Scott Nicholson - The Farm

"Well, you work for him," Ray said. "Anything peculiar going on at the Smith place?"

"He's been mighty riled up about his scarecrow," Odus said. "Muttering strange stuff under his breath and tending to his goats."

"Every religious figure needs a flock," Lillian said. "Without Moonies, Sun Myung Moon would be just another businessman."

"Moon do what?" Ray said.

"The leader of the Unification Church," she said. "He has a church in Washington, D.C., and owns a ton of real estate and international newspapers. The conspiracy theorists believe Moon has his mouth whispering in the ear of our politicians while his fingers are slipping cash into their back pockets. Some say even the president is an ally."

"Now don't you be knocking George Dubya," Ray said. "The worst thing that ever happened to Solom was letting Democrats come in. If Clinton was a Jew, he'd have been the Antichrist."

Sarah didn't rise to the bait, though she made a mental note of his remark. Her father had changed the family name from Jaffe to Jeffers before moving to Solom. She'd never made a big deal about being Jewish, though she was the only one in the valley, though so many summer people had built homes here that some were bound to be Jewish. She wasn't all that religious, anyway, and she sold plenty of knickknacks that featured Bible verses or pictures of a snow-white Christ.

All she knew about the Moonies was from the Guinness Book of World Records, where they set the record for the number of people married at one time. Out of the thousands, most of them were strangers. Well, she supposed your odds of getting divorced were about the same as whether you thought you were in love. She'd been in love a couple of times, and in something close enough to it a few other times, and they'd all ended up the same.

"Maybe the goats tie in with fertility and harvest," David said. "The more you sacrifice, the more they multiply. The Old Testament sacrifices were all about pleasing God. It's the same with most religions, whether you're lighting candles, taking communion, shaving your head, or offering food."

"All I know is the billy goats don't like it when you talk about gelding them," Lillian said, holding up her injured hand.

"Hold on a minute, folks," Sue said. "I can accept that the Circuit Rider is real. After all, every legend has a basis in fact. And I'll even buy that goats are evil. I mean, with those creepy eyes and cloven hooves, how could anybody think otherwise? And let's assume 'its hour come round,' as the Yeats poem goes, and Solom is our backwoods Bethlehem. After all, the battle of Armageddon has to start somewhere. The question is, what do we do about it?"

They all looked at each other, except Lillian, who was staring into the bottom of her coffee cup as if the answer were spelled out there. "I reckon we have to find a way to take down the Circuit Rider," Odus said. "We have to figure out what he wants, then give it to him and make him go away."

"What if he wants us all to suffer like starving dogs on a slow trip to hell?" Ray said.

"Revenge," David said. "He might hold the people of Solom responsible for his death, and his spirit can't rest in peace."

"Maybe he's looking for his horse," Lillian offered.

"What I think," Odus said, "and I can't blame him because I kind of feel the same way, and I've only been here thirty-eight years instead of two hundred, is he's come to clean house. If he's really been around all this time, he's probably sick of flatlanders coming up here and building on our ridgetops, crowding the valley with their SUVs and bluegrass festivals, flushing their shit in the river. I'd bet he's just homesick, and since it looks like God won't let him into heaven and the devil doesn't have the room to spare, old Harmon's stuck here and decided to take on Solom as a fixer-upper."

"And he's doing it by killing tourists?" Sue said.

"Well, he's been killing us for years and years," Odus said. "Maybe he's decided he needs to hurry things along now, because of all the growth. So he goes after the rest of us, probably trimming back to the handful of families that were around when he first came to Solom."

"The only problem with that theory is he's a tourist just like the rest of us," David said. "You can't turn back the clock."

"You can't come back from the dead, either."

Sarah suddenly felt all alone, even in the presence of company. She imagined the general store under the great, crushing weight of night. Despite the ticking woodstove, a chill settled into her brittle bones. Darkness pressed against the window, and the porch light did little to scare it off. Black was every color rolled into one, they said and when everything bled together it made just the one color, the absence of light. And it looked like there was going to be plenty of bleeding going on.

A clatter arose from the front of the store, near the register. She'd turned off the lights as she usually did at closing time, and the corners of the store were cloaked in shadows.

"Who's there?" she said. Nobody could have broken in without her hearing. But somehow the goat had passed through these walls, and a man who could command goats and defy the grave probably wouldn't be considerate enough to knock. Besides, he'd already paid her a visit once.

The Circuit Rider stepped into the light. He held a pack of Beechnut chewing tobacco in his hand, and as they watched, he slowly peeled the foil pack open and shoved a moist wad into his mouth, shreds of the dark tobacco dribbling down his chin to the floor. The brim of his hat was turned low, but the bottom half of his face was waxen and milk-colored, not as ghostly as when Sarah had first seen him. His mouth was filled with broad, blunt teeth, like those of a grazing animal.

"Put it on my tab, Sarah," he said grinding the tobacco with his jaws, his voice cob-rough and deep.

"What business you got here in Solom?" said Odus, the first of them to recover.

"No business, just pleasure," he said.

A whinny came from outside, near the front of the store. The Circuit Rider plucked a Macintosh apple out of a bushel basket. He polished it against the sleeve of his black wool jacket. "There's pleasure in the fruits of your labors."

Lillian spilled her coffee and Odus backed up until he bumped into the woodstove. David had risen half out of his chair and stood there, bent over as if he'd been flash-frozen. Sarah thought about the shotgun under the cash register, but it was still covered by newspapers.

"Nice of you folks to hold this little get-together for my sake," he said.

"We don't want nothing from you," Odus said. "We just want to be left alone. We're willing to let you rest in peace."

"Love your enemies, right, Elder David? Bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you." The Circuit Rider gave a laugh that held no humor, with just the hint of a hell wind behind it. He shot a thick stream of tobacco onto the pine floorboards, causing Sarah to wince. Touching the brim of his hat, he dipped his head slightly, as if nodding to the ladies.

"Sorry to rush off, but I have work waiting in the orchards of life," he said. He went to the door, his boots loud on the wood, then opened it and went outside, merging into the darkness from which he'd come. From which they all had come, and to which they were inevitably bound.

Hooves thundered down the asphalt road, and the six people sat in silence, afraid to give words to their fear. Eventually, Sarah went to get a rag and mop up the tobacco juice. By the time she reached the spot by the register, the dark stain had vanished, as elusive as the creature that had left its mark.

Katy was elbow-deep in dirty dishes when the back door swung open. Gordon must have forgotten to lock it, and the wind was picking up, skating leaves against the side of the house, sending cold air against her bare legs. She realized with a start that she wasn't wearing panties, and she must have changed into the autumnal-print dress sometime after dinner. She put a soapy hand to her forehead. What was happening to her memory?