Julia realized that she did not know the chief’s name, that none of them had even bothered to ask. Of course, she didn’t know the names of most of the Molokans either, and somehow the fact that she was here with strangers lent to the proceedings a dispassionate, objective air that further served to dispel the aura of horror that overhung the house.
The downstairs people started searching the kitchen and the first floor bedrooms while the rest of them went upstairs with Agafia.
They planned to go through this floor, then, if they didn’t find anything, check out the attic. The thought of going up into the attic scared her—it was where Gregory had hidden, where he’d stored his gun
—and she decided that she would remain here and let some of the hardier people, the Indian men, check for her. She could not go up there. Not now. Not yet.
There was a press of bodies behind her, and she moved forward, flashlight extended. They started with the hallway, checking the linen closet.
Nothing.
Their bedroom, bedroom closets, master bath. Nothing.
Adam’s bedroom. Nothing.
Sasha’s bedroom.
Julia sucked in her breath as the flashlights shone into the darkness and illuminated the bed.
It was him. The Owner of the House.
Jedushka Di Muvedushka.
He was crouching over the body of Sasha, and it was obvious that he’d been playing with her. There were patterns drawn in blood, obscene renderings on the wall above the headboard, and her limbs had been repositioned in a disgusting way that he obviously found comical.
She recognized him instantly. She had seen him before, in Russiantown. He was the figure she had encountered in the ruined buildings of the old Molokan neighborhood. She remembered perfectly the scrunched-together face, the abhorrent configuration of features, the aura of tremendous age. He was wearing traditional Russian clothing, but his white shirt was covered with red, and his stubby hands were drenched with blood.
Fear, horror, revulsion, sadness, despair, anger—all vied for supremacy within her, but it was anger that came out on top, and she was the first one to step through the door into the unnaturally cold room. He could not do that with her daughter’s body. Supernatural being or not, he could not desecrate her corpse and get away with it.
She acted without thinking, throwing her flashlight as hard as she could at the little man and feeling a small twinge of satisfaction as it bounced off his head and made him wince. “Leave her alone!” Julia screamed.
She felt Agafia’s reassuring hand on her arm.
“Get out of my house and leave my daughter alone! All of you!”
He looked at her, and in a sudden flash of insight she realized the truth.
There were no others. No ghosts, no demons, no other creatures, no other beings.
Only him.
Agafia was wrong. It was not that supernatural forces were attacking the town because he wasn’t there to protect them. It was simply that he was pissed off that they hadn’t invited him along when they’d moved.
And he was out for revenge.
The powers at his disposal, the ones he was supposed to turn outward against their enemies, he had turned inward against them. Not only was he not protecting them, he was attacking them, and in his face was the purest example of rage and hatred that she ever hoped to see. It was terrifying, the sheer power and intensity of those emotions, and her next invective died in her throat as she involuntarily backed up.
There were shouts coming from the stairs, everyone was running up, but there wasn’t enough room for everybody in the hallway, and she heard the people at the tail end calling out in confusion.
There were all these men and women against this one dwarfish creature, but the deck still seemed stacked, the odds in Jedushka Di Muvedushka’s favor, and it was clear that everyone knew it. The cold air was thick with power, an almost electrical charge that Julia could feel on her skin, in the shallow breaths she inhaled. Despite the rush of bodies, she and Agafia were still the only ones in the bedroom. A half-dozen flashlight beams were trained on the blood-spattered little man, but the men and women holding the lights remained out in the hall, afraid to come in.
The left-behind owner smiled at her, revealing small, sharp baby teeth, but there was no mirth or humor in the gesture. “There is only me,” he said, confirming her thoughts.
“The banya?” Julia said. “The hauntings? The murders?”
Jedushka Di Muvedushka grinned. “All me.” He chuckled. “My sandstorm, too.”
“It is not him,” Agafia said quietly in Russian.
“What?”
“It is not the right one.”
The little man chuckled, spoke Russian as well. “Then I guess I’m the wrong one.”
Julia understood. It was not their Jedushka Di Muvedushka. It was another one. A bad one.
An evil one.
She should have known that, should have been able to guess, but it made no practical difference, had no bearing on anything at this point.
“The banya,” Agafia said. “It used to be the Shubins’. They must not have invited him to come. They must have left him behind.”
And he’d been sitting here all these years, growing angrier, more bitter.
Stronger.
“Yes,” he said, grinning.
Around them, the house shook. Some of the Molokan women in the hallway screamed. Flashlight beams darted around. Color was bleeding from the walls, leaving them black and white. Hovering outside the window was a miniature funnel cloud, a dust devil.
A dust devil with a face.
Gregory’s face.
The Owner of the House laughed, the same ancient laugh she remembered from Russiantown, and Julia was chilled to the bone. The creature’s voice, when he spoke, was equally ancient. “I’m glad you all came. I’m glad you’re here.”
And a naked, dirty old man with a beard that hung down to his knees walked through the door.
2
“You have found him.”
Agafia heard him before she saw him, heard his voice in her mind, and she turned to see a commotion in the hallway, a jostling of bodies made apparent by the suddenly skewed flashlight beams.
And then the prophet walked into the room.
The feeling that coursed through her, that washed over her, was not gratitude, not relief, not joy, not hope, but some amalgam of the four that was stronger and more intense than all of them put together.
Peter and Nikolai had found him. And they’d brought him here. She felt like crying but knew she could not allow herself that luxury.
Agafia looked at the pra roak and wanted to apologize for not doing something sooner, for not realizing what was happening and putting a stop to it before it reached this point, but there was no time for that either, and she did not really know what to say.
“It is not your fault,” that voice in her mind said, and she saw on that wrinkled old face a look of contrition.
She blinked. He was apologizing to her?
“It is not your fault.”
That was true, she realized. Perhaps if they had invited their Jedushka Di Muvedushka to move with them from California he could have fought off this onslaught from his brethren, but it was equally likely that he would have ended up dead like the others, piled in the banya. It was the Shubins who had brought this about by ignoring tradition, by not following the Russian custom and inviting the Owner of the House to come with them, and it was their Owner that lay at the root of this disaster.