Jett unsnapped her seat belt and was out of the car before Katy could grab her arm. "Come back here, Jett."
But Jett was already passing the Jeep and Odus Hampton on a horse, reaching the outer circle of goats.
"Shit," Katy hissed getting out of the car.
"It's him," Jett screamed, pointing at the scarecrow, which was approaching the Circuit Rider from the opposite side of the clearing.
The Circuit Rider's pale and waxen face turned from Jett to the scarecrow. The grin froze on the preacher's lips. Katy was pushing past Odus Hampton and Sarah Jeffers, noting the shotgun in the old woman's arms. What in the hell is going on here? her mind screamed as her feet carried her after Jett.
The goats stirred for the first time since their arrival, snorting and bleating as the scarecrow stomped into their midst.
"You're not supposed to be here," the Circuit Rider said.
The scarecrow's stitched lips gave the illusion of a wicked smile, but surely that was an illusion, because the feed-sack face bore no other expression. The scarecrow hopped over a fat nanny, catching one dusty boot on a curled horn. It regained its balance and leaped onto the stone beside the Circuit Rider.
"Solom doesn't need you anymore," the scarecrow said, in a muffled and rough voice. "We can appease God ourselves."
"Solom needs me," the Circuit Rider said. "Who else can bring the rain and the frost and the wind and the sun?"
"You're not the only one who understands the power of blood sacrifice."
Jett had drawn to a stop among the goats, about ten feet from the stone stage. Katy dodged around the goats, ignoring their sinister eyes and wicked teeth. Her daughter was more important to her than the whole world, and she was nearly oblivious to the strange assembly of people, many of whom held weapons. At least she had proof that she wasn't descending into madness, because if this was a hallucination, it was a communal one.
Katy sensed more than saw the movement around her: the sheriff's deputy reaching in the car and triggering the blue strobes on the car's roof; Ray Tester dashing through the goats like a drunk running an obstacle course, rousing some to their feet as he thumped against them; their reclusive neighbor, Alex Eakins, raising what looked like a bow and aiming an arrow toward the stage; a large old goat that was the spitting image of Abraham, the one that Katy had killed or crippled in the driveway, rising and stomping toward the Circuit Rider like a repentant sinner headed for the touch of a faith healer; Sarah Jeffers moving into shotgun range with the careful steps of the elderly; Odus whacking the paint pony on the flank and urging it toward the granite slab; others circling and drawing closer, wanting to be part of the malevolent miracle, some stretching out their hands like New Testament lepers reaching for the robes of Jesus.
Jett's quoting of the Tommy Keene title "Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" popped into her mind, all the pretty ponies spilling from their poles, the center giving way, the crazy carnival lights bobbing, though the smells were those of fur and forest instead of popcorn and spun sugar. She reached Jett just as the scarecrow joined the Circuit Rider as if wanting to hog half the spotlight.
"These are my people now," the scarecrow said, and Katy recognized the cruel, commanding tone.
Gordon.
"Fucking Christ on a rubber crutch," Jett said. "It's him"
Katy recalled the scarecrow outfit in the box upstairs, the blood in the locked cupboard. She'd accepted that Gordon was capable of murder in the wake of Rebecca's confession, but she hadn't pegged him for a lunatic until now. She figured he was just like any man, vain and cruel and possessive, but she didn't know the possession might have worked both ways.
But why the costume? Why dress up when the most successful killers were those who didn't draw attention to themselves?
Katy had no time to analyze Gordon's motives. She hadn't figured him out in the year she had known him, and she suspected that would be the job for a team of prison psychiatrists over the next thirty years. In fact, all of Solom's residents would probably be scooped up in a giant butterfly net and plopped gently into soft asylum rooms, especially when they started babbling about dead preachers, man-eating goats, and mountaintop revivals where faith was challenged and madness was shared like communion sacraments.
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."