The Preacher: A Supernatural Thriller (Solom Book 3) Read online

  “Know them by their fruits,” the Horseback Preacher said to her, and she saw the family resemblance between him and Gordon, although Gordon had sported a little more padding due to life spent behind a desk. The circuit trail had left Harmon Smith trim and mean and dead. She pounded at him in an attempt to free herself, Dad holding her in place—I can’t believe Dad’s HELPING him—and water streamed from her nose. Her eyes stung as she tried to blink them clear and she screamed again, wondering why none of the people on the bank were helping her.

  Mom cupped her hands and put them to her face, and Kelvin took a step into the water, both of them looking at her with something approaching dismay. She shook her head, flinging water from her hair, and then she heard Elder David saying, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, wash this child clean and take her into your bosom, O Lord, so that she will be free of despair. God bless!”

  The congregation shouted amens and halleleuahs, and Jett found herself standing between Dad and Elder David once more. Dad leaned close and whispered over the noise, “You’re in the arms of the Savior now, honey! I’m so proud of you.”

  One of the women brought a stack of towels as the trio emerged from the water. Mom gave Jett a hug despite her dripping clothes, and Kelvin draped a towel around her neck.

  “How do you feel?” Mom asked.

  “Did you see him?” she asked, glancing from Mom to Kelvin.

  “See whom?” Mom said.

  “You know who.”

  Kelvin said, “What’s the deal with that screaming? The water’s not all that cold.”

  “It was probably an emotional, cathartic moment, wasn’t it, Jett?” Mom said. “Such a powerful ritual. I almost wanted to dive in myself.”

  Dad shook Elder David’s hand, cold steam rising from both men. “Welcome to the bosom of the Lord, Jessica,” the lay preacher said. “Why don’t you go on in the building and change so we can start the regular service?”

  Mom and Kelvin joined her on the walk to the car for the dry clothes. Now Jett wished Kelvin wasn’t there, so that she could tell Mom what she had seen. She would get Mom to help her change and then tell about the Horseback Preacher’s visit. He looked ghastly and undead, but his words were spoken gently. Almost fatherly.

  “The kids are going to flip out when they see this,” Kelvin said, thumbing his phone to replay the video. “You looked as miserable as a drowned rat.”

  Jett snatched the phone out of his hands. “Lemme see.”

  She fast-forwarded through the opening and the singing, but stopped once she was to the image of herself about to be dipped backward into the waters of Rush Branch. She scrolled until she saw herself pulled from the water and led to shore, with Elder David and Dad helping support her the whole way.

  Except…

  Kelvin reached to retrieve his phone but she elbowed him away. She scrolled backward until she came to the moment just before she was submerged. She studied the opposite shore, forwarding almost a screen at a time, and then she saw him—the outline of the Horseback Preacher, fuzzy and indistinct, sitting astride a horse. He was in shadows, the face barely suggested by a thin shaft of light, and in the next frame he was gone. Even with video evidence, she still wasn’t sure he’d been there.

  “What’s wrong, Jett?” Mom asked, opening her Subaru to get the change of clothes out of the back seat. “This is what you wanted.”

  “I’ll tell you inside,” she said, giving Kelvin a look that suggested “women stuff.”

  He frowned and shook his head. “Man, this is the weirdest first date I’ve ever been on.”

  Mom shot her a quizzical glance and Jett said, “It’s not a date. It’s…oh, never mind. It’s Solom.”

  The rest of the congregation gathered by the creek and broke into another hymn. Dad had told her the church didn’t believe in musical instruments, since the Bible only referred to people singing in celebration. But Jett remembered the saying, “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.” She wasn’t sure if that was in the Bible or not, but these people didn’t sound all that joyful. Somehow their a cappella singing inside the church walls created a pleasant resonance, but out here under the high ceiling of sky the harmonies sounded like hopeless wailing.

  “Go wait with my dad,” Jett said to Kelvin, returning his phone and giving him a brief hug so that his feelings wouldn’t be hurt by her last comment. He shook his head in confusion, but didn’t draw away until she released him. “See you inside.”

  As she changed in the church’s tiny vestry, which contained only a small desk, some shelves of books, and cleaning supplies and yard tools, she told Mom about Harmon Smith and how the video corroborated it. She was still shivering even with the dry clothes, wiping her head with the towel.

  “So much for thinking salvation would protect me from him,” Jett said.

  “That’s what this was all about?” Mom said. “Undergo these rituals and hope they keep the devil away?”

  “I don’t think he’s the devil, Mom. What he said to me almost sounded like a warning. And if he wanted to hurt me, he could have just kept me down under the water until I drowned. I doubt Dad and Elder David could’ve stopped him. How many times has he come onto the farm? He could’ve killed us whenever he wanted.”

  “Maybe he’s back for a different reason this time,” Katy said.

  “Well, he’s gone now. Maybe he went into his grave out there and he’s sleeping it off. He’s been here longer than any of us, so why would I think religion would scare him off?”

  “I…I’m so proud of you, honey,” Mom said, her face softening. “You looked like an angel out there. It made me…a little jealous, I guess. Because you had a new and different way of life you were willing to try. I don’t want you to use it as a kind of talisman. I want you to explore your heart.”

  “Oh, I kind of know my heart by now.”

  Mom smiled. “Kelvin?”

  “Oh, no,” she lied, and Mom saw through the lie but didn’t add anything, just kept smiling. But darkness lurked in her eyes, and the smile was as much a parody of happiness as the droning hymn was a testament to doubt.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  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. Just as David had bested Ray in service to the Lord, so had David stepped forward while the more experienced Mose Eldreth failed.

  Mose is scared of the Horseback Preacher.

  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 higher than him on those golden stairs. But none of that mattered now.

  Clayton Boles, a semi-regular at Solom Free Will Baptist, had shown up at David’s church fifteen minutes after early service started, sliding into one of the back pews. As was tradition at Rush Branch, the service was held immediately after the dawn ceremony instead of mid-morning, a fact that Clayton was aware of, since all the local church deacons kept tabs on one another. His entrance was obvious: two dozen faithful had shown up that morning, and only two of them under the age of forty, but there were some other rarely seen faces in the congregation. Jett Draper and her young friend—maybe boyfriend—were in attendance. But if the couple thought they’d spend the service holding hands and flirting, they were sorely mistaken, because Primitives segregated the genders with one on each side of the sanctuary aisle. The best they could manage was shooting occasional glances at each other.

  But there were other rarely seen faces as well. Larry Woodhead, another Free Will deacon, w
as there, which might mean a mass defection was in order. Mark Draper was now considered a regular, and his wife Katy sat respectfully with the other women, in a clean and old-fashioned dress that appropriately disguised her figure. But the biggest surprise was his big brother Ray, sitting sour-faced in the back row.

  Ray’s scared, too. And he’s turned to the Lord for comfort. And to me.

  David was still shivering a little from performing the baptism, refusing to change his clothes because he wanted to show strength and humility in his service work. He felt the weight of additional responsibility now, caring for a larger flock. But the Lord shouldered all burdens. All was predestined.

  David had even paused in his sermon, a rambling discourse on the enemy within and a human’s inability to personally remove the mantle of sin, to welcome the newcomers by name. Clayton nodded and blinked, Larry Woodhead stood and bowed, Katy nervously looked around, Kelvin stared at his hands as if he wished his phone were there, and Ray audibly snorted.

  The Primitives welcomed guests, and relatives sometimes sat in, especially during foot washing ceremonies. But if these newcomers thought they were going to join the fold, they’d have to rid themselves of a lot of self-serving ideas of getting saved. Clayton and Larry and Ray 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, Larry took David aside and told him about Mose’s dereliction of duty. Word of the Horseback Preacher had gotten around, and Clayton confessed that he figured any port in a storm, because evil wouldn’t befall him while in a church, no matter what kind of brand name 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.”

  Ray skulked at the edge of the crowd, refusing to acknowledge his brother’s existence. As the congregation thinned, Mark left alone, and young Jessica got into the car with her mother and apparent boyfriend. The new convert didn’t have that glow common to those undergoing a cleansing. Instead she looked confused and uneasy.

  The Word will work on her in the Lord’s own time and way.

  Finally, only Ray remained. David didn’t extend his hand to shake, nor step in for a hug. They hadn’t talked in more than a year, and that was limited to mutually praising Emmie Floyd’s fried chicken at the Tester family reunion. David knew Ray wouldn’t make the first move and ask forgiveness as was proper, so he merely said, “Welcome, Brother. Good to see you in the House of the Lord.”

  “Cut the shit, David,” Ray said. “You know what day it is.”

  “Sunday, the Sabbath. A day of blessing and rest.”

  “No. It’s the third day. You’ve seen the signs, same as everybody else.”

  David glanced at the graveyard where someone had offered the blood sacrifice the day before. Ray didn’t own goats, but he could picture his brother trying to appease the vengeful spirit. Making a deal with the devil was a lot easier than living the Word. “I can handle Harmon Smith.”

  “I’m sure you can, Mr. Preacher Man,” Ray said with a sneer. “If anybody’s on a higher horse than Harmon, it’s you.”

  “You had your chance to walk the path. Why are you so angry that I chose it?”

  “Because when it was just you and me, the stakes were low. But now I got Bennie and Glenda to think about. You preachers were the start of all this trouble in the first place. It would be real nice if you could end it, too.”

  David brushed back his hair that was still damp from the creek and the sweat of his sermon. “I don’t know how to do that. It’s up to the Lord. All we can do is stand strong in our faith.”

  “Yeah,” Ray said. “Stand there and let the Horseback Preacher pluck us off one by one.”

  “What would you do if you were in my shoes?”

  “I’d start by putting them three graves together into one. If Harmon’s spirit is still restless because of what y’all did, maybe it’s because his bones are scattered to hell and gone. I don’t even know if anything’s left down in there, or was ever there in the first place, but if there’s anything that would make a ghost shit a squealing worm, it would be that kind of spit in the eye.”

  David didn’t appreciate Ray’s cussing, but he let it pass. His brother was weak. That was understandable. He’d not tempered himself with the Word.

  “I’ll think on it,” David said. “Maybe talk to some of the other preachers.”

  Ray restlessly scuffed the toe of one boot back and forth, as if anxious to get away. “You do that.”

  David wanted to leave on a conciliatory note if possible. “How’s little Bennie doing?”

  “He’s buttoned down in his bedroom. He ain’t going out until this blows over.” Ray glanced at the sun that was nearly straight overhead. “Seven hours till dark. And the longest night that Solom’s ever seen.”

  Ray stomped away, got in his quarter-ton truck, and gunned it out of the parking lot, boiling black exhaust behind him. David walked over to Harmon Smith’s grave again. He’d wiped down most of the blood, but plenty remained in the cracks and crevices. He’d merely whitewashed a problem, not rooted it out.

  He changed clothes in the little dusty vestry, and then knelt before the altar and prayed for guidance. By the time he emerged, the sun was already dipping. 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 preordained 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.

  David knelt and peered closely at the pile of stones. 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 twisted, driving the blade beneath a rock. He was a groundskeeper, and this was his turf. Here, at least, he had a chance.

  He’d barely loosened the stone when he realized he couldn’t do much on his own, even with the Lord’s help. Solom’s preachers had killed Harmon Smith, and it would take them all to soothe the Horseback Preacher’s soul.

  He would need Mose Eldreth and William Edmisten’s help.

  But first he had to prove his own strength. Both to the Lord and to himself.

  David jabbed and banged at the rocks, ignoring the small remnants of fur and bone that remained from yesterday’s desecration.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Katy, Jett, and Kelvin were sitting on the porch drinking iced tea when the silver Lexus pulled into the driveway.

  “Who do we know drives a Lexus?” Jett asked.

  Katy had felt a little uneasy ever since the baptism and the appearance of the Horseback Preacher, which is why she’d insisted that Kelvin hang out a little before going home. Kelvin was a little embarrassed to spend too much time around them, but Katy did a pretty decent job of not giving him the third degree. He shared a metal swinging sofa with Jett, the couch squeaking rhythmically as they rocked slowly back and forth.

  Jett was pretty fidgety herself, and the sight of a visitor didn’
t do much to calm her. But at least the visitor had come on wheels instead of by horse.

  The Lexus parked beside Kelvin’s Nissan hatchback. The car’s windows were tinted, which led Katy to suspect it was some type of county official. Maybe even the sheriff, come to follow up on the Odus Hampton arrest. She was plenty surprised to see Odus himself step out of the driver’s side and walk toward them. Katy stood and waited by the steps.

  “Afternoon, Miss Katy, Jett,” he said, nodding, then side-eyeing Kelvin. His John Deere strapback was reared back to allow the sun in his face, and his eyes looked clear.

  “Hi, Odus,” Katy said. “We heard you had a little trouble.”

  “No getting around the news, ma’am, but I’m innocent.”

  “And now you show up in a fancy new car? That’s not the least bit suspicious.”

  Odus shook his head. “Oh, no, I did some horse trading for that. It’s mine free and clear.”

  “The police have been out here twice asking about you.”

  Odus glanced over to the barnyard and the three goats working over the last of the grass. “What did you tell them?”

  “Everything I know, which is nothing,” she answered. “Are you going to help me know a little more than that?”

  Odus glanced at the young couple and looked speculatively back at Katy. “Does everybody need to know?”

  “If we’re all in danger, then yes, we do.”

  “Danger?” Kelvin said to Jett. “What’s he talking about? Is it about this goat killing stuff? Is this that creepy guy they were talking about?”

  “He’s Odus,” Jett said. “He helps us here on the farm.”

  “I even help you off the farm,” Odus said, which Katy thought was a weird thing to say for a guy who’d just been called “creepy.”

  “We’re missing some goats,” Katy said. “And we’ve seen him.”