The red church (32 page)

Thy will be done, amen,
she silently added as a catch-all apology to God. Just in case He was one to hold a grudge. He had a long memory, that much was plain. The whole history of the human race was one everlasting bout of suffering.

She opened the door and slipped into the sanctuary of the church. The murmurs quieted, then picked back up again as the parishioners realized Archer wasn't coming out. She glanced at the dark shape on the floorboards of the altar, saw that it had grown larger and sharper, that the Death's Angel was nearly formed. Just a little more blood and it would be whole. Mama Bet lifted her skirt so that the hem didn't brush the floor, then raised her chin proudly and walked across the dais to take her place in the front row. Nearly thirty of the faithful had gathered. The can-dles mounted on the wall bathed their faces in un-steady shadows. Mama Bet was pleased to note that the Abshers lined the pew in the second row, Sonny looking uncomfortable in a
button-down shirt
and bow tie. Becca Faye sat beside him, the vee of her dress offering up the pillars of her flesh. At least the slatternly hussy had worn a bra, even if it was one of those push-up kinds that made a woman look more womanly than was proper.

Becca Faye was wasting her time. Archer had no need for such offerings
,
and Mama Bet wouldn't let him sample the vile fruits even if he was of a mind to. Sonny could drool over that harlot all day, but Sonny
would
pay and pay and pay for the privilege, maybe with his tongue, maybe with his eyes, maybe with other things, according to God's will.

"Don't see why we have to put up with this fool-ishness," Sonny muttered just loudly enough for Mama Bet to hear. "I got better things to do than hobnob with you God-fearing folk."

"Shush," Becca Faye said, though she giggled. Haywood cleared his throat uncomfortably. Mama Bet turned around and looked Sonny in his oily eyes.
"You'd
best open them big ears, mister," she said. "You don't get many chances at salvation in this life. So you best be ready when the light shines on your stupid greasy head."

Becca Faye looked around nervously, like a cat caught in a hedgerow, a whiff of her fear carried on the scent of department-store perfume that probably went by the name of Passion Flower or Wild Meadows or such. Sonny's eyes grew bright and fierce.

"I ain't the one that hung Wendell McFall
,
" he said. "None of us are. So why do we got to pay for it?" Mama Bet shook her head, her mouth wrinkled in weary amusement. "You ain't heard a single word Archer's said. Sacrifice is the currency of God. It ain't a sacrifice if all you're doing is paying what you owe. No, you got to pay
more
than you owe."

Haywood tried to change the subject. "Did y'all hear about the car that run off the road? Jim Potter says it just went over the side for no good reason. Probably a drunk or something."

"Nobody went to help them?" his wife Noreen said.

Haywood glared at her. "They ain't of the old fami-lies, so what's it to us?" He added, as if to himself,

"Wonder if they had insurance?"

Mama Bet glanced past them to the other rows, at Alma Potter, Lester and Vivian and Stepford Matheson, the Buchanans in the back row, where their barnyard smell barely reached her, Whizzer sul-lenly chewing on the stump of a half-smoked ciga-rette. And across the aisle, oh, yes, there they were. The Day family, minus that meddling David, the boys wide-eyed and fidgeting, the mother glowing with an expectant pride.

There
he
was, the one Archer needed.

A warmth expanded from Mama Bet's chest to the rest of her body. Let the cleansing begin. Icy coffin black.

Drifting, on beyond black. So easy.

So cold.

At Samuel's viewing, Frank had touched his little brother's hand. Samuel had looked lost in the splen-did folds of the casket, a little too pink-skinned and hollow-cheeked. His lips were unnaturally red, a shade they had never been in life. But worse than the interrupted smile was the coldness of Samuel's skin, colder than November air
,
colder than shaded mar-ble.

That same coldness gripped Frank now. It flowed through his veins, clasped him in its shocking dull-ness, enveloped him in its numbing shroud. He was dimly aware of the currents around him, the water softly swirling around his skin. The river murmured in his ears, telling him to drift, to surrender, to sub-mit to the embrace of long sleep.

Years passed in that near-perfect state, years in which Frank remembered the roughness of his fa-ther's hands, callused and cracked from farm work, hands that could break a locust rail if they had to. Those same hands had met, tucked under chin in desolate prayer, during Samuel's funeral. A week after, those same hands had threaded and looped one end of a thick rope. Then the hands' owner joined his youngest boy in whatever afterlife they each deserved.

And Frank's mother followed six months later. She also killed herself
,
though she wasn't cowardly or brave enough to take a direct route like her husband. No, she was subtle. She went into the darkness by fading a little at a time, losing appetite and health and soul to the great erosion of apathy. And only Frank had carried on, the weight of all their deaths on his shoulders, pressing down on him as heavy as a cross, the guilt a constant, cold lump in his heart.

And now he followed them into darkness. He could almost hear their whispers drawing him for-ward, pulling him more deeply into the numbing cold. They were waiting.

He almost smiled in his sleep. So many years of waiting, so many more years of journey ahead. But what would be waiting? - The bright light of heaven, as promised by his par-ents and the Baptist preacher and practically every-body in Pickett County.

But if heaven was bright and warm and welcoming, then the change should start occurring any moment now. Because if God and Jesus wanted the eternity of worship they deserved and demanded, then they were being robbed of Frank's servitude by this ex-tended dark purgatory. This cold and peaceful drift-ing. This slow suffocation.

He was aware of hands reaching, hands darker than the darkness, gentle hands. He relaxed, glad for the end to this interim end. Anxious for heaven. Anxious for the love and light and heat. Then the hands clamped onto his wounded shoul-der, and he screamed into the darkness. His eyes snapped open against wetness, and he re-alized he was underwater. Then he remembered the crash. He struggled against the current as the years of drifting became seconds of chaotic tumbling and thrashing and pain. His body was trapped in the sub-merged car.

The hands on his shoulder . . .

Sheila.

The hands worked down his arm, and Frank stopped flailing, realizing she was trying to help him. The seat belt loosened across his chest. He reached for her, and his fingers brushed her softly flowing hair, and then she was gone.

He blinked into the blackness, his limbs stiffening from the intense chill. His right hand found the door, then the opening of the shattered window.

The water he'd inhaled burned in his lungs as he kicked through the window. A small pocket of air in his chest told him in which direction the surface lay, and he fought toward it.

The car had tumbled into a deeper part of the river, so the current was sluggish, but the weight of his wet uniform limited his progress. Bright streaks of lime and fluorescent orange rocketed across the backs of his eyelids as he paddled upward. Then he broke through the skin of the river, his lungs greedy as he gulped at the night air.

The air tasted of muck and mud and fish, and he spat to clear his mouth, then drew in another gar-gling gasp. The current tumbled him lazily against a boulder, then another, the rush of the river like white noise. In the glimmer of the moon, he saw the scarred ground and broken saplings where the car had rolled down the bank. He spun around in the water, looking for Sheila. Nothing but black stones and the white phosphor of the current.

He spat once more, took a deep breath, and dove toward the twin streams of yellow light that rippled ghostlike in the riverbed.

The current pulled him away from the underwater lights. He frantically paddled toward the bank until his feet hit bottom, then waded back upstream, his teeth chattering. He'd been up for nearly a minute. Could Sheila hold her breath that long?

When he reached the spot where the car had gone under, he dove in headfirst. His hand hit smooth metal and he opened his eyes. Judging from the po-sition of the swirling headlight beams, he was on the roof of the car. He let the current drag him to the driver's side. Luckily, the car had settled nearly flat on the riverbed, so he didn't have to worry about the door's being jammed.

Frank forced himself deeper, his lungs already longing for a taste of oxygen and nitrogen. He found the door handle, opened his eyes again, and thought he made out a shadow in the front seat. But the water was dark, as dark as his drifting dream of death.

He yanked the handle up, and the dented door opened with a burp of released air. Reaching inside, he felt the vinyl of the seat, the warped steering wheel, the freely drifting seat belt. He probed deeper
,
holding himself suspended in the cold water with his left hand on the chassis. He found her draped halfway across the seat, her legs dangling limply.

How long had she been under? Had she reached the surface, then come back to rescue him? Or had she been submerged all along? Frank was losing track of time, his thoughts gone fuzzy from lack of air, and he knew they were in trouble.

He squirmed his body into the cab and reached for her torso. Wrapping his arm around her, he tugged her toward the door. His knee caught on the steering wheel and the horn emitted a pathetic, drowning bleat. He pulled again, and the current nudged them out of the vehicle. Vomit and fear forced Frank's mouth open, and rank, muddy water rushed between his teeth.

He spun lazily and acrobatically with Sheila in his arms. He thought of Friday night hoedowns at the Gulp

'n' Gulch, how he'd never had a partner this graceful. He nearly laughed. Choking on Potter's Mill River, with the ghost of his dead brother waiting for them up on the road, with the red church owned by whatever nightmare inhabited Archer McFall's transient flesh, with everything he'd ever held as sane and right and normal now as distant as the sweet night air above, he'd finally found a dance partner.
At least I'll die in somebody's arms, and not all alone, like I always figured would happen.
And he almost surrendered again, almost opened his mouth and let the river sing its song, almost let the cold black in-between sweep them both away to the endless sea. But just as he thought of it, just as he realized that your life doesn't flash before your dying eyes, only the very end of it does, he pictured Sheila. He pictured her behind her desk, and him standing before it, explaining to her why he'd given up.
A little bit of
pain? she would say.
You were cold and tired and just wanted to rest"? It was easier
to give up than face a world where things were topsy-turvy gone-to-hell, where spirits walked and
shape-shifters drove luxury cars and you had to stare your embodied guilt in the eyes? You gave up
on me, you gave up on yourself, you gave up on us, just because you didn't have faith?

And her imagined anger flooded his wet and scald-ing chest, lit a fire in his rib cage, made
him
angry. Frank kicked until his feet found solid purchase. He shoved upward
,
his arms tightly clutching Sheila around the waist.

He silently prayed as they rose through the water
,
though he could not decide to whom to send his prayers or what he should ask for. His limbs were so numb he wasn't even entirely sure it was Sheila in his grasp. It could easily have been an old sodden stump.

And then they broke the surface
,
the air as sweet as a ripe plum
,
the moon as welcome as a smile
,
the million bubbles of froth on the river joyously whis-pering in Frank's ears.

He tilted Sheila's head back so that her mouth and nostrils were clear of the water
,
then half swam
,
half drifted to a sandy shallow. He carried Sheila to a flat outcropping of rock and laid her gently on her back. He had learned CPR as part of his officer certification, and leaned over her face, ready to pinch her nose and force breath into her lungs and reach in-side her shirt to massage her heart back to action. But suddenly she coughed
,
spat
,
and blew a clear viscid fluid from her nose. She coughed again
,
and Frank called her name, then rolled her onto her side so that she wouldn't choke. Her skin was white in the moonlight, almost glowing in its bloodless pallor.

"Sheila?" he called again, louder this time, so that his voice carried over the rushing waters. Her eyelids fluttered weakly, and she coughed again. Then her eyes snapped open and she raised herself on one elbow, her hair trailing water onto the gray stone.

"C-cold," she said, teeth chattering. That re-minded Frank of his own chill, settling as bone-deep as a toothache. But he brushed aside his discomfort in the face of this miracle. How long had she been under?