Waiting

by Stephen Jones

  “What truth is that?” asked Tim.

  “Nothing, and I do mean nothing, is ever what it seems.”

  “So there really is communist danger here in Mitford?” Tim asked.

  The agent cleared his throat. “My division has had eyes on Mitford, the Charles House specifically, for a very long time. We received word that the house was about to become occupied again.”

  “Occupied by Russians!” interjected Leo.

  Agent McMillan nodded. “Yegor and Dominika Volos. Better known in their native Moscow as Drakon ubezhishcha, the Seekers of the Dragon.”

  “Seekers of the Dragon?” said Leo. “What are they? Some kinda zookeepers?”

  “They’re stage illusionists,” Agent McMillan replied. “Or rather, they were. They retired years ago, but around the time of the Russian Revolution they were a famous duo. They performed all over Europe. They went into hiding just before the outbreak of the Second World War. My division had been doing our best to keep tabs on them, but the Voloses were basically ghosts until this year, when we received information that they had resurfaced.”

  “But why Mitford?” Luna asked.

  “The Witch House . . . ,” muttered Tim.

  Agent McMillan touched the side of his nose.

  “But what would two Russky magicians want with a haunted house?” Leo asked.

  “Their routine was based not on entertainment but on sorcery, on real magic.”

  “Are yous telling us that their prestidindigestion is real?” Leo interjected.

  “Prestidigitation,” Luna corrected.

  “Yes,” said Agent McMillan.

  “But every magician tries to convince their audience that their tricks are real,” said Tim.

  “True enough. But the Seekers of the Dragon weren’t just pulling rabbits out of top hats or linking rings together. Their stages were designed using very precise geometry and symbols. Instead of locking cabinets and silk handkerchiefs, they used double-cube altars, Circles of Evocation, black mirrors, things like that. Their act, if you can describe it as that, was calling up spirits and demons that they believed lurked in certain corners of the Earth. That’s what was most peculiar about them; they didn’t tour per se, instead they selected specific sites that they believed had occult power.”

  “You don’t buy that anarchy do you?” asked Leo.

  “I believe you mean malarkey, Leo, but yes, I do. I’ve seen enough strange things in my time to leave me open to the possibility of spirits and demons.”

  “So what you’re telling us is that we should steer clear of the Witch House,” Luna said.

  “Quite the opposite; if anything I need you all to stick close to the place. We could really use the Junior G-Men’s help on this one.”

  “You sure you don’t have us mixed up with some other club?” asked Leo.

  “I’m positive. You all know this town much better than I do. And you’re known faces around here. We consider that an advantage.”

  “Who is the ‘we’ you’re referring to?” Luna asked. “I mean, it might not be any of our business, but the initials on your identification aren’t FBI, they are HPL. What does that stand for?”

  “I’ll explain everything at the proper time. Right now I’m asking all of you to trust me when I say that the closer you stick to the Charles House, the more you’ll be helping us. I’m going to leave you this card. It has the telephone number where I can be reached day or night during my stay in Mitford. Anything you can find out about the comings and goings of the Dragon Seekers would be greatly appreciated. Stick close to them, but not so close that you might be seen. I’m trying to stay inconspicuous, so instead of staying at the inn I’ve rented a room at Elsie’s Boarding House over on Eleventh Street. You can reach me there.”

  “Pardon me,” Tim began, “but this all . . . well, sounds kind of dangerous.”

  “That’s because it is.” Agent McMillan’s voice was level and firm. He thanked the Junior G-Men for their time and exited the headquarters.

  The group sat and listened to the agent’s car engine rumbling and then the sound of tires passing over the gravel lot.

  “Boy,” Leo said, breaking the cloying silence, “it feels like the whole town is being turned upside down.”

  Suddenly a shadowy figure emerged from behind a pallet of bricks. “Claude!” Luna cried. “You startled us.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I had to wait until that spy was gone.”

  III

  “Claude, I’m telling yous, that agent was as American as you or me,” Leo said.

  “Says him,” Claude returned. “But like I just said, he was with those Russians today.”

  “But Agent McMillan just told us that he was keeping an eye on the Russians,” Luna explained.

  “There’s a difference between ‘keeping an eye on’ and chauffeuring the enemy around and chatting with them in Russian. I promised the mayor that I wouldn’t tell you any of this, but that was before I saw that spy trying to infiltrate the Junior G-Men. I say we listen to Mayor Felton and give those three a wide berth.”

  “Let’s not get batty, Claude,” Leo interjected, “nobody’s giving birth to anybody here!”

  Luna rolled her eyes. “Your English teachers really did a number on you, didn’t they, Leo?”

  “I went to the same school as yous guys. Anyways, I’m still the head of the Junior G-Men, this is still my pop’s property, and what I say goes; and I say we do our civic duty and help out this government man. I’m at my uncle’s tomorrow, but why don’t at least one of you go and meet him at Elsie’s Boarding House after church tomorrow?”

  All the Junior G-Men nodded, save for Claude, who raised his hands in resignation. “You do what you like. But I can’t follow you.”

  “But we’re a team!” Luna said.

  Two years earlier, when the friends decided to put their patriotism and sense of justice to productive use as the Junior G-Men, Tim had produced a quartet of handmade identity cards that outlined each member’s title alongside the Junior G-Men logo. It was this card that Claude removed from his wallet and placed upon Leo’s desk; a gesture that robbed the other members of speech.

  “I’m out,” Claude said before moving to the exit. He crossed the brickyard with a deliberate slowness, secretly hoping that his chums would come rushing out to stop him, to beg him to reconsider. But they never did. Shock and unease about the future of not only their club but the world at large kept them pinioned.

  The following morning Claude’s heart was filled with a mighty desire to attend Sunday Service. It was not grace or faith that inspired him, but a wish to speak to the mayor. Shaking hands and chatting with their mayor had become woven into the fabric of Mitford’s Sunday routine ever since the election in November. It was now a common sight for the procession of churchgoers to shake the minister’s hand and then a few paces down stop and gab with Mayor Fenton if they so desired. Unlike previous mayors, Elder Fenton did not even attempt to pass himself off as a family man. On Sundays his only companion would be his stone-faced secretary, whom Claude had never heard utter a sound. When asked about his confirmed bachelor status, Mayor Fenton quipped that he was wedded only to his duties as mayor.

  The sermon was a tedious thing. Claude felt awkward when he caught a peripheral glimpse of Tim seated with his family, so he kept his eyes locked on the nave. Unsurprisingly, there was no sign of the double agent or the Russians from the Witch House. Claude did spy Luna’s parents but not Luna. Leo, he presumed, was in the next town attending Catholic mass with his father and brothers.

  Mayor Fenton sat in the back pew. Claude counted the seconds until the congregation at last rose and began to file out. Fate delivered him an opportunity when his parents slipped into a convivial chat with a couple they’d not seen in weeks. Claude was fascinated by how, despite the fact that the mounting crises in Korea and the Soviet Union were clearly on the fore of everyone’s mind, not one word was spoken of it. Instead, recipes were exchan
ged, queries were made about the wellbeing of such and such, innocuous jokes were told.

  There was a painful moment when Tim called Claude’s name and began to advance toward him, but Claude dodged him, instead making a beeline for the great willow tree beneath whose somber boughs Mayor Fenton stood.

  “You have something for me, son?” the mayor whispered before Claude could even speak.

  “Yes, sir. That man you told me about, that double agent . . . I know where he’s staying.”

  A cold gleam brightened Mayor Fenton’s eyes. After a pause he said, “Go with your family now, Claude. You’ve been a great help. Leave everything to me. Go home and stay put. I’ll call on you again when the time is right.”

  Claude slipped back with his parents just as they were saying their goodbyes to their friends.

  Within minutes the streets were vacant and tranquil.

  They remained that way until the afternoon idyll was unexpectedly pierced by the awful scream of the air-raid siren. As there were no drills scheduled for that day, everyone in Mitford was overwhelmed by the realization that this was for real.

  IV

  As to the exact reason behind her determination to visit the Witch House on Sunday morning, Luna couldn’t say. Perhaps it was a desire to curry favor with Agent McMillan, or simply to prove Claude wrong. Either way, Luna departed solitarily for the outskirts of town once her family had left for Sunday Service. She felt guilty for lying to her parents about feeling unwell, but desperate times . . .

  It was an unseasonably cool, overcast day in late June, and Luna wished she’d had the forethought to wear a jacket. When she reached the valley of the Devil’s Humps the atmosphere was fittingly gloomy.

  The glow in the Witch House’s main-floor windows would have likely gone unnoticed had the day not been so dim. Set against this leaden atmosphere, the amber light appeared as dramatic as the jack-o’-lanterns that lined Mitford’s leaf-padded streets on Halloween. Luna squinted in order to sharpen her distance vision, but her eyes took in merely shapes, impressions. The glowing orange light was unquestionably moving, for Luna was able to see it pass from one parlor window to the next. There also appeared to be figures bearing that light, but these figures were obscured to the point of being shapeless silhouettes. Or were they dressed in hooded robes?

  Then figures and light and movement all became subsumed by the Witch House’s deeper recesses. Luna felt herself in a push-pull as to whether she would be of more service to the Junior G-Men if she were to phone for Agent McMillan or to follow the authentic, but admittedly more perilous, route of pursuing the lead she’d just witnessed.

  She chose the latter. Luna approached the house in a roundabout way in order to take advantage of the great obscuring oaks and apple trees that loomed large over the rear of the property. Crouching behind the final apple tree, checking for any signs of the Russians, she saw none.

  The backdoor was stained the purple of spilt wine. Its handle was carven in the form of a gargoyle squatting amidst ugly castle stones. Unsurprisingly, a turn of this grotesque proved the door locked. But Luna had learned a number of skills since associating with Leo and the Junior G-Men. In his youth, Leo’s father had been, by his own admission, a hood, but some of the knowledge he’d gleaned from the streets of Brooklyn still came in handy. When Luna had lost the key to her bicycle lock two years ago, Leo’s father had schooled her in the art of lock-picking. Ever since then she always kept a hairpin clipped to her keychain.

  The lock on the Witch House was somewhat more sophisticated than the padlocks she had practiced on, but after a few minutes of fiddling and poking Luna heard the thrilling click. She pressed down on the gargoyle and slipped inside the forbidding building. She felt more than a little like a child in a Grimm’s fairy tale.

  The Witch House interior was singular, a place thoroughly domesticated and yet so very rich in strangeness. The walls were high and regally adorned with wallpaper whose emerald background practically glowed against the intertwining arabesques of black velvet. Sconces were mounted just below the cherry-wood molding, each of which bore a single burning taper. These wan flames allowed Luna an impression of the long and latticed carpet that seemed to lure her toward the double doors.

  These she approached and silently opened. She was then able to fully appreciate the care these old Russian magicians had invested in order to transform this ordinary chamber into a shrine dedicated to their career. Based on the sheer scope of this collection, their obsessions had been long and dearly held, for there was no speck of the room that did not bear some relic of the magical career of Yegor and Dominika Volos. Posters and news-clippings, all in Russian, spoke of Drakon ubezhishcha. One of the framed clippings offered her a full view of the couple. Dominika was not what Luna would call beautiful, but as a young woman she had been undeniably striking. Her countenance was haughty, as though she viewed the world from an elevated plane and thus was able to view the smallness of most things. Her eyes and hair were silver. Yegor Volos appeared much younger than his paramour and partner, for there was vitality in his piercing stare, and both the shock of hair on his head and the sculpted Van Dyke beard that framed his thin mouth were free of gray. He wore many necklaces, each of which were weighted with what looked like carven stones. On his brow was a black spot, which Luna thought could be either a mole or simply a flaw in the photograph.

  Along with the printed ephemera the Voloses’ had displayed, there were a variety of handcuffs in nickel and iron, a gilded cage that held a stuffed dove the color of porcelain, and a pair of mannequins dressed in the stage costumes of a glittering scarlet woman and a top-hatted prestidigitator. But mixed in among these props of industry were items less of magic and more of mystery: bundles of stinking weeds impaled on long, imposing nails, devils carved from corn cobs drowning inside jars of vinegar, a staff of crooked wood. As she neared the great stone fireplace, Luna noticed that it was immaculate, without so much as a trace of ashes.

  Perhaps the Russians had kept this fireplace unused in order to preserve the massive firebrand that decorated the back wall of the hearth? Hammered into the iron slab was a work of art akin to what Luna had seen in history books dealing with ancient Mayan or Aztec religion. There was a vast serpent-like creature coiled inside what looked to be an egg. Perched on the outer shell of the egg were a cluster of human figures armed with fire and rods of lightning. A second egg sat adjacent to the other, but there the human figures were inside the egg, walking through what seemed to be winding entrails.

  No, not entrails, she realized.

  Tunnels.

  This insight, which Luna had gained from who-knows-where, then led to a second realization: these were not eggs, they were hills—hills so very much like the Devil’s Humps that flanked the Witch House.

  Agent McMillan had warned that the Voloses were not mere illusionists and that their knowledge reached far deeper than sleight-of-hand. Was this what had brought them to Mitford, this site? Not the hills themselves, but something within them.

  Luna backed away from the fireplace, unsure how to feel. She stood numb and useless, staring at the firebrand while her mind reeled with no stable thoughts at all.

  Something then drew her gaze to the edge of the hearth, where an iron pull-ring hung as if in waiting. Luna couldn’t help but sense that something had just extended to her a forbidden invitation.

  She accepted this invitation not out of curiosity or reverence, but simply because she couldn’t stand this vertigo of helplessness any longer. She gripped the ring and pulled it. The firebrand parted from the wall with neither resistance nor sound.

  What it revealed was an abyss. Dumbstruck, Luna leaned her ear toward the round aperture. There she heard a silence beyond silence; the muteness of a place that felt less abandoned and more sworn to some oath of secrecy.

  Inspired, she darted to the corridor and retrieved one of the burning candles from its mount. This she carefully ushered back to the secret doorway.

  The i
ntroduction of a lone taper to this sprawl was akin to attempting to light the heavens with a single star. The flame gave Luna no perspective on how large or deep this next world was, but what it did reveal was another sign that she couldn’t help but perceive as welcoming. Set into the blackish clay beyond the hearth was a series of flat stones. They descended down and down with a crafted symmetry—an ancient rung ladder that was built to admit men to a place not made for them.

  Looking into an environment so startling and so unspeakably foreboding froze her.

  She had a grip on the pull-ring and was about to set the firebrand back in place when a hand lunged out from the shadows and grasped Luna’s blouse. Shock and unthinkable horror turned her muscles to jelly and allowed her captor to pull her through the hole with ease. Her attempt to cry out was stifled, and she was dragged rapidly down the hideous steps.

  V

  Tim and his family had just settled around the dining room table for their customary early Sunday supper when the siren started wailing from the town hall. It pressed through the streets and into the less-populated stretch of town where the Wight family farm stood. The sound caused the dinnerware to rattle on the walnut table. The chicken fidgeted on its platter as though reanimated.

  “Everybody outside!” Tim’s father cried.

  The Wights did their best to follow their well-rehearsed protocol, but the authenticity of this siren made their routine jerky and sloppy. They reached the rear of the unused barn where Tim’s father had installed a pair of incongruous orange flagstones in the soil.

  “Help me lift them, Tim,” his father instructed. Tim heeded and the stones rolled back on the metal hinges that transformed them into a trapdoor.

  The world below those doors always struck Tim as being like something out of a dream. Perhaps this was because he always dreamt so richly during the drills, which although they were designed to last only moments seemed always to stretch until after sunrise, with everyone in Tim’s family sleeping soundly underground. Perhaps this boded well: it meant that in case of the real event—like today—they knew they could survive down there.