The Town (29 page)

There was no noise—it was like being in a place where sound could not penetrate—but there was a lot of movement, and as the shadows touched her skin, her arm, her cheeks, she laughed. It tickled.

In less than a minute, the cat was gone.

“Good,”
the
banya
said.
“So good.”

She smiled, feeling pleased.

She was glad she could do something for the
banya
—because the
banya
had done so much for her. It had promised to help her, and help her it had. She still had no friends, the other kids still refused to talk to her, but no one was making fun of her anymore. The
banya
had given her . . . something, and the other kids in her class seemed to sense it. They stayed away, afraid of her, and that was good. She no longer had to spend her recesses in the classroom with the teacher, hiding. She strode bravely and proudly through the playground, doing whatever she wanted, and though she had to do it by herself, she didn’t really mind. Just knowing that she was not alone, just knowing that she had the
banya
, gave her the confidence to be herself, allowed her to shrug off criticism and not worry about what other kids said or thought or did.

Of course, Mary Kay and Kim hated her more than ever. They did not trip her or push her down like they used to, but she sensed the hatred and resentment building in them, and she thought that eventually they would probably try to get back at her somehow, do something to her.

If only she could get them first. If only she could beat them to the punch.

The
banya
seemed to know what she was thinking, because it gave her a comforting breath of warm, sweet-smelling air.

She smiled.

“It is time,”
the
banya
said.

She blinked. “What?”

She thought she heard the sounds of a playground, thought she heard Mary Kay’s voice singing, “I see England, I see France, I see Teo’s underpants!”

“It is time,”
the
banya
repeated.

And she understood.

 

Going out to morning recess, Teo was bumped by Kim, but when she said, “Watch it!” Kim just kept running, pretending it was an accident.

She stared after the other girl. Apparently whatever immunity her newfound confidence had given her had worn off and she was once again in for some teasing and torture.

She walked out to the playground. That’s okay, she thought. The
banya
would show them.

But how? she wondered. Was she supposed to lure the girls over to the bathhouse, trick them into going inside?

The thought came to her, unbidden, that she was supposed to present the girls to the
banya
the way she had the bird, the mice, the chipmunk, the cat. As an offering.

The idea stopped her cold. There was no way she would do that, no way she
could
do that, and for the first time, it occurred to her that maybe the
banya
wasn’t really her friend, that there was something wrong with it. It was trying to make her do things she shouldn’t do, things she didn’t want to do, and in a burst of clarity, she understood that it was not normal, not right, for her to sit in a bathhouse and talk to it, to bring it dead animals.

She thought about what had happened. She had not just picked up the bodies of dead animals and fed them to the
banya
. She’d actually killed a cat herself, had murdered a little kitty, and tears welled up in her eyes as she realized what she’d done. It was as if she’d been hypnotized or something and had suddenly awakened, and she looked back at what had happened and was horrified.

Now the
banya
expected her to bring girls home and kill them?

She heard its voice, faintly, as if carried over a distance.

“No,”
it said smoothly.
“No, Teo.”

The voice made her stop, pushed all those negative thoughts out of her head. She stood there listening to the faint words of the
banya
, and her doubts fled, her faith was restored. The
banya was
her friend, she realized, and it told her that it was going to punish the girls who had tormented her, that it was going to make them pay.

But they would simply be taught a lesson, the bathhouse told her. No one would be seriously hurt.

And then the birds came.

They swooped down from previously clear skies, a living black cloud. They were the same type of bird that she’d fed to the
banya
, and they buzzed the heads of the kids on the playground. Boys jumped out of swings and off slides, girls fled hopscotch and tetherball courts. The birds were shrieking, and it was like a scene out of that old movie. The teachers monitoring the playground were simultaneously trying to scare off the birds and yelling for the children to head for cover.

The birds were followed by mice and chipmunks.

The birds were still there, above, but on the ground chipmunks and mice raced out from the field, swarming beneath the playground equipment, dashing between the feet of the panicking students and the screaming staff.

Teo looked around, searching out faces she knew. Kids were crying, running, not just heading back to the classrooms but darting about in all directions, trying to avoid the birds and get away from the rodents on the ground. She finally found Mary Kay, and a thrill of vindication coursed through her as the bratty girl stumbled and fell, sobbing while other kids tripped over her and fell on top of her. She also picked out Kim and two of Kim’s friends and was gratified to see them stranded atop the monkey bars, swatting their own heads as they tried to keep the birds away.

A tabby cat walked through the melee, oblivious. It ignored the mice, making a beeline for her. Teo looked down at the animal, and the cat looked back at her. It meowed softly, rubbed against her legs.

She picked the cat up, petted it.

Standing alone, next to the drinking fountains, untouched by everything, Teo smiled.

S
unday.

It was the third week in a row that they’d tried to perform a Cleansing for the entire town, one that would exorcise once and for all the unseen beings that had invaded this place. They stood in the empty church, the ten of them, holding hands, praying. All of the other parishioners had gone home, and the pots and pans and dishes and cups and spoons had all been washed and put away, the leftover food placed in the refrigerator. All of the tablecloths and napkins were in Nikolai’s car, ready to be taken to the laundromat and washed.

The dying sun shone orange through the west windows, creating long shadows in the empty room. They continued the ceremonies, but no matter how many words they repeated, no matter how earnestly they wanted this to work, their efforts were in vain. The church remained clean, free of spirits—they had successfully cleared and protected it—but though they once again prayed and sang, performing virtually every Molokan exorcism ritual known, it seemed to have no effect on the rest of the town. There were no accompanying signs of either success or failure as they worked, not even a slight drop in temperature, and if Agafia had not known better, she would have thought that McGuane was clean, that there was nothing here.

But there was.

The
pra roak
had been right. There were spirits everywhere, demons all around. They could all feel them, could sense their growing presence, and periodically one of their own would be provided with proof:

Vera Afonin. She came home after last Sunday’s services to find that all of the furniture in her house had been rearranged, placed in its opposite location, so that it looked like she was walking into the mirror version of her home.

Peter Potapov. For a full day, all of the taps at his house disgorged urine rather than water.

Alexander Nadelashin. Control of his car was wrested from him, the steering wheel in his hand turning of its own accord, forcing him to bump into and damage six other cars on his way down the street.

The attacks had all been relatively harmless, mischievous even, but outside the church, outside their circle, in the rest of the town, that had not been the case. No one had been killed recently, and there’d been no specific news of anything in the paper, but rumor had it that the man who owned the auto parts store had died of a heart attack after seeing something in his store, something that had subsequently disappeared, leaving behind only a gelatinous puddle in the middle of the floor.

Things were going on that nobody could explain, and no one knew how to defend against such an assault. Agafia and the other Molokans hoped that faith would protect them, that the Lord would keep them safe from harm and put a stop to it all, but so far their prayers had not been answered. It was a distinct possibility that they were being tested, that God was allowing this to occur in order to see their reactions. Which made it doubly important for them to maintain their faith.

That was Nikolai’s position, and Vera’s, but Agafia was not sure she believed it. Not only did she not believe God would be so deliberately cruel and unfeeling, but there was a seriousness in all this that made her think it was more than just a test, that it had a definite purpose and goal. She did not know what that could be, but she did not believe it involved God’s complicity. She was frightened, but she vowed to do everything within her power to put a stop to it and to prevent the catastrophe that the prophet had predicted.

The
pra roak
.

She did not believe herself guilty, thought that that part of the prophecy was wrong, but she bought into the rest of it and was willing to take responsibility for fixing the problem. And even the remote possibility of her involvement made her that much more determined to find an answer—and a solution.

They stopped praying, let go of each others’ hands, began singing a hymn, but there was no real enthusiasm for the music, no feeling put into the song. They knew already that this Cleansing had failed too, and their discouragement was audible in their singing.

Afterward, they did not even address the subject, did not even mention it. They were all frustrated and disheartened, and, saying good-bye, they took their leave.

It was Semyon who drove her home, and she was afraid that he would want to talk about the old days, would bring up things she did not want to discuss, but they were mercifully silent with each other on the trip back to the house, and they parted with polite, formal farewells.

That night she dreamed of Jim.

The minister was young, the way he’d looked when she first met him, and he was kneeling before a statue of what looked like Jedushka Di Muvedushka. He was mumbling to himself, praying, but it was not Russian, was not English, was not Spanish, was not any language she could understand. He was wearing a short-sleeve shirt, and his slender arms were unwrinkled, without age spots.

She was young too, and she was overjoyed to see him, but the statue frightened her, and she was afraid to come any closer.

“Jim!” she called. “Jim Ivanovitch!”

He turned, looked over his shoulder at her, and she saw that he had no face. There were no eyes, no nose, no mouth, only blank skin, and he gestured at her, waving his arms, obviously attempting to communicate, but she had no idea what he was trying to say, and behind him the statue started laughing. His gesticulations grew more wild, and the statue’s laughter increased. The rest of its form remained completely stationary, only its mouth opening and closing, and soon it was laughing so hard that tears streamed down its cheeks from its cold stone eyes.

“You look terrible.”

Julia nodded, glanced at her reflection in the window of the antique store. She had not slept well since her visit to Russiantown, her dreams disturbed with images of dwarves and shadows, the sounds of old laughter.

“Is anything wrong?” Deanna asked.

Julia shook her head. “No. I’m just tired.”

She had not said anything to her friend about what had happened up there, though she was not sure why. She’d told Gregory, in bed that night, away from the kids, but he either didn’t believe her or didn’t care—it was hard to tell which. He offered vague, ineffectual reassurances, the kind of bland platitudes they told the children when they had nightmares, and his attitude so infuriated her that she simply shut up, closing down, unwilling to even try and make him understand what she had gone through.

She would have told his mother, talked to her about it, but her mother-in-law was all churched-out these days, spending most of her time with her old Molokan friends rather than the family, and Julia didn’t especially want to drag the entire church into this.

Although sometimes she thought that might be the best thing that could happen.

Deanna would have been the natural person for her to discuss this with, but something kept her from it. She did not know why, but she did not feel comfortable telling her friend what had happened. It could have been her own natural reluctance to believe in anything beyond the material world and the fact that her friends had always shared her opinions on that subject, it could have been that she did not yet feel close enough to Deanna to open up to that extent, to expose herself to possible ridicule, but she had the feeling that it was something else, something . . . outside, that was dictating her behavior. It wasn’t overt and she had no proof to back it up—her feelings, in fact, felt perfectly natural, as though they were an organic part of her being—but intellectually she sensed a skipped beat, an emotional response on her part that should have been there but wasn’t.

Such a thought almost made her want to confide in Deanna just to prove to herself that she could, that it was her decision, that nothing was keeping her from it.