Chapter Forty Sad Willy
FORTY SAD WILLY
No one came this way much these days. The road, once clear enough to get a truck through, was grown over now: raspberries and saplings had taken root in the old rutted tire tracks; tree branches hung low, obscuring the way.
The hill trying to hide its secrets.
But Willy knew them. And he knew the way to where he was going. It was more of a footpath than a road now, a mountain-goat path, uphill all the way.
He remembered reading the story about the three billy goats and the bridge back when he was a boy and being frightened by the troll.
Trip trap, trip trap went their hooves over the bridge.
“Who dares to cross my bridge?” roared the great ugly troll.
And the irony did not escape him: he was the one living under the bridge now, the one children taunted and ran from. Willy had become the troll, ugly and reeking of bourbon, bellowing out words no one understood.
The walk took nearly an hour, because he couldn’t go fast, not anymore, not with his prosthetic foot that didn’t fit right. The air was clear and cool, the sun warm on his face. The bourbon was making him feel just right.
The birds were singing, the ones that hadn’t headed south already (smart birds, they knew what was coming), and a mild breeze was blowing the branches around, sending what few leaves were left on the trees falling down like giant colorful snowflakes.
Willy caught one: a maple leaf so red and perfect it looked like it had been plucked right from a Canadian flag.
Sometimes Willy felt like he was in a movie or a play. Just acting out a part, the way he did back in fourth grade when he played Joseph in the Christmas pageant. Joseph, who led his pregnant, virgin wife to the manger to give birth. All part of God’s plan.
As he walked, he tried to imagine what it must have been like back when the knackerman had walked the hill in 1919.
No electricity yet. Very few cars in town.
Mostly horse-drawn wagons still. He imagined the effort of the horses, pulling a cart up this hill, muscles straining, hearts hammering, breathing clouds of steam in the cold air.
He could almost hear them—the snorting breath, the whinnies and clomping feet.
He heard other things too. The snap of twigs, the crunching of crisp leaves on the forest floor. He was not alone out here. Animals mostly. But the birds and the animals might not be the only creatures watching him. He had to be careful.
He continued on, ducking to avoid branches in the path, not failing to notice the way some of them were broken—as if someone, or something, had used the path recently.
Don’t think about that, he told himself.
He was Sad Willy. He had nothing left to lose.
Willy crested the hill at last and the remnants of the cabin came into view. He was amazed that so much had survived all these years.
Of course, in the old days, people from town would come a couple times a year, tidy the place up, fix broken shingles and windows, repair and maintain the cabin and barn.
But the town grew. Things changed. People stopped coming to the cabin, stopped doing the repairs. The children were warned that it was a haunted and dangerous place, that they must never climb the hill to see it for themselves.
It was easier, really, wasn’t it? To turn it all into a story. To not have to keep seeing the actual physical proof that the knackerman had once been a real man who’d lived in a tiny cabin.
He squinted at the cabin with its collapsed roof, a place he had sometimes dared to bed down for the night. But this was not what Willy had come for.
He turned to the right, went by the pile of rubble that had once been the barn.
He shuffled through the fallen leaves, being careful of the rotten beams, the rusty nails.
He found the door to the cellar and reached for the handle with trembling hands.
He wasn’t just Sad Willy anymore.
He wasn’t just Will O’Brien, husband of Anna.
Killer of Anna, more like, his dead wife whispered in his ear.
It nearly brought him to his knees, the gut punch of her words.
“I’m going to make it right,” he said, the words meaningless. He could never make it right. Not really.
He heard her mirthful laughter, far away now.
He closed his eyes. He needed to stay focused. To do what needed to be done.
If he did this right, there would be no more deaths. No more disappearances. No more midnight rides by the light of the full moon, going house to house looking for someone to blame, to mark as next.
Willy jerked the old wooden door open.
And then he screamed.
Because there he was, waiting for Willy: the knackerman in his white bone mask and long hooded coat.
Only, the knackerman was screaming too.
A high-pitched, girlish scream.
And as Willy looked down, studied the figure at the bottom of the stairs, he saw how small it was, almost like a—
“Mr. Willy, sir?” The figure reached back, loosened the leather straps, and pulled the mask off its face.
He stared at her in dumbfounded amazement. “Mini?”