The Narrow Gate: A Supernatural Thriller (Solom Book 2) Page 12

  She brought a full coffee pot to the table as Odus laid a fire in the woodstove. The general store’s floor was without insulation, and the weather had turned colder with sunset, an arctic air mass making an early entry from the Northwest. The assembled lot was about as ill-fitting as the wintry wind outside.

  Claude Tester slouched on a bench. The Rev. Mose Eldreth sat erect, his elbows on the table as if he were about to pray. Kim Deister dealt cheese crackers from a cellophane pack and crunched them, the only sound in the room besides the crackling fire. Kim’s right hand was swathed in gauze and tape. Sue Norwood stood to one side, playing with a wind chime, not far from where the mouse-munching goat had passed not more than four hours ago. The Smith widow, Katy, was off in the corner with the pickled eggs and chewing tobacco like she’d rather be anywhere else, but her plucky daughter with the shoe-black hair and makeup seemed all too eager for adventure.

  Kim’s blonde hair featured pink highlights, and Jett’s bore a blue streak. Sarah never thought she’d live long enough to see such a thing in Solom, but she’d passed way too many years already, and it was starting to catch up with her. Starting in her arthritic joints and working up to her addled brain.

  “Come have a seat, Miss Norwood,” Sarah said. “Got some drip grind right here.”

  “Half off?” Odus asked with a crooked grin. He seemed to be in a better mood tonight, or maybe he’d just hit the Old Crow enough to smooth off his rough edges.

  “I’ll take half off your head if you keep talking like this. We’re supposed to be serious.”

  “Hard to be serious when the Horseback Preacher is back in the saddle.”

  Sue sat beside Mose, in one of the wooden-slatted chairs with uneven legs. The preacher nodded to her. Sarah sat a Styrofoam cup in front of her and filled it before Sue could say whether or not she wanted some.

  When all the cups were full, she put the coffee pot on top of the woodstove and sat at the table with the others. Odus tossed a splintery chunk of locust into the stove and closed the cast-iron mouth, then stood and looked around the dining area.

  “I reckon we all know each other,” Odus said. “So let’s just get right to it. The plain truth of it is Harmon’s come back to Solom and all hell’s about to break loose.”

  Claude shook his head. “You’ve been in the bourbon. Only a drunk would talk like that.”

  “He’s here.”

  “Harmon Smith is dead and planted, long gone to dust. That’s just an old wives’ tale.”

  “Speaking of wives, then, where’s yours?”

  Claude shut up at that, but Sue cut in with, “Can you tell us more about Harmon Smith? Not all of us here were weaned on the legends.”

  “The Horseback Preacher,” Mose said in his own preaching voice. “Some call him the Man in the Black Hat or the Circuit Rider. He rode these mountains in the early 1800s as a Methodist, set him up a homestead and a garden. He was a little touched in the head, though, and started bucking the Methodist beliefs, turned to sacrificing animals in the Old Testament fashion. They say he was murdered on a mountain trail one night. Some believe it was fellow Methodists who did him in; others say it was the Solom folks who had begun to follow his ways.”

  “I reckon they figured if animal sacrifice made God happy, then offering up a human ought to do wonders,” Odus said. “But he didn’t stay dead.”

  “Sounds like so much horse shit to me,” Claude said.

  “There are ladies present,” David said.

  Claude nodded angrily at Kim. “What’s she doing here anyway?”

  “She’s an Army vet. Figured we could use some marksmanship.”

  “Fort Meade, among other places,” Kim said, with no false pride but with no backdown either. “I was a specialist in Linguistics and Cryptology.

  “That’s just dandy if they taught you to speak goat, or hold one of them séance things and talk to them beyond the grave,” Claude said.

  “Women held Solom together through the Civil War, the two world wars, and lots of shenanigans since then,” Sarah said. “I think we can handle a battle.”

  She ought to jump in and confess that she’d seen the Horseback Preacher. She’d heard the local legends all her life but managed to ignore them. Jews had their dybbuks and golems, but nowhere did men of God ever come back from the dead to bring suffering to the living.

  But had the Horseback Preacher brought suffering? In all the stories she’d heard, the man did nothing more than appear, like the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, or the devil in the clouds of those mocked-up photos that graced the cover of the “Weekly World News.” Sure, some claimed he caused calamity and death, but plain bad luck could account for a lot of the mishaps. Maybe he was more like an escort, the effect rather than the cause.

  What did the man say to her? I’m back. Like it was neither a brag nor a threat, just a plain fact, something he held no power or choice over.

  “It’s one of those things where you need to make believers out of people,” Odus said. “No offense, Elder Mose, but your branch of Baptists don’t go in for conversion.”

  Sue raised her hand, like the new student in a grade school class. “Sorry, folks, but I don’t get any of this, and I’m still not sure what we’re supposed to do about it.”

  Katy spoke for the first time. “Doesn’t matter. We didn’t ask for him to pay a visit to the Smith farm, but he showed up anyway. I have a hard time believing he’s evil. He saved our lives.”

  “So the rumors are true?” Mose asked. “About what happened that night?”

  “Gordon Smith went crazy and tried to kill us. But he—the Horseback Preacher—sacrificed Gordon instead. He didn’t seem like a ghost—he was as solid as this counter.” Katy rapped on its surface for effect.

  “But nobody’s been killed lately,” Claude said. “You can’t have a good spook story unless there’s some blood in it somewhere.”

  Odus nodded, went around the middle aisle to the dry goods section, and returned stooped over, rolling a battered ten-speed. The wheels wobbled, the chain dragged the floor, and the seat cushion was gouged and pocked. It looked as if it had been trampled by a herd of elephants. “Recognize this?”

  “That’s one the Everharts rented.” Sue said.

  “Found it on Switchback Trail, off in the laurels. No sign of the couple, just a bunch of scuffed leaves by the creek. But there was this.” Odus held up a small flashlight that appeared to have dried blood on the handle.

  “I told you we should have called the cops,” Sue said.

  “What for?” Odus said. “This is Solom’s problem. It’s our job to take care of it. Besides, what would we tell them? That a man a hundred and fifty years dead has come back to square things with them that did him in?”

  “Hold on,” Kim said. “You don’t really think this is supernatural, do you?”

  “I just know what I seen. What about you, Elder Mose?”

  Mose lowered his eyes. The stove popped in the gap of silence, and the long stovepipe ticked with rising heat. Hickory smoke that escaped during the igniting of the fire now settled in a blue-gray layer five feet off the floor. Sarah wished for a chore, another pot of coffee or a round of sandwiches to give out on the house.

  “Sarah?” Odus challenged her, his blue eyes piercing hers, somehow harder to meet since they weren’t bloodshot. “You saw him, didn’t you?”

  Sarah looked at the counter and the glass mayonnaise jar by the register with the change in it. The jar held donations for Rupert Walpole, a retired postal carrier who developed cancer of the larynx. As if a few dollars could make any difference once the cancer dug its claws into you. Just like the Horseback Preacher wormed his way into Solom’s heart as a chronic cancer.

  “He came in, all right,” she said. “Walked right up to the cash register like he was born here and knew every inch of this community. How can that be, if he’s been dead all this time?”

  Claude gave a rat-squeak of laughter. “Tell us, Brothe
r Mose. I bet you got it all figured out, with your Bible and your big words. You’re the one who’s big on believing things you can’t see.”

  “I believe in the Lord,” Mose said. “But the Good Book allows for the mysterious and miraculous.”

  Kim stood up. “I’m sorry, Mose. This is getting too wacky for me. I need to get home.”

  “And do what, Kim?” Mose said. “Tend to your goats?” He nodded at her wounded hand. “Feed them?”

  Kim sat.

  “I guess that brings us to the goats,” Sarah said.

  “I saw one,” Sue said. “Down by the river. It must have got out of its fence.”

  “One of them bit Kim, then chased her into the house,” Mose said. “It would be funny if it wasn’t so gosh-darned creepy.”

  “They been breeding like rabbits this year,” Odus said, letting the bike rest against a chain-saw sculpture. “Seems like everybody’s got a herd, and they’re acting more ornery than usual.”

  “What about you, Katy Logan?” Sarah said. “You’ve got the one of the biggest herds on this side of the county. If anything funny’s going on with the animals, you’d probably know about it.”

  “They’re…normal,” Jett said. “Just goats.”

  “I heard Betsy Ward had a fainting spell and is in the hospital, but I’ve been too busy to call on her,” Katy said. “Now I’m starting to wonder. Arvel’s been acting jumpy lately.”

  “Remember the last time the goats got uppity?” Claude said.

  “Yeah,” Odus said. “Right before Gordon’s first wife got killed in that car wreck.”

  “Shit fire and fart brimstone,” Claude said. “If the Horseback Rider is hooked up with the goats somehow…sounds like hell’s worst nightmare.”

  “No matter what they say about Harmon Smith, he was a man of God,” Mose said. “I just can’t believe God would send anything to His Earth unless there was a good reason.”

  “God don’t need no devil, does He?” Claude taunted. “He’s done decided who’s going to heaven, so what’s the point? Ain’t that what you’re preaching to the flock, Brother?”

  “You ought to come to a service once in a while,” Mose said. “Might do you good to get down on your knees and wash somebody’s feet.”

  “Save the feud for later and let’s worry about the Horseback Preacher,” Odus said. “I ain’t ever been sure whether Jesus Christ is going to return or not, but I know for a fact that Harmon Smith has.”

  “Do you think he—or it, whatever it is—killed the Everharts?” Sue asked.

  “I don’t know.” Odus stroked his beard, picked something from the hairs and stared at it. “If he took them, he might be done. But why would he kill two this time?”

  Kim took her coffee cup away from her lips. The white rim was ragged, and the perfect imprint of her teeth showed where she’d been biting into the Styrofoam. “Well, even if we accept what you’re saying, and we’ve got a vengeful preacher in our midst, what in the world are we supposed to do about it?”

  “That’s what this meeting’s about,” Odus said. “Any ideas?” He looked around the room.

  Sarah shook her head. She was determined not to get dragged into this mess. Who cared if goats wandered her aisles and a stranger in black stopped by once in a while? As long as her routine didn’t change, and the Horseback Preacher didn’t do away with her best customers, she was willing to live and let live.

  If such a thing applied to dead people.

  “I guess this isn’t a garlic-and-crucifix kind of thing, is it?” Sue asked. “I mean, nobody’s come up with a mythology. I’d almost rather tackle a vampire or werewolf, something that followed rules.”

  “You’re the Bible guy,” Odus said to Mose. “What do you make of it?”

  “Harmon Smith seemed to follow some of the Celtic ideas of harvest sacrifice,” Mose said. “Gordon Smith was apparently acting out some of those same beliefs, only elevated to a sick fetish.”

  “He was sick, all right,” Katy said. “Coming at us with that scythe, claiming he wanted to please Harmon Smith with a blood sacrifice.”

  “Every religious figure needs a flock,” Kim said. “Without Moonies, Sun Myung Moon would have been just another businessman.”

  “Moon do what?” Ray said.

  “The leader of the Unification Church,” she said. “He established a church in Washington, D.C., and owned a ton of real estate and international newspapers. The conspiracy theorists believed Moon’s mouth was whispering in the ear of our politicians while his fingers were slipping cash into their back pockets. Some say even the president was an ally.”

  “Now don’t you be knocking the president,” Claude said. “The worst thing that ever happened to Solom was letting Republicans come in. If Bush was a Jew, he’d have been the Antichrist.”

  Sarah didn’t rise to the bait, though she made a mental note of his remark. Her father changed the family name from Jaffe to Jeffers before moving to Solom. She’d never made a big deal about being Jewish, though she was the only one in the valley. She wasn’t all that religious, anyway, and she sold plenty of knick-knacks that featured Bible verses or pictures of a snow-white Christ.

  “Maybe the goats tie in with fertility and harvest,” Mose said. “The more you sacrifice, the more they multiply. The Old Testament sacrifices were all about appeasing a wrathful God. It’s the same with most religions, whether you’re lighting candles, taking communion, shaving your head, or offering food.”

  “All I know is the billy goats don’t like it when you talk about gelding them,” Kim said, holding up her injured hand.

  “Can’t blame them,” Jett said. “I don’t even have balls, and that makes me wince.”

  “Hold on a minute, folks,” Sue said. “I can accept that the Horseback Preacher is real. After all, every legend has a basis in fact. And I’ll even buy that goats are evil. I mean, with those creepy eyes and cloven hooves, how could anybody think otherwise? And let’s assume ‘its hour come round,’ as the Yeats poem goes, and Solom is our backwoods Bethlehem of the Damned. After all, the battle of Armageddon has to start somewhere. Now what?”

  They all looked at each other, except Kim, who was staring into the bottom of her coffee cup as if the answer was spelled out there. “I reckon we have to find a way to take down the Horseback Preacher,” Odus said. “We have to figure out what he wants, then give it to him and make him go away.”

  “What if he won’t go until he takes us all with him?” Claude said.

  Sarah suddenly felt all alone, even in the presence of company. She imagined the general store under the great crushing weight of night. Despite the ticking wood stove, a chill settled into her brittle bones. Darkness pressed against the window, and the porch light did little to scare it off.

  Black was every color rolled into one, they said, and when everything bled together it made just the one color, the absence of light. And it looked like there was going to be plenty of bleeding going on.

  A clatter arose from the front of the store, near the register. She’d turned off the lights as she usually did at closing time, and the corners of the store were cloaked in shadows.

  “Who’s there?’ she said. Nobody could have broken in without her hearing. But somehow that mouse-eating goat passed through these walls, and a man who could command goats and defy the grave probably wouldn’t be considerate enough to knock. Besides. he’d already paid her a visit once.

  The Horseback Preacher stepped into the light. He held a pack of Beechnut chewing tobacco in his hand, and as they watched, he slowly peeled the foil pack open and shoved a moist wad into his mouth, shreds of the dark tobacco dribbling down his chin to the floor. The brim of his hat was turned low, but the bottom half of his face was waxen and milk-colored, not as ghostly as when Sarah had first seen him. His mouth was filled with broad, blunt teeth, like those of a grazing animal.

  “Put it on my tab, Sarah,” he said, grinding the tobacco with his jaws, his voice cob-rough and dee
p.

  “What business you got here in Solom?” said Odus, the first of them to recover.

  “No business, just pleasure,” he said.

  A whinny came from outside, near the front of the store. The Horseback Preacher plucked a Macintosh apple out of a bushel basket. He polished it against the sleeve of his black wool jacket. “Know them by their fruits.”

  Kim spilled her coffee and Odus backed up until he bumped into the woodstove. Mose raised half out of his chair and stood there, bent over as if he’d been flash frozen. Sarah thought about the shotgun under the cash register, but it was still covered by newspapers.

  “Nice of you folks to hold this little get-together for my sake,” he said. “I’m touched.”

  “We don’t want nothing from you,” Odus said. “We just want to be left alone. We’re willing to let you rest in peace.”

  “Love your enemies, right, Elder Mose? The New Testament says to turn the other cheek but the Old Testament says an eye for an eye. I go in for tradition, myself.”

  The Horseback Preacher gave a laugh that held no humor, with just the hint of a hellwind behind it. He shot a thick stream of tobacco onto the pine floor boards, causing Sarah to wince. Touching the brim of his hat, he dipped his head slightly, as if nodding to the ladies.

  “Sorry to rush off, but I have work waiting in the orchards of life,” he said. He went to the door, his boots loud on the wood, then opened it and went outside, merging into the darkness from which he’d come. From which they all had come, and to which they were inevitably bound.

  Hooves thundered down the asphalt road, and the eight people waited in silence, afraid to give words to their fear. Eventually, Sarah went to get a rag and mop up the tobacco stain. By the time she reached the spot by the register, the dark stain had vanished, as elusive as the creature that had left its mark.