Legend had it Harmon pitched Johnny Hampton under the water wheel at the old Rominger gristmill, and Johnny's foot got caught in one of the paddles. Over and over went little Johnny, shouting and blubbering each time his head broke free of the water, grabbing a lungful of air just before he went under again. Took about twenty rounds of the wheel before he tuckered out and drowned while the mill hands desperately tried to stop the wheel. His death went down in the church records and the county deed office as an accident, but folks in Solom kept their own secret ledger.

Arvel's great-uncle Kenny was galloping down a moonlit road when he came to the covered bridge that used to cross the river near the general store. Everybody liked the nice echo of horse shoes clanging off those wooden runners, so Kenny had picked up speed and burst through. Trouble was, a carpenter had been doing repairs on the bridge's roof that day and left a level line in the rafters. The line had slipped during the night until it was about neck-high to a man on a horse. Kenny's head hadn't been cut clean through, but there was barely enough connecting meat left to stuff a sausage casing.

Others had fallen into hay rakes, caught blood poisoning from saw blades, and old Willet Miller had been gored by a goat, his in testines yanked out and hanging like noodles on a fork. So Arvel had had no expectations of ever getting up and walking away from the encounter mat long-ago day. He was just glad for two tilings: he'd go with a belly full of gooseberries and he wouldn't have to clean the fish before supper.

"Boy," Harmon Smith had said in greeting, touching the brim of his hat. The voice held no fire and brimstone, not even the thunder of a preacher. It was just plain talk.

"You're the Circuit Rider." Arvel figured it was no time for fool ing around; plus he ought to be on his best behavior. Free Will Baptists earned their way to heaven, and Arvel figured he had to do some making up for the horehound candy he'd pilfered from the jar down at the general store. Even stealing from a Jew probably counted as a sin in God's all-seeing eyes.

Harmon's head swiveled back and forth, offering just a hint of the man's angular nose and sharp chin. "Doesn't seem like I'm doing much riding, does it?"

Arvel squinted, trying to make out the man's eyes in that des perate black shadow beneath the hat. It almost seemed like the man had no face at all, only a solid glob of dark. His suit was black and pocked with holes, and he wore a tow-linen shirt, material only poor kids wore in those days. "You looking for your horse?"

"Why, have you seen one?"

Arvel made a big show of looking up and down the pig path. "I think I saw one down that way," he said, and nodded in the direc tion of the Ward farm.

Arvel couldn't have said the man exactly grinned, but the dark ness broke in the lower part of the face, revealing a gleam of ochre enamel. "And I suppose you'd be leading me to it, right?"

"Why, yes, sir."

"Respect for elders. That speaks well for you, boy."

"I try to do right by people," Arvel said, as much for God's ears as for Harmon's.

"All right, show me that horse."

Arvel struggled to his feet, hitched up the suspenders he'd un hooked while digesting, and headed down the pig path, careful not to walk too fast. The Circuit Rider followed, scuffed boots knock ing dust in the air. Arvel tried to sneak a look back to catch the man's face now that they were heading into the sun, but somehow the preacher stayed just out of plain view. Arvel had his cane pole over his shoulder, and wondered idly what would happen if his hook accidentally sank in the Circuit Rider's flesh. That would make some fish story.

They went through the apple orchard that divided the Smith and Ward properties. The apples were small and tart, still weeks away from ripening, and Arvel's belly was already gurgling from all the gooseberries. He wondered if he'd have to make a dash behind a tree before they reached the outhouse. Would the Circuit Rider give him privacy, or stand over him with the wooden door open while he did his business?

They came out of the trees and the Ward farm was spread out before them. Arvel's pappy was splitting wood by the house, and his brother Zeke was scattering seed corn for the chickens. Acres of hayfields surrounded them, and the crop garden was rich and green behind the house. There under the bright summer sun, Arvel felt protected.

"I don't see a horse," the Circuit Rider said.

"Sure, it's there in the barn."

"You're lying to me, boy."

Arvel's heart was pumping like water from a spring hose. He threw aside his pole and the basket of fish and broke into a run, screaming like a fresh gelding. Despite the noise in his own head, the C ircui t Rider's voice came through clear from the shade of the orchard rows: "Liars go to the devil, boy. Know them by their fruits."

Pappy whipped him for raising a ruckus and startling the live stock, and Zeke had snickered and teased for days afterward, but Arvel was fine with all that, because he was alive. Still, he knew Harmon Smith never forgot, and the ride never ended. Sooner or later, Arvel would have to own up to his lie.

He just hoped it wasn't tonight. Zeke had been taken, but that was an accident, could have happened to anyone. Harmon Smith wasn't the type to rely on old age for stealing souls. No, violence was his way. He'd been taken by violence, and violence was what he had to deliver.

Arvel locked the doors. He should have warned Gordon's new wife and that little girl, no matter how peculiar they were. But they were outsiders. Plus, every fresh victim that stood between Arvel and the Circuit Rider meant a longer wait until his own day of reckoning.

After Mark, Katy had promised herself not to fall for a man, any man. She was on the type of post-divorce arc she'd read about in Cosmopolitan: no dating until a year after the breakup, then dat ing only nonthreatening men who didn't appeal to her all that much. The Cosmo rule declared no serious relationship could even be contemplated until two years after a divorce, especially if a child was involved. Katy ignored those kinds of rules, though she'd made a promise to herself to be cautious for Jett's sake. Jett, born Jessica, had gotten her nickname because of her inability to make sibilants as a toddler. When Jett had learned of eighties black-clad bad-girl rocker Joan Jett, the name was sealed.

Katy had kept Jett away from the potential replacements for Mark, not wanting to parade men through her life. She'd dated a Roger something-or-other, an insurance adjuster with overpowering cologne and happy hands; a broody food columnist for a Charlotte paper who'd nearly had her in tears after just one lunch; and Rudolph Heinz, a tall blond Aryan she'd met in a coffee shop who'd given her a thrilling three weeks but in the end offered about as much mental stimulation as her favorite vibrator. After those experiences, part of her was ready to settle down again, but the rest was determined to hold out for the perfect situation.

Gordon changed all that. He was presenting at a conference in the same hotel where Katy's company had scheduled a seminar. Her bank had eschewed frugality and scheduled the event at a resort in Asheville, a vibrant community billed as a "gateway to the North Carolina mountains." In the tradition of such seminars, it combined networking with leisure, the kind of professional vaca tion that most employees endured for the good of their careers while cramming in as much recreation as possible. She'd skipped out of the session entitled "Tax Considerations of Mortgage Points in Refinancing" and was browsing the vending machines by the check-in desk when she saw the schedule for the hotel's other con ference. Written in red marker on the dry-erase board were the words European Mythology in Appalachian Religion, with a room number and time listed. To Katy, bored nearly to tears and nursing a run high on one thigh of her stockings, the topic evoked images of snake-handling hillbilly preachers crossed with sacrificial burn ings like the one in the old Christopher Lee film The Wicker Man. She knocked down a quick martini at the hotel's bar and slipped into the small room where she first saw Gordon Smith, who was keynote speaker.

Gordon resembled a slimmer Orson Welles, tall and broad-chested, projecting a vulnerable arrogance. He told the crowd of about twenty, mostly professors who were nursing tenure-track hangovers, about the Scots-Irish influence on Southern Appalachian culture, as well as contributions by the Germans and Dutch. Katy wasn't that inter ested in the Druids, and religious politics always seemed like an oxymoron to her, so she tuned out most of the speech and planned the evening ahead. The bank had paid for her room, the seminar officially ended before dinner, and she had hours looming with no re sponsibilities. Jett was staying with her dad, and she'd left her cell phone in her hotel room. She was about as close to free as a single mom could be.

Gordon pulled her from her reverie with a rant on Demeter and Diane, harvest goddesses who had to be appeased before they would prove generous with their human subjects.

"Human sacrifice was common among many primitive reli gions," Gordon said, his voice assuming an evangelical thunder as if to wake the drowsing audience. "Blood was not only a gift for Diane in the forests of Nemi. Central America, Scandinavia, the South Sea Islands, Africa, India, virtually every continent had bloodthirsty gods, and those gods often demanded the ultimate tribute. Certain Germanic tribes combined human sacrifice with nature worship. If someone was found guilty of scarring the bark of an oak tree, that person's belly button was nailed to the tree trunk, and then the body was circled around the tree until the of fender's bowels served to patch the tree's wound."

Gordon had the audience riveted by then, and Katy found her self admiring the man's strong cheekbones, thick eyebrows, and dark, penetrating eyes. He went on to suggest that vestiges of the old worship still lived on in the form of scarecrows, horseshoes, jack-o'-lanterns, and Yuletide mistletoe. By the time he'd finished, she'd thought of a question to ask him derived from her own lapsed Catholic beliefs. She waited while he shook the hands of balding, tweed-encased academics, and gave him a smile when her turn came. He nodded impatient, as if he'd earned his honorarium and the show was over.

"Professor Smith, could you tell me how Jesus Christ fits into your theories of human sacrifice?"

Gordon first looked startled and then he threw back his head and laughed from deep within his belly. "My dear, entire books have been written on the subject. Do you have an hour to spare?"

His question had not exactly been a come-on, but she didn't want to eat in the hotel dining room alone, or worse, with colleagues from the bank. So she said, "Yes, I do. How about dinner?"

She wasn't physically attracted to him, at least not in the rip-off- clothes-and-let's-wallow fashion. Even after their marriage, she questioned her original motivation in seeking him out. But some where between the oysters and the strawberry cheesecake, he'd be come interesting for more than just his obvious intelligence. Gordon didn't flinch when she told him she was a divorced mother of one. If anything, he'd become more deferential and inquisitive. By the end of dinner, they agreed to a nightcap at the bar, Katy fully expecting the drinks to lead to an invitation to his room. She didn't have to decide whether she would have accepted the offer, because he never asked. Instead he made her promise to join him for breakfast.

A flurry of communication ensued over the following weeks, phone calls at night, e-mails throughout the day, and even old-fash ioned, handwritten letters showing up about once a week. It was the letters that eventually won her over. In person, Gordon was a little cool and distant, but his sentences burned with passion and a playful humor that belied his professorial persona. He invited her to visit Solom, and she drove up with Jett one Saturday, her daugh ter grumbling all the while, dropping into defensive mode over Dad. But Jett had frolicked on the Smith farm, exploring the barn, traipsing through the woods, playing in the creek, and by sundown Jett wanted to stay for another day. By then Katy was prepared to bed the evasive Dr. Smith, but he seemed old-fashioned about courting, reluctant to do more than kiss her cheek.

Katy's decision to accept his proposal came after a few sleepless weeks of soul-searching. She didn't want a replacement for Mark, especially in Jett's life, but as Mrs. Smith she would be a stay-at-home mother, something she had never desired until Jett's drug problems surfaced. Katy blamed herself for being so ab sorbed in her career that she let her marriage to Mark fail (though intellectually she knew they'd waltzed together over the cliff edge) and then compounded the error by neglecting Jett. Gordon and Solom offered a fresh start, a chance for her to rebuild her relation ship with her daughter with a supportive man in her life.

Gordon had never explained Christ's position as the world's most famous sacrificial lamb, but it didn't matter now. The honeymoon was over.

The Blackburn River was old.

Geologists said it was the second-oldest river in the world, after the Amazon.

The people in Solom didn't care about history books. All they saw was the slim ribbon of silver that cut into the brown banks of the hilltops. The water brought sustenance in the spring, kept their stock alive in the summer, and in September it shot its narrow cur rents among the yellow and white stones. It slowed to a trickle in January, only to bust out white again during the March melt. Maybe the water, like the humans who clustered around its shores, had an instinctive understanding of ebb and flow.

Solom took its name from bad grammar. Some say the place used to be called Solomon Branch, after the Old Testament king. Others said it was Solomn, a misspelling of the word solemn, which meant everything from formal and serious in a liturgical sense to grave and somber, as in a funeral ceremony. The permanent valley settlers had eventually trimmed off the silent letter at the end. If it sounded like Solom, then it was Solom.

The original residents were the buffalo that trampled ruts across t he hilltops as they made their way from Kentucky in the summer to the Piedmont flatlands of Carolina in the winter. The herds num bered in the thousands, and the ground shook as their hooves bit into the earth. The Cherokee and Catawba visited the region only in the fall, when meat was available. Otherwise, the natives had the good sense to stay off those cold and forlorn mountaintops. Then the whites came along and poured across the slopes like albino fire ants.

Daniel Boone and the early European trappers and hunters were cold-blooded enough to hang out on the trails and slaughter their quarry across the seasons, with no sense of a circular food chain. In a few short decades, the buffalo and elk that had sustained the natives for centuries were gone, remembered only in the occa sional place name or flea-ridden floor skin. The Cherokee had their own problems, driven at gunpoint to Oklahoma, where the land scape was as alien to them as if they had been dropped onto the surface of Mars. The federal government later felt guilty enough to grant them control of gambling casinos, but by then their heritage and souls had been all but lost. They dreamed of spiritual journeys where they met up with buffalo, but they woke up to an artificially inflated Britney Spears, an artificially inflated Barry Bonds, and a cynical, media-inflated Republican leadership that encouraged fear in every sector of society, especially among the outcast.

Not that modern Solom paid any attention. The inhabitants were mostly the offspring of farm and lumber workers, the women thick and faithful, the men prone to drink when they weren't in church. All were raised with a sense of duty, and church records were often the final statement on the quality of a life lived. A man's obituary was set down by a barely literate family member, and if the man lived a good life, he was noted as a solid provider, a friend of the church and community, and an honest trader. If he failed in any of those areas, his obituary was nothing more than an opportu nity to question the eventual resting place of his soul.

Women were measured within a narrower yet more sophisti cated set of parameters. Were her hips broad enough to bear a goodly number of children? Did she sit quietly on her side of church, raising her singing voice only at the appropriate time, after the males had established the proper cadence? Did she keep the Bible on her lap instead of the shelf? Did her obituary list more than a dozen grandchildren?

No obit had ever been written for Harmon Smith, and his name was marked in no family Bible.

Many testimonials had once been recorded about the work of Good Harmon Smith, a Methodist minister who had crossed denominational lines in the late 1800s, whose horse Old Saint had touched half of three states. A rival minister, the Reverend Duncan Blackburn, had attended to the needs of Episcopalians and the few mountain Catholics. Blackburn had earned a resting place on holy ground while Smith had died on the slopes of what became known as Lost Ridge. Legend held he was on his way to a January bedside appointment with a dying widow when a blizzard swept down from the Canadian tundra and paid his holy debt in full. In the twenty-first century, Blackburn had a line-drawing portrait tucked in the back pages of a university library while Smith occupied graves in three different churchyards. No one knew where Smith's real re mains were buried.

And some questioned if there were any remains left worth re turning to the dirt But this was Solom, home of an old river, and questions only came from those who didn't know any better. From outsiders, and newcomers, and those who heard the soft sound of distant twilight hoofbeats.

Chapter Four.

Cabbage.

Katy hated the stuff. When cooked, it stank almost as much as swordfish. But Gordon had grown it in the garden, and therefore it achieved all the sacred status of a scapegoat. She could cop out and make slaw, a little mayo, celery seed and paprika and she'd be done. But she wanted Gordon to know she had broken a sweat, and she might accidentally cut her thumb in the bargain and prove her self a worthy mountain farm wife.

She lifted the heavy knife and was about to snick a fat green- white wedge when the scream pierced the air.

Jett.

Not from upstairs, so it couldn't be Jett.

Outside.

Maybe the cat had gotten a baby rabbit. Katy had been startled by the first bunny scream she'd ever heard on a Sunday morning several weeks back. It was the keening of a raped woman, the grunt of a gutted man, and the mournful wail of an abandoned child all rolled into one. Gordon had chuckled at her leap from the bed. "City girl," he'd admonished.

But Gordon wasn't here and this was no laughing matter.

The scream came again, and this time it did sound like Jett, and it came from the barn, muffled by the chestnut walls.

Time for Supermom without a cape, her uniform stained blue jeans and beige sleeveless blouse instead of blue-and-red tights with a yellow S across her boobs.

She burst onto the porch, raising the knife as if she meant busi ness.

Katy made a direct line toward the barn, kicking away the dor mant lilies that had grown around the Smith house for decades. She plowed through the garden, her flip-flops throwing up brown bits of dirt and dead vegetation. The gate was at the end of the driveway, but it was thirty yards out of the way. The fence was right in front of her, sparkling silver in the sunset, but seemed as ephemeral as a spi derweb. Her heart beat monkey rhythms.

Where was Jett?

She was unaware of leaping the fence, though one foot had probably reached the top strand of hog wire, but she stumbled on the other side, the knife flying from her hand as she fell to her knees. The barn rose before her, a haunted vault of straw and cow manure, as ancient as the family that had erected it. Her daughter, her life, her soul was in there.

She scrambled to her feet and found the knife. Her breath was a sick series of dry heaves in her chest. As she entered the barn, she raised the blade like a talisman.

"Jett?"

No answer, only the wooden echo of her pulse.

The inside of the barn had gone to a bruised shade of purple with sunset.

Creeeeeek.

The loft.

She squinted and found the stairs and was halfway to them when a blur of motion came from her left.

"Jett?"

Katy's gasp tasted of dust. She stepped back as the body fell from above, its arms flailing in the half-light, the waist bent at an obscene angle. She cringed, waiting for it to fall in a splintering heap of bones on the crooked steps. Instead, the body bounced and sprawled on the dirt floor at her feet. She jumped away, slamming her back into a locust support beam.

The body was too large to be Jett's. It was facedown, the limbs askew. Katy waited for breathing or a wheeze of pain to come from the twisted figure. After a few moments of silence, she eased for ward and nudged the body with her toe. It moved with a rodent rus tle, too light to be flesh and bone.

Katy knelt and touched the flannel of the shirt, then lifted the head. Straw spilled from a split seam in the clothing. It was a scarecrow, mildewed and ragged. Her ascent up the stairs must have dis lodged it from its seasonal slumber dangling from a rusty nail. A length of braided hemp rope was tied in a noose around its neck, the top end frayed. The head was wrapped in cheesecloth, with pale bone buttons for eyes and a piece of black yarn for a mouth. Its straw planter's hat had rolled away, a jagged crescent torn in the brim as if some animal had taken a big bite.

Maybe Jett had seen the scarecrow and thought it was a person and freaked out, just as Katy had done. After all, Gordon had told her the legend, too, and Jett's face had gone pale while listening, making her black eye shadow even more dramatic.

But there were worse things than legends. Like drugs. What if Jett had scored some angel dust or crystal meth, something that turned reality into a rocket ride down a nightmare chute to hell?

"Jett?"

Footsteps drummed on the loft floor above. Boots, too heavy to be Jett's ankle-high black leather things.

Katy mounted the steps, glancing at the four chicken-wired windows on the lower floor, wishing more of the fading sunlight would pour through and burn her fear away. But she had little room for fear, because worry took over. At the top of the stairs, she eased up the little metal hasp that kept the door fastened. She'd never been in the loft, and had only briefly visited the barn during Gordon's introductory tour.

Too bad she wasn't Supermom for real. X-ray vision would come in handy right now. The light was a little better up here, thanks to the large triangles cut into each end of the barn. Uneven squares of dirty blond hay were stacked around like an autistic giant's alphabet blocks. Stalks of tobacco dangled upside down at the far end of the barn, speared on poles, the drying leaves like the wings of reddish brown bats.

Could Jett be playing some bizarre game of hide-and-seek? She wasn't the type to scream. If Jett wanted to get attention, she usu ally came up with some mind-blowing observation or another. But Katy had been neglecting Jett in favor of Gordon lately, even though Jett's world had been shaken more than anyone's by the move to Solom.

"Okay, Jett," she said. "Fun's over. Come on out."

She heard a giggle, or maybe it was only a breeze rifling the parched tobacco.

"Dinner's probably burning," Katy said. "If you thought the swordfish was bad wait until you smell scorched cabbage."

Katy felt silly holding the knife, so she rucked it behind her back as she headed between the rows of hay. The air was as thick as snuff, motes spinning in the shafts of dying sunlight. A few loose piles of hay were scattered here and there, near the black square holes in the floor through which food was thrown down to the ani mals. Katy expected Jett to jump from behind a stack at any moment, or burst up from one of the hay piles in a sneeze-inducing spray of gold. Good prank, except that would spoil dinner. She wanted Gordon in a good mood so maybe they could finally finish consummating their marriage.

"Cute, honey. We can have a good laugh over the dinner table."

No answer. The time Jett had taken acid in Charlotte, she'd stayed out all night, hiding in a storm sewage pipe, showing up late for school the next day, dirty, wild-eyed and ravaged by insects. Katy, who had waited up sleepless and had several times resisted the urge to call the police, had picked her up from school, taken her to the doctor, and let the school psychologist give the lecture. Something in Jett had changed after that, a drifting look in her eyes, a secretive smile that spoke of more journeys to come. Hopefully this wasn't one of them.

Katy made her way through the maze of bales to the far end of me barn. She looked through the triangle to the wooded hills above. A few goats dotted the slopes, browsing in the brush at the edge of the forest. In the adjacent meadow, separated by a stitch of fencing, cows worked the grass, their heads swiveling, ears twitching against the insects. She was about to turn back to explore the loft again when a light flickered in the distant trees.

Somebody with a lantern or flashlight. The ridge was Gordon's property. It was nearly hunting season, but Gordon's land was posted. Gordon said his neighbors were always welcome, as long as no bullets flew around and no drunken hunters mistook his cows for oversize deer. She'd have to tell him about the trespassing later, when such ordinary oddities would matter.

"Jett, seriously. Don't make me get mad." She tapped the knife against a post. "The scarecrow trick was a good one. Spooked the living daylights out of me. I bet you can't wait to tell Gordon."

No answer. Maybe Jett had already slipped down the stairs and was waiting at the dinner table, or in her room, cheeks swollen with the laughter she was storing up. At any rate, Jett was twelve and could find her way to the house with no trouble, even in the dark. Even stoned out of her eyeballs.

But that screama"

It hadn't sounded like a joke.

If there had even been a scream. Maybe, like the perfume in the kitchen or the footsteps that had no legs, the scream had been noth ing more than invisible smoke. The farm wasn't haunted. Despite the way Gordon's first wife had died.

This was silly. Jett had promised to quit drugs as part of their new life. If a mother and daughter couldn't trust each other, they were hopeless anyway. Katy decided she would check on dinner, and if she didn't see Jett in the house, she would grab a flashlight and return. Without the knife.

"Okay, Jett," she yelled, her words stifled by the hay. "I'm going back to the house."