The Witch at Sparrow Creek: A Jim Falk Novel (15 page)

“This is the key,” Simon said. “This is the token. Otherwise
she won’t even be there to talk to you. Her house won’t even be there. She
knows you’re a man of the Way, Preach. It’s your kind that drove her out here.
She won’t see you unless she knows that you’re not of the kind that want her
dead. But there’s a real kind of magic that’s been put over her. I don’t know
what it is or where it came from. Only with this piece of her can you find
her.”

Why had he come here to the church? What was it that
he needed? To tell someone something? The old hag had sent him on his way. She’d
said something. He couldn’t draw it up. When he tried to remember her words, he
was stricken suddenly with the twinkling eyes of the shadow thing that had
burned its mark on the wall.

Here at the steps of the church, he felt warm. He started
to feel safe.

“Everything is all right,” he whispered to himself and
sat down on the steps. Something had happened. He shook his head. He put his
hands up to his face and put his palms into his burning eye-sockets, rubbing.
He was tired. He put his left hand down in something sticky.

Something had happened here at the church. There was
blood on the steps. There was blood on the steps and splintered wood all around.
The door was destroyed.

He heard the Starkey boy talking in his memory: “A witch
like that spends a lot of her time saving up energies for keeping herself young
and alive. Who knows how long she’s been around? Even with the thumb, she can’t
even always be found, Preacher.”

He got up and looked. Nobody was around. There were black
spots in the grass out here, as if something had burned the spots; the grass
was black and crisp and dead. He went in and looked. He looked in the corner
where Bill’s cot was. Bill’s cot was there, but Bill wasn’t in it. Nobody was
inside.

Vernon Mosely walked slowly up the aisle, step by step,
looking into the pews on either side of him. Expecting to see someone there.
Someone sleeping or someone hiding; he didn’t know. He felt, though, that
someone was there. There was a heavy feeling on the back of his neck, as if
someone was watching him. He was tired and his mind ached. His heart fluttered
in his chest and a heavy dizziness started to flush his face.

He walked against some force, slowly up to the
pulpit, underneath the plain sign of the meeting of heaven and earth. His hands
went cold.

A little sunlight had begun flickering in through the
windows. It lit the dust in the church. It caught him across the face, but his
eyes didn’t catch the light; they held a darkness about them.

He got up there by the pulpit and leaned on it, looking
around the church: all the empty pews, the blanket on the cot pulled onto the floor,
blood on the floor, mud on the floor, an abandoned glove on the front pew.
Something’s happened here.

Weakly he called out, “Hello?”

The use of his voice caused him to get dizzier, and his
vision started to blank out.

Nobody answered him.

There was nothing around but the broken door and the
smear of blood by the broken door. Strange spots of blood, sharpened, red marks,
as though made by hooves, drying in the sun through the windows.

He turned to the Sign, the sign of the meeting of heaven
and earth, hoping for an answer from the touching arrow shapes.

Vernon’s heart was fluttering again in his chest. A nausea
came up in back of his throat; the feeling in his hands and arms and chest
disappeared so that he only felt a floating and his knees buckled.

He fell. He curled around, away from the podium, and
tilted his head so that he could look up and see the Sign, the two planes touching.
Heaven touching earth. “When? Oh God, please soon,” he said.

He reached for it with his hand, but he could not feel
his arm.

He was curled up there in a ball on the floor as if he’d
been struck. Then he felt a burning in his arm and face and in his mind.

The things that had happened at the witch’s crawled up
in the back of his throat and stuck into his neck and head like pins. What would
happen to him now? He frowned and bit his lip. Somewhere in his body, from
where he could not tell, pain fired and twisted. His left arm tightened and
twisted crooked in an unnatural way.

What of his wife, his home? What of his daughter, Merla?
He saw again the black eyes, the spiny horns, the curved claws. They would come
for them all. His hand seized up at the end of his gnarled arm.

They would come. He gasped again at the pain. Maybe not
tonight, maybe not tomorrow night. But they would come. He knew now. He knew
what was happening. The writings, the teachings, his parents, his whole life it
seemed, bubbled and frothed with an oily poison in his mind. No, it hadn’t been
the outlander at all who had brought these evils to these innocent people. It
was him that had done it. It was him and his damned pride. That he could keep
old secrets hidden, that he could . . . Again he saw the curving teeth and
ripping spines, twitching in the darkness, hungry.

But how could he stop it? The outlander? The witch said
to tell no one, but . . .

“Preacher?”

Vernon heard the voice, but he didn’t recognize it straight
off.

“Preacher, is ’at you back there?”

Now his eyes popped open, and he recognized the voice.
He found a strength to grab hold of the side of the pulpit with his right hand
and begin raising himself up.

He was trembling as he raised his eyes over the pulpit.

“Boy, you’re in a state,” said the voice.

The preacher looked at who it was, and there, standing
in the middle of the little church, was the chicken man.

The preacher couldn’t look right at the chicken man because
it made him sick to look. But he had to look anyway. The chicken man was all
mangled up, torn, stretched too far. Mangled up in a way where he ought to be
dead, but he wasn’t dead. He was standing there talking.

“Something else here last night, Preacher. Something
else,” said the chicken man.

The preacher locked his eyes on the wood of the pulpit
in front of him. He was frozen and he couldn’t look up at the broken thing that
was talking to him. It wasn’t the chicken man, but it was. The chicken man
spoke in a hoarse and lisping way. Something changed around him and the room
got colder and felt darker. The preacher felt as if someone was putting out the
light in the back of his mind.

He heard the chicken man sliding his twisted legs toward
the pulpit. He smelled the sweet stink of rot coming off of the chicken man.

“You’re in for trouble,” the chicken man’s voice came,
somehow deeper-sounding now. “You’re in for trouble.” There was sweetness in
his voice, a sweetness like sleep. The church swirled away into a white pinhole.

“How long did you think you could hide from me?” the
chicken man asked again angrily, but it was no longer the chicken man’s voice. “Look
at me, old man! Look at me!”

The preacher deeply dreaded what he would see, but
he rolled his eyes up toward the voice.

It was not the chicken man who stood there. It was a
terrible man, a terrible man he’d never seen. A terrible man with eyes that seemed
both black and hot, and a sharp, bent way about him.

“Vernon Mosely,” the terrible man said, “you are found.
You are all found at last. We have awoken to find you all and you will all die.
You cannot hide in hollows and behind the walls of this wooden hut that you
call a place of worship, this shamble of rotten wood and dying faith. Your people
will disappear from the earth along with the nonsense scribbled on the tattered
animal hide you call scripture. We will find it. We can see it now.”

Then there was a hand on his shoulder. “Preacher!” a
voice shouted right into his ear now.

He was lying under the pulpit and looking at the ceiling
feeling pain, but also relief. He was twisted up and he’d fouled himself, but
the terrible man was gone.

Hattie Jones grabbed him up and propped him up on a stool
and put his whisky flask under the preacher’s nose. “Wake up, Preacher!”

Vernon opened one eye. His face felt numb. He couldn’t
see right.

“Morning, Preacher!” Hattie shouted in his face and laughed
a little. “What a scene, what a scene! Where had you gotten off to? What did
you find out?”

The preacher reached out and put his hand on Hattie’s
flask and Hattie stopped talking. He watched as the preacher put his hand on it
and drew it close to his lips.

Hattie pulled the flask away from the preacher’s snarled
mouth and twisted the cap back on. “There’s no need for that, is there, Preacher?”

Hattie helped the preacher over to one of the front pews
and sat beside him.

“Here, Preach,” he said and pulled a cloth from his pocket
and began dabbing the preacher’s forehead with the cloth.

Vernon tried at some words, but they wouldn’t come. Out
of the corner of his open eye he could see his left hand and arm, curled and
gnarled at his side like a burnt stick.

Hattie started talking. “Something awful happened, Preacher.
Where was you? Something came after us all when we was waiting for you. At
least a lot of us did. We was all up in here with Bill Hill like you told us.
Bill Hill started talking to everyone in a deep voice, but his eyes was closed
the whole time. He was talking but nobody knew what he was saying. Then he got
quiet for a real long time and then someone outside the church started
whispering inside to Bill. It sounded like something was on the roof, like a
big animal, and everyone was scared. Then when the doctor and Jim Falk got
here, Bill stood up and told everyone that we shouldn’t answer them if they called
for us. But see, it wasn’t like it was Bill Hill anymore. There was blood
coming out of his mouth and his eyes were all white. Where was you at?”

There was a long pause between the two of them. The preacher
was moving his mouth and kind of moaning something.

“What?” Hattie asked him.

The preacher groaned, but his mouth moved in a way that
didn’t make words.

Hattie looked at the preacher’s face. It looked as
if Vernon had been hit by a lightning strike. “Preacher!” he shouted. “Looks
like you got hit by lightning strike. Your face is all black and your eye! My goodness,
Preacher.”

Hattie sat there looking at the preacher for a minute.
The preacher didn’t say anything at all. He was just staring straight ahead at
the pulpit. Hattie took a drink from his silver flask. He took another drink.
He stared at the pulpit for a minute with the preacher.

“Yeah,” he finally said. “Yeah, Preacher. Who would believe
it? Who would believe it?” Hattie took another drink and then screwed the cap
back on and slid it away into his inside pocket.

“Who would believe all this? Wolves and then a monster
in the night. A monster in the night, crawling on the roof, Preacher. Then a
dead man wakes up and looks like a demon is inside of him and breaks down the
door and runs off into the night. You should have seen it, Preacher. Monsters
and dead people. Monsters and dead people. I couldn’t believe it. I’m sittin’
there lookin’ at Ruth and she’s lookin’ at Bill Hill’s body. Bill Hill’s body
is layin’ there and he’s not breathin’. And I’m sittin’ there lookin’ at it.
He’s dead. Dead as dead. And he ain’t movin’—and then that thing outside starts
in a whispering and this moan comes up out of Bill’s body like he’s groanin’ or
something and this terrible stink comes out of him. It was awful and some of
the women got sick and started to cry and some of the men got sick too. Then he
was totally still for a long time. Then the thing outside, or whatever it was,
starts scratchin’ at the walls. We thought it was a wild man at first, like one
of the River People, except that all of a sudden we could hear it up on the
roof scratchin’ on the roof, like I said. We were waitin’ for it to burst
through the windows. It must not have been very strong, or maybe it wasn’t
smart, or maybe there was something about the church that it couldn’t get in,
but it couldn’t get in. Who would have believed it, Preacher? Who would have
believed it? Then it was pounding at the door and whispering into the cracks in
the door and I swear, Preacher, we could see Bill Hill’s mouth moving as it was
whispering in here. It would whisper and then one of the women noticed and
would say, ‘Look at Bill! Look at his mouth! It’s movin’!’ We could hear kind
of what it was that was being said, but all the time too, we weren’t sure what
we were seeing or hearing. We thought Bill Hill was dead, but then there was
the possibility that maybe he wasn’t dead at all. I mean, maybe he just wasn’t
dead at all. Maybe he was totally alive and maybe outside, this thing. This
thing in the night. This monster or whatever it was, Preacher, maybe it was
just something like an animal scurryin’ around. And maybe the whisperin’ in the
door, maybe that was just the wind. Yes, I guess that coulda been. Or maybe
that was the doctor and Jim Falk. That might be true, Preach. That might be the
real truth of it, because I don’t know how else a dead man could get up and
tell us all to be quiet with a weird voice and not to answer the doctor and the
outlander and then he up and run at the door and broke right through that door
and knocked down the doctor and knocked that outlander off the steps and then
tear off running out into the night like that. Preacher, are you even listening
to me? Are you even listening to me? Preacher?”

Hattie looked into the preacher’s face, but the preacher
didn’t seem to see him. The preacher was still breathing, but he just didn’t
seem to see him. He put his hand on the preacher’s hand, and the preacher’s hand
squeezed his hand. From the preacher’s open eye came tears, glistening in the
sunlight that was coming now through the windows.



Huck was sleeping loudly. He was leaned up against the
post.

May had no idea how he could sleep that way, “I have
no idea how you can sleep that way,” she whispered in the room.