White Walker (14 page)

“Who?”

“Who do you think?” Jasmine said as she glanced over
at Teddy.

“Do I know what?” Teddy said.

“He doesn’t, does he?” Jasmine said with a widening
smile that faltered as realization dawned in her eyes. “He’s here
for you, for your child. You made a promise. It’s his way into the
world of the living.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Judy said
as she pushed Jasmine away and retreated to Teddy’s side.

“What the hell is she talking about? What child?”
Teddy said.

“It’s nothing,” Judy said, “a bunch of babbling
nonsense.”

“What are you talking about, Jasmine?” Teddy
said.

Jasmine looked from Judy to Teddy. “She never told
you?”

“Just shut up. It’s my business,” Judy said.

Teddy shook his head. “She hasn’t told me anything,
why?”

“She’s pregnant,” Jasmine said.

Teddy looked from Jasmine to Judy as his mouth
worked silently. He was surprised, yet at the same time he wasn’t.
He realized she had been leaving him clues all week. Little things
that while not odd in and of themselves, when taken as a whole,
with the understanding he now had, added up. He was surprised he
hadn’t figured it out sooner.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said, turning to
confront Judy.

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “With your plans I
knew there wasn’t really room for a child right now.”

“But what were you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t really sure.”

“You know I would do the right thing by you.”

“I didn’t want you to do the right thing unless it
was something you really wanted to do.”

“But I want this. I’ve always wanted this.”

“What about your plan? Your goal to be rich before
you started a family?”

“It’s just a goal. Something I wanted to try to do
before I settled down. If I didn’t make it, or didn’t succeed for
one reason or another, it would be no big deal. We’ll survive.”

“I don’t want you to feel you have to do this. I
don’t want to feel like we will survive is our only option.”

“I don’t feel I have to. I want to. I’ve always
wanted to.”

“You have a hell of a way of showing it.”

“I wasn’t sure you felt the same way. You haven’t
really been open with your own feelings lately.”

“Only because I wasn’t sure about you, especially
after what you told me about your own parents and what your family
did after.”

“That’s the past. It is what it was, there’s no
changing that. What was Jasmine talking about with a promise?”

“It’s nothing, something I said when I was a kid.”
Yet she knew it was anything but. As a child she had made a promise
to that which inhabited the forest behind her house. Some would say
the promise of a ten-year-old girl grieving the loss of a favored
pet would never hold up in a court of law and they would be right.
Unfortunately that promise had not been made to someone ruled by
any court in the world. Her promise had been made to what many
believed was a local legend, an entertaining tale whispered over
the dancing flames of a campfire. A creature of the storm.

Just like their current situation, the winter storm
had surprised a populace more than ready for spring. Restless winds
cast the falling snowflakes about in an erratic dance as its depths
slowly accumulated. Her dog, Charlie, a Pekinese-poodle mix who had
been a part of the family since before her birth, needed to go
out.

Always put a leash on him
, her mother had
warned when she started taking the responsibility of seeing to his
daily needs.
He likes to run and he won’t come back, so put a
leash on him
. Her mother’s words echoed in her mind as she led
Charlie to the back door. He dutifully followed her and sat as she
attached the leash to his collar. Once outside, he raced back and
forth, testing the ends of the leash. On his third lunge, the
looped end she should have slipped over her wrist slipped from her
hand and Charlie darted across the back yard for the tree line that
led into the forest depths. There were things out there that would
gobble him up like a tasty little snack.

She called for him to come back, but he ignored her
pleas, vanishing into a stand of pines whose limbs were sagging
from the weight of the snow that had accumulated on them.

She had been frantic as she darted back and forth on
the small patio, not sure if she should follow, the falling snow
quickly coating his trail in a new blanket of white. She raced back
inside, slipped on her boots, and returned to the patio. She
followed Charlie’s trail into the stand of pines, calling his name
and listening for any sound to point her in the direction he’d
fled. The snow was falling so fast it was quickly filling in his
narrow trail, making it indistinguishable from the rest of that
blanket of white.

Once inside the tree line, she looked back at her
house, reassuring herself that she could still see it, noting too
that her own trail was quickly being obliterated. It was bad enough
losing Charlie over her own stupidity; it wouldn’t do for her to
become lost as well. The immensity of the forest lay before her, a
vast expanse of wilderness that offered little hope. Behind her lay
the safety, and warmth, of her house.

She should go back. Charlie could find his own way
home. He had in the past, but this time it was different. He’d
never been lost in a snowstorm before. As she stood just inside the
tree line, struggling to decide which course of action to follow,
she heard the steady sound of footsteps coming from the shadowy
depths of the forest. With a slow, measured gait, they approached
her, and she took a step back, suddenly very afraid.

Who would be out wandering around in a storm like
this? she wondered as the footsteps drew closer. Within the blanket
of falling snowflakes, she spotted movement. A lone figure dressed
in a long overcoat, a filthy red scarf wrapped around the lower
portion of his face, a battered cowboy hat pulled low over his
eyes.

The sight of him made her want to flee back to the
house, yet she stood her ground. She remembered the whispered
stories her friends had shared about a lone stranger who would
arrive with the storms. No one knew where he lived, and he would
only ever be seen during a heavy snowfall. Denise, her best friend,
had told her once that the stranger had come to her bedroom window,
wanting her to let him in. She wasn’t sure whether to believe her
or not, but now, as the stranger slowly approached through the maze
of pine trees that marched away in every direction, her fear was
tinged with a hint of curiosity.

He stopped twenty feet away, watching her from
beneath the shadowy brim of his hat, his eyes sparkling with a
light all their own.

“Did you lose something?” he said in a gravelly
voice that stirred ancient memories in Judy’s subconscious,
primitive memories that reached back to the days of the caveman and
his instinctive fear of the dark.

She nodded as she took a step back, glancing over
her shoulder to judge the distance to the house. She should have
been more careful. If she hadn’t had been in such a hurry to get
back on the phone, if she had held onto the leash better, she would
be snug and warm inside instead of standing here at the edge of the
wilderness facing a thing that until this very moment she never
really believed existed.

“Was he small and furry?”

Again she nodded silently, afraid to speak, fearing
that it would reveal her deepening terror. She’d made a terrible
mistake.

“I can get him back for you.” The stranger continued
the one sided conversation. “Would you like that?”

She nodded as she took another step back.

“But I want something in return.”

Terror coursed through her at his words.
What
could he want from her? What could she, a young child, possibly
possess that he couldn’t possess himself?

“Would you be willing to give me something for
Charlie’s safe return?”

She remained still, afraid to move, to give any
indication that she agreed with him. How did he know Charlie’s
name? She’d never said a single word to him. The fear slowly
unwound in the pit of her stomach, feeding a growing panic that
nibbled at her calm reserve. She was going to die, today, right
here in the woods not a hundred yards from the safety of her house.
Her mom and dad would be heartbroken over her death and the thought
brought a solitary tear that traced a wet path down her cheek.

“You will grow to become a beautiful woman,” the
stranger said. “A young man will catch your eye and together you
will build a family.” The stranger paused to let that sink in.

Judy was bewildered by this sudden turn in the
situation and she sensed that she stood a good chance of surviving.
The stranger was obviously off his rocker, wandering the woods in
the snowstorm, scaring little kids.

“What do you want?” she said after mustering the
courage to speak.

“So she speaks.” The dirty red scarf covering the
lower portion of his face was the color of spilled blood and
muffled the stranger’s words.

She took another step back, sensing her backyard
right behind her; all she had to do was turn around and run to the
house. Would she have enough time to get the door open and slip
inside before he caught up with her? And what about Charlie?

“Before you run away, Judy, hear me out.”

How did he know my name?
She stopped.

“I know many things.”

It was like he could read her mind, but what did he
want?

“I want your first-born child.”

“What?” she blurted out.
What was he talking
about?
She was only ten. Sure she had fantasies of growing up,
getting married, and having a family. Every little girl did. But
that was so far in the future thinking about it now was an exercise
in futility. Even though she was ten, she understood how life could
change in an instant. It had happened to her cousin Janice just
last year. She had been returning from vacation with her Mom and
Dad when a drunk driver crossed the yellow line. Against her
mother’s wishes, she has attended their funeral and for weeks after
dreamed about Janice crying out from within her closed coffin as it
was lowered into the grave.

Life could change in an instant. A promise made
today carried no guarantee of being fulfilled in the future. And
she wanted Charlie back so bad. If such a promise resulted in
Charlie’s return, why shouldn’t she make it? After all, there was
no guarantee she would be around to pay up. Before she could stop
herself, she was nodding her head, and the stranger was gone,
vanishing into the storm, disappearing so completely she questioned
if he had really even been there.

Charlie barked from the forest and she saw him
standing next to a fallen tree where the stranger had been
standing. As she approached, she became aware of the single trail
of footprints that ended where Charlie stood.

The looped end of his leash had become caught on a
protruding branch and she worked to unravel it while at the same
time she tried to understand what had just happened. She remembered
the stranger, but the memory had a dream-like quality to it, as if
she was recalling what had happened instead of experiencing it
first-hand. Getting the leash loose, this time she slipped the loop
around her wrist and led Charlie back to the house as the snow fell
around her with a soft hissing voice.

The memory faded and she was back in the call
center. Before her stood the small schoolhouse, the image wavering
as if it stood behind heat waves rising from blacktop baking
beneath a relentless sun. As it shimmered, she head a faint
crackling sound that so perfectly matched the memory of the voice
of the falling snow. Like the sound heard at the end of an old
vinyl album just before the needle plunged into the center of the
record.

Judy had another connection with the structure now
standing before her. Her mother had been into genealogy when Judy
was eleven, researching their family tree. At the time, the
Internet was in its infancy; there was no genealogy dot com to
research the past of one’s family, so Judy’s mom became a fixture
at the local courthouses, where she pored over old birth and death
records. One branch of the tree ended abruptly and when Judy asked
her mom about it she told her it was for a young schoolteacher who
had died in a fire during a blizzard.

She walked around the structure, unaware of the
others watching her as she rounded the corner and came to the
front. Here several rickety stairs led to a small stoop in front of
a sagging door. The door had been built in the same manner as the
walls, with narrow boards covering the gaps between the wider
boards that made up its surface. Two small windows flanked the
door, the glass as opaque as those on the side, with shadowy
movement behind each.

The door swung open and a small woman stepped out of
the shadows of the interior, her every feature an exact duplicate
of Judy’s. She wore the long dress of a frontier woman, with the
high waist topped off by a long-sleeved blouse whose collar climbed
her neck. It was a severe outfit designed more to cover any exposed
flesh than to provide comfort or protection from the elements. With
the exception of the naturally curly hair that framed the
schoolteacher’s face, curls that elicited a jealousy in Judy, whose
own hair lay straight and lifeless, they were twins. No matter what
Judy did, nor however much she spent on volumizers and curling
treatments, her hair remained straight as an arrow. With the
exception of the hair, Judy would have sworn she was staring into a
mirror.

As their eyes met, she began to understand the true
nature of the world around her. Of the cycles of life, and death,
and rebirth and how the past was but a memory waiting in the wings
to be recalled. She felt a connection with this woman. A
familiarity that transcended time itself.