Never Alone

Never Alone

Christina Harlin

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Christina Harlin

Visit the author at http://www.christinaharlin.com

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Chapter One

I am seeing a vision of the future, like I sometimes do. In this vision, I am with Noelle.

Even though it’s really late at night, the sheriff’s office called her and told her to come to the church. The deputy outside tells her what happened and I can’t believe it but Noelle doesn’t even act surprised. She just nods and stares at him like she was expecting it.

We think Pastor Albright might have been involved in a death, Miss Bankford. The sheriff’s inside with him. The deputy is a grown man but his eyes are big like a kid’s.

Without saying a single word Noelle walks past the deputy’s car and into the church. She stands shaking in the foyer. She has never been so cold in church, not even in February when the doors are opened and closed lots of times as people leave. I can’t feel it myself but I’d bet it’s warm in the room. All Noelle’s cold is coming from inside of her.

I’m really confused; I don’t know when I’m looking at. Sure, it’s the future but how far? It can’t be too many days, because nothing has changed. Sometimes I can get a read on the thoughts of the people I see but Noelle is not thinking about dates and times. She’s thinking about children. I catch these visions off the surface of her brains like I used to skim flies off the water in the swimming pool. She sees herself as she’d always imagined she would be someday: Pastor Albright’s supermodel wife, with three beautiful kids. She thought of the future-kids in the form of a rhyming song I can almost hear:

Matthew, tall like his father.

Jeffrey, studious and shy.

Melinda, who sings like an angel,

The apple of Daddy’s eye.

Those kids are in a bad vision in her head now: drowning in a lake. It’s private and I look aside.

Noelle can hear someone sobbing in the auditorium. John Kashman was just carried out on a stretcher, out cold, with all this blood coming from his nose and mouth and head, and his eyes puffing shut, and his jaw probably broken from the crooked way it looked. Noelle saw him as they rolled him to the Pack’s Landing ambulance and she barely recognized him. And someone called Sarah Shale is dead in the church basement. I don’t know who that is.

Noelle has a second where she almost turns and runs away, to stop at home just long enough to grab a suitcase and then to run away from this town forever. She’d never have to look at any member of the congregation again. What were they going to think? She can just imagine, and that is the problem. I know Noelle pretty well and I know she’s always worried about what other people think.

The sound of Pastor Albright’s crying is what wakes her up, I guess. She is moving fast toward the auditorium. There are two swinging doors here. She pushes one open a few inches and peers across the huge room with its really high ceiling. I used to gaze up at that ceiling for the whole time the sermons went on, because I was usually pretty bored in church. I haven’t looked up at it in a long time. I don’t really think about stuff like looking up or looking down anymore, because I sort of see everything at once.

Noelle spots Sheriff Nathan Flanders, who is standing by the front pew. He doesn’t attend this church but his brother’s family does. Everybody in this town knows everyone else. Everyone will hear about how Ashley Albright is acting and what Noelle does here tonight.

As she walks down the aisle, Noelle looks less like a supermodel to me and more like a zombie. Noelle has another one of those really vivid pictures flash in her mind – like the one with the drowning kids, this one is hard for me to look at because it seems private and embarrassing. She thinks about how she meant to be walked down this aisle by her father, in her wedding to Ashley Albright. I mean, it’s really girly stuff, all about the dress as far as I can tell, but I understand it’s important to her and I feel bad that it’s hurting her, knowing that wedding can’t happen now.

Hey, Noelle, says Sheriff Flanders in a really quiet voice. He’s, um.

Noelle nods, looking stupidly from the sheriff to Ashley, her . . . what is he? Her boyfriend? Her fiancé? She can’t think of what to call him. He is not even her pastor anymore, not after tonight. I see that Pastor Albright is a mess, his hair all standing on end, and he’s covered in stains and dust, his clothes are messed up pretty bad. I think those stains are blood. He’s collapsed over the altar like he fainted there and he grasps it with his hands. There is blood on his knuckles and a smear of it behind his ear. His hands look battered and raw. The shoulder of his black t-shirt is ripped open to show scratches underneath. I figure out that he’s not crying exactly. It’s got crying in it but what would I call it? Like hysteria. I can’t think what would make Pastor Albright go hysterical. He’s like the coolest guy I watch and never gets upset about anything much.

He’s praying, says Sheriff Flanders.

No, he’s not. It’s the first thing Noelle has said since we got here.

He’s been begging me to let him go back downstairs to the girl, but I can’t do that. That’s crime scene. And he’s, well, I’m sorry, but he’s under arrest. I’ve just been waiting for you, to see if you could calm him down. I don’t want to treat him like a common criminal; it’s not dignified.

A laugh barks from Noelle’s mouth and it would have startled me, if I’d had a body to be startled with. It gets Pastor Albright’s attention: he looks up and stares at her with crazy eyes. Noelle has a third thought that makes me sad for her, and this time it’s almost more than I can stand to hear: I’m a virgin. I saved myself for him.

Pastor Albright says her name, but it comes out sounding like a cough.

She asks all matter-of-factly, What did you do down there?

His bows his head and says in that same choked sounding voice, Sarah’s dead.

Noelle flies at him, shrieking, pummeling him with her fists. "How could you how could you how could you?" I’ve never seen her raise her voice. Now she’s like a maniac from a slasher movie, just going to beat him with her hands instead of with a butcher knife. Noelle kicks at him, she claws, she grabs at his hair. Sheriff Flanders can’t hold her back and he shouts at her to stop but she’s not hearing him. Pastor Albright seems like he’s willing to take the beating or maybe he doesn’t even feel it. He just holds his hands over his face and lets her tear him up. In a few seconds Sheriff Flanders figures out that he can’t stop Noelle but he can push Pastor Albright, so he shoves him out of her way. Pastor Albright just goes over on the floor like he’s made out of straw and lies there. It’s bad, to see a guy like that. I would really really like to get out of this now.

But once she can’t reach Pastor Albright any more, Noelle just slumps right over too, onto the floor nearby where she breathes hard and starts to cry louder even than Pastor Albright. She wipes at her face and asks him, Who killed her? Was it you?

It takes Pastor Albright a long time to say anything. But what he finally comes out with is, This church is haunted.

That sure doesn’t answer any questions, not Noelle’s, and not mine. I already know about the church being haunted. I’m one of the ghosts.

Three Weeks Before:

Thursday, April 29, 1993

Highway 7 was a skinny ribbon of road that wound from Pack’s Landing to Clancy, Missouri. Sarah Shale was driving on it that afternoon and growing steadily less enthusiastic as she did so.

What’s the price on hog jowls? Sarah asked the farm reporter who was speaking on her car radio. Actually, the farm reporter was talking about corn. The road (Highway, my ass, Sarah muttered) led her deep into southwestern Missouri, where she assumed hog jowls had some relevance. While her hometown of Kansas City wasn’t by any means strictly suburban, surrounded as it was by farm country, Sarah had little experience with rural life. The last sign of civilization had been a busy little town called Pack’s Landing, in which every building seemed made of the same red bricks. Since she’d left that metropolis, trees reached over the road to meet, forming walls like a cave’s. She had a queasy feeling that she’d better leave a trail of breadcrumbs or she’d never emerge from this forest again. Just when it seemed that the road was simply a tree-lined path to oblivion, she saw a sign declaring she was four miles outside Clancy.

The town of Clancy was originally set in a long shallow valley of the upper Ozark Mountains (Mountains, my ass, Sarah had complained). Growth and time had caused the little town to creep up the slopes of the hills. As Sarah’s car descended onto Main Street from what seemed to be the highest of the stunted mountains, she saw a good portion of the town’s business. First was a shoe factory with a wide parking lot, then two lines of locally owned stores with their names hand-painted on the windows. About every third building was a bar. She passed a post office, a car dealership, a shining new bank. In the distance beyond Main Street sat a fat brown structure with many added-on wings, perhaps the school.

Her directions said to stay on Main Street until it took a sharp right and became Park Road, go until she passed the gas station, and take a left. This is what she did, driving slowly by a fenced public park, with a pond inhabited by brown duck families, a swimming pool, and lines of clinking swings. The park was empty. Children were still in school, with maybe another week to go. Sarah’s own school semester wasn’t officially over yet, but since she had this assignment in Clancy, her professors let her have exams early.

Beyond the park, she found herself going uphill again, on the opposite side of the valley. She arrived suddenly in a broad flat spot cut into the gently sloping hill. This expanse was paved-over as a parking lot, and dominated by an imposing L-shaped block that was the Cooper Church of Our Lord, three stories at its highest point, steeple and stained glass bearing down on her. The façade of the place immediately made her feel a thrill of dread.

Keep an open mind, she scolded. Dr. Dagney would. In Sarah’s mind, a lofty goal was to behave as Dr. Dagney would.

There were two other cars present. Sarah parked next to them and checked the time. Past two. She was supposed to be here at one, but hadn’t counted on the number of spluttering tractors that she’d get behind, or her own fear of the strange road. This was a five-hour trip; they couldn’t expect precision timing on her part. Besides, judging from the dead silent emptiness, these people were not running on tight schedules. A minister couldn’t have all that much to do on a Thursday afternoon.

Sarah stretched thankfully when she got out of her car, listening to her back and shoulders pop, sighing as blood filled her muscles again. Under the sunlight, Sarah’s most noticeable feature was her hair, a shoulder-length halo of fire. Indoors it was tamer, but it was always what people saw of her first. Her other features matched the redhead qualifier: translucent white skin, blue-green eyes, light freckling. She had a heart-shaped face, a doll’s face, which was adorable, but forever banned her from beauty. Here was a little upturned nose, a delicate bow-mouth, and large, traitorously expressive eyes. All were very good attributes for a child or a toy, but counterproductive to a young woman wishing to be taken seriously. Just tall enough not to be considered petite, Sarah had a very good figure, generously curved in the correct places, a flat stomach and lean strong legs. She worked hard on this, with a large supply of vigorous aerobics videotapes, ankle weights, and more sit-ups than she could count. Sarah was twenty-four years old. Recently she’d found the first evidence of aging around her eyes, squint-lines from reading, a casualty of graduate school. Looking soft and sweet, with those big innocent eyes, Sarah was a hard first impression. People typically liked her at once, but usually made the mistake of thinking she wasn’t particularly bright.

Today, she looked like a young woman on her own in a strange place, maybe for the first time ever. It was true; she’d never been completely on her own before.

For a few more seconds she stood and stretched in the warm sunlight, mentally preparing for whatever unpleasantness lay ahead. She was in a lousy mood and it would no doubt benefit her to be nice. Then she took her purse and walked grimly to the front door beneath the awning. It was unlocked, and there went her last excuse.

Tall stained-glass windows dominated the foyer of the Cooper Church of Our Lord. A dim rainbow of colors from sunlight on the water-color glass infused the room with a surprisingly calming effect. Yet it smelled funny in there, of mothballs, the reek of dust in the thin red carpet, the wool of lost gloves and forgotten coats. It was a long room, furnished with racks of empty coat hangers, a set of purple flower arrangements, and a shelf full of tracts that solved problems in one printed page. With fascination Sarah skimmed one that promised to set her on the road to recovery from alcoholism. She decided to save it for her roommate Nancy as a joke – Nancy was very fond of whiskey – and stuffed it into the pocket of her shorts. At the far end of the room was a nursery. Across from the windows were the auditorium doors.

The last church Sarah had entered was for a friend’s wedding the previous summer. Churches were the places of weddings and funerals. She’d never visited one for any other reason. The place was distinctly cold and the smell got worse instead of better, the longer she stood there. Shaking off her distaste, Sarah entered the auditorium. Three rows of pews were in straight order beneath the high ceiling, from which hung modest chandeliers, decorated with crosses. Far across the spacious room, the stage itself held a choir loft, a baptismal, a piano, an organ, a bass guitar set, pews of honor, and the pulpit itself. The pulpit was enormous, throne-like. Sarah wouldn’t have cared to speak from behind it; it would dwarf the average person. A man was in fact standing right behind it, noticeable only because he was tall. As Sarah drew closer, she saw that he struggled with a tape recorder.

This had to be Pastor Albright. Dr. Dagney told her he was a young man, in his early thirties. She studied him with a frown as she approached. He was greasy and tight-lipped, with a square-jawed, weirdly feminine face and a big nose. A tie cinched tight around his neck. The stern way he slicked down his dark hair reminded her of old vampire films. He looked asexual, self-righteous, stuck-up, and prissy.

After watching him work a few more seconds, she said, Hi there. I’m Sarah Shale. I have an appointment with Pastor Albright, but I’m very late. She realized that she held her purse to her chest like armor. Typically when Sarah Shale entered a room, people were glad. But this guy gave her the once-over and got a look on his face like he’d smelled something foul. Sorry about that, about being late.

Sarah couldn’t know this, but she was meeting Pastor Albright on what was already a frustrating day. She was at the center of his frustrations through no fault of her own.

Ash Albright believed that some members of his congregation had too much time on their hands, which they apparently spent thinking of ways they were superior to the unenlightened, and then thinking of ways to show it. This wasn’t a Christian virtue by any means and Ash didn’t like it. He tried to address this in sermons, but it was a big church in a small town and collectively they liked to feel important. Most of them, if taken alone, were quite good people. Put them together, and mob mentality broke out. Ash saw their obsessions come and go annually. Last year, they had protested at the Family Clinic in Pack’s Landing where somebody supposedly procured an abortion. The year before, they had the high school principal and the drama teacher fired for allowing the students to perform Guys and Dolls, a musical which insinuated prostitution, gambling and premarital sex.

This year, their pet project was Michael Cooper’s journals. To an extent, Ash was agreeable to this crusade. He didn’t want those journals read, either. Michael Cooper was dead. Ash tried to remind them all of this with subtle regularity, as they all seemed to think Ash still worked under Michael’s watchful supervision. Yet they chose to consider Pastor Cooper long-gone when it came to his diaries. Ash did not know precisely what anyone wanted from the journals: answers, insight, gossip, scandal? Delphia Cooper, the widow, played with mysterious strategy on this point, figuring that the best way to handle the matter was to bring in an actual historian. Thus, the congregation was angry because some scholar from Kansas City would read the journals. Because anger toward Delphia Cooper was taboo, they focused their anger on the scholar instead.

Things had been bad enough when said scholar was Mark Dagney, Ph.D., a historian distantly related to Cooper by marriage. But when Dagney was replaced by a student, and a woman at that, the group’s anger shifted toward the educated female sex in its entirety, the old-fashioned and rural tendency to be suspicious of learned and independent women. Ash tried to refocus the group’s concern toward the real issues at hand, not some stereotypical dislike of educated city girls. But his congregation, as he was wearily aware, was not accustomed to listening to him.

For all the talk, what most bothered Ash was that nobody really meant to do anything. Nobody would dare go against Delphia Cooper’s plans and nobody was willing to actually step in and act. Acting had been left to him. In an unspoken understanding, he was meant to keep the woman under control, whatever that might mean. The woman in question couldn’t do him a favor and be scholarly looking, couldn’t at least show up in a pair of reading glasses. No, she had to look like a curvy, rosy-cheeked little cheerleader, which made matters considerably worse.

When Ash first saw Sarah Shale, he was sure there had been a mistake. Certainly he was expecting her when she turned up on Thursday; he’d purposely requested her to arrive on Thursday because it was the day the church was most empty. He had to wait there all afternoon, which annoyed him because there were things he could be doing. He needed to go to the bank, to run by the grocery store, to pick up his dry cleaning. Housewifey things, but he had no other time to do them and he had no housewife. He wanted to get his errands done before he was due at Noelle’s for the Thursday night trivia game. Once Friday came, his time would be full until Monday. As a minister, his weekends were not his own. Mondays and Thursdays, those were his free days. And he did not relish wasting a Thursday waiting for his unwelcome visitor.

Finally he’d had to occupy himself with fixing his tape recorder, which had eaten a tape of wedding music and spit out a daunting length of tangled brown ribbon. His church had a pianist and an organist, but for this particular upcoming wedding, neither would be available. The pianist was the groom, and the organist disliked the pianist. A feud raged between them, as to who was meant to lead in the music and who was meant to follow, and they both had differing ideas about the answer to that puzzle. Ash was deep in thought about this ponderously silly problem, about all his ponderously silly problems, while trying to extract the bit of tape from the recorder when that pleasant young voice said, Hi there.

He looked up to see a curly-haired child standing in the aisle, clutching a macramé purse embroidered with bluebirds. She watched him with large curious eyes, her head cocked to one side. For a moment he thought she was some lost waif. No, she was too shapely to be a child. She wore denim shorts and a white blouse, not immodest clothes in themselves, but something about her made them seem clingy and provocative. He knew she was a graduate student but she didn’t even look twenty years old. If she was as creampuff-delicate as she looked she wouldn’t last a week, and Ash was glad for it. He wanted her gone.

He set the tape recorder on the pulpit and came down the five steps to her, extending a hand, shaking hers without really touching. He was indeed tall; Sarah guessed six foot three. Speaking down as if he wasn’t accustomed to shorter people, he said, I’m Pastor Albright.

I’m sorry I’m late, Sarah said. She felt determined that he should acknowledge her apology. She didn’t like it when people didn’t acknowledge the things she said. But he was weirdly silent. I got behind a tractor. There’s no place to pass on your highway.

He pissed her off, just looking at her like that. It was not precisely insolence, but she didn’t think it possible to be insolent unless one was an inferior, and Holy Boy probably figured he was the superior one here. Sarah caught her breath and then resumed, I’d like to get on with it, if that’s okay. I’d like to check into my motel soon.

Well, we wouldn’t want to keep you waiting.

Sarah especially didn’t like sarcasm, no matter how subtle, because it was a sign of verbal weakness. Dr. Dagney had often said so. She came close to telling him that. But he turned to walk away, and he made a sort of gesture that implied she should walk with him and that he would walk in deference to her. The gallantry in this motion unbalanced her ill impression of him, as if this prissy jerk had a fine gentleman trapped inside, only able to show his existence through unobtrusive motions of the hand.

***

His office was in the right front corner of the auditorium. A gold plaque on the door declared PASTOR. The office was richly furnished, imbued with the ambiance of oak, leather, expensive books, polish and brass. Most of the furniture looked older than Pastor Albright himself. He took a seat in a forest-green leather chair behind the massive oak desk, which no doubt cost more than her car, and motioned her into a similar chair across from him.

Here’s my letter from Dr. Dagney. To cover the uncomfortable silence between them, Sarah made a big show of digging in her purse. He didn’t expect there to be any question of my identity, a nervous laugh, here, but just in case of problems, you know. She paused before handing the letter over the desk. There aren’t problems, are there?

Dr. Dagney must have told you.

About the disgruntled congregation.

Pastor Albright murmured disgruntled congregation, as if he were testing that particular phrase for accuracy.

Sarah straightened in the chair, and said rather coldly, He showed me some of the letters he got. That had been a disconcerting afternoon to say the least, sitting beside Dr. Dagney’s bed as he passed four letters to her. The first three were simple requests for him to please leave well enough alone, from the deacon’s board, the ladies’ club, and another solitary member. But Dr. Dagney liked climaxes and he’d saved the best for last. The fourth was a cruel essay on Dr. Dagney’s character, his lack of respect for God, his certain damnation to hell. Most awful, though, was the suggestion that Dagney’s relapse of leukemia was God’s punishment. Sarah felt sick after reading it. At the time, she’d thought she’d never forget the writer’s name, but now could not call it to mind. She didn’t think it was Albright.

It’s on everyone’s mind, and some people are more upset than others.