The red church (2 page)

Tim faced his brother and put the magazine be-hind his back.
"
I
—
I'm the one who found it."

"Yeah, and you don't even know what it is, do you?"

Tim stared at the ground. "A naked-woman book."

Ronnie started to laugh, but it choked off as he looked around the graveyard. "Where did you learn about girlie magazines?"

"Whizzer. He showed one to us behind the gym during recess."

"Probably charged you a dollar a peek."

"No, just a quarter."

"Give it here, or I'll tell Mom."

"No, you won't."

"Will, too."

"What are you going to tell her? That I found a naked-woman book and wouldn't let you see it?" Ronnie grimaced.
Score one for dingle-dork.
He thought about jumping Tim and taking the magazine by force, but there was no need to hurry. Tricking him out of it would be a lot more fun. But he didn't want to stand around in the creepy graveyard and negotiate.

He looked at the other stuff scattered on the grass around the tombstone. The bottle had a square base and a black screw top. A few inches of golden-brown liquid were lying in the bottom. He knew it was liquor because of the turkey on the label. It was the kind that Aunt Donna drank. But Ronnie didn't want to think about Aunt Donna almost as much as he didn't want to think about being scared. A green baseball cap lay upside down beside the tombstone. The sweatband was stained a dark gray, and the bill was so severely cupped that it came to a frayed point. Only one person rolled up their cap bill that way. Ronnie nudged the cap over with his foot. A John Deere cap. That cinched it.

"It's Boonie Houck's," Ronnie said. But Boonie never went anywhere without his cap. Kept it pulled down to the bushy line of his single eyebrow, his eyes gleaming under the shade of the bill like wet ball bearings. He probably even showered and slept with the cap plastered to the top of his wide head. A crumpled potato chip bag quivered beside the cap, fluttering in the breeze. It was held in place by an unopened can of Coca-Cola. The blind eye of a flashlight peeked out from under the edge of the chip bag. Ronnie bent down and saw a flash of silver. Money. He picked up two dimes and a dull nickel. A couple of pennies were in the grass, but he left them. He straightened up.

"I'll give you twenty-five cents for the magazine," he said.

Tim backed away with his hands still behind him. He moved into the shadow of a crude stone monu-ment, made of two pillars holding up a crosspiece. On the crosspiece was a weathered planter. A brittle sheaf of brown tulips stabbed up from the potting soil.

Tulips. So somebody had minded the graveyard at least once since winter. Probably Lester. Lester owned the property and kept the grass trimmed, but did that mean the tobacco-chewing farmer had to pay respects to those buried here? Did the dead folks come with the property deed?

But Ronnie forgot all that, because he accidentally looked over Tim's shoulder. The red church was framed up perfectly b
y
the stone pillars.

No,
not
accidentally. You
wanted
to see it. Your eyes have been crawling right toward it the whole
time you've been in the graveyard.

The church sat on a broad stack of creek stones that were bleached yellow and white by eons of run-ning water. A few of the stones had tumbled away, revealing gaps of darkness beneath the structure. The church looked a little wobbly, as if a strong wind might send
it roof-over-joist down the
hill. The creepy tree stood tall and gangly by the door. Ronnie didn't believe Whizzer's story about the tree. But if even half of it were true—

"A quarter? I can take it to school and make five bucks," Tim said. The magazine. Ronnie didn't care about the mag-azine anymore. "Come on. Let's get out of here."

"You're going to take it from me, ain't you?"

"No. Dad's supposed to be coming over, that's all. I don't want to miss him." Tim suddenly took another step backward, his eyes wide.

Ronnie pointed, trying to warn him about the monument. Tim spun and bumped into one of the pillars, shaking the crosspiece. The concrete planter tipped over, sending a shower of dry black dirt onto Tim's head. The planter rolled toward the edge of the crosspiece.

"Look out," Ronnie yelled.

Tim pushed himself away from the pillar
,
but the entire monument toppled as if in slow motion. The heavy crosspiece was going to squash Tim's head like a rotten watermelon.

Ronnie's limbs unlocked and he leaped for Tim. Something caught his foot and he tripped, falling on his stomach. The air rushed from his lungs with a whoosh, and the smell of cut grass crowded his nos-trils. He tasted blood, and his tongue found the gash on the inside of his lip just as he rediscovered how to breathe. A dull cracking noise echoed across the graveyard. Ronnie tilted his neck up just in time to see the planter bust open on the monument's base. Tim gave a squeak of surprise as dingy chunks of concrete rained across his chest. The pillars fell in opposite directions, the one on Tim's side catching on the ledge just above his head. The crosspiece twirled like a slow helicopter blade and came to rest on the pillar above Tim's legs.

Ronnie tried to crawl to Tim, but his shoe was still snagged. "You okay?" Tim was crying. At least that meant he was still alive.

Ronnie kicked his foot. He looked back to his shoe—

No no no

—red raw burger hand.

An arm had reached around the tombstone, a bloody arm, the knotty fingers forming a talon around his sneaker. The wet, gleaming bone of one knuckle hooked the laces.

Deadghostdeadghost

He forgot that he'd learned how to breathe. He kicked at the hand, spun over on his rear, and tried to crab-crawl away. The hand wouldn't let go. Tears stung his eyes as he stomped his other foot against the ragged grasping thing.

"Help me," Ronnie yelled, at the same time that Tim moaned his own plea for help. Whizzer's words careened across Ronnie's mind, joining the jumble of broken thoughts:
They trap ya,
then they get ya.

"Ronnie," came Tim's weak whine.

Ronnie wriggled like a speared eel, forcing his eyes along the slick wrist to the arm that was swathed in ragged flannel.

Flannel?

His skewed carousel of thoughts ground to a halt.

Why would a deadghost thing be wearing flannel?

The arm was attached to a bulk of something be-hind the tombstone.

The hand clutched tightly at nothing but air, then quivered and relaxed. Ronnie scrambled away as the fingers uncurled. Blood pooled in the shallow cup of the palm.

Ronnie reached Tim and began removing the chunks of concrete from his little brother's stomach. "You okay?"

Tim nodded, charcoal streaks of mud on his face where his tears had rolled through the sprinkling of potting soil. One cheek had a red scrape across it, but otherwise he looked unharmed. Ronnie kept looking back to the mangled arm and whatever was behind the tombstone. The hand was still, the sun drying the blood on the clotted palm. A shiny fly landed and drank.

Ronnie dragged Tim free of the toppled concrete. They both stood, Tim wiping the powdery grit from the front of his shirt. "Mom's going to kill me.. . ." he began, then saw the arm. "What in heck . . . ?" Ronnie stepped toward the tombstone, his heart hammering in his ears.

Over his pulse, he could hear Whizzer:
They got livers for eyes.

Ronnie veered toward the edge of the graveyard, Tim close behind.

"When I say run . . ." Ronnie whispered
,
his throat thick.

"L-looky there
,
" Tim said.

Dorkwad didn't have enough brains to be scared. But Ronnie looked. He couldn't help it. The body was crowded against the tombstone
,
the flannel shirt shredded
,
showing scoured flesh. The head was pressed against the white marble, the neck arched at a crazy angle. A thread of blood trailed from the matted beard to the ground.

"Boonie," Ronnie said, his voice barely as loud as the wind in the oak leaves. There was a path trampled in the grass, coming from the underbrush that girded the graveyard. Boonie must have crawled out of the weeds. And whatever had done that to him might still be in the stand of trees. Ronnie flicked his eyes from Boonie to the church. Had something fluttered in the belfry?

A bird,
a bird,
you idiot.

Not
the thing that Whizzer said lived in the red church.

Not
the thing that trapped you and then got you, not the thing that had wings and claws and livers for eyes, not the thing that had made a mess of Boonie Houck's face.

And then Ronnie was running, tearing through the undergrowth, barely aware of the briars grabbing at his face and arms, of the scrub locust that pierced his skin, of the tree branches that raked at his eyes. He heard Tim behind him—at least he
hoped
it was Tim, but he wasn't about to turn around and check, because now he was on the gravel road, his legs were pumping in the rhythm of fear—
Not the thing, not
the thing, not the thing
—and he didn't pause to breathe, even as he passed Lester Matheson, who was on his tractor in the middle of a hayfield, even as he passed the Potter farm, even when geezery Zeb Potter hol-lered out Ronnie's name from his shaded front porch, even as Zeb's hound cut loose with an uneven bray, even as Ronnie jumped the barbed wire that marked off the boundary of the Day property, even as the rusty tin roof of home came into view, even as he saw Dad's Ranger in the driveway, even as he tripped over the footbridge and saw the sharp, glis-tening rocks of the creek bed below, and as he fell he realized he'd hit another turning point, found yet another way for the world to end, but at least
this
end wasn't as bad as whatever had shown Boonie Houck the exit door from everywhere.
TWO

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Like you'd understand? You didn't understand the first time." Linda Day balled her hands into fists. She could smell beer on David's breath.

Drunk at three o'clock,
she thought.
Doesn't he know that the body is sacred? If only he were
more like Archer.

David closed in on her. She backed against the kitchen table. He'd never hit her in their fifteen years of marriage. But his face had never set in such a mix of hurt and anger before, either. He waved the papers in the air, his thin lips crawl-ing into a sneer. "A lie. All those years . . ." God, he wasn't going to cry, was he? Mr. Ain't-Nothing-It'll-Heal that time he flipped the tractor and had his forearm bone poking through his denim jacket?

She looked into his wet brown eyes. Who was he? What did she
really
know about him? Sure, they'd gone to high school together, were both in the Fu-ture Farmers of America, lost it together one fum-bling Friday night in the pines above the Pickett High football field, never really dated anybody else, got married like everybody expected and—after that little California interlude—settled down on the Gregg family farm after cancer had chewed her fa-ther's lungs away.

More than half of their lives. Not nearly enough time to figure David out.

"Don't start that," she said.

"I ain't the one who started it. You said when we got married that all that foolishness was over and done with."

"I thought it was."

"Thought it was?" he mocked. His face twisted.

"I was going to tell you."

"When? After you'd sneaked another hundred lies past me?"

Linda looked away, anywhere but at his burning, red-rimmed eyes. The stick margarine on the counter was losing its sharp edges in the heat. Two black flies were playing hopscotch on the kitchen window screen. The roses that made a pattern on the yel-lowed wallpaper looked as if they needed watering. "It's not like that."

"Sure, it ain't." A mist of Pabst Blue Ribbon came out with his words. "When a man's wife gets love letters from another man, why, that's nothing to worry about, is it?"

"So you read them."

"Course I read them." He stepped closer, looming over her, six-three and shoulders broadened by lift-ing ten thousand bales of hay.

"Then maybe you noticed that the word 'love' isn't in a single one of them." He stopped in his tracks. Linda thought about re-treating to the hall entrance, but she was trying hard not to show fear. Archer said fear was for the meek, them that huddled at the feet of Christ. David's brow lowered. "There's lots of different kinds of love."

She studied his face. Twice-broken nose. A white scar in one corner of his mouth. A strong chin, the kind you could forge steel with. Skin browned by years of working in the sun. Had she ever really loved the man who wore that face?

"There's only one kind of love," she said. "The kind we had."

"The kind you and
Archer
had."

"David, please listen."

He reached out. She held her breath and leaned away. But he didn't touch her, only swept the can of Maxwell House from the table behind her. It bounced off the cabinet under the sink and the lid flew off, sending a shower of brown granules onto the vinyl floor. The rich smell of the coffee drowned out David's sweet-sour breath.