“He did it because it was his destiny,” Katy said, raising her voice over the roar of the straining engine.
“You’re freaking me out, Mom,” Jett said.
“Destiny,” Rebecca said. “That’s as good a name for it as any.”
“So, what’s your deal?” Jett said to the ghost. “Are you stuck here or something? Why don’t you get to go to heaven or wherever?”
“I belong to Solom now.”
“Mom, maybe we’d better find a place to turn around. I don’t think I want to die here. It would be a real bitch to be stuck in Solom forever.”
“We’re not going to die,” Katy said.
“The Horseback Preacher might have other ideas.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Alex had a passing knowledge of tracking and hunting, and although he was mostly a vegetarian, he figured being able to round up meat for the dinner table might be a handy survival skill when the Republicans and Democrats finally toppled the Statue of Liberty.
So he’d learned the basics, and had even killed some small game with his bow and arrows. Of course, he was a crack marksman. That was required of any member of the anti-government militia, even if you were only an army of one.
So Alex encountered no trouble following the goats’ hoof prints through the woods. Even his sister, a Boston lawyer, could have followed this trail—the fuzzy beasts had practically trampled a superhighway through the underbrush. The carpet of leaves on the forest floor was scuffled, branches hung broken and nibbled, and of course there was the occasional pile of plum-sized goat turds. In his haste, Alex hadn’t paid close attention to the ammunition he’d loaded into his shoulder bag, but he figured he carried at least six rounds for each of the goats. Plenty enough lead to teach the Satan-faced little fucks not to mess with his property.
The trail followed the ridge. Wherever they were going, they were making a beeline for high ground. Alex understood the chemical processes by which marijuana played with the synapses. Marijuana required heat before the cannabinoids were activated, so you had to smoke it or cook it in brownies or oil for the pot to do its stuff.
But maybe goat neurology was different. Maybe goats could get stoned just from the raw green leaves. That seemed to be the only reason they would break into his shed and gobble up good bud that would net twenty grand on the street.
Unless they were smart enough to know what the pot meant to him.
Maybe they were part of some secret government experiment, too. He’d read about how the spooks trained dolphins to carry explosives toward enemy ships and trained chimpanzees to infiltrate bunkers. No doubt the government was going gangbusters in their underground labs, splicing all kinds of stuff together, putting microchips in the heads of animals, developing entire battalions of remote-controlled killers.
Alex stopped and adjusted the strap of the submachine gun, the Pearson Freedom bow tucked under his armpit. Maybe the goats were fucking with him on purpose. Maybe they were trying to ... well, to get his goat. The FBI had found out about his stash and his weapons and his tax evasion, and instead of coming up and knocking on the front door with a warrant, they’d concocted the most screwed-up, expensive, and outlandish revenge possible. Yeah, that was what the U.S. of A. was all about.
Well, revenge worked two ways. Alex patted the Colt Python at his side. The ripped-up ground was moist, the mounds of goat shit fresher as he climbed the slope of Lost Ridge. He was gaining on them, even with darkness settling in. And if the universe was as just and fair as Alex always believed it was, especially while brain-basted on a thumb-sized joint of God-green smoke, then he’d have his revenge before the sun surrendered to the night.
Maybe Weird Dude was some sort of upper-level federal agent, in the National Security Agency, even. Shadow Ops at its most devious. The Establishment. Alex realized maybe that particular line of paranoid delusion was probably a bit too extravagant, but it pleased him nonetheless.
An engine roared in the distance and more headlights bobbed in the valley below. Probably the SEALS. He expected choppers at any minute. He’d better get this mission finished before reinforcements arrived.
Alex shifted into a double-time jog, eager to catch up with whatever was awaiting him at the top of the ridge.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Odus thrashed through the laurels, calling for Sister Mary.
He was mostly sober now, the braving effects of the Old Crow dissipated, leaving in its place a painful veil of fog. Some shining knight he’d made, some backwoods hero. His image of a tin-star stud riding into a dirty town with six-guns blazing was reduced to a hung-over hillbilly who’d lost his ride.
The autumn darkness didn’t settle over the sky so much as it seeped up from the cool, ancient mountains. The black stuff of night had crawled around the rude and rounded chunks of granite, out from between the roots of old-growth ash and beech and hickory, up from the hidden holes in world.
Now it knitted its single, all-consuming color in a smothering strait jacket, there at every turn, ready to match every breath, flowing into Odus’s lungs and claiming its rightful space. Odus had never felt so much like an invader on this planet as he did now. In fact, he’d never given it any thought at all.
He’d hunted these peaks, sought squirrels and wild turkey and the occasional black bear, but he’d always come here as a conqueror. Now, entangled in its inky depths, his bearings lost, he recognized the futility of laying claim to something as old as the Appalachians.
No human owned these mountains. If anything held deed to these stony and storied lands, it was creatures like the Horseback Preacher, those not bound by time and space and the sad, small worries of the mortal.
Unseen branches tore Odus’s hands and waxy leaves slapped his face. He rested for a moment, squinting through the canopy to the scattered stars and the comforting cast of moonlight above.
“God, if you’re up there, now would be a great time to lend a little hand here,” Odus said, the prayer sounding stupid even as it left his lips. Why should God listen to a man who hadn’t stepped foot in a church in two decades, who hadn’t cracked a Bible since Sunday school in Free Will Baptist church, who hadn’t felt a single spiritual twitch since the day Preacher Blackburn dipped his head into the chilling waters of Rush Branch and pronounced him washed free of sin?
However, his prayer may have been answered, or at least coincided with an earthly event, which amounted to the same thing when you dropped the fancy cloth and got down to brass tacks.
Needles of light broke through the branches ahead. This light was filtered by the leaves, but was a solid force, pushing at the suffocating darkness and promising hope. Odus worked toward it, his footing more sure now as he could make out the black lines of trees and didn’t have to feel his way through the vegetative maze.
He heard voices as the light grew stronger, and he recognized one of them: Sarah from the general store. What business did a seventy-year-old woman have on top of Lost Ridge at this time of night? Of course, Odus could ask himself the same question, and maybe the same answer would serve for both of them.
“Hello,” he shouted through the trees.
“Who’s there?” Sarah said, her voice snapping like a soggy twig.
“Odus.”
“Well, come on out of there and count your blessings that I didn’t let loose with some buckshot first. It ain’t wise to go sneaking up on a lady in the dark.”
“I wasn’t sneaking, I was walking,” he said.
“Is this your horse, then?” came another voice, and Odus placed it as belonging to Sue Norwood.
Guided by their voices and the intensifying glare of car headlights, Odus threaded through the edge of the laurel thicket and stood in a little clearing at the end of a logging road. He stepped into the comforting cone of light and shielded his eyes. Sister Mary stood by the parked Jeep, snorting, head twitching up and down, and Odus couldn’t shake the feeling that Sister Mary was laughing at him.
“Wel
l, she’s not rightly mine,” Odus said. “I kind of appropriated her for a mission.”
“See,” Sarah said to Sue, who was holding Sister Mary’s reins. “I’m not the only one who’s been touched in the head. The whole blamed place goes crazy whenever Harmon Smith rides into town.”
“It seemed like the thing to do at the time,” Odus said. “I mean, when you hear a higher calling, do you stop and ask questions, or do you just follow that voice?”
“You follow it,” Sue said, and Odus could see the pick-axe in her hand, brandished like a crusader’s sword.
“That little pig-sticker won’t do a thing against the Horseback Preacher,” Odus said, then noted the shotgun cradled across Sarah’s arm. “I reckon a 20-gauge won’t, either.”
“Oh, yeah?” Sarah asked. “And what exactly do you have in your bag of tricks there that’s supposed to kill a dead preacher? A Mason jar of holy water? A slingshot and a silver dime? An empty liquor bottle?”
Odus’s face flushed. He’d tossed the Old Crow bottle into the hollow of a rotted-out stump, but first he’d briefly considered its potential as a spiritual battle-ax. After all, drinking was practically his religion. Now the idea seemed as silly as Sue’s and Sarah’s weapons of choice.
“Okay, own up to it, we’re poking in the dark with a limp stick,” he said. “What now?”
“Wait it out, I reckon,” Sarah said. “Harmon crashed our party last night, but I think tonight he’s playing host.”
“The air feels strange,” Sue said. “Like it’s carrying a mild electrical charge.”
Odus had been so wired with tension his senses honed and focused down to the tight ache in his gut. Having found company, and his horse, he was able to relax enough to draw in the moist night air. The inhalation carried the fragrance of balsam and wet leaves, rich loam and moss, the safe, healing aromas of the high forest.
But beneath that, like a corpse’s smell oozing from beneath the undertaker’s applied mask of perfume, was a corruption of sulfur and ozone, of decay and a pervasive stink of something that didn’t belong. The smell almost projected a physical presence, as if it was lightly stroking his skin, coaxing him into vile acts and thoughts.
“I expect the others will be joining us,” Sarah said. “I hear cars in the valley.”
“He’s leading us here?” Sue said.
“Jesus had his sermon on the Mount,” Odus said. “Maybe Harmon’s ready for his turn.”
Sister Mary stepped forward, onto the stage defined by the headlights, and Sue dropped the reins so the horse could reach Odus. Sister Mary brushed Odus’s satchel with her nose, and he unzipped it and brought out an apple. As she munched it with a curious, sideways twist of her jaws, Odus was reminded of the goats and their increasing numbers.
“Flock,” he said, dimly recalling material from Sunday School, when the class leader sold the kids on religion by using coloring books and posters. Jesus was often pictured with a flock of some kind, whether it was sheep, children in robes, or grown-ups whose skin colors were varied enough and in the right proportions to make you think that, sure, black folks could get to heaven, too, only there probably wouldn’t be too many of them and God would surely give them a place off to themselves.
The common theme was the gathering of creatures around Jesus, as if the Son of God would get lonely if He didn’t have living things milling around him, all waiting for a wise word or a bit of free food.
“Flock what?” Sarah said.
“The goats made me think of it,” Odus said. “They’ve been breeding like rabbits in the past year, especially on the Smith farm. Maybe Harmon Smith wants a flock again, and we’re it.”
Sarah looked around, as if afraid of what might lurk beyond the false security of the headlights, the shotgun tilted to the ground. “What in the world does he need with us? He should have killed somebody and been gone already.”
“Maybe he needs something different this time,” Odus said. “Notice we both said need. Like we got to serve some purpose.”
“We?” Sarah said. “You can just leave me out of it.”
“He implied others will be coming along shortly,” Odus said, realizing how pitiful and small his lone effort seemed, riding into the mountains like a fool.
“Well, we ain’t serving nothing by just standing here,” Sarah said. “I guess we ought to get this over with. I got work in the morning.”
“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.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Jett decided her mom was spacing out again, because she seemed calm as she navigated the narrow, rutted road up Lost Ridge.
A couple of times the Subaru swerved over to the ledge and the valley opened up in a dizzying scene 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: it would be way too short. Plus it would leave out the cool stuff like her love of Robert Smith and The Cure, the night she survived an attacked by her deranged stepdad, and the ghost in the back seat.
The road leveled out and grew wider. Mom steered the car over a grassy area, though a path appeared to have been tattooed into the dirt. Tire tracks cut twin grooves in the open stretch of land, flattening the wet weeds. The tracks were recent.
“Someone’s ahead of us,” Katy said. “I can see their taillights.”
Jett turned to Rebecca, still not quite used to the shock of that ethereal face, the hollow eyes that looked out as if from the bottom of a deep and drowning cave, the thin lips that were as insubstantial as mist.
“What’s up?” Jett said to Rebecca.
Jett didn’t like the way the torn flesh around the woman’s neck rippled as she spoke, as if unearthly air passed through her windpipe. “We’re all on the same path,” the ghost said.
“Yeah, but what does that mean?”
“It means we have to look,” Mom said, turning her head for a moment. “We’re part of this. We can’t just go off and leave a mystery hanging.”
“Sure we can, Mom. Remember the Smith scarecrow? Remember the goats? What do I have to do, die and come back as a ghost myself to get your attention?”
“We can get through this together.”
Jett almost choked on the Mom-ism but decided to go with it this time. After all, she had no choice. Even if she jumped out of the car and survived, she’d still be facing a long hike down the mountain. And then what would she do? Call Dad and ask for a lift? Her cell phone wasn’t getting any signal back here in the wilds.
Plus Mom had an odd, intense look on her face, and Jett wasn’t sure she should be abandoned.
“Rebecca, tell Mom this is crazy,” Jett said.
“This is crazy,” the ghost said, mouth parting to reveal darkness inside the translucent flesh.
“Yes, but we’re here,” Mom said, applying the brakes. “Looks like the party’s just started.”
The Subaru emerged from the woods, revealing a clearing of low grass, scrub, and protruding granite boulders, a hillbilly Stonehenge. The man in the black hat sat on a rock, surrounded by goats, while people came walking out of the woods to gather around. Jett recognized some of them: there was Odus, sitting astride a horse; Jerry Bennington, her math teacher, was standing to one side, wearing his bow-tie; the man who lived up the road from the Smith farm and occasionally rumbled by in his battered pick-up was hunched at one edge of the clearing, holding some type of hunting bow and arrow.
There were others from last night’s gathering at the general store. Sarah cradled the shotgun across the crook of one knotty elbow. Kim Deister leaned against a boulder, wielding some sort of wicked-looking semiautomatic rifle. Sue Norwood’s Jeep bathed the bizarre tableau in light, and as Mom killed the Subaru engine, she left the headlights on and aimed at the rock formation, giving the menagerie a strange, stark radian
ce.
And in the center of it all stood the Horseback Preacher, hands clasped and head tilted back as if sniffing the sky.
Jett turned to query Rebecca on this weird gathering, but Rebecca was gone. At least, most of her was. Her disembodied head hovered in the rear passenger area, slowly fading to thin air. The last to fade were those dark, hollow eyes, and they seemed to hold a challenge and a glimmer of triumph.
“I hate it when she does that,” Jett said.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Sarah leveled the shotgun at the Horseback Preacher, who stood with his thin arms spread in welcome.
Four dozen goats knelt before the dead preacher, tranquil and waiting under the glare of the Jeep headlights. That might have been the creepiest part of the whole scene: the Horseback Preacher’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, their jaws were always working 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 scruffy young 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 horse flesh, if “flesh” was the right word. He might have been a stack of decades 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 climbed behind the wheel of the Jeep, apparently having second thoughts about her desire to scrub Solom clean of its legends. Odus regained Sister Mary’s good graces and 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 wound through the woods on foot.
The Narrow Gate: A Supernatural Thriller (Solom Book 2) Page 17