The Witch at Sparrow Creek: A Jim Falk Novel

by Josh Kent

  Jim shook his head, reached into his pocket, pulled his flask, and gulped to help him swallow down the chewed leaves. He straightened his hat and listened and watched the woods. There was nothing now—just a cold breeze that seemed to bring the darkness from back over the hill, covering the bent and crackling trees. If Bill came tramping up the back way with his rifle, Jim would hear that for sure. Then he’d be able to slip right up into the thicket, the same way the shadow had.

  He saw Violet now in his mind, her hair ruddy as autumn, crossing and uncrossing her skinny arms, patting her own shoulders, twiddling her little fingers. Bill said she tore up holes with her toes in the sheets. Running from the spook in her dreams.

  Her eyes were deeper somehow now in his memory. He worked them out in his mind so that he could see each separate, tiny jewel of her eye. Something moved behind her eyes, a shape, a sign. Something curled and twirled there like a smoky, dark flame.

  He wished he knew where the old book his pa kept was now, or could call its pages up in his memory. If wishes were horses . . . but this town didn’t keep horses.

  What was a spook doing down here in Sparrow? In some ways it might make more sense if he saw one of them lurking in the shadows of the docks in Hopestill, but he still wasn’t ready to think of that.

  Then, in his chest, he felt something move.

  He squinted, and the trees seemed to take on a watery, glassy quality, shifting dim windows. Through the trees, he could see a dark shape up there in a piece of the woods way toward the top. It swayed this way and that. His heart beat as the leaves and the whisky grew strong in him again.

  The dusk was almost complete now; only the thinnest gray light came in through the rickety trees.

  There, between some low branches, just almost out of sight, he could see the eyes, winking, yellow, round as eggs.

  The jitters jumped in him. Even in the cold, the leaves broke through and helped him to feel. He moved slowly. His gear sack was unrolled by his knee; with one hand he slid out the butt of his long gun, nice and slow and neat, into the cold grass by his leg.

  The eyes winked.

  Now, with nimble fingers, he attached the chamber quick and squeezed it locked with a quiet click.

  The eyes lowered and thinned and bobbed.

  Jim knew the thing could feel him too. That’s the toughest part to get by on one of these beasts. More than sight or sound or smell, the spooks had a way of feeling what it is you’re meaning to do. Jim was pretty sure the thing wouldn’t have full command of its special sight until pitch dark.

  With a silent slide and a few twists, he assembled his long gun and then brought the long silver bullets from his satchel and slipped them into the chamber; he held still and breathed slowly and let his mind begin on the wander.

  The wander was a trick his pa had taught him.

  “Once,” his pa told him, “there were an evil kind of people in this land. Long before even the first people lived here. And these evil people were in league with the Evil One. Bendy’s Men is what they still call ’em in stories. And they used to live up high in these woods and way back on old roads and in the hollers where folks don’t go anymore. But folks like us, James, we travel in the Old Paths—the paths that are almost now forgotten. We’re the ones who were born to see. You and me. Bendy’s Men have a different kind of seeing; they could see what was on your mind. That’s a power the Evil One give ’em. Maybe they couldn’t even see you. Maybe, maybe they wasn’t even near you, but they could see thoughts that was in your mind. Old Magic Woman showed me a way of making your thoughts wander, or even go blank and black. She said that you shouldn’t learn to do that when you’re so young like you are now, but I’m gonna show you how. I am going to show you anyway.”

  Jim fired.

  He lost his own sight for an instant in the flash, but the gun made only the smallest sound of a sneeze.

  The spook made another noise, a hoarse, empty whine that started low and went high. That noise meant that the silver-lode had hit the spook deep. The whole of the woods seemed to shiver with the noise—and then, then started the wolves.

  The howls came first from the north and then the wind picked up and whirled the noise around. Answers came from all directions now, covering up whatever yowling the spook might be doing.

  Jim watched the yellow eyes falter and then lurch off into the ever-darkening trees. He slung his gun on his back, rolled up his sack quick, and gave chase.

  The jitters were hot in Jim’s heart now; he could nearly see them waking out behind the fleeing beast. Through the darkling trees, he could see here and then there, its hulking shadow stopping to turn and bray at him, flashing its strange, curving teeth, whipping spines behind as it whirled and fled.

  One eye, Jim could see now, was completely blacked out.

  “I hit you good,” Jim said to the thing, running behind it. “This time I’ll burn every piece of you to smoke and let the river wash you away.”

  

  It was night and the wolves were howling. Doc Pritham opened the door, and in walked William Wade.

  “John,” William Wade said. The moon came in the door behind him, putting his face and messy hair in a shadow.

  “William Wade,” Doc Pritham said.

  “I’m getting too old for these trips,” William Wade said. He had with him a big leather case and some black bags that tinkled as he passed through the doctor’s door and into his office.

  “Too old?” Doc Pritham said, and a small smile started on his face. “You’re practically a baby.” But Pritham stopped there; he could see now by the oil lamp on his wall, he could see in Wade’s eyes a kind of blankness that comes with fear. “Something the matter, Will? Here, here, it’s only wolves,” the doctor said and started moving around all the papers and empty bottles and scribbled writing that were cluttering up his table. He cleared a spot just enough for William Wade to set down his carryings.

  William Wade took a deep breath. “Have you got something to drink, John? I’m parched.” William Wade looked up at the ceiling as though he could see the howls.

  Doc Pritham went to his shelf and grabbed a brown bottle and a heavy cup. He poured and gave it to William Wade. “Wine,” the doctor said. “It will bring the color back to your face. It’s a dark wine from the south.”

  A smile came up on William Wade’s face when he took a gulp. “It’s sweet.”

  The two men stood there quietly while William Wade drank the rest of the cup. Doc Pritham quickly refilled it.

  William Wade went to the leather case and began unbuckling it. He breathed heavy again. “There’s an issue,” he said.

  “An issue?” Doc Pritham’s hands went to the back of his scalp and he scratched his old head with both hands.

  “A problem,” Wade said.

  “A problem with the shipment?” Pritham asked.

  Inside the case were many small dark bottles, some with labels, some with strangely shaped stoppers, some filled with liquids, some with powders. There were also paper-wrapped packages bound with coarse string and some smaller lidded boxes.

  “Yes,” Wade said, “a problem with your shipment, but more than that.”

  “Just tell me, Will.”

  “I couldn’t bring everything you ordered.”

  Doc Pritham went to his desk and shuffled around in the papers there and picked out a sheet and laid it over the items in the opened case. “Well, fine, it’s not the first time. Here’s the order, what’s missing?”

  William Wade said, “It’s not exactly what’s missing from your order as it is what’s missing. Rootfire, Apoplexy, Inhere.”

  “I don’t order Rootfire or Apoplexy. What would I want with those?”

  “Someone took them from the inventory. Last month. I count every week. I had to leave Hopestill and go to Woodmeer to get extras of some of the usuals. The new man in charge up there in Hopestill, that Varney Mull’s demanding to take all the firsts of the goods that come off the ships now, so I had
to head up to Woodmeer. When I got back, someone, somehow, had gotten into the storage. I don’t know how. I couldn’t see how they got in. They took those, but they took something else too, John, they took the translated pages.”

  Doc Pritham raised his bushy eyebrows and patted around in his jacket for his pipe and paced back and forth in the little room.

  William Wade sat down, taking another drink from the cup. “Your order is incomplete.”

  Doc Pritham started up his pipe with a match and said, “Who would take, who would even know that you had those pages? Who could even know to take them?”

  Wade said, “You know what could be done with those ingredients and those pages. It’s been strange in Hopestill for the past few months. Shipments come slow from the east, slower and slower, supplies are less and less. Some of the captains are telling me it’s on account of the weather, others say a war at sea, but they only mumble these things to me and don’t look me in the eye . . .”

  “Wade, the only person to know about the translated pages other than you and me would be he who is translator of those pages,” Pritham said.

  “That’s the worst part of it, Doc; they’re saying he’s been killed. Not only that he’s been killed, but that he was killed in some strange way, by a poison or something of the kind. There’s a rumor that a strange man has come to town, been visiting Barnhouse, and that when they found his body, it was burned up, as if it had been burned from the inside out.”

  Doc Pritham took in a deep smoke and sat down at his cluttered table and then blew it out. This moment was one he had feared since he had been shown the ancient writings that Wade was talking about. There were very few people who knew about them, and even some of those who knew about them didn’t believe in the power contained inside of them. If it was the truth that Spencer Barnhouse had been burned up from the inside out, it would mean not only that someone had stolen some of William Wade’s ingredients and stolen the papers, but that it was someone who was somehow able to read the papers and use what was contained in them. There were no people on this earth who knew how to do such things outside of himself and Spencer Barnhouse, and maybe, just maybe . . .

  William Wade fussed at the fasteners on his big coat and took it off. He hung his jacket on the doctor’s coatrack and took a seat at the table.

  “Well,” Wade said, “it’s a strange set of events. I can’t get Rushwater or white pollen for nothing, so if you even wanted to derive a simple from those, you couldn’t get one. And there’s less and less gunpowder coming off the ships. I only brought what I had to bring, which I haven’t measured. So I only want you to pay for what I could bring.”

  “Why would someone kill Spencer Barnhouse?” Doc Pritham said and closed his eyes.

  “No one else has the abilities that he does.”

  “That we know of,” Pritham said.

  “That we know of,” William Wade said.

  

  Vernon Mosely ate a piece of chicken off the end of his fork. He looked at his daughter, Merla, and she smiled at him. The morning sunlight came through the kitchen window and lit her cheerful face. She was a happy girl and good at chores, but she was always so very quiet. Vernon had imagined his daughter to be more like him, cheerful, sharp, and ready to talk. She was cheerful and sharp, though.

  Vernon smiled on days like these probably more than some might think a preacher should. He couldn’t help but feel that his life had been spared, that there were things in this world that one should enjoy. Even if there were joys beyond measure to come in the heavenly kingdom, there were certainly some measurable joys in front of him just now. He also knew how quickly things could change.

  But his younger brother, who was in front of him right now, didn’t often bring along much joy. No, John Mosely had been something other than a joy on many occasions. There had been so much hope in Vernon that once John had married up with Ruth Eavan, this would somehow create a way for his little brother to grow up all of a sudden—to become a little bit more of a man of his age. Unfortunately, almost the opposite occurred. He grew down. This Ruth woman was one who assumed some role over him so that John fell into a kind of servitude with her and turned into something of a combination of her little boy and her little servant. It made Vernon angry, but still, here was his brother, and his brother was his brother.

  After a moment he looked up at his brother, smiling, and swallowed, his brow pinched.

  John Mosely looked at his brother and raised a cup of water to him.

  Vernon wiped his mouth, “Well, go on.”

  “Well,” John said, “Ruth had a . . .” Merla put a plate in front of him. “Thank you, Merla. Ruth had a talk with that non-believing Benjamin Straddler last night.”

  Vernon smiled and considered this and his brother’s thin face for a moment, waiting. He waited longer. “Yes?”

  John Mosely eyed Merla. She was a talker. Sure, she was quiet enough now, but he could tell by the way she held herself—she was a talker. John Mosely didn’t like talkers. He didn’t like girls who went on talking at all.

  John looked at Vernon and sort of nodded his head to the side. Meaning for the girl to get out.

  “Merla,” her father said and tipped his head back to catch her eye, “give your father a kiss and go mind your mother.”

  She kissed him and was off through the house to her mother’s room.

  Vernon bit into another morsel and looked at his plate and not at his brother as his brother spoke to him.

  John said, “So she said that Benjamin Straddler had come by the house and said strange things.”

  “Not a surprise.”

  “That he was drunk.”

  “Not a surprise.”

  “Well, she said that there was a man come to town and he said some strange things and that this man may be some kind of”—John whispered now—“may have some knowledge of the craft as you call it.”

  Vernon Mosely stopped chewing for a moment and looked at his brother. Then he started chewing again and looked back down at his plate. “Explain.”

  “Well,” his brother said, his fingers twitching at the table as he talked, “she said that Straddler said that the stranger stood up and announced to everyone—they were at Huck Marbo’s, of course—that he stood up and announced his name to everyone there, and said he was Jim Fox, or some such name, and that he had some kind of powers to cast out demons.”

  “Powers?”

  “Well, yes,” John Mosely said and his hands stopped playing. He looked at Vernon with a serious face. “That’s what Ruth understood from Benjamin.”

  Vernon started back in on his chicken.

  John picked up his knife but didn’t eat. In the knife he could see his own eye. In the other room, he heard a shrill cackle. Vernon’s wife, Aline, laughing.

  Vernon smiled, but wouldn’t look at his brother. “Benjamin Straddler,” he swallowed, “has been hanging around a long while with that Simon Starkey, am I right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Simon was said once to have a book of magician’s tricks, and a lot of folk say that they seen him do tricks, making things appear, and the like.”

  John was surprised at his brother. “So you already know?”

  “Know already what? There is no already about it, brother. This has been going on for a few years now—am I right or am I wrong? I heard that the preacher before me, Taylor, before he passed, had even spoke directly to Simon about this. Am I right?”

  “I think so,” John said. “That sounds right. But this is something serious. Something needs to be done.”

  “What, brother? What needs to be done?”

  John Mosely’s face was red. He didn’t like outlanders. He didn’t like them one little tiny bit, and neither did Ruth.

  “Well,” John finally said, “I ain’t the right person to say what needs to be done. I guess that should be up to you and up to the doctor and up to the other men of the town that run the town meetings.”

  “Well, anyway,�
� Vernon went on after nothing was said for a while, “all this stuff with magic and the Starkeys and Benjamin Straddler and his drinking and the wolves and all, all that was before my time and yours in Sparrow. But if he’s been up to it again, and he’s been bending on Straddler’s ear about mystics and magic, and Benjamin’s been taking to drink, there might be a little less to this story. There might be a lot less to this story. You know, the chicken man is in town. The chicken man always brings out strange stories for Benjamin. What’s his name? I can’t remember. Everyone just calls him the chicken man. It’s good chicken!” He waved his fork in front of his face with a piece of white meat dangling from it.

  “I suppose, Vernon, but Ruth is awful concerned about this, and she wanted me to come over right away. Benjamin wanted to wake me up last night and tell me, but Ruth wouldn’t let him, seeing as how he was drunk and all, and she didn’t want to wake me up for that, but she was awful concerned this morning about it.”

  Vernon put his fork down. “Go home, John Mosely. Tell your wife that I will be by shortly.”

  “Well, okay,” John Mosely said and left his food untouched at the table. He went out the door and closed it.

  Vernon Mosely stared at the closed brown door for a long time. A darkness came across his features and his hands ever so slowly made themselves into fidgeting pink fists.

  “Powers?” he whispered and worried.

  Soon he was back in his den. His wife and daughter were in the other room talking, making plans for the big winter feast in three months. He stood in front of the fireplace and stared at a little white brick in the mantel. He went to the window and drew the blind. He could hear Aline joking about the paper dolls that Merla had made for the winter feast decorations last year. He was glad to hear them laughing together. He pulled the blind tight and went back to the mantel.

  He used his fingers and thumbs to ease the white brick out of its place in the mantel and from there drew a long silver and flat box. He sat in his chair and opened it.

  Years ago, Spencer Barnhouse had given this treasure to him. It was one of only a few—how many he didn’t know, except that there weren’t many.