Ghosts.
She looked around, aware all of a sudden how many rooms there were in the empty structures surrounding her, how many places there were to hide, how many left-behind relics of lives remained in the abandoned husks of these buildings.
Was that why she was here?
Had she been lured?
She thought of the noises at night, the box that had fallen in the kitchen. Ghosts had been in the back of her mind ever since that first week. She was surprised that she had not thought about this earlier, when she’d first arrived. After all, this was a ghost town. Wasn’t it logical for ghosts to be here?
There was nothing logical about ghosts, and for all her vaunted rationalism and intelligence, she found herself spooked, no pun intended. The fact that she’d been thinking about Russiantown, that she’d felt herself drawn here, was more than a little disturbing, and, as much as she hated to do so, she started to see a pattern in what before had seemed to her merely a series of random coincidences.
She was reminded of the tag line for a movie.
Out here, she thought, no one could hear her scream.
Of course, that was not strictly true. She could hear the voices of children from the school, and she could probably be heard down there as well, but she knew that even her loudest scream would be only a muffled chirp to anyone downtown.
If, that is, they were listening.
She could die here and no one would know.
Julia shivered. She was no longer quite so interested in exploring the empty buildings of Russiantown, and she turned and started back down the path the way she’d come.
There was movement to her right, and her attention was drawn in that direction, but whatever it was had already disappeared behind a banya. She told herself it was a cat or a dog, hoped it was a cat or a dog, but she knew that the figure she’d caught in her peripheral vision was bigger than that.
Movement again. This time ahead and to the right.
She saw a child dash from one shack to another, heard it laugh . . . but the laugh was that of an old man, not a young kid, and the juxtaposition was shocking.
Heard it laugh?
Yes. For she’d sensed even in that moment, even with just that brief glimpse, that it was not a boy, not a girl, but . . . something else.
Her skin was covered with goose bumps, her pulse was racing. She was afraid to go forward, afraid to return down the same path on which she’d come. She decided to take a detour, an alternate route back to the road, glancing frantically about all the while to make sure that the child—or whatever it was—did not pop out at her.
She passed a shack with a detached and dilapidated front porch, heard a strange scuttling noise from inside.
Her heart lurched in her chest.
A little face peered out at her from a broken, dirt-smeared window.
She screamed, and the face faded, disappearing into the darkness of the shack.
There was the laughter again, the old-man laughter, and she backed quickly but carefully away, keeping her eyes on the window. The face did not reappear, but the sight stayed with her. The features had been unclear behind the dirty glass, but she had the impression that the eyes, nose, and mouth were scrunched too close together, that there was something horrid and aberrant about the small figure.
Again, she was acutely conscious of how far away from the occupied part of McGuane Russiantown was.
It was playing with her, she thought, whatever it was, it was after her. She took off running, no longer looking for the figure, no longer trying to hide from it, but prepared to knock it over or run around it or even jump over it if it popped out at her. She would do whatever she had to in order to avoid it, but she was determined to get out of Russiantown as fast as possible, as quickly as her legs would carry her.
She thought she saw the figure again, in a hole in the adobe wall of a banya, but the face looked older, and she did not stop to think about or acknowledge it but simply kept running, finally reaching the dirt road and jumping over the small ditch, running toward downtown McGuane.
Behind her, again, the laughter.
Her chest hurt and she could not seem to suck in enough air to fill her lungs, but she forced her legs to keep pumping and did not slow down until she reached an occupied neighborhood, where an old woman watering her roses outside, smiled at her and told her to slow down before she had a heart attack.
3
She sat in the banya with the body of the cat on her lap.
“Teo.”
She felt warm and tingly as she heard the banya’s voice. It seemed to echo through her, the words being absorbed into her body, into her bones.
“Teo.”
“I brought you a present,” Teo said. She looked down at the tabby’s matted fur. She had killed it herself. She’d found it wandering through their yard yesterday and had picked it up. She’d petted it, talked to it, carried it down the path—and then thrown it down as hard as she could onto a boulder, smashing its head.
She’d poured dirt into the wounds to stop the blood and had hidden the cat under some leaves so it could dry.
She’d come back today and picked it up.
It was the biggest thing she’d ever brought here, and she knew that the banya would be grateful. The banya had devoured everything she had brought so far—the bird, the mice, the chipmunk—and it had grown stronger as a result. There was a new energy in here now, and even though the building still looked abandoned, it had started to clean itself up. The benches were fixed and set up against the wall the way they should be. The bones were mostly gone.
She had always liked coming here, but she enjoyed it even more now. She felt at home in this room. Accepted, wanted, appreciated.
The banya was her friend.
The banya was her only friend, and she did not know what she would do without it. She could let out all her frustrations in here, describe all of her problems, scream, cry, throw a tantrum, and it was always there for her. It never told her what to do, never made judgments, never bossed her around.
It listened.
And understood.
Teo took the cat off her lap, set the stiff body down in the dirt. “Here you go,” she said.
She watched the cat’s body with anticipation. She no longer had to leave while the banya ate. It let her watch now, let her see it devour food, and she felt a thrill of excitement pass through her as the shadow came down from the far wall, as it broke up into long, swirling segments and the familiar cold-yet-pleasurable wind began to blow. The body of the cat lifted almost imperceptibly off the floor, swathed in shadow, and then it began to disappear. In pieces. The left ear was gone. The right rear paw. The tail. A section of stomach. The head.
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 tha
t 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.
Was she supposed to kill them?
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.
Thirteen
1
Sunday.
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.
It is your fault.
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 fix
ing 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.
2
“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.
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