew you knew, and I thought there was something personal about it. I could tell. That's why I let you in. I had a feeling about you." She looked at him, cleared her throat. "So what happened? Your dad died?"

  "Yeah." Miles nodded. "He had a stroke in November, just fell over in the supermarket. They said he would never fully recover, but I was led to believe that he could still live

  for quite a while--just in sort of a diminished state. So I hired a home health-care nurse, who basically took care of him when I was at work, administered his medications and all that, did physical therapy." He was silent for a moment, thinking. "It happened out of the blue. I came home from work one day and the nurse was gone. She'd barricaded the door of my father's room with furniture, and he was inside.

  Walking." "

  "In a circle?"

  "Yeah. Around the perimeter of the bedroom. And the bed and dresser and stuff was moved into the middle of the room. Not because he'd pushed it there but because he'd bumped into it, forced it over while he walked. I could see the marks on his body where he'd hit the edges of the fur "So what happened after that? What did you do?" "I called the coroner's office. A friend of mine works there. He eventually stopped the walking with some kind of muscle relaxant and took my... took the body. He wanted to study it, find out what was causing my dad to keep moving even though he was dead. They kept him at the morgue, kept his body filled with drugs and, I think, strapped down, but well, one day he disappeared. The coroner was looking for him, I was looking for him, the police were looking for him, and we all assumed that he'd walked away, but we couldn't find him. Couldn't find a single trace of him.

  "Then yesterday I saw the article in the Insider. And here

  Janet's reaction was a non-reaction. She seemed to shut down at the conclusion of his story, and when it was clear that she wouldn't be asking any questions and that she wasn't planning to say anything herself, he prodded her. "Your turn."

  "It's a long story."

  He smiled. "I've got time."

  She nodded solemnly. "Okay." She licked her lips. "You want something to drink? Water? Coke? Wine?"

  He shook his head.

  "I think I need a drink first." She stood, walked into the kitchen, emerged a few moments later with a stemmed glass filled with red wine.

  She sat down again, then cleared her throat and took a loud swallow.

  He waited patiently.

  "I loved my Uncle John," she said finally. She swirled the wine in her glass, looked down at it. "He started walking before he died, actually. You probably read in the article that he had cancer, and he did, so I guess he was like your dad in that he was bedridden and had a lingering illness. Maybe that had something to do with what happened to them. I don't know. But three days before he died, he started walking. Around his room, like your dad. He hadn't been able to get out of his bed or move at all, really, for the past week, and then all of a sudden he was pacing like a lunatic." She paused, took another sip of wine. Then another here was something weird about it, too.

  About his movements, I mean. It was almost like he was a puppet or a robot---"

  "Like something was controlling him," Miles said. "Exactly."

  "I thought these thing."

  "Well, this went on for three days, and I didn't know what to do. I wanted to tell someone, but I didn't know who to tell, and I was scared. Then I came home from work on the third day, and he was outside, walking around the house, wearing only his old pajama bottoms.

  Some of the neighborhood kids were throwing things at him, mud and stuff, and I chased them off, then ran around the back of the house. I thought he was delirious, and I wanted to get him back

  inside." She shivered, thinking about it, and finished her glass of wine. that's when I found out he was dead."

  Miles nodded. He understood completely. The memory of touching his father's cold rubbery skin was one that would remain with him for the rest of his life.

  Janet shrugged. 'that it, really. The police came, and the coroner.

  They took him away, did an autopsy, and... that's all."

  He smiled gently. "See? That wasn't such a long story."

  She smiled hesitantly in return. "I gave you the abridged version."

  Miles thought for a moment. "So he didn't keep walking after they took him away?"

  "I guess not." She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "I mean, I didn't really ask. I suppose I didn't want to know. He was still moving when they took him. It took several policemen -several big policemen--to capture him and strap him down in one of those what do you call them? Not a stretcher but..."

  "Gurney ?"

  "Yeah. They strapped him to a gurney and that's the last he'd stopped walking the time ybffburied him." She nodded.

  "Was it an open casket? Did you see him?"

  ]anet breathed deeply. "We had him cremated so... so he wouldn't come back. We just buried his ashes."

  "Are you sure it was him?" Miles prodded gently. "I mean, you didn't actually see his body after the autopsy?"

  She shook her head. "I don't know. They said.." they said we wouldn't want to see him. They said, well, that there wasn't much left that was identifiable."

  "Who suggested that he be cremated? Was that your idea?"

  "No," she admitted. "It was suggested by the mortuary. But, under the circumstances, I thought it was a good plan.

  I'd already had nightmares of my uncle digging his way out of a grave and walking through the city to find me. Cremating him would take care of that possibility." She met Miles' eyes. "You think he walked away, like your dad, and they pawned off some other body on me?"

  He shrugged. "It's a possibility. I'm not saying it happened, but I'd feel a lot more secure about it if you'd actually seen his body to make sure it had stopped moving."

  There was an awkward pause. Janet stood. 'q need another drink. You want something.

  "Maybe some water," Miles said.

  She returned a few moments later with a tumbler of water and her refilled wineglass. "You know," she said, handing him his drink,

  "there's one thing that I've been thinking about. Something that stuck in my mind."

  "What?"

  "His last words. Or the last words he spoke to me. I was feeding him his dinner. He could barely talk at that point, his voice was just a whisper, and I had to lean close to hear him. After that, about an hour or so after I cleaned him up, he started walking. And he never spoke again."

  "What'd he say? what'd he tell you?"

  'The last thing he said, before he started walking, was, "She's here."

  "

  " "She'? Who's 'she'? .... "I don't know. Maybe he was just delirious, seeing things that weren't there."

  "But you don't think so?" She looked at him. "No." She's here.

  Eeeee-eeear = Miles recalled the noises his father had made in the hospital, the desperate, incomprehensible pleas that had been so earnestly addressed to him. She's here. Was that what Bob had been trying to say?

  "I've thought about it a million times since they took him away. I've gone over it in my mind, but it doesn't make any
sense to me. I don't understand it. I know he was trying to tell me something, but I have no idea what it was. There certainly wasn't anyone else in the room with us, and no woman has shown up since then, unless you count the Insider photographer. I've been waiting, hoping--or maybe not hoping--that whatever he meant would be revealed to me, but.." nothing."

  She's here.

  There was something ominous about the phrase, and Miles gulped down his water. He was pretty sure that that was what his father had been trying to say, and he recalled the panicked urgency of Bob's stroke-slurred voice. His father had been afraid.

  "Did your uncle seem, well, scared when he told you that?"

  Janet nodded. 'that why I haven't been able to forget it, why I keep going over it in my mind. I can't help feeling that it had something to do with his.." walking."

  The homeless woman in the mall, too, had warned him of a "she"

  She's going after the ddnin builders, too.

  He wanted to understand, but nothing made sense to him, no facts he could put together, no conjecture he could make that would provide an identity for this woman?... girl? witch? goddess?

  "Did your uncle leave anything behind?" he asked Janet

  "Any diaries? Any item that might give us some clue?" "Like what?"

  "Like witchcraft paraphernalia."

  She stared at him. "How did you know?"

  He smiled wryly. "I found some stuff in my dad's safety deposit box. I have no idea what it's for or how to use it, but I could tell that it was supposed to be used for magic.

  There was a dried, flat frog, a bunch of powders, some roots in bottles." He paused. "And a necklace made out of teeth. Human teeth."

  "My uncle had a box in his closet. I looked through it, but it scared me, so I put it in a plastic garbage sack and haven't looked at it since. It's in my hall closet. You want to check it out?"

  Miles shook his head. "Maybe later."

  "There's no necklace, but there is some kind of arm bone with feathers attached to it. And, like you said, a bunch of powders and potions, I guess."