The red church (30 page)

I killed him, Judge. I swear, as God is my witness. I shot Archer dead, but you know the rules. Innocent until proven
guilty.

"Tell her how it is, Frankie," said the boy, his eyes darkening. "What the legend says. The gospel ac-cording to the Hung Preacher."

"Sacrifice is the currency of God," Frank said in a hiss.

"And everybody pays," said the smiling boy. The gap between his top front teeth did nothing to damp-en the corruption of his smile.

"Not you, Samuel," Frank said, struggling to his knees. Tears pooled in his eyes. "You're innocent." The boy's face changed yet again, became that of a balding middle-aged man with sweat beading his upper lip. "Innocent until proven guilty," he said. "Just ask your lady-cop friend." Storie recognized that voice, the one that some-times slithered into her own nightmares.
Hey, honey,
you can lock me up, but I'll be back.

Years ago in Charlotte, she couldn't ram the night-stick into the kiddie-rapist's face or pull the car over and shoot him in the head. But she was already a murderer now, so one more victim wouldn't matter. She pulled the trigger, then again, then again, only the last time the hammer clicked on a spent shell. And still the pudgy man licked his lips and leered at her.

"Except nobody's innocent," the man said, his shape shifting again, growing taller and becoming Archer McFall.

"What have you done to Samuel?" Frank shouted.

"I told you, it's not what
I've
done to Samuel," Archer said. "It's what
you've
done." Archer touched the spot on his forehead where Sheila had aimed the revolver. "Not bad," he said to her, in his calm televangelist voice. "But you have some deep sins in your heart, Sheila Storie. If only you would open up and let God come inside, give over all your troubles, then you'd find the one true Way." Sheila stumbled slowly backward, away from this insane vision, away from the black pit of madness that threatened to swallow her whole.

If I close my eyes, it will all go away. Criminal Psych 101: "Psychotic episodes can be triggered by
extreme emo-tional stress, leaving the subject temporarily displaced from reality," yeah, that's a
good one, I'll have to remember to tell that to my defense lawyer, because when I open my eyes,
Archer McFall is going to be lying dead on the floor of a Holiday Inn motel room, unarmed, with
five bullet holes in his body.

And with luck, I'll only get six to ten for manslaughter, only I've got the funny feeling that this is a
life sentence. Innocent until proven guilty? Hell, we're all guilty, just like the man says.
She sat on the bed, eyes still closed, the .38 in her limp fingers. She could smell Frank's blood and her own sweat. A breeze seeped through the broken window, raising goose bumps on her neck. A hand touched her just above the knee, and she tensed. Frank's voice broke through the knotted fabric of her thoughts. "Sheila? Are you okay?"

"She'll live," Archer said. "At least for a while."

Sheila's eyelids fluttered open despite her best ef-forts to keep them clamped tight. Archer smiled at her with his most benevolent and beatific expression.

"I'm sorry to have misled you earlier,
Detective
,
" the preacher said. "You will not serve me, nor God, nor the church. That's only for the old families, right, Sheriff?"

Frank's lips pressed tightly together, as if his anger would crawl up his throat and erupt in sharp claws and needles of fire and silver blades.

"Now if you two will excuse me, I have a congre-gration in need of tending." Archer turned and walked to the door. Three holes formed a triangle in the back of his jacket. Archer opened the door, and the darkening hills were behind him, the secu-rity lights in the parking lot blinking on. A car whisked by on the highway beyond the lot. A siren, probably from a patrol car responding to reported gunshots, bounced off the high, hard mountains.

"See you at church, Frank? It's the Third Day, you know." Archer stepped into the twilight and closed the door.

NINETEEN

Night.

It pressed down on the whole world, stretching out and smothering the trees, crushing the mountains, swallowing the weak light of the stars. The night pressed against the remaining bedroom window, and Ronnie knew it was equally thick outside the walls. The scariest thing about the night was that it always came back. You could shine the universe's brightest light into it, make it run away, but the second you switched that light off—
whoosh
—the night came swooping back in blacker than ever.

"We're going to be okay, ain't we?" Tim said. He was in the bottom bunk, bundled in blankets. Ronnie nodded in the bunk above him, not trust-ing his voice. Then he realized that Tim couldn't see him, though Dad had left the light on. He took a quick breath and spoke. "How many times do I have to tell you it's going to be all right?"

His anger had no force, like a bad actor's in those stupid daytime soaps that Mom used to watch, back before she joined the red church.

"What about Mom?"

Ronnie rolled over and stuck his head over the edge of the bunk. "She'll be fine. Things will work out. You'll see."

"I don't like it when they fight." Tim squinted, his glasses put away for bedtime.

"They don't like it, either."

"Then why do they do it?"

Why? That was the big question, wasn't it? Why did the Bell Monster want to eat Ronnie's heart? Why did Mom have to join the red church? Why did Melanie turn out to be the queen of mean girls?

And there was always the big question: Why did God let bad things happen? God let Boonie Houck and Mr. Potter and that woman by the side of the road get killed. He even let people kill His only be-gotten son. What sort of all-merciful God was that? Maybe Ronnie would ask Preacher Staymore that one, if Ronnie were lucky enough to live until the next Sunday school meeting.

"Ronnie?"

Ronnie realized that Tim had been talking for at least half a minute, but Ronnie had just zoned out. Better to keep the kid occupied, so he didn't com-pletely lose it. "I'm listening."

"We have to give it what it wants."

"Give what to who?" Ronnie said, though he knew
exactly
what Tim was talking about.

"To . . . you know."

"Yeah, yeah. The thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes."

Tim pulled the blankets up to his chin. His eyes were wide now, his lip quivering from fear. Ronnie swung down off the bunk and got in bed with him.

"I won't let it get you," Ronnie said. "No matter what. Dad will beat it somehow." Tim didn't look like he believed Ronnie, but he didn't say anything. He closed his eyes and Ronnie told him the story of Sleeping Beauty, and he was halfway through "Hansel and Gretel" when Tim fell asleep. Ronnie lay beside him in the cramped bunk, trying to figure a way out of this mess. Then it struck him, the revelation like an icicle in the chest: God was sending all these trials down on Ronnie as some kind of test. If there was one thing that stood out clearly in the Bible, it was that God liked to test the faith of His people. Job, Daniel, Abra-ham, why, heck, even Jesus got tempted by the devil, and if God was all-powerful, surely He pulled the devil's strings, too.

Imagine that. Jesus was God's own son, His flesh and blood, His earthly incarnation, yet even Jesus had to measure up. And with Ronnie committing all these sins of the heart lately, it was no wonder that God wanted to visit some great trials on him. And that was the scariest thing of all. Because Dad said that when the night was dark and the pain was great and you were all alone, then you turned your eyes up to God and you opened your heart and let Jesus come on inside. You let God take away the fear. You let Him work out your prob-lems, you let Him push back your enemies. But what if
God
was the enemy? What if God was the source of your fear?

Even as he thought it, he knew it was wrong. The idea of God as the bad guy was just too awful. You had to have faith. If you didn't, you might as well curl up in a ball and let the Bell Monsters of the world eat your insides. You might as well roll away the stone and head down into hell. So Ronnie tried to picture the face of Jesus from those color plates in the Bible, that man with the beard, long brown hair, and sad, loving blue eyes.

Something clicked against the window.

A rap on the glass at the good window, the one that hadn't been boarded up.

Can you hear him aknocking?

Oh, yes, Ronnie could hear the knock. Only this wasn't Jesus. This was the Bell Monster, come back to finish the job.

This was what God wanted—for Ronnie to get up out of bed and open the window and give himself away. Then the dead would stay dead, ghosts would stay in the ground
,
and Tim would be saved. And Ronnie would have passed the test.

Ronnie almost yelled for Dad, so Dad could come in with the rifle and kill the thing again. But what good would that do? You could kill it a million times, but still it would come back night after night, forever. Until it had what it wanted.

Until it had Ronnie.

He slid out from under the covers, looked at Tim's face relaxed by sleep, and crossed the room. Even though he was wearing pajamas, he shivered. The thing rapped on the glass again, and Ronnie heard slithery whispers. He hoped the claws were fast, so that he could die without pain. He was carrying plenty of pain already. His broken nose, the welt on his face where Whizzer had punched him, the stone lump in his chest. At least all those would pass away. Soon Jesus would come and take his hand and float with him up to heaven, where there was a cure for every pain. Because Ron-nie believed.

Don't you, Ronnie?

He took another trembling step to the window. He couldn't see through the blackness beyond the glass. All he saw was his own reflection and the lighted bedroom. It was better this way. If he saw the Bell Monster, he would scream, Tim would wake up, Dad would come in, and the Bell Monster would get all of them. Or Dad would kill the Bell Monster and they'd have to do it all again, every night forever, until the test was taken.

So he pulled back the sash-lock and held his breath and slowly slid the window up. It squeaked in its frame, and the cold night air poured through the crack and chilled his belly. He tensed for the claws to his gut, his eyes closed. Nothing happened, so he lifted the window another few inches.

"Ronnie," came the whisper.

Mom.

Relief surged through his body, a warmth similar to the one made by Jesus coming into his heart. But what was Mom doing out there with the Bell Mon-ster?

Confused, Ronnie opened his eyes. The light from the room spilled on Mom's face. She didn't look scared at all. She smiled and put her finger to her lips. "Shh. Where's your dad?" Ronnie stooped until his head was near hers. "In the living room. He thinks the Bell Monster will come through the front door this time."

"Let's go," she said, waving at him to come out-side.

"Where are we going?"

"The church."

The red church. At night. Maybe Dad was right. Maybe Mom really was crazy.

"Get Tim," she said.

"Tim?" Ronnie glanced back at his brother. Tim moaned in his sleep from a bad dream. "Why does Tim have to come?"

"He's of the blood." Her eyes were strangely bright. "We all are."

"What about Dad?"

Mom's eyes narrowed. "He's not a member of the church."

Ronnie started to add that he and Tim weren't, either. Mom smiled again, and it was the old Mom smile, the one that said
Everything's going to be all right
and
Mom will kiss it and make it better
and
I love
you more than anything in the world.

"I'm scared of the red church," Ronnie said.

She took down the screen, reached through the window, and gently squeezed his shoulder. "Honey, it's so wonderful. You know how good it feels to be in the First Baptist Church?" Ronnie nodded.

"Well, this is a hundred times better. This is like having God right in the same room with you. No more pain, no more anger, no more earthly worries. Nothing but everlasting peace." Being in the red church was starting to sound a whole lot like being dead. But Ronnie thought that if he went with Mom just this once, he could figure out why she loved the place so much. Besides, she wouldn't let anything happen to her sons. She would protect Tim from the Bell Monster and other bad things, and she'd help Ronnie pass the test.

He woke Tim, putting a hand over Tim's mouth before he could yell out. "Mom's here," he whis-pered.

"We have to go to the church."

Tim's lips moved beneath his palm, so Ronnie moved his hand away. "Why do we have to go to the church?" he said drowsily.

"Why do we ever go to church? Because we
have
to, that's why. Mom's here to take us." At the mention of Mom, Tim came fully awake and sat up. "Is she here?"

"At the window."

"Hi, sugar," she said. "Now hurry, before Dad hears. Don't worry about changing clothes. We won't be there long. Just put your shoes on."