The Town (40 page)

It was weird, weird and spooky, and he thought of what Babunya had said—

—and hurried out of his parents’ bedroom back to his own.

He hadn’t even had time to say good-bye to Dan, he thought.

Somehow that bothered him.

It had come to Agafia in Adam’s bedroom, when she’d seen his sister’s underwear wadded up beneath his bed. She had tried to remain calm for his sake, but inside she was in turmoil, filled with the sudden realization that the evil forces in this town were not just growing stronger and randomly killing people but were proceeding along other, quieter, more subtle lines as well. And when he told her he’d gone back to the
banya,
told her of the spoon on the ledge, she understood the extent of the influence. They were all at risk. Every one of them. Her family. Her friends. The Molokans. Everyone in town. Not just from without but from within.

Suddenly, it had all become clear, and she understood what the prophet had tried to tell her. It
was
the fact that they had not invited the Owner of the House that had led to this, that was the source of these murders and manifestations. That one breach had allowed spirits to gain a foothold here in town, had taken the lid off the pressure cooker. As Adam said, this was a bad house to begin with, home to evil of its own, and evil was like a magnet for other evil.

Now spirits were overrunning McGuane, growing ever more powerful.

And their house was at the center of it.

She had blessed the home. Many times. Every time she walked into it, in fact. But that sort of mild defense did not make up for the lack of strong permanent protection, and she had allowed her reliance on habit to blind her to what was really going on. She had assumed that their house was safe because she was blessing it, while the truth was that it was being invaded under her watch.

It explained why none of the Cleansings had taken, why none of the rituals had worked. Their focus had been misdirected. They had concentrated their prayers and energies on the church because that was where Jim had been killed, but they should have been focused on this house.

Perhaps they could have stopped it earlier.

No matter. They would stop it now. She phoned Vera, told her to call the others immediately and gather them together. She didn’t say why, didn’t say what the hurry was, but she told Vera she would meet them at the church, and she made it clear that it was important. She did not want to speak in this house, did not want to reveal too much in case something was watching, listening. She knew the church was clean, and she thought it best to discuss things there. On the other end of the line, Vera seemed strange, distant, but she agreed to call the others and meet.

Agafia changed into a Russian dress, put on her white sneakers, and went into the dining room for her Bible. Gregory and Julia were both at home, and she could have asked one of them to take her downtown in the van, but she was wary of involving them. She had spoken to Adam, and she would talk to Teo, but Sasha and her parents were out. They were too old. There was a possibility of corruption, and while it was not their fault, she knew she could no longer trust them. Not until this was over.

Agafia thought of the prophet’s bony arm, wiping out the small town on the sandy floor of the cave.

She could not allow herself to think about that. She had to concentrate on what needed to be done now, and she quickly called Vera back, but the line was busy, so she dialed Semyon’s number. No one answered.

She made several phone calls, calling everyone in the church for whom she had a number, dialing Vera’s number in between each, but she could not get hold of anyone, and she made the decision to walk. It was foolish, perhaps, but it felt right, and, putting on her jacket, clutching her Bible, she sneaked out of the house and hurried up the drive, praying she would not hear Gregory’s or Julia’s voice behind her.

She headed for the church.

It was a long walk. She tired easily these days, and ordinarily she would have had to sit down and rest every so often, but the brisk air and pumping adrenaline gave her the sort of strength she had not had in years, and while she did not
speed
down to the church, she was able to make good time.

She remembered when she was younger and walked to the church all the time, when she and John and Gregory would get dressed up and all walk, and she found herself thinking that the years sped by far too fast, that life was too short.

It took only fifteen minutes for her to reach the street on which the church was located, and her step, which had been flagging, picked up as she hurried along the side of the road.

She did not see the building until she was nearly upon it—the bulk of the variety store blocked it from view—but as soon as she reached the vacant lot next to the church, she stopped dead in her tracks, her heart lurching painfully in her chest and causing her to gasp.

The church was covered with hair.

Not all of the other Molokans had arrived yet, but several of them had, and they were standing in the dirt parking lot, staring at the building. She hurried past the vacant lot, over to them.

Thick black hair had grown out from every inch of wood wall and stone step and shake roof, straight and shiny and several feet long. The church resembled nothing so much as some sort of fantastic beast from a children’s fairy tale, but there was no sense of the benign magic so common to children’s stories. This was wrong, this was evil, and it had been created not to amuse or inspire awe but to terrify.

Agafia had never seen such a thing before, and it was the absurd incongruity of the sight that made it so frightening. There was a cool, dry breeze blowing through the canyon, and the light wind caused the hair to waft left on unseen currents, waving slightly and giving the church beneath it the appearance of movement.

When had it happened? Last night? This morning? Had it occurred as these things usually did, under the cover of darkness, when no one was looking? Or had someone seen it? She imagined the transformation: the hair appearing, coming in, the church building suddenly growing darker, as though a shadow was passing over it, until the hair grew long enough to see and it became clear to anyone viewing the sight what it was.

Did this have any meaning? she wondered. And what was the significance of
hair
? She didn’t know, but she walked onto the church property feeling cowed and intimidated, certain that this bizarre desecration had somehow been meant as a warning to
her
.

Vera turned in her direction as she walked over. “It is
you,
” she said quietly. “You are the one who has brought this upon us.”

“What?”

“It is your fault. This. Everything.”

She understood now Vera’s diffidence over the phone, and she shook her head. “No.”

“Last night I dreamed of the prophet. He told me.”

“What did he tell you?”

“He told me you had been influenced. He said you must be cast out.” Vera looked at her evenly. “He said this is your fault. It is all your fault.”

She wanted to explain that it
was
her fault, that she had forgotten to invite the Owner of the House and that it was from that that everything else had sprung, but she knew that at this point Vera would not listen to her. The other woman was fixated on her dream, she believed it utterly, and nothing anyone could say would dissuade her.

“Pray for me,” Agafia challenged her.

“It is too late for that.” Vera turned away. “Leave. This is no longer your church.”

Pacifism or no pacifism, she heard hatred in Vera’s voice, hatred and fear, and she could sense the threat of violence just below the surface.

Agafia turned away, feeling frustrated and frightened, not knowing what to do. Other people were stopping, drivers on the street braking to a halt so they could look at the transformed building. A crowd was gathering.

She looked again at the church, and this time she saw it in a different light. She’d been thinking of this as a religious occurrence, an act of defiance against God, but now she saw it as vandalism. That was why the hair made no sense, she realized. Like everyone else, she had been thinking in biblical terms, trying to equate what was happening to the words and prophecies in the Bible, but this had nothing to do with that.

This was not sacred, it was secular.

A hand touched her shoulder, and she whirled around. It was Semyon. He’d obviously been standing nearby, listening to her and Vera, and he was offering his support. “I do not believe it,” he said. He smiled. “I know you, Agafia.”

She smiled back, took his hand, gave it a small squeeze of gratitude, but the expressions on the faces of the others were hard and harsh, judgmental and unyielding.

She pulled him aside, walked with him out toward the street. “Listen,” she said, quietly but earnestly. “We need Vasili. Someone needs to get him and bring him here. Our Cleansings are nothing, a squirt of water on a pile of dirt. There are . . . many entities. They are invading McGuane and there are more all the time. Nikolai knows nothing about this, and even Vera is in over her head. Maybe the prophet has some idea of what we can do to stop it.”

“He wasn’t much help last time.”

“Prophets only know what God
wants
them to know, and only
when
God wants them to know it. Vasili has no control over what is revealed to him. And perhaps he has had some revelations since that will let us know what to do.” She paused. “Besides, God may have nothing to do with this.”

She saw the look on his face, and she stopped him before he could start. “We don’t have time,” she said. “But this has nothing to do with prayers or God or Jesus Christ. It has to do with Jedushka Di Muvedushka . . .”

He frowned. “That’s just a . . . a tradition. A superstition.”

“It is not!” she said fiercely. “My father saw him, and I’m sure you know plenty of other people who have, too. And you and your family have always invited him when you moved, haven’t you?”

Semyon nodded a reluctant acknowledgment.

“So you believe. Don’t tell me you don’t.”

He was interested now.

She took a deep breath. “I forgot to invite him when we moved here. I cannot go into the details now, but as I’m sure you know, that left our house unprotected. And you know which house
that
is. You know what happened there.”

He swallowed, nodded. “The Megan house.”

“That is where it started. It grew from that.” She took his right hand in hers, looked into his eyes. “You see what I mean? This may have nothing to do with church.”

“The way it started might have nothing to do with the church, but the spirits that have come in, the evil that has come in since your house was unprotected . . .”

“That’s why I hope the church can help stop it. I don’t have any other ideas. So get the prophet. Tell him. Maybe he will know what to do.”

“I will,” Semyon promised.

“Vera will not listen to me, and that means Nikolai will not listen to me, but you talk to them, you make them know what is behind all this, what started it. And make sure someone brings the prophet here.”

“He may not come.”

“At least talk to him, tell him what is happening, see if he knows what to do.”

The others were staring at them, and Agafia released him, used her left hand to help hold up the Bible sagging in her right. “Go,” she said “Talk to them. Tell them.”

He nodded, backed away. “I believe you,” he said.

She smiled her thanks.

It was getting near dusk, and the air was growing even colder. The others obviously had something planned, and she hoped they’d at least called in someone else for whatever ritual it was. She doubted it would work, but there needed to be ten of them. Just in case.

They were staring at her, waiting for her to leave, and so, clutching her Bible, Agafia turned and walked through the long shadows of downtown back toward home.

Only she didn’t get that far. She was in front of the hardware store, standing on the corner, looking both ways, when to her right she saw a small, dark figure crossing the road, a little man with a beard, and her heart jumped.

Jedushka Di Muvedushka.

She had never seen him before, but she recognized him instantly. There was about the small man an air of the unearthly. Something about him bespoke an unnatural origin, and though he appeared calm and benign, she was seized with fear at the sight of him.

When Father had seen the Owner of the House back in Mexico, it had been accidental, pure luck, and it, too, had been right around sundown. Father had never been sure whether it was the special qualities of the light which had given him that glimpse of the little man, the fact that it was the time halfway between day and night, or whether the Owner of the House had
allowed
him a glimpse, but he had never doubted what he’d seen and neither had anyone else in the family.

Agafia understood why. There was something so
there
about the man, something so substantial about his presence that he seemed in a way more real than his surroundings.

It was that observation which made her think he
wanted
her to see him.

But whose Owner was he? she wondered. Where had he come from? And why was he trying to communicate with her?

He turned, smiled, beckoned.

She followed him to Russiantown.

She remained far behind, ready to run at any moment, though she doubted she could actually escape him. He did not appear to be after her, made no effort to chase her, and though she was cold and tired and winded, she followed him through empty alleys and empty streets, along a route that seemed specifically designed to avoid contact with anyone else, until they were halfway up the canyon and in the ruins of Russiantown.