infinities (30 page)

She could see the symbol from across the room, even though it was bunched into the top right corner. It looked like one of those Egyptian symbols, only the cross was topped with two loops. Two suns. The Temple of the Two Suns.

Not that she needed to see it, because she was sure now that it had been seared into her brain, that its power had reached over years and across three thousand miles and through the thick white walls of her renewed faith in Jesus. Because, after all, there was only one true savior. And his name was Archer McFall.

If only David would open his heart. Sure, he'd been born with Baptist blood, he'd been dipped in the river below the red church so that his sins would be washed away, he'd given his ten percent, but there was so much more to faith than the rituals and scriptures and prayers. Her own heart was swelling again, budding, unfolding like a flower under a bright sun. No, under two suns. Twice the love. If only she could share that with David. But he wouldn't understand. He was as blinded by Jesus as everybody else was.

David watched her carefully, waiting for her reaction. She swallowed her smile and let her face slacken.

"The Temple," he said in a sneer. "You promised you were over it. But I guess I'm the fool."

"He's not asking for money."

David laughed, a bitter sound. He rubbed his forehead with his right hand. "Probably the only thing he's not asking for, whoever it is."

"Since you read the letters, you know exactly what he wants."

"Yeah." He held up one of the letters. "'We've missed you, sister,'" he read.

"And that's all."

"'There will come great trials, but we bathe in the light of faith.'" He shuffled to the next letter. "'The stone is rolled away.'"

"Where's the love in that?" Linda was straining to show disinterest. David wasn't from one of the old families. She had been a fool to think Archer would accept him, anyway.

"Where's the love? Where's the
love
? Why, right there on the bottom, where it says 'Forever Yours, Archer McFall.' On every single one of them."

"Maybe he didn't die. Or maybe somebody started up the group again and is using his name. That's all it is. I don't care one way or another."

But I DO care. I've always cared, even when you thought you and your Christian friends had "cured" me. There was always a little room in my heart tucked away for nobody but Archer.

David's eyes had cleared a little as he sobered, but kept their bright ferocity. "You don't care so much that you didn't even bother to throw the letters away, huh?"

"Don't matter none to me."

"That so?" David started to crumple the letters into a ball.

Linda's mouth opened, and her arm reached out of its own accord.

David smiled, but it was a sick smile, the kind worn by a reluctant martyr. He crushed the paper into a hard wad of pulp and tossed it on the floor at her feet. "I seen him come around. Last week. Laid out of work just so I could hide up in the hills and watch the house. Just me and a six-pack. Mostly I was curious if you were sending out any letters yourself."

"You bastard."

David licked his lips. "Is ten o'clock the regular meeting time?"

Linda felt the blood drain from her face. How much did he know?

"Got himself a Mercedes. I guess this 'cult' business pays pretty good."

"It wasn't—" Linda started.

David nodded. "I know. It wasn't Archer McFall. Then why don't you tell me who it really was?"

Linda wondered how many times David had watched the house from the woods. Or if she could trust anything he said.

Trust. That was a good one.

David slowly approached her. She was like a deer frozen in the headlights of his hate. She looked down just as his boot flattened the wad of letters.

"How long?" he said, and his eyes were welling with tears again. As if the reservoir had been filling all his life and, finally full, now had to leak a little or bust.

"
It's not like that
." She looked again at the butcher knife on the counter, close to tears herself.

He took another menacing step. "I wondered why you been acting strange lately. And why you ain't been up to going to church."

Linda grabbed a gulp of air and scooted from the table to the kitchen counter. David was close behind her and caught her when she spun. His hands were like steel hooks in her upper arms, holding her firmly but not squeezing hard enough to bruise.

She stared at his stranger's face with its wide eyes. She'd never noticed how deep the two creases on his forehead were. The hard planes of his cheeks were patched with stubble. He looked old, as if all his thirty-seven years had dog-piled him these last few weeks.

"Tell me who it is," he said.

She shuddered with the force of his grip. Those hands had touched her so tenderly in the night, had softly stroked her belly when she was pregnant with the boys, had tucked daisies behind her ears when they fooled around in the hayfield. But now they were cruel, the caresses forgotten, the passion in them of a different kind.

She turned her face away, afraid that he'd see the fear in her eyes. The knife was beside a bowl of melted ice cream, within reach. But David grabbed her chin and twisted her eyes back to his.

Archer had warned her what the price of belief would be. Persecution. Pain. The loss of everything human. She could hear Archer's voice now, pouring from the geysers of her heart.
There will come great trials. And great sacrifices. Because sacrifice is the currency of God.

But the reward was greater than the sacrifice. Belief paid back a hundredfold. Devotion now brought Archer's steadfast love unto the fourth generation. Surrendering to him meant that her offspring would reap the harvest. She had been telling herself that ever since Archer and the Temple of the Two Suns reclaimed her heart. And she reminded herself now, locked in David's grip.

He'd never hurt her before. But Archer said those who didn't understand always fell back on violence, because violence was the way of their God. That was why the world had to end. From the ashes of their heavenfire would come—

"Who
is
it?" he asked.

She grunted through her clenched teeth. David relaxed his grip until her mouth could move. "Ahh—Archer."

"Archer. Don't lie to me, damn it." He clamped his fingers tight again.

She fumbled with her left hand, running it along the edge of the counter. She felt the cool rim of the bowl. If only she could keep him talking. "It is. And he doesn't want me ... that way."

"It can't be Archer."

"He's come back."

David choked on a laugh. "The second coming. They really
do
have you again, don't they?"

"No, I meant he's come back to Whispering Pines." Her hand went around the bowl and touched wood. Her fingers crawled along the knife's handle. Archer said sometimes you had to fight fire with fire, even if it meant descending down to their level. Even if it was a sin.

"You said he was
dead
."

"They said ... I thought ... I never saw his body."

"It's not Archer."

"It is. You know I'd never cheat on you."

He released her arm with his left hand and drew his arm back. He was going to hit her. She snatched at the butcher knife, then had it in her palm, her fingers around it, and all the old memories flooded back, all the energy and power and purity that Archer promised and delivered. She raised the knife.

David saw it and stepped away easily. The blade sliced the air a foot from his face. He lurched forward and caught her wrist on the down-stroke. The knife clattered to the floor.

They both looked at it. Silence crowded the room like death crowded a coffin.

A chicken clucked out in the barnyard. Somewhere over the hill, in the direction of the Potter farm, a hound dog let out one brassy howl. A tractor engine murmured in the far distance. The clock in the living room ticked six times, seven, eight. David reached out with the toe of his boot and kicked the knife into the corner.

He exhaled, deflating his rage. "So it's come to this."

"I didn't mean to—"

"Is that what they preach? Stabbing your own husband?"

"I ... you scared me." The tears erupted from her eyes even as David's tears dried up, probably for good. "I thought you were going to hit me."

"Yeah." He was calm again, walking dead, a man who wouldn't harm a fly. "I guess you never could trust me, could you? Not the way you could trust them."

"I didn't lie to you."

"Which time?"

Archer was right. Pain was a steep price. Faith required sacrifice. "When we got married, and I said I was through. I believed it then."

"And I believed it, too. Guess you're not the only fool in the family."

"Please, David. Don't make this any worse than it has to be."

"Fine." He spread his arms in surrender. "I guess it don't matter none who it is. I just don't see why you had to make up this stuff about the cult."

"It's not a cult."

"And Archer McFall just happens to walk back into your life twenty years after he died. You really must be crazy, or else you think I am."

Archer always said he would return. How could she ever have doubted him?

Easy. You had your world taken away from you, and you came back to this safe, normal, God-fearing life and slipped into it like a second skin. You hid away your heart like it was separate from loving and mothering and living. But this normal life was all a lie, wasn't it? Maybe David was right, even if he was right about the wrong thing.

"I reckon I'll get the kids, then," he said, and a chill sank into her, deep-freezing her bones.

"No." She went to him.

"Any judge in the land would give me custody. Don't worry. I won't make no claim on the farm. That's rightly yours as a Gregg, if for no other reason."

"Not the kids," she wailed. She pounded her fists on his chest. He didn't try to stop her.

The blows softened and she collapsed, grabbing his shirt for support. He kept her from falling. She felt nothing in his embrace.

"How are we going to tell the boys about us?" She sniffled.

"They already know. They ain't dumb."

"I thought ... I don't know what I thought." But Linda knew exactly what she thought. She thought the children were hers, to love and protect and introduce to the joys of worship in the Temple of the Two Suns. To deliver unto Archer, so the generations would be spared.

"Now quit your crying. They'll be here any minute."

Damn him for trying to be strong. Acting like she didn't matter. Her eyes went to the knife in the corner.

"Don't do it, Linda. I'd hate for that to come up at the custody hearing."

Jesus-loving bastard.
But she wouldn't lose hope. Archer would know what to do. Archer would—

"Did you hear that?" David asked, releasing her.

"Hear what?" She rubbed her arms, trying to wipe away the memory of his rough touch.

David went to the door. Linda thought about the knife. No, if she used the knife, they'd take the kids away for sure. She heard something that sounded like a calf caught in a crabapple thicket and bawling its heart out.

"It's Ronnie," David said, then leaped off the porch and ran toward the creek that divided a stretch of pasture from the front yard.

Ronnie raced across the pasture, moaning and wailing, waving his arms. Tim was farther back, running down the road, and even from that distance Linda saw that her youngest boy had lost his glasses.

Ronnie reached the little wooden footbridge that spanned the creek, a bridge that was nothing more than some pallet planks laid across two locust poles. His foot caught in a gap in the planks and his scream went an octave higher as he plummeted into the rocky creek bed. Her own shout caught in her throat.

David reached the creek and jumped down to where Ronnie lay. Linda scrambled down the bank after him. Ronnie was facedown, his legs in the shallow water. His head rested on a large flat stone. A trail of blood ran down the surface of the rock and dribbled into the creek, where it was quickly swept away.

"Don't move him," Linda shouted.

David gave her a look, then knelt beside Ronnie. The boy moaned and lifted his head. Blood oozed from his nose. His lip was swollen.

He moaned again.

"What?" David said.

This time Linda was close enough to hear what he was saying.

Ronnie's lips parted again. "Uhr—red church."

His eyes were looking past both of them, seeing nothing, seeing too much.

CHAPTER THREE

Sheriff Frank Littlefield looked up the hill at the church and the monstrous dogwood that hovered beside it like a guardian. He'd always hated that tree, ever since he was a boy. It hadn't changed much since the last time he'd set foot in the graveyard. But
he
had, the world had, and Boonie most definitely had.

The young get old and the dead get deader
, he thought as he studied the shadowed belfry for movement.

"What do you figure done it?" asked Dr. Perry Hoyle, the Pickett County medical examiner.

Littlefield didn't turn to face the man immediately. Instead, he squinted past the church steeple to the sun setting behind the crippled cross. The cross threw a long jagged shadow over the cemetery green. Somebody was cutting hay. Littlefield could smell the crush of grass in the wind. He scratched at his buzz cut. "You're the ME."

"Wild animal, that's my guess. Mountain lion, maybe. Or a black bear."

"Sure it wasn't somebody with a knife or an ax?"

"Not real likely. Wounds are too jagged, for one thing."

Littlefield exhaled in relief. "So I guess we can't call it a murder."

"Probably not."

One of the deputies was vomiting in the weeds at the edge of the cemetery.

"Don't get that mixed in with the evidence," Littlefield hollered at him. He turned back to Hoyle. "Black bear wouldn't attack a man unless her cubs were threatened. And it'd have to be a mighty big mountain lion."

"They get up to two hundred pounds."