The red church (29 page)

Archer said the red church had to feed, so let it be fed. Let the juice of these sorry souls soak into the floorboards. Let this church absorb all their hu-man blood and sweat and sin. Let them be cleansed for the final journey. Because Archer so ordained.

A tear collected in the corner of her eye. Jim stood and gently clasped her hand, thinking she was afraid or mournful. No, she was
joyful,
grateful to be al-lowed to hobble into the church, though it was tainted with the sins of their ancestors. Even aching and stiff, her bones as brittle as chalksticks and her blood vessels as narrow as flaxen threads, even with eyes that could barely tell day from night and fire from ice, even with all the crush of eighty-odd years weighing down and crooking her spine, she could stand proud before the altar.

Here, she could surrender. In this sick house of God, she could give up her flesh and blood. Frank Littlefield looked around the motel room. Sheila appeared dazed, her eyes wide and her pupils unnaturally large. Archer McFall sat on the bed like a patient king who was deigning to accept tribute from a minor subject.

"Did you learn anything from David Day?" Sheila asked, though judging from the tone of her voice, she could care less.

"He pulled a gun on me, mostly just for show," Frank said. "He's crazy, but not the kind of crazy that kills three people."

"David Day?" Archer said. "I believe his wife is a member of the congregation."

"Linda," said Frank. "And if I remember right, she was one of the ones who took off to California with you."

Archer looked from Frank to Sheila, and back again. "California has nothing to do with what's hap-pening here. Please put your minds at rest about that. We're all home now, and that's what's important. We're all fulfilling God's plan."

"God's plan," said Frank. "God's plan has left three innocent people dead, assuming that God is the one who pulls the strings."

"Nobody's innocent," said Archer. "And God doesn't pull the strings."

"Sure," Frank said. "I forgot.
You
do."

"Have you been talking to my mother?" Archer smiled. Shadows flitted in the corner of his mouth, or maybe it was worms crawling from between his lips. . . .

Frank blinked away the illusion. "Oh, no, Mr. McFall. I don't have to talk to your mother. Because on the way over here, I was thinking back on a night a long time ago. One night when you and me were both younger and, I reckon, more innocent."

"Nobody's innocent," Archer repeated.

"Samuel was," Frank said.

"What's your brother got to do with this?" Sheila asked, her voice hesitant. She put a hand to her head, then rubbed her face as if wiping away sleep.

"That Halloween night at the red church," Frank said hurriedly. His blood raced, his face grew warm, his stomach clenched around a bag of hot nails.

Archer's eyes widened in interest, his face passive and unconcerned, his hands in his lap. As if he were watching a bug in jar, curious to see what it would do next. "Halloween? There've been so many Hal-loweens."

"When Samuel climbed up into the belfry, some-thing came up behind him. A shadow. Except the shadow laughed." Frank balled his hands into fists.

"Please, Sheriff, not the ghost story again," Sheila said. She seemed to have recovered from her daze, and was probably worried that Frank would make a fool of himself in front of the public. Probably thought that Frank would blow his law enforcement career, maybe his whole future in Pickett County. But right now, Frank wasn't thinking about the future. He was thinking about the past. About the dead and buried. And about a familiar laugh.

"I recognized that laugh," Frank said. "Sent a chill through me, the first time I heard it again—at the red church, the day after Zeb Potter was killed."

The Halloween laugh. Frank had heard it hun-dreds of times, keeping him awake at 4 A.M. or jerking him from nightmares. He heard it in the squeal of car tires, in the wail of a police siren, in the rush of the cold river. He heard it in the howl of the wind, and he even heard it in silence. The laugh was loud-est in silence.

"You were there." Frank raised his fist toward Archer's face. Archer ignored the threatening ges-ture.

"Sheriff," Sheila said, in her stern cop voice.

"You were in the belfry that night," Frank said to Archer.

He'd heard assault suspects talk about being so mad they "saw red," and now Frank knew what they meant. It was a real thing, the red brighter than the blood of the sun. It poured down over his vision, blocking out Sheila, blocking out the Bible on the nightstand, blocking out the consequences.

"You scared Samuel." Frank was trembling now. "You made him jump. You killed him."

"Sheriff, Sheriff, Sheriff," Archer said, shaking his head slowly as if having to explain an obvious truth to a child. "I didn't kill Samuel.
You
did."

Frank leaped at Archer, the red in his vision now completely obscuring everything but the smile on Archer's face. Frank wanted to tear that smile from the man's face, to hear the satisfying rip of flesh and crack of bone. Frank wanted to feed the man his own smile, shove it down his throat until he choked. His hands snaked around Archer's neck, squeez-ing. Frank looked at his own fingers, white from the pressure. He felt removed from the attack, as if it were someone else's hands shutting the air from Archer's lungs. As if he were watching a movie. The thought angered him. He didn't want to be dis-tanced, removed, cheated of his satisfaction.

Hands pounded on his back, pulled at his shirt. He barely felt the blows. Sheila's voice came to him as if through a thick curtain of dreams.

"Stop it, Frank," she shouted. "Damn you, you're killing him."
Killing him.

A wave of pleasure surged through Frank, almost sexual in its intensity. At the same moment, he was repelled by his joyful vengeance. He was no better than Archer, no better than whoever had killed Boonie Houck, Zeb Potter, Donna Gregg.

Sheila had one arm hooked under his right bicep, the other pressing on his neck, her weight full on his back. Frank kept his grip on Archer's neck, watch-ing the carotid artery swell from the stifled circula-tion. Throughout the attack, Archer had made no move to defend himself. As if he were submitting, a willing victim. A sacrifice.

Frank stared into Archer's eyes. He saw nothing human, no fear, no anger, no pity.

"If he did it, we can take him to trial." Sheila grunted, levering her body against his, trying to break his chokehold. "Let the justice system make him pay."

Justice system.

God supposedly ran a justice system, one where the meek and the just earned a place in the kingdom of heaven. One where the guilty paid for their sins eternally. But eternity was a long way away, and re-venge was like chocolate on his tongue, the taste sweet and rich and consuming.

Frank pictured Samuel in his mind as he pressed his fingers tighter. The gristle of Archer's throat popped and clicked, his breath coming in shallow, whistling gasps. Still Archer endured his own murder without raising a finger to protect himself.

Sheila's knee pressed against Frank's lower spine and he shouted in pain. Sheila seized the opening, bending him backward and jerking one of his hands from Archer's throat. She twisted her hip against Frank, and the sheriff slammed against the night-stand as Archer fell back onto the rumpled bed. Sheila drew her .38 and stood in cop stance, both arms extended, legs spread, jaw tense. Frank looked up at her. His shoulder throbbed. He ignored it, and rubbed his scalp instead.

"Are you okay, Reverend?" Sheila asked, her hard gaze never leaving Frank's face. Archer didn't answer.

"Reverend McFall?" she said, her voice rising in both pitch and volume. Still she didn't look away from Frank.

The sheriff tried to stand.

"Don't do it, sir," she ordered.

Archer rose slowly from the bed behind her. Floated up without bending his legs. As if God were pulling invisible strings.

"Look out, Sheila," Frank yelled. "Behind you."

She gave him a disbelieving look, as if use of this oldest trick in the book was proof of his utter mad-ness. Behind her, Archer came to full life, the skin of his neck unblemished, his face contorted. Changing.

Archer's smile returned, a curved gash of bright, sharp teeth that dripped hate. His wings filled the room behind Sheila, stretching themselves and stir-ring a wind to life.

Something broke inside Frank's head, some thin threshold was breached, and his thoughts spilled out into dark places where thoughts should never go. He sprang at Sheila, trying for her knees in a perfect flying tackle.

Her gun went off, and the blood spilled along with his thoughts.

It all happened at once, distorted in jerky slow mo-tion, as if the filmstrip of reality had jumped its sprockets and was jamming the projector.

Frank had cracked. Sheila had no doubt at all about that. Attacking a suspect like that, trying to choke Archer, trying to . . .

She still felt groggy, and barely trusted her own thoughts, but now she was acting on instinct. She heard a whisper of movement behind her at the same time that Frank jumped at her knees. Aiming to wound instead of kill was also instinc-tive, the product of countless hours of training. Still, she was surprised when the revolver roared in her ears and twitched in her hands. Frank shouted in pain as a red rip erupted in his left shoulder. Frank slammed against the nightstand, the bedside lamp and Bible knocked to the floor, his head bouncing off the edge of the mattress as he crumpled to the floor. The sulfurous tang of gunpowder reached Sheila's nose at the same moment she realized what she had just done. She had shot Frank. Her sheriff and the man she cared about most in the world was bleeding at her feet. And Archer was laughing.

The source of the laughter was so close that she could feel its wind stirring her hair. The preacher's breath was cold on her neck, sending icy rivers down her spine. Or maybe it was the quality of the laugh itself that chilled her. The voice was scarcely human, a cross between an animal's growl and an asylum in-mate's demented cackle. Or maybe Archer's wind-pipe was so damaged that he could scarcely breathe. It was a miracle he could stand at all.

She stepped backward and pivoted to face Archer, expecting to see red fingerprints around the preacher's throat. She nearly dropped her revolver.

The thing hovering before her was not real.
Not real, not real, not real.
She had cracked, same as Frank. Too many murders to solve, not enough sleep, too much processed food; she shouldn't have watched
Rosemary's Baby
as a child, yeah, that was it, that was why she was crazy, and she began laughing herself.

Because this just ain't happening; this things got wings and nothing that big has wings and oh my
what big
teeth
you have, the better to eat you with, my dear and oh God your
eyes,
what have they
done to your
eyes
they look like split meat in a butcher's counter and where's Archer and hee hee
since I'm absolute apeshit crazy it's okay if I shoot you, especially if you don't exist.
Sheila pulled the trigger, the firm metal beneath her finger her only link with reality. The .38 flashed a second time, and the window exploded. Still the impossible vision hovered before her, the hideous face gleaming with a wet, sharp smile. She fired again, and Frank groaned from the floor. The sher-iffs hand gripped her pant leg as if he were trying to pull himself to his feet.

"Nice try," said the thing, only now it was using Archer's voice, and the flesh rippled and changed and became the preacher again. His suit had three holes in the breast. He fingered them and smiled. "This is a three-thousand-dollar suit," he said.

Yeah
,
Judge, I swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, if only I could
figure out what it
is,
but I testify that one Archer McFall turned into a ... a thing . . . yeah, right in
front of my eyes, it had big teeth and gray wings and you could smell the rot in the wrinkles of its
meat and . . . no, of course I didn't sneak into the evidence room and sample the contraband drugs,
hee hee, I'm just apeshit crazy, that's all
—

"And I would be a good boy and lie down and die, but that isn't the way this works," Archer said. "Is it, Frank?"

Archer's face changed again, the body quivered and shrank, and a young boy of about eleven stood before her, his hair mussed and his eyes sparkling blue above his freckled cheeks. Beneath the freckles, his skin was as pale as milk. A beach towel was tied around his neck and hung down his back like a cape.

"Tell her, Frankie," said the boy in a rural moun-tain accent. "Tell her how it's got to be done." Frank leaned against the bed, his right hand pressed against the gunshot wound, his left arm dan-gling limply. "Suh . . . Samuel?" he whispered, his voice cracking.

Sheila looked in disbelief from Frank to the pale boy, then to the revolver in her hand. A small trail of smoke wended from its barrel.