The Walking

by Bentley Little

  Perhaps May was right. Perhaps they could help Miles. "Wait here!"

  Claire ordered the old woman, and May nodded in acquiescence, mumbling something unintelligible to herself.

  Claire hurried inside and used the cordless phone to dial Miles' firm.

  She asked to talk to Hal, keeping track all the while of the woman in her front yard. She gave her name to the receptionist and, after a few seconds' silence, was put through to Hal.

  "Claire!"

  "Hi, Hal."

  "It's great to hear your voice again! How the hell're you doing?"

  "I'm fine."

  "Glad to hear it, glad to hear it. I was so happy for Miles when he told me you'd gotten back together--" Hal broke off in mid-sentence, clearing his throat embarrassedly, suddenly aware that he may have said more than he should. She smiled. "Yeah, well..."

  He sounded worded. "You' really not back together? That was just wishful thinking?"

  "No, we are."

  "Whew! Scared me for a minute. You know Miles; I thought that maybe his plans were rushing ahead of the

  |

  "No. We're. I don't know what we are, to be honest with you. But we're together again."

  "Well, I'm glad you're back," Hal said.

  'l'hanks," Claire told him.

  "So what can I do for you? Miles isn't here--"

  "I know. That's why I'm calling. He took two weeks' leave in order to go to Arizona and find out what happened to his dad."

  'l'hey found Bob's body? Howbme he didn't tell me?"

  "No," she said. "It's not that." She paused, sighed. "Some i thing's going on. And the reason he didn't talk to you about it was probably because he was afraid you wouldn't believe him."

  "Try me"

  "All right." She dc bed for Hal the events as Miles had told her and as she herself had seen--Bob and Liam Connor and the woman in Utah---ending with May's mysterious visit and their intended trip to Wolf Canyon. She looked outside, saw the homeless woman grinning at her through the window, palms against the glass.

  Hal whistled. "Heavy shit."

  "Yeah. I know you probably don't believe any of it--" "Don't count me out. Miles was asking me my feelings about the supernatural a few weeks ago, and I told him then and I'll tell you now: my mind is open.

  I don't automatically disbelieve anything."

  Claire hesitated. "I don't know exactly how to bring this up, but do you think you could come with me?" She lowered her voice. "I don't want to travel by myself with that woman. She's crazy and she scares me. She said she's a witch, and she obviously has mental problems besides.

  "I'll pay," she added quickly. "Whatever your going rate is. I'll hire you to-"

  "Fuck that shit. What do you think I am, a stranger?

  have enough sick leave built up. I can take a few days. How long do you think it'll be?"

  "One day there, one day back. Two days, probably. Three at the most."

  "No problem. I'll get myself together and come right over. Where are you? Miles' place?"

  "Don't you have to clear it with someone first? ......

  "NO"

  "What about Perkins? Isn't he going to be ticked?"

  "Are you kidding? His head's a fecal-containment sys term. He will not even notice I'm gone. Besides, if worse comes to worst, Tran'll cover for me."

  "I'm at my house," Claire said. She gave him the ad dress. "Do you have a cellular phone you could bring?"

  "It's my American Express," Hal told her. "I don't leave home without it."

  Or' See you in an hour, then?" much sooner. I don't imagine you want to spend too time alone with that fruitcake."

  "No," Claire admitted, looking out the window.

  "I'm on my way."

  Then

  Isabella was not forgotten.

  Leland Huerdeen stood in his yard at the edge of town and looked north toward the flat buttes that defined the east west boundaries of the canyon. It had been nearly twenty five years since Isabella had been entombed, and she still cast a long shadow over life in town. Not a day went by that one of her misdeeds was not remembered by the older men, that children did not scare each other with the possibility of her return, that all of them did not tread warily past the abandoned house which had been hers and William's.

  Somewhere up there, Leland knew, was Isabella's sealed cave, and though he was not sure of its exact location, like everyone else in town he knew the cliff in which it was situated, and he always sped past the spot on the rare occasions that he passed through that area.

  His father, Grover, had been one of the early settlers in Wolf Canyon and the only haberdasher the community had ever known. Leland had taken up the family business several years ago, and though his father was still alive and still managed to block occasional hats for close friends, he had effectively turned everything over to his son.

  Hats and Isabella.

  Those were the two things his father talked about these days.

  Times had changed. Hardly anyone in town used magic anymore, and people kept the-k powers private, secret.

  Though it wasn't official, had probably never even been discussed, the decision had been made to disavow the past, to pretend as though this was an ordinary community filled with ordinary people where nothing unusual ever occurred. That was all Isabella's doing.

  As his father had told him many times, the woman had corrupted the paradise that they had all come together to build. "I was one of the first to see old Jeb Freeman after she'd drained the life out of him, and that's a sight I'll never forget," Grover had been saying as long as Leland could re member. "Jeb was a powerful man, and someone that could do that to him, leave him nothing more than an empty shell, was someone to be feared indeed. We didn't like Isabella, none of us did, but after that we were afraid of her. She still had William hornswoggled, too, and some of the others eventually went in with her.

  But I never did. I knew what she was."

  There was a litany of sins that his father never failed to recite, and Leland had grown up with a fear of Isabella and her seemingly unstoppable powers. Now he had a son, Robert, and his father wanted to indoctrinate the boy as soon as he was old enough to speak, to instill in him the same fear of Isabella's revenge with which he himself had been filled.

  "Why didn't we ever leave?" he'd asked when he'd grown old enough to think on his own. "How come we're still here? Other people left. Why don't we?"

  "Because this is our home," his father always said fiercely. "We carved this home from the wilderness, and I'm not about to let any monster drive us away."

  There were rumors that some had seen her: visions in the canyon late at night that terrified horses into running and sent the roughest ranchers into paroxysms of fear. They all knew where the cave was, and a special effort was made by all to avoid that area. It was one of the wider sections of the canyon, several miles across, and though the route was

  longer, people these days traveled on the other side of the marsh, near the west bluffs, rather than take the old path past the blocked cave entrance.

  Leland moved away from the fence, looked down at Hattie's sunflowers, just beginning to poke their heads up toward their namesake after staring at the ground all through the early weeks of their existence.

  He was supposed to travel to Randall tomorrow for material, a hard hundred miles that covered a lot of diverse territory, not all of it nice. But the truth was that the only part of the journey which concerned him was the trip out of the canyon.

  The trip past Isabella's cave.

  It was foolish and childish, but he still had the sense that she waited in there, watching, that she could somehow see through the rocks that covered the cave entrance to where he passed by--even though the new trail was miles away. It was as if there were a line across the width of the canyon, and anytime anyone crossed it, she knew.

  He'd had a dream the other night that he'd been on the road to Randall and his horse had kicked something in the trail that turned out to
be Isabella's head. The hair was filthy and filled with spiderwebs, the skin rotting, the eyes gone, but the bloody mouth worked perfectly and the head flew up into the air before him and began to shriek.

  Though he knew it was probably just his father's doing, he still couldn't help feeling some trepidation at the thought of passing by the dreaded place after a dream such as that.

  Leland walked into the house, yelled to Hattie in the kitchen that he was going over to see Samuel and visit for a while, have a smoke.

  "Supper's gonna be on soon!" she called.

  "I'll be back in twenty minutes!" He looked at his pocket watch and headed out the door. She said something behind him, but he didn't hear what it was and it didn't really matter. Even if he was late, she'd hold supper for him.

  Magic was still good for a few things around here. Samuel Hawks was sitting on his porch, smoking his pipe, looking after the slowly setting sun, which would be below both the clouds and the rim of the canyon in a few more minutes. He nodded to Leland, motioned for him to come up and sit a spell.

  A spell

  Samuel's wife Maureen was watching the Engstrom's baby John while their next-door neighbors went to the market and a loud constant crying could be heard from inside the house. Samuel reached back behind him and shut the window as Leland took a seat on the swing next to his friend's rocker. "Thought you was leavin'" 'romorrow."

  "Be back when? A week?"

  "About that." Leland took out his pipe, packed down some tobacco, lit it. "Watch Hattie and Robert for me?"

  Samuel chuckled. "Hattie don't need no one watching out for her. That li'l woman can take care of herself." He glanced over. "Which way you headin' out?"

  "To Randall? There's only one way."

  Samuel said nothing, looked north toward the buttes.

  Leland cleared his throat, turned toward his friend. "You saw something out there once, didn't you? Over by Isabella's cave?"

  Samuel nodded slowly, was silent for a moment. He took a puff on his pipe. "Wudn't nuthin' specific, you know.

  Wudn't no specter or Spock. I don't know what I told you before, but it was more something' I felt than saw.r=

  "I thought you said you saw something"

  "I did, I did. But that wudn't the scariest part is I guess what I'm lryin' to say. It's what I felt not what I saw that scared the bejeebers out a me."

  "So what'd you see? Tell me again."

  Samuel smoked in silence for a bit, and Leland thought

  his friend wasn't going to respond at all, but finally he sighed. "I was gonna go fishing upriver, past that sycamore grove. It was spring, I think, and it wudn't even night, although I think it was a little cloudy." He paused, puffed. "I got spooked around that swampy area.

  Mighta all been in my head, but I thought I heard noises, and I stopped for a moment and..."

  He shook his head.

  "What?"

  "I felt her lookin' at me. It don't make no sense, but it was like for a minute she was lookin' through me, too. Everything looked brighter.

  Or darker. Something. Anyway, it felt like I was seem' through someone else's eyes, but I knew it was her lookin' through my eyes.

  Then I felt like she was lookin' at me again, and everywhere I turned I felt eyes peerin' at me, hidden in that swampy water, behind the grasses, up on the cliffs. It scared the hell out a me, I tell you.

  Then I saw it, over by the bottom of the canyon wall, next to a pile of old rabble that had to be coverin' her cave."

  "What?"

  "A shadow. But it weren't like any shadow I ever seen. It was kinda human-shaped, female if you want to know the truth, but it din't move right. It sorta twisted in on itself instead a walked. Creepiest damn thing I ever saw. It twisted toward me, and I just hightailed it out a there. Never did go fishing. And I never been back up that part of the canyon since." He looked meaningfully at Leland. "If I were you, I wouldn't go there, neither."

  "I have no choice. My materials are in Randall, and until they build a train track to Wolf Canyon, I have to pick them up myself."

  There was another long silence as they both smoked, looking up at the darkening late afternoon sky.

  'There is another way to Randall," Samuel said. "Go south out a the canyon, take the new road from Rio Verde.

  It'll add an extra day to your trip, but believe me, it's worth it."

  Leland did not respond.

  "It's worth it."

  Leland walked home feeling even more uneasy than he had on his way over, although perhaps that was what he wanted, the reason he'd gone to see Samuel in the first place.

  Supper was ready when he arrived, and he hid his con ceres for Robert's sake, eating in silence, letting Hattie talk to the boy and answer his nearly continuous questions. The person he should discuss this with was his father, but he already knew what Grover would say, and despite the comfort he himself would receive from such a discussion, he thought it better not to worry the old man. He'd talk to his dad about it once he returned from Randall. If he returned from Randall. Now he was just being stupid.

  He left early the next morning but not as early as he'd originally planned. The days were getting shorter already, in anticipation of fall, and when Hattie got up to make breakfast, the sky outside was still dark. It was almost an hour's ride to the section of canyon near Isabella's cave, but he didn't want to take any chances and be caught there before the sun arose, so he dawdled, playing for time until there was a definite lightening in the sky above the eastern walls.

  There was no problem on the way out. In spite of all his worries, he inexplicably found himself occupied with the mundane thoughts of haberdashery while passing through the dreaded section of canyon, and by the time it registered that Isabella was entombed somewhere on the far side of this marsh, he was already past the line of her cave.

  He spurred his horse on, quickly galloped until that area of the canyon was hidden behind a curve of the landscape.

  The rest of the trip Qver was uneventful, his day and night in Randall were f'me, and he easily found everything he needed.

  He miscalculated the timing on his trip home, however, and before he'd even reached the mouth of Wolf Canyon, he realized that it would be dark well before he reached the marshy area in front of the buried tomb. He briefly considered making camp and starting from here in the morning, but Hattie and Robert were expecting him today, and he didn't want to worry them. He'd also been away from his business for six days, and he couldn't really afford to be gone even as long as he had been. He needed to get back to work.

  Besides, he'd be traveling along the opposite wall of the canyon, just as he had on the trip out.

  Leland had never been formally taught in the magic arts, growing up in the post-Isabella days, but he instinctively wove a spell of protection around himself, something that, while not perfect, would at least afford him some defense on his journey.

  He'd brought with him a lantern, but in the cavernous open space of the middle canyon the light illuminated only the section of trail immediately before him, throwing all else into even deeper gloom. He wanted to put down the fear he felt to imagination, but the horse seemed spooked and jittery, too, and as they traveled farther into the darkness, into the increasingly cold night, it became ever more difficult to pretend nothing was out of the ordinary. He thought of Samuel Hawks........ It was more something' l felt.

  Leland felt it, too, and though he knew he would never be able to describe it, he understood now what his friend had meant. For the horror that enveloped him, that seemed to seep inside him to his very bones, was the most terrifying thing he had ever experienced. The air itself seemed wrong, the texture of the breeze unnatural. All of his senses were assaulted, and he saw shapes in the blackness, heard soft sounds that should not have been here, smelled wafting odors unlike any he had ever come across, and he tasted in his mouth the foulness of the grave.

  And then she appeared.

  Her cave was miles away, on the east bluffs, but,
as he'd somehow known, hers was a boundary that spanned the entire width of the canyon, and she appeared to him as he tried to cross it on his way home.

  At first it was just a light, not greenish like most spirit illuminations but red, like blood. It hovered above the marshy weeds and cattails and slowly solidified into a figure that was almost but not quite human. He kicked his horse, yelled at it, tried to will the animal forward, but his mount refused to budge, as if held under a spell. The red figure floated toward him, wailing terribly in a cry that was somehow translated by his brain into images:

  --Hattie dead and dismembered, lying amid the expelled contents of an outhouse.

  --Robert nude in the sand, legs spread, screaming, his lap and the ground beneath it covered with blood, his genitals being gnawed on by Grover's head, which was bodiless and sporting raccoon legs.

  The figure's own head dislodged from its ethereal form, turning black in the process. He had thought nothing could be blacker than the canyon at night, but the head was, and despite the darkness, it retained all of its horrible features. He could see clearly the face of a beautiful woman, long flowing hair on a face that was the most exquisite he had ever seen.

  And the most evil.

  The laugh that issued from the lightless jet lips sounded like the tinkling of bells.

  Leland leaped off his horse and ran. If the steed was stupid enough to remain, so be it, but he was not about to sacrifice his life because of the incapacitation of a pack animal. He ran down the trail toward town, carrying the lantern, but with all of his supplies and materials still in saddlebags on the horse. He heard a wail, but screamed himself to cover the sound, to keep the images out of his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the black head and the red body reconnect.

  He had never run so fast in his life, and he expected at any moment to be grabbed from behind or pushed over or even levitated into the air.