Katy decided she needed to improve the odds a little. As the butt-head slammed her car door for the third time, she turned over the ignition key. The Subaru engine roared to life, and she threw th e gearshift into drive and hit the gas. The goat perched on the bumper (for some reason, the name "Methuselah" came to mind) lost its balance and bounced off the grille with a meaty thump. Gravel spat from beneath the wheels like Uzi slugs, and startled goats emitted bleats of surprise and pain. The fishtailing rear of the Subaru slewed into a small group of the creatures, scattering them like soft bowling pins. Katy heard limbs snap, and a stray horn clacked against a side window and caused the glass to spiderweb.

Some of the goats danced out of the way, their long, angular faces almost comical with those obscene eyes set deep beneath heavy brows. Katy navigated an arc, parking the passenger's-side door at the foot of the porch steps. She leaned over and flung the door open as Jett hopped toward the car. Gordon looked shattered, as if he wanted to cry but couldn't find any water in his dried-up heart. Katy would almost have felt sorry for him, but she was pretty sure he was distraught over the dead and injured goats and not over losing his wife.

"Shit, Mom, you rock," Jett said as she climbed into the front seat. Katy was already pulling away before the door closed.

The goats had by now figured out a monstrous steel predator was in their midst, and they had parted like the waves of the Red Sea.

"Moses," Katy said. "Did he have a goat named Moses?"

"That one," Jett said, pointing to the left. "The one with the black hairs in its beard."

Katy veered out of the way and clipped Moses head-on. The goat bounced up on the hood and pressed against the windshield. For one horrifying second, Moses glared through the glass at Katy, as if admonishing her for breaking some unwritten commandment. Then he rolled to the side and was flung from the car, which was by now halfway down the drive to the Ward house. When Katy checked the mirror, Moses was flopping and flailing on the hard-packed road.

"Sweet!" Jett yelled, as if this were a sequel to Thelma and Louise, only this time cowritten by Federico Fellini and George Romero.

"Fasten your seat belt," Katy said, her hands no longer trem bling. She hadn't had time to be frighteneda"well, not such a much of ita"but now the reverse endorphins were kicking in and the blood drained from her face, her bruised eye throbbing.

"I saw your ghost," Jett said after obeying the parental com mand. She put her backpack in the floor between her legs, opened it, and rummaged while Katy aimed for the paved highway.

"It's not my ghost," Katy said. "I'm still very much alive, thank you."

Jett pulled a CD from her backpack, opened the case, and slid it into the player. She punched a button and Paul Westerberg's "Knockin on Mine" blared from the speakers like a bad attitude in A major.

Neither of them noticed the ghost sitting in the backseat, its head in its lap.

Sue parked the Jeep beneath a stand of balsam, gnarled trees whose bones had been bleached white by acid rain and foreign pests. A number of native tree species were in decline because of exotic diseases that had been brought to the country from Asia, usually piggybacking on landscaping plants. Human vanity had led to this imbalance of nature, as it did to most imbalances. The regional tourist economy, and Sue's personal economy, was threat ened by the damage to scenic beauty.

Perhaps Harmon Smith, the Circuit Rider, was another such blight, invading a realm where he didn't belong. The Circuit Rider was just as much a threat, because he couldn't be caged and put on display at five bucks a head. Instead, he literally killed her cus tomers, if indeed he had done away with the Everharts while they were cycling. Plus, somebody had to pay for the damage to the bicycles. Though the Circuit Rider couldn't pay in a pound of flesh, Sue hoped to extract some sort of substance.

"Ready to rock and roll?" she said, looking over at Sarah. Maybe ancient wisdom had something on the brashness of youth, because Sarah gripped the safety bar on the dash in front of her and stared straight ahead at the woods.

"I don't know why you brung me along," the storekeeper said. "If I was meant to take care of Harmon Smith, I expect I'd have done it many moons ago."

Sue brandished the pickax, letting it catch the last rays of sun light. "Maybe you didn't have the right tool."

"And what in tarnation am I supposed to do with that? Hammer it into his heart like he's some kind of ass-backwards vampire?"

"I think we'll know when the time comes. I'm just flying by the seat of my pants here."

"You act like you've done this kind of thing before."

Sue flicked the headlights, strobing the silent trees. "No, I just don't want to be waiting for the next time Harmon Smith decides to come around. Solom is my home now."

"You younguns are so full of piss and vinegar. It's a wonder any of you ever live to be old."

"Well, Miss Jeffers, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but if the people of Solom had faced this problem right at the start, maybe it would all be over by now."

Sarah's voice broke, nearly becoming an old woman's whine. "We couldn't figure out what he wanted. We figured he'd just come to claim somebody and that was that, and each time he went away, the ones who weren't picked just counted their blessings and went about their business. That might be the worst of it all. Because, until he comes back again and you start seeing the people he killed, you somehow manage to forget"

Sue wrestled a flashlight from beneath her seat and flung open her door. "Well, nobody's forgetting this time."

"I hope it ain't you," Sarah said. "But 1 hope it ain't me, either, and if it does turn out to be one of us, I'd rather he carry you over. Nothing personal, mind you."

Sue almost smiled despite the knot in her stomach. Her bravery was mostly false, but Sarah was clearly shaken, and Sue felt a need to be strong for both of them. She believed Harmon Smith would be impressed by a lack of fear. She went to Sarah's door and helped her out, then played the flashlight around beneath the dark canopy of the forest.

"Where to now?" Sue asked.

"Right here," came a voice from the trees.

When Mark Draper arrived at the Smith house, both vehicles were gone from the driveway. He knocked on the front door with no answer, then walked around the house. He didn't know how Gordon Smith would react to trespassing, but a tingling at the base of Mark's skull told him something was wrong. After hearing Jett's stories and seeing the dead boy in the waterwheel, he was willing to believe his paranoia was real and not a side effect of the cocaine.

Mark was about to drive back to the general store to call the sheriff's department when he saw the barn. The doors were swung wide, and the gate was open. Twin tire tracks led into the old wooden structure, and the tracks looked fresh. That was where Jett had been attacked by the scarecrow and the goats, and he figured he'd at least take a peek. He owed her that much. He hadn't be lieved her this morning. Now he realized, maybe for the first time in his life, that he expected her to lie. Because she'd learned it from him. Along with other bad habits. His failure cast a bigger ripple than a mere broken marriage and a troubled childhood, because Jett would be carrying that bad karma with her even when Mark was worm food.

As he approached the gate, he noticed splotches of blood on the gravel driveway. The blood led into the barn.

"Shit," Mark said, breaking into a jog even though his knees were trembling. Dusk seemed to settle more heavily with each step, and the dark heart of the barn beckoned him like a carnival funhouse. Chickens emitted clucks from a row of cages along the front of the barn, and in the otherwise brooding silence, the clamor added to his uneasiness. What if the blood were Jett's? And what if something had happened to her just because he didn't believe her?

The wet drops reflected in the scant light that leaked through the doors and windows. Mark followed them to a set of narrow wooden stairs, where the drops were larger and stood out like black paint against the gray, bleached boards. Mark hesitated only a second, making sure none of the goats that Jett had talked about were around.

Man-eating goats.

That was about as loopy an idea as, say, a dead boy crying for help. He shivered and ascended the stairs, stepping as carefully as he could, though even missing a shoe his footfalls sounded like the beating of a kettledrum. Or maybe the noise was his pulse pound ing through his temples. He leaned against the wall for balance, not trusting the skinny, cockeyed railing. His hand brushed cloth and a dusty snuff of dried straw and chicken manure assailed his nostrils. He fought off a sneeze, eased up another few steps, and his hand struck cold metal. He ran his hand along the smooth length and came to wood, then back up into a sharp edge. Some type of cutting tool. Mark lifted it free of its support and checked its weight. It was a long scythe, the kind the Grim Reaper carried in cartoons. The curve of the blade made it awkward to handle in the confined space, but gave Mark a sense of security.

At the top of the stairs, the blood had pooled on a short landing, as if whatevera"or whoevera"was injured had struggled to open the door that must lead to the hayloft. The blood gave off a bright, warm smell that reminded Mark of seawater. He tried the latch, and his hand came away slick and moist. He wiped his hand on his slacks and eased the latch up. The door swung open with a slow groan of hinges.

The hayloft access was open on the far side of the barn, and the first glimmers of moonlight cast the pastures and surrounding hills in silver, as if the scene had been electroplated. The air was rich with chaff and the sweet smell of an early dew. Mark was tempted to call out for Jett, but what if someone was holding her prisoner? The scarecrow thing, or whatever?

Mark hefted the scythe and held the blade in front of him, tak ing careful steps forward. Something could be hiding in the hay bales to either side of him, and he couldn't swivel the scythe fast enough if he was jumped. Light from the gaps in the boards threw lustrous stripes across the floor, giving the illusion of prison bars. Mark was in the middle of the hayloft when he glanced out the window and saw Gordon's Chevy Tahoe parked up on the hill. The truck appeared to have been driven through a section of fence, be cause barbed wire curled around it and a broken fence post lay across the hood. The truck's driver's-side door was open, and the cab appeared empty. Mark was edging toward the window for a closer look when he heard a whisper of movement behind him, the soft rattling of corn husks or the stirring of a rodent. He spun, the scythe causing him to lose his balance.

Silhouetted against the silver spill of moonlight was a man in a hat.

The one Jett had told him about.

Mark squinted, trying to pool enough light in his pupils to make out the face. It appeared to be covered by a rough, grainy cloth. The rest of the clothing was ragged, with frayed strips fluttering in the breeze that carried the smell of autumnal decay from the valley outside.

"Where's Jett?" Mark said, his voice thick from dust.

The man didn't move.

The man in the black hat, Jett had said. But as his eyes adjusted, Mark saw that the hat wasn't black. It was a straw planter's hat, dented and torn, with stray sprigs of reeds sticking out at odd an gles.

Mark took two steps forward, then went weightless, and he pushed the scythe across his chest as he realized he was falling. A square was cut in the floor, wide enough to drop through a bale of hay {or a man, he thought), and his rib cage banged, and then his chin, as he kicked to keep himself upright. The floor couldn't be more than twenty feet below, but it was hard ground, packed by the hooves of generations of animals.

And as Mark struggled to keep a grip on the scythe, fighting to keep his elbows on the long wooden handle, he was suddenly sure that goatsa"carnivorous goatsa"were milling down below him, as silent as sharks cruising a chum-stained sea.

He pushed his legs out, swinging like a drunken gymnast in a surreal Olympics, then lifted himself until his belly was across the scythe handle. He reached one hand and found the hayloft floor, his index finger ripped by a protruding nail head. Blood trickled down bis finger to the pad of his hand, where it fell to the barn floor below. The unseen movement beneath him increased in intensity, and hooves padded softly in the dirt. But that didn't matter, be cause he had his balance and then his other hand was gripping a floorboard and he pulled himself forward, forward, and then he had a knee on the scythe handle and he was going to make it- He looked up to see the scarecrow standing over him, a crescent moon of metal arced above its straw hat. Mark couldn't be sure, but th e stitched face seemed to be grinning. Then the sickle swept down, slicing into Mark's left wrist all the way to the bone. The whole arm went numb, but he kept a grip with his right hand, even though his blood pressure plummeted and his skin grew cold as he went into shock. As the sickle reaped its sick harvest a second time, Mark let go, and as he fell to his death, he concentrated on Jett's face but all he saw was the long, endless tunnel of a final failure.

Chapter Thirty-two.

Katy pushed the Subaru a little fast for the winding road that followed the river, but she was in a hurry to get as far away from Solom as possible. She switched on the headlights as they passed the general store, noting that the store's porch light wasn't on. Usually, its deep yellow glow flooded the valley, drawing insects from the riverbanks and reflecting off the plate-glass window of the post office. All the buildings were dark, even the True Light Tabernacle, the squat brick building with the teepeelike steeple.

"Looks like Solom shut down for the night," Katy said over the sweet, aching strains of Westerberg's "Runaway Wind."

"What?" Jett cupped a hand to her ear, and Katy turned down the volume a little.

"Solom," she said. "Something weird's going on."

"Hey, not our problem, Mom."

"Got your cell phone?"

"Yeah, but it's about as useful as frog's wings in this valley. Where's an ugly cell tower when you need one?"

"I thought we might call your dad."

Jett's grin flashed in the green glow of the dashboard lights. "Are we going there?"

"No, I just thought we ought to tell him. He should be back in Charlotte by now."

"Damn, Mom. This is an emergency. Forget about your pride for a sec, okay?"

Katy eased up on the gas pedal. "There's a lot you don't know, honey, and a lot that you don't need to worry about."

"Come on, I saw the way you guys were looking at each other this morning. There's still a spark, just like Paul says in this song." She reached over and cranked the volume as Westerberg plowed through a chorus fraught with romantic desperation, and then she turned it down again. "I never saw any spark between you and Gordon. Not even hatred. Just a pair of flat-out fucking zombies."

"No cussing, honey," Katy said automatically, but was thinking: out of the mouths of babes. Jett had seen what Katy refused to see. But Katy had larger issues to consider than sparks, happiness, or love. She had to make good she had to provide Jett stability, she had to make up for a failed marriage by making the second one work. She had to have a happy family whether she wanted one or not.

Except that perfect plan hadn't exactly worked out, had it? She'd ended up playing second fiddle to a woman who couldn't even hold an instrument.

She glanced into the rearview mirror, wanting to see the outline of Solom vanishing into the past, one more wrong turn on the road to wherever she was meant to wind up. The full moon had risen and segued with the setting sun so that full darkness had never touched the sky. It had gone from deep purple to milky silver, though the hills lay beneath it like black sleeping beasts. A few wisps of ragged clouds spread themselves across the dust of the Milky Way. Katy had never noticed how few streetlights there were in Solom, and how the stars stood out by contrast, even while fight ing the dominant glow of the full moon.

"Up ahead is where Gordon's wife wrecked" Jett said pointing to a steep cut of bank that led down to the river. Hard trees danced just beyond the headlight beams. "The kids at school said the car flew off the road and flipped. She wasn't wearing her seat belt anda""

"Her head was cut off."

"I saw her, Mom. You weren't lying."

"I never lie to you."

"Bullshit. You lied about lots of things."

"Only to myself." Katy found her foot going from the accelera tor to the brake.

"Mom? What are you doing?"

"She needs to stop," came the voice from the backseat. Even with Westerberg singing over a tortured blues guitar lick, the voice carried and filled the interior of the car, as if it was coming from the speakers.

Katy swerved the steering wheel, bouncing to the narrow shoul der as the tires grabbed for traction. Jett jerked forward straining against the seat belt. "What the fuck?" she said her voice reverting to a prepubescent screech.

Rebecca, or what there was of her, leaned over the front seat. The milk-white threads of her ghostly flesh caught the sick glow of the dash lights. Her head was on, her face nearly blank, though her black lips held the hint of a smile in the mirror. Even ethereal and dead with a gruesome wound around her neck and the shadows of her bruises on her face, Katy noted that she was beautiful. The first wife whom Katy could never replace.

Jett wriggled from her seat belt and flung the passenger door open. "Get the hell out, Mom!"

Katy's fingers hesitated on the seat belt latch. Westerberg was singing about the dice behind somebody's shades. The soft, eternal whisper of the river blended with the music, and the night air car ried the smell of mud that had spent eons working its way down from the high granite peaks. Rebecca had died here, and hadn't been allowed to haunt this place. She had been banned from mov ing to some greater reward or perhaps a greater punishment than any cruelty this world could administer.

Weren't ghosts supposed to haunt their place of dying? But Rebecca had been bound to the Smith house, perhaps the place of greatest happiness or sorrow in her life. Not here, by a cold and re morseless river.

Katy could hop in a car and run away, but Rebecca was destined to stay with Gordon.

Their gazes locked in the mirror, and Rebecca gave a slight nod as if she understood Katy's thoughts.

"They found me here," Rebecca said.

Jett pounded on the hood with her fist. "Mom, get the fuck out"

Katy released her seat belt, but didn't get out. Instead, she killed the engine, taking the headlights with it. In the vacuum of silence, the night sounds filled the car, surrounded her: a breeze rustling the dried weeds along the river, bullfrogs croaking in a symphony, a short spill of water churning against the rocks, the engine ticking as it cooled.

"But you didn't die here," Katy said, the deeper, less calm part of her mind screaming: you 're talking to a ghost!

"No."

Jett ran to Katy's side of the car, pulled open the door, and pulled Katy's arm. "Get out, Mom. Get away."

"It's okay. She's not going to hurt us." Something made Katy add, "She can't hurt us. She's dead."

Jett kicked the side of the car in frustration. "I don't think she's nearly dead enough."

"Look at her. She's trying to tell us something."

Rebecca's smile widened in the mirror, and though it was still a creepy, elusive, unnatural thing, Katy turned to face her. She ex pected a corpse smell, a graveyard wind of what passed for breath among the dead, but there was none. Ragged flesh circled Rebecca's neck. However she had lost her head, it had not been by a clean stroke. Something, perhaps a piece of dull, jagged metal, had worked and rasped and gnawed at the meat. Rebecca was wearing the dress from the closet, the one with the autumnal print, though the dress was as translucent as the woman wearing it. The bustline would have been flattering if not for the wound.

"I died at the Smith house," Rebecca said, her dark eyes far away, as if staring into the cold waters of the river Styx.

"But what about the car wreck?" Katy said.

"Gordon brought me here."

"Did the Circuit Rider kill you?"

"No. I'm a sacrifice."

"A what?"