Walking Alone

by Bentley Little

  We stood around, not talking. Flashlights were turned off in order to save batteries, and the only light came from the moonbeams shining through the window. Jimmy T continued to put the finishing touches on his lover, sculpting her face.

  Twenty minutes later, Henry saw the first creature come running up the drive. “They’re here,” he said, looking out the window.

  Charley started down the stairs first, and the rest of us followed close behind. “There!” he shouted, pointing. Two of the slimy creatures ran through the kitchen door and darted down the basement stairs, carrying what looked like a half-eaten cat between them.

  “I can’t go down there,” Charley apologized. He was holding his nose. “I’m sorry. I’ll throw up.”

  I got a whiff of the smell through the door and almost gagged myself, but I kept on. Henry followed, and so did everyone else. Someone flipped on the light.

  The creatures were sloughing off their skin, shedding it the way a snake would, and beneath the white fungus they looked human. Too human. Ten or fifteen other creatures, ones that had already shed their skin, were also in the basement. They were clustered together in a group, and when they split up, we could see behind them rows of tiny women made out of dirt.

  The new creatures, each with an erection, fell on the closest dirt women, writhing lustily.

  They pulled out moments later, and from between the legs of the dirt figures came brown creatures the size of spiders. They were too small to see clearly, but I had the sickening feeling that they all looked like Jimmy T.

  Henry and two of the other men started shooting. Skin and fungus and dirt went flying every-which-way, and the basement was filled with baby screams.

  I started shooting, too.

  We killed the feeb like Mrs. Caffrey said we should. None of us could shoot him in cold blood, so we just tied up his hands and feet and pushed him down the stairs. He didn’t say anything, didn’t even scream, as his body jerked and flopped down the steps. He was dead before he reached bottom.

  We torched the house afterward.

  And the crops started getting better, and no more animals died.

  And two months later, when Doug’s wife gave birth to a feeb, we drowned it and buried it in the field in an unmarked grave.

  THE MALL

  (1991)

  “I saw Daddy.”

  Marylynn stopped fastening Glen’s bulletproof vest and looked into his face.

  “Where?” she asked carefully.

  “In the mall, by school.”

  She grabbed both of her son’s arms, squeezed. “I told you never to go near the mall.”

  “It’s all closed up. You can’t even get in.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s dangerous. The building’s unsafe, and gangs hang out there.”

  “I didn’t see anybody but Daddy.”

  “What was he doing there?”

  Glen shrugged. “I don’t know. I just saw him through the door. I peeked through the door to see if I could see inside there, but it was all dark. Then I saw Daddy standing in the middle of the mall. I waved to him, but he didn’t see me. Then he went downstairs and he didn’t come back.”

  Marylynn finished fastening Glen’s vest, pulling his t-shirt on over it. “Why would your father be inside the mall? How would he get in there? That’s just stupid.” She gave him a small slap on the bottom. “Now go and brush your teeth before school. And I don’t want you going anywhere near the mall, you understand me?”

  “Mom…”

  “Don’t ‘mom’ me. You go straight to school and come straight back. You hear?”

  “Yeah.” Glen reluctantly walked into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

  Marylynn frowned. Now he was seeing his daddy in abandoned buildings. She shook her head. It was her fault. It was all her fault. She shouldn’t have babied him this long. She should have been honest with him. She should have told him the truth long ago.

  She should have told him that she’d killed his daddy.

  ****

  There was another drive-by shooting, a third-grader was taken down, and once again school was let out early. Glen considered calling his mom and telling her, maybe asking her to give him a ride home, but he decided to walk instead.

  He waited in the library until he was sure that the bad kids were gone and the campus was empty, then walked past the closed classroom doors, through the parking lot, and down the cracked and broken sidewalk toward home.

  He slowed his pace as he passed the mall. The gigantic building, which had once housed hundreds of shops, was now abandoned and covered with graffiti. From this angle, near the weedy asphalt field that had been the upper parking lot, it looked like some great beast hunkered down and ready to pounce, the upward slope of the empty Nordstrom’s resembling haunches, the jutting square of the Sears a head.

  Glen stopped walking. The mall scared him, had always scared him, and he was not sure why he had disobeyed his mom’s orders yesterday and snuck through one of the holes in the chain-link fence that surrounded the block to trek across the lot and peek into the mall. It had been a stupid thing to do. He had known it was stupid even while doing it, had been aware of the dangers, but something had compelled him to continue on, and before he knew it, he had found himself standing in front of one of the old doors and peeking through the smoked glass.

  Where he had seen Daddy.

  Daddy.

  Even the word was magic, and just saying it to himself made Glen feel better, made him feel more secure, less afraid.

  He said it aloud: “Daddy.”

  Whispered it again: “Daddy.”

  And once more he found himself sneaking through the fence, walking through the waist-high weeds of the parking lot, leaping the ruts and potholes, until he was standing before the entrance of the mall.

  He felt good, happy. It seemed to him almost like his birthday or Christmas, the excited expectancy was so strong within him.

  Daddy.

  It was a different door than the one he’d peeked through yesterday, and it was covered with a layer of tough dirt that would not wipe off no matter how much spit he used or how hard he rubbed it with his palm. Unable to clear a spot on the glass, he simply pressed his face against the outside of the door and used his hands to block out the side glare of the sun. Through the filth he could make out vague shapes in the darkness, boxes and triangles and the skeletons of indoor trees.

  And Daddy.

  He was standing in front of a square black hole that led into one of the old department stores. He wasn’t doing anything, just standing there. He was closer than he had been yesterday, and Glen could see him more clearly. He looked different than he used to, Glen thought. His skin was all white and his clothes looked torn and raggedy.

  If he was living this close, Glen wondered, how come he never came by? Mom had said that he’d moved away, that he’d gotten a job in another state.

  Maybe this raggedy man wasn’t Daddy.

  But then the man waved, smiled, and Glen knew that it was Daddy.

  “Glen!”

  He turned around at the sound of the voice and saw his mom standing outside the fence across the parking lot.

  “Get away from there! Right now!”

  Glen hazarded one last look through the door before leaving. He saw that the mall was empty, his daddy gone, and then he was running back across the empty parking lot toward his mom.

  She was furious, her face red, but he thought he saw fear there as well as anger.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. She grabbed him by the arm, gave him a swift hard swat on the seat of the pants and pushed him into the car. “I told you to stay away from here!”

  A lowrider drove by, filled with dark faces. “Hey, mama!” someone called out. “Sit on my face!”

  His mom ignored the taunt and, tight-lipped, got behind the wheel. She glared at Glen. “We’re going to have a serious talk, young man.”

  He nodded, saying nothing. />
  They drove home in silence.

  ****

  Marylynn sat in the living room, staring at the face of the television. A program was on, a sitcom, but she wasn’t watching it and couldn’t have said what it was. Glen was in the bathroom, taking a bath. She could hear the sound of the water running. He’d been in there for nearly a half hour now, and she knew that he was taking his time, stretching out his bath, trying to avoid her.

  She didn’t blame him. In a way, she was kind of glad. She still hadn’t decided what to tell him and what not to tell him, still hadn’t worked out the approach to take. For some reason, she felt uncomfortable, almost frightened. She wasn’t really afraid that Glen was in physical danger. He’d lived in the city all his life and knew how to take care of himself. She was more afraid of the psychological damage he might suffer. It might not be good for him to know that his father was dead, but it couldn’t be any healthier for him to think his father was alive when he wasn’t. Glen had thought he’d seen his daddy before: in the crowd of a televised baseball game, once turning a corner down a busy street at Christmastime. If this continued, he would soon be seeing his daddy everywhere.

  But it wasn’t just the idea of Glen thinking he’d seen his father that bothered her. She was embarrassed to admit it even to herself, but it was the fact that he had seen his father in the mall that tinged her worry with fear.

  The mall.

  The mall had scared her even in the old days, even when it had been open. It had been dying back then, of course. Nordstrom’s was already gone and Macy’s was leaving, but most of the smaller stores had still been there, and she and her friends had often spent their Saturdays browsing through the clothes boutiques, looking for bargains. She had gone there alone, as well, and she’d been attacked once, in the long hallway that led to the ladies’ room—a spiky-haired white boy who grabbed her through her pants and squeezed while he yanked the purse from her shoulder.

  It was not the attack that had frightened her, though, not the increasingly rough makeup of the patrons that had made her nervous. No, it had been something about the mall itself, something about the high narrow design of the structure and the angled arrangement of the shops. She had never said anything to anyone about her feelings, but she thought she’d heard agreement with her position in the veiled comments of other shoppers, thought she’d seen understanding in the faces of occasional customers.

  She and her friends had stopped going to the mall long before it finally closed for good.

  Glen emerged from the bathroom wearing pajamas, his hair wet and wild.

  “Go dry your hair,” she told him. “And then we’re going to talk.”

  “I won’t go back there again,” he promised. “I learned my lesson.”

  “Dry your hair. And then we’ll talk.”

  ****

  His mom picked him up from school on Thursday, Friday and Monday, but on Tuesday she had to work late and Glen found himself once again wandering slowly past the chain-link fence that enclosed the abandoned mall. He had dreamed about the mall last night, dreamed about Daddy. Daddy had been trapped inside the hulking structure, and Glen had had to smash one of the glass doors to let him out and save him. Daddy had emerged tall and strong and happy, with a big grin on his face, and he had hoisted Glen on top of his shoulders, piggy-back, the way he used to, and the two of them had run home, where Mom had made a special cake as a reward.

  Glen stopped walking, hooked his fingers between the wires, and stared through the fence. He had not forgotten the bad times. He remembered when Daddy had beaten Mom up and broken her arm, how Daddy had told him afterward that from now on he was supposed to call his mom “Slut” instead of “Mommy,” and how it had made his mom cry when he’d said that word. He remembered the times Daddy had beaten him for no reason, and how he’d once said that he’d kill him if he didn’t stop crying, and how he’d known that Daddy meant it.

  But somehow the good times seemed more important than the bad times now. And there seemed to be a lot more of them. He remembered the bedtime stories, the trips to movies—they never went to movies anymore—the basketball games at the old church.

  He missed his daddy.

  And then he was through the fence and walking across the weedy parking lot toward the mall. He walked up to the same door he’d peeked through the last time he’d come here and pressed his face against the dark glass. From underneath a stairway that led down to the lower level of the mall, he saw a pulsing whitish glow that grew progressively stronger. The inside of the mall, Glen noticed, no longer looked as dirty as it had before, no longer looked as rundown. His eyes scanned the vast interior and there, standing next to a planter of budding flowers, stood Daddy.

  “Glen.”

  “Daddy!” Glen waved to his father.

  “Glen.”

  Daddy’s voice was the same, yet different. There seemed to be an echo behind it, even though he was whispering. “I’m glad you came back to see me. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Me too.”

  “I want you to come and live with me.”

  Glen stared, surprised. “Really?”

  “Really.” Daddy laughed.

  “Where? In the mall?”

  Daddy nodded. “In the mall.”

  “What about Mom?”

  “Your mom’s a bitch,” Daddy said in that soft resonant tone, and Glen’s eyes widened as he heard the bad word. “She’s a whore of a bitch and she deserves to die.”

  Glen moved away from the glass door, frightened. Daddy was still smiling, his voice still soft, but there was something about his eyes that didn’t look right and that made him feel suddenly very cold.

  “Glen!” Daddy called, and now his voice was not so soft. “I’m not through talking to you!”

  Afraid, Glen once again pressed his face to the glass. He stood there, listening, as his daddy talked, explained things, and the coldness within him grew.

  He pulled away only when Daddy said goodbye and the light in the mall began to fade.

  She deserves to die.

  He closed his eyes, heard Daddy’s echoing voice.

  Deserves to die.

  He ran all the way across the parking lot and ripped the pocket of his jacket as he climbed quickly through the hole in the fence.

  He did not stop running until he was a block away from home.

  ****

  Glen brought it up himself this time, at dinner. Marylynn had known that something was bothering him, but she thought that after the discussion they’d had the other night, at least this subject had been straightened out.

  So, she was surprised when Glen took a drink of milk and blurted out: “I saw Daddy at the mall again!”

  She swallowed the bite of casserole in her mouth, stared at him. He looked away, squirming. He seemed unusually uncomfortable, almost afraid, and she found herself wondering if something more than that might have happened.

  “Glen,” she said. “You didn’t really see Daddy, did you?”

  “I did!” he insisted.

  She put down her fork, faced him. It was her fault. Again, it was her fault. She should have told him everything last time; she shouldn’t have tried to spare him at all. Her heart was pounding, and for some reason as she looked at Glen, squirming uncomfortably in his seat, she felt afraid. “Glen,” she said slowly, straightforwardly. He looked up at her. “You didn’t see Daddy.”

  “I did!”

  “You couldn’t’ve seen him. I killed him.”

  He stared back at her dumbly.

  “Daddy lied to us. He didn’t get out. He was still in the gang. And he wanted to sell you back.”

  Glen blinked. He looked blankly at her, as though he hadn’t heard what she’d said.

  She walked around the table, put an arm on her son’s shoulder. “I killed him and then I turned him in. I didn’t tell you because…well, because I wanted you to grow up thinking you had a good Daddy. I didn’t want you to be like the other children whose fa
thers were killed. And I wanted to make sure you didn’t get involved in a gang.” She held his shoulders, looked into his face. “That’s why you have to stay away from the mall. Do you understand? I don’t know who’s talking to you, but he’s not your father, and I don’t want you going anywhere near him. He’s probably just a child molester, but…but the mall’s a bad place, Glen. A bad place. A dangerous place. Do you understand me?”

  He looked at her, saying nothing. She had expected him to cry when she told him, but his eyes weren’t even wet. She had expected denial, but there was nothing.

  “I killed Daddy. He’s never coming back.”

  “I’m not hungry anymore. I’m going to bed.” Glen pushed his chair away from the table and ran out of the kitchen, down the hallway. She heard his door slam.

  Marylynn moved back to her side of the table, slumped in her seat. She’d finally told him. And finally, he had reacted normally. She felt tired, drained, as though she had been exercising all day. It would take a while, but Glen would get used to the idea, and he would realize that, in the long run, she had done right.

  Or maybe not. Maybe he would end up hating her his whole life.

  Either way, she had the feeling that at least he wouldn’t be seeing his Daddy at the mall anymore.

  ****

  Glen stared up at the ceiling of his room. Dead. Killed. That was exactly what Daddy had told him she’d say. “She wants you to think I’m dead, Glen,” he’d said. “But I’m not. She’s always been a jealous bitch, and that’s why she tells those lies about me. She knows I love you more than she does. She knows that I can give you a better life and a happier home, but she doesn’t want that. She doesn’t love you, but she puts up with you just to get back at me. I love you, though. I love you.”

  Glen thought about those words, and even in his memory they sounded good: I love you.

  He tried to concentrate on those words, tried to say them over and over again to himself, but other words kept intruding.

  Bitch.

  Whore.

  Deserves to die.

  He lay there thinking, not falling asleep.