Chapter 36
Ghosts linger most where the living are scarce, their corporeal, petty existences shucked off once the worms start to eat.
They drift to the wide-open spaces where the feet of mice in the sand can be heard pattering; they drift away from the noise of the cities.
Come from the earth, go back to the earth.
Maybe only then can any living thing truly appreciate this land it is part of. Once they become dust within it.
Sometimes, though, like the hungry rodents and the skittering lizards and fireflies that are lured by the headlights and streetlamps of the small towns dotted in the sprawling farmlands, they come, curious, maybe drawn by the echoes and strands of what once was, the final essence of humanity before the last molecules vanish back into the great energy.
They come on the hint of a breeze, a prickle on the back of a neck, a twitch in a sleeping child.
They have moved past memory, and maybe they watch because something compels them, something that has stopped the last of them dissipating, some echo of love or hate or unfulfilled ambition, or a life ended too quickly, death too much of a terrible surprise to let go of everything that they briefly were, to go back to everything that ever was and ever shall be. The dream still holds them.
If Pastor Keene feels their presence, pressing into the gaps around the heavy wooden door or at the glass windows around him, or in the shiver of the flames from the slim candles he lights in the quiet of the church, he does not show it.
He’s used to being alone in the depths of the night.
He likes the solitude. He likes time to think.
There are blessings and curses that come with being the pastor in a small town.
He feels a weight of responsibility to do what he can to help it thrive.
Even for the godless. Perhaps especially for the godless.
It has been two hours since the last truck revved its engine and Pastor Keene knows that Sheriff Adams will have ignored the drunk drivers leaving The Shamrock because, like all sheriffs in hick towns, he knows when to pick his battles.
Pastor Keene is not sure how much Sheriff Adams shares his own sense of responsibility for the health of the town.
As he lights a second candle, he thinks of the way the sheriff looks at him sometimes, as if he’s not quite sure of who exists beneath the pastor’s skin.
He whispers prayers as he reflects on how beautiful the candle flames are and he wonders if they shine more brightly because they burn so fast, their light fleeting.
They make him think of the dead girls who haunt the town he’s trying so hard to revive.
After a moment, lost in the beauty of the glow, he sparks a match to light a third.
Around him, the ghosts crowd in.
In the old Beech house, Lucas can’t sleep.
He’s cold, despite the warmth of the woman next to him and the suffocating heat of the summer.
He’s simmering with rage thinking about how that little bitch threatened him.
Ruination by rumor. He knows how that can go.
He saw it when he worked at the high school.
A teacher accused. Although it came to nothing—it was nothing—the man moved away.
The whispering never stopped. Lucas has nowhere else to go.
He doesn’t like the cities when he works there.
Too loud. Too busy. He’s a Harper’s Creek man.
He’s of this land. He breathes heavy in the quiet.
Someone needs to teach that girl a lesson.
Is it fear or anger talking, he’s not sure.
He thinks about his time at the school. Women.
Girls. So hard to understand. They flirt and dance and laugh and tease. It’s so easy for them.
He thinks about Lila and Bonnie and how they were both beautiful and so different but they both knew that power.
The flick of a miniskirt with a glance over the shoulder.
Always looking for a response. As if all men were panting dogs one breath away from out of control.
He remembers the TikTok and Insta videos he’d watched of them dancing and partying in this house over and over, when they were alive.
He imagines men across town sweated over some of those posts just as he did. Youth and beauty could be addictive.
He can’t go back to sleep. He can’t wait to leave in the morning, to escape this danger, but he needs to play nice with Claire for now. He wonders if the pastor is awake. They haven’t talked in a long time. He wonders if he should break that drought, but he knows he won’t.
Instead, he lies there, looking out at the moonlight through the gap in the curtains, and tries to ignore the ghosts that crowd in.
Across town, Sheriff Adams sips whiskey he shouldn’t be drinking while on duty, but what the hell, it’s been a day.
He’s deep in thought. He’s thinking about the dead boy at the motel, already haunting him, the waste of a young life.
Maybe he could have done more. He thinks about the girl, Anna.
Her suggestion that someone killed him. It worms into his brain, making him uneasy. It could be true.
His soul weighs heavy with it all and he thinks about going to talk to the pastor but figures, like any decent man, the pastor will be in bed by now. He thinks about Lila and then about Bonnie and then he drinks some more as all the ghosts crowd in.