The red church (25 page)

The families began filing out, their heads down. Linda thought they should be joyful, but instead they were worried about their own mortal flesh. Death wasn't the end; death was the beginning of a new life in the kingdom. The coming deliverance was a time of celebration and exaltation, not punishment. God had blessed them by sending Archer to serve as His mighty sword.

Then why did she so dread giving her boys away?

Linda waited on the porch for the crowd to thin. Becca Faye brushed past, leaving a trail of dimestore perfume. Sonny Absher flashed his four-toothed grin and nodded good-bye, then took Becca Faye's arm. He escorted her to his rusty Chevelle, where they would probably spend the afternoon sinning in the backseat.

"You coming to the church early tonight?" asked Lester.

Linda chewed at her thumb. "If it's Archer's will."

"Don't worry none about your boys. Mine went to God years ago, and I've come to accept it." Lester nervously chewed his tobacco.

"What if Vivian is the next sacrifice? How would you feel then?"

"Sins got to be paid for."

"Why can't we just pay for our own sins?"

Mama Bet was listening from the screen door. "It don't work that way, child. Sacrifice is the true test of faith. Remember the lesson of Abraham? It ain't a sacrifice unless you lose something dear."

"And what are you losing, Mama Bet?"

The old woman looked out across the mountains, squinting her milky eyes. A small breeze was blowing from Tennessee, carrying with it the smell of sour-wood blooms and pine.

"Flesh and blood," Mama Bet finally said. "Just like everybody else."
SIXTEEN

The last bell rang, and Ronnie ran to his locker, holding his books in front of his face so that no stray elbows would bump him in the nose. The injury throbbed a little, but he'd decided not to take the pain pill. After he'd spent lunchtime with Melanie, pain barely touched him. He felt bulletproof, espe-cially because she said maybe they should eat lunch together every day.

He was mentally going over the poem that he'd given her last month. He had tried to be funny and sweet at the same time, so that maybe if she read between the lines, she'd see that he thought she was the most beautiful flower in the whole garden. Drip-ping in the rain. Soaking color from the sun. Flash-ing beauty in the breeze.

Plucking petals.
She loves me. She loves me not.
Well, he'd left out that last part. No way was he going to say
love
in a poem. Plus, she might think that, since she was the flower, that would mean he wanted to pull her arms and legs off.

The best thing about the poem was that she didn't giggle and show it to all her girlfriends. Ronnie didn't think he could stand that. A lot of the other kids already thought he was weird because he carried around books that weren't even assigned. He also wore bargain-brand blue jeans and sometimes his T-shirts didn't even have messages on them. He wasn't cool: he didn't play sports, hang around the Bark-ersville mall, or watch MTV.

But right now, he didn't care what people thought or how far out of it he was. All he cared about was that Melanie would sit with him at lunch. He recalled the breathless way she had said, "I promise," when he told her not to tell anyone else about Boonie Houck and the Bell Monster. His heart was made of helium. A commotion in the hall pulled him from his pleasant thoughts. Shouts erupted, and a gawking ring of students had gathered in the math wing. Something was happening, possibly a fight. Most likely a fight. That was about the only thing that drew people's attention these days.

"Leave me alone," came a scared voice.

Tim!
Ronnie fought through the circle. He heard Whizzer Buchanan's smoky, snickering voice.

"Tell us about it, goober-head," taunted Whizzer. "Tell us about the thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes."

"No," whimpered Tim. "Let me go."

Ronnie shouldered past the eighth graders in the front row. Whizzer had Tim by the shoulders, shaking him. Tears trailed down Tim's cheeks. His glasses were on the floor, and books were scattered around his feet.

"Tell us, Tim," said Whizzer. "Inquiring minds want to know." This drew a laugh from the crowd. Ronnie threw down his books and shoved Whizzer in the back. The crowd gasped and grew silent. Whizzer turned, all five-feet-ten of him, jaw muscles twitching. Ronnie imagined the bully's muscles tensing under his camouflage jacket.

"Well, well, well," said Whizzer. "If it ain't Mr. Hero himself." Whizzer's eyes half closed, as if Ronnie were a bug that he wanted to squash with one big lace-up boot. Ronnie looked around the looming hulk at Tim, who was pressed back against the lockers that lined the hall.

"You okay, Tim?"

Tim sniffed and nodded.

"Get your books, then. Dad's waiting."

"And what if I say it ain't time for you to go yet?" said Whizzer.

Ronnie looked at the faces in the crowd. Their expressions were eager, expectant, relieved that they weren't Whizzer's victims of choice this time. If only a teacher would come. He'd even be happy to see Mrs. Rathbone.

"We didn't do anything to you," Ronnie said.

"Yeah, you did. You got born, didn't you?" This drew another laugh, but Whizzer wasn't smiling. Tim stooped to pick up his books. Whizzer kicked them away.

"Heard you been to church," said Whizzer. "And you got a little friend there. Something with wings and claws and livers for eyes. Everybody likes a good ghost story, Mr. Hero-Man. Tell us about how you saved Tim from the Bell Monster."

Ronnie's heart lodged in his throat. "Did you tell anybody, Timmy?" Tim shook his head, then knelt and found his glasses and put them back on.

If
Tim
hadn't told, then . . .

Ronnie spun and searched the crowd. Melanie was on the edge of it. To her credit, she was a little pale. She looked away in shame.

He would not cry. Oh, no, Ronnie would not cry, at least not here and not now. He balled his fists, and a sigh of satisfaction rose from the crowd.

"Tell us about the rest of it," said Whizzer, looking down at Ronnie, his smile like a possum's. "Tell us about your Mama and the temple in California."

Temple? California?
His mom had never been to California. "You're crazy, you . . . you"—Ronnie was aware that he could never take back what he would say next—"you gap-toothed redneck." A murmur rippled through the hall. Some of the kids had buses to catch, but the crowd had grown larger. Sweat trickled down the back of Ronnie's neck.

Where were those teachers?

Whizzer shoved Ronnie in the chest. Ronnie stum-bled but kept his feet.

"Now you done it, you sissy," said Whizzer. "The reverend says everybody got to pay for their sins in blood. So maybe I'll just let you make an advance payment."

The reverend?
Ronnie's head spun in confusion. His ears rang because of the pulse throbbing in his head. He was scarcely aware of the crowd now. It was just him and Whizzer and hate and pain. Whizzer drew back a fist that looked the size of a football. Ronnie heard the whisper of air just before the fist crashed into the side of his head. His vision went black for a moment, and when it returned, he was looking at Whizzer's boots only inches away.

One of the boots nudged him on the shoulder. "Get up, weasel. Or you want me to step on you a little?" Ronnie struggled to his knees, then stood on wob-bly legs. He realized that the crowd was roaring, shouts and laughter and jeers. Tim had slipped to safety. The blood hunters had bigger game now. Ronnie pretended to be hurt. It wasn't a far stretch of his imagination. His ears rang and the side of his face throbbed.

"Come on. Archer says there will come great tri-als," taunted Whizzer. "Archer says it's high time for a cleansing."

Did none of the other kids realize Whizzer was a raving lunatic? No. They didn't care. Reasons didn't matter. Only entertainment at someone else's ex-pense.

Ronnie stooped and bulled his way into Whizzer's belly. He heard the wind rush from Whizzer's gut, and they both slammed into the lockers. Whizzer pounded on his back, but he could hardly feel it. He held on and squeezed, his nose pulsing now. He tasted blood on his lips.

An authoritative voice boomed through the hall. "What's going on here?" It was Mr. Gladstone, the principal. The one ev-erybody called either Glad-Stoned or Fred Flint-stone. The students backed away, and Ronnie relaxed his grip on Whizzer, though he didn't let go. The principal grabbed Ronnie by the collar and finally dragged him to his feet. Whizzer stood and smoothed his jacket, his face red.

"Ah, Mr. Buchanan," Mr. Gladstone said. "Why am I not surprised?" He turned to Ronnie. "And you are . . . ?"

Lying was useless. Everything was useless. "Ronnie. Ronnie Day."

"Okay, gentlemen. Let's take a trip to my office."

Ronnie and Whizzer marched down the hall like prisoners at gunpoint. The crowd had broken into lines on each side of the hall, whispering among themselves, already expanding the fight into a bloody schoolyard legend. Ronnie realized he was the first person stupid enough to stand up to Whizzer Bucha-nan. He wiped his nose with his hand. At least Whiz-zer hadn't punched him there.

Sins paid for in blood. Well, how much freaking blood does it take?

He looked behind him. The kids were juiced on adrenaline, dispersing now, a few shadowboxing to re-create the fight. Tim's tears had dried and he fol-lowed Mr. Gladstone as if in shock, carrying an arm-ful of books. Melanie was behind Tim, and Ronnie looked back into her blue eyes.

So this is what it feels like when the Bell Monster rips open your chest and takes your heart. Except this way, you
don't die. This way, your heart keeps working, and you get a dose of nails and barbed wire and broken glass with
every beat.

Melanie opened her mouth as if to explain, then looked down at the floor and shook her head. Her lip quivered and her eyes were moist.

She loves me. She loves me not.

At least that was one less thing to worry about. The principal nudged Whizzer and Ronnie into his office and closed the door.

"Another one dead." Sheriff Littlefield let the deerskin jacket fall back over the face of the muti-lated woman. "One of the Gregg girls."

"You know her?" Detective Storie asked.

"Used to date her sister back in high school." Lit-tlefield looked up the road, where it wound into the hills. He knew this area well. A half dozen houses were tucked away in the shadowed folds. Behind them, Buckhorn Mountain rose so steep and rocky that no one could settle there. The mountain was the end of the world, a great wall that imprisoned as much as it protected.

Littlefield had grown up in one of those old houses. He still owned a couple of acres of sloping timberland at the foot of the mountain. He had vis-ited the land only twice since his mom had died some ten years ago. She had gone to her grave still heart-broken over the deaths of her husband and youngest son. Frank was the last of the Littlefields. Maybe that wasn't a bad thing. Seemed all the old families were dying out. The world had changed under them, time had left them in the dust, and all that remained was the demolishing of homesteads and the erecting of monuments. Stone markers that read,
May God Protect
and
—

"Sheriff?" Storie called from the ditch.

He rubbed his eyes and looked up from where he was kneeling over the body. Whatever haze he'd been in last night still affected him. He felt as if he were moving underwater. "Did you find something?" She held up a yellow receipt, gripping it carefully by the edge so that she wouldn't smudge any finger-prints. "This must have fallen out of the jacket."

"What does it say?"

"It's from Barkersville Hardware. Made out to Day Construction."

"David Day. He lives about a mile up the road."

"We couldn't be that lucky, could we?"

"David ain't a murderer. I've known him since we were kids."

David sometimes wore a jacket like the one over Donna Gregg's body.

"How well do you know him?"

Littlefield stood, his knees sore. "Well enough."

"As well as you know Archer McFall?"

The sheriff looked up the road, then at Sheila. "I'd better go question him."

"I'll call for Perry Hoyle," Sheila said.

The county's station wagon was putting on a lot of miles these days. Sheila headed back to her cruiser, which was pulled off the side of the road behind the sheriff's Trooper.

Littlefield checked around the body. Chest ripped open. Heart gone. No mountain lion had performed that particular atrocity.

How about the Bell Monster, Frankie?

Samuel's voice. Littlefield glanced into the forest on both sides of the road. His ears rang, a high-pitched buzz that ripped like a jigsaw blade through his brain.

He tried to blink away the darkness that seeped from the corners of his vision.
Not another blackout. Not in front of Sheila.

He wouldn't allow himself to go insane. Too many people were counting on him. Samuel was dead. So were Donna Gregg and two others. More, unless he did something.

A car came down the road and slowed as it ap-proached the scene. Littlefield forced himself to stand erect and wave the car past. One of the Absher boys was driving. Becca Faye smiled at him from the passenger's side. Neither of the pair looked at the body lying in the weeds, though it was visible from the road.