by Josh Kent
“That’s coming down from up at the church,” Jim said and leapt from the table, seized his gear bag up under his left arm, and flashed out the front door. The doctor stumbled about in the dark of his office. He grabbed up his medicine bag and scooped in an armful of tinkling bottles. He darted out into the night after the outlander. In his mind, the doctor saw two tangled spiderwebs.
It was dark for sure and the fog was still heavy on the town. Jim could hear the people wailing in the church, but he could see nothing but moonlit fog.
They were crying out, but he could not understand. The wind was whipping the noise of them this way and that way, twisting their words up in the fog—making it so you couldn’t understand a thing. The fog was thick enough that his own hot breath came back against his face as he ran.
Things clicked and flashed in Jim’s mind. When he’d left Huck and May Marbo behind they’d waved friendly-like in the doorway, the light of dusk blending them into the dark of the wood. He wanted medicine. He wanted to chew the leaves. His boots pounded on the dirt road. Behind him, he could hear the doctor catching up to him. The old man was fast. He heard the bottles clinking.
Jim thought about the people in the church and he thought about his pa. The doctor reached his side, jostling with a sack full of his vials and medicines.
The doctor said to him as they ran toward the church, “I know you are looking for your father.”
“Give me some medicine,” Jim said and stopped. “My hand is on fire with this itching.”
The doctor stopped too, turned, frowned, and shook his head, but was quick with a brown vial to Jim’s mouth. “We don’t have time for this.”
Jim grabbed at the bottle in the doctor’s hands and gulped eagerly.
“That’s it,” the doctor said, pulling it away. “That’s all for now. I’ve never had anyone to take so much.”
“Or to heal so fast?” Jim asked and under the bandage, the doctor saw a wiggling in the wounded hand.
They turned together and ran again.
As they ran together in the fog, a smile broke out on Jim’s face. This was definitely the Pritham that he’d seen on Barnhouse’s inventory sheets. Barnhouse had mentioned him in a throwaway way a few years ago, pausing, his eyes stuck in a point in the air and then looking at Jim and shrugging his shoulders.
It was coming to Jim that the circles were closing. In his mind he saw himself moving along a map, a dark and dirty map with changing lands and scribbled buildings, strange claws jutting from messy trees—Jim was moving, paths were crossing, closer and closer to his father. . . . Pritham was a kind of proof of this—the paths crossing, closer and closer to the conjunction of all paths.
Jim slung his pack on his right shoulder and, with his left hand, he pulled his hatchet. They could see the lights from inside of the church through the fog putting big circles of yellow up in the gray clouds. They could hear the people hollering, but they couldn’t see much of anything but moving up near the church.
The light from the church came through the fog in yellow spots. The two men walked slowly, quietly toward the dark shape of the building.
Jim saw the doctor walking next to him out of the corner of his eye. Was this the man? He’d started to remember. Barnhouse had told him, “There are others, Falk. There are others who are realizing the danger. There are others who know that the Evil One seeks to destroy the Way. They will come. They will come for me and for you.”
Jim smiled and smiled. He saw the church up ahead. He saw its little roof, the hand-worked walls, the glowing windows, the smallness of the place that made it look like a smoking stove in the middle of the road.
He remembered his pa teaching him about places such as this, places hidden away in the mountain where time stood still, where the people were God’s people, and where evil from the old days came to dwell.
“Old Bendy’s Men lived in these hills at one time,” his pa had told him. “That’s why these places become such places. That’s why no one is too much interested in passing through these places anymore. Maybe they don’t even know why they don’t go through a certain way. They just get a sense of it. The thing is that there were these men here. Long before the River People came to know this place. Long before even a lot of these animals. There were these evil men here and we seen ’em. We seen ’em in visions and in the land, back in the waves of time, and sometimes we just plain out seen ’em.”
They stopped in front of the church.
A few low voices could be heard from inside.
The doctor looked at Jim’s silhouette in the fog. Jim was tall and thin and his hat was on and his coat was raggedy and worn. In the fog he looked a bit like a scarecrow made out of outlaw clothes. He had an axe in his left hand and the pack on his back where he kept what else the doctor didn’t know. The doctor had an idea, but he didn’t know. Jim Falk was a man of the Way, though. The doctor knew that now for sure. Jim Falk was a man of the Way and what else was in his pack was for the ridding out of spirits or for destroying evil.
Jim Falk looked at the old doctor. The old doctor was thick in the chest like a barrel and his glasses twinkled in the church light. The doctor had brought along with him a little pistol and he was holding it out in front of him and to the side. Jim saw the doctor’s eyes flickering about keenly in the fog. He could see the light in the doctor’s eyes. He felt sure that there was something much, much more about this old doctor that Jim was supposed to find out and know. There was something deep inside the doctor that was beyond Jim to see right now.
Now things were quieted down. There were voices in the church, but they were hurried whispers. It was still outside the church and someone was whimpering on the inside.
Jim and the doctor walked in a small circle with their backs facing the other’s. Nothing happened.
The wind blew a little and the fog swirled. Jim felt the tug and dull moving in his chest. The jitters, just like that, started up.
Jim nodded to the doctor and jerked his head in the direction of the stairs to the church door. The doctor, pointing his gun out into the darkness, made his way backwards up the steps.
Then there was a noise from somewhere beyond what they could see in the dim swirls of fog. It was a dark sound, an intake of breath that made the fog twist and race out of sight and then shift and move back.
Jim whispered, “See who’s in the church and get inside there.”
The doctor turned to try the lock. As he did so, he saw one of the shadows near the church crouch.
He didn’t move. His left hand, reaching for the iron latch to the door, began to shake.
Jim was facing the other way.
The doctor did not want to look back. Doc Pritham had never seen anything like what he had just seen. Whatever was crouched down there, it was inky and thin and wicked-looking.
He froze up.
Then he saw Jim moving quiet and fast behind him. “Get inside, Doc!” Jim said in a low voice. “Get inside!”
The doctor heard something else too. Something close to him, whispering to him, calling him. Whispering something twisted into his mind.
He rattled the handles and heard the folks inside holler. The door was blocked and he couldn’t move it. Behind him he heard a sudden noise like a grunt, and he looked to see Jim battling against something in the darkness.
He pointed his pistol at what he thought he saw.
There, in the shadow beside the wall of the church, something had its pointed, long fingers dug into Jim Falk’s back. There was hair on the fingers, shining black hairs. Something of it made the doctor think of a horsefly. He got a sick feeling and drew back the hammer on his pistol. He saw the thing’s black eye roll and twinkle. It was looking at him. It was tearing away at Falk, but it was looking with one dark eye right at the doctor.
Then the doctor got a sense of stillness about him. He felt he suddenly was filled with a power. His hearing and vision sharpened, and he stepped down the steps without fear toward where Jim was being w
hipped around in the shadows. The doc’s gun trained in effortlessly on the dark spot where its head must have been.
He saw the thing’s eyes now, black and twinkling in the darkness—its face something like a man’s face without a nose, the gray spotted skin on its neck, the broken glass teeth in the black maw glittering and something like tubes reaching from inside toward Jim’s face.
Jim’s hatchet shone in the church light as it shot up into the air and then landed heavy and cracked on the thing.
Jim sprang backward, away from the creature and toward the doctor, and the doctor pulled his trigger.
The powder flashed them both blind for a moment. He’d missed the thing’s head, but the shot must have met a mark somewhere in the creature’s body. The wiry shape of the thing shuddered and toppled back into the shadows with a squeal and then a deep, sawing groan.
Jim and Doc Pritham stood in burning anticipation for the next mêlée, squinting into the blackness about the little church. Then they saw its wild and crooked form scampering off into the edges of the fog. Somehow, it appeared to spread and expand into the edge of the woods as it went into the fog.
The fog rolled back into the surrounding woods, and the moon broke from the clouds and suddenly shone bright onto the church. On the ground by the stairs were steaming little pools of some liquid.
The doctor broke open his bag and dropped to the ground. This might be the blood of the thing, he thought. He pulled a glass dropper, put the tip in one of the little pools, and began squeezing the bulb.
The doctor was busy collecting when he saw Jim’s left hand snatch the brown bottle again from his satchel and take it to drink.
“You’re going to reverse the effects and lose your memory permanently if you keep on!” the doctor shouted up at him.
Jim put the bottle hastily back into the pouch. The night looked like day to him now. Sparks leapt from the edges of things, the door to the church glowed red like a warning. “Step aside, good doctor,” Jim murmured.
Jim knocked at the door of the church. He’d thought the jitters would have gone, but they hadn’t and yet they weren’t exactly the same. His breath was coming out now in heavy white wisps. He looked down to see that his bandage had been ripped asunder in the struggle with the creature. He could see the blood spotting on his tattered bandage and the puffy white flesh of his healing hand.
He knocked again, ignoring the red glow of the door becoming ever brighter.
He could hear someone move up to the door and through the red light, could see a black mass.
“Folks? Folks? You can open the door now. We’re here to help, the doctor is here with me.”
Jim turned to the doctor. “Why are they all in there?”
The doctor said, “Sometimes they go there when they’re scared.”
Jim put his ear to the door. He heard whimpering and whispering; no answer came to him from inside the church, but he could feel the people on the other side. He could feel the fear. Jim wondered if Bill and Violet might be in there. He wondered if, when they came and opened the door, Bill Hill might level his rifle at him and blast him. He wondered if May was inside. He thought of how her face looked when he woke up. He saw her sweet hands pouring the medicine into the cup.
“It’s Jim Falk!” he said louder now at the door. “The outlander. I’m out here with the doctor and whatever there was to fear out here in the night, it’s gone. It’s run off. Now you don’t have to open the door if you don’t want to. You can keep it shut if you’re safe in there. But if anyone is hurt in there, the doctor can come in and give them a hand. Can you open the door?”
“Doc Pritham?”
A young girl’s voice came through the door, but Jim didn’t recognize it.
Jim said, “Hey!” to the doctor, who was carefully squeezing droplets of the black liquid he had collected into a tiny glass vial.
“Who’s that?” the doctor yelled at the door, barely looking up from the task at hand. “Is that you, Merla? It sounds like Vernon Mosely’s daughter,” he said to Jim.
The doctor put his things away quickly and ran up to the door. “Open this door!” he yelled. “Open this door!”
Jim saw the black mass getting bigger and bigger, coming toward the door.
“Get back!” he shouted at the doctor and pushed him sideways as the wood of the shattering door burst into the night. Something came running.
Vernon Mosely didn’t have a memory of how he’d got back to Sparrow. He stood on the steps of the church and looked around. The sun was coming up through the cold trees. He could see his breath in front of his face, floating and disappearing.
He was even too confused to think about the witch and what had happened. He just felt tired—too tired for his own mind. His head shuffled through all kinds of things but couldn’t stay on one thing long enough to form a real thought.
Why had he come here to the church? He should have gone home. Were there people here, maybe waiting for him? Home to his wife and his daughters. He couldn’t see their faces. His mind felt terribly heavy. He could have curled up in his bed and forgotten everything—his life, his learnings, his parents. Forgotten about Simon and the box with the thumb inside.
“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.