The red church (23 page)

"What about Mom?"

Oops,
Ronnie thought.
What a dingle-dork.

"Your mom will be okay," Dad said. "Just took a fool notion. We all do that once in a while. Now let's talk about something else."

Ronnie looked out the window. He didn't mind going to school, even if his nose was still a little sore. The swelling had gone down, and the only problem was that the packing in his nose muffled his speech. Kids would be making fun of him. But at least at school, the Bell Monster had plenty of victims to choose from if it came aknocking. Ronnie wouldn't mind seeing two or three of his classmates come face-to-face with whatever the thing was. But that wish sounded like a sin of the heart, and Ronnie couldn't risk any more of those.

"Got your medicine?" Dad asked. Ronnie nodded.

Yep. A good old pain pill.
He would go through the day with a dorked-up brain, that was for sure. He won-dered if that was why Whizzer Buchanan smoked those stinky pot cigarettes he brought to school. If so, maybe Whizzer wasn't as loony as Ronnie thought.

Because there was something to be said for going through life in a fog. In the fog, you couldn't see the monsters coming. In the fog, they got you before you knew what hit you.

They reached Barkersville Elementary about a half hour late. Dad said he would pick them up in the afternoon. Ronnie was relieved he didn't have to spend all day worrying about having to walk past the red church. He and Tim got excuse notes from the principal's office and went into the hall.

"See you, Tim," said Ronnie.

"Are you going to tell anybody?"

"Tell anybody what?"

Tim just didn't get it If Dad said do something, you did it. Dad had his reasons.

"You know. The monster."

"Lock it and throw away the key," said Ronnie, imitating turning a key against his tight lips and toss-ing the invisible key over his shoulder.

"Even about finding Boonie Houck?"

"If anybody asks, just say the police told you not to talk about it."

"Cool," said Tim, his eyes widening behind his glasses. "We're sort of like heroes."

"Yeah, sure." Heroes. Brave as hell, that was Ron-nie, all right. Ran from Boonie Houck and busted his nose. Left Tim to fend for himself when the mon-ster had chased them both. Chickened out when something came scratching around the bedroom window.

At least here at school, the biggest horror was Mrs. Rathbone's prealgebra class.

"Meet me out front after school," Ronnie said. He turned toward the upper-grade wing. He'd taken about six steps before Tim called.

"Ronnie?" The word echoed off the cinder-block walls. Ronnie looked around, hoping none of the teachers came out in the hall to shush them.

"Yeah?"

"Is everything going to be okay?"

"Of course it is."

"With Mom and Dad? And everything?"

Ronnie walked back, made sure no one was in the hall, and gave Tim a quick hug. "Sure. Your big brother's here. I'll make sure nothing happens to us."

Tim almost looked convinced.

"Now get to class, squirt," Ronnie said. Tim hus-tled down the hall. Ronnie got his books from his locker, then went to Mrs. Rathbone's room. He hung his head as he walked to his assigned desk near the back of the class.

"Why, Mr. Day, we're fortunate that you have graced us with your presence today," Mrs. Rathbone said, folding her arms, stretching her ever-present acrylic sweater over her sharp shoulders. Ronnie stifled a groan and glanced at Melanie in the next row. He slid into his desk and said, "Sorry, Mrs. Rathbone. We . . . had an accident at home."

"I see," she said, touching her nose in derision. She imitated his stuffy tone as the class giggled. "I trust you have your homework, nevertheless?"

"Uh, yeah, sure." He shuffled through his papers. He hadn't done his homework. Who else but crazy Mrs. Rathbone assigned homework over the week-end?

"Then would you share with us the answer to prob-lem number seventeen?" Ronnie gulped and pretended to scan down a piece of paper. Mrs. Rathbone was almost as scary as the Bell Monster. Sweat collected along his hairline. He was about to blurt a random answer when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Melanie wiggling her fingers. He rolled his eyes toward her while holding up his paper to hide his face. Melanie had scrawled something and angled her paper toward him so that Mrs. Rathbone couldn't see it.

He looked over his paper at Mrs. Rathbone. "X equals seven?"

The teacher frowned. "Very good," she said, un-able to hide the sour disappointment in her voice. She turned her attention to the next victim.

After class, Ronnie caught up with Melanie at he locker. With his heart pounding, he said, "Thanks.'

"It was nothing." She smiled. Ronnie grew about two feet and felt as if he'd already taken the pain pill.

"Besides, you've helped me a couple of times."

He nodded, unable to think of what to say next

"What happened to your nose?" she asked.

"Broke it."

"Ouch. Does it hurt?"

"Yeah."

Around them, kids slammed lockers, and the in-tercom ordered somebody to the office. Ronnie checked the clock on the wall. He'd better hurry to his next class before he'd have to think of something else to say.

"How did you break it?" she asked, her eyes blue and bright and her pretty lips parted in waiting. He swallowed. Better to stare down Mrs. Rathbone than to talk face-to-face with Melanie. But she was looking at him as if what he had to say actually mat-tered.

It was now or never, one of those stupid turning points again. Did everything require bravery?

We're sort of like heroes.

Well, maybe.

He lowered his voice conspiratorially, his heart fluttering as she leaned closer to listen. He wished his nose worked so he could smell her hair. "You ever heard of Boonie Houck?" She shook her head. The warning bell rang.

"I got to go," he said.

She put her hand on his arm. "Sit with me at lunch and tell me about it," she said, then disappeared into the bustle of students.

Ronnie floated to his next class. He'd just learned that fogs came in different flavors.
FIFTEEN

Sheila
stood on the steps
of the red church and stared it down.

Just a building. Wood and nails and stone and glass A little shabby, the roof bowed in the middle from age.
Walls that creak a tittle when the wind blows, and mice probaly skittering around under the
foundation. Nothing but a building.

Then why all the ghost stories? Sure, the Scottish and English and Irish settlers brought their folk leg ends to the mountains, something to spook the chil-dren when gathered around a winter's fire. Maybe preachers were always a favorite target of gossipers, and gossip turned to whispered legend. If Fran could fall for that "Hung Preacher" nonsense, then that was a testament to the power of a whisper. Even in the flatlands, every town had a haunted house or two. There was one in Charlotte, an old brick house a few blocks from where she had grown up. She had pedaled her bike past it several times, searching the darkness of the broken windows for movement.

One bright autumn morning, Sheila saw something move in the dead space behind a shutter. She stopped her bike and looked up from the edge of the over-grown yard. Something or someone was watching her. She had shivered and pedaled madly away. She hadn't believed the place was haunted, yet she had never ac-cepted her friends' Halloween dares to enter it.

Now, after all her derision of Frank's stories, she hesitated at the church door. Of course this place held horrors for Frank. His brother had died here while Frank watched. A memory like that would haunt any-body. But did that explain why the hair on her fore-arms tingled erect when she touched the doorknob?

Sheila looked around the churchyard. Frank was at the edge of the forest, searching the ground. Other than the noise of his moving through the brush, the hill was quiet. Though the sun glared down, she was chilled by the shadow of the huge old dogwood. Its branches hovered over her, long bony fingers, reaching, reaching. . . .

Nonsense. You're just catching whatever craziness is in-fecting everybody else in Whispering
Pines. You deal in facts, and don't you forget it.

She went inside. The foyer was dark, since it had no windows. She blinked and headed into the sanc-tuary. The handmade pews were lined neatly on both sides, even though the heights of them varied slightly. Storie admired the woodwork of the beams and the carved railing that marked off the dais. Once upon a time, somebody had put a lot of love into this church.

The church smelled of hay and her nose itched from dust. The church had been used as a barn, Frank had said. The church had undergone a hap-hazard cleaning job since the Houck murder. She wondered if the intent had been to hide evidence, and regretted not ordering the church sealed off with yellow crime scene tape. But Frank said he'd checked the church thoroughly.

She approached the pulpit, aware of her footsteps and heartbeat intruding on the stillness of the church. She wasn't religious, but she was respectful of houses of God. Still, the Christian God was all about getting to the truth, right? So maybe Jesus wouldn't mind her snooping around a bit

Nothing seemed amiss in the sanctuary and a quick look in the vestry revealed only cobwebs and dark cor-ners. She crossed the dais and stood at the lectern, looking out over pews and imagining what it would be like to have a congregation to address. If she were going to understand Archer McFall's motives, she had to put herself in his place. All murderers had a motive, however senseless in the eyes of sane people.
A preacher as prime suspect? That's about as loopy as a murderous ghost.

She put her hands on the lectern and realized her palms were sweating. Was this the power that lured McFall from California, to leave a life of sun and cash to preach in these cold mountains? Did McFall have a messiah complex or something? No, that was giving him too much credit. The only reason he was a sus-pect at all was that she couldn't come up with any thing better.

She checked over the dais one more time, and on the second pass she saw the stain. It was old and brown, faded into the oak floorboards. It looked like a bloodstain, though too ancient to be from Boonie Houck's murder. She knelt and traced her finger around the edges of it.

The stain made a pattern. She stood and studied it. If you looked hard enough, you could imagine it was an angel, all wings and . . .

She smiled to herself. Yep, she'd failed her own Ror-schach test. So much for those criminal-psychology classes. It was time to see if Frank had found anything.

She touched the railing as she stepped off the dais, and something clung to her hand. At first she thought it was dust, but she held her hand to the light coming through the windows. Rust-colored flakes glistened against her skin. Dried blood.

Sheila stooped and looked at the rail, wishing that she'd brought a flashlight. A few flakes of dried blood were scattered across the wood. How had Frank missed seeing them? She thought maybe she'd better be more discriminating about the things Frank said. After all, he believed in ghosts. She had a solid clue at last, something the labs could work with. They could at least determine whether the blood was Houck's or, if she were lucky, the killer's. She wondered how many fingerprints were lying about the church. Even if they were from fifty differ-ent hands, at least she would have a suspect pool. Sheila backtracked down the aisle, scanning the floor for more bloodstains. No luck. She went through the foyer, better able to see this time because her eyes had adjusted to the dimness. A coat rack was nailed to one wall, wooden pegs an-gled out like deer antlers. Sheila bumped into the bell rope and it swayed against her blazer with a whis-pering sound. The rope led up into the belfry.
Wait a second. Frank said there wasn't a bell rope. Why would he lie about something like that? And what
else has he lied about?

Well, at least this explains why those witnesses had re-ported hearing bells on the nights of the murders.
Probably some kids messing around in here.

She hurried from the church to share her news with Frank. She wanted to see his face when he was confronted with his lies. "Hey, Sheriff," she called.

He stepped out from a laurel thicket. He looked a little better now, though his eyes were bloodshot and his hair unkempt. "I didn't find anything," he said with a shrug.

Big surprise.

"Well, I did. Bloodstains."

"Bloodstains?"

"In the church."

Frank's eyebrows raised. "I'll be damned."

"I thought you would be. And another thing. You know the ringing bells that you kept talking about?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, I have a simple explanation for that."

"How simple?"

"Follow me."

She jogged to the church steps and waited for Frank. "In here. I thought you said there wasn't a bell rope because of—"

"Right. There hasn't been a bell rope for over a hundred and thirty years. Because people wanted to forget that mess about the Hung Preacher."

Sure. That's why the legend is alive and kicking today, isn't it? Because they did such a damned
good job of for-getting?