by Josh Kent
“Sit down. Can I offer you some coffee, Preach, or a bit of whisky to take the chill off?” Simon said and poured some from a bottle on the table.
Vernon shook his head no and waved his hand. He set his parcel down on the table.
“How is your mama, Simon?” the preacher asked the man in the robe. “How is Elsie?”
Simon looked back at the door and then at the floor. “It’s a terrible thing, Pastor, it’s a terrible thing.”
A wind blew around the house clattering the shutters and then dying as quick as it started. The fire snapped and Vernon took a seat at the table across from Simon.
The two stared at each other. Simon was smiling in a friendly way.
The preacher adjusted himself in his chair.
Simon drank whisky from a little black cup.
The fire blazed, lighting Simon’s face. Vernon had never really got the chance to look at Simon or talk to him much.
Now, here Vernon was, to ask this thing.
And there Simon was across the table, sipping whisky. Vernon figured, as everyone else did, that Simon was born in the East and that Elsie and Dan had found him somewhere and had raised him up. But no one knew, and no one was impolite or brave enough to ask for the truth. But there was something not exactly right in the story. Simon was much older-seeming, but he was younger-looking. He looked not unlike a boy of the River People or the first people with high cheekbones and a smooth face. His eyes were big and dark and there was even a certain kindness about them. Too, there was a deepness in them. Those eyes were sparkling and black and there was a sense in them of other lands, places that were very, very far away.
“Someone’s out there,” Simon whispered and looked toward the shuttered window, gesturing with his eyebrow.
“What?” Vernon said, but really he had heard.
“He’s quick and quiet,” Simon whispered, “and whoever it is seems to have a knack for staying just on the edges of the light so you can’t exactly see him.” He raised his thin eyebrows twice.
“Who is it?”
“Can’t tell,” Simon said. “Maybe it’s whoever might have killed the chicken man. I heard the chicken man’s been killed. Maybe it’s that outlander.”
“Who told you about the chicken man, Simon?” Vernon asked and looked him in the eyes.
“Just something I heard from around town. Mama,” Simon said, motioning with his head over his left shoulder to the dark room he had just come from, “said that those wolves must’ve killed him, but I heard too that they couldn’t find him.” Simon looked into his cup and lifted it to his lips and took a long drink. He cleared his throat and said, “I heard Hattie Jones said there’s a demon wandering down by the creek.”
Vernon stopped breathing for a moment.
“Do you believe in that, Pastor Mosely? Do you believe that demons are alive?”
Vernon’s face slackened. A lot of folk in town were asking him the same kinds of questions. A lot of people in the square were looking to him asking him questions of all kinds. People wanted to know what they had done to make the Lord punish them or the devil to send demons. People wanted to know if it was the devil that was after them. That’s what people who are afraid want—they want details, and they want certainty. What could he do? Some folk were saying that they were fixing to leave Sparrow altogether, maybe head up to the Ridges where they heard there was never any trouble because folks didn’t change up there, so they said. Bill Hill’s condition worried him. Hattie Jones was spreading news of a monster and the chicken man was missing and who was this Jim Falk that had passed through claiming to have powers? Why had this outlander come at all?
“Why are you here, Pastor Mosely? What’s got you out here tonight to see me?”
Vernon cleared his throat. He knew that what he was doing was somehow wrong, but he felt he couldn’t stop at where he was. He felt drawn into it without his own will. He thought momentarily of the metal box containing the secret writings and wondered about the ways and the paths and how it seemed in the scriptures that no matter what some did, they were bound to a path, even if it led into darkness.
“I’ll, uh,” he cleared his throat again, “I’ll have a drink of that whisky, if you will.”
Simon looked at Vernon and then looked closer at Vernon. Then he laughed loud and shut up quick, casting his eyes toward the door of his mother’s room, “Here you go, Preach.” He set out a black cup and poured a little whisky into it. He set the bottle between them and said friendly, “If you want more . . .” and gestured with his open hands.
“Thanks.” Vernon raised the cup to his lips and dropped the whisky in his mouth. It tasted terrible, like fire. He swallowed hard and his gullet came up. He held back a vomit and swallowed hard again. As soon as the heat hit his stomach, it spread through his body. He felt suddenly a bit stronger. His vision seemed to sharpen.
“Simon,” the pastor said and looked deep into Simon’s deep eyes, “I know that you do magic of some sort.”
Simon looked at the aged pastor. Vernon’s face was serious, wrinkled and squat as a tree trunk; his hands were wide and pointed, and his brown eyes were lost, looking as if they didn’t belong to his stout frame and tough old face.
“Magic? What is magic? What I do is my business, Preacher. You are a man of the Word, a man of the Way; what do you care about magic and tricks? Magic is nothing when compared to the Way. Right?”
“What I am saying to you, Simon, is that I know that you do magic and I hear some people in the town, like Benjamin Straddler for one, believe that you have some powers beyond tricks.”
“What is it exactly that you want from me, Preacher?”
“The town is in a bad way. There’s all kinds of talk.” He nodded. “Demons, as you say, devils and monsters, spooks, wolves. Everyone in Sparrow’s got it that there’s an evil about the town.”
“An evil?”
“Like you said, Simon, demons alive.”
“Demons alive?”
“Yes. And the thing of it is, I don’t know for sure that they’re wrong.”
Simon leaned back into his chair and looked away and into the fireplace. “Neither do I.”
“What I don’t want, Simon, is for these people to start looking for the cause of these things.”
“The cause?”
The preacher looked at Simon.
Simon was quiet. He looked at his feet sticking out from underneath his long robe.
“When these folks start talking, what they say and think can change men into monsters and women into witches whether you think it or believe or not, and quick. You know as well as I do some of the things that are happening in the north.”
Simon rubbed his forehead and turned his eyes toward the fire. “You mean the burnings? Why are you here, Preacher, what do you want?”
“I need to know if you have a way from your books or your mixes or whatever it is that you do. Can you tell the future?”
“No,” Simon said.
“Can you tell if there’s an evil come into this town? A demon or the devil or a spawn of the devil?”
“No.”
“Or a curse? Are you able to tell if a curse has been put on this town?”
“No, Preacher, I just do tricks. I am no mystic or medium or witch or warlock.”
“Do you know where I can find one who has such—such powers? One who might be able to help?”
At this, Simon stood up. He adjusted his robe and walked away from the table toward the fire.
He had his back to Vernon when he said, “Yes.”
Vernon’s eyebrow went up.
When Simon turned about, he had in his hands a little black box—something that immediately made the preacher think of a tiny coffin.
Simon walked over to the little table and set it down and sat down.
“You do not know me, Preacher. You do not know my people or where I come from.” He traced a circle with his finger around the box. “Neither do I, Preach. Do you know what that�
��s like? Do you know what it is like not to have a people? Do you know what it is like not to know the voice of your real father or to remember your name? Do you know, I have dreams, Preach. Sometimes I dream of my people. I see their faces clearly, but when I wake up I cannot remember. I see their homes and their lands, but when I wake up I can’t remember. What I can remember, Preach, is pain. I remember the hands that dragged my true mother away. I remember my father screaming after her and the men in black robes holding him back, I remember the silver knives that stabbed him, but I cannot remember his voice. I can only remember the feel of the scream.”
Vernon Mosely looked at the long face and the watery eyes of this man, Simon, and he put his shaking hand again to the cup of whisky and brought it to his lips. Now he was sure that whatever was in the box, it was something that would not lead to good.
“I don’t know how I escaped, but I have an idea. There was someone in the woods, Preach, who I think saved me, brought me here to be taken care of by a person of Sparrow. But I haven’t seen her in a long time and I think that this is why.”
Simon opened the black box, and inside the black box was a brown cloth. Simon unrolled the brown cloth and inside the brown cloth was a long white thumb. The thumb had a nail on the end that nearly looked like a yellow fang or a bird’s talon.
“I believe,” Simon said, “she is being held captive somehow by means of this thumb, which is hers. If you take the thumb into the woods, it will lead you to her door. By no other means can you find her.”
Vernon Mosely had absolutely no idea what to do or what to say.
“If you can find a way to release her, please set her free.”
“Where did you . . .”
“I cannot and will not say any more about this. If you tell anyone, you will die.”
Chapter 11
Huck woke up.
He heard May talking to Violet. Violet’s voice was small and creaky, not like usual. He straightened himself up in the chair and stretched his neck right and stretched his neck left. He listened some more.
“Some of those wide bandages, the big ones, and more alcohol and any medicine you have for wounds,” Violet was saying and clearing her throat.
Huck looked out the window of the little room. His knee was hurting him where the leg was gone. He’d fallen asleep while he was watching the outlander.
It was October, and October was getting colder. It was gray and bright out the window. Leaves were stuck to the edges of the window, black and curled with the rain. This bad cold snap came through right when this outlander did. He looked at Jim there lying on the little bed. His hookish nose, the thin cheeks—there was something about Jim Falk that was sickly and pale, and yet, there was a strength in him too. Huck Marbo wasn’t sure what unsettled him more, the strength or the sickliness. What bothered him most about Falk’s features was that they weren’t familiar to him at all. He didn’t even look like any of the faces or the faces of the families from up at the Ridges. He didn’t look like any of the Mantres, the Bildooks, or the Westerlies, any of them at all. He certainly didn’t look like a Mosely, a Marbo, a Jones, a Hill, a Straddler, a Pritham, none of them. In fact, there wasn’t a man alive that Huck had seen that had such a long and sharp face. The only other faces that Huck knew of that had such high cheeks and sharp noses were the faces of the natives and the River People.
“You brought this rain with you,” Huck said to the outlander lying on the cot. “Among other things.” Huck’s eyes wandered about the room. What other things the outlander had brought he didn’t know; he didn’t believe in what they even might be anyway.
Huck looked back at the outlander, Jim Falk. At some point Falk had fallen into a deep, peaceful sleep and he was drawing long, relaxed breaths now. His eyes were rolling around quick behind the lids. The health had come back slightly to his thin face. Huck leaned in a little and squinted. Despite all the things that looked wrong about the man, and especially in his sleep, Jim Falk looked kind. His face was narrow, but soft and lined. His closed eyes were deep-set and his gray brows were raised in a sincere way. He almost looked worried, but not quite.
Huck leaned back up and sat down. He strapped on his wooden leg.
He heard nothing now from the front room. Maybe he heard May creaking up the rungs of the ladder to get some bandages off the top shelf. Maybe he didn’t. Violet was out there buying bandages. Huck took a deep breath as he made his way down the hall. What happened? The night had been something terrible. Huck was going to ask questions. Vernon Mosely should know something about this. Vernon Mosely would know what to do beyond praying. John Taylor had been a good man. He had been a good preacher, but he never knew what to do beyond praying and waiting. Religion can keep your children in line, but it won’t keep you from freezing to death.
“What are we supposed to do, John? What are we supposed to do? Just sit here and pray?” Huck asked.
The shaking preacher looked at him in the snow bank and closed his eyes as the blood seeped dark below his legs. His blue lips mumbled prayers. The snow covered his face slowly, surely.
Jim Falk snored loud and smacked his lips and Huck came back from the memory.
For unknown reasons, Benjamin Straddler had dragged this outlander through the rain back to Huck’s. This was the man, stretched out here on this cot, this cot where his wife had napped so many afternoons. Now this stranger lay here, snoring.
Benjamin Straddler was not the type to really give a hoot about anything until it meant life or death, and then Benjamin seemed to give a hoot about everything.
“Pa?” It was May’s voice calling him.
“Pa, Violet wants alcohol for wounds, Pa. Pa?”
Huck appeared in the big hall with two flasks.
Violet was sitting at the bar on one of the stools. Her head was laid on its side on the bar, her arms crossed under her head. Gray sunlight splayed in through the shuttered windows of the front of the shop; all around her shone the dusty shafts of light. Her hair spilled as red vines over her pale face. Somewhere behind the red locks those dark eyes sparked.
May stood behind the counter, high up on the ladder, looking over at her pa.
“Come on down, May,” he said.
Huck came into the front room all the way now and set the flasks on the bar. Violet didn’t budge. She was all hunched over on the stool. She didn’t look so good.
“What’s happened to you, Violet Hill?” Huck asked her.
Violet sat up, arching her back and pulling the hair from either side of her face with both shaky hands. “Bill’s been attacked,” she said and closed her eyes and steadied herself in her seat with her left hand on the bar. “My husband’s been attacked.”
Huck took a few more steps toward her. She was real rickety, with her eyes half-closed there, and the way her lips stayed together when she spoke . . . What was that smell coming from her?
“Attacked?” Huck asked quietly now and limped a few more steps toward her.
May came down from the ladder and over by her pa.
Violet opened up her eyes. The pupils were black, wide and glittering, “Attacked by the spook,” she whispered.
Huck turned to May and slowly, in his warmest voice, said to her, “May, you go on upstairs and let’s see if we can’t find some more help for Violet here.”
“Like what, Pa?”
“May,” he returned slowly in the same fashion, “I am sure you can think of some things that a woman like Violet here might need. Can’t you see she’s in a state, here? Something to calm her? Go on up and start pulling some things together and I’ll be up in a minute.”
“Yes, Pa,” May said and went off.
When May had cleared out, Huck said in a whisper, “Violet.” He went over to her and caught her up in his arms.
“Huck, I’m tired,” she said loud, breaking her whisper.
Huck brushed the red coils of her wet hair away from her white face. She was in a cold sweat. The freckles on her cheeks were darkened, fl
ushed. Violet’s pupils were big and sparking, as if she’d been in some kind of darkness or a trance. And what was this smell? It was something that smelled sweet and heavy. It wasn’t liquor, but what was it?
He kissed her wet forehead.
“Don’t,” she said.
“What’s happened?” he whispered in her face. “What did he do to you this time?”
“Nothing. Nothing. Put me down,” she said weakly.
“What?” His eyebrows were raised.
“Let me go, put me back on the stool. Anyone could walk through that door and see how you’re looking at me. See what’s in your eyes. Let me alone.”
She wriggled free of him and stood unsteady a moment. She found the stool and settled back on it.
She whispered and pressed her fingers and thumb against her forehead. “See, Huck, it’s me.”
“It’s you—what’s you? What’s going on, Violet?”
Huck grabbed up a pitcher of water and poured some in a brown cup and gave it to her. He could hear May rummaging around in one of the cupboards. He remembered suddenly the outlander who was knocked out on the cot and wondered if he shouldn’t get Violet out and on her way, but she said again, “It’s me, Huck.”
He turned off his tenderness. Things that had happened in the past were just that. They were things that had happened in the past. For some folk those things go away; but for Huck, for Huck Marbo, those things somehow stayed close, and sometimes they were brought closer.
“It’s you what?” he asked and put the cup in her hand. She brought the cup, shaking, a little to her bluish lips.
“It’s me”—she looked down in the water in the cup—“that brought the ghost killer.”
“The ghost killer?” Huck wondered what she was even talking about.
“The outlander, Jim Falk.”
“The outlander.”
“It’s me that called him here.”
“Called him here? What do you mean, called? On account of what?”
“On account of I wanted him to rid this town of the spook.”
“Violet, you and I know . . .”