The Curse of Crow Hollow (7 page)

“Yesss,” she hissed. “Bickford. I see you well.” She turned her head slow, studying Hays. “Foster,” she spoke, and then to where Naomi cowered not a body's length from the other dog, Alvaretta screamed, “Ramsay,” and spat once more. To Cordelia she said nothing.

The dog near Naomi raised its nose, no doubt smelling the fear coming off her. Her body had gone stiff but for her
trembling hands. She stared at the witch with eyes that looked somehow brightened. “How do you know our names?”

“You ask me that? I know of you, but you don't know of me?”

“Give us the bracelet,” Cordy said. “Give it to us and we'll go.”

“'Twas given
me
.”

Alvaretta stepped from the doorway and aimed the tines at Cordelia's stomach, as if she knew what grew there. Hays neither said nor did a thing. You put anybody in that situation, friend—you put yourself there—could you have done any different? I'd tell you no. He tried moving but was stuck in place, and then he heard something move inside the shed. One of the gaps in the boards had opened wide enough to let in a thin bar of sun through to the other side. It glowed and then winked out, like something inside had passed by.

“What's in there?” he asked.

Alvaretta whipped her head his way. Hays couldn't meet that awful stare and so dropped his eyes to the ground, where the long track of horseshoe marks led past the spot where Alvaretta stood.

“What's in there?” he asked again. “Let me see.”

What came next happened quicker than you can blink. Mayhap it was a shadow of the rage that had burned in Scarlett Bickford ever since she was old enough to know her own name, a fury that had rumbled and built and finally blew right there in that dead part of Campbell's Mountain. Or it could have been plain fear. She shot forward in a spot where neither the witch nor her beast could see. Alvaretta saw the look of horror on Cordelia's face. She spun back, but not in time. Scarlett's fist slammed into the side of the witch's mouth with a wet, hollow sound that would haunt those kids forever.

The pitchfork went flying. Alvaretta staggered backward into the dog, which reared up and knocked her forward at
Scarlett's feet. Cordelia screamed as Hays and Naomi called out, and from inside the shed came a shriek that shook the very boards themselves. Dogs barked and howled, a chorus of them, calling out from either side of the cabin and behind. The one that had closed on Naomi and the one that had guarded the witch barreled away for the safety of the forest.
Run
was all those kids must've thought,
Run
and
Run far
, and yet as Scarlett lifted her foot, Alvaretta took hold of it like a vise. The Thing in the shed yowled in a language none of them had ever heard, guttural and olden. One of the boards broke free, like what was inside had kicked it. A hunk of it struck Hays in the knee, doubling him over. Scarlett struggled to free herself, but Alvaretta would not yield. The witch's hands went from Scarlett's feet to her legs and then her hips, her thick body like steps to lift Alvaretta off the ground. Hays had gone numb. His shoulders had moved inward, caving his chest, and he began shaking his head as what had lain hidden inside the shed now tried to emerge. Cordy tried moving away and tripped, nearly touching one of the hoofprints burned into the dirt. The knife lay beside her. Friend, I don't think she even saw it.

Scarlett tried tilting her head away. She felt the witch's arm squeezing her tighter and saw Alvaretta stand, so close that she could smell the stink on the old woman's breath. A trail of blood poured from the gash on the side of her lip. Scarlett shook her head
No
as the demon in the shed spoke again. Alvaretta shook her own head
Yes, yes
. With one arm she squeezed Scarlett tighter. The other came around front and produced a gnarled and swollen finger that gathered the blood from her own lip like a dark harvest. Alvaretta reached out and touched Scarlett's forehead, then made a straight line of crimson down the bridge of Scarlett's nose.

“Yesss,” she whispered. “Curse ye.”

Scarlett cried out. She wrenched herself from the witch's
grasp and took off, they all took off, not minding the crows watching them from their nooses nor the dogs chasing them nor the long hill to the top of the ridge, minding only the raging wail of what the witch had been hiding and the witch herself screaming
Curse ye
over and over,
Curse ye all for ye sins.
Oh yes, friend, they scampered. And know you would have scampered as well. You would have hastened to the ends of the world to be away from there, and what you'd find after your hastening was done would be just what those poor kids found: you could run from Alvaretta Graves, but you could not run from her words.

IV

The curse takes hold. At the hospital. The prayer chain. Naomi makes a video.

-1-

I'd put it about seven that morning when Scarlett struck Alvaretta Graves and so sealed the fates of us all. Let's call it an hour later when the kids neared the mines again. Those are guesses, a course. By then, Cordelia and the rest were too scared and tired to worry about the time. Naomi never even bothered to check her phone. But time was about the only thing on the minds of everybody else back in the Holler. It was the Sabbath, and that meant gathering down to the church.

Friend, I don't know where you come from or how the people there handle matters of the soul, but round here religion is king. All the proof you need's to look yonder at that sign.
F
IRST
C
ROW
H
OLLOW
C
HURCH OF THE
H
OLY
S
PIRIT ON
F
IRE
, R
EVEREND
D
AVID
R
AMSAY
P
RESIDING
. Mouthful, ain't it? Church looks about as run-down now as everything else. But you have to remember I'm talking about how things was then, and back then, everybody come down to the Holy Fire. Every Sunday morning and evening, then again for Wednesday Bible study. And if you weren't there and Doc Sullivan ain't provided you a reasonable enough excuse, you can bet people wondered. They wondered plenty.

About the time Cordelia was getting her first eyeful of dead crows at the edge of Alvaretta's wood, her folks was pulling out of the gravel drive a dozen miles off. Bucky had on his best Sunday suit, having kept it hanging off the shower curtain in the bathroom since paying respects at Henrietta Slaybaugh's funeral two days before. Angela wore a pretty red dress and her hair down, which she thought made her face look less fat. They were late, having first waited for Cordelia and then given the roses a good watering. By the time they figured Scarlett could just as well drive Cordy and Naomi straight to church from Harper's Field, Bucky barely had time to grab his King James.

Angela asked him to keep the window down, it stunk in the car. Bucky turned the crank and promised he'd rode all the way home like that the day before, after his shift at the dump, which was true. Bucky was always conscious of the way his vocation made him smell. Still, Angela rode most the way to town with her fingers pinched against her nose. She tried prying the two kitchen sponges out from between the frame and window of her door. Bucky asked her to stop, telling her if that window fell there'd be no prying it up, and then what would they do?

“Maybe tomorrow I'll get down to Mattingly,” he said. “Get one of those fresheners that hang off the mirror? Smell like pine trees.”

“That'd be good.”

Bucky moved his hand across the seat of the family's little car, an '88 Chevy Celebrity he'd bought off Raleigh Jennings two weeks after high school graduation and a week after Homer Pruitt had hired him on at the dump. He gave Angela's leg a squeeze that didn't look to improve her mood. She'd been sullen since Bucky got home from work the day before. The funeral, he'd thought at first, but then Angela had told him later that night about poor Nikki on her stories. From the car's only working speaker, Johnny Cash sang of a burning ring of fire. Bucky hummed a little and then told Angela everything would be okay, death must come to us all and even people
like this girl Nikki, and who knew, maybe she'd come back. Anything's possible on the TV.

The wind fluttered the stack of flyers in the backseat—Bucky looking stern in a constable's jacket that had gone a few sizes too small over the years and a turtleneck that seemed to swell his face to the point of bursting, L
ET
'
S KEEP THE LAW IN ORDER
— E
LECT
B
UCKY
V
EST
C
ONSTABLE
printed across the top. The whole family had been hanging them up all over town in the last weeks, but I'll be honest and say Bucky never really had to bother. He'd been elected constable near as many times as Wilson Bickford had been named mayor, and for good reason. Everybody liked Bucky, even if he came off a little simple on occasion. Even Chessie and Briar Hodge would always get out near election time and drum up support, so long as the mayor agreed to make sure Bucky never got the notion to go after their moonshining.

The morning dawned a chilly one for April. Bucky flipped the heater switch to High and shivered at the cold air that rushed from the vents. Angela asked (not for the first time, but as nice as usual) if he'd take the Celebrity down to the Hodge farm one day the coming week, get Briar to look at it. Everybody took their stuff there, Angela said, and it was a whole lot cheaper than taking the car all the way to a real mechanic in Mattingly. Bucky drove with the wind in his face, reminding Angela (not for the first time, but as nice as usual) that he could not in good conscience ever set foot upon Hodge land unless it was in an official capacity, and it didn't matter how often Briar and Chessie sat in church or how much they helped the wanting in town, that family was villainous.

“Criminal or not,” Angela said, “at least Chessie's got respect. That counts for something.”

“She ain't got respect,” Bucky told her. “She's feared.”

“But she's known. Chessie's
somebody
. I'd rather be feared than just be another face.”

“Whole world's full of other faces, Angela. Can't everybody be somebody, or else there'd be no common folk like us. We're the ones keep the world going.”

“That's your laziness talking.”

And so it happened that just as Cordelia was screaming her way back to the campsite, Bucky and Angela had their first fight of the morning. There were no voices raised or hard words exchanged, just the clipped sentences and sideways glances that had come to define their marriage these last hard years. Both of them shivering, his hand no longer on her leg. The two of them likely wishing it was all because their car didn't blow heat on a cold morning and knowing it was not.

-2-

Bucky pulled into the parking lot that circles the Holy Fire right ahead of Kayann and Landis Foster. They were in that fancy Mercedes, of course. And of course Kayann was driving. Both of them waved, though you could say Landis and Bucky seemed to mean it a little more. Angela, you could say she meant to wave at only one of them, and they all got out.

Kayann had on a black dress that flaunted both the flatness of her stomach and the bulge of her chest. She hit a button on her keychain that made the Fosters' car beep. Setting the alarm, even if near everybody in town would be inside that church and so disinclined to break and enter. Bucky rolled his eyes and tried not to let Landis see.

Kayann asked Angela if she'd heard anything from Cordelia, Hays hadn't bothered to call or text that morning. Bucky
answered the same. Landis broke the silence that followed by making a joke that maybe Hays and Cordy had run off to get married and was met with more silence. Bucky said he was sure the kids would be there before the service started. Kayann said she hoped that was so, but a course it wasn't. Hays wasn't nowhere near church by then. He was tearing down the hill in his car from the Number Four, thinking the crow feather stuck to his collar and tickling the back of his neck was Alvaretta's reaching fingers.

Still, the four parents decided it best to maybe wait outside until Raleigh Jennings stepped out to ring the church bell, just in case the kids arrived. Townfolk came in a steady stream, men and women and children dressed in their finest, which round here meant the clothes least worn and faded. Briar Hodge arrived with Chessie. He parked his old truck near the front of the church and lumbered around to let her out, the two of them looking like lovebirds in the twilight of some gilded romance rather than the most wanted people in the county. Chessie puffed the bit of red hair in front of her eyes with her breath so she could see. She greeted the Fosters and Vests and told them to have a blessed day.

Medric Johnston had the shortest walk of anybody in the Holler from home to church, having only to step acrost the street from the funeral parlor next door. He said hello to the little group near the steps and tried to ignore the fact that Kayann didn't so much as lift her chin. Oh, I'm sure that coulda been on account of the way Hays had taken to spending so much of his time helping Medric with whatever poor soul had last fallen to death. Coulda also been that Medric Johnston belonged to a class and race that Kayann Foster considered well below her own. I'll let you decide. But I guess Medric was used to being treated that way, him being just about the only black man in the Holler. I like to believe he could stand there smiling under
Kayann's glare because he was thinking of how it'd be to one day lay that woman down on the gurney in the funeral home's basement and get her all prettied up to be put in the ground. Kayann'd probably make Landis buy the most expensive casket Medric had, which would be fine, and then Medric would dig the hole extra deep. That'd please him fine. Please Angela too.