Bentley Little - The Walking

"Call me anyway when you get there. Use a pay phone. I'll probably be home by then, but if not, call this number.

Make sure you call me either way."

"I will," he promised.

"I love you," she said again.

"Me, too."

They said their good-byes and hung up. The sound of the handset dropping into its cradle with a quiet plastic clap had a note of finality to it.

He turned away to see Janet carrying a box out from the hallway and setting it down on the coffee table.

They looked at each other, met each other's eyes.

Janet glanced down at the box. "It's my uncle's magic stuff. Should

I?

"Bring it," Miles said. "Who knoWs what we'll need?"

Claire took off work early, stopped off to buy some groceries, then headed straight home. She always kept the drapes in the house closed when she was gone, and she put the twin sacks of groceries on the kitchen counter, then opened the front shades to let in some light.

And nearly jumped out of her skin.

She let out an involuntary cry, lurching back and stumbling into the couch. The homeless woman standing next to

the window and peering in at her was grinning crazily, both palms pressed flat against the glass. She licked the window, leaving a trail of blurred spittle.

Claire knew instantly who this was--the woman Miles had met at the mall before Christmas--and that frightened her far more than if it had just been some random loony who had wandered into her yard. How the woman had found her house she did not know, but she had no doubt that it was intentional, and that added another layer of fear onto what she already felt. She had not seen the old lady while walking in. Had she merely been unobservant, or had the woman been hiding from her, crouching in the bushes?

She refused to let herself be intimidated. Despite her embarrassing first reaction, she gathered up her dignity and strode purposefully out of the house, confronting the woman on the front lawn. "Who are you and what are you doing on my property?" Her voice, thank God, carried exactly the edge of authority she'd intended.

"He's gone there, hasn't he?"

"Who? Who's gone where?"

"Bob's son. He's gone to Wolf Canyon."

Claire's mouth felt dry. She was in way over her head. She stared into a wrinkled, dirty face that seemed both blank and crafty.

Whatever this was, it was far beyond her comprehension, and the scope and range of a creature or demon or power that could reanimate Bob's corpse and the dead body of a man in Utah, kill dam workers across the country and lead this homeless woman to her house left Claire feeling small and helpless and overwhelmed. She was terrified for Miles even more than for herself, and although every instinct in her body was telling her to run, to lock herself inside the house and dial 9-1-1, she stood her ground. "Who are you?" she asked again.

"May. I'm here to help you." She leaned forward confidentially. "I'm one, too. Like Bob."

Nothing was making any sense. Either she was getting stupid in her old age, unable to make those large connective leaps necessary to communicate for the first time with people she did not know, or the elements of this conversation were so far off the scale that making coherent sense of them without a shared blueprint was pretty much impossible. "You're one of what like Bob?" she asked.

"A witch."

Now it was making more sense.

She still could not completely reconcile Miles' ordinary down-to-earth father with a mystical power-wielding sorcerer, but it explained the collection of powders and nostrums, the mystery of his walking dead body. And if she was going to buy into this witchcraft thing, she might as well take it all the way and subscribe to the notions of good magic and bad magic; white magic and black magic.

Bob would obviously have been a good witch.

But why had he never told this to Miles... or anyone else, for that matter? And how had he kept it a secret all those years? In her mind, she saw him waiting until his children were asleep, then chanting paeans to Satan.

No. That was not Bob.

She didn't really know Bob, though. If this woman was telling the truth--and Claire thought she was--none of them had really known him.

"Is he at the lake?" May asked. Claire found herself nodding.

"He won't know what to do by himself. Bob never taught him."

"Never taught him what?"

May flipped up her dirty dress, grinned. "I'm not wearing any panties!"

Claire sighed. Great. Like too many homeless people, this woman obviously had some serious mental problems, and she was going to have to sift through the old lady's words

to determine what was truth and what was delusion--not an easy thing to do when the subject was the supernatural. "Miles--" Claire began.

May snapped her fingers. "That's his name! Miles!" "Miles thinks his father walked to Wolf Canyon. His father is dead, but he's still walking around and he escaped from the morgue several weeks ago."

"He's going back. They all go back when they die. Or I should say, we all go back when we die. It's part of her curse."

"Whose curse?"

The old woman cackled. Yeletype firetrap. Teletype firetrap.

Buttfuck Cornelius of love!"

Jesus Christ.

'qsabella," May said, suddenly lucid once again. "She cursed us after she was killed, before she was buried." The old lady smiled at Claire.

"Your house is pretty. Can I go in?

"No." She was starting to get a headache.

"Isabella promised to come back."

"I have no idea what you're talking about. Could you start from the beginning? Who are you? Who is Isabella? what the hell does any of this have to do with Bob and

Mi"

A small wind kicked up, a surprisingly localized gust that swirled about her yard, kicking up leaves and picking up dirt, but leaving the rest of the street and the other yards untouched. May stood at the center of the miniature tempest, her hair blowing wildly, as if this was nothing out of the ordinary. It occurred to Claire that she was causing this, that it was an attempt on the old woman's part to get Claire to invite her inside the house. The wind coalesced into a funnel-like dust devil, and pushed its way through a hedge and into the yard next door. She watched it retreat down the street. A Land Rover drove by, oblivious.

Despite the increased dishevelment of her appearance, May seemed suddenly saner, more grounded and rational. "Wolf Canyon," she began,

"was a town of witches founded by a man named William Johnson in the mid-1800s. Like many religious and ethnic groups at that time, witches were persecuted. We were hung, drowned, burned at the stake, and William followed the example of the Mormons, who had headed west to establish their own community."

She smiled widely, reached both hands behind her, started furiously scratching. "Ass itch! Ass itch!"

Just as suddenly, she was all seriousness. "William met and married a woman named Isabella. Isabella was a witch, but she was more than a witch." May's voice dropped. "She was evil. She started taking over the town, molding it in her own image. Those who disagreed with her were punished. She drove some away, others were mysteriously found dead. Finally, they had all had enough. William was old by this time, but his powers were still strong, and he killed her while she slept. He cut off her head, and the people buried her in a cave up the canyon.

Before they sealed the cave entrance, her head started talking, and she cursed the people of Wolf Canyon. She vowed to return, stronger, and to wreak vengeance on all other witches, to destroy them all. She said that no one would be allowed to leave Wolf Canyon and that everyone in the town would be engulfed by a wall of water and killed."

May stared off in the distance, almost as though she were in a trance, and Claire shivered.