White Walker (9 page)

Before they left she had warned them to stay away
from Coopers Woods, making Norman promise to take the long way
around. There had been reports of older teens using the old pump
house as a hangout where they smoked, did drugs, drank and who knew
what else.

At the bottom of the hill, the path went right past
the pump house, but Norman was confident that as early as it was no
one would be around. As they got closer, they heard voices coming
from within the low concrete structure that resembled a bunker
better suited for some forgotten battlefield than the middle of a
growing housing development.

“I thought you said no one would be around?” Jimmy
said.

“They shouldn’t be, but if we’re real quiet we
should be able to sneak by.”

“I don’t know, my mom said not to come this way and
you promised.”

“Do you want to go back?” Norman said.

Jimmy looked from the pump house to the trail
snaking back up the hill behind them. “Do you think we can sneak
by?”

Norman nodded and moved forward with Jimmy close
behind him. Bent over at the waist, they slowly worked their way
around to the side of the pump house. This close, Norman recognized
the two voices coming from within the crumbling structure. One was
Todd, who lived two houses down from him. By himself he wasn’t too
bad. He was actually somewhat of a friend to Norman that is when
Pete wasn’t around.

Pete lived two streets over with his parents in a
rundown apartment building. It was all they could afford, as Pete’s
dad was a drunk who spent everything he had on beer, whiskey, and
cigarettes. Pete’s mom worked two jobs to keep food on the table,
coming home only to sleep and take a shower before her next shift.
That left Pete at his father’s mercy. Many times Pete would be
found sleeping in somebody’s back yard.

“I told the little fuck to give me his lunch money
or I’d beat him to death,” Pete said. Todd laughed in response. A
bottle exploded inside the cinderblock structure. Followed by
another. The smell of cigarette smoke came from inside, mingling
with the ever-present odor of old shit.

The pump house had at one time been responsible for
pumping sewage from the growing suburbs to a waste treatment
facility across town. When it was replaced by newer technology,
instead of being torn down, the structure was left to decay on its
own. Inside the main room, in the middle of the floor, was a
circular hole twelve feet across that led to a network of pipes
that had once been connected to the grinder pump that had occupied
the opening. Years ago it had been removed for scrap, but no one
had bothered to seal the opening.

As the two young boys snuck around the corner of the
pump house, the safety of the woods a mere twenty feet away, Jimmy
was overcome by a coughing fit.

Drawn by the noise, Todd and Pete stepped out of the
pump house and raced towards them. Norman’s fight or flight
instinct kicked in and he turned and fled into the woods, leaving
Jimmy behind as the two older boys quickly caught up with him.

The next time he saw Jimmy was at his funeral. His
body had been found three days later, dumped in a drainage ditch on
the other side of town. It looked like his captors had tortured
him. Cigarette burns covered his face and one eye had been poked
out. The physical evidence at the scene clearly pointed to Todd,
who was arrested and later informed on Pete. Both of the boys were
sent downstate to a juvenile facility on the eastern shore.

Norman had lied about Jimmy’s whereabouts that first
evening, claiming that Jimmy had grown tired at the game and
returned home alone. But at night when he was alone, he was faced
with the simple truth that he had abandoned a friend. If he had
stayed by Jimmy’s side, maybe none of this would have happened. But
at the same time, he understood that had he done so he might have
joined Jimmy in that drainage ditch.

It’s your fault
, Jimmy whispered in his mind,
and Norman’s gaze was drawn to the swirling sheets of falling snow
that parted momentarily to reveal Jimmy. He stood on the hill
opposite the dock. His remaining eye watching Norman with an
unnatural stillness as the contents of the other slowly oozed down
the scarred flesh of his burned cheek.

“What’s wrong, Norman,” Cody shouted in his ear, the
words ripped away by the relentless wind. Norman ignored him, his
gaze fixed on Jimmy’s figure standing motionless in the falling
snow.

“I’m sorry,” Norman said.

“Let’s get him inside,” Teddy said. Cody stepped
around to Norman’s other side.

Norman followed willingly enough as Cody and Teddy
led him back towards the building. But he never took his eyes off
of Jimmy standing in the falling snow.

Can I come in?
Jimmy whispered in his mind
and Norman whimpered.
You owe me that much
, Jimmy continued
as Norman slowly shook his head and a moan of terror rumbled in his
throat.

“I can’t,” Norman whispered.

“What’s he talking about?” Cody asked Teddy as they
approached the door with Norman between them.

Teddy shrugged as he swiped his card and pulled the
door open. Andrea was waiting inside and she stepped out to help
guide Norman into the safety of the interior.

She didn’t know how long she had lain there, her
hands over her head, the smell of burning flesh heavy in the room.
David’s charred body lay a few feet from her, while the sound of
that relentless storm raged beyond the wall behind her. She sensed
that presence in the storm, an ancient thing that had wandered the
world since the dawn of time. Slowly she became aware of others in
the room around her, carrying with them a childish terror of all
things they didn’t understand, but among them was a soothing
presence filled with a desire to protect the others.

“We won’t hurt you,” a feminine voice whispered in
her ear, and Jasmine slowly lifted her head. From the shadows they
emerged, a group of children of assorted ages, standing around her
in a rough semi-circle.

“I’m sorry,” a child’s voice murmured, filled with a
genuine regret, “I didn’t mean to hurt your friend.”

“She hasn’t learned to control the fires that live
within her,” that feminine voice soothed. “It’s my own fault. I
should never have kept them at school that day.”

“Who are you?” Jasmine said as she rose to her
knees. Around her she saw the silhouettes, their details wrapped in
shadows. There were eight of them of varying heights. Their
emotions washed over her like the waves of an ocean crashing upon a
battered shore.

Charles was the oldest, full of a remorse that
belied his young age. No child should ever feel the guilt that
boiled within him. Randy was gone and it was his fault. If he had
gotten the wood like Miss Butler wanted, Randy would still be with
them. But he was lost in the wilderness of the raging storm, all
because he had been too frightened to do what he was asked. He had
seen that stranger up close, and his presence had terrified
him.

William was four years younger and stood next to
Charles. His was a bewildering array of sensations pinning her to
the ground and threatening to crush her beneath the sheer weight of
his emotions. School for him was an escape from the daily abuse
meted out by his coal miner father. He stuttered, and his father
held the belief that he could beat the problem out of William.

Next to William was Margaret. Jasmine saw an image
in her mind, that of a young girl with long black hair that had
been braided into two ponytails that hung down her back. Her father
ran the company store where he did everything he could get away
with to help the local miners who were forced to spend their meager
wages on items priced nearly ten times more than what they could
get them for if they had the time and means to travel the fourteen
miles to the next town. Margaret could have gone to a boarding
school in the next town where she would have been protected from
the vulgarities of the miner’s children, but her father felt it
best that she attend school with these less fortunate children to
give her a better understanding of the world around them. She was
the only child in class who could actually pay Miss Butler for her
services, a fact she never hesitated to expound upon any time there
was a disagreement in the small schoolyard alongside the
schoolhouse.

The remaining children were of such a young age that
their emotions were a seething cauldron of devotion for their young
schoolteacher, who was little more than a child herself. Jasmine
felt the teacher’s presence, Harriet Butler, who had left a life of
leisure in Baltimore to come to this wilderness to bring knowledge
to the less fortunate. She was like a lioness protecting her pride,
tempered with a hint of immaturity, a mixture that was so common
when the nation was young and still finding its way.

“What happened?” Jasmine said.

Images exploded in her mind as terror washed over
her. She blamed herself for what happened. She could have returned
home after the accident that claimed her husband’s life only two
weeks earlier. No one would have faulted her for that. But her
sense of doing what was right compelled her to stay and finish the
year. During the summer she would return home, give birth to the
child that was even now growing within her, and after that? Well,
that was too far in the future to consider at this moment in
time.

They had thought they were safe in the little
schoolhouse perched at the edge of a vast wilderness. No Indians
had been sighted in this area for over twenty years. The only
things they had to worry about were the black bears and coyotes. It
was winter, so the bears had already bedded down for their long
sleep, and the coyotes had found greener pastures at the local
farms. The storm came out of nowhere. One moment the sky was a
clear blue, the next, dark clouds had rolled in, carrying with them
a raging blizzard that battered itself against the walls of the
schoolhouse like a wild beast trying to get to the morsels hidden
inside.

There were sixteen children in her class, the
offspring of miners who toiled in the nearby mines, ranging in age
from six to fourteen. Almost evenly split between boys and girls,
with the boys outnumbering the girls by a mere two. Yet anyone who
had ever watched a prepubescent boy in the presence of a young girl
would understand that the boys only outnumbered the girls in a
physical sense. Mentally the girls dominated the boys.

"Charles, would you please bring in some more wood?"
Harriett asked her oldest boy, who promptly stood up and turned to
the door. "Don't forget to button up," Harriet reminded him as he
strode to the door.

"Of course, Miss Butler," Charles replied. Manners
were important in Harriett's class, and though the children were
born of parents many would view as less than civilized, in
Harriet's mind, it was manners that set one apart.

Charles opened the door and stepped out into the
raging blizzard. An errant wind shrieked through the schoolhouse
and in its voice Harriet became aware of a cold certainty. The wood
was not going to last the night, and the little bit of coal they
had, much of it brought in by the children in lieu of payment for
her services, would not last much longer. They had to get to town.
The town offered safety from the storm and if they could make it to
the hotel they would be safe. It was only a mile and a half away,
but with the storm raging outside it might as well be on the
moon.

Harriet had considered tying the children into a
line with a rope and leading them to the hotel, as she'd read a
schoolteacher had successfully done in Missouri the winter before
during a particularly bad storm. Another teacher had attempted the
same thing without success. They had not been found until the
spring thaw, huddled together in a tight knot no more than a
hundred yards from the safety of a railroad terminal.

No, it was better to ride out the storm here. The
schoolhouse offered some shelter from the wind, and if necessary
they had the desks they could use to keep warm. For now Harriet
would use the dwindling supply of firewood and coal available to
her. Only in the end, if it became necessary, would she instruct
the children to break up their desks.

As Harriet considered their options, Charles loaded
his arms with several pieces of the firewood that was stacked in
the small shelter built to house it less than twenty yards from the
front door of the schoolhouse. There were only a few more pieces
left and he figured he would retrieve them on his next trip.

Halfway back, he became aware of the presence of
another. He stopped and turned all the way around, searching the
storm around him. Nothing moved in the swirling snow. No sound came
to him save the shrieking voice of the wind.

"Hello!" he called out, certain that someone was out
there in the storm. "We're over here!" he continued, aware that if
someone was lost in the storm he was their only hope. From the
storm came the sound of approaching footsteps and the swirling
sheets of snow parted to reveal a man not twenty yards away,
watching him. He was dressed like the drovers who occasionally
passed through town as they herded cattle to market downstate. A
long leather coat that reached to mid-calf, a kerchief or scarf,
and a battered leather hat pulled low over the eyes.

"Hello, can you hear me?" he shouted.

The curtain of snow parted again and the man was
gone, leaving only the sheets of wind- driven snow in his wake. The
sound of footsteps came from behind him and he spun around to
confront whoever was sneaking up on him. Nothing moved aside from
the swirling snow.

With a shrug, he continued on his way. Ten yards
from the front door, that solitary figure appeared again, no more
than twenty feet away, watching him intently. Unnerved by his
silent presence, Charles charged the last few feet to the front
door, clambering up the steps to get back into the schoolhouse and
the relative safety it afforded.