He stopped twenty feet away, watching her from beneath the shadowy brim of his hat, his eyes sparkling with a light all their own.
“Did you lose something?” he said in a gravelly voice that stirred ancient memories in Judy’s subconscious, primitive memories that reached back to the days of the caveman and his instinctive fear of the dark.
She nodded as she took a step back, glancing over her shoulder to judge the distance to the house. She should have been more careful. If she hadn’t had been in such a hurry to get back on the phone, if she had held onto the leash better, she would be snug and warm inside instead of standing here at the edge of the wilderness facing a thing that until this very moment she never really believed existed.
“Was he small and furry?”
Again she nodded silently, afraid to speak, fearing that it would reveal her deepening terror. She’d made a terrible mistake.
“I can get him back for you.” The stranger continued the one sided conversation. “Would you like that?”
She nodded as she took another step back.
“But I want something in return.”
Terror coursed through her at his words. What could he want from her? What could she, a young child, possibly possess that he couldn’t possess himself?
“Would you be willing to give me something for Charlie’s safe return?”
She remained still, afraid to move, to give any indication that she agreed with him. How did he know Charlie’s name? She’d never said a single word to him. The fear slowly unwound in the pit of her stomach, feeding a growing panic that nibbled at her calm reserve. She was going to die, today, right here in the woods not a hundred yards from the safety of her house. Her mom and dad would be heartbroken over her death and the thought brought a solitary tear that traced a wet path down her cheek.
“You will grow to become a beautiful woman,” the stranger said. “A young man will catch your eye and together you will build a family.” The stranger paused to let that sink in.
Judy was bewildered by this sudden turn in the situation and she sensed that she stood a good chance of surviving. The stranger was obviously off his rocker, wandering the woods in the snowstorm, scaring little kids.
“What do you want?” she said after mustering the courage to speak.
“So she speaks.” The dirty red scarf covering the lower portion of his face was the color of spilled blood and muffled the stranger’s words.
She took another step back, sensing her backyard right behind her; all she had to do was turn around and run to the house. Would she have enough time to get the door open and slip inside before he caught up with her? And what about Charlie?
“Before you run away, Judy, hear me out.”
How did he know my name? She stopped.
“I know many things.”
It was like he could read her mind, but what did he want?
“I want your first-born child.”
“What?” she blurted out. What was he talking about? She was only ten. Sure she had fantasies of growing up, getting married, and having a family. Every little girl did. But that was so far in the future thinking about it now was an exercise in futility. Even though she was ten, she understood how life could change in an instant. It had happened to her cousin Janice just last year. She had been returning from vacation with her Mom and Dad when a drunk driver crossed the yellow line. Against her mother’s wishes, she has attended their funeral and for weeks after dreamed about Janice crying out from within her closed coffin as it was lowered into the grave.
Life could change in an instant. A promise made today carried no guarantee of being fulfilled in the future. And she wanted Charlie back so bad. If such a promise resulted in Charlie’s return, why shouldn’t she make it? After all, there was no guarantee she would be around to pay up. Before she could stop herself, she was nodding her head, and the stranger was gone, vanishing into the storm, disappearing so completely she questioned if he had really even been there.
Charlie barked from the forest and she saw him standing next to a fallen tree where the stranger had been standing. As she approached, she became aware of the single trail of footprints that ended where Charlie stood.
The looped end of his leash had become caught on a protruding branch and she worked to unravel it while at the same time she tried to understand what had just happened. She remembered the stranger, but the memory had a dream-like quality to it, as if she was recalling what had happened instead of experiencing it first-hand. Getting the leash loose, this time she slipped the loop around her wrist and led Charlie back to the house as the snow fell around her with a soft hissing voice.
The memory faded and she was back in the call center. Before her stood the small schoolhouse, the image wavering as if it stood behind heat waves rising from blacktop baking beneath a relentless sun. As it shimmered, she head a faint crackling sound that so perfectly matched the memory of the voice of the falling snow. Like the sound heard at the end of an old vinyl album just before the needle plunged into the center of the record.
Chapter 24
Judy had another connection with the structure now standing before her. Her mother had been into genealogy when Judy was eleven, researching their family tree. At the time, the Internet was in its infancy; there was no genealogy dot com to research the past of one’s family, so Judy’s mom became a fixture at the local courthouses, where she pored over old birth and death records. One branch of the tree ended abruptly and when Judy asked her mom about it she told her it was for a young schoolteacher who had died in a fire during a blizzard.
She walked around the structure, unaware of the others watching her as she rounded the corner and came to the front. Here several rickety stairs led to a small stoop in front of a sagging door. The door had been built in the same manner as the walls, with narrow boards covering the gaps between the wider boards that made up its surface. Two small windows flanked the door, the glass as opaque as those on the side, with shadowy movement behind each.
The door swung open and a small woman stepped out of the shadows of the interior, her every feature an exact duplicate of Judy’s. She wore the long dress of a frontier woman, with the high waist topped off by a long-sleeved blouse whose collar climbed her neck. It was a severe outfit designed more to cover any exposed flesh than to provide comfort or protection from the elements. With the exception of the naturally curly hair that framed the schoolteacher’s face, curls that elicited a jealousy in Judy, whose own hair lay straight and lifeless, they were twins. No matter what Judy did, nor however much she spent on volumizers and curling treatments, her hair remained straight as an arrow. With the exception of the hair, Judy would have sworn she was staring into a mirror.
As their eyes met, she began to understand the true nature of the world around her. Of the cycles of life, and death, and rebirth and how the past was but a memory waiting in the wings to be recalled. She felt a connection with this woman. A familiarity that transcended time itself.
“She’s your twin,” Jasmine said, having followed Judy around to the front of the schoolhouse. The school teacher stood upon the small stoop with the shadowy faces of her charges gathered behind her.
“I know her,” Judy said. The stories her mother had told her when she was a child were rekindled in her mind. There had been a school teacher in their family’s past, back when the mines were in full operation, and the miners who inhabited this area sought more opportunities for their children. It was the miners who had built the schoolhouse. The building itself comprised of what they could gather from a number of barns in the area. They had pooled what few resources they had to purchase a blackboard and schoolbooks. The desks had been hand-built by many of the miners themselves after working a long day in the mines. Working at their homes while they were still covered in coal dust. A labor of love that had terminated in terror when a surprise winter storm had cut the schoolhouse off from the town. Afterwards, the miners had found the smoking ruins filled with the charred remai
ns of their children huddled in one corner.
“Her name is Harriet. She’s my great-aunt or something.”
The schoolteacher smiled at Judy as she carefully came down the steps and approached her. As she did, Judy was overwhelmed with the sickly sweet odor of roasting flesh and she baked away from Harriet’s approach.
I’m sorry, Harriet whispered in Judy’s mind. It is what I’ve become.
From the walls around them came heavy pounding as the storm sought entry into the call center. Harriet looked around with a frightened expression as the cries of the children came from the shadowy interior of the schoolhouse.
“Please,” Norman cried out as he clamped his hands over his ears and lowered his head to his knees. “Please make it stop.”
“He’s come for the children,” Jasmine said.
Harriet glanced back at the schoolhouse as the children’s cries intensified. She swiveled her head around to Judy. She looked down at her belly and placed her hand on Judy’s midsection. Surprisingly, her hand felt warm and a faint smile came to Harriet’s lips as she looked into her eyes. Judy understood then just how much Harriet had loved the children under her care, just as she would have loved the child blossoming in her own womb had she survived, yet it wasn’t to be.
Chapter 25
The memories tumbled through Judy’s mind as the past opened before her. She felt like a voyeur as she watched the scenes unfolding. There had been a brief fling. A young miner had caught her eye, and on a rare day off he had taken her to the country, to his own small shack sitting at the edge of the wilderness. There they had made love as a gentle snowfall drifted down from a slate gray sky. Afterwards, the shame of her actions had descended and she had fled from the cabin, racing into the wilderness to lose herself, and in the process drawing the attention of the walker.
The snow-covered forest was the same everywhere she looked; the only thing different were her footprints, which were rapidly filling with snow as it fell with a steady hiss from the overcast sky. She was surrounded by towering pine trees whose boughs were bowed beneath the weight of the snow piled upon each branch. Then she heard it, the measured sound of approaching footsteps crunching through the layer of snow. She thought the young miner had come to rescue her and she ran towards the sound.
Rounding a tree, she came face to face with a stranger dressed in a long canvas riding coat. It was filthy, sweat-stained, and the odor of unwashed bodies accompanied him. He wore a leather hat that was pushed down upon his head, his eyes in shadows, the lower portion of his face wrapped with a dirty, blood-red scarf. The dress reminded her of the drovers who had come through late last fall, driving a herd of cattle to market down state. Several of them had passed back through on a return trip as the first snowfall turned the landscape into a winter wonderland.
It was the same stranger Judy had confronted as a child.
It was the one the locals called White Walker. Harriet had heard several of her pupils speaking about him. Their parents had emigrated from Russia, carrying with them the legends and tales of the windswept Russian steppes where they had grown up. The White Walker was purported to gather the souls of those who became lost in the many winter storms that swept down from the frozen north. Carrying them away to live out eternity in the desolate landscape that was its soul. He had gone by many names in the past. Had worn many faces, and she realized as she stood facing him, that he had been here long before the first immigrants inundated the land. His true name had become lost in the memory of the distant past, but his image had crossed the great land bridge that once connected the vast Siberian forests to the Upper Peninsula that would one day become Alaska.
She turned and fled into the forest, following her faint trail that wove among the towering pine trees around her. She became disoriented, losing sight of her trail, fleeing deeper into the vast wilderness as the cold slowly wicked down to her bones. She didn’t understand why she had run away in the first place. Surely her family would understand. The trail dimmed as her hopes of surviving dwindled. Just when she thought everything was lost, she came upon the young miner
He had followed, and he begged for her forgiveness, offering to do the right thing. But shortly after they were married in a simple ceremony overseen by the parents of her charges, a mining accident claimed his life. Such was the sorrow of the past, and Judy was overwhelmed by the realization that Harriet’s story mirrored her own. She had yet to tell her parents about her pregnancy. Nor did they approve of her living with Teddy. While they appeared to like him, the fact that he had yet to propose reinforced their belief that he was only after one thing.
“She has to let them go,” Jasmine said. She had followed Judy to the front of the schoolhouse.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s what he wants. It’s his due. He believes the schoolteacher and the children belong to him. Unless you can convince them to cross over, they will become lost in the frozen wastes that is his soul,” Jasmine said.
Chapter 26
From the ceiling above came the snapping sound of steel surrendering to the immense weight of the snow resting upon the roof’s surface. Leslie and Liz looked up just as the roof collapsed upon them, burying them beneath a mountain of snow and twisted steel. The lights went out and water sprayed across the room from the severed sprinkler system as a wintry wind swirled among the chairs and desks of the main floor. Snowflakes were driven this way and that, drifting to any available surface, where they melted instantly.
“Liz,” Cody shouted as he raced to the pile and pulled at the twisted wreckage. His palms were sliced open and he left bloody handprints on the white snow. Dropping to his knees, he dug through the snow with his hands, crying out for Elizabeth as he worked, his emotions, already at a high point, had been thrown into overdrive by this new turn of events.
Teddy took him by the arm and tried to pull him away, but Cody shook him off and continued his frantic search. Teddy’s experience as an EMT told him what Cody had yet to find out.
“There’s nothing we can do for them.” Teddy tried to reason with him but Cody was having none of it. He continued to dig through the snow, pulling away pieces of the roof and tossing them over his shoulder.
“We gotta find them,” he said as he flung aside the pieces of a shattered desk. “We gotta save them.”
“I’m sorry, man,” Teddy said in a gentle voice as he rested his hand on Cody’s shoulder. The younger man’s efforts slowed as reality asserted itself in his mind. He’d done everything he could to save them. But some things were meant to be. Some deaths were necessary to help us grow and mature. He hung his head to cry as the sound of rushing water battled the voice of the wind that had found its way inside. Fat snowflakes drifted down from the opened roof and Teddy surveyed the damage as the sound of movement came from the shattered remnants. They would have to get out soon. No telling when the rest of the roof would collapse.
Chapter 27
The incessant pounding of the wind battering itself against the outer walls of the building had become his world. The rear door rattled in its frame, and from his vantage point in the main room, Norman could see the door clearly. Through the shattered glass of the window, the faint light of day softly illuminated a portion of the shadowy hallway.
He looked away, his gaze drifting over to the shimmering image of the schoolhouse and the young schoolteacher who looked like Judy. The sudden appearance of the schoolhouse had not rattled him one bit. After all, he had plenty of experience with the ghosts of the past, his current predicament exemplifying that fact.
Jimmy was still at the back door trying to get in. Norman’s gaze drifted back to the hallway, beyond which stood the only barrier between them and that which inhabited the storm. From the roof above came the creaking of the steel rafters and he knew it was about to let go.
He was about to voice his concerns when, with the snapping sound of cold steel stretched beyond its capabilities, a portion of the roof collapsed. Standing directly below t
hat section were Leslie and Liz, who had backed away to put some distance between themselves and the one-room schoolhouse standing in the middle of the call center’s main floor.
There had been a brief scream from one of the women before they were buried beneath a small mountain of snow and debris. He watched as Cody tried to save them, touched by his actions as he’d always considered Cody to be nothing more than an overgrown, immature child who had found the freedom he’d sought but was unable to handle it, as was evidenced by his drinking. He felt detached, not really a part of what was going on around him. It was a sensation he had grown accustomed to, for he had never really been a part of anything in his life.
As Teddy pulled Cody from the small mountain of snow, Norman saw swirling snow devils dancing across the surface of the debris strewn pile. They moved back and forth across the pile, up and down its sides, and he suddenly understood that what had been safely locked out by their refusal to permit it access had just found a way in.
Let me in, Norman, Jimmy whispered in his mind and he clamped his hands over his ears as he lowered his head to his knees. Please, he pleaded silently. Please leave me alone!
A cold wind swept down from the opening in the roof, driving those small snow devils before it, and as they drew closer Norman shot to his feet.
“What’s wrong?” Andrea said. Her attention drawn from what was happening with Cody by Norman’s sudden movement.
“They’re coming,” Norman said before he turned and raced towards the back door. Andrea gave chase, catching up with him at the door to the smoking area. He started to push the bar that would open the door when she stopped him.
“What are you doing?”
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