The scarecrow-Gordon, she had to remind herself-stood half a foot taller than the Circuit Rider, the brims of their hats nearly touching.
"Have you people had enough of the Circuit Rider?" Gordon shouted, the feed-sack mouth puffing out with the air of his words, the stitched lips moving in a grotesque parody of language.
"Get out of the way and give me a clear shot," Alex Eakins yelled back.
Ray Tester tripped over a billy goat, and the goat snapped at bis flesh, teeth sinking into his arm and eliciting a scream. Ray swung the heavy wrench he was carrying as if it were Samson'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, noting that their attention was still fixed on the Circuit Rider. The goats around Jett twitched their tails but were otherwise docile. Ray 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 Circuit Rider stood with his grave-seasoned hands at his sides, his face calm, his eyes burning with the orange and red of coals being fanned to life by an inner wind.
"What has this preacher ever done for you?" the scarecrow/ Gordon called to the crowd.
"Is that you, Gordon?" someone said from the edge of the crowd.
"I am the son of Ceres, the daughter of Diana," he answered, in that bombastic, lecturing tone that should have been enough for Katy to call off the engagement. But she had wanted to give Jett a happy, stable home, one far removed from the troubled past, the drugs, the divorce.
All those ordinary failures now seemed so laughable when compared to this supernatural tsunami of danger and death.
Katy reached Jett and tried to pull her back, but Jett stood transfixed. Though it was difficult to tell where the bone-button eyes of the scarecrow mask were focused, she felt burned by his stare, which was brighter and hotter than the beams of the collective headlights. Katy could have sworn the black yarn of the lips arched into a sneer.
"Ah, my sweet little scapegoats," Gordon said. "Come to offer yourself to the old gods? Come to give yourself to the soil so that Solom may be fruitful and multiply?"
The scarecrow put a hand on the Circuit Rider's shoulders and forced him to his knees. "See how hollow this supposed man of God is? A straw man, you might say. Ha-ha-haa-haaaaa."
Ray scrabbled the final few feet to the granite slab, pushing past complaining goats. "Take me," Ray said. "I'm the chosen one."
"No," Odus said, guiding his horse among the capricious herd. "This is my mission."
"Get off that horse and come back here," Sarah called to him. "I can't get a good shot with so many people standing in the way."
To Katy, the woman sounded almost grateful to have an excuse. Any of them could have attacked the Circuit Rider if that was their intention. He was exposed on the rock, presumably blinded by the glaring lights, unless his vision was guided by unnatural laws. Those at his back wouldn't have to worry about being seen and marked by whatever wrath he might unleash. It was as if the people, like the goats, were under some sort of spell, transfixed despite their hatred of the entity that had brought such pain and suffering to their community.
"See?" Gordon said, towering over the Circuit Rider. "Look how frail is this creature of the night."
Gordon yanked off the preacher's hat, exposing the wiry gray hairs that curled over the pale, crenulated skull. Gordon sailed the hat into the herd of goats, where it caught on the horn of one and hung as if tossed atop a coatrack.
"Look upon his wonder and be disappointed," Gordon said. "Know him by his fruits."
Katy wanted to bring Jett back to the relative safety of the Subaru, but found herself as rapt and awestruck as the rest. This close, she detected not only the electric aura of the Circuit Rider, but Gordon's mad energy that created its own special and strange gravity as well. She wondered if that danger-tinged charisma had been what had attracted her to him, but the thought sickened her.
"What's he doing and why doesn't that policeman stop him?" Jett said.
"Because the policeman's human. Like the rest of us."
Ray tried to climb up onto the stone slab. It was slick with September dew, and his wounded arm prevented him from gaining solid purchase in the crevices. He lodged one boot into a crack and was about to haul himself up onto the impromptu stage when one of the goats in the front row, whose brown facial fur made a raccoon mask, lurched forward and snagged his other leg, tugging on the cuff of his jeans. Another goat rose, this one with crooked beige horns, and began sniffing his calf. "Help me, David," Ray called.
A hissing thwack pierced a hole in the night, and the goat with the beige horns let out a bruised bleat of shock. The feathers of an arrow tip jutted from its rib cage, just above its heart. It staggered back two steps, wobbled, and collapsed as if its legs were pipe cleaners.
"No!" Gordon moaned, as though the injury had been inflicted on him instead.
"The fucker munched my stash, man," Alex said. "That was private property. My property."
The goats near the one who had fallen began sniffing the warm corpse. One poked out a tentative tongue and licked the wound. The flock began bleating and lowing, giving off restless snorts, several of them rising.
"Come on, Jett," Katy said. "I don't trust these goats."
"I don't trust anything right now."
A grizzled billy goat, one eye made milky by blindness, nipped the air a couple of feet from Katy's leg, brown teeth clacking with menace. She eyed the distance back to the Subaru. The rock slab was closer, but that would put them within Gordon's reach. Gordon pointed his sickle at Alex, the other hand still pressing on the kneeling preacher's shoulder.
Words issued from behind the scarecrow's mask: "You should forgive those who trespass against you."
"Maybe you should take better care of your fences," Alex said, notching another arrow. "Gordon."
"I'm not Gordon. I am he who gives tribute."
"With other people's lives," Odus said, guiding his paint pony through the restless goats.
"Gordon's gone squirrel-shit nutty," Jett whispered to Katy.
"I think we all have," Katy whispered, just before the first shotgun blast ripped through the forest night.
Chapter Thirty-five
Sarah didn't quite mean to squeeze the trigger. At least, that's what she told herself. But an old woman's reflexes, like all her physical responses, tended to decline with every go-round of the sun. A shotgun was a great weapon if you needed to rake down a thief from close range, but the wide pattern of the bird shot all but guaranteed a few stray pellets.
A few bleeding goats might not be a bad bonus, she rationalized, as the echo of the gun's report slapped off the granite boulders and rolled through the trees. Blue-gray smoke swirled in the Jeep's headlights, and the strong bite of cordite drowned out the moist humus smell of the mountain and the stench of the goats. The frail bones of her shoulder ached from the recoil.
She'd meant to take down those goats nearest to Ray Tester, because they looked ready to chomp down on his legs. But what really flipped her was seeing the goat that had raided her store. She didn't usually carry a grudge, and believed all God's creature's had a rightful place in the world. But this was the same world that held monsters like the Circuit Rider. And it seemed Gordon Smith had gone crazy, too.
She'd never quite trusted the man, and it wasn't just because of his bloodline. Whenever he ate a sandwich and took coffee at the store, he always calculated the tip at exactly 15 percent. He'd do the division longhand on the back of his ticket and round it to the nearest penny. Sarah could only guess what that scrawny, redheaded wife of his had gone through. Now he'd slipped into some sort of Halloween getup and had taken to killing folks.
The gunshot temporarily restored the peace that had prevailed when they had first stumbled onto the gatheri
ng. But it was a false peace, inflicted through shock and surprise. In that frozen moment, Sarah had time to absorb tiny details just as the night exploded: Sue Norwood opening the driver's-side door of the Jeep; Odus sitting tall on the bareback horse and looking around like a rustler wondering where to direct the stampede; the man with the hunting bow taking aim at either Gordon or the Circuit Rider; Ray scrambling onto the flat slab of stone and crawling toward the Circuit Rider; Gordon in his scarecrow outfit reaching a gloved hand to the Circuit Rider and pulling that sickly forehead back, exposing the dead preacher's pale and knobby throat; the goats rising to their feet as if heeding some silent command; and David Tester running into the midst of the stirring animals, either chasing his brother or making the same obsessed dash toward the Circuit Rider.
Sarah broke down the barrel and thumbed out the warm, spent shell, reaching in her blouse pocket for a fresh round.
Katy sensed the change in the animals after one of their number had fallen. The night was electric, charged with rage and confusion.
Ray leaped for the Circuit Rider and threw his arms around the preacher, shielding him just as Alex launched another arrow. Katy heard the wet snick of the arrow as it buried itself between Ray's shoulder blades. Ray's wrench bounced off the stone with a dull clink. He gave a soft grunt of surprise, hugging the preacher, looking up into his face as if craving a final benediction. The preacher showed no emotion, just stared back with those beetle-black eyes.
Ray's words were so weak and strained that Katy was sure no one heard them besides herself, Gordon, Jett, and the Circuit Rider.
"I'm the one," Ray said, smiling, dying, slumping against the preacher with the arrow jutting from his back.
"Get him!" Gordon yelled, again pointing his sickle at Alex. At first Katy thought he was addressing the crowd but the goats turned as one and sniffed the air in Alex's direction. The goats gave out cries and squeaks as they moved. Alex backed away, but the goats nearest him had broken into a trot. There was no way he'd make the relative safety of the woods. Even if he did the surefooted goats would have an advantage on the rough terrain.
The horn of a passing goat grazed Katy's wrist, laying open the skin.
"Shit, Mom, you're bleeding," Jett said.
Jett wasn't the only one who noticed. A long-bearded nanny paused bucking against the river of goats and turning toward Katy. It sniffed snorted and kicked up its back legs, clicking its hooves. Then it struggled against the seething tide of animals and headed for Katy as if she had been dipped in honey and oats.
"The rock," Katy said gripping Jett's hand so hard her own fingers ached.
The nanny negotiated the rumbling herd better than Katy did because she was busy dodging bobbing horns and stomping hooves. The nanny was gaining, and Katy was still twenty feet from the rock. And even if she reached the rock, what would Gordon do to her? Cut her with his sickle, or toss her to the meat-eating monsters that somehow obeyed his perverted commands?
The decision was taken from her as a passing goat rammed her in the stomach, knocking the wind from her. Above the high-pitched whining in her ears, she heard Jett scream, and a hundred hoofbeats drummed their death march. Then she was lifted into the air, yanked as if by the ray of a flying saucer or the crook of God's swooping shepherd's staff. She blinked the lime-colored sparks of pain from behind her eyes and found herself flopped belly-down over the back of Odus's horse.
"Where's Jett?" she managed to whisper, breath like wet cement in her lungs.
"Can't reach her," Odus said. He slapped the horse on the thigh and said "Come on, Sister Mary, let's ride out of this stampede."
The horse whinnied and reared jostling Katy, and for a horrifying split second she thought she would be hurled from the horse and back among the milling goats. But she grabbed the horse's neck and held on as they waded through the herd which was thinning now as the stragglers made their way toward Alex.
Another shotgun blast sounded and two goats bleated squeals of pain. Katy saw Jett at the edge of the rock, climbing up, finding handholds on the mossy surface, gaining her footing.
Gordon let go of the Circuit Rider, who was still in the grip of Ray's corpse. He grabbed Jett by the hair and yanked her against his ragged clothing. "I'll teach you to leave me," he said.
"We have to save her," Katy said to Odus.
"These goats are crazy," Odus said. "Look. They're eating people."
He was right. Alex had reached a beech tree and scrambled up into the safety of the branches. Two goats butted the tree trunk, but its girth was several feet in diameter and the tree barely shook. A man screamed as another shot rang out, and Katy looked around to see the deputy, a goat latched onto his leg, another biting the hand that held his pistol. A wounded goat shivered at the officer's feet, thrown into spasms by a head wound.
The old lady who owned the store had dropped her shotgun and climbed onto the hood of the Jeep, and several goats tried to clamber up the bumper. An old man in a leather jacket, whom Katy didn't recognize, leveled his shotgun and blasted toward the Jeep, sending pellets scattering across the metal and driving the goats away. The old woman cursed and gripped her knee.
A woman and a younger man with pitchforks stood back to back, jabbing at the goats that had them encircled.
"We're all going crazy," Katy said.
"We were already at crazy," Odus said. "We've gone way past that now."
The goats had lost their communal goal and scattered into the night, chasing the people who had been summoned to the surreal revival. Their bleats became guttural cries of hunger. Katy saw one digging its teeth into the neck of one of its brethren that had fallen victim to a gunshot.
Odus guided Sister Mary toward the logging road urging the horse into a trot. But Katy kicked free, falling to the ground twisting her ankle as she rolled. She struggled to her feet in the rough, tilled soil where the goats had romped. Goat manure streaked the knees of her pants, and the smell was enough to make her vomit. But she blocked that out, along with the screams of the people and me unnerving cries of the goats. She focused on the rock, where Gordon stood holding Jett, the eerie scarecrow figure seemingly seven feet tall under me moldy straw planter's hat.
Katy limped toward the rock, passing the preacher's trampled hat. A goat trotted past her, a dripping chunk of what looked like potted meat clamped between its buckteeth. "Let her go, Gordon," she said, trying to summon her bitch voice, one she'd packed away in the wake of her divorce.
"Come here and I will," Gordon said. "It's you that I wanted anyway."
Katy's gaze shifted from me sackcloth head to the Circuit Rider's implacable, waxy face. "Is this why you won't die?" she said to the preacher. "Is this why you kept coming back all those years?"
"It's not what I want that matters," he answered through thin, bloodless lips.
Katy reached me edge of me rock and me Circuit Rider kneeled forward, reaching down a hand mat looked the color of rancid soap. She couldn't climb the rock with her injured ankle. She took me preacher's hand, a chill coursing through her as if a dozen icy needles had penetrated her palm. Despite his gaunt, slack flesh, the Circuit Rider pulled with the strength of a draft animal, and Katy found herself lying alongside Ray Tester's cooling body.
"You need to kill somebody," she said to the preacher, "then do it and get it over with. But that means Jett goes free, right?"
Gordon laughed a sound that somehow echoed the goats' ravenous bleats. "You're praying in me wrong direction, my dear. I'm the one who chooses the sacrifices now. I'm me child of God's favor."
Jett peered out from under her black bangs, eyes wide with fright. Gordon put me tip of the sickle against her neck.
"You killed Rebecca," Katy said, knowing it sounded dumb, as if one murder mattered in a mountain valley where dozens had come to wicked ends.
"She wanted me to kill her," Gordon said from inside his scarecrow mask. "She gave herself up for the greater good. Because she wanted to belong to me forever. To Solom f
orever."
"Then why did she bring us to… oh."
The clop of horse hooves sounded on the packed dirt, and Katy thought it was Odus, come to make a rescue attempt. Instead, she saw Rebecca, sitting sidesaddle on Old Saint. The vehicle headlights cut through both her and her mount's bodies as if they were gauze. Rebecca had no head, and Katy thought of Ichabod Crane in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
"Here's your horse, honey," Rebecca said, but the words didn't come from the body. Instead they came from the head, which floated just beyond the edge of the granite slab. It wore the preacher's black hat, angled to one side in a parody of fashion. Around her, the goats continued their hunt for human meat.
"I wasn't ready then," Gordon said. "I had to grow my power. More sacrifices, more goats killed, more tribute paid to those who bless this land."
Gordon moved the sickle away from Jett's throat and waved it at the Circuit Rider. "Just like you did," he said to the preacher. "Only you killed reluctantly."
"I just want to rest," the Circuit Rider said. "Put my three graves together and you can have Solom. And all my other stops."
Gordon kicked Ray's limp body. 'They're still willing to die for you. Use it."
The Circuit Rider shook his head. "My rounds are over."
"You weren't fit to carry the Smith name."
"None of us are worthy."
Katy eyed the distance between her and Gordon. Even with two good legs, she wouldn't have been able to reach him before he cut either her or Jett. And a man who could order goats to kill and ghosts to do his dark deeds probably had few limits, anyway. But she had to try. Damned if she would give herself up as Rebecca had.
Not to mention her daughter.
She thought of the promise she'd repeated to Jett so many times that it had become a mindless mantra: we'11 get through it together.
She just hoped it wouldn't be death's door that they would go through, side by side, hands held in fear of the waiting unknown.
The Farm Page 38
