A sickle, the same as the one that hung on the wall of the barn. Except this one was clean and had a honed edge, while the one in the barn was rusty from lack of use. Katy held the curved piece of steel before her. Could this be the same one from the barn, only with the blade polished and sharpened? When was the last time she had been in the barn?
Short pieces of straw were scattered among the clothing. At first Katy thought the hat was unraveling, but the straw was tucked into the folds of the shirt, adding another scent to the strange mix. She laid the sickle on the shelf and lifted the shirt toward the shafts of light leaking from the nearest vent. The wet sleeves slapped at her arms as she carried the shirt to the mirror. The mirror reflected the faint light and allowed her to recognize the pattern. It was the same shirt worn by the scarecrow in the barn.
And the sleeves were dark red with drying blood.
Katy tossed the shirt to the floorboards in disgust. Maybe some one had killed an animal in the shirt, then stowed it away in the attic. Then why was the blood not completely dried? Neither Gordon nor Odus had killed any farm animals since Katy and Jett had moved in. Certainly not in the last day or two.
'Blood in the attic?' Katy asked half to herself and half to Rebecca, though she still didn't quite trust the opinion of a ghost.
Behind the dresser, the lid on the long wooden box creaked open, then fell closed with a soft
Every country attic had rats or squirrels or possums. She had disturbed some nesting animal, that was all.
Katy remembered the clothes in the box, coarse fabric like those that had adorned the scarecrow. Except they had been dry, and not under lock and key.
Tiny scurrying under the dresser. The quick claws of some ro dent. Clicking on wood.
Katy dropped the shirt and gripped the wooden handle of the sickle. It fit her palm as if personally carved for her.
She backed toward the attic door. The clicking multiplied as more small, sharp toes scrabbled among the boxes, furniture, lamp shades, and the huddled hulk of an old wheelchair. Katy reached the door with its folded ladder and pushed downward. The door had no latch, and should have swung free. But it stuck tight as if someone were on the other side, bracing it closed.
She placed her foot on the door, slowly sweeping the sickle in front of her, reaping air as if to ward off the unseen creatures that flirted with the shadows. That's when she looked back at the dresser. On the stool, perched before the mirror, was a woman in the same dress that Katy was wearing. A pale, delicate, freckled hand swept the silver-handled hairbrush in curling motions as if smoothing tangles. Except there was no hair.
The woman had no head.
The body turned on the stool, the hairbrush descending to rest in her lap, a ragged, transparent stump of flesh protruding above the lace collar. 'Am I not pretty enough for him?' Rebecca asked.
Katy climbed onto the narrow access door, then began jumping, staying hunched so she wouldn't bump her head on the joists. She couldn't look away from that headless figure, the woman whose place Katy had taken in the Smith house, even though the scurry ing was on all sides and shapes wriggled in the eaves.
On the fourth jump, the door gave way and she plummeted into space, the sickle falling from her hand as she bounced off the shelves in the linen closet and tumbled into the upstairs hall.
As the world went gray, the staccato scurrying continued above her, and beyond that, as soft as lamb's breath, came the whispering stroke of a hairbrush through ethereal tresses.
Odus figured the Circuit Rider would be either at one of his three Lost Ridge grave sites or else up on the Snakeberry Trail where he'd been killed. The Circuit Rider had somehow found his faithful horse, and was mobile again.
Odus figured he'd need a horse himself if he was going to roam the back-mountain trails. A motorcycle would probably work bet ter, but the engine noise would kill any element of surprise. Plus he didn't think he could hot- wire a Harley without rousing half the police in the county. Besides, it seemed only proper to track the Circuit Rider by horseback. Since Odus was going into this show down without any weapons, he figured he ought to make up the rules as he went along, on the theory that like could slay like.
Odus parked his truck on a gravel lot by the river at the McHenry farm. He was near the bridge that led to Rush Branch Road, a steep strip of crumbled asphalt that gave way to mud as it wound around the mountain. The Smith property lay on the other side, in the valley at the base of the mountain. The Primitive Baptist Church stood near the peak, just where the pavement ended. Some three-story houses were perched on the steep slopes here and there, up where the late wind shook the walls, but they were mostly summer homes for Yankees and were empty this time of year. It would be easy to ignore their fences and no trespassing signs. The Circuit Rider certainly wouldn't observe human laws, and Odus had to adopt that same mind-set.
He found a horse on a riverside pasture, a stretch of flat bottom land that would have been developed for condos already if not for the spring floods that sometimes washed over it. The horse was a pinto mare of mixed colors, probably two or three years old. It shied away as Odus approached, which was just fine because Odus needed to lure the horse out of sight of the river road. The horse was pastured with cows, a mistake on Old Man McHenry's part, be cause horses didn't know how to behave after spending time with cud-chomping sacks of sirloin. Odus had helped McHenry put up some hay last fall and knew his way around the barn. The house was up the road a quarter mile, so Odus was concealed while he rummaged. The horse followed him to the barn because it smelled the apple in Odus's pocket and, despite the bad bovine influence, an apple to a horse was like a sweet lie to a woman. They both got you what you wanted.
In the barn, Odus rounded up a halter and reins. He didn't like sliding the steel bit in the horse's mouth. Folks said horses didn't mind, but it looked uncomfortable anyway. He gave the pinto the apple to work on while he cinched the saddle. Odus had done some riding here and there in his work as a hired hand, occasionally putting in some saddle time to exercise horses for lazy people. He was no Gene Autry, but he knew enough to keep from getting bucked.
The church crowd would be filling the roads any minute now, and he'd have to either use the bridge or find a shallow spot to cross Blackburn River. He liked the idea of fording the river. That's prob ably how the Circuit Rider did it. With any luck, or some kind of higher power pitching in a little help, Odus would be able to track Harmon before nightfall. Because night was a time when things like dead preachers grew more powerful. Odus didn't need a scien tist to tell him that. Dark things loved the dark, and the dark loved them right back.
Odus swung into the saddle and gave the pinto a twitch on her flank. 'You got a name?' he asked her.
The horse whinnied, spraying a few specks of apple.
'I'll take that as a 'yep,' ' Odus said. 'You speak human better than I speak horse, so I'll just have to make something up. Harmon has Old Saint, so let's call you 'Sister Mary.' What do you think of that?'
Sister Mary's snort might have signaled disgust, or it could have been a request for another apple. Either way, she headed out of the barn when he gave the reins a shake. He guided Sister Mary past the cows, who stared as if they'd bought tickets, and toward the river. Just before Sister Mary put a tentative hoof in the cold water, Odus glanced up the ridge at the next pasture. McHenry's goats were lined along the fence, as menacing as the Apache warriors in a wagon train western.
'Don't pay them no mind,' Odus said. 'We got business else where.'
He gently bounced bis knees against Sister Mary's ribs and they entered the current
Crisis of faith. That was the only explanation. Mose Eldreth hadn't shown up for services, leaving his congregation high and dry in its time of need. David should have felt disappointment or perhaps pity, for he understood as well as anyone the flesh was weak. But the emotion that struggled for dominance in the mix was triumph, as if God had whittled away one more competitor for pre cious space in heaven.
Primitive Baptists shouldn't gloat, he knew. Only the Lord knew the whole truth about Mose, and it was always possible that God had sent Mose away on some sort of quest or mission. In which case, David's triumph was actually failure, because it meant Mose was at least one step ahead on those golden stairs. But none of that mattered now.
Clayton Boles, a semiregular at Solom Free Will Baptist, had shown up at David's church fifteen minutes after service started, sliding into one of the back pews. His entrance was obvious: only a dozen faithful had shown up
