Littlefield

by Scott Nicholson

  Sheila had one arm hooked under his right bicep, the other pressing on his neck, her weight full on his back. Frank kept his grip on Archer’s neck, watching the carotid artery swell from the stifled circulation. Throughout the attack, Archer had made no move to defend himself. As if he were submitting, a willing victim. A sacrifice.

  Frank stared into Archer’s eyes. He saw nothing human, no fear, no anger, no pity.

  “If he did it, we can take him to trial.” Sheila grunted, levering her body against his, trying to break his chokehold. “Let the justice system make him pay.”

  Justice system.

  God supposedly ran a justice system, one where the meek and the just earned a place in the kingdom of heaven. One where the guilty paid for their sins eternally. But eternity was a long way away, and revenge was like chocolate on his tongue, the taste sweet and rich and consuming.

  Frank pictured Samuel in his mind as he pressed his fingers tighter. The gristle of Archer’s throat popped and clicked, his breath coming in shallow, whistling gasps. Still Archer endured his own murder without raising a finger to protect himself.

  Sheila’s knee pressed against Frank’s lower spine and he shouted in pain. Sheila seized the opening, bending him backward and jerking one of his hands from Archer’s throat. She twisted her hip against Frank, and the sheriff slammed against the nightstand as Archer fell back onto the rumpled bed.

  Sheila drew her .38 and stood in cop stance, both arms extended, legs spread, jaw tense. Frank looked up at her. His shoulder throbbed. He ignored it, and rubbed his scalp instead.

  “Are you okay, Reverend?” Sheila asked, her hard gaze never leaving Frank’s face. Archer didn’t answer.

  “Reverend McFall?” she said, her voice rising in both pitch and volume. Still she didn’t look away from Frank.

  The sheriff tried to stand.

  “Don’t do it, sir,” she ordered.

  Archer rose slowly from the bed behind her. Floated up without bending his legs. As if God were pulling invisible strings.

  “Look out, Sheila,” Frank yelled. “Behind you.”

  She gave him a disbelieving look, as if use of this oldest trick in the book was proof of his utter madness.

  Behind her, Archer came to full life, the skin of his neck unblemished, his face contorted.

  Changing.

  Archer’s smile returned, a curved gash of bright, sharp teeth that dripped hate. His wings filled the room behind Sheila, stretching themselves and stirring a wind to life.

  Something broke inside Frank’s head, some thin threshold was breached, and his thoughts spilled out into dark places where thoughts should never go. He sprang at Sheila, trying for her knees in a perfect flying tackle.

  Her gun went off, and the blood spilled along with his thoughts.

  It all happened at once, distorted in jerky slow motion, as if the filmstrip of reality had jumped its sprockets and was jamming the projector.

  Frank had cracked. Sheila had no doubt at all about that. Attacking a suspect like that, trying to choke Archer, trying to . . .

  She still felt groggy, and barely trusted her own thoughts, but now she was acting on instinct. She heard a whisper of movement behind her at the same time that Frank jumped at her knees.

  Aiming to wound instead of kill was also instinctive, the product of countless hours of training. Still, she was surprised when the revolver roared in her ears and twitched in her hands. Frank shouted in pain as a red rip erupted in his left shoulder. Frank slammed against the nightstand, the bedside lamp and Bible knocked to the floor, his head bouncing off the edge of the mattress as he crumpled to the floor.

  The sulfurous tang of gunpowder reached Sheila’s nose at the same moment she realized what she had just done. She had shot Frank. Her sheriff and the man she cared about most in the world was bleeding at her feet. And Archer was laughing.

  The source of the laughter was so close that she could feel its wind stirring her hair. The preacher’s breath was cold on her neck, sending icy rivers down her spine. Or maybe it was the quality of the laugh itself that chilled her. The voice was scarcely human, a cross between an animal’s growl and an asylum inmate’s demented cackle. Or maybe Archer’s windpipe was so damaged that he could scarcely breathe. It was a miracle he could stand at all.

  She stepped backward and pivoted to face Archer, expecting to see red fingerprints around the preacher’s throat. She nearly dropped her revolver.

  The thing hovering before her was not real. Not real, not real, not real. She had cracked, same as Frank. Too many murders to solve, not enough sleep, too much processed food, she shouldn’t have watched Rosemary’s Baby as a child, yeah, that was it, that was why she was crazy, and she began laughing herself.

  Because this just ain’t HAPPENING, this thing’s got wings and nothing that big has wings and oh my what big TEETH you have, the better to eat you with, my dear and Oh God your EYES, what have they done to your EYES they look like split meat in a butcher’s counter and where’s Archer and hee hee since I’m absolute apeshit crazy it’s OKAY if I shoot you, especially if you don’t exist.

  Sheila pulled the trigger, the firm metal beneath her finger her only link with reality. The .38 flashed a second time, and the window exploded. Still the impossible vision hovered before her, the hideous face gleaming with a wet, sharp smile. She fired again, and Frank groaned from the floor. The sheriff’s hand gripped her pant leg as if he were trying to pull himself to his feet.

  “Nice try,” said the thing, only now it was using Archer’s voice, and the flesh rippled and changed and became the preacher again. His suit had three holes in the breast. He fingered them and smiled. “This is a three-thousand-dollar suit,” he said.

  Yeah Judge, I swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, if only I could figure out what it IS, but I testify that one Archer McFall turned into a . . . a THING . . . yeah, right in front of my eyes, it had big teeth and gray wings and you could smell the rot in the wrinkles of its meat and . . . no, of COURSE I didn’t sneak into the evidence room and sample the contraband drugs, hee hee, I’m just apeshit crazy, that’s all—

  “And I would be a good boy and lie down and die, but that isn’t the way this works,” Archer said. “Is it, Frank?”

  Archer’s face changed again, the body quivered and shrank, and a young boy of about eleven stood before her, his hair mussed and his eyes sparkling blue above his freckled cheeks. Beneath the freckles, his skin was as pale as milk. A beach towel was tied around his neck and hung down his back like a cape.

  “Tell her, Frankie,” said the boy in a rural mountain accent. “Tell her how it’s got to be done.”

  Frank leaned against the bed, his right hand pressed against the gunshot wound, his left arm dangling limply. “Suh . . . Samuel?” he whispered, his voice cracking.

  Sheila looked in disbelief from Frank to the pale boy, then to the revolver in her hand. A small trail of smoke wended from its barrel.

  I killed him, Judge. I swear, as God is my witness. I shot Archer dead, but you know the rules. Innocent until proven guilty.

  “Tell her how it is, Frankie,” said the boy, his eyes darkening. “What the legend says. The gospel according to the Hung Preacher.”

  “Sacrifice is the currency of God,” Frank said in a hiss between clenched teeth.

  “And everybody pays,” said the smiling boy. The gap between his top front teeth did nothing to dampen the corruption of his smile.

  “Not you, Samuel,” Frank said, struggling to his knees. Tears pooled in his eyes. “You’re innocent.”

  The boy’s face changed yet again, became that of a balding middle-aged man with sweat beading his upper lip. “Innocent until proven guilty,” he said. “Just ask your lady-cop friend.”

  Storie recognized that voice, the one that sometimes slithered into her own nightmares. Hey, honey, you can lock me up, but I’ll be BACK.

  Years ago in Charlotte, she couldn’t ram the nightstick
into the kiddie-rapist’s face or pull the car over and shoot him in the head. But she was already a murderer now, so one more victim wouldn’t matter. She pulled the trigger, then again, then again, only the last time the hammer clicked on a spent shell. And still the pudgy man licked his lips and leered at her.

  “Except nobody’s innocent,” the man said, his shape shifting again, growing taller and becoming Archer McFall.

  “What have you done to Samuel?” Frank shouted.

  “I told you, it’s not what I’ve done to Samuel,” Archer said. “It’s what you’ve done.”

  Archer touched the spot on his forehead where Sheila had aimed the revolver. “Not bad,” he said to her, in his calm televangelist voice. “But you have some deep sins in your heart, Sheila Storie. If only you would open up and let God come inside, give over all your troubles, then you’d find the one true Way.”

  Sheila stumbled slowly backward, away from this insane vision, away from the black pit of madness that threatened to swallow her whole.

  If I close my eyes, it will all go away. Criminal Psych 101: “psychotic episodes can be triggered by extreme emotional stress, leaving the subject temporarily displaced from reality,” yeah, that’s a good one, I’ll have to remember to tell that to my defense lawyer, because when I open my eyes, Archer McFall is going to be lying dead on the floor of a Holiday Inn motel room, unarmed, with five bullet holes in his body.

  And with luck, I’ll only get six to ten for manslaughter, only I’ve got the funny feeling that this is a life sentence. Innocent until proven guilty? Hell, we’re ALL guilty, just like the man says.

  She sat on the bed, eyes still closed, the .38 in her limp fingers. She could smell Frank’s blood and her own sweat. A breeze seeped through the broken window, raising goosebumps on her neck. A hand touched her just above the knee, and she tensed. Frank’s voice broke through the knotted fabric of her thoughts. “Sheila? Are you okay?”

  “She’ll live,” Archer said. “At least for a while.”

  Sheila’s eyelids fluttered open despite her best efforts to keep them clamped tight. Archer smiled at her with his most benevolent and beatific expression.

  “I’m sorry to have misled you earlier, Detective,” the preacher said. “You will not serve me, nor God, nor the church. That’s only for the old families, right, Sheriff?”

  Frank’s lips pressed tightly together, as if his anger would crawl up his throat and erupt in sharp claws and needles of fire and silver blades.

  “Now if you two will excuse me, I have a congregration in need of tending.” Archer turned and walked to the door. Three holes formed a triangle in the back of his jacket. Archer opened the door, and the darkening hills were behind him, the security lights in the parking lot blinking on. A car whisked by on the highway beyond the lot. A siren, probably from a patrol car responding to reported gunshots, bounced off the high, hard mountains.

  “See you at church, Frank? It’s the Third Day, you know.” Archer stepped into the twilight and closed the door.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Night.

  It pressed down on the whole world, stretching out and smothering the trees, crushing the mountains, swallowing the weak light of the stars. The night pressed against the remaining bedroom window, and Ronnie knew it was equally thick outside the walls. The scariest thing about the night was that it always came back. You could shine the universe’s brightest light into it, make it run away, but the second you switched that light off—whoosh—the night came swooping back in blacker than ever.

  “We’re going to be okay, ain’t we?” Tim said. He was in the bottom bunk, bundled in blankets.

  Ronnie nodded in the bunk above him, not trusting his voice. Then he realized that Tim couldn’t see him, though Dad had left the light on. He took a quick breath and spoke. “How many times do I have to tell you it’s going to be all right?”

  His anger had no force, like a bad actor’s in those stupid daytime soaps that Mom used to watch, back before she joined the red church.

  “What about Mom?”

  Ronnie rolled over and stuck his head over the edge of the bunk. “She’ll be fine. Things will work out. You’ll see.”

  “I don’t like it when they fight.” Tim squinted, his glasses put away for bedtime.

  “They don’t like it, either.”

  “Then why do they do it?”

  Why? That was the big question, wasn’t it? Why did the Bell Monster want to eat Ronnie’s heart? Why did Mom have to join the red church? Why did Melanie turn out to be the queen of mean girls?

  And there was always the big question: why did God let bad things happen? God let Boonie Houck and Mr. Potter and that woman by the side of the road get killed. He even let people kill His only begotten son. What sort of all-merciful God was that? Maybe Ronnie would ask Preacher Staymore that one, if Ronnie was lucky enough to live until the next Sunday school meeting.

  “Ronnie?”

  Ronnie realized that Tim had been talking for at least half a minute, but Ronnie had just zoned out. Better to keep the kid occupied, so he didn’t completely lose it. “I’m listening.”

  “We have to give it what it wants.”

  “Give what to who?” Ronnie said, though he knew exactly what Tim was talking about.

  “To . . . you know.”

  “Yeah, yeah. The thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes.”

  Tim pulled the blankets up to his chin. His eyes were wide now, his lip quivering from fear. Ronnie swung down off the bunk and got in bed with him.

  “I won’t let it get you,” Ronnie said. “No matter what. Dad will beat it somehow.”

  Tim didn’t look like he believed Ronnie, but he didn’t say anything. He closed his eyes and Ronnie told him the story of Sleeping Beauty, and he was halfway through “Hansel and Gretel” when Tim fell asleep. Ronnie lay beside him in the cramped bunk, trying to figure a way out of this mess.

  Then it struck him, the revelation like an icicle in the chest: God was sending all these trials down on Ronnie as some kind of test. If there was one thing that stood out clearly in the Bible, it was that God liked to test the faith of His people. Job, Daniel, Abraham, why, heck, even Jesus got tempted by the devil, and if God was all-powerful, surely He pulled the devil’s strings, too.

  Imagine that. Jesus was God’s own son, His flesh and blood, His earthly incarnation, yet even Jesus had to measure up. And with Ronnie committing all these sins of the heart lately, it was no wonder that God wanted to visit some great trials on him. And that was the scariest thing of all.

  Because Dad said that when the night was dark and the pain was great and you were all alone, then you turned your eyes up to God and you opened up your heart and let Jesus come on inside. You let God take away the fear. You let Him work out your problems, you let Him push back your enemies. But what if God was the enemy? What if God was the source of your fear?

  Even as he thought it, he knew it was wrong. The idea of God as the bad guy was just too awful. You had to have faith. If you didn’t, you might as well curl up in a ball and let the Bell Monsters of the world eat your insides. You might as well roll away the stone and head down into hell. So Ronnie tried to picture the face of Jesus from those color plates in the Bible, that man with the beard, long brown hair, and sad, loving blue eyes.

  Something clicked against the window.

  A rap on the glass at the good window, the one that hadn’t been boarded up.

  Can you hear him aknocking?

  Oh, yes, Ronnie could hear the knock. Only this wasn’t Jesus. This was the Bell Monster, come back to finish the job.

  This was what God wanted—for Ronnie to get up out of bed and open the window and give himself away. Then the dead would stay dead, ghosts would stay in the ground, and Tim would be saved. And Ronnie would have passed the test.

  Ronnie almost yelled for Dad, so Dad could come in with the rifle and kill the thing again. But what good would that do? You could kill it a million ti
mes, but still it would come back, night after night forever. Until it had what it wanted.

  Until it had Ronnie.

  He slid out from under the covers, looked at Tim’s face relaxed by sleep, and crossed the room. Even though he was wearing pajamas, he shivered. The thing rapped on the glass again, and Ronnie heard slithery whispers. He hoped the claws were fast, so that he could die without pain.

  He was carrying plenty of pain already. His broken nose, the welt on his face where Whizzer had punched him, the stone lump in his chest. At least all those would pass away. Soon Jesus would come and take his hand and float with him up to heaven, where there was a cure for every pain. Because Ronnie believed.

  Don’t you, Ronnie?

  He took another trembling step to the window. He couldn’t see through the blackness beyond the glass. All he saw was his own reflection and the lighted bedroom. It was better this way. If he saw the Bell Monster, he would scream, Tim would wake up, Dad would come in, and the Bell Monster would get all of them. Or Dad would kill the Bell Monster and they’d have to do it all again, every night forever, until the test was taken.

  So he pulled back the sash-lock and held his breath and slowly slid the window up. It squeaked in its frame, and the cold night air poured through the crack and chilled his belly. He tensed for the claws to his gut, his eyes closed. Nothing happened, so he lifted the window another few inches.

  “Ronnie,” came the whisper.

  Mom.

  Relief surged through his body, a warmth similar to the one made by Jesus coming into his heart. But what was Mom doing out there with the Bell Monster?

  Confused, Ronnie opened his eyes. The light from the room spilled on Mom’s face. She didn’t look scared at all. She smiled and put her finger to her lips. “Shh. Where’s your dad?”

  Ronnie stooped until his head was near hers. “In the living room. He thinks the Bell Monster will come through the front door this time.”