White Walker by Richard Schiver Page B

a lighter above his head as the three of them
peered into the darkness of the main room.
    “What was that all about?” Teddy said as Norman
reached them.
    “Nothing,” Norman replied as he glanced back at the
black maw of the break room door. From the shadowy depths came the
sound of something dragging itself across the tiled floor.
    The light coming through the small window in the
rear door filled the hallway with a soft glow. As the four of them
peered into the deeper shadows of the main room, something blocked
the light coming through the window in the back door.
    Norman was the first to turn around to find the
silhouette of a head wearing a wide-brimmed hat outlined in the
window.
    “Who’s blocking the light?” Cody said, the rest of
his statement unspoken as he turned to find that silhouette.
    “What’s wrong?” Teddy said as he turned to find
themselves being scrutinized by something beyond the back door.
    “He’s trying to get in,” Cody said, filled with the
same terror he’d experienced as a child when his drunken father
would try to crawl into bed with him at night. There were no sexual
overtones in his father’s act. Just the loneliness of a shattered
man seeking some kind of comfort.
    I can make it all better for you. That
sinister voice returned, caressing Cody’s thoughts with the memory
of a cold and desolate place. I can take all the bad things away
and leave only the good.
    “Leave me the fuck alone, you asshole,” Cody yelled
as he raced to the rear door and beat at the wire reinforced glass
with his fist. The shadowy form beyond the window watched with
silent mirth.
    Teddy and Norman pulled Cody away from the back
door, his knuckles broken and bleeding, splotches of blood staining
the glass.
    “Get the first aid kit.” Teddy said. Judy nodded
before she turned and vanished into the shadows of the main
room.
    “I’m sorry,” Cody said as he cried. It was his
fault, and his alone; he was the reason his father had started
drinking. He had taken his father’s freedom from him with his
birth. He had become a burden, an obligation, and the cold grasp of
reality that strangled his dreams.
    His father had told him once, during a rare moment
of sobriety, that when he was younger he wanted to be a singer. But
then he’d met Cody’s mother, and the next thing he knew she was
pregnant. He had tried to do the right thing. But the nine-to-five
grind was not to his liking and it wasn’t long before his options
had dwindled to none. He loved Cody’s mother, and loved Cody as
well, but the drinking had twisted that love into a mockery of
itself. Making it so easy for him to lay the blame for his failure
at the feet of an impressionable child.
    The lights came on, flickered several times, and
then steadied as Teddy and Norman led Cody to the bathroom to clean
his wound.
     
     

Chapter 19
     
    Andrea wanted a cigarette. There was no request for
forgiveness in that statement, no anger, no remorse. Stated plain
and simple, she wanted a damned cigarette. She had given up years
ago on quitting, accepting the fact that she would always smell of
cigarette smoke, and that she was risking her life by inhaling all
the toxic fumes that they said were contained within the smoke
itself. But who really gave a shit? She was going to die anyway.
They all were. If not today, then sometime down the road the reaper
would catch up with each of them in its own way.
    How it took you was a different matter entirely. She
had witnessed first hand the ravages of cancer. Her aunt had died
of lung cancer when Andrea was ten. A favorite aunt who always got
along much better with the children than she did with the adults in
the family.
    Their repeated requests to visit Aunt Dee had fallen
upon deaf ears until the very end. By that time there was no
disguising the fact that death was knocking at her door. And the
smell. It was the smell of death; there was no describing it. The
hospital staff had tried to disguise it with