Bentley Little - The Walking

"No, that's my job he explained quickly. that is what I do. It's not why I'm here."

"Why are you here?"

"I want to find out about your uncle. I want to find out about my dad." He took a deep breath. "The same thing happened to my father."

The expression on her face was complex, a look that was at once pained and relieved, frightened and sympathetic, angry and understanding. "I knew you knew, and I thought there was something personal about it. I could tell. That's why I let you in. I had a feeling about you." She looked at him, cleared her throat. "So what happened? Your dad died?"

"Yeah." Miles nodded. "He had a stroke in November, just fell over in the supermarket. They said he would never fully recover, but I was led to believe that he could still live

for quite a while--just in sort of a diminished state. So I hired a home health-care nurse, who basically took care of him when I was at work, administered his medications and all that, did physical therapy." He was silent for a moment, thinking. "It happened out of the blue. I came home from work one day and the nurse was gone. She'd barricaded the door of my father's room with furniture, and he was inside.

Walking." "

"In a circle?"

"Yeah. Around the perimeter of the bedroom. And the bed and dresser and stuff was moved into the middle of the room. Not because he'd pushed it there but because he'd bumped into it, forced it over while he walked. I could see the marks on his body where he'd hit the edges of the fur "So what happened after that? What did you do?" "I called the coroner's office. A friend of mine works there. He eventually stopped the walking with some kind of muscle relaxant and took my... took the body. He wanted to study it, find out what was causing my dad to keep moving even though he was dead. They kept him at the morgue, kept his body filled with drugs and, I think, strapped down, but well, one day he disappeared. The coroner was looking for him, I was looking for him, the police were looking for him, and we all assumed that he'd walked away, but we couldn't find him. Couldn't find a single trace of him.

"Then yesterday I saw the article in the Insider. And here

Janet's reaction was a non-reaction. She seemed to shut down at the conclusion of his story, and when it was clear that she wouldn't be asking any questions and that she wasn't planning to say anything herself, he prodded her. "Your turn."

"It's a long story."

He smiled. "I've got time."

She nodded solemnly. "Okay." She licked her lips. "You want something to drink? Water? Coke? Wine?"

He shook his head.

"I think I need a drink first." She stood, walked into the kitchen, emerged a few moments later with a stemmed glass filled with red wine.

She sat down again, then cleared her throat and took a loud swallow.

He waited patiently.

"I loved my Uncle John," she said finally. She swirled the wine in her glass, looked down at it. "He started walking before he died, actually. You probably read in the article that he had cancer, and he did, so I guess he was like your dad in that he was bedridden and had a lingering illness. Maybe that had something to do with what happened to them. I don't know. But three days before he died, he started walking. Around his room, like your dad. He hadn't been able to get out of his bed or move at all, really, for the past week, and then all of a sudden he was pacing like a lunatic." She paused, took another sip of wine. Then another here was something weird about it, too.

About his movements, I mean. It was almost like he was a puppet or a robot---"

"Like something was controlling him," Miles said. "Exactly."

"I thought these thing."

"Well, this went on for three days, and I didn't know what to do. I wanted to tell someone, but I didn't know who to tell, and I was scared. Then I came home from work on the third day, and he was outside, walking around the house, wearing only his old pajama bottoms.

Some of the neighborhood kids were throwing things at him, mud and stuff, and I chased them off, then ran around the back of the house. I thought he was delirious, and I wanted to get him back

inside." She shivered, thinking about it, and finished her glass of wine. that's when I found out he was dead."

Miles nodded. He understood completely. The memory of touching his father's cold rubbery skin was one that would remain with him for the rest of his life.

Janet shrugged. 'that it, really. The police came, and the coroner.

They took him away, did an autopsy, and... that's all."

He smiled gently. "See? That wasn't such a long story."

She smiled hesitantly in return. "I gave you the abridged version."

Miles thought for a moment. "So he didn't keep walking after they took him away?"

"I guess not." She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "I mean, I didn't really ask. I suppose I didn't want to know. He was still moving when they took him. It took several policemen -several big policemen--to capture him and strap him down in one of those what do you call them? Not a stretcher but..."

"Gurney ?"

"Yeah. They strapped him to a gurney and that's the last he'd stopped walking the time ybffburied him." She nodded.

"Was it an open casket? Did you see him?"

]anet breathed deeply. "We had him cremated so... so he wouldn't come back. We just buried his ashes."

"Are you sure it was him?" Miles prodded gently. "I mean, you didn't actually see his body after the autopsy?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. They said.." they said we wouldn't want to see him. They said, well, that there wasn't much left that was identifiable."

"Who suggested that he be cremated? Was that your idea?"

"No," she admitted. "It was suggested by the mortuary. But, under the circumstances, I thought it was a good plan.

I'd already had nightmares of my uncle digging his way out of a grave and walking through the city to find me. Cremating him would take care of that possibility." She met Miles' eyes. "You think he walked away, like your dad, and they pawned off some other body on me?"

He shrugged. "It's a possibility. I'm not saying it happened, but I'd feel a lot more secure about it if you'd actually seen his body to make sure it had stopped moving."

There was an awkward pause. Janet stood. 'q need another drink. You want something.

"Maybe some water," Miles said.

She returned a few moments later with a tumbler of water and her refilled wineglass. "You know," she said, handing him his drink,

"there's one thing that I've been thinking about. Something that stuck in my mind."

"What?"

"His last words. Or the last words he spoke to me. I was feeding him his dinner. He could barely talk at that point, his voice was just a whisper, and I had to lean close to hear him. After that, about an hour or so after I cleaned him up, he started walking. And he never spoke again."

"What'd he say? what'd he tell you?"

'The last thing he said, before he started walking, was, "She's here."

"

" "She'? Who's 'she'? .... "I don't know. Maybe he was just delirious, seeing things that weren't there."

"But you don't think so?" She looked at him. "No." She's here.

Eeeee-eeear = Miles recalled the noises his father had made in the hospital, the desperate, incomprehensible pleas that had been so earnestly addressed to him. She's here. Was that what Bob had been trying to say?

"I've thought about it a million times since they took him away. I've gone over it in my mind, but it doesn't make any sense to me. I don't understand it. I know he was trying to tell me something, but I have no idea what it was. There certainly wasn't anyone else in the room with us, and no woman has shown up since then, unless you count the Insider photographer. I've been waiting, hoping--or maybe not hoping--that whatever he meant would be revealed to me, but.." nothing."