don’t quite get the message all that clear, Reverend.” Said Bates.
“What do you mean, my son? And how, if I may ask, sir are you aware of the existence of my housekeeper’s real name? Did she tell you where I was?”
“It is common knowledge in this town; let’s say we gathered the information from a reliable source.” Klyne said.
The Reverend smiled again, his gleaming teeth flashing in the lightning. “That is well. You did her no harm? Nor my brother?”
“No. And none of this taking you back for a fair trial crap, so you can slip the noose off your soft bitching neck.” Bates added.
“Nooo!” The Reverend leaped forward, followed by Bates. The cry rang out round the small church, louder now that the storm was passing, leaving only an occasional slash of light and a distant sullen rumbling of thunder.
The Reverend moved with the frantic speed of desperation, swinging his arm out to knock over the oil lamp, sending it spinning to the wooden floor. Its fluted green shade smashed into a thousand glittering shards, and the brass base rolled round and round, clattering like a child’s top. Its wick still glowed red and oil poured from it, spilling and bubbling across the aisle.
The minister dived for cover behind the front row of pews, scuttling into the instant darkness like a fat beetle. The moment he’d disappeared, Bates fired twice in the direction of the movement, but there was only the noise of splintering wood, and a soft chuckle from the black coolness.
“Just in case of trouble with the town rowdies, I long ago hooked a scatter-gun beneath this row of seats. So, my brethren, the first of you who comes near me will receive a belly of prime lead-shot. And then the Lord will have no mercy at all on your souls.”
There was another laugh, like gas bubbling through honey, and quite unmistakable sound of a shotgun being cocked. The twin hammers clicking back.
Bates and Klyne both crouched under cover, waiting and watching. Behind the Reverend, near the alter, the oil-lamp had started a small fire, the flames licking hungrily at the dry wood, edging along cracks in the floor-boards, reaching out for the faded curtains that hung from the walls.
“Whole place’ll go,” hissed Bates from the left, over near the harmonium.
“And you with it, unless you try for that door,” called the Reverend. “I, on the other hand, have a small exit ready for me, well-covered by furniture. The bullet or the fire, my brethren. Which shalt thou choose?”
Hell Fire
Klyne lay flat on his face, the smoke already stinging his nostrils, when an idea came to him. An idea that would mean the end of Reverend Smith. But it had to be fast, and there wasn’t going to be room for any error.
“Go left on my shout, Bill!”
“Ready!”
“Now!”
Firing his gun Bates dodged across to duck behind the harmonium. Silhouetted for a moment against the rising flames, he presented a fleeting target for the crouching minister. The scatter-gun boomed, sending its splintering load of death starring out across the burning church. There was a macabre shriek from the harmonium as the lead shot ripped into it, tearing strips of white wood from its front and shattering its keys.
Klyne didn’t have time to notice the damage to the harmonium. He was already moving. The Reverend would be expecting Bates move to be a decoy to the left. Which would mean that Klyne was going to come in at him from the right. That’s the way he would be looking.
And that was where the movement came.
Laughing at the simplicity of his enemies, Smith blasted off his other barrel at the noise. Hitting the object that made the noise.
But it was only a large and well-padded hassock that Klyne had thrown out of the blackness. Klyne himself didn’t go right or left. He just came in straight over the top, gun ready in his fist, looming over the covering figure of the Reverend.
The Reverend realized that he had been tricked and was frantically trying to
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