The other woman backed off. “I’m not going to get into a political discussion here. I just came to tell you all to keep it down. After all, this is a library.” She smiled, but there was no humor in it. “Come on, now. Back to work. You may be volunteers, but I’m in charge here, and there’s a lot that needs to be done.”
Julia watched the librarian walk through the door to the front of the library.
They were all loonies, she realized.
She returned to the pile of donated books in front of her, not looking at either Alma or Trudy. Silently, she filled out another accession card.
She left at lunch.
She did not return.
3
Jim sat on the edge of the unmade bed, head in his hands, elbows on his knees. He was tired, fatigued, and his head was pounding. He’d been sitting like this for nearly twenty minutes, wanting to get up, intending to get up, but for some reason unable to do so. It felt like a hangover, the pain in his head and the lethargy in his body, but he had not gotten drunk in a long time, and he knew that could not be the cause.
Ordinarily, he would have been at the church hours ago. It was nearly midmorning, the sun hot and high in the sky, and he should have already finished sweeping out the dust and cleaning the kitchen, and started preparing his sermon for Sunday. But he just hadn’t been able to do it.
Perhaps he was sick.
No. It was not his body that was troubling him.
It was not even his mind.
It was his heart.
It was Agafia.
He did not know why, not specifically, but his heart ached when he thought of her. This should have been the happiest time of his life. His prayers had finally been answered, and Agafia had returned to him free and unencumbered. She had apparently forgiven and forgotten, and she seemed more than willing to take up where they’d left off.
But…
But something was wrong.
She’d changed.
Yes, she had. That was to be expected, of course. Only saints and fools walked through life without reacting and adjusting to the circumstances of their surroundings, without learning from their mistakes. But in Agafia’s case, it was different. She hadn’t changed all that much in her attitude or outlook, and on the surface she seemed to be the same as always, only older. But there’d been a subtle shift in the core of her being, and there was now something about her that made him uncomfortable.
He did not like being around her.
That was why his heart was so heavy. The woman he loved, the woman of his dreams, frightened him.
Frightened him?
Yes.
The thought occurred to him that it might not be her doing. She might be under the influence of an evil spirit, a neh chizni doohc.
Jim sighed. He was overreacting, obviously worked into a state by his concern for her, by his love, and by his inability to understand the ambiguity of his feelings. Agafia was the same religious woman she had always been. She was a good Molokan, and it was beneath him even to think otherwise.
Wasn’t it?
He thought of what had happened in Russiantown all those years ago, and he closed his eyes, shivering.
He’d always assumed—no, he’d always known—that everything God did was good. God was all good and was incapable of doing something that was not good. So the Bible, God’s word, was inherently pure, supremely incorruptible, the closest thing to perfection on this earth. Yet when he’d gone over to Agafia’s home yesterday, when he’d looked at the big family Bible on top of the bureau in her dining room, he’d felt a vague sense of unease. He tried to tell himself that it was the room, the house, but that was not true. It was the Bible itself that was wrong. The black-leather binding looked ominous, the gilt lettering garish and almost obscene. There was about the volume a subtle air of decadence and corruption. He never would have thought such a thing possible, but the Good Book did not seem at all good. It seemed bad. Evil.
He was afraid of it.
He was a man of God. How could he be afraid of a Bible? He didn’t know, but he was, and as Agafia talked, he had gently urged her into another room, away from the horrid book.
The Bible a horrid book?
Maybe it wasn’t her at all, he reasoned.
Maybe it was him.
Maybe it was the house.
That was the most likely explanation. After what had happened at that location, it was more than realistic to assume that evil lived at that address. He had not yet asked Agafia whether she knew what had transpired in her house, and though he had not wanted to bring it up before, had not wanted to taint her homecoming, he now thought the time had come to tell her of the massacre, assuming she did not already know.
If she had not said the proper prayers, perhaps all of the church members could go over to her home and attempt to cleanse it. If she had done everything correctly, then they could still put their heads together and, with the combined power and goodness of all their wills, drive out whatever had taken root at that spot.
And if it wasn’t the house?
He didn’t know. But whatever the problem, whatever the cause of his unease, he still loved her.
He would always love her.
His head was still pounding and he felt like going back to sleep, but he forced himself to stand. He walked into the bathroom, wet a comb, and ran it through his tangled white hair. He rinsed with Listerine and grabbed yesterday’s pants and shirt from the top of the hamper, putting them on before going into the kitchen and grabbing a handful of crackers to snack on.
He walked down to the church.
And sensed immediately that something was wrong.
He walked slowly through the open room, his footsteps echoing on the dusty wooden floor. The windows were shut, the doors securely locked, nothing appeared to have been touched, but he could tell that he was not alone. He could feel it. The church looked empty, but it wasn’t, and it was with trepidation that he approached the darkened doorway of the kitchen.
“Zdravicha!” he called. Hello.
There was no answer.
He tried to tell himself that kids had broken in or that he was worried about robbers and vandals, but there was no sign of a break-in, there was nothing to steal, and nothing had been vandalized.
And the truth was, it was not human intruders that concerned him.
It was neh chizni doohc.
He flipped on the kitchen light, looked quickly around. Nothing.
There were only the stove, the sink, an empty counter, and the metal rack holding pots, pans, and various cooking utensils. At the opposite end of the room was the closed door of the storage closet, and Jim said a quick protective prayer as he walked across the kitchen and yanked the door open.
Again… nothing. Only brooms and tools and buckets and cleaning solvents.
He closed the closet door. That was it. There were no other rooms or spaces inside the church. He had looked everywhere and found nothing. He sighed heavily. He should have been able to relax, his fears allayed, but the feeling was still there, as strong as ever, that he was not alone, that someone—something.
—was in the building with him.
He thought for a moment, then decided to get out his Bible and walk through each square inch of the church in order to drive out any demons or evil spirits that might be lurking. He did not understand how neh chizni doohc could even enter the blessed house of God, but he thought of his experience at Agafia’s and reminded himself that just because he did not understand something did not mean that it could not occur.