Bellwether

by Jenny Ashford

  The man in the poster didn’t answer, but for a split second it did seem as though the air had shifted ever so slightly, as if the house had let out a breath it had been holding. Chloe’s skin flushed cold, and then she laughed at herself. She really was letting her imagination run away with her.

  As she carried her brimming mug over to the table, another sound, much louder this time, froze her in her tracks; a coughing, whuffing sort of sound, like the waking snuffle of some massive beast. For a second, her heart stopped in her chest, and then she realized it was only the chugging engine of Martin’s car, forcing its way through the sand in the backyard. Her heart resumed its beating, and she tried to laugh it off again, but found that this time the apprehensiveness remained.

  Chapter Nine

  Olivia wondered what in the hell was wrong with her manager.

  Sammy had never been the brightest of intellectual lights, but ever since this morning he’d been acting positively brain dead. Since he had closed the store last night, he had apparently forgotten everything he ever knew about running a coffee shop. He couldn’t remember how to work the cappuccino machine, he kept mixing up people’s orders, and on more than a few occasions, Olivia had caught him simply slacking off, staring out of the front windows like a dog waiting for its master to come home.

  By late afternoon, after an entire day of basically running the shop by herself, Olivia finally lost it. “Sammy, will you get with it? Jesus, did you fall on your head or something?” It felt odd yelling at him; she’d always liked Sammy, but something was definitely wrong with him and she wasn’t going to put up with it any longer.

  Sammy turned toward her, slowly, his face at first registering no discernable emotion at all. Recognition seemed a long time coming, but at last his eyes cleared. “Oh, Olivia,” he said, wiping his hands on his brown apron. “I’m sorry, I guess I must have…zoned out for a minute.”

  “Zoned out for eight hours is more like it,” Olivia shot back. She didn’t need this shit; it seemed like all she did lately was work, work, work, and her lack of sleep wasn’t helping her mood any. Besides that, Ivan and Martin acted weird, too, secretive and distracted. She’d had about all of it she could take. “Look, I know you’re the manager and you can fire me if you want to. Maybe you’ll say it’s none of my business, but since you’re coming here acting like a space cadet while I do all the work, it’s becoming my business. So for Christ’s sake, what the hell is the matter with you?”

  Sammy looked confused and flustered, his face going through numerous strange contortions, as though he were enduring some profound internal struggle in the space of a few seconds. “I’ve just had other things on my mind, is all,” he said finally, though his tone suggested that he didn’t quite believe it himself.

  “Like how many demons there are possessing you?” Olivia said, trying to be funny, but just coming off as harsh and acerbic. She watched as someone passed by the window outside—were they coming in? No, it was all right, they’d walked on by—then said with a sigh, “What’s really on your mind, Sammy?”

  The manager lowered his head and began fiddling with the glass shaker that held the chocolate sprinkles. “I started going to church,” he said, almost under his breath.

  This revelation surprised Olivia; Sammy had never mentioned religion at all in any of their numerous conversations, and it didn’t seem to be a subject that held much interest for him. “What for?” she asked him.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said, still pushing at the chocolate shaker with his finger, not meeting her gaze. The smell of coffee and cinnamon in the shop was heavy, but still pleasant. “I guess I just felt like I was…missing something in my life.”

  “Since when?” She didn’t mean to be rude; she liked Sammy, and he was her boss, after all, but he’d always been a happy, outgoing guy. This new dissatisfaction with life seemed a little peculiar.

  He looked up at her at last, and his eyes were wide and earnest, his forehead sheened with sweat. “Well, you know, sometimes you don’t really know something’s missing until you…well, until someone else points it out to you. Sometimes you see things differently then.” His face seemed moon-like, twitching, desperate.

  It was at that moment that Olivia seriously thought that Sammy might have lost his mind. She backed up a step. “You’re kidding, right?” she said, hoping he’d say yes, but knowing that he would never go this far for a joke. “Sammy, this isn’t you talking.”

  He acted as though he hadn’t heard her, and his eyes grew bigger, the pupils seeming to drown out the whites. “Actually, Olivia, this place I went to…it’s really great. You should come with me one day, just to see. I think you’d get a lot out of it.”

  Olivia backed up even farther, her palms up in a defensive posture. She could feel the heat from the coffeepots warming her lower back. “No you don’t, Sam. Thanks for caring, but it’s really not my thing.” Now she knew for sure that he’d gone off the deep end—he’d been born again. Well, that explains why he’s been acting like a zombie the last few days. She wasn’t sure what the best plan of action would be at this point, so for now she figured she should humor him. “I really appreciate you thinking of me, though. You’re sweet.” She tried to smile, and managed only half a smirk.

  “Come on, Olivia.” He hadn’t moved toward her, not yet, but his arms were extended, beseeching. “It’s not so far to go, it’s only just across the street. We could go right now, there’s no one here. The people there are really nice, you’ll see…”

  “Across the street?” Olivia had a sudden flash of memory to yesterday. Just about sunset, a little blonde-haired girl had been walking around pasting different colored flyers all over the shop windows and car windshields in the strip mall. Later on, the girl was joined by another blonde, tall and thin, and then later she’d seen both girls getting out of a car driven by a scruffy old man in a black fedora. Olivia remembered glancing at the flyer on her way out last night. The church was called Bellwether, which was a pretty weird-ass name for a church, she thought, and it promised eternal happiness and salvation and all the usual crap. She’d wanted to tear the flyer down from the coffee shop door, but she figured that was Sammy’s lookout, so she’d left it. Now she was wishing she’d torn every last one of them off every shop window in sight, if this was what the place did to people.

  “So, you mean to tell me you got suckered into that place on the flyer? Do they drink strychnine and dance with asps and stuff?”

  Sammy didn’t seem angry at her impertinence; in fact, he appeared not to have registered it at all. “I can’t make you go, of course,” he said, his smile beatific but somehow chilling. “It’s really wonderful there. You’re missing out.”

  Olivia felt goose bumps on her arms at the odd emphasis he’d placed on the word I. Was he implying that even though he couldn’t make her go, that someone else could? “I’m sure it’s great.” Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a group of four girls approaching the shop from the parking lot, and willed them to move faster. Then she stared Sammy straight in the face, even though she didn’t really want to. She hoped Sammy was still sane enough not to wig out in front of strangers. “Hey, we’ve got customers. Get your ass in gear. Or do you want to give me your salary?” She hoped that a little levity would snap him out of this lunacy, but the look on his face told her this was unlikely.

  Sammy paused, as though he was about to say something else, but then he just nodded and turned toward the door. Olivia sighed with relief, glad to be out of the line of fire of his sudden dementia. The bell over the door tinkled, and the girls bustled inside, all noise and giggles, and as Olivia stepped up to the counter and plastered a smile on her face, she thought, I wonder if Starbucks is hiring?

  Chapter Ten

  Lily and Rose had done their jobs well.

  The original pile of 500 flyers had been distributed in a wide area around
the church, and almost immediately, there had been a modest response. The first new follower was a very old man with long, tangled gray hair cascading out from underneath a battered black hat. He said his name was Alvin. Lily thought he smelled funny, but he seemed very nice and gentle; as an added bonus, he had a car, and didn’t mind driving the girls farther away to deliver more flyers. Rose kept her distance from him as much as possible, but Lily liked to talk to him, and liked that he was always around, since Father had allowed him to lay out his sleeping bag and few possessions in the corner of the storage room, opposite Lily’s cot.

  Next came a dark-haired younger man, who had wandered in late that first Sunday night, bringing the sharp, but somehow comforting, aroma of coffee into the church with him. His name was Sammy, and even though he was not so attractive as the other men Lily had seen, the one at the house and the one from the music shop, he was pleasant enough to look at. He wasn’t always around, but he came by every evening after work, and on his days off he stayed from morning until late in the night. Rose liked him better than Alvin, and sometimes the three of them would play cards in the front room while the old man dozed or read his Bible nearby. Sometimes all of them would talk, sitting in the foldout chairs underneath the crosses and the beautiful glowing angels and the loving, pleading Jesus. They mostly talked about Mother and Father, and how wonderful they were, and how wonderful it would be when everyone else in the world knew how wonderful they were.

  It was only after a week had passed, and after two more members had joined—two girls this time, one barely out of her teens and one probably in her late thirties with the bearing of a strict schoolteacher—that Father began talking about the white house again. Lily had to admit she had almost forgotten all about it, or at least forgotten that it was supposed to play any part in the future of the church. After all, why did they need that old house to live in when they had this nice, clean, new place, and new friends to talk to? Father, speaking for Mother and himself, was set on that particular house. Lily didn’t really understand, but since Mother and Father wanted it, then she knew it would have to happen eventually.

  Piles more flyers were printed. Lily rode with Alvin to distribute them, and Rose usually went with Sammy. The other two girls—Alice and Florence—went in Florence’s car. Father told the flock daily how important it was to get as many members as possible, that nothing wonderful could happen until many more people came around to their way of thinking. Lily thought wonderful things had already happened, but maybe there were even better things in store. This thought galvanized her, and she took it as her personal mission to recruit as many people as she could. She wanted so badly for everything to be perfect, for Mother and Father to be proud of her.

  Lily knocked on countless doors, and had many slammed in her face, but almost as many opened wider, slightly, as the person inside grew cautiously more receptive to her message. She found that the hated pity, which her deformity had always inspired, could work to her advantage, as many potential recruits felt guilty for turning away someone so pathetic. She also discovered the types of people most likely to listen to her: Generally, very old people or very young ones, unemployed men with a whiff of booze about them, frazzled women at home with small children and longing for some adult contact. After a while, Lily began to recognize the glint of desperation in the eyes of the people she spoke to, and she learned to tailor her spiel to their specific needs, saying what she thought would give them hope and spur them to change their lives. She never felt as though she was manipulating anyone; quite the contrary. She was helping these people, throwing them a lifeline, and she could see that they knew it, and were grateful.

  In less than ten days, she had brought six new members into the fold. Though the subject was not spoken of, there was never any worry about one-timers, people who just turned up at the church once and then didn’t return. Everyone who entered the church, after speaking at length with Mother in private in the back room, became a fiercely committed member. Mother was, Lily supposed, a very persuasive woman.

  Rose and the others had some success as well, bringing in five new followers altogether. The only recruiter who came up empty was Sammy—he claimed he’d been trying very hard to convince the girl he worked with to join, but she was proving most reluctant, and was even threatening to quit if he didn’t stop pestering her about it. Father seemed irritated by this news, but when he spoke, he remained calm, explaining gently that some people were simply never going to see the light, and that it likely wouldn’t be necessary to force anyone into the church against her will. “Soon, there will be many of us, and we will be strong,” Father said. “We probably won’t need her.” He gave Sammy a thin smile and told him that his recruitment energies would be best spent elsewhere. Sammy nodded, his head lowered at the mild reprimand.

  One afternoon, as Lily and Alvin were returning from one of their distribution excursions, she spotted the pretty blond man with the guitar coming out of the music store. She knew what Father had said about not forcing anyone, but what harm could it do just to talk to him? She shooed Alvin into the church, and he went, looking back at her with a knowing glance. Lily blushed, thinking that if she could only succeed in convincing the man, then he would be with her all the time, and this prospect pleased her very much. Perhaps he would even sing to her, compose songs for her on his wonderful guitar. Perhaps he could even sleep on a cot near hers, in the storeroom, so that at night he could reach over and grasp her hand as she slept. Her blush deepened at the thought.

  The man was walking briskly toward his car, his head down, an unlit cigarette already crooked in his lips. Lily had the distinct feeling that he had seen her, but was trying to pretend he hadn’t. This hurt her profoundly, but she didn’t let it dissuade her. After he joined the church, he would be different. He would want to see her, not try to avoid her. She put on what she hoped was her prettiest smile—it was a hideous and freakish expression, she knew that, but the man would not think so, he was too nice to think such things about her—and began marching straight toward him. She knew her dress wasn’t as nice or fancy as it could have been, but it was the best one she had, so it would have to do. Her hair was shining and lusciously blonde, anyway; at least she shared that attractive feature with Rose.

  The beautiful man was just getting into his car; his hand was on the door, ready to pull it closed. Lily practically ran the last few yards. “Hello,” she called, still a little ways from him. Surely, he wouldn’t close the car door now that she had spoken directly to him. He couldn’t be that rude, she surmised.

  She was right. He sat in the driver’s seat, one hand on the steering wheel, smoking. He left the car door open and watched her approach.

  “Hi,” he said, his voice neutral. She could tell from his face he was cautious, suspicious, a little annoyed, but willing to listen.

  “Thank you for staying,” Lily said. She was a little out of breath. She noticed the man’s gaze resting uncomfortably on her misshapen face, then sliding away. This was disappointing, but she soldiered on, still smiling. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you for the longest time.”

  “Me? What for?” He hadn’t taken his hand off the steering wheel; escape was simply a matter of turning the key, stomping on the gas. Lily moved a little closer to him, casually, putting her small body in the way of the car door’s closing arc. He wouldn’t get away as easily as he thought, not without hearing her out first.

  “Oh, I just see you all the time and you look like someone interesting to talk to.” She tossed her glorious blonde locks, and smiled wider, full wattage. Then she leaned against the car door, crossing her arms. “You should come down to our place sometime. We could have a nice chat, or play cards if you want.”

  The man grinned. “Our place?” he said, glancing over her shoulder toward the church. “Who else is in there with you? What do you get up to in there?”

  Lily knew that here she would have to tread
carefully; Father always said it was no good scaring people off just when you’d got them to pay attention, just when they seemed a little receptive. She shrugged, trying to make it seem as though what they did in the tiny storefront was of no great significance. “I guess it’s…kind of like a church,” she said as offhandedly as she could, knowing that for some types of people the word “church” brought up all sorts of negative associations. “Not really, but you know, kind of like that.”

  The man’s grin widened. “I don’t really do the church thing,” he said. She could tell he was trying to be diplomatic, trying not to hurt the feelings of the little deformed girl. It made her angry, but she suppressed it. The man clearly believed the whole concept of church was silly, useless, a waste of time. Lily decided to change tactics somewhat.

  “Well, it’s not like a regular church, you know,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand, an equally dismissive laugh. “It’s really just a bunch of us who get together.” She glanced into the back seat of his car. “You could bring your guitar, everyone would love it. You must play really good, to teach all those kids.” Flattery was always effective; she didn’t need Mother or Father to tell her that.

  The man smiled, but he was still wary. “Yeah, well, I don’t know about that. Anyway, it was nice talking to you, but I gotta go.”

  Lily didn’t move. She told herself this had all just been a lark on her part, she hadn’t really expected him to come with her, but now that he was actually trying to leave, she decided she didn’t want to let him. “Don’t go yet,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t detect the tightness she feared had crept into her voice. “We’ve only just gotten started. What’s your name?”