The Farm

Chapter Twenty-six

"I'll take Jessica now," Gordon said.

Mark looked up from the table. Jett had plowed her way through a glass of chocolate milk, half a Spanish omelet, two strips of bacon, a piece of white-bread toast slathered with margarine, and still had a cream-cheese cinnamon bun at her elbow. Mark was drinking coffee, the house brand, and wished the woodstove had been stoked recently. He was not used to the mountain chill, and the general store had obvious shortcomings in weatherproofing. The twin aromas of fried liver mush and onions fought for dominance in the air. However, the place was not without charm, if you didn't count the six-foot-four guy standing over him who set off every bullshit alarm in Mark's body.

"I thought I was supposed to take her back to your house," Mark said.

"Plans have changed," Gordon said. His smile was midway between smug and confrontational and he was outfitted in his Sunday best, collar stiff and uncomfortable, the kind of clothes built for sitting upright in church or lying prone in a coffin. Gordon's face was flushed, as if he'd jogged a half mile before walking in the door.

Jett looked at Mark with those wide, pleading eyes. He'd let her down plenty already. He'd fucked up with the drags, he didn't take the steps that could have saved his marriage and his family, he hadn't grabbed on to the things that were most important in his life. And now they were drifting out of his reach, like fairy dust or pot smoke, insubstantial, unreal, pieces of a lost and long-ago dream.

He could sit here and drink coffee or he could tell Gordon Smith to go the fuck down the deepest hole in hell.

"We're still finishing our breakfast," Mark said. "Adolescents need their nutrition. Haven't you read the parenting manuals?"

"I know what's best for her," Gordon said, his gaze unwavering. And for Katy. You had your chance, after all."

Mark's grip tightened around his coffee mug. He didn't know whether to dash the liquid onto Gordon's three-hundred-dollar jacket or to shatter the ceramic and bring a shard up to slice his own jugular.

"It's okay, Dad," Jett said. "Call me when you get back to Charlotte." She reached across the table and put her small fingers on his forearm. Her nails were painted dark violet to match her eye shadow. His girl had style, at least. And a flair for the dramatic.

"I don't feel comfortable leaving things as they are," he said to her, hoping his expression revealed he was worried and didn't want Gordon to know.

"We'll get by, Daddy," she said. "You know what Mom always says."

The words were like rabbit punches to the kidney. That was a Katyism, said when bills were stacking up or some medical problem arose. When things seemed darkest, when love seemed ephemeral, when only fools believed "forever" was more than just a weapon in a poet's arsenal. "We'll get through this together" had been one of those lines that still rang even after the 'together" part was over.

Coming from Jett, the words were almost a mockery, an echo that whispered of failure. Because they weren't getting by. Jett had told him the weirdest damned stories, and after he'd gotten past his initial instinct to assume she'd graduated to hard drugs, just like her old man, he had almost started to believe her. Tongues could lie, but eyes had a difficult time. Especially the eyes of the young.

"When can I see you again?" Mark asked her.

"We'll talk about that," Gordon said. "The three of us. We'll let you know."

Gordon reached down and took Jett's wrist. She wore the expression of a prisoner being hauled away after court sentencing.

"It's okay, pumpkin," Mark said. "I'm glad I got to see you."

They stood and hugged, Jett giving him an extra squeeze. He stroked the top of her head and stooped to kiss her cheek. She was on the doorstep of womanhood, and he'd miss her crossing the threshold. Gordon would be ushering her through that passage, because Gordon was stable and wealthy and reliable. The kind of man every woman needed as a husband and every daughter needed as a father.

Except the corners of Gordon's mouth flirted with a smirk. Which Gordon was the real one?

"Call me," Mark said as the pair walked down the aisles of the store, between rows of bark birdhouses, snow shovels, bushels of apples, pumpkins, dried Indian corn, and gourds.

After they left, Mark sipped his coffee. It had gone cold and bitter, a fitting juice for his heart. His daughter had told him Katy was possessed, a man in a black hat was stalking her, a scarecrow had attacked her, and goats were trying to eat her. It sounded like a di-rect-to-video movie, and yet her face had paled and hands trembled as she told her tale. Despite her talent for drama, she had spoken with quiet conviction, as if fully expecting not to be believed. She'd finished speaking, crunched some bacon, a couple of dark red crumbs on her lower lip as she'd asked, "What now, Daddy?"

It was a question Mark pondered as he finished his coffee and the tables around him filled with lunch customers.

The key turned in the lock with a sharp groan of relief. The bureau gave forth a smell of lilacs so strong that Katy nearly sneezed. Beneath the floral sweetness lay the stink of something warm and wet, like damp and rotted hay. The bureau was empty except for a rumpled pile of clothes on the middle shelf. Katy looked behind her, half expecting Rebecca to finally seep out of the shadows. But Rebecca hadn't harmed her yet, so why should she be frightened? After all, Rebecca had been part of this house long before Katy's arrival.

Katy was tempted to ask Rebecca what was so important about the clothes that they needed to be locked away. Maybe Rebecca had her own motives. Jealousy might stain the soul even unto death, though Katy couldn't imagine the grave being much colder than Gordon's bed.

She pulled the tangle of clothes from the shelf. A plain flannel shirt, pocked with tears, loose threads, and moth holes. Except the sleeves and cuffs were moist, painted a color that was darker than the shadowy attic. A pair of faded jeans was beneath the shirt, and under the hump of clothing was a battered planter's hat. As she pulled the hat from the shelf, something heavy thumped to the floor, barely missing her toes. She bent and picked it up.

A sickle, the same as the one that hung on the wall of the barn. Except this one was clean and had a honed edge, while the one in the barn was rusty from lack of use. Katy held the curved piece of steel before her. Could this be the same one from the barn, only with the blade polished and sharpened? When was the last time she had been in the barn?

Short pieces of straw were scattered among the clothing. At first Katy thought the hat was unraveling, but the straw was tucked into the folds of the shirt, adding another scent to the strange mix. She laid the sickle on the shelf and lifted the shirt toward the shafts of light leaking from the nearest vent. The wet sleeves slapped at her arms as she carried the shirt to the mirror. The mirror reflected the faint light and allowed her to recognize the pattern. It was the same shirt worn by the scarecrow in the barn.

And the sleeves were dark red with drying blood.

Katy tossed the shirt to the floorboards in disgust. Maybe someone had killed an animal in the shirt, then stowed it away in the attic. Then why was the blood not completely dried? Neither Gordon nor Odus had killed any farm animals since Katy and Jett had moved in. Certainly not in the last day or two.

"Blood in the attic?" Katy asked half to herself and half to Rebecca, though she still didn't quite trust the opinion of a ghost.

Behind the dresser, the lid on the long wooden box creaked open, then fell closed with a soft thwump.

Every country attic had rats or squirrels or possums. She had disturbed some nesting animal, that was all.

Katy remembered the clothes in the box, coarse fabric like those that had adorned the scarecrow. Except they had been dry, and not under lock and key.

Tiny scurrying under the dresser. The quick claws of some rodent. Clicking on wood.

Katy dropped the shirt and gripped the wooden handle of the sickle. It fit her palm as if personally carved for her.

She backed toward the attic door. The clicking multiplied as more small, sharp toes scrabbled among the boxes, furniture, lamp shades, and the huddled hulk of an old wheelchair. Katy reached the door with its folded ladder and pushed downward. The door had no latch, and should have swung free. But it stuck tight as if someone were on the other side, bracing it closed.

She placed her foot on the door, slowly sweeping the sickle in front of her, reaping air as if to ward off the unseen creatures that flirted with the shadows. That's when she looked back at the dresser. On the stool, perched before the mirror, was a woman in the same dress that Katy was wearing. A pale, delicate, freckled hand swept the silver-handled hairbrush in curling motions as if smoothing tangles. Except there was no hair.

The woman had no head.

The body turned on the stool, the hairbrush descending to rest in her lap, a ragged, transparent stump of flesh protruding above the lace collar. "Am I not pretty enough for him?" Rebecca asked.

How can you speak when you have no head? How can you speak anyway when you're dead?

Katy climbed onto the narrow access door, then began jumping, staying hunched so she wouldn't bump her head on the joists. She couldn't look away from that headless figure, the woman whose place Katy had taken in the Smith house, even though the scurrying was on all sides and shapes wriggled in the eaves.

On the fourth jump, the door gave way and she plummeted into space, the sickle falling from her hand as she bounced off the shelves in the linen closet and tumbled into the upstairs hall.

As the world went gray, the staccato scurrying continued above her, and beyond that, as soft as lamb's breath, came the whispering stroke of a hairbrush through ethereal tresses.

Odus figured the Circuit Rider would be either at one of his three Lost Ridge grave sites or else up on the Snakeberry Trail where he'd been killed. The Circuit Rider had somehow found his faithful horse, and was mobile again.

Odus figured he'd need a horse himself if he was going to roam the back-mountain trails. A motorcycle would probably work better, but the engine noise would kill any element of surprise. Plus he didn't think he could hot-wire a Harley without rousing half the police in the county. Besides, it seemed only proper to track the Circuit Rider by horseback. Since Odus was going into this showdown without any weapons, he figured he ought to make up the rules as he went along, on the theory that like could slay like.

Odus parked his truck on a gravel lot by the river at the McHenry farm. He was near the bridge that led to Rush Branch Road, a steep strip of crumbled asphalt that gave way to mud as it wound around the mountain. The Smith property lay on the other side, in the valley at the base of the mountain. The Primitive Baptist Church stood near the peak, just where the pavement ended. Some three-story houses were perched on the steep slopes here and there, up where the late wind shook the walls, but they were mostly summer homes for Yankees and were empty this time of year. It would be easy to ignore their fences and NO TRESPASSING signs. The Circuit Rider certainly wouldn't observe human laws, and Odus had to adopt that same mind-set.

He found a horse on a riverside pasture, a stretch of flat bottomland that would have been developed for condos already if not for the spring floods that sometimes washed over it. The horse was a pinto mare of mixed colors, probably two or three years old. It shied away as Odus approached, which was just fine because Odus needed to lure the horse out of sight of the river road. The horse was pastured with cows, a mistake on Old Man McHenry's part, because horses didn't know how to behave after spending time with cud-chomping sacks of sirloin. Odus had helped McHenry put up some hay last fall and knew his way around the barn. The house was up the road a quarter mile, so Odus was concealed while he rummaged. The horse followed him to the barn because it smelled the apple in Odus's pocket and, despite the bad bovine influence, an apple to a horse was like a sweet lie to a woman. They both got you what you wanted.

In the barn, Odus rounded up a halter and reins. He didn't like sliding the steel bit in the horse's mouth. Folks said horses didn't mind, but it looked uncomfortable anyway. He gave the pinto the apple to work on while he cinched the saddle. Odus had done some riding here and there in his work as a hired hand, occasionally putting in some saddle time to exercise horses for lazy people. He was no Gene Autry, but he knew enough to keep from getting bucked.

The church crowd would be filling the roads any minute now, and he'd have to either use the bridge or find a shallow spot to cross Blackburn River. He liked the idea of fording the river. That's probably how the Circuit Rider did it. With any luck, or some kind of higher power pitching in a little help, Odus would be able to track Harmon before nightfall. Because night was a time when things like dead preachers grew more powerful. Odus didn't need a scientist to tell him that. Dark things loved the dark, and the dark loved them right back.

Odus swung into the saddle and gave the pinto a twitch on her flank. "You got a name?" he asked her.

The horse whinnied, spraying a few specks of apple.

"I'll take that as a 'yep,' " Odus said. "You speak human better than I speak horse, so I'll just have to make something up. Harmon has Old Saint, so let's call you 'Sister Mary.' What do you think of that?"

Sister Mary's snort might have signaled disgust, or it could have been a request for another apple. Either way, she headed out of the barn when he gave the reins a shake. He guided Sister Mary past the cows, who stared as if they'd bought tickets, and toward the river. Just before Sister Mary put a tentative hoof in the cold water, Odus glanced up the ridge at the next pasture. McHenry's goats were lined along the fence, as menacing as the Apache warriors in a wagon train western.

"Don't pay them no mind," Odus said. "We got business elsewhere."

He gently bounced bis knees against Sister Mary's ribs and they entered the current

Crisis of faith. That was the only explanation. Mose Eldreth hadn't shown up for services, leaving his congregation high and dry in its time of need. David should have felt disappointment or perhaps pity, for he understood as well as anyone the flesh was weak. But the emotion that struggled for dominance in the mix was triumph, as if God had whittled away one more competitor for precious space in heaven.

Primitive Baptists shouldn't gloat, he knew. Only the Lord knew the whole truth about Mose, and it was always possible that God had sent Mose away on some sort of quest or mission. In which case, David's triumph was actually failure, because it meant Mose was at least one step ahead on those golden stairs. But none of that mattered now.

Clayton Boles, a semiregular at Solom Free Will Baptist, had shown up at David's church fifteen minutes after service started, sliding into one of the back pews. His entrance was obvious: only a dozen faithful had shown up that morning, none of them under the age of fifty. David had even paused in his sermon, a rambling discourse on the enemy within and a human's inability to personally remove the burden of sin. Clayton nodded and blinked and David had offered a public welcome. The Primitives didn't mind an occasional guest; Gordon Smith popped in every three months or so, and relatives sometimes sat in, especially during foot-washing ceremonies. But if Clayton thought he was going to join the fold, he'd have to rid himself of a lot of self-serving ideas of getting saved. Clayton would have to get humble, an idea that far too many Christians of every stripe resisted.

After the sermon, while the members of the congregation were shaking hands, David took Clayton to the side and found out about Mose's dereliction of duty. Word of the Circuit Rider had gotten around, at least among the locals, and Clayton confessed that he figured any port in a storm, because evil wouldn't befall him while he was in a church, no matter what kind of sign was posted out front.

"Damnedest thing, though, Preacher," Clayton had said. "The grass in the graveyard was tore to hell and gone, like somebody stampeded a herd of cattle through. And there was a scorched patch around Harmon Smith's grave."

Around one of his graves, David almost added. Instead, he quoted from Matthew: "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."

David waited until the congregation left, then changed clothes in the little room that was more of a broom closet than a vestry. By the time he emerged, the sun was nearly straight up in the sky. As surely as the dawn was a symbol of rising and renewal, dusk was a time of despair and destruction. Whatever Harmon Smith had planned for this go-round of the circuit, it would happen tonight. That gave David less than seven hours to come up with a way to preserve his church and his community. Even though God had already predestined the outcome, David felt a need to act.

He went to his pickup truck and took a shovel from the bed. The oaken handle was strong and sure in his hands, a sacred staff if there ever was one. He navigated the scattered markers that surrounded Rush Branch Primitive Baptist Church and proceeded to the worn and nameless slab of limestone that was cracked down the middle as if lightning had been buried there.

The holes that had pocked Harmon Smith's grave were larger, the dirt fresh, as though some creature had burrowed its way in. Or maybe out.

Only one way to know for sure. David drove the shovel blade into the moist soil with a sound like a hatchet into meat. He drove the metal deeper with his boot and turned. He was a groundskeeper, and this was his turf. Here, at least, he had a chance. If he could beat the sinking sun, that was.