The red church (33 page)

Two minutes? Three? Five?

"Are you okay?" he asked, knowing how stupid his words sounded even as he said them.

"'Next time . . . you take me for a swim . . ." she said, panting, her throat rattling with trapped liquid, "can you make it... a heated pool?"

She sat up, tucking her knees against her chest and hugging them. Her body trembled, and Frank pressed against her, even though he had little body heat to offer.

"You saved my life," he told her. She felt good in his arms, even with cold flesh.

"No . . .
you
saved
my
life," she said. Her shoulders rose and fell with her deep, even breathing. She was recovering quickly.

Too quickly.

There must have been a pocket of air trapped in the car, perhaps near the back windshield where her head had been. That was the only explanation. That, or else maybe there really was a God, prayers sometimes
did
get answered
,
sometimes miracles happened.

Frank glanced at the deep black sea of sky over-head, at the winking blue-white stars that stretched out and out forever. Then he cleared the brackish aftertaste of the river from his mouth and spat into the dark water. Sure, God just happened to break from His constant job of keeping the stars burning to actually save a human being. That was a laugh.

God hadn't bothered with saving Samuel, or Frank's father and mother. He hadn't saved Boonie Houck or Zeb Potter or Donna Gregg. Hell, if you got right down to it, He hadn't even saved His only son, Jesus. God was cold and uncaring, as distant as the blue behind stars. God didn't even deserve Frank's hate, only the apathy He showered upon those who would love Him, so Frank spat once more and turned his attention to Sheila.

"Are we dead yet?" Sheila said, her eyes bright with her old sarcasm and verve and maybe that little glint that comes only from seeing the light of life's end.

"No, but you're going to have so much paperwork, you might wish you were," he said. "You wrecked a Pickett County patrol car, and the taxpayers are go-ing to want an explanation."

"And the worst part is, you're only half joking," she said, followed by a laugh that turned into a cough.

"That Frankie, he's a laugh a minute," came a voice from the shadows along the riverbank. Frank's blood temperature plummeted the rest of the way to zero. Sheila tensed beneath his embrace. A milky shape came out from the dark trees.

"Samuel?" Frank said.

"Thought you were going to get baptized for sure that time," the dead boy said. "Somebody up there must like you."

Frank had often dreamed of the apologies he wished he could make to Samuel, all the ways he could try to put things right, a hundred ways to say he was sorry. But now that he had the chance, all he could do was respond dumbly to his brother's ghost. "You mean God?"

Samuel's laughter drifted across the river like a mournful fog.

"No," came the hollow voice. The ghost turned its head up the embankment toward the hill, where the orange lights of the church windows flickered between the trees. "I mean Archer McFall. Him what owns God."

"Samuel?" Frank held up a quivering hand as if to touch the thing that couldn't be there, that couldn't possibly exist. "Is that really you?"

"What's left of me."

Sheila squeezed Frank's forearm. Frank wanted to ask Samuel so many things. But his dead brother spoke before he could think of anything to say.

"Why did you let me die, Frankie?" The hollow eyes became part of the greater night. The wispy threads of the ghosts rippled as if fighting a breeze. Then the ghost turned away.

Samuel drifted up the steep bank and disappeared between the mossy boulders. Frank stood, his wet clothes hugging him like a second skin. He was to follow. He knew it as surely as he knew that all the roads of his life led to the red church, led back to that night of his greatest failure, led forward to Archer and the Hung Preacher and the Bell Monster with its Halloween laugh. As surely as he knew that even the dead weren't allowed to rest in peace. Until Archer said so.

And the thing behind Archer?

Did it have a name, or did it have its own Archer, its own God to obey?

No matter. All that counted now was the arrival of midnight. He took Sheila's hand and helped her to her feet. Wordlessly they began the climb to the red church.

TWENTY-ONE

Ronnie's nose hurt.

Not so badly that the pain drove away the throb-bing in the side of his head where Whizzer had punched him, but plenty bad enough. Whizzer had glared at him when the Day family entered the church, had even tried to stand, but one of Whizzer's moronic brothers held him back. Whizzer grinned around his cigarette butt in an
I'll see you after church
expression.

Ronnie flipped him a secretive finger and followed Mom to the second row. Tim sat between Ronnie and Mom, looking around the church with an awestruck expression. Tim wasn't that hard to im-press. Ronnie had trembled a little coming up the church steps, but now that he was inside and could see this was just a church like any other, only a little bit older, he was able to bite back his fear. He recognized most of the people in the church, though he didn't know everybody's name. There sat creepy Mama Bet McFall, who had stopped by last week to sell Mom a few jars of pickled okra. Anybody who ate okra at all, much less pickled it, must be batty. Plus she was Archer McFall's mother, and Ronnie knew that Archer had something to with the trouble between his parents.

"Sit still," Mom whispered to Tim, who had been kicking his legs back and forth in his excitement. He sat back in the pew and held himself stiff for about twenty seconds
,
then started swinging his legs again. Ronnie looked at Mom. She seemed happy
,
her eyes shiny in the candlelight, a little smile wrinkling the corners of her mouth. She hadn't smiled this much in years, not ever in the Baptist Church, hardly ever at home, not even at the Heritage Festival at the school when Dad made her get out on the floor and do a little flatfoot dancing. But she was happy now, her hands held over her heart as if she were going to reach in and grab it, then give it away.

The other parishioners whispered to each other, as agitated as Tim. Something was up. You could feel it in the air like a mild dose of electricity
,
sort of like the shock you got when you touched a wire between the posts of a car battery. Not bad enough to hurt, but enough to make you uneasy. This felt like one of those turning points. Ronnie didn't like so many turning points popping up in such a short period of time. If you turned in too many different directions, you got twisted up in knots and couldn't tell which way you were headed.

Mama Bet turned around in her seat and smiled back at the Days. She was missing three of her teeth, and the grin looked like that of a sick jack-o'-lantern. "Glad you could make it tonight, Linda," she said, her words liquid and snuffy.

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," Mom said, smil-ing in that empty and satisfied way.

"See you brought the boys." Mama Bet nodded at Ronnie, then reached out to pat Tim on the head.

"Little Timothy Day. What do you think of the church?"

Tim shrank back from her gnarled fingers, then shook his head from side to side as if to shed himself of her lingering touch. "It ain't so scary," he said in that defiant nine-year-old way. "They said it was scary." Mama Bet's eyes narrowed, and some of the Mathesons at the other end of the pew stopped whispering and stared.

Tim went on. "I mean, it's supposed to be haunted, but it's just like the Baptist church, only it smells funny. Like wax and old meat and—"

Ronnie elbowed Tim in the side.

"Your mom did a lot of work on it," Mama Bet said. "Cleaned it up right good, along with some of the other folks. Made it worthy of Archer's glory."

Ronnie frowned. Archer's glory? In the Baptist church, they always talked about the glory of Jesus and God.
People
weren't supposed to be glorious, at least not until they were dead. But here was Mama Bet saying bad stuff right in the middle of the church. And God didn't come out of the woodwork and strike her dead.

Mom's smile faded. "What's wrong, honey?" she asked Ronnie.

"Preacher Staymore says that everything is for the glory of Jesus." Mom and Mama Bet laughed in unison.

"This church is a little different," Mom said.

"You mean like the Methodists and Catholics and all those other people that Dad says don't know any better?" Tim said.

"Sort of like that, yeah," Mom said. "Only here, when the plate is passed, you get to take instead of having to give."

"Cool," Tim said.

Ronnie had a bad feeling in his stomach, as if he had swallowed a boot. "Mom?"

"What?"

"You ever been to California?"

Mom and Mama Bet exchanged glances. The Mathesons had gone back to whispering among themselves, but suddenly fell silent again as the little door off to the side of the pulpit opened. Mama Bet turned and faced forward. Even the candles stopped flickering, as if not daring to absorb any of the preacher's precious oxygen. The night beyond the windows turned a shade blacker. A stillness crowded the church like water filling a bottle, and thirty pairs of eyes fixed on the man in the doorway. Archer crossed the stage like an actor. Mom's mouth parted slightly, as if she were witnessing a mir-acle. Ronnie studied the preacher's face, trying to see what the others must see, the special quality that held the congregation rapt. Archer met his gaze, though surely that was Ronnie's imagination, be-cause the preacher was looking everywhere at once, meeting every eye in the church.

Ronnie had seen eyes that intense only once be-fore. Painted eyes. In the color plate of his Bible, on the portrait of Jesus. Sad, loving eyes. Eyes that said,
I'm sad that you must kill me, but I forgive you.
Ronnie shivered. He wished Preacher Staymore were here. The preacher would tell Ronnie in a calm yet strong voice that Jesus was the light and the truth and the way, that the Lord was aknocking and all you had to do was open up. But Preacher Staymore was miles away, and this wasn't even Sunday. Ronnie didn't even know if you could be saved on any day besides Sunday.

If only Preacher Staymore had told him all the rules. Then this new preacher with his peaceful face and wise eyes and graceful hands gripping the lec-tern wouldn't scare him so much. If Ronnie knew the rules, if he didn't need the preacher to help show Jesus the way into his sinning black heart, then maybe Ronnie wouldn't dread the words about to come from the preacher's mouth. If Ronnie could be positive that Jesus was still inside him, then noth-ing else would matter. Except Mom and Tim and Dad. But he wasn't sure.

Archer smiled from the lectern, his teeth gleaming in the candlelight. And twenty-nine people smiled back, Mama Bet and Whizzer and Lester Matheson and Mom and even Tim. Only Ronnie doubted. It seemed in all the world, only Ronnie failed to un-derstand and believe.

And Ronnie wondered if he was the only one who heard the stirrings and scratchings in the church bel-fry.

"Sacrifice is the currency of God," Archer said to the flock, gathering the prepared communion from a shelf beneath the lectern. The plate was covered with a dark cloth, but stains were still visible on the fabric. Archer inhaled its sweet aroma.

Conducting the ritual was Archer's favorite part of playing messiah.

Rituals were important to the congregation. It was as true for the Catholics and the Baptists and the Jews and the Muslims as it had been for the unfor-tunate members of the Temple of the Two Suns, and now, the fold of the red church. This was the act that bound them together and bound them to Archer, that made them willing to pay the currency of sacrifice. And the preacher's job was to make the show worth the price of admission.

"And God sent the Son, who led the world astray," Archer said, lifting the communion. "And that Son, the terrible, blasphemous Jesus, who was called the Christ, gave his flesh to the people, that they might be tainted. And God looked down, and saw that evil had been set loose upon the world." Archer looked out at the congregation. The
"
o
l
d families." The living flesh of those who had mur-dered Wendell McFall so many decades ago. They deserved their cleansing. Anger burned his chest, but he kept the beatific smile on his face. One corner of his mouth twitched, but he doubted that anyone noticed. The lambs were too intent on the offering.

"And because we have been tainted, we must be cleansed," he continued, raising his voice, working toward the payoff.

He sensed the stirrings in the belfry, and knew that his shadow had chosen a new victim. Tonight it would be the boy.

But first, the families must taste the bitterness of their treason. They must know the depth of their iniquities. They must prove themselves worthy of cleansing. He would feed them. Matheson, Bucha-nan, Potter, Day, all.

He looked down at his mother in the first row. Even dear Mother must be cleansed. Perhaps she was more deserving than anyone. The ritual was his sa-cred duty, the reason he had been fashioned into flesh. He would not disappoint her.