Bentley Little - The Walking

She's here.

There was something ominous about the phrase, and Miles gulped down his water. He was pretty sure that that was what his father had been trying to say, and he recalled the panicked urgency of Bob's stroke-slurred voice. His father had been afraid.

"Did your uncle seem, well, scared when he told you that?"

Janet nodded. 'that why I haven't been able to forget it, why I keep going over it in my mind. I can't help feeling that it had something to do with his.." walking."

The homeless woman in the mall, too, had warned him of a "she"

She's going after the ddnin builders, too.

He wanted to understand, but nothing made sense to him, no facts he could put together, no conjecture he could make that would provide an identity for this woman?... girl? witch? goddess?

"Did your uncle leave anything behind?" he asked Janet

"Any diaries? Any item that might give us some clue?" "Like what?"

"Like witchcraft paraphernalia."

She stared at him. "How did you know?"

He smiled wryly. "I found some stuff in my dad's safety deposit box. I have no idea what it's for or how to use it, but I could tell that it was supposed to be used for magic.

There was a dried, flat frog, a bunch of powders, some roots in bottles." He paused. "And a necklace made out of teeth. Human teeth."

"My uncle had a box in his closet. I looked through it, but it scared me, so I put it in a plastic garbage sack and haven't looked at it since. It's in my hall closet. You want to check it out?"

Miles shook his head. "Maybe later."

"There's no necklace, but there is some kind of arm bone with feathers attached to it. And, like you said, a bunch of powders and potions, I guess."

"No diary, though, huh? No book?"

"My uncle wasn't one for keeping diaries."

"Neither was my dad."

They looked glumly at each other.

"Do you know anything about this witchcraft stuff? Did your uncle ever talk to you about it? Do you remember... anything?"

She shook her head slowly. "What about your parents?" "Dead."

"Any other relatives?"

Yeah, but they're pretty distant. I mean, I was the one closest to him. If he was going to tell anybody, he would have told me? "Well, what about friends.

"I don't know."

"Where did he work? when and where was he born? If I have some background information, I can check up on him, build a profile from there."

"I know he was born in Arizona."

"Arizona?"

"A place called Wolf Canyon."

A shiver feather-tickled the back of his neck, moved down his back, spread into his arms.

Wolf Canyon. It was all circling back to that.

Miles realized that he did not know where his father had been born, and while he had never thought of it before, he understood now how strange that was. Would Bonnie know?

He was tempted to call his sister and find out, but he had a feeling he already knew what the answer was.

He played a hunch. "Did your uncle say anything about dreams he was having before he died? Recurring dreams about"--a tidal wave and the end of the world?"

Miles nodded slowly. "Yeah."

"I've been having dreams, too, he died. Not a tidal wave, exactly, but water.

"Me, too," Miles mentioned. "What's it mean? What is it? Janet sounded as though she were about to cry.

"I don't know, but there's more to come." He motioned toward her empty glass. "You might want to get yourself another drink. I have a lot of things to tell you."

He started from the beginning. Marina Lewis and her father. Montgomery Jones and the other men on the list.

Brodsky and Hec Tibbert. The homeless old woman in the mall. Liana on the fence.

And, at the hub of all this activity, Wolf Canyon.

When he was through, they were silent for a moment, staring at each other.

"So," she said slowly. "This town, Wolf Canyon. It was--"

"---covered by a lake."

"You think that's where your father walked to?"

Miles nodded. "I'd bet on it. And your uncle too if he escaped and they lied to you about it."

"But why?"

He took a deep breath. "I don't know. Let's go there and find out."

He called Claire at work to tell her what he'd learned and to let her know that he was going to Wolf Canyon. She was not happy to hear it, and when he said he was going with a woman whose uncle had met the same fate as his father, he could feel the tension over the phone. He thought of asking her to come along, but he didn't really want her to and he kept his mouth shut. She wasn't involved in this, not directly, not by blood blood and he wanted to keep her as far away from Wolf Canyon as possible. Whatever-was out there was dangerous, and he would not be able to live with himself if, through negligence or selfishness or stupidity, he allowed something to happen to her.

"What are you going to do when you get there?" Claire asked. "Just stand there and stare at the lake? Wait for your ESP to kick in and suddenly explain everything?"

"I don't know," he admitted, and he realized that something deeper might be at work here. Claire was right. He had no plan and, logically, no reason to visit Wolf Canyon.

There was nothing he could learn empirically from viewing the site where the town was buried. But the impulse to go was strong, and what he had taken for an idea logically conceived was really closer to an imposed thought, an illogical plan that had grown from a casual notion to a definite desire. He still felt as though he had come up with the idea himself, but he also felt like a piece of metal being drawn to a magnet against its will.

"why does this woman have to go with you?" "I don't know," he said again. And he didn't. Claire was silent.

"Trust me on this," he told her. "I don't know what all is

happening, but..." The words trailed off as he realized that he didn't know what he wanted to say.

""But what?"

It feels right," he said finally. "I may not know what I'm doing or why, but I know that it's what I'm supposed to be doing."

"You're scaring me."

"I'm scaring myself."

Claire breathed deeply, trying to calm down, a stat icky sound that only emphasized how far away she was right now. "You really think that Bob went there?"

"Yeah!

What are you going to do if you find him?"

"I don't know."

"Shouldn't you have some sort of plan? What if? She sighed. "Shit.

Who knows how to deal with something like this? If someone had told me a month ago that we'd be back together and some kind of curse was killing off everyone connected to a dam in Arizona where your zombie father was headed... I mean, Jesus Christ, Miles. What have you gotten yourself into here.

"I didn't get myself into anything. It came to me. I didn't want it to happen. I didn't ask for it."

"I know, but how are you going to... right it? What are you going to do to get your father to stop walking around and die? With a vampire you put a stake through its heart. With a werewolf you shoot it with a silver bullet. But there isn't anything concrete like that here.

There's just a ... a big jumbled mess, and there's no way to sort it out, and there's only you and some woman against... God knows what."

"I know," he told her. "But I have to find out. I can't make a plan because I don't know what I don't know. I just have to investigate and roll with whatever comes."

A welcome wry edge came into her voice. "Part of you is enjoying this, though. Admit it, Miles. You always secretly dreamed of some big exotic movie-like case that you could crack."

"I'm too scared to enjoy it. BUt you're right. Maybe that keeps me going, keeps me from giving up."

"Just be careful," she said softly. "I don't want anything to happen to you. I love you."

"I love you, too. And I'm always careful." "Did you bring your cell phone?" "No. Damn. I forgot."