by Chris Neeley
That had been fine with Anna. Fine until the day of the redbird.
Now, she bothered with one of them, she had bothered with Seph. Look where it had gotten her. Still, nobody cared, not even the man who had fathered her child. He didn't even care about the babe, burying her where no one would see, as if Babe Rose was so much white trash.
Well, the war had begun, Anna thought, taking the cloth from her face. She was sporting a few battle scars, but she wasn't finished.
She had only begun.
***
Seph couldn't sleep, no matter what he did. A nurse came into the room, her shoes making that funny little nurse's shoe squeak as she crossed the floor and reached up to do something to the bag of fluid hanging from the pole. She didn't notice that Seph was awake.
"Ma'am?"
The nurse jumped, her hand flying to her breast. "You--you're awake, Mr. Mayhew. You scared me." Then she let out a little giggle.
"I didn't mean to scare you. I'm sorry. I just can't sleep."
The nurse picked up his wrist and held her fingers around it, looking at her watch. Seph heard someone being paged to please come to emergency. The nurse kept looking at her watch, then finally she smiled and placed his wrist back on the bed. "Very good. You're looking better, although tired, I must say," she said. She pulled his chart from the chart holder at the foot of his bed, and jotted something on it, then put it back.
Seph rose up on one elbow. "Have my kids been here? I haven't heard from them."
The nurse walked around to the other side of the bed and leaned him back. "Your son called, a long time back. The doctor told him that you were fine and he should wait 'til in the morning to come visit. Now, you should be sleeping. Would you like something to help you sleep?" she asked, adjusting the pillow behind his head.
"Something to help me sleep, huh? That's about the only way I'm going to get any. What with everything that's happened, I ..." Seph's voice trailed off. His eyes burned, no more tears left in them to wet them down. "I would appreciate it if I could have a phone in here," he said, finally.
The nurse patted his shoulder sympathetically. "I heard about your tragedies. Your heart attack was a very mild one, but you still have to rest. I can't get you a phone until morning, but I can get you something to help you sleep. I'll be right back." She squeaked her way out of the room, leaving the door open just a crack.
Seph looked at the window. Its drapes were drawn against the night.
He couldn't wait until morning, couldn't wait to talk to James. He had to tell him everything. If James didn't hate him now, he would after he heard what Seph was going to tell him, but that didn't matter.
What mattered was stopping the girl before she killed anyone else.
***
James helped Doc Varner put all of his samples into the cab of his pick-up.
"Want a cup of coffee?" James asked when they had everything put into the truck. "I want to hear more about these 'Holler Witches'. I think I need to know what I'm dealing with here."
"I sure could use a cup of coffee, that I could. Let's go on in. We should check on your sister, too," Doc said, closing the door of the pick-up.
Rain started to spatter down on them as they walked toward the house. The cat had been right, washing its face. Another sign that James had read right. He was getting better, but he still wasn't good enough. The two picked up their pace, finally breaking into a run when the sky opened up and tried to drown them.
James got a clean dishtowel for Doc Varner after he turned on the kitchen light.
"Thanks," Doc said, taking off his glasses. He used the towel to wipe off the raindrops. "They needed cleaned anyways, I guess." James thought the Doc was right about that. After digging around in Georgia, the Doc had little splatters of blood on his glasses.
James put on a pot of coffee. It was close to midnight, but he knew that sleep would not take him away from his problems tonight. Lightning flickered through the windows. It looked like someone was on the roof holding a hose to the kitchen window, which was how much water was coursing over the pane. Thunder pounded against the glass with an invisible fist, making it rattle in the frame.
"Gonna be a soaker," Doc observed from his seat at the table. "Kind'a glad now that you asked me in for a cup. Sure would hate to be on the road, dark as it is, in this here weather."
"I'm going to check on Fern. The storm might have woken her up," James said.
"I'll come with you." Doc scooted his chair out from the table. It made an awful grating sound as it scraped across the floor.
They walked into the living room. Lightning flashed, lighting up the couch where Fern lay, sleeping a drugged sleep. Doc Varner bent over her, listening to her breathe. He straightened up, motioning for James to go back into the kitchen. They tiptoed out of the living room.
Back in the kitchen, James went to the cupboard and got two coffee mugs.
Doc Varner sat back down at the table. "Fern'll probably sleep 'til afternoon, from the way she looks."
James flashed him a worried look. "Now, now," Doc said, "she looks fine. It's just that she's young and probably never had a sedative before. It'll take her a while to sleep it off. Probably a good thing, too."
James relaxed a bit. That's all he needed was for something to happen to Fern with everything else going as wrong as it possibly could. He poured two cups of steaming coffee and carried them to the table. Doc Varner pulled his toward him. He raised his bushy white eyebrows. "Got any milk and a spoon?"
"Sure," James said.
James sat down across the table from Doc Varner after supplying him with his milk and spoon and waited until the Doc took a sip of coffee. The storm was directly over the house, pounding it with rain. It sluiced over the windows, making the house feel closed in, under water.
"So, the hogs were poisoned with mandrake and that's something that most people wouldn't know about, huh?" James asked. He sipped his coffee.
"Nope," Doc said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. "Most people wouldn't. Think about it. If you wanted to poison something today, you'd just go on down to the grocery store of the grain elevator and buy yourself some rat poison. No," he said, shaking his head, "whoever poisoned them hogs did it like it was some folk medicine thing." Doc Varner took another sip of his coffee.
"Who would know something like that, about mandrake, I mean?" James asked.
"Well," Doc scratched his chin, "I knew about it. But a'course I work with animals and sometimes they're known to eat some mighty strange things, things that they're not supposed to. Why I remember one time--"
"What about the Holler Witches?" James cut in. He had to cut him off before the Doc launched into some long story about somebody's cat or something. "You said something about 'Holler Witches' before."
Doc Varner scooted his butt around in the chair, putting both hands around his coffee cup. Doc liked telling stories, long ones if you'd let him. James swore that the old man's eyes even twinkled, even though it was late and he had to be tired.
"I remember that my Momma used to tell us kids not to go way down in the Holler--that's what she called the Hollow--back under Big Hoary, a'cause the Holler Witches didn't much like little boys," Doc pointed a finger at James, who sat sipping his coffee, watching the old man's face come alive with the telling. James settled back and let himself get lost in the story.
"They like the men, oh yes, they did. When it started out, there were three of them, the Holler Witches. A mother and her twin daughters. They supposedly lived back in the Holler all by their lonesome. Hear tell, when they wanted a man, they would just cast their spells and work their magic and draw one to them.
"Well, my Momma told me that each of them cast for a man and they each got one, you bet. But for some odd reason, only one of the twins could bear a child. Well, the Momma and the other twin just seemed to wither away," Doc leaned forward in his chair. "Some say them two, the Momma and the other twin, still haunt the woods out that way. Some say that when t
hat she-cat starts up a'wailin', it ain't really a she-cat, it's them two Holler Witches fightin' over a man." He straightened back up, taking a sip of coffee. "Now, by the time I was old enough to know better, I didn't believe the story no more. By that time--which really wasn't that long ago--a married couple lived back in under Big Hoary by the name of Caine. Most people say that Martha Caine, that was the woman's name, was the descendant of them Holler Witches. Come to think of it, I heard that Martha had a twin, but the twin died young. Martha was a might odd, if I recall. Well, anyways, the Caines, they kept to themselves mostly.
"One day, the Mister and the Missus was out taking the vegetables that they raised back there in the Hollow to market and for some reason, that Mr. Caine drove that old truck right over the edge of Shaky Bridge. No one knows for sure just how it happened, there wasn't a skid mark to be seen. Hear tell, it looked like he just decided to drive right off the bridge into the river. By the time anybody got them two out of their old pick-up, after they winched it out of the water, well, they wasn't for this world anymore. It was a sorry thing." Doc shook his head, remembering. "The Caine’s, they had a daughter. They tried to raise her up like the rest of us, I guess. Sent her to school and such, but I don't think they let her get too close to the town folk too often. 'Cept for school, maybe. Anyways, I heard that the daughter went to live with some relative up north after the bad wreck. But, come to think of it," he scratched his head, "I've seen a girl, 'round town, looks kind'a like that little Caine girl. Hunh. Makes you wonder." Doc Varner looked off in the distance, not seeing the kitchen but something else, in his mind. "Anyhow, someone raised backwoods, like that Caine girl, would know about the mandrake. Don't get me wrong now, I don't rightly know for sure if there was such a thing as them Holler Witches and I don't know about the Caine clan being descended from 'em, but it sure can make a body wonder a bit."
James had taken all of it in. Doc had said that he thought that he had seen someone that resembled the Caine girl around town. Maybe she came back. Maybe she never left. James knew that even now, some people treated other people like trash. There were a lot of people in Rockside that didn't live by today's standards, that didn't have money, which still lived like regular 'hillbillies'. They weren't treated the same as everybody else. That was probably why you didn't see them around much. James got up from the table and got the carafe of coffee and refilled their cups.
James thought that there might be actual witches down here in the sticks. Maybe not the kind who rode brooms and stirred cauldrons, but who knew the old Southern ways. Look at Aunt Doll, for example. She knew sign. And she had tried to teach James, he was the only one who hadn't thought that she was crazy. Maybe these Holler Witches were called that because everybody thought that they were crazy. But if this girl was a descendant of them, she probably was taught their ways, mother to daughter. And if she was back, she would be a likely suspect.
"What did this little Caine girl look like?" James asked. He didn't remember anyone by that name that he had went to school with. He really hadn't paid that much attention to girls when he was younger. And she was from the other side of the Hollow.
"Well, if my mind serves me right, she was about average for a girl of about eleven-twelve years old, when her parents died, that is. I do remember one thing about her. She had the most beautiful red-brown hair. I'd see her, off and on, you know, walking the back roads. Her hair would shine with a fire when the sun caught it. I'd always thought to myself, 'Doc', I thought, 'when that one grows on to be a woman, them boys ain't gonna much care if her daddy had money or no, they're gonna be on her like ruttin' bucks', that's what I thought." Doc glanced at his watch. "My Lord, look what time it is. Sounds like the rain's let up a might. I best be gettin' back. I want to do some tests on those samples before I lay down." Doc scooted his chair back from the table.
"Thanks for coming in for a while. You took my mind off things," James said.
"Anytime. You let me know 'bout your Pa," Doc said, heading for the door. He stopped, his hand resting on the doorknob. "You let me know, too, if you need help with making arrangements for your brother," he said quietly.
James looked down at the table. It was going to be hard, burying his brother. He didn't even know whether his father would be out of the hospital in time for the funeral. "I'm sure Mr. Dobbs over at the funeral home will help me make the decisions that need to be made. Thanks though."
Doc cleared his throat. "I'm sure he will. Clete's a good man. He wouldn't steer you wrong. Well, I best be gettin'. You try to get some rest, you hear?"
James nodded.
Doc Varner went on out into the drizzle. James walked to the door and pulled back the curtain to watch as the Doc got in his old truck and backed out of the driveway. James looked up at the black night sky.
The Doc had said that the Holler Witches lived under Big Hoary.
He wondered if he could make his way there in the dark.
Better to wait until daylight.
After he talked to Mr. Dobbs about Cliff, and after he saw his father and asked him just what in the hell he had been talking about, maybe he would try to find the place. He let the curtain drop back.
He'd have to do something about Fern. Depending on her attitude when she woke up, he might have to ask Ms. Creager, down the road, if she wouldn't mind coming down and staying with her during the day.
Then, there was the school thing. School was starting day after tomorrow and there was no way that he and Fern would start on time. He'd have to take care of that, too.
James wiped a hand across his forehead, realizing for the first time tonight just how exhausted he was. He put the coffee cups in the sink and turned the coffee maker off. He wandered into the living room and sat down in his father's recliner. He kicked it back and rested his head.
James stared at the ceiling, listening to the thunder in the distance and the white-noise sound of the drizzling rain as it caressed the glass of the window beside the chair.
He knew deep in his heart that now was the time that he would have to do most of his growing up. Hopefully, by morning.
He closed his tired eyes and rested.
Finally, he dozed into a hazy kind of sleep.
Chapter Thirteen
Anna thrashed on the bed, fever causing her to sweat rivers, wetting the nasty bedclothes that still bore the slight scent of old blood and sex. Her dreams were wicked nightmares filled with crows and cats and hideous things that called themselves 'Mommadoll'.
When she had lain down on the bed after cleaning her wounds the best she could, her face had already puffed up like a melon and her eyes were almost swelled completely shut. She hadn't remembered dropping her potato sack until she had washed her wounds free of blood and had tried to think of something she could put on them. All of her homemade salves and potions were in the sack and now it was lying somewhere out in the woods, ruining in the storm. She had thought her luck was running to the good when the sow had done her bidding, up until the time that Fuzzy had attacked her in the dark of the woods. Now things were starting to go haywire on her.
She wasn't sure if it was interference from the 'Mommadoll' protector--Fuzzy had definitely been sent by her--or from the rule that her own Momma had taught her from day one.
The rule was that whatever you decided to do, be it good or bad, or even on the in-between side, whatever power that you put into it when you set the thing in motion would come back at you sometime in the future. Only it would be threefold as powerful as when you sent it out. Her Momma had told her, her hand on her hip, "Anna, you'd better be sure," she had said, "a'cause you'll have to pay the piper on down the road and sometimes he takes a mighty tall toll." Her Momma's words had come back to her as she had climbed into her bed. She had almost forgotten the warning.
Anna batted at the nightmare crow that was only in her dream, but in the dream the crow had talons of shiny silver steel, sharp as needles, and was determined to lock one of these deadly talons into whichever one of
Anna's eyes it could get too.
Anna fought her tormentors, sleep not yet ready to release her, as the blazing heat of an August sun peeking its white, hot eye over the top of Big Hoary Mount.
***
Seph awoke to the sound of a meal cart rattling through the hospital hallway. He raised his arm to check his watch for the time, then realized that he wasn't wearing it. The curtains at the window glowed a fluorescent green, the sunlight doing wonders for the drab green that he remembered from the night before.
Seph frowned. Something felt different. He touched his face, feeling the stubbly overnight growth of whiskers, then noticed that he wasn't wearing the oxygen tubes. He glanced up at the oxygen port in the wall. Nothing was hooked into it. That shot the nurse had given him in the middle of the night must have really put him under if he hadn't woke up when somebody had taken the oxygen off from him. He noticed that the bag of sugar water hanging on the pole was still feeding into his arm, though.
His stomach growled. He could smell the food on the meal cart out in the hall and he wondered if they were going to let him eat yet.
Another nurse elbowed his door open, carrying a tray in her arms. Her shoes squeaked across the floor, keeping perfect time with the 'sshhh, sshhh, shh' sound of her white hose as her thighs rubbed together. She put the tray on the rolling bed table and immediately moved to the bed. She pushed the bed control, raising the head off the bed.
Seph looked at her. She sure wasn't wearing the pleasant face of the night nurse. This one looked like she was in charge of the whole damn army and they had decided to go A.W.O.L. all at the same time. When she got him where she wanted him, she lifted the cover off of his breakfast and started for the door.