The Hung Preacher dangled in full glory before her. But even now he was shimmering, fading back into his holy realm beyond this earth. Linda felt her heart leap with uncertain loss.
Archer clutched his hands together and edged toward the dogwood tree on his knees. “Don’t go, oh sweet prophet,” he pleaded, his voice almost childlike.
The Hung Preacher mouthed the word more a final time, the dead face contorted in rage. His arms fell limp at his sides, and he drifted into invisibility.
Archer stood and ran to the spot beneath the tree. He reached his arms out and hugged the empty air to his chest. “Come back,” he said softly. He had a lost look on his face.
Linda had never seen Archer appear in any way vulnerable. It made her heart soar with joy. She could be of use to him. He did have needs. He needed her.
Archer had given her so much, opened her eyes to the follies of Christianity, saved her soul. The least she could do was comfort him now in his time of trouble. At last she had something to offer. She touched his shoulder. His coat was so hot that it almost burned her fingers.
He spun. Linda drew back, her hand covering her mouth in shock.
Archer’s face contorted as if the bones of his skull had broken and the fragments were trying to push through his skin. His forehead flattened and elongated, the lower part of his face funneled together, the nose broadened over the mouth. His eyes widened, and a fierce golden color ringed the black, marble-sized pupils. Archer’s eyes glittered, capturing the moonlight and turning it into green and yellow diamonds.
A low, animal growl came from his throat, and triangular ears pricked up at the top of his head. Whiskers like silver wire sprouted from the sides of the black-gummed mouth. The eyes narrowed, cat-like, and Archer fell onto his hands.
No, not his hands. PAWS.
Archer’s suit ripped, and reddish-brown fur sprouted over the preacher’s flesh. The creature stepped forward, out of Archer’s shoes, its thick claws curling into the ground through the socks.
A mountain lion.
David had told her stories about them, her father had hunted them, and the Appalachian settlers used to fear them so much that they became the stuff of fireplace scare stories. But all the mountain lions were dead.
She had never doubted that Archer could work miracles. Now, with this undeniable proof, she gave the last of herself to him. She fell before the great cat and bowed her head, trembling, awaiting the mighty gnash of its teeth or the swift stroke of its talons, whatever method Archer deemed most fitting. Salvation was all about sacrifice, Archer had told her, and she was willing to make the ultimate one.
Jesus divided loaves and fishes and walked on water. Big deal. Jesus had never been anything but Jesus. This proved that Archer was better, the true savior, the real Son of God. This proved that Archer was master of the atoms and cells and all that other invisible stuff that made things what they were.
The animal growled again, a low rumbling noise in its chest. It moved forward and sniffed at Linda. Despite herself, she shivered as warm, moist breath passed across the back of her neck.
Please make it not hurt, Archer.
The mountain lion waited. The sky was a shade lighter now, a deeper blue from the east pushing away the black. The forest was still, hushed in that moment just before dawn when the diurnal and nocturnal animals changed shifts. The great cat’s soft breathing was the only sound besides the pounding of Linda’s heart.
The cat moved away, toward the still-unconscious sheriff. Linda felt a small surge of disappointment, but also a rush of relief.
So I’m to be spared. I promise to have a purpose if you only let me live, God. You need me here to serve Archer, to help him do whatever he needs done to save the world. To beat Jesus and Satan forever.
She watched as the cat lowered its head toward the sheriff’s neck.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The house was dark when Linda drove up. That meant the boys were asleep. She hated to neglect them the way she had been, but Archer needed her more than the boys did. A servant should have only one master, Archer always said. And God was a jealous God.
She had passed the body that had been lying on the side of the road. Some of the other parishioners had probably passed it as well, though all would murmur to themselves, “There must be great sacrifices.” Linda recognized David’s jacket draped across the body. So her husband had been out nosing around.
She hoped he would stay out of the way. If David left her alone, maybe Archer would spare him. David had married into the Gregg family, not earned the birthright with blood. The Days weren’t one of the old families, so they owed no tribute to the red church and had no iniquities to pay for.
She got out of the car and took a breath of fresh air. The smells of the farm, freshly tilled soil, hay, and chicken manure always comforted her. That was one of the ironies of her life: she’d always been afraid that she’d wind up trapped in Whispering Pines, yet she had never really felt comfortable anywhere else, especially in California. Not even Archer’s wonderful presence there could totally erase her homesickness.
The moon was low in the sky, three-quarters full over the uneven mountain ridges. The deep indigo of the night and the scattered pinpricks of stars were beautiful. She would miss this world. It was hard to believe that a better one existed, but Archer said he had a place for her waiting in heaven. The real heaven, not that mock-up illusion that the Christians peddled.
Harps and white robes. What a laugh.
She went into the house, careful not to make any noise. She would go in and kiss the boys good night and make sure the blankets were tucked under their chins. Her hand fumbled along the wall until she found the light switch, and she flipped it up.
“Well, well, well . . .” David said. She jumped back against the door.
“. . . if it ain’t the whore of Babylon,” David finished. He sat on the couch, still in his work clothes, eyes alert. His rifle was across his lap.
“What in the world do you think you’re doing here?” she whispered, as loudly as she could without waking the boys.
“Taking care of my own.” His eyes narrowed as he patted the gun barrel. “Somebody’s got to do it.”
“Get out.”
“Not while that . . . that McFall bastard is on the prowl.”
“Leave Archer out of this.”
“I wish I could.”
“You think this is all about you? This doesn’t have anything to do with you, so just mind your own business.”
David watched her as she stepped away from the open door and eased toward the kitchen. Only his eyes moved. The rest of him remained rigid. “What’s going on up at the church, Linda?”
“Nothing. Just getting services going again.” Linda looked away to escape his gaze. “How are the boys?”
“Oh, they’re just fine. Ain’t nothing like being scared to death and having their mother taking up with a touched-in-the-head bunch of midnight worshipers.”
“Those are good folks. You know most of them. They’re our neighbors.”
“Yeah, at least the ones who are still alive.”
“You saw her?”
“Yeah.”
Linda’s eyes grew moist. She had not allowed herself to mourn for Donna. But now that David had reminded her, she couldn’t fight the mortal weakness of tears.
“Boys saw her, too.” David’s voice was sharper now that he saw he could cut her with his words. “Lucky for them, they didn’t find out who it was.”
Linda leaned against the jamb of the entryway that led into the hall. The guilty had to die. But why did it have to be Donna? Her cousin had never really done anything wrong, except maybe committing a little adultery. Was Donna’s heart really that tainted, just because she liked to love other women’s husbands?
“That makes three,” David said. “One every night. Just like in California.”
Linda slammed her fist against the cheap paneling, and the trophy heads on the wall shook. “Why di
dn’t you just let me stay in California?” she said, louder than she wanted to.
“You’re going to wake the boys.”
She crossed the room and stood over him. “Why didn’t you leave me out there? I was happy. Maybe for the first time ever.”
David took his hands from the rifle and cupped them over his knees. “Because you turned your back on the Lord. And on me. I couldn’t let Archer McFall and that bunch rot your soul.”
She snorted, her nose red from crying. “Soul? What do you know about having a soul?”
“I know what’s right. And Archer ain’t right. He’s the devil. He’s worse than the devil. At least the devil plays by God’s rules, and knows good from evil. Your precious preacher seems to get them a little mixed up.”
“You’re crazy, David.”
“I ain’t the one praying to a murdering monster.”
“Archer has nothing to do with the killings.”
“Sure he don’t. Mighty big damned coincidence, wouldn’t you say? Archer goes to California, people die hard. Archer comes back to Whispering Pines, people die hard.”
“Sometimes the innocent must die-”
“I got news for you. None of us are innocent.”
Linda shook her head. “You don’t get it, do you? I’ve been praying and praying, asking God to throw some light on you so you’d see that Archer is the real savior. But I guess that ten-dollar-a-week Jesus is all you’ve got the brains for. Serves you right to follow him to hell.”
David stood suddenly, the rifle thumping to the floor. He glared down into her eyes, but Linda wasn’t afraid. There will come great trials, Archer said. She would be strong. Her faith would not waver.
“You can follow that fool,” David said between clenched teeth. “But I’ll be damned if you’re going to take the boys with you.”
“That’s right. You’ll be damned,” she said, angry now that David was taking her greatest possessions, the greatest tithe she could make to Archer. The boys were her ticket into Archer’s heart, into the kingdom of God.
David bent and picked up the rifle, holding it across his chest between them. “Then let the son of a bitch come and get them. But he’ll have to come through me first.”
David’s eyes were hard. She knew how stubborn he could be. He had worn that same expression in California, when he came into the temple after Archer had disappeared. He’d carried her out to his pickup, then drove back to the mountains, stopping only for gas and food or when exhaustion forced him to nap for a few hours. Now, as then, Linda realized just how much she loved him. But love was a trick, a scare tactic that led to desperation. Archer said that earthly love was just another vanity, didn’t he?
Love in its way was a false idol. Love was as hollow as a golden calf- all shiny and bright on the outside, and nothing but bad dark air on the inside. Love gave you nothing, but took every little thing that you had.
Human love was an altar that you crawled on and then asked to be slaughtered.
Love was Jesus’ greatest lie.
She would be strong.
“I hate you,” she said, her chest cold, her heart coated with the iron will that Archer had instilled.
David held up a hand, glanced at the front door and then the window. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
David thumbed the rifle’s safety off and tilted his head to listen. “Shh.”
“It won’t come here,” Linda whispered, trying to reassure herself. Archer would send his heavenly agent for the boys. But he’d promised to wait until they’d become part of the fold. That would ensure their place in Archer’s eternal glory, and secure her place by Archer’s side.
Something rattled at the front door.
It can’t be. Tonight’s sacrifice has already been made.
In the silence, the ticking of the clock was like raindrops on a coffin.
David put his cheek to the gunstock and waited for whatever was outside to enter.
Can you hear Him aknocking?
Ronnie pulled the covers over his head, but the suffocating darkness made his fear grow instead of disappear. Mom and Dad had stopped arguing, so maybe they had heard the noise, too. Tim was snoring, but Ronnie hadn’t been able to close his eyes since they’d arrived home. He was afraid that if he slept, he’d dream about the black shape that flapped across the sky like a jaggedy kite.
And now it was here, the Bell Monster, the scary thing from the church that had wings and claws and livers for eyes. It had followed them home, and Ronnie knew—knew—that it had come just for him. Because he had sinned in his heart, and the devil had sent a demon from the pits of hell, just the way Preacher Staymore had threatened in Sunday school.
The claws clicked on the glass. Ronnie chewed nervously on the blankets and a stray fiber got in his throat and made him cough. The clicking stopped. The monster had heard him. In the stillness, Ronnie listened to the wet mist of its waiting breath.
Ronnie tried to pray. The preacher said that the Lord forgave all sins and protected the children. If God had control over the heavens and the earth, then surely He controlled the demons as well.
Dear Jesus, please forgive me for my sins of the heart. I know I’ve suffered bad thoughts, and I haven’t been saved in three weeks. But I want YOU in my heart and not the thing with livers for eyes. Please, please, get me out of this and I promise I’ll get saved every week from now on, even if Preacher Staymore’s breath smells like rotten fruit. Amen.
Ronnie opened his eyes under the blankets. It was working. The wet noises went away. The prayer had sent the demon back to hell, or maybe back to the red church.
Thankyou thankyou thankyou, O Jesus—
The clicking started again, and Ronnie felt as if the door to his heart had slammed shut. Across the room, Tim rolled over in his sleep. If the Bell Monster came in through the window, it might get Tim.
And maybe if it gets Tim, it will leave me alone.
As soon as he had the thought, his face warmed with shame. Didn’t Jesus say to love thy brother? Or was that one of the Ten Commandments? Either way, he had suffered another sin of the heart, and Jesus would punish him even more.
The brave thing to do would be to go out and face the monster. To let the thing rip him open and gnaw on his sinning heart, the way it had ripped up Boonie Houck and probably Zeb Potter and that person on the side of the road.
Mom said that Archer McFall said that sacrifice was the way to heaven. If Ronnie sacrificed himself, maybe Jesus would take him instead of letting the demon drag him down to the hot place. But Archer McFall was weirder than any preacher Ronnie had ever heard of. Who else would hold services in a haunted church? And the memory of those strange hymns that Mom and the others had been singing made him shiver with strange, sick pleasure.
The claws were on the windowsill now, exploring the crack at the base of the window. Ronnie couldn’t remember if the window was locked. Mom had raised it yesterday to let in some fresh air, and Ronnie went right after she left and latched it again. But maybe she had unlatched it again while he was asleep.
Footsteps came down the hall, heavy footsteps. Dad’s boots. Ronnie pulled the covers off his head and sat up, braver now that Dad was coming to the rescue. He couldn’t help himself. He had to glance at the window.
Through the curtains, Ronnie saw the Bell Monster pressed against the glass. It was moist, changing shape as he watched, the lesser gray of its mouth parting in some kind of anger or longing.
And he saw the eyes.
Livers.
Wet, drippy, slick, and red.
Eyes that looked right into Ronnie’s, that seemed to crawl down his eyeball sockets and into his brain, to reach from his brain to his heart, as if to say, You’re mine now, you’ve always been mine, can you hear me aknocking?
Then the door to the bedroom crashed open and light from the hall spilled across the room and Dad’s long shadow filled the doorway.
“Get down,” Dad yelled, and Ronnie fe
ll back against the pillows as the first shot exploded from Dad’s rifle.
Glass shattered as the percussion echoed off the walls.
Dad yanked the bolt back, reloaded, and fired again.
Gun smoke filled Ronnie’s lungs, and though he couldn’t smell it, he could taste it, as acrid as car exhaust on his tongue.
Tim woke up screaming. Mom ran into the room and hugged him, pausing for a moment to look at the window.
Dad hurried across the room and looked through the broken panes. Jagged glass framed him, sparkling in the moonlight like sharp teeth.
“Is it gone?” Mom asked. Tim cried into her chest, his shudders shaking them both.
“I don’t see it,” Dad said, the rifle at his shoulder.
“Did you kill it?” she asked.
“Who the hell knows?”
“Will it come back?”
Dad turned from the window and glared at her. “You tell me. You’re the damned prophet.”
Prophet? thought Ronnie. Like Ezekiel and Abraham and all those? Was Dad committing a sin of the heart?
Dad bent over Ronnie’s bed. “You okay?”
Ronnie nodded.
Yeah, I’m as okay as I’m ever going to be, considering that the thing with livers for eyes is after me because I’ve sinned in my heart, and now it’s after YOU, too. And my nose hurts and you and Mom are fighting again and I’m not going to cry, I’m not going to—
Dad sat on the bed and wiped Ronnie’s tears away. “It’s gone now. You’re safe. I won’t let that thing get you.”
“P—promise?”
“Yeah.”
“Will you stay here?”
Dad tensed, then looked at Mom. Ronnie felt their hatred in the air, a black electricity, as mean as the Bell Monster and almost as scary.
Tim had stopped crying, and now whimpered a little into the folds of Mom’s shirt. Ronnie knew his little brother was waiting for what would happen next. They both knew what was at stake. If Dad left again, they would be helpless against the Bell Monster. And despite the promises, Dad might just be angry enough to leave them all, to go somewhere in his truck and drink beer and do other things that he’d never done before.
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