At the foot of the left-hand ranks of pews was a pipe Organ, and Burt could not at first tell what was wrong with it. He walked down the left-hand aisle and saw with slowly dawning horror that the keys had been ripped up, the stops had been pulled out . . and the pipes themselves filled with dry cornhusks. Over the organ was a carefully lettered plaque which read: MAKE NO MUSIC EXCEPT WITH HUMAN TONGUE SAITH THE LORD GOD.
Vicky was right. Something was terribly wrong here. He debated going back to Vicky without exploring any further, just getting into the car and leaving town as quickly as possible, never mind the Municipal Building. But it grated on him. Tell the truth, he thought. You want to give her Ban 5000 a workout before going back and admitting she was right to start with.
He would go back in a minute or so.
He walked towards the pulpit, thinking: People must go through Gatlin all the time. There must be people in the neighbouring towns who have friends and relatives here. The Nebraska SP must cruise through from time to time. And what about the power company? The stoplight had been dead. Surely they'd know if the power had been off for twelve long years. Conclusion: What seemed to have happened in Gatlin was impossible.
Still, he had the creeps.
He climbed the four carpeted steps to the pulpit and looked out over the deserted pews, glimmering in the half-shadows. He seemed to feel the weight of those eldritch and decidedly unchristian eyes boring into his back.
There was a large Bible on the lectern, opened to the thirty-eighth chapter of Job. Burt glanced down at it and read: 'Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? . . . Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.' The lord. He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Declare if thou hast understanding. And please pass the corn.
He fluttered the pages of the Bible, and they made a dry whispering sound in the quiet - the sound that ghosts might make if there really were such things. And in a place like this you could almost believe it. Sections of the Bible had been chopped out. Mostly from the New Testament, he saw. Someone had decided to take on the job of amending Good King James with a pair of scissors.
But the Old Testament was intact.
He was about to leave the pulpit when he saw another book on a lower shelf and took it out, thinking it might be a church record of weddings and confirmations and burials.
He grimaced at the words stamped on the cover, done inexpertly in gold leaf: THUS LET THE INIQUITOUS BE CUT DOWN SO THAT THE GROUND MAY BE FERTILE AGAIN SAITH THE LORD GOD OF HOSTS.
There seemed to be one train of thought around here, and Burt didn't care much for the track it seemed to ride on.
He opened the book to the first wide, lined sheet. A child had done the lettering, he saw immediately. In places an ink eraser had been carefully used, and while there were no misspellings, the letters were large and childishly made, drawn rather than written. The first column read:
Amos Deigan (Richard), b. Sept. 4, 1945 Sept. 4, 1964
Isaac Renfrew (William), b. Sept.19, 1945 Sept.19, 1964
Zepeniah Kirk (George), b. Oct.14, 1945 Oct.14, 1964
Mary Wells (Roberta), b. Nov.12, 1945 Nov.12, 1964
Yemen Hollis (Edward), b. Jan. 5, 1946 Jan. 5, 1965
Frowning, Burt continued to turn through the pages. Three-quarters of the way through, the double columns ended abruptly:
Rachel Stigman (Donna), b. June21, 1957 June 21, 1976
Moses Richardson (Henry), b. July 29, 1957
Malachi Boardman (Craig), b. August 15, 1957
The last entry in the book was for Ruth Clawson (Sandra), b. April 30, 1961. Burt looked at the shelf where he had found this book and came up with two more. The first had the same INIQUITOUS BE CUT DOWN logo, and it continued the same record, the single column tracing birth dates and names. In early September of 1964 he found Job Gilman (Clayton), b. September 6, and the next entry was Eve Tobin, b. June 16, 1965. No second name in parentheses.
The third book was blank.
Standing behind the pulpit, Burt thought about it.
Something had happened in 1964. Something to do with religion, and corn. . . and children.
Dear God we beg thy blessing on the crop. For Jesus' sake, amen.
And the knife raised high to sacrifice the lamb - but had it been a lamb? Perhaps a religious mania had swept them. Alone, all alone, cut off from the outside world by hundreds of square miles of the rustling secret corn. Alone under seyenty million acres of blue sky. Alone under the watchful eye of God, now a strange green God, a God of corn, grown old and strange and hungry. He Who Walks Behind the Rows.
Burt felt a chill creep into his flesh.