“Liza,” she said.
“It was all so fine,” Liza said, “don’t you think?” “Yes.”
“The choir, the singing—” “Yes.”
“—the sermon—” “Yes. It was fine.” “Creath was very moved.” “I saw him, Liza.”
“Well, you must have. But what about Nancy?” The killing blow. “Is she ill? One hears such terrible stories—not that I give them any credence—”
But the Wilcox woman only turned and stalked away.
Liza felt a perverse flourish of pleasure. Let her go, she thought. It doesn’t matter. Let her go.
Anything is possible, Liza thought blissfully.
The switchman’s shack was a good quarter mile away, but if she listened closely Nancy could make out the murmur of voices from the tent revival. She reached for the door, and the beat of her pulse drowned out the singing.
“You came,” Anna Blaise said.
Nancy sighed, the sound of it closed up in the darkness of the shack. Travis’s words echoed through her mind. Not human. It made no sense… though there was, yes, that indefinable quality about her, a kind of ethereal lightness, a not-thereness. And that quality had grown more intense over the last week. She was paler than ever. A strong light, Nancy thought, might shine right through her. “It wasn’t easy getting away.”
“Your mother?”
“There’s a tent revival in town. You know about tent revivals?” “I’ve heard.”
Her eyes, Nancy thought. The stillness and wideness of them. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. She wanted me to go with her. It was important to her. If I don’t go it makes her look bad. She begged. And threatened.”
“She could hurt you?”
“Not physically. Not anymore. I guess she could kick me out of the house. Might—if it comes to that.”
Anna said, her voice softly musical in the darkness of the shack, “I’m sorry to have brought this on you.”
“I would have gone with her tonight. But you said it was important.”
“It is.”
The silence stretched out. Nancy said, “I saw Travis, too.” “I’m sorry about Travis.” “He asked for an explanation. I couldn’t give him one.” “I know.”
“He said—” She licked her lips. “He said you weren’t human.” “Nancy—?” “Yes?” “I’m not.”
The shack was very dark indeed. Only a faint beam of moonlight played through the gaps in the wallboards. From far away Nancy heard the sweet massed voices of the revival choir. She said carefully, “I don’t understand.” Fear had uncoiled like a spring inside her.
“Travis saw too much too soon … he didn’t understand either. But now you must. I’ll need your help tonight.”
“I don’t know what you mean!”
“Shh.” The voice was soothing now. Motherly. Nancy’s heart beat in her chest… but she stayed. She did not run.
Anna explained. It was like listening to a bedtime story.
“I am,” she said, her voice cadenced and singing, “a long, long way from home. …”
After dark Travis worked his way along the river-bank to the switchman’s shack.
He was not sure what had brought him. A restlessness. An unease. A need to once more see—like the tongue’s need to probe an aching tooth. The night was cold, and the stars arched overhead in a cruelly vacant sky.
She is a witch. A monster. Not human.
He thought of Creath sneaking up the stairs, seduced by her femaleness.
She was that debased thing his mother had become, he thought, tainted by her sex, but worse, a hundred times worse…
Mama, I’ll protect you, said the six-year-old in him.
His head had become a cacophony of voices. But this one does not need protection, Travis thought.
The door of the shack gaped open then, and Travis hid himself among the fragile ruins of the summer’s pussy willows. Two figures in the moonlight. He recognized Nancy at once. The shape leaning against her could only be Anna. But an Anna changed… luminous with faint blue fire, which was strange enough, but changed in other ways, too… her bones more defined within that frail body, her eyes very wide, her arms elongated.
It was true, then. What he had seen a week ago was not an hallucination. She was changing. She was not human.
But surely Nancy must be able to see that?
They were squatting at the riverside now, Nancy sponging the Anna-thing’s forehead with river water, and where the water touched her skin the feverish blue light seemed to fade. Far off, there was the sound of motors revving as the tent revival ended.
Changing, Travis thought. Though not precisely the way he had expected.
He squinted at the faint figure of Anna at the riverbank, and ancient fears rose up in him.
If this goes on, he thought dazedly, then soon, soon, there would be nothing left of Anna Blaise at all.
Chapter Ten
Nancy was not sure precisely when or how the fear had descended on the town. She knew only that it had come. The Courier was full of frightening headlines. Doors were more often locked. She was apt to be scrutinized when she was out after dark. The Depression had deepened; in Idaho the farmers had set up blockades, dairy farmers had spilled their milk into the road rather than sell it for two cents a gallon. In Washington the Bonus Expeditionary Force had been routed by the Army. A murderous contagion was abroad in the land, and Haute Montagne was sealing its borders.
She had never felt more alone. This is what it means, Travis had told her, and it seemed like infinities ago. This is what it means to be a misfit.
Nancy lay on the rosette bedspread in her room. Her mother kept the small house meticulously neat. They were not rich, but her mother’s job at the bakery was much envied, and she earned enough to keep them. Until recently, too, there had been Nancy’s salary from the Times Square. But that was gone. Mr. O’Neill had not forgiven her for walking out before the dinner rush. Nor had her mother forgiven her for losing the job. It meant a degree of hardship.
Nancy had some money saved back. Listless, she felt under the mattress for the pastille can she kept there and when she found it she thumbed it open. The last of her own cash. A little over seven dollars. Saved for a rainy day. Well, surely that day had come? In fact, it was raining, a lackluster rain sliding down the fogged windows. She hated to go out, but she had to.
Anna needed food.
This thing Anna had said was going to happen, Nancy thought—I just wish it would. Now. Regardless of the consequences.
She was tired.
When she went downstairs her mother was in the parlor, upright in a cane-backed chair with her feet flat on the carpet. “Surely to God,” Faye Wilcox said dully, “you cannot be going out now.”
“Have to, Mama.”
“Need I ask where? Or why?”
Nancy said, “I thought you had a meeting.”
“Damn the meeting,” her mother said, and Nancy was shocked. Faye Wilcox did not curse, not ever. Cursing, she had told Nancy, was of the devil.
It occurred to her that maybe she was now the more religious of the two of them, in some strange way: at least, she prayed more often. Clipped, furtive, practical prayers. Please God, let me get through this. She believed in Anna Blaise… and was that not in itself a kind of religious faith?
“Mama, don’t make yourself late.”
“There is nothing for me there. Not anymore.” She focused a sullen look on Nancy. “You’ve seen to that.”