"Sacrifice."

"Who killed you?"

"I'm a sacrifice."

"That's just great," Jett said, still standing by the open door. "Out of all the dead people in the world we get the only one with a defective voice chip."

"Shh," Katy said. Distant headlights flickered in the valley be hind them, then disappeared as the vehicle rounded a curve. A dog barked from a distant hillside, the sound lost and lonely under the full moon.

"Who killed you?" Katy repeated. She felt a strange affinity for the woman, now that she had accepted that dead people were just like the living, only less afraid. She and Rebecca had shared the same kitchen and the same husband. Now they were sitting in a car together, talking about Rebecca's death as if they were discussing cosmetics.

"I'm a sacrifice," Rebecca said. "For his goats."

"Goats? Gordon killed you?"

The morose eyes blinked momentarily shielding Katy from their dark sorrow and pain.

"I knew that fucker had a screw loose," Jett said.

"Try the phone," Katy said, handing her the cell unit.

"Who do you want me to call? Ghostbusters? The FBI? Scully and Mulder?"

"Nine-one-one for a start."

"And what am I supposed to tell them, assuming we've found the one little patch in the valley where there's a signal?"

'Tell them we have to report a murder."

"And you're going to take her word for it?"

"Shh. Go on, so I can talk to Rebecca."

"Great. You're as nutty as the rest of them."

"I love you, too, dear." Katy turned her attention back to the dead woman in the backseat. "Well, what do we do now? Are you coming with us, or are you like the 'vanishing hitchhiker' in that urban legend and are going to disappear the moment we get where we're going?"

Rebecca's answer, rising from the pipes of an ethereal hollow inside, was neither of the two options Katy had offered.

Odus thrashed through the laurels, calling for Sister Mary. He was mostly sober now, the braving effects of the Old Crow dissi pated and leaving in its place a painful veil of fog. Some shining knight he'd made, some hero. His image of a tin-star stud riding into a dirty town with six-guns blazing had been reduced to a hung- over cowpoke who'd lost his ride.

The September darkness had not settled over the sky so much as it seeped up from the cool, ancient mountains. The black stuff of night had crawled around the rude and rounded chunks of granite, out from between the roots of old-growth ash and beech and hickory, up from the hidden holes in the world. Now it knitted its sin gle, all-consuming color in a smothering straitjacket, there at every turn, ready to match every breath, flowing into Odus's lungs and claiming its rightful space. Odus had never felt so much like an in vader on this planet as he did now. In fact, he'd never given it any thought at all.

He'd hunted these peaks, had sought squirrels and wild turkey and the occasional black bear, but he'd always come here as a conqueror. Now, entangled in its inky depths, his bearings lost, he rec ognized the futility of laying claim to something as old as the Appalachians. No human owned these mountains. If anything held deed to these stony and storied lands, it was creatures like the Circuit Rider, those not bound by time and space and the sad, small worries of the mortal.

Unseen branches tore Odus's hands, and waxy leaves slapped his face. He rested for a moment, squinting through the canopy to the scattered stars and the comforting cast of moonlight above.

"God, if you're up there, now would be a great time to lend a lit tle hand here," Odus said the prayer sounding stupid even as it left his lips. Why should God listen to a man who hadn't stepped foot in a church in two decades, who hadn't cracked a Bible since Sunday school in Free Will Baptist Church, who hadn't felt a single spiritual twitch since the day Preacher Blackburn had dipped his head into the chilling waters of Rush Branch and pronounced him washed free of sin?

However, his prayer may have been answered, or at least coin cided with an earthly event, which amounted to the same thing when you dropped the fancy cloth and got down to brass tacks.

Needles of light broke through the branches ahead. This light was filtered by the leaves but was a solid force, pushing at the suf focating darkness and promising hope. Odus worked toward it, his footing more sure now as he could make out the black lines of trees and didn't have to feel his way through the vegetative maze. He heard voices as the light grew stronger and recognized one of them: Sarah from the general store. What business did a seventy-year-old woman have on top of Lost Ridge at this time of night? Of course, Odus could ask himself the same question, and maybe the same answer would serve for both of them.

"Hello," he shouted through the trees.

"Who's there?" Sarah said, her voice snapping like a soggy twig.

"Odus."

"Well, come on out of there and count your blessings that I did n't let loose with some buckshot first. It ain't wise to go sneaking up on a lady in the dark."

"I wasn't sneaking, I was walking," he said.

"Is this your horse, then?" came another voice, and Odus placed it as belonging to Sue Norwood, the young woman who'd been at the meeting at the general store last night.

Guided by their voices and the intensifying glare of car head lights, Odus threaded through the edge of the laurel thicket and stood in a little clearing at the end of a logging road. He stepped into the comforting cone of light and shielded his eyes. Sister Mary stood by the Jeep, snorting, head twitching up and down, and Odus couldn't shake the feeling that Sister Mary was laughing at him.

"Well, she's not rightly mine," Odus said. "I kind of appropri ated her for a holy mission."

"See?" Sarah said to Sue, who was holding Sister Mary's reins. "I'm not the only one who's been touched in the head. The whole blamed place goes crazy whenever Harmon Smith rides into town."

"It seemed like the thing to do at the time," Odus said. "I mean, when you hear a calling, do you stop and ask questions, or do you just follow that voice?"

"You follow it," Sue said, and Odus could see the pickax in her hand, brandished like a Crusader's sword.

"That little pig-sticker won't do a thing against the Circuit Rider," Odus said, then noted the shotgun cradled across Sarah's arm. "I reckon a twenty-gauge won't, either."

"Oh yeah?" Sarah asked. "And what exactly do you have in your bag of tricks there that's supposed to kill a dead preacher? A Mason jar of holy water? A slingshot and a silver dime? An empty liquor bottle?"

Odus's face flushed. He'd tossed the Old Crow bottle into the hollow of a rotted-out stump, but first he'd briefly considered its potential as a spiritual battle-ax. Now the idea seemed as silly as Sue's and Sarah's weapons of choice.

"Okay, own up to it, we're poking in the dark with a limp stick," he said. "What now?"

"Wait, I reckon," Sarah said. "Harmon crashed our party last night, but I think tonight he's playing host."

"The air feels strange," Sue said. "Like it's carrying a mild elec trical charge."

Odus had been so wired with tension his senses had been honed and focused down to the tight ache in his gut. Having found com pany, and his horse, he was able to relax enough to draw in the moist night air. The inhalation carried the fragrance of balsam and wet leaves, rich loam and moss, the safe, healing aromas of the high forest. But beneath mat, like a corpse's smell oozing from be neath the undertaker's applied mask of perfume, was a corruption of sulfur and ozone, of decay and a pervasive stink of something that didn't belong in this world. The smell almost had a physical pres ence, as if it was lightly stroking his skin, coaxing him into vile acts and thoughts.

"I expect the others will be joining us," Sarah said.

"He's leading us here?" Sue said.

"Jesus had his Sermon on the Mount," Odus said. "Maybe Harmon's ready for his turn."

"You don't think... he's the devil, do you?" Sue said this with the tone of one who'd relegated such ideas to the realm of B-grade horror movies and backwoods tent revivals.

"Or a dybbuk in Jewish lore," Sarah said. "Not that I'd know anything about that."

"Maybe that's a question for Gordon Smith," Odus said. "He's the one with all the smarts on that stuff. Come to think of it, I won der why he's never talked about it much."

"Ashamed, maybe," Sarah said. "It's the same bloodline. And we all got some kin that we don't talk about much."

Sister Mary stepped forward, onto the stage defined by the headlights, and Sue dropped the reins so the horse could reach Odus. Sister Mary brushed Odus's satchel with her nose, and he unzipped it and brought out an apple. As she munched it with a cu rious, sideways twist of her jaws, Odus was reminded of the goats and their increasing numbers, how they were being born outside their natural gestation period.

"Flock," he said, dimly recalling material from Sunday school, when the class leader sold the kids on religion with coloring books and posters. Jesus was often pictured with a flock of some kind, whether it was sheep, children in robes, or grown-ups whose skin colors were varied enough and in the right proportions to make you think that, sure, black folks could get to heaven, too, only there probably wouldn't be too many of them, and God would surely give them a place off to themselves. The common theme was that gathering of creatures around Jesus, as if the Son of God would get lonely if he didn't have living things milling around him, waiting for a wise word or a bit of free food.

"Flock what?" Sarah said.

"The goats made me think of it," Odus said. "They've been breeding like rabbits in the past year, especially on Gordon's farm. I could hardly walk through the field without hearing them rutting in the weeds. Made me think that Gordon was on some kind of power kick, like he needed to be the king of the heap. Like he needed a flock so he could feel good about himself. I figured that was why he married a woman who had a kid, too."

"What's that got to do with the Circuit Rider?" Sue said.

"He wants a flock, too. And we're it."

Sarah looked around, as if afraid of what might lurk beyond the false security of the headlights, the shotgun tilted to the ground. "What in the world does he need with us? He should have killed somebody and been gone already."

"Maybe he needs something different this time," Odus said. "Notice we both said need. Like we have to serve some purpose."

"And maybe that's why we feel like we're on some sort of mis sion," Sue cut in, her voice excited, reminding Odus of just how young she was, and how new to Solom and its strange ways. But she seemed to be a fast learner, or else was as loopy as the rest of them. Odus had sometimes wondered if there was some mineral missing from the local water sources, or if some element was too rich in the underground springs, and that it had slowly poisoned the minds of everyone who stayed here too long. After generations, no doubt the madness was inherited. But if cheap bourbon had never clouded his mind for less than a day at a time, then why should plain water have that power?

"Others will be coming along shortly," Odus said realizing how pitiful and small his lone effort had seemed, riding into the moun tains like the long arm of justice.

"Well, we ain't serving nothing by just standing here," Sarah said. "I guess we ought to go hear our sermon."

"Where do we look first?" Sue asked.

Odus stroked the lean, sinewy neck of Sister Mary, who nuz zled against the flannel of his shirt. "I think our animal friend here knows the way."

Animals.

Alex Eakins sensed their presence as he threaded his way up me narrow mountain trail. This path had been marked by buffalo and elk, which had walked these ridges in great numbers before European hunters had permanently removed them from the landscape. Bears, bobcats, deer, foxes, raccoons, opossums, and other creatures had used the route in their stead. Mountain lions had once lurked in me branches above, waiting for easy game. Alex could feel the power of all those thousands of feet, hooves, and paws that had passed here before. But mostly, he could smell the raw musky funk of goat shit.

As daylight had failed, he'd relied on the flashlight to follow the goats' trail. When night had finally pulled its dark sheet over the sky, his other, more primitive senses had emerged at their keen est. The air was chilly, ripe, and moist, full of the fecundity of fall's decay. The forest had a taste that lingered with each breath, the acidic tang of oak, the bitter bite of wild cherry and birch, the muddy richness of a hundred seeping springs. His power at detect ing scent had also heightened, until he found he could smell not only the goats' spoor, but their fur and their ripe rutting aromas as well. Several times he thought he'd heard dozens of them moving through the unseen trees ahead, and wondered what he would do if he stepped into a clearing and found them all staring at him.

Alex patted the bow. He'd handle it, by the grace of God and the pissed-off fury of a man who had suffered trespassing.

His footing had grown more treacherous, the soles of his boots slick with the offal of those he pursued. The soil, though packed down by the centuries of use, had been scarred and tilled by the goat hooves. They were mountain creatures by nature, browsing the high forests when left in the wild, where their sure footing gave them an advantage over predators. But Alex felt his weapons and determination made him equal to the task.

The degree of the slope leveled out a little, allowing him to catch his breath. Near the peak, the trees thinned and moonlight spilled over the gleaming protrusions of granite. The gray boulders were scarred by moss, worn smooth by the slow work of a hundred thousand rains. The path narrowed as it wound between the rocks, and the hoot of an owl made the mountaintop seem like the last outpost on an alien boundary. Alex didn't contemplate the danger of breaking a leg or falling from a ledge. His path was sure and righteous. Revenge always delivered its own justification.

Below, through a gap in the trees, he could see the few twinkling lights of Solom. The bulb on the porch of the general store cast its pumpkin-colored glow, the center of a constellation of houses. The river road was like a dark black snake winding through the valley, and icy moonlight glinted off metal barn roofs. The trees thinned and Alex came to a clearing. He paused and listened, the wind playing through the dead and dying leaves. A soft murmur arose, like the babbling of a brook. After a moment, he recognized the sound as that of lowering goats, their bleats muted but uneasy. The bastards were just ahead, probably milling around in stoned- out glory, chewing bark and rocks in their advanced stage of mari juana munchies.

Alex slipped an arrow into the Pearson bow and made a stealthy approach. The ridge seemed brighter here, as if a last finger of day light held a tentative grip. Alex eased his way through a stand of laurels and saw what was in the clearing.

Weird Dude Walking stood in the center, on a large slab of stone. The goats knelt around him, their heads tilted up as if await ing words of capricious wisdom. Car headlights glared from behind the opposite stand of trees, moths swirling in the twin beams. Three people stood in silhouette among the trees.

Alex drew back the bowstring, intending to send an arrow through the dude's heart.

Weird Dude Walking turned to where Alex was hidden in the vegetation. "Welcome, friend," he said his voice like smoke.

Chapter Thirty-three.

A chauffeur for the dead.

Katy guided the Subaru off the highway onto the old logging road, sure that the last bit of sanity had slipped from her, leaving the nerves of her brain raw and exposed.

Why else would she be taking directions from a ghost? Her in stinct had been to stay on the highway and make time to Florida, maybe stopping at a Holiday Inn halfway between. Anything that would have put distance between Jett and Solom. But Rebecca's lost voice had connected with her on some primal, feminine level. They were two women who had traveled the same path, though Rebecca's had ended too early and violently.

"Well, Mom, this is just great," Jett said. "You brought me here to get me off drugs and then you drop me right into the biggest bad-acid trip in the universe."

Jett had been reluctant to get back in the car after Rebecca had shared her story. But Katy's determination had convinced Jett they had a duty to obey. It was a little like a stray kitten that comes yowling in hunger around your doorstep. Never mind that this par ticular feline could remove its head and was built of see-through supernatural stuffing.

"Just hang on, honey," Katy said. She glanced in the rearview. Rebecca was gone but her words came as if she were leaning over the seat: up the mountain.

Up, an ascension, as if the journey had a spiritual as well as physical element. But didn't all journeys? If you thought of life as a road that must be traveled, then you had all kinds of exit ramps, signal lights, pit stops, and, eventually, a vehicle breakdown. Each fork was an opportunity, as the poet Robert Frost had pointed out, but no one had ever figured out if each road taken was a choice or an obligation. If you took the road less traveled was it because you wanted to, or because you were compelled?

Katy decided this road was definitely the one less traveled be cause the Subaru bottomed out in the ruts, the arcs of the headlights bouncing ahead like light sabers cutting a path through the wilderness. The car was all-wheel drive, which gave it enough trac tion to navigate the roughest parts of the old road but it groaned in protest as it leaped and jittered like a two-ton electrified frog.

"Mom, what are we supposed to do when we get there?"

"I don't think we're supposed to know," Katy said.

"You just have to get there," Rebecca said suddenly whole again, or the closest she could come to that state.

Jett jerked away, sitting forward in her seat, fighting the tension of the seat belt. "Hey! Don't do that. You're freaking me out enough already without popping out of thin air."

"I'm a ghost," Rebecca said. "What else do you expect me to do?"

"I see years of therapy ahead" Jett said.

"Just imagine the stories you'll have to tell your grandkids," Katy said wrestling the steering wheel as the car lurched over a f en sapling. "If I live that long. Let's not take that for granted yet. We're on a place called 'Lost Ridge' with a headless woman in the backseat." "They're waiting," Rebecca said. "They?" Katy asked. "The ones who are supposed to be there." "What's with the riddles?" Jett said. "If you know what's going to happen, why don't you tell us?"

David sat in the pickup truck's passenger seat, wiping his face with Ray's orange hunting vest. The interior light was on, and in its weak light David's cheeks were pale and bloodless. Ray's pipe wrench lay in the seat between them.

"You seen him, didn't you?" Ray said. They were brothers. They had fished together, fought together, lost their virginity to Mary Lou Slater together, were baptized together. They hadn't kept any secrets, not until the day the congregation went for style over substance eight years ago.

"Yeah," David said. "I looked in his grave."

"But he wasn't there."