The Witch at Sparrow Creek: A Jim Falk Novel

by Josh Kent

  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 th
e 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.

  Huck snorted a bit and then fell back into a deep sleep. May looked out the window of the shop. The sun was coming up. The fog had cleared outside and the sun was coming up. It lit up the muddy ground and shined through the trees.

  She could see, from the window, the front of the church. She could see Hattie helping the preacher down the steps. The door looked as if someone had torn it into pieces and threw it all over the yard.

  She was tired, but she didn’t want to wake her pa. She was glad to see him finally knocked off to sleep.

  May sat down on the window seat and watched the sun lighting up the crooked trees. She put her face against the window and tried to feel the heat of the sun, but the window was cold as ice. She rolled her eyes along the frame of the window and jumped. There on the window, on the outside of the window, two fat, black spiders wiggled in the wind. They both looked the same. They were frozen dead with the night’s frost. They were facing each other as if they were looking at each other.

  She shuddered and got away from the window and moved to the other one.

  From this one, she could see the side of the church and the edge of the woods. She sighed and put her forehead up against the glass. A raccoon, a big one, was pacing back and forth at the tree-line, stopping now and then to stand up on its back legs and smell the air. It took its time, pausing and sniffing, figuring it all out. She smiled as its round body wobbled off into the autumn trees. She could hear the birds.

  She was tired. Her pa had been up all night pacing back and forth just like that raccoon. Pacing back and forth in front of the windows and looking out into the night. He was sure that it wasn’t safe to go out. He thought all those folk that had run up to the church had gone crazy.

  “So what?” Huck said, looking out the window and up at the church. “So what? The wolves can’t go in the church? Is that the idea? Wolves is natural, May. They’re running out of food up on the mountainside. They came down here. They ate all the chickens and now they’re moved on.”

  He patted her on the head. “Now they got talk of all kinds of things. One thing happens and the next thing you know, the town’s full of monsters and magicians. So what? I tell you what, the people that believe in this nonsense about spooks and demons are more dangerous than the wolves.”

  Her pa was right. The night passed by. The wind blew. The fog curled, but no wolves came back, no monsters showed their faces.

  Now Huck Marbo was snoring, his face smushed up against the beam in the middle of the big room.

  He smiled a little and said something in his sleep. His smile was something that May loved to see, and he didn’t do it but quick when he was awake. Since her ma was gone, if he did smile it usually got followed by his eyes getting tears in them.

  So this was nice. He was there, smiling for a moment, saying something in his sleep with the sun coming in the windows.

  She didn’t know it, but he was dreaming of his daughter in the water and she sure was having some kind of trouble out there. She was having a time trying to stay stood up in the creek.

  The dream was part memory and part dream. He laughed, watching her wade out into the middle, slipping here and again with the net in her one hand. Tumbling forward, almost dipping her tanned face and honey hair in the water and then somehow bending herself back, flashing her white teeth in her big smile.

  “Lord, watch yourself!” Anna called from the creek bed.

  Her voice shone into his mind. He could feel her fingers laced in his.

  May sure was having a problem out there in the water.

  Anna jumped in the water after her, laughing now and then turning toward Huck, scolding him, wagging her finger. “You’ll ruin her yet.”

  She turned back to steady her daughter with her one hand and slipped and fell in up to her shoulders.

  “You’re no help!” Huck shouted through barking laughter. He jumped in now. Wresting them both, one in each arm, carrying them out of the cold waters, squealing and kicking.

  Both of his feet, bare, digging into the mud and rocks of the banks of Sparrow Creek.

  When he woke up, he could still feel her fingers laced in his and looking down at his hand, he saw that a shaft of sunlight shone through the icy window right on his hand, warming it. The sensation of it drifted away.

  “You’re up,” May said. She was tinkering with the stove, getting it going, making some hot water.

  “You been watchin’ up at the church?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said and yawned and stretched, “and the fog’s cleared up and the sun’s come up. I saw the preacher leaving the church with Hattie Jones, and the preacher looked like he was hurt.”

  Huck was tired for sure and after squinting out the window for a few and bobbing his head up and down, he sat right down in a chair and May came and sat with him at the little table by the post. They sat there together in silence for a while and Huck looked at his daughter.

  The reason for the way that his daughter could find a way to be happy and smile even in the midst of all this strangeness was because of her mother and the fact that she was like her mother. Her mother had shown May ways to be strong, but May had a streak in her that was no good. Not no good in a vile, awful way, but no good in a mischievous way where she just wouldn’t listen and she had to go and find things out herself. To her father, she was lovely—a square face and straight, big teeth with deep, round eyes that had that same green tone as his. She was short but strong-shouldered, and now, though he still did not believe it, she was a woman.

  And yes, even with all this strangeness about, she smiled in the sunshine. That was her mother’s way too. Why are you smiling, Anna? Just because.

  Now they were both up and drinking coffee together.

  Huck looked across the little table at his daughter.

  “May?” he asked and took a little sip, not looking in her eye, “let me ask you a question. What do you think is going on here?”

  May looked at her coffee swirling around in the white cup. She looked out the window toward the church and squinted. She remembered Jim’s words that she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone what she had seen.

  “Pa, I walked into town with Jim Falk the other morning,” she said in a cool manner, still looking out the window.

  Huck didn’t make a sound and he didn’t move his eyes from off his cup.

  There was some quiet at the table.

  May breathed.

  Huck scratched the back of his neck and thought of Violet and what she said about the look in his eyes.

  “When I was coming out of the house,” she went on, “Mr. Falk happened to be coming down the road and he asked if he could escort me into town. I know you told me to stay away from him, Pa, but there didn’t seem to be anything else that I could do at the time except for accept and go with him. Besides, with the strange things that the Hills were saying, they had me kinda scared.”

  Huck didn’t say anything. He took a drink of coffee, then he said, “May . . .”

  “Something about the way he asked me, Pa, the way he asked me is what made me think that it would be okay and safer to go into town with him. So he walked with me a while and it was strange out. It was strange and quiet out and things seemed muffled around us. Then we got to a point in the road and he started
squinting and looking on ahead and he grabbed hold of me and told me to be quiet and we crouched down together.”

  Huck looked up at his daughter now. His eyes had gone into a deep green and were moving quickly back and forth. He was searching out her face to try and see if she was scared. She wasn’t. He didn’t think of it often, but sometimes he wondered what would happen about this. Since the bad winter, so many had died. So many of the young kids, they hadn’t made it. It wasn’t right. There was no one in Sparrow May’s age except for Vernon’s daughter, there were no boys for her to go chasing after or to be shy and coy around. The closest man to her age in town was that damned Simon, and he was still her senior. He shuddered at the thought of her wandering up to the Ridges to court.

  So he listened. His blood boiled, but he listened.

  “Pa,” she said, “I could see something. I couldn’t see exactly what it was, but it didn’t look right. It looked like something dark and like a thing, not a person and not an animal. It gave me chills just looking at it. It was far away too, so I couldn’t really make it out exactly except for the fact that it gave me these chills to look at it. Then it was off into the woods.”

  Huck sat up straight in his chair and calmly took a sip of his coffee. “What did the outlander do?”

  “He brought me all the way into town and protected me from whatever it was. He said that it was a spook and that it was possible that the devil sent it.”

  Huck sipped again at his coffee. He said, “The Evil One.”

  “Pa, that’s what Jim said.”

  Huck said, “That’s what the outlander said. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know, Pa,” she said. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know, May. I just want you to be careful, May. That’s all I want you to do. Be as careful as you possibly can.”

  He looked out the window. The sun was playing in the frost and in the wet pools of frozen mud. The birds were chirping.