The Walking (38 page)

"Fine." Rossiter started off on his own. "I'm not letting them out of my sight." He started down the slope, jogging to maintain his balance until he reached the beach at the bottom.

"Don't!" Miles called after him, and he was surprised by the power of his own voice.

"I have to! They'll get away!"

"Let them. We'll go after them later. We need to talk about this. We need to plan--"

"Nothing to talk about. Nothing to plan. You pussies stay here. I'm going." He was already moving away from shore and was past the first paloverde, heading around the column-like bulk of a saguaro.

"Maybe we should go," Garden said.

Janet shook her head fiercely. "Miles is right. It's dangerous You saw them."

"I saw my gram pa and uncle."

'Tthat's not who they are anymore," Miles told him. He looked Garden in the eye and saw that he was only stating what the young man already knew,

Rossiter disappeared into the deert.

"What do we do?" Garden asked.

Miles didn't know. He knew what felt wrong, but he didn't know what felt right. Isabella needed to be stopped. But he did not know how to do that, and it seemed criminal and irresponsible to stand around here, waiting for inspiration to strike instead of taking action.

"What's going to happen to him?" Janet was looking off toward where Rossiter had disappeared into the desert brash. "I hope nothing."

"But you don't think so?

Miles shook his head. Until Janet had forced him to confront the fact, he had not realized that he never expected to see the agent again. He was surprised at himself for not feeling anything, and once again he realized what a bizarre turn everything had taken, how. off it all seemed.

"Where do you think they're all going?" Garden asked. "Maybe we could call the police. I don't know how strong that Isabella is, but maybe they can be overpowered. Maybe

if we get a group together and confront them we can..."

He trailed off. "I don't know what we can do, but maybe we can do something."

Miles nodded absently. He was listening for the sound of gunfire, expecting Rossiter to catch up with the Walkers and, once cornered, use his revolver. =

But there were no shots, and the optimistic thought briefly occurred to him that the agent was trained in this sort of thing. He might be tailing them without their knowledge. Maybe he would see something or learn something that they could use to stop Isabella.

Hope died in his chest as Rossiter emerged from the brush, shuffling through the sand, hands hanging loosely at his sides, eyes white and wide, his mouth open in a stunned expression.

His face was bright lobster red. The thudding of Miles' heart rose to a drumbeat loud enough to drown out all incoming sounds. Rossiter looked as though his skin had been doused with red paint, but as he drew closer, starting up the slope toward the parking lot, Miles saw that the redness came from a transformation of the skin itself, like some ultra-extreme sunburn. The agent looked up at them and began talking, but the noises that came out of his mouth were like nothing that had ever issued from either human or animal.

Rossiter reached the parking lot and promptly sat down, his legs folding naturally into a lotus position as he lowered himself onto the gravel.

That's what his voice Sounded like. Rossiter was still talking, but his mouth closed as his but locks touched the earth. The disturbing noise stopped, and Rossiter looked up at the sky.." and froze.

Miles thought of Medusa, the gorgon, who, according to

Greek legend, would turn to stone any man who looked upon her.

Was that what had happened here?

What exactly had Rossiter seen?

Miles was not sure he wanted to know.

He looked down at the agent's unmoving form. Behind him, from the road, he heard tires on dirt, the sound of a car engine.

"Someone's coming," Janet said. Her voice was small and uncharacteristically squeaky.

Miles turned. A car pulled into the gravel parking lot, slowed to a stop. "I know that car," he said. "It's from my

It was the longest trip of her life.

Even without May chattering nonsensically in the backseat, Claire would have been anxious and unable to sleep. Ordinarily on a long drive, the rhythm of the wheels lulled her and she dozed. But the homeless woman kept alternately muttering to herself and making sudden absurd pronouncements, making for a long and stressful trip. ::..

Claire stared out the windshield.

Hal was a progressive rock fan, and he had an endless supply of tapes that he played throughout the night: Triumvirat and ELP and Yes and Gentle Giant and PFM. She herself was more of a smooth jazz, New Age kind of listener, and after a while she found the sheer number of notes and the tortured time changes of the music wearying. She longed for something soothing, relaxing, but this was Hal's car, and he was good enough to drive her, and she didn't say a word.

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.

"And that's what happened.

"She called them back after they passed on, all of the people who'd had a part in disposing of her body, who had been living in Wolf Canyon at that time. And, from what

we could figure out, she fed off them, using their energies to right her way back. She was strong enough thirty years ago to reach out to me all the way over on the East Coast, and she's been getting stronger ever since. Her power has been growing with each passing year as the children of Wolf Canyon die off and she consumes their energy. Miles nodded. "And when she was strong enough, she reached out to the men who had worked on the dam and killed them, too. Only I don't see why, if they were just doing what she wanted done anyway."

"Because maybe they beat her to the punch. Maybe she's angry that they did what she was not yet strong enough to do. Or maybe not. Who knows? Sometimes there just isn't an explanation."