Figured. Mom was Gordon's now, for whatever reason. This seemed like something Jett was supposed to do alone. So much for getting through things together.
She had to throw all her weight against the barn door to slide it open, the little wheels creaking in their metal track. Her ankle throbbed like a sore tooth. The inside of the barn was nearly pitch-black, the chicken-wired windows leaking the last of the dying daylight. The odor of manure, animal hair, and straw filled her nose and nearly made her sneeze. The goats must still have been in the fields, because the bottom floor appeared empty. She played the cone of light over the stairs. The scarecrow was in its usual place, hanging from a wire tied to a fat nail. Straw bulged from the seams in the clothes, and the cheesecloth face was expressionless. As the flashlight beam swept slowly over the wall, Jett paused. The wicked-looking sickle was gone.
Something stirred just outside the barn, and Jett told herself the goats had decided it was feeding time. She went up the stairs, carefully adjusting her weight with each step to protect her sprained ankle. The wood groaned and squeaked like a beast with an arthritic spine. The door leading to the loft was shut, with the hasp in place, but the lock hadn't been snapped. Just like the first time she'd seen the man in the black hat. Or the scarecrow creature. Or the abominable fucking snowman.
If she'd even seen anything at all.
To hell with it, just get it over with.
She could hear the goats milling below, calling out in anxious voices with their peculiar bleats. They must have been out in the barnyard the whole time, as if expecting her. It seemed crazy, but it sounded like there were lots more of them. They had somehow multiplied in number in the last couple of days.
What was it the Bible said? Be fruitful and multiply? Did that apply to goats or just to people? I'll have to ask Gordon. Strike that. I could never ask Gordon anything that would make him even more fucking smug than he already is.
Jett eased into the loft, her footfalls hushed by the scattered hay. The air was as thick as snuff, and golden motes spun lazily in the flashlight's beam. The bales were on the far end of the loft, and even dry, they weighed about forty pounds each. She couldn't lift them, especially not while holding the flashlight. She rested the light in the crotch of an angled support beam so that it cast a spotlight on the area in which she would be working. She grabbed a bale by the twin strands of twine and yanked it toward the hole in the floor of the loft. She should have worn gloves. The twine gave her rope burns and cut into her palms. By the time she'd dragged the first bale over the square hole and shoved it to the nattering creatures below, her palms were wet with blood.
The animals drummed their hooves on the packed earthen floor of the barn, thumping against each other in their lust for hay. She wondered if Fred was down there, the one who had eaten her stash the day before. Maybe the next bale would fall on him and break his frigging neck. She had dragged the next bale halfway to the hole when the flashlight fell to the floor, bounced, and went out.
Shit damn almighty Jesus on a toothpick.
Jett was so pissed off, she forgot to be afraid. For at least three seconds. Then she heard the soft shuffling of rag feet on the floorboards, and a whispering rush that was too small to be the wind, though it was loud enough to carry over the bleating goats. She backed away, toward the opening on the far end through which the bales were loaded into the loft. She tripped and fell into a suffocating stack of hay, kicking and choking until she scrambled to her feet, awaiting the embrace of flannel arms, the crush of a cheesecloth face against her cheek, the singing of a grinning sickle as it swept in a grim harvest.
She felt nothing, though, only the sickening pull of gravity as she slammed against the loading bay door. It gave way before her, spitting her out into the moist darkness with its faint dusting of stars. She fell, spinning as awkwardly as a merry-go-round broke down, and even if she had thought to scream, she wouldn't have had time.
Nothing like dying to kill a good buzz, she thought, then had no thoughts at all.
Chapter Twenty-two
Sarah didn't know what to make of this little get-together. She'd locked the front door, but didn't rightly know whether she was more afraid of whatever was outside or the people inside and of what they might tell her. Odus had made the invites, so he had pretty much staked a claim to being the leader of the bunch. The Chesterfield clock above the door showed a quarter till ten, nearly her bedtime, but she had a feeling she wouldn't be sleeping tonight.
She brought a full coffeepot to the table as Odus laid a fire in the woodstove. The general store had no insulation in the floor, and the weather had turned colder with sunset, an arctic air mass making an early entry from the Northwest. Ray Tester slouched on a bench, his brother David sitting erect, his elbows on the table as if he were about to pray. Lillian Rominger dealt cheese crackers from a cellophane pack and crunched them, the only sound in the room besides the crackling fire. Lillian's right hand was swathed in gauze and tape. Sue Norwood stood to one side, playing with a wind chime, not far from where the mouse-munching goat had passed not more than four hours ago.
"Come have a seat, Miss Norwood," Sarah said. "Got some drip grind right here."
"Half off?" Odus asked with a crooked grin.
"I'll take half off your head if you keep talking like this. We're supposed to be serious."
Sue sat beside David in one of the wooden-slatted chairs with uneven legs. The preacher nodded to her. Sarah set a Styrofoam cup in front of her and filled it before Sue could say whether or not she wanted some. When all the cups were full, she put the coffeepot on top of the woodstove and sat at the table with the others. Odus tossed a splintery chunk of locust into the stove and closed the cast-iron mouth, then stood and looked around the dining area.
"I reckon we all know each other," Odus said. "So let's just get right to it. The plain truth of it is Harmon's come back to Solom and all hell's about to break loose."
Ray shook his head. "You've been in the bourbon. Only a drunk would talk like that."
"He's here."
"Harmon Smith is dead and planted long gone to dust. That's just an old wives' tale."
"Speaking of wives, then, where's yours?"
Ray shut up at that, but Sue cut in with, "Who is Harmon Smith?"
"The Circuit Rider," David said. "Some call him the man in the black hat or the horseback preacher. He rode these mountains in the early 1800s as a Methodist, set him up a homestead and a garden. He was a little touched in the head though, and started bucking the Methodist beliefs, turned to sacrificing animals in the Old Testament fashion. They say he was murdered on a mountain trail one night. Some believe it was fellow Methodists who did him in, others say it was the ones who began to follow his ways."
"I reckon they figured if animal sacrifice made God happy, then offering up a human ought to do wonders," Odus said. "But he didn't stay dead."
"Sounds like so much horseshit to me," Ray said.
"There are ladies present," David said. Ray turned away.
"Don't hold back on my account," Sarah said. She ought to jump in and confess that she'd seen the Circuit Rider. After all, David was a preacher, even if he believed a messiah had already come and gone in this world, and Catholics said confession was good for the soul. But the words wouldn't leave her lips. She'd heard the local legends all her life, but had never put too much stock in them. Jews had their dybbuks and golems, but nowhere did men of God ever come back from the dead to bring suffering to the living.