White Walker

by Richard Schiver

  How it took you was a different matter entirely. She had witnessed first hand the ravages of cancer. Her aunt had died of lung cancer when Andrea was ten. A favorite aunt who always got along much better with the children than she did with the adults in the family.

  Their repeated requests to visit Aunt Dee had fallen upon deaf ears until the very end. By that time there was no disguising the fact that death was knocking at her door. And the smell. It was the smell of death; there was no describing it. The hospital staff had tried to disguise it with disinfectant, but the smell lingered just beneath the surface of that harsh chemical odor.

  With all the commotion that was going on, the loss of their dedicated computer- controlled phone links, the sudden interest Teddy and the others had been paying to the smoking area, and Kevin’s heart attack, she wasn’t sure where to go. The smoking area was out of the question, leaving the ladies’ room as the only viable option. While Norman, Teddy and Cody were in the break room warming up, she retrieved her purse from her desk and slipped into the ladies’ room.

  Lowering the toilet seat, she sat down and rummaged through her pocketbook. She knew she had some smokes left, at least half a pack, unless… No, she’d been keeping an eye on the others. There had been some times in the past when her so-called co-workers, short on cash but long on need, had slipped a few out of her purse when she was busy elsewhere.

  Her fingers brushed against the cellophane packaging and she withdrew the partially crushed package that still contained five smokes. Not enough for a whole night but she would have to make due. She should have stopped for more before coming in but the parking lot of the Pick & Go convenience store that supplied her habit had not been plowed and she hadn’t wanted to take a chance on getting stuck.

  She removed one of the crinkled smokes and slipped the filtered end between her lips. As she did the memory of her aunt stirred in the back of her mind. Aunt Dee was her mom’s only sister and until she had gotten sick she was always at the house, doting over Andrea and her brother. There was no reason to be thinking about her now, but the memory of that last day blossomed in her mind.

  She was once again ten, being led down the hospital corridor by her mother and father, one hand firmly grasping her brother’s. Edward was crying; he was two years younger than she was, and the hospital corridor with its bright lights was a frightening place. Everything around them seemed oversized and scary. Nurses, doctors and patients crowded the hallway. Some of the patients sat in wheelchairs, with IV bottles suspended behind them, attached to their arms via a clear plastic tube.

  At the end of the corridor, they were ushered into a room where the lights had been turned down low. The first thing that struck her was the smell. They had tried to mask it with antiseptic but there was no denying the odor that lay beneath that harsh chemical smell. It was the stench of decay, of things lying dead in the blazing sun, of forbidden swamps deep in the heart of shadowy forests.

  Her grandmother was there, perched upon a chair on the other side of the hospital bed. She held something in one hand, caressing it with the other, and it took Andrea several moments before she realized it was her aunt’s emaciated hand her grandmother was comforting. Blue veins stood out on the back of Aunt Dee’s hand, the color of the flesh was nearly the same as the sheets of the bed. The tendons on the back of her hand created ridges that led to each oversized knuckle that in turn led to skeletal fingers resting lightly in her Grandmothers hand.

  “It won’t be much longer,” her grandmother said, not talking directly to Andrea, not really talking to anybody. Just stating a fact. There was a sadness about her that fed Andrea’s own growing unease.

  “Aunt Dee wants to say goodbye,” her mother said as she guided each of them to the side of the bed.

  Where is she going? Andrea wondered as she stood by the bed with her head down, grasping the chrome bar that kept her aunt from falling out of it. Her hands were small against the bright metal. Her aunt’s hand rose from the sea of white sheets beyond and came to rest on top of her fingers. Her flesh was cold, waxy, and a chill whispered along her arm. Andrea looked up, into her aunt’s face, and shivered at the living skull that was staring back at her.

  Dee was only twenty-eight, but she looked like she was much older. The skin of her face was pulled tightly against the bones of her skull, making her cheekbones especially prominent; her eyes looked like they might just roll right out of her skull at any moment.

  “I’m sorry, Boo,” Dee whispered, struggling to catch her breath, as if it took a tremendous amount of energy just to speak. “We won’t be going fishing this summer,” she finished before letting her head fall back to the pillow.

  Every summer for the past two years they had spent their days on the river bank catching fish. Andrea had learned to bait her own hooks, and this year she had been looking forward to taking her catches off the hook. Her fondest memories were of summer evenings spent on the river, the air full of insects flying just above the water’s surface as it trundled past them in slow motion, dimples appearing where the fish rose to the surface to feed. The occasional splash as one leapt above the atmosphere of its home to snatch a tasty morsel from the air.

  Andrea couldn’t understand why. After all, Aunt Dee was in a hospital. Weren’t they supposed to make you all better? It was what her Mommy always told her.

  “I think it’s time,” her grandmother said. Andrea’s mother stepped to the other side of the bed while her father’s hand came to rest on Andrea’s shoulder.

  Time for what?

  “Let’s wait in the hall, kids, your Aunt Dee needs to rest,” her father said

  Andrea was led from the room, but before she stepped out she glanced back to see her mother and grandmother leaning over Dee’s bed as they comforted her in her last moments. In the hallway was a short row of hard plastic chairs and it was here they waited.

  A doctor walked down the hallway towards them, followed by two nurses, and the three of them vanished into Dee’s room. Shortly Father Holloran arrived; he was the priest at the church where Andrea and her brother attended Sunday school in the basement while their parents worshipped upstairs.

  Aunt Dee had never gone to church, so Andrea was confused as to why Father Holloran had come to see her. Maybe he was going to convince her to start going to church on Sundays. If that was so, Andrea could have saved him the trouble. Aunt Dee always said Sunday mornings were best for sleeping in and being lazy.

  She and her brother were not allowed to sleep in on Sundays. They had to get up, take a bath, and dress up for Sunday school. In a way Andrea resented her aunt’s freedom, and she looked forward to being able to sleep in on Sunday mornings when she grew up.

  Father Holloran stopped and spoke with her father in low whispers for a moment before stepping into the room. Andrea tried to eavesdrop, even though she knew she shouldn’t, but she was searching for answers neither of her parents were willing to provide.

  Why was Aunt Dee in the hospital? What was wrong with her? Why wasn’t she going fishing with them this year? The questions chased one another through her mind as she concentrated on what the priest and her father were saying. She caught snatches of the conversation. Something about a service, a casket, and a grave. Andrea knew about these things. Her grandfather had died the previous year and she had gone to the church service with her mother, who had been crying the whole time.

  A sound in the bathroom pulled her from her thoughts and she realized she hadn’t even lit her cigarette before the memories had taken her on a brief jaunt into the past. The sound came again, a slow, scraping noise as if someone were trying to sneak up on her. Her co-workers had done that very thing in the past when she first started working here and she wouldn’t put it past Cody to try something like that now. But Cody was in no shape to be kidding around.

  “I hear you out there. Don’t try anything stupid.”

  The sound stopped and Andrea was about to light her cigarette when the smell washed over her. It was li
ke that day in the hospital room, but now there was no harsh chemical smell to mask it and its full power filled her with fear. It was the smell of death and dying, of things lying long dead under the blazing sun, of abandoned basements and forgotten attics. It was the stench of a stagnant swamp hidden within the gloomy depths of a forbidden forest.

  The sound of movement came again, directly in front of the stall she occupied, and as she covered her mouth and nose to keep from gagging, she saw a shadow on the floor beneath the door of the stall. The sound of a dragging step kept time with the shadows movement. Andrea fought back the scream building in her throat, a part of her still clinging to the idea it was one of her co-workers playing a trick on her, refusing to embarrass herself in front of anyone.

  “I’m coming out,” she said and gathered her courage as she pulled herself to her feet. Silently she reminded herself that ghosts did not exist. Dead was dead, and there was no coming back. She reached up and unlocked the door to the stall, pulling back the little silver bar that was all that stood between her and whatever was waiting on the other side.

  Readying herself, she pulled open the door and stepped into the empty bathroom. The odor still lingered, an errant memory that had escaped her thoughts? The remnant of a visit from beyond the grave?

  Her need for a cigarette now forgotten, she turned to the entrance of the bathroom just as the lights flickered and went out. Standing in the dark, she felt it then, on a deep primitive level, the presence of others in the room with her. Not one, nor even two, but many. Steeling herself, she marched straight for the door. She was half expecting to bump into something in the dark and the thought of doing so sent chills down her spine. She didn’t know what she would do if she did.

  With her hands stretched out in front of her, she reached the wall and felt along its surface. The lights flickered and came on, the fluorescent tubes above her head buzzing like a disturbed nest of angry bees. From the room behind her came the soft sound of movement as something, or someone, slowly approached her. The odor of death wrapped itself about her as that old memory, once awakened, refused to relinquish its grip. It took every ounce of her willpower to not turn around. Certain that if she did she would be lost forever. She grabbed the door handle and yanked the door open, stepping across the threshold into the hallway, where she stopped and leaned against the wall as she struggled to get her churning emotions under control.

  Chapter 20

  Without the phones, Liz had been browsing the web, updating her Facebook page and following the tweets on Twitter. Had she been doing this during normal business hours she would have been fired, but as it was, with nothing else to do, she ventured online, figuring if they fired her, so what? She had been looking for a job when she found this one. Besides, there was no work to do anyway.

  As she browsed the web, she would occasionally glance towards the hallway that led to the break room, where the others had gone after taking Kevin’s body out onto the dock. She had never really gotten a chance to know him as they both moved in separate circles outside of work, so his death had had about as much impact on her as the death of an animal in the forest. It had really been more of an inconvenience to her. Aside from the fact that over a decade separated them in age, Kevin was a homebody while Liz lived for the weekend and party nights on the town.

  That was how she and Cody had gotten together. Like her, he was a party animal and they frequented many of the same bars on Friday and Saturday nights. She had to admit that he was kind of cute. They’d gone out a few times, dancing, or to the bars, maybe a movie. They’d made out in the front seat of her car with the shifter between them, keeping things from going any further than some heavy groping and kissing. He’d invited her into his apartment several times but she declined the invitation. While he might be cute, there was just something about him that frightened her. An aura of violence surrounded him, and she had seen him beat the crap out of a couple of people. It was something he looked like he enjoyed.

  She glanced again at the hallway as she struggled to control the jealousy that was threatening to overwhelm her. She knew what had happened between Judy and Cody, but that had been before they got together.

  “Can’t you get in trouble for that?” Leslie said. She’d only been with the company for a month, so she was still worried about breaking any one of the myriad rules designed to keep the workers in line.

  “What are they gonna do? Fire me?” Liz said with a dismissive shrug. “Besides, the phones aren’t working, so we’re not getting any calls.”

  “Where are the others?” Leslie looked around the empty sea of cubicles. From the shadowy depths around them came the sound of the wind battering itself again the walls of the building. From above came another sound, a faint groaning, as if an object were being pushed beyond its limits.

  Had the shadows not been so dense, they would have seen the ceiling tiles in the corner as they shifted in response to the movement of the roof truss above them.

  Built in 1974, the building that now housed the call center had been behind schedule before construction even started. In order to meet his deadline, the builder had taken a few shortcuts, the most dangerous being the repair of a roof truss that had been damaged in shipment. Instead of replacing the steel truss, he had cut out the damage and replaced it with a lower grade of steel he’d picked up at the local surplus store. In his mind, placing the truss next to the wall would ensure it wouldn’t have to carry the same load the other trusses would. Under normal circumstances, this would not have been a problem.

  What the employees of the call center now faced was far from normal. The roof’s load limit had been exceeded an hour earlier as the heavy wet snow continued to pile up. The winds that battered the building were stressing the structure to the breaking point. The roof truss the builder had repaired was moving back and forth under the load, nearly a full inch in either direction, slowly twisting the low grade steel that had been used to repair it.

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Leslie said.

  “Did you hear that?” Liz said.

  “Hear what?”

  Liz held up her hand to silence Leslie, and tilted her head to one side to listen.

  “There it is again.”

  “What is it? I can‘t hear anything.”

  “It sounds like a kid crying.”

  “Can’t be, there aren’t any kids here. Maybe it’s the wind.”

  Liz shook her head. “No. That’s a kid crying.”

  “Where’s it coming from?”

  Liz got to her feet and started towards the front of the building where all of the offices were located. Leslie followed, her gaze switching from the shadows behind them to the corridor in front.

  “I still can’t hear anything,” Leslie said.

  “There it is again.”

  Leslie strained to hear what Liz had heard. From the shadowy depths of the corridor came a barely audible sob that sent chills racing the length of her spine as goose bumps washed across the flesh of her arms. Her grandmother used to say that if you heard a child crying where there was no child, someone would die before sunset.

  Am I about to die? she wondered.

  “Oh my God, I heard it,” Leslie said, her hands going to her mouth.

  “Why is there a baby in the building?” Liz said, glancing back at Leslie, who could only watch silently. What could she say? Liz would laugh at her if she revealed how terrifying the thought of that crying child was to her.

  “Let’s go see if the phones are back up,” Leslie said, trying to draw Liz away from searching for the source of that child’s crying.

  “Are you crazy? I want to know what’s going on.” Liz stopped at the entrance to the hallway. Slowly she leaned into the doorway and looked down that shadowy corridor. The left wall was black with several framed posters. The right wall contained the doorways to the assorted offices located there. Each door was closed, with a narrow strip of soft light showing along the bottom.

  From the shadowy
depths a child’s cry whispered. Liz shivered and she rubbed her arms.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “I didn’t hear nothing,” Leslie said from the main room behind her.

  In the deep shadows gathered at the end of the hallway, she spotted movement, the darker outline of a something small as it slithered through the gloom.

  “What the hell was that?” Liz said as she stepped into the hallway and walked cautiously down the narrow corridor.

  Leslie was left alone in the main room, her gaze swiveling from the corridor down which Liz had vanished to the hallway that led to the break room where it seemed everyone else had gone. Then she smelled it. The sickly sweet odor of roasting flesh, and the scent caused her stomach to perform several lazy somersaults.

  Glancing down the corridor, she saw the shadowy form of Liz, who had so far managed to make it twenty feet. In the other direction the hallway ended in a flight of stairs that led to the training room on the second floor. It was from this direction that the odor was strongest. Three steps were visible, the rest vanishing into the emptiness that lay like a heavy cloak across the light of reason, shrouding in its depths the essence of nightmares that lay waiting for the unwary traveler to draw near.

  She didn’t want to go up there. The steps that in the cold light of day held no menace were now crowded with barely glimpsed nightmare images that existed more in Leslie’s mind than anywhere else. Stairs went up and nothing else. The thought from her childhood whispered in her mind. Growing up, she’d had an irrational fear of steps, believing they led to a dark and frightening place inhabited by all the monsters that lived beneath the floor under her bed. The monsters weren’t really under her bed, they were under the floor, and all steps led to their lair.