by Billy Coffey
Hays rolled over and rubbed his back, looking up at the brightening sky. “Wasn’t no party to begin with.”
He struggled out of his bag as Naomi worked out what kinks the night had left in her muscles. Cordelia freed herself from her bed and stood, trying to stretch. She froze with her arms high over her head.
“Where’s Scarlett?”
Naomi and Hays stopped what they were doing and looked to the far edge of the campsite. Scarlett’s sleeping bag lay empty, her skirt and sweater from the night before strewn to either side. Naomi called out, then Hays and Cordelia. No answer came.
Hays took the knife and told them to stay there, he was going to look. That’s as far as his courage carried him, though. He hollered for Scarlett again and then said to Cordelia, “This was so stupid, coming up here.”
A branch snapped close. Cordy flinched and ran to where Hays stood, the knife now shaking in his hand. Naomi’s mouth hung open as though she’d forgotten how to breathe as something came walking down the path.
It was only when Scarlett stumbled into the clearing that Naomi seemed to remember again. Scarlett’s clothes were a rumpled mess and her blond hair had been pulled back into something close to a ponytail, but that only made what makeup she hadn’t cried off look worse.
“Something’s happened,” she said. “Y’all need to come.”
“What happened?” Cordy asked.
Scarlett’s voice cracked. “I woke up this morning and it was gone. Must’ve lost it last night. When I run off.”
“What’s gone?”
“Your momma’s bracelet.”
“What?” Cordy left Hays where he stood. “You lost Momma’s bracelet?”
Scarlett fell into a full-on cry then, saying she’d spent since daybreak looking up at the mines and she couldn’t find it anywhere and that wasn’t even the problem, the bracelet going missing, the problem was something had taken it.
“Stop,” Hays said. “What do you mean something took it?”
“Something,” Scarlett told him. “Took it.”
Naomi grew still. “How do you know that, Scarlett?”
“I’ll show you,” she said, then turned and disappeared into the trees.
They all went, picking their way through the trees and shadows until they reached the Number Four, which looks just as run-down and possessed in the early day as it does in the late of night. Scarlett led them to a bare spot midway between the mine and the clump of shrubs. She pointed at the ground.
“What is that?” Naomi asked.
No one answered. No one knew.
At their feet lay dozens of tracks shaped in a horseshoe, near the shape of a circle, leading in a straight line from the bushes to the forest beyond. Spaced as wide as Hays was tall, meaning what had left them carried a stride of near six feet. But there’s more, friend. It was late April then, but the soil on that mountain was still hard as stone from the long winter. Hadn’t been any rain in the Holler for weeks. But whatever had passed through there was heavy enough to press those tracks near an inch into the path. An inch.
Hays bent and brushed the hair from his eyes, tracing a finger along the length of one of the prints. He stood again and set his shoe against it. Naomi let out a gasp and covered her mouth, apologizing through her fingers for letting shock get the better of her.
“I’m a twelve,” Hays said. “There’s what? Another two inches left?” He turned his shoe sideways, gauging the length.
“Eighteen,” Cordy guessed. “A foot and a half long and near that wide?” She paused. “I don’t know nothing that big.”
“Horse, maybe?” Naomi asked.
Hays shook his head. “You know a horse walks on two legs? Cause two’s all I see.”
Cordelia listened to Hays and Naomi and Scarlett go back and forth about what could’ve gotten so close to camp in the night, listened as Scarlett said maybe it was nothing and Naomi said John David had been right, they had no business being up there in the first place, but Cordy didn’t care about any of that because the only thing that mattered was the bracelet.
She looked at Scarlett. “Momma’s bracelet’s gone, Scarlett. She’s gonna find out, and I need me and her to be good right now.” She felt her belly, like she was trying to straighten her shirt.
Scarlett whispered, “I’m so sorry, Cordy.”
“It’s gotta be here somewhere,” Hays said. He looked on, to where the tracks disappeared around a tall oak. “Come on.”
“No,” Naomi said. “No way. I’m sorry, Cordy, but I’m done. I want to leave. We should all just leave.”
Hays swelled his chest. He could do that with somebody like Naomi. Not so much with somebody like John David. “That wasn’t a question, Naomi. We stick together. Always have. Right, Scarlett?”
Scarlett nodded.
Hays pulled the Buck knife from his pocket and held it in his hands, just in case. He grinned at Naomi and said, “Don’t worry, we’ll be at church in plenty of time for Jesus and your daddy to wash our sins. Come on. Time’s wasting.”
It was just before seven in the morning when those three kids left the Number Four’s shadow, aiming for that oak and the wide woods in the distance. By nine, they’d all be running for their lives. Funny how quick things can turn, ain’t it?
-2-
I think all but Scarlett expected those tracks to keep right on through the woods a ways, or—and this would be much better—to simply vanish with as much mystery as they’d appeared, leaving the bracelet safe and sound in a soft pile of leaves. But what none a them could’ve imagined was those prints leaving the ground altogether, walking straight up one side of a tree and then straight down the other, like whatever’d left them had mocked gravity itself. Chuckle all you want, friend, I’m saying it’s true. You go up there right now, get through the gate if you can. See them for yourself.
The trunk was wide enough for Scarlett and Cordelia to wrap their arms around it and still not touch, though neither had a mind to try. Hays fell to silence, trying to believe what his eyes said couldn’t be. Naomi’s lips moved slow. Her words came out soft, more for herself than any of the others. Cordelia was close enough to hear: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
Hays reached out and traced a finger around the edge of the closest horseshoe-shaped hole carved into the wood. When he drew that finger away, it trembled.
“Burned,” he said.
Cordy cocked her head. “What?”
“The . . . whatever they are,” he said. “They’re burned in. See the edges? All charred up.”
Cordelia stepped to the other side of the tree. The prints there were upside down, marking a descent that led on into the woods.
“They lead this way,” Hays said.
“Wait,” Naomi said. “We’re keeping on?”
Hays didn’t answer. I don’t think he heard. Out of all them kids, that boy understood that the stories they’d all been raised on about those mines and that mountain could be true, that maybe there really could be things up there waiting, hungry things that existed only in madness and nightmares. He’d never come out and say it, not to Naomi and Scarlett, not even to Cordelia, but Hays knew of the monsters in this world. He’d seen them.
Those tracks had done something to those kids, something powerful but so small they couldn’t yet feel it. How else can you explain why Hays kept right on leading them and why Cordelia and Scarlett kept following, convinced everything was fine really, right as the rain? What other reason could there be that Naomi fell into prayer once more, begging them all to go back even as she herself pushed on?
They walked on in places few had ever trod with only Hays’s rusted pocketknife to protect them. They followed when the prints ended at a deep pond hidden in the forest and reappeared on the opposite side, followed as the marks shrunk to disappear into the groundhog hole some distance on, followed still as those tracks emerged from another hole some dozen steps on and grew back to monstrous size. One mile and then two as nary a w
ord passed between them, until they reached a boulder at the edge of a meadow fronting a sloped and barren ridge.
The rock was gray and large, wider than a car and just as tall, with a flattened top that sloped higher on one end. Drawn between patches of moss on the rock’s front side was what looked like a slanted eye. Scattered inside the picture was a series of strange patterns: a long, flattened S; an X with hooked ends; crude pictures of hands and animals; a W; a 3. Many more, dozens of them that held no meaning to the kids at all, and all the while that eye was staring out at them.
“Indians,” Cordelia guessed. “Daddy says there’s stuff like that all over the mountains.”
“Can’t be,” Hays said. “See?” He ran a finger over the W, smearing it on the rock. “It’s new. Like somebody just drew it.”
And here, whatever enchantment had settled over them fell away. It was different before, when what they followed amounted to little more than some queer footsteps. Now it was something with brain enough to write. And was the message it had left behind for them? Did it know they were following? Was it a warning?
“Please let’s go back,” Naomi said. “Please, Hays. I’m really scared now.”
Hays had his lighter out, flicking the top open and closed, trying to think.
“Something’s on that ridge,” Scarlett said. She pointed with one hand and shielded her eyes against the sun with the other. “See it? Near the top, against that tree.”
It was no monster waiting at the crest of that hill, but a dog, watching from the thin shadow of a dying maple, motionless but for its perking ears and a nose that swept the air. The footprints wound up the slope and over right near there, giving the animal the strange air of a watchman.
“That ain’t the only thing up there,” Cordy said. “See the smoke on the other side?” It wasn’t easy to spot at first, but one by one each of her friends did—a single wisp of white rising up against the blue sky. “Bet you anything that’s where it went.”
“Then this is where we should turn around,” Naomi said. “I’m not kidding, Scarlett. This don’t feel right.”
Hays would have none of that. “We’ve come this far.”
“Let’s just take a look,” Scarlett told them. “Just to see. Won’t hurt none to see, will it?”
Now a course all them kids knew deep down it could hurt plenty, but there really wasn’t much else to say. Hays, Scarlett, and Cordy had found their nerve again. Naomi had no choice but to follow. She had a life back in town, after all, one that depended a great deal on how her friends thought of her. The dog bounded down the other side of the ridge and disappeared into a patch of forest as the four of them crested the top. All they could do then was stare.
The footprints led down the slope through trees older and taller than any they had seen that day. Heading toward where that single column of smoke rose into the clear spring sky, where they snaked around to the sagging front porch of a squalid cabin below.
-3-
Some places have a feel to them, like there’s a heaviness to the air. You can’t see it with your eyes but you know it in your gut, and what your gut says is those places are not made for humans at all, but for things best left alone. Every one a them kids had an idea whose cabin that had to be; you could tell the way their faces went slack and their bodies sank low to the ground to keep out of sight.
“That’s the witch’s place,” Naomi whispered.
“Can’t be,” Hays said. “We’re too close to the mines. Alvaretta lives farther than this.”
“How do you know?” Naomi asked. “You ever been to Alvaretta’s cabin?”
Hays didn’t answer, didn’t need to. Who else could it have been down there but Alvaretta, living all alone and so cut off from town? Their trail had led to the witch, plain enough. And as Hays and Scarlett and Naomi and Cordelia pressed their bodies even closer to the ground, groping for a hand to hold or a body to nudge against, you can bet your soul their minds recalled the stories of the witch that anyone who calls these hollers home was raised upon. We all know of Alvaretta Graves’s past, friend. How she blamed every person in Crow Holler for her husband’s death, and how she said Stu would never rest because the town refused to let her bury him on Campbell’s Mountain. How she’d spent all the years since alone in the woods, communing with the devil. The droughts in the years that followed. The deaths.
Ain’t no witches, you’ll tell me, and I’ll say that back then there was a few who’d say the same. But there wasn’t a body in this town who’d dare speak Alvaretta’s name aloud for fear she’d somehow hear it, and you always knew who’d driven by the narrow cut in the trees that led off the dirt road to her cabin by the three Xs they’d drawn on the windshield with their fingers as they’d passed.
“Could just be some old farmer,” Scarlett said.
Cordy nudged her. “We gotta make sure.”
“I’m not going down there,” Naomi said.
Cordy reached for Hays’s elbow, which he promptly shook away. The morning was cool but the walk had warmed him. A single bead of sweat ran from his hairline past his cheek, almost like a tear.
“Say that is Alvaretta down there,” he said. “You want her holding something that belongs to Cordy’s momma?”
And that, friend, was what convinced them all in the end. That’s what made Scarlett, Hays, and Cordelia sidle around that little holler in the woods, keeping well inside the trees so they wouldn’t be seen. Because it was bad enough Cordelia stole that bracelet. It was worse Scarlett lost it. But the thought of her momma’s bracelet falling into the hands of the witch? That was too much for Cordelia to bear and too much for them all to risk.
Naomi stayed well back of the others at the start but then closed the distance, too afraid to be alone. They kept their eyes to the cabin and the single column of smoke rising up from the chimney. The dog that had watched them from the ridge appeared again, this time where the tree line met the dirt and grass of Alvaretta’s yard. Dozens more dogs had joined it. Some sat, licking themselves. Others wound their way through the trees, watching with cold eyes and low growls. And the footprints, those hooves. Leading right down through the middle of them all, around to the front of the cabin and out of sight.
Cordelia led the way now, moving steady and trying not to dwell on the thirty or so pairs of eyes staring at her. Halfway to the side of the house, Hays found another rock bearing the same strange markings he’d found back in the field. Scarlett found two more not a ways on. They’d come to a spot in the woods where they could see the side of the cabin plain, where a large garden had been plowed. A single glass window stared back at them. The faded curtain inside was drawn closed, letting them believe they’d gone unnoticed.
Whatever shred of hope those children had that they’d come upon some old farmer’s plot left soon as they made it around to the front of that cabin. Near twenty feet of trees lay between where the four of them stood and the open half acre or so that drew up to the cabin’s porch. And on all those trees, on every branch low enough to reach, hung a dead crow. Hundreds of them, all strung up in nooses of thin rope to rot and twist in the breeze. A few held on to their feathers, a black so crisp and bright it hurt the eye. Most were little more than sagging bones. Some still had eyes that looked out into the woods, their beaks open like they was sounding a silent alarm. Others had only small holes where eyes had rotted. Scarlett vomited into the leaves. Hays and Cordelia stared on as Naomi fell to prayer once more.
On the opposite side of the cabin sat the broken-down Chevy truck that had been Stu Graves’s when he was killed, back when the parents of Scarlett and Hays and Cordelia and Naomi had been teenagers themselves. The side was caved in where Stu had wrecked it. The windshield lay cracked and jagged in the sun.
“This really is the witch’s place,” Scarlett whispered.
Hays said, “Tracks lead to the porch.”
They did. Right up to that rickety old porch and then on across, past the truck to a shed so old that the wood
on it had gone gray and warped, leaving gaps between the boards. Cordelia slipped her hand into Hays’s and squeezed. He squeezed hers back.
No words passed between them, but they’d seen the same thing. The sun had come alive over that little holler by then, lighting every shiny surface it touched. The cracked side mirror on Stu Graves’s old truck, the front window to the left of Alvaretta’s front door, the metal washbasin overturned in the front yard, all a them glowed like tiny suns themselves. But what sparkled brightest was the diamond bracelet that had been draped over the rusty doorknob of that leaning shed.
-4-
“We gotta get over there.” Cordy turned to find Naomi and Scarlett had backed farther into the woods. Hays still had her hand, but he’d taken a step away as well. “Hays? We have to get over there. That’s momma’s bracelet, I know it is.”
“No,” he said. “No way, Cordy.”
“It’s just right there. We can sneak through the trees. Ain’t nobody around.”
He shook his head but didn’t let go of her hand, like he meant to keep her there.
“John David said for me to keep y’all safe. I’m not going anywhere near that shed. I can’t.”
“What is wrong with you?”
“I just can’t,” Hays said, and there was a panic to his voice that looked to scare them all. “We come too far.”
“Too far?” Cordy asked, and a little too loud, making the girls look around and at least one of the dogs somewhere in the trees bark. When she spoke again, it was nearer a whisper. “You were the one who said we should follow those tracks in the first place. You brought us here.”
“I’ll go,” Scarlett said.
Cordy looked her way, to where Scarlett stood beside a trembling Naomi, who was now so scared she’d even given up her praying.
“I’ll go with you, Cordy,” Scarlett said again. “It’s my fault. I lost your bracelet, and I know you have to get it back. You can’t have problems with your folks now. So I’ll go.”
“No,” Hays said.
“We have to. You stay here with Naomi and keep watch. Let us know if you see anything. Scream it, we’ll run. The lane has to be around here somewhere. We’ll all follow it to the road and then keep on running if we have to. Our cars’ll just have to wait.”