"Maybe he needs something different this time," Odus said. "Notice we both said need. Like we have to serve some purpose."
"And maybe that's why we feel like we're on some sort of mission," Sue cut in, her voice excited, reminding Odus of just how young she was, and how new to Solom and its strange ways. But she seemed to be a fast learner, or else was as loopy as the rest of them. Odus had sometimes wondered if there was some mineral missing from the local water sources, or if some element was too rich in the underground springs, and that it had slowly poisoned the minds of everyone who stayed here too long. After generations, no doubt the madness was inherited. But if cheap bourbon had never clouded his mind for less than a day at a time, then why should plain water have that power?
"Others will be coming along shortly," Odus said realizing how pitiful and small his lone effort had seemed, riding into the mountains like the long arm of justice.
"Well, we ain't serving nothing by just standing here," Sarah said. "I guess we ought to go hear our sermon."
"Where do we look first?" Sue asked.
Odus stroked the lean, sinewy neck of Sister Mary, who nuzzled against the flannel of his shirt. "I think our animal friend here knows the way."
Animals.
Alex Eakins sensed their presence as he threaded his way up me narrow mountain trail. This path had been marked by buffalo and elk, which had walked these ridges in great numbers before European hunters had permanently removed them from the landscape. Bears, bobcats, deer, foxes, raccoons, opossums, and other creatures had used the route in their stead. Mountain lions had once lurked in me branches above, waiting for easy game. Alex could feel the power of all those thousands of feet, hooves, and paws that had passed here before. But mostly, he could smell the raw musky funk of goat shit.
As daylight had failed, he'd relied on the flashlight to follow the goats' trail. When night had finally pulled its dark sheet over the sky, his other, more primitive senses had emerged at their keenest. The air was chilly, ripe, and moist, full of the fecundity of fall's decay. The forest had a taste that lingered with each breath, the acidic tang of oak, the bitter bite of wild cherry and birch, the muddy richness of a hundred seeping springs. His power at detecting scent had also heightened, until he found he could smell not only the goats' spoor, but their fur and their ripe rutting aromas as well. Several times he thought he'd heard dozens of them moving through the unseen trees ahead, and wondered what he would do if he stepped into a clearing and found them all staring at him.
Alex patted the bow. He'd handle it, by the grace of God and the pissed-off fury of a man who had suffered trespassing.
His footing had grown more treacherous, the soles of his boots slick with the offal of those he pursued. The soil, though packed down by the centuries of use, had been scarred and tilled by the goat hooves. They were mountain creatures by nature, browsing the high forests when left in the wild, where their sure footing gave them an advantage over predators. But Alex felt his weapons and determination made him equal to the task.
The degree of the slope leveled out a little, allowing him to catch his breath. Near the peak, the trees thinned and moonlight spilled over the gleaming protrusions of granite. The gray boulders were scarred by moss, worn smooth by the slow work of a hundred thousand rains. The path narrowed as it wound between the rocks, and the hoot of an owl made the mountaintop seem like the last outpost on an alien boundary. Alex didn't contemplate the danger of breaking a leg or falling from a ledge. His path was sure and righteous. Revenge always delivered its own justification.
Below, through a gap in the trees, he could see the few twinkling lights of Solom. The bulb on the porch of the general store cast its pumpkin-colored glow, the center of a constellation of houses. The river road was like a dark black snake winding through the valley, and icy moonlight glinted off metal barn roofs. The trees thinned and Alex came to a clearing. He paused and listened, the wind playing through the dead and dying leaves. A soft murmur arose, like the babbling of a brook. After a moment, he recognized the sound as that of lowering goats, their bleats muted but uneasy. The bastards were just ahead, probably milling around in stoned-out glory, chewing bark and rocks in their advanced stage of marijuana munchies.
Alex slipped an arrow into the Pearson bow and made a stealthy approach. The ridge seemed brighter here, as if a last finger of daylight held a tentative grip. Alex eased his way through a stand of laurels and saw what was in the clearing.
Weird Dude Walking stood in the center, on a large slab of stone. The goats knelt around him, their heads tilted up as if awaiting words of capricious wisdom. Car headlights glared from behind the opposite stand of trees, moths swirling in the twin beams. Three people stood in silhouette among the trees.
Alex drew back the bowstring, intending to send an arrow through the dude's heart.
Weird Dude Walking turned to where Alex was hidden in the vegetation. "Welcome, friend," he said his voice like smoke.
Chapter Thirty-three
A chauffeur for the dead.
Katy guided the Subaru off the highway onto the old logging road, sure that the last bit of sanity had slipped from her, leaving the nerves of her brain raw and exposed.
Why else would she be taking directions from a ghost? Her instinct had been to stay on the highway and make time to Florida, maybe stopping at a Holiday Inn halfway between. Anything that would have put distance between Jett and Solom. But Rebecca's lost voice had connected with her on some primal, feminine level. They were two women who had traveled the same path, though Rebecca's had ended too early and violently.
"Well, Mom, this is just great," Jett said. "You brought me here to get me off drugs and then you drop me right into the biggest bad-acid trip in the universe."
Jett had been reluctant to get back in the car after Rebecca had shared her story. But Katy's determination had convinced Jett they had a duty to obey. It was a little like a stray kitten that comes yowling in hunger around your doorstep. Never mind that this particular feline could remove its head and was built of see-through supernatural stuffing.
"Just hang on, honey," Katy said. She glanced in the rearview. Rebecca was gone but her words came as if she were leaning over the seat: up the mountain.
Up, an ascension, as if the journey had a spiritual as well as physical element. But didn't all journeys? If you thought of life as a road that must be traveled, then you had all kinds of exit ramps, signal lights, pit stops, and, eventually, a vehicle breakdown. Each fork was an opportunity, as the poet Robert Frost had pointed out, but no one had ever figured out if each road taken was a choice or an obligation. If you took the road less traveled was it because you wanted to, or because you were compelled?
Katy decided this road was definitely the one less traveled because the Subaru bottomed out in the ruts, the arcs of the headlights bouncing ahead like light sabers cutting a path through the wilderness. The car was all-wheel drive, which gave it enough traction to navigate the roughest parts of the old road but it groaned in protest as it leaped and jittered like a two-ton electrified frog.
"Mom, what are we supposed to do when we get there?"
"I don't think we're supposed to know," Katy said.
"You just have to get there," Rebecca said suddenly whole again, or the closest she could come to that state.
Jett jerked away, sitting forward in her seat, fighting the tension of the seat belt. "Hey! Don't do that. You're freaking me out enough already without popping out of thin air."
"I'm a ghost," Rebecca said. "What else do you expect me to do?"
"I see years of therapy ahead" Jett said.
"Just imagine the stories you'll have to tell your grandkids," Katy said wrestling the steering wheel as the car lurched over a f en sapling. "If I live that long. Let's not take that for granted yet. We're on a place called 'Lost Ridge' with a headless woman in the backseat." "They're waiting," Rebecca said. "They?" Katy asked. "The ones who are supposed to be there." "What's with the riddles
?" Jett said. "If you know what's going to happen, why don't you tell us?"
David sat in the pickup truck's passenger seat, wiping his face with Ray's orange hunting vest. The interior light was on, and in its weak light David's cheeks were pale and bloodless. Ray's pipe wrench lay in the seat between them.
"You seen him, didn't you?" Ray said. They were brothers. They had fished together, fought together, lost their virginity to Mary Lou Slater 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."
"But he wasn't there."
"No, but he came up while I was digging."
"Dumb-ass. I could have told you that. When they looked in Jesus' tomb, it was empty, too."
"I wasn't good enough, Ray-Ray." 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 bis 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 (hat 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 night 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 scarecrow and the headless goats. Those were signs, 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.
Looking through the windshield, Ray saw a faint glow at the top of the ridge, less than a half mile from the church. He'd hunted that ridge for wild turkey, one of the most elusive creatures ever set loose on God's green earth. The glow was more than just a collected pool of moonlight against the granite boulders. It was a spotlight shone down from heaven, marking a center stage where Ray would meet his destiny. With David serving as witness.
"The path has been marked," Ray said. "Narrow is the gate and hard is the road, but the logging road to Lost Ridge is as wide open as Mary Lou Slater's legs." He punched his brother on the shoulder. "And you get to ride shotgun, just like you did that day we busted our cherries. Whaddaya think about that, Davey Boy?"
David may have answered, but Ray couldn't have heard him over the roar of the engine's kicking to life.
Sarah leveled the shotgun at the Circuit Rider, who sat on the flat boulder with his legs crossed like one of those fat Asian bud-dhas. Four dozen goats knelt before the dead preacher, still and waiting under the glare of the Jeep headlights. That might have been the creepiest part of the whole scene: the Circuit Rider's eyes burned yellow in the light, his waxen face and gaunt cheeks visible under the wide brim of his black hat, and his smile was like a broken snake under his long, thin nose, but goats were never still. They usually twitched and nattered and stomped and kicked, and most of all, they were usually chewing on something. But these animals folded up before Harmon Smith as if they were dosed with tranquilizers and headed for a long drowse. Even the kids among them were motionless and relaxed scarcely wiggling an ear.
Old Saint was tied to a tree at the edge of the clearing, and it was the first time Sarah had ever seen the fabled creature. He was an admirable hunk of horseflesh, if "flesh" was the right word. He might have been a couple of centuries up from the grave, but he looked as solid as the oak that served as his hitching post. The horse nibbled at a patch of moss on the tree, as if he'd already heard the sermon that Harmon Smith appeared about to deliver.
Sue sat behind the wheel of the Jeep, frozen by the sight that had greeted them upon pushing into the clearing. Odus, who had regained Sister Mary's good graces, sat astride the paint pony to the left of the Jeep. The young man who held some sort of bow-and-arrow stood on the opposite side of the clearing, as if he'd found another route to the top of the ridge. Sarah recognized him from a couple of his shopping trips to the store, where he bought only cheap staples like rice and dried beans. She figured it was no coincidence that the man had shown up here at the same time as her little trio, and had no doubt that the reason for their mutual summoning was buried in the skull space beneath mat ragged-rimmed black hat.
If the Circuit Rider 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 bird shot, just to test the waters, so to speak, but she had a sense that 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 Sunday night were just the right time for a nice, peaceful gathering of good company.
"Shoot him, Sarah," Sue said from the Jeep's cab. Young folks were so impatient.
"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 years ago. Besides, sometimes it's fun to hear a man open his mouth just to hear what kind of lie comes out."
"I bring only the truth,'' Harmon shouted, though 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. Sarah saw the man had other weapons slung over his shoulder, and wore a sidearm in a belt holster. He was equipped like a secret agent in a movie that couldn't keep its time period right.
"Do these shit-bag animals belong to you?" the man asked, voice quivering 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 is never done."
"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. I go where I want because Solom belongs to me."
Sarah thought the man's release finger on the bow-and-arrow looked a little itchy. "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?" He raised his voice, addressing Sarah, Sue, and Odus. "What are you guys 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 Circuit Rider said. "As do 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 al
ive, had been touched in the head somewhere along the line, about the time he traded in his Methodist leanings for a belief in fleshly sacrifice. After a couple hundred years roaming the backwoods to visit various Appalachian communities, killing somebody here and there along the way, he'd probably made peace with his madness. The miles were long and the path dusty, but a mission of that kind would require a man to embrace solitude. Even with a horse for company, the Circuit Rider worked alone, abandoned by both God and the devil and shunned by every mortal creature. Then why were those creatures gathering around him like moths drawn to a porch light?
"I have a revelation 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 Circuit Rider would summon tonight.
Harmon Smith sat on the rock in his yoga position, the snake of a smile bending into a deeper smirk. "My children," he said. "All my lovely children."
Jett figured her mom was taking some kind of heavy downer, because she seemed calm as she navigated the narrow, rutted road, looking freaky with her one bruised eye. A couple of times the Subaru had swerved over to the ledge and the valley opened up in a dizzying tableau below. In those moments of vertigo, Jett covered her eyes and imagined what her obituary would look like. She figured her obit would have the same problem as most people's: it would be way too short. Plus it would leave out the cool stuff, like her acid flashbacks and the ghost in the backseat.
Rebecca's ghost had a part in this whole cluster fuck called Solom, and Jett had come to accept that Gordon's goats were evil and the man in the black hat wanted her for some very special and creepy purpose. Solom was the biggest bad-acid trip of all time, and she and Mom couldn't escape until the drug wore off. She was aware that most people used the term supernatural to describe such occurrences, but to Jett they seemed completely natural. In a world gone crazy, why shouldn't the dead and the living occupy the same space? Why shouldn't a ghost guide them up a mountaintop in the dark of a Sunday night, even though Mom had been determined to flee this place for the comparative sanity of Florida's crime, congestion, and pollution?
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