Every time I thought I had gotten used to the sound of her footsteps, there would be a break in their rhythm-either coming faster, closer, or stopping so long I thought she was gone.  If she was even there in the first place.  I couldn't bring myself to look.

It wasn't the fear of seeing her.  It wasn't even the fear of not seeing her.  I knew if I turned and looked into that blackness, I'd be swallowed up.  But if I kept walking and she kept following maybe she could come out of it and then . . . Halloween was coming.  Maybe the preacher was insane.  Maybe I was insane.  But maybe . . . .

There was still darkness around and behind, and there were no sounds of the high wild country like there sould have been.  We had driven out into the back country together before the children.  She'd hated camping but I had loved it and so we'd gone into the wild, huddled together by a fire and howled back at the coyotes that cried somewhere in the hills.  We'd always said someday, when the children were old enough . . . someday. 

 Maybe Halloween.

The edge of the road was crumbling under my feet where asphalt met dry ground.  Ahead of me I saw another light, this one brighter and whiter than the lamp where I'd last seen the preacher.  As I came closer I saw it was a diner, the sort that rotted away at the side of roads abandoned to the interstates and fast-food chains miles away.  The paint was faded and the letters of the name flaked away, but the lights glowed in the windows and a single neon word, "EAT", glowed balefully red in the night.

The click-clack of her steps vanished as I went up the cracked cement steps and pushed open the door.  I still didn't dare look back.  As I stepped inside the drone of a staticky radio deafened me after the silence, and it took a moment for my hearing to adjust.  The light was so bright after my dark walk (how many hours?) I couldn't see out the windows--they reflected my pale, hollow-eyed features at me as well as any mirror. 

 On their own, my feet carried me to the counter.  It was the kind you see in movies and in old pictures, with wobbling stools and a hard wooden top, complete with a case full of sliced pies, bleeding glossy fruit filling from the sides.  The menu had prices as old as the building, with coffee at a nickle a cup, and the cash register had no sign for credit cards.  As I sat, nearly sliding off the stool as it spun beneath me, the gray woman behind the counter glided over to me.  I thought of her as gray--hair, dress, even a dingy tone to her white apron, and her face was lined and pinched.  She looked at me, but didn't speak.

"Coffee."  I hated coffee.

She made a note on her pad and walked silently away.  I heard a noise in one of the booths.  A child's giggle.  I hadn't heard a child laughing in longer than I cared to remember.  I turned to look, but the only person besides me and the waitress that I saw was a woman at one of the booths.  Her hair was swept in an old-fashioned roll at the back, and her clothes were faded and looked dusty, as if she'd been walking a long time on the roads.  Her hands were curled around a coffee mug and she was staring into the middle distance between her and the cup. 

"It's a long walk, isn't it?"

Even looking right at her, I almost didn't see her lips move.  She turned to look at me, and there were circles under her eyes almost as dark as mine.  "I don't know how long it took me to get here," she continued.  "You look like you've been walking just as far."

I realized I was staring, that the radio and another whispered giggle from somewhere in the booths was filling silence after her speech.  "I don't even know where here is," I finally stammared.

"Doesn't matter, does it."  She sipped from her mug, then stood up and moved to the stool beside mine.  "Long walk to get here, and it's still a long walk to go."

"Where are you going?"  My coffee was in front of me, I realized, with two packets of powdered cream and a spoon.  I sipped it black. 

The woman's exhausted eyes crinkled a bit with a smile.  "South.  Just like you.  It's the only way this road goes."

There was another child's laugh, and a clatter, and I looked quickly over my shoulder.  This time I knew I saw a quick flash of a tow-colored head.  Our youngest had golden hair.  "Is that your child?" I asked the woman.

"I don't have children."  Her eyes drifted back to her coffee.  "No husband, either.  No one.  Anymore."  If she'd seen the little . . . girl?  Boy? . . . she gave no indication.

"I had children."  The coffee was bitter and burned.  I drank more anyway.  "I had a wife.  They died together."

"I'm sorry."  It was the usual monotone platitude.  "I haven't had anyone in a long time.  Maybe after I get where I'm going, but I'll have to leave here first."  She sipped at her coffee again, though I noticed now it had the grayish tint of coffee with cream gone cold.

"Have you been here long?"  I glanced around--the child had laughed again, this time from the other end of the diner.  The waitress was at the far end near the register, counting the cash, and if she heard the giggling she didn't bother to look.

"Since the man told me to go," she replied.  "By the time I got here I was so tired, I just sat.  But I'll have to get moving again soon."

The flash of motion came quickly again, but this time I turned, and saw the back of a shoe, a rounded young limb.  I remembered tiny shoes scattered in the front hall and boots dripping winter snow in puddles.  Suddenly I didn't want to see the face of the laughing child, who could move so quickly and so quietly.  Not here.  Not yet.  Not any more than the source of the click-clack behind me in the dark. 

"I can't stay here long, either," I said.  I managed another mouthful of the black coffee. "I'm running out of time."

"Maybe that's what I need," the woman said.  She had pushed her cup aside.  The waitress was hovering now, the pot poised over the woman's cup.  She covered the top of the mug with her hand.  "A deadline."

"I don't know why I have one," I said.  I felt in my pocket.  There was a rumpled dollar, and I left it on the counter between our mugs.  The waitress eyed me and my half-full mug, then shrugged and pocketed the bill.  "We should go, then," I said to the woman, who looked now just the smallest bit less tired.  "Halloween is coming."