She squinted into the mists about us, and finding nothing to lock onto from her old life, she looked up at me.
“How do we get out of here?” she asked me.
“There’s nowhere else to go.”
“How can that be?”
“I’ve been back in the world—it’s worse, because there’s nothing left to see,” I said. “That gets old after a while.”
“You can go back?”
“Only as an apparition. I can’t touch or feel anything there, and it’s too painful to see my friends going on with their lives, having new experiences, as if no one misses me. It wore me down. So, I just stay here now.”
She looked around again, insecure and anxious.
I wanted to help her.
“You can sense and feel me?” I asked her.
She brushed my arm and nodded. Again, I felt contact.
I asked her to describe what she saw. She said she saw me in a white dress, billowing hair, serene bearing. No stab wounds.
We could only see our own shattered bodies in death. To others, we looked fine.
“I don’t want to stay here,” she winced. “I want to go back.”
I had no answer to that. I didn’t want her to leave me behind. So, I tried to tell her my story and what had happened to me. The high-profile cruelty of my death seemed to appall her.
I hoped my candor would bring out her own story, but she didn’t reciprocate.
Still hopeful, I went to my most vulnerable place, and told her about the mouse I saw dying on that summer day.
“Wait,” she said, coming closer to me, as if to verify the honesty in my face. “Where did you live?”
I told her about my neighborhood, and when I mentioned Debbie and Brooke, and her eyes widened. She told me they were her housemates too, and that was the house where she’d died.
We looked at each other up and down, and as we recognized ourselves, each in the other, a terrible realization hit us both. When I’d seen the mouse dying, I’d wanted a second chance to help the poor thing so badly I had offered up my own life in exchange for the life of the mouse. And my wish was granted, only not how I’d thought possible.
The result stood before me.
Instead of killing myself, I had to be murdered. No wonder I’d had my meltdown. I couldn’t commit suicide, but I needed to die.
I saved the mouse. It didn’t succumb to the poison. It went free.
No wonder I hadn’t found its body.
The girl and I looked at one another in disbelief and horror. We’d both just met the stark possibility of something we’d been so desperate to prevent in life. And still—it was all for the sake of the mouse.
Suddenly, something that sounded like a low-flying jet screamed above us. The ground imploded beneath our feet. A darkness blossomed, and then we were shoved apart by cold blast of rusty-smelling air. We cried out as the distance between us yawned, and the bright haze turned to ash. I never saw my ghost again.
16
It’s now been a year since I was stabbed to death.
I can’t stop crying and bleeding all over myself.
I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live. I wanted to be with Nora and have picnics with her on the summer grass. I wanted to ride horses. I wanted to be reunited with my people. I wanted my mom to finally come to her senses, and love me as her daughter. I wanted to find a great place to sit, drink tea, and read for hours. I wanted to help weak and small things. I wanted the mouse.
But now I’m lost in this wasteland of regret. I guess that’s just the way things are. And they will be this way forever.
And yet, today I decided to find a way back into the living world, its love and warmth and promise walled off from my being. It’s a place where I may never have existed to begin with. I’m still going back.
And even though it’s going to hurt a lot, and make me feel even more sad and tired, I’m going to keep looking for the mouse.
There’s something I need to ask it.
The Walking Man
Matt Bechtel
Not all ghosts are dead.
There’s this guy who walks around my neighborhood. I see him when I’m out running, and I run all the time. I call him “The Walking Man,” because that’s all he ever does — just walk, slowly down the sidewalk, apparently to nowhere. Although that’s being kind of me, because honestly, he doesn’t walk well; his left leg is mangled, deformed, and encased in a massive brace, so I should really call him “The Limping Man.”
But that seems mean, because his leg is the least of his problems.
The left side of his body is burnt, covered in scars that make his skin look like a half-peeled beet. Particularly his face. It’s harder to notice when his hair gets shaggy, but he looks like a Batman villain when he’s cleaned up and it’s cut short.
But that seems mean, because the burns aren’t his worst problem, either.
The Walking Man is … not well. I don’t know how to put it more delicately than that. He’s not all there. He barks at himself — or, at least, I hope at himself — as he shuffles down the street, his eyes typically locked on his underperforming feet. On the days he’s particularly agitated (when I assume he’s off his medication), he punctuates his shouts by throwing punches at the breeze. The saddest part is that he can’t even clench a fist with his left hand, so he swipes at whatever demons are tormenting him with a pathetic claw.
I’ve even seen him off the sidewalk a few times, pacing across an empty church parking lot or some random family’s back yard. I’ve almost stopped my run to try to get him help or to alert a homeowner that there was a potentially dangerous person on their property.
There’s a home for the mentally handicapped on Hope Street, right at the bus stop two blocks up from the Y and three blocks down from the little mom and pop liquor store. I don’t know for sure, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out where The Walking Man lives.
I’ll come clean and admit that, no matter how un-PC it is of me, I’m not comfortable around the mentally disabled. I know it’s not their fault, and I know they’re not bad people, but they just give me the heebie-jeebies. I think it’s because I know that there, but for the grace of God, go I. I’m an athlete and strong and healthy and bright, yet the only difference between The Walking Man and me is one genetic imperfection. One chromosome a tiny bit off. That’s why whenever I see him, whenever I pass him running in the opposite direction as he’s struggling his way up the sidewalk, I look away. I check for foot traffic coming up behind me, gaze across the street, or even follow his lead and keep my head down until I’m clear of him. In other words, I do pretty much anything to avoid acknowledging him.
It usually works, but every so often, it doesn’t. With how much I run and how often he’s out walking in the same neighborhood, the law of averages dictates that there are times when our gazes catch one another. And it’s when we share a fleeting glimpse as I race past that The Walking Man really, truly, scares me.
His eyes are like the un-boarded windows of an abandoned house — dark, reflective, and clinging to the feint memory of who used to live within.
My left leg acts up whenever it rains. It’s from an old injury, and it’s been that way for so long that it’ll literally start to ache the second the sky darkens and I can smell the atmospheric change of an impending shower. Fortunately for me, the bus stop I mentioned (the one right in front of the group home) is a perfect place to pause for a stretch. All the pedestrian foot traffic passes in front, so I’ll sneak behind it for a few lunges and hamstring stretches to keep myself loose and my leg from cramping up. It was on one such drizzly day that The Walking Man left the house at the same time that I had stopped. I turned away from him per usual, but as he passed one of the nurses, who was clearly waiting for her ride home, she waved to him.
“Enjoy your walk!” she called with a genuine smile.
The Walking Man meekly raised his good hand in a sad wave as he pulled his body down the street in the ot
her direction.
There was an elderly woman waiting at the bus stop as well. She patted the nurse on her thigh and told her, “You’re a saint, working with those poor people!”
The nurse smiled. “I especially have a soft spot for him. Such a tragedy!”
My ears pricked up and I stretched towards the back of the bus stop to eavesdrop.
“How so?” the old woman asked.
“He wasn’t born like that,” the nurse explained. “Traumatic brain injury. He was out jogging in the rain one day and a drunk hydroplaned and jumped the curb. His leg got caught underneath the car.”
“No!” the old woman gasped.
“It took four surgeries to save it. But nothing could save his mind — he got dragged along for a block and a half, his head bouncing the whole way like a basketball!”
“So … so those burns …?”
The nurse nodded. “They’re ‘road rash.’ Pavement scars.”
“Dear God!” the old woman exclaimed. “That poor child!”
“You get used to working with the disabled,” the nurse explained, “but him? It’s just so, so sad. He lives for his afternoon walks; says he enjoys them because they remind him of who he used to be. That’s why we use them as his reward. When he takes his meds and finishes his P.T. every day, he gets to go out walking.”
I couldn’t bring myself to listen anymore, so I finished my stretching and shot off in the opposite direction of The Walking Man.
It took me a solid half-mile to realize why I had bolted so suddenly — I was wracked with guilt. Everything I had assumed about The Walking Man had been wrong. He wasn’t born like that, with a gimpy leg and an even more gimpy brain. And the burns I’d always figured were the remnants of an uncontrollable act of self-harm were a horrific reminder of the hell through which he’d literally been dragged.
Most of all, I felt guilty because I’d been right — there, but for the grace of God, went I. Not from some freak genetic crapshoot, but from pure, dumb, unfathomable, tragic luck. I can’t tell you how many miles I’ve logged over the years running these very streets; on any given day, that drunk who jumped the curb could’ve jumped into me.
Which was when I decided to stop being such a piece of shit to The Walking Man. There would be no more looking away, no more avoiding those glances that scared me so much. On that day, I made a solemn vow to myself that I’d wave or smile or nod whenever I saw him. I knew he was capable of reciprocating since I’d seen him wave to the nurse, so once we’d established that level of comfort I’d start saying, “Hello!” as I passed. I wouldn’t push him and I’d take it slowly. It’s not like I envisioned us becoming friends and going out for coffee, but I was determined to treat him like a person instead of some feral animal. After all, this was his neighborhood, too.
My plans may have been good and pure, but The Walking Man seemed to want no part of them.
It was only a few days later that I found myself barreling towards him as he dragged his way up the street, shouting and gesturing at God-knows-what as he did. He was in front of the little Mexican bar and restaurant that always had really good chips and salsa, but really mediocre everything else. Unabashedly, I focused my eyes on his like lasers and smiled the biggest, most sincere smile I could fashion.
The Walking Man stopped in his tracks and stared straight through me, dumbfounded, as I ran by.
Undaunted, I decided to up the ante the next time I saw him, which again was only a matter of days. Every so often, when I feel like mixing things up and running a few sprints, I’ll hit my old high school for a couple of laps around the track (in fact, I’m there often enough that the track team doesn’t pay me any mind as I lap their best runners). I was just leaving one afternoon, crossing the lot where they park all the school buses for the night, when I spotted him. He was a block down and shuffling up the other side of the street, so I darted across a crosswalk and bee-lined toward him. He stopped and stared when he saw me approaching. Good! I thought. Progress! This time I not only smiled, but flared my eyebrows and nodded three times.
Still, no response. The Walking Man gazed through me with a slack jaw, as if it were unbelievable to him that someone would show him a bit of kindness.
So I upped my ante again and changed my normal running route to essentially loop around and around his block. Since I knew he walked every afternoon, I figured I’d have more chances to interact with him the more time I spent close to the group home. I was right, because I caught him two blocks up the very next day at the front steps of the public library (right by the weird street sculpture the city commissioned from a local artist years ago that never made any sense in front of a library). This time I threw it all at him at once — the broad smile, the nods, and the flared eyebrows. I even waved, a subtle two-finger-salute that undeniably conveyed acknowledgment and goodwill.
Again, The Walking Man did nothing. He just stopped and stared at me with what I would swear was incredulity.
About five steps past where he’d planted himself, I looked over my shoulder to see his empty, perplexed stare had followed me up the street. Although I realize now that I was reaching and seeing what I wanted to see, I honestly thought that might have been a positive sign.
Then, the next time I saw him, I almost ran into him.
I don’t know why I wasn’t thinking more about him that day; I guess I was just zoned out and focused on my run. Still, I was on my new route around his block, and without realizing it I almost steamrolled the poor guy. I had my head down and he had just left for his afternoon walk. We met at the junction point of his front path and the sidewalk like a pair of trains with no conductor working the crossing. Fortunately, I slammed on my foot brakes a half a step before we collided and threw my hands up like airbags. He stopped, startled, and for the first time I was face to face with The Walking Man.
I smiled, nodded, and spoke my first words to him. “Hello!” I said. “Heading out for a walk?”
The Walking Man started screaming.
I stepped back and started apologizing profusely. “It’s okay!” I insisted, trying to calm him and to keep myself from freaking out in kind. “It’s okay! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to frighten you!”
But he wouldn’t stop shouting. Over and over again, unintelligible and violent sounds burst from his mouth as he wildly swung his hands at everything around him except me. Pedestrians across the street stopped and stared, and cars driving by slowed to a crawl.
“Please!” I tried again. “Please, I’m sorry! It’s okay! We’re both okay! No one got hurt!”
Mercifully, reinforcements arrived when the nurse whom I’d seen at the bus stop charged down the front walk with two other nurses in tow. “Martin!” she called as she approached him. “Martin! What’s wrong?”
“I’m … I’m so sorry!” I tried to explain to her, “I almost ran into him, but I stopped! I didn’t touch him! I promise, he’s not hurt!”
She ignored me and put her hands on The Walking Man’s shoulders. At first he tried to wriggle away, but she was insistent (clearly, unlike me, she knew what she was doing and how to handle him when he got like this). “Martin!” she demanded. “Look at me! Look at me!” When he finally did, her voice became soothing. “Tell me what’s wrong, Martin.”
That was when I heard The Walking Man speak for the first time. “I …” he stammered, with a tongue that sounded four sizes too big for his mouth, “I saw ‘im ‘gain.”
“Saw him?” the nurse asked. “Saw who? Saw who again?”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, “I almost ran into him! I think he’s talking about …”
“Me,” The Walking Man interrupted me. “I saw me ‘gain. Me be-fore.”
“Um, hi!” I tried to interject, this time with half a chuckle. “I’m not sure what he thinks he saw, but I’m pretty sure this is all my fault!”
“Martin, we’ve been over this,” the nurse explained in voice that was somehow tired, comforting, and yet stern all at the same time. �
��You did not see yourself. There’s no young version of you running around the neighborhood.”
“Excuse me!” I tried to get her attention more forcefully, but to no avail.
The nurse slid her hands down to hold The Walking Man’s to keep them from flailing, and another stepped forward and gently rubbed his back and shoulders. Slowly but surely, his rage and fear melted, but he wouldn’t stop shaking his head. When he finally looked up again, I caught a twinge of honest pain in his usually vacant, dark eyes.
“Was me,” The Walking Man insisted. “Wear … my old … Clash tee.”
I took two steps back from the group gathered around him and stared down at my chest, right at a faded silkscreen image of the album artwork of London Calling. I’d bought this shirt at the first concert I’d ever seen, back when they played The Pavilion across town the summer when I was fifteen.
I didn’t know what to do, so I just started running again, sprinting off in the other direction as fast as my legs could churn. That was when I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I wasn’t out running. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten, or slept, or showered, or went to work, or even went home. Hell, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spoken with anyone. I’d just been running, for as long as I could remember.
Which was when I remembered that my name is Martin.
I was right about one thing — not all ghosts are dead. Sometimes, whatever it is that makes us, us, gets separated from our bodies by other means. It took getting dragged through the rain for a block and a half by a drunk to knock me out of mine.
But I was very, very wrong about another thing when it came to The Walking Man. There, without the grace of God, I went.
I’ll be lying if I tell you I have any clue what’s going to happen to me or how long I’ll spend running these streets, but I know one thing for certain — I’ll avoid The Walking Man’s block from now on. There’s no need for me to haunt him; he’s suffered enough, and he deserves to enjoy his walks in peace.
Wicked Haunted: An Anthology of the New England Horror Writers Page 11