Walk the Sky (9 page)

“Yes?” Willard said, opening the door.
 

Roy nervously bounced from one foot to the other, his face pale and drawn.
 

“We got trouble.”
 

“What kind of trouble?”
 

“Can’t quite explain, Reverend. You just need to see for yourself.”
 

“I’m spending time with my wife,” he said in a voice much louder than was needed, wanting Marilyn to hear how he did not want to leave her. Not that he didn’t love her already, but after last night, her coming to him like she did—like he had always prayed for, coming to him as a wife was supposed to come to her husband—why, it had set every wrong in the world momentarily right.
 

“I understand, Reverend, and I apologize. But”—Roy swallowed—“you really need to see this.”
 

“Very well,” Willard sighed. “Let me get my shoes.”
 

He returned to the bedroom.
 

Marilyn stirred again, her eyelids fluttering open. “Is everything all right?”
 

“Everything’s fine.” With a warm smile he leaned down and kissed her on the lips. He let the kiss linger more than he had ever done before, and, grace be to God, she let him. “I’ll return shortly.”
 

“I’ll be here.”
 

He slipped on his shoes and met Roy at the door. The man still looked nervous. Willard understood the reason why. Before, Joe had been Willard’s right-hand man, the one he counted on for everything. Now with Joe gone, Roy had taken over that position and Roy didn’t want to disappoint.
 

“Okay,” Willard said, stepping out into the crisp morning, “where is this trouble?”
 

Roy led him toward the center of town. Before they had even gone fifty yards, Willard said, “I don’t care to see the remains.”
 

Roy said nothing, just kept walking.
 

“I said I don’t care to see the remains.”
 

Roy paused, kept his eyes downcast. “I know, Reverend. That’s what the trouble is.”
 

They came to the center of town. Two men stood by the post, waiting for them. Willard noted, with a churning in his gut, the dirt stained dark with blood. Almost two month’s worth of blood, so much so it appeared the ground had stopped soaking it up.
 

Willard had always made it clear he didn’t want to deal with the remains—the scraps of clothing, the bones, the stray body parts—and Joe had understood that just fine. Maybe he would have to rethink keeping Roy as his right-hand man.
 

Nobody spoke, so Willard looked pointedly at each man and said, “Well?”
 

Duane, the shortest of the bunch with a ridiculous mustache, held up a length of rope. It was the same rope, presumably, that they used every night. Willard couldn’t really say for sure. Despite overseeing the town during this evil time, he had always kept a fair distance between himself and the sacrifices.
 

“Reverend?” Roy said questioningly, as if the evidence of the rope should be obvious enough.
 

“What?”
 

“Can’t you see?”
 

Willard sighed, his impatience waning. “Can’t I see what?”
 

“The rope,” Roy said. “It’s been cut.”
 

The sky above them was a light and hazy blue that stretched on for miles. A few clouds hung on the horizon. The town itself was quiet except for those men who were slowly waking and doing their assigned chores.
 

Willard stepped forward. He took the rope from Duane and inspected it. As Roy claimed, it appeared to be cut straight through.
 

“What are you saying?” Willard asked. When there was no answer, he raised an eyebrow at Roy. “Well?”
 

“He’s gone.”
 

Willard lowered the rope to his side. “Would you be so kind as to repeat what you just said?”
 

“He”—Roy swallowed again—“he’s gone.”
 

“That’s what I thought you said. But I’m still confused. After last night, he
should
be gone, correct?”
 

 
Roy nodded quickly. “Yes, Reverend. But the demons, they didn’t take him. There was ... nothing here this morning. No remains. That man, he managed ... he managed ... he managed ...”
 

“Just spit it out already, would you?”
 

This time taking a large gulp of air, Roy murmured, “He managed to escape.”
 

Willard didn’t know when it had happened, but he had begun gripping the rope so tightly his nails bit into his palm.
 

He took a slow, deep breath, held up the rope, and said, “How?”
 

“Well, Reverend, there’s something else you need to see.”
 

Roy and the two men led him toward the jailhouse. Here another man stood with his hands in his pockets, looking just as nervous as Roy. On the ground beside him was something Willard had never seen before.
 

“What ... what
is
that?”
 

“Sir?” Roy said, his voice hesitant. “That ... we think that’s one of the demons.”
 

Willard tilted his head slightly, squinted down at the thing in the dirt. Now that he was looking closely, he could see features that may have been legs and arms, even a head. But the flesh on the creature was not at all what he had expected. It was hard and weathered and ... green?
 

“It looks like some kind of overlarge plant,” he said.
 

“Yes, sir. We thought so too. But that’s not all we have to show you.”
 

“There’s more?”
 

Roy nodded. He motioned at the man with his hands in his pockets. The man, standing on the other side of the dead creature, lowered his gaze to the ground. Willard did the same, but he couldn’t see anything except the creature.
 

“What am I looking at?”
 

“Here,” the man said, taking a hand out of his pocket to point at the ground.
 

Willard carefully stepped around the creature, expecting it to move at any moment. He let his gaze follow the man’s finger to the ground. A knife lay in the dirt.
 

“We think he used that to cut his bindings,” Roy said. “We think he must have also used it to stab this ... this thing. He must have dropped it when he was escaping.”
 

Willard stared down at the knife for several seconds before blinking and looking up at the jailhouse.
 

“Did he try to free the other one?”
 

“He may have tried, but the man is still locked up.”
 

“Have you talked to him yet?”
 

“No, sir. We wanted to wait to see what you thought.”
 

“Haven’t you at least searched the town in case he’s hiding?”
 

“We did that already. We searched every building inside and out and even under. Unless he’s in your home, he’s gone.”
 

Willard, mindful of the dead creature only inches away, bent and picked up the knife and shook off the loose dirt. He stared down at the design on the handle, at the little scratches on the blade.
 

“Reverend?”
 

Willard said, “Get a group together, larger than normal. Use every man that’s available. He couldn’t have gone far. The demons won’t let him.”
 

“Yes, Reverend,” Roy said, and immediately began directing the other men to get the horses and round up a few more hands.
 

In the back of his mind Willard thought he had underestimated Roy. That when the time came the man would make a fine right-hand. For now, though, he had other worries that needed dealing with. It was bad enough that a man had escaped the sacrifice last night—and how the demons hadn’t attempted to take more lives was beyond him—but the simple fact remained that the man had had help.
 

And Willard knew exactly who it was that had helped him.
 

He recognized the knife, after all.
 

It had once been his father’s.

part three

THOSE THAT WALK THE NIGHT

15.

Clay’s reaction to the hand on his arm was the reaction of a man who had literally just run a mile to save his life from creatures that shouldn’t exist.
 

He was breathless, his heart pounding, sweat falling down his face, all his focus on the few demons coming his way, and when the hand touched him in the dark he cried out, spun around, raised his fist to strike whatever was there ... but his feet twisted and he fell back down onto the ground.
 

“Are you okay?”
 

The voice—it was quiet, soft, feminine—made Clay pause. He had been expecting ... something else. Certainly not a voice that spoke words in his own language.
 

“Please”—that quiet voice again—“stand up. We cannot stay here.”
 

At first all he saw was a dark figure, a silhouette in the night. Then she moved closer, her features becoming a little more pronounced by the moonlight, a small dark face and long black hair.
 

“Please,” she said again, “we must hurry.”
 

Before he knew it she was bending down and grabbing his arm and trying to pull him up—and, somehow, succeeding. He knew he wasn’t the lightest man in the world, but this girl (because that’s what she was, he now saw, she was just a girl) lifted him to his feet like he was nothing more than a ragdoll.
 

“Hurry,” she whispered, pulling him forward.
 

“Why?”
 

“They cannot know I am here.”
 

“Who?” he said, a little too loudly, and she shushed him, pressing three of her fingers to his lips.
 

“Those That Walk The Night.”
 

A moment passed and it was like it was just the two of them in the world at that instant, no one else, not the crazy townspeople behind him or the cicadas trilling around them or the creatures that shouldn’t exist coming to kill him.
 

Clay touched her hand, moved her fingers away from his lips, and whispered, “Who are you?”
 

She kept her fingers where they were inches from his face, as if debating whether she trusted him to keep his voice low. Then she looked past him and her eyes widened just a bit, and he turned to see that the few creatures that had been following him were now less than one hundred yards away.
 

“
Hurry
,” she whispered again.
 

She grasped his hand and pulled him forward into the night.

*
 
*
 
*

How far and how long they ran, Clay did not know. There were clouds in the sky and frequently they shifted in front of the moon, creating even more darkness. It was like he was moving through pitch black, only the girl kept hold of his hand and didn’t let go, pulling him through the dark like he was just a toy. She was strong and fit and could probably run miles without breaking a sweat. He, however, was old and weak and could barely walk a mile without taking a much-needed break. Clay knew that any moment his heart might explode in his chest, so he stopped suddenly and stood still.
 

The girl did not jerk back like he thought she would. It had not been his intention to try to harm her—he had concluded by this point that she was here to help him, whoever she was—but as a schoolteacher he certainly knew the laws of physics.
 

When something was moving at such a fast speed and was stopped suddenly by another force, that force would then jerk back. That was just the way things went.
 

But the girl surprised him.
 

Her hand never left his, not even when he halted, and while she did stop and tug at him, she never once lost her balance, and she never once fell back.
 

She tugged once more, paused, and looked at him.
 

The clouds shifted again, revealing the moonlight, revealing her small dark face.
 

Clay was amazed that barely a bead of sweat dotted her brow, and that she was not breathless.
 

“What are you doing?” she whispered.
 

“I ... can’t,” he huffed, wriggling his hand from hers and placing both hands on his knees. He slowly breathed in, slowly breathed out, again and again. Blood rang in his ears.
 

He expected the girl to protest, but she merely said, “I believe they have lost our trail.”
 

The cicadas continued to trill around them, only there seemed to be less of them now, their song not as powerful.
 

Clay asked, between breaths, “Who are you?”
 

The girl stood tall and silent, her eyes closed and her face tilted toward the sky. Clay couldn’t tell what she was doing—thinking, praying, simply being—but then she opened her eyes.
 

“Yes, I think we are safe for now.”
 

“How do you know?”
 

“I can no longer smell them.”
 

“Smell who?” he asked, and immediately remembered her strange words:
Those That Walk The Night
.
 

“They are not natural. They are not of our world anymore.”