The Sleepwalkers Part 36

"She'd have been the sixty-sixth," whispers Christine.

"I'm sorry you had to go through all that," says Caleb. "But thank G.o.d you made it."

"Yeah," she says, "I just kept prayin' like my daddy always taught me, and everything was okay." A tear sneaks out and she quickly flicks it away with one finger.

"I'm Caleb," he says, reaching to shake her hand.

"And I'm Christine."

An inhuman scream pierces the quiet. They all turn.

From the darkness of the woods, a figure approaches. Gray tangles of hair fall over unblinking eyes. A tattered skirt hangs to her feet. Blood, like war paint, adorns her cheeks. It's the witch.

She's gotten inside the police perimeter somehow and is cursing at an officer who tries to subdue her and get her out of the area.

"Ma'am, please," he says. "Ma'am . . ."

"TICK, TICK, TICK," she says. "YOU'RE ALL BLACKBIRDS! You're all baking! You're all BURNING, BURNING, BURNING, BURNING!"

The police officer grabs her and begins dragging her away as gently as he can.

"Look at the sun!" she says. "Already wilting, already dying! The morning of darkness is coming! The trumpet of silence is blowing! Johnny Morle got his wis.h.!.+"

Then she looks over at Christine and Caleb. Her gaze seems to clamp on them like an invisible vice. She will not turn her head away.

Christine looks for a place to hide, panicked, but it's too late.

Suddenly the witch lashes out.

It happens so fast, it hardly even registers in anyone's mind when the officer falls, unmoving. Stabbed into his eye: a knife.

The witch runs with inhuman speed. Before Caleb and Christine can react she's there. She grabs Christine by the hair, pulling her face-to-face.

Whispering, singing: "Johnny Morle got his wish, Johnny Morle got his wish, Johnny Morle got his wis.h.!.+"

"No, he didn't," says Caleb, pus.h.i.+ng himself between the mother and daughter. "I killed him."

The witch still ignores him, whispering instead to Christine.

"Dying was his wish, it was. That's the end of the world for him. And dying would never work for him unless his son would do him in!"

"But that's it," says Caleb. "It's over now. The world isn't ending.

Right?"

The girl wrapped in the blanket is looking on in disbelief. "This is freaking me out. What is going on?"

Christine just stares at her mother intensely.

"Christine was always the bad one," says the witch, "but my sweet Anna would always help me and Johnny."

"I killed John Morle," Caleb says firmly. "The world isn't ending."

The witch smiles. "Six and sixty souls," she says, "drowned in the dark."

"There are only sixty-five, Mother."

"Count again, my daughter dear. The devil is awake."

And the witch lets Christine go, and as fast as she had come, she is gone, running away like a puma, melting into the shadows of the woods and disappearing.

The police haven't even noticed their comrade yet, lying dead amongst the weeds at the edge of the forest.

"She's crazy," Caleb says. "She can't be right."

"That was your mom?" the girl in the blanket says. "Dang. . . ."

Caleb is looking all around, noticing what he had somehow missed before. Things look fake, fragile, wrong. The sun is hollow.

He can stare right at it.

"My name's Keisha," says the girl. She puts a comforting arm around Christine, who still stares at the place where her mother disappeared into the forest. "Look, honey, it's going to be alright."

"Wait," Christine says. "Your name is Keisha? Keisha Bent?"

"Whoa. How did you know my last name?"

The reporter with the red goatee is walking back by, taking the last drag of his cigarette and looking at the ground. He rolls the burning filter between his fingers. As he approaches, Caleb notices something over his shoulder sticking out of the surface of the water.

"Hey," Caleb says, stopping him. The guy looks up. "What's that in the water? That stake?"

The reporter turns around, shading his eyes, "Uhhh . . . oh, that's where they found another body. Foul play for sure. That one got whacked in the face with an axe or something. They think he mighta fallen off the roof."

Caleb's face is very still. His mouth barely moves. His voice is barely even a whisper. "And he landed there, in the water?"

"Yep," says the reporter.

"Is he one of the sixty-five you were talking about earlier?"

"Ah, no. Those were the ones in the deep part of the water with the ropes around their necks. If you count that poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d with the axe in his head as one of the pond bodies, that makes . . . uh," he glances at his notepad, " . . . sixty-six."

Christine looks at Caleb. Neither of them can breathe.

At that moment Caleb feels closer to her than he ever has to another human being.

"Let's get the h.e.l.l out of here," he says.

Christine nods frantically.

"Can y'all give me a ride?" asks Keisha. "I'm sick of waitin.'"

"Yeah," says Christine. "Definitely."

"Look," says Keisha, "I don't know what y'all are freaking out about, but my daddy was a great man, and he always said no matter what you believe, whether you wors.h.i.+p Allah or Buddha or Jesus or whatever, if you surrender to G.o.d can't n.o.body stop you. So whatever's goin' on, y'all are gonna overcome it."

"I hope he was right," says Christine.

"'Course he's right. My daddy's a great man."

"We know," says Caleb.

"What do you mean? Y'all know my dad?" asks Keisha, following them toward the car. "Is that how you know my name? Why are y'all walking so fast?"

Caleb glances back over his shoulder. A few large bubbles break on the surface of the pond. It's probably just a diver bringing up another body . . . Probably.

"Everything will be explained," says Caleb, "sooner or later."

That answer seems to satisfy Keisha, and she doesn't speak again for a while.

As the three of them walk up the driveway, leaving the old asylum for the last time, Caleb tries to pretend he's confronted all his old, silly childhood fears and won. He imagines waking up and realizing this was all just another dream, the random firing of neurons, the stuff of campfire stories. He almost succeeds.

The wind through the trees is eerily steady. There are no gusts. The air is just moving, slow and heavy, bending the tall pines with its weight.

The clouds are moving a little too fast.

The birds are all flying away.

"Everything's going to be okay," Keisha says, maybe to herself, maybe not.

They all get into the car, shut their doors, and lock them.

After Caleb turns on the car, Christine takes one of his shaking hands.

"Look," she says, "whatever this means, whatever happens . . . I just want to thank you for coming back for me. I know you had other plans."

"I'm glad I broke them for you," he says.

He leans close. Sitting here, in the forbidden place of their childhood, he kisses her long-lost lips.

He puts the car in drive. As what's left of the Dream Center falls out of sight for the last time, Caleb turns north and floors it.

"Everything's gonna be fine," says Keisha again from the backseat.

"Yeah," says Caleb, smiling.

"Yeah, it is," says Christine, and she squeezes Caleb's hand.

But it sure is dark for noon on a cloudless day.

About the Author.

Photo by Vai Yu Law Photography.

J GABRIEL GATES is a Michigan native and a graduate of Florida State University. He has worked as a professional actor, written several Hollywood screenplays, and is the coauthor of Dark Territory and Ghost Crown, Books One and Two in the teen fantasy series The Tracks.

Visit www.jgabrielgates.com.

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