The Narrow Gate: A Supernatural Thriller (Solom Book 2) Read online

  And the attic access.

  But the access must have been shut, because its folding ladder wasn’t visible. Sunlight spilled from both of their bedrooms, erasing any gloom the old farmhouse might have imparted. Katy forced a laugh.

  “Here we are, spooking ourselves over nothing,” she said.

  “I’m not afraid,” Jett answered. “This beats the heck out of homework.”

  “Nice try, young lady.” Katy wrapped an arm around Jett’s shoulders and guided her back down the stairs. “Now get it finished so I can look it over before dinner.”

  “Like that would do any good. This math wasn’t even invented when you were in the tenth grade.”

  “I’m not as dumb as I look.”

  “I’m not touching that one.” Jett stomped back down the stairs, and Katy waited a moment before glancing into Jett’s bedroom to verify it was empty, as well as the bathroom. She entered her own bedroom, the same one she’d shared with Gordon. She’d made him buy a new mattress when they’d married, but the antique four-poster bed was the same one in which he’d slept with Rebecca.

  Katy should have bought a new bed, but with the uncertainty over the civil suit filed by Charlie Smith, she avoided needless expenditures. Her Charlotte friends, after venting their shock over Gordon’s aberrant behavior, assumed she would sell out and move back as fast as possible. But part of her would have viewed that as a defeat, letting Gordon Smith’s shadow fall over her even though he was in the grave. She had earned this farm and assumed more right to it than did any distant member of the Smith bloodline.

  However, if Rebecca’s spirit were still around, wouldn’t it be fair to say it belonged to her? Hadn’t she paid the ultimate price?

  She glanced through the window at the cornfield, briefly reliving that horrible night when she and Jett had been attacked by Gordon, who wanted to spill their blood as a sacrifice to the Horseback Preacher. Gordon nearly killed Mark in the process, but the preacher rejected the offering and instead skewered Gordon with the long wooden pole that held the scarecrow. Katy liked to think the preacher’s own violent death led him to choose the innocent over the depraved and profane.

  Yeah, right, like any of us are innocent. Mark has a criminal record for drugs, Jett endured her own struggle with addiction, and I’m batting oh-for-two on choosing marital partners. And the only common denominator in all my failures is me.

  Mark had called her that afternoon, ostensibly to discuss Jett’s progress at school, but he’d probed into personal territory as well. She’d drawn away as politely as she could—after all, they still needed to raise a child together—but she’d found herself thinking of him more and more often these days.

  She glanced at the bed. Desperation. She hadn’t been intimate with anyone in more than a year, and sex with Gordon had been distant and strange. Mark was a winner in that arena, but no way was she going to weaken now.

  I have to set a good example for Jett. You always move forward.

  As she was leaving the room, she noticed the silver mirror and hairbrush on the vanity. The mirror handle was tarnished gray, a Smith heirloom. She was sure she’d packed it away in the attic with the other objects she associated with Gordon. But she knew to whom the mirror and brush belonged.

  Rebecca.

  Katy picked up the mirror and looked into its fogged glass. The reflection looking back almost startled her—her red hair was lush and full, but her face was haggard, as sharp as the blade of an ax. Dark wedges curved under each eye, and creases etched the corners of her mouth. Her freckled skin was grainy.

  Crap, I’m starting to look like a scarecrow myself.

  She slid open a vanity drawer and placed the mirror and hairbrush inside.

  “Okay, Rebecca,” she whispered. “I guess we can share the house. Just don’t borrow my sweaters without asking first.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Betsy Ward didn’t scream when she encountered the goat. She’d milked plenty of the critters, and the teats were tiny and tough, a workout for her hands. But they usually kept to the field, even when they were riled. Occasionally one slipped through a gap in the fence or squeezed between two gate posts, but when they did that, they usually made a beeline for the garden or the flower beds. Goats had a nose for heading where they could do the most damage.

  But she’d never had one come in the house before. The back door was ajar, as if the goat had nudged it open with its nose. The mesh on the screen door was ripped. Maybe the goat planted one sharp hoof on the wire and sliced it down the middle. Goats weren’t that smart, even if they smelled something good in the kitchen.

  In this case, the only thing going was the sweet potato pie. No doubt the goat smelled that and came in for a closer look, though Betsy had no idea how in the world the creature had worked the door knob. Why hadn’t Digger run the goat off, or at least raised the alarm with his deep barks?

  “Shoo,” she said, waving her apron at it. “Get on back the way you come.”

  The goat stared at her as if she were a carrot with a spinach top.

  “Arvel,” Betsy called, trying not to raise her voice too much. Arvel didn’t like her hollering from the kitchen. He thought that amounted to pestering and henpecking. Arvel said a wife should come up to the man where he was sitting and talk to him like a human being instead of woofing at him like an old bitch hound.

  “Arvel?”

  Arvel must not have heard her over the television. The goat’s nostrils wiggled as they sniffed the air. The oven was a Kenmore Hotpoint, the second of the marriage. In the red glow of the heating element, she could see the pie through the glass window in the oven door. The surface bubbled a little and the orange filling was oozing over the crust in one spot.

  The goat lowered its head and took two steps toward the oven. It sported small stumps of horns and was probably a yearling. Sometimes a goat would get ornery and butt you, but in general they avoided interaction with humans, except when food was at stake. It seemed this goat had its heart set on that sweet potato pie.

  Betsy shooed with her apron again, then scooted so she was standing between the oven and the goat. She didn’t think the goat could figure out how to work the oven door, but some sense of propriety overtook her. After all, this was her kitchen. “Get along now.”

  The goat regarded her, eyes cold and strange. She didn’t like the look of them. They had the usual hunger that was bred into the goat all the way back to Eden, but behind that was something sinister. Like the goat had a mean streak and was waiting for the right excuse.

  “Arvel!” By now Betsy didn’t care if her husband thought she was henpecking or not. You don’t have a goat walk into your kitchen and expect to take it in stride. She’d gone through a miscarriage, the blizzard of 1960, the drought of 1989, and the flood of 2004.

  She knew hard times, and she knew how to keep a clear head. But those things were different. Those were natural disasters, and this one seemed a little unnatural. Like maybe the goat had something more in mind than just ruining a decent homemade pie.

  Betsy stuck her hands out, hoping to calm the animal, but its cloven hooves thundered across the vinyl flooring as it rapidly closed the ten feet separating them. Betsy saw twin images of herself reflected in the goat’s vertical pupils. Her mouth was open, and she may have been screaming. Her hair hung in wild, slick ropes around her face. She didn’t have time to step away even if she could have made her legs move.

  The goat hit her low, its head just above her womanly region, driving into her abdomen. The nubs of the horns pierced her like fat, dull nails, not sharp enough to penetrate but packing plenty of hurt. The unexpected force of the assault threw her off-balance, and she felt herself falling backward.

  The kitchen ceiling spun crazily for half a heartbeat, and she saw the flickering fluorescent light, the copper bottoms of pans arranged on pegs over the sink, the swirling patterns in the gypsum finish above.

  Then she was falling and the world exploded in sparks, and she th
ought maybe the pie filling had leaked onto the element. As she slid into the inky, charred darkness, the smell of warm sweet potatoes settled around her like the breath of a well-fed baby.

  “Pie’s done,” she whispered. Her eyelids fluttered and then fell still.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Odus eased his truck into the gravel lot of Solom Free Will Baptist Church, parking beside the Ford F-150 driven by the Rev. Mose Eldreth. Most likely the preacher was taking on an inside chore, mending a loose rail or patching the metal flue that carried away smoke from the wood stove. A dim glow leaked from the open door, framing the church’s windows against the night sky. Odus cast an uneasy glance in the direction of Harmon Smith’s grave, but the white marker looked no different from the others that gleamed under the starlight.

  Odus didn’t hold much stock with Free Will preachers, but at least Preacher Mose was local. Preacher Mose knew the area history and, like most of the people who grew up in Solom, he’d heard about Harmon Smith. After all, Harmon owned a headstone in the Free Will cemetery. That didn’t mean the preacher would talk to Odus about it. Like Sarah Jeffers, most people in these parts didn’t want to know too much about the past.

  Odus went up the steps and knocked on the door. “You in, Preacher?”

  A scraping sound died away and there was the metallic echo of a tool being placed on the floor. “Come in,” Preacher Mose said.

  It was the first time Odus had been in a church in a couple of years. He’d attended the Free Will church in his youth, but the congregation didn’t think much of his drinking so he’d been shunned out. He didn’t carry a grudge. He figured they had their principals and he had his, and on Judgment Day maybe him and the Lord would sit down and crack the seal on some of the finest single-malt Scotch that heaven had to offer. Then Odus could lay out his pitch, and the Lord could take it or leave it.

  Although hopefully not until the bottle was dry.

  The Primitives were different, though. A little drink here and there didn’t matter to them, because the saved were born that way and the blessed would stay blessed no matter how awful they acted. Odus could almost see attending that type of church, but he liked to sleep late on Sundays. As for the True Lighters, they took religion like a whore took sex: five times a day whether you needed it or not.

  Preacher Mose was kneeling before the crude pulpit up front. He wasn’t praying, though; he was laying baseboard molding along the little riser that housed the pulpit and the piano. A hand drill, miter saw, hammer, and finish nails were scattered around the preacher like sacraments about to be piled on an altar. Preacher Mose was wearing green overalls, and sweat caused his unseemly long hair to cling to his forehead. “Well, if it isn’t Brother Hampton.”

  “Sorry to barge in,” Odus said. “I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t important.”

  “You’re welcome here any time. Even on a Sunday, if you ever want to sit through one of my sermons.”

  “Need a hand? I got some tools in the truck.”

  “We can’t afford to pay. Why do you think they let me carpenter? I’m better at running my mouth than running a saw.”

  The church was without electricity, and even in the weak glow of a battery-powered spotlight propped on the seat of a front pew, Odus could tell the preacher’s baseboard joints were almost wide enough to tuck a thumb between. “This one’s on the house. A little love offering.”

  “Know him by his fruits and not by his words,” Preacher Mose said.

  “Good, because my words wouldn’t fill the back page of a dictionary and half of those ain’t fit for a house of worship.”

  Odus retrieved his tool kit from the bed of the pick-up and showed the preacher how to use a coping saw to cut a dovetail joint. After the preacher nicked his knuckles a couple of times, he got the hang of it and left Odus to run the miter saw and tape measure.

  The preacher bore holes with the hand drill so the wood wouldn’t split, then blew the fine sawdust away. “So what’s troubling you?”

  “Harmon Smith.”

  The preacher sat back on his haunches. “You don’t need to worry about Harmon Smith. His soul’s gone on to the reward and what’s left of his bones are out there in the yard.”

  “That’s not the way the stories have it.”

  “I’m a man of faith, Odus. You might say I believe in the supernatural, because God certainly is above all we see and feel and touch. But I don’t believe in any sort of ghost but the Holy Ghost.”

  “Do you believe what you see?”

  “I’m a man of faith.”

  “Guess that settles that.” Odus laid out an eight-foot strip of molding, saw that it was a smidge too long. “Always cut long because you can always take off more, but you sure can’t grow it back once it’s gone.”

  “I’ll remember that. Maybe I can work it into a sermon.” Preacher Mose drove a nail with steady strokes, then took the nail set and sunk the head into the wood so the hole could be puttied.

  “What I’m trying to get around to is, I seen him.”

  “Seen who?”

  “Harmon Smith.”

  The preacher paused halfway through the second nail. Then he spoke, each word falling between a hammer stroke. “Sure”—bang—”don’t”—bang—”know”—bang— “what ... “—bang. He paused, then wound up with a flourish. “…in heaven’s name you’re talking about”—bang bang bang BANG.

  “He come down by the river while I was fishing. Face like goat’s cheese and eyes as dark as the back end of a rat hole. He had on that same preachin’ hat you see in the pictures.”

  Preacher Mose drilled another hole and positioned the nail. Odus noticed his hands were shaking.

  “Sarah Jeffers saw him, too, only she won’t own up to it.”

  The preacher swallowed hard and swung at the nail. The hammer glanced off the nail head and cut a half-moon scar in the wood.

  “A little putty will hide it,” Odus said. “That’s the mark of a good carpenter. It’s all in the final job.”

  Preacher Mose swung the hammer again, the head glancing off his thumb this time. “God duh—” He stuffed his thumb in his mouth and sucked it before he could finish the profanity.

  “Don’t be so nervous. It’s just a finish nail.”

  “Harmon Smith died of illness. He caught a fever running a mission trip to Parson’s Ford. He had a flock to tend, and his sheep were scattered over two hundred square miles of rocky slopes.”

  “That’s the way the history books tell it. But some people say different, especially in Solom.”

  “And they probably say there’s a grudge between us and the Primitives.”

  “No, they don’t say that.”

  “We all serve the same Lord, and on the Lord’s Earth, the dead don’t walk. Not ‘til Rapture, anyway.”

  “Maybe you ought to tell that to him.” Odus lifted his hammer and pointed the handle to the church door. Framed in silhouette was the tall, gangly preacher, the one who was nearly a hundred and fifty years dead.

  Preacher Mose knelt at the foot of the pulpit and stared at the black-suited revenant. He put his bruised thumb back in his mouth and tightened his grip on the hammer until his knuckles were white.

  Harmon Smith’s shadow moved into the church and up the aisle.

  But before Odus could live a hammer, the revenant vanished.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  When Arvel heard the noise from the kitchen, his first reaction was annoyance, because one of the guys on TV was about to get voted off the show. It was the guy with the bandanna who hadn’t shaved; there was one on every reality show. Arvel could always tell which asshole was going to get cut loose, although it never happened in the first few episodes.

  No, they had to string the audience along and let all the viewers build up a real hate for the guy, which was made worse by the fact that he just might have a chance of winning. Which would mean another asshole millionaire in the world while folks like Arvel still got up at six a.m.
and put in ten hard hours. Well, only seven if he could help it.

  So he’d been working up a decent dose of spite for the asshole in the bandanna when the floor shook and thunder boomed in the kitchen, like his wife had dropped four sacks of corn meal. But since she couldn’t lift even one sack of corn meal, it meant something else had dropped.

  His wife, all hundred and ninety-five pounds of her.

  His first thought when he entered the kitchen was: Damn, she’s burnt the pie.

  Then he saw his wife sprawled on the kitchen floor and forced himself to remain calm. He’d been a volunteer firefighter for over a decade, ever since a liquored-up cousin set one of his outbuildings on fire by dropping a cigarette in a crate of greasy auto parts. Arvel didn’t know all the fancy techniques used by the Rescue Squad folks, but he’d watched them in action plenty of times.

  His favorite emergency tech was Henrietta Bannister, who was built like a cross between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Julia Roberts, except unfortunately Henrietta had Arnie’s chin and hairline and the Pretty Woman’s nose and muscle tone. Despite this unsettling mix, she was cool as a September salamander when the pressure was on, and it was her voice that Arvel now heard in his head. He repeated the imagined lines to his wife as he knelt beside her and felt for her pulse.

  “Hey, honey, looks like you had you a little mishap”—check your pulse, don’t know a damned thing about how fast it’s supposed to be, maybe it’s MINE that’s thumping like a rat trapped in a bucket, but yours feels mighty shallow—”but don’t you worry none cause old Arvel’s right here beside you. We’ll get through this and have you baking lemon cakes again in no time.”

  Arvel put a cheek near her lips, making sure she was still breathing. He looked at the back door, where he’d seen the flicker of movement as he’d entered the room. He was almost sure it was some kind of animal, and he was getting ready for a closer look when he saw Betsy laid out like Sly Stallone in Rocky, only Sly managed to climb up the ropes and lose on his feet while Betsy appeared down for the count.