1980
1
YOUR DADDY OWES MY DADDY.
The Long Walker traveled on. Petty followed helplessly, her hand engulfed in its own. The woods are lovely, dark and deep—that was a line from a poem her mother read to her years ago, before slipping into her big sleep.
The trees creaked in a gentle breeze that ruffled the hem of Petty’s nightgown. She wasn’t cold or hungry or thirsty, though she should be all of those things by now. Here and there the boughs dropped away to give a view of the sky salted with bright stars.
Your daddy owes my daddy…
The Long Walker had told her this at the start of their journey. What had her father done, and to whom? Her dad was a strong and clever man, but she doubted he would double-cross anyone, especially anything that might count the Long Walker as its son.
The Long Walker spidered up the side of a cliff, its feet finding hidden grooves in the rock. It cradled Petty lovingly; with her ear pressed to its chest, she could hear the strange workings of its insides: a cresting buzz, as if its chest was all honeycombs crawling with wasps.
The trees grew sickly and sparse. A huge formation came into view: darker than the night sky, with a density that made her body shrink inside her skin. Was the Long Walker taking her there? She couldn’t even imagine it.
I will go crazy, she thought simply.
She knew that wasn’t how it happened. People didn’t “go crazy,” not all at once. It was something that occurred more slowly. A person starts to hear voices, or she thinks people are looking at her when really they’re not. Those worries get worse, and that person slowly slips into insanity. But Petty could see it happening another way, too. A person experiences something so horrible that it tears her brain in half—a crack zigzagging across a frozen river, the black madness pouring in all at once.
The trees gave way to a sandy slope leading to the monolithic rock. She tried to jerk her hand out of the Long Walker’s grip. It laughed softly at her struggles.
“Please,” she said. “I don’t want to go.”
“One two three four five six seven,” it said in a voice Pet recognized as her own mother’s. “All good children go to heaven.”
“Don’t.” Her cheeks flushed with anger despite her fear. “Don’t you talk like her, you… you asshole,” she said, summoning the vilest word she knew.
The Long Walker grinned, perhaps admiring her spunk. The towering shadow of the rock cast over them even in the dead of night. Coldness seeped off of it, and a faraway sense of panic wormed into her veins.
“Have you ever heard a newborn cry as it awakes from a nightmare?” the Long Walker asked. Petty was too stunned by its question to reply.
“A newborn, only a few days old,” it went on. “They have nightmares, but not as you would understand. Their minds are unformed, as was your own at that age. A newborn baby can still see the world behind the world, you see? The world where my daddy lives, and me and a few others like us. They can still see us. That’s why they scream as they do.”
Petty swallowed hard. “Because they’re… they’re scared of you?”
“No, precious. Because they don’t want us to leave them.”
They reached a cleft in the rock. The Long Walker guided her inside. It had to stoop to make its way through the dark and twisting cavern. They went deeper and deeper, until the light died. The Long Walker was untroubled by the darkness, though—it navigated as if by some kind of sonar, never stumbling, bearing Petty quickly along. There came a faint squishing from overhead, but that quickly dwindled. The mineral smell of the rock invaded Petty’s nostrils. She stepped on something that made a metallic rattle under her feet. She caught a glimpse of a child’s toy browned with rust.
They came to a drop. A rope ladder was rolled up at the ledge, its rungs salted with dust that had accumulated over a period of years. The Long Walker sat, its legs dangling over the edge. It had no need of the ladder; it skinned down the rocks, carrying Petty effortlessly. At the bottom was another tunnel. The Long Walker urged her inside of it—Petty had stopped fighting, realizing it was useless to try. It swept in behind her, its body filling the entire tunnel. She couldn’t see a thing, yet she never bumped a wall or hit a dead end. She might as well have been moving through outer space.
They crawled for some time. Petty didn’t even think she was crawling—she was motionless, her limbs made sluggish with worry, and yet she moved. The Long Walker propelled her forward through some manner of infernal mechanics; she felt as if she were on a moving walkway, or had been harnessed to a remorseless winch that was pulling her toward… likely nothing she’d ever want to meet.
The tunnel emptied into what her senses told her was an enormous vault—the air wasn’t as tight, and she got an impression of vastness, as if she’d stepped into a warehouse. But she still couldn’t see anything. That was frightening enough. It was like waking in the middle of the night in your bed and waiting for your eyes to adjust. But at least then you’re still in your warm bed, in your house, with your parents not far away. Here she was totally alone…
No. There was something else in here.
That’s what was raising the hackles on her neck, what was making the flesh crawl up her throat.
“I’m home, Daddy.” The Long Walker danced, limbs swinging and kicking. “Home again, home again, jiggety jig.”
It pranced into the center of the space toward whatever it was that inspired fright to flutter like a bird’s wings in Petty’s chest. Its body kicked off a weird deep-sea glow… and that’s where Petty may as well have been right now: a hundred miles under the surface of the deepest sea, hopelessly alone.
The light of its body touched the shape of another shape. Petty staggered back with a scream rising in her throat.
I will go crazy in a second was the thought that rabbited through her mind. And maybe that’s for the best.
2
MICAH, MINERVA, AND EBENEZER set off from the godforsaken cabin before daybreak. Minerva was plagued by worries that its luckless occupant might peel himself from his perch upon the wall and shamble forth, blood spluttering from the severed stump of his neck, to avenge the loss of his head—which was by then a roasted, hatchet-cleaved husk in the stove.
They had debated burying the poor man’s remains, but that was a problematical proposition, owing to the fact that his body, while indeed headless, was still moving: the legs quivering, the arms spasming against the heavy pelt tacks pierced through his flesh. Even trying to bury a motionless body would tax both their energy and sanity, which was already somewhat on the trembling edge—as such, they regretfully opted to leave him hanging on the wall.
Having made their decision, they hunkered down a couple hundred yards from the cabin. But the proximity was too much for Minerva: she kept hearing the choking, garbled laughter of the hunter’s decapitated head as it baked in the stove; she swore that she could overhear his spiteful chuckles spindling up through the tin chimney and atomizing into the air like so much lunacy-inducing smoke.
“Let’s go,” she said to them before dawn had even broken.
They walked, resolutely. Their bodies ached, joints screaming. They were fifteen years older than they’d been the last time they made this trek. The land was unchanged, but they were different. Gray hair, wrinkles, shot nerves. Ebenezer’s knee felt as though it had been hollowed out and packed full of fire ants. As the hills grew steeper, Minerva regretted every belt of gutrot whiskey she’d drunk and every unfiltered cigarette she’d smoked in the interceding years. The fear was what wearied them the most—fear had a terrible way of getting inside your chest, sucking at you like a vampire until every step became a misery.