Free The red church by Scott Nicholson

Case closed."
    Littlefield folded his arms over his chest and let the wave of sarcasm sweep over him and die in the corners of the room.
    His tight lips must have aroused Detective Storie's curiosity, because she looked as if she expected him to admit he was joking. "What?" Her mouth dropped open. "Sheesh, you're serious, aren't you?" He said nothing. The coffeemaker on a side table gurgled. He walked slowly over to the machine and refilled his cup. "Want some?" he said, lifting the pot in Storie's direction. She shook her head. Littlefield had been dreading this moment ever since they'd gotten the call yester-day. The thing at the church had never left. All these years of hoping, wishing, and his best attempts at praying hadn't made it go away.
    "In the 1860s, the church was the only one in these parts," he began, walking to the closed door of his office. He looked at the hardware store calendar hanging there. The almanac said the moon was fa-vorable for planting root crops.
    He continued, keeping his back to the detective. "Back then it was called Potter's Mill Baptist Church, after the old grist mill that operated down by the river. Wendell McFall was the pastor. He was an 'old school' preacher"—he turned to judge her reaction and saw she was carefully controlling her expression, which didn't surprise him—"all fire and brimstone and hell to pay. But during the Civil War, they say he started stretching his interpretation of the Gospel.
    "I don't know how much you know about the his-tory of these parts, but the war pretty much made a hard life harder for the people who lived here," he said. "Pickett County men were part of the fifty-eighth North Carolina Troops, and almost two-thirds of them were killed in action. Women were keeping up the fields and home chores at the same time. It was a bad stretch, as you can imagine. And Reverend McFall started preaching that the end of the world was nigh."
    "Now, there's an original idea," Storie said. "They've been peddling that line for at least four thousand years."
    Littlefield gulped his coffee, welcoming the hot sting in his throat. At least Storie hadn't walked out of the office yet. Maybe rank had its privileges after "Some of the soldiers' bodies were shipped back here to be buried," Littlefield said. "Reverend McFall insisted on holding midnight vigils over the graves, because he said they would rise up and walk again otherwise. At the same time, he was preaching some nonsense about how God had two sons, and while the first one was merciful and good and holy, this second son was just the opposite."
    "Too bad this guy wasn't around in the 1980s," Storie said. "He could have made a fortune selling cheesy paperbacks."
    Littlefield ignored her. "So McFall starts warning the congregation that this second son would return to the earth, come to undo the good done by Jesus. Said the second son demanded love and sacrifice, like God's spoiled little brat. In those times, the preacher was pretty much the leader of the commu-nity. While those ideas might seem a little flaky now, people were more imaginative back then, carrying with them all the legends and beliefs of their Scottish and English ancestors. So when a man of the cloth told you he had a vision, then you were bound to believe it. And with their fathers and brothers and sons dying and hunger spreading, the congregation must have felt that they hadn't given enough tribute to God. Or His sons." Littlefield had never discussed religion with Storie, or with much of anyone else, for that matter. He'd invited her to attend the First Baptist Church in Bark-ersville, but that was more of a rote politeness than a serious recruiting pitch. Littlefield himself usually went to services about once a month. He'd stopped reading the Bible after he finished his run through Sunday school and there was no longer anyone to force to him memorize verse. But he'd been raised Baptist, and he was going to die Baptist, even if he'd never devoted a