The Town

by Bentley Little

  The demon had died after performing its assigned duty. It had been created out of hate and magic for one thing and one thing only, and when that was done, it had dissolved into nothingness, its life extinguished with the death of its purpose.

  Perhaps that had been the true start of it, Agafia thought now. Perhaps that was why she and the Molokans were being targeted. They were being punished for what they had done in the past. Judgment had finally found them. Her unprotected opening had allowed the natural workings of supernatural events to resume, had allowed impulses and forces that had been blocked and dammed for all these years finally to take their course.

  Did that mean there was nothing they could do to stop it?

  No. She did not believe that. God would not let such a thing happen. And God would not allow the innocent to suffer. The children, like Sasha and Adam and Teo, the people who had moved into town since those days, none of them had had anything to do with the events of that time, and God would not turn His back on them.

  But were any of them really innocent?

  She recalled the look in her future husband’s eyes when he had helped to call forth the death spirit that night, and she remembered that there was something in the fierceness and determination of his expression that had appealed to her, that had drawn her to him. While she had not exactly been waffling in her commitment to him, it was that as much as anything else that had cemented her resolve to be his wife.

  The sins of the father were visited upon the sons, she thought.

  Evil always comes back.

  No, she thought. God would not allow it. He would not stand by while the innocent were taken.

  Jim had been innocent, though. He had fought against the summoning of the spirit. He had not taken part in any of it.

  And he had been killed.

  Evil did not play by God’s rules.

  And evil always came back.

  In the doorway of what was left of her old house, Jedushka Di Muvedushka turned, looked at her. His face was middle-aged, but his eyes were ancient.

  He smiled, beckoned, but she refused to follow him any farther and would not walk into the house.

  Whose Owner was he? she wondered again. Someone’s who had been left behind when Russiantown had been abandoned? She remembered father inviting Jedushka Di Muvedushka to come with them when they moved, and she remembered, even on that terrible morning, the kids laughingly making room for him on the buggy, though they could not see anything there.

  No, this one was not theirs.

  Still smiling at her, the little man walked into the open entrance of her old house and promptly disappeared into the shadows.

  She dreamed that night of the pra roak.

  She was back in the cave, and she was alone with him. He looked up from his fire at her and grinned, and she turned away, wanting to leave, but the bones had blocked the path and she was barefoot.

  He cackled, and she saw that he no longer had his unnaturally white teeth. His teeth were rotted, blackened stumps.

  He reached out an arm and wiped out the town he had rebuilt in the sand.

  “It’s here,” he said in English, and his voice was Gregory’s voice. “It’s time.”

  4

  Gregory met Odd at the bar. Paul had severed ties with the handyman as well as himself, and the two of them had spent the past several days commiserating about it, feeling sorry for themselves, drinking away their troubles. It was clear to Gregory that the bartender didn’t like him, that the man was one of those ignorant yokels who bought into that bullshit rumor that he and his family had brought bad luck or evil or whatever it was to McGuane, but as usual beliefs took a backseat to bucks, and since he and Odd were the bar’s most loyal customers, the man put his personal feelings aside and served them.

  He didn’t participate in the conversations, though. And he kept a wary, careful distance.

  He was listening, however. He kept his ears open, and he kept track of what was said and who said it, in case he needed the information in the future.

  That ticked Gregory off.

  It was one of many things that ticked him off. There was nothing he could do about any of it now, but he, like the bartender, was keeping track, keeping score, and one of these days he was going to tally everything up and the bill was going to come due.

  Gregory finished his beer, motioned for another. The headaches had been really bad the past few days, much worse than usual, and he’d considered going to a doctor. Aspirin and Tylenol did no good, and it occurred to him that perhaps he had something serious, like a brain tumor.

  Drinking took away the pain, though, and for the moment that was his medicine of choice.

  The bartender brought him a beer, and Gregory nodded his thanks, smiling unctiously. The bartender ignored him and went back to the other end of the bar where he was pretending to dry shot glasses.

  Gregory raised the mug to his lips, took a long, cool drink, then stared down at the dark wood countertop. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. He and Julia had made up, or had pretended to make up, but for some reason he’d been avoiding her ever since. It was as if her capitulation had somehow tainted her in his eyes, and if he had found himself too often angry with her before, now he was simply disgusted. He had no respect for her whatsoever; in fact, it was hard to remember what had once convinced him to marry her.

  He didn’t want to go home tonight, and he realized that he was drunk when he found himself trying to concentrate nonexistent psychic powers on Odd in an effort to get his friend to invite him over to his place. He kept repeating the same phrase over and over again in his mind, concentrating so hard that he gave himself a headache: Invite me to sleep at your house. Invite me to sleep at your house.

  Finally he gave it up and just came right out and asked.

  “Julia kicked me out,” he lied. “Do you know someplace I could stay the night, until things cool off?”

  Odd squinted at him. “What’re you talking about? A separation?”

  “No, no. Just for tonight. Just this one time.”

  “Hell,” Odd said, “Lurlene and I’d love to have you over.”

  That was what he’d been fishing for. “Thanks,” Gregory told him. “You’re a real pal.”

  The old man grinned. “At least you got one left.” Gregory nodded. He wasn’t sure why he did not want to go home. And he didn’t know why he wouldn’t just go to a hotel if his goal was merely to stay away. But this was what felt right, and he was glad that Odd had invited him over.

  Or else he would have had to kill him.

  Where had that thought come from? Gregory didn’t know, but it frightened him, and he pushed the mug away, declining to finish the last half of his beer. “I’m ready to go,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They were both too drunk to drive, and so they walked through town, ignoring the hostile stares of the passersby. Odd had said before that things had turned nasty, and he was right. There was a feeling of tension in town, tension combined with a wild unpredictability that reminded Gregory of the mood in Los Angeles just before the riots.

  He thought of his father, wondered what his father would think of this.

  Odd lived in a run-down one-story wood-frame home just behind the business district. He hadn’t kept up maintenance on the house—ironic for a handyman—but the yard was carefully landscaped and, rare for this town, sported two tall citrus trees and a full lawn.

  The old man pointed proudly at his grass. “Lurlene refused to live in a house without a lawn. Water bills cost me an arm and a leg, but it looks good, if I do say so my damnself.”

  Gregory nodded his agreement, and the two of them walked up the porch steps into the house. “Hon?” Odd called.

  There was no answer.

  “Probably in the kitchen.” Odd led the way through the rather shabby living room, opening the swinging door that led to the kitchen.

  Odd’s face lit up. “Gregory?” he said, turning around proudly. “This here’s
my wife.”

  In the center of the kitchen was a cow.

  A heifer.

  Gregory stared in horror at the animal, which stood in the middle of the room placidly chewing its cud. There was a bale of hay on the floor next to the refrigerator, and dirty hoof marks marred the yellowed linoleum.

  Odd kissed the cow on the mouth, and Gregory could see, through the gap between their ill-fitting lips, his tongue caressing hers.

  Through the fog of alcohol, through the headache that still lay somewhere beneath that, a rational part of his brain was telling him that this was not right, that there was something wrong here, that whatever had led his friend to do this was dangerous and he should get the hell away from here as quickly as possible. But amazingly, incredibly, he was already rationalizing it, and whatever protests had been forming in his mind were quickly squelched.

  Love was blind, Gregory told himself. And if he could marry an outsider like Andrea, well, Odd could marry a cow. Who was he to pass judgment on someone else’s private life?

  Again, there was a nagging hint of disagreement from somewhere deep within his brain, but that faded into nothingness.

  Gregory walked over to the opposite side of the kitchen, slumped down in the breakfast nook, and smiled at his friend. “What’s for dinner?” he asked.

  5

  Julia was frightened, Gregory had not come home last night, and his mother had been upset and agitated, ranting in Russian about evil spirits and Jedushka Di Muvedushka. Promise or no promise, this was the last straw. She was going to pull up stakes and throw their stuff in the van and drive back to California as quickly as her lead foot would take her. She had not slept at all, wondering whether Gregory was dead, murdered, lying in a ditch, or whether he had . . . what? Run away?

  She didn’t know, but she was scared. She’d called Paul in the middle of the night, but he said he hadn’t seen Gregory in days. She’d called Odd, but no one had answered the phone at his house.

  Maybe he was at Odd’s, she told herself hopefully. Maybe they’d gotten to talking and lost track of time and he’d had a little too much to drink and he’d decided to spend the night there.

  But why hadn’t he called?

  Because something had happened to him.

  It was an idea she could not get away from.

  His mother was even more worried than she was, if that was possible, and the two of them had talked about evil spirits and the Owner of the House, and the skepticism Julia had always feigned before had been completely stripped away.

  Her mother-in-law’s worry was of a different sort. Agafia seemed to believe with unshakable certainty that nothing injurious had happened to her son, that he had not been hurt or killed, but she was worried about . . . something else. She was wary with Julia, but though it did not disappear completely, that suspicion did break down a little as the night stretched on, and Julia learned that it was the house that made her mother-in-law so guarded, the fear that she, Julia, had somehow been corrupted or influenced that kept Agafia from trusting her fully.

  The house.

  It was terrifying to have her worst fears confirmed, but it was also strangely reassuring. Gregory’s mother told her it was because Jedushka Di Muvedushka had not moved with them to this house that other spirits had been allowed in. Julia remembered the flippant and condescending reaction she’d had that first day when Agafia had been so worried about not inviting the Owner of the House, and she was ashamed of her attitude. If she’d had more respect, if she’d been a little less arrogant and a little more open-minded, perhaps she would have caught on to this earlier. They might not have been able to stop what was happening, but they might have been able to get away from it.

  The house seemed even darker than usual to her, though it was morning and the brightest part of the day.

  What was here? she wondered. What existed in this place with them? The ghosts of Bill Megan and his murdered family? A demon from hell? Some nebulous, shapeless, evil entity?

  As ridiculous as those concepts would have sounded to her before, they all seemed perfectly plausible now, and Julia understood why Agafia was so wary. She thought of Sasha’s behavioral reversal since they’d moved here, Adam’s arrest, Teo’s secrecy, her and Gregory’s personal problems. They’d all been influenced in one way or another. She’d noticed it before, and she’d always attributed it to natural causes, but the pattern now seemed too clear to ascribe to such innocent origins.

  She’d let the kids go to school earlier without telling them that their father was missing, without letting them know her fears, and she was glad now that she’d done so. It would make it easier to do what she knew she had to do.

  She faced Gregory’s mother across the kitchen table and told her that they were going to leave. “After I find Gregory, we’re getting out of here,” she said. “We’re going back to California before anything else happens. Just pack enough for a week or so, and we’ll get the rest later, when we sell the house.”

  “No,” Agafia said in Russian. “I cannot leave. I am responsible for allowing this evil in, and I must remain to fight it. Only our church can put an end to this—”

  “But your family comes first,” Julia said, also speaking Russian. “Your first loyalty is to us. We need to get out of this town before one of us is killed and ends up like Jim Ivanovitch or my friend Deanna.”

  “I cannot leave. There is evil here.”

  “I know there is,” Julia told her. “That’s why we need to get out. That’s why I have to get the kids out especially.”

  The old woman seemed to understand. “Take the children back. Keep them away from here.”

  “You too.”

  “No,” Agafia said firmly.

  Julia knew it was useless to argue, and so she gave in, nodding her acquiescence. She did not know what the old woman had planned, did not know what she intended to do, but she imagined Agafia standing in the church, praying, attempting some sort of exorcism, and she figured that if her mother-in-law was going to stay, that would probably be the safest place for her. Besides, Agafia seemed to know what she was talking about. She’d been right about all of this from the beginning. Perhaps she did know how to put a stop to it, though to Julia the most logical tack would be for all of them to leave. If it really was the fact that the Owner of the House was not here to protect them and keep out other supernatural entities, then shouldn’t that breach be closed with their departure?

  “Go to Montebello,” Agafia said. “Stay in my house, Helen, across the street, has the key. I left it with her and asked her to water my plants.”

  Julia had almost forgotten that her mother-in-law had refused to sell her home, and now she was ready to weep with gratitude for that bit of stubbornness. They would not have to put themselves up at some hotel or stay with friends or relatives. They had a place to go, a house where they could live until they got resettled.

  “Thank you,” Julia said. She stood. “I’m going to try and find Gregory. Then we’re getting the kids and getting out.”

  “No,” Agafia said.

  Julia blinked. “What?”

  “No!” The old woman slammed her hand down on the table. “Get the children and go! But leave Gregory here! I will take care of him!”

  “I don’t want Gregory to stay here. I want him safe, and with us.”

  “He is my responsibility. I will take care of him.”

  Julia looked at her mother-in-law. She had never been overprotective of her son, had never seemed to be one of those overly Oedipal mothers who resented wives and girlfriends and any other female intrusion into their boys’ lives, but that was the way she was acting now, and Julia wondered if the same forces that she was so worried about affecting everyone else had gotten to her first.

  She had no intention of leaving Gregory in this town if she could help it. If he wanted to stay, that was different, but Julia was determined to give him a choice and a chance and ask him to come with them back to California. He seemed to have been
the most affected by living here, the most influenced, and if his mother was right, he should be okay if he got away from this town.

  If he was still alive.

  No, Julia agreed with Agafia there. She did not think Gregory was dead. Injured, perhaps, out of commission temporarily, but alive.

  Could he be with another woman?

  The possibility threw her. She had not thought of that before, and she was surprised at herself for not even considering such an obvious explanation for his absence. Their sex life certainly hadn’t been lighting up the skies lately, and it was entirely possible that another woman could be at the root of his disinterest.

  She pushed that thought away before pictures started forming in her mind. There was too much to think about right now, too many other things going on. She would get her family out of McGuane and back to California, and then she’d try to sort everything out.

  “I’m still going to try to find him,” Julia said, heading toward the stairs.

  “He stay here!” Agafia called after her in agitated English.

  Thank God Gregory had not taken the van yesterday. Julia found the keys on the top of their dresser in the bedroom, slipped on some tennis shoes, and went outside.

  Where to begin?

  She didn’t know, but the café seemed as good a place as any. She started the van, executed a three-point turn, and headed up the dirt drive, turning toward downtown.

  She was glad the kids were at school. It would give her time to pack, give her time to prepare without having to answer a thousand questions and explain everything she was doing. She would find Gregory, they’d get everything together, pick up the kids at school, and take off. The kids could ask questions on the trip.