The Walking Man
By Anthony Izzo
Copyright 2017 Anthony Izzo
Published by White Knuckle Books
All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be reproduced without the written permission of the author. All persons depicted in this work are fictional. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.
“The Walking Man decides your fate
By the time you see him it’s too late
Tall and lean, mean and stark
Best be home before it’s dark.”
One
It was late summer when the Walking Man returned.
Chris Peters was walking along the road, parallel to the old Harwell estate, which had been sold to the state and converted to a park. It was a little after nine on a Saturday, and he’d just finished a shift at Tully’s, a little grocery/gas station out on old North road. He was in good spirits, just having gotten a raise. Mr. Tully was happy with him. He stayed late. Came in early. Did what he was told without question.
The sky was clear and he gazed up at the stars. A warm breeze blew in his face. To his right were thick woods, and beyond that, the park grounds. To his left were fields. He had another mile or so to go before he reached the outskirts of town.
He was well aware that he had to pass the house. His house. If you believed in ghost stories, the Walking Man lived there. Or at least returned every few years to haunt the town. Sixteen years ago, some kids had been killed. Others were taken and never found. People whispered that a strange man was seen at the time of the abductions. A man no one could quite describe or identify.
People said it was the Walking Man. The police had scoured fields, dragged ponds, set up roadblocks. They had brought in every known sex offender and pervert for miles and grilled them. Still they came up with no leads.
Chris passed the house, feeling like he’d been put in a freezer, the hairs dancing on the back of his neck. You could see the house through the woods, a crumbling mansion, once white. The paint had gone to gray. Big columns supporting the roof. There was a rusted, 1950s pick-up truck on blocks out on the lawn.
He hurried along, passing the house.
As he reached the edge of the property, he got the distinct sensation he was being watched. He glanced to his left. There was someone in a copse of trees. Someone tall. The wind blew and he caught the stench of something rotten.
He hurried down the road and didn’t look back.
“Great night for a run,” Stacey Mills said to Greg.
He was keeping pace with her, their footfalls slapping the asphalt path that ran through the park. They’d met at the gym, where the two of them had been on treadmills next to each other. Both of them worked in the IT field, developing software. They both loved action movies and Mexican food. They’d hit it off, and after two months, she knew she was falling for him.
“If you can keep up,” Greg said.
“It’s you that needs to keep up with me,” she said.
They came to a T junction in the path.
“Actually, quick break up here?” he said.
“I knew you couldn’t keep up,” she said, and gave him a playful swat on the arm.
They stopped at the junction, right near the woods that bordered Pruitt park. A bench with sun-bleached wood stood at the junction.
“Need to sit down?” Stacey said.
“Only old ladies sit down,” Greg said.
Something rustled in the woods. A large branch snapped. It was probably a deer. They’d seen six of them dart across the path at the start of their run. Still, her heart quickened a bit. Something unseen in the woods always gave her a little start.
Greg was stretching, one leg up on the bench.
Another rustling of grass and leaves in the woods. It was getting closer.
“Coming this way,” Greg said. “Loud.”
“A deer in the woods at night can sound like a rhino,” she said.
The noise grew louder, until Stacey thought a horned beast might actually charge out of the woods. It happened fast. A man strode out of the woods. He wore a long, duster-style coat. He stank like something rotten. He reached across the bench and pulled Greg over, slamming him to the ground.
She watched the man grab Greg’s head and twist. His neck snapped like dry kindling. Stacey gasped. The man’s head was down, still preoccupied with Greg, whose head was cocked at a sickening angle. He was gone.
The man took a long knife from under his coat. She was looking at the top of his head. Through the thin, greasy hair, she saw burned-scarred flesh.
With the knife, he began sawing Greg’s neck. She screamed.
She took off down the path, expecting the man to chase after. When she was about fifty yards away, she turned and saw the man dragging Greg’s body into the woods. In his hand, the man held Greg’s head by the hair.
Stacey reached the edge of the park, coming to the road that bordered the property. She had her iPhone strapped to her arm. When she ran alone, she took it and listened to music.
After taking the phone off her arm, she called 9-1-1.
Two
“That’s a shit-ton of blood,” Maria Greco said.
In her ten years as a detective, she’d never seen that much blood at a scene. A tech from the county crime lab was doing his thing, taking samples near the bench.
Maria’s partner, Jenna Martz, was looking into the woods, hands on hips.
Jenna turned. “Like they dumped buckets of it.”
The ground around the bench looked as if it had rained blood and saturated the
