Dead Men (and Women) Walking (19 page)

Sitting on the bed, in a
vastly oversized white T-shirt yellowed by sweat, and tattered
jeans, was a teenaged girl of probably 18. She looked
pregnant.

“
This is my home,” said
Kane.

Ned turned to run, and Kane
punched him in stomach sending him staggering backward toward the
bed, flies swarming down onto him.

“
You boys break into my
home, my store, then try to leave when I bring you someplace warm
and let you escape from the cold?” said Kane furiously, his voice
dripping with a tone that sounded incredulous but also sounded
partly like an act.

“
I offered you
hospitality, and you will accept it!”

“
Daddy, don’t shout,” said
the girl on the bed.

“
You don’t speak!’ hollered
Kane.

Walt saw the man’s face for
the first time and was utterly disgusted. His forehead jutted out
too far, like that of a Neanderthal. One of his eyes was in its
socket, albeit covered by an oozing cataract, the other was missing
all together. The wound had closed itself, leaving a red, crusted
shell over the orifice where his eye had been. That said, he moved
like a man with perfect vision.

Kane’s cheeks inverted
inward, and his mouth and chin seemed far too small for his
voice.

“
Well there,” said Kane,
his hideous visage looking in Walt’s direction, “seems to me your
friend here is a faggot like that reporter was. How about
you?”

Walt stood
silent.

“
Come on now, didn’t your
daddy never teach you nothing ‘bout speaking when spoke to? Or was
he a loser like your faggot friend?”

Walt bristled, but was
afraid to say anything that would incite the man’s rage. He was
literally a monster.

“
I’m–I–Happy New Year,“
said Walt, choking back his desperation, saying the most innocuous
thing he could come up with.

“
It’s a New Year? Go
figure. We lose track of the time here.”

“
Yes. 2005.”

“
Golly, time flies then,
don’t it?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Well is there anything I
can do to make you comfortable?” asked Kane, as he walked over to
Ned. He yanked the fallen man up by his hair and sent him hurtling
toward the corpse that lied in the corner. Ned landed facedown upon
the body and began to scream.

“
He always like this?”
asked Kane, as he sat on the edge of the mattress where Ned had
been reeling from the previous blow.

“
Sir, what you are doing
right now, this ain’t human.”

“
Son, I ain’t been human
for sometime now.”

Walt was silent.

Ned staggered up from the
corpse, still screaming, and ran to the door, whipped it open, and
ran out through the store. Walt and Kane heard the door to the
building open and slam shut.

Kane stood up.

“
He’s a dead man now,”
rumbled the madman, his tiny lips contorting into a hideous grin
upon his concave cheeks.

Kane stood up and ambled out
the door. Walt heard a click, and when he eventually stood up, he
found that the door was locked. He turned and looked at the utterly
sorrowful girl who was sitting on the bed.

“
What did he mean?” asked
Walt.

“
About what?” responded the
girl.

“
About Ned being a dead
man.”

“
Self-explanatory I’d
reckon. This town don’t like outsiders Mister. Near as I can
figure, they didn’t much like them when they was all alive, and
they don’t like them much now neither.”

“
But he was alive.
Deformed, but alive.”

“
All the dead are deformed
here.” The girl sighed, then continued. “She was an outsider, like
I was. She was my mother. Finally dad–Kane . . .Kane, had enough of
her.”

“
I don’t understand none of
this! Not a single thing!”

“
Me neither sir. You can
call me Holly, by the way. Holly Berkeley. I’ve been here. . .if
you said it was 2005, I’ve been here for 40 years.”

“
But you’re just a
girl.”

“
Time stops for the living
here as much as I can tell. Unless they kill you like they killed
my momma. Then you’re just dead.” said Holly, pushing her far too
long, thinning, blonde hair back from her eyes, revealing a
mournful, dirt-caked face.

“
I’m sorry,” said Walt,
sullenly.

“
My real daddy was off in
Vietnam I remember. Momma and I were going to the show by
ourselves, because he had just left for the war and we was
lonesome. Anyway, our car broke down, engine stopped working. We
saw a sign off on the roadside that said this place was ahead. And
we met Kane.”

“
And that man killed your
mother?”

“
Yeah, had enough of her.
Decided he wanted me instead of her. My momma’s protestin’ got to
be too much, so he beat her to death.”

Walt looked at the girl,
tears welling in her eyes, as she recounted the story.

“
Now,” she said, starting
to cry, “Now I’m gonna have that thing’s child. Momma was too old
for child-bearin’, she was lucky. Not me. Not me, not
me.”

Walt gasped. It was the only
reaction he could muster.

“
This town, it’s damned,”
said Holly. “I don’t know what happened to these people. Backwoods,
inbred rednecks before maybe, but now, they are just damned. For
some reason they didn’t die like normal folk. They stay on this
earth, and they take people like you and me and your friend and my
momma because they are evil people, or something made them evil.
And this is what the souls of the evil do.”

After a pause, Holly added,
“And I’m giving birth to his demon.”

“
We’re getting out of
here.”

“
You can’t leave. They’ll
catch you.”

“
When he gets back, we are
leaving,” said Walt, calmly, his hand gripping the switchblade in
his jacket pocket.

Walt sat and chatted with
Holly for a while as they waited for their mutual captor to
return.

“
I wish he’d get rid of
that body, I really do.” Said Holly.

“
Why won’t he.”

“
He says he’s the man and
he makes the rules. The rules are me and my momma are never to
leave this room. Even now that she’s dead.”

“
That’s
depraved.”

“
That’s normal. I remember
in the beginning, we’d try and run away, and he’d just tie us to
the bed and let the wax from the candles drip down on our faces
until we promised never to do it again. It’s evil the things he
does. I ain’t never even seen the rest of this town. Like you, I
met him first.”

Walt couldn’t respond. He
just couldn’t.

“
I hate having to look at
her every day. Knowing I’ve lost her is hard enough, but having to
look at the reality of it, to never be able to forget, it’s
awful.”

“
I lost my father, I can’t
imagine having to–“

“
Please don’t try to,
you’ll only end up hurting yourself in your mind.” Suddenly there
was a crash outside, the sound of a strong force whipping open the
door. Kane was back.

“
He’s going to come in
here, and I’m going to attack him. Then we’re going to find Ned,
and get on out of here,” said Walt, bracing himself.

They heard the sound of keys
jangling behind the door to the back room, and the handle rattled,
until finally the door opened.

In walked Kane, looking like
something out of an American Gothic painting from hell. In one hand
he gripped a bloody pitchfork, and in the other, he held the head
of Ned Jenkins by the hair.

“
Faggot shouldn’t have
run,” said Kane, his twisted face contorting into a twisted smile.
He tossed the head at Walt, who vomited as it bounced off his lap
and onto the floor.

“
Shouldn’t have done that,”
said Kane, shoving Walt violently aside, eyeing the regurgitated
mess on the floor. “At least now my baby has dinner.”

Kane started menacingly
toward Holly, and she curled up into a fetal position, hoping in
vain it would help.

That was when Walt
snapped.

“
I will not accept this!”
growled Walt, lunging at Kane, his switchblade in hand.

Kane turned around,
surprised, and the hideous man gargled in horror and dropped the
pitchfork as the knife plunged into his neck. All the while, Walt
screamed maniacally.

“
My daddy didn’t raise me
to sit by and watch evil men do the devil’s work! He didn’t you
hear! God may have forsaken your town, but He is working through me
right now! I am his servant and I will not let you hurt this poor
girl anymore!”

Holly stood up, and
staggered off the bed.

“
Run girl, run!”

Holly bolted for the door
and ran out into the winter evening. Her legs felt weak and
unsteady. She had not run in so long, and on top of that, she was
pregnant.

“
Come back here girl,” Kane
gargled, some sort of greenish-yellow goo oozing from his neck
wound.

“
No, she won’t come back,
she is free from you now.”

“
You say you are the Lord’s
servant. That’s a gol’dang joke son. So long as you are in this
town, your Lord doesn’t even acknowledge you exist.”

“
That’s a lie.”

“
That church on the hill up
there, in it, we worship a god much more powerful than yours. He
has kept us on this earth forever. And he lets us do whatever we
want. He is a benevolent god, a kind god.”

“
He has made you into
monsters.”

Walt and Kane stared at each
other; Kane slumped over the mattress looking upward, Walt looking
down with his knife in hand.

Finally, Walt
spoke.

“
Evil men took my father
and her mother. And not even your god will prevent me from stopping
you, for Holly’s sake.”

“
You are a fool,” said
Kane, standing up, and approaching Walt, his face contorted in the
same twisted smile.

Holly ran through the snow,
and saw lights switch on, one after another, in the shacks as she
ran in the direction that Walt and Ned had come from. Doors opened
on either side of her, and she saw men, some large and some small,
start to give chase. They were silent, their feet falling in the
snow the only sounds they made. Their presence was terrifying
enough in their quietness. Then she heard the voices.

“
That one there!” shouted
one. “That’s Kane girly! Them outsiders come into town, always
bringing trouble!”

Holly continued running as
fast as she could, thinking to herself, if the outsiders caused
nothing but trouble, how come they never let any of them leave once
they hit town. Was it to appease Kane’s god? She had no clue. She
only knew she was desperate to leave. As she neared the very first
house that began the haunted township of Samson, she was shoved
from behind. Shoved right over the town line.

Looking up, Holly saw about
50 men looking down at her, their faces contorted and disfigured
all like Kane’s. This was not just the effect of inbreeding. These
men looked like they had seen the devil.

Then, the most bizarre thing
happened. In the middle of the winter storm, which seemed to be
winding down, there was a rumble of thunder. Then lightning
flashed, followed by another, louder, thunderclap. This weather now
bordered upon apocalyptic. Oddly, the lightning only flashed within
the limits of the town.

“
God’s calling us back,”
said one of the things that once had been a man as he looked up at
the sky. “He don’t like your god very much.”

The pack of men turned
around, seemingly bound by the limits of the town, and walked back
toward their homes. As lightning continued to flash and the thunder
crackled, Holly saw that the demonic townsfolk were fading away,
disappearing like spirits. Spirits of men who may have been decent
once, but who now had given their souls to evil, and were remade in
its image. Souls forever damned.

As she stood up in the snow,
she noticed something remarkable. There was no struggle indicative
of the extra weight from carrying a child. Her stomach was normal.
She was no longer pregnant. She looked at her hands. They seemed
bigger and arched. She touched her face. There were lines, lines of
age and experience. She was in her late fifties. She was
old!

Holly turned and walked down
the same footpath that had taken Walt and Ned into the town. She
saw their footprints, not quite covered by freshly fallen snow. She
saw that the sky was beginning to brighten. She had not seen the
sun begin to light the pre-dawn sky in the years she had been kept
prisoner in that wretched town. Finally she came to the end of the
footpath. She saw an automobile, a strange model that she didn’t
recognize, on the side of the road.

Going around to the back of
it, she saw that the word “Jeep” was written, and underneath it,
“Grand Cherokee.” This must be a new kind of automobile, she
thought to herself.