Walking Sam Got My Dad

I: What He Decided to Do

Jeffy knew no one would help him, not even Mama. He didn’t need them anyway. He was almost a teenager, and his dad could take care of himself by the time he was a teenager. So, Jeffy would do it himself.

Some of the parents thought he was a bully. Most of the other kids thought so, too. But they were all wrong. He didn’t care about them, not even a little. They didn’t have to make it on their own. They were spoiled and happy and didn’t understand what it was like to lose your dad to a monster.

They said Geoffrey Senior got on a bus full of tourists and rode out of the Black Hills to a better life. They said he was teaching people to kayak in Sioux Falls. They said he was living off the land.

Jeffy knew the truth. He knew his dad had been turned into a paper doll that hung off the belt of a tall thin man who stalked the thick, dark woods outside of town. He’d gone looking for the thing, and he’d found it. Or maybe it found him.

Walking Sam, they called the creature in the black suit.

The monster that collected people like notecards to shuffle and display and shred if he felt like it.

The long-limbed monster that wanted everyone’s soul.

If no one else cared, Jeffy would and could do it without them. His dad had showed him the book where he kept the cards of the creatures he’d seen. These cards, Geoffrey Senior had said, let you collect a little piece of these creatures, these cryptids, from the old stories. Cryptids are real, you know, and I can show you how to find them, if you want.

He told Jeffy about Walking Sam, most of which Jeffy already knew—every kid in town knew about Walking Sam and what he wanted. And then Jeffy hadn’t thought much more about the book or the cards or the cryptids…until his dad had disappeared.

Walking Sam got him, he tried to tell Mama.

She didn’t want to hear him. Instead, she wanted to yell at him about the two fights he’d picked at school that morning. He let her yell, and when she was done, he went to his dad’s spare room, took down the book with the cards, and put on his dad’s oversized coat. It hung on him like a robe.

As he headed out into the evening, he didn’t think at all that if his dad had gone looking for Walking Sam, he would have taken the book with him. His dad wouldn’t leave it behind if he’d been looking for a cryptid.

Just the same, no matter what the neighbors thought, Jeffy’s dad wasn’t teaching kayaking in Sioux Falls or living off the land.

He was actually teaching fly fishing.

Of course, Jeffy didn’t know this.

II: What He Did

By the time Jeffy reached the tree line, it was cold. He could see his breath. He’d forgotten his gloves, so the one holding the book was freezing. His dad’s coat was warm enough, though, and he could even smell his dad in the fabric. When he put his free hand in a pocket, he felt something. It felt like a ring, but when he took it out to look at it, he couldn’t see it well at all in the dimming light.

The woods were dark and deep and reminded him of a poem he’d read in English class. There was already frost on top of fallen leaves. He couldn’t see a trail, though he knew one was there. He walked slowly and carefully, but it still sounded to him like he crunched every dry leaf in his path. The moonlight, which he had been able to navigate by when he first entered the woods, was now hidden by clouds.

It a short while, he was quietly convinced that he was lost.

He strained to see into the growing night and strained to listen for the approach of anyone else on the covered trail or from the woods, but he was still surprised when Walking Sam stepped in front of him and leaned forward.

Now, where you goin’, little man? Where you coming from?

He felt the words instead of hearing them.

Walking Sam was tall and thin and almost featureless like a burned out streetlight. He wore a black top hat the would have looked right at an old-time funeral. He was an unnatural black from hat to boot—his shoes, his jacket, and even his skin. His only speck of color was a red glow in his eyes. Jeffy couldn’t see a mouth, but he could still hear Walking Sam’s voice, a smooth, inviting monotone that was completely opposite his alarming appearance.

This here is not a place for little boys. No, indeed, I said. It’s mighty dark out here for someone so small.

Jeffy stood as tall as he could—about half Walking Sam’s height—and tried to stop his lip from trembling.

“You took my dad,” he said. “And I want him back.”

Walking Sam’s jacket twitched in the wind—but there was no wind. Jeffy thought he could see movement just inside the jacket’s lining, but the Walking Sam leaned close, snapping Jeffy’s focus back and taking his breath away.

Well, almost everything’s for trade, isn’t it now? That’s indeed what I said. What could you have to trade to me for the likes of your pappy?

Walking Sam blinked. Jeffy found this more terrifying than even the creature’s towering height, which seemed to grow taller by the second. The brief moment when the red eyes vanished and the blackness came in was worse than he could have imagined.

“Why should I trade?” he heard himself say. I’m so brave, he thought. I’m not a bully at all! “You stole something. I shouldn’t have to give you anything for something that didn’t belong to you to begin with.”

He backpedaled, leaves crackling like fire beneath his feet, as Walking Sam drew closer still.

I’m no thief, my boy. Huh-uh. I’m all about the deal, and what’s fair for me is just about fair for you, don’t you think? What’s that there you got? How about that book? I suppose I might be willing to take that on and see if I can’t find someone else to trade with later on.

“No. This is mine.” He stuck his hand in his jeans pocket and came out with the wallet Mama had given him last Christmas. “I have two dollars.”

Two dollars. I suppose that’ll let you take a look.

With trembling fingers, Jeffy pulled the bills from his wallet. Walking Sam reached for them, and when he touched them, they vanished as if they’d never existed.

Walking Sam seemed taller for the deal.

With long black fingers, he pulled back the hem of his jacket. There, in the blackness underneath that seemed almost impenetrable, hung a dozen paper cutouts on a piece of black string. They were shaped like people. Each one was six inches long with black thread pierced through both shoulders to hang them from the string. Jeffy stared so hard he could feel his eyes drying out.

They looked exactly like photographs of people. He stopped breathing—one of them was Mrs. Fitzgerald, who ran the Smart Mart and who everyone said moved back to Rapid City to take care of her aging mom. As he stared, Mrs. Fitzgerald’s eyes moved.

Her mouth fell open in a silent scream.

Then Walking Sam flapped his jacket closed again.

That was a pretty good gander, indeed, I said. So, what’s for trade next?

Jeffy took a step back, clutching his dad’s book to his chest with one hand. “Nothing. He wasn’t there. No trades.”

He took another step, afraid to turn his head to look behind him. The woods seemed alien now, as if he’d never seen them before. It was dark above and dark below. Walking Sam’s head cocked, and his red eyes blinked again so quickly that Jeffy felt a scream rising in his chest.

“I want to go home,” he whispered.

Walking Sam curved above him like a canopy. Well, I know a thing or two still. I suspects I know where to find your pappy. It’s Geoffrey, isn’t that right? Just like your name, how about that?

Jeffy’s knees began to shake. He could feel himself about to lose his balance.

“Where is he?” His voice was hoarse. “Give him back. If you have him, give him back, Walking Sam.”

That’s my name, all right. You’re a smart boy. What will you give me if Pappy’s coming home?

The book? No. He couldn’t think. Walking Sam kept coming closer. He realized he didn’t know how to use the book—his dad had told him about mapping and essence and cards, but it was all getting confused in his mind now. He didn’t dare look away. If he took his eyes off him, Walking Sam would fall on him like the jaws of black steel trap, chewing him up. His hand slipped into his pocket, groping, finding, and bringing it out.

He held it up to Walking Sam, and at last, moonlight broke through the treetops again. He could see the ring clearly now; he’d seen it a thousand times before, on his father’s finger. It was his dad’s wedding ring.  

“This?” His voice was so quiet, he wasn’t sure Walking Sam had heard him. But then the tall, gaunt man who he’d stupidly come to challenge draped over him until the moonlight was gone again.

Now that there’s a deal. Let’s guide pappy home, shall we?

III: What Happened

Rosemarie began to worry about Jeffy when he didn’t come home for dinner. She worried even more when the boy didn’t come home for bed. Her son had no friends she should call, so she only called the local police. Someone came, someone left, and she was left alone, sitting on the sofa, wringing her hands, listening for the front door to open.

After midnight, she fell asleep sitting upright, but in her dreams, she heard her husband’s familiar step. A jaunty step. When he walked up and down the stairs, it was a sound like someone playing the drums. She could hear it now as if he hadn’t run off after all. As if he were still here.

She woke with a start. There were footsteps on the front porch.

She hurried and pulled the door open, and there he stood, gaunt, eyes wide, unshaven, an envelope shaking like thin lightning in both his quaking hands.

“Geoffrey?” she breathed his name. “You’ve got some nerve, coming—”

Geoffrey pushed toward her, and she instinctively stepped back in, away from him. When they were both standing in the dark entryway, she closed the door, and turned on the light.

“Jeffy hasn’t come home,” she said. She didn’t meant to say so; she meant to rail against him for taking off on them, for abandoning his son, for being selfish and childish, but her anger staggered under the weight of her fears. “He’s so late. I’ve called the police, but they—”

Geoffrey reached inside his envelope, and as he did, she thought, This is it. Divorce papers. My whole life is about to change.

And she was half-right.

What he pulled from the envelop was a perfect cutout of a person. Six inches tall, a thin little paper doll. It was Jeffy, his eyes wide. She groaned miserably as she took it from him and turned it over in her hands.

Scratched on the back of the cutout doll in what appeared to be red ink:
WHAT WILL YOU TRADE FOR THIS ONE?

She sank to the floor, one hand over her eyes, the breath rushing out of her as if she’d been struck in the stomach. Geoffrey knelt with her, one arm around her shoulders. The cutout fluttered to the floor.

“What,” he whispered, “can we give him? He’ll be here soon.”

The cutout’s eyes followed his parents’ movements. Begging, crying, terrified, but only paper.

They never noticed.