“She owned me, Hogan. She could have told me to take a gun and shoot myself, and maybe I would have done it. You gotta know her to understand what I’m saying.”
Marshall remembered standing in the hallway outside Langstrat’s class wondering how he got there. “I think I understand.”
“But Eldon found out about the college finances, and we both checked into it, and he was right. The college was headed for the rocks, and I’m sure it still is. Eldon tried to stop it, to get the whole mess straightened out. I tried to help him. Juleen came after me right away and made all kinds of threats. I ended up going in two directions, following two different loyalties. It was like being torn apart inside. Maybe that’s what snapped me out of it; I made up my mind I wasn’t going to be controlled anymore, not by the network, not by anyone. I was a newspaperman; I had to print it the way I saw it.”
“And they took care of you.”
“And it came as a total surprise. Well, maybe not total. When the police came to the paper and arrested me, I almost knew what it was about. It was something I could have predicted from the way Juleen and the others were threatening me. They’ve done that sort of thing before.”
“For instance?”
“I can’t help thinking the real estate offices, the tax rolls, any information you can get on the properties around the town, might show something. I couldn’t follow it up when I was still there, but all the recent real estate deals didn’t feel quite right to me.”
THE REAL ESTATE business wasn’t feeling quite right to Bernice either. Just as she pulled up in front of Tyler and Sons Realty, she saw the owner, Albert Tyler, locking up the place and getting ready to leave.
She rolled down her car window and asked him, “Say, aren’t you supposed to be open until 5?”
Tyler only smiled and shrugged. “Not on Thursdays.”
Bernice could read the hours on the front door. “But your hours say Monday through Friday, 10 to 5.”
Tyler got just a little cross. “Not on Thursdays, I said!”
Bernice noticed Tyler’s son Calvin driving his Volkswagen out from behind the building. She got out of her car and waved him down. Unwillingly, he paused and rolled down his window.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Aren’t you people usually open on Thursday until 5?”
Calvin only shrugged and made a face. “What do I know? The old man says go home, we all go home.”
He drove off. “Old man” Tyler was getting into his Plymouth. Bernice ran up to the car and waved to get his attention.
He was really miffed by now. He rolled down his window and said gruffly, “Lady, we’re closed and I have to get home!”
“I just wanted to look through your microfiche. I need some information on some property.”
He shook his head. “Hey, I can’t help you anyway. Our microfiche is broken down.”
“Wha …?”
But Tyler rolled up his window and pulled away, screeching his tires a little.
Bernice shouted angrily after him, “Did Rosemary tip you off?”
She hurried to her car. There was still the Top of the Town Realty. She knew the owner regularly helped out with youth baseball on Thursday afternoons. Maybe the other gal who worked there wouldn’t know who she was.
HARMEL LOOKED GRIM and haggard as he said, “They’ll do you in, Hogan. They have the clout and the connections to do it. Look at me: I lost all I owned, lost my wife and family … they cleaned me out. They’ll do the same to you.”
Marshall wanted answers, not doomsaying. “What do you know about some guy named Kaseph?”
Harmel grimaced with fresh disgust. “Go after that. He might be the source of all the trouble. Juleen worshiped that guy. Everybody did Juleen’s bidding, but she did his.”
“Do you know whether or not he was looking for any real estate around Ashton?”
“He was drooling over the college, I know that.”
Marshall was taken aback. “The college? Keep going.”
“I never got the chance to dig after it, but there might be something there. Talk around the Network said that the college would be taken over entirely by some Network higher-ups, and Eugene Baylor seemed to be spending a lot of time talking money with Kaseph or his reps.”
“Kaseph was trying to buy the college?”
“He hasn’t yet. But he did end up buying everything else around town.”
“Like what?”
“A lot of homes, I know, but I couldn’t find out very much. Like I said, check the tax rolls or the real estate offices to see if he’s been buying up anything else. I know he had the bucks to do it.” Harmel pulled a ragged manila envelope from under his jacket. “And take this off my hands, will you?”
Marshall took the envelope. “What is it?”
“A curse, that’s what. Something happens to everyone who has it. Eldon’s accountant friend, Ernie Johnson, gave it to me, and I hope Eldon told you what happened to him!”
“He told me.”
“It’s Johnson’s findings from the college accounting office.”
Marshall couldn’t believe his luck. “You gotta be kidding! Did Eldon know about this?”
“No, I just came across them myself, but don’t start dancing yet. You’d better get some accountant friend of your own to try to decipher it for you. It doesn’t make much sense to me … I think there’s still a whole other half of it missing.”
“It’s a start. Thanks.”
“If you want to play with theories, try this out: Kaseph comes to Ashton and wants to buy everything he can get his hands on. The college is not even thinking of selling. Next thing you know, thanks to Baylor, the college gets itself in such deep financial trouble that selling may be the only way to get out of it. Suddenly Kaseph’s offer isn’t so far-fetched, and by now the board of regents is stacked with yea-sayers.”
Marshall opened the envelope and leafed through the pages and pages of photocopied columns and figures. “And you couldn’t find any leads in all this?”
“More leads you don’t need, not as much as proof. What you really need to see is who’s on the other end of all those transactions.”
“Kaseph’s books, perhaps?”
“With all the friends and confederates he has at that college, I wouldn’t be surprised if Kaseph was coming back to buy the college with its own money!”
“That’s some theory. But what would a man like that even want with a little town, or with a whole college?”
“Hogan, a guy with the power and bucks that guy seems to have could take a town like Ashton and do anything he wanted with it. I think he already has to a great extent.”
“How do you know?”
“Just check it out.”
CHAPTER 21
BERNICE WAS IN a hurry. She was in the back room of the Top of the Town Realty, going through their microfiche files. Carla, the girl out in front, was new enough to the job and the town that she bought Bernice’s little talk about being a historian from the college looking for background on Ashton. It didn’t take long for Carla to give Bernice a tour of the files and a short course on how to run the viewer. When Carla left her alone, Bernice went straight for the criss-cross file. This was certainly a wonderful stroke of luck: the other real estate offices had files that told you what land was owned by whom if you knew where the property was; the criss-cross file told you what various people owned if you knew the names of the people.
Kaseph. Bernice flipped through the microfiche holder to the Ks. She slipped the celluloid into the viewer and began scanning up and down, across, zigzag, the myriads of microscopic letters and figures streaking in a blur across the viewscreen as she looked for the right column. There. Kw … Kh … Ke … Ka … across to the next column. Hurry it up, Bernice!
She found no listing under Kaseph.
“How’re you doing?” asked Carla from up front.
“Oh, just fine,” Bernice answered. “I’m not finding much yet, but I know where to
look.”
Well, there was still Joe’s Market. She went back to the regular file and pulled out the microfiche for the Section, Township, and Quarter for that address. Into the viewer the celluloid went, and again Bernice raced the myriads of listings up and down, looking for the listing. There! The legal description of what used to be Joe’s Market, now the Ashton Mercantile. It was tax assessed at $105,900, and owned by Omni Corporation. That was all it said.
Bernice went back to the criss-cross file. Into the viewer went the Ok–Om celluloid. Up, down, across. Olson … Omer … Omni. Omni. Omni. Omni. Omni. Omni. The listings under Omni Corporation went down, down, down the column; there could have been over a hundred. Bernice got her pen and pad and started writing furiously. The many addresses and legal descriptions meant little to her; many of them weren’t even decipherable, but she kept scribbling as fast as she could, hoping she would be able to read her own writing when she looked at it later. She abbreviated, filling page after page in her notepad.
Out front, the telephone rang, as it had been doing; but this time Carla’s conversation didn’t sound too happy. Her voice was hushed and serious, and she sounded very apologetic. The jig might be up, kid, keep writing!
In a moment Carla appeared. “Are you Bernice Krueger, from the Clarion?” she asked directly.
“Who’s asking?” Bernice said. That was dumb, but she didn’t want to come right out with the truth either.
Carla looked very disturbed. “Listen, you’re going to have to leave right away,” she said.
“That was your boss on the phone, right?”
“Yes it was, and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell him I let you back here. I don’t know what this is all about, and I don’t know why you lied to me, but would you please just leave? He’s coming over here to lock the place up, and I told him you hadn’t come by …”
“You’re a doll!”
“Well, I lied for you, now you please lie for me.”
Bernice scrambled to gather up all her notes and replace the celluloids. “I was never here.”
“I appreciate it,” said Carla as Bernice raced out the door. “Wow, you just about got me fired.”
ANDY AND JUNE Forsythe had a very nice home, a modern log house on the outskirts of town, not far from Forsythe Lumber. Tonight Hank and Mary had gathered there for a dinner fellowship along with many others of the Remnant, as Krioni, Triskal, Seth, Chimon, and Mota sat up in the lofty rafters looking on. The angels could feel the growing power of this little cluster of praying people. The Joneses were there, as were the Colemans, the Coopers, the Harrises, some of the college students; Ron Forsythe was there along with his girlfriend Cynthia. A few more brand-new Christians were with him, just now getting introduced to the rest of the group. Other latecomers were continually trickling in.
After dinner the people gathered and settled around the big stone hearth in the living room, while Hank took his place on the hearth with Mary beside him. Each person began to share his background.
Bill and Betty Jones had been churchgoers all their lives, but only made a serious commitment to Jesus Christ a year ago. The Lord had spoken to their hearts, and they searched Him out.
John and Patty Coleman had been to another church in town, but never knew much about the Bible or about Christ until coming to this church.
Cecil and Miriam Cooper had always known the Lord, and they were glad to see a new flock gathering to replace the old one. “It feels a lot like replacing a flat tire,” Cecil quipped.
As others shared, their various backgrounds were brought out; there were different traditions and different doctrinal backgrounds, but any differences were not very important right now. All of them had one main concern: the town of Ashton.
“Oh, it’s a war, all right,” said Andy Forsythe. “You can’t go out on those streets and not feel it. Sometimes I feel like I’m running through a shower of spears, you know?”
A new couple, friends of the Coopers, Dan and Jean Corsi, spoke up.
Jean said, “I really think it’s Satan out there, just like the Bible says, just like a roaring lion trying to devour everyone.”
Dan commented, “The problem is that we’ve all just sat to the side and let it happen. It’s time we got concerned and scared and on our knees to see that the Lord does something about it.”
Jean added, “Some of you know our son is having some real problems right now. We really wish you’d pray for him.”
“What’s his name?” someone asked.
“Bobby,” Jean answered. She swallowed and went on to say, “He enrolled at the college this year and something’s really happened to him …” She had to stop, choked with emotion.
Dan picked it up, and his tone was bitter. “Seems like something happens to any kid who goes off to that college. I never knew what kind of weird stuff they were really teaching over there. The rest of you should find out about it and make sure you don’t let your kids get involved.”
Ron Forsythe, silent up to this time, piped up, “I know what you’re talking about, man. It’s in the high school, too. The kids are messing around with Satanic stuff like you wouldn’t believe. We used to trip out on drugs; now it’s demons.”
Jean ventured through her tears, “I know this sounds awful, but I really wonder if Bobby isn’t possessed.”
“I was,” said Ron. “I know I was. Man, I heard voices talking to me, telling me to get some drugs, or steal something, all kinds of horrible things. I never let my folks know where I was, I never came home, I’d end up sleeping in the weirdest places … and with the weirdest people.”
Dan muttered, “Yeah, that’s Bobby. We haven’t seen him in about a week.”
Jean wanted to know, “But how did you get started in such things?”
Ron shrugged. “Hey, I was already going the wrong way. I’m not sure I’m even all the way straightened out yet. But I’ll tell you when I think I got into the Satanic stuff: it’s when I had my fortune told. Hey, that’s when I caught it, no doubt.” Someone asked if the fortune-teller was a certain woman. “No, it was somebody else. It was at the carnival three years ago.”
“Aw, they’re all over the place,” someone else moaned.
“Well that just goes to show how far off-base this town has gotten!” Cecil Cooper protested. “There are more witches and fortune-tellers around here than Sunday school teachers!”
“Well, we’ll just see what we can do about that!” said John Coleman.
Ron picked it up again. “It’s all heavy duty, man. I mean, I saw some pretty weird things when I was into that stuff: I’ve seen things just float around by themselves, I’ve read people’s minds, I even left my body once and floated around town. You’d just better all be good and prayed up!”
Jean Corsi began to cry. “Bobby’s possessed … I just know it!”
Hank could see it was time to take control. “Okay, people, now I have a real burden to pray for this town, and I know you do too, so I think that’s where the answer lies. That’s the first thing we need to do.”
They were all ready. Many felt awkward praying out loud for the first time; some knew how to pray loudly and confidently; some prayed in phrases they’d learned from certain liturgies; all meant every word, however they managed to express it. The fervency slowly began to rise; the prayers became more and more earnest. Someone started a simple song of worship and those who knew it sang, while those who didn’t know it learned it.
In the rafters the angels sang along, their voices smooth and flowing like cellos and basses in a symphony. Triskal looked at Krioni, smiled broadly, and flexed his arms. Krioni smiled and flexed back. Chimon took his sword and made it dance from the pivot of his wrist, tracing streaks and curls of shimmering light in the air as the blade sang with a beautiful resonance. Mota just looked toward heaven, his silken wings spreading, his arms upraised, caught up in the rapture of the song.
KATE QUIETLY SET her kitchen table with one plate, one cup, and a saucer. That e
vening she ate by herself, hardly able to get anything down because of the emotions tightening her throat and twisting her stomach. Oh well, it was leftovers anyway—leftovers from those many other meals Marshall never showed up for. It was happening again. Maybe the place had nothing to do with how busy a newsman could be. Perhaps, even though Marshall had moved to a small, supposedly dull town, he still had that cursed nose for news that led him on his wild hunts into all hours of the night, making a story where one didn’t even exist before. Perhaps this was, after all, his first love, more than his wife, more than his daughter.
Sandy. Where was she tonight? Hadn’t they made this move for her sake? Now she was further away from them than ever, even though she still lived in the same house. Shawn had grown into her life like a cancer, not a friend, and Kate and Marshall never did talk about it like he had promised. His mind had been totally preoccupied. He was married to that newspaper, maybe enamored by that young, attractive reporter.
Kate shoved her plate away and tried to keep from crying. She couldn’t start fussing and shedding tears now, not when she had to think clearly. Undoubtedly there would be decisions to make, and she would have to make them alone.
ON THE OUTSKIRTS of Ashton, next to the railroad yard, Tal conferred with his warriors inside an old, unused water tower.
Nathan was pacing back and forth, his voice echoing off the walls of the huge tank. “I could feel it coming, captain! The enemy is luring Hogan into a trap. There has been a dangerous shift in affection toward Krueger. His family is in grave danger.”