by Josh Kent
A woman’s voice said, “It was horrible.”
A man’s voice said, “It was awful.”
An old man said, “These things came to town when the outlander came to town. It was calling for him. He must be the master of the things. I knew we shoulda moved up to them Ridges. Them people was right and I knew it.”
Ruth said, “We knew this town has been headed in a bad direction for a while. It was God’s will that the blizzard came on us. Was it not? It was to punish us for straying from the true path. Was it not? You could go up to the Ridges, but I will tell you this. The folks that live up in the Ridges have strayed from the path even farther than Sparrow. There’s no good up there at all and this thing has come on us all. This James Falk is kind of a sign. He is a kind of warning. He has brought this evil with him; of that there is no question.”
Now she swallowed again and stretched her neck up and down; her arms came in and rested on the table with their long fingers at the end. She put one hand on top of the other and looked around at the people at the table. “I spoke with my husband last night on such things as have been happening. We are in agreement that this Falk is what is written about in the writings as one of the killers of the Way. He has come to our town seeking to destroy us, to destroy the true teachings, rid out what’s left of our good folk, send demons for the rest of us—and that’s what he’s brought with him. Called by Bill Hill’s wife, Violet Hill, by way of some spell, as an act of revenge against us all and against this town. This is shown by the evil outcome of their acts. Powers to control the dead, powers to control wolves, and drawing demons from the dark places.”
There were intakes of breath and clearing of throats.
Ruth continued, “James Falk is practicing the craft, Violet Hill is practicing the craft, the doctor has made a way for them, and John Mosely and I have decided that we will deal with it as those in the North have been dealing with such things. We will have to deal with this according to The Old Law.”
The man in the brown hat with his face in the shadows asked, “The Old Law? What? How?”
Ruth closed her eyes ever so slowly and said, “We cannot allow them to live. They may have the craft and the Evil One on their side, but we have God on ours and we have many. They are few.”
A woman said, “But . . .”
There was silence for a long while. Ruth looked around at the people until she had caught the eyes of each of them and stared deeply into them.
“The Law,” she said, “is The Law.”
“But we don’t know . . .” an old man said.
“We will take it up with my husband’s brother, seeing that he is the preacher, but we will do what God says is to be done,” Ruth said and looked at the woman next to her.
People’s heads turned slightly as they peered at one another out of the corners of their eyes. Each one was searching for the reaction of the other, looking for doubt, or for a shaking head, but all the faces were strong with fear and their faces were like carved stones in the flickering candle light.
One of those faces was the face of the preacher’s wife. Ruth was staring at her.
Aline looked into Ruth’s eyes in the candlelight. They were gray and dark, even with the light reflected in them. Aline’s eyes were squinting. Her right hand moved over toward Ruth, and she put her right hand over Ruth’s hand and squeezed it.
At that moment, from above them, they heard a commotion. A door was flung open and smacked heavily, and someone above them was crying out: “John! Ruth! John! Ruth!”
It sounded like Hattie Jones.
“Now what?” Ruth barked.
The candle went out and the people in the darkness scuttled about. There were harsh whispers: “The back way! The back way!”
Ruth flew up the lightless staircase and appeared outside the shack in the back yard. She dashed around the side of the house toward the noises.
Yes, it was Hattie Jones yelling, “Ruth! John! John! Ruth!”
Where was John? she thought as she came in her own front door, behind Hattie Jones who had her brother-in-law, Vernon Mosely, draped across the little chair—the same chair Benjamin Straddler had slumped into only nights before.
There was Vernon and he looked crumpled.
“What’s happened?” Ruth said, running to Vernon’s side and pushing Hattie away from her brother-in-law.
Then, up from the cellar and in through the front door came Vernon’s wife with a wide mouth and watery eyes. “My dear! My dear!”
The rest of the people were coming around up from the cellar, their bodies pushing into the little room, their faces peeking, mumbling to one another.
“You stop shouting!” Ruth barked at her.
Aline Mosely tottered about trying to see her husband’s face, her hands flying around in the air. “This evil! This evil! This evil Falk!”
“You stop shouting, Aline Mosely!” Ruth snapped again, and this time she smacked Aline’s face. The people who had rambled up from the cellar looked at one another.
Ruth knelt down and looked at Vernon Mosely’s face. It was puffed up and green-looking. His arm, his left arm, had turned a sickly black and purple color as though it had been burned to a crisp. Ruth huffed and puffed and looked at the open door to the cellar. How did they know to come back around here to find her? Now she was sure. She was sure that someone in her group was talking about it with the others.
“Ma’am,” Hattie said, “looks to me like he’s got himself a snakebite somethin’ awful. I found him in the church, lyin’ by the pulpit just like that.”
Vernon’s eyes twinkled and he suddenly drew in a ragged, wheezing breath. He struggled for a moment trying to talk, pushing the air out of his dry lips, trying to make a sound, but all that came out was invisible air and white foam.
Ruth suddenly leapt to her feet and brought the back of her hand so hard across Hattie’s old face that it knocked Hattie’s hat off and he fell back. Ruth shouted at him, “Why did you bring him here? You stupid, stupid man! Grab him! Grab him!”
With another strange burst of strength, Ruth lifted Vernon’s legs and was motioning now with her pink face and pointy head for Hattie to grab Vernon’s shoulders.
Hattie picked up his crumpled brown hat and put his hat on his head.
Vernon wheezed again and they pulled him forward from the chair.
They picked him up and Ruth shouted, “You’re a damned fool, Hattie Jones! You take a man with venom right to the doctor, you don’t bring him around for prayers and coffee, you don’t bring him home to die, you take him right to the doctor!”
Hattie was hurt. His face was red and his eyes watered, but he carried the preacher all the way to the doctor’s house with Ruth, not looking at Ruth the whole time. He couldn’t get a word out of his mouth at her because he knew what he said would be awful, and even after being hit in the face he still refused to say anything awful about this woman.
This woman Ruth had never done Hattie Jones a lick of good. He knew it. Samuel knew it too. Samuel knew it too in the special way that Samuel knew things. You can look into that boy’s eyes and you know he knows. He might not tell you, but you know he knows. That woman Ruth came to town and started right in on all the good people. Married up with that John Mosely, the preacher’s brother, and then started in on all the good people. She didn’t understand. It was like she didn’t know. How can she not know, a woman like that? She was smart and old, too, but there was something in her that was mean, something in her that was all pinched up. But she was God’s people and that’s the twist about it because it was like she didn’t know. Or maybe it was that she didn’t know for others and she only knew for herself. Somehow, though, she had got it in her head that she was some kind of way more of one of God’s people than the rest of them and she didn’t understand, plain as it was, that God’s people is God’s people and that’s the end of it. How could she not understand that? But anyway, she didn’t. She had this way about her and started in something awful on all
of us about how we was doin’ things that we shouldn’t, praying and waiting on miracles and the like. Got so bad with her and her judging everyone that Benjamin and Lane Straddler up and left out one time and never did come back to church.
But right now, he was helping her but he couldn’t even look at her.
For an old woman to hit an old man, an old man like Hattie . . . Hattie realized that he had made a terrible mistake and that she was right, of course; he guessed she was right, he should have dragged the preacher straight to the doctor’s and then come and got his brother even though his brother didn’t seem to be around.
John Mosely came running up alongside of them just as he came up in Hattie’s mind.
He grabbed his brother right out of Hattie’s hands, and Hattie was left standing in the morning sun on the hill. He watched the two of them struggle with the preacher, taking him down over the low hill down to where the doctor’s little house was.
Hattie stood there by himself on the hill. He thought about the broken door and the things that he had seen at the church. He thought about his son, Samuel, he thought about the chicken man, and he thought about the horse bones. He started plodding back to his little house at the edge of the creek. Samuel would be there waiting for him, feeding the chickens, maybe.
He turned again and saw John and Ruth Mosely pounding on the doctor’s door and the door opening and them carrying the preacher inside the door.
Hattie prayed a little prayer in his heart that the preacher would be restored to health and that the Mosely woman would stop being mean.
Hattie Jones walked home with his hat on his head, mumbling to himself, “I’m sorry, Ruth, sorry about the preacher.”
When Ruth and John came in the front of the doctor’s place, they weren’t expecting to see Jim Falk sitting right there with the doctor.
Ruth’s eyes came wide open and she almost dropped her husband’s brother straight onto the ground. If John hadn’t been holding him tightly by the shoulders, she would have.
John hadn’t seen the outlander yet, and the doctor was staring straight at Vernon’s withered arm.
Jim Falk watched them all come in together, but didn’t budge from his chair. He looked at the preacher. The preacher’s face was contorted and his right eye had gone squeezed shut. It looked as if the right side of his face had been somehow burned and his left arm looked exactly like a burned-up and twisted stick.
The doctor stood up and put down his pipe. “What is this here?” he asked in a quiet voice. He walked quickly to the back of the room and clicked open a door there. “Get him in here and lay him down on the bed.”
John Mosely and Ruth carried him in the door just as the doctor told them to and put him down on a neat little bed in the little room.
As John Mosely set his brother down on the bed, he noticed that Ruth was not looking at him or at his brother’s mangled arm. She was looking out the door and into the main area where they came in. Her eyes were wide. He could see she was kind of afraid.
“Ruth!” he shouted at her.
She turned and looked at him. “Did you see?” she whispered. “Did you see in the front?”
He shook his head.
“The outlander,” she whispered, and just as she did, she put her hand up and her long index finger over her lip to shush him from saying anything.
John Mosely’s eyes got big and then bigger. He arranged his brother quickly and was set to rush out the way he came when the doctor came in through the door blocking his way. The two almost collided in the door frame.
The doctor adjusted himself and asked, “What’s happened here?”
Ruth said, “Hattie Jones found him up at the church”—she said it quietly—“said he was curled up at the pulpit just like this.”
The doctor eyed the preacher. The preacher was still breathing. In his left eye, the only open one, there was a glimmer of fear. The doctor could see that the intelligence in the preacher’s eye was trapped, trapped in the frozen and paralyzed face.
“Can he speak?” the doctor asked John; and seeing that John was occupied only with looking out into the front area, the doctor called out to the preacher, “Can you speak?”
A noise like a wheeze came from the preacher, and John turned and looked at his brother.
When the big snow had passed through Sparrow and it got so awful cold, John’s brother had stayed out too long in the snow and got so cold that most of his ears had come off and they had turned a permanent grayish-black. Along the side of his head, they looked like an animal’s ears now, pointed and curled. Vernon’s face was pinched on the right side, a black and purple bruise ebbing out from his right eye, which was swelled completely shut now.
His left arm was the worst thing that John Mosely had ever seen happen to a human being. It was black and crisp and the fingers looked as though they would flake away like a husk; and yet, they somehow looked molded together too. The arm had lost its human qualities. It looked like something that, long dead, began to resemble earth and roots.
Doc Pritham pushed past them both and out into the main area. “Falk!” the doctor cried.
And then they both appeared in the room and the four of them were in the room together with the preacher lying there on the bed between them. On one side of the bed were the doctor and the outlander. On the other side of the bed were Ruth and John. In the middle, on the bed, was the preacher.
Ruth said, “Oh!”
John Mosely said, “Ah!”
Jim Falk said, “What’s happened here?” His keen eyes went over the preacher’s body fast, and when he saw the curled and twisted arm and the eye that was slowly sinking into the preacher’s head, he looked at the doctor. He looked at the preacher’s brother and the preacher’s brother’s wife, who were both looking at him with wide eyes.
Jim said, “These good people should go.”
The doctor nodded in agreement.
John said, “What do you mean? This is my brother. I’m not going anywhere.”
Doc Pritham said, “We have to move fast. We can’t argue. His life is at stake. If we do not move fast, he will die.”
The doctor moved fast and bent over the preacher and soon the preacher’s coat and shirt were removed exposing his old, gray-haired chest and the rolls of fat of the preacher’s soft belly. A blackness was running along the side of the preacher like little streamlets underneath his pale skin.
Ruth looked at this and said, “What is happening to him?”
The doctor sped out of the room.
Jim looked at the two frightened people and said, “I know special ways of medicine, and so does the good doctor. We can save him, but we have to move fast. You must let us do this. You may go into the other room and pray if you wish. But you should go into the other room. It’s going to be gruesome.” As he was saying this, the doctor came back in the room with a book with old pages and strange writing in it and a bag.
“We’re not leaving,” Ruth said. “Prayers! If it’s God’s will that he die, he’ll die; if it’s God’s will that he live, he’ll live! Prayers! This man was bit by a snake, he needs the anti-venom! Not prayers! Prayers and miracles and false hopes, do you see what you’ve taught the people?”
John Mosely said to the doctor, “And this man cannot be in here! This man probably called the snakes up out of the Pit to bite my brother!” John pointed at Jim Falk, wagging his finger at the end of his thin arm.
The doctor looked at John Mosely. “There’s not time for all this!” the doctor shouted suddenly, his face becoming red behind his bushy white brows. “There’s not time for this!”
The doctor pulled from his black bag a long and silvery blade.
The preacher groaned loudly.
“Vernon!” John shouted.
“Stand back!” the doctor yelled at the two frightened onlookers.
Jim Falk moved around to the other side of the bed, using his glare to try and move John and Ruth out of the way and into the corner of the little room.
“We’re not moving!” Ruth shouted in his face. “We’re protecting this man of God from your evil, from your spells and your”—she almost spit when she said it—“prayers!”
“I am not here to do evil, woman!” Jim suddenly found himself shouting. “I am here to rid it out!” Jim had not noticed it, but his left hand had pulled the hatchet.
Ruth and John moved out of the way.
“That’s my brother!” John shouted.
Jim reached out with his left hand and grabbed the broken preacher’s twisted arm. He tried to remember what Old Magic Woman had shown him about clearing up the demon rot. He knelt down beside the preacher. He looked at the doctor. He started to remember. He quietly started to say the things that he remembered to himself, and where his hand was touching the preacher’s arm, it looked as though the air around it began to get smoky.
“What are you doing? He’s saying a spell! He’s calling the devil!” John shrieked. His eyes were flashing around at the scene.
Ruth had closed her eyes. No one could see that she was not afraid. She was hoping. She was hoping that what she saw in her brother-in-law was a sign. A sign that he had been found. A sign that her time was coming and that she would receive her reward. She just kept closed her eyes, though, hoping. She had been doing her own kind a praying, a practical kind, a kind that she knew one day would bring results.
Doc Pritham positioned the long, flat blade just at the crux of Vernon Mosely’s shoulder. He inserted it with a thrust. No blood came from the wound, but the blade’s color appeared to turn from a silver to dull yellow.
“You’re killing him!” John shouted and rushed forward.
Jim Falk yanked sudden and fierce at the preacher’s arm and a moist popping sound came from the blade. The preacher’s arm came off in Jim’s hand and the preacher sat up in bed, suddenly fully awake and squirming. John Mosely crashed into Jim Falk, but Falk was a stone and John tumbled into the corner.