The Curse of Crow Hollow (6 page)

Ain't no witches, you'll tell me, and I'll say that back then there was a few who'd say the same. But there wasn't a body in this town who'd dare speak Alvaretta's name aloud for fear she'd somehow hear it, and you always knew who'd driven by the narrow cut in the trees that led off the dirt road to her cabin
by the three Xs they'd drawn on the windshield with their fingers as they'd passed.

“Could just be some old farmer,” Scarlett said.

Cordy nudged her. “We gotta make sure.”

“I'm not going down there,” Naomi said.

Cordy reached for Hays's elbow, which he promptly shook away. The morning was cool but the walk had warmed him. A single bead of sweat ran from his hairline past his cheek, almost like a tear.

“Say that is Alvaretta down there,” he said. “You want her holding something that belongs to Cordy's momma?”

And that, friend, was what convinced them all in the end. That's what made Scarlett, Hays, and Cordelia sidle around that little holler in the woods, keeping well inside the trees so they wouldn't be seen. Because it was bad enough Cordelia stole that bracelet. It was worse Scarlett lost it. But the thought of her momma's bracelet falling into the hands of the witch? That was too much for Cordelia to bear and too much for them all to risk.

Naomi stayed well back of the others at the start but then closed the distance, too afraid to be alone. They kept their eyes to the cabin and the single column of smoke rising up from the chimney. The dog that had watched them from the ridge appeared again, this time where the tree line met the dirt and grass of Alvaretta's yard. Dozens more dogs had joined it. Some sat, licking themselves. Others wound their way through the trees, watching with cold eyes and low growls. And the footprints, those hooves. Leading right down through the middle of them all, around to the front of the cabin and out of sight.

Cordelia led the way now, moving steady and trying not to dwell on the thirty or so pairs of eyes staring at her. Halfway to the side of the house, Hays found another rock bearing the same strange markings he'd found back in the field. Scarlett
found two more not a ways on. They'd come to a spot in the woods where they could see the side of the cabin plain, where a large garden had been plowed. A single glass window stared back at them. The faded curtain inside was drawn closed, letting them believe they'd gone unnoticed.

Whatever shred of hope those children had that they'd come upon some old farmer's plot left soon as they made it around to the front of that cabin. Near twenty feet of trees lay between where the four of them stood and the open half acre or so that drew up to the cabin's porch. And on all those trees, on every branch low enough to reach, hung a dead crow. Hundreds of them, all strung up in nooses of thin rope to rot and twist in the breeze. A few held on to their feathers, a black so crisp and bright it hurt the eye. Most were little more than sagging bones. Some still had eyes that looked out into the woods, their beaks open like they was sounding a silent alarm. Others had only small holes where eyes had rotted. Scarlett vomited into the leaves. Hays and Cordelia stared on as Naomi fell to prayer once more.

On the opposite side of the cabin sat the broken-down Chevy truck that had been Stu Graves's when he was killed, back when the parents of Scarlett and Hays and Cordelia and Naomi had been teenagers themselves. The side was caved in where Stu had wrecked it. The windshield lay cracked and jagged in the sun.

“This really is the witch's place,” Scarlett whispered.

Hays said, “Tracks lead to the porch.”

They did. Right up to that rickety old porch and then on across, past the truck to a shed so old that the wood on it had gone gray and warped, leaving gaps between the boards. Cordelia slipped her hand into Hays's and squeezed. He squeezed hers back.

No words passed between them, but they'd seen the same thing. The sun had come alive over that little holler by then,
lighting every shiny surface it touched. The cracked side mirror on Stu Graves's old truck, the front window to the left of Alvaretta's front door, the metal washbasin overturned in the front yard, all a them glowed like tiny suns themselves. But what sparkled brightest was the diamond bracelet that had been draped over the rusty doorknob of that leaning shed.

-4-

“We gotta get over there.” Cordy turned to find Naomi and Scarlett had backed farther into the woods. Hays still had her hand, but he'd taken a step away as well. “Hays? We have to get over there. That's momma's bracelet, I know it is.”

“No,” he said. “No way, Cordy.”

“It's just right there. We can sneak through the trees. Ain't nobody around.”

He shook his head but didn't let go of her hand, like he meant to keep her there.

“John David said for me to keep y'all safe. I'm not going anywhere near that shed. I can't.”

“What is wrong with you?”

“I just
can't
,” Hays said, and there was a panic to his voice that looked to scare them all. “We come too far.”

“Too
far
?” Cordy asked, and a little too loud, making the girls look around and at least one of the dogs somewhere in the trees bark. When she spoke again, it was nearer a whisper. “You were the one who said we should follow those tracks in the first place. You
brought
us here.”

“I'll go,” Scarlett said.

Cordy looked her way, to where Scarlett stood beside a trembling Naomi, who was now so scared she'd even given up her praying.

“I'll go with you, Cordy,” Scarlett said again. “It's my fault. I lost your bracelet, and I know you have to get it back. You can't have problems with your folks now. So I'll go.”

“No,” Hays said.

“We have to. You stay here with Naomi and keep watch. Let us know if you see anything. Scream it, we'll run. The lane has to be around here somewhere. We'll all follow it to the road and then keep on running if we have to. Our cars'll just have to wait.”

Cordelia nodded. “It's the only way, Hays.”

“Then I'm going too.”

Naomi let off to panicking, telling the rest no way was she going to get close to that cabin and no way was she going to stay in the woods alone, not with those dogs around and those crows hanging over their heads, watching with their dead eyes.

“You stay with Naomi,” Cordy said. “We'll be fast.”

Hays handed the knife over. “Use it,” he said. “I'm not kidding. Something happens, Cordy, don't even think.”

The two girls left Hays and Naomi there and made a wide arc through the trees, watching for Alvaretta's dogs and keeping both the cabin and the shed in sight. They met the lane not a hundred yards on, nothing more than a rutted path hidden in the trees. Feathers stuck to the bottoms of their shoes as they swung around and eased out of the woods between two dead crows, one hung upside down and another missing both legs. They saw none of the dogs that roamed the land around the cabin. Cordy unfolded the blade on Hays's knife, locking it open as she hugged the back of the shed. She peered around the corner, past the open space of dead weeds and dirt that made up the front yard to the trees beyond. Hays and Naomi couldn't be seen. Scarlett peered through a gap in the boards but saw nothing in the shed's darkness. Cordelia stepped around the side, motioning for her to follow.

A wisp of gray smoke rose from the cabin's chimney. Otherwise, the place looked dead and empty. Cordy peeked around to the front of the shed. The bracelet—her momma's bracelet—still hung on the knob, not ten feet away. Scarlett tapped her on the shoulder. She held up three fingers and pointed to Cordy first, then to the cabin's door, finally to herself and the shed. Cordelia nodded. A count of three, then. Three, and Scarlett would go. She'd turn the corner quick and snatch that bracelet, and then she and Cordy would run, run for the others and then run all the way home, and they'd never come to Campbell's Mountain again.

One.

A sound from the porch. Cordy shot her hand back, telling Scarlett to stay. She moved her hand away when she saw it had only been the breeze against the bear traps hanging from the pegs by the door.

Two.

Scarlett's body tensed. Cordy gripped the edge of the shed, no longer watching the porch but shutting her eyes in prayer.

Three.

Scarlett ran.

I told you it was maybe ten feet to the door and that's the truth, but I'd wager that distance felt like a mile to that poor girl. You know what it's like, friend, to be afraid? I'm not talking plain scared, like how Angela had sat all comfortable in her living room watching somebody get killed on the TV. I'm talking about terror. You get as scared as Scarlett Bickford was, your body starts turning against you. Parts don't move right, leaving you to feel like you're fighting the very air for purchase. You don't hear. You can't see. Time itself melts away. All that's left is a single moment you know will never end, and what you realize is you're as close to hell as you ever want to get.

You can bet that's what Scarlett thought as she ran toward
that door on two legs made of jelly. I can picture her fingers now, brushing against that shiny oval bit of gold and glass hanging from the knob, relishing that brief moment when she thought she saw a light at the end of the long dark hole they'd all found themselves in that morning. But just before Scarlett's hand could close upon the bracelet, the door of the shed flew open and all hope went with it, and all Scarlett could do was scream.

-5-

Scarlett stumbled backward, hand still outstretched, reaching for a bracelet Cordelia would never wear again. The witch charged from the shed's open door with a cry more animal than human and a rage that burst from the scrawny body that contained her. Her feet scuttled over the dirt, making tiny clouds gather about her black boots and the hem of her worn dress. She gripped a pitchfork in two bony hands, angling the tines upward. Scarlett would've fallen at the edge of that clearing (and would've died there too—the witch had murder on her mind, friend, I'll stretch that truth not at all) were it not that she fell against the front of Stu Graves's old truck. Her back met the edge of the hood, lifting Scarlett's head to expose her chubby white neck. That's where Alvaretta now aimed. She let out a final yell and pulled back on the handle, meaning to run the little trespasser through.

Hays and Naomi ran from the trees and across the yard, but they were too far to be of any help. Nor could Scarlett help herself. She was so frozen by Alvaretta's appearance that she could not even beg for mercy. Had Cordelia not screamed, I doubt none a them kids would've made it off the mountain that day. They'd all be dead, buried by Medric Johnston's hand and
mourned over by their parents, or maybe hung up in the trees to rot like them crows, and there's where my story would end. Yet Cordy found courage enough in that last moment to call out
No
just as Alvaretta went to run Scarlett through and
Stop it
as the witch flinched and spun her head.

Cordelia raised her hands—to her eyes at first, not bearing the thought of meeting Alvaretta's stare, then high and out as if in surrender. No sound came from the witch's mouth other than a rough panting. Her bottom jaw hung free from the rest of her face, revealing stumps of brown teeth. Gray hair hung free down the middle of her back, held in place by tiny silver barrettes. Scarlett picked herself up as Hays and Naomi stopped in front of the cabin not twenty feet away. Naomi was crying. Alvaretta saw them and the knife at Cordy's feet and took a step toward the door.

“Get on.” She stabbed the air with the pitchfork. “Go you.
Goway
.”

Cordelia dared not move. She kept her hands high and said, “We're sorry, ma'am. We didn't mean to trespass. We got lost is all.”

The witch stepped inside the doorway. Her fingers had gone pale from gripping the handle so hard. She said again,
“GOWAY.”

Scarlett chanced a look over her shoulder. Hays had moved closer in the last seconds, cutting the distance by half. He didn't see the mongrel dog easing around the corner of the house behind him.

“We were camping,” she said, but the witch did not look. Her eyes were on Hays instead, and now Naomi. Scarlett took a step closer. “Up at the mines? I know we weren't supposed to and we won't do it again, but I lost my friend's bracelet and it's there on your door. You give us that back, we'll be on our way, and we'll never trouble you again. You got our word.”

Alvaretta cackled through a grimace and spat on the ground, letting Scarlett know just how valuable her word was on the mountain. “
Mine
. I found it, I keep it.”

Scarlett saw Hays's shadow creep next to her own. He stopped when Alvaretta leveled the pitchfork at him.

“Get on,” she warned. The words came low and smooth, almost like a spell. “Leave us.”

“Us?” Hays asked.

Scarlett eased along the front of the shed, meaning to flank the old woman and catch her by surprise. Her shoe landed on one of the footprints they'd followed from the mines. She cried out as though she'd stepped barefoot on a thistle. Alvaretta smiled as she turned, looking at Scarlett for the first time.

“I see the face behind your eyes, little one,” she said. “I know it well.”

Scarlett held her place. “What's that mean?”

“I see your pa grinnin out from the sour girl he's wrought.” And then the witch licked her lips with a tongue that looked gray and dying, like she was savoring the bitterness in her next word. “Bickford.”

Scarlett's face went slack. “How do you know me?”

That cackle again, low and soft, which only made the blood in Cordelia's face drain quicker. A brown dog with only one eye moved out of the trees to where Alvaretta stood. It leaned against the witch's spindly legs and growled.