Sarah recognized him from a couple of his shopping trips to the store, where he bought only cheap staples like rice and dried beans. It was no coincidence that the man had shown up here at the same time as her little trio, and she suffered no doubt that the reason for their mutual summoning was buried in the supernatural skullspace beneath that ragged-rimmed black hat over there.
If the Horseback Preacher even had a brain, that was. Sarah suspected if that skull was laid open with a shotgun blast, it would ooze a stinky, sticky tar. The juice of madness and evil, the sort of stuff that might pump through Satan’s icy hot veins.
She was tempted to give Harmon Smith a load of birdshot, just to test the waters, so to speak, but she sensed the stage wasn’t completely set yet. Harmon had a few other pieces to move into the picture, and he seemed in no particular hurry, as if a full-moon October Sunday night was just the right time for a nice, peaceful gathering of his congregation.
“Shoot him, Sarah,” Sue said from the Jeep’s cab.
“You don’t just up and shoot a man without giving him a chance to explain himself,” Sarah said, keeping the fright out of her voice. “Otherwise the gender would have been wiped out ages ago. Besides, sometimes it’s fun to hear a man open his mouth just to hear what kind of lie comes out.”
“Come hear my truth,” Harmon shouted, although he was too far away to have heard Sarah, just at the edge of effective shotgun range. But he looked to be in range of the man with the cocked arrow, who raised his own weapon. Other weapons were slung over his shoulder, and he sported a sidearm in a belt holster.
“Do these shitbag animals belong to you?” the archer asked the Horseback Preacher, voice trembling with either fear or anger.
Harmon swept out a casual hand to indicate the ridge and the valley below. “All this belongs to me,” the preacher answered. “And other places as well. My road is long and my service has been longer.”
“Drop the double-talk, Weird Dude,” the man said. “If these are yours, you’ve got reparations to pay. Because you trespassed against me.”
“Fences are for the living, Alex Eakins. I go where I want because Solom belongs to me. I’m beyond boundaries.”
Sarah thought the man, Alex Eakins, looked to have an itchy release finger on his notched arrow. “My deed is registered at the courthouse,” he said.
“And mine is recorded in the Book of Knowledge.”
“Are you with the government?”
“I answer to one law.”
“What’s with the riddles, man?” Alex raised his voice, addressing Sarah, Sue, and Odus. “What’s everybody doing up here?”
“We’re here for the same reason you are,” Sarah said.
“To kill some damned goats?”
“They came because of me,” the Horseback Preacher said. “As did all my creatures.”
“Hey, dude, I saw those goats eating you.”
“I provide nourishment to my flock.”
Sarah figured Harmon Smith, back when he was alive, had been touched in the head somewhere along the line, around the time he traded in his Methodist leanings for a belief in fleshly sacrifice. After all those years roaming the back woods to visit various Appalachian communities, killing somebody here and there along the way, he’d probably made peace with his madness.
“I have a message to deliver,” Harmon Smith said, as if he’d looked inside Sarah’s head. He drew his ragged wool coat about him with gaunt fingers. “But we’ll have to wait for the others.”
“Others?” Odus said.
At that moment, Sarah heard a mechanical roar rising from the slopes below and echoing in the cup of the valley. Cars, at least three and maybe more, the rumble of a convoy as the engines whined against the climb. She wondered how many the Horseback Preacher would summon tonight.
Harmon Smith sat on the rock in his yoga position, the snake of a smile bending into a deeper smirk. “My flock,” he said. “All my lovely creatures.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Odus gripped the reins to steady Sister Mary as more people came out from the trees, vehicles groaned up the old logging roads of Lost Ridge, and a few stray goats staggered into the combined glare of half a dozen headlights. It was like some kind of bizarre revival service, with the Horseback Preacher summoning a great congregation.
Odus couldn’t finish the job. It was too big for him. He was unworthy. He was just a drunk who couldn’t hold down a steady job, a dirty horse thief, part of a bloodline that had squatted on these lands since Colonial times without really improving them.
The Eakins boy, the one who owned a piece of property above the Smith place, stood with a taut bow, unsure of which direction to aim his arrow. Loretta Whitley and her son Todd each held pitchforks, looking like frightened members of a mob storming Victor Frankenstein’s castle. Amos Clayton sported a shotgun of a larger bore than Sarah’s, although he seemed uncertain about using it. Kim Deister handled her weapon as if she was dead certain to spill blood.
Odus wondered if they each suffered the same delusion, of being called to kill the Horseback Preacher and finally lay the preacher to rest, bringing peace to the valley. Or perhaps they’d come to offer themselves on the altar of life. Regardless, many heeded the call.
Several more vehicles rolled into the clearing, and the smell of exhaust briefly muted the stench of the goats and the bright metallic odor of human fear. Odus recognized Claude Tester’s Ford pick-up, and a sport utility vehicle pulled up beside it. A Sheriff’s Department patrol car, a Crown Victoria, had been beaten up by the rough road, but the front-wheel drive dragged the car to the peak.
The door on the patrol car opened and a deputy stepped out, half his face blotted by a red birthmark, one hand on his sidearm. Odus figured the deputy would try to take control and restore order, but he seemed as much under the Horseback Preacher’s sway as the rest of them.
“Welcome, all,” the preacher said, standing on legs that unfolded like broken black sticks. In the fuzzy aura of headlights, he seemed almost a silhouette in his moth-eaten black suit. He lifted the brim of his hat and turned in a semicircle so that all the assembled could see his face. The skin was as smooth as hardened wax, and just as brittle. The preacher’s eyes were the bloodied color of a harvest moon just after sundown.
The crowd fell silent, as if each word might be the one that delivered the Truth. The late-arriving goats joined their kind near the flat stone that served as the Horseback Preacher’s pulpit, and they, too, settled into passive and meek positions.
The people who emerged from the woods—Odus saw Marletta Hoyle, the wispy-haired English teacher at the elementary school, carrying an eagle-head cane as if she meant to brain Harmon Smith like a wayward student—drew closer around the stone with an air of expectation.
“We’re not all here yet,” the Horseback Preacher said. “Soon.”
A man concealed in the safety of the forest called out, “Go back to where you come from, you black devil.”
The Horseback Preacher grinned, showing teeth as orange as candy corn. “This is where I came from.”
The unseen man hollered, “You wasn’t born to Solom. The damned Methodists sent you.”
“It was a Methodist who rode into this fair valley all those years ago,” he said, in a voice that would make any preacher, living or dead, proud. “But that Methodist found other, older ways here. The ways of the harvest.”
“We’re God-fearing folk, Harmon Smith,” Loretta Whitley said, slamming the point of her pitchfork handle into the ground for emphasis. “Why don’t you go on about your business and leave us alone?”
“This is my business,” the Horseback Preacher said. “Just as God ordered Abraham to lay his own son on the altar, so did the people of Solom listen when God commanded them to slay me.”
“If God wanted you, why didn’t he take you?” Sarah shouted, surprising Odus with the strength in her voice. “Why do you keep coming back and killing?”
The Horseback Preacher
laughed, a sound as raw as an owl’s screech and as deep as the howling of a red wolf. “We all serve a purpose under God’s sky. The tree is known by its fruits.”
“What about your goats, Weird Dude?” asked the Eakins boy. The way his hands were trembling, Odus figured the arrow would let fly any second. Maybe all of them were waiting to see who would attack Harmon Smith first. Then they could all join in with whatever weapons or talismans they had brought.
Odus realized he still hadn’t decided on a weapon. He trusted that the way would be shown, but now that the moment was at hand, no voice from the wilderness gave him instruction. Through all his false courage, he was alone. As they all were, despite their number.
“Which one of us do you want, Harmon?” Claude Tester called. “We know you need to take one of us, and we know you’ve done passed over a few.”
“I want all of you,” the Horseback Preacher said. “Why do you think I keep returning?”
“You’re just a pesky old buzzard,” Sarah said with a rush of courage. “You pick at the bones of the past. But we don’t need you around no more.”
“It’s not about what you need, Sarah Jeffers. It’s about what’s meant to be.”
“Well, I ain’t meant to be standing on the top of a cold mountain in the middle of an October night, what with my arthritis flaring up.”
“You’re here, though, aren’t you?”
Sarah had no answer for that. She thumbed at the hammer of the shotgun as if debating whether to try a shot in such a crowd. No doubt stray pellets would strike innocent bystanders. But maybe, Odus figured, none of them were innocent. After all, they belonged to Solom, and Solom had slaughtered the Horseback Preacher.
Maybe the years had led to this moment just as surely as the Horseback Preacher’s route brought him back again and again. While the past drew only farther in the distance, the Horseback Preacher was caught in an endless loop, playing out his fate with no hope of rest.
Odus was surprised to hear his own voice, not aware his thoughts slipped to his tongue. “We’re here because we have to be.”
“That’s the same reason I’m here, Mr. Odus Dell Hampton. Because you all need me.”
Odus felt the Horseback Preacher was looking straight through him, and he was sure everybody in the crowd shared the same feeling. Though the headlights must have been burning his eyes, Harmon Smith didn’t squint as he surveyed the creatures gathered on the ridge.
“Let’s kill the fucker,” the Eakins boy said.
The Sheriff’s deputy barked in an authoritative manner. “Hold it right there. Nobody gets killed here unless I say so.”
Odus wondered if anyone was going to point out the irony of killing a dead man, but the assembly merely waited with half-held breath. Amos Clayton raised his shotgun but it was pointed toward the leering moon above. Will Absher, who had once been Odus’s fishing buddy before Odus caught him stealing change out of his truck ashtray, stepped from the laurel thicket carrying a muzzle-loading rifle that appeared to date to back before the Civil War.
Odus wondered if that was the proper means of sending the Horseback Preacher on to heaven or hell or lands in between: a weapon from Harmon Smith’s own mortal time. Odus was getting a headache from thinking over the possibilities, and decided his original idea was the best one. The way would be shown when the time was right.
If the time was right, Odus amended. He’d seen no sign that Harmon Smith was bound to die again tonight.
Sister Mary’s flank muscles quivered beneath Odus, and for a moment Odus wasn’t sure whether it was his own shivering, building until it was transmitted into the horse’s mottled flesh.
Another handful of people leaked from the woods. As James Greene walked into the clearing leading a mule, the Horseback Preacher issued his black grin.
“One more lost child,” the preacher said. “You can come out now.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
“Holy fucking frijoles,” Jett said. “Some of those are our goats. I would recognize them anywhere, especially after they tried to munch me. See that big one, up at the front? With the brown tail? That’s Dirty Harry.”
A figure moved from the edge of the woods, and the crowd parted to let it through. Katy recognized the battered straw hat and the feed-sack face and fear squeezed her heart. “It’s the Smith scarecrow,” she whispered.
“They always come back,” Rebecca said from nowhere. “All of Harmon Smith’s victims.”
The scarecrow figure held a wicked-looking sickle. Its clothes were torn and rumpled, and straw leaked from the folds with each step of cracked and flapping boots. It didn’t quite look human, and its limbs were too long and boneless for a man to be inside the clothing. Katy wasn’t sure whether she should be relieved that Gordon wasn’t wearing the costume or disturbed that the Scarecrow Man was now animated, a legend come to life.
“Told you we should have burned that piece of shit. But maybe it’s not too late.”
Jett unsnapped her seatbelt and was out of the car before Katy could grab her arm. “Come back here, Jett!”
But Jett was already dashing past Sue’s Jeep, reaching the outer circle of goats.
“Damn,” Katy grunted, getting out of the car.
“You almost killed my dad!” Jett screamed, pointing at the scarecrow, which was approaching the Horseback Preacher from the opposite side of the clearing.
The Horseback Preacher’s pale and waxen face turned from Jett to the scarecrow. The grin froze on the preacher’s lips. Katy pushed past Odus Hampton and Sarah Jeffers, noting the shotgun in the old woman’s arms.
The goats stirred for the first time since their arrival, snorting and bleating as the scarecrow stomped into their midst. The scruffy figure stopped before the preacher and hung there as if from an invisible wire, barely touching the dirt.
“You came back,” the Horseback Preacher said to the scarecrow.
The scarecrow’s stitched lips gave the illusion of a wicked smile, but surely that was illusion, because the feed-sack face bore no other expression. The scarecrow hopped over a fat nanny, catching one dusty boot on a curled horn. It regained its balance and leaped—floated, Katy’s mind screamed—onto the stone beside the Horseback Preacher.
“Solom doesn’t need you anymore,” the scarecrow said, in a muffled and rough voice that sounded like it had been ground out of millstone. “We can appease God ourselves.”
“Solom needs me,” the Horseback Preacher said. “Who else can bring the rain and the frost and the wind and the sun? Who else can reap the harvest in the proper season?”
The scarecrow jabbed a gloved finger at the preacher. “You’re not the only one who understands the power of blood sacrifice. You’ve been away too long. The old ways are worthless and Solom needs new ways. The flock is mine now.”
Jett drew to a stop among the goats, about ten feet from the stone stage. Katy dodged around the goats, ignoring their sinister eyes and wicked teeth. Her daughter was more important to her than the whole world, and she was nearly oblivious to the strange assembly of people, many of whom held weapons and were closing in around them, tension thickening in the air like a gathering storm.
Katy sensed more than saw the movement around her: the Sheriff’s deputy reaching in the car and triggering the blue strobes on the car’s roof; Claude Tester dashing through the goats like a drunk running an obstacle course, rousing some to their feet as he thumped against them; their reclusive neighbor, Alex Eakins, raising what looked like a bow and aiming an arrow toward the stage.
“Come now, my flock,” the scarecrow said, his straw hat bouncing with his shouts. “Accept my offering and then you shall feed.”
A large old goat that was the spitting image of Abraham, the one that Katy had killed with her car last year, rose and stomped toward the Horseback Preacher like a repentant sinner headed for the touch of a faith healer. Other goats stood and followed.
Sarah Jeffers moved closer into shotgun range with the careful steps of
the elderly. Odus whacked the paint pony on the flank and urged it toward the granite slab. Other people stirred and drew closer, wanting to be part of the malevolent miracle, some stretching out their hands like New Testament lepers reaching for the robes of Jesus.
Katy reached Jett just as the scarecrow joined the Horseback Preacher as if wanting to hog half the spotlight.
“These are my people now,” the scarecrow said, and Katy now recognized the cruel, commanding tone.
The Scarecrow Man—Gordon’s ghost, she reminded herself—stood a half a foot taller than the Horseback Preacher, the brims of their hats nearly touching.
“Have you people had enough of this preacher’s ways?” the scarecrow shouted, the stitched lips moving against the burlap face in a grotesque parody of language. “Isn’t it time we killed him once and for all, so he can gallop on back to hell?”
“Step aside and give me a clear shot,” Alex Eakins yelled back.
Claude Tester tripped over a billy goat, and the goat snapped at his flesh, teeth sinking into his arm and eliciting a scream. Claude swung the heavy wrench he was carrying as if it were David’s jawbone of an ass wielded against Philistines. The scent of blood seemed to arouse the other goats, because several of them broke out of their languid stupor and sniffed the night air.
Katy looked down at the goats around her legs, relieved that their attention was still fixed on the Horseback Preacher. The goats around Jett twitched their tails but were otherwise docile.
Claude regained his balance and continued toward the stage, holding his arm, blood trickling between his fingers, the bloody wrench clutched in one fist.
Throughout all the chaos, the Horseback Preacher stood with his grave-seasoned hands at his sides, his face calm, his eyes burning like orange and red coals being fanned to life by an inner wind.
The Narrow Gate: A Supernatural Thriller (Solom Book 2) Page 18
