White Walker (12 page)

At the end of the corridor, they were ushered into a
room where the lights had been turned down low. The first thing
that struck her was the smell. They had tried to mask it with
antiseptic but there was no denying the odor that lay beneath that
harsh chemical smell. It was the stench of decay, of things lying
dead in the blazing sun, of forbidden swamps deep in the heart of
shadowy forests.

Her grandmother was there, perched upon a chair on
the other side of the hospital bed. She held something in one hand,
caressing it with the other, and it took Andrea several moments
before she realized it was her aunt’s emaciated hand her
grandmother was comforting. Blue veins stood out on the back of
Aunt Dee’s hand, the color of the flesh was nearly the same as the
sheets of the bed. The tendons on the back of her hand created
ridges that led to each oversized knuckle that in turn led to
skeletal fingers resting lightly in her Grandmothers hand.

“It won’t be much longer,” her grandmother said, not
talking directly to Andrea, not really talking to anybody. Just
stating a fact. There was a sadness about her that fed Andrea’s own
growing unease.

“Aunt Dee wants to say goodbye,” her mother said as
she guided each of them to the side of the bed.

Where is she going
? Andrea wondered as she
stood by the bed with her head down, grasping the chrome bar that
kept her aunt from falling out of it. Her hands were small against
the bright metal. Her aunt’s hand rose from the sea of white sheets
beyond and came to rest on top of her fingers. Her flesh was cold,
waxy, and a chill whispered along her arm. Andrea looked up, into
her aunt’s face, and shivered at the living skull that was staring
back at her.

Dee was only twenty-eight, but she looked like she
was much older. The skin of her face was pulled tightly against the
bones of her skull, making her cheekbones especially prominent; her
eyes looked like they might just roll right out of her skull at any
moment.

“I’m sorry, Boo,” Dee whispered, struggling to catch
her breath, as if it took a tremendous amount of energy just to
speak. “We won’t be going fishing this summer,” she finished before
letting her head fall back to the pillow.

Every summer for the past two years they had spent
their days on the river bank catching fish. Andrea had learned to
bait her own hooks, and this year she had been looking forward to
taking her catches off the hook. Her fondest memories were of
summer evenings spent on the river, the air full of insects flying
just above the water’s surface as it trundled past them in slow
motion, dimples appearing where the fish rose to the surface to
feed. The occasional splash as one leapt above the atmosphere of
its home to snatch a tasty morsel from the air.

Andrea couldn’t understand why. After all, Aunt Dee
was in a hospital.
Weren’t they supposed to make you all
better?
It was what her Mommy always told her.

“I think it’s time,” her grandmother said. Andrea’s
mother stepped to the other side of the bed while her father’s hand
came to rest on Andrea’s shoulder.

Time for what?

“Let’s wait in the hall, kids, your Aunt Dee needs
to rest,” her father said

Andrea was led from the room, but before she stepped
out she glanced back to see her mother and grandmother leaning over
Dee’s bed as they comforted her in her last moments. In the hallway
was a short row of hard plastic chairs and it was here they
waited.

A doctor walked down the hallway towards them,
followed by two nurses, and the three of them vanished into Dee’s
room. Shortly Father Holloran arrived; he was the priest at the
church where Andrea and her brother attended Sunday school in the
basement while their parents worshipped upstairs.

Aunt Dee had never gone to church, so Andrea was
confused as to why Father Holloran had come to see her. Maybe he
was going to convince her to start going to church on Sundays. If
that was so, Andrea could have saved him the trouble. Aunt Dee
always said Sunday mornings were best for sleeping in and being
lazy.

She and her brother were not allowed to sleep in on
Sundays. They had to get up, take a bath, and dress up for Sunday
school. In a way Andrea resented her aunt’s freedom, and she looked
forward to being able to sleep in on Sunday mornings when she grew
up.

Father Holloran stopped and spoke with her father in
low whispers for a moment before stepping into the room. Andrea
tried to eavesdrop, even though she knew she shouldn’t, but she was
searching for answers neither of her parents were willing to
provide.

Why was Aunt Dee in the hospital? What was wrong
with her? Why wasn’t she going fishing with them this year?
The
questions chased one another through her mind as she concentrated
on what the priest and her father were saying. She caught snatches
of the conversation. Something about a service, a casket, and a
grave. Andrea knew about these things. Her grandfather had died the
previous year and she had gone to the church service with her
mother, who had been crying the whole time.

A sound in the bathroom pulled her from her thoughts
and she realized she hadn’t even lit her cigarette before the
memories had taken her on a brief jaunt into the past. The sound
came again, a slow, scraping noise as if someone were trying to
sneak up on her. Her co-workers had done that very thing in the
past when she first started working here and she wouldn’t put it
past Cody to try something like that now. But Cody was in no shape
to be kidding around.

“I hear you out there. Don’t try anything
stupid.”

The sound stopped and Andrea was about to light her
cigarette when the smell washed over her. It was like that day in
the hospital room, but now there was no harsh chemical smell to
mask it and its full power filled her with fear. It was the smell
of death and dying, of things lying long dead under the blazing
sun, of abandoned basements and forgotten attics. It was the stench
of a stagnant swamp hidden within the gloomy depths of a forbidden
forest.

The sound of movement came again, directly in front
of the stall she occupied, and as she covered her mouth and nose to
keep from gagging, she saw a shadow on the floor beneath the door
of the stall. The sound of a dragging step kept time with the
shadows movement. Andrea fought back the scream building in her
throat, a part of her still clinging to the idea it was one of her
co-workers playing a trick on her, refusing to embarrass herself in
front of anyone.

“I’m coming out,” she said and gathered her courage
as she pulled herself to her feet. Silently she reminded herself
that ghosts did not exist.
Dead was dead, and there was no
coming back.
She reached up and unlocked the door to the stall,
pulling back the little silver bar that was all that stood between
her and whatever was waiting on the other side.

Readying herself, she pulled open the door and
stepped into the empty bathroom. The odor still lingered, an errant
memory that had escaped her thoughts? The remnant of a visit from
beyond the grave?

Her need for a cigarette now forgotten, she turned
to the entrance of the bathroom just as the lights flickered and
went out. Standing in the dark, she felt it then, on a deep
primitive level, the presence of others in the room with her. Not
one, nor even two, but many. Steeling herself, she marched straight
for the door. She was half expecting to bump into something in the
dark and the thought of doing so sent chills down her spine. She
didn’t know what she would do if she did.

With her hands stretched out in front of her, she
reached the wall and felt along its surface. The lights flickered
and came on, the fluorescent tubes above her head buzzing like a
disturbed nest of angry bees. From the room behind her came the
soft sound of movement as something, or someone, slowly approached
her. The odor of death wrapped itself about her as that old memory,
once awakened, refused to relinquish its grip. It took every ounce
of her willpower to not turn around. Certain that if she did she
would be lost forever. She grabbed the door handle and yanked the
door open, stepping across the threshold into the hallway, where
she stopped and leaned against the wall as she struggled to get her
churning emotions under control.

Without the phones, Liz had been browsing the web,
updating her Facebook page and following the tweets on Twitter. Had
she been doing this during normal business hours she would have
been fired, but as it was, with nothing else to do, she ventured
online, figuring if they fired her, so what? She had been looking
for a job when she found this one. Besides, there was no work to do
anyway.

As she browsed the web, she would occasionally
glance towards the hallway that led to the break room, where the
others had gone after taking Kevin’s body out onto the dock. She
had never really gotten a chance to know him as they both moved in
separate circles outside of work, so his death had had about as
much impact on her as the death of an animal in the forest. It had
really been more of an inconvenience to her. Aside from the fact
that over a decade separated them in age, Kevin was a homebody
while Liz lived for the weekend and party nights on the town.

That was how she and Cody had gotten together. Like
her, he was a party animal and they frequented many of the same
bars on Friday and Saturday nights. She had to admit that he was
kind of cute. They’d gone out a few times, dancing, or to the bars,
maybe a movie. They’d made out in the front seat of her car with
the shifter between them, keeping things from going any further
than some heavy groping and kissing. He’d invited her into his
apartment several times but she declined the invitation. While he
might be cute, there was just something about him that frightened
her. An aura of violence surrounded him, and she had seen him beat
the crap out of a couple of people. It was something he looked like
he enjoyed.

She glanced again at the hallway as she struggled to
control the jealousy that was threatening to overwhelm her. She
knew what had happened between Judy and Cody, but that had been
before they got together.

“Can’t you get in trouble for that?” Leslie said.
She’d only been with the company for a month, so she was still
worried about breaking any one of the myriad rules designed to keep
the workers in line.

“What are they gonna do? Fire me?” Liz said with a
dismissive shrug. “Besides, the phones aren’t working, so we’re not
getting any calls.”

“Where are the others?” Leslie looked around the
empty sea of cubicles. From the shadowy depths around them came the
sound of the wind battering itself again the walls of the building.
From above came another sound, a faint groaning, as if an object
were being pushed beyond its limits.

Had the shadows not been so dense, they would have
seen the ceiling tiles in the corner as they shifted in response to
the movement of the roof truss above them.

Built in 1974, the building that now housed the call
center had been behind schedule before construction even started.
In order to meet his deadline, the builder had taken a few
shortcuts, the most dangerous being the repair of a roof truss that
had been damaged in shipment. Instead of replacing the steel truss,
he had cut out the damage and replaced it with a lower grade of
steel he’d picked up at the local surplus store. In his mind,
placing the truss next to the wall would ensure it wouldn’t have to
carry the same load the other trusses would. Under normal
circumstances, this would not have been a problem.

What the employees of the call center now faced was
far from normal. The roof’s load limit had been exceeded an hour
earlier as the heavy wet snow continued to pile up. The winds that
battered the building were stressing the structure to the breaking
point. The roof truss the builder had repaired was moving back and
forth under the load, nearly a full inch in either direction,
slowly twisting the low grade steel that had been used to repair
it.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Leslie said.

“Did you hear that?” Liz said.

“Hear what?”

Liz held up her hand to silence Leslie, and tilted
her head to one side to listen.

“There it is again.”

“What is it? I can‘t hear anything.”

“It sounds like a kid crying.”

“Can’t be, there aren’t any kids here. Maybe it’s
the wind.”

Liz shook her head. “No. That’s a kid crying.”

“Where’s it coming from?”

Liz got to her feet and started towards the front of
the building where all of the offices were located. Leslie
followed, her gaze switching from the shadows behind them to the
corridor in front.

“I still can’t hear anything,” Leslie said.

“There it is again.”

Leslie strained to hear what Liz had heard. From the
shadowy depths of the corridor came a barely audible sob that sent
chills racing the length of her spine as goose bumps washed across
the flesh of her arms. Her grandmother used to say that if you
heard a child crying where there was no child, someone would die
before sunset.

Am I about to die? she wondered.

“Oh my God, I heard it,” Leslie said, her hands
going to her mouth.

“Why is there a baby in the building?” Liz said,
glancing back at Leslie, who could only watch silently. What could
she say? Liz would laugh at her if she revealed how terrifying the
thought of that crying child was to her.

“Let’s go see if the phones are back up,” Leslie
said, trying to draw Liz away from searching for the source of that
child’s crying.

“Are you crazy? I want to know what’s going on.” Liz
stopped at the entrance to the hallway. Slowly she leaned into the
doorway and looked down that shadowy corridor. The left wall was
black with several framed posters. The right wall contained the
doorways to the assorted offices located there. Each door was
closed, with a narrow strip of soft light showing along the
bottom.