Joana and Glen walked into the cramped little store. Shelves were lined with bottles of liquor and wine. There was a big refrigerator for beer and soft drinks, and a few canned goods, potato chips, and candy bars. The proprietor, a balding man with an overhanging stomach, was talking in rapid Spanish with a single customer, a stocky man with a white scar on his nose. They fell silent as the anglo couple entered.
"Hi," Glen said.
There was no response.
"This is 250 °Charles Street?"
The customer gathered up his purchase, a six-pack of Miller's, and edged away along the counter. Theproprietor eyed Glen from behind lowered lids.
'No se."
He had another exhange in Spanish with the customer. Joana picked out the word migras.
"No, no," she said, "we're not with the immigration service."
The proprietor studied them suspiciously. "Yousure?"
"Absolutely," Joana said. "We're looking for the grandmother of a friend."
"That's right," Glen confirmed. - The proprietor said something else to the customer, who kept as much distance as possible between him and the young couple and hurried out the door.
"Okay," the bald man said, "who you looking for?"
"It's an older woman," Joana said. "Her name is Villaneuva. Her granddaughter Ynez gave us thisaddress."
"Villanueva? The old bruja?"
"I think that's the one we mean," Joana said. "Does she live here?"
"Not here," the proprietor said quickly. "Upstairs. "She's got a room in the back."
"How do we get up there?" Glen asked.
"You wasting your time. The old bruja don' talk to nobody."
"All the same, we'd like to try," Joana said. "Is there a stairway?"
"Okay, but I think you're crazy. Go out and around the side of the building. There's some stairs. Go up them, and she's in the room at the top. Don' say I told you how to find her."
Joana thanked the man, and she and Glen went back out on the street. They followed a weed-grown alley between the store and a shoe-repair shop and found the flight of wooden stairs leading up to a door on the second floor. Joana started up, with Glen right behind her.
The door was weathered to driftwood gray, and fitted crookedly in the frame. A cold wisp of wind curled around Joana's neck and she shivered. She and Glen looked at each other and exchanged uneasy smiles.
Glen knocked. The sound was curiously dead, as though there were nothing behind the door. They waited, hearing only the traffic noise from Brooklyn Avenue. Glen knocked again.
"Go away!" The voice from the other side of the door was thin and papery.
"We've come to see you," Glen said.
"I don' want to see anybody. Go away."
Joana leaned closer to the door. "Senora Villa-nueva, your granddaughter Ynez at the hospital sent us. She said she spoke to you."
There was a shuffling sound from inside the room. A bolt slid back and the door opened inward about six inches. A puff of stale air, sour with the smell of old age, escaped. The inside of the room was in shadows, and it took a moment for Joana's eyes to adjust so she could see the woman peering up at them from the doorway. She was not more than five feet tall, wearing a loose black sweater and a long skirt that hung limp on her thin body. Her face was as wrinkled as a walnut.
"Senora?"
The old woman said nothing.
"I'm Joana Raitt. This is my friend, Glen Early."
"I know who you are." The old woman's eyes were lively and bright in their deep sockets. "Come inside, if you must."
She backed away from the door. Joana and Glen entered, closing the door behind them. The room contained a sofa-bed covered with a gray military blanket, a wooden table with paint of several colors showing through the worn places, three mismatched chairs, and a cheap black-and-white television set on which a game-show host capered without sound. An old standing lamp with a forty-watt bulb gave the only illumination. The room's single window had a dark green shade tacked to the frame.
The old woman sat down at the table. Joana sat across from her. Glen started to take the third chair.
"No," the old woman snapped. "Not you. You have no business with me." She pointed a bony finger at the sofa-bed. "You sit over there."
Glen looked surprised for a moment, but did as he was told.
For a full minute Senora Villanueva and Joana sat facing each other, not speaking.
"What is it you want of me?" the Mexican woman said finally.
"I–I'm not sure," Joana said. "Let me tell you my story first."
"No. I know all I have to know of your story. You are surrounded by death. You live in the midst of death. That is your story. Just tell me what it is you want of me."
"I guess what I want is for you to explain it to me. I don't understand what is happening to me. Or why."
There was another silence. The old woman's wheezing breath was the loudest thing in the room. At last she said, "You have walked in the land of the dead."
"Yes." Joana shivered, although the room was hot and stuffy.
"You were called before your time. You did not belong there."
Joana leaned forward, intent on every word.
"You traveled too far. You saw too much. The dead want you back."
Like an echo in her mind, the words spoken by the terrible voice in the tunnel came back to Joana. You cannot go back now! You have come too far. You can never return!
"That's what I felt," she said softly, "that they did not want me to come back."
"But you did in spite of them. You were called back to life by someone who loved you."
Joana glanced over at Glen. He was sitting very straight on the edge of the sofa-bed, his head cocked to hear what was being said.
"I did come back," Joana said. "But now-"
"Now they have come for you. The dead have come to claim you."
Joana's throat was dry. She could only nod her head in answer.
"You have shown courage, young woman. You have fought them, even though they are very powerful. The dead."
"I want to live," Joana said. "I'm young."
"Everyone wants to live, child. Even the very old."
"Of course. I'm sorry."
"Never mind 'sorry.' The young always think they will live forever."
Joana saw compassion in the bright, deep-set eyes, and smiled.
"But you must watch, always watch. Cuidado. Take care. Your struggle is not finished."
"There will be more of them?" A sob caught in Joana's throat.
"Yes. You were warned. You were told how many will come for you."
"I was told? I don't understand."
The old woman looked at her. Joana could read nothing in the wrinkled face. Then, again, an echo from the tunnel of the dead: You may win once, not likely twice, most rarely thrice, and four times- never!
"Four? Does it mean there will be four?"
Senora Villaneuva lifted and lowered her head in a silent assent.
Joana's mind raced ahead. The woman in the car, the maniac, the girl on the cliff. Three of them. She had fought three of them and won.
Four times-never!
Could she stand another of the dreadful walkers without going insane?
"You can see these things, Senora," she said. "Do you see my fate? Will I survive the fourth walker?"
"That is not revealed to me," said the old woman.
Joana felt the cold clutch of despair. "Is there nothing I can do? Must I walk in fear the rest of my life, wondering when the next of these creatures will come after me?"