The Town (18 page)

Gathering up her courage, she whirled around.

And there was no one there.

She scanned the shadows and the dark, searching for signs of movement, a person or an animal, but visibility was too limited, the night too black and inky to be able to tell whether someone was hiding behind a rock or a bush. The only thing she knew for sure was that no one was on the road behind her. The dirt street was lighter than everything else, and even in this dimness she would have been able to see the smudged outline of anyone—
anything

—on the road.

Maybe it had been an animal making the noise, she thought. A jackrabbit. Or a bobcat.

Maybe.

But she didn’t think so.

She broke into a jog. Her little cottage was only a couple of hundred yards ahead, and if she hurried, she could be home and safely inside in a matter of moments. A motion detector switched on the sharp fluorescent beam of a driveway spotlight on the house to her right, and her attention was automatically captured and pulled in that direction. There was no sign of any person or animal on the gravel in front of the house, but in the diffused glow of peripheral illumination, she saw movement on the cliff wall above the residence, a white, misshapen figure that clambered down an impossibly steep slope at an unbelievable rate of speed.

She started running toward home as fast as her legs would carry her.

The road was rough, the hard-packed dirt filled with rocks and ruts, and several times she nearly stumbled, but she never fell and she kept moving forward, frantic to get as far away from the freakish form as she could. She was not at all sure that home would provide any protection, but she could at least lock herself in and call the police and let them take care of the problem.

She kept her eyes focused on the street in front of her and on the darkened square at the end of the lane that was her cottage, but the ultraquick movement of the thing on the cliff remained at the edge of her vision and the forefront of her consciousness, and as it dropped past the roof level of the house and she lost track of it, she increased her speed.

Or tried to.

For she was already running as fast as she possibly could, her leg muscles aching and breath coming in harsh gasps that were so loud in her ears they would have drowned out even the sound of a scream.

She didn’t know what was happening, didn’t know what that figure was, but she knew that it was not human and she knew that she did not want to come in contact with it. At this point she was not even sure if the creature was aware of her existence. If she had imagined the noises behind her on the road, if that had been entirely unconnected and the monster on the cliff had been concentrating on the rock wall it was descending, maybe it had not spotted her. She prayed for that to be the case, and it was only the hope that she had not been noticed that kept her from screaming.

She reached her gate and pushed it open as she ran forward, already fumbling with her keys as she dashed up the wooden steps to the cottage door.

A loud, sharp thump on the roof of the porch did make her scream and startled her into dropping her keys. She heard them hit the rock between the open steps.

She looked up to see the source of the thump.

And saw it peeking over the edge of the roof at her.

The figure grinned, its teeth abnormally long in its too-skinny face.

She cried out, but this time no sound emerged, and before she could adjust her brain to rectify that, its cold, gelatinous hands were around her mouth.

I
t was the first time he’d been alone in the house.

And Adam was scared.

He didn’t know why, but he was. He sat there watching TV, and after a while he had to go to the bathroom and realized that he was afraid to do so—afraid to go upstairs to his parents’ bathroom, afraid to go to the bathroom by Teo’s room, afraid to leave the living room, period.

He crossed his legs, held it in.

The house was dark. Even in the daytime it was dark, and after all this time he still did not feel comfortable in it. Part of it was no doubt due to what Scott had told him about it being haunted, but the truth was that he’d felt this way even before he’d known anything about that. It was an instinctive reaction, a response to the place that had nothing to do with stories or rumors or third-hand accounts, and now that he was here alone, he found that he was not quite as nonchalant about it all as he had been with his friend.

He thought about the
banya
.

He tried
not
to think about the
banya
.

Babunya was doing Molokan things, and his parents and Teo were out shopping, buying groceries and picking out videotapes: a Russian film for his grandmother and a Disney movie for Teo. Sasha was over at one of her friends’ houses. Although his parents had invited him to come along with them, he had declined, explaining that he had some math homework to catch up on, and they’d left him here alone.

He’d been waiting for just such an opportunity to sneak into Sasha’s room and do a little exploring, but now he was afraid to go upstairs at all, and his sick impulse would have to remain unacted upon until some other time, until he became braver.

Jesus. What the hell was wrong with him? Something sure had happened since they’d moved to Arizona. He’d turned into a complete wuss, for one thing. Jumping at every little sound, afraid of his own shadow. And he’d become some sort of pervert, stalking his own sister and trying to peek up her skirts, trying to catch her naked, wanting to examine the contents of her room in hopes of finding . . . what? A diary?

Yes. A diary.

In his sickest and most elaborate fantasy, he found her diary and discovered that she had intentionally flashed him on his birthday, had purposely allowed him to look between her legs and see her underwear as part of his birthday present. She had been waiting ever since for him to make a move and had put down all of her sexual thoughts about him in her diary.

It was ridiculous, of course, but he grew hard just thinking about it, and for a brief moment he forgot that he was alone in the house and afraid.

Then he heard what sounded like something heavy being dropped on the floor upstairs, and he jumped, spilling the sack of potato chips on his lap. He moved the potato chip bag aside, listening carefully, ready to run out of the house if he heard any other sounds, but all was quiet save for the lame jokes and canned laughter of the rerun on the television. He waited a few more minutes, but there was nothing else, and he put it down to the settling of the house—his father’s all-purpose excuse for unexplained noises—then reached for the remote and turned up the television volume.

He and Scott had stopped by Dan Runninghorse’s house on the way home from school yesterday. Dan lived at the edge of the reservation, and his dad was the chief, but even though the other Indian kids were always kissing his ass, they didn’t much like him, and the feeling was reciprocal. They were nice to him, but only because of who he was and what he could do for them, and Dan resented that. He and Scott, though, had been pals since kindergarten, natural outcasts who had banded together, and they shared a relaxed, easy camaraderie that reminded Adam of himself and Roberto and made him feel a sharp pang of homesickness.

Adam, too, liked Dan and found the Indian boy easy to get along with. There was a calm sort of confidence about him, and an emotional and intellectual openness more common to metropolitan Southern California than small-town Arizona. Both Scott and Dan were different from most of the other kids here, more like himself, and he was grateful that he had found them.

He didn’t know what he’d expected to see at Dan’s place. Not a tepee, certainly, but also not the rather mainstream-looking house with its potted palms and wicker patio furniture. They’d gotten Dr Peppers out of the refrigerator and sat around in Dan’s bedroom, talking a bit about scary stuff—haunted houses and mysterious deaths and cactus births and eerie occurrences. Dan said it was the mine that had drawn evil to McGuane. Adam assumed he meant that the town was built on a sacred site and that the gods or spirits or whatever had cursed the place, but Dan said no, not exactly.

The earth was their mother, he explained, not just their home. It was the source of all life. It was also a living entity, made up of dirt and rock, plant and water, and the mine was like a big open sore on its body. It hurt here, and it sent out the equivalent of antibodies to fight the disease—ghosts and spirits, demons and monsters.

“It is trying to protect itself,” Dan said. “That’s why this place is haunted.”

The day was warm, but Adam shivered. There was a logic to Dan’s argument that made it seem not only believable but likely, and he imagined increasingly powerful supernatural entities being sent to McGuane until the town was entirely overrun. The other boy seemed totally serious, it was clear that he was not goofing around or playing with them, and there was something about the gravity of his bearing that lent weight to his words.

Adam was acutely conscious of the fact that he was on a reservation, in the house of a chief, and it was a strangely disorienting experience. He felt suddenly as though he was in a foreign country, a place that was geographically part of America but where American laws and beliefs did not apply.

He’d lived with, gone to school with, been friends with, people from a lot of different minority groups back in Downey. There were Russians, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Mexicans, Armenians,
India
Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese. But Native Americans had not really been represented in the multicultural melting pot of Southern California, and their ways were unfamiliar to him, what little knowledge he had having been filtered through the distorting prism of movies and television. They were exotic but indigenous, and their ghost stories, their folklore, their superstitions, seemed scarier to him than others because they’d been here for so long. They were an old people, the first residents of this land, and he found that spooky. It gave their beliefs greater credence in his eyes, and he had no trouble buying Dan’s theory.

“You don’t really believe that,” Scott said.

“Of course I do,” Dan replied. “It’s common knowledge. At least among my people. And it explains why all of that weird stuff happens here. Besides, do you have a better theory?”

Scott shrugged.

Adam looked at Dan. He was impressed by how comfortable the other boy was with his heritage, with his religion. Dan wasn’t embarrassed by it, didn’t try to apologize for it or explain it away, and that made Adam feel a little better about his own background. He suddenly didn’t feel so ashamed about being a Molokan, and for the first time he experienced a sense of . . . not pride but . . . acceptance.

He cleared his throat. “I know a place that’s haunted. A
really
spooky place.”

“Where?” Scott said, interested.

“It’s on our property—”

“I knew it! After all those murders . . .”

“It’s not the house. It’s not even near the house. It’s on the opposite end of our property. It’s a . . . a
banya
.” He felt good as he said the Russian word. “A bathhouse.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a place where they cleanse themselves,” Dan said, and Adam was reminded of the fact that Indians had
banyas
too. Or their version of it. “It’s like a steam bath, right?”

“Yeah,” Adam said.

“And it’s haunted?” Scott asked.

He nodded. He described the bones and the shadow, told them of his grandmother’s refusal to go in the building. They both wanted to see it immediately.

They’d walked over to his house, and he’d taken them out to the
banya
and shown them first the bone he believed to be the femur of a child and then the shadow of the Russian man.

The shadow.

They’d both seen it. Scott found it cool and exciting and thought they should call the
Enquirer
to take a picture of it, or at the very least charge admission to see it, but Dan’s response was more serious and subdued. He would not speak while inside the
banya
, and when he was once again outside he told Adam that he agreed with his grandmother, and he suggested that Adam stay as far away from the
banya
as possible.

Adam had half thought that coming here with a group of people would dissipate the oppressiveness of the atmosphere, would lessen the dread he felt, but it did not. He was just as scared being here with Scott and Dan as he had been when he’d come by himself. More scared, perhaps, because he now had verification that the shadow of the man was real, was a concrete apparition and not some misinterpreted wall stain or trick of light.

And Dan’s warning sent chills down his spine.

They’d left quickly after that, and on the way back his friends asked him if there was anything creepy about the rest of the property or the house itself, and he had told them no.

But that wasn’t true, and he wished they were here now to confirm what he was feeling as he concentrated on the television and tried not to hear any other noises. The air in the house felt as heavy as the air in the
banya
, and there was that same sense of apprehension, that feeling that something bad was about to happen.

There was another thump from upstairs, and on the wall above the steps he thought he saw the quick dart of a wild shadow.

He ran out of the house.

He did not turn off the television, did not even close the door behind him. He simply dashed outside and kept running until he was halfway up the drive.

His heart was pounding, and he had a difficult time catching his breath, but that heavy dread was gone, and he turned around to look at the house. What was it? he wondered. What was in there? One of Dan’s earth-sent spirits? Or the ghosts of the murdered family Scott had told him about? He didn’t know, but either way he was scared, and he wished Babunya was here. She seemed to know how to handle this kind of stuff.