Bellwether

by Jenny Ashford

  As soon as he had rounded the corner by the old garage, he saw what the trouble was. Two police cars had pulled into the driveway, the bumper of the foremost vehicle less than a yard from the now bedraggled line of disciples. Behind the police cars was another car that Ivan recognized immediately; Chloe was standing behind the open driver’s side door, her red hair like an angry smear across the landscape. She spotted him and her face took on a hard edge. “Ivan,” she called. “Get these people out of here now. I mean it.”

  “You know him, ma’am?” Ivan heard one of the police officers ask.

  “Yes,” she answered simply. She turned back to Ivan. “What do you want here? If you’ve decided to join a cult, I guess that’s up to you. Why can’t you leave the rest of us out of it?”

  “Send the police away, Chloe.” Ivan had stopped a few feet from the police cars, smiling, showing them that he wasn’t any threat. “You know we don’t mean you any harm.”

  “Yeah, why am I not so sure about that?” Chloe slammed her car door and took a few steps forward. The police motioned for her to keep back, and even though she shook her head at them and made to keep moving, she finally and reluctantly did as she was told. “Your best friend, Martin, is in there alone, Ivan,” she called, her arms folded across her chest. “Is that why you came here, to scare him half to death? Or is it because you want something from us and you figured it would be easier to get it if there was only one person in the way?”

  “I want only what Mother and Father want,” Ivan answered, taking care that his smile did not falter. He could tell that the cops were getting more and more uneasy with each passing minute. He may have been on a mission, but Ivan didn’t particularly want to get shot. He held up is hands slightly, a gesture of partial surrender. “Mother and Father are good people,” he said. “They sent us here only to wait. We don’t mean to hurt anyone.”

  The cops turned to Chloe, silently asking what their next move should be. She narrowed her eyes. “Get rid of them,” she said, her gaze still fixed on Ivan. “Can I go inside to see if Martin is all right?”

  “Ma’am, it would probably be better if you —”

  She waved dismissively at them. “I’ll be all right. Just get rid of all these people. They’re a nuisance and they’ve been harassing us. I don’t want any of them hurt, but I do want them all gone as soon as possible.”

  Chloe marched past the stunned cops and headed directly for Ivan. “I’m only trying to help you,” she said when she was within three feet of him. “Maybe one day we’ll get you back, and then you’ll understand why I had to do this.”

  Ivan looked down at her, sadly. He remembered loving her, remembered the close friendship that blossomed between them, but the memories were strange, disconnected, as though they were someone else’s. Now, in his view, Chloe was simply recalcitrant, another obstacle in the way of his mission, like Martin, like his former lover, Olivia. None of them would be an obstacle for long, and perhaps his sadness was more a feeling of pity for her, for all his former friends. “It doesn’t matter now what you do to us,” he said, too softly for anyone but Chloe to hear. “It’s all going to happen soon, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

  She glared into his face, defiant, looking as though she’d just as soon spit at him as speak to him. “We’ll just see about that,” she hissed, then breezed past him, not looking back. The other disciples, whose tight ring formation had dissolved into a loose clumped mob, parted in the face of her obvious rage and contempt. As Ivan watched her rod-straight back, she stomped up the brick front steps and disappeared into the house, slamming the door behind her with a sound like a pistol crack.

  Martin was huddled beneath the ragged hole on the stair landing when he heard the front door slam. He didn’t move, even though he knew it must be Chloe; he felt safe here, the way he did in his dreams, despite the lurking presence of the unseen dead man below.

  A few moments later, there were footsteps, and then Chloe poked her fox-like face around the corner. He wanted to cry when he saw her, but he laughed instead. “My hero,” he said, and then held his arms out so she could fold herself into them. She was laughing now, too. “How did you get past…them?” Martin asked.

  “Oh, you know what a mean stubborn bitch I am,” she said, pulling back from him a little so she could look at him with her big, searching eyes.

  “I heard the police cars pull up.”

  “Yeah.” She glanced away, toward the back door, as though she could see through it to the outside. “I ordered them to disperse the Jim Jones brigade out there. At this point, I don’t think I even care if the cops just mow them all down. Save us a lot of trouble.”

  Martin stared at her, trying to decide whether she was joking or not. “They can’t help being that way, babe,” he said.

  “I know,” she sighed. “I didn’t really mean it.”

  He thought maybe a small part of her did mean it, but he didn’t pursue it. He had known Chloe for more than six years, but it seemed as though he was always stumbling across uncharted dark waters in her character. It certainly kept things interesting, he had to admit that, but it was a little scary, too. Then again, he’d been standing out on the porch with a knife in his hand not more than half an hour ago, so who was he to judge?

  “What are we going to do if the cops can’t get rid of them?” Martin wondered aloud.

  “Well, I’ve been thinking,” Chloe began, and he realized he knew what she was going to say before she said it. “Those people obviously want something in the house, or want the house itself for some purpose only they know about. Do you think they might want that body?”

  Martin couldn’t think of a reason why they would, but it seemed a reasonable possibility under the circumstances. The thought had crossed his mind as he had sat here waiting for Chloe to come. Crossed his mind more than once, in fact. “You think we should go back down there,” he said. He didn’t mention that he’d been in the process of doing that very thing when the Bellwether crew had turned up.

  “Yeah,” Chloe said. Her hand still grasped his, loosely. “Even if the body is nothing to do with it, there has to be something we missed. Even if there isn’t, we’ll be safer down there than up here when the barmy army finally get in.”

  He had to agree with her there. “What about Olivia?”

  “I called her before. She won’t be home until past seven probably.” She fished in her pocket for her cell phone. “I’ll call her again and tell her what we’re doing. If she can get in the house, we can leave some kind of trail for her to follow down the hole. If she can’t get in, maybe she can stay over at Seth’s. I’m warning you, we might have to stay down in the hole for a long time until this shit all blows over.”

  Martin shuddered slightly at the thought of sitting down there in the featureless darkness, knowing there was a corpse nearby but unable to see it, perhaps being able to hear the thundering footsteps of the invaders upstairs once the mystical threshold had been crossed. He silently hoped things wouldn’t come to that. Maybe they’d be able to find out something more while they were down below. Something that could help them out of this mess.

  “Get another flashlight, and some rope from the basement,” Chloe said, getting to her feet. “Oh, and there’s something else.”

  Martin had reluctantly moved to follow her orders, but he stopped and turned to her. “What’s that?”

  “I’m going to get the hammer again. In the dreams, there are three other places, remember? Something was making us touch the walls there, in the living room and upstairs. I want to check those places, too.” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s nothing, but then again…”

  “Maybe it’s something,” Martin finished.

  “Exactly.” Chloe began punching buttons on her cell phone. “I’m gonna call Olivia, then I’ll get to work on those other walls, see what we can see.” She lo
oked up and smiled at him, a sad smile. “After that, I guess we can start heading on down.”

  * * * *

  Ivan could feel that the time was very near. Mother and Father were very close now, and the threshold would soon be passed.

  He stood and faced the two police officers, his smile never faltering. He was not afraid of them; there was nothing they could do to stop any of this. Nevertheless, he thought it would be better if they were out of the way. What was going to happen was none of their business, and they might cause a bit of trouble if they weren’t dealt with immediately.

  “I’m sorry about all of this,” Ivan said. He could tell that the cops were still nervous, so he kept his voice even and friendly. He didn’t make any move toward them, and kept his hands loose and still by his sides. “We’re just going to go, okay? We really didn’t mean anyone any harm.”

  He knew the officers didn’t believe him, although it was obvious by their faces that they wanted to; they probably had no idea how they were going to disperse all these people anyway, and were no doubt hoping for an easy resolution to the problem. “Sir, we’d really like to know what’s going on here,” the cop closest to Ivan said.

  Ivan gave them what he hoped was an aw-shucks grin. “Well, it started out as kind of a joke on my friend, Martin,” he said.

  “The young lady doesn’t seem to think it’s very funny,” the second cop said.

  Ivan shrugged. “Yeah. I guess it all kind of blew up in my face.” He laughed.

  Just at that moment, he felt a ripple on the air, like an earthquake that had no external form but simply manifested itself directly in the marrow of his bones. His friendly expression fluttered briefly, but he quickly recovered himself. It didn’t appear that the cops had noticed the change.

  Ivan smiled inwardly, triumph surging through his veins. Mother and Father had racked up another step toward the threshold. All the followers had felt it; he could sense their psyches buzzing in time with his, like the whine of a giant circuit. It was all he could do to keep his hands still and his face neutral. Soon now, it would be very soon. “So, we’re just going to go now, okay?” he said. “Again, I’m really sorry to have caused so much trouble. It’s just been a big misunderstanding.”

  One of the cops crossed his arms, his eyes narrowing. “You’re sure this was all just a joke?”

  Ivan laughed again, losing patience with the whole charade. He risked taking a step or two toward the officers, though he willed the other disciples to keep still with benevolent smiles on their faces. They all did. “Yeah, I’m sure. Not a very good one, I guess.” He took a few more steps. The disciples wouldn’t have to go far; they could make their way toward the road until the cops left, then circle back and hide out in the woods until Mother and Father arrived with the news they’d all been waiting for. “We’re going now, all right?” He raised his arms as if in surrender. He wanted to glance back at the house to see if Chloe or Martin was watching through the windows, but he didn’t dare.

  One of the officers crouched a little, as if on the verge of getting back into his cruiser, whether to drive away or call for backup on his radio, Ivan wasn’t sure. The closer cop hadn’t moved, although his hand was thankfully no longer hovering near his gun belt. The wariness in his eyes still hadn’t completely disappeared, though. “Are you all going to go quietly?” he asked, a threat bubbling just under the surface of the question.

  “Absolutely.” Ivan glanced back at the other disciples and made a very slight gesture with his head. They all met his eyes, and all began to move at the same moment, slowly and calmly, their faces slack and contented. They all knew how near the time was, and knew this was only a temporary setback.

  Ivan led the followers past the two cops, and he couldn’t help but salute them jauntily as he walked by. The horde began the long walk between the trees, along the dirt path toward the road. After a few minutes, Ivan heard two car engines coming up behind them. He didn’t turn to look. The cop cars passed them slowly on the right, kicking up clouds of sand with their tires. Ivan waited until the cars were out of sight, leaving nothing but a miasma of dust hanging in the air. Then, without a word, he signaled to the others. Silently, moving as one great organism, they dispersed among the trees to hide and wait for their salvation.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  By the time Olivia arrived home, it was nearly dark, and there was no sign outside the house that anything had happened at all. She prepared for World War Three after that weird phone call from Chloe, and convinced Seth to come with her. Once she approached the house, she found the stillness more disturbing than a riot would have been. The very air seemed on the cusp of disaster.

  The pair of them entered through the back door, stealthily, jumping at every creak of the boards beneath their feet. By the fading daylight through the kitchen window, Olivia saw immediately where Martin and Chloe had gone; one end of a cheap white rope had been nailed clumsily to the wall of the stair landing, just outside the hole. Olivia was suddenly reminded of Theseus and the labyrinth. It wasn’t an encouraging association.

  They scrounged another flashlight from the basement and drank two espressos each, to fortify their courage. Seth tried to smile, but it was strained, and the flashlight trembled a little in his hand. Olivia knew how he felt. The last thing she wanted to do was go down into that hole—Christ, Martin’s description of it had been bad enough—but it seemed as though there was no way around it.

  She stood by the side of the hole. Seth pressed in at her back; she could feel his adrenaline pumping, hear his quickened breaths. The fact that big, scary Seth was afraid made Olivia slightly less so; at least she didn’t have to go through this alone. Sticking her face partway into the opening, she shouted Chloe’s name into the blackness, then poised her ear for a reply. For a long moment, there was nothing, and then she thought she could hear a voice, very faint and far away. It might have been wishful thinking, but she hoped it wasn’t. “Well, let’s get going,” she said.

  Seth climbed in first and then pulled Olivia in by her arms. They began following the rope through the empty space, each second passing like an hour. The flashlight they’d found was an old one, and kept flickering out, making it necessary for Seth to smack the plastic casing every few minutes. Nevertheless, the pitiful light it gave off was more than welcome.

  Neither of them spoke, but Olivia knew that Seth was thinking the same thing as she was, namely that she never could have imagined what it was like in that hole, and that it was worse than anything she had ever experienced in her entire life. The place freaked her out immensely, but she did her best to stay calm, silently groping along the lifeline in the guttering nothingness. Seth kept moving, too, his back squared in an oddly grim pose; she guessed he was just concentrating on maintaining his sanity, just like she was.

  The trek seemed endless with no landscape to guide them, and Olivia thought that this was what it must feel like to be floating in the deepest reaches of space, so far out that no stars or planets were visible. Maybe this was what it was like on the event horizon of a black hole; the idea made her shudder. After what seemed like an eternity of listening to nothing but their shallow breaths, Olivia was startled almost to the point of screaming when Seth whispered, “I think we should call to them again.”

  Once her heart had regained its normal rhythm, Olivia agreed. Seth had stopped walking, and without realizing it, she had moved right past him. It was then that she nearly stumbled headlong through an unseen doorway, catching herself just as her toes were dangling over the edge. “Shit!”

  A strong hand clapped around her arm, pulling her back. “Watch it there,” Seth said. “What is it?” He waved his fingers in front of him, feeling for anything tangible.

  “I guess it’s that doorway they told us about,” she said. She didn’t add that she fervently hoped the two pioneers were at this moment standing at the bottom of
the steps waiting for them, with more light and hopefully more answers. Olivia thought briefly of what else Martin had told her was down there, but she shoved the memory away.

  The rope squirmed a little in her hands. “Hey, are you guys down there?” she shouted.

  The flashlight flickered in the silence. Then, very faint, “Yes, we’re here.” It was Martin’s voice. “Come down and be careful on the steps.”

  The two of them managed to get to the bottom without stumbling too many times, and a second later Olivia could see the dim glow from another flashlight, and a quick glimpse of a face in the blackness. She headed eagerly toward it, now gripping the rope loosely with only one hand. Seth followed right on her heels.

  Finally, their own flashlight picked out Martin and Chloe’s unreadable expressions floating in the vast nothingness. The light also illuminated three small dust-covered boxes tucked under Martin’s good arm. “What are those?” Olivia whispered.

  “We found them behind the walls, you know, in the other three places.”

  Olivia nodded, but Seth frowned. “What are you guys talking about?”

  “The dreams,” Olivia said without elaborating further. “What’s in them?”

  “We’re not sure what they’re for,” Chloe said, keeping her voice very low. “One’s got an old book in it, and one has a crystal bell, and the other one has a hunk of something like wax.”

  “Let me see,” Olivia said, moving closer to Martin and Chloe’s circle of light.

  “Don’t get too close,” Martin warned, his voice seeming like a yell even though it was barely more than a whisper. “That body is right here in front of you.”

  Olivia stopped abruptly, and Seth jumbled headlong into her back before he sorted himself out. “Christ. Is it really…a dead body?” She snatched the flashlight from Seth and pointed it to where it should be, but, of course, she couldn’t see anything.

  “I guess so,” Chloe said. “I touched the face and the hands. They feel like a real person’s. If it’s a dummy, it’s the most realistic one I’ve ever felt.”