The Curse of Crow Hollow (49 page)

“You'll not leave this place,” she said.

Landis tried backing off but found the way blocked by what looked like a retriever mixed with coyote. One eye had been gouged away, but the other saw him clear. The dog barked hard, making Landis jump and Alvaretta cackle. Landis turned to where she stood and saw a shadow move beyond a drawn curtain in one of the front windows.

What Landis did next, he did for his boy.

-4-

Bucky saw that shadow, too, and how big it looked against the window. He watched Landis's face go stiff and felt his own slacken at the understanding of what was about to happen. And it was the worst thing that could happen, friend. They were armed, sure. And with John David and both Hodges, they were as capable as any posse you'd find in Crow Holler. But no amount of bullets and right could change the fact they were trapped by light in a wide open space with Alvaretta occupying the high ground, and they were surrounded by thirty wild and angry dogs.

But none of that played a part in Landis Foster's thinking. Only thing that man heard was the witch's taunts, and all he seen was her demon standing in the window. He saw his shot and took it, and there's no way you or I can blame him for that.

Alvaretta must've seen his finger settling down on the trigger, because right then she screamed and raised to fire. Landis emptied half his gun into that window, sending glass onto the porch and the dogs below. The spray knocked the witch's aim off just enough to send her shot wide into the trees. The shadow
inside took off. Briar chased it with shots of his own while Chessie and the Reverend took aim at Alvaretta. She swung her shotgun their way and pulled. Fire leaped from the barrel.

“Eat,” she cried to her children.
“Eat.”

Dogs pounced from all sides. Chessie got the first two, though she needed four shots and there were six more of the beasts right behind. Briar shot as fast as he could, as did the Reverend. Yet the more Alvaretta's holler erupted to gunfire, the hungrier her beasts became. Bucky aimed that army rifle to one animal and then another, yet his finger froze on the trigger. John David shot two. The third snuck behind and leaped, barking as it did. He spun too late. John David's world became nothing more than a black mouth with white fangs before the dog's head exploded in a shower of blood. The monster fell limp to the ground. Reverend Ramsay stood with his gun pointed not a foot from his son's head. He'd tell Belle later was a miracle he hit that dog and not John David, so bad his hand shook.

The dogs had backed them into a tight knot, and there is where Alvaretta aimed. She emptied her shotgun and cared not if she hit human or animal. Briar returned fire and missed. Landis ran for the porch. Whether to get away from the dogs or to rush the witch, I can't say. All I can tell you is Alvaretta saw his approach and grinned as she leveled her gun. Bucky ran for Landis, pushing him aside as the gun boomed. Buckshot lit his shoulder and part of his face afire. Bucky cried out and took a single step to his right when he heard the sharp sound of metal springing and the crunching sound of bone. The world went all bright colors and searing pain. Bucky wailed as the jaws of the bear trap Alvaretta had hidden in the scrub and grass devoured his leg. Four dogs set upon him. Landis shot one, John David and Chessie the others.

The witch threw her scatter-gun down and yanked the pistol from her belt. As soon as Bucky saw that long barrel in the
blood moon's eerie glow, he knew that gun was his own. He had no time to call a warning. Alvaretta took aim at the only person she truly wanted to kill that night and pulled the trigger. The gun's kick would've knocked her off her feet were it not that it slammed her backward into the wall. A shot like cannon fire boomed over the holler. The Reverend's head snapped backward. He spun and fell at Briar's feet, clutching the bullet hole through his shoulder. Briar fought off the advancing dogs as the doc tried to stanch the wound.

John David yelled, “We have to get out of here,” but there was nowhere to go. Twenty or so of Alvaretta's children remained, and while half of those had retreated, the other half pressed in to cut off any escape. The Reverend couldn't be moved, nor could Bucky until his leg could be freed. Strange as it is to say, the only safe place on Campbell's Mountain was inside Alvaretta's cabin. Bucky must've figured this. Either that, or some part of him he'd always hoped existed but was always afraid to know awoke. I expect it was just as John David told Cordelia about war—you don't think of good and evil in battle, you think only of your friends.

He raised his body and wrenched free the anchor chain from where Alvaretta had stuck it into the hard ground. Blood poured from the holes the steel teeth had carved between his ankle and knee. He staggered, lifting the rifle as he dragged all forty pounds of that trap toward the cabin, deaf and blind to the screams and barks around him.

-5-

For the first time in memory, Alvaretta Graves gave herself over not to the hate that had fueled the evening years of her life, but to the fear that had draped those years in shadow. The man
stumbling for her had a rage-filled look in his eyes. Something had come upon him, a devilry Alvaretta could not comprehend. The bumbling fat man who had days before turned tail off the mountain with his own waste staining his pants now came forth like one who could not die. Like one eternal.

Most of her children lay dead or wounded. Others had scampered. A few, the hungriest, remained, and yet they could only fight off some of the intruders. This one—the Bucky Vest—would not be stopped by them. And so that fell to her.

All those years on the mountain, all that life she'd scraped and bled for, only to have this man try to take it away? Try to take her secret? Rape her hope as the man who'd called himself Wally had tried to rape her body after her Stu had been killed? No.
No,
she thought. The scrap of land upon which she'd made her stand may have been poisoned and unholy, but it and all it contained was hers and hers alone, and she would protect it even unto death.

She turned her face to the curtained window long enough to see the shadow inside. In that small glance, Alvaretta Graves poured what small bit of love still remained hidden inside her. One step to the porch. The clatter of the bear trap being dragged closer pulled her back to all that mattered now. Her children howled in pain and death as gunshots rang out, and yet time itself now slowed for the witch just as it had for Bucky. She leveled the pistol (
his
pistol, and my, how sweet that was) at the sheriff's head and moved down the steps firing, shooting and shooting again, no longer able to see or keep the gun raised as her elderly body began to fail. One boot landed upon the ground. The other stepped into a puddle of blood and fur. The crippled man (Alvaretta could no longer remember his name) stumbled over the trap that bit into his leg. He fell with a cry of pain that went unnoticed by those who had come with him to kill and steal. Going to him now, her eyes searching the
grass and leaves for the other hidden traps. And when Alvaretta looked to Bucky once more, she saw not him but the barrel he pointed at her.

The pistol felt like an anvil in her hand. She tried to raise it but found she could not. Alvaretta could do nothing but gape in a kind of wonder at the flash of orange and yellow light that flowered from that dark tube.

In that brief and final moment, I believe the witch knew she would die protecting what she most loved. That peace came unbidden, yet it came.

-6-

Jake Barnett kept the blue light flashing and parked at the edge of the torches. He eased out and met the distant sound of baying dogs and the coppery smell of blood.

Chessie greeted him. Her cheeks were bruised and cut by then. Doc Sullivan had fashioned a crude bandage around the flab of her left bicep that had already soaked through with blood. He'd shaken his head as he cinched it, telling Chessie there was no way around the rabies shots she would have to get. She talked a long while with the sheriff, explaining as best she could all that had happened and why Jake wouldn't be arresting her that night. Then she turned and faded into the darkness. Looking for Briar, I suppose, who had set off to hunt the last of Alvaretta's hell hounds.

Jake watched her go and eased his way through the ring of torches toward the porch. He spotted two bear traps hidden in the leaves and stepped wide of the body, offering it only a glancing look. The bedsheet Doc Sullivan had found and draped over the body was worn so thin you could see the flesh he'd meant to cover. A single gnarled hand jutted out, exposing a thin wrist
and the diamond bracelet clasped around it. Dozens of rusty blotches littered the body.

Bucky didn't see him, nor did he look to feel the bow in the boards as Jake took the steps. Two men sat slumped at a wooden table inside. Both were bleeding and silent.

“Hey, Buck.”

“Jake.”

It was barely a whisper, that word, and yet enough to tremble the fat that hung from Bucky's chin. His uniform had been rendered filthy despite its newness, as was the star on his chest. He ran a hand down the machine gun draped across his lap.

Jake sat, wincing at Bucky's mangled knee. Doc had done all he could with that, wrapping it tight. Said Bucky would have to get to a hospital soon or else risk losing that leg from the knee down, but Bucky had refused to go.

“You okay?” Jake asked.

“See her hand, Jake?”

Jake looked out into the yard. “I do.”

“I think it moved a minute ago.”

“Don't think so, Bucky. She's gone.”

“Scarlett call you?”

“She did.”

He smiled a little. “She tell you the witch come for her? For us all?”

“I talked to Chessie coming in. She told me most everything. Who got her, Buck? I need to know who it was.”

Bucky looked over his shoulder to the men at Alvaretta's table. “Gonna have to get them outta here soon,” Bucky said. “Take too long for the ambulance to get up here and then to Stanley. Belle and Maris, they'll take 'em. I expect Kayann'll want to stay with Hays. Chessie's gonna have to get that arm looked at. That dog took a chunk—”

“Bucky? I need to know what's inside there.”

“I don't know, Jake.” He breathed deep, let it out slow. “Something. Once Alvaretta fell, her dogs scattered. Briar tended to the Reverend while Danny tried to get that bear trap off me. After that, we all went after Stu. John David and Chessie took these steps hard. Had to. If any of us would've slowed even a little, we mighta found out we were too scared to go on. Chessie started firing soon as she hit the door, just in case he was still by that window. Tore the whole place up. But he wasn't there.

“We got to looking around. There's a door off from where we found her bedroom. Wasn't no lock on it—I mean, why would the witch need to lock anything, you know? We heard something in there and crouched down. John David busted in. That's where we found him. He's still in there. Guess he's gonna need help as much as Landis and the preacher.”

John David came around the side of the house. His gun rested in a shaky hand, but that calmness still covered his face. He took the steps up and nodded to Jake, who nodded back. To Bucky, he said, “All clear.”

“I'm gonna have to take Jake inside,” Bucky said. “Let him see. You sit out here, John David? Keep an eye on Alvaretta for me?”

“How's Daddy?”

“Doc says he'll be okay. Bullet went through.”

“Then I'll sit here.”

Jake helped Bucky stand and then supported him as he limped inside. When they reached the door, John David said, “Buck? I ain't cold no more.”

Bucky turned to look at him. And even though he had no idea what John David meant by that and would only when Scarlett told him later of their talk on the back porch some nights before, he said, “That's fine, John David. I'm glad you ain't cold.”

The inside of that cabin was tiny. Barely big enough for one, but I reckon that's all the space Alvaretta ever needed. Jake spoke with Landis and David long enough to ask what they needed. Neither man answered. Shock, you see. Not just from what the night had brought, but from what they'd found in the after. Bucky took him to the far wall where Danny Sullivan waited by the shut door. He told Bucky again he'd have to call an ambulance. Bucky said wait and introduced Jake.

“Anything?” Bucky asked.

The doctor shook his head. “Not for a while now. Best thing, Sheriff Barnett, is to go slow and quiet. I don't know what's in his mind.”

Jake thumbed the button on his holster as Bucky eased the door open.

That room was probably no bigger'n the closet you keep your clothes in, friend. One plain bed without a sheet, one little table, nothing more. A lantern's flame gave enough light to step inside. Jake stepped in and said, “Lord have mercy.”

The walls were covered with the same markings Cordelia and her friends had found that first day, pictures and symbols that looked as some ancient language. More crows hung from string tied around nails hammered into the ceiling—five of them, Jake counted. On the table beside the lantern sat three pieces of chalk and a small pile of feathers.

Bucky staggered in behind. His head leaned to the left as he peered at the dark space on the other side of the bed. He held his rifle tight and said, “Come out of there. Do it slow, and we won't harm you.”

Jake grabbed for his pistol as the demon raised a dirt-crusted hand atop the mattress. Another hand, this just as stained and leathered, came up beside it. The bed creaked as the thing behind it pushed itself up, revealing first a tangled mop of black hair; two wide and unblinking eyes; the patchwork of an
unkempt beard; thin, weakened arms; a pair of overalls, faded and worn to the thickness of paper. He stood slow and kept his hands close to his chest.

“Who is this, Bucky?” Jake asked. “What's your name, son? Can you tell me that?”