The Scarecrow: A Supernatural Thriller (Solom) Read online

  When Katy remarries and brings her teen daughter Jett to the rural Appalachian town of Solom, they discover a dark legend lives in the hills and farms.

  SOLOM: THE SCARECROW

  By Scott Nicholson

  Preorder Solom #2: The Narrow Gate at Amazon !

  Releases Feb. 26, 2014.

  Copyright ©2013 Scott Nicholson

  Published by Haunted Computer Books

  CHAPTER ONE

  Lilacs.

  That was probably what the dead woman had once smelled like.

  The scent drifted from the cupboard and crossed the kitchen as if riding a late spring breeze. Katy Logan sniffed and frowned. It was late September, too deep in the Appalachian autumn for any flowers but goldenrod, jewel weed, and hummingbird plant. She hoped Gordon wasn’t the type of man who believed in packaged deodorizers, those little plug-in things that looked great on a television commercial. The kind featuring a fashionable mom who could clean the house, build a career, raise three kids, and still manage to be dynamite in the sack, all without rumpling the pages of Cosmopolitan.

  Katy had no doubt the scent was lilacs. Her mother Althea was a gardener, though her Floridian climate was 800 miles and 4,000 feet of elevation removed from the North Carolina mountains. Mom had collected a string of blue ribbons from flower shows across the panhandle. Katy’s green thumb had turned a sickly shade of chartreuse somewhere at the age of six, when she’d dumped a bucket of mud on a prize species of two-tone rose. Sent to bed without supper, Katy had fantasized about ripping Mom’s flower garden up by its roots.

  To her, flowers were the stench of failure.

  Katy let the pot she was scrubbing slide into the soapy water. The scent came again, stronger. It wasn’t a pure smell. The lilac had a faint musky undertone. Like old fish.

  God, she shouldn’t have cooked Gordon swordfish last night. At least the heady lilac disguised the fish odor a little. She was as hapless in the kitchen as she was in the garden. Katy had always resisted the petty tyranny of the kitchen, its perfect order and shiny regimen, the confusing array of spices. Was it basil or oregano that tomato-based sauces needed most? Was it cinnamon or was it cloves that dominated a pumpkin pie? Did swordfish demand a freshly squeezed lemon or a splash of soy sauce?

  Katy had gone with both lemon and soy last night, determined to be a good wife for Gordon. A textbook wife. An Old Testament wife, if necessary. She’d been the other kind of wife and didn’t have much to show for it.

  Except Jett.

  Katy dried her hands. A door slammed beyond the kitchen. Jett must be coming in, ready to hit the books and wow the teachers at Cross Valley High.

  “Jett?” A smile slipped across Katy’s lips, and she could practically feel the furrows in her forehead smooth out. Like a Cosmo mom. No stress. Wrinkles were for those who succumbed to gravity.

  Of course it’s Jett. Who else would it be?

  Certainly not the woman you keep sensing when the house is empty. Because she doesn’t exist.

  Jett, born Jessica, had gotten her nickname because of her inability to make sibilants as a toddler. Neither her first husband Mark nor Katy could resist the endearing speech impediment. When Jett had learned of ‘80’s black-clad, bad-girl rocker Joan Jett, the name was sealed.

  Katy waited for the footsteps of her daughter. Jett was blossoming, her figure beginning to strain against her clothes, and the transition to womanhood was fraught with hormones. She was as likely to break into tears over an imaginary slight as to lean against her mother on the couch for a good cuddle. Her first expression would reveal the mood of the moment and trigger the latest salvo in the psychological battle.

  Katy was glad to be done with the kitchen, anyway. Last night’s swordfish experiment had taught her that she’d better take it easy on becoming Supermom. Simply slapping an “S” on her chest hadn’t eased today’s stink any. She sprinkled baking soda into the trash can, hoping the odor would fade before Gordon came home.

  “Jett?” she called again, closing the freezer.

  Foot stomps, not steps.

  Her daughter was in a mood that could only possess a fourteen-year-old. Anger, anger, anger with fat leather heels. A hard day in the classroom, no doubt. Or a boy. Probably both, since those went hand-in-hand when you were in your first year at a new school and real boys were just starting to rival Goth bands and fingernail polish for your attention. Except Jett had made an art form of being an outsider. Black wardrobe and attitude to spare.

  Katy left the kitchen without a backward glance, the lilac-and-fish aroma and the whirring microwave occupying the room. Even after four months here, she still hadn’t become comfortable with the layout of Gordon’s house.

  No, not Gordon’s house. OUR house. Until death do us part, just like I promised.

  For the second time.

  The front door of the two-story farmhouse opened onto the living room, with a foyer that was barely big enough for dirty shoes and damp umbrellas. The kitchen stood off to the right, interrupted by a stretch of hardwood floor that contained a dining table. Four chairs. Gordon must have always been an optimist, even during those last five years of bachelorhood.

  Katy almost called for Jett again, but stopped herself. That might be construed as nagging. Katy had dropped the two of them into the middle of this new situation, so she owed her daughter a little slack. If Katy were compelled to be honest with herself, something she desperately avoided, she would admit Jett had endured the tougher transition.

  Katy had done nothing more than say “I do” and turn in her resignation at Wells Fargo. Sure, she’d hated Charlotte anyway, and a small town called Solom in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina seemed like the perfect escape from the thirty-eight years that had given her nothing but a beautiful child and a bottomless well of insecurity. But for Jett, this move had been the equivalent of an emotional tsunami.

  Not only had Jett left her father behind, she’d said goodbye to a small private school and a number of friends she’d known since diaper days. The two-bedroom-apartment on Queen Street had been traded for a restored wooden-frame house on thirty acres of slanted land. Jett couldn’t even get a decent cell phone signal out here, a point she’d drilled into Katy at every available opportunity. So Katy didn’t completely blame her for storming up the stairs to her room.

  Thump thump thump, all the way up.

  As a mother, Katy’s duty was to follow and tap quietly on Jett’s door. On her way, she made a half-hearted swipe at the dust that covered a curly maple coffee table. How could dust collect so fast? As a wedding present, Gordon had hired a professional cleaning service to perform a top-to-bottom wipe-down. But already the weight of domestic responsibility had settled in Katy’s heart as heavy as the dampness from the stream that ran behind the house.

  As she climbed the stairs, she expected to hear the floor-shaking beat of industrial Goth, music that Katy dared not criticize lest it gain a permanent slot on her daughter’s play list. Katy had helped Jett shop for her first studded dog collar, a possibly scarring experience for them both. Since then, Jett had eschewed the collars as part of her black leather-and-vinyl outfits, along with the occasional denim complement, and Katy had withheld fashion advice. Katy didn’t relate to the Goth look, but she recalled her own youthful experiments in hippie chic, frayed bell bottoms and paisley blouses worn without a bra. She shuddered to imagine herself in such a costume now, and figured Jett had the right to make her own choices she would later regret.

  You get to make your own mistakes. Except the choice to do drugs.

  Katy paused at the top of the stairs. Below, the footsteps crossed th
e living room, headed for the kitchen. How could Jett have gotten back downstairs so fast?

  “Jett?”

  A snack. No adolescent’s afternoon was complete without an apple or a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. They were growing, after all, pushing towards adulthood, shoving aside the generation ahead. But did Jett have to sneak around to do it? Couldn’t she just give a shove and declare her independence?

  Instead of going back downstairs in search of her wayward daughter, Katy went down the hall to her and Gordon’s bedroom. She opened the walnut door with a creak of century-old hinges. The room was always dark, even now with the five-o’clock sun at the windows. The shelves were thick with Southern Appalachian history, outsider sculptures carved in seven species of native woods, stacks of cassette tapes from old evangelical radio stations, dozens of family Bibles arrayed in rows. Gordon’s work was his life, had apparently always been. She wondered if he would ever be able to change. Men rarely changed, but women kept hoping, a snake trying to swallow its own tail but never even catching it. It was a game as old as Adam and Eve.

  A rustling arose from inside the closet on Gordon’s side of the room.

  The closet was barely big enough for a person to stand inside, and the space was filled with the regalia of an academic’s profession: black and blue suits, white shirts, polished shoes, and a tuxedo. The closet was open, the ancient door handle missing its knob.

  Nobody in there.

  Of course not.

  She doesn’t exist.

  Besides, she’d heard no footsteps.

  Stress.

  From slapping the old “S” on the chest.

  The noise came again from the hollow of the closet. Mice. A house developed holes over the years, especially in a rural setting. Generations of mice had the opportunity to search for crevices, to explore the corner boards and probe the openings where utility lines entered the walls. Supermom would have to learn to set traps.

  She’d mention the mice to Gordon. Maybe he was the type who would insist on taking care of the problem. He’d never been much of a traditionalist in other gender areas, though. He’d let her keep her maiden name of Logan. Katy had said she wanted to remain a Logan for sentimental reasons, because she didn’t want Jett to feel left out with a different name. In truth, changing her name back after her divorce had been so troublesome she never wanted to endure it again. Not that she was planning to get divorced again. Of course, she’d also said she’d never get married again, and here she was, in Gordon’s house, becoming a Smith.

  The front door swung open and banged closed. “Mom, I’m home.”

  Home? But you came home five minutes ago.

  Katy frowned at the closet, wondering if she should peek inside and scare the mice away. No, may as well let them get comfortable. Made them easier to snare. She hurried from the room and called from the top of the stairs. “Honey, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing. I just got out of school. I caught a ride from Mrs. Stansberry up the road. You know, the math teacher.”

  Katy was halfway down the stairs when Jett came into view. Freckles like Mom, but black hair instead of red, cut short in bangs and the rear spiked with mousse. The darker hair was one of Mark’s genetic contributions, along with a gangly frame, though Jett had dyed it a shoe-polish black for dramatic effect. Jett had taken to slumping so she wouldn’t tower over the ninth-grade boys. Jett smacked her gum, a habit she’d picked up in Charlotte and clung to with all the defiance and resentment of a quarantined goat.

  “I haven’t met Mrs. Stansberry,” Katy said. “I’d rather you not ride with strangers.”

  Jett let her book bag drop to the floor. “She’s not a stranger. She lives up the road. She knows Gordon.”

  Gordon. It was odd to hear Jett call him by his first name, as if he were an acquaintance instead of her stepfather. But “Dad” wouldn’t do. Mark, for all his faults, deserved the sole right to that title. Even if he’d done little more than squirt a seed invisible to the naked eye, then roll over and snore for about eight years.

  “You could ride the bus.”

  Jett was already headed to the kitchen, heels clopping on the floor. Just like the footsteps Katy had heard minutes before. “The bus is lame,” Jett said. “That’s for babies and poor kids. Bethany’s getting rides from a junior.”

  Katy descended the rest of the stairs, following into the kitchen. “This Bethany, she’s in your class?”

  Jett pulled her head from the refrigerator. “You never listen to anything. She’s my best friend. And her boyfriend flunked a grade, plus he’s on the football team and has a Corvette.”

  That sounded like the kind of guy who would have drugs. The last thing Jett needed. “I hope you have better judgment than that.”

  Jett kneed the refrigerator closed, hands full with a yogurt, Diet Sprite, celery, and a microwave burrito. “Jeez, Mom. I’m not a kid anymore, remember? Feminine products and stuff?”

  The period. Katy had given her plenty of instruction about how blood was all part of being a woman. Jett had still panicked when she’d awoken to find a red splotch on her sheets. But, as Katy had also taught her, women accepted and women endured.

  “Okay,” Katy said. “Just because biologically you can have a baby doesn’t mean you’re ready to date.”

  “Mom, don’t get in my face about it. I’m not dating anybody. I haven’t done anything wrong.” Jett leaned against the counter, set down her snacks, and peeled back the lid on the yogurt.

  “Sorry, honey.” Katy went to the sink and the never-ending demand of dirty dishes. “I know the move has been hard on you.”

  Jett shrugged. “One sucky place is as good as another.”

  “Do you smell lilacs?”

  “All I smell is stinky fish. That swordfish was so not right. I mean, it tasted good and all, but there’s not enough Lysol spray in the world to hide it.”

  Katy plunged her hands into the dishwater. “I’m sorry you had to give up Charlotte. I know you had a lot of friends there and—”

  “We talked about it, okay? Jeez, you wouldn’t even get married until I gave my permission.”

  “Please stop saying ‘Jeez.’ You know Gordon finds it disrespectful.”

  Jett looked up, gave a theatrical lift of her arms, and said, “Do you see Gordon? I don’t see Gordon. In fact, you never see Gordon. He’s practically a ghost in his own life.”

  “He works hard, honey. He has a lot of responsibilities at the university.”

  “Assistant vice dean of continuing something-or-other? Sounds like a job he could do over the Internet.”

  “He also teaches.”

  “Like, what? One class this semester? A seminar on obscure hillbilly cults?”

  “He’s well-known in his field.”

  “What field is that, exactly?”

  “I don’t know. Appalachian religion, I guess.”

  Jett dug into her yogurt. The Yoplait painted her lips a milky green. “So how are you handling giving up your career?”

  “I have a career. I’m your mother and Gordon’s wife.”

  “I meant one where you make money and get to dress up and do stuff. Get out of the house.”

  “I’m very happy, honey.” Katy glanced at the orange rings of greasy suds floating on top of the dishwater. She forced her focus through the window, to the barns outside and the barbed-wire stretch of meadow. Gordon had seven head of cattle, two of them the Black Angus variety. Gordon said that was where the breeding money was. Breeding money. Sounded a little obscene to Katy, like a prostitute’s tip for services adequately performed. But the goats were his real pride. She could see a few of them, young bucks separated from the rest because they would try to mount anything that moved, including their mothers.

  “Maybe you can be happy enough for both of us.” Jett had bottomed out on the Yoplait and popped the tab on the Sprite.

  “It will get easier for you.”

  “Sure. In tenth grade, or twelfth, or maybe c
ollege. By then, nobody will know I’m the new kid and I’ll lose these Frankenstein wires.” Jett grimaced, flashing her braces.

  “They go fine with your studded bracelet.”

  “Cute, Mom.”

  “Solom isn’t so bad. I kind of like the peace and quiet.”

  “That’s the problem. It’s as quiet as a graveyard. And what’s with that creepy tabernacle up the road, with the steeple that looks like a KKK hood?”

  “Gordon said it’s a family tabernacle, charismatic Baptists.”

  “Did Gordon get baptized there or something? What do they dunk you in, goat’s milk?”

  “Honey, Gordon is taking good care of us. He opened up his home and heart. I know he’s not your dad, but he’s trying his best. Let’s give it some time, okay?”

  “Time. You’re already old and over with and you’ve got all the time in the world. I’m only fourteen and every second counts.” Jett walked her burrito to the microwave.

  “Don’t get too full before dinner. I’m planning spaghetti.”

  “From a can, I hope.”

  “Jett.”

  “Sorry, Mom. You creep me out when you cook. I’m on a diet, anyway.”

  “Girls shouldn’t be on diets.” Katy wished she had canceled her subscription to Cosmopolitan. Katy had never been able to measure up, and Jett had often thumbed through those same magazine pages. The Buddhists said desire was the cause of all suffering. But Buddhists occasionally set themselves aflame to prove a point. Maybe suffering was the cause of all desire.

  “It’s okay,” Jett said, then began reading aloud from the burrito wrapper. “Calories: three-hundred-and-twenty. Grams of fat: fifteen. Serving size: two ounces.” She turned the wrapper around. “Apparently this single burrito contains three servings, so I won’t have to eat again until lunch tomorrow.”

  “You’d better be hungry in time for the spaghetti, or I’ll start serving up goat meat.”

  Goats had become a joke between them because half the local farms raised the animals. Beyond Gordon’s cow pasture was a hillside dotted with the stunted white creatures, their heads constantly down as they gnawed the world to its roots. Goats preferred to browse in the forest, only coming down at dusk when Gordon fed them grain or hay. Gordon’s breeders had been fruitful this fall, and the herd seemed to have doubled in size since the wedding.