Dance with the Devil

He drew her attention to the pylon beside them and showed her how to operate the simple controls. The cables did not carry electrical power at all, but formed a rudimentary ski-lift to the top of the mountain. One had only to grasp the lower cable, turn on the device and be dragged up the mountainside.

“It can be hard on the arms,” Alex said. “But you can stop and rest once or twice and then grab it again. It won't shut off until you reach the top and re-set the controls up there.”

“I was so excited about getting on skis again that I never wondered how we would get back. I guess the road isn't open yet.”

“Not yet,” he said. “But without the wind, the drifting won't be so bad. They'll have everything cleared up by tonight.” He sat down in the snow and began to unbuckle his skis. “Come on, let's get into town for a cup of coffee at the cafe. My face is still stinging from the cold.”

By the time they had walked into the square, pausing now and then while Alex commented on the town along the way, they were both slightly flushed from the exertion and no longer chilled. They decided to postpone the coffee until they had thoroughly prowled from one end of Roxburgh to the other.

Connecting the four main streets of Roxburgh like robins running from one spoke of the wheel to the other, were narrow, twisting alleyways and dead-end avenues which gave the town a feeling of size that it did not genuinely possess. They explored these streets, stopping to look at unusual pieces of turn-of-the-century architecture: an eight-room log cabin that had recently been renovated into a magnificent home; a stone grocery store and post office combination that, with its sunken windows and recessed double-open entryway, looked more like a fort than a grocery; the Catholic Church, which was done all in unpainted natural pine with wooden pegs used for nails, composed of a thousand fascinating angles and beams and struts, a miniature cathedral large enough to seat a hundred and fifty at one time, capped with such intricate detail as handcarved pew edging and altar panels.

As they walked, Katherine learned that the Roxburgh family had originally made their money in shipping, later in railroads and highway construction. It had been Lydia's father's conceit that the Adirondack wildernesses would swiftly open to the railroads and to the not-too-distant automobile which, he maintained, would cross these mountains on hundreds of roadways, bringing civilization into the heart of the back-lands. He had been too optimistic. Roxburgh and his land purchases around it was the only investment he had been wrong about. He had permitted his own love of the countryside to unsettle his normal business sense, had built the mansion because he wanted to make it the first cornerstone of a “showplace” town. At least, though his dreams for the land did not come to pass, he was happy here, away from the bustle of high society — a bigger fish than ever, because he was in a smaller pond.

They were climbing a steep, icy sidewalk which, though shoveled and salted, was still treacherous in places, when Michael Harrison turned the corner immediately in front of them, seemed to slip, grasped at Alex for support and sent the other man sprawling into the snow.

“My God, I'm sorry, Alex!” Harrison said solicitously, offering him a hand up.

Alex ignored the hand, made it on his own. He was covered in snow and distinctly comical, though the rage on his face made it impossible for Katherine to laugh.

“That was clever as hell,” Alex said.

“Clever?” Mike was perplexed.

“I suppose you'll say it was an accident?” Alex wiped the last of the snow from his face. Despite the cold, his skin was pallid, white with anger.

“It was an accident,” Mike said.

Alex turned to Katherine. “Come on. What I wanted to show you is only a block further on.”

Katherine felt that she was witnessing something that had a history beyond her understanding, but she said, “Alex, I'm sure Mike wouldn't—”

“He would, believe me.”

“I'm truly sorry that—” Harrison began.

Alex interrupted him. “Oh, shut up, Harrison.”

Mike shut up, though he looked baffled.

“It wouldn't be the first time he's taken an opportunity to humiliate me,” Alex told her, teeth clenched through the last few words.

“Really, if—” Mike began, still baffled.

“Come on,” Alex said, rudely grasping her arm and trying to propel her past Harrison.

“Wait a minute,” she said, holding her ground on the steep walk. She turned and faced Harrison whom they had passed and said, “I don't think the two of you should be fighting, even if you think you have a reason for it. Alex, if Michael apologized—”

“Of course I apologize,” Harrison said. “I hadn't meant to—”

“Apologies come easily when they aren't genuine,” Alex said. He looked at Katherine, at Harrison, back at the girl again. “But if you would prefer his company to mine — as it suddenly seems to me is the case — then be my guest.” He let go of her arm, turned and stalked down the incline toward the center of town which they had already explored, his face twisted in fury.

“Alex!” she called.

He did not turn.

In a moment, he was out of sight around the corner.

“I'm sorry to have caused trouble,” Michael said.

“It wasn't your fault.” She smiled at him. “Whatever does he hold against you?”

“I don't know,” Michael said glumly. “I've never known — unless it's that his grandfather started the town, but my father is the one who keeps it alive with his forests and mills.”

“But that's a silly thing to hold against you — to make him blow up like he did.”

“You know that, and I know that, but try to explain it to Alex. He's a strange man.” He looked the way Alex had gone, then turned to her again. “I hope I haven't put you in a bind with your employer.”

“He isn't my employer,” Katherine said. “Lydia is. And she seems to like you quite a bit — at least to the extent that she always counters his remarks about you.”

“That's like Lydia,” he said. “Now, you were on a tour of the town?”

“Yes, was.”

“Let me finish it with you.”

She frowned. “Maybe I should be getting back—”

“Plenty of day left,” he said. “Where were you headed for?”

“The church,” she said. “The one that Alex's grandfather built.”

“Straight up here,” he said, linking arms with her. His manner was warm and confident, and she found herself going with him happily.

The Presbyterian church was of brick, colonial in style, very compact with white trim at the windows and door, and a white wooden cap on the slim, brick bell tower.

“It was the second building in town,” Michael explained, “after the grocery and post office — and after Owlsden, of course. It was called something other than Owlsden then, though.”

He opened the church door and ushered her into a darkened vestibule, found a light switch.

“It's very pretty,” she said.

He closed the door behind them. “It is, isn't it? Very simple and yet somehow reverent. Amazing that the same man could have approved the design for this— and for Owlsden too.”

Katherine walked into the church proper ahead of him, moving down the shadowed center aisle between the two sections of high-backed pews, squinting to see in the dim light that washed out of the vestibule behind her. The only other sources of light, even less illuminating than the bare, seventy-five watt bulb in the first chamber, were the tall, extremely narrow, darkly-stained glass windows on either side. The church was rich with the odor of furniture polish and candle wax and worn leather cushions.

She would never have thought, for a moment, that there could be anything in a church to terrify her. Perhaps she should have thought through some relationship between Christianity and Satanism and, therefore, should have recalled the aftermath of the Satanic ceremony which she had stumbled across the day before. But she did not.

Not until Michael turned on the main lights in the church…