The Curse of Crow Hollow (48 page)

A line of townfolk with pails and hoses worked to keep the fire at the funeral home from spreading. After a final hug, Bucky eased open the church doors just enough to let Scarlett through. It was enough for him to see Angela talking to Cordelia near the altar. A glimpse of his family, all Bucky would allow, because to dwell on the two of them standing there in embrace seemed to Bucky a token of doom that would spill over them all in the next hours. He stepped away in silence and took the steps back down, making that slow walk to a car that would drive him into what remained of his future.

He pulled away and cast one final look at the church. Cordelia stood at the top of the steps beside Scarlett. The flames from the funeral parlor lit upon her face, and Bucky could see his daughter's anguish. They exchanged a small wave. It was the same one that they'd shared so many times before, when Bucky left for his work at the dump or Cordy left with Scarlett and Naomi for a Friday night football game at the high school. A flick of his fingers; a twist of her hand; an unspoken promise between them that said
I'm leaving, but only for a bit.

But neither Bucky nor Cordelia thought that was true. Not this time, friend. Didn't matter who Bucky took with him to face the witch one final time. Didn't matter it was two hardened criminals and a father bent on revenge, a doctor, a holy man. Didn't matter it was a man who'd seen the worst of war and so had lost the best of himself. None of them would return. Those leaving from the Holler to Campbell's Mountain maybe had might and faith and the Lord on their side, but Alvaretta's might was greater. All you'd need to understand that was to look out from where Cordelia and Scarlett stood at the top of those steps, seen those burning buildings, and heard the shouts
of men and women scrambling to save what couldn't be saved. You would've known Alvaretta's power then. You would've felt that hopelessness.

Cordelia watched Bucky's taillights fade in the distance. She turned her face to the sky. Sun and moon and earth fell into perfect line, leaving what looked like a bloody lantern hanging over the night, and all she could do was turn and walk back inside.

Scarlett let her go. She could hear the wailing inside the church. Belle and Naomi by the sound of it, reacting to where the Reverend had told them he would go. Cordelia cracked the door enough to see inside. The preacher stood in the middle of a family hug. Naomi begged him not to go with such feeling that it made her tremors even worse. She looked like a spring wound too tight and ready to pop. Scarlett could have told her friend that no amount of begging would work. It hadn't with Bucky, it wouldn't with David Ramsay. I don't doubt begging wouldn't've changed the mind of Landis Foster, neither. Kayann didn't even try to talk him into staying, though that may have been because she was too busy keeping her son still and quiet in his pew. Hays kept speaking of how they were all monsters underneath and so was he, and I guess the only thing that kept somebody from telling him to shut up was he'd fallen to whispering it. Kayann had never looked so stricken.

Landis walked out without even a good-bye and passed Scarlett as if she were a ghost. Bucky might've thought he'd almost lost his family since the witch lashed out, but friend, I'm here to say Landis Foster truly had lost his. He'd lost his wife and son all on the same night, and all that remained for him was the pound of flesh he would extract from Alvaretta Graves. The Reverend followed. His eyes were low to the ground as though in prayer, though Scarlett knew better. It was not the Lord that David Ramsay had given his soul over to, it was his own judgment.

The church doors closed. Scarlett turned on the steps. The dirt streets were crowded with people running from the funeral home to the Exxon, from the Exxon to the grocery. Scarlett raised her arms and began waving, trying to get someone's attention. She stood in the middle of absolute chaos, friend, and yet that girl had never felt so alone. The witch had taken Cordelia's beauty because beauty was all Cordy believed she had. She'd taken Naomi's control over her own body because that's what Naomi coveted. Alvaretta had given Hays what he most feared—the ability to see the monsters of this world. But I believe Scarlett understood then that the witch had stolen her voice for a different reason than she'd stolen from all the others. Alvaretta had silenced her for the simple reason that Scarlett had never found the strength to speak up and make herself known. The witch had simply taken what Scarlett had never used anyway. For that, I suppose you could say that girl had always been cursed, and by her own power.

She gripped the pad of paper with one hand and pulled her cell phone out with the other. The numbers were easy to read in the glow of all that firelight. Scarlett punched them one by one, slowing herself to dial right and summon the strength to speak. She held the phone to her ear as more men raced past. Someone screamed that the funeral home was about to cave in.

The line rang.

Scarlett could barely breathe, much less produce a sound.

Two rings. Three. Then the sound of Jake Barnett's tired voice: “Hello?”

“Hhhhhha.” She squeezed her eyes shut and bore down on her throat and chest.

“Hello?”

“Hhhhhha.”

“Who's this?”

“Hhhhelp,” Scarlett whispered. And then she began to cry.

-2-

They all met at the end of Alvaretta's lane—Bucky and John David, Chessie and Briar, the Reverend, Doc Sullivan, and Landis—each as quiet as they could be inside that cut in the trees. Briar lowered the tailgate on his truck and pushed back the thick blanket he'd laid inside.

“Pick what you want,” he said. “Just make sure you can handle what you take. Plenty of ammo for it all.”

The Hodges began loading shells into their shotguns. Doc refused to carry anything but his own good intentions, saying he'd come to make sure nobody was killed rather than do the killing. Chessie looked at him and shook her head. She grabbed two pistols from the blanket and handed them to John David.

“Don't like guns,” he said.

“Maybe, but they sure got a fondness for you.”

The Reverend reached for the guns instead. He took them from Chessie's hands and loaded the clips with the steady movements of a professional, pulling back the slides to chamber the first rounds. “My son doesn't have to carry if that's his wish,” he said. “Don't you worry about things, Chessie. I'll be with him.”

John David looked to protest. But then he met the Reverend's eyes, and what lay there was not the patronizing gaze of a man who'd come to believe his son a disgrace, but a look of near equality. Whether John David had risen to his father's level in the last hours or the Reverend had sunk to his son's, I don't know. But to this day, I believe that was as close to an apology as the preacher had ever given.

Landis went next. He reached for the biggest gun Briar had brought, a full-on assault rifle like the ones John David had used in the war. Chessie slapped his hand away and handed him another scatter-gun.

“You're too worked up, Landis,” she said. “We all are, but
you most. You take something like that down there, you're apt to kill us all before Alvaretta gets the chance.”

Bucky took the machine gun instead, along with four extra magazines. When Chessie told Bucky maybe he should leave that alone, Bucky told her an automatic rifle was about as illegal as a thing could be and so he had to confiscate it for about an hour. He assured her he'd have no problem handling such a weapon. John David had to show him how to load it.

Everything ready and nothing more to do, the eight of them gathered in a circle for the Reverend's blessing. Even John David dipped his head. He knew things would turn bad. I reckon they all did.

Bucky said, “I don't want all of us rolling up on there at once and scaring her. We'll have to walk it. Quiet and slow until we get there, then we take her by surprise. And we take the witch alive. I need y'all to understand that. You're all acting deputies here, not a lynch mob. Landis? You hear me? Whatever that woman's conjured we'll send back to hell, but Alvaretta lives to face trial.”

The group set off then, aiming for the middle of the narrow lane and wary of the woods to either side, where the darkness looked thicker and even alive. Over their heads the blood moon stood, and you can bet each of them glanced skyward to behold the terribleness of how that looked. To this day, you'll hear folk in Crow Holler speak of the blood moon, and how it'd been a warning for Bucky and the rest to stay away. But it was past late for that. Too many had suffered and died and too many more would if things was left as they were. Wasn't no going back. Not for Bucky or the Reverend, not for Chessie or Landis. Not even for John David. They'd come this far; they'd see the rest through.

The lane began to rise over the hill when they heard the
first scurry in the trees. Landis wheeled his pistol in that direction. He would've fired if John David hadn't pushed him at the last moment. It was a good thing he did. Not only would Landis have let everybody inside of five miles know exactly where they were, he'd've also shot Danny Sullivan square in the face.

“Dogs,” Bucky whispered.

Briar nodded. “Heard'm a ways back. They get to wailing, Alvaretta's gonna know.”

“Let's get on, then,” Chessie said. “More time we stand out here, harder this'll be.”

John David hesitated. “It's too late. She knows already.”

He pointed on up the hill, where the top carried a glow that resembled the moon but wasn't that exactly—more fire than blood. Bucky led the rest of the way. He had John David to one side and the preacher on the other and felt safe enough, especially with the Hodges at his back. Landis and the doc traveled in the middle. Everyone strung out shoulder to shoulder when they reached the crest of the hill.

Below, stretched out in a half circle at the edge of Alvaretta's yard, burned thirteen torches. The fire lit all that stretch of wood so that nothing could remain hidden in the darkness. Even the solid black shapes of crows hanging off the trees could be seen. The cabin glowed with lantern light and a fire in the hearth. And the witch herself, standing at the open door upon her front porch, with a shotgun in her hands and a pistol tucked in an old brown belt she'd cinched around her vanishing waist. Waiting for them, daring Bucky to cross the wide space between the torches and the cabin, because that would be Alvaretta's killing field.

“Think our element of surprise is gone,” John David said. He looked at the Reverend. “Better go on and give me one of those pistols.”

-3-

No need for them to hide now, friend. Everybody knew what cards they held, except for whatever ace was up Alvaretta's sleeve inside her cabin. They were out of the witch's range, but that didn't stop Briar and Landis from raising their guns as the group descended the hill. The trees came alive. Alvaretta's dogs clamored, and those dead birds set to swaying in wind that never stills on that ridgetop. It looked like the forest itself had joined the fight on the witch's side. A mongrel mutt eased its way from the trees and growled deep and long at Chessie. She tried kicking it away. Her foot missed but sent the creature back into the darkness.

Alvaretta remained quiet on the porch, some sixty feet away. No farther than pitcher to catcher is how the Reverend described it later, and then he said he'd never been so close to the devil. Her shotgun was nearly as long as she was tall, and yet the witch's arms did not shake from the weight. She kept her legs spread just past shoulder width and her head still. Angela's bracelet glimmered on her wrist.

Bucky stopped them at the torches. He took a step toward the witch and yelled, “Alvaretta Graves, this is the sheriff. Throw down your arms.”

Alvaretta did just the opposite. She brought the shotgun up and the barrel toward Bucky's chest. Bucky returned the favor. All you heard was clicks—everyone at Bucky's left and right, kicking off the safeties on their guns.

“Told you not to come back,” the witch hollered. “Knew you would. 'Tis a blood moon this night. Blood calls for blood, always has. Turn tail, Sheriff Bucky Vest. Leave this mountain. I'll warn you onced and only.”

“I won't leave without what I come for,” Bucky said. “I know who you hide, Alvaretta. You go on and bring him out.”

“He's mine. You won't have him.”

“I can and I will, and I'll do the same with you. Your time's over now. Too many's been hurt.”

Alvaretta racked her gun. She stared at Danny. “You come with them, man from town? Was it you betrayed me?”

“This doesn't have to end badly, Ms. Graves,” the doctor hollered. “You cooperate, it'll turn out best.”

“Shoulda kilt you when I had the chance. Shoulda kilt you all.”

“You'll answer for what you did,” Landis screamed. “You ruined my boy.”

“Cain't roon what's already spoilt,” Alvaretta said. “That's what ye are—spoilt. Rot of the earth. Now turn and get on or feel my power, it makes no difference.”

The Reverend slid in behind Briar, as far from Alvaretta's eyes as he could manage. Yet now he came forth into the torchlight with his gun tucked in his belt and his two arms high, and the witch saw him and knew him. She spat at the ground and swung the barrel to the preacher's face. John David lurched forward in front of his father. He leveled the pistol at Alvaretta and shouted
No.

“I see your face, David Ramsay,” she said. “I'll have your heart. You took mine. You and Wilson Bickford, the night you took Stu. Bring Wilson to me, the rest can go.”

“You've
taken
Wilson,” Bucky said. “Wilson was my
friend
. Now bring him out here.”

“He's mine.”

“Bring him out.”

She whistled low against the breeze in a tune none of them had neither heard nor believed could exist. The shadows beyond the firelight began to harden and move. One by one, Alvaretta's beasts crept from the trees. They came around the side of the cabin to where the porch stood and from the edge of the shed into the open. They came behind Bucky and the rest, turning
Briar and Chessie both. Heads low to the ground, hackles as straight and hard as razors, teeth bared such that you could see the slobber dripping from their maws.