The red church (22 page)

The Chamber of Commerce mailed out glossy bro-chures that said,
Up here, life moves at a different
speed.
The idea was to lure rich tourists with the promise of front-porch rockers and lazy river breezes. Of course, once they got here, they were bored out of their minds after two days and then dumped a few thousand dollars in the area craft shops and restau-rants. Some different speed.
Then why are you here?

She chewed her pencil. Why the hell
was
she here? Running from the Metro force and big-city crime, she had wanted as rural a life as she could find. Maybe
she thought this would be an easy place to cut her teeth, move up a little in rank, and then make a run for sheriff. She'd always wanted a department of her own. Storie wanted it the way other people craved sex or fame or a family. Solving high-profile cases was just the means to that end. But she also had developed this very
scary need to understand Frank Littlefield, to get beneath his professional veneer and his good-ol'-boy act and figure out just what in the hell he was about. She didn't know much about him. She didn't know enough about the red church or Archer McFall, either. It was time to change that. She pulled her keys from her desk and poured herself a last cup of coffee. She pressed a button on her two-way. "Unit Two will be in service." "Ten-four," came the third-shift dispatcher's voice. She strapped on her shoulder holster before put-ting on her blazer. The .38

revolver was comforting against her rib cage. As she went outside, she was struck by the moist scent of life: lilies crawling out of their night pajamas, the wild cherry in front of the library snow white with blossoms, birds chatter-ing from branches and utility poles. She took a deep breath and gazed over the mountains.

On those hills were houses, filled with people who were as deeply rooted as the old-growth hardwoods. Smoke curled from a couple of the chimneys, despite the warmth of the morning. These people were no different from the urbanites she had grown up with. They slept with dreams, and the dreams dissolved when they awoke. Time passed for them as rapidly as it passed for everyone.

Yep, some different speed, all right.

She got in her cruiser and headed for Whispering Pines, staying just under the limit all the way.
Frank.

Get up.

Frank didn't want to get up. He was lying under some hay, and the sun was coming through the open loft door and warming his bones until they were like cooked noodles.

"Get up, Frankie."

Frank opened his eyes. The world was yellow, all sunlight and straw dust. The straps of his overalls dug into his neck, making him itch. But that was only a minor problem. He could endure the itch, and he could ignore Samuel. Samuel was about as minor a problem as a little brother could be.

"Come on, let's go fishing."

"Go away," Frank murmured. If Grandpa or Dad found him lazing off, they'd wear out his rear end with a hickory switch. He could hear Grandpa's crotchety voice now:
Corn to be hoed and hogs to be slopped
and the goldurned dinner chicken's still wearing its feathers.
The chainsaw buzzed like a drunken bee where the two men were cutting firewood on one of the hillsides.

Something poked Frank in the side. He reluctantly rolled over and saw Samuel with a cane pole in his hands, feet bare and an Atlanta Braves cap perched on his head. A grin filled with crooked teeth threat-ened to split Samuel's freckled face in half. "Come down to the river, Frankie." Frank sat up, dazzled by the sun. Outside, the fields were a brilliant shade of green. The mountains were sharply in focus, as if each individual tree and rock had been carefully etched onto a fine cotton paper. The sky was so vividly blue that he rubbed his eyes, because the air was like water, thick with cur-rents and eddies and languorous coolness. He stood on wobbly scarecrow legs.

"Got your pole, too," said Samuel. He held out another bamboo cane. A round red-and-white float and a small silver hook dangled from the monofila-ment line. Frank took the pole without a word, then followed Samuel across the hayloft. His feet felt as if they were wrapped in fat clouds and scarcely seemed to touch the ground. Then they were down the lad-der and out of the barn and crossing a long meadow. The grass was alive, like the crisp hair of the earth.

The chainsaw stopped and its echo fell like smoke across the valley and dissolved. In the sudden silence, a bird cried from the trees near the river. Samuel led the way across the meadow, below the garden with its tomato vines and leafy cabbage heads and corn stalks tipped with golden buds. He felt as if he were attached to an invisible line, being reeled toward an unknown shore.

Samuel hummed a church hymn that was a little too somber for such a bright summer day. And Sam-uel should be skipping, laughing, beating at the this-tles with his cane pole. He should be running ahead of Frank to find a hiding place under the cotton-woods. Instead his little brother walked solemnly, watching his toes. The sky pressed down and Frank swam against it. They were at the river now, and its sparkling silvery eyes watched them.

"We're going to catch the big one," Samuel said, standing on a sandbar and freeing his line. He sneaked a look at Frank and put his hand to his mouth. Then he held out his palm to Frank, showing a writhing mass of thick, glistening nightcrawlers. Frank took one and speared it on his hook. Samuel took one for himself and returned the rest of the worms to his mouth. Frank's stomach tightened in nausea. The boys launched their baited hooks almost in unison. Dragonflies scooted along the riverbank, their green wings beating against the air. Water splashed over stones, snickering.

"It's almost like Sunday," Samuel said.

"Yeah. Here we are being lazy when there's chores to be done. Dad will get ill as a hornet if he finds out we're fishing." Frank moved down the sandbar a little so the sun didn't flash off the water into his eyes.

"Lazy Sunday. Makes you want to go to church, don't it?"

"Church?"

Samuel smiled and his head lolled limply to one side. "Fun place to hang around, know what I mean?"

"We don't have time for that," Frank said, his hands sweating and his heart pounding.

"I got all the time in the world," Samuel said, as a thick worm crawled from his mouth. The brown tip of it squirmed as if sniffing the air, then the worm inched down Samuel's chin.

"I don't go the church anymore," Frank said. "Not since ..."

"Since
what,
brother?"

Samuel's float bobbed once, twice. Then he jerked his pole and it bowed nearly double. "Got one, got one," he squealed in delight.

Frank dropped his own pole and lay on his belly so he could reach into the water and land the fish. In the calm water near the shore, he saw the reflec-tion of the sky and the high white clouds. His own face was dark on the water, unwrinkled, unworried. Young.

"Pull him in," Samuel said. Frank reached out and grabbed the taut line. As he tugged, the river erupted in a silver avalanche.

The Hung Preacher rose from the water.

The fishing line was a rope, the hook a noose that encircled the preacher's neck. The pale figure clawed at the strands, and the skin was purple where the rope dug into flesh.

The Hung Preacher's mouth parted in a suffo-cated scream, except—no, that wasn't the river, that was the
preacher—
he
was laughing, gurgling, a font of morbid merriment. Frank's own scream was a dull fist in his throat, a mossy stone, a cold fish. He tried to scramble up the bank, but a hand on his arm held him down.

"Time for a baptism, Frankie," came Samuel's voice, only it wasn't the voice of a child. It was a low voice from beyond the grave, a putrid exhalation of hate, the words rustling and slithering like snakes through a catacomb.

Frank looked up at his dead brother, into the eyes that had once been mercifully sewn closed by the funeral director, eyes that now stared accusingly, filled with the hot hunger of vengeance delayed. Samuel's crooked teeth were sharp, moldy, the spaces between them filled with quick darkness. Samuel was knee-deep in the water now, his gaunt hand tight on Frank's arm, drawing him across the mud and soggy roots into the lapping, laughing tongue of the river. The Hung Preacher tented his hands in a prayer, and his bowed head was smiling, smiling.

Samuel tugged, and Frank was in the river, his dead little brother pushing down on the top of his head, submerging him, and the water tasted like death; the water was crypt air and flooded his lungs even while he struggled toward the surface that was so far away. He fought, even though he knew he de-served to die for what he had done to Samuel.

The hands tugged, pulled. He felt himself going under, deeper—

"Sheriff, wake up."

Littlefield kicked and flailed, moaning.

"Get up, you're having a bad dream."

Littlefield tensed, his muscles spasming from the struggle. "Sh-Sheila?"

"Yeah,
Sheriff. Are you okay?"

He opened his eyes. The morning sun was painful. He blinked up into Detective Storie's face. She was so close that he could smell the coffee on her breath. Her hair fell softly about her cheekbones, but her mouth was lined with worry.

What a pleasant sight to wake up to,
Littlefield thought. His head felt as if Zeb Potter's murderer had done another sledgehammer job. A sweetly foul aftertaste coated the inside of his mouth. He could smell his own body odor.

Storie helped him sit up. His uniform was moist with sweat and dew. Or maybe baptismal water . . .

"What happened?" Storie asked.

"I don't know," said the sheriff, shaking his head. "Last thing I remember . . ." He looked across the churchyard. The Trooper was where he had parked it the night before, but that was his last memory. Had he been inside the church?

Gravestones surrounded him, the marble and granite bright in the sun. He knew this area of the cemetery. He had brought flowers here many times. He turned and glanced at the marker where his head had been resting.

A small lamb was engraved on the top of the tomb-stone. The etched symbols beneath the image pierced his heart, just as they had always done:

Here lies

Samuel Riley Littlefield

1968-1979

May God Protect and Keep Him

May God protect him.
Because Frank Littlefield sure hadn't. Frank had practically sealed Samuel's coffin shut through stupidity and indifference. A big brother was supposed to be his brother's keeper. The dream.

"Look," said Storie, pulling Littlefield from his reverie. She pointed to a flattened path in the grass that led from the forest.

"Something dragged me here."

"Something?"

Sure. The Hung Preacher, the Bell Monster, the Tooth Fairy. Maybe even the Bride of
Frankenstein. Take your pick. She'll believe any of them, won't she?

"The back of your shirt is dirty," she said. "And your collar's torn. You look like you pulled an all-night drunk."

"Gee, thanks. I feel like it."

"Must have been a hell of a church service. What did they do, make you go back for second helpings of the wine until you blacked out?"

Communion. Vague images floated through his head, images of taking something into his mouth from Archer McFall's fingers. He swallowed and probed his mouth with a thick tongue. He wanted to spit but couldn't muster enough saliva.

The red church stood silent at the top of the rise. The belfry was black with shadows. He watched for a moment, but the shadows didn't move. His fingers explored the shredded fabric of his collar. Whatever had made the wounds had stopped inches from his neck. He had been spared, but why?

He wasn't sure he wanted to know.

"Looky," said Tim. "There's the sheriff and that lady cop. Out in the churchyard." Ronnie looked past his dad to the two police offi-cers. The sheriff was sitting in front of a tombstone, his hair all messed up. The woman waved at them. He started to wave back, then remembered what Dad had said.

Dad glanced over into the cemetery, then back to the gravel road. He kept his hands clenched around the steering wheel. Ronnie knew that when Dad set his jaw
so
that it creased, he didn't want to be both-ered.

"Shouldn't we tell them about the dead person we saw last night? And the monster?" David glanced into the rearview mirror and froze Tim with a hard look. "Those things are best no talked about."

"Is it because the sheriff was at the church with Mom? Is he one of the bad people?" Tim didn't know when to shut up.

"Let the Lord sort that out," Dad said. "Our job is to keep our eyes on our own paths." They rounded the bend and the church was out of sight. Below the road, the river raced them, losing by a wide margin. The water was low because no rain had fallen in weeks. Ronnie looked for places that might make good swimming holes. Anything to avoid thinking about you-know-what.

"Why do we have to go to school, Daddy?" The motor of Tim's mouth couldn't idle for long.

"The best thing to do is to keep everything as nor-mal as possible."

"Is that why we can't tell anybody what hap-pened?"

"Yep. So you two are going to school and I'm going to work."