White Walker (11 page)

The guilt lay heavy in his heart. If he had come
forward in the beginning none of it would have happened. Jimmy
would have been saved, he’d still be alive today, and his own life
might have taken a turn for the better.

At the same time he understood it could have been
him. But would they have tortured and killed them both if they had
been together? It was a question that would forever haunt him.

His eyes had become fixed on the back door, the
image of his friend’s battered and bloodied face firmly planted in
his mind. Every time the wind rattled the door he cringed, imaging
that Jimmy was on the other side trying to get in.

***

While Judy was busy putting on a pot of coffee to
help warm them, Teddy and Cody spoke in hushed whispers about what
they had seen, while Norman’s gaze remained fixed on the back
door.

“Did you hear it?” Cody said.

“I heard footsteps in the snow,” Teddy said.

“Did you see anything?” Cody said.

“I didn’t see a thing,” Teddy lied, opting to
refrain from saying anything about the lone figure in the storm. Or
what he had seen inside the building when he was unconscious. He
still didn’t believe it himself, choosing instead to classify what
had happened as a dream.

“I saw him, for a second or two,” Cody said.

“What did you see?” Teddy said.

Cody shook his head. “It was one guy, dressed in a
long coat, and with a cowboy hat pulled down over his face. All I
could see was his eyes. They sparkled in the shadows.” Cody
shuddered at the memory.

Teddy cringed inwardly at Cody’s description that
matched his own, confirming they had both seen the same thing.

“Did he say anything to you?” Teddy said.

“He asked if he could come in. I said no fucking
way, man. When I was a kid, my mom used to tell me about some guy
she saw walking through a snow storm when she was a kid. I always
figured it was bullshit. Just a story she made up to try and scare
me and my sister. She called him a White Walker, and said he faded
in and out of the snow storm.”

“My nanny told me a story about her grandmother,”
Teddy said. “Telling her about a creature that lived in snow
storms. She called it Byelii, which she said translated to White
One. It was supposed to have saved the village she lived in when a
German patrol came through during World War II.”

“You had a nanny growing up?” Cody said.

“Yeah, didn’t you have one?”

“Fuck no, we were lucky to have a babysitter when my
mom worked. My dad was a worthless shit, always drunk, could never
hold down a decent job.”

Judy placed two steaming cups of coffee on the table
between them. Norman had been silent while his gaze remained fixed
on the back door.

“So what was the story your mom told you?” Teddy
said.

“She said one night during a bad winter storm she
was sitting at her window watching the snow fall when a man dressed
in a long coat with a hat pulled down over his eyes stepped out of
the woods into her back yard. He stood there and she knew he was
watching her, and then she heard him in her mind asking her to let
him in. She got away from the window and tried to go to sleep, but
several times through the night she sneaked to the window to see if
he was still there, and each time he was. Just standing in the back
yard staring up at her window, and every time she peeked she heard
that same voice in her head. Asking to let him in.”

“What do you think he, or it, wants?” Teddy
said.

Cody shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t wanna know. I just
want him, it, whatever to leave me alone.”

“What about you, Norman? What have you seen?” Teddy
said.

“Nothing!” Norman said.

“Bullshit,” Cody said, “you saw something out there,
I know you did.”

Norman turned his bleak gaze on Cody, who settled
back into his seat, silenced by the terror in Norman’s eyes.

“I didn’t see anything. Now shut up,” Norman said
before he returned his gaze to the back door.

They became silent, each retreating into their own
thoughts, as Judy returned and busied herself helping each of them
into their winter coats.

Teddy’s question had struck a nerve with Cody, who
had grown up in a dysfunctional home ruled by a drunken old man who
hadn’t put in an honest day’s work his entire life. His mother had
been forced by circumstance to work three jobs to keep the bills
paid, put food on the table, and keep his father immersed in a
drunken stupor.

To this day, he could not understand what it was his
mother had seen in his father. He also learned, the hard way, that
alcoholism was for him a fact of life. Of all the things he could
have inherited from his parents, he got stuck with the one thing he
didn’t want. He was so afraid of becoming just like his old man,
yet at the same time the allure of becoming lost in a drunken
stupor was too much for him to resist.

His friends were no help. They were always after him
to go out and get drunk. And it was so easy, drink a few beers, a
couple of shots of whiskey, and kiss his sorry-ass life goodbye for
a few hours. He could pretend that he was important. That he really
mattered.

But you do matter, Cody,
that sinister voice
whispered in his mind, accompanied by the crunch of snow beneath a
booted foot
. Open the door, let me in, I will make your life
matter.

“Get out of my mind,” Cody whispered as he clamped
his hands over his ears.

“What’s wrong, Cody?” Teddy said.

“Is he all right?” Judy said.

Cody lowered his head as he growled in his
throat.

“It’s the stranger,” Norman said. “He’s gotten into
Cody’s mind.

“How do you know that?” Teddy said.

“Because he’s been in my mind, digging through my
memories, looking for a weakness he can use.”

“Why?”

“Because he wants in,” Norman said.

“What are you talking about?” Judy said. “Who wants
in?”

Teddy knew. He understood what was going on, though
he didn’t know why. He hadn’t quite figured that out yet, but he
felt like he was on the verge of uncovering the secret. It had
something to do with the children and the woman who looked
surprisingly like Judy.

From the main room came a sound like a gunshot. The
lights flickered momentarily before plunging them into total
darkness. Judy screamed. Norman moaned in terror and the door
rattled in its frame as the wind continued to batter against the
outer wall of the building.

Here and there emergency lights kicked on creating
pools of light, like islands of safety in the thick emptiness that
lay beyond their reach.

Teddy, Cody and Judy moved to the hallway, which was
softly illuminated by the dim light coming through the window in
the back door. In the break room a single light offered some
illumination on the far wall.

The lights came back on. From somewhere within the
depths of the building came the sound of a motor starting up, and
then it died as the lights blinked out once again.

The three of them had reached the hallway, leaving
Norman alone in the break room. From the shadows behind him Norman
heard the sound of dragging footsteps.

“Please,” he whispered. The steady buzz of the
emergency light on the opposite wall was the only response he
received.

The lights flickered on and off for a brief second
and Norman saw Jimmy standing in the break room twenty feet away
from him. In the ensuing darkness he heard dragging footsteps as
the moan trapped in his throat erupted into a scream of terror as
he jumped to his feet and raced to the relative safety of the
hallway.

He found Cody, Teddy and Judy at the far end of the
hallway. Cody held a lighter above his head as the three of them
peered into the darkness of the main room.

“What was that all about?” Teddy said as Norman
reached them.

“Nothing,” Norman replied as he glanced back at the
black maw of the break room door. From the shadowy depths came the
sound of something dragging itself across the tiled floor.

The light coming through the small window in the
rear door filled the hallway with a soft glow. As the four of them
peered into the deeper shadows of the main room, something blocked
the light coming through the window in the back door.

Norman was the first to turn around to find the
silhouette of a head wearing a wide-brimmed hat outlined in the
window.

“Who’s blocking the light?” Cody said, the rest of
his statement unspoken as he turned to find that silhouette.

“What’s wrong?” Teddy said as he turned to find
themselves being scrutinized by something beyond the back door.

“He’s trying to get in,” Cody said, filled with the
same terror he’d experienced as a child when his drunken father
would try to crawl into bed with him at night. There were no sexual
overtones in his father’s act. Just the loneliness of a shattered
man seeking some kind of comfort.

I can make it all better for you.
That
sinister voice returned, caressing Cody’s thoughts with the memory
of a cold and desolate place.
I can take all the bad things away
and leave only the good.

“Leave me the fuck alone, you asshole,” Cody yelled
as he raced to the rear door and beat at the wire reinforced glass
with his fist. The shadowy form beyond the window watched with
silent mirth.

Teddy and Norman pulled Cody away from the back
door, his knuckles broken and bleeding, splotches of blood staining
the glass.

“Get the first aid kit.” Teddy said. Judy nodded
before she turned and vanished into the shadows of the main
room.

“I’m sorry,” Cody said as he cried. It was his
fault, and his alone; he was the reason his father had started
drinking. He had taken his father’s freedom from him with his
birth. He had become a burden, an obligation, and the cold grasp of
reality that strangled his dreams.

His father had told him once, during a rare moment
of sobriety, that when he was younger he wanted to be a singer. But
then he’d met Cody’s mother, and the next thing he knew she was
pregnant. He had tried to do the right thing. But the nine-to-five
grind was not to his liking and it wasn’t long before his options
had dwindled to none. He loved Cody’s mother, and loved Cody as
well, but the drinking had twisted that love into a mockery of
itself. Making it so easy for him to lay the blame for his failure
at the feet of an impressionable child.

The lights came on, flickered several times, and
then steadied as Teddy and Norman led Cody to the bathroom to clean
his wound.

Andrea wanted a cigarette. There was no request for
forgiveness in that statement, no anger, no remorse. Stated plain
and simple, she wanted a damned cigarette. She had given up years
ago on quitting, accepting the fact that she would always smell of
cigarette smoke, and that she was risking her life by inhaling all
the toxic fumes that they said were contained within the smoke
itself. But who really gave a shit? She was going to die anyway.
They all were. If not today, then sometime down the road the reaper
would catch up with each of them in its own way.

How it took you was a different matter entirely. She
had witnessed first hand the ravages of cancer. Her aunt had died
of lung cancer when Andrea was ten. A favorite aunt who always got
along much better with the children than she did with the adults in
the family.

Their repeated requests to visit Aunt Dee had fallen
upon deaf ears until the very end. By that time there was no
disguising the fact that death was knocking at her door. And the
smell. It was the smell of death; there was no describing it. The
hospital staff had tried to disguise it with disinfectant, but the
smell lingered just beneath the surface of that harsh chemical
odor.

With all the commotion that was going on, the loss
of their dedicated computer- controlled phone links, the sudden
interest Teddy and the others had been paying to the smoking area,
and Kevin’s heart attack, she wasn’t sure where to go. The smoking
area was out of the question, leaving the ladies’ room as the only
viable option. While Norman, Teddy and Cody were in the break room
warming up, she retrieved her purse from her desk and slipped into
the ladies’ room.

Lowering the toilet seat, she sat down and rummaged
through her pocketbook. She knew she had some smokes left, at least
half a pack, unless… No, she’d been keeping an eye on the others.
There had been some times in the past when her so-called
co-workers, short on cash but long on need, had slipped a few out
of her purse when she was busy elsewhere.

Her fingers brushed against the cellophane packaging
and she withdrew the partially crushed package that still contained
five smokes. Not enough for a whole night but she would have to
make due. She should have stopped for more before coming in but the
parking lot of the Pick & Go convenience store that supplied
her habit had not been plowed and she hadn’t wanted to take a
chance on getting stuck.

She removed one of the crinkled smokes and slipped
the filtered end between her lips. As she did the memory of her
aunt stirred in the back of her mind. Aunt Dee was her mom’s only
sister and until she had gotten sick she was always at the house,
doting over Andrea and her brother. There was no reason to be
thinking about her now, but the memory of that last day blossomed
in her mind.

She was once again ten, being led down the hospital
corridor by her mother and father, one hand firmly grasping her
brother’s. Edward was crying; he was two years younger than she
was, and the hospital corridor with its bright lights was a
frightening place. Everything around them seemed oversized and
scary. Nurses, doctors and patients crowded the hallway. Some of
the patients sat in wheelchairs, with IV bottles suspended behind
them, attached to their arms via a clear plastic tube.