The red church (16 page)

David closed his eyes and let the barrel of the gun tilt slowly to the ground. Sweat stung his eyes, and the metallic stench of his fear overwhelmed the green smells of the forest.

Forgive me, Lord, for I am weak.

He leaned against a cold hickory and waited for midnight.

"It'll be dark soon," Sheriff Littlefield said, turn-ing from the window in Storie's cramped office. Pa-pers were piled high on the sofa, crime reports and DARE brochures and gun magazines. He had no-where to sit. He couldn't be comfortable in front of Sheila anyway, even if he were lying in a feather bed. "You coming?"

"Afraid not." She didn't look up from her cluttered desk. "I'd better go over these reports one more time." Littlefield sagged against the wall, the years heavy on him, the last two days heavier still. "I guess you never thought you'd get a serial killer here."

She looked up. "I guess you didn't, either."

She hadn't mentioned Littlefield's confession, the way he'd broken down in front of her about Samuel. Whether it was kindness or embarrassment that kept her off the subject, he hoped it would continue. "We'll be calling in the SBI."

Storie's lips tightened. "I want this bastard."

Littlefield contemplated the black sludge in the coffeepot. "No witnesses. No prints. No suspects. No motives. Probably no DNA evidence."

"Let's wait for the state lab to have a look. Or did I forget that ghosts don't have DNA?" Littlefield slammed his fist against the wall. Storie's framed copy of a newspaper article trembled from the blow. "Look, forget what I said about the ghosts. I wouldn't expect you to understand, anyway. You're not from around here."

Storie stood, the wheels of her chair squealing in the rush. She parodied a hillbilly accent " 'Cause I ain't mountain, I don't know nothin'. Well, Sheriff, I wouldn't believe in ghosts or boogiemen or haunted churches even if I lived in Transylvania County. I'm sorry about your brother, and I know his death must have . . .
upset
you. But this is the twenty-first century, even in the Appalachians." They stared each other down. Littlefield finally looked away, out the small window to the lights of town below. "You do it your way. I'll solve it mine."

Storie held up some papers. "The answer's here somewhere. And we'll get the coroner's report back in a few days."

"A few days might be too late.1'

"You think there's going to be another one?" She sat down, her anger deflated.

"Maybe more."

"You really
do
think the church has something to do with all this, don't you?"

"There's no such thing as coincidence."

"What's the background on this Archer McFall character? You think we should bring him in?" Storie was interrupted by the receptionist's voice paging from the speakerphone: "Sheriff, you have a call on line two."

"Who is it?"

"The radio station. Wants to know about reports of murders in the county."

"That's all we need, getting everybody worked up," he said to Storie, then louder, to the dispatcher, "Tell them we'll have a press release going out next week. In the meantime, they can make do with the obituaries."

"Yes, Sheriff." The static was silenced.

"I'd better get to the church. It's going on mid-night," he said.

Storie called to him as he reached the doorway. "Sheriff. .."

Her face was hard, but her eyes were soft. "Sorry I lost my temper," she said.

"We all want to solve this case. And I hope I'm wrong about the church. Lord only knows how wrong I want to be."

"What kind of crazy has a church service at mid-night?"

"The kind named Archer McFall."

"Well, be careful."

"I'm going to church. What's the worst that could happen?"

Littlefield was relieved that she didn't prod him for an answer.

"I got to go," Ronnie said.

"You're crazy." Tim was still in his pajamas, watch-ing television with the living room lights off. A half-empty bag of cookies and a bottle of Pepsi were beside him on the couch. The flickering from the screen strobed over him and made his movements jerky. Twin reflections of the on-screen action played themselves out in his glasses as well as in the false eyes of the deer heads mounted on the walls.

"You can either stay here by yourself or come with me." Ronnie's dizziness had passed, and he'd taken one of the pills that made his nose stop hurting. But the pill also made him feel as if he had pillows under his feet.

"What if Mom comes back?"

"Mom won't be back. Not until morning."

"How do you know?"

"I just
know,
dingle-dork."

"I'm scared."

"The moon's out and we can take a flashlight." Ronnie didn't know why he wanted to go to the red church. Especially at night. But maybe he didn't want to. Maybe something was
making
him go.
Like the thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes.

He swallowed invisible dry needles. Tim was look-ing at him, waiting. Maybe it would be better if Tim stayed here. But then the thing might get him. No, better to stick together.

Ronnie went to the closet by the front door. Tim reluctantly followed. "Better take a jacket," Ronnie said.

He rummaged in the closet for a flashlight. His heart stopped for a moment when he saw Dad's fish-ing pole, leaning all thin and lonely in the corner. A pair of hip waders flopped bonelessly against the wall.
If only Dad were here . . .

But Dad wasn't here, for whatever mysterious rea-son people got mad at each other. Mad enough to hate. Maybe Jesus was paying Ronnie back for all those sins of the spirit, all those questions he asked himself that Preacher Staymore said would lead to eternal damnation.

"The answer is Jesus," Preacher Staymore said, every time Ronnie was getting saved and asked one of those questions. But Jesus was the question. How could He be the answer to His own question? But Dad said the Baptists were the true religion, and Dad was smart enough to catch a trout in four inches of water. Ronnie found the flashlight and put on a jacket and they went out the door. The driveway and the gravel road were pale under the big moon, like white rivers in the night. But the wooded hills rose black around them, filled with the chatter of a million rest-less insects. Across the meadows, the Potter farm was dark and still. The stars above were far and cold with great spaces between them. Ronnie wanted so much for there to be a Jesus behind the stars.

"I'm scared," whispered Tim.

"Shh. It's okay. I'm here."

"I want Dad."

"Me, too. But Dad's not here."

"Even Mom."

"We'll get to Mom."

"Are you scared?"

"No," Ronnie lied.

"Then why are you whispering?"

Ronnie looked off the porch into the thick shadow of the barn, then down along the creek bank. The thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes was nowhere around, or else was really good at hiding.

"I'm not whispering," he said aloud. He hoped Tim didn't hear the tremble in his voice. "Now come on," he said, stepping off the squeaky porch.

"Where are we going?"

"You know."

"Do we
have
to?"

"Yeah."

"How come?"

"We just have to, that's all. Remember what Dad says: 'Some things, a man's just gotta do.' " Ronnie didn't want to point out that Dad could do anything, wasn't scared of anything, and was a man, and they were only boys.

They started down the driveway, Tim huddling close and Ronnie not minding a bit. When they reached the road, Ronnie looked back at the house and its squares of yellow light. For a moment the light beckoned, promising safety and warmth and the possibility of love. But love wasn't found behind walls. It was found in Mom and Dad and Jesus.

He switched on the flashlight when they reached the road. It made an orange circle in the gray gravel. Ronnie shifted his head back and forth, studying the dark roadside weeds for any movement. The sounds of the forest were smothered by their footsteps crunching on the gravel.

"I thought you didn't like the church," Tim said.

"I don't But we have to go anyway."

"Do you think whatever got Boonie Houck and Mr. Potter—"

"No," Ronnie said too quickly. "There's nothing out here now. It's ..."
It's what? Eaten its fill and flown home to the belfry?

"We'll be okay," Ronnie said.

"Do you think it was the thing that lives in the church steeple?"

"What thing?"

"You know. What Whizzer says. The thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes."

"Whizzer's a dork."

They went around a bend and were out of sight of the house. Ronnie couldn't smell the river, but he could feel its fishy dampness on his face. They passed the last of Zeb Potter's pasture. The barbed-wire fence ran into the forest, and the trees pressed close on both sides of the road. The moon sliced through a narrow gap between the treetops.

"How come Mom's at the church so late at night?" Tim asked. There was a note of complaint in his voice.

"What am I, Einstein or something? And do you have to ask so many stupid questions?"

"Talking makes me not as scared."

They walked faster now, the exertion driving away the moist chill of the spring night. They hit an incline and slowed. One side of the road sloped away into blackness. The river rushed over rocks below, the water gurgling like a choking victim trying to breathe.

They rounded another turn, and the red church stood on a hill, black under the moonlight. The moon glinted off the windshields of cars that were huddled around the church. Behind the cars, the pale slabs of tombstones stood like soldiers. The dog-wood was all black bones and sharp fingers and reaching hands of wood.

The church's front door was open, a gray rectangle against the darkness of the church structure. Yellow light flickered from the church windows, tiny pin-pricks that would flash and then disappear.
Candles,
Ronnie thought. The church had never been wired for electricity.

Singing drifted from the church, a choir of several dozen voices. The music was nothing like the songs they sang at First Baptist. This singing was hollow and creepy, as if half the people were singing off-key on purpose. But if they were singing about Jesus and God's love and mercy and salvation, that would make the music not so creepy. Ronnie listened but couldn't make out the words.

"That song is creepy," Tim said.

"Shh." Ronnie grabbed the sleeve of Tim's jacket and led him toward the edge of the woods, where the nearest cars were parked. He wanted to be as far away from the dark wall of forest as possible, but he also was reluctant to approach the graveyard. He pulled Tim down to the ground and they crawled between the cars until they could see into the church. The singing stopped.

"Do you see Mom?" Tim whispered. Ronnie el-bowed him in the ribs.

A man's voice resonated inside the church and spilled into the night.

"My fellow worshipers," the voice rang out. During the pause, someone coughed. The voice continued.

"We are gathered here tonight to honor the one true God. For He is a jealous God, and many are the lies that fall on our ears. Many are the promises made to us by those who wear faces of evil. Many are the paths that lead from the true Way."

Ronnie peeked over the hood of the vehicle they had hidden behind. The engine was still warm. He saw the rounded light on the dashboard. It was the sheriffs Trooper.

Ronnie felt a little better. Nothing bad could hap-pen if the sheriff was here. Ronnie knew that the cops on the TV shows were all fake, but the sheriff had seemed like a nice guy when he'd asked Ronnie about finding Boonie. So if both the sheriff and Mom were here . . .

"... and the First Son was a carpenter," came the voice. "The First Son went among the people, among the sick and the outcast and the poor. The First Son taught of love and peace and salvation."
Salvation.
So the man was a regular preacher after all. Though he spoke more like an actor than any of the preachers Ronnie had ever heard, the man's voice made Ronnie less afraid.

"And God called the First Son back to heaven, letting Him die on the cross so that we might find grace," the preacher said, his voice rising. "But God always promised that the Son would return. And the Son has returned. The Son walks among us. But it's not the First Son that God has sent. God gave Jesus a chance to save the world, and Jesus failed. Jesus with his false miracles and lies. So now the job goes to the Second Son."

"Second Son," murmured a few in the audience.

Second Son.
That didn't sound like something a Baptist preacher would say. But now that he thought about it, it kind of made sense. Why should Jesus be an only child, when God could make as many off-spring as He wanted? Jesus certainly hadn't made the world a perfect and sinless place. And the red church wasn't as scary anymore. In fact, Ronnie felt a kind of warmth radiating from the structure. How silly and dumb and third-grade he had been, thinking the church was a bad place. The church was a
good
place.

The preacher increased his cadence. "The Second Son spares no one from His love. This one needs no money, asks for no servitude, demands no tribute The Son has found the path, and it leads through people's hearts. The Son wants to take us all home. But every journey begins with a single step. Tonight, in this house of the Lord, let us begin."