Jett waved her hand in front of Katy's eyes, but Katy was nearly catatonic, staring at her reflection in the window. 'Mom. You're not hearing me. Solom is going goat-shit crazy.'
'The best thing is to get some sleep. I'll talk to Gordon about it. He'll know what to do.'
'I love you, sweetie.' Mom hugged her, and the embrace reminded Jett of how things used to be, back in Charlotte before marijuana and the divorce and the first stirrings of puberty. Jett held on as if the universe were crumbling away beneath the floor, and the bed were the last tiny island of sanity and hope. Warm tears ran down her cheeks. Everything was going to be okay, as long as they stuck together.
Unless the scarecrow dragged his scratchy sack of straw out of the barn and came calling on the house. The September wind picked up, whistling around the window frame, and bare branches clicked against the side of the house. Or it could have been the point of the sickle,
'Will you sleep in here, Mommy?' Jett hadn't said 'Mommy' in years.
'A wife's place is by her husband,' Katy said, staring out the doorway into the hall.
'Mom?'
Katy stood and walked across the room like a zombie in an old black-and-white movie. She paused at the door, blew a kiss, and turned off the light. 'Pleasant dreams, Jessica.'
'Mom!'
The door closed, throwing the room into darkness. Jett, panicked, fumbled for the bedside lamp, and flipped the switch. She huddled in its glow as if it were the world's first campfire keeping back all the beasts of the night. Every rattle of a leaf outside became the footfall of a straw man, every creak of the wind-beaten house was a straining bone of the man in the black hat, each flap of loose shingles was the fluttering wings of some obscene and bloated bat.
Mom had gone over. Jett couldn't rely on her. So much for get ting the fuck through it together. She waited a few minutes until she was sure Katy had gone into her own bedroom. The she tiptoed to the door and cracked it enough to check the hall. It was dark but empty, as far as she could tell. Jett tiptoed to the staircase. She was passing by the linen closet when she remembered the access hole and the scarecrow's box in the attic. Maybe it slept away the day mere, like a vampire in its coffin. She quickened her pace, socks slipping on the wooden floor. She descended the stairs so quickly she couldn't recall touching any of the treads.
In the den, the banked fire threw a throbbing orange glow across th e room. The phone was by the sofa, and she plopped down and di aled. The trophy heads on the wall glared down at her with glass eyes mat seemed animated in the firelight. On the third ring, Dad answered.
'Hello?' His voice was cracked with sleep. He was an early-to- bed type, especially when a woman was around.
'Dad?'
His voice cleared. 'Jett? What time is it?'
'Nearly midnight.'
'What's wrong?'
'It's Mom. She's losing it and everything's going to hell.'
'Where is she?'
'Upstairs.'
'That doesn't sound so bad.'
'She just told me she was a ghost.'
'Shit.'
'We need you.'
'Is it bad?'
'Badder man bad. But I can't talk now. Gordon might catch me out of bed. But please come.'
He sounded fully awake now. 'Okay. I'll get mere first thing in th e morning, if you think you'll be okay until men.'
'Maybe,' Jett said, listening for cold fingers trying the front door handle.
'Solom. I guess it's about time I paid a visit, anyway.'
'It's a real happening place, Dad. Maybe too much.'
'Don't worry. Everything's going to be all right.'
'So I keep hearing.'
They talked for a minute more, then said their good-byes. After Jett hung up, she knelt before the fire and stared into the pulsing embers, waiting for the soft touch of boots on the front porch or the whisper of straw-filled sleeves in the attic.
Chapter Twenty-five
The sun came up on a brisk, clear Sunday. Frost laid a sparkling skin across the ground but quickly melted where touched by the autumn light. Odus had slept uneasily, visions of the Circuit Rider galloping across his eyes whenever he happened to drift. He tried to remember what Granny Hampton had said about the Circuit Rider, if the old-timers had some means of warding him off. Didn't seem likely, because even after all these years, Solom was still a stopping point for Harmon Smith. The other mountain communities on Harmon's original rounds had probably all seen their share of mishap and death. Odus would bet that anybody following the his tories of Balsam, Parson's Ford Windshake, Rocky Knob, and Crowder Valley would see a trail marked by bloody hoofprints, at least every seventeen years or so. Seventeen years seemed to be the gap between Harmon's visits, for whatever reason. Odus didn't have a head for numbers, and he couldn't parse out any reason why seventeen would be special. But Rebecca Smith's death was gener ally attributed to the Circuit Rider, and that had only been five years ago. The Circuit Rider had a lot of territory to cover, stretch ing into East Tennessee and Virginia, and even a man on a hell-dri ven horse could only cover so many miles in a day.
Odus dressed in a pair of overalls that were dirty and stiff but had aired out for a couple of days. He scrambled a couple of eggs and rummaged in the counter. Like any common drunk, he knew exactly how much liquor was in the house and that on a Sunday, a bottle would be hard to come by unless he felt like visiting a bootlegger and paying a king's ransom. Odus had tucked back a pint of Old Crow, and the bourbon lay golden and gleaming in the glass, greasy and somehow thicker than water. He'd been tempted to pol ish it off last night, especially after Harmon had walked into the general store pretty as a show pony, as if knowing they were talk ing about him and daring them to make a play. But liquor tasted better on a Sunday and mock courage might serve where plain old backbone failed.
Because Odus was going to hunt down the Circuit Rider.
After Harmon had mounted Old Saint and vanished into the dark, off toward whatever errands called such a creature, Odus and the others had gone onto the general store's porch. The others were shaken, excepting old Sarah, who had been around for a few of Harmon's past visits, though she claimed this was the first time she'd ever seen him up close. Sure, David Tester had talked big, quoting some Bible passages from books that Odus had never heard before, with names like Nehemiah and Malachi, but he was as scared as the rest.
David had quoted Malachi as having set down these words in the old days, back when pretty near everybody with a beard, a high fever, and a clay tablet could be a prophet: 'Surely the day is com ing, it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble.'
Then David went on to say that the dead horseback preacher had been quoting from the book of Matthew, when Christ delivered his Sermon on the Mount.
Odus didn't feel much like an evildoer. Sure, he cheated the government and big corporations and rich Floridian tourists, but he never cheated a human being. His reputation as a handyman was built on his word. He delivered what he promised, and he was never a day late about it, either. He treated people fair and expected the same. That was more than Odus could rightly say of the Lord, at least from what he'd seen. So he couldn't see
