Bentley Little - The Walking

She prayed that Miles was okay, that nothing had happened to him, that he had not found Bob.

Or Isabella. "

They drove through the darkness, and by morning they were on a two-lane road that the map said led to Wolf Canyon. May said so, too, but Claire was not sure how much she trusted the navigational skills of the old woman, and not until the water was in sight was she sure that they had reached their destination.

Approaching the lake by a dirt trail that ended in a parking lot, they saw two vehicles and a group of three people looking out toward the water. Something in their manner, in their posture, suggested both defeat and terror, and as they drew closer, Claire saw that one of them was Miles.

Before him on the ground sat a preternaturally still man dressed in a suit and staring upward at the sky.

"Hal " -she started to say.

" "I see," he responded grimly.

For the past several miles the sky had been overcast, a strange tempestuous swirl of black-gray cloud cover that reminded Claire of tornado weather. There weren't supposed to be any tornadoes in Arizona.

The car pulled to a stop, skidding in the gravel. Miles caught her eye through the passenger window, and she rushed out of the vehicle and hugged him. His return embrace was clutching and heartfelt, the bear hug of a man who had not expected to see anyone he knew ever again.

"I love you," she said

She pulled back and looked up at him as another door slammed. The relief was evident on his face when he saw Hal, heard his friend's booming "Imagine seeing you here!"

Miles started to respond, but then his eyes widened as the back door opened and May stepped out. "Oh, my God," he said.

"I found her," Claire explained. "Or rather, she found me. She was waiting for me when I came home from work.

That's why we're here." Claire took his hand in hers, squeezed it.

"She has some things to tell you, Miles. I think you'd better listen."

The homeless woman stood next to the open car door, looking out at the lake as if searching for something. "May!" Claire called out.

She glanced up and ran over, dirty skirts flying, leaving the car door open behind her.

"May?" Miles said, as though he'd heard the name before. "Lizabeth May?" The old woman stopped in front of him, smiled.

Miles looked stricken. "What is it?" Claire as.

He shook his head.

"Hello, Garden," May said, nodding to the young man standing next to Miles. She smiled. "Dreams," she told Miles. "We should always listen to our dreams. They teach us."

"Yeah, right." Hal had walked up, and he snorted derisively. He glanced around at the others: the young man and woman, the guy on the ground. "Hey," he said in greetingi. "what's going on?" Claire looked down at the well-dressed man seated on the gravel. She hadn't noticed it before, but his face was a bright cherry apple red. "Is he?

" i. "I don't know. He just sat down there a minute before you showed up. He was chasing..." Miles shook his head. "It's a long story.

But he came back all.." red. And then he sat down here and he hasn't moved since."

She felt his neck for a pulse, found one. "He's alive. We should send somebody out for help."

Claire turned toward the homeless woman. "May?" "

"Isabella did this. There's no hospital that can help him now."

Again, Miles looked stricken. "You know IsabellaT"

"I know of her. We all did. Bob"--she nodded at the

young man to Miles' right--"John Hawkes"--she nodded at the woman,--"John Engstrom."

"You haven't introduced us to your friends," Hal said.

Miles seemed rattled, preoccupied, on automatic pilot.

Claire remembered that behavior from the old days: he was thinking, his brain sorting things out. It's what he used to do when he was putting together the pieces of a case on which he was working--something that happened far too often at home, at dinner, in the bedroom, during what was supposed to be their time together. Miles motioned toward the man and woman. 'this is Garden Hawkes and Janet En gslom. Janet's uncle died and kept walking, like my dad. I brought her here with me from Cedar City. The same thing happened to Garden's grandfather years ago. We met him at the lake." He turned around. "Garden, Janet? This is my friend Hal. We work together.

This is Claire, my... ex-wife.

And this is a woman I met once at a mall before Christmas.

Apparently, her name is May. I guess it'll be explained to me why she's here."

'That's the witch woman I was telling you about," Gar den whispered.

Mi'les nodded distractedly.

"So who is he?" Hal asked otioning toward the man on the ground

"Agent Rossiter. FBI."

"No shit?" The detective whistled. "You got yourself involved in a big one here."

"Yeah."

Come to think of it, you got me involved, too."

"I'm sorry.

"Don't apologize." Hal shook his head. "Jesus Christ,

Miles, when are you going to stop playing Lone Ranger? I learned more from Claire in the one hour before we left L.A. than I did from you the past three months. If we really are friends, you need to include me here. I came all this way,

and I don't know what the fuck's going on, but this time you can't just tough it out alone. There are other people involved."

Claire knew exactly what Hal was saying, and she agreed completely, but this wasn't really the time or place, and she could tell from the set of his face and the tightening in his jaw that Miles was closing himself off. She reached out. "What happened to Bob?" she asked softly. "Did you find him?"

Miles sighed tiredly. "Yeah. I found him." Drawing in a deep breath, he explained what had happened since he'd left California. Hal interrupted with occasional questions, and Miles answered them all, Garden and Janet jumping in for clarification.

Claire could not help looking out at the lake as Miles told his story.

Somewhere underneath that black water was a submerged town, where drowned witches had spent the last few decades walking and to which the newly dead had trekked. The fear she felt was palpable, a physical sensation like the temperature or the wind.

Miles finished talking, and he held her sweaty hand tightly, as if for support. He was keeping something back, she sensed, and that was what was troubling him. Hal seemed to sense it, too, and she met his eyes and saw, beneath the forced good humor, a reflection of her own worries and concerns.

"So," Miles said dramatically, turning to May, "I guess it's time to hear what you have to say about all this. I assume you know what's going on. I assume that's why you're here."

"It is." May repeated everything she'd told Claire, describing how she'd been a New Jersey housewife pulled to Wolf Canyon by the strength of Isabella's will, like a moth drawn to a light. "Of course, I was a witch, too. So I knew all about Isabella."

"She's a witch?" Janet asked.

"She is not a witch," the old woman said. "Well, she is but she isn't."

Garden threw up his hands. "She's not even making any sense!"

"Yes, she is," Miles said. "Listen to her."

"Isabella's a predator, a parasite, a creature who lives off her own kind. She feeds off witches, absorbs their power. Yes, she's one herself, but she's also something more. At least, that's the way we figured it."

"And she was killed when the town was flooded," Miles said.

May shook her head. "Oh, no. Isabella was killed way before that. She might even be the cause of it. See, she was around when Wolf Canyon was founded She married William Johnson, the founder himself. No one knew where she came from originally. I guess she just showed up one day, and William fell under her spell. So to speak. But she was a bad influence on him. After she came, there were mysterious deaths and disappearances, murders. The entire town changed. There were purges of non-witches in the outlying areas, trials and executions of witches who did not agree with the way William and Isabella were running things. She was an evil creature, hated and feared, and eventually even William figured that out. No one knows what all happened, but he killed her one night while she was sleeping, cut off her head. They buried her in a cave outside town, sealing it up, weaving spells around it to keep her in. She was dead but her head was still talking, and she cursed Wolf Canyon and everyone in it, vowing revenge. She promised that they would drown and die, and that they would suffer even after death.