The Witch's Grave

by Phillip DePoy

“Andrews?” He looked back down at the papers. “Sorry I snapped. Don’t usually do it.”

  “I know you don’t,” Andrews responded, as kind a voice as I’d ever heard in his mouth. “Nothing for which to apologize at all, you know. Entirely my fault.”

  “No,” Skid began.

  “Do you mind if I interrupt the Benevolent Society,” I interjected, “with a spot of relevance? I think I’ll go back to the cemetery one last time, round up Harding’s killer. Would you like to come along?”

  Skid sighed, leaned back, bore into me with a gaze that threatened a return of behavior for which he had just apologized. “Say what?”

  “Leave the girl back there with Able,” I continued, “get into your squad car, and let’s go.”

  “Who are we going for?” he wanted to know.

  “I’d rather not say until I have to.” How often had that sentence been uttered in my family, my town?

  “Dev!” Skid’s exasperation spat out the syllable. “I’m afraid this is one of those times—”

  “Do you ever remember a time,” I interrupted, “when you didn’t want to tell people, Andrews for instance, some fact or other because you were afraid they might mess it all up?”

  “Hey,” Andrews objected.

  “Uh,” Skid growled.

  For a second I felt certain Deputy Needle hovered on the brink of tossing me into the cell next to Able. But after that second passed, he blew out an exhausted breath, stood, spoke to the deputy nearest the cells, hoisted up his pants, and shoved past me out the door.

  “He’ll make a great sheriff,” Andrews whispered, watching him go.

  “That’s just what I’m afraid of,” I agreed, following Skid out the door.

  Seventeen

  Rud’s cabin was locked, no one home. Skid had parked the squad car close to the door; he and I stood on the porch.

  “We really need Rud for this?” Skid said finally.

  Rud’s porch was swept spotless. The porch roof rafters didn’t have a single spiderweb; even the doorknob seemed polished hard, as if November wind had scrubbed it clean.

  “Yes,” I said slowly, “we do.”

  Andrews sat in the car, glaring. He was clearly ready to go home, the adventure done, cognac set before him in front of a cozy fire. Following through to the bitter end was never his forte; I’d told him so many times. Directing a play, he’d lose interest a day or two before technical rehearsals; writing a paper, he’d often have his secretary pull the last pages together, like a doctor at the end of a strenuous operation: “Nurse, close for me, would you?” Didn’t keep him from being brilliant, just kept him from being entertained by endings.

  “We’ll be done in a little while,” I assured him impatiently.

  “Didn’t you say the same thing yesterday just before you got shot?”

  “Sh.” Bad luck to bring the subject up in a graveyard, I thought.

  “Where to?” Skidmore’s tether was short as well. It was clear he was frustrated by the way I was handling the situation.

  “Close to the Angel of Death,” I pronounced, “we’ll find the grave of Truevine’s parents. And not to be dramatic, but would you mind taking the safety off your pistol?”

  “Do I have to go?” Andrews slumped in the backseat of the car.

  “We might need a little rugby-style help,” I encouraged him.

  “With that tired old bag of bones?”

  “Come on,” I urged. “You don’t want to sit in the cold car when you can have a nice warm jaunt.”

  “Jaunt. That’s your choice, that word?”

  “Would you just—”

  “Fine,” he interrupted, throwing the door open and heaving himself out of the car with massive effort. “Let’s go.”

  Some of the sheen on the first day of November was wearing thin. Many of the saints, their work done, had gone home. The sky was losing the edge of its former luster; the sun was on a downward turn. Though it was still a lovely afternoon, the air now held certain promise of night and a November not far from snow, gray days that lasted a few hours attached to cold nights that went on forever.

  The yard was quiet, no wind. Weeds stood their ground, seemed less yielding than the headstones, each one a bookmark in the archives of our town: a child, a mayor, a man no one knew.

  The Angel of Death came into view.

  “I think it would be best,” I said softly, “if we went separate paths to Davy and Eloise.”

  “Surround him?” Andrews asked wearily.

  “I’ll go straight in,” I continued.

  “This is very irritating.” Skidmore was grinding his teeth. But he’d also taken out his gun, safety off. “I’ll go right.”

  “Christ on a cross,” Andrews muttered, and headed left.

  The grave site was fifty feet away, longer for the other two as they made their way around other headstones and the few smaller crypts that lay between us and our goal.

  I went straight for the Angel.

  From behind its wings, a darkness of crows suddenly ascended, tattering the air with their loud complaint. One crow was an omen, ten a warning—something that, to my peril, I did not heed.

  Instead I stepped up my pace, fearing what had attracted the crows. Rounding the statue, I stumbled, fell forward, grabbed the stone hem of the Angel’s garment to steady myself, and came face-to-face with the scarecrow.

  He lay on his back, head haloed in syrupy blood. Crows had already pecked out one eye. The back of his head was caved in, a rotten pumpkin, black and oozing. His lone eye stared toward heaven, a thousand questions still lurking just behind the pupil.

  Before I could straighten and call out, the black dog was on me. It was snarling softly; no intention of warning or scaring me, it wanted a kill. Teeth were bared at my neck, eyes wide and wild.

  The force of its lunge knocked me backward against the Angel; my hands instinctively wrapped around the dog’s throat, praying to keep its sharp teeth from my skin. Saliva streamed downward from its mouth; claws flailed trying to knock me to the ground.

  I tried to yell for help, but I couldn’t catch my breath. I was aware of snorting short involuntary fear noises, adrenaline-fueled; they weren’t loud enough to bring aid.

  I turned hard to my left, hoping to slam the animal against the statue, knock it off me. The dog had other ideas. Thrashing, it pushed off me, landed on all fours, crouched ready to leap again.

  Steadying my back against the Angel, I raised both hands high and shook my palms, growled a guttural curse that didn’t seem mine. The dog’s eyes darted upward, making certain I had nothing in my hands. I took that opportunity to kick its head.

  Not connecting as solidly as I would have liked, my boot caught the underside of the jaw. Enough to surprise the thing, it shifted backward, whining.

  “Help!” My verbal skills returned.

  The dog recovered.

  It lowered, ready to pounce. I bent at the knees as well, a larger imitation of its dark posture. I unzipped my leather jacket as quickly as I could, tore at the arms, slung it around like a whip, snapped the dog’s face.

  It was taken aback—for perhaps a second. It snarled, readying to strike.

  I pulled the jacket to me, held it open wide.

  “Come on,” I whispered hoarsely, staring the thing in the eye, flashing telepathic threats.

  It leapt, flying the air, mouth snapping, teeth like white coffin nails.

  The black bulk hit me hard. If I hadn’t been backed by the Angel, I would have gone to the ground. As it happened, I was able to wrap my jacket around the dog’s head so it couldn’t see, lock my arms around it in an embrace so tight it couldn’t breathe. I used every bit of fear and rage I could muster from the depths of my unconscious bestial heritage, squeezing, holding fast.

  The animal flailed wildly, trying to loose itself. I was breathing like a broken pump organ, gasping, swallowing, barely able to stand.

  Skid must have appeared about then, throwing himself at me, san
dwiching the dog in between us. I heard something snap, and the dog gave out a muffled howl. I realized then that I might kill the thing and let go my hold.

  The dog was barely moving. Skid took a step back and the dog tumbled to the ground, rolling out of my jacket onto its side, panting. Its tongue lay out one side of its mouth.

  “Dev?” Skid’s voice was panicky.

  “Am I bleeding?” I said, dazed. “Did it get me?”

  He make a quick check. “Seems okay.” He looked down at the dog. “My God. Did it do this?”

  “Do what?” I still couldn’t catch my breath.

  “The …” His eyes drifted to the corpse of the scarecrow.

  “No,” I told him quickly. “I think, in fact, that’s why the dog attacked me. It was trying to protect …” but I was breathing so hard I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  Skid reached down and got my jacket off the ground. “Better put this on. You’re hot now, but you could get cold again quick, shock.”

  “Did we kill the dog?” I asked shakily.

  “Naw. I think I busted a rib when I flung myself on him, though.”

  “What the hell?” Andrews had appeared only to stop short.

  Dead man in his own blood, wheezing dog at my feet, Skid and I gasping like maniacs—Andrews was right to stand back.

  A brief explanation satisfied him for the moment when I made it clear to all that our task was not complete.

  “The person responsible for this,” I said, putting my jacket back on, “is still around.”

  “There is someone over by the grave,” Andrews confirmed, his voice more animated than it had been all afternoon. “I saw something moving there before I heard all your commotion.”

  “We’ve scared him off by now,” Skid said, sighing between clenched teeth.

  “Not really,” I said, zipping my jacket and heading toward the Deveroe plot. “He can’t leave. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  A dark figure in a light coat knelt on the grassy grave, cheek pressed against the stone, eyes a thousand lifetimes away, fingers absently twining a bit of rosy thread.

  “She belonged to me once,” he told us as we approached. “Threw her away. I wouldn’t mind being dead.”

  “Come on, Rud.” Skidmore’s voice was gentle, but the pistol was still in his hand.

  “I wondered when you’d finally come for me.” He didn’t move, but his eyes darted my way. “Knew when I saw you nosing around this grave the other night—when Able nearly got hung.”

  “What are we doing?” Andrews asked me uncertainly.

  “I believe we’re about to arrest Rudyard Pinhurst for the murder of his cousin,” Skidmore said, his voice still soothing. “You are confessing, aren’t you, Rud?”

  Rud put the thread in the outside pocket of his coat, didn’t stand.

  “You saw Andrews and me up here that night,” I went on. “You were watching. You didn’t care if Able got killed.”

  “Not much.”

  “It wouldn’t help,” I told him. “She still wouldn’t love you.”

  “I know.” His voice was a gasp, the last air forced from a closing coffin lid.

  “Rud did it?” Andrews jutted his chin, brow knit. “And you knew this?”

  “Rud did a lot of things, I was pretty sure,” I said. “He saw us up here the other night, for example, and thought we were already on to him. Is that right?”

  “Guilt.” Rud shrugged. “My perennial undoing.”

  “Rudyard killed Harding.” Andrews took a step toward us, still trying to get his mind straight.

  “The night you and I saw the Deveroe boys over there trying to hang Able,” I said, eyes on Rud, “Rud saw us. After we left he spent time digging up my great-grandfather’s grave. Still right?”

  “I thought it was a particular stroke of genius,” he answered, “yes.”

  “You mean he remembered the stories about Conner Devilin,” Skid guessed. “Not a person in this town’s been able to escape the Devilin family history.”

  “Rud thought I’d be thrown if the little community of vagrants he sheltered had something to do with me,” I said, “so he took a chance, found the lily in my great-grandfather’s grave, amazingly enough, set up that pile of rubbish in the corner of the crypt where everyone camped. My guess is he also scratched my great-grandmother’s name in the rock, got the others to go along with him.”

  “They all helped build the monument,” he said, smiling. “They had fun, especially May. She’s good.”

  “That she is,” I agreed.

  “You weren’t taken in?” Andrews asked.

  “I was.” I folded my arms; afternoon was turning to evening, and a chill rose from the stones. “Until I realized, much later, that the whole thing was held together by old shoelaces. That started me thinking.”

  “They’d all just got new sneakers.” Andrews rolled his head. “And the sculpture thing was made out of old shoelaces. Christ, how did you figure that out?”

  “May played for both sides,” was all I would say to Rud.

  He was past caring.

  “Now get to the part where the caretaker kills the mortician,” Andrews rolled out, enthusiasm growing with his ironic tone.

  “I don’t have a life,” Rud said slowly, coming to his feet. “I have a shadow. I live between this world and the next. The reason for my state is that I betrayed a young girl who believed me. I deserve what I got. She’s a simple girl, took me at my word. I took advantage of her, as I believe the novels of a previous century might say, and I married someone else. I didn’t know she was a witch who would put a curse on me. It affected my mind, my face, my posture. Now I look like this.”

  Rud held his hands wide, a mockery of the crucifixion. He looked sixty, his face deep-ridged, his eyes dead, thin as a skeleton, stoop-shouldered, bent at the knee. Had I not seen a splinter of myself in him, he would not have been human.

  “You invented the Adele community, like, two days ago,” Andrews said, still stuck, “just to throw Dev off the track?”

  “It almost worked.” He let his arms fall to his sides.

  “It might well have, of course,” I informed him, “except for the fact that it wasn’t necessary; it was only a distraction. I hadn’t come for you at all. I was looking for Girlinda Needle’s brother.”

  “Able,” Rud growled, that name a curse.

  “And you killed your own cousin,” Andrews went on.

  “It was dark,” Rud snapped. “I didn’t know who it was.”

  “That’s not entirely true. You thought it was Able,” I said. “You heard the argument at the church, lurking in the shadows as you always are, constantly following Truevine.”

  “Following Truevine?” Andrews echoed.

  “It’s my guess that Rud has been Truevine’s unseen companion for several years,” I explained.

  “I prefer the word guardian,” he said plainly. “My watchful eye increased recently, as a matter of fact.”

  “He follows her,” I continued, “partly to protect her, if he says so, but mostly out of obsession. He stalks her, half-hoping for … what should we call it, Rud? Redemption?”

  “Let’s leave that to the court psychiatrist, why don’t we?” he sneered.

  “It’s also my surmise that Truevine was aware of his presence in some way,” I went on. “She told me she felt someone was watching over her, but she grew increasingly uncomfortable about it.”

  Rud’s face lowered.

  “At any rate, he saw someone attack Truevine on the path close to my house,” I said.

  “She was wearing one of Able’s big old flannel shirts,” Skid interjected. “She told me, told you too. That’s how thread from Able’s clothes got under Harding’s fingernails: when Harding attacked her.”

  “The fiber evidence.” Andrews struggled to remember.

  “Without thinking about who it was, or caring,” I went on, glaring at Rud, “you murdered her attacker.”

  “Hit hi
m with a piece of gravestone,” Rud said, lifting his head, a scratch of a smile at the corner of his mouth, “that’s in the pile underneath your lily. A little poetry.”

  “Very nice,” I responded coldly.

  “And the folks who stay there,” Skid began, “went along with you …”

  “ … because I told them to!” Rud snarled. “They do what I say.”

  “Okay.” Skid had raised his pistol a little.

  “Did they know what you’d done?” Andrews whispered.

  Rud hissed an exasperated sigh, shook his head.

  “Look, Truevine was dazed; Able came running up.” I rubbed the backs of my arms, shivering. The air was hard and the adrenaline of my dog fight was dissipating. “You hid, realizing you hadn’t killed Able. They had their scene and left; you made it to the bottom of the ravine, found Harding dead.”

  “He was hurting Tru.” Rud’s voice wavered. “I saved her life.”

  “I doubt that,” I disagreed. “He wouldn’t have harmed her. He was angry, but that was all. He’s not capable of anything serious. Harding Pinhurst is a coward.”

  “Was,” Andrews corrected softly.

  Skid eyed Rud. “And what were you doing with a chunk of tombstone in your hand that far away from the graveyard?”

  “Comes in handy in these woods,” Rud answered, calming, “something like that. Had to scare away that damned dog of hers—on occasion.”

  “You killed the scarecrow too?” Andrews suddenly asked. “Why?”

  “Let’s save some of it for the police station,” Skidmore told us all, pistol raised, pointing in the general direction of Rud’s heart. “I’m sorry, Rud; I’ve got to cuff you. Turn around, do you mind?”

  “‘Come, all you young men,’” Rud said, his eyes boring into mine, “‘take a warning by me.’ What’s the next line, Dr. Devilin?”

  “‘When courting the girls,’” I finished for him, “‘don’t be easy and free.’”

  “How many songs begin with those lines?” he asked.

  “Ten thousand,” I told him. “Or more.”

  “And I didn’t listen to a single one. That’s the problem with your discipline, you know.” Rud turned around, hands behind his back, waiting for the cuffs. “No one pays attention to it anymore. It’s useless.”