White Walker (13 page)

From the shadowy depths a child’s cry whispered. Liz
shivered and she rubbed her arms.

“Did you hear that?”

“I didn’t hear nothing,” Leslie said from the main
room behind her.

In the deep shadows gathered at the end of the
hallway, she spotted movement, the darker outline of a something
small as it slithered through the gloom.

“What the hell was that?” Liz said as she stepped
into the hallway and walked cautiously down the narrow
corridor.

Leslie was left alone in the main room, her gaze
swiveling from the corridor down which Liz had vanished to the
hallway that led to the break room where it seemed everyone else
had gone. Then she smelled it. The sickly sweet odor of roasting
flesh, and the scent caused her stomach to perform several lazy
somersaults.

Glancing down the corridor, she saw the shadowy form
of Liz, who had so far managed to make it twenty feet. In the other
direction the hallway ended in a flight of stairs that led to the
training room on the second floor. It was from this direction that
the odor was strongest. Three steps were visible, the rest
vanishing into the emptiness that lay like a heavy cloak across the
light of reason, shrouding in its depths the essence of nightmares
that lay waiting for the unwary traveler to draw near.

She didn’t want to go up there. The steps that in
the cold light of day held no menace were now crowded with barely
glimpsed nightmare images that existed more in Leslie’s mind than
anywhere else. Stairs went up and nothing else. The thought from
her childhood whispered in her mind. Growing up, she’d had an
irrational fear of steps, believing they led to a dark and
frightening place inhabited by all the monsters that lived beneath
the floor under her bed. The monsters weren’t really under her bed,
they were under the floor, and all steps led to their lair.

In the house where she’d grown up, the steps to the
second floor opened into the upstairs hallway. It was really
nothing more than a gap in the floor with banisters on two sides to
keep people from falling through. From the vantage point in her
room, it looked as if the floor was slowly swallowing anyone who
went down the steps, an image that added to her fear, reinforcing
her belief that the monsters lived beneath the floor. Going up was
fine, going up led into the light and safety. But going down was
bad, because you became like the monsters that lived there.

She spotted movement, and a single pair of legs
emerged, hesitantly coming down the steps. Elizabeth moaned. It was
one of the monsters from her childhood, unleashed into the present.
She was trapped, as in the nightmares she’d experienced as a child,
unable to flee as some monstrous creature emerged from beneath the
floorboards, threatening to swallow her whole. She moaned as the
legs became a body, and then Jasmine staggered into view.

“Where have you been?” Leslie said, relieved, as she
stepped into the hallway and crossed to the bottom of the steps to
help Jasmine.

Jasmine looked back over her shoulder as the sound
of something crackling came from the second floor shrouded in dense
shadows. “He’s coming,” she whispered.

Leslie felt it too as she gazed up the steps into
the thick shadows crowded at the top. Something snapped with a
sound like a gunshot. The panels of the drop ceiling rattled in
their frames as the damaged truss bent under the tremendous weight
of the snow pressing down upon it. It had never been built to
withstand these weights. The ceiling sagged in the shadowy depth,
unseen by those below.

Had they been able to see the roof from outside,
they would have witnessed it undulating like the waves of an ocean
under the growing weight of the snow. As it was, they were unaware
of the danger directly above their heads.

Elizabeth retuned from her brief exploration and
with Leslie helped Jasmine into the main room as Teddy and Cody
entered from the direction of the break room.

“Where’s David?” Teddy said as he crossed the
room.

Jasmine shook her head, her eyes alight with terror
as she battled the memory of what had happened. The little girl had
only touched his hand. But she wasn’t a little girl anymore. She
was something more, something that had existed until that very
moment in the feverish recess of her nightmares.

“She has to let them go,” Jasmine said as Elizabeth
helped her into a seat. “He has come back for them, she has to
release them, now.”

Where is everybody?
Andrea wondered as she
turned to look at the door leading to the smoking area. She
remembered that she had never lit her cigarette, the memory of her
aunt washing away her desire to smoke. The storm raged outside, the
wind battering itself against the back wall, shaking the door in
its frame, driving the swirling sheets of snow to and fro in a wild
dance. For a moment she felt it, that wild abandon of the raging
wind, and she was compelled to approach the back door.

As she neared the door, she felt cold waves of air
emanating from its surface. The small window had been shattered and
blood stained its surface; the bits of glass were held in place by
a wire mesh that formed small diamonds. When she was next to the
door, she heard the faint whistle of the wind as it blew across the
broken surface of the glass.

As a child she had dreamed of flying like a bird. Of
being as free as the wind to move about without purpose or desire.
She felt that old familiar feeling again and she placed the palm of
her hand against the chilled surface of the door. When she did, she
became aware of that ancient presence hidden in the depths of the
storm as a wild abandon washed over her.

She could fly!
If she wanted, the promise
came on a sweetly sinister voice that whispered in her mind. Her
hand dropped to the handle, which was nothing more than a bar one
pushed to open the door, and she leaned into it. She had the handle
depressed halfway when she came to her senses and realized what she
was doing. She backed up, rubbing her hand as the chill that had
invaded her flesh slowly drained away.

Andrea was turning from the door when a shadow moved
in the window as a face appeared. She spun back around to see who
was outside and she recognized the shape of the head gazing in at
her. She was bald, the flesh of her face pulled taunt over the
bones of her skull; her eyes looked like they could just roll out
of their sockets. A pair of dice that always rolled snake eyes.

“
Please,”
her aunt Dee whispered in her mind,
“please let me in. It’s so cold out here.”

The door rattled in its frame, as if Dee were trying
to pull it open. Andrea backed away, unable to tear her gaze from
the window. The face vanished and she was turning to flee down the
hall to the main floor when she spotted Norman emerging from the
shadows that filled the other end of the hallway.

“Norman,” she said.

He ignored her as he walked towards the rear door.
Andrea crossed the hall and fell into step beside him. He was
sweating, the sour odor of fear rolling off of him in waves. She
grabbed his arm to stop him. When he looked into her eyes, she saw
the terror, the guilt that had been gnawing at his soul.

“What are you going to do, Norman?”

“I have to let Jimmy in. I have to make it all
better. Everything will be okay if I let Jimmy in.”

“Who’s Jimmy?”

“He’s my friend,” Norman answered as his eyes slid
off to the right and he gazed at the door.

“He’s not out there, Norman.”

“Yes, he is. He’s waiting for me. He told me
everything would be okay. Once he was allowed to come inside, I
would be forgiven.”

“You can’t let him in, Norman. It’s not safe.”
Andrea glanced at the window, spotting the familiar silhouette of
her aunt’s emaciated head. She’s not there, she told herself as she
blinked her eyes, trying to dispel that image.

“I have to let Jimmy in, it’s so cold outside,”
Norman said in a child’s whining tone.

“You can’t open the door, Norman. We can’t let him
in.” Until this moment she had not given much thought to what lived
in the storm.

She had always believed there were things beyond
their comprehension in the wider world around them. Bigfoot did
exist, along with a host of other legends and folktales that had
survived the intervening years. But even with this background, she
struggled to believe a simple winter storm contained anything more
dangerous than the freezing cold and the potential to become lost
in a blizzard. Yet she had seen the proof of its existence, had
felt its sinister touch. Had fallen briefly under its spell.

“Let me go,” Norman said as he tried to slip around
her. She stepped into his path. He grabbed her by the shoulders and
firmly moved her aside. Then he turned to the door that rattled in
its frame, the searching fingers of the wind trying to pry it open,
the growing anticipation of getting what it wanted making it rattle
harder and faster.

Andrea refused to give up. She reached him just as
he started to push against the bar that would open the door.

“Please, Norman,” she said.

A tear rolled down Norman’s cheek, “I’m sorry, I
didn’t mean for any of it to happen.”

“I know you didn’t. It wasn’t your fault.”

“But they said,” he faltered and turned to face her,
his eyes two black pools of terror and pain.

“It doesn’t matter what they said. That was then,
this is now. The past is what it was.”

He blinked, wiping at his tears. “I didn’t want it
to happen.”

“I know.” Andrea wrapped him in her arms and gently
placed his head against her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he sobbed.

“It’s okay,” she whispered in a soothing voice as
she watched the shadowy form at the window. The face that had been
there became her Aunt Dee’s and she felt her own sorrow stir. There
was nothing she could have done, there was nothing any of them
could have done to save her, so there was no guilt for this thing
to lure her with.

She led Norman back to the main room.

Teddy, Cody, and Judy crossed the main room as
Elizabeth and Leslie helped Jasmine to a seat.

“What the hell is she babbling about?” Cody
said.

“I dunno,” Liz said.

“I’ll get her some water,’” Judy said. She turned
and raced back across the main room, vanishing into the shadowy
depths of the hallway as Andrea led Norman across the room to a
chair, where he sat down.

“Is he okay?” Teddy said, nodding at Andrea, who
answered with a shrug and a sigh.

The lights of the main room flickered on briefly
then went out. The air became charged with static electricity as
the heavy odor of ozone filled the room. Whispering voices came
from the shadows all around them, snatches of conversation that
faded in and out of focus, becoming louder, then softer as if
someone were twisting the volume knob on a radio back and forth.
The air was filled with the odor of roasting flesh, and the screams
of children swirled around them in a confused maelstrom of sound,
accompanied by the crackling sound of a raging fire. Thunder
rumbled distantly as the incessant pounding of the wind battered
itself against the outer walls. The storm was growing even more
violent. The end was coming. They all felt it on a deep, primitive
level.

Cody and Teddy were approaching Jasmine when a sound
like that of an electric motor suddenly running out of control
washed over them. A high-pitched whine that created a painful
sensation at the center of his forehead. The overpowering scent of
ozone filled Teddy’s mouth with a metallic taste that made the
fillings in his teeth hurt. It felt like his mouth was filled with
electricity.

“What the fuck is that,” Cody said, causing Teddy to
stop short and turn around.

Behind them, a one-room schoolhouse occupied the
center of the main floor. Leslie screamed and backed away as
Elizabeth held her hand over her mouth, joining her friend as they
put some distance between themselves and the old structure. Teddy
had felt it on that primitive level where man’s most basic emotions
dwelled. That and the heat that emanated from its presence drove
back the chill that had slowly been winding its way through the
room.

“You can see it?” Teddy said.

“Of course I can see it. What the hell is going on
around here?”

Spectral flames danced around its edges as shadowy
shapes flitted to and fro behind the opaque glass of its two small
windows. The past and the present occupied the same space; in one
stood the drab gray dividers that served to create the maze of
cubicles that covered the main floor, in the other was the one-room
schoolhouse that looked like it had just been dropped into place
from the Kansas plains. With not a straight corner, the schoolhouse
stood tiredly, as if a stiff breeze would be enough to bowl it
over.

Judy returned, carrying a cup of water, and stopped
as she became aware of the schoolhouse. Slowly, cautiously, she
approached the ancient building. A face appeared at one of the
windows, its features twisted beneath the rippled surface of the
glass.

It was all they could afford
. The thought
filled Teddy’s mind.

“He wants the children,” Jasmine said as she pushed
herself up from her seat and approached the building.

“What are you talking about?” Cody said.

“He wants the children,” Jasmine said, “that’s why
he came back. He wants their souls.”

“Who?” Judy said.

“The walker, jack frost, the white one. The one your
mother called White Walker.”

“How did you know about that?” Judy said.

“You’ve seen him, haven’t you?” Jasmine crossed to
where Judy stood. She looked into her eyes, and placed her hand on
her belly. “Does he know?”