The Farm

and death.

Katy reached Jett and tried to pull her back, but Jett stood trans fixed. 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 peo ple, 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.'

Gordon yanked off the preacher's hat, exposing the wiry gray hairs that curled over the pale, crenulated skull. Gordon sailed the hat into the herd of goats, where it caught on the horn of one and hung as if tossed atop a coatrack.

'Look upon his wonder and be disappointed,' Gordon said. 'Know him by his fruits.'

Katy wanted to bring Jett back to the relative safety of the Subaru, but found herself as rapt and awestruck as the rest. This close, she detected not only the electric aura of the Circuit Rider, but Gordon's mad energy that created its own special and strange gravity as well. She wondered if that danger-tinged charisma had been what had attracted her to him, but the thought sickened her.

'What's he doing and why doesn't that policeman stop him?' Jett said.

'Because the policeman's human. Like the rest of us.'

Ray tried to climb up onto the stone slab. It was slick with September dew, and his wounded arm prevented him from gaining solid purchase in the crevices. He lodged one boot into a crack and was about to haul himself up onto the impromptu stage when one of the goats in the front row, whose brown facial fur made a rac coon mask, lurched forward and snagged his other leg, tugging on the cuff of his jeans. Another goat rose, this one with crooked beige horns, and began sniffing his calf. 'Help me, David,' Ray called.

A hissing thwack pierced a hole in the night, and the goat with the beige horns let out a bruised bleat of shock. The feathers of an arrow tip jutted from its rib cage, just above its heart. It staggered back two steps, wobbled, and collapsed as if its legs were pipe cleaners.

'No!' Gordon moaned, as though the injury had been inflicted on him instead.

'The fucker munched my stash, man,' Alex said. 'That was pri vate property. My property.'

The goats near the one who had fallen began sniffing the warm corpse. One poked out a tentative tongue and licked the wound. The flock began bleating and lowing, giving off restless snorts, several of them rising.

'Come on, Jett,' Katy said. 'I don't trust these goats.'

'I don't trust anything right now.'

A grizzled billy goat, one eye made milky by blindness, nipped the air a couple of feet from Katy's leg, brown teeth clacking with menace. She eyed the distance back to the Subaru. The rock slab was closer, but that would put them within Gordon's reach. Gordon pointed his sickle at Alex, the other hand still pressing on the kneel ing preacher's shoulder.

Words issued from behind the scarecrow's mask: 'You should forgive those who trespass against you.'

'Maybe you should take better care of your fences,' Alex said, notching another arrow. 'Gordon.'

'I'm not Gordon. I am he who gives tribute.'

'With other people's lives,' Odus said, guiding his paint pony through the restless goats.

'Gordon's gone squirrel-shit nutty,' Jett whispered to Katy.

'I think we all have,' Katy whispered, just before the first shot gun blast ripped through the forest night.

Chapter Thirty-five

Sarah didn't quite mean to squeeze the trigger. At least, that's what she told herself. But an old woman's reflexes, like all her physical responses, tended to decline with every go-round of the sun. A shotgun was a great weapon if you needed to rake down a thief from close range, but the wide pattern of the bird shot all but guaranteed a few stray pellets.

A few bleeding goats might not be a bad bonus, she rationalized, as the echo of the gun's report slapped off the granite boulders and rolled through the trees. Blue-gray smoke swirled in the Jeep's headlights, and the strong bite of cordite drowned out the moist humus smell of the mountain and the stench of the goats. The frail bones of her shoulder ached from the recoil.

She'd meant to take down those goats nearest to Ray Tester, be cause they looked ready to chomp down on his legs. But what really flipped her was seeing the goat that had raided her store. She didn't usually carry a grudge, and believed all God's creature's had a rightful place in the world. But this was the same world that held monsters like the Circuit Rider. And it seemed Gordon Smith had gone crazy, too.

She'd never quite trusted the man, and it wasn't just because of his bloodline. Whenever he ate a sandwich and took coffee at the store, he always calculated the tip at exactly 15 percent. He'd do the division longhand on the back of his ticket and round it to the nearest penny. Sarah could only guess what that scrawny, red headed wife of his had gone through. Now he'd slipped into some sort of Halloween getup and had taken to killing folks.

The gunshot temporarily restored the peace that had prevailed when they had first stumbled onto the gathering. But it was a false peace, inflicted through shock and surprise. In that frozen moment, Sarah had time to absorb tiny details just as the night exploded: Sue Norwood opening the driver's-side door of the Jeep; Odus sitting tall on the bareback horse and looking around like a rustler won dering where to direct the stampede; the man with the hunting bow taking aim at either Gordon or the Circuit Rider; Ray scrambling onto the flat slab of stone and crawling toward the Circuit Rider; Gordon in his scarecrow outfit reaching a gloved hand to the Circuit Rider and pulling that sickly forehead back, exposing the dead preacher's pale and knobby throat; the goats rising to their feet as if heeding some silent command; and David Tester running into the midst of the stirring animals, either chasing his brother or making the same obsessed dash toward the Circuit Rider.

Sarah broke down the barrel and thumbed out the warm, spent shell, reaching in her blouse pocket for a fresh round.

Katy sensed the change in the animals after one of their number had fallen. The night was electric, charged with rage and confu sion.

Ray leaped for the Circuit Rider and threw his arms around the preacher, shielding him just as Alex launched another arrow. Katy heard the wet snick of the arrow as it buried itself between Ray's shoulder blades. Ray's wrench bounced off the stone with a dull clink. He gave a soft grunt of surprise, hugging the preacher, look ing up into his face as if craving a final benediction. The preacher showed no emotion, just stared back with those beetle-black eyes.

Ray's words were so weak and strained that Katy was sure no one heard them besides herself, Gordon, Jett, and the Circuit Rider.

'I'm the one,' Ray said, smiling, dying, slumping against the preacher with the arrow jutting from his