The Walking (8 page)

He'd changed his mind. He was positive he did not want to die. And while there might be no pleasant way to go, some ways were definitely worse than others. Much, much worse.

He could still see nothing, but there was a sense of movement in the blackness, and he knew with a certainty he could

not explain that he was not alone in the room, that there was something in here with him.

Something not human.

There was another sound now besides his breathing--the hiss of piss as he peed his pants in terror. He threw himself out of bed, the walker clutched tightly, and headed toward where he knew the door had to be.

He expected at any moment to feel a clawed hand on his shoulder, but he concentrated on moving, walking, getting out of here, not allowing himself to dwell on the other possible outcomes of this situation. He wanted to cry out for help, but he was not sure there was any help to be had, and he was hoping that this darkness was just as disorienting to whatever was after him.

His walker hit a barrier, the wall, and Derek reached out to touch, feeling to the left and to the right until he found a crack, a hinge, and, finally, a knob. He grasped the knob, turned it. Or tried to.

The door was locked.

From the outside.

Was that something that was done every night? He didn't think so, but he wasn't sure. The only thing he was sure of was that he was now trapped in here with whatever was trying to kill him.

There was a... a slumping sound, the noise of something large moving forward through the room, forcing its weight across the floor toward him.

He wished to God the room had remained silent. He didn't want to think about what kind of form went with that sound. He wanted only to find a way to escape, a way to get out of here before The bathroom!

Yes! If he could make it to the bathroom without being caught, he could lock himself in until morning. Maybe the

monster could break down the door, but his chances were better in there than they were out here.

The monster?

He had no problem with that word.

The bathroom was to the right, and he started toward it. He did not have to face forward as he moved--his walker met obstructions before he did--so he kept swiveling his head around, looking from one section of the room to the other. The darkness was still almost total, but his eyes seemed to be adjusting to the lack of light because there was an area now less black than the room around it, a rounded, shapeless mass that drew ever closer to him and looked somehow as though it was made out of ice.

His heart was pounding loud enough to drown out that horrible slumping sound. He tried to hurry but Damn this walker, was not able to move any faster than he did ordinarily. His old bones and feeble muscles were unwilling to grant him any favors even in this time of crisis.

His walker hit the wall. He looked forward, and was promptly grabbed from behind.

This is it, he thought. The hand that covered his mouth was cold, freezing cold, and hard.

Ice. "

He thought of Wolf Canyon.

Ice, it occurred to him, was made of water. And then the cold hand forced itself into his mouth and down his throat.

Then

These were bad times, especially for his kind.

It was almost as if the old days had returned.

William talked to the wolves as he traveled, and the ravens. They told him of burnings and hangings that were occurring on an almost regular basis in the scattered settlements of the territories. The stories chilled him. He would have been better off having been born into one of the Indian tribes, where his powers and abilities would be, if not understood, at least respected and appreciated. But he was white-skinned, and as such was fated to live within the world of the fair, that irrationally rational culture that believed only in one unseen, uninvolved God and attributed anything, even remotely supernatural to the work of Satan.

He traveled by day, slept at night, and tried to ignore the horrible sounds he heard in the darkness, the moans and wails that came from no man, no animal, no wind but seemed to emanate from the land itself.

There were Bad Places in the territories, places where neither white man nor Indian had settled, where even animals would not live. He passed through these on his way from one temporary home to another, and there was a voice in the Bad Places that spoke to him, a uniform voice that was the same in the Dakotas as it was in Wyoming, a voice he found at once tempting and terrifying, a seductive presence that pleaded with him to give up his sense of self,

to abandon his small meaningless life and become one with the land.

He did not stay long inrie place, not after what he'd done to Jane Stevens' father back in Sycamore. He thought of his mother and remembered how difficult life had been for him as a child, but if anything, settlements in the West were less tolerant than the more sophisticated and civilized cities of the East. The people here were less modern, less educated, filled with the superstitious dread that had afflicted their forefathers, indiscriminately afraid of anything they did not understand.

So he kept moving, living in Deadwood, in Cheyenne, in Colorado Springs, staying just long enough to make some money and load up on supplies, not long enough to arouse suspicion. He tried to stick to trading and trapping and other respectable ways of making a living, but somehow someone would always find out who he was, what he could do, and he'd end up helping them out.

These days he always left immediately after

He was by nature and necessity a solitary man, used to being alone. He was also, like his mother before him, familiar with forces unseen. But often, as he traveled across the great expanses, he was afraid. Moving through this vast country, he realized how small and insignificant he was, how puny and limited was his power, his gift. A heavy, brooding untapped energy lay beneath the surface of this rugged country. It ran in continuous currents beneath his feet, in veins the size of rivers.

It hung thick in the oppressive silence of the windless air. He could sense it in the huge dark mountains that hunkered waiting on the horizon, in the thick stands of ancient trees, which were home to far more than animals. And the Bad Places... They scared him.

He'd been traveling west now for over a month, nearly

losing himself in the mountains, coming through only with the help of the ravens. His supplies were almost gone, but he had some pelts he could trade, and he found a trail through the foothills that connected to a wagon-rutted road on the plain. He followed the setting sun, and on his first night on the plain he could see, maybe one or two days ahead, the small twinkling lights of what looked like a fairly large town.

He felt nothing beneath his feet, heard no voices, and he slept peacefully next to his untethered horse, not waking up until dawn.

The town was neither as far away as it looked nor as big as he'd hoped, and William knew by midmorning that he'd reach it some time in the early afternoon. The knowledge did not excite him as much as it should have, however, and he did not know whether his trepidation came from a legitimate premonition or merely reflected his disappointment at not finding a bigger settlement after all this time alone.

The sun was straight up when he reached the graveyard.

The witch graveyard.

It was several miles away from the town, out of sight of even a rooftop or flagpole, far away from the regular cemetery. It had not been fenced and had no headstones to mark the grave sites--witches did not deserve such amenities--but it was clearly a burial tract. Rectangular indentations in the barren soil, sunken from the packing of weather, identified the individual plots. A rusty pick and broken-handled shovel were embedded in the hard ground next to what was obviously the most recent grave.

William stopped his horse. No weeds grew within the graveyard, he noticed. Nothing grew. The desert bushes and cactus that rimmed the periphery of the spot were all dead and had turned a peculiar orangish brown.

From the branch of a lifeless tree nearby hung the frayed end of a thick rope.

"Bastards," William said to himself.

He dismounted, leaving his horse to graze among the low clumps of pale weeds that grew next to the wagon trail. He could feel the power here.

Not the wild power of the land, but a familiar pleasant tingle in the air that he recognized as the energy of fellow witches.

The energy was dead, though. It was like the lingering smell of a campfire that remained in the air long after the flames had been put out, and he felt an odd sadness settle over him even as he enjoyed the warm, stimulating aura.

He walked slowly past the unmarked graves, the intentionally anonymous resting places of men and women who had once been vibrant individuals, who had been no more good or evil than the general population, but who had been condemned to death because they possessed abilities that most people were too frightened to even try and understand. It was happening all over, this killing of their kind, and if it-continued, soon there would be none of them left. They would be exterminated in America just as they had been exterminated in Europe.

He stared down at a recent grave, one that still retained a slightly raised rectangular outline. Was this to be his fate as well? Did his future lie in an unmarked grave in a cursed and segregated graveyard?

It was what had happened to his mother. He did not even know where she was buried. No one had ever told him.

He took off his hat, wiped the sweat from his forehead. What kind of life was this? He stared up at the cloudless sky.

Why had he been born a witch? It was the same question he always asked himself, and as always, he had no answer.

He put his hat back on and walked over to his horse. Taking the reins, he grabbed the horn and pulled himself onto the saddle.

As if the graveyard had not been enough of a deterrent, there was an explicit warning posted on a leaning sign next to the road leading toward town:

WITCHES WILL BE EXECUTED

William stopped the horse, looked at the sign, then glanced ahead, but the ramshackle huts that marked the outskirts of the settlement several miles down the road were obscured by watery heat waves stretching across the length of the plain.

He wondered how long the sign had been in place, how many had ignored its warning, its promise, and continued on regardless. What they needed, he thought, was someplace of their own, land in which they were in charge and they made the rules, somewhere away from everything else where they could live in peace and be free from persecution.

It sounded like a fantasy, a dream, but he'd heard that the Mormons were making for themselves just such a place, that their prophet had led them across the desert sands to a special spot their God had picked out for-them, a place where they could live among their own kind and be free to practice their own ways. His people could do the same. Such an idea was not inconceivable.

But they were so hard to find these days. The ones who had not been killed had gone into hiding, fleeing like himself into the wilderness or keeping secret their true natures amid the normal residents of their communities. He looked again at the sign-WITCHES WILL BE EXECUTED

--then bade his horse turn around. He was getting no concrete feelings from up ahead, but the graveyard and

the sign were warning enough, and even without a definite reading he could tell that this was one town he did not want to visit.

He would return to the foothills and then travel south through them until he was far enough away from this nameless community to once again head west. He would trade his pelts elsewhere, in a bigger settlement, one where he would be less likely to be noticed.

Just in case, he cloaked himself in a protective spell, then pushed his horse into galloping back toward the hills.

Now

Muzak carols over hard-to-hear speakers. Decorations that were nothing more than products sold inside the stores they adorned. A skinny Hispanic Santa Claus kids could meet only if their parents paid to have their picture taken with him.

Miles stood unmoving in the center of the jostling crowd. Christmas seemed cheap and depressingly pointless to him this year, its practitioners yuppified and smugly materialistic. Ordinarily, he rejoiced in the trappings of the season, but all of the joy had gone out of it for him. It reminded him of Halloween, a grassroots celebration that had been turned into a buying contest by the newly affluent.

He was at the mall to purchase presents, but he realized that he didn't really have any presents to buy. A few small tokens for people at the office, gifts for his sister and her family. That was it. He had no wife, no girlfriend, no significant other, and though he usually celebrated the holiday with his dad, there was a distinct possibility that his father might not even be here come Christmas day.

Happy holidays.

Miles sat down heavily on a bench in front of Sears, feeling as if a great weight had been placed upon his shoulders. He understood now why people buried themselves in their work. It kept them from having to deal with the depressing realities of their lives.

Claire had never been one to look back, to dwell on past

mistakes. She had told him once that life was a ride and all you could do was hold on, face forward, and see it out to the end. It was too painful looking at where you'd been or where you were. The best thing to do was hang on and enjoy the next curve, the next hill the next drop the next any thing. He found himself wondering if she still adhered to that philosophy. Did that mean that she never thought about him, never had any memories, good or bad, of their marriage, of the time they'd spent together?

The thought depressed the hell out of him.

Feeling empty, feeling numb, he stared blankly into the crowd of holiday shoppers. The people he saw were almost indistinguishable in their happiness, and he envied them.

He leaned back on the bench against the brick wall of

Sears, looking at the rush of people. Gradually, one face began to differentiate itself from the rest, a wrinkled old lady's visage that drew his attention because her gaze remained fully, unwaveringly focused on him.