“You really believe me about our haunted house?”
“I believe that you believe, and that’s enough for me. Whether it’s ghosts and creeps or simple dysfunction, things aren’t working out the way they should, and it sounds to me like it’s time for you to bail.”
Julia smiled, already feeling better. “This is your totally objective opinion?”
“The fact that I’d like my friend back here in California in no way compromises my impartiality.”
“Well, I’m stuck here for a while. For this school year at least.”
“But you’re thinking about coming back?”
“Every damn day.”
They both laughed.
There was a long pause, and it was Debbie who spoke first. “You’re really spooked, though, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Julia admitted.
“I didn’t think you were the type to believe in ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night.”
“I didn’t either.”
“I’ve always kept an open mind, myself. I don’t believe or disbelieve. But the fact that you think you saw something scares the shit out of me. I trust you more than I trust my own eyes.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“Jules?” Debbie’s voice was serious.
“Yes?”
“Be careful.”
A shiver passed through her, but Julia managed not to let it reach her voice. “I will,” she said.
“I mean it. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“I know.”
The conversation ended on an up note, with a return to movies.
Debbie was the one to finally say good-bye, and she hung up promising to call soon. Julia put the receiver back in its cradle and stood there next to the phone until her vision started to get blurry. She wiped her eyes before the tears overflowed onto her cheeks.
Teo emerged from the hallway, walked over to her.
“What are we having for dinner?” she asked.
Julia looked at her daughter, felt her strength return.
“I don’t know,” she said. She smiled. “But let’s go into the kitchen and see what we can figure out.”
4
She had not been to the banya in a long time and it was mad at her.
Teo peeked out at the bathhouse from behind a boulder. It even looked angry. There was something cross about the defiant darkness staring out of the open doorway. The small building looked better than it ever had before—the adobe seemed new, the roof no longer appeared to be caving in on one side—but it also looked sore, although that was something she sensed as much as saw. It knew she was here, it could see her, it could sense her, but it was refusing to speak to her, and Teo could feel the rage behind its silence, the anger within its darkness.
She wanted to leave but dared not, was tempted to walk closer but was afraid to do so. She was trapped just where she was, and the thought occurred to her that that was exactly where the banya wanted her to be.
It had called to her, and though there’d been no words, no explicit commands, she recognized the summons. It was one of those feelings that didn’t need words, that her brain understood without having to translate into language. She’d ignored it at first, pretended she didn’t notice, tried not to think about it, but the calling had grown increasingly insistent until it no longer seemed to be something outside that was beckoning her but a part of herself, a need.
So she had come.
But she was not brave enough to go all the way, and indeed the need within her seemed to have lessened—which was why she was beginning to think that this was exactly where the banya wanted her.
She’d been trying to think of ways to explain why she had not been by, things she could tell the banya that would explain her absence: the weather was getting too cold; she’d gotten in trouble and was grounded; her parents had found out about her coming here and had forbidden her to come again. She liked the weather idea the best. Being grounded was only a temporary excuse, and her parents had already banned her from coming here and she’d done it anyway. But it was definitely fall, and it was a lot colder fall than she was used to, and she could always say that she’d wanted to come but it was just too darn cold out. In fact, the idea of being inside the warm house, sitting on the living room floor, doing her homework and watching TV, sounded mighty good to her right now.
But she’d been called and she’d come, and it was as though she was helpless to refuse. She was a puppet. She thought of the animal attack at school and knew with dreadful certainty that the banya had done something for her and now it expected her to do something for it.
She already had, Teo told herself. She’d brought it food.
But she knew that was not enough, and that was what scared her.
The banya was still not speaking to her, and as scary and angry as it looked, she told herself that if it did not say anything in the next five minutes, she was going to leave.
At that thought, there was movement within the darkness, the sense of something shifting inside the bathhouse. She sucked in her breath.
And a horde of mice streamed out of the banya door toward her.
It came completely out of the blue, was not something she had thought about or could ever have expected, and she remained rooted to the spot as hundreds of the tiny rodents, far more than could possibly have fit inside the bathhouse, sped in a living wave over the rocky ground, the brown bodies so close together that they looked like a carpet being unrolled.
They stopped three or four feet in front of her, instantly, at the same time, as if they’d run into an invisible wall. They were in rows, she saw, lined up perfectly, like little army men. It was the orderly unnaturalness of it that frightened her the most. She wanted to run, but something kept her from it, and she could only hope that that something came from inside herself.
There was an exhalation of warm air from the door of the banya. She could see it rustling the fur of the mice, could feel the outer edges of it touching her face. It brought with it a foul stench that reminded her of rotting cucumbers, and she wrinkled her nose, turning away, finally freed from her immobility.
The mice stood up on their hind legs and smiled at her.
It was a frightening sight. A mouse’s mouth was not meant to smile, was not built to move in those directions, and seeing hundreds of them doing it at once, all facing her, made her blood run cold.
As one, the mice screeched, and the sound coming out of their mouths was her name:
“Teo!”
She ran.
Crying, screaming at the top of her lungs, finally able to make her body obey her mind, she sped back down the path toward home as fast as her legs could carry her.
She could not be sure, but behind her she thought she heard the sound of the banya laughing.
Fifteen
1
Scott carried the flashlight as the three of them made their way up the hidden path to the secret spot on the cliff. They should have all brought flashlights, Adam knew, but Scott was the only one who’d thought to do it, and the going was slow because he and Dan were forced to stand in place until Scott climbed up each section of trail, then turned around and illuminated the way so the two of them could follow.
It was an arduous journey, the ascent at least twice as difficult at night as it had been in the daytime. When they stopped to rest at the curve in the switchback, Adam looked over the edge at the road below. To the left, he could see the diner, the shape of its roof defined by the lights around the building, two lone pickups in the parking lot. To the right and down the sloping highway, he could see some of the lights of town, the ones not hidden by the cottonwoods or the canyon dropoff. The highway itself was empty, not a single vehicle on it.