This Present Darkness (38 page)

“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.”

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
K
s. 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!”