The Town Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Epilogue

  PRAISE FOR BENTLEY LITTLE

  The Revelation

  Winner of the Bram Stoker Award

  “Grabs the reader and yanks him along through an ever-worsening landscape of horrors. . . . It’s a terrifying ride with a shattering conclusion.”

  —Gary Brandner

  “The Revelation isn’t just a thriller, it’s a shocker . . . packed with frights and good, gory fun. . . . A must for those who like horror with a bite.”

  —Richard Laymon

  “I guarantee, once you start reading this book, you’ll be up until dawn with your eyes glued to the pages. A nail-biting, throat-squeezing, nonstop plunge into darkness and evil.”

  —Rick Hautala

  The Ignored

  “This is Bentley Little’s best book yet. Frightening, thought-provoking and impossible to put down.”

  —Stephen King

  “With his artfully plain prose and Quixote-like narrative, Little dissects the deep and disturbing fear of anonymity all Americans feel. . . . What Little has created is nothing less than a nightmarishly brilliant tour de force of modern life in America.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “The Ignored is a bizarre psychological drama that readers will not be able to ignore as they peruse it in one sitting, from first page to the last. Anyone who desires to emulate the famous will choose the obscurity of the ignored after reading this tale. It is that chilling a shocker. Bentley Little is a giant when it comes to the weird thriller.”

  —Painted Rock

  “Inventive. Chilling.”

  —Science Fiction Chronicle

  “A spooky novel with an original premise.”

  —SFSite (website)

  “Little is so wonderful that he can make the act of ordering a Coke at McDonald’s take on a sinister dimension. This philosophical soul-searcher is provocative.”

  —Fangoria magazine

  “The Ignored is not average at all.”

  —Locus magazine

  The Store

  “If there’s a better horror novelist than Bentley Little working today, I don’t know who it is. The Store is . . . frightening. The perfect summer read.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “Must reading for Koontz fans. Bentley Little draws the reader into a ride filled with fear, danger, and horror.”

  —Harriet Klausner, Painted Rock

  The Mailman

  “A thinking person’s horror novel. The Mailman delivers.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  University

  “Bentley Little keeps the high-tension jolts coming. By the time I finished, my nerves were pretty well fried, and I have a pretty high shock level. University is unlike anything else in popular fiction.”

  —Stephen King

  Also by Bentley Little

  The House

  The Store

  The Ignored

  Dominion

  University

  The Summoning

  Death Instinct

  The Mailman

  The Revelation

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane,

  London W8 5TZ, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,

  Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road,

  Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

  First Printing, May 2000

  Copyright © Bentley Little, 2000

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-11923-5

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN PUTNAM INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For the Dobrinins, the Tolmasoffs, and all of my Molokan relatives

  Prologue

  Loretta Nelson hated working at night.

  The real estate office stayed open after dark only during the weeks preceding the Copper Days celebration each August. The rest of the time, the doors closed at five, like a normal business, and that was the way Loretta preferred it. Still, she recognized the importance of the celebration, and that was why she never put up a fuss. Copper Days was the town’s big claim to fame, and it was the closest thing to a tourist attraction that McGuane had. Each year it brought in people from all over the state—hell, all over the Southwest—and a lot of local shops, restaurants, and hotels were able to survive only because of the business they did that weekend. Last year an estimated ten thousand people had descended on their sleepy little town during Copper Days, and the huge and sudden influx of cash had helped offset an otherwise dismal season.

  Their office had sold more homes that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday than in the combined months of June and July.

  This year they had a jump on things, though. Gregory Tomasov had bought the Megan place, which had been on the market for years now and which they thought they’d never be able to unload.

  She hadn’t seen Gregory since junior high school, but he hadn’t changed at all. He was the same arrogant know-it-all he’d always been, and he still acted as though his shit didn’t stink. He was rich now. He’d won several million dollars in the California lottery, and he’d apparently come back to town to lord it over everyone else. He said he just wanted to raise his kids in a good, wholesome small-town environment, and he pretended to be nice to her when he found out who she was, but she knew better. She sensed the real reason for his return to Arizona, and she could feel the smug disdain behind his casual conversation.

  His wife looked like she was a Molokan, too—which was not a surprise because those people always stuck together—and she seemed as stuck-up as he did.

  As petty as it was, Loretta was glad Call had conned them into buying the Megan place, and she couldn’t wait to tell her friends that the sucker they’d finally hooked was old Gregory Tomasov.

  Although she would be grateful if Gregory were
here right now. Or if anyone were here.

  She did not like being alone.

  Not at night.

  Loretta stood, walked over to the front window, looked out at the highway.

  Nothing.

  Only darkness.

  In the decade and a half she’d been Call Cartright’s secretary, she could count on one hand the number of people who’d called or stopped by after dark.

  She shivered. It was the mine behind the building that spooked her. She knew it was a childish fear. She’d lived in McGuane her entire life, and there was nothing in the pit at night that wasn’t there in the daytime. It was empty, abandoned. But after nightfall, having that black hole behind her gave her the heebie-jeebies. It was abandoned, and that absence of human activity was one of the reasons she felt unnerved here at the edge of the pit.

  It had been abandoned since before she was born.

  That made it even scarier.

  She shook her head. She’d been watching too many monster movies lately.

  Lymon was supposed to have shown up to keep her company, but he was even more unreliable than he was slow, and it didn’t surprise her that he hadn’t arrived. She continued to scan the highway, searching for the lights of his four-by-four, but there was no one on the road at all tonight. She glanced up at the clock. Nine-forty. Twenty minutes to go.

  She walked around the edge of the office, looking out the windows, ending up back behind her desk, straightening the brochures she’d had printed this morning and peering out at the inky blackness of the mine. The moon was new, a pale sliver in the sky, and its faint illumination made the pit seem even darker. It was as though the mine was a light vacuum, sucking the slightest hint of radiance out of the land and sky.

  She was about to turn away, about to call Lymon and give him a lecture on laziness and thoughtlessness, when she saw something out of the corner of her eye. Something white against the blackness of night.

  Movement.

  Loretta sidled next to the window and peered out. It was a light. A light down in the bottom of the pit.

  But there hadn’t been a light down there for nearly half a century.

  A cold chill passed through her. She was afraid to look into the mine, but she was afraid to look away, and so she remained in place, staring, as the light, a vague, shapeless glow of indeterminate size, first floated upward, then began darting around, moving not with any visible motion but winking on and off, appearing at different points around the massive pit in rapid succession.

  It was accompanied by a sound that reminded her of rats screaming.

  Loretta looked away, concentrated on the warm, friendly, illuminated interior of the office, trying to tune out everything else. She checked to make sure the windows were all closed, then hurried over and closed and locked the front door.

  She looked down at the desk, at the brochures, tried to tell herself that it was nothing, just her imagination, that there was nothing unusual happening outside. But she could still see the light in her peripheral vision, buzzing around the deep interior of the mine.

  Then it winked off.

  Appeared instantly next to her car.

  Loretta’s heart leaped in her chest. There was no way she could continue to pretend that there was nothing going on. She quickly reached for the phone, intending to call Lymon. She picked up the receiver, but there was no dial tone. The line was dead.

  She looked back out the window, saw nothing but blackness.

  There was a knock at the door.

  She let out a small yelp. Her pulse was racing, her heart thumping, and she was more scared than she had ever been in her life. She swallowed, tried to sound brave. “Hello?”

  There was another knock, louder this time.

  “Go away!” she yelled.

  All of the lights went out.

  She screamed, an instinctive reaction but not a practical one. The office was too far from downtown for anyone to hear her. She could scream all she wanted and no one would ever know.

  Another knock.

  Crying, terrified, she slumped against the wall.

  And in the darkness, something grabbed hold of her hand.

  One

  1

  Lawn grass, freshly cut.

  It was the smell of suburban summer, and Adam had always loved that rich, unique scent, but it depressed him now, and as he walked down the sidewalk past the Josefsons’ yard on his way to Roberto’s, he thought about how unfair life was. Especially if you were a teenager. Or almost a teenager. It was an adult world, adults made the rules and made the decisions, and they always got their way. Forget black, white, brown. Adolescents were the true minority. They were the ones really being oppressed. They had the thoughts and emotions of adults but none of the rights. He might be only twelve, but he considered himself mature for his age, and he knew better than anyone else what was good for him. He should at least be consulted regarding decisions that would affect his life and his future.

  But his parents had decided to move to Arizona without even discussing it with him.

  They’d just told him.

  Ordered him.

  Adam sighed. Life sucked.

  His friend was already waiting for him, sitting on the trunk of his dad’s old Chevy parked in the driveway.

  “Hey, Ad Man,” Roberto called.

  “Dick,” Adam said. No one had ever made fun of his name except Roberto, although he’d always been embarrassed by it and considered it supremely goofy. Babunya, his grandmother, had picked out the name, and it sounded okay when she said it: Uh-dahm, with the accent on the second syllable. It sounded exotic that way, not quite so stupid. But when it was pronounced the normal way, the American way, he hated it.

  He was glad Babunya was going to be living with them, he had to admit. He liked the idea of having her around all the time instead of just going to visit her on weekends. But he was not happy to be moving.

  Not happy?

  He was miserable.

  He’d postponed telling Roberto that they were moving, not sure how to break the news to his friend.

  Sasha, if possible, was even more upset than he was. Teo was only nine and didn’t seem to be all that concerned, but Sasha was furious. She’d had a big fight with their parents last night, refusing to move, threatening to leave, threatening to run away, and she and their parents were still arguing when he finally fell asleep.

  For the first time in his life, he’d been rooting for his sister to win an argument.

  But of course that could not happen. She might be a senior in high school, but she was only a teenager and they were adults, and hierarchy always overrode logic.

  They were going to be forced to move to Arizona, and there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it.

  Roberto walked quickly over to him, glanced back at his house. “Let’s hit the pavement,” he said. “My mom’s on the warpath again, and I know she’s gonna try and make me wash windows or pull weeds or do something stupid. She was all over my old man last night about how I don’t do anything around the house, and she’s been looking around all morning trying to think of something.”

  “Roberto!” his mother called from inside the house.

  “Haul ass!” Roberto took off, and Adam followed. They sped down the block, turned the corner, and didn’t stop until they were out of hearing range. They were both laughing and breathing heavily, but Adam’s laughter was tinged with sadness as he realized that in a few more weeks he would not be able to hang out with Roberto anymore, would not be able to rescue him from the hell of household chores, and his amusement faded much faster than his friend’s.

  “Let’s check out the AM/PM,” Roberto said. “The new Marvel cards should be in.”

  Adam nodded his agreement. “All right.”

  They walked through the neighborhood, cut through an alley, and headed down busy Paramount Boulevard to the gas station mini-mart. Roberto found a plastic spider on the ground next to a sewer grating, and Adam found a quarter i
n the coin return slot of a pay phone, and they both agreed that this was turning out to be a fine day.

  At the AM/PM, they walked straight to the trading cards rack. The new Marvel cards had indeed arrived, and the two of them pooled their money and bought five packs. Adam was the Spiderman fan, so all Spidey cards automatically went to him. There were four this time, so Roberto got four choices from the remaining cards, and they divided up the rest on a one-for-you-and-one-for-me basis.

  They were walking slowly past the pumps, back out to Paramount, sorting through their cards, when Adam told him.

  “We’re moving.”

  “What?” Roberto stopped walking and looked dumbly over at him as though his ears and brain had somehow mistranslated what had been said.

  “My parents bought a house in some small town in Arizona. That’s where my dad’s from. Ever since he won the lottery and quit his job he’s been lost. He doesn’t have anything to do. He doesn’t know what he wants to do. So he decided to try to recapture his childhood or something and he dragged my mom out to Arizona and they bought a house out there and now they’re going to force us to uproot our lives and take off and live in the middle of the desert.” The words spilled out in a torrent, with barely a pause between sentences, and Adam realized that he had a lump in his throat and was very close to crying.

  Roberto was silent.

  They looked around at the building, at the cars, at the pumps, at the street, at everything but each other, both of them too embarrassed to acknowledge what they were feeling.