He bent over and snorted the right line into one nostril, tilted his head back, and sniffed. The coke draped a frozen sheet over the base of his skull and his heartbeat accelerated. He bent and tooted the left line into his other nostril, his nose and cheeks going numb. He wiped up the stray dust with one pinky and rubbed the dregs of the coke around his lips, then sucked his pinky clean.
Yeah. Walkin time. Let’s see what the fuck Solom’s got to offer a man who’s as high as a god and as lowdown as the Devil.
He was at the door before he’d even thought about standing, his thoughts racing, trying to stack the images of Jett’s story: goats, ghosts, some guy in a black hat, a scarecrow. Now that he was jumped up, the whole thing seemed ridiculous, yet appealing in a strange way. Like some kind of cryptic mystery.
He didn’t believe in the supernatural. Even though he’d read Stephen King like everybody else on the planet, he couldn’t quite get his head around Katy’s haunting. More likely his ex-wife was being dramatic in an effort to win sympathy from Gordon. That was just like her, making a play for attention. Maybe to divert Gordon away from Jett’s problems, or to pull that selfish “me-first” business that had put paid to their marriage.
Mark walked fast, down the hard-pack road and past the Happy Hollow office. A number of other cabins were tucked away in the woods, all offering the occupants privacy without ever letting them lose sight of the Pepsi machine in front of the office. Mark came to the entrance at the highway, and then decided to cut across the road instead of making straight for the general store.
The river beckoned, a jeweled, frothy dragon, chuckling as it slithered around rocks. The air was wet with the smell of mud and decaying vegetation, and goldenrod shimmered along the banks. The back of Mark’s throat tingled, and his feet seemed to be hovering two inches above the ground with each step.
A little trail among waist-high weeds marked what was probably someone’s favorite fishing hole. Mark looked up the road and saw a couple of pick-up trucks parked in front of the general store’s deck. A man in a denim jacket was using the pay phone. Mark headed down the trail, beggar’s lice sticking to his trousers, a stray blackberry vine grabbing his sleeve. He scarcely felt the briars that stitched his forearm.
At the river’s edge, the mud gave way to smooth pebbles. The water was clear as glass, though its motion distorted the colorful stones along the bottom. A fish raced by, sparkling in the diffracted sunlight before disappearing in a deep, shadowed pool beneath the branches of a drooping sycamore. Nature was a trip. He’d have to get out more.
He was about to walk back to the road and see if the phone was free when something splashed upstream. An old concrete dam spanned the river fifty yards away, though it was more holes than anything. A decrepit mill sagged at one end of the dam, a wooden waterwheel dipping into a gray concrete channel. Most of the wheel’s paddles were missing, so it didn’t turn steadily. Instead, it juddered and spun a few feet at a time, wobbling like a giant tire with loose lug nuts.
“Help!” someone shouted.
The sound had come from the same general direction as the splash. The white noise of the rushing water confused Mark, or maybe it was the Peruvian flake banging pipes in his brain. He started up the bank toward the sound. That’s when he saw the boy attached to the paddle wheel. It looked like his clothes had snagged and he was pushed under the water. Mark waded into the river and fought against the current.
The wheel turned, lifting the boy, who looked to be no more than ten. He was dressed in ragged overalls and a flannel underwear shirt, and as the wheel brought the boy higher into the sky, water poured from his bare feet. The boy was silent, but had seen Mark and raised a weak, desperate hand toward him. Mark plowed through the knee-deep water. The coke had kicked in enough that the river seemed no more powerful than the spit of a garden hose, but time had stretched out so that Mark didn’t seem to be making any progress. The wheel took another hesitant roll and the boy was now at the top, his back arched against the metal framework.
As Mark watched, realizing he should have run up the road and then down to the dam, the wheel moved again, and the boy descended head-first toward the water. His dark hair hung like a dirty mop as he struggled to free himself. He grabbed one of his overall buckles as if to unfasten it, but his fingers weren’t strong enough to fight his weight against the strap.
Mark was twenty yards from the boy now, sticking to the shallows near the overgrown banks, kicking water into his face as he ran, knees high like an old-fashioned fullback. The boy’s head went under and the wheel seemed to hesitate, as if chocked by the boy’s head pressed against the bottom of the channel. The wire-and-wood frame shook as the boy’s legs flailed in the air. Then the wheel turned again, dragging the boy fully under and pinning him on his belly.
The water was deep near the base of the dam, the edges rimmed with stonework. Mark had to swim the last ten yards, though the current was much weaker where the force of the water spent itself straight downward. He reached the dam and grabbed a chunk of shattered concrete, pulling himself out of the water. He couldn’t tell if it was an effect of the cocaine or the angle of the sun off the water, but the drops that poured around him seemed to each contain a tiny rainbow.
The wheel still juddered in place, hung up because of the boy lodged at its lowest point. Mark pulled himself over to the channel, scrabbling for purchase on the slick and jagged concrete. He reached the wheel, wondering if the boy had already drowned, wondering how he could fight thousands of gallons of water, wondering if he’d failed somebody again. Just as he reached the wheel, it issued a moist, rusty groan and turned. Mark braced himself, expecting to see the boy’s slack face, eyes shocked wide in death.
Instead, the wheel was bare, save for a few wooden blades dangling from the metal frame.
Mark looked into the river below. The boy couldn’t have plunged past without Mark’s seeing. He eased along the top of the dam and examined the upstream edge of the wheel. No body.
Shit. Cocaine didn’t give you hallucinations. Not unless you were in the screaming pink pain of serious withdrawal.
Mark scanned the road that ran parallel to the river. Through the trees, the general store stood with its green metal roof, white siding boards, and black shutters. Farther upstream was the wooden covered bridge marking the highway that led to Titusville. An old house, its windows broken, huddled at a high bank of the river, boards warped where past floods had touched it. Solom seemed abandoned, as if everyone had driven away for the season and locked up their buildings.
Mark pushed his hair out of his eyes. The water upstream looked too deep to wade, and he was too weary to try it with his sodden clothes. He’d have to navigate the top of the dam, walk to the other side of the river, and push through the weeds to the covered bridge. The wheel clicked forward a few feet, like a roulette given a half-hearted nudge.
That’s when Mark looked at the window of the millhouse. In the shadows stood a man in a hat, which might have been black like the one Jett had described. Mark couldn’t discern any features, but he was struck with the notion of being watched. The man was motionless for a moment before slipping into the deeper darkness of the ruins.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sarah usually closed at six in the evening on Sundays, figuring the second shift at the Free Will Baptist Church would bring in a few customers on the way, those who needed a cup of coffee, Moon Pie, or giant Dr. Pepper to fuel them through the service. She couldn’t understand why some Baptists felt the need to go to church three or four nights a week. She always thought it would be simpler just to do a little less sinning than to more begging forgiveness. But a dollar was a dollar, no matter the stains on the soul who spent it.
She’d had only two customers in the past hour, loud Yankee fly fishermen who prowled the aisles and hadn’t bought so much as a pack of Wrigley’s, though they’d held up a number of the more esoteric items and laughed in that slick, mean way they taught up in New York. Too many
tourists, and Yankees in particular, had a way of waltzing through her store like it was a museum, as if none of the merchandise had price tags. Like the whole shebang was there for amusement and not to help feed and clothe a poor old hunched-over Appalachian Jew.
So shutting down early had crossed her mind, because a feeling was creeping up from the soles of her feet that tonight was going to be a doozy. It was almost like the Earth itself was sending up bad vibes, that the billion-year-old rocks and mud of the world’s oldest mountains sensed something unclean was walking over them. If tonight was going to be a doozy, and the Circuit Rider had found his horse, then going home and worming deep under the quilts sounded like a good idea. Dollar or no dollar.
Sarah was closing out the cash register, figuring to turn over the sign on the door (from “Come On In—We’re Broke!!!” to “Missed You—And Your Money, too!!!”) even though it was only four o’clock. Word had gotten around about her fainting spell, so any regular who dropped by would understand. As for the tourists, like those who rented out the cabins on the hill, let them haul their big white rumps into Titusville and mingle with the Tennessee welfare moms in the Wal-Mart.
She was counting the twenties—not enough of them to suit her—when the screen door spanged open and a man thrust himself through. He was soaking wet, one shirt tail hanging out, the knees of his trousers scuffed. He was missing one shoe, and the toe of his sock make a spongy slap with each step. The man’s eyes showed white all around the iris, as if a doctor had just given him a surprise proctology check-up.
Sarah recognized him from earlier in the day, when he’d stopped in for lunch with a young girl. She’d seen the girl around before; you could hardly miss her, the way she waltzed around tarted up in lipstick and black eyeliner. The girl’s red-headed mother came in from time to time, buying eggs, baking powder, and flour, and occasionally asking kitchen advice. The redhead had married Gordon Smith, a fact that had been the talk of the community back in June. This man, though, didn’t seem to fit that family picture.
He was probably playing fisherman and had walked himself out of his hip waders after a sip too many. Or maybe he’d rented a canoe from Sue Norwood and taken a spill down by the island park along the first stretch of white water. He didn’t look hurt, but his face was blanched the color of the provolone cheese she kept in the dairy case. Might be one of those drugged-out meth junkies she’d read about, who seemed to be everywhere these days, cooking up the stuff in their car trunks. She didn’t know what meth was, exactly, or what it did to people, but she wouldn’t be surprised if it led you to fall in the river.
“You okay, mister?” She slipped the twenties under the cash register in case he took a notion to rob her. The shotgun beneath the counter was loaded and handy, if need be. She’d made certain of that after the Circuit Rider’s recent visit to her store. Not that buckshot would do any good against something two hundred years dead, but it was the comfort of the thing that mattered.
“I don’t have any change,” he said. He didn’t talk Yankee, but he sure wasn’t local.
“Well, normally we take credit cards, but I’m just about to close.”
“No, I mean—I need to use your phone.”
Their eyes settled on the store’s rotary-dial phone, a battered black relic that looked like something from a 1950’s government office. Sarah liked the sound of a good, solid ring, not the little kitty puttering of those modern phones. A woman of years could hardly hear such a contraption. Most people carried their phones in their pockets these days, like it was virtue to never spend a minute totally alone. The pay phone out front barely earned its keep these days, and the BellSouth man had threatened to take it away until she convinced him it was a proper companion to an old country store.
“That’s not a public phone,” Sarah said, annoyed that a drenched-to-the-gills outsider had the nerve to barge in and take over the place. Like it was a museum built for his amusement and convenience. Sure, he’d tipped well after his earlier meal, but that was hours ago.
The man put his palms flat on the counter and leaned forward, water dripping from his chin to dot the scarred maple. He panted, his breath ruffling the cellophane in the jar of cow-tail candy perched by the register. He didn’t smell of liquor, so that ruled out the “drunk fisherman” theory.
“I have to report a drowning,” he said.
“Oh, goodness, why didn’t you say so? Whereabouts?” Sarah grabbed the phone and put her finger in the last hole on the dial, ready to spin out 911.
He waved behind him, toward the old dam. “In the mill. A boy got caught in the water wheel.”
Sarah was halfway through the spin when she lifted her finger away. “About ten? Wearing scrub overalls and a long john shirt?”
The man’s eyes grew even wider, near the size of pickled eggs. “Did you see him, too?”
“I seen him,” she said. “Not lately, though.”
He reached to grab the phone from her, but she slapped his hand away. “Hurry,” he said. “There might still be a chance—”
“That was little Willet Rominger you saw,” she said. “No need to hurry on his account. He’s dead.”
“I didn’t see his body. He just went under. He might be somewhere downstream.”
“He ain’t downstream.”
“Please, ma’am.” His hands were shaking, and he sniffed a rope of snot back into his head. Sarah was sticking with the “meth junkie” idea, but meth wasn’t what had triggered the man’s horrible ghostly vision.
“He went around and around the wheel, didn’t he?” Sarah said, calm now, no longer afraid of him. Instead, she felt pity. Solom’s dead were meant for the eyes of Solom’s people, not those of outsiders. The Circuit Rider must be whooping up some god-awful bad juju if just any-old-body was able to see his victims.
The man pushed the wet hair from his eyes, stepped back, and looked out the store windows, as if checking to see if the dam were visible from the counter. He shuddered, and whether it was from the cold or the shock, Sarah couldn’t say. She doubted if the man could, either.
“I didn’t see it this time,” Sarah said. “I saw it nearly 20 years ago.”
The man faced her again, one eyelid twitching. “The boy?”
“I wasn’t the first, and you ain’t the second,” Sarah said. “Willet makes an appearance every now and then. Along with the rest of them.”
“The rest of who?”
Sarah had lost him. She should have known better. Solom kept its secrets, and outsiders never understood. “Where’s the girl? The one you ate lunch with?”
“My daughter? She’s back home.” The man choked on that word “home” like it was a sour green gooseberry.
“Keep her there. Now, be on about your business.”
The man lunged forward and grabbed the front of her cardigan sweater. A speck of spit landed on her cheek as he spoke. “If there’s some kind of danger, you need to tell me.”
“Hey, mister, ain’t no call for that.” Sarah dug her fingernails into the man’s wrists and squeezed until he looked down. He let go of her and studied his palms as if stigmata had appeared there.
“Sorry,” he said. “I—damn ...”
“Things are walking,” Sarah said, pity filling her. If the redhead was his ex-wife and the little tart was his daughter, that meant they were now part of Solom, since they’d married into the Smith clan. They’d be bound up in whatever business the Circuit Rider had in store this time.
“Harmon’s things,” she continued. “The ones he’s taken away. They come back when he comes back. It’s best for you to make sure your daughter stays in tonight, and get yourself as far away from this valley as you can. This ain’t your business.”
“If my daughter’s involved, I’m not going anywhere,” he said.
“Suit yourself. But I can’t help you.”
“She was telling me about a man in a black hat.”
“Harmon Smith.” Dark blotches formed across Sarah’s vision,
drifting like jagged thunderclouds. She wouldn’t black out again. She had nothing to fear. Harmon didn’t want her, not this time, or he would have taken her the day he walked into the store.
“I think I saw him down at the dam. Where is he?”
Sarah braced herself against the counter, fighting off the dizziness. “Everywhere. In the trees, in the river, in the barns. The best thing we can do is lay low until he rides off for the next stop.”
The man shook his head. The river chill had sunk in, and his lips quivered. Steps clattered across the wooden porch. The door opened and Sue Norwood entered the store, a rock climber’s pick-ax in her hand.
“Are you okay?” Sue asked Sarah, lifting the pick-ax as if she knew how to use it.
The man raised his hands, palms showing in a submissive gesture. “Hey, I was just leaving.”
Sue looked at Sarah, who nodded. Sarah was bone tired, eighty years of standing up to gravity and worry and fright finally coming down square on her shoulders. Who cared if Harmon swooped in and reaped her? One less Jewish shopkeeper in the world wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference in the big scheme of things.
The man eased around Sue, the toe of his sock slapping like a wet fish against the floor. After he was gone, Sarah sagged into the little rocker she kept behind the counter.
“This is my town, too, even if I’ve only lived here for a few years,” Sue said. “I’m going after the Circuit Rider.”
“You and everybody else,” Sarah said. Though she had a feeling they wouldn’t have to do much seeking. Harmon Smith had found his horse, and that meant he’d be making the rounds in due time.
***
David Tester’s hands were callused from years of landscaping, but a blister arose on the pad of his left hand before he reached Harmon Smith’s coffin. As the shovel bit deeper, the soil became darker and gave off a rank, swampy smell. If Harmon had been buried for over two centuries, then the coffin was likely rotted away. The grave might contain nothing but a few bones, given the lack of preservation techniques employed during Smith’s era. But that was wrong, too, thinking of Smith as belonging to one era, when every generation in Solom earned a visit from the Circuit Rider.
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