CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The sun came up on a brisk, clear Sunday.
Frost laid a sparkling skin across the ground, but quickly melted where touched by the autumn light. Odus had slept uneasily, visions of the Horseback Preacher galloping across his eyes whenever he happened to drift.
He tried to remember what Granny Hampton said about the Horseback Preacher, if the old-timers commanded some means of warding him off. Didn’t seem likely, because even after all these years, Solom was still a stopping point for Harmon Smith.
The other mountain communities on Harmon’s original rounds had probably all seen their share of mishap and death. Odus would bet that anybody following the histories of Balsam, Parson’s Ford, Windshake, Rocky Knob, and Crowder Valley would see a trail marked by bloody hoof prints. The Horseback Preacher covered a lot of territory, stretching into East Tennessee and Virginia, and even a man on a hell-driven horse could only cover so many miles in a day.
Odus dressed in a pair of overalls that were dirty and stiff, but he’d aired out for a couple of days until they were bearable. He scrambled a couple of eggs and rummaged in the counter. Like any common drunk, he knew exactly how much liquor was in the house. On a Sunday, a bottle would be hard to come by unless he felt like visiting a bootlegger and paying a king’s ransom.
Odus had tucked back a pint of Old Crow, and the bourbon lay golden and gleaming in the glass, greasy and somehow thicker than water. He’d been tempted to polish it off last night, especially after Harmon walked into the general store pretty as a show pony, as if knowing they were talking about him and daring them to make a play.
But liquor tasted better on a Sunday and mock courage might serve where plain old backbone failed.
Because Odus was going to hunt down the Horseback Preacher.
After Harmon mounted Old Saint and vanished into the dark, off toward whatever errands called such a creature, Odus and the group had gone onto the general store’s porch. The others were shaken, excepting old Sarah, who’d been around for a few of Harmon’s past visits, though she claimed this was the first time she’d ever seen him up close. Sure, Mose Eldreth talked big, quoting some Bible passages from books that Odus had never heard before, with names like Nehemiah and Malachi, but he was as scared as the rest.
Mose quoted Malachi as having set down these words in the old days, back when pretty near everybody with a beard, a high fever, and a clay tablet could be a prophet: “Surely the day is coming, it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble. The fruit will wither on the vine.”
Then Mose went on to say that the dead horseback preacher had been quoting from the Book of Matthew, when Christ delivered his Sermon on the Mount.
Odus didn’t feel much like an evildoer. Sure, he cheated the government and big corporations and rich Floridian tourists, but he never cheated a human being. His reputation as a handyman was built on his word. He delivered what he promised, and he was never a day late about it, either. He treated people fair and expected the same.
That was more than Odus could rightly say of the Lord, at least from what he’d witnessed in his time on this Earth. So he couldn’t see why the Lord would want to set something like the Horseback Preacher loose on Solom, especially since most of them were decent, church-going folks.
But it didn’t matter whether Harmon had ridden up through the gates of hell or whether he’d clopped down a set of golden stairs. Odus could track the Horseback Preacher because, ghostly stallion or not, the animal left hoof prints in the muddy parking lot.
With a flashlight, Odus followed the tracks until they disappeared on the asphalt of Railroad Grade Road, although the prints faded and vanished within minutes of its passing. Chances were that Harmon was hiding out up in the woods, probably on his original land at the foot of Lost Ridge where the Smith House sat. Even a dead man probably took comfort in familiar surroundings.
Odus hadn’t mentioned his plan to the others because he didn’t see that they could offer any help. Claude had a country lick of sense, but he was too steamed at Preacher Mose to work as a group. Sarah had too many years on her, Sue Norwood was too young, Kim was too sensible, and Mose couldn’t shake free of his Bible enough to tackle such a thing.
Katy and Jett…well, he liked them and felt a need to protect them. This was Solom’s troubles, and they had suffered enough.
Odus hunted in the fall, and usually got himself two or three bucks each season. The venison could be frozen or canned, and he traded the meat for vegetables and fruit. It was another way to keep from holding down a regular job. Now the tracking skills would come in handy, although a Winchester 30-30 wouldn’t do the same job on Harmon Smith that it did on a white-tailed deer.
Odus figured he’d find the right weapon when the time came. If Mose could afford faith, then so could Odus.
He threw a can of Vienna sausages, a couple of McIntosh apples, a thermos of coffee, and the bottle of Old Crow in his leather hunting pouch, hauled it and his fishing rod to the truck, and headed for the river road.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Alex fired up a bowl of sweet, home-grown weed and puffed it until his lungs were scorched.
Despite the pleasant buzz from the smoke, Alex couldn’t relax. Something heavy was coming down in Solom. He had a feeling it wasn’t the secret agents he’d always feared, or the Internal Revenue Service coming to seize his land as punishment for his tax evasion. No, this exhibited all the vibes of a global conspiracy.
Alex had convinced Meredith to stay in her apartment near the college. Despite her sweet charms and generosity, Alex liked his space. He needed to get his head together, which seemed to be a full-time job these days. He put the pipe away and went outside to check on the garden.
The garden did what drugs and sex couldn’t do: it filled him with a sense of purpose and accomplishment. Growing good crops, especially mythical motherlode mindfuck marijuana, was about as close to God as a human being could get. Crops made the world a better place, especially dope, which was the equivalent of Eden’s apple when it came to granting wisdom.
As a fringe benefit, self-reliance also stuck it to the Man, because the government hadn’t yet figured out how to tax it. He’d considered moving to one of the legal-marijuana states, but he wasn’t willing to become part of the Establishment in order to sell weed. Seemed like the worst kind of compromise.
Alex peeked through the curtains to make sure nobody was watching from outside. Dope possessed the strange power to make him feel bulletproof and paranoid at the same time. Behind the safety of locked doors, he was master of his fate. When he stepped under the big sky, all manner of rules and laws took effect, whether they were natural or contrived by the global elite to ensure that nothing changed, that all the stars stayed fixed in the heavens and all the crooks in Congress defended their incumbency.
Looked safe outside. No cops, no Weird Dude Walking. The morning sun poured its pink-orange lava over the eastern ridges and the woods were on fire with autumn. It was nearly ten o’clock, which meant the bell in the steeple of the Free Will Baptist Church would soon sound its Sunday call. Birds twittered in the surrounding trees, as sacred a music as any that ever droned from a church organ. If the birds were talking, that meant everything was normal, despite the eerie flutter in the pit of his stomach.
Alex went out onto the deck, binoculars in hand. Through a cut where the road wound among the trees, the Smith farm was visible. Focusing the lenses, he saw the Smith widow, the redhead, walking toward the barn. Alex didn’t like spying, because it was too close to what the CIA practiced against its own citizens. But survival instinct told him there was a big difference between being nosy and being informed.
As he watched, the redhead veered toward the fence, then pulled back as a clutch of goats came trotting toward her from the rear of the barn. Probably the same damn goats that had eaten Weird Dude Walking.
Alex shortened the lenses so he could scan his fence line. T
he spot he’d repaired near the garden was still intact. He’d fantasized about planting some sort of booby trap, maybe a razor-studded spring that could be triggered by a trip wire. But the fence was technically on Smith property, and that would be crossing the line. Trespassing was uncool, even if their livestock fed on old preachers as if they were a Jesus biscuit in a Catholic chow line.
Alex put down the binoculars. All was right with the world, at least his portion of it.
Then he saw the shed.
The doors were open, one of them hanging askew on a single hinge. The grow bulbs threw their blue-tinted light against the greater might of the orange sun. Something had forcibly broken in, or maybe out. There was nothing in the shed of value except...
Thirty-seven of Mother Nature’s most beautiful creatures.
His babies. His family.
Alex hurtled down the deck steps three at a time, the binoculars swinging from the strap and banging against his chest. He ran the fifty feet to the shed and looked in, barely able to breathe.
Most of the pot plants had been ripped up by the roots, though a few bare and broken stalks poked toward the ceiling like skeletal green fingers. Stray leaves lay scattered along the floor, and one light fixture dangled by wires from the wall. The black plastic sheeting beneath the buckets was ripped and gouged. And on the cinder blocks that served as a step was a mucosal gray-white smear that could only be one thing.
Goat shit.
The fuckers trespassed onto his land, broken into his shed, chomped down on the fruit of his labors. He didn’t know how they’d circumvented the fence or busted through the doors, but the ground was scarred by cloven-hoofed footprints. Alex, his heart pushing broken glass through his chest, followed the tracks behind the shed to the fence.
There, the wire was trampled as if pressed down by a great weight, dragging down several locust posts. The wire was pocked with tufts of goat hair, and the musky stench of a rutting billy tainted the air.
On the Smith side of the fence, leaves had been scuffed and scooted around. Clearly evident against the dark humus was the imprint of a horseshoe. As if some rider urged his horse to stomp down the fence and allow the goats access. Maybe the horse kicked in the shed door for them. Alex was sure that, if he checked beside the padlock, he’d find the arc of a horseshoe embedded in the wood.
Alex wondered if Weird Dude Walking was no longer walking. Maybe he’d mounted up in order to make better time. On whatever road he was headed down.
Didn’t matter.
The Dude had fucked with private property. And so had those creepy-eyed, stink-making, beard-pissing goats.
The Bible said to forgive trespasses, but Alex didn’t hold to the Bible. In Alex’s belief system, trespasses meant one of two things: either you build a bigger fence or you go after those who didn’t respect boundaries.
Alex went back to the house, to the walk-in closet that held his arsenal. There was hell to pay and Alex planned on delivering the invoice.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“Jett?” Katy called from the yard. “Hey, Jett.”
Like most teens, Jett liked to sleep as late as she could, especially on Sundays, but after the meeting at the general store, both of them endured restless nights. Katy usually asked Jett do farm chores on weekends, but this morning she was glad to be out of the claustrophobia of the house. She’d been a little groggy but her discovery at the barn yanked her fully alert.
Jett, still in her pajamas, came out on the porch rubbing her eyes. “You don’t have to yell loud enough to wake the dead. I’m here already.”
“Did you leave the gate open?”
“No, we put up the goats before we went to the general store.”
“Somebody let them out, then.”
“Maybe they pushed the gate open,” Jett said. “You know how they love to butt everything in the world and rub against the fence. Besides, they’re all in the pen, right?”
Katy gave the herd the once-over. They were so agitated she couldn’t do a full count, but there were no noticeable absences. “Looks like it.”
“What’s the big deal, then?”
“Just a little jumpy, I guess. You go on and get dressed and I’ll be in to make us some pancakes in a minute.”
“Don’t step in anything.” Jett went back in the house.
Katy waded through the herd to the feed bins. Usually the goats followed but this morning they stood where they were, watching her pass. Dirty Harry shook his head from side to side, causing his matted beard to sway. She was almost relieved to reach the barn’s interior. She opened the bin and banged open the metal trash can that held the grain. The chickens gathered around as she dumped a few scoops on the barn floor.
Even though the pastures still held a little forage, the goats enjoyed their morning hay. Katy climbed the loft stairs for hay, and when she swung open the heavy wooden door, there was too much open space.
Then she realized scarecrows were missing.
Would Jett play that kind of joke on me?
No, unless Jett had snuck out in the middle of the night, she wouldn’t have had an opportunity. Besides, Jett was more afraid of the scarecrows than she was the goats, even though the effigies were nothing more than cloth and straw.
She grabbed a pitchfork, more for comfort than defense, and backed her way downstairs to the barn door. The goats gathered behind her, their curiosity aroused. Horns bumped her bottom and she spun, nearly jabbing the rusty tines into Dirty Harry’s face.
“Make way or die,” she said.
The goats closed in, sealing off her exit.
This can’t be happening.
But she had already endured the impossible here in Solom.
The goats peeled back their lips and bleated, showing their stained teeth. What looked like dark rags hung from some of the mouths. Had the goats somehow reached the scarecrows?
She plucked a fragment from between a mottled nanny’s teeth. It snapped at her fingers as she drew the scrap of cloth away. The fabric dripped clotted red fluid. She sniffed it.
Blood?
The nanny leaped into the air and clacked its teeth together, snatching for the treat. Katy dropped it and wiped her hand on the thigh of her jeans. Dirty Harry pressed his nose against the stain and sniffed.
She swatted at him with the handle of the pitchfork, delivering a thwack across his flank. His nostrils flared and his vertical pupils took on an odd light. The goats surrounded her, blocking her escape to the house. She flung the pitchfork at the gathering tribe and fled toward the barn stairs. She could have reached one of the holding pens first, but then she’d be trapped. In the loft, she’d have options.
Even as she thundered up the uneven wooden steps, she realized how ridiculous her plight was. All her resolve to disconnect these animals from Gordon Smith’s attack and the Horseback Preacher’s appearance withered away with one hungry look. Now they were nightmares on the hoof.
But even worse things could be waiting in the loft.
Such as Gordon, back from the grave and wearing the scarecrow costume? Or the real Scarecrow Man, climbing down from his wire to finish what Gordon started?
But the loft held only hay and dust, the morning sunlight sending great golden shafts across the buckling plank floor. She secured the door behind her as goat hooves pounded on the steps.
The far end of the loft featured a sliding door. Odus and Ray Tester had backed a truckload of bales up to the door and hauled them up a wooden ladder to the loft. The ladder must be there among the yellow bales stacked along both sides of the loft. If not, she’d have to kick the mesh wiring out of a window and jump twenty-five feet to the ground.
The ladder was there, half buried in spilled piles of straw. She unlatched the heavy door and slid it open, the metal track from which it hung squealing with the weight.
“Mom?” Jett said from the yard below. “What’s going on?”
“I told you to stay in the house.”
“I heard you scream.
What did you expect me to do?”
“I didn’t scream.”
“Yes, you did. Now quit freaking out.”
“That wasn’t a scream, it was…a shout of dismay.”
“Whatever.”
“Watch out for the goats, they—”
“I shut the barn door so they couldn’t get out. I could tell they were acting weird again.”
“Okay, good. Help me with this ladder so I don’t break my leg.”
She wrestled the ladder over to the opening and slid it over the lip of the floor until Jett could reach the bottom. Once it was securely planted in the ground, Katy swung onto it and clambered down.
Something thumped against the barn walls.
“Head butt,” Jett said.
More thumping. The siding planks quivered.
“Damn, they’re going to bust through.” Katy grabbed Jett’s hand and pulled her toward the house.
“No way, Mom. They’re just goats.”
“You heard the people at the general store last night. The goats are part of whatever’s happening in Solom.”
“So we just board ourselves in like it’s ‘Night of the Living Zombie Goat’?”
“For starters.” Katy reached the gate first and waited for Jett, and then swung it closed. The inside of the barn was a clattering cacophony of horns and hooves battering the walls. The tin roof gave off a metallic echo as if the valley were filled with thunder. A plank broke free from the side of the barn and a gleaming eye appeared in the gap.
Jett sprinted for the porch as another plank broke loose. Katy was right behind her, and she slammed and locked the door when they were both inside. They went to the living room window and parted the curtains just enough to watch. Dirty Harry was halfway out the gap in the siding, his front forelegs suspended in the air and kicking wildly. He thrashed his head from side to side, wallowing the planks loose around him.
Soon he squirted free as another board splintered and cracked, then two more goats followed the filthy billy. They kicked through and then the rest of the tribe poured forth and milled restlessly in the pen. Dirty Harry reared up and planted his feet on the wire fence, pushing it to the ground.
The Narrow Gate: A Supernatural Thriller (Solom Book 2) Page 13
