White Walker (15 page)

“She’s your twin,” Jasmine said, having followed
Judy around to the front of the schoolhouse. The school teacher
stood upon the small stoop with the shadowy faces of her charges
gathered behind her.

“I know her,” Judy said. The stories her mother had
told her when she was a child were rekindled in her mind. There had
been a school teacher in their family’s past, back when the mines
were in full operation, and the miners who inhabited this area
sought more opportunities for their children. It was the miners who
had built the schoolhouse. The building itself comprised of what
they could gather from a number of barns in the area. They had
pooled what few resources they had to purchase a blackboard and
schoolbooks. The desks had been hand-built by many of the miners
themselves after working a long day in the mines. Working at their
homes while they were still covered in coal dust. A labor of love
that had terminated in terror when a surprise winter storm had cut
the schoolhouse off from the town. Afterwards, the miners had found
the smoking ruins filled with the charred remains of their children
huddled in one corner.

“Her name is Harriet. She’s my great-aunt or
something.”

The schoolteacher smiled at Judy as she carefully
came down the steps and approached her. As she did, Judy was
overwhelmed with the sickly sweet odor of roasting flesh and she
baked away from Harriet’s approach.

I’m sorry,
Harriet whispered in Judy’s mind.
It is what I’ve become
.

From the walls around them came heavy pounding as
the storm sought entry into the call center. Harriet looked around
with a frightened expression as the cries of the children came from
the shadowy interior of the schoolhouse.

“Please,” Norman cried out as he clamped his hands
over his ears and lowered his head to his knees. “Please make it
stop.”

“He’s come for the children,” Jasmine said.

Harriet glanced back at the schoolhouse as the
children’s cries intensified. She swiveled her head around to Judy.
She looked down at her belly and placed her hand on Judy’s
midsection. Surprisingly, her hand felt warm and a faint smile came
to Harriet’s lips as she looked into her eyes. Judy understood then
just how much Harriet had loved the children under her care, just
as she would have loved the child blossoming in her own womb had
she survived, yet it wasn’t to be.

The memories tumbled through Judy’s mind as the past
opened before her. She felt like a voyeur as she watched the scenes
unfolding. There had been a brief fling. A young miner had caught
her eye, and on a rare day off he had taken her to the country, to
his own small shack sitting at the edge of the wilderness. There
they had made love as a gentle snowfall drifted down from a slate
gray sky. Afterwards, the shame of her actions had descended and
she had fled from the cabin, racing into the wilderness to lose
herself, and in the process drawing the attention of the
walker.

The snow-covered forest was the same everywhere she
looked; the only thing different were her footprints, which were
rapidly filling with snow as it fell with a steady hiss from the
overcast sky. She was surrounded by towering pine trees whose
boughs were bowed beneath the weight of the snow piled upon each
branch. Then she heard it, the measured sound of approaching
footsteps crunching through the layer of snow. She thought the
young miner had come to rescue her and she ran towards the
sound.

Rounding a tree, she came face to face with a
stranger dressed in a long canvas riding coat. It was filthy,
sweat-stained, and the odor of unwashed bodies accompanied him. He
wore a leather hat that was pushed down upon his head, his eyes in
shadows, the lower portion of his face wrapped with a dirty,
blood-red scarf. The dress reminded her of the drovers who had come
through late last fall, driving a herd of cattle to market down
state. Several of them had passed back through on a return trip as
the first snowfall turned the landscape into a winter
wonderland.

It was the same stranger Judy had confronted as a
child.

It was the one the locals called White Walker.
Harriet had heard several of her pupils speaking about him. Their
parents had emigrated from Russia, carrying with them the legends
and tales of the windswept Russian steppes where they had grown up.
The White Walker was purported to gather the souls of those who
became lost in the many winter storms that swept down from the
frozen north. Carrying them away to live out eternity in the
desolate landscape that was its soul. He had gone by many names in
the past. Had worn many faces, and she realized as she stood facing
him, that he had been here long before the first immigrants
inundated the land. His true name had become lost in the memory of
the distant past, but his image had crossed the great land bridge
that once connected the vast Siberian forests to the Upper
Peninsula that would one day become Alaska.

She turned and fled into the forest, following her
faint trail that wove among the towering pine trees around her. She
became disoriented, losing sight of her trail, fleeing deeper into
the vast wilderness as the cold slowly wicked down to her bones.
She didn’t understand why she had run away in the first place.
Surely her family would understand. The trail dimmed as her hopes
of surviving dwindled. Just when she thought everything was lost,
she came upon the young miner

He had followed, and he begged for her forgiveness,
offering to do the right thing. But shortly after they were married
in a simple ceremony overseen by the parents of her charges, a
mining accident claimed his life. Such was the sorrow of the past,
and Judy was overwhelmed by the realization that Harriet’s story
mirrored her own. She had yet to tell her parents about her
pregnancy. Nor did they approve of her living with Teddy. While
they appeared to like him, the fact that he had yet to propose
reinforced their belief that he was only after one thing.

“She has to let them go,” Jasmine said. She had
followed Judy to the front of the schoolhouse.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s what he wants. It’s his due. He believes the
schoolteacher and the children belong to him. Unless you can
convince them to cross over, they will become lost in the frozen
wastes that is his soul,” Jasmine said.

From the ceiling above came the snapping sound of
steel surrendering to the immense weight of the snow resting upon
the roof’s surface. Leslie and Liz looked up just as the roof
collapsed upon them, burying them beneath a mountain of snow and
twisted steel. The lights went out and water sprayed across the
room from the severed sprinkler system as a wintry wind swirled
among the chairs and desks of the main floor. Snowflakes were
driven this way and that, drifting to any available surface, where
they melted instantly.

“Liz,” Cody shouted as he raced to the pile and
pulled at the twisted wreckage. His palms were sliced open and he
left bloody handprints on the white snow. Dropping to his knees, he
dug through the snow with his hands, crying out for Elizabeth as he
worked, his emotions, already at a high point, had been thrown into
overdrive by this new turn of events.

Teddy took him by the arm and tried to pull him
away, but Cody shook him off and continued his frantic search.
Teddy’s experience as an EMT told him what Cody had yet to find
out.

“There’s nothing we can do for them.” Teddy tried to
reason with him but Cody was having none of it. He continued to dig
through the snow, pulling away pieces of the roof and tossing them
over his shoulder.

“We gotta find them,” he said as he flung aside the
pieces of a shattered desk. “We gotta save them.”

“I’m sorry, man,” Teddy said in a gentle voice as he
rested his hand on Cody’s shoulder. The younger man’s efforts
slowed as reality asserted itself in his mind. He’d done everything
he could to save them. But some things were meant to be. Some
deaths were necessary to help us grow and mature. He hung his head
to cry as the sound of rushing water battled the voice of the wind
that had found its way inside. Fat snowflakes drifted down from the
opened roof and Teddy surveyed the damage as the sound of movement
came from the shattered remnants. They would have to get out soon.
No telling when the rest of the roof would collapse.

The incessant pounding of the wind battering itself
against the outer walls of the building had become his world. The
rear door rattled in its frame, and from his vantage point in the
main room, Norman could see the door clearly. Through the shattered
glass of the window, the faint light of day softly illuminated a
portion of the shadowy hallway.

He looked away, his gaze drifting over to the
shimmering image of the schoolhouse and the young schoolteacher who
looked like Judy. The sudden appearance of the schoolhouse had not
rattled him one bit. After all, he had plenty of experience with
the ghosts of the past, his current predicament exemplifying that
fact.

Jimmy was still at the back door trying to get in.
Norman’s gaze drifted back to the hallway, beyond which stood the
only barrier between them and that which inhabited the storm. From
the roof above came the creaking of the steel rafters and he knew
it was about to let go.

He was about to voice his concerns when, with the
snapping sound of cold steel stretched beyond its capabilities, a
portion of the roof collapsed. Standing directly below that section
were Leslie and Liz, who had backed away to put some distance
between themselves and the one-room schoolhouse standing in the
middle of the call center’s main floor.

There had been a brief scream from one of the women
before they were buried beneath a small mountain of snow and
debris. He watched as Cody tried to save them, touched by his
actions as he’d always considered Cody to be nothing more than an
overgrown, immature child who had found the freedom he’d sought but
was unable to handle it, as was evidenced by his drinking. He felt
detached, not really a part of what was going on around him. It was
a sensation he had grown accustomed to, for he had never really
been a part of anything in his life.

As Teddy pulled Cody from the small mountain of
snow, Norman saw swirling snow devils dancing across the surface of
the debris strewn pile. They moved back and forth across the pile,
up and down its sides, and he suddenly understood that what had
been safely locked out by their refusal to permit it access had
just found a way in.

Let me in, Norman
, Jimmy whispered in his
mind and he clamped his hands over his ears as he lowered his head
to his knees. Please, he pleaded silently. Please leave me
alone!

A cold wind swept down from the opening in the roof,
driving those small snow devils before it, and as they drew closer
Norman shot to his feet.

“What’s wrong?” Andrea said. Her attention drawn
from what was happening with Cody by Norman’s sudden movement.

“They’re coming,” Norman said before he turned and
raced towards the back door. Andrea gave chase, catching up with
him at the door to the smoking area. He started to push the bar
that would open the door when she stopped him.

“What are you doing?”

“They’re inside. We have to get out, now.”

He shoved against the bar, pulling at Andrea, who
was hanging onto his arm. The door started to swing open and she
clawed at it to pull it closed, but it was too late. The wind
grabbed the door, slamming it against the wall, the wind itself
racing down the hallway as the papers hanging from the bulletin
boards rattled in response. She slipped outside to pull the door
closed and had managed to bring it halfway around when the wind
snatched her from the side of the building. One moment she was
there, and in the next she was gone, vanished into the swirling
maelstrom that screamed with a savage voice.

Norman gazed at the space Andrea had occupied only a
moment ago. Dumbfounded by her sudden disappearance. Her screams of
terror came faintly from within the swirling snowstorm. Then he
heard it, the slow, steady footsteps of the strangers approach.

Suddenly he was beside him, his heavy hand dropping
to Norman’s shoulder, his eyes sparkling with electric anticipation
under the shadowy brim of his battered cowboy hat.

“I knew you would see it my way, Norman.”

“Will I have peace?” Norman said.

“Of course,” the stranger whispered as a cold chill
invaded Norman’s chest and slowly spread across his lungs and rib
cage. He struggled to breathe as his flesh was frozen and he
dropped to his knees before falling face first onto the
snow-covered dock.

Judy turned her attention back to Harriet, whose
hand was still resting on her stomach. The past and the present
swirled around them as they communicated on a level that
transcended words and actions, their minds sharing the memories of
the past and promises made by naive children wishing for a better
future.

Judy saw Harriet as she waited at the opening of the
mine for news of her young man, surrounded by men and women who
watched with unconcealed anticipation as the rescue crew entered
the mine shaft and began the long descent to where eight men were
trapped by a recent cave-in. One of them was the father of the
child growing in Harriet’s womb. Silently she begged and pleaded
with powers beyond her comprehension, not really praying, but
bargaining with everything she owned for the safe return of her
beloved.

Judy silently witnessed the sorrow that had
overwhelmed her when the news finally came, the lonely nights
stretching out ahead of her as she quietly raged against the
injustice of the world in which she lived. She had been saved only
to witness the loss of her one true love. To survive, she threw
herself into her work, vowing to give the children under her care
the education they deserved. Spring broke, carrying with it the
promise of rebirth, and the new life growing within her. A severe
winter storm rolled down from the north, carrying with it howling
winds and endless snow of the Walker’s domain. She recalled that
day in the forest and the stranger she had met.