The Curse of Crow Hollow

by Billy Coffey

  Now Chessie got involved, saying something about one of the Lord’s disciples cutting off some slave’s ear, and unless David wanted to end up the same he’d better let them on in. Ruth Mitchell, who’d come to worship with her husband (Joe had shut up the Exxon special that night), their ailing daughter Chelsea, and the 12-gauge that hung over their fireplace, started up about how David owned more guns than anybody in the whole blamed town. Ain’t no reason to get skittish over anyone else having one, Ruth said, unless maybe the preacher was the one Alvaretta had enchanted.

  Boy oh boy, did that ever start a ruckus. Wilson and Landis tried calming things down. They didn’t get very far. Bucky started in, too, shouting about how this was exactly what Alvaretta wanted. Belle then hollered the same. That’s what got everybody quiet. Belle Ramsay was about the only person left in Crow Holler liked by all.

  Well, you can imagine how hard it is to humble thyself in the sight of the Lord with all them guns and shouting. That’s what David Ramsay found out that night. He and Belle managed to get everybody inside without a single bullet flying, Belle soothing people with that smile of hers, David shaking everybody’s hand and saying there were no hard feelings even if there was. He barely registered Angela’s quick words and the slips of paper she’d placed in his hand before taking her pew. Everybody sang and prayed like always, but there was no heart in it. No . . . community, I guess. I don’t know if that’s what Alvaretta had in mind, killing the town from the inside. If so, that plan worked something fine. You think of standing in one a those pews and trying to sing your praises, all the while wondering if the person behind you’s the one been sneaking out to hear the witch’s counsel. Imagine bumping your neighbor’s hand by accident and feeling the notion that the skin you just touched had maybe caressed Alvaretta Graves.

  Only one person there that night looked to give himself over to the spirit of the occasion, and that was the one person you’d never think. But by then Hays Foster felt he had no other place left to turn but heaven. His friends—if they’d ever been his friends—had abandoned him. His parents were more worried of their precious store than their only child. Scarlett and Naomi had all but accused him of being the one who’d fallen in league with Alvaretta, calling him a coward in the process. Well, didn’t nobody else do anything either that Sunday morning, did they? Scarlett, sure, but look what she got for her trouble. Only Cordelia had come to his rescue. Even then, that defense hadn’t felt particularly spirited. Hays had taken it as Cordy’s way of telling him You might not love me like I love you, but I’m all you got. Maybe that was true. But even if it was, that didn’t change the most important issue in Hays’s mind right then: Cordelia couldn’t save him from the monsters. How could she, when she didn’t even believe in them?

  Pastor Ramsay preached on the darkness that chased every living soul and the devil that crouched at every door. I know as he spoke those words he thought of whatever had crouched at his own door that afternoon. I know, just as I know Hays thought of the shed that once stood in the Fosters’ backyard.

  When the time came for healing and acceptance of the Lord, it was Hays who stood up. Bucky was checking his watch, trying to figure where Chessie’s load of moonshine would be by then, and thus John David. He glanced up to the shocked looks on Landis and Kayann’s faces and the Reverend’s hands upon Hays’s shoulders, and what our sheriff and all who had gathered witnessed next could only be described as a boy reborn. The preacher prayed and the people lifted their voices to the night, overcome by the Spirit descending into that place. Hays stood overcome, too, friend, so full of the Lord that he began shaking worse than even Naomi, and what poured forth from his lips was not the dark speech of Alvaretta’s demon, but words of wonder and praise and second chances that brought tears to Cordelia’s eyes.

  “The Lord calleth from the darkness,” David Ramsay proclaimed. “Hays Foster has answered.”

  It was air Hays walked on as he returned to the waiting arms of his girlfriend and parents, and it was air Briar Hodge decided he needed right then. Too much religion, I guess, or maybe Briar needed to make sure his guns were safe in the bed of his truck. Whichever it was, he got up from Chessie’s side and made for the back, past where Raleigh sat. He pushed on those double doors and breathed in deep. The air outside had cooled, the sun gone in favor of a moon that glowed dull and pale. What small light remained covered the buildings and trees like a thin blanket, turning the world dim yellow. He managed the first step when he saw what had been left in the street. What came next is something even I have a hard time believing.

  Briar Hodge, Briar the Bear, the baddest man you’ll ever find in these mountains, began to scream.

  He turned and ran back through the tiny foyer, his big boots shaking the wood floor. When Briar reached the first set of pews, he bellowed the words again.

  “Stu. Stu Graves is here.”

  -7-

  They poured out, friend. You just let that sink in. Wasn’t a safe place in all of Crow Holler that night but under that steeple, and yet they went out. Not just David and Wilson and Landis and Bucky. Chessie, Angela, and Belle too. All the kids. Everybody.

  What lay beyond the doors wasn’t Stu Graves, but you could say it was close. The hoofprints looked to have been seared into the dirt, same as they’d appeared all the way from the mines to Alvaretta’s doorstep. Only now they stretched in a long and meandering line down the middle of the road that cut through town, stopping in front of the church before meandering left to the council building. There the tracks turned in a wide arc around back of the church, skirting Medric’s funeral home, then moved off south to where many of the townspeople lived. Hundreds of tracks. Thousands. Like it hadn’t been a single dead man that had come for them, but an army.

  “Find them,” someone called. “Find them” echoed. They rushed for their guns before fear could take them and fanned out, every man and woman according to their own will. Landis led a group toward the grocery, Briar another toward the council building. Joe and Ruth Mitchell went with him. David mustered men to follow the trail toward the far houses. Wilson grabbed Scarlett, Cordelia, and Naomi and pushed them back inside, warning them not to leave. Angela, Belle, and Kayann joined them, along with many more of the women and children.

  Bucky pulled Chessie aside and said, “I need a gun.”

  “Where’s yours?” she asked.

  “I left it. Give me a gun, Chessie.”

  “You’re the blessed sheriff, Bucky, and you’re asking me for a gun?”

  “Give me a gun,” he screamed.

  He settled for the double barrel she threw at him and ran for the funeral home. This time Bucky didn’t have to knock. Medric answered with his finger on the trigger of his shotgun. Bucky shoved the barrel aside with his own.

  “I don’t know what’s going on with you, Medric, and I don’t care, but you come help me or somebody’s gonna die out there.”

  Medric shook his head. Terror flashed in his eyes. “What if it’s me dies out there?”

  “You see those?” Bucky pointed to the tracks. “They come right to your door, Medric. You see what left them?”

  “I didn’t see nothing, Buck. You hear me?”

  “Neither did anybody else. But people see that Stu Graves passed here and you’re nowhere to be found, they’ll like to come in here guns blazing. You want to be part of this town, it’s now.”

  I don’t think Medric much wanted to be a part of anything (and for good reason), but he did as Bucky said. They both ran into the street toward the council building. Shots rang out. Bucky couldn’t tell from where. From the direction of the grocery. Somebody screamed, “He’s here.” Over at the council building, people shouted the same. Raleigh ran that way. Joe Mitchell, Tully Wiseman, and Homer Pruitt went with him. All of them carried pistols and rifles both.

  Bucky broke into a sprint. He turned to yell for Medric, but Medric was gone.

  -8-

  Reverend Ramsay gripped the revolver in his hand a
nd tried to keep in the center of the six men around him. You call that cowardice if you want, I won’t say a word against you. But you should remember that not a few hours before, our preacher heard a knock made by a shadow standing on the other side of his door. Stu Graves was coming back for everybody, friend, but the ones who’d killed him were first in line, and no amount of prayer and service to the Lord would ever be enough to wipe the stain of that sin away. God forgives. David had preached that particular sermon many times in his long past, and for each one he’d made sure to add that God might forgive seventy times seven, but that don’t mean you get off scot-free. You might get heaven eventually, but that don’t mean you won’t have to walk through hell on earth first.

  It was hell enough down that dark road past the church where no lamps led and only a pale moon shone. Those other men with him felt it too. The footprints were burned into the dirt and led straight on, but that didn’t mean Stu Graves was ahead of them. He could’ve just as easy doubled back and be sitting right now in the thick brush to the side of the road. Waiting.

  The circle around the preacher got tighter with every step away from the church. David’s lips moved. Whether it was the Twenty-Third Psalm or a plea for Alvaretta’s forgiveness, I don’t know. Nothing but a long stretch of black ahead. The houses lay farther down, a mile or so on. In between lay nothing but the same scrub and trees that make up much of Crow Holler. Have a look yourself, if you want. Tell me you’d want to be walking down that road at night with a demon loosed.

  David was about to suggest they all turn back and at least get a few trucks when something moved in the bushes. His eyes went there before his gun. Rising up from a clump of weeds and grass came a black shape. He blinked, found it gone, then saw it again when he blinked again. Bigger now, and moving for him.

  The warning he shouted came not in words but in a piercing shriek that could be heard all the way back to town. David fired his gun, barely missing the side of the man’s head closest to him, and then they all fired. The night exploded to booms and shouts. Round after round, pummeling the trees and grass, grown men screaming like children. And there was David’s voice high above them all, yelling to kill it, kill Stu.

  -9-

  Landis made it halfway to the grocery when he heard a man shout that something had just run into the store. He thought he’d seen it too. Something on two legs but not human at all, at least not anymore.

  They slowed when they reached the lot, guns forward. Landis shook so bad there was no way he could get off a straight shot. With a shotgun, though, that didn’t matter. One pull on the trigger would send a spray of buckshot wide enough to hit anything close. Problem was, Landis had never pulled a trigger in his life. I know that seems a stretch, seeing as how that man was born and raised here in the mountains, but it’s the truth. You get to be a big businessman, you leave the hunting and shooting to the lower classes.

  But this time was different. This time it was his grocery being threatened, Landis Foster’s livelihood, and there weren’t no way in the world he was gonna let Alvaretta Graves snatch away what not even the town had been able to destroy.

  The tracks led straight inside. Landis led the four men with him in a slow creep toward windows still broken and jagged. All looked still and dark inside but for the two red eyes on the steps to his office. Landis yelped, jerked the shotgun in that direction, and fired the first gun of his insignificant little life.

  The twin barrels erupted in flame and the kick, which Landis hadn’t counted on at all, knocked him backwards. The gun’s roar drew the others, some of whom were screaming it was Stu, they could see him, don’t let him get away.

  -10-

  Medric might have thought it best to be seen helping things, but that didn’t mean he possessed a mind to try. What he wanted more than anything was to get away from the crazy white people and back inside the funeral home where it was safe. He’d lost Bucky somewhere between the house and the council building. No way he could know whether that had been an accident or something the “sheriff” (he’d tried saying that word to himself and never could leave off those quote marks around it) had done on purpose. I do believe Medric thought Bucky had left him to die. Because Bucky knew, you see. He might not’ve known everything, but he knew enough to think Medric had something to do with the witch.

  And it wasn’t fair. If Medric could’ve taken all the anger and pain inside him and given it words, those three are what he would’ve chose. It wasn’t fair, him suffering and being singled out. What he’d done was out of a sense of right. He alone had done what the Lord would want. And that alone now made him a target.

  He saw Briar and Chessie and Raleigh Jennings gathered with a group of people along the far side of the council building. Medric had gone too far to turn back, but the wide space behind the building looked empty enough for him to hide until things calmed down. He lowered his shotgun and broke into as much a trot as his old body would allow, making for the closest corner and the trees beyond. Whether by grace or plain dumb luck, he made it without anybody seeing. Medric laid his head against the cold brick of the wall and shut his eyes.

  When he opened them, something stood not three feet away.

  There was no time to ponder, no time to scream. All Medric saw was that dark shadow coming for him, and all he thought was Stu Graves. Stu coming back for him, even if Medric Johnston had been the only man in Crow Holler to show Alvaretta respect. The figure stopped. It did not speak, did not move, and that hesitation was all Medric needed. He raised the barrel and fired, sending the figure backward into the dirt and leaves with a humph that came out sounding not like a demon’s cry at all.

  -11-

  Hays Foster spent his first moments as a member of the Lord’s elect just as afraid as he’d spent all his years as a heathen. Landis had run off to his precious grocery, Kayann screaming back inside the church, and each of them must’ve thought Hays had gone with the other. Not even Cordelia remained with him in the parking lot. Chessie had been handing out nearly every gun imaginable from the bed of Briar’s truck, tossing them to those who’d been fool enough to not bring their own, but she’d never given one to Hays. He’d tried, but Chessie had just smirked when she saw him standing there with his hand out, and what she’d said was it’d be best if Hays got back inside the church with the rest of the women.

  He saw Bucky running past with a man who might’ve been Medric, heading toward the council building where everybody was shouting. Hays couldn’t tell if it was his friend for sure. Shots rang out from the road and the grocery and the council building. It was full dark by then, and not even the moon or stars could bring enough light to put him at ease. He fumbled for the lighter in his pocket, flipped the top, and spun the wheel just as Medric passed by again, running back toward the funeral home.

  And that’s when Hays Foster knew that the Lord may have claimed his soul, but Alvaretta Graves had claimed his sanity. He’d been cursed beyond anything Cordelia endured, or Scarlett or Naomi. Their sufferings lay in the frailness of their bodies, and yet they’d still found comfort in their blindness to what circled them all. That was true for him no longer. The witch would have all of Crow Holler drown in darkness, but she would have Hays Foster bear witness to the truth.

  He’d been right about it all. The demon, the monsters, the ones in league with the witch. Because you see, it wasn’t Medric Johnston that Hays had seen by the light of that flame, running back to the funeral home. At least not the Medric that Hays had always known. Oh no, friend. What raced past him had Medric’s puffy belly and Medric’s skinny legs, but it wore a demon’s face.

  -12-

  Someone screamed. Bucky didn’t know who it was because so many guns were going off, but he knew the voice was one of terror and pain because it was the voice his momma had made while the bad man Tom hurt her on the dining room table. He ran harder and racked Chessie’s shotgun.

  He saw Briar waving, calling for help, and now Chessie come from around the back of th
e council building, waving too. People were still shooting up at the grocery and the Exxon. More gunfire echoed from the road where David had taken his men. But whatever fight there’d been around Wilson’s office was done, and everything there had gone quiet.

  Briar and Chessie ran back around the council building. Bucky followed and raised his gun, then stopped when he rounded the corner and saw everyone gathered in that small patch of trees. It wasn’t Stu Graves who laid there. Pains me to say that. Pains me more to tell you it was one of the Holler’s own. Joe Mitchell and Raleigh were bent over the body of Joe’s wife, both men crying. Ruth Mitchell’s face held the same look of frozen horror that Angela had seen Nikki-whoever wearing on the TV back when the world made sense. Only this time it was real.

  I think even Bucky could’ve handled seeing one of those hoofprints seared into her chest better than he did seeing the scattershot that had been her end. Those dozen tiny holes in her body meant it wasn’t no curse that had killed Ruth Mitchell. Nor had it been the ghost of Stu Graves. It had been one of our own.

  -13-

  It wasn’t that Danny Sullivan had no religion, nor even that he found fault with the chorus of amens and hallelujahs that got passed around the Holy Fire every Sunday like candy. He simply thought the whole thing hypocritical. You have to figure Danny seen the people of Crow Holler at their worst, walking into his little office with their aches and pains, needing pills for their depressions and pills for their lovemaking, hearing the women talk about their men beating on them and the men talk about all the times they want to pick up a gun and end their sorry lives, only to see them all standing up in the pews a few days later, praising the Lord for His goodness. Danny knew the sins of this town even more than David Ramsay did.