Archer talked of strange things. He made her look at the stars. He pointed to the church bell and the dogwood and told the story of the Hung Preacher. Linda thought at first he was trying to spook her so that she would slide close and he could put his arm around her. But he told the story wrong.
In Archer’s version, the Hung Preacher was a victim of persecution. “It was all a conspiracy of Jesus,” he said. His eyes seemed to gather the scraps of stray light and glistened like oil. “Jesus got in the heads of all those people and made them kill my great-great-grandfather. And Jesus had to pay nothing for his own sins. Because God loved Jesus more than He loves the entire world.”
Linda knew she should be getting the hell out of the van, that he was insane, but he spoke so reasonably and kept his voice level. So she listened to the rest of it, how Jesus hated the McFalls because they would bring forth the holy child. And that child would rise up and reveal Jesus for the fallen angel that he was. By morning, when the first timid rays of the sun peeked over the hills, she was more than in love; she was devoted.
She went through that summer with a bounce in her step, seeing David throughout the week but saving every Sunday night for Archer and his private sermons. When she found out that Archer had others, like Mandy Potter and Esther Matheson, she got jealous. But Archer explained how each had a part in the Divine Plan and that Linda would always hold a special place in his heart.
They moved to California at the end of the summer. Linda wrote a good-bye letter to David, three pages. At the end, she’d written, I hope you understand, but there’s a larger mission that I must attend to. I love you. Archer helped her write that last bit, and she cried until Archer made her stop.
They headed west in the van, Archer driving, the seven girls taking turns sleeping, singing silly songs by the Eagles and the Beach Boys, at least until Archer pointed out the sinful subtexts in the lyrics. Then they passed the time wondering aloud what California would be like.
“What are we going to do out there?” Linda asked from the front passenger seat. They were halfway across Tennessee, and the hills were rounded and green. Archer was hunched over the steering wheel, wearing a faint peaceful smile.
“Get delivered,” he had said.
Now, with his face only inches from hers, Linda wanted so very much for Archer to deliver her once and for all.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sheriff Littlefield looked around the churchyard at the trees. The moon bathed the open hill with light, and the tombstones were like silver sentinels, mute and mocking. Littlefield took a deep breath of the chilly air, trying to clear his head. His tongue was fouled with a sweetly putrid aftertaste. He felt as if he had just walked out of the long tunnel of a dream.
He had come to the church to see if he could learn more about Archer McFall. His plan had been to keep a polite smile on his face and sit quietly through the service. He would shake hands if necessary and bow in prayer at the right time. But his eyes would always be slightly open.
His plan had failed. The green digital display on his watch read 1:57. Somehow he had lost nearly two hours. He leaned against the front of the Trooper and tried to remember what had brought him to the red church.
The others had gone already, shaking hands with each other and saying “God bless,” and driving back to their dark farmhouses. Linda Day and the preacher were inside the church. He could hear them talking.
The sheriff was hit by a sudden wave of nausea that almost drove him to his knees. The candlelight dancing from the open church door blurred in his vision. The huge, twisted dogwood swayed, as if moving to invisible music. His head roared with the first soul-ripping toll of the church bell.
He covered his ears and looked up at the bell tower, his mind scattered by the noise.
No rope. It CAN’T be ringing.
The dull cast iron of the bell glinted under the moon. As the note pealed through Littlefield, vibrating every nerve ending in his body, he fought to keep his eyelids from snapping shut in agony. The bell hadn’t moved an inch.
Archer was at the mouth of the church now, arms spread to the sky. The preacher was a dark shape shimmering in Littlefield’s tears. Behind Archer, Linda was bowed in reverence or else hunched in an agony that echoed Littlefield’s own.
With the second toll of the bell, Littlefield knew the deep resonance had driven him insane. Because the night walked.
A shape fluttered from the forest and settled in the belfry, a ragged black thing, an insult to the swimming beauty of the stars. The red church took on a glow, as if consumed with bright fire. A rope dangled from a strong, high limb of the dogwood. Pulling the rope taut was a body, full and heavy and limp.
It’s HIM.
The thought came to Littlefield along with a flood of other broken thoughts and images. The cemetery ground buckled and swelled, and the turf beneath the headstones rippled like boiling water. Archer grew in Littlefield’s vision—grew—until he filled the church door, and the edges of Archer’s body sharpened. The nearby trees leaned forward as if to ogle the unreal spectacle before them.
Littlefield surrendered to gravity and fell to his hands and knees. With effort, he lifted his head, transfixed by the still form of the Hung Preacher shimmering twenty feet away. The man’s face was waxen, and the skin reminded Littlefield of the way Freeman Harper had looked after floating dead in the river for two weeks. The tongue protruded like a blacksnake’s head. The eyes bulged, maniacally gleaming as if lit by strange suns.
The Hung Preacher wore a vested suit of ill-cut cotton that draped about the body like burlap, the ivory buttons resembling teeth. The dull leather square-toed shoes dangled inches above the ground. A leaf stirred between the feet, and Littlefield watched the leaf’s shadow skip across the grass on the breeze. He visually traced the shadow of the tree, thrown long across the hill by the candlelit church. But the Hung Preacher cast no shadow.
Littlefield stared the illusion full in the face. But he knew the Hung Preacher was no illusion. He had almost been able to convince himself that the first time had been a trick of the mind, the night that Samuel died. Now here was the ghost again, dangling like a slip of lost light, back to prove that the long-ago Halloween was as horrible as Littlefield remembered.
But in some small part of himself, he knew that such things were impossible, irrational. Dead people don’t come back. Samuel had died, and was as dead or deader now than he had ever been. This hideous vision hanging before him had no right to be here. Dead people belonged in the dirt.
He focused on the Hung Preacher’s bloated, wan face.
See? It can’t be real. You’ve let it build up in your mind, giving shape to your guilt over Samuel. You’ve just heard too many stories, that’s all.
And the stories are wrong. Because in the stories, right after the Hung Preacher comes back, the congregation gathers around him—
The bell rang a third time, louder and more jarring than before, and the Hung Preacher blinked and smiled.
The black tongue flitted back inside the swollen head. The dead arms trembled and raised as if testing the gravity of a new reality. The Hung Preacher parted his blood-engorged lips and laughed. It was the Halloween laugh, the terrible and unforgettable sound from Littlefield’s childhood. All the fear came flooding back, all the memories, only this time he couldn’t run away.
Around and behind Littlefield, the cemetery came alive.
His screams sheared the damp silence of the night.
“Do you smell that?” Tim said.
David Day did smell it. He knew the smell intimately. He was a hunter. Death had its own essence, a thick, heady quality that went beyond the olfactory sense. Death seeped inside of you like a mist.
“Smell what?” Ronnie said, his voice nasally because of his bandages. David looked down at the wide eyes of his oldest son. Ronnie was lucky that he couldn’t smell. The coppery odor of blood and a sickly-sweet aroma of decay mixed in the night air, tinged with an underlying pungency.
/> David looked down the gravel road, then back to the woods. He didn’t know what was safer, being out in the open stretch of moonlit road or sneaking through the dark forest. Their house was still half a mile away, and the only nearby houses, those of the Potters and the Mathesons, were dark. He gripped the gun more tightly. The weapon probably wouldn’t do any good, but it made him feel better.
Tim kept trying to run ahead of their little group. He didn’t seem scared anymore, just excited, as if he had sneaked out past bedtime to play some silly chasing game. David tried to keep his fear to himself, but Ronnie was smart. Ronnie knew that something bad had come to Whispering Pines.
“Hey, looky,” Tim said, pulling his hand from David’s. He pointed into the tall grass along the side of the road ahead. “There’s somebody.”
It could just as easily have been a sack of grain or a pile of rags, except for the pale hand that extended from the weeds onto the roadbed. Even in the dimness, there was no mistaking the fact that it was a human hand, its fingers curled upward in motionless begging. The hand was slender, feminine.
“Stay here,” David whispered, taking a quick look around. The breeze that had steadily risen and fallen was now in a lull. The stillness was almost more unbearable than the flapping of leaves and the groaning of trees bending in the wind. He crept toward the body, his rifle tilted in front of him.
David fought back the vomit that tried to leap from his stomach. He recognized the woman’s blouse. He thought at first that her blouse was unbuttoned and that she was wearing a dark, rumpled shirt underneath. But now he realized that her chest was open, not her blouse, and that someone or something had parted her rib cage. Blood pooled in the cavity, a slight steam rising toward the moon.
Her heart was gone.
David glanced at the woman’s face. Her eyes were open, her mouth gaping in an endless, voiceless scream. It was Donna. Linda’s cousin.
Linda had given Donna the blouse for Christmas two years ago. David hadn’t liked Donna because he always got the sense that she didn’t approve of Linda’s marrying a redneck. But nobody deserved to die like this, to be ripped open like a cow at the slaughterhouse. Horror and sorrow and fear welled up in David’s chest, fought each other for space, and then settled into a miserable mixture.
“What is it, Daddy?” Ronnie called.
“Somebody . . .” He fought to keep his voice calm. “Somebody had an accident.”
“Are they dead?” Tim asked.
David knelt in the grass and looked at the boys waiting thirty feet behind him. They would have to walk past the body, and he didn’t want them to know that it was Donna. He settled his fingers on her eyelids and pulled them closed, the way he had seen soldier buddies do in war movies. He tried to nudge her mouth closed, but her jaw muscles had locked in an everlasting scream.
He pulled the blouse closed across her wound, careful not to get blood on his hands. He took off his deerskin jacket, even though the night was chilly. Then he whispered a quick prayer.
“Dear Lord, I know she took You into her heart. And I know she was messing around at that awful church. But please don’t hold that against her. The devil spins a mighty good yarn, and I don’t think it’s fair if she got tricked off the path of salvation. Judge her by the way she was before Archer got ahold of her. So if it be Thy will, please take her away from him and bring her up into the heavenly fold where she rightly belongs. Amen.”
David looked into the woman’s face. Death was supposed to be peaceful. But there was no peace in those rigid features. Worst of all, the thin nose and the sharp cheekbones and the rounded eyebrows were Gregg family characteristics. Exactly the same as Linda’s. He laid the jacket across Donna’s face.
“Are they dead?” Tim repeated, coming forward despite David’s order to stay put. Ronnie followed, hesitantly.
“Looks like it, son,” David said, standing. “We’d best get home and call the sheriff.”
“The sheriff?” Ronnie said. “We saw his truck back at the church.”
Tim tried to peer at the body. David put his arm around Tim and led him to the far side of the road. “Come on. Let’s get home.”
They walked in silence past the forest and into the open stretch of pasture and fields. The Potter farm sprawled dark and empty at the foot of the mountains. The farmhouse and barns were like tiny boats in a rough sea. Nobody let their lights burn all night in Whispering Pines. That was wasteful and expensive. But somehow the darkness in Zeb’s windows was more desolate and final than if the occupant had been merely sleeping.
Boonie, Zeb, and now Donna. It’s starting again, getting faster. Just like Archer done in California. Except this time I don’t know if I can even slow him down, much less stop him.
“How come people are dying, Daddy?” Tim asked.
David thought about how to answer.
The devil’s setting up revival camp in Whispering Pines? A preacher got hung over a hundred years ago and he’s been pissed off ever since? We’ve all collected on the wages of sin and now it’s payback time?
“I don’t rightly know, son,” he finally said. “I just know it’s going to be all right.”
Lying, like marksmanship and tomato growing, got easier with practice.
He could see their house ahead, the mailbox shining in the moonlight. It somehow made him feel safer, even though he knew that mere walls wouldn’t keep the Bell Monster away. The lights were off in their house, too.
“Is Mama home?” Tim asked.
“Don’t believe so,” David said, hoping he could keep his worry hidden.
“How come she was at the church?” Ronnie asked. “We always go on Sunday morning, not late at night.”
“Well, she was just being neighborly, helping out,” David lied for the third time. Well, it wasn’t a complete lie. She was helping out, all right, just not the kind of help a person usually gave to their church. Her service went way beyond bake sales and sending get-well cards and arranging flowers.
She would be out with Archer, taking part in whatever crazy ritual the freak thought up next. She was helping him bring death and fear and hell’s madness into their little valley. His chest tightened, this time hot with failure.
He’d rescued Linda once, led her back into the Baptist fold, into the love and light of the Lord. But maybe that wasn’t good enough for her, because she’d taken a second taste of the devil’s temptation and found it to be sweeter than Christ’s redeeming blood.
He clenched his hands tight around his rifle. He tried to offer a prayer, to ask for God’s strength, but he’d run out of words. He glanced at the sky, ink-dark and star-filled and stretching from mountaintop to mountaintop.
Just exactly who owns this damned world?
David shivered at the slight weakening of his faith.
He led the boys up the driveway and into the house. He was momentarily afraid that, even if he managed a prayer, it would fall on deaf ears. Or worse, ears that heard but just didn’t plain care.
When the bell rang, Linda didn’t cover her ears, though the church shook with the vibrations.
That was part of the ritual, Archer had said. The bell had to ring to drive away that crazy Jesus and all the other demons that clouded people’s minds. The bell must toll as a reminder of the iniquities of murderous ancestors.
So she welcomed the sound, and each rich resonance washed over her body like a cleansing wave of holy water. Archer folded his hands together and bowed his head.
“Stronger,” he whispered after the third toll. “It’s getting stronger.”
What’s getting stronger? Linda wondered. But she dared not break his reverie to ask. She craned her neck to peer outside the church. That was when the sheriff screamed.
Archer ran down the church steps and stood over Littlefield’s prostrate form. Linda followed slowly, waiting for a sign from Archer. The sheriff had been looking at the tree. Linda wondered what he had seen that was so frightening. The churchyard was a place of peace and be
auty, not a place of fear. Perhaps the sheriff was faithless, weak, unworthy.
Archer knelt on the ground beside the sheriff and lifted his face to the sky.
“O Father,” he intoned in that preacher voice that sent shivers of rapture up Linda’s spine, “See me take this sinner into my church. He has joined us in communion and has eaten of the host. O Father, watch him join us in the battle against the unrighteousness and evil that masquerades as salvation, so that he may walk into light forever, amen.”
“Amen,” Linda echoed automatically. She felt a piece of the communion between her teeth. She worked it free with her tongue, then swallowed the soft flesh that Archer had consecrated and administered. The sense of well-being expanded in her chest, swelled her head, made her light with love.
And then she saw.
The Hung Preacher rolled his eyes in her direction, looking at her appreciatively. Then the thick apparition turned his face back to Archer.
The Hung Preacher’s black lips parted, and insubstantial things wiggled inside his mouth. “More,” he said, moving his lips again, but the second time he made no sound.
A vision, Linda told herself. An honest-to-God VISION. Just like Archer always promised.
The Baptists had raved on and on about Moses and the burning bush, about how such-and-such was revealed to God’s chosen, but nobody at First Baptist had ever had a vision of his or her own. Well, Boonie Houck had laid claim to a few, but his revelations never seemed religious in nature, especially since they usually came after a week of the trembles. But this . . . this . . .
The Hung Preacher dangled in full glory before her. But even now he was shimmering, fading back into his holy realm beyond this earth. Linda felt her heart leap with uncertain loss.
Archer clutched his hands together and edged toward the dogwood tree on his knees. “Don’t go, oh sweet prophet,” he pleaded, his voice almost childlike.
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