The Town

by Bentley Little

  Debbie had called for no specific reason, just because she was bored and wanted to shoot the breeze (and she wanted to annoy her miserly husband by calling in the daytime instead of during the cheaper evening hours), and that touched Julia more than anything else. Adam and Teo emerged from the kitchen with Cokes and cookies in their hands, and she waved them away, motioning for them to stay out of the living room so she could talk in private.

  Debbie always liked to work from the generic to the specific, so they started out talking about movies, making Julia realize how long it had been since she’d had a serious movie discussion with anyone.

  “I watched Singin’ in the Rain last night,” Debbie told her. “It was on AMC.”

  Julia smiled. “A classic.”

  “Yeah, but don’t you always wonder about the movie they’re supposed to be making? The Lockwood and Lamont costume epic that’s turned into a musical? I mean, what kind of movie could include ‘Broadway Melody’ and ‘The Dancing Cavalier’? And ‘The Dancing Cavalier’ is supposed to be part of a dream sequence, while the rest of the story is contemporary, but ‘The Dancing Cavalier’ ends the movie! Does that mean the movie ends with a dream?”

  Julia laughed. “God, I miss you.”

  Debbie’s voice, which had been righteously serious, softened. “I miss you too, Jules. That’s why I called. How are things going there?”

  She shrugged, but the shrug could not be heard over the phone. “Okay, I guess.”

  Debbie had always been able to read between the lines.

  “That bad, huh? What is it? Mother-in-law troubles?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Local hillbillies?”

  She laughed. “No. It’s just that . . . it’s taking us a little longer to adjust than we thought.”

  “Gregory, huh?”

  “How do you do that?” Julia asked.

  “Do what?”

  “See through whatever I’m telling you and guess the truth.”

  “It’s an acquired skill,” Debbie said. “So spell it out for me.”

  This time, Julia kept nothing back. She even talked about the box of dishes and her feelings about the house and her trip to Russiantown.

  “You want my advice?” Debbie said when she was finished.

  “What?”

  “Get the hell out of Dodge. Pack your things and go. Stick your little tails between your legs and come running back here to the real world.”

  “You really believe me about our haunted house?”

  “I believe that you believe, and that’s enough for me. Whether it’s ghosts and creeps or simple dysfunction, things aren’t working out the way they should, and it sounds to me like it’s time for you to bail.”

  Julia smiled, already feeling better. “This is your totally objective opinion?”

  “The fact that I’d like my friend back here in California in no way compromises my impartiality.”

  “Well, I’m stuck here for a while. For this school year at least.”

  “But you’re thinking about coming back?”

  “Every damn day.”

  They both laughed.

  There was a long pause, and it was Debbie who spoke first. “You’re really spooked, though, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Julia admitted.

  “I didn’t think you were the type to believe in ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night.”

  “I didn’t either.”

  “I’ve always kept an open mind, myself. I don’t believe or disbelieve. But the fact that you think you saw something scares the shit out of me. I trust you more than I trust my own eyes.”

  “That’s reassuring.”

  “Jules?” Debbie’s voice was serious.

  “Yes?”

  “Be careful.”

  A shiver passed through her, but Julia managed not to let it reach her voice. “I will,” she said.

  “I mean it. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “I know.”

  The conversation ended on an up note, with a return to movies.

  Debbie was the one to finally say good-bye, and she hung up promising to call soon. Julia put the receiver back in its cradle and stood there next to the phone until her vision started to get blurry. She wiped her eyes before the tears overflowed onto her cheeks.

  Teo emerged from the hallway, walked over to her.

  “What are we having for dinner?” she asked.

  Julia looked at her daughter, felt her strength return.

  “I don’t know,” she said. She smiled. “But let’s go into the kitchen and see what we can figure out.”

  4

  She had not been to the banya in a long time and it was mad at her.

  Teo peeked out at the bathhouse from behind a boulder. It even looked angry. There was something cross about the defiant darkness staring out of the open doorway. The small building looked better than it ever had before—the adobe seemed new, the roof no longer appeared to be caving in on one side—but it also looked sore, although that was something she sensed as much as saw. It knew she was here, it could see her, it could sense her, but it was refusing to speak to her, and Teo could feel the rage behind its silence, the anger within its darkness.

  She wanted to leave but dared not, was tempted to walk closer but was afraid to do so. She was trapped just where she was, and the thought occurred to her that that was exactly where the banya wanted her to be.

  It had called to her, and though there’d been no words, no explicit commands, she recognized the summons. It was one of those feelings that didn’t need words, that her brain understood without having to translate into language. She’d ignored it at first, pretended she didn’t notice, tried not to think about it, but the calling had grown increasingly insistent until it no longer seemed to be something outside that was beckoning her but a part of herself, a need.

  So she had come.

  But she was not brave enough to go all the way, and indeed the need within her seemed to have lessened—which was why she was beginning to think that this was exactly where the banya wanted her.

  She’d been trying to think of ways to explain why she had not been by, things she could tell the banya that would explain her absence: the weather was getting too cold; she’d gotten in trouble and was grounded; her parents had found out about her coming here and had forbidden her to come again. She liked the weather idea the best. Being grounded was only a temporary excuse, and her parents had already banned her from coming here and she’d done it anyway. But it was definitely fall, and it was a lot colder fall than she was used to, and she could always say that she’d wanted to come but it was just too darn cold out. In fact, the idea of being inside the warm house, sitting on the living room floor, doing her homework and watching TV, sounded mighty good to her right now.

  But she’d been called and she’d come, and it was as though she was helpless to refuse. She was a puppet. She thought of the animal attack at school and knew with dreadful certainty that the banya had done something for her and now it expected her to do something for it.

  She already had, Teo told herself. She’d brought it food.

  But she knew that was not enough, and that was what scared her.

  The banya was still not speaking to her, and as scary and angry as it looked, she told herself that if it did not say anything in the next five minutes, she was going to leave.

  At that thought, there was movement within the darkness, the sense of something shifting inside the bathhouse. She sucked in her breath.

  And a horde of mice streamed out of the banya door toward her.

  It came completely out of the blue, was not something she had thought about or could ever have expected, and she remained rooted to the spot as hundreds of the tiny rodents, far more than could possibly have fit inside the bathhouse, sped in a living wave over the rocky ground, the brown bodies so close together that they looked like a carpet being unrolled.

  They stopped three or four
feet in front of her, instantly, at the same time, as if they’d run into an invisible wall. They were in rows, she saw, lined up perfectly, like little army men. It was the orderly unnaturalness of it that frightened her the most. She wanted to run, but something kept her from it, and she could only hope that that something came from inside herself.

  There was an exhalation of warm air from the door of the banya. She could see it rustling the fur of the mice, could feel the outer edges of it touching her face. It brought with it a foul stench that reminded her of rotting cucumbers, and she wrinkled her nose, turning away, finally freed from her immobility.

  The mice stood up on their hind legs and smiled at her.

  It was a frightening sight. A mouse’s mouth was not meant to smile, was not built to move in those directions, and seeing hundreds of them doing it at once, all facing her, made her blood run cold.

  As one, the mice screeched, and the sound coming out of their mouths was her name:

  “Teo!”

  She ran.

  Crying, screaming at the top of her lungs, finally able to make her body obey her mind, she sped back down the path toward home as fast as her legs could carry her.

  She could not be sure, but behind her she thought she heard the sound of the banya laughing.

  Fifteen

  1

  Scott carried the flashlight as the three of them made their way up the hidden path to the secret spot on the cliff. They should have all brought flashlights, Adam knew, but Scott was the only one who’d thought to do it, and the going was slow because he and Dan were forced to stand in place until Scott climbed up each section of trail, then turned around and illuminated the way so the two of them could follow.

  It was an arduous journey, the ascent at least twice as difficult at night as it had been in the daytime. When they stopped to rest at the curve in the switchback, Adam looked over the edge at the road below. To the left, he could see the diner, the shape of its roof defined by the lights around the building, two lone pickups in the parking lot. To the right and down the sloping highway, he could see some of the lights of town, the ones not hidden by the cottonwoods or the canyon dropoff. The highway itself was empty, not a single vehicle on it.

  Adam turned toward Scott. “What if there aren’t any cars?” he asked, secretly hoping that there wouldn’t be.

  “Don’t worry,” Scott said. He motioned with the flashlight. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  They continued up the trail.

  This section of the path was shorter, and ten minutes later they were at the clearing.

  It was freezing out tonight, but Adam was sweating from the climb, and so he took off his jacket. The cold air felt good against his skin, and he stood there enjoying it, looking down over the wall at the still silent highway, as next to him Scott sat down hard in the dirt. “Whew!”

  “The tough part’ll be going down,” Dan said from behind them.

  Scott snorted. “You’re crazy. We can slide down on our asses if we have to. Piece of cake.”

  Adam checked out what he could see of the town, getting his bearings and trying to find his own house, but it was blocked from view by a low hill. He wondered what he would do if he looked down and saw their van pull into the diner’s parking lot. He’d told his parents that he was spending the night at Scott’s, and they said that was okay as long as the two of them remained at his friend’s house and didn’t go anywhere. He’d lied and said they were just going to watch the Star Wars movies on video.

  To be honest, he was surprised that his parents had even let him stay overnight. They knew Scott, but they had never met Scott’s parents, and though he’d falsely portrayed his friend’s mom and dad as kind, caring, loving, happy Mike and Carol Brady clones, he was still surprised they had let him go. Back in California, they never would have been so lax, and while part of him was happy for this change, another, more responsible part was worried by it. He tried to tell himself that it was nothing, that they were acting this way because they believed this was a better, safer environment, but he could not make that rationalization stick. Deep in his heart he believed that they did not care as much about him as they used to.

  His sweat had dried, and now he could feel the cold. He slipped back into his jacket and sat down next to Scott in the dirt. Dan remained standing, looking over the edge. Above them, a half-moon turned everything into silhouette.

  “So what’s the plan?” Dan asked.

  “You know what the plan is. Keep a lookout.” Scott turned toward Adam. “You take over when he gets tired.”

  Adam nodded.

  There was something different about Scott lately, too, although once again it was not anything he could pin down. Like his parents, his friend had seemed preoccupied recently, as though something was worrying him. And while Scott’s interests and actions were the same as they’d always been, a cruelty and harshness had crept in where before there had been playfulness.

  None of them spoke as they waited. Adam picked up the flashlight between them and shone it on the dirt around him.

  “What are you doing?” Scott said.

  “Looking for spiders,” he explained. “I want to make sure there are no bugs here.”

  “Don’t worry. If there are, you’ll feel them.”

  The light played over the small indentations made by their feet before settling, near the wall, on an object with a red-and-gold pattern that he immediately recognized. He leaned forward for a closer look, not believing what he saw.

  There in the dirt, half hidden, chipped and cracked with age, was a wooden Russian spoon.

  The hairs on the back of his neck bristled. He scooted forward, picked up the object. He could not have said what about the spoon so unnerved him, but finding it here seemed somehow—meaningful. That was stupid, he knew. There’d been a lot of Russians in McGuane over the years, and finding a piece of discarded trash like this was perfectly natural.

  But it did not feel natural. It felt preordained, as though it had been left here specifically for him, as though he was supposed to find it. He could not help thinking that the fact that it was a Russian spoon and he was Russian and he had found it way up here in their little secret hideout had some deeper, hidden meaning.

  “What’s that?” Dan asked, walking over.

  He handed the other boy the spoon as though it was nothing to him. “A Russian spoon.”

  “What’s it doing up here?”

  “You got me.”

  “Somebody keep an eye on the highway,” Scott said.

  Dan handed the spoon back to Adam, and they returned to their original positions.

  They lapsed back into silence, and Adam found himself wondering how this little clearing had come to be, who had constructed the path up to it. Its origin still seemed suspect to him, and the spoon made him think that maybe Molokans had built it.

  But for what purpose? He looked at the low sandstone wall that separated Dan from the cliff drop-off. It was almost like a fort, like someplace built to be defended.

  He had avoided thinking about the cave until now, had not even looked at the hanging succulents covering its entrance when they’d arrived here, but the image of that alcove in the cliff, with its hint of ritualism and unknown purpose, was imprinted permanently on his brain, and he could not get away from it. Even in avoidance, it dominated his thinking about this place, and he was acutely conscious of the fact that the cave was facing his back. He was tempted to turn around, to look at it—to make sure nothing was coming out of it

  —but he remained facing forward, willing himself not to give in to temptation and fear.

  Fear?

  Yes. There was something scary about the hidden cave behind them. He was reminded of the banya, and when he thought about the cave he imagined the shadow of a Russian man burned into the rock of the back wall.

  He wished he hadn’t come here. He had a bad feeling about this.

  The spoon suddenly felt strange in his hand, and he tossed it over the edge.
Dan ducked, thinking it was a rock, and turned on him. “What the hell was that?”

  “The spoon.”

  “What did you throw it at me for?”

  “I wasn’t throwing it at you. I was just throwing it.”

  Dan looked at him, and Adam knew he understood.

  Adam stood. “I don’t like this place,” he admitted. “It’s creepy.”

  “It’s haunted,” Scott said.

  Adam looked at him, and he shrugged. “I told you. There are a lot of haunted places in McGuane.”

  “And you think this is one of them?” Adam asked.

  “You said it yourself, didn’t you?” Scott stood, walked over to the wall. “I don’t like the cave.”

  Full-fledged chills rippled over nearly all of Adam’s body. His mouth felt dry.

  “Let’s get out of here.” Dan’s voice was low, quiet, as though he didn’t want to be overheard.

  “Nah, we’ll be all right.” Scott looked down on the empty highway. “Let’s give it another ten minutes.”

  “I don’t like the cave either,” Adam said.

  “I don’t know what it is, but it didn’t seem that scary to me in the daytime.”

  “I thought it was scary.”

  “You didn’t say anything.”

  Adam looked at his feet. “Yeah, well . . .”

  “I’m bored,” Dan said. “Let’s go.”

  Scott smiled. “Bored? You’re scared.”

  “So am I,” Adam told him.

  “Another ten minutes.” He looked at the two of them.

  “Come on. You know we’re not going to be coming up here again. This is our only chance.” He bent down, picked something up out of the dirt. “Here. I got a rock.”

  Adam took a deep breath, avoided looking at the succulents hanging over the cave entrance. “Ten minutes,” he agreed. He looked at Dan. “It’s a long walk down.”

  The Indian boy didn’t say a word, started picking up his own rocks.

  “Did you ever take a picture of the bathhouse?” Dan asked a few moments later.