The red church by Scott Nicholson Page B

her hus-band's twisted face. The interior light cast her odd shadow across the yard.
    "You done yapping the sheriff's ear off?" she asked, her voice trembling and thin. She must have been a little hard of hearing, because she talked louder than necessary.
    "Ain't hardly started yet," Lester said, not rising from his rocker. "Now get on back in the house be-fore I throw a shoe at you."
    "You do and I'll put vinegar in your denture glass."
    Lester chuckled. "I love you, too, honey."
    "You going to invite the sheriff in for pie?"
    "No, thank you, ma'am," Littlefield said, bowing a little in graciousness. "I've got a few other people to talk to tonight."
    "Well, don't listen too much to this old fool. He lies like a cheap rug."
    "I'll take that under advisement."
    The door sprang closed. The darkness sprang just as abruptly. "So you haven't seen a mountain lion since then?" the sheriff asked Lester.
    "Nope."
    "And you're sure you haven't seen anything strange around the red church?"
    "Haven't seen nothing. Heard something, though."
    "Heard something?"
    "Last night, would've been about three o'clock. You don't sleep too well when you get to be my age. Always up and down for some reason. So when I heard them, I figured it was one of those in-between dreams. You know, right before you fall asleep and your real thoughts are mixing in with the nonsense?" Littlefield nodded, then realized the old man couldn't see his face. "Yeah. What did you hear, or think you heard?"
    Littlefield glanced at his watch, about to chalk up his time spent talking to Lester as a waste. The lumi-nous dial showed that it was nearly nine o'clock.
    "Bells," the old man said in a near-whisper.
    "Bells?" Littlefield repeated, though he'd plainly heard the man.
    "Real soft and faint, but a bell's a bell. Ain't no mistaking that sound."
    "I hate to tell you this, Lester, but we both know that the red church has the only bell around here. And even if some kids were messing around there last night, there's no bell rope."
    "And we both know why there ain't no bell rope. But I'm just telling you what I heard, that's all. I don't expect you to put much stock in an old man's words."
    The ghost stories. Some families had passed them down until they'd acquired a mythic truth that had even more power than fact. Littlefield wasn't ready to write Death by supernatural causes on Boonie's incident report. Since Samuel had died, the sheriff had spent most of his life trying to convince himself that supernatural occurrences didn't occur.
    Just the facts, ma'am, Littlefield told himself, hear-ing the words in Jack Webb's voice from the old Drag-net television show.
    "There were no recent footprints around the church. No sign of disturbances inside the church, either," Littlefield said, piling up the evidence as if to convince himself along with Lester.
    "I bet there wasn't no mountain lion pawprints, either, was there?" This time, Littlefield initiated the ten-second si-lence. "Not that we've found yet." Lester gave his liquid laugh.
    Littlefield's head filled with warm anger. "If you believe so much in the stories, why did you buy the red church in the first place?"
    "Because I got it for a song. But it won't be my problem no more."
    "Why not?"
    "Selling it. One of the McFall boys came by the other day. You know, the one that everybody said didn't act like regular folks? The one that got beat near to a pulp behind the football bleachers one night?"
    "Yeah. Archer McFall." Littlefield had been a young deputy then, on foot patrol at the football game. Archer ended up in the hospital for a week. No arrests were made, even though Littlefield had seen two or three punks rubbing their hands as if their knuckles were sore. Of course, nobody pressed the case too much. Archer was a McFall, after all, and the oddest of the bunch.
    "Well, he says he went off to California and made good, working in religion and such. And now he's moving back to the area and wants to settle here."
    "I'll be