Littlefield Read online

  She blinked against the sudden rush of sun, annoyed by this trespass into her spiritual communion with Archer. “What are you doing here?” she said.

  He looked past her to the reverend. “I came to get some answers, same as you.”

  “Come in, Sheriff. We’ve been expecting you,” McFall said.

  David lowered the rifle and smiled.

  The front door burst open, and David thought the sheriff might have returned to sneak up on him and jump him. He swiveled the rifle toward the door, his finger tight on the trigger. Ronnie stood in the doorway, Tim small behind him.

  David sniffed the comforting aroma of gun smoke. Linda was facedown on the living room floor. Tim ran to her and got on his knees, touching her hair, murmuring “Mommy” over and over again. Ronnie stared at David, his eyes wide with shock, his face pale.

  “Did you . . . did you shoot her?” Ronnie asked.

  David leaned the rifle against the coffee table. “I ain’t that crazy yet.”

  Linda groaned and Tim helped her sit up.

  Ronnie clenched his hands, a tear running down his cheek. “What in the hell’s going on, Dad?” he said, shuddering with sobs. “Why are you trying to kill her?”

  “I’m not the one trying to kill her,” he said, looking down at his wife. “It’s that damned Archer McFall.”

  “Archer McFall’s the preacher. The preacher’s supposed to be the good guy.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear in Sunday school, son.”

  “You’re scaring me, Dad. You told us a family’s supposed to stick together when times get bad.” Ronnie helped Tim lean Linda against the easy chair. She had a welt above her eye. Ronnie looked at it and then glared at David.

  He looks so damned much like his mother.

  “I didn’t touch her,” he said. “She fell when I shot that damned thing.”

  He pointed to the little symbol that hung on the wall, the lopsided cross that Linda had kept from her days in California. She’d told David she’d thrown it away, that all the old nonsense was over. Well, the devil’s hooks sank deep. All it took was a little whiff of sulfur and brimstone to fan the embers in a sinner’s heart.

  The bullet had penetrated the center of the mock cross. The metal arms had twisted outward, curled by the impact. Gypsum powder trickled from a hole in the sheet rock. David nodded in satisfaction at a good shot.

  “Hell followed her from California,” he said.

  “California?” Ronnie said. “She’s never been to California.”

  David wiped sweat from his forehead. Maybe some secrets were best left buried.

  “Are you okay, Mommy?” Tim sounded like a four-year-old.

  “Yeah, honey,” she said, pushing her hair away from her face and looking at David with mean eyes. “There will come great trials, but we keep on walking.”

  David was filled with renewed rage. So this was what Archer had driven his family to. Linda, ready to give up everything she owned, including her own flesh and blood. Tim, not knowing which of his parents to trust. Ronnie, learning too young that the world was a screwed-up and hard-assed place. And he himself wondering if faith was enough, if he could single-handedly take on the devil who wore lamb’s clothing.

  No, I won’t be single-handed. I’ve got God and Jesus and a rifle and everything that’s right on my side. Surely that will be enough. I pray to the Lord that will be enough.

  “What are we going to do, Dad?” Ronnie looked pathetic, his eyes red and moist, his swollen nose a bruised shade of purple.

  “It’s high time for a cleansing,” Linda said, her voice distant. She rocked back and forth as if tuned into an invisible gospel radio station.

  David looked out the open door. Dark mountains huddled on the horizon, cowering before the sinking sun. Even the trees seemed to dread the coming night. The shadows held their breath, waiting to send out an army of monsters under cover of darkness.

  Linda’s eyes focused on a high spot behind the wall. Tim and Ronnie looked at David, expectant and fearful.

  Maybe it was high time for a cleansing.

  “We’re going to beat that thing,” he said, more to himself than to the boys.

  “How do you kill a ghost?” Tim asked.

  David rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Hell if I know, Tim.”

  “Ronnie says the trick is to make it stay dead. By giving it what it wants.”

  “Maybe so. We’re just going to have to trust in the Lord.”

  “The Lord,” Linda said with a sneer. She stiffened and contorted her features. She resembled the wrinkle-faced bat that David had found dead in the barn one morning. The old Linda, the pretty wife and loving mother and good sin-despising Christian, was as dead as Donna Gregg.

  David knew Linda had been saved. He had knelt with her at the foot of the pulpit and held her hand while she tearfully asked Jesus into her heart. Once Jesus was in there, He belonged forever. Or was being saved a privilege that He could take away, like the court took away your driver’s license if you drove drunk?

  David was getting a headache thinking about it. That was God’s business, and not for him to worry about. His mission was to protect the innocent, and let the guilty be damned.

  “Get out,” he said to Linda, trying not to raise his voice.

  She lifted her face to him, her eyes wild. The boys wore twin masks of terror.

  “Get out,” David said more firmly. He gripped the rifle. “Go to the red church or Archer McFall’s bed or straight to hell if you want. Just as long as you stay away from the boys.”

  Linda trembled as she stood.

  “Don’t hurt her, Daddy,” Tim yelled.

  David felt a smile crawl across his face, and a chill wended up his spine. He was sickened by the realization that he was enjoying this. A Christian was supposed to hate the sin but love the sinner. A man was supposed to honor his wife. The Lord’s number one lesson was that people ought to forgive trespasses.

  But the Lord also knew that the human heart was weak.

  David pointed the rifle at her.

  Tim jumped at Linda and hugged her, his face tight against her chest. “Don’t go, Mommy,” he pleaded.

  David motioned with the rifle barrel toward the door. Linda glared at him, then leaned down and kissed Tim on top of the head. “Shh, baby. It will be okay.”

  She gently pushed Tim’s arms from her waist. Her blue blouse was dark with Tim’s tears. She rubbed Ronnie’s hair and smiled at him. “Take care of your brother, okay?”

  Ronnie nodded. Linda pulled the mangled cross from the wall and clenched her hand around it. She paused at the door. “It’s tonight, you know,” she said to David.

  He swallowed hard. He started to tell her that he still loved her, despite it all. But he could only stare numbly, his fingers like wood on the rifle.

  “Lord help us all,” he whispered as she headed into the shroud of twilight. His prayer tasted of dried blood and ash.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The sunset threw an orange wash over the ribbed clouds in the west. The strong green smell of the day’s growing died away on the evening breeze. The river’s muddy aroma rose like a fog, seeping across the churchyard so thick that Mama Bet could almost taste it. She eyed the shadows in the belfry, clutching her shawl tightly across her chest.

  This was bad ground, here at the church. She didn’t know why Archer insisted on holding services in this marred house of worship. Wendell McFall had died right there at the end of a rope, one end of it tied high in that bedeviled dogwood. The tree’s branches stretched both high and low, toward the sky and the ground, like fingers reaching to grab everything and everybody.

  “What’s wrong, Mama Bet?”

  She turned and looked into the dirty face of Whizzer Buchanan. Fourteen and already in need of a shave. He was all Buchanan, wall-eyed and his hands as plump and clumsy as rubber gloves filled with water. And to think his family used to be fine whittlers, back in the days when people made what the
y needed instead of buying it down at the Wal-Mart.

  “Why, nothing’s wrong, child.” She smiled at him.

  Whizzer smelled of sweet smoke, probably that wacky weed she heard some of the hippies were growing up in the mountains. Archer would cleanse them, sure as day. Archer held no truck with such trash. Hippies were as bad as the hard-drinking Mathesons and Abshers. Sins of the flesh, sins of the heart. All sins led down one road, down one tunnel, into the dark heart of hell.

  “How come we ain’t seen the Bell Monster yet?” Whizzer asked. Like the Bell Monster was some kind of video game that you could switch on and off at your convenience. The boy had a lot to learn about the workings of God.

  “We got to be patient,” she said.

  Whizzer nodded and ran into the church, his boots thumping across the wooden floor. She looked across the cemetery. Stepford was relieving himself against a tall granite statue. The faded angel accepted the insult with nary a peep.

  In the woods, shadows moved and separated. Becca Faye and Sonny came out from the trees, holding hands and giggling like kids at an Easter egg hunt. Crumpled leaves stuck to Becca Faye’s blouse, and the top button was undone. Mama Bet hoped the hussy enjoyed her sweaty little frolic. Because soon she would be sweating the long sweat, the devil riding her back, until forever ate its own sorry tail.

  Mama Bet walked across the gravel to the church steps. Diabetes was making her feet hurt something awful. She slowly went up the steps, keeping a grip on the worn handrail. She figured she might as well get used to taking them one step at a time, because she just knew that God had a mighty high set of golden stairs for her to climb to get to heaven.

  She rested in the windowless foyer, in the cool darkness. Voices came from the main sanctuary, scattered and echoing in the hushed hollow of the church. She overheard Haywood telling Nell about the benefits of a high deductible with a low co-pay.

  “You see, honey,” he said, as Mama Bet entered the main body of the church, “odds are that if you do get sick enough to meet your deductible, it’s going to run into the tens of thousands of dollars anyway. And the way hospitals charge these days, a body pretty much meets their deductible just walking in the door. So you might as well save that money up front with the cheaper plan.”

  Nell nodded and put the back of her hand to her mouth to hide her yawn. A couple of pews in front of them, Jim and Alma whispered about Zeb’s funeral arrangements. Rudy Buchanan knelt near the lectern, on both knees, practicing his Archer-worship. Almost as phony as a boot-licking Christian.

  Mama Bet chewed her lower lip between the nubs of her gums. She didn’t want to have one of her spells, not on Archer’s night. She took slow deep breaths until her rage subsided.

  Some congregation this was. As addle-brained as fish-head stew. But it wasn’t Archer’s fault. Her boy worked with what material God gave him. If anybody was to blame for this shoddy bunch of backwoods nonbelievers, then you had to turn your eyes upwards- to Him that would plant the seed and then laugh until the skies busted open. And all you could do was let your belly swell until you busted open yourself, until the child crawled out from between your legs and took its rightful throne.

  “It’s going to be tonight, ain’t it?” said Jim, pulling her from her reverie.

  “That’s for God and Archer to know,” she answered. “It ain’t for the likes of us to worry about.”

  “Can’t help but worry,” he said, sweat under his eyes. “It might be any of us up on the chopping block.”

  “Pray that you’re worthy.” She couldn’t abide such selfishness in the face of a great moment, the moment the whole world was born to see, the reason God clabbered the mud together and shaped the mountains and spit the seas and breathed life into dust. This one shining moment of glory. This end to everything, and the start of the business beyond everything.

  She gazed upon the dark stain on the dais. The thing was taking shape, drawing on the sacrificial blood spilled onto its wooden skin. It had slept for 140 years, fighting free once in a while to drift across the night hills or to spook up some teenagers. But now it was awakening for real, busting loose of whatever kind of invisible chains bound the past.

  Archer said the red church had to feed, so let it be fed. Let the juice of these sorry souls soak into the floorboards. Let this church absorb all their human blood and sweat and sin. Let them be cleansed for the final journey. Because Archer so ordained.

  A tear collected in the corner of her eye. Jim stood and gently clasped her hand, thinking she was afraid or mournful. No, she was joyful, grateful to be allowed to hobble into the church, though it was tainted with the sins of their ancestors. Even aching and stiff, her bones as brittle as chalk sticks and her blood vessels as narrow as flaxen threads, even with eyes that could barely tell day from night and fire from ice, even with all the crush of eighty-odd years weighing down and crooking her spine, she could stand proud before the altar.

  Here, she could surrender. In this sick house of God, she could give up her flesh and blood.

  Frank Littlefield looked around the motel room. Sheila appeared dazed, her eyes wide and her pupils unnaturally large. Archer McFall sat on the bed like a patient king who was deigning to accept tribute from a minor subject.

  “Did you learn anything from David Day?” Sheila asked, though judging from the tone of her voice, she could care less.

  “He pulled a gun on me, mostly just for show,” Frank said. “He’s crazy, but not the kind of crazy that kills three people.”

  “David Day?” Archer said. “I believe his wife is a member of the congregation.”

  “Linda,” said Frank. “And if I remember right, she was one of the ones who took off to California with you.”

  Archer looked from Frank to Sheila, and back again. “California has nothing to do with what’s happening here. Please put your minds at rest about that. We’re all home now, and that’s what’s important. We’re all fulfilling God’s plan.”

  “God’s plan,” said Frank. “God’s plan has left three innocent people dead, assuming that God is the one who pulls the strings.”

  “Nobody’s innocent,” said Archer. “And God doesn’t pull the strings.”

  “Sure,” Frank said. “I forgot. You do.”

  “Have you been talking to my mother?” Archer smiled. Shadows flitted in the corner of his mouth, or maybe it was worms crawling from between his lips.

  Frank blinked away the illusion. “Oh, no, Mr. McFall. I don’t have to talk to your mother. Because on the way over here, I was thinking back on a night a long time ago. One night when you and me were both younger and, I reckon, more innocent.”

  “Nobody’s innocent,” Archer repeated.

  “Samuel was,” Frank said.

  “What’s your brother got to do with this?” Sheila asked, her voice hesitant. She put a hand to her head, then rubbed her face as if wiping away sleep.

  “That Halloween night at the red church,” Frank said hurriedly. His blood raced, his face grew warm, his stomach clenched around a bag of hot nails.

  Archer’s eyes widened in interest, his face passive and unconcerned, his hands in his lap. As if he were watching a bug in a jar, curious to see what it would do next. “Halloween? There’ve been so many Halloweens.”

  “When Samuel climbed up into the belfry, something came up behind him. A shadow. Except the shadow laughed.” Frank balled his hands into fists.

  “Please, Sheriff, not the ghost story again,” Sheila said. She seemed to have recovered from her daze, and was probably worried that Frank would make a fool of himself in front of the public. Probably thought that Frank would blow his law enforcement career, maybe his whole future in Pickett County. But right now, Frank wasn’t thinking about the future. He was thinking about the past. About the dead and buried. And about a familiar laugh.

  “I recognized that laugh,” Frank said. “Sent a chill through me, the first time I heard it again- at the red church, the day after Zeb Potter was killed.�
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  The Halloween laugh. Frank had heard it hundreds of times, keeping him awake at 4 A.M. or jerking him from nightmares. He heard it in the squeal of car tires, in the wail of a police siren, in the rush of the cold river. He heard it in the howl of the wind, and he even heard it in silence. The laugh was loudest in silence.

  “You were there.” Frank raised his fist toward Archer’s face. Archer ignored the threatening gesture.

  “Sheriff,” Sheila said, in her stern cop voice.

  “You were in the belfry that night,” Frank said to Archer.

  He’d heard assault suspects talk about being so mad they “saw red,” and now Frank knew what they meant. It was a real thing, the red brighter than the blood of the sun. It poured down over his vision, blocking out Sheila, blocking out the Bible on the nightstand, blocking out the consequences.

  “You scared Samuel.” Frank was trembling now. “You made him jump. You killed him.”

  “Sheriff, Sheriff, Sheriff,” Archer said, shaking his head slowly as if having to explain an obvious truth to a child. “I didn’t kill Samuel. You did.”

  Frank leaped at Archer, the red in his vision now completely obscuring everything but the smile on Archer’s face. Frank wanted to tear that smile from the man’s face, to hear the satisfying rip of flesh and crack of bone. Frank wanted to feed the man his own smile, shove it down his throat until he choked.

  His hands snaked around Archer’s neck, squeezing. Frank looked at his own fingers, white from the pressure. He felt removed from the attack, as if it were someone else’s hands shutting the air from Archer’s lungs. As if he were watching a movie. The thought angered him. He didn’t want to be distanced, removed, cheated of his satisfaction.

  Hands pounded on his back, pulled at his shirt. He barely felt the blows. Sheila’s voice came to him as if through a thick curtain of dreams.

  “Stop it, Frank,” she shouted. “Damn you, you’re killing him.”

  Killing him.

  A wave of pleasure surged through Frank, almost sexual in its intensity. At the same moment, he was repelled by his joyful vengeance. He was no better than Archer, no better than whoever had killed Boonie Houck, Zeb Potter, Donna Gregg.