Firewalkers

by Chris Roberson

  And now, all of these years later, Patrick found himself wondering if he’d been wrong to dismiss the lessons that his great-uncle had taught him. He couldn’t help thinking about the last day that they’d spent together, and the things that the old man had told him that day, twenty-five years earlier . . .

  Patrick was certain that the dead man had been staring at him.

  As he hurried through the streets of Little Kovoko, eyes on the pavement in front of his feet and clutching his knapsack to his chest, Patrick tried his best not to cry. But while he successfully managed to stifle his sobs, he could still feel hot tears streaking down his cheeks. Already he burned with embarrassment at the thought that he might run into one of the older kids in the neighborhood, who routinely teased him mercilessly for being so much younger than the rest of his cousins. The fact that he was short for his age, nearly half a foot shorter than the rest of the sixth graders at Powell Middle School, only made matters worse. The other kids would call him much worse than the usual “Shrimp” or “Rugrat” if they were to catch him crying like a baby.

  But Patrick couldn’t help himself.

  It wasn’t the idea of death that had him so unsettled. He had seen dead things before. Once he’d come across a dog in a vacant lot, lying on its side in the tall grasses, and couldn’t figure out what he was smelling until he saw the maggots wriggling and writhing in the gash in the dog’s side where a car had struck it. He’d seen birds mangled and half-eaten by alley cats, left to desiccate in the sun. Once at the Founder’s Day Parade he’d seen a horse fall down dead in the street, struck by a sudden heart attack. And each experience might have left him uneasy, or sick to his stomach, or simply sad, but never as upset as he was now.

  And it wasn’t that he hadn’t encountered a dead person before. He had seen images of dead people in magazines and newspapers, or on the TV news of course. But the closest he had been to a dead body in person had been his Aunt Winnie’s open casket funeral the summer before, and she had looked more like one of the statues in the Recondito Waxworks museum than the woman Patrick had known all of his life.

  Before today, he had never looked death squarely in the face. Much less had death stare right back at him.

  “Finished already?”

  Patrick looked up, startled, nearly colliding with the old man in front of him.

  “Better start watching where you’re going, boy, or you’re liable to run into someone who . . .” The old man broke off when he saw Patrick’s face, the red eyes, the tear tracks down his cheeks. “What’s wrong, Patrick?”

  Patrick’s eyes welled as he took a ragged breath and stifled a sob. Then he dropped his knapsack on the sidewalk and lunged forward to wrap his arms around his great-uncle’s waist.

  “Uncle Alf, there’s a . . . a . . .” He choked on the word, eyes squeezed tightly shut. “In the alley . . .” The tears flowed faster, soaking into the fabric of the old man’s denim overalls, and he began to sob.

  The old man rested a hand on Patrick’s back, patting lightly. “Come on, grab your bag and you can show me.”

  Patrick walked back the way he had come, clutching his knapsack to his chest, while his Uncle Alf followed along behind him, hands tucked into the front pocket of his overalls. Neither spoke a word, their only sound being Patrick’s occasional ragged sob and the slap of the old man’s sandals against the pavement with each passing step.

  Finally, they came to the mouth of the alley that ran between two row houses facing in either direction.

  Patrick’s great-uncle turned to look down at him. “You were out this way, heading to check on the Kururangi house?”

  Patrick managed a nod. Like most Saturdays, he’d spent the afternoon ranging all over the neighborhood, checking on the old man’s marks.

  “And that’s when you found . . . ?” The old man trailed off, turning from Patrick back to the alleyway before them.

  “Him,” Patrick said, pointing a trembling finger toward the shadows ahead.

  The old man nodded once, then stood silently, considering the matter. Then he ran a wrinkled hand across his forehead, brushing the ragged fringe of white hair to one side, and started to walk toward the dead man. “Come on, then. We can’t just leave him lying there.”

  Patrick stood in the sunlight, at the edge of the shadows, afraid to venture any closer. “But Uncle Alf . . . ?” He paused, swallowing hard. “Shouldn’t we . . . I mean, couldn’t we just tell the police or something?”

  The old man barked a laugh. “Of course we tell the police.” He looked back at Patrick with lopsided grin on his face. “What do you think, boy, I want to bury some vagrant’s body my own self? Find his people, let them know he’s gone? From the looks of him, he probably drank himself to death, and that’s a sadness, but we have our own people to look after. Which is why we can’t just leave the body untended in the meantime. It’s not safe.” He glanced up at the sky, and then back down to the dead man. “Especially not so close to sundown.”

  Patrick hugged his knapsack tighter to his chest, and tried not to look at the wide-open eyes of the dead man.

  “He was looking at me, Uncle Alf,” he said, sniffling. “Right at me.”

  “Hhn?” The old man put his hands on his knees and bent down, craning his head to one side to look the dead man in the face. “Ah, nah, he’s not using those eyes anymore. He’s gone.” The old man straightened up, wincing slightly and putting a hand to the small of his back, joints creaking, breathing heavily. “Course,” he went on after he’d caught his breath, “something else could come along and use those eyes for themselves, which is what I’m worried about.”

  The old man turned to Patrick.

  “You got the paint I gave you in there?” He gestured with a knobby finger to the knapsack in Patrick’s arms.

  Patrick blinked for a moment, then nodded, trying not to look at the dead man’s face. “Y-yes, Uncle Alf.”

  “Bring it here, then.”

  Patrick hesitated at the shadow’s edge.

  “Now, boy,” the old man said, growing impatient.

  Reluctantly Patrick shuffled forward, and held the knapsack out to his great-uncle.

  The old man turned to him and shook his head. “Don’t need the bag. Just the paint.”

  Patrick unzipped the knapsack and pulled out the small mason jar inside. The old man took the mason jar, and began to screw off the metal lid. “Got a brush, a stick, anything like that?”

  Patrick looked into the knapsack, and shook his head slowly. “S-sorry, Uncle Alf. I hardly ever . . . I mean . . .”

  He seldom used the paint. The old man paid Patrick a quarter for every one of the marks that he cleaned around the neighborhood, which usually involved plucking off vines or moss, or wiping away dirt or mud. But if any of the paint in the grooves had chipped away since the last visit, his instructions were to fill it back in with the special paint, as a temporary fix until his Uncle Alf could make more permanent repairs.

  “Okay, okay, don’t worry. I can use my finger this time. The mark won’t have to last.” The old man handed Patrick the metal lid, lips pursed. Then he slowly lowered himself down on the pavement with considerable effort, his joints creaking audibly. “This—” he said, then grunted before continuing, “used to be easier.”

  Finally, he was seated on the ground beside the dead man, breathing a little heavy, like he’d just walked up a few flights of stairs. He carefully placed the mason jar on the pavement beside him, and then stuck his index finger into the jar’s open mouth. When he pulled it out the finger was covered up to the first knobby knuckle in viscous white paint that sparkled faintly when the light struck it.

  “But you should carry a brush, boy,” the old man said, as he bent low over the pavement. “No point in taking my paint if you don’t have a way to use it proper.”

  “Yes, Uncle Alf.”

  The old man began to draw a spiraling pattern on the pavement beside the dead man’s head.

  “Course, if
you’d found this fella a few blocks south of here, this wouldn’t be a problem.” The old man dipped his finger in the mason jar again, then shifted position and began to draw another spiraling pattern by the dead man’s left elbow. “There are enough marks on the houses there to protect entire blocks. But the Kururangis’ place is the closest house to here, and they’re a good . . . what? Two blocks away?”

  The old man took a brief rest to catch his breath, and then held his finger in front of his face, studying the paint closely. “Could use more sea salt in the next batch, I think. Not quite enough crystals in this mix.” He sidled down until he was near the dead man’s feet, and started inscribing another spiraling pattern on the pavement there.

  “He stinks.” Patrick pinched his nose. Standing this close, he could smell the dead man. Judging by the state of his clothes and hair, the vagrant probably hadn’t smelled very good when he was alive, but in death his smell was something else entirely.

  The old man glanced up at him, chuckling. “You think this is rough? When I was a boy, back on the island, and my grandfather was tohuna, I had much worse jobs than this. But when he was a boy, he had to help his grandfather prepare the bodies of the dead for burial. Do you know what he had to do?”

  “No.” Patrick lowered his hand and shook his head. “What?”

  “First, the tohuna would slice the body open.” Reaching out his hand, the old man pointed at one side of Patrick’s stomach, then moved it quickly across to the other. “Then they would remove all of the organs and . . .” He broke off when he saw the stricken expression on Patrick’s face. “Maybe I’ll tell you when you’re a little older,” he added with a sympathetic smile.

  Patrick nodded, swallowing hard.

  The old man moved on to the space beside the dead man’s right arm, and rested for a moment. Then he dragged his finger along the pavement one last time, back and forth, up and down and around, leaving a trail of sparkling white paint behind.

  Finally he sat up straight and regarded his work. “That should do.” He picked up the mason jar and held it out toward Patrick. “Here, take this.”

  Patrick kept his hands at his sides, and looked from his grandfather to the dead man who lay on the pavement between them. In order to take the jar, Patrick would have to step closer and lean over the dead man himself.

  “He can’t hurt you now,” the old man said. “That’s the whole point. Now close this up before it dries out.”

  “Yes, sir.” Patrick stepped forward, took the mason jar, and then hurriedly stepped away as he screwed the metal lid back in place.

  With his joints creaking audibly, the old man climbed to his feet, and then stood for a long moment with his hands on his knees, struggling to catch his breath. Then he wiped the remainder of the paint from his index finger as best he could on the bib of his overalls.

  “So what now?” Patrick asked as he put the paint back in his knapsack. He looked down at the dead man, who was now surrounded on all four sides by his great-uncle’s marks. These wouldn’t last as long as the ones that Uncle Alf had etched in stone all over the Little Kovoko neighborhood and then filled with his special salt and paint mixture, of course, but they looked about the same.

  “Now?” The old man lay a hand on Patrick’s shoulder. “We tell the police about this, and get something to eat, maybe? I don’t know about you, boy, but I am starving.”

  Patrick grinned. “Pizza?”

  “Do you ever want to eat anything but pizza? You live in a city with so much to choose from, and always want to eat the same thing, every time.” The old man rolled his eyes and guided Patrick back toward the street. “When I was your age, back on the island, we didn’t have that kind of choice. We had good food, don’t get me wrong. Really good food. But if you didn’t want to eat what there was, you didn’t eat. Not like here.”

  The street lights were beginning to warm up as the sun set, and in the distance Patrick could hear the mothers of the neighborhood calling from their front steps for their kids home for dinner.

  “Uncle Alf? Do you ever miss it?”

  “Hhn?” The old man turned to look in his direction. “The food? Your aunties cook island food as good as anyone back home, and—”

  “No.” Patrick shook his head, a slightly embarrassed expression on his face. “Do you ever miss the island?”

  “Oh. Yes. And no.” The old man looked away, a distant expression on his face. He took a deep breath and sighed. “I miss the island I knew as a boy, but it isn’t really there anymore. Places can change and grow, just like people do, and not always for the best. Even true places.”

  “Besides,” the old man said, stopping in his tracks and pointing at the ground at his feet, “I knew that this was where I was needed. Even if I had wanted to stay on the island, it would have meant turning my back on my people here. Maybe I did want to stay, but in the end, it didn’t matter. . . .”

  The old man paused, looking up at the sky. When Patrick followed his gaze, he saw that the first stars of the night could faintly be seen overhead. The old man sighed deeply, his eyes shut tight. Then he opened them, looked down, and shook his head a little sadly before turning to Patrick with a smile.

  “After all, if I had stayed back on the island, who would be here in the city to look after all of you?” He gestured back the way that they had come, toward the alley where the dead man lay. “Who would protect you from the things in the shadows? Things that would stare back at you from a dead man’s eyes?”

  The old man continued on up the sidewalk toward home, chuckling, but Patrick couldn’t help but shiver at the thought of it, unable to get the image of the dead man’s blank stare out of his head.

  Patrick almost collided with the old man when his Uncle Alf stopped short on the sidewalk.

  “Nice. Clean.” The old man was looking at a tight spiraling pattern etched into the pavement beside the front steps of a row house. He glanced in Patrick’s direction. “Your work?”

  Patrick nodded. He had visited the house earlier in the day while making his rounds, sweeping away dirt and leaves from the mark, cleaning out the deep grooves until the glittering paint sparkled in the midday sun.

  “How many you get to today?” The old man gave Patrick and appraising look.

  “Um . . .” Patrick tallied up the numbers in his head. It was important to keep track, since every job meant another twenty-five cents coming to him at the end of the day, and he was saving up to buy some new comic books. “I was hoping to do three dozen today, but I got sidetracked by . . . well, everything. So, thirty-two houses today, I guess?”

  “Very nice.” The old man had his hand on his chin, thoughtfully. “You know, I think it’s time you learn how to make the marks yourself.”

  Patrick’s eyes widened.

  “Sure.” The old man started walking again, gesturing for Patrick to follow. “Someone has to look after our people when I’m gone. I won’t be here forever, but the things in the shadows aren’t going anywhere.”

  Patrick trailed along behind the old man, silent for a moment, eyes on the pavement and lost in thought.

  “Uncle Alf?” he finally said, looking up from the sidewalk. “Is it real?”

  “Hhn?” The old man glanced back over his shoulder at him.

  “The things in the shadows?” Patrick clutched his knapsack a little tighter. “I mean . . . are they real, or just like something from a story? Like, I don’t know, a metaphor or something.”

  A lopsided grin spread across the old man’s face. “Just because something is from a story doesn’t mean it can’t be real. Don’t you remember me telling you about how the time that Pahne’i conquered fire, and then he climbed down below the earth and found the god of Shadows in—”

  He stopped suddenly, shoulders lurching forward and an expression of intense pain twisting his face. His hand, the index finger still faintly stained with sparkling white paint, clutched at his chest.

  “No . . .” He gasped, eyes wide, and then fe
ll sideways, landing hard on the pavement with a sickening thud.

  “Uncle Alf?” Patrick threw his knapsack to one side and rushed to the old man’s side. “Uncle Alf!”

  The old man wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing, but his eyes were wide open and staring straight ahead.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Following the death of his great-uncle, Patrick had become an angry agnostic, railing against what he thought to be nothing more than ignorant superstition . . . but only when he was with his friends, or when he had left home to attend college. When he was around his family, his mother and aunts in particular, he had kept his mouth shut, hoping to avoid any withering glances at best, or lengthy lectures at worst. When his mother passed away after a lengthy illness, though, Patrick had been unable to hide his disdain at the whole idea of organized religion, and when it came time to make the funeral arrangements, his aunts had surprised him by responding not with anger or disappointment, but with pity. They felt sorry for him that he didn’t have faith, that he didn’t have that to lean on for support.

  At the time, likely because he was too preoccupied with his own grief, Patrick had resented those pitying looks that they had given him. But now, after enough years had passed to give him a little perspective, he couldn’t help but feel that he had let his aunts down. Their faith had mattered to them in a way that he had never been able to understand, and gave them a sense of comfort and security when facing an uncertain and often frightening world.