By Stephen Windwalker
Editor of Kindle Nation Daily ©Kindle Nation Daily It's the first Saturday night in October, and whether you've been very, very good, or very, very bad, Kindle Nation is an equal opportunity provider of treats....
We think you deserve a very special treat.
We think you deserve ... to be scared out of your britches.
And fortunately, we've got the #1 bestselling ghost story in the Kindle Store to do the trick. Or almost.
What we have are the first 15,000 words of Scott Nicholson's ghost story novel, The Red Church. That's a really generous, really scary free excerpt, but there's no heinous bait-and-switch at work here. If you like it and want to keep reading ... if you dare to keep reading ... Scott is offering the entire novel for download in the Kindle Store for just 99 cents.
How great a deal is that? Well, as you can tell from the reviews below, it's a terrific deal. And equally important, it will leave you a little money to pay for some extra locks on your doors....
Here's what some other very distinguished authors are saying about The Red Church:
- "A damn scary story well told."-Christopher Ransom, author of the international bestseller The Birthing House
- "Like Stephen King, he has an eye and ear for the rhythms of rural America, and like King he knows how to summon serious scares. My advice? Buy everything he writes. This guy's the real deal."-Bentley Little, author of The Disappearance
- "Keep both hands on your pants because Nicholson is about to scare them off."-J.A. Konrath, Origin and Serial
- "Always surprises and always entertains."-Jonathan Maberry, Patient Zero
- "Scott Nicholson knows the territory. Follow him at your own risk."-Stewart O'Nan, Boston Noir
- "A wonderful storyteller." Sharyn McCrumb, author of The Ballad novels
A Stoker Award finalist and alternate selection of the Mystery Guild. A boy and a rural sheriff must solve the mystery of a haunted Appalachian church when a strange preacher returns to town.
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An Excerpt from
The Red Church
A Novel By Scott Nicholson
The Red Church
A Novel By Scott Nicholson
Copyright 2002, 2010 by Scott Nicholson and reprinted here with his permission.
CHAPTER ONE
The world never ends the way you believe it will, Ronnie Day thought.
There were the tried-and-true favorites, like nuclear holocaust and doomsday asteroid collisions and killer viruses and Preacher Staymore's all-time classic, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. But the end really wasn't such a huge, organized affair after all. The end was right up close and personal, different for each person, a kick in the rear and a joy-buzzer handshake from the Reaper himself.
But that was the Big End. First you had to twist your way though a thousand turning points and die a little each time. One of life's lessons, learned as the by-product of thirteen years as the son of Linda and David Day and one semester sitting in class with Melanie Ward. Tough noogies, wasn't it?
Ronnie walked quickly, staring straight ahead. Another day in the idiot factory at good old Barkersville Elementary was over. Had all evening to look forward to, and a good long walk between him and home. Nothing but his feet and the smell of damp leaves, fresh grass, and the wet mud of the riverbanks. A nice plate of spring sunshine high overhead.
And he could start slowing down in a minute, delaying his arrival into the hell that home had been lately, because soon he would be around the curve and past the thing on the hill to his right, the thing he didn't want to think about, the thing he couldn't help thinking about, because he had to walk past it twice a day.
Why couldn't he be like the other kids? Their parents picked them up in shiny new Mazdas and Nissans and took them to the mall in Barkersville and dropped them off at soccer practice and then drove them right to the front door of their houses. So all they had to do was step in and stuff their faces with microwave dinners and go to their rooms and waste their brains on TV or Nintendo all night. They didn't have to be scared.
Well, it could be worse. He had a brain, but it wasn't something worth bragging about. His "overactive imagination" got him in trouble at school, but it was also kind of nice when other kids, especially Melanie, asked him for help in English.
So he'd take having a brain any day, even if he did suffer what the school counselor called "negative thoughts." At least he had thoughts. Unlike his little dorkwad of a brother back there, who didn't have sense enough to know that this stretch of road was no place to be messing around.
"Hey, Ronnie." His brother was calling him, it sounded like from the top of the hill. The dorkwad hadn't stopped, had he?
"Come on." Ronnie didn't turn around.
"Looky here."
"Come on, or I'll bust you upside the head."
"No, really, Ronnie. I see something."
Ronnie sighed and stopped walking, then slung his book bag farther up on his shoulder. He was at least eighty feet ahead of his little brother. Tim had been doing his typical nine-year-old's dawdling, stopping occasionally to tie his sneaker strings or look in the ditch water for tadpoles or throw rocks at the river that ran below the road.
Ronnie turned-to your left, he told himself, so you don't see it-and looked back along the sweep of gravel at the hill that was almost lost among the green bulk of mountains. He could think of a hundred reasons not to walk all the way back to see what Tim wanted him to see. For one thing, Tim was at the top of the hill, which meant Ronnie would have to hike up the steep grade again. The walk home from the bus stop was nearly a mile and a half already. Why make it longer?
Plus there were at least ninety-nine other reasons-
like the red church
-not to give a flying fig what Tim was sticking his nose into now. Dad was supposed to stop by today to pick up some more stuff, and Ronnie didn't want to miss him. Maybe they'd get to talk for a minute, man-to-man. If Tim didn't hurry, Dad and Mom might have another argument first and Dad would leave like he had last week, stomping the gas pedal of his rusty Ford so the wheels threw chunks of gravel and broke a window. So that was another reason not to go back to see whatever had gotten Tim so worked up.
Tim jumped up and down, the rolled cuffs of his blue jeans sagging around his sneakers. He motioned with his thin arm, his glasses flashing in the mid-afternoon sun. "C'mon, Ronnie," he shouted.
"Dingle-dork," Ronnie muttered to himself, then started backtracking up the grade. He kept his eyes on the gravel the way he always did when he was near the church. The sun made little sparkles in the rocks, and with a little imagination, the roadbed could turn into a big galaxy with lots of stars and planets, and if he didn't look to his left he wouldn't have to see the red church.
Why should he be afraid of some dumb old church? A church was a church. It was like your heart. Once Jesus came in, He was supposed to stay there. But sometimes you did bad things that drove Him away.
Ronnie peeked at the church just to prove that he didn't care about it one way or another. There. Nothing but wood and nails.
But he'd hardly glanced at it. He'd really seen only a little piece of the church's mossy gray roof, because of all the trees that lined the road- big old oaks and a gnarled apple tree and a crooked dogwood that would have been great for climbing except if you got to the top, you'd be right at eye level with the steeple and the belfry.
Stupid trees, he thought. All happy because it's May and their leaves are waving in the wind and, if they were people, I bet they'd be wearing idiotic smiles just like the one that's probably splitting up Tim's face right now. Because, just like little bro, the trees are too doggoned dumb to be scared.
Ronnie slowed down a little. Tim had walked into the shade of the maple. Into the jungle of weeds that formed a natural fence along the road. And maybe to the edge of the graveyard.
Ronnie swallowed hard. He'd just started developing an Adam's apple, and he could feel the knot pogo in his throat. He stopped walking. He'd thought of reason number hundred and one not to go over to the churchyard. Because-and this was the best reason of all, one that made Ronnie almost giddy with relief-he was the older brother. Tim had to listen to him. If he gave in to the little mucous midget even once, he would be asking for a lifetime of "Ronnie, do this" and "Ronnie, do that." He got enough of that kind of treatment from Mom.
"Hurry up," Tim called from the weeds. Ronnie couldn't see Tim's face. That wasn't all bad. Tim had buck teeth and his blond hair stuck out like straw and his eyes were a little buggy. Good thing he was in the fourth grade instead of the eighth grade. Because in the eighth grade, you had to impress girls like Melanie Ward, who would laugh in your face one day and sit in the desk behind you the next, until you were so torn up that you didn't even care about things like whatever mess your dorkwad brother was getting into at the moment. "Get out of there, you idiot. You know you're not supposed to go into the churchyard."
The leaves rustled where Tim had disappeared into the underbrush. He'd left his book bag lying in the grass at the base of a tree. His squeaky voice came from beyond the tangle of saplings and laurel. "I found something."
"Get out of there right this minute."
"Why?"
"Because I said so."
"But look what I found."
Ronnie came closer. He had to admit, he was a little bit curious, even though he was starting to get mad. Not to mention scared. Because through the gaps in the trees, he could see the graveyard.
A slope of thick, evenly cut grass broken up by white and gray slabs. Tombstones. At least forty dead people, just waiting to rise up and-
Those are just stories. You don't actually believe that stuff, do you? Who cares what Whizzer Buchanan says? If he were so smart, he wouldn't be flunking three classes.
"We're going to miss Dad," Ronnie called. His voice trembled slightly. He hoped Tim hadn't noticed.
"Just a minute."
"I ain't got a minute."
"You chicken or something?"
That did it. Ronnie balled up his fists and hurried to the spot where Tim had entered the churchyard. He set his book bag beside Tim's and stepped among the crushed weeds. Furry ropes of poison sumac veined across the ground. Red-stemmed briars bent under the snowy weight of blackberry blossoms. And Ronnie would bet a Spiderman comic that snakes slithered in that high grass along the ditch.
"Where are you?" Ronnie called into the bushes.
"Over here."
He was in the graveyard, the stupid little jerk. How many times had Dad told them to stay out of the graveyard?
Not that Ronnie needed reminding. But that was Tim for you. Tell him to not to touch a hot stove eye and you could smell the sizzling flesh of his fingers before you even finished your sentence.
Ronnie stooped to about Tim's height-twerp's-eye view-and saw the graveyard through the path that Tim had stomped. Tim was kneeling beside an old marble tombstone, looking down. He picked something up and it flashed in the sun. A bottle.
Ronnie looked past his little brother to the uneven rows of markers. Some were cracked and chipped, all of them worn around the edges. Old graves. Old dead people. So long dead that they were probably too rotten to lift themselves out of the soil and walk into the red church.
No, it wasn't a church anymore, just an old building that Lester Matheson used for storing hay. Hadn't been a church for about twenty years. Like Lester had said, pausing to let a stream of brown juice arc to the ground, then wiping his lips with the scarred stump of his thumb, "It's people what makes a church. Without people, and what-and-all they believe, it ain't nothing but a fancy mouse motel."
Yeah. Fancy mouse motel. Nothing scary about that, is there?
It was just like the First Baptist Church, if you really thought about it. Except the Baptist church was bigger. And the only time the Baptist church was scary was when Preacher Staymore said Ronnie needed saving or else Jesus Christ would send him to burn in hell forever.
Ronnie scrambled through the bushes. A briar snagged his X-Files T-shirt, the one that Melanie thought was so cool. He backed up and pulled himself free, cursing as a thorn pierced his finger. A drop of crimson welled up and he started to wipe it on his shirt, then licked it away instead.
Tim put the bottle down and picked up something else. A magazine. Its pages fluttered in the breeze. Ronnie stepped clear of the brush and stood up.
So he was in the graveyard. No big deal. And if he kept his eyes straight ahead, he wouldn't even have to see the fancy mouse motel. But then he forgot all about trying not to be scared, because of what Tim had in his hands.
As Ronnie came beside him, Tim snapped the magazine closed. But not before Ronnie had gotten a good look at the pale flesh spread along the pages. Timmy's cheeks turned pink. He had found a Playboy.
"Give me that," Ronnie said.
Tim faced his brother and put the magazine behind his back. "I-I'm the one who found it."
"Yeah, and you don't even know what it is, do you?"
Tim stared at the ground. "A naked-woman book."
Ronnie started to laugh, but it choked off as he looked around the graveyard. "Where did you learn about girlie magazines?"
"Whizzer. He showed one to us behind the gym during recess."
"Probably charged you a dollar a peek."
"No, just a quarter."
"Give it here, or I'll tell Mom."
"No, you won't."
"Will, too."
"What are you going to tell her? That I found a naked-woman book and wouldn't let you see it?"
Ronnie grimaced. Score one for dingle-dork. He thought about jumping Tim and taking the magazine by force, but there was no need to hurry. Tricking him out of it would be a lot more fun. But he didn't want to stand around in the creepy graveyard and negotiate.
He looked at the other stuff scattered on the grass around the tombstone. The bottle had a square base and a black screw top. A few inches of golden-brown liquid were lying in the bottom. He knew it was liquor because of the turkey on the label. It was the kind that Aunt Donna drank. But Ronnie didn't want to think about Aunt Donna almost as much as he didn't want to think about being scared.
A green baseball cap lay upside down beside the tombstone. The sweatband was stained a dark gray, and the bill was so severely cupped that it came to a frayed point. Only one person rolled up their cap bill that way. Ronnie nudged the cap over with his foot. A John Deere cap. That cinched it.
"It's Boonie Houck's," Ronnie said. But Boonie never went anywhere without his cap. Kept it pulled down to the bushy line of his single eyebrow, his eyes gleaming under the shade of the bill like wet ball bearings. He probably even showered and slept with the cap plastered to the top of his wide head.
A crumpled potato chip bag quivered beside the cap, fluttering in the breeze. It was held in place by an unopened can of Coca-Cola. The blind eye of a flashlight peeked out from under the edge of the chip bag.
Ronnie bent down and saw a flash of silver. Money. He picked up two dimes and a dull nickel. A couple of pennies were in the grass, but he left them. He straightened up.
"I'll give you twenty-five cents for the magazine," he said.
Tim backed away with his hands still behind him. He moved into the shadow of a crude stone monument, made of two pillars holding up a crosspiece. On the crosspiece was a weathered planter. A brittle sheaf of brown tulips stabbed up from the potting soil.
Tulips. So somebody had minded the graveyard at least once since winter. Probably Lester. Lester owned the property and kept the grass trimmed, but did that mean the tobacco-chewing farmer had to pay respects to those buried here? Did the dead folks come with the property deed?
But Ronnie forgot all that, because he accidentally looked over Tim's shoulder. The red church was framed up perfectly by the stone pillars.
No, NOT accidentally. You WANTED to see it. Your eyes have been crawling right toward it the whole time you've been in the graveyard.
The church sat on a broad stack of creek stones that were bleached yellow and white by eons of running water. A few of the stones had tumbled away, revealing gaps of darkness beneath the structure. The church looked a little wobbly, as if a strong wind might send it roof-over-joist down the hill.
The creepy tree stood tall and gangly by the door. Ronnie didn't believe Whizzer's story about the tree. But if even half of it were true-
"A quarter? I can take it to school and make five bucks," Tim said.
The magazine. Ronnie didn't care about the magazine anymore. "Come on. Let's get out of here."
"You're going to take it from me, ain't you?"
"No. Dad's supposed to be coming over, that's all. I don't want to miss him."
Tim suddenly took another step backward, his eyes wide.
Ronnie pointed, trying to warn him about the monument. Tim spun and bumped into one of the pillars, shaking the crosspiece. The concrete planter tipped over, sending a shower of dry black dirt onto Tim's head. The planter rolled toward the edge of the crosspiece.
"Look out," Ronnie yelled.
Tim pushed himself away from the pillar, but the entire monument toppled as if in slow motion. The heavy crosspiece was going to squash Tim's head like a rotten watermelon.
Ronnie's limbs unlocked and he leaped for Tim. Something caught his foot and he tripped, falling on his stomach. The air rushed from his lungs with a whoosh, and the smell of cut grass crowded his nostrils. He tasted blood, and his tongue found the gash on the inside of his lip just as he rediscovered how to breathe.
A dull cracking noise echoed across the graveyard. Ronnie tilted his neck up just in time to see the planter bust open on the monument's base. Tim gave a squeak of surprise as dingy chunks of concrete rained across his chest. The pillars fell in opposite directions, the one on Tim's side catching on the ledge just above his head. The crosspiece twirled like a slow helicopter blade and came to rest on the pillar above Tim's legs.
Ronnie tried to crawl to Tim, but his shoe was still snagged. "You okay?"
Tim was crying. At least that meant he was still alive.
Ronnie kicked his foot. He looked back to his shoe-
NO NO NO
-red raw burger hand.
An arm had reached around the tombstone, a bloody arm, the knotty fingers forming a talon around his sneaker. The wet, gleaming bone of one knuckle hooked the laces.
DEADGHOSTDEADGHOST
He forgot that he'd learned how to breathe. He kicked at the hand, spun over on his rear, and tried to crab-crawl away. The hand wouldn't let go. Tears stung his eyes as he stomped his other foot against the ragged grasping thing.
"Help me," Ronnie yelled, at the same time that Tim moaned his own plea for help.
Whizzer's words careened across Ronnie's mind, joining the jumble of broken thoughts: They trap ya, then they get ya.
"Ronnie," came Tim's weak whine.
Ronnie wriggled like a speared eel, forcing his eyes along the slick wrist to the arm that was swathed in ragged flannel.
Flannel?
His skewed carousel of thoughts ground to a halt.
Why would a deadghost thing be wearing flannel?
The arm was attached to a bulk of something behind the tombstone.
The hand clutched tightly at nothing but air, then quivered and relaxed. Ronnie scrambled away as the fingers uncurled. Blood pooled in the shallow cup of the palm.
Ronnie reached Tim and began removing the chunks of concrete from his little brother's stomach. "You okay?"
Tim nodded, charcoal streaks of mud on his face where his tears had rolled through the sprinkling of potting soil. One cheek had a red scrape across it, but otherwise he looked unharmed. Ronnie kept looking back to the mangled arm and whatever was behind the tombstone. The hand was still, the sun drying the blood on the clotted palm. A shiny fly landed and drank.
Ronnie dragged Tim free of the toppled concrete. They both stood, Tim wiping the powdery grit from the front of his shirt. "Mom's going to kill me. . . ." he began, then saw the arm. "What in heck . . .?"
Ronnie stepped toward the tombstone, his heart hammering in his ears.
Over his pulse, he could hear Whizzer: They got livers for eyes.
Ronnie veered toward the edge of the graveyard, Tim close behind.
"When I say run. . ." Ronnie whispered, his throat thick.
"L-looky there," Tim said.
Dorkwad didn't have enough brains to be scared. But Ronnie looked. He couldn't help it.
The body was crowded against the tombstone, the flannel shirt shredded, showing scoured flesh. The head was pressed against the white marble, the neck arched at a crazy angle. A thread of blood trailed from the matted beard to the ground.
"Boonie," Ronnie said, his voice barely as loud as the wind in the oak leaves.
There was a path trampled in the grass, coming from the underbrush that girded the graveyard. Boonie must have crawled out of the weeds. And whatever had done that to him might still be in the stand of trees. Ronnie flicked his eyes from Boonie to the church. Had something fluttered in the belfry?
A bird, a BIRD, you idiot.
Not the thing that Whizzer said lived in the red church.
Not the thing that trapped you and then got you, not the thing that had wings and claws and livers for eyes, not the thing that had made a mess of Boonie Houck's face.
And then Ronnie was running, tearing through the undergrowth, barely aware of the briars grabbing at his face and arms, of the scrub locust that pierced his skin, of the tree branches that raked at his eyes. He heard Tim behind him-at least he hoped it was Tim, but he wasn't about to turn around and check, because now he was on the gravel road, his legs were pumping in the rhythm of fear-NOT-the-thing, NOT-the-thing, NOT-the-thing-and he didn't pause to breathe, even as he passed Lester Matheson, who was on his tractor in the middle of a hayfield, even as he passed the Potter farm, even when geezery Zeb Potter hollered out Ronnie's name from his shaded front porch, even as Zeb's hound cut loose with an uneven bray, even as Ronnie jumped the barbed wire that marked off the boundary of the Day property, even as the rusty tin roof of home came into view, even as he saw Dad's Ranger in the driveway, even as he tripped over the footbridge and saw the sharp, glistening rocks of the creek bed below, and as he fell he realized he'd hit another turning point, found yet another way for the world to end, but at least this end wasn't as bad as whatever had shown Boonie Houck the exit door from everywhere.
CHAPTER TWO
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Like you'd understand? You didn't understand the first time." Linda Day balled her hands into fists. She could smell beer on David's breath.
Drunk at three o'clock, she thought. Doesn't he know that the body is sacred? If only he were more like Archer.
David closed in on her. She backed against the kitchen table. He'd never hit her in their fifteen years of marriage. But his face had never set in such a mix of hurt and anger before, either.
He waved the papers in the air, his thin lips crawling into a sneer. "A lie. All those years . . ."
God, he wasn't going to CRY, was he? Mr. Ain't-Nothing-It'll-Heal that time he flipped the tractor and had his forearm bone poking through his denim jacket?
She looked into his wet brown eyes. Who was he? What did she really know about him? Sure, they'd gone to high school together, were both in the Future Farmers of America, lost it together one fumbling Friday night in the pines above the Pickett High football field, never really dated anybody else, got married like everybody expected and-after that little California interlude-settled down on the Gregg family farm after cancer had chewed her father's lungs away.
More than half of their lives. Not nearly enough time to figure David out.
"Don't start that," she said.
"I ain't the one who started it. You said when we got married that all that foolishness was over and done with."
"I thought it was."
"Thought it was?" he mocked. His face twisted.
"I was going to tell you."
"When? After you'd sneaked another hundred lies past me?"
Linda looked away, anywhere but at his burning, red-rimmed eyes. The stick margarine on the counter was losing its sharp edges in the heat. Two black flies were playing hopscotch on the kitchen window screen. The roses that made a pattern on the yellowed wallpaper looked as if they needed watering. "It's not like that."
"Sure, it ain't." A mist of Pabst Blue Ribbon came out with his words. "When a man's wife gets love letters from another man, why, that's nothing to worry about, is it?"
"So you read them."
"Course I read them." He stepped closer, looming over her, six-three and shoulders broadened by lifting ten thousand bales of hay.
"Then maybe you noticed that the word 'love' isn't in a single one of them."
He stopped in his tracks. Linda thought about retreating to the hall entrance, but she was trying hard not to show fear. Archer said fear was for the meek, them that huddled at the feet of Christ.
David's brow lowered. "There's lots of different kinds of love."
She studied his face. Twice-broken nose. A white scar in one corner of his mouth. A strong chin, the kind you could forge steel with. Skin browned by years of working in the sun. Had she ever really loved the man who wore that face?
"There's only one kind of love," she said. "The kind we had."
"The kind you and Archer had."
"David, please listen."
He reached out. She held her breath and leaned away. But he didn't touch her, only swept the can of Maxwell House from the table behind her. It bounced off the cabinet under the sink and the lid flew off, sending a shower of brown granules onto the vinyl floor. The rich smell of the coffee drowned out David's sweet-sour breath.
His teeth were showing. Broad and blunt. Pressed together so tightly that his jaw trembled.
Linda scooted along the edge of the table to her right. There was a knife on the counter, a skin of dried cheese dulling the flash of the blade. If she had to-
But David turned away, slumped, his shoulders quivering.
David never cried, at least not in front of her. But since he'd found the letters, he was doing a lot of things he'd never done before. Like drinking heavily. Like leaving her.
"Hon-" She caught herself. "David?"
His work boots drummed the floor as he strode away. He paused at the back door and turned, looking down at the letters in his hand. Tears had shimmied down one side of his face, but his voice was quiet, resigned. "Archer McFall. Pretty funny. Who'd you put up to doing it?"
"Doing what?"
"We both know it ain't Archer, so quit lying. Is it one of your buddies from California?"
Linda shook her head. He doesn't understand. And I had hopes that he would join us. "No, it's nobody."
"Nobody? Nobody who's been writing you letters while dumb-and-happy David Day runs a hammer and eats sawdust for ten hours a day, only he don't mind because he's got a wonderful family waiting at home each night waiting to shower him with love and bullshit?"
His bulk filled the door frame, blocking her view of the barn and the pasture beyond. The room darkened as a cloud passed over the sun. "I told you, it's not the way you think," she said.
"Sure. Archer McFall just happened to walk back into your life at the exact same time that you started to get the letters. That's a mighty big coincidence."
"This isn't about Archer or the Temple. It's about us."
He flapped the letters again. "If it's about us, how come you didn't tell me about these?"
"I was going to."
"When? After hell finished freezing over?"
"When I thought you were ready to listen."
"You mean when I was ready to swallow it hook, line, and sinker. And get reeled into that mess the same as you. I thought you learned your lesson the last time."
The cloud passed, and the sun lit up the mottled spots on the window. She looked past them to the reddish square of the garden, at the little rows of green that were starting their seasonal push to the sky, then looked beyond to the wedge of mountains that kept North Carolina from slopping over into Tennessee. Two hundred acres of Gregg land, every inch of it stony and stained, every ash and birch and poplar stitched to her skin, every gallon of creek water running through her veins like blood. She was as old-family as anybody, and the old families belonged to the McFalls.
"It's only letters," she said. "That doesn't mean I'm going back in."
"Why did you ever have to fall for it in the first place?"
"That was nearly twenty years ago. I was a different person then. We were different people."
"No, you were different. I'm still the same. Just a mountain hick who thinks that if you say your prayers and live right, then nobody can break you down. But I reckon I was wrong."
"You can't still blame me for that, can you?" But his eyes answered her question by becoming hard and narrow. "Don't you know how terrible I thought it was to be trapped here in Whispering Pines forever? Stay around and squirt out seven kids with nothing to look forward to but the next growing season? To be like my mother with her fingers as knobby as pea pods from all the canning she did? What kind of life is that?"
"It's good enough for me. I didn't need to run off to California."
"I must have asked you a dozen times to come with me."
"And I asked you a dozen-and-one times to stay."
"You were just afraid you'd lose me."
He hung his head and shook it slowly. "I reckon I did," he said, barely above a whisper. "Only it took me this long to find out."
"The kids will be home soon," she said. "Ronnie's been looking forward to seeing you."
He held up the letters again. "You're not going to drag them into this mess, are you? Because, so help me, if you do-"
The threat hung in the air like an ax.
"Archer's not like that." Linda said it as if she only half-believed her own words.
"You said the group broke up."
"I . . . most of us left. I don't know. When they said he was dead, I-"
"He's dead. Now, the question is, who's trying to bring back this?" David held up one of the letters, more for effect than anything. Because Linda knew perfectly well what was on the letter.
She could see the symbol from across the room, even though it was bunched into the top right corner. It looked like one of those Egyptian symbols, only the cross was topped with two loops. Two suns. The Temple of the Two Suns.
Not that she needed to see it, because she was sure now that it had been seared into her brain, that its power had reached over years and across three thousand miles and through the thick white walls of her renewed faith in Jesus. Because, after all, there was only one true savior. And his name was Archer McFall.
If only David would open his heart. Sure, he'd been born with Baptist blood, he'd been dipped in the river below the red church so that his sins would be washed away, he'd given his ten percent, but there was so much more to faith than the rituals and scriptures and prayers. Her own heart was swelling again, budding, unfolding like a flower under a bright sun. No, under two suns. Twice the love. If only she could share that with David. But he wouldn't understand. He was as blinded by Jesus as everybody else was.
David watched her carefully, waiting for her reaction. She swallowed her smile and let her face slacken.
"The Temple," he said in a sneer. "You promised you were over it. But I guess I'm the fool."
"He's not asking for money."
David laughed, a bitter sound. He rubbed his forehead with his right hand. "Probably the only thing he's not asking for, whoever it is."
"Since you read the letters, you know exactly what he wants."
"Yeah." He held up one of the letters. "'We've missed you, sister,'" he read.
"And that's all."
"'There will come great trials, but we bathe in the light of faith.'" He shuffled to the next letter. "'The stone is rolled away.'"
"Where's the love in that?" Linda was straining to show disinterest. David wasn't from one of the old families. She had been a fool to think Archer would accept him, anyway.
"Where's the love? Where's the love? Why, right there on the bottom, where it says 'Forever Yours, Archer McFall.' On every single one of them."
"Maybe he didn't die. Or maybe somebody started up the group again and is using his name. That's all it is. I don't care one way or another."
But I DO care. I've always cared, even when you thought you and your Christian friends had "cured" me. There was always a little room in my heart tucked away for nobody but Archer.
David's eyes had cleared a little as he sobered, but kept their bright ferocity. "You don't care so much that you didn't even bother to throw the letters away, huh?"
"Don't matter none to me."
"That so?" David started to crumple the letters into a ball.
Linda's mouth opened, and her arm reached out of its own accord.
David smiled, but it was a sick smile, the kind worn by a reluctant martyr. He crushed the paper into a hard wad of pulp and tossed it on the floor at her feet. "I seen him come around. Last week. Laid out of work just so I could hide up in the hills and watch the house. Just me and a six-pack. Mostly I was curious if you were sending out any letters yourself."
"You bastard."
David licked his lips. "Is ten o'clock the regular meeting time?"
Linda felt the blood drain from her face. How much did he know?
"Got himself a Mercedes. I guess this 'cult' business pays pretty good."
"It wasn't-" Linda started.
David nodded. "I know. It wasn't Archer McFall. Then why don't you tell me who it really was?"
Linda wondered how many times David had watched the house from the woods. Or if she could trust anything he said.
Trust. That was a good one.
David slowly approached her. She was like a deer frozen in the headlights of his hate. She looked down just as his boot flattened the wad of letters.
"How long?" he said, and his eyes were welling with tears again. As if the reservoir had been filling all his life and, finally full, now had to leak a little or bust.
"It's not like that." She looked again at the butcher knife on the counter, close to tears herself.
He took another menacing step. "I wondered why you been acting strange lately. And why you ain't been up to going to church."
Linda grabbed a gulp of air and scooted from the table to the kitchen counter. David was close behind her and caught her when she spun. His hands were like steel hooks in her upper arms, holding her firmly but not squeezing hard enough to bruise.
She stared at his stranger's face with its wide eyes. She'd never noticed how deep the two creases on his forehead were. The hard planes of his cheeks were patched with stubble. He looked old, as if all his thirty-seven years had dog-piled him these last few weeks.
"Tell me who it is," he said.
She shuddered with the force of his grip. Those hands had touched her so tenderly in the night, had softly stroked her belly when she was pregnant with the boys, had tucked daisies behind her ears when they fooled around in the hayfield. But now they were cruel, the caresses forgotten, the passion in them of a different kind.
She turned her face away, afraid that he'd see the fear in her eyes. The knife was beside a bowl of melted ice cream, within reach. But David grabbed her chin and twisted her eyes back to his.
Archer had warned her what the price of belief would be. Persecution. Pain. The loss of everything human. She could hear Archer's voice now, pouring from the geysers of her heart. There will come great trials. And great sacrifices. Because sacrifice is the currency of God.
But the reward was greater than the sacrifice. Belief paid back a hundredfold. Devotion now brought Archer's steadfast love unto the fourth generation. Surrendering to him meant that her offspring would reap the harvest. She had been telling herself that ever since Archer and the Temple of the Two Suns reclaimed her heart. And she reminded herself now, locked in David's grip.
He'd never hurt her before. But Archer said those who didn't understand always fell back on violence, because violence was the way of their God. That was why the world had to end. From the ashes of their heavenfire would come-
"Who is it?" he asked.
She grunted through her clenched teeth. David relaxed his grip until her mouth could move. "Ahh-Archer."
"Archer. Don't lie to me, damn it." He clamped his fingers tight again.
She fumbled with her left hand, running it along the edge of the counter. She felt the cool rim of the bowl. If only she could keep him talking. "It is. And he doesn't want me . . . that way."
"It can't be Archer."
"He's come back."
David choked on a laugh. "The second coming. They really do have you again, don't they?"
"No, I meant he's come back to Whispering Pines." Her hand went around the bowl and touched wood. Her fingers crawled along the knife's handle. Archer said sometimes you had to fight fire with fire, even if it meant descending down to their level. Even if it was a sin.
"You said he was dead."
"They said . . . I thought . . . I never saw his body."
"It's not Archer."
"It is. You know I'd never cheat on you."
He released her arm with his left hand and drew his arm back. He was going to hit her. She snatched at the butcher knife, then had it in her palm, her fingers around it, and all the old memories flooded back, all the energy and power and purity that Archer promised and delivered. She raised the knife.
David saw it and stepped away easily. The blade sliced the air a foot from his face. He lurched forward and caught her wrist on the down-stroke. The knife clattered to the floor.
They both looked at it. Silence crowded the room like death crowded a coffin.
A chicken clucked out in the barnyard. Somewhere over the hill, in the direction of the Potter farm, a hound dog let out one brassy howl. A tractor engine murmured in the far distance. The clock in the living room ticked six times, seven, eight. David reached out with the toe of his boot and kicked the knife into the corner.
He exhaled, deflating his rage. "So it's come to this."
"I didn't mean to-"
"Is that what they preach? Stabbing your own husband?"
"I . . . you scared me." The tears erupted from her eyes even as David's tears dried up, probably for good. "I thought you were going to hit me."
"Yeah." He was calm again, walking dead, a man who wouldn't harm a fly. "I guess you never could trust me, could you? Not the way you could trust them."
"I didn't lie to you."
"Which time?"
Archer was right. Pain was a steep price. Faith required sacrifice. "When we got married, and I said I was through. I believed it then."
"And I believed it, too. Guess you're not the only fool in the family."
"Please, David. Don't make this any worse than it has to be."
"Fine." He spread his arms in surrender. "I guess it don't matter none who it is. I just don't see why you had to make up this stuff about the cult."
"It's not a cult."
"And Archer McFall just happens to walk back into your life twenty years after he died. You really must be crazy, or else you think I am."
Archer always said he would return. How could she ever have doubted him?
Easy. You had your world taken away from you, and you came back to this safe, normal, God-fearing life and slipped into it like a second skin. You hid away your heart like it was separate from loving and mothering and living. But this normal life was all a lie, wasn't it? Maybe David was right, even if he was right about the wrong thing.
"I reckon I'll get the kids, then," he said, and a chill sank into her, deep-freezing her bones.
"No." She went to him.
"Any judge in the land would give me custody. Don't worry. I won't make no claim on the farm. That's rightly yours as a Gregg, if for no other reason."
"Not the kids," she wailed. She pounded her fists on his chest. He didn't try to stop her.
The blows softened and she collapsed, grabbing his shirt for support. He kept her from falling. She felt nothing in his embrace.
"How are we going to tell the boys about us?" She sniffled.
"They already know. They ain't dumb."
"I thought . . . I don't know what I thought." But Linda knew exactly what she thought. She thought the children were hers, to love and protect and introduce to the joys of worship in the Temple of the Two Suns. To deliver unto Archer, so the generations would be spared.
"Now quit your crying. They'll be here any minute."
Damn him for trying to be strong. Acting like she didn't matter. Her eyes went to the knife in the corner.
"Don't do it, Linda. I'd hate for that to come up at the custody hearing."
Jesus-loving bastard. But she wouldn't lose hope. Archer would know what to do. Archer would-
"Did you hear that?" David asked, releasing her.
"Hear what?" She rubbed her arms, trying to wipe away the memory of his rough touch.
David went to the door. Linda thought about the knife. No, if she used the knife, they'd take the kids away for sure. She heard something that sounded like a calf caught in a crabapple thicket and bawling its heart out.
"It's Ronnie," David said, then leaped off the porch and ran toward the creek that divided a stretch of pasture from the front yard.
Ronnie raced across the pasture, moaning and wailing, waving his arms. Tim was farther back, running down the road, and even from that distance Linda saw that her youngest boy had lost his glasses.
Ronnie reached the little wooden footbridge that spanned the creek, a bridge that was nothing more than some pallet planks laid across two locust poles. His foot caught in a gap in the planks and his scream went an octave higher as he plummeted into the rocky creek bed. Her own shout caught in her throat.
David reached the creek and jumped down to where Ronnie lay. Linda scrambled down the bank after him. Ronnie was facedown, his legs in the shallow water. His head rested on a large flat stone. A trail of blood ran down the surface of the rock and dribbled into the creek, where it was quickly swept away.
"Don't move him," Linda shouted.
David gave her a look, then knelt beside Ronnie. The boy moaned and lifted his head. Blood oozed from his nose. His lip was swollen.
He moaned again.
"What?" David said.
This time Linda was close enough to hear what he was saying.
Ronnie's lips parted again. "Uhr-red church."
His eyes were looking past both of them, seeing nothing, seeing too much.
CHAPTER THREE
Sheriff Frank Littlefield looked up the hill at the church and the monstrous dogwood that hovered beside it like a guardian. He'd always hated that tree, ever since he was a boy. It hadn't changed much since the last time he'd set foot in the graveyard. But he had, the world had, and Boonie most definitely had.
The young get old and the dead get deader, he thought as he studied the shadowed belfry for movement.
"What do you figure done it?" asked Dr. Perry Hoyle, the Pickett County medical examiner.
Littlefield didn't turn to face the man immediately. Instead, he squinted past the church steeple to the sun setting behind the crippled cross. The cross threw a long jagged shadow over the cemetery green. Somebody was cutting hay. Littlefield could smell the crush of grass in the wind. He scratched at his buzz cut. "You're the ME."
"Wild animal, that's my guess. Mountain lion, maybe. Or a black bear."
"Sure it wasn't somebody with a knife or an ax?"
"Not real likely. Wounds are too jagged, for one thing."
Littlefield exhaled in relief. "So I guess we can't call it a murder."
"Probably not."
One of the deputies was vomiting in the weeds at the edge of the cemetery.
"Don't get that mixed in with the evidence," Littlefield hollered at him. He turned back to Hoyle. "Black bear wouldn't attack a man unless her cubs were threatened. And it'd have to be a mighty big mountain lion."
"They get up to two hundred pounds."
"But they're extinct up here."
"One of them college professors down at Westridge believes mountain lions are making their way back to these parts."
Littlefield resumed rubbing his scalp. He'd just had it trimmed at Ray's, a good clipper job that let the wind and sun get right to the scalp. The department thought he wore the short style to give himself a ramrod appearance, but the truth was, he kind of liked the shape of his skull. And his hat fit better when he went to the Borderline Tavern to kick up his heels to some Friday-night country music. Boonie used to dance at the Borderline, too. Back when he still had feet.
The two men stood quietly and looked at the church for a moment. "Never been many happy times here," Hoyle said.
Littlefield didn't rise to the bait. He was annoyed that Hoyle would fish those waters. Some things were for nothing but forgetting. He hardened his face against the past as easily as if he'd slipped on a plastic superhero mask.
"Who found the body?" Hoyle hurriedly asked.
"Couple of kids who live down the road. They were walking home from school this afternoon."
"Must have bothered them something awful."
"Hell, it's bothering me, and you know I've seen a few ripe ones."
"What did they tell you?"
"The older one, he's about thirteen, fell running home and busted his face up. He'll be all right, but for some reason it got to him worse than it did the little one. Kept mumbling 'the red church' over and over again."
"How old's the little one?"
"Nine. Said he saw some stuff laying in the graveyard and went through the bushes to have a look. He said he saw a cap and a flashlight and a bottle of liquor, but he didn't touch any of it. Ronnie, the thirteen-year-old, came back to see what was taking so long, and that's when the victim must have dragged himself out from the bushes and grabbed ahold of Ronnie."
Littlefield didn't like calling Boonie Houck a victim. Boonie was a good fellow. A little bit creepy and plenty lazy, but he was in church of a Sunday morning and was known to vote Republican. Nobody deserved to die this way.
Hoyle looked like he could use a cup of coffee, maybe with a few drops of brandy in it. "He lived a lot longer than he should have with those kinds of wounds. My guess is he was attacked sometime in the early morning, between midnight and sunup."
Littlefield's stomach rolled a little. How did Boonie feel lying in the weeds, wondering about the wound between his legs, knowing that whatever had ripped him up was somewhere out there in the dark? "You going to send him to the state ME's office?"
"Reckon I ought to. They can do a better job of guessing than I can." Hoyle pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped the sweat from his bald head. "The press is going to want to know something."
"Wonderful."
"Plus, if it is a wild animal, might be some rabies going around. That could make an animal go nuts and do something like this."
"We haven't had that up here in a long time, either."
"Times change."
The sheriff nodded. You used to have hair, and I used to be worth a damn. Boonie used to be alive, and the red church used to be white.
"Let me know when you're ready to drive him down," Littlefield said. "We'll get the pieces together."
He didn't envy Hoyle. The drive to Chapel Hill took about four hours. Boonie would be kicking up a mean stench by the time the trip was over. But Littlefield decided he ought to save his pity. Unlike Boonie, at least Hoyle would be coming back.
Littlefield patted the medical examiner on the shoulder and went to examine the articles lying on the grass in clear plastic bags. He bent over the bag that held a porn magazine. He fought an odd urge to flip through the pages.A camera flash went off. "Could you please move to one side, Sheriff?"
He looked up. Detective Sgt. Sheila Storie waved her arm. She was taking photos of the crime scene.
No, not a CRIME scene, Littlefield had to remind himself. An accident. A tragic, violent, unexplained ACCIDENT.
The kind of thing that happened too often in Whispering Pines. But Littlefield was relieved that a psycho with a set of Ginsu knives wasn't on the loose in his jurisdiction. They'd had one of those down the mountain in Shady Valley a few years back, and the case was never solved. Damned inept city cops.
He already knew he was going to put Storie in charge of the investigation. When they arrived and found the mess, she hadn't even blinked, just got out her clipboard and tape measure and went to work. She was too young to be so unmoved by death, in Littlefield's opinion. But maybe she was a little bit like him. Maybe it was the kind of thing that made them cops.
Got to keep yourself outside of it all. Don't let them get to you. No matter what they do, no matter what the world takes from you.
"What do you make of it?" he asked Storie.
Her eyes were blue enough to hide everything, as unrevealing as her camera lens. "Extensive trauma. Death probably due to exsanguination."
Storie's educated flatland accent always surprised him, even though he should have been used to it by now. Most people took her for a local until they heard her speak. "That's what Hoyle says. Only he calls it 'bled to death.'"
"Unless shock got him first. Same to the subject either way. I haven't seen this much blood since those driver's ed films they show in high school." She took two steps to her right and snapped another picture, then let the camera hang by its strap over her chest.
"Must have taken a while. You looked over in the bushes where he crawled after the attack?"
"Yes, sir. He left a few scraps."
Littlefield swallowed a knot of nausea.
"Footprints go from this grave marker here, where the boys said they found the stuff. They're deep, see?" She pointed to the pressed grass. The smaller prints of the boys were visible as well. But Boonie's were clearly marked by the thick treads of his boots.
"That means he was running, right?"
"He must have seen or heard whatever it was and gotten scared. He was probably attacked just before he started running."
"Why do you say that?"
"Blood here is coagulated almost to powder. The blood over there- "-she waved to the slick trail of slime where Boonie had crawled out of the bushes- "-isn't as oxidized."
Littlefield nodded and passed his hand over his scalp. The breeze shifted and he could smell Boonie now. A person never got used to the odor of death. The detective didn't even wrinkle her nose.
"Hoyle thinks it's a mountain lion," Littlefield said.
She shook her head. Her brown hair was a couple of inches past regulation and swished over her shoulders. "Wild animals typically go for the throat if they're treating something as prey. There are a few wounds around the eyes, but those are no more devastating than the other injuries. And it doesn't look like the subject had an animal cornered so that it would be forced to defend itself."
Littlefield was constantly amazed by the level of instruction that new officers received. A college degree in Criminal Justice, for starters. Then state training, not to mention extra seminars along the way. Littlefield had long since quit going to those things, at least the ones that didn't help him politically.
Or maybe Storie was a little too educated for her own good. Frank knew that as a female in a rural department, she had to be twice as smart and icy and sarcastic as everybody else. She couldn't go out for after-shift beers.
Pay attention, damn it. In case you're going senile and need a reminder, one of your constituents is gathering flies long before his natural time.
"So you don't necessarily hold to the wild animal attack theory?" he asked.
"I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that if it was an animal, its behavior was unnatural." She looked across the stretch of tombstones to where the cemetery ended near the forest. Her brow furrowed.
"What is it?" Littlefield asked.
"The thing that bothers me the most."
If STORIE'S bothered . . . A small chill wended its way up Littlefield's spinal column and settled in the base of his neck.
"No animal tracks," she said.
The sheriff's jaw tightened. So that was what had been bothering him ever since he'd first walked the scene. An animal's claws would have ripped chunks out of the ground, especially if it were attacking.
"Damn," he whispered.
"No tracks means no easy answers." She almost sounded pleased. "There are no other human footprints, either."
Storie had cracked a big case last year, when an ex-cop had hauled a body up to the mountains for disposal. Perp was a big goofy guy who went around bragging about how he'd never get caught. Well, Storie set her nose on his trail and nailed him so hard that his lawyers had to recite scripture in the courtroom to save him from a lethal injection. The conviction got statewide coverage, and Storie's picture was in both the local papers.
This looked like it might be another of those high-profile mysteries that, if she solved it, would make her a legitimate candidate for sheriff. If she ever ran against him, she'd have him beat all to hell on looks. Her accent would hurt her some, though.
"Tell me, Sergeant. What do you think did it?" he asked.
"I can honestly say I have no idea, sir." She folded her arms over the camera.
"Any chance that somebody did it with a sharp weapon, without leaving footprints that we could see?"
"The pattern of the wounds seems random at first glance. But what bugs me is the ritualistic nature of the injured areas."
Areas? Littlefield wanted to remind Storie that those body parts were once near and dear to Boonie Houck. But he only nodded at her to continue.
"Look at the major wounds. First, there's the eyes."
"We haven't found them yet."
"Exactly. That's an inconvenient spot for a rampaging animal to reach. In any event, it's unlikely that a claw would take both eyes."
"Unless they were shining, and somehow attracted the animal's attention. The moon was over half full last night."
"Okay. Let's go on to the hand. Seems like an animal would have started gnawing at a softer spot."
"Maybe it did."
"That brings us to the fatal wound."
"Now, that's not been determined yet." Littlefield felt the tingle of blood rushing to his cheeks.
"I saw the rip in the front of his pants." She lifted the camera. "I took pictures, remember?"
"Guess so." His tongue felt thick.
"With the loss of that much blood, I'm amazed he survived as long as he did."
"You said the wounds were ritualistic. What's that got to do with his . . . er . . ."
"Penis, Sheriff. You can say it in the company of a woman these days."
"Of course." His face grew warmer with embarrassment. He looked across the mountains. He would love to be walking a stream right now, flicking a hand-tied fly across the silver currents, the smell of wet stone and rotted loam in his nostrils. Alone. Anywhere but here with blood and the red church and Sheila Storie. "So what does it mean?"
"It may mean nothing. Or it may mean we have a deviant personality on the loose." The flash of her eyes gave away her belief in the latter. Or maybe she was only hopeful.
"Is it because we haven't found the . . . other part, either?"
"I don't know yet."
"Think we ought to call in the state boys?" Littlefield knew Storie would bristle at turning the case over to the State Bureau of Investigation. She would want a shot first.
"That's your decision, Sheriff."
"I suppose we'll have to wait for the state medical examiner's report. Hoyle's sending him down to Chapel Hill."
"Good."
Littlefield tried to read her expression. But the sun was in her face, so her half-closed eyes didn't give away anything. He knew she thought Perry Hoyle had about as much forensic sophistication as a hog butcher. The whole department was probably a joke to her. Well, she was a flatlander, anyway. "Hoyle doesn't think the wounds were made by a weapon."
"You asked for my opinion, sir."
Littlefield looked up the hill at the church. Suddenly he felt as if someone had reached an icy hand down his throat and squeezed his heart. His brother Samuel was on the roof of the church, waving and smiling.
His dead brother Samuel.
Littlefield blinked, then saw that the illusion was only a mossy patch on the shingles.
He sighed. "I'm putting you in charge of the investigation."
Storie almost smiled. "I'll do my best, sir."
Littlefield nodded and stepped over the strings that marked off grids at the scene. He knelt by the toppled monument. "What do you make of this?"
"The boys' footprints lead over here. I'd guess vandalism. Tipping tombstones is an old favorite. Maybe they were messing around when the subject heard them and tried to crawl out of the weeds."
"Seems like they would have heard Boonie yelling." He stopped himself. Boonie wouldn't have called out, at least in nothing more articulate than a groan. Boonie's tongue had been taken, too.
Hoyle rescued him from his embarrassment. "We're ready over here, Sheriff," the ME called. Littlefield winced and started to turn.
"I'll handle it, sir," Storie said. "It's my case, remember? I might see something I missed the first two times."
She was right. Littlefield's shoulders slumped a little in relief. He hoped Storie hadn't noticed, but she didn't miss much. She had detective's eyes, even if they were easier to look at than look through. "Go ahead."
Littlefield headed across the cemetery and up the hill toward the red church. He glanced at the markers as he passed, some so worn he could barely make out the names. Some were nothing more than stumps of broken granite. Other graves were probably forgotten altogether, just the silent powder of bones under a skin of grass.
The ground was soft under his feet- good mountain soil, as black as coal dust. Almost a shame to waste it on a graveyard. But people had to be buried somewhere, and to the dead, maybe the most fertile soil in the world wasn't comfort enough. Maybe his kid brother Samuel had yet to settle into eternal rest.
The names on the markers read like a who's who history of this end of the county. Potter. Matheson. Absher. Buchanan. McFall. Gregg. More Picketts than you could shake a stick at.
And three Littlefields off by themselves.
He knelt by two familiar graves. His mother and father shared a single wide monument. He looked from the gray marble to a smaller marker, which had a bas-relief of a lamb chiseled in its center. Its letters were scarcely worn, and the fingerlike shadows of tree branches chilled the stone. Littlefield read the damning words without moving his lips.
Here Lies Samuel Riley Littlefield. 1968-1979. May God Protect and Keep Him.
His heart burned in his chest and he hurried away, his eyes frantic for a distraction. He stopped by the dogwood. The thing looked like it was dying. But it had looked that way for the last forty years, and every spring it managed to poke a few more blossoms out of the top branches. A memory stirred and crawled from the shadows before he could beat it back.
The red church. Halloween. The night he'd seen the Hung Preacher.
The night Samuel had died.
He shuddered and the memory fell away again, safely buried. The sun was warm on his face. Down the slope, Hoyle and Storie were hauling Boonie's body to the back of the overgrown station wagon that served as the county's non-emergency ambulance.
Littlefield moved away from the tree and put a foot on the bottom of four steps that led into the church foyer. The door was large and made of solid wooden planks. The cracks between the planks were barely distinguishable due to the buildup of paint layers. Over the door was a small strip of colored glass, two deep blue rectangular planes separated by an amber pane. Those had survived the onslaught of juvenile delinquents' rocks.
The sheriff climbed the rest of the steps. The top one was a wider landing, scarred from the tailgate of Lester Matheson's truck. Littlefield examined the thick hinges and the door lock. There was a lift latch in addition to the dull brass handle. Littlefield put his hand on the cool metal.
Wonder if I need a warrant to open it?Naw. Lester won't mind if I have a peek.
There was a small chance that if Boonie had been murdered, some evidence might be hidden inside. Or the door might be locked, but he didn't think Lester would bother keeping up with a key just to protect a hundred bales of hay. People didn't steal out in these parts. The thieves and B&E addicts kept to Barkersville, where the rich folks had their summer homes.
Littlefield turned the knob and the catch clicked back into the cylinder. He nudged the latch up with his other hand, and as the door creaked open and the rich dust of hay hit his nostrils, he realized he hadn't set foot inside since shortly after Samuel's funeral.
Please, God, just let it be a plain old ordinary murderer. Some drunk who got mad because Boonie took two swigs before passing the bottle instead of one. A Mexican Christmas tree worker with a grudge. I'll even take a crazy if you got one.
His palms were sweating, the way they had when he was seventeen and he'd first heard the laughter in the belfry.
The door opened onto a short, windowless foyer. A shaft of light pierced the ceiling from the belfry above.
Where the bell rope used to hang.
The bell rang in his memory, a thunderclap of angry bronze, an echo of the night Samuel died.
The plank floor creaked as Littlefield crossed the foyer. Golden motes of dust spiraled in the draft. What must it have been like a century ago? The worn wood had endured a hundred thousand crossings. Trembling and red-faced virgin brides with their best dresses dragging on the pine, solemn cousins come to pay their respects to a dear departed, women in bonnets and long swirling skirts gathering for Jubilee. Littlefield could almost see the preacher at the steps, shaking the hands of the menfolk, bowing to the women, patting the heads of the children.
The sheriff peered up through the tiny rope hole, an opening barely large enough for a child to scramble through. The hollow interior of the bell was full of black shadow. But that would tell him nothing. He returned to scanning the floor for signs of blood.
The foyer opened onto the main sanctuary. The chill crawled up his spine again. He didn't know whether it was caused by childhood legends, or the chance of finding a killer hiding among the bales of hay. For a frantic moment, he almost wished he wore a firearm.
The bales were stacked to each side, forming a crooked aisle down the center of the church sanctuary. Lester had left the altar undisturbed, probably because lifting hay over the railing was too much work. The altar itself was small, the pulpit hardly more than a rectangular crate with a slanted top. A set of six wormy chestnut beams, hand-hewn, crossed the open A-frame overhead. The interior walls were unpainted chestnut as well. In the dim light, the woodwork had a rich, deep brown cast.
The bales were packed too tightly against the walls to afford hiding places.
Unless somebody had removed a few bales and made a hollow space inside the stacks.
He'd done that in his family's barn, when he wanted to hide out on an autumn day, or when he and his brother played hide-and-seek or army. But few hours could be stolen back then. Crops, livestock, firewood, fence mending- a long list of chores was waiting at six every morning that never got finished before dark. But back then, Littlefield had slept in dreams and not bad memories.
Nothing stirred amid the hay. The church was silent, as if waiting for a congregation to again fill it with life. Littlefield walked to the dais. The chill deepened even though the air was stuffy. A small wooden cross was attached to the top of the pulpit. Like the cross on the church steeple, it was missing a section of the crosspiece.
Littlefield leaned over the waist-high railing and looked into the corners of the altar. The small vestry off to the side held nothing but bare shelves and cobwebs. He didn't know what he expected to see. Maybe he was just trying to ease his own mind, to reassure himself that old rumors and long-ago strangeness were put to rest. Boonie was dead, and that had nothing to do with the red church or Samuel or the Hung Preacher.
As he was turning to leave, he noticed a dark stain on the dais floor. It was the kind made by a spill. Maybe Lester had stored building materials in here once. At any rate, the rust-brown stain was far too old to have been made by whatever had killed Boonie.
But something about it held his attention. The shape seemed familiar. He tilted his head, as if stumped by an inkblot in a Rorschach test. When he realized where he had seen the form before, he drew in a dusty gasp of air.
The dark shape in the belfry, that long-ago Halloween.
Littlefield strode back through the church, suddenly anxious to be in the sunshine. He was going to go with the animal theory for now. If Storie wanted to play her forensic games, that was fine. But he wouldn't allow himself to believe that something masquerading as human had ripped apart good old Boonie Houck. Not in Pickett County. Not on God's ground. Not on his watch.
As he closed the door and looked across the graveyard where Storie searched the weeds for clues, the chill evaporated. Something fluttered in the belfry.
Bird or raccoon, he told himself without looking up. NOT the thing that had laughed as Samuel died.
He hurried down the slope to see if Storie had found any of Boonie's missing parts.
CHAPTER FOUR
Bummer.
That was Ronnie's first thought when the gray blindfold of unconsciousness dissolved into light. And that was the last thought he'd had when the anesthesiologist had pressed the mask to his face. Or maybe not. He'd been so stone-black-buzzed from the injection that he couldn't be sure if he'd had any prior thoughts at all.
His face, at least what he could feel of it, was like a molasses balloon. Pain tingled and teased him through a curtain of gauze. It was a sneaky, funny pain, a bully that skulked around the edge of the playground, waiting for you to chase a stray kickball. Once you were alone, it would jump on you and beat you and kick you and rip you--
More of the druggy haze fell away. Ronnie opened his eyes and the light sliced at his pupils. His eyes were overflowing, but he couldn't feel the tears on his cheeks. His stomach turned crooked flips. Mom and Dad were blurry images beside the bed. A man with a mustache whose eyes looked like licorice drops leaned over him.
"I think we've got somebody waking up." The man's mustache twitched like a caterpillar on a hot griddle. He wore a white coat.
Doctor. Ronnie's thoughts spun, then collected. Pain plus doctor equals hospital.
He opened his mouth to speak, but his tongue was too thick to find his teeth.
"Easy now, little partner," the doctor said. "Take it slow."
Slow was the only way Ronnie could take it. His arms and legs felt like lead pipes. He turned his head to look at his parents. Despite the numbness, he felt a warmth growing in his chest. Mom and Dad were together.
Well, they weren't holding hands, but at least they weren't yelling at each other. And all it took to make that happen was for Ronnie to . . . what had he done?
He slogged through the tunnels of his memory. He remembered the ride to the hospital, Dad holding him in the back seat, Dad's shirt against his face. The shirt should have smelled of sawdust and sweat and maybe a little gasoline, but Ronnie had smelled nothing but blood.
Then, farther back, before that, the little footbridge, falling, the rocks . . .
Ouch.
Ronnie was old enough to know that the memory of pain could never quite match up to the real thing. Which was a good thing; otherwise, everybody would be running around as crazy as old Mama Bet McFall, or Grandma Gregg down at the Haywood Assisted Care Center back before she slipped into the grave. But even Ronnie's memory of the pain was strong enough to wipe out some of the numbing effects of the drugs.
Dad stepped forward, his lower lip curled, his face made sickly green by the fluorescent strip lights. Dad never looked quite right indoors, sort of like the tiger Ronnie had seen in a pen down at the Asheboro zoo. Both of them nervous and impatient, pacing, too large for walls or bars.
"Hey, Ronnie," Dad said, unsuccessfully trying to funnel his deep voice into a whisper. "How are you feeling?"
"Muuuuhr." Even Ronnie couldn't translate the sound his vocal chords made.
Mom leaned over him, a tight smile wrinkling her face. The skin under her eyes was dark blue. She reached out and brushed hair away from his forehead with a clammy hand. "It's okay, baby."
The doctor checked Ronnie's pulse. "Coming around fine. You'll be able to take him home in an hour or so. Buzz one of the nurses if you need anything."
The doctor left the room, and the draft from the closing door swept over Ronnie like a tide of water. Being a molasses-head wasn't all bad. His thoughts weren't dropping as fast as usual, but he was thinking wider than he ever had before. If not for the pain bully waiting behind the numbness, Ronnie wouldn't mind hanging out in this half-speed dreamscape for a while.
This was almost peaceful. If he closed his eyes, the white walls fell away and the sky got big and he could float on a cloud and no one could bother him, not even dingle-dork-
Tim. What had happened to Tim?
The molasses of his face rippled as his eyes opened wide. Mom and Dad and . . . where was Tim? Because suddenly it was all coming back, the molasses creek turning a bend and flowing into sunlight and, now hot and golden, churning over a precipice in a sugary waterfall. The run home, the hand on his foot, the bleeding thing-they got livers for eyes-the toppled monument, the red church, the graveyard.
Had the bleeding thing trapped Tim?
Dad must have sensed his agitation, because a hand on his shoulder prevented him from sitting up. "Now, you heard the doctor, son. Just rest up."
Mom chewed on the skin at the end of her thumb. "You got busted up pretty good when you fell. Broke your nose. The doctor said you were lucky you didn't crack your skull."
Good old Mom. Found the bright side to everything. So he had a broken nose. He thought of some of the players on his football cards, how their noses had great big humps across the bridge or were twisted off to one side. Just what a guy like him needed. Now Melanie would never talk to him.
The molasses mask slipped a little more, and the pain bully chuckled from the shadows, knowing an opportunity was drawing near. Ronnie became aware of a lower portion of his body, where the knot of snakes nested in his stomach. He was going to throw up.
Total bummer. He groaned and his tongue worked.
"What is it, honey?" Mom said, her face now paler and her eyes wider.
"Poooook," he said. His right arm flailed like a water hose under pressure.
"Puke?" She looked at Dad. "Oh, Lord, David, he's going to throw up."
Dad looked helpless. The situation called for quick action and compassion. As a caregiver, Dad made a good pallbearer.
Mom spun and began searching under a counter beside the bed. A mirror ran along the length of the counter, and Ronnie was startled by his own reflection. His nose was purple and swollen, little clots of bloody gauze hanging out of his nostrils. His eyes were like green-brown marbles pressed into ten pounds of dough.
The image accelerated his nausea. He turned his body with effort, and now Dad helped, putting a hand in his armpit to lean him over the steel railing of the bed. The scene in the mirror was doubly disorienting from being reversed. The greasy snakes crawled up Ronnie's throat.
Mom found a plastic pan made of a yucky aqua color, but that was okay because yucky was just what the situation required. She held it under his face, and the snakes exploded from his mouth. His eyes squeezed shut in the effort of vomiting, and drops of something besides molasses beaded his forehead. His abdomen spasmed twice, three times, four, a pause, then a fifth eruption.
"Oh, my Lord," Mom exclaimed to Dad. "Call the nurse."
"He said this might happen. And look, it's stopped now."
"But it's blood."
"What did you think it would be, grits and sausage gravy? They just operated on his nose."
Ronnie looked into the pan and his guts almost lurched again. A thick gruel of blood and mucus pooled in front of his face. And what were those things floating in-
Fingers. They cut off my fingers and made me eat them.
Dad's words came as if through cotton. "What the hell are those?"
"Get a nurse." Mom waved her hands helplessly.
The draft of the door opening wafted over Ronnie again, but this time it provided no comfort. He lay back on the raised pillows.
A tired-looking nurse looked in the pan. "Oh, those are the fingers of surgical gloves. The doctor stuffs them with gauze and uses them as packing."
"How did they get in his stomach?" Mom's voice was a thin screech.
"The packing must have worked its way down the pharyngeal openings of his Eustachian tubes. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about."
"Nothing to worry about?" Dad's voice was loud enough to make Ronnie's head hurt. "It's not your kid in the bed, is it?"
The nurse gave a forced smile that Ronnie figured she wore while giving medicine to somebody who wasn't likely to last the week. A smile that plainly said, If there were another job in Pickett County that paid this well, he could puke rubber fingers until he choked, for all I care.
But all she said was, "I'll see if I can find the doctor."
After she was gone, Mom said, "You didn't have to raise your voice."
"Shut up."
"David, please. For Ronnie's sake?"
Ronnie wasn't bothered by the argument. The relief of passing nausea was so great that he would have slow-danced with the pain bully, he felt so wonderful. So what if more sweat had popped out along his neck and in his armpits and down the slope of his spine? The stomach snakes were gone.
The act of vomiting also cleared his head a little. That was a mixed blessing. Or mixed curse. Because not only were the good wide thoughts gone, they were being replaced by memories.
Before he'd been wheeled into surgery, the sheriff had talked to him about the things that happened at the red church. It was scary enough just to talk to a policeman, especially one with a crew cut and a face that looked like it was chiseled out of stone. But the sheriff wanted him to remember what had happened, when Ronnie really, really, really wanted to be in the business of forgetting.
Forgetting the wet, slooshing sound his shoe had made as he jerked his foot from the graveyard grip.
Forgetting the raw, bloody arm reaching around the tombstone.
Forgetting the laughter that had fluttered from the belfry of the red church.
The sheriff finally went away, and they had rolled Ronnie to the operating room. Then came the needle and the mask and the wide thoughts and the darkness.
"How are you feeling, honey?"
He looked at his mom. Her hair was wilted and stringy, a dull chestnut color. She looked about a hundred and twelve, older even than Mama Bet McFall, the crazy woman who lived up the road from the Day farm.
"Better," he whispered, and the air of his voice scraped his throat as it passed.
The door opened again and Ronnie craned his neck. The doctor was whistling an uneven tune through the scrub brush of his mustache. Ronnie would bet money that it was a Michael Bolton song. Or maybe something even lamer. Ronnie was almost glad that his nose was clogged. He would have bet double-or-nothing that the man was wearing some sissy cologne. He flopped his heavy head back on the pillows.
"I heard you had a little episode," the doctor said.
Episode? Was that the medical term for vomiting up fingers?
"I'm okay now," Ronnie said in a wheeze, mainly because the doctor was leaning over and reaching for his nose. And even though the painkiller was still dumbing him down, he was smart enough to know that being touched there would hurt like heck. Even through the molasses that encased his brain.
The doctor backed away at the last moment. "The packing looks like it's still in place where the break occurred. I don't think any harm was done."
Nope. No harm at all to YOU, was there, Mr. Mustache?
"We could always roll him back into the OR and pack some more gauze up there," the doctor said to his parents, as if Ronnie weren't even in the room.
"What do you think?" Mom turned another shade closer to invisibility.
"I believe he's okay," the doctor said, fingering his mustache. "In fact, I'd say you could go ahead and take him home. Call me next week and we'll schedule a time to take the stitches out."
Dad nodded dumbly. Mom worked at the gnawed skin of her fingers.
Ronnie was eager to go home. By the time the nurse showed up with a fake smile and a wheelchair, he was sitting up in bed, feeling dizzy but no longer nauseated. As the nurse wheeled him to the elevators, he was floating away again. The outside air tasted strange and thick.
Ronnie was surprised to see that the sun was setting. He felt as if years had passed, not hours, since he'd fallen. Pinkish gray clouds wreathed the horizon above the dark mountains.
Mom had pulled her big black Coupe De Ville by the hospital doors. Dad eased him into the backseat and they were on their way home. They had gone about two miles when Ronnie remembered Tim.
"Where's Tim?" he managed to ask. He was sleepy again, a molasses-head.
"At Donna's. They went back to the graveyard to find his glasses."
So Tim had survived the encounter at the red church. The Encounter. Sounded like a title for a cheesy monster movie. Whatever. His thoughts were getting wide again.
He wanted to be asleep by the time they drove past the red church.
He was.
"Didn't see nothing," Lester Matheson said. His face was crooked from decades of chewing his tobacco in the same cheek. He ground his teeth sideways, showing the dark mass inside his mouth, occasionally flicking it more firmly into place with his tongue.
"Last night, either?" Sheriff Littlefield turned from the man's smacking habit and looked out over the rolling meadows. A herd of cows dotted the ridge, all pointed in the same direction. Like their owner, they also chewed mindlessly, not caring what dribbled out of their mouths.
"No, ain't seen nothing up at the red church in a long time. Course, kids go up there to mess around from time to time. Always have."
Littlefield nodded. "Yeah. Ever think of posting a 'No Trespassing' sign?"
"That would only draw twice as many. I'd never keep nothing out there that I couldn't afford to get stolen."
Littlefield shifted his weight from one foot to another and a porch board groaned. The Mathesons lived in a board-and-batten house on the edge of two hundred acres of land. Even Lester's barns seemed better built than the house. It was roofed with cheap linoleum sheeting that had visible patches in the material. The windows were large single panes fixed with gray strips of wood. The air coming from the open front door was stale and cool, like that of a tomb.
The sun was disappearing into the angle where Buckhorn Mountain slid down to the base of Piney Top. The air was moist with the waiting dew. Pigs snorted from their wooden stalls beside the larger of Lester's two barns. Crickets had taken up their night noises, and the aroma of cow manure made Littlefield almost nostalgic for his own childhood farm days. "Have you ever seen Boonie hanging around the graveyard?"
Lester scratched his bulbous head that gleamed even in the fading light. His hand was knotted from a life of work, thick with blue veins and constellations of age spots. "Well, I found him in the red church one time, passed out in the straw. I just let him sleep it off. As long as he didn't smoke in there, he couldn't really hurt nothing."
"Have you noticed anything unusual around here?"
"Depends on what you mean by 'unusual.' The church has always been mighty unusual. But I don't have to tell you that, do I?"
"I'm not interested in ghost stories," Littlefield lied.
Lester emitted a gurgling laugh and leaned back in his rocker. "Fine, Sheriff. Whatever you say. And I guess Boonie just happened to get killed in one of them gang wars or something."
"Perry Hoyle thinks it was a mountain lion."
Lester laughed again, then shot a stream of black juice into the yard. "Or maybe it was Bigfoot. Used to be a lot of mountain lions in these parts, all right. Back in the thirties and forties, they were thick as flies. They'd come down out of the hills of a night and take a calf or a chicken, once in a while a dog. But they're deader than four o'clock in the morning now."
Lester was a hunter. Littlefield wasn't, these days. "When's the last time you saw one?" the sheriff asked.
"Nineteen sixty-three. I remember because everybody was just getting over the Kennedy mess. I took up yonder to Buckhorn"-he waved a gnarled hand at the darkening mountain-"because somebody said they'd seen a six-point buck. I set up a little stand at a crossing trail and waited. My stand was twenty feet up a tree, covered with canvas and cut branches. Moon come out, so I decided to stay some after dark, even though it was colder than a witch's heart.
"I heard a twig snap and got my rifle shouldered as smooth as you please. We didn't mess with scopes and such back in them days. Just pointed and shot. So I was looking down the barrel when something big stepped in the sights. Even in the bad light, I could see its gold fur. And two shiny green eyes was looking right back up the barrel at me."
Lester drained his excess juice off the side of the porch. The old man paused for dramatic effect. People still passed down stories in these parts. The front porch was Lester's stage, and they both knew his audience was duty-bound to stay.
The sheriff obliged. "You shot him," he said, even though he knew that wouldn't have made a satisfactory ending to the tale.
Lester waited another ten seconds, five seconds longer than the ritual called for. "About did. I knew what he was right off, even though his fur was about the same color as a deer's. It was the eyes, see? Deer eyes don't glow. They just sop up light like a scratch biscuit draws gravy."
"What happened next?"
"He just kind of stared back at me. Damnedest thing I ever saw. Looking at me like I was an equal, or maybe not even that. Like I was a mosquito buzzing around his head. He drew his mouth open like he was going to snarl, and his whiskers flashed in the moonlight. And I couldn't pull the trigger."
"Scared?" Littlefield asked, hoping Lester wasn't insulted. But Lester seemed to have forgotten the sheriff as he stared off at the mountain.
"In a way I was, but that's not the reason I didn't pull the trigger. There was something about him, something in the eyes, that was more than animal. You might think I'm crazy, and you probably wouldn't be too far wrong, but that cat knew what I was thinking. It knew I wouldn't pull the trigger. After maybe half a minute of us staring each other down, he slipped into the woods, his long tail twitching like he was laughing to hisself. Like I was a big ball of yarn he'd played with and gotten tired of."
The sun had slipped behind the horizon now, and Littlefield couldn't read Lester's expression in the darkness. All he could see was the crooked shape of the farmer's face.
"I was frozen, and not just from the chill, either," Lester continued. "When I finally let out a breath, it made a mist in front of my face. I was sweating like I was baling hay and racing a rainstorm. I strained my ears for any little sound, even though I knew the cat was gone."
Littlefield had been standing more or less at parade rest, a habit he had when he was on official business, even around people he knew. Now he let his shoulders droop slightly and leaned against the porch rail. As a youngster, he'd hunted at night himself. He could easily imagine Lester in the tree, muscles taut, ears picking up the slight scurry of a chipmunk or the whispering wings of a nighthawk. Like any good storyteller, Lester had put the sheriff in another place and time.
"You're probably wondering why I'm going on so about this mountain lion," Lester said. "You're asking yourself what that's got to do with Boonie Houck's death."
"That mountain lion would have died a natural death long ago."
Lester said nothing. There was a clattering inside the house, then the rusty skree of the storm door opening. Lester's wife Vivian came out on the porch. Her hair was in a bun, tied up with a scarf. She had a slight hump in her back, a counterpart to her husband's twisted face. The interior light cast her odd shadow across the yard.
"You done yapping the Sheriff's ear off?" she asked, her voice trembling and thin. She must have been a little hard of hearing, because she talked louder than necessary.
"Ain't hardly started yet," Lester said, not rising from his rocker. "Now get on back in the house before I throw a shoe at you."
"You do and I'll put vinegar in your denture glass."
Lester chuckled. "I love you, too, honey."
"You going to invite the sheriff in for pie?"
"No, thank you, ma'am," Littlefield said, bowing a little in graciousness. "I've got a few other people to talk to tonight."
"Well, don't listen too much to this old fool. He lies like a cheap rug."
"I'll take that under advisement."
The door sprang closed. The darkness sprang just as abruptly. "So you haven't seen a mountain lion since then?" the sheriff asked Lester.
"Nope."
"And you're sure you haven't seen anything strange around the red church?"
"Haven't seen nothing. Heard something, though."
"Heard something?"
"Last night, would've been about three o'clock. You don't sleep too well when you get to be my age. Always up and down for some reason. So when I heard them, I figured it was one of those in-between dreams. You know, right before you fall asleep and your real thoughts are mixing in with the nonsense?"
Littlefield nodded, then realized the old man couldn't see his face. "Yeah. What did you hear, or think you heard?"
Littlefield glanced at his watch, about to chalk up his time spent talking to Lester as a waste. The luminous dial showed that it was nearly nine o'clock.
"Bells," the old man said in a near-whisper.
"Bells?" Littlefield repeated, though he'd plainly heard the man.
"Real soft and faint, but a bell's a bell. Ain't no mistaking that sound."
"I hate to tell you this, Lester, but we both know that the red church has the only bell around here. And even if some kids were messing around there last night, there's no bell rope."
"And we both know why there ain't no bell rope. But I'm just telling you what I heard, that's all. I don't expect you to put much stock in an old man's words."
The ghost stories. Some families had passed them down until they'd acquired a mythic truth that had even more power than fact. Littlefield wasn't ready to write Death by supernatural causes on Boonie's incident report. Since Samuel had died, the sheriff had spent most of his life trying to convince himself that supernatural occurrences didn't occur.
Just the facts, ma'am, Littlefield told himself, hearing the words in Jack Webb's voice from the old Dragnet television show.
"There were no recent footprints around the church. No sign of disturbances inside the church, either," Littlefield said, piling up the evidence as if to convince himself along with Lester.
"I bet there wasn't no mountain lion paw-prints, either, was there?"
This time, Littlefield initiated the ten-second silence. "Not that we've found yet."
Lester gave his liquid laugh.
Littlefield's head filled with warm anger. "If you believe so much in the stories, why did you buy the red church in the first place?"
"Because I got it for a song. But it won't be my problem no more."
"Why not?"
"Selling it. One of the McFall boys came by the other day. You know, the one that everybody said didn't act like regular folks? The one that got beat near to a pulp behind the football bleachers one night?"
"Yeah. Archer McFall." Littlefield had been a young deputy then, on foot patrol at the football game. Archer ended up in the hospital for a week. No arrests were made, even though Littlefield had seen two or three punks rubbing their hands as if their knuckles were sore. Of course, nobody pressed the case too much. Archer was a McFall, after all, and the oddest of the bunch.
"Well, he says he went off to California and made good, working in religion and such. And now he's moving back to the area and wants to settle here."
"I'll be damned."
"Me, too. And when he offered me two hundred thousand dollars for the red church and a dozen acres of mostly scrub pine and graveyard, I had to bite my lip to keep from grinning like a possum. Supposed to go in tomorrow and sign the papers at the lawyer's office."
"Why the red church, if he's got that kind of money?" Littlefield asked, even though he was pretty sure he already knew.
"That property started off in the McFall family. They're the ones who donated the land for the church in the first place. Remember Wendell McFall?"
Coincidences. Littlefield didn't like coincidences. He liked cause-and-effect. That's what solved cases. "That's a lot of money."
"Couldn't say no to it. But I had a funny feeling that he would have offered more if I had asked. But he knew I wouldn't. It was like that time with the mountain lion, like he was staring me down, like he knew what I was thinking."
"I guess if he's a successful businessman, then he's had a lot of practice at negotiating."
"Reckon so," Lester said, unconvinced. He stood with a creaking that might have been either his joints or the rocker's wooden slats. "It's time to be putting up the cows."
"And I'd best finish my rounds. I appreciate your time, Lester."
"Sure. Come on back anytime. And next time, plan on staying for a piece of pie."
"I'll do that."
As Littlefield started the Trooper, he couldn't help thinking about the part of Lester's story that had gone untold. The part about why a bell rope no longer hung in the red church, and why Archer McFall would want to buy back the old family birthright.
He shook his head and went down the driveway, gravel crackling under his wheels.
... continued ...
* * *
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