The Town

1

Julia needed the van to buy groceries, and after lunch she offered to drop Gregory back off at the café, but he said he’d rather walk off the calories, and he gave her a quick kiss and started up the drive.

He was looking better since they’d moved to McGuane. The middle-age spread that had been overtaking his midsection for the past few years had receded somewhat, and he looked fitter than he had in quite some time. All the walking on those hilly streets was doing him good. He seemed happier, too, than he had back in California, and he’d made the adjustment to small-town life quite easily.

She was getting used to McGuane herself. After her disastrous attempt at volunteering, she’d retreated back into her home and actually started to write her children’s book. So far it was going surprisingly well. She was pleased with what she’d accomplished.

There’d also been no new “incidents,” as she called them, and her fear and dread seemed to have disappeared as quickly as they had arrived. She could still not truthfully say that she felt comfortable in the house, but she was not afraid of it anymore, and while Gregory’s mother continued to say a quick prayer each and every time she entered the place, a hurried blessing muttered half under her breath, she’d always done that, and it didn’t bother Julia at all.

She walked back inside the kitchen, picked up the grocery list she’d made, and invited her mother-in-law to accompany her to the store, making it clear that she was planning to go to the Molokan market, but the old lady declined, claiming she was tired. She’d been tired ever since the funeral, and both Julia and Gregory were worried about her. She seemed to have lost something after Jim Petrovin’s death, some spark of animation, and she seemed to be just existing these days, exhibiting little or no interest in… well, in anything. It was as if she had simply disconnected herself from life and was biding her time, waiting to die.

This could not go on. Julia knew that she and Gregory were going to have to sit her down and talk to her, but Julia did not feel qualified or comfortable enough to do it alone, and she did not press her mother-in-law to go on the trip to the market. She simply nodded, accepting the old woman’s decision, and said that she’d be back in twenty minutes or so.

Julia took the keys out of her purse, walked outside, and got into the van, starting the ignition and immediately turning on the air conditioner. They had discussed buying another vehicle—they could certainly afford it now—but one seemed to be enough at this point. Sasha had been pressuring them for her own car, and while she and Gregory had adopted a “we’ll see” attitude in front of their daughter, they were planning on getting her a jeep for graduation.

She drove down to the market, parking in the dirt lot on the side of the building. She grabbed a shopping cart and looked up at the painted butcher paper in the window that advertised this week’s specials. Bell peppers were on sale, as were whole chicken fryers, and she mentally adjusted her planned menu, deleting ground beef from her list. They would have fajitas tomorrow instead of burgers.

She’d finished most of her shopping and was in the canned-food aisle picking up some diced green chiles, when a woman next to her said, “Excuse me, don’t you work at the library?”

Julia looked up, confused. “Uh, no.”

“Really? I thought I saw you there a couple of weeks ago.”

“And you remembered me?”

The woman smiled. “It’s a small town.”

Julia examined her fellow shopper more carefully. Approximately her own age, with short blond hair and clothes that seemed far too hip for McGuane, she was not someone Julia recognized, yet she did seem vaguely familiar.

“I was thinking of volunteering a few days a week,” Julia explained. “But I changed my mind.”

“The reason I ask is because I used to work at the library myself.” The woman paused. “How… did you like the other volunteers there?” she asked carefully.

“They were loony. That’s why I quit. Alma was talking about some comet that was going to hit Earth and they were all into bizarre conspiracy theories.”

The woman wiped her brow in a melodramatically exaggerated expression of relief. “Whew! I was hoping you’d say that. But you can’t be too careful in this town.” She smiled. “My name’s Deanna Matthews.”

Julia blinked. “Are you related to Paul Matthews?” “He’s my husband.”

“This is a small town. My husband is Gregory Tomasov.”

Deanna laughed. “Gregory’s wife and a normal person to boot! It’s my lucky day. Are you Molokan, too?”

Julia nodded.

“I’m not, but I grew up here.”

“So you knew Gregory when he was little?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I take it you were all friends—”

Deanna laughed. “Well… Not exactly. To tell you the truth, he was kind of a…”

“Jerk?”

“Thank you. I was trying to think of a polite way to say it.”

“I think he’s changed since then.”

“I hope so.” Deanna chuckled. “Although, to be honest, Paul was just as bad back then. Maybe even worse. They were both typical teenagers, but in a place like this that means asshole.” She moved her cart aside to let another shopper pass. “Listen, Paul’s really grateful for everything Gregory’s doing. He’s not the kind of guy who’ll express it, but I can tell you that he’s really excited about everything that’s happening down at the café. We were just barely keeping our heads above water, and you guys’ve been a godsend. He seems to think the place actually has potential now.” She smiled. “Your winning the lottery’s having a sort of trickle-down effect on us, and since he probably won’t tell you, I thought I would. We’re really glad you’re here.”

“Thank you,” Julia said, genuinely touched. “Gregory’ll be happy to hear that. He’s pretty excited about the café himself.”

“Paul’s also glad Gregory’s back just for personal reasons. As you can probably tell, this isn’t exactly the hub of cultural activity, and we don’t really have a lot of friends here in town. Paul hangs around with that Odd guy, and I occasionally see some of my old friends from high school, but… Well, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I hope we can become friends. It’d be nice to have an intelligent conversation once in a while.”

Julia laughed.

“You think I’m joking?”

“No. Not after my experience at the library.”

“Comet conspiracies are just the tip of the iceberg.”

“What are you doing this afternoon?” Julia asked.

“No plans. Why?”

“Would you like to come over?”

“Sure.” She nodded at her half-filled shopping cart. “Just let me take this home and get it put away.”

“You know where we live?”

“Of course.”

Something about Deanna’s tone of voice, her surprise at the fact that the question had been asked at all, set off Julia’s internal alarm. “ ‘Of course’?” she repeated.

Deanna frowned. “You live in the old Megan…” She trailed off, realization dawning in her face. “Oh, my God. You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“About your house. What happened.”

A chill crept down Julia’s spine. She didn’t want to hear what was coming next, but she knew she could not turn back. “No,” she said. “I guess not.”

“It was a while ago, and several people have lived there since, but…” She shook her head. “I don’t exactly know how to put this.”

Julia felt cold. “What?”

“A family called the Megans were living in the house. They’d been there for… well, for years. They’d lived there for a long time. And one day the father, Bill Megan, just snapped. He woke up in the middle of the night and… killed his family. His wife, their kids. He shot them all. Then he killed himself. No one knows why. He hadn’t been fired from his job or anything. Nothing traumatic had happened. He just… he went crazy.”

Julia licked her suddenly dry lips. “How many kids were there?”

“Three.”

All at once her fears and worries didn’t seem quite so silly—all at once the dread she’d felt was understandable, made sense.

“I wondered why you two would live there.” Deanna shook her head. “I can’t believe no one told you.”

“Who could’ve told me?” she said, but at the instant she said it she thought of the Molokans at the picnic. “I don’t really know anyone in town.”

Deanna laid a hand on her arm. “You do now.”

Julia nodded, forced herself to smile, though inside she felt like ice. “Yes,” she said. “I do now.”

She confronted Gregory the minute he came home. Deanna had left only a few moments before, and Julia was still putting away cups and dishes when Gregory walked through the door.

She told him everything: Deanna’s story and the fleshed-out details her new friend had provided, her own uneasy feelings about the house, the mysterious box of dishes that had fallen for no apparent reason. She threw it at him angrily, getting in his face, but he seemed neither surprised nor particularly upset by her behavior. He was calm, rational, and his unflappability only increased her anger.

“What do you want to do?” he said. “Move?”

She met his eyes. “Yes.”

“Come on.”

“ ‘Come on’ what?”

“You think our house is haunted? You think the ghosts of that murdered family are harassing you and breaking your china?” He shook his head. “Jesus. You sound like my mother.”

“Maybe she’s smarter than you give her credit for.”

“Even if she is, even if there are such things as ghosts, this house is safe because she purged it of evil spirits and she blesses it every time she walks through the goddamn door!”

“Keep your voice down. She’s in her room.”

“We’re not moving because you got a sudden attack of superstition.”

“It doesn’t bother you at all that people were murdered in the room we sleep in? In the rooms our kids sleep in? That doesn’t bother you at all?”

“It didn’t bother you until you found out about it.”

“It’s not as if we have all of our money tied up in this place. We—”

“All our money is tied up in this place. All our money for this year, at least. We’re not going to get another lottery payment until next August. So unless we can miraculously sell this house, which is pretty doubtful, considering its pedigree, we’re stuck here.”

She stared at him, blinked. “You knew,” she said. “You knew about this.”

“Paul and Odd told me. I thought it would be better if you didn’t know. I didn’t want to worry you.”

“What gives you the right to make that decision for me? Who are you to censor my information like I’m some goddamn child?”

“Why don’t you keep your voice down?” he said.

“It’s my house, and I’ll yell if I want to!”

“Where are the kids?”

“School,” she said, but she couldn’t help glancing at the clock. Three-ten. They’d be home in twenty minutes.

“Look, I admit it’s not the most comforting thought in the world, but we’re stuck here—for the short term, at least—and we’re going to have to make the best of it. I suggest we don’t tell the kids—”

“Of course we’re not going to tell the kids,” she snapped. “But since our family seems to be the only one in town that doesn’t know what happened here, I’m sure someone, sometime, will tell them.”

“And when they ask, we’ll explain that there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Isn’t there?”

Gregory looked at her. “You honestly believe Bill Megan’s ghost is going to try to murder us in our sleep?”

“I don’t know what to believe.”

He wiped his forehead. “Jesus,” he sighed.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, I’m just a stupid little backward Molokan girl, huh? Let me remind you, mister, that I’m the one from L.A. You’re the one from Hicksville here. So don’t try to pull any more-sophisticated-than-thou crap on me.”

“Just shut up,” he said.

“What?” she demanded.

He turned away. “We’ll talk about this when you’re more rational.”

“We’ll talk about it now!”

“No,” he said levelly. “We won’t.”

“Fuck you!”

“Fuck you.”

“Go to hell!” she said, but he was already walking down the hallway toward the bathroom. She turned her back on him and stormed into the kitchen. She was shaking, with fury and frustration and some emotion she could not identify, and she poured herself a glass of water and sat down at the kitchen table, breathing deeply, drinking slowly, trying not to think about Gregory, trying not to think about the house or the murders, trying to calm down before the kids came home.

2

Sasha stood on the corner of Malachite Avenue, finishing her cigarette before turning onto her own street. She might be an adult, but she still didn’t want her parents to catch her. Her father would shit a brick if he ever caught her smoking, and while she wasn’t afraid to stand up to her parents, she didn’t want to go through all the hassle. It was better to avoid any conflict with the family and just pretend that things were going along the way they always had.

She took one last deep drag, then dropped the butt and ground it into the gravel with the toe of her shoe.

She popped a couple of Tic Tacs into her mouth and headed up the street toward home.

Adam assaulted her the moment she walked through the door. “What’s twelve base six?”

“What?”

“We’re doing base six in math. What’s twelve base six?”

Sasha pushed past him. “I don’t know.”

In the living room, her father put down his paper and looked coldly at her. “I thought I told you to be nice to your brother.”

“I am being nice. I just don’t know the answer to his question.”

“You were short, brusque, and rude. I told you before, you may be almost eighteen, but as long as you are living in this house I expect you to abide by our rules. I expect you to treat your family with decency and respect. And that includes Adam. Now I want you to help your brother with his homework.”

“Why don’t you help him, Father? Or don’t you know how?”

He stood up, his already red face growing livid. “I will not be spoken to that way in my own house!”

She thought he was going to hit her, and she stepped back, suddenly afraid. Neither of her parents had ever hit any of them before, aside from small slaps on the bottom when they were younger, and this new, threatening authoritarianism took her by surprise.

“You… help… Adam… with… his… homework,” her father said evenly.

Sasha glanced at her brother, and he seemed just as unnerved as she was.

That little shit Teo started laughing, but Sasha silenced her with a look.

“Do you understand me?” her father said.

“Yeah,” Sasha told him, but she did not stay around to prolong the discussion. She stomped up the stairs to her bedroom, half-expecting to hear her father’s footsteps following behind, but no one came after her, and she walked into the room and boldly slammed the door.

She threw her books on the bed. Everyone was acting fucking weird these days. Her father was all pissed off, her mother was all silent, Babunya seemed like she was getting ready to die. Everyone was freaked.

They should never have moved here.

She herself was behaving strangely—she certainly wasn’t the same person she had been back in California—but while she recognized that fact, she did not really care. She was happy with the new Sasha, happy with the way things were going, and if she had to live here in this dumpy little rathole of a town, at least she would do it on her own terms.

There was a tentative knock on her door, and she heard Adam’s voice. “Sasha?”

“Go away!” she said.

“You’re supposed to help me with—”

“Fuck off!” she yelled.

“You’re in trouble now.” Her brother’s footsteps receded down the short hallway and retreated down the stairs.

Sasha moved over to the door, locked it, then sat down on her bed.

And waited for her father.

3

The storm hit an hour out of Tucson.

Gregory had picked up replacement relays for the café’s soundboard at an electronics warehouse on the south side of the city, loaded them into the van, and headed immediately back toward McGuane, hoping to stay ahead of the weather, but the storm caught up to him just past the turnoff to Cochise Stronghold. There was only rain at first, and wind, but by the time he’d gotten off the interstate and was driving down the two-lane McGuane Highway, there were thunder and flashes of far-off lightning.

He sped up. Save for an occasional saguaro or paloverde tree, his vehicle was the tallest thing on this stretch of desert, and as he saw a jagged flash of lightning touch ground a couple of miles to his left, he increased his speed. The seconds between the increasingly deafening thunderclaps and the slashing blue-white bolts of lightning were steadily shrinking, and he wanted to make it to the mountains before the full force of the storm reached him.

Ordinarily, he would have been able to see for untold miles in every direction, but clouds and rain hemmed in the horizon, and though the lightning illuminated specific sections of desert, the land for the most part remained dark. Darkest of all was the highway before him, and though he knew the mountains were close, he could see nothing ahead save swaths of gray.

A whipcrack of thunder exploded nearby, so loud that it sounded as though a cannonball had shattered the van’s windows, and Gregory jumped, unintentionally swerving to the left. He saw no accompanying lightning, but his ears were still ringing and he knew that the hit had been close. The road was slick and dangerous, but he pushed the van up to eighty, wanting just to get out of this flat area before lightning hit the van.

Directly ahead and off to his left, a bolt of lightning so perfectly defined that it looked like it had been digitized by some Hollywood special-effects house hit a paloverde tree. The paloverde exploded, flying limbs on fire as they fell to the ground and bounced in the roadway. A deafening peal of thunder sounded at the precise instant of the hit, and it was the suddenness of the sound as much as anything else that caused Gregory to swerve out of the way and avoid the burning debris.

Then the cliffs were surrounding him and the highway was snaking through a canyon, into the mountains, and his van was no longer the tallest thing on the desert floor, no longer a moving target, and he slowed down as he rounded the second curve.

Already the thunder was fading, moving farther away, and ahead there were no flashes of lightning.

There were dark clouds over McGuane, but no rain, and when he pulled into town some twenty minutes later, the van’s windshield had already dried off and his heart rate was finally back to normal.

Gregory drove directly to the café, parking in the middle of the steep back alley. Paul was over in Safford, taking care of some personal business, and the café was empty save for a newly hired teenage busboy and a minimum-wage female clerk, who were standing with their heads together at one end of the counter. They jumped apart as if struck the second he entered the room, and he could not help smiling at their obvious guilt as he asked, “Where’s Odd?”

“Mr. Morrison went home,” the girl explained. “He told me to tell you to call him as soon as you got back.”

“Thanks.” Gregory walked into Paul’s office and dialed Odd’s number. He told the handyman he’d gotten the relays, and Odd promised to be by “in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

Gregory walked out and poured himself a cup of regular, straight coffee before going back and unloading the van. The clerk and busboy were now in entirely different parts of the café, she wiping down the counter and he sweeping out a windowed corner, and if Gregory had not known better he would have thought they did not even know each other.

Odd arrived soon after he finished unloading, and they got to work. They finished putting in the relays, then tested everything, running the lights and checking the sound system, Odd croaking out an old Jimmie Rogers song as they tried out the mikes. Everything worked, everything was in order, everything was ready to go, and as a few late-afternoon patrons trickled in, the two of them began putting away their tools.

“I guess that’s it, then,” Odd said, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a blue bandanna.

Gregory nodded. “I guess so.”

The grand opening of the new and improved Mocha Joe’s Café had been postponed twice already due to what they were euphemistically calling “technical problems,” but it looked like the third time was the charm, and if no disasters struck, they should be ready to roll tomorrow night. A local band, Montezuma’s Revenge, was now scheduled to be the inaugural act, but there was still going to be an hour of open mike between sets, and the sign-up sheet Paul had posted on the wall next to the stage had fifteen wannabe performers listed.

Gregory would call Paul later, tell him everything was ready, and tomorrow they’d go through the last-minute preparations, and then it would be showtime.

He was excited. There was a twinge of disappointment that the physical work was over, but that was more than balanced by the fact that, starting tomorrow night, Mocha Joe’s would be McGuane’s only legitimate entertainment venue.

And it was all his doing.

He had come up with the idea, bankrolled it, seen it through, and now he would get to see the fruits of his labors. For the first time in his life, he felt a sense of professional accomplishment.

And it felt good.

Odd shut and locked the door of the maintenance closet. “Got any plans?” he asked.

“Not to speak of.”

“Wanna get a quick drink?”

Gregory smiled. “You read my mind.”

“Come on. I’ll buy.”

“No. I’ll buy.”

“Deal.”

They went out through the back door, got in the van, and Gregory drove the half a block to the bar. On the way, he described his close encounter with the lightning.

“I’m glad I was in a car when it happened,” he said. “I read that it’s supposed to be the safest place in a lightning storm because the rubber tires ground you.”

Odd snorted. “Tell that to Bill Daniels.”

“Who’s Bill Daniels?”

“He was driving that same stretch of road in a lightning storm four or five years back. A lightning bolt hit his windshield, smashed the glass, tore off his damn head and melted his neck to the car seat. Those sonsabitches are powerful. Pure energy. And if they can crack a tree like you saw, a windshield ain’t nothing to it.” Odd grunted, shook his head. “They had to identify Bill by his wallet. Only, his wallet was soaked with his own blood and shit. Sure wouldn’ta wanted to be the one to do that.”

Gregory was silent, thinking about how close he’d come to death.

“I wouldn’t worry none about it, though. Chances of something like that happening are astronomical. And if it already happened once on that stretch of road, the odds of it happening again are—”

“About the same as being hit by lightning?”

Odd grinned. “There you go.”

He parked the van in front of the bar, and the two of them walked inside and ordered beers.

“I didn’t know milk drinkers were allowed in here.”

The voice came from the darkness next to the rest rooms, and the hackles rose on Gregory’s neck as he squinted into the gloom, trying to will his eyes to adjust. A harsh laugh spat out from the cowboy-hatted figure emerging into the dim light. It was Chilton Bodean. Gregory hadn’t seen Bodean in decades, but he recognized him immediately. Two years ahead of him in school, the bully had made his first year of junior high a living hell.

“Long time no see, Tomasov.”

Gregory felt a pacifying hand on his arm. “Ignore him,” Odd said. “The guy’s nothing but a drugstore cowboy, a fucking Rexall ranger.”

But Gregory didn’t want to ignore him. In his old enemy’s terminally belligerent face, he saw the expressions of the men who had made fun of his father all those years ago, and he turned to face Bodean. “Are you talking to me?”

The mocking smile faltered. Clearly, the bully had just wanted to goad him, make fun of him, had not intended for it to escalate beyond that, but Gregory wasn’t about to back down. There were a lot of old scores to settle here, and he was in the mood to dispense with them once and for all.

Bodean quickly regained his equilibrium. “How goes it, milk drinker?”

“Chil,” the bartender warned.

“Ignore him,” Odd repeated.

“Say that one more time,” Gregory told him flatly. “And I will kick your fucking ass.”

The other man clearly didn’t know what to do. He remained in place, smiling, but the smile had been on his face for too long and was already well past strained. Gregory did not look away, did not blink, kept his eyes on Bodean’s face.

“You have anything else to say to me, Chilton?” Bodean backed down. He looked away, strutted up to the bar, attempting to retain what little dignity he had left, gave the bartender a bill, and said, “Keep the change.” He did not look at Gregory as he pushed open the barroom door and walked into the light.

Gregory felt good. He exhaled, his muscles relaxing, and he sat down on the stool next to Odd and took a long swig of beer. He’d dreamed of fighting back against that bully every day of seventh grade, and now that he’d confronted him, he experienced a strange sort of peace, an easy, calming sensation that was not quite like anything else he had ever felt. It was for his father as much as for himself that he’d pushed back hard when Bodean tried to make fun of him, and though his father had always remained philosophically opposed to even the threat of physical violence, Gregory felt good about what he’d done and told himself his father would approve.

Odd shook his head. “ ‘Milk drinker.’ That’s one you don’t hear too often anymore.”

“Good,” Gregory said.

“Not many Molokans left here, are there?”

“Not really.” Gregory finished off his glass, motioned for another. “Most of the younger ones moved away, and the old ones are slowly dying off.”

“I remember when this town was chock full of Molokans and Mormons. And miners.” He grinned. “Lotta m’s there, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Town had an identity back then, though. Now who knows who lives here? It’s all kinda generic.” He finished his beer. “I miss the old days. Guess that means I’m gettin’ old, huh?”

“Getting old? You are old.”

Odd laughed. “Don’t remind me.” He stood. “I gotta get going. My wife’ll kill me if I’m late.”

Gregory nodded. “See you tomorrow, then.”

Odd waved low as he headed toward the door. “Later.”

Opening night.

Not only was the inside of the café full but all of the sidewalk tables were taken, and there was a line of waiting people snaking up the street past the closed hair salon all the way to Ed’s Variety Store. A photographer from the paper was covering the event, and the paparazzi-like flashes from his camera added to the excitement and gave a show-biz aura to the proceedings.

He and Paul and Odd had been working all day, preparing for the big event, and they were still going over last-minute details even as the band was setting up. Montezuma’s Revenge had their own sound guy, but Paul would be working the lights, and Gregory would take over the soundboard for the open mike set. Even above the din of conversation, the three of them could hear the almost constant ringing of the cash register, and Gregory thought it was that more than anything else that accounted for the big grin that seemed to be permanently etched on Paul’s face.

Julia and the kids showed up a little after seven. Alice, the senior server, tracked him down in the back, and Gregory met his family at the door and took them to the table he’d reserved, telling them to order whatever they wanted, it was all on the house.

He gave his wife a quick, grateful kiss. He and Julia seemed to have put their argument over the house behind them, but it had still been a relief when she’d arrived smiling. Her moods were tough to call these days, and he had given up trying to predict what she was feeling or why.

Adam and Teo were excited, honored to be treated like adults even if only for this one evening, but Sasha was her usual disagreeable self, and Gregory was thankful for small favors. There were a lot of single guys on the prowl here tonight and the four young men in the band were pinup quality themselves. He didn’t want Sasha to make a good impression on any of them. There were also a lot of slutty-looking redneck girls hanging around the fringes of the café tonight, and he certainly didn’t want his daughter falling in with that crowd. Let her stick to the boys at school.

Odd said that his wife was feeling a bit under the weather and wouldn’t be able to make it, but Deanna showed up soon after and sat next to Julia at their table. The two of them immediately started talking, and Gregory and Paul left them together as they went back to the makeshift control booth to go over the light and sound boards.

The night was perfect. Everything ran like clockwork, and even Gregory’s miscues and Paul’s clearly novice manipulation of the stage lights did not detract from the triumph of the evening. The audience was more than kind, applauding wildly for even the most raggedly amateurish open mike acts, and the consensus of everyone, even the Monitor photographer, was that the night had been a rousing success.

After they came home, Julia checked on his mother, he made sure the kids went to bed, and the two of them met in the bedroom. They hadn’t had sex in a while, not since the fight, but she gave him a long, slow kiss, massaged him through his pants, and told him he’d better stay awake while she took her shower if he knew what was good for him.

He took off his clothes, turned on the TV and got into bed, and she was clean and freshly shaved when she crawled under the covers with him fifteen minutes later. They waited a little longer, just to make sure everyone in the house was asleep, then she climbed silently on top of him. He was already hard, and he slid it in and began pumping, grabbing her butt the way she liked, and she muffled the sounds of her pleasure by screaming into his mouth as she kissed hm.

4

The bar closed at one, and except for Jimmy, the owner, Lucinda was the last one to leave. She hung up her apron, counted her tips, and shouted out “I’m leaving!” as she walked out the front and locked the door behind her. Jimmy’s response was muffled and incomprehensible, but it didn’t matter. She knew all of his standard smart-ass replies, and she double-checked the lock before heading up the street toward home.

It had been warm in the bar, but it was chilly outside, and she shivered as she walked along the gravel shoulder. She should’ve brought a jacket. The days were still summer, but the nights were edging toward autumn, and pretty soon she’d have to start driving to and from work.

When she’d first come to McGuane after traveling across the country from Sarasota, when she’d ended up here after Joel had dumped her and moved on to California, leaving her with an empty pocketbook and an unpaid motel bill, it was May and it was hot as hell. She’d assumed that the temperature would remain that way year-round. After all, this was the desert. But desert sand did not hold heat, and the winters here were surprisingly cold. She’d found out that rough first year that she needed sweaters, long pants, and long-sleeved blouses to supplement her shorts and T-shirts and tube tops.

She smiled to herself. It was a dry cold, though.

From somewhere up the canyon came a coyote’s cry, and Lucinda rubbed her arms as she quickened her pace. That was one desert sound she’d never gotten used to. It still frightened her, and it seemed to her that the coyotes had been howling a lot more lately.

Closer in, a dog barked, and other dogs took up the cry, a chain reaction passing through the backyards of houses on several parallel streets.

She turned into Azurite Lane. The narrow road wound along the floor of the upwardly sloping side canyon, and the temperature seemed to drop even lower as she headed up the dirt street toward her house.

The buildings here were few and far between, and it was so late that most of the house lights were off, only an occasional lit porch lamp indicating that anyone lived in this section of town. The dogs had quieted, the coyotes were silent, and behind her she heard a noise she had not noticed before, a rough and ragged scraping that sounded like someone wearing boots was coming up behind her.

She hadn’t seen anyone out, hadn’t passed anyone along the way, and she tried to tell herself that it was merely someone walking home from a friend’s house and that it was purely coincidental that the two of them happened to be walking along this section of road at this time of night, but she was afraid to turn around and look to make sure.

The sound seemed louder now that she was listening for it, and it conjured in her mind stalking scenes from a thousand old monster movies. The horrific image she tried to focus on was that of the shambling, slow-moving mummy, but she could not sustain that fiction against the reality of the noise behind her. There was a sprightliness to the strange step, a hint of quickness and agility in the identifiable sound of movement.

On impulse, she stopped, froze in place, listening.

The sound stopped as well.

It resumed the second she started walking.

Someone was following her.

She began walking faster.

Striding quickly, she rounded the last curve before home. The road grew even darker, if that was possible, the high canyon walls effectively blocking out all but the narrowest segment of sky. There was a full moon tonight, but the moon was still low in the east, and its light was not yet able to penetrate down here.

A full moon.

She knew there was nothing to that. It was just a bunch of superstitious hogwash, but the power of myth was greater than the power of facts any day of the week, and now it was not only the fictional terrors of Hollywood that took up residence in her mind, but the more believable bogeymen of serial killers and psychopaths.

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.