The Town

Prologue

Loretta Nelson hated working at night.

The real estate office stayed open after dark only during the weeks preceding the Copper Days celebration each August. The rest of the time, the doors closed at five, like a normal business, and that was the way Loretta preferred it. Still, she recognized the importance of the celebration, and that was why she never put up a fuss. Copper Days was the town’s big claim to fame, and it was the closest thing to a tourist attraction that McGuane had. Each year it brought in people from all over the state—hell, all over the Southwest—and a lot of local shops, restaurants, and hotels were able to survive only because of the business they did that weekend. Last year an estimated ten thousand people had descended on their sleepy little town during Copper Days, and the huge and sudden influx of cash had helped offset an otherwise dismal season.

Their office had sold more homes that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday than in the combined months of June and July.

This year they had a jump on things, though. Gregory Tomasov had bought the Megan place, which had been on the market for years now and which they thought they’d never be able to unload.

She hadn’t seen Gregory since junior high school, but he hadn’t changed at all. He was the same arrogant know-it-all he’d always been, and he still acted as though his shit didn’t stink. He was rich now. He’d won several million dollars in the California lottery, and he’d apparently come back to town to lord it over everyone else. He said he just wanted to raise his kids in a good, wholesome small-town environment, and he pretended to be nice to her when he found out who she was, but she knew better. She sensed the real reason for his return to Arizona, and she could feel the smug disdain behind his casual conversation.

His wife looked like she was a Molokan, too—which was not a surprise because those people always stuck together—and she seemed as stuck-up as he did.

As petty as it was, Loretta was glad Call had conned them into buying the Megan place, and she couldn’t wait to tell her friends that the sucker they’d finally hooked was old Gregory Tomasov.

Although she would be grateful if Gregory were here right now. Or if anyone were here.

She did not like being alone.

Not at night.

Loretta stood, walked over to the front window, looked out at the highway.

Nothing.

Only darkness.

In the decade and a half she’d been Call Cartright’s secretary, she could count on one hand the number of people who’d called or stopped by after dark.

She shivered. It was the mine behind the building that spooked her. She knew it was a childish fear. She’d lived in McGuane her entire life, and there was nothing in the pit at night that wasn’t there in the daytime. It was empty, abandoned. But after nightfall, having that black hole behind her gave her the heebie-jeebies. It was abandoned, and that absence of human activity was one of the reasons she felt unnerved here at the edge of the pit.

It had been abandoned since before she was born.

That made it even scarier.

She shook her head. She’d been watching too many monster movies lately.

Lymon was supposed to have shown up to keep her company, but he was even more unreliable than he was slow, and it didn’t surprise her that he hadn’t arrived. She continued to scan the highway, searching for the lights of his four-by-four, but there was no one on the road at all tonight. She glanced up at the clock. Nine-forty. Twenty minutes to go.

She walked around the edge of the office, looking out the windows, ending up back behind her desk, straightening the brochures she’d had printed this morning and peering out at the inky blackness of the mine. The moon was new, a pale sliver in the sky, and its faint illumination made the pit seem even darker. It was as though the mine was a light vacuum, sucking the slightest hint of radiance out of the land and sky.

She was about to turn away, about to call Lymon and give him a lecture on laziness and thoughtlessness, when she saw something out of the corner of her eye. Something white against the blackness of night.

Movement.

Loretta sidled next to the window and peered out. It was a light. A light down in the bottom of the pit.

But there hadn’t been a light down there for nearly half a century.

A cold chill passed through her. She was afraid to look into the mine, but she was afraid to look away, and so she remained in place, staring, as the light, a vague, shapeless glow of indeterminate size, first floated upward, then began darting around, moving not with any visible motion but winking on and off, appearing at different points around the massive pit in rapid succession.

It was accompanied by a sound that reminded her of rats screaming.

Loretta looked away, concentrated on the warm, friendly, illuminated interior of the office, trying to tune out everything else. She checked to make sure the windows were all closed, then hurried over and closed and locked the front door.

She looked down at the desk, at the brochures, tried to tell herself that it was nothing, just her imagination, that there was nothing unusual happening outside. But she could still see the light in her peripheral vision, buzzing around the deep interior of the mine.

Then it winked off.

Appeared instantly next to her car.

Loretta’s heart leaped in her chest. There was no way she could continue to pretend that there was nothing going on. She quickly reached for the phone, intending to call Lymon. She picked up the receiver, but there was no dial tone. The line was dead.

She looked back out the window, saw nothing but blackness.

There was a knock at the door.

She let out a small yelp. Her pulse was racing, her heart thumping, and she was more scared than she had ever been in her life. She swallowed, tried to sound brave. “Hello?”

There was another knock, louder this time.

“Go away!” she yelled.

All of the lights went out.

She screamed, an instinctive reaction but not a practical one. The office was too far from downtown for anyone to hear her. She could scream all she wanted and no one would ever know.

Another knock.

Crying, terrified, she slumped against the wall.

And in the darkness, something grabbed hold of her hand.