Dance with the Devil

CHAPTER 5

In the morning, the storm was gone, leaving more than twenty inches of fresh, blindingly white snow dumped on Roxburgh and the surrounding countryside. The trees were hung with it, the pines bent under their hoary load, a few of the birches even snapped in two under the tremendous weight. The drifts on the west side of the house were swept up over most of the first floor windows, while the lawn behind was nearly scraped barren of its share of whiteness. The sky was bright and blue, cut through here and there by gray remnants of the storm, or by cloudy premonitions of another snow.

Katherine took breakfast in her own room, some fruit juice and a sweet roll. She had never been one for eating heavily in the morning, preferring to skimp even through lunch so that, at dinner, she could indulge herself and still not overeat. Though slim, she knew she had a tendancy to add weight quickly if she didn't watch herself.

When she got downstairs, she found Lydia Boland in the library which also served as her “office.” The room was lined with bookshelves that ran clear to the ceiling, all packed tightly with an unbelievable number of paperback and hardbound volumes. There was even a stool for reaching the titles on the middle shelf and a rolling ladder whose wheels fit into a tiny track in the ceiling, making it possible to move the ladder wherever one wanted it and then to climb up and easily obtain any volume in the room.

“Good morning!” Lydia said.

She was sitting at a large, pine desk with a massive slab top at least three inches thick, with legs as sturdy as bedposts. It was so huge and masculine that it dwarfed her and made her seem much smaller than she was, smaller than Katherine. This did not, however, make her look more aged, but rather younger, almost like a little girl in her bright yellow dress.

“Good morning,” Katherine said. “Did you sleep well?”

“Fine, thank you. And how was your first night in Owlsden?”

“I found out how it got it's name,” she said.

“Oh?”

“Yes.” She told Lydia about her middle-of-the-night adventure.

“How wonderful!” Lydia said. “I forgot to mention them to you. Most girls would have locked their door and pulled up the sheets and forgotten about the noise.”

“Maybe my curiosity will kill me some day,” Katherine said.

“Don't believe it. Only those people with curiosity ever amount to anything in this life.”

There was more pleasant conversation, and then the dictation of a few letters which Katherine took in shorthand and typed on rich, embossed vellum stationery, using the IBM electric that was the only modern thing in the library.

As she was finishing the last letter — Lydia was looking over something in a book she had taken from the shelves — Alex Boland poked his head in the door. “I think I'll be going into town, Mother. Still want Katherine to go with me?”

“Yes,” Lydia said. She put her book down and turned to Katherine. “I believe your records say you ski.”

“There's a run into town?” Katherine asked.

“An excellent one,” Alex said. “About a two mile winding slope that leads gently through the pines and feeds almost directly into Costerfeld Avenue.”

“I'd like you to accompany Alex,” Lydia said. “Let him show you the town. Roxburgh has been my life, or most of it, and I want you to become thoroughly familiar with it.”

“I'll have to change,” Katherine said. “Give me twenty minutes.”

“Right,” Alex said. “I'll meet you outside the kitchen door.”

The day was cold but, without the wind, she found it far more endurable than the day before. She was dressed in blue insulated ski slacks, black sweater, thermal jacket, sturdy boots and toboggan hat. When she came out the kitchen door, she saw Alex standing far off to the south, at the edge of the mountain slope where the first downward angling of the land began. She went to him, kicking at the snow as she did.

He said, “How much have you skied before?”

“Quite a bit,” she said. “The orphanage where I grew up was near a resort that used to let us kids in free if we were interested. I was one of the few who were interested, and I spent a lot of my free time there.”

He nodded. “This shouldn't be any trouble. Look.”

A wide swath of clean snow, guarded by towering pines, lead down the mountainside, cut at one edge by what appeared to be power pylons carrying two thick cables.

“It looks easy enough,” she said.

They put on their skis, and Alex went over the edge first, swishing through the clean snow, cutting two shallow runners as he went. She followed close behind, watching him, letting his movements dictate hers as they swept down the snaking trail.

The wind bit at her, whined off her vinyl slacks and jacket, snapped her yellow hair out behind her and tried to tug away the toboggan cap which was strapped beneath her chin.

Snow thrown up behind Alex spattered her goggles. She wiped them off and dropped back fifty feet until she was not bothered by his wake.

The trees flashed by so fast that, if she looked to either side, they almost seemed like a continuous rail fence of gargantuan proportions.

She felt gloriously free and renewed. One day on the job, and already she knew that she would be happy to be Lydia Boland's secretary and companion for the next fifty years if Lydia happened to live to be over a hundred.

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.”