The Walking (30 page)

--and seeing her asleep in bed like this, her guard down, vulnerable, he suddenly had the strength to do what needed to be done.

He killed her as she slept.

He killed her, but she did not die.

He put the pillow over her head, held it there, and when he had done so until his arms were aching, he pulled the pillow up.

She was still breathing, still asleep.

And she was smiling.

The chill he felt was not from the outside air seeping in between the cracks of the windowsills, nor from the rheumatism that had permanently settled in his bones. He backed away from the bed, his hands shaking, his mouth dry. He kept waiting for her to sit up, to open her eyes, to acknowledge the attempt he'd made on her life and retaliate in some way. But she remained unmoving, asleep, and only that sly smile on her face let him know that she was aware of what he'd done..

He placed a quick spell on the bed and everything in it, a binding spell, and he rushed around the room looking for a weapon, determined to go through with what he'd decided.

He used her own knife to cut off her head, the long serrated one with which she'd disemboweled the girl. Blood spurted, flowed He stemmed it with toad powder, he separated the head from the body, but still she lived. The eyes blinked open; the arms moved up to casually scratch her disassociated cheek.

She was playing with him, he realized.

She looked at him and shook her head, the unconnected head rocking back and forth on the pillow, its raggedly severed veins flopping from the open neck like live red worms.

He was covered with blood, as were the bedsheets, as were the blankets, as was the floor He had never been so frightened in his life, and it was the knowledge in her eyes that was the most unnerving. For he had intended to kill her quickly and cleanly so that she would not know what happened to her, so she would not be aware of his betrayal.

But it had not worked out that way, and her eyes remained wide and seeing, watching each of his awkward fumbling attempts to murder her.

Knowing that she was aware of what he was doing filled him with a strange and terrible dread, a terror unlike any he had known before.

With a cry he grabbed the edge of the pillow and yanked it, tossing her head on the floor. He sliced her body in half, said a quick and dirty spell, then stumbled out of the house, breathing deeply, trying to fill his tired old lungs with the clean freshness of cold night air and to move the taste and smell of blood from his mouth and nos.

He had planned to keep her death a sret, at least for a little while, and then attribute it to natural causes. But the disruption in power must have ben sensed because a dozen people were standing outside his fence, dressed in nightcaps and bedclothes. He scanned the faces of those present, pecting to confront the wrath of those who had gone along with her purges. But what he saw instead filled his heart with joy. Relief. Gratitude.

They were glad she was gone, thankful that he had killed her.

He staggered down first steps, through the small yard, out the gate, and into the arms of Irma Keyhom and Susan Johnson.

By the time he reached them, his eyes were so full of tears that he could not even see.

They did not wait for morning. Several of the men accompanied him back into the house.

Matthew, Joshua, Cletus, and Russell carried out the two halves of the body, chanting spells to ward off malevolence, spells to protect themselves. William carried her head, have thing dusted it with invested bone meal in order to render it

inanimate, and though his emotions were churning, he had no doubt that he had done the right thing.

By this time most of the town had gathered out front, and they followed silently as the men carried what was left of Isabella up Main Street and out into the wilds of the canyon. The road became a wagon trail, then a horse path as it led farther into the darkness, farther from town.

William felt as though he should explain what he'd done and why, but he did not know what to say, and the truth was that words did not seem to be needed. The people of the town understood somehow, and he sensed nothing but support when he scanned the crowd.

They continued into the darkness.

-The cave was up the canyon in the marshy area by the ferns.

He had intended to entomb her there from the beginning. The cave was far from town but still in Wolf Canyon, and it was remote enough that her body would probably never be discovered. His intention was not to keep her corpse from harm, but to keep her from harming others. He had no faith that she was rendered completely disabled by death, that her power had died with her body, and he wanted to make sure that he did everything he could to ensure her permanent incapacitation.

Leading the way, he slogged through the muck and weeds that adjoined this particularly slow-moving section of the river. Underneath an overhang of rock on which grew clumps of green fern shaded from the sun and fed by a trickling spring located somewhere at the top of the cliff, the cave entrance yawned, a low, narrow opening in the rock that disguised a much larger chamber inside. One by one they entered and someone conjured a sand fire for light.

"We will leave her here," William said. "Place the halves of her body at opposite ends."

He felt movement in his hands, a repugnant unnatural

squirming that startled him into dropping her head. It hit the powdered dirt with a quiet thud, rolling over until the blank staring eyes were looking up. He'd been half expecting something like this, but it still took him by surprise. He stared down at the head, not wanting to pick it up again, afraid to touch it. The eyes blinked, the cheek muscles twitched, and he knew that neither bone meal nor spells were strong enough to block her will.

He backed up a step. The men carrying the halves of her body had dropped them at the opposite sides of the cave, and they had joined the rest of the people near the fire. All eyes were on him. William heard a whisper, saw Isabella's mouth move. Her eyes shifted to look at him, then took in the rest of the crowd. The temperature suddenly dropped, a chilling of the air that was strong enough to dim the fire.

Despite the absence of a connected body and lungs, Isabella's voice issued loud and clear from between the moving lips of the severed head:

'Thou shalt not leave when the waters come. I curse thee. I curse thee and thy descendants, and I shall feed upon thy souls to avenge my death. And woe to anyone who cometh between us, woe to those who bringeth the waters..."

She continued to talk, a litany of dark promises that seemed to have no end. William shivered. It was not the curse itself that sent a chill down his spine. It was the words she used, the formality of her speech and the archaic vocabulary. It made him realize emotionally what he had until this point understood only intellectually: she was different, she was not like them. She was far older than he, and stranger in her makeup than any of them could have possibly imagined.

"... And when I am reborn from the lives of thee and thy descendants, I shall be stronger than thou could st have

ever imagined. Armies will bow before me. As it was foretold, so shall it be..."

Marie and Ingrid and several of the others were already backing out of the cave, attempting to leave without drawing attention to themselves.

The utter silence of all who witnessed this scene told him better than could any words the fear they felt, the impact Isabella's curse was having upon them.

William looked back at the others, then reached down, picked up a rock, and smashed her head.

The voice stopped, and the only sounds in the cave were the echoes of her final words. The large chunk of sandstone he had dropped completely covered her face, but the veins of her neck protruded from one end and her wild hair ringed the rock's upper third. Blood was spreading outwards-ping into the sand, bubbling down. William said a few words, increasing the intensity of the fire. Using all of the knowledge and skill he had gained in his nearly seven decades on earth, he bound her to this place, warding off intervention from others, containing what eve self was left of her. "Get out," he ordered everyone. "Leave. Wait for me by the river."

He rejoined them twenty minutes later, drained and dizzy. They sealed the tomb, all of them working together to cause a landslide that covered the cave entrance, and by the time the sky above them was lightening with the dawn, they had left the cave behind and were trudging back to town.

In the years left to him, he tried to put the incident behind him, tried to avoid thinking about Isabella at all, but that was impossible.

She was too entwined with his life, too tied up in the history of this place, and even avoidance of those

locations most associated with Isabella necessitated thinking about her.

Was her spirit still here, in the canyon, in the house she had died? He did not know because he made no effort to contact her. Nor, to his knowledge, did anyone else. Such contact could be dangerous, as they were too well aware, and even in Wolf Canyon the magic that had been practiced so freely began to be utilized less and less as they adopted prohibitions on themselves in an attempt to avoid a repetition of the recent past.

The town faded. Several people left, and no new citizens arrived to take their place. The days of persecution seemed to be gone. Wolf Canyon had outlived its most practical purpose. Looking at it now, looking at it objectively, he saw that it was fear that had brought them together in the first place, fear that had enabled them to forge some semblance of society in this wilderness, not a sense of community, not genuine camaraderie. His dream of a utopian village where those of their kind could live peacefully and happily with each other, away from the evil and corruption of so-called civilization, had been only that--a dream. The foolish wishes of an arrogant and overreaching young man.

Still, some stayed on, and many of them had kids, and gradually the flight was stemmed, the population leveled off.

Others settled into the surrounding countryside, hard scrabble ranchers and family farmers who were not driven off or terrorized but were greeted as neighbors. Whether or not these new people were aware of the fact that Wolf Canyon was a town populated by witches, William had no way of knowing. He had given up all claim to authority after killing and entombing Isabella, had not even voted when the town chose its first democratically elected mayor and sheriff.

He had lived for too long, and when his health began to

seriously fail, he felt only a profound sense of relief. He was more than ready to go.

On his deathbed, he had a vision, a glimpse of the future, something that Isabella had claimed to experience quite often but that had never before come to him. There was no one by his bedside. One of the town's women checked in on him every day, brought him meals in the morning, but he had made it clear that he needed no companionship, that he wanted to be left in peace.

The vision was of a man-made lake, with a wall of smooth stone that rose hundreds of feet to the top of the canyon walls and reined in the waters.

He understood now the import of Isabella's curse. For the town was buffed beneath the waters and he knew that the witches down there, were doomed, drowned, fated never to leave thanks to her imprecation.

Several families had left since Isabella's death, and he knew that they had all assumed this invalidated her curse, since she had decreed that no one would be allowed to leave. But meanings were often elude: sive, and he realized now that she had made sure whoever remained in Wolf Canyon at the time this lake was created would be killed.

He wanted to let the others know, wanted to evacuate the town and place a spell of avoidance around it that would discourage anyone from living here ever again so that Isabella plans could never come to fruition.

But he could tell no one.

His breath caught in his throat. He started to choke, stopped breathing.

He died alone.

And when he left life behind and crossed over to the other side... She was waiting.

Cedar City was located at the foot of a series of green mountains. Or mesas. He couldn't tell which, with the low clouds planing off the tops to a uniform flatness. It was colder than in California and drizzly, and the high desert vegetation was all a dark blackish green that suited the day.

Miles stepped off the small shuttle plane and ran through the mist to the small building serving as the airport terminal. As he should have expected, no rental car was waiting for him, and he called Avis to confirm that one had been re served. He had no choice but to wait at the airport until his vehicle was delivered, and he sat down on one of the stained uncomfortable chairs facing the window. He pulled out the piece of paper on which he'd written the two addresses he'd found last night and unfolded the street map of Cedar City the woman at the counter had given him. The city was small, the streets easily found, and he had no choice but to fold up the map and stare out at the drizzle as he waited for his car.

Ten minutes later, a red Pontiac Grand Am pulled up to the curb in front of the airport door, followed by a beat-up pickup. The bald, sad-looking man who emerged from the Grand Am had on a white shirt and an Avis name tag, and Miles quickly gathered up his map and briefcase and hurried outside. There was a form to sign, the sad man took down his driver's license and credit card number, then gave Miles the key to the car and ran back to the pickup, hop ping in. The Wuck roared off, splashing water, and Miles

tossed his briefcase on the passenger seat and headed downtown.

He hit it on the first try.

Janet Engstrom was a haggard-looking woman who was probably much younger than she seemed. She lived alone in the front apartment of a single-story complex across the street from the college. Perhaps he should have called In'st, but since he had not, he simply walked up and rang the bell.

"Are you Janet.Engstrom?" he asked the woman who answered the door.

She nodded warily. "Yes." I'd like to talk to you about your uncle."