Dance with the Devil

by Dean R. Koontz

  Suddenly, the trail twisted and swept directly down toward the village of Roxburgh, the slope grading into a gentle run at the bottom of which, two hundred feet away, Alex waited beside the last of the tall, gray pylons. She brought herself to a stop beside him, showering snow over his head.

  “Like it?” he asked.

  “Wonderful!”

  He drew her attention to the pylon beside them and showed her how to operate the simple controls. The cables did not carry electrical power at all, but formed a rudimentary ski-lift to the top of the mountain. One had only to grasp the lower cable, turn on the device and be dragged up the mountainside.

  “It can be hard on the arms,” Alex said. “But you can stop and rest once or twice and then grab it again. It won't shut off until you reach the top and re-set the controls up there.”

  “I was so excited about getting on skis again that I never wondered how we would get back. I guess the road isn't open yet.”

  “Not yet,” he said. “But without the wind, the drifting won't be so bad. They'll have everything cleared up by tonight.” He sat down in the snow and began to unbuckle his skis. “Come on, let's get into town for a cup of coffee at the cafe. My face is still stinging from the cold.”

  By the time they had walked into the square, pausing now and then while Alex commented on the town along the way, they were both slightly flushed from the exertion and no longer chilled. They decided to postpone the coffee until they had thoroughly prowled from one end of Roxburgh to the other.

  Connecting the four main streets of Roxburgh like robins running from one spoke of the wheel to the other, were narrow, twisting alleyways and dead-end avenues which gave the town a feeling of size that it did not genuinely possess. They explored these streets, stopping to look at unusual pieces of turn-of-the-century architecture: an eight-room log cabin that had recently been renovated into a magnificent home; a stone grocery store and post office combination that, with its sunken windows and recessed double-open entryway, looked more like a fort than a grocery; the Catholic Church, which was done all in unpainted natural pine with wooden pegs used for nails, composed of a thousand fascinating angles and beams and struts, a miniature cathedral large enough to seat a hundred and fifty at one time, capped with such intricate detail as handcarved pew edging and altar panels.

  As they walked, Katherine learned that the Roxburgh family had originally made their money in shipping, later in railroads and highway construction. It had been Lydia's father's conceit that the Adirondack wildernesses would swiftly open to the railroads and to the not-too-distant automobile which, he maintained, would cross these mountains on hundreds of roadways, bringing civilization into the heart of the back-lands. He had been too optimistic. Roxburgh and his land purchases around it was the only investment he had been wrong about. He had permitted his own love of the countryside to unsettle his normal business sense, had built the mansion because he wanted to make it the first cornerstone of a “showplace” town. At least, though his dreams for the land did not come to pass, he was happy here, away from the bustle of high society — a bigger fish than ever, because he was in a smaller pond.

  They were climbing a steep, icy sidewalk which, though shoveled and salted, was still treacherous in places, when Michael Harrison turned the corner immediately in front of them, seemed to slip, grasped at Alex for support and sent the other man sprawling into the snow.

  “My God, I'm sorry, Alex!” Harrison said solicitously, offering him a hand up.

  Alex ignored the hand, made it on his own. He was covered in snow and distinctly comical, though the rage on his face made it impossible for Katherine to laugh.

  “That was clever as hell,” Alex said.

  “Clever?” Mike was perplexed.

  “I suppose you'll say it was an accident?” Alex wiped the last of the snow from his face. Despite the cold, his skin was pallid, white with anger.

  “It was an accident,” Mike said.

  Alex turned to Katherine. “Come on. What I wanted to show you is only a block further on.”

  Katherine felt that she was witnessing something that had a history beyond her understanding, but she said, “Alex, I'm sure Mike wouldn't—”

  “He would, believe me.”

  “I'm truly sorry that—” Harrison began.

  Alex interrupted him. “Oh, shut up, Harrison.”

  Mike shut up, though he looked baffled.

  “It wouldn't be the first time he's taken an opportunity to humiliate me,” Alex told her, teeth clenched through the last few words.

  “Really, if—” Mike began, still baffled.

  “Come on,” Alex said, rudely grasping her arm and trying to propel her past Harrison.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, holding her ground on the steep walk. She turned and faced Harrison whom they had passed and said, “I don't think the two of you should be fighting, even if you think you have a reason for it. Alex, if Michael apologized—”

  “Of course I apologize,” Harrison said. “I hadn't meant to—”

  “Apologies come easily when they aren't genuine,” Alex said. He looked at Katherine, at Harrison, back at the girl again. “But if you would prefer his company to mine — as it suddenly seems to me is the case — then be my guest.” He let go of her arm, turned and stalked down the incline toward the center of town which they had already explored, his face twisted in fury.

  “Alex!” she called.

  He did not turn.

  In a moment, he was out of sight around the corner.

  “I'm sorry to have caused trouble,” Michael said.

  “It wasn't your fault.” She smiled at him. “Whatever does he hold against you?”

  “I don't know,” Michael said glumly. “I've never known — unless it's that his grandfather started the town, but my father is the one who keeps it alive with his forests and mills.”

  “But that's a silly thing to hold against you — to make him blow up like he did.”

  “You know that, and I know that, but try to explain it to Alex. He's a strange man.” He looked the way Alex had gone, then turned to her again. “I hope I haven't put you in a bind with your employer.”

  “He isn't my employer,” Katherine said. “Lydia is. And she seems to like you quite a bit — at least to the extent that she always counters his remarks about you.”

  “That's like Lydia,” he said. “Now, you were on a tour of the town?”

  “Yes, was.”

  “Let me finish it with you.”

  She frowned. “Maybe I should be getting back—”

  “Plenty of day left,” he said. “Where were you headed for?”

  “The church,” she said. “The one that Alex's grandfather built.”

  “Straight up here,” he said, linking arms with her. His manner was warm and confident, and she found herself going with him happily.

  The Presbyterian church was of brick, colonial in style, very compact with white trim at the windows and door, and a white wooden cap on the slim, brick bell tower.

  “It was the second building in town,” Michael explained, “after the grocery and post office — and after Owlsden, of course. It was called something other than Owlsden then, though.”

  He opened the church door and ushered her into a darkened vestibule, found a light switch.

  “It's very pretty,” she said.

  He closed the door behind them. “It is, isn't it? Very simple and yet somehow reverent. Amazing that the same man could have approved the design for this— and for Owlsden too.”

  Katherine walked into the church proper ahead of him, moving down the shadowed center aisle between the two sections of high-backed pews, squinting to see in the dim light that washed out of the vestibule behind her. The only other sources of light, even less illuminating than the bare, seventy-five watt bulb in the first chamber, were the tall, extremely narrow, darkly-stained glass windows on either side. The church was rich with the odor of furniture polish and candle wax and worn
leather cushions.

  She would never have thought, for a moment, that there could be anything in a church to terrify her. Perhaps she should have thought through some relationship between Christianity and Satanism and, therefore, should have recalled the aftermath of the Satanic ceremony which she had stumbled across the day before. But she did not.

  Not until Michael turned on the main lights in the church…

  He found a switch just inside the entrance from the vestibule, flicked it and brought light to the three, massive candleform chandeliers that were placed down the middle of the church, unexpectedly illuminating one of the most grotesque scenes that Katherine had ever come across or even imagined in her life.

  The altar was formed around a twelve foot metal cross that occupied the central position of venerability. Hanging from each of the crossarms was a dead dog. Both dogs had been gutted from throat to hind-quarters, and their blood had been splashed over everything. That and the fat, black candles that had been stuck at a few points on the altar and were now mostly disfigured stumps was clue enough as to what had transpired here: the cultists again.

  When Michael touched her and called her name soothingly, she screamed and jumped nearly a foot. He put his arm around her and drew her to him, forcibly turned her away from the altar. He said, “Don't look at it, Katherine.”

  She followed his suggestion and was facing the rear of the church when she said, “Two times in two days., It's almost as if they put this here for us — for me to find.”

  “Nonsense,” he said.

  She gagged into her handkerchief, then began coughing uncontrollably. Tears came to her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. In the vestibule to which he had slowly been leading her, she said, “But in just two days, I've—”

  “Had some very bad luck,” he finished for her. “Nothing more than that.” But his face was pale.

  “Where was the minister when they were doing this?” she asked.

  “The church doesn't have a resident clergyman,” he explained, still holding her, steadying her. “Our minister travels between four area churches.”

  “What should we do?”

  “I'll talk to the constable right away,” he said. “Those things can be taken down quickly enough, before the whole grisly story gets around town and draws a crowd. One thing is certain. Now, maybe they'll realize how close to home this stinking business hits. When their own church has been violated, maybe they'll feel like doing something for a change, no matter how much Lydia and Alex ridicule the notion that these cultists are dangerous.”

  “Can we go now?” she asked, thinking of the sacrificial animals hanging in the church behind her.

  “Yes,” he said. He turned her to him and kissed her squarely on the lips. “You're a strong-hearted girl to have taken all that without fainting.”

  Strangely, the simple fact of his kiss did a great deal toward ameliorating the worst of the scene's impression. She wondered why she should find such solace in a kiss and why, after having just met him, she should react to him so quickly, be so pleased with him. But now was not the time for the answers to those questions. She said, “I may faint yet if you don't get me out of here.”

  He pushed open the church door and helped her down the steps into the cold afternoon air. “We'll go directly to the constable,” he said. “I'm going to set fire under his apathetic tail.”

  CHAPTER 6

  She retired early that night, showered, dressed for bed and lay down to sort out the events of the long and complicated day, trying to put them into some reasonable perspective. She was close to exhaustion, but she felt that she had to come to terms with the rather unpleasant developments and decide what she was going to do next — remain in Owlsden as Lydia's secretary and try to weather these strange events, or leave soon and search for another job that might be far less remunerative but easier on the nerves.

  One of the first things the constable had done was to call the Bolands and let them know that the Satanists had not only been at work again, but had violated the very church they attended regularly and which Lydia's father had planned and constructed with his own funds. In an hour, thanks to the quick work of the plow that had opened the road that morning and early afternoon, Lydia and Alex were there to look over the damage and assess the insanity of those who had been responsible. Throughout the re-examination of the church, Katherine had noticed a smug look on the constable's face. He was a thin, dark little man named Cartier, and he was not good at disguising an I-told-you-so self-righteousness Lydia had the good taste to ignore but which drew Alex's ire in short order.

  The afternoon had been spent in making preliminary plans to catch the Satanists in their work if they dared be so bold about it again. Lydia pledged a substantial sum to the town treasury for the maintenance of a larger parttime deputy force to keep the streets and buildings of the town under constant observation during the night hours.

  Michael Harrison, who was sitting beside Katherine in the conference room of the town hall, leaned toward her and whispered, “They made fun of all this until it touched something of theirs.”

  Though Michael had been quiet, Alex heard him and challenged him on the point. The disagreement soon became a full-fledged argument — though the greatest part of the shouting and gesticulating was on Alex's side. Michael answered calmly, rationally, though sometimes a bit bitterly, only to further infuriate Alex by his reserved manner. At one point, Alex struck him as a challenge to a fight and had to be restrained by the constable who was clearly enjoying the confrontation.

  After that, the meeting broke up, and Katherine rode back to Owlsden with the Bolands. Lydia attempted to relax everyone with gay observations on the weather and the efficiency of the plows but had to give up long before they reached the tall oak doors of the ancestral house. Alex, in a brooding mood, did not say anything at all.

  At dinner, Alex had begun a rambling monologue whose subject was almost exclusively Michael Harrison, opening a vein of anger, dislike and bitterness that was unpleasant to behold. Too, he put forth the opinion that Harrison himself might very well be behind these recent Satanic ceremonies and felt — in some way that Katherine could not comprehend — that Harrison was doing this only as a means to get to the Roxburgh-Boland family and embarrass them.

  When his mother asked him please to cease that line of conversation, he challenged her on her defense of Harrison and left the table in a huff after upsetting his water glass and breaking the tiny, fragile wine taster beside it.

  Lydia apologized for Alex when he was gone and tried to pass off his maniac behavior as nothing more than a case of bad nerves. However, even she did not seem to believe that it was as simple as that, and she excused herself for the remainder of the evening as soon as dessert had been served.

  Now, alone in her room, Katherine, considering the drawbacks to life in Roxburgh and Owlsden, began to make a mental list of debits that she had been willing to ignore until the events of the afternoon. First of all, there was this whole cult business, this sacrificing of animals and playing at devil worship. She now saw that it was far more serious than she had at first thought. As Michael said the first time they had talked about it, though Satanism was silly and unbelievable, the adherents of such an odd faith might very well be dangerously mentally unbalanced. And since they held some ceremonies in the forest behind Owlsden, perhaps one was not safe alone, at night, as Yuri had protested — though the danger lay in mortal agents, not in supernatural stalkers. Secondly, she thought she would not be able to abide Alex Boland's increasingly unpleasant temperament for long without telling him exactly what she thought of his childish outbursts. He seemed to get depressed too quickly, to react too suddenly to even the slightest irritant. And what was this obsession with Michael Harrison all about? At times, Alex was downright slanderous when he talked of Mike… Thirdly, there was the townspeople's underlying envy of the Roxburgh-Boland family which she had not noticed until this afternoon when the constable and various other town offic
ials got such a kick out of proving that Lydia and Alex were wrong on the question of the Satanists. Katherine supposed that all wealthy people were subjected to this kind of attitude now and again, but, even so, she felt that it proved the existence of a minor streak of hypocrisy in what was reputedly a happy town. Fourthly, there was Alex's treatment of his mother which, at dinner this evening, had ceased to be exemplary and became inexcusably rude. His use of a few four-letter words at the table had visibly shaken his mother, and his overall temper had thoroughly blighted the evening. If this continued, Katherine could hardly hold her thoughts in, but would be forced to give him a hefty piece of her mind.

  Something else that bothered her was the slowly developing relationship between Michael Harrison and herself. In just two days, they had progressed from a casual friendliness to a kiss in the vestibule of the church, a kiss he had seemed to mean whole-heartedly and which she had taken without reserve. She remembered, now, how her heart had beaten more quickly when he had kissed her and how the kiss had instantly calmed the terror generated by the discovery of the two sacrificed animals on the altar… She had never been one for forming such close attachments in so little time, and she was afraid that exterior circumstances were driving her into an affectionate relationship with Michael that she did not actually feel. Among strangers, disconcerted by the gruesome events of the past two days, perhaps she was too eager for companionship to think straight. Yet… yet a curious warmth stole over her even now, when she remembered his arm around her shoulders.

  Add one more debit to the list. If she did find herself increasingly attracted to Michael Harrison— and if he became increasingly attracted to her as he already seemed to be — it would be all that much more difficult to listen to Alex and his anti-Harrison tirades.

  She was about to begin listing the credits attached to remaining here at Owlsden when someone knocked lightly on her door.