“Him?” Kelvin asked, scooting forward on the swing.
“Mom,” Jett said. “Maybe Kelvin should go.”
“No way,” he said. “You make me sit through a church sermon and now you want me to leave when things finally get interesting?”
“You’ll think we’re weird,” Jett said to him.
“Y’all got attacked on this farm by a guy dressed up in scarecrow rags,” Kelvin said. “And that big fire on the mountain where those people died…don’t worry, I know what I was getting into.”
“Not completely,” Katy said.
“This is about the Horseback Preacher, isn’t it?” he said.
“How did you know about that?” Odus asked, easing closer to the steps.
“Dude, I’m from Solom.”
They all looked at one another. Katy had no response to that. There was really nothing to say. You were either from Solom or you weren’t.
“All right,” Odus said. “Whatever Harmon Smith wants, he’s taking it tonight. So you’d better get out of the valley for a while.”
“No,” Katy said. “This is my farm now. I’m not running.”
Jett rose from the swing and stood beside Katy, then took her hand. Katy squeezed back in gratitude. No matter what happened, they really were going to face it together.
Kelvin looked at Odus for a moment. The handyman scratched beneath his collar as if annoyed and unable to focus his agitation. “What the hell,” Kelvin said. “It’s either this or watch boring old football on TV.”
Katy wasn’t sure she wanted to be responsible for the young man, but he was old enough to know the score. And he apparently knew a lot more than he was letting on. Katy wondered how much of his interest in Jett was due to a desire to protect her. Romance took many twists and turns, but that was better than a lot of more-selfish roads he could have taken into her daughter’s heart. “Okay, Kelvin, if you’re in, you have to know the whole score. So you can run now instead of later.”
“I ain’t afraid of no ghost.” He stood alongside Jett, a head taller than her, strong and determined. They were like a line of defense, and Katy felt just a little safer.
“You’re the hardest-headed woman I ever did meet, Miss Katy,” Odus said. “This ain’t even about you. It goes way, way back. You just happened to plop down right in the middle of it.”
“So what?” Katy said. “I’m here now. Who says I don’t belong here?”
Odus glanced back at his Lexus as if considering climbing in and getting as far away as possible. In his Levi’s overalls, plaid work shirt, and boots, he was an unlikely match for the luxury sedan. He seemed to realize how foolish he looked. “Ah, hell with it. That ride’s not big enough to hold a fishing pole, anyway.”
He marched up the steps and Katy stepped aside to make room. He walked straight to the sweaty pitcher of iced tea that sat on a little wicker table and poured himself a glass. He tossed it back and drank half of it in three big gulps, then wiped at his mouth with a shirt sleeve. “Ahhh. Not as good as Kentucky mash bourbon, but it’ll do.”
“We thought about asking Elder David to perform some kind of exorcism here,” Katy said.
Odus eyed Jett up and down as if she’d suddenly grown into adulthood right before his eyes. “I heard you got baptized this morning.”
“Yeah,” Jett said. “It was…freezing. And he was watching.”
“The Horseback Preacher,” Kelvin said. “I saw him on the video.”
“When did you watch that?” Jett said.
“While you were changing clothes in the church. I watched it three times.”
“That’s stalkerish.”
“Can you blame me?” he grinned. “You were in it.”
Jett grinned back and leaned against him, cute as a kitten. Katy’s heart simultaneously soared and ached for her. I have to be strong for her.
“He told her, ‘You’ll know him by his fruits,’” Katy said. “Sounds like a Bible verse.”
“Fruits of the spirit,” Odus said. “Preacher Mose was telling me about it.
“These preachers,” Odus said. “They’re tied in with it somehow. Just like they were a century ago. Preacher Mose of the Free Willers is afraid of him, your preacher David Tester sees this as a personal test of faith, and the Rev. Edmisten of the True Lighters…well, he wants to be Harmon Smith. He’s the one that’s offering up these goat sacrifices. I’m hoping the Horseback Preacher will take one of them and call it a good day’s work for this go-round. But this is his farm. He might be ready to come home for good.”
“What do we do now?” Jett asked.
A goat bleated plaintively in the barnyard, like a siren song to a hidden god.
Odus eyed the sky and rested against the wall, sliding down until he was seated on the porch. “We wait.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
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 remains.
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 visits from the Circuit Rider.
The shovel blade finally met a soft resistance. He hadn’t cut a sharp rectangle into the ground the way gravediggers shaped them to receive a coffin. David’s hole was sloped and uneven, showing the roots and gravel that had slowed his path through the clay. The wood was soggy, but preserved somewhat by the clay, and David had to chew through it with the shovel blade. He wouldn’t have to clear the entire lid of the coffin to find what he sought. He rammed the shovel down time and again, the sound of the blows baffled by the walls of dirt. The wood gave way, and David twisted the blade to widen the opening.
A foul odor arose from the voided coffin, like rotten eggs scrambled in formaldehyde and served up with slices of spoiled pork. David pulled a bandana from his back pocket and wrapped it around his mouth and nose, tying it behind his neck. He was reaching for the shovel when the sodden wooden planks gave way beneath him.
He plunged knee-deep into the gap, the stench rising around him in putrid waves. His boots splashed in unseen muck. He clawed at the clay banks, trying to pull himself up, but his movements triggered a tumble of loose soil from the rim of the hole. Clods rained down and bounced off his shoulders.
“You looking for something?”
The voice came from above and below at the same time, as if piped in by some insane and remote sound system. He looked up, and the Horseback Preacher was framed against the blue afternoon sky, sitting astride his legendary horse. His back was to the sun, like the lone hero of a western, throwing most of his face into shadow. David had a sense that even if that shadow were removed, no real face would be there, just a vague haze of mist and misery.
David sank another six inches, the jagged wood scraping against his thighs. He grabbed the shovel and spanned the broken top of the coffin with the handle, hoping to halt his descent. He didn’t want to die this way, another one of Harmon’s victims. Even if it was predestined by God, David fought the urge to surrender. He could imagine his congregation whispering about his failure, he pictured the men casting votes for the next elder, he could see the church abandoned and forlorn, good for nothing but the winter nests of rodents.
“I was looking for you,” David said, his voice muffled by the cloth over his mouth. He braced against the shovel handle even though he was now waist-deep in the cool morass. The stench had grown even stronger, despite the protective bandana.
“You got your hold-up mask on,” Harmon Smith said. “You fixing to rob a bank? Or just a grave?”
“I needed to see how many pieces of you were buried in my churchyard.”
“To see if you got your fair share?”
“You’ve got three graves.”
“And I’ve got no use for any of them,” Harmon said. He twitched the reins and Old Saint took a step forward, knocking a bucket’s worth of dirt around David’s waist.
David could feel things moving around his legs, loathsome and slithering creatures. He tried to tell himself that an underground spring must run beneath the graveyard, carrying water from the creek, and the creatures were salamanders preparing for a long winter’s sleep. But they were too big to be salamanders. And salamanders didn’t have teeth...
It’s all predestined.
But that didn’t make this any easier, or less scary.
David looked past the gaunt face and potato-beetle eyes of the Circuit Rider to the faint rags of clouds above. Somewhere up there, God sat on His almighty throne and watched it all play out, even though He already knew the ending.
Must be kind of boring, even when the entertainment was as rich as watching a preacher die in a deep hole while Harmon Smith made ready to haul off another soul? How many times would God play out this little scene again? How many times would some Solom native play puppet in Harmon’s little stage show? Jesus Christ would come again, but Harmon Smith would come back not only once, but over and over and over.
“I tried to follow Your ways,” David cried, slipping another few inches into the mire. He could no longer move his feet.
“Well, that’s mighty obliging of you, Elder David. A shame your ancestors didn’t walk that path.”
“I wasn’t talking to you, you sorry bastard.”
The Horseback Preacher laughed, a rattling ululation that silenced the birds in the trees surrounding the graveyard. Even Old Saint blew a moist snicker. He lifted a bony hand, one that was like parchment wrapped around a bundle of broken sticks. His index finger aimed at David as if preparing to shoot fire or a lightning bolt or a magic spell.
“No respect for a fellow man of cloth,” Harmon said. “That’s what caused such grief for the people of Solom. If they hadn’t given in to jealousy and coveting and rotten fruits of the spirit, all of us would have lived in peace. But they had to go and kill me. And I couldn’t allow that to be the end of it. Neither could He who gives life.”
David tucked his forearms over the shovel handle and lifted. He thought he was gaining ground, though it felt like one of his boots was sliding off. Something bumped against his knee and sent a sharp flare of pain up his leg.
“All the people who hurt you are long gone,” David said between tight lips. “Didn’t the Methodists teach you to forgive?”
“Oh, I gave up the Methodist ways. That’s why people got so riled. I went back to the older religions. If you want God to grant increase and to bless the orchards of your life, then you offer Him blood. Fair enough trade. Life for life.”
The dark morass sucked at David’s lower body, a moist, hungry thing. He wondered if this was really the way God wanted his life to end. What if he let go of the shovel and slid on down into the suffocating mud?
“Did you find what you were looking for down there?” Harmon asked, adjusting the brim of his hat. Old Saint kicked at the loose dirt, triggering another small avalanche onto David’s shoulders.
“I wanted to see if your grave was a doorway to hell. Or if the Primitive Baptists had earned their piece of your sorry corpse.”
Harmon Smith tipped his hat. “Well, I’ll leave you to your business, then. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
He whipped the reins against Old Saint’s neck, and the horse reared and whinnied, the front legs coming down with so much force that David feared the bank would give way and the horse and rider would fall on top of him. The horse wheeled and the hoof beats thundered off across the graveyard. David slipped another couple of inches into the mud and was losing his battle to brace himself with the shovel handle. How could God allow a true believer to die in someone else’s grave?
Something slithered into his remaining boot, then up his pants leg, scraping rough scales against his bare skin. David tried to kick, but the mud held his leg firm. In his struggles, he lost his balance on the shovel handle and slid into the mud until it was past his waist. The pressure on his abdomen made breathing difficult. He thought of offering a final prayer, but if God had already decided, as the Primitive Baptists believed, then it would be a waste of air.
He was just about to let himself slip down into Harmon Smith’s tainted coffin when a snake fell across the back of his neck. He slapped at it, frantic, and found it was coarse and fibrous. It wasn’t a snake.
It was a rope.
“He would let you die that way, but I won’t,” the Horseback Preacher said. “After all, the Good Book says to bless those who curse you and do good to those who hate you.”
David grabbed the rope. The Horseback Preacher tied his end to the saddle horn and nudged Old Saint so the horse backed away, chest and flanks flexing as it fought for purchase in the graveyard grass. The walls of the hole gave way in large chunks, but David wrapped the rope around his wrists and shielded his face from the barrage of dirt.
He thought his arms would be ripped from his shoulder blades, but his body slowly pulled free of the mud and the two feet of loose dirt that had piled around him. He slid on his belly up the slope of clay and then laid gasping and shivering on the grass.
The rope fell beside his face in a rattlesnake’s coil.
“A good tree cannot grow bad fruit,” Harmon Smith said. “And a man cannot serve two masters.”
“What now?” David managed.
“I’m going home.”
Once more, the horse’s drumming hooves faded into the distance, leaving David weak and cold, and, beyond the numbness, maybe a little angry. Whether at himself, or Harmon Smith, or God, he couldn’t be certain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
God had chosen the wrong Tester.
Ray had always known it, and that was the thing that had driven him from the Primitive Baptist church. God had dropped the bucket in that matter. David had a silver tongue, there was no denying that, but when it came to sheer gumption and balls, Ray had his younger brother beat seven ways to Sunday. True, the congregation made the decision on choosing a new church elder to deliver their sermons, but hadn’t God determined all things before He even set the whole blamed shooting match in motion?
Ray had driven back to the church to see if his little brother was cowering on his knees instead of hunting down the Horseback Preacher. He arrived to see David crawling around on his hands and knees, mucked up to the eyeballs and looking like he’d been waltzed through a carnival house of horrors. Ray fought the impulse to turn around without stopping. But blood kin was blood kin. Besides, it wasn’t David’s fault that God had goofed.
After all, this was the same God who had set the Horseback Preacher loose in the world. If all things had a purpose, then God was basically the kind of guy who enjoyed pulling wings off flies, and He made sure there were enough piles of shit around to draw those flies.
Ray got out of the truck and ran to his brother’s side, helping him to his feet. David swayed unsteadily back and forth, and Ray had to use both arms to support him, staining his own clothes in the process. David’s cheeks were pale and bloodless.
“You seen him, didn’t you?” Ray said. They were brothers. They had fished together, fought together, were baptized together. They hadn’t kept any secrets, not until the day the congregation went for style over substance eight years ago.
“Yeah,” David said. “I looked in his grave like you said.”
“But he wasn’t there.”
“No, but he came up while I was digging.”
“Dumbass. I coulda told you that. When they looked in Jesus’ tomb, it was empty, too.”
“I wasn’t good enough, Raybee.” David had fallen back to using a childhood nickname, proof that he’d been shaken like a rat in a terrier’s jaws. “I had the chance to defeat him, or at least give myself and save others, but I wasn’t worthy.
”
Ray bit back his grin of pleasure. Maybe God hadn’t blown this thing yet. Maybe the Big Guy had set up the domino chits so the real favorite son could knock them down.
He patted David on the shoulder and gave him the kind of manly squeeze that said, Yeah, that’s some rotten possum you got served, but eat it for your own good.
“I’ve got this feeling,” Ray said. “A feeling that maybe God has other business for you. That’s how you got to look at it. Maybe you’re the fish He threw back in so you could grow up big and strong and feed the multitudes.”
David nodded, shivering a little. Mist rose off his damp clothes as the autumn chill settled around them.
“Maybe it’s my turn,” Ray continued. “God passed me over the first time because He had this job for me. That explains the goats. They were signs calling me, and I was too red-eyed blind to see them. I’m the one, Davey Boy. I’m the one.”
David was drawn up and beaten, the way he’d been after wetting the bed at age five. David had to sleep on the bottom bunk, not because Ray was older and therefore deserved a higher station, but because there was the real risk that urine would dribble off his plastic sheet to the bed below if he’d been on top. David was in an agreeable mood, Ray noted, because he’d seen the light of truth. David wasn’t worthy, and that meant Ray was in the driver’s seat again. He could hardly wait until next Sunday’s service, when David announced his resignation and Ray stepped up to win their vote as the new elder.
Elder. As if that name for the church leader weren’t self-evident. It probably wouldn’t hurt the congregation to eat a little crow for going with style over substance, as if practically every lesson in the Bible didn’t warn against arrogance, pride, and hypocrisy.
“He said he was going home,” David murmured.
Ray was so wrapped up in his fantasies that he didn’t know what David was talking about. “Home?”
“Harmon Smith. He’s going home.”
Ray scanned the forested mountain where the preachers of old had killed Harmon Smith. “Up on Lost Ridge?”
The Preacher: A Supernatural Thriller (Solom Book 3) Page 15
