Scott Nicholson Library Vol 1 Page 29

  Shoot it.

  Frank couldn’t kill it, because that would only bring the thing back, more powerful than ever. But Mama Bet was its creator, in a way. At least in the human way. If the Archer-shadow-thing was an ancient evil, it must have started somewhere. And everything that had a beginning also had an end.

  Ronnie was light in the sheriff’s arms as they fled from the altar and down the aisle. Sheila, or whatever Sheila had been, was gone. Frank thought of her touch, but only briefly. He was getting better at forgetting.

  The shot exploded when he was in the middle of the church, and he couldn’t help himself. He had to turn and look.

  Archer, arms wide, palms up, eyebrows raised, mouth stunned open, a messiah on an invisible cross.

  A small red spot appeared on his white shirt, just to the left of his tie.

  Shot in the heart.

  Archer’s lips moved, but no words came. The face shifted rapidly, to mud and mountain lion to Samuel and then to a dozen, no, a hundred faces that Frank didn’t recognize. Then it settled back into Archer’s face.

  “Jeez,” whispered Ronnie.

  Archer’s eyes rolled heavenward, as if looking for some large, compassionate hand to come down and collect him. But above them was only the dark ceiling of the red church.

  Then the bell rang, a belch of hellwind ripping the night.

  “Mom,” Ronnie called, struggling in Frank’s grasp.

  Linda looked from Ronnie to Archer, then back again, as if making a hard choice.

  The wound on Archer’s chest blossomed wider, leaking a gray gelatinous substance along with the blood. Frank thought he saw bits of stone and root in the seepage. Archer lurched toward Mama Bet as the bell rang a second time.

  “Why hast thou forsaken me?” the preacher-thing said to its cowering mother. The words were as thunderous as the tolling bell, but Archer was smiling. As if getting killed was all part of some perverted sacrament.

  “Come on, Linda,” Frank shouted.

  “Ronnie,” she called, holding her arms up and running from the altar. This time they were a mother’s loving arms, not the snatching arms of a conspirator.

  Frank set Ronnie down, and the boy hugged his weeping mother.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Frank said, leading them down the aisle.

  He turned one last time, just before they went out the door. Mama Bet had stood and was meeting her son’s embrace. Except her son, her savior, her hope for the world, was a glistening mass of clay. The mudslide swept over her and suffocated her screams. Frank’s feet were in the graveyard grass when the bell rang for the third and final time.

  This is it, Ronnie thought. The all-time, Whopper-with-extra-cheese turning point, the up-close-and-personal end of the world.

  And the weirdest thing was, he was no longer afraid. No matter what happened from here on in, he knew he wasn’t alone. Because when Jesus came into your heart, He signed a lifetime contract with a no-trade clause. Ronnie wished someone had told him how simple it was, that you didn’t need Preacher Staymore or an angel or even Dad to tell you God was right there all the time.

  He gripped Mom’s hand as they ran across the graveyard. A smattering of starlight and the half-faced moon threw the shadow of the dogwood tree over them. The black branches swayed in an unfelt breeze like fingers reaching to grab them.

  “Are you okay?” Mom asked.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “I- I’m sorry,” she said, but Ronnie barely heard her, because the bell rang for a third time and the ground trembled beneath his feet.

  “Over here,” someone shouted.

  Dad!

  Ronnie dashed for the trees at the edge of the woods. Dad stepped from the darkness and grabbed him, hugged him, and pulled him into the underbrush.

  Tim squinted from behind a laurel.

  “Timmy,” Ronnie said, his heart lighter than it had ever been. Prayers worked. Prayers kicked ass.

  “What happened?” Tim asked.

  “Did the sheriff kill him?” Dad asked, before Ronnie could answer Tim.

  “She did.”

  “She? The detective?”

  “No, Mama Bet.”

  “Did they hurt you, son?”

  “No,” he said, wanting to tell Dad about his new discovery, that Jesus was a pal and an ally, and who cared about an old stupid Bell Monster when you had the top gun on your side?

  But he forgot about Jesus.

  Because Mom was standing in the graveyard, and so was the sheriff, and the grass stretched open and the ground cracked and tombstones shivered.

  Archer appeared in the doorway of the red church, the hole in his chest miraculously healed, the shirt unstained. He was bathed in a strange light, a sick yellowish orange the color of a dying fire. His face was sad and peaceful, and once again Ronnie was reminded of Jesus’ face in the Bible pictures.

  Ronnie swallowed hard. Because what if this was the Second Coming, only this time God did it in a roundabout way, the ultimate big-time test of faith?

  “What’s happening?” Tim said, nearly blind without his glasses.

  “God only knows,” David said.

  Archer walked—no, floated—down the steps. Mama Bet was behind him, looking nearly the same as she had, the dried blood and dirt streaking her face. But her eyes were somehow wrong, looking past the seen and known world.

  Then the ground quivered again. The dirt at the base of the grave markers roiled, and pale, wispy shapes slithered up into the night air.

  Arms topped with clawing, grasping hands.

  Arms followed by heads, whitish lumps that were half skull, half milkish vapor.

  Then more, rising up from the ground like heavy fog. A sound like a hurt breeze wended through the forest.

  The shapes solidified, became translucent people. Some wore old clothes, long dresses and bonnets, some of the men in Confederate Civil War uniforms, their blanched faces stretched and sagging, mouths yawning mournfully as they moaned. Others wore clothes of more recent vintage, suits and cravats or ties, with or without shoes. Ronnie recognized some of the more freshly dead.

  There, Willie Absher, who had been crushed to death while working on a truck last year. Jeannie Matheson, an old schoolteacher who had finally given in to cancer. And Grandma Gregg.

  The same Grandma who used to perch Ronnie on her knee and tell about the old ways and the old stories. Now she shook the dark dirt from her burial gown and moved forward, feet hovering above the ground, vacant eyes shadowed.

  A dozen, a hundred dead, all rising up from the grave, answering the call of the bell.

  Summoned by Archer.

  The preacher was beneath the dogwood now, reaching out with his luminous hands to rip the air in front of him. A separate entity shimmered into being.

  “The Hung Preacher,” whispered Ronnie.

  “May the good Lord protect us and keep us,” Dad prayed aloud.

  “What about Mom?” Tim whimpered.

  “She bargained with the devil. Now she’s got to pay the price.”

  “No,” Ronnie said. “She changed. When Archer got shot, she became one of us again. We can’t give up on her now.”

  Ronnie couldn’t explain. Mom was Mom. Mom belonged to them, not Archer. And Archer wasn’t the devil, anyway. For the first time ever, Dad was wrong.

  Ronnie looked for her in the herd of haunted figures. At first he saw only the aching dead collecting around Archer. Then he saw Mom, hiding behind Grandma Gregg’s tombstone. The sheriff was with her.

  “There she is,” Ronnie said. “You got to save her.”

  “Only Jesus saves, son.”

  “But you love her. You can’t let Archer have her.”

  “She was more than ready to give you up. She thought she was making that sacrifice for love.”

  “What’s happening to Mommy?” Tim said.

  “Please, Dad,” Ronnie said. He was nearly ready to run out there himself, out in the middle of those dead creepy thi
ngs, to help Mom. “Jesus will run with you. Archer can’t touch you if you’re carrying Jesus in your blood.”

  Dad said nothing. As they watched, the Hung Preacher materialized, his plump bloated face beaming with joy. Archer embraced his ancestor, lifted him as three of the new congregation removed the noose. The sinuous threads that comprised the Hung Preacher’s revenance collapsed onto Archer, and the two coalesced into one body.

  Then the crowd of corpses parted, and Archer headed across the corrupted cemetery. The others fell in line, a ghostly caravan.

  The sheriff shouted and ran from his hiding place. He caught up to one of the figures, a young boy.

  “Samuel,” the sheriff screamed. “Don’t go.”

  The sheriff grabbed at the apparition, tried to embrace it, but he might as well have been harvesting the air. The boy didn’t even turn, just kept marching in that solemn regiment. The sheriff fell to his knees, weeping.

  When the last of the dead disappeared into the brush, Dad said to Ronnie, “Stay here with your brother. I’ll get your mom.”

  Ronnie looked at the dark gaps in the bushes where the dead had gone, wondering where Archer was leading them. Then he looked at the belfry, at the unmoving shadows that filled its hollowness. The candles burned low in the red church, the eerie flickering making the building seem alive.

  “I can’t see nothing,” Timmy said. “My glasses broke. Tell me what’s happening.”

  “Exactly what you see,” Ronnie answered. “Nothing is happening.”

  The sheriff crawled into the shrubs. Below him, the road and the valley lay spread beneath the grim moon. The congregation drifted down the embankment, and there, near the end of the speechless column, was Samuel.

  His dead brother, now and forever Archer’s.

  Frank watched as Archer reached the great stones bordering the river. The monstrosity stepped into the water. No, not into—onto. Because the preacher walked on water.

  Archer turned and waited as his congregation followed, first Mama Bet, then others old and new, including Frank’s grim parents, all entering the black river. The water swallowed them, took them under its frothy tongue and carried them back to the ancient belly of the Earth.

  Frank hoped Samuel would look back and wave, do anything to show that he remembered, that part of Samuel’s human life would remain even in this bleak new eternity. But Samuel slipped beneath the currents as silently as the others had, and when the last ghost faded, Archer himself dissipated and sank into the water.

  Only the river mist remained, like the shroud of a final burial. The water laughed as it carried Archer’s people to the deadest sea.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Frank returned to the red church three weeks later.

  The cemetery was quiet, the grass thick from gentle rains, the earth undisturbed. Birds chirped in the nearby forest. Wildflowers erupted along the road, black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace and winding morning glories. At the feet of the giant slumbering mountains, the river rolled on.

  They’d found Sheila’s body two miles downstream. Hoyle said that sometimes fish or turtles nibbled on the flesh when it became softened by prolonged exposure. Frank tried to believe that. At the hard edge of midnight, as he convinced himself that haunted congregations didn’t exist, Hoyle’s little forensic tidbit gave a tiny comfort.

  But right now, he didn’t need comfort.

  He pulled the cord, and the chainsaw leaped to life, its racket drowning out nature’s blissful stirrings. As he dug the spinning blade into the base of the dogwood, his teeth were clamped so tightly together that his jaw ached. The sawdust was bitter on his lips and in his nostrils as he sliced into the wood. Finally the deformed tree fell, and the sun bathed the red church with its cleansing rays.

  He’d filled out a missing persons report on Mama Bet and Archer McFall, writing that he suspected they’d moved to California. He also postulated that Archer had murdered Boonie Houck, Zeb Potter, and Donna Gregg. Never mind that no solid evidence had ever been recovered, and that the state medical examiners were left as baffled as everybody else. Who cared if the FBI spent ten years tracking down a person who no longer existed, who may never have lived?

  Frank sawed the dogwood into smaller lengths, then carried the brush to the edge of the forest. The work raised a good, honest sweat. Lester rode by on his tractor, gave a neighborly wave, and kept driving. The people of Whispering Pines were good at keeping things to themselves. Sonny Absher had tried to blabber, but everybody chalked it up to liquor-induced delusions.

  When Frank was finished, he took off his gloves and went into the church. A pile of dry, gray dirt lay in the spot where Archer had been shot. Frank kicked at it, and dust spun in the air. The stain on the altar was gone.

  He had thought about burning the church. Arson was a difficult crime to trace. But a church couldn’t be good or evil—only people could. Or things that walked as people. Without people, and what they believed, a church was just a bunch of wood and nails and stone and glass.

  Maybe someday God would return to this church. Maybe pure-hearted people would take up psalms and hymns and prayers here. Maybe a preacher would come here as God’s servant, not as a jealous rival.

  Maybe.

  Frank went outside and gathered some wildflowers. He put some on the grave of his parents, then knelt before the stone that contained the engraving of a lamb.

  If only God truly did keep and protect people.

  If only.

  Forgiveness.

  That was something Jesus taught.

  So Ronnie figured it was only right that he forgive Mom for trying to sacrifice him to Archer. Besides, Dad said that Jesus had already forgiven her. If Jesus, with all His problems and worries and duties, had room in His heart for Mom, then surely Ronnie had room, too. It helped that Mom and Dad had made up, and that Mom had joined the choir at Barkersville Baptist, and life was almost back to normal.

  His nose was healing nicely, though he suspected he’d have a small hump on the bridge. Gave it character, Mom said. He looked forward to being able to smell flowers again.

  Because he’d also forgiven Melanie. They sat together every day at lunch, and maybe in a week or two, he’d be able to smell that sweet little smell that her hair gave off. Melanie had asked him several times about what had happened at the church, but he’d never told her. At least, not yet. Every time she batted those long eyelashes and made his heart float, he weakened. Maybe someday he’d tell her, as soon as he figured it out for himself.

  Summer was coming, the days long and full of sunshine. And the sun had a way of killing darkness and dark thoughts. He still walked past the red church, and he still shivered when he was near it. The Days didn’t talk about what had happened at the church. Forgetting was part of forgiving.

  But sometimes, when the sun was burying itself in the cut of Buckhorn Mountain, Ronnie couldn’t help glancing at the belfry. And he couldn’t help remembering how, that night of the ghosts when the Hung Preacher moved into Archer, the black shadow had slipped away and seeped into the old dogwood tree.

  But surely that was only his overactive imagination trying to get him in trouble again. The sheriff had cut the tree down. Besides, Ronnie had Jesus, didn’t he? Jesus would protect him. Doubting would be a sin of the heart, and Ronnie had suffered enough of those to last a lifetime.

  So he kept his eyes away from the shadows and looked ahead to a life where dead things stayed dead, except for good things like Jesus.

  These humans were the source of endless joy, endless fascination.

  The thing had played many games throughout the billion passages of the sun, but this new one, the one of godhood, was the best.

  With their belief in miracles, with their faith, with their frailties and failures, humans were a rich and abundant playground. From the beginning, when it had first burrowed up from the core of the Earth, it had inspired awe among those who wore flesh. The thing had taken many forms, many faces, and they had
given it many names, but most of all, they had fed it fear and worship, and it craved those things that had been reserved for the gods.

  And though it had been many things, trees and rocks and wind and meat, all those things were of the Earth. As it settled into the sandy riverbed and seeped back toward the hot magma of the earth’s core, it considered the human thoughts it had stolen.

  The time as Archer McFall had been pleasurable, as had its venture as Wendell McFall. But so had a thousand other forays into the flesh. So had many other possessions. Perhaps it would return one day, to shape clay into human form, to breathe life into hollow vessels and again bring a McFall among the people who lived in those old mountains. Or perhaps it would rise somewhere else, to play havoc in a new place, or revisit the site of other former miracles.

  Because miracles never ceased.

  Sometimes, when it owned thoughts, it wondered if its own existence was a miracle.

  No. That would mean that greater things, greater forces, existed.

  And the thing did not believe in anything greater than itself.

  In the riverbed, it surrendered thought.

  The master of the world returned to the dirt from which it had arisen.

  THE END

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  ###

  Julia Stone will remember, even if it kills her.

  THE SKULL RING

  By Scott Nicholson

  Copyright ©2010 Scott Nicholson

  Published by Haunted Computer Books

  Table of Contents

  For Miranda and Lexie and our ring of love. May the circle be unbroken.

  THE SKULL RING

  CHAPTER ONE

  I locked the door.

  Didn’t I?

  Julia’s sweating palm gripped the doorknob, the click of the tumblers still echoing inside her skull. Would he be inside, waiting, his lungs holding a hateful breath? The years fell away, and for a moment, she was a child again. A scared little helpless—