by Chris Neeley
Seph's eyes widened.
Some of the ink that covered the hand-written pages had run and blurred, but he could still make out some of the writing.
It was a book of spells, even he could tell that.
Another branch cracked behind him.
He jerked around. He couldn't see anything moving.
He closed the book, shoved it back in the bag and tightened the drawstring. It was the girl's, he knew it.
Well, she wasn't going to get it back.
He made his way to the old broken down shack, the whole while feeling like something was watching him. You're just spooked, that's all, he told himself, as he warily crept up on the porch.
The front door was standing wide open.
Seph peered inside.
No sign of the girl, but the place was still a mess.
It was probably better that he didn't face her alone anyway, he thought. She might have some other kind of magic up her sleeve. He had to tell James the whole story, he was involved now after all, and he hoped that James would understand. Because even though Seph had been drunk that night, he wouldn't have laid with the girl if she hadn't done something to his mind.
The girl wasn't around so he figured that he'd better get on back home. He slung the sack full of the girl's goodies over his shoulder and set off walking.
He'd take the road this time.
Half an hour later, sweat was rolling down the middle of his back and he was beginning to wish that he hadn't done this. He should have waited. But he had found her sack, so at least he felt like he was one step ahead of her now.
He kept pounding the pavement, hoping that someone would come along and give him a ride.
And not ask too many questions.
***
James stood at the edge of the creek that ran at the back of the clearing. He looked up stream. He didn't see an oak hanging over the water. The creek took a bend a little ways up. It must be around the bend. He'd better get to it. He wanted to see for himself just what was in that grave.
He dragged the shovel behind him as he waded into the bubbling water of the creek.
The water washed over his ankles. He slipped on a moss, covered rock and caught himself, noticing how shiny the rock was where his boot had scraped off the moss. He dunked his hand in the water and worked it free of the muddy bottom. It came up easily. He swished it around, washing the mud off. It was about the size of his palm and when it broke the surface of the water, the sun struck it. Rainbows of color shot from the clear piece of quartz.
Quartz.
He could use it. The quartz would deflect any witchery away from him just like it reflected the sun. Aunt Doll had given him a piece of quartz long ago and it had become lost in his little boy pocket along with the marbles and rubber bands and things that he used to carry.
He shoved this piece of quartz deep in his pocket. This quartz wouldn't become lost.
He noted another rock, gray like granite, and smooth, about ten by twelve inches, lying on the bottom of the creek beside where he had removed the quartz. Someday, maybe he'd come back for it.
But right now, he had dirty business to attend to.
James sloshed on up through the creek, the trees and bushes closing in on either side of the banks the further he went. He rounded the tiny bend and instantly recognized the tree that his father had described.
Its gnarled old branches clawed their way over the creek and reached the other side to become lost in a tangle of scrub brush.
James walked on up to it, then spied the little expanse of grass to the other side of it.
One thing he could say for his father. He had hidden the grave well.
Three flat stones covered a small portion of the grass and he could see where the dirt had been turned under them. There was a spot along the edge that looked like an animal had spent some time trying to dig it up for itself, but had given up before it had got down to whatever was under the rocks.
James stepped out of the water and up onto the bank. He leaned his shovel against the tree trunk and shook the water from his boots.
He bent over and worked his fingers under the edge of the first stone. It came up easily.
The woods around him were unusually silent. James looked around and wondered where all the birds were. He wasn't sure that he liked this.
He flipped the stone off of the grave and pulled up the other two, laying them to the side. Pill bugs scrambled across the dirt, trying to get away from the light.
James got the shovel and placed the edge of it in the dirt, resting his foot on the shovel. He wondered how deep the grave was. It couldn't be too deep for the roots of the big old oak ran close to the surface of the ground. He eased the shovel into the dirt, lifted a shovelful up and dropped it beside the grave.
A cloud passed over the sun, throwing him into shadow, and he shivered.
He shoved the shovel back into the dirt. He lifted it up. Something was caught on it. A piece of some type of cloth.
James laid the shovel on the ground and pulled on the cloth. It wasn't cloth, it was really something that had been crocheted, like a shawl, or an afghan. It was covered with dirt. He pulled on it gently. There was a little weight to it, but not much. The afghan was wrapped around whatever was in the grave. James ran his hands along the afghan all the way to the bottom and carefully lifted the bundle free from the dirt. He laid it on the grass. A worm had slithered itself into the design of the crocheting and James pulled it free, slinging it into the creek.
Slowly, he unwrapped the afghan, brushing the dirt away as best he could. Finally he came down to what the afghan was wrapped around. James jerked back, almost falling into the creek.
The tiny face was shriveled already. Deformed and silent, the baby seemed to be crying, crying in its lonely grave.
Oh God, what had his father done? He had buried a child.
Whose child? Where had it come from? Why had his father buried it? What had he been trying to hide?
All these questions assaulted James as the sun came out from behind the clouds and blasted its unforgiving light down upon him.
James got control of himself and gingerly wrapped the baby back up, his stomach tightening. He didn't want to, but he picked up the bundled dead child and held it to him, grabbed his shovel and waded back into the creek.
He couldn't wait to hear how his father would try to explain this. Or what he was going to do with this child.
James made it back to the truck, whipped the shovel over the side and into the bed of the truck. He got in and laid the child on the seat beside him and headed for home.
He'd have to hide the child somewhere while he went to see his father.
***
Anna Caine could barely see and her face was infected, she knew, because she felt her fever was shooting up. The cat, Fuzzy, must have had something under his claws when he had tore into her face. Or Crow. It didn't matter which one had caused the infection. What mattered was getting rid of it.
She stumbled through the woods, fever making what she could see waver in the sun that shot down through the trees. She hadn't gotten very far into the woods when she had heard someone coming toward her.
Anna had dropped down in the weeds, her blurry eyes searching for who would be coming toward her shack. She didn't know if they were coming for her. Someone or something else to attack her. She lay as close to the ground as she could and listened, her ears taking over where her eyes couldn't help her.
It was a person walking, she could tell from the way they moved. Only two feet moving. Unless it was an animal that walked on its hind legs.
A fly buzzed her face, trying to light on her. She swished it away, in the process leaning her arm on a twig, breaking it, at the same time that whoever was walking sounded like they had tripped.
Anna cocked her head, listening.
The person was making the brush rustle. She heard the words, 'What the--'. Then the sound of something being dragged.
She eas
ed herself up from the ground and tried to move to better shelter. A fallen branch broke under her weight.
She froze for a second, hunched over.
Through a break in the trees, she made out the shape of a man standing. She squinted her eyes. It was him! Seph!
He was holding her potato sack in his hand and looking around for where the sound had come from. She held her breath.
He scanned the woods. His eyes traveled over her. He went back to going through her sack.
She moved carefully through the brush, not wanting him to see her.
He had her ammunition. He had everything that she could use to protect herself and now he was looking through her book.
Now he would know just what she was.
He would have power over her.
NO!
She stumbled, another branch breaking under her clumsy foot.
She didn't know what to do. She couldn't let him see her. She wasn't in any condition to take the book from him, either.
He put the book back in the sack and started walking again. He was heading in the direction of her shack.
She followed him the best that she could. She wanted to see just what he was planning to do.
She stayed at the edge of the woods and watched, only making out his form because she still couldn't see very well and the fever was making her head buzz. She saw him sneak up onto the porch and enter the door of her shack. She lost sight of him for a few moments, then he came out and started walking down the dirt track toward The Bend.
She waited until she was sure that he couldn't see her and she stumbled out from the woods and headed for the shack.
Maybe she could rummage through the rubble that was left inside and find something that she could use to at least lower her fever. She couldn't think straight and she was going to need her wits about her.
She had plans for that girl of Seph's.
She'd have to do it from memory, Seph had her book now, but she thought that maybe she could carry it off.
She walked into the shack and hoped that there was something left in the herb cabinet that would help her.
After all, by not giving Babe Rose his name, Seph had cursed her to limbo forever. It was only fair that his own daughter be cursed.
Chapter Fifteen
Seph trudged up the driveway to the house, his shirt completely soaked with sweat. His breath came hard as he walked through the back door into the kitchen.
He dropped the potato sack onto the kitchen table on his way through to the bathroom. He had to take a shower. He had to get cooled down. He couldn't afford to have his heart take him now.
He went up to the bathroom, turned the shower on cool, dropped his sweaty clothes in the floor and stepped under the spray. As his body temperature dropped, he turned down the water temperature until it was cold against his skin.
Feeling better, he shut the water off. Goosebumps peppered his skin. After drying off, he dashed across the hall to his bedroom to get some clothes on.
As he was coming back down the stairs, he heard someone come in the back door. "James!"
"Yeah, it's me," James called from the kitchen.
Seph walked into the kitchen to find James, white-faced, sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the potato sack as if it were alive.
"James," Seph said quietly.
James raised his eyes--eyes that Seph thought had seen too much, way too much, for a boy his age--and stared at his father. He didn't speak.
"How'd you get home?" James asked, out of the blue.
"I signed myself out and called Matthew to come and get me. Let me finish telling you about this--" Seph waved his hand in the air, "-- this mess that I need you to help me straighten out, then we'll talk. Really talk. Okay?"
James nodded.
Seph sat down across from him. He wasn't sure how to begin. He cleared his throat. James stared at him, unblinking, and Seph wondered if maybe the boy was in shock.
"Did you do what I asked?" Seph asked.
James nodded.
"You dug up the grave." James nodded again. "Where is it?" Seph asked.
"In the truck," James answered.
How was he going to tell James that the babe might be his? Seph thought. He twiddled his fingers. "Um, James," he looked his son in the eye, "that babe--that babe might be mine, I mean, I might have fathered it."
James crossed his arms over his chest.
"Now, I know what you're probably thinking but give me a chance to explain." Seph watched James' face. His expression didn't waver. He'd might as well get on with the telling and hope for the best because he needed James' help to finish this. "One night, a while back," he began, "I went to old Matthew's and got a little loaded. Now I know that you don't like it when I drink, probably because of your mother, and I swear that I'm not going to drink anymore, but that one night, I really got loaded and I couldn't get the truck started and I thought it best that I didn't drive. I probably wouldn't have made it home if I had."
James still stared at him, judge and jury, sitting across the kitchen table from him, a sack of witchery in between them. Seph felt the sweat breaking out under his arm pits.
"Well, that night, I started walking," Seph continued, "I know these woods around here but, being so drunk and all, I got lost. I happened upon this little shack, the one that I told you about over there by Big Hoary Mount, and I was of a mind for somebody to set me on the right track.
"I went up to the shack and I'll be damned if I didn't fall through the front porch, the damn thing was so rotten. Well, this girl, the one that lives there, took me in and gave me some tea. After I drank that tea, my head went really funny. Knowing what I know now, I know that she drugged me with that cup of tea. After I drank it, there wasn't a more beautiful girl in the world than that little girl who lived in that shack. She seemed willing and before I knew what had happened, I was out in the middle of some clearing, stark naked, and the girl was taking off through the woods."
James was looking at him now with an expression somewhere between seriousness and doubt. Seph wasn't sure if the boy believed him or not.
"James, I laid that girl, out in the middle of some clearing that I doubt that I could even find now. I vowed never to do anything like that again, but it kept eating at me," he pounded his chest for emphasis, "and I started drinking heavier. A few months later, I was at Matthew's barn and I hear the girl calling me. Well, I go there, to her shack. Stupid, I know.
"The girl has some kind of hold on me. She tells me when I get there, that she's pregnant with my child, after she beds me again. Well, I'd come to my senses by then and I told her that no, it wasn't mine.
"She cursed me and said I had to give her babe my name. I outright refused, of course."
James spoke up. "How'd the baby die? She lost it, didn't she? It's not full term, even I can tell that. She lost it and you buried it."
"She brought that dead babe to me and just handed it over and said that if I didn't give it my name that it would be cursed and she would curse my family. What was I supposed to do?" Seph got up from the table and paced to the sink. "I buried it. I thought the girl was crazy. I didn't know what else to do." He raised his palms toward his son. "You know what it would have done to your mother. I couldn't call the cops. I couldn't call anyone.
"I did what I thought was best at the time."
James stared at him. "You didn't know that she was a witch," he said, matter-of-factly.
"I don't know what she is, to tell you the truth. You might say that she's a witch. She did curse this family. She outright told me that she was the cause of your mother's death. And the hogs. And probably Cliff, too." He walked back to the table and grabbed the potato sack. "Look what I found, in the woods, out by her shack," Seph said. He loosened the drawstring and emptied the contents of the sack onto the tabletop.
James ran his hands through the bottles, tins, and withered old roots. When James touched the book, Seph saw him cock his head as if listening to a voice only
he could hear. "A book of spells," James said.
"How did you know that?" Seph asked. James hadn't even opened the book. What did James know?
"I just know," James said, shoving the book away like it was offensive.
"James, you know things. I remember when you were small that you used to tell me and your mother things, things that you shouldn't know, but you did," Seph said, sitting down at the table again, "What do you know about this situation?"
"Yes, some things I know, some things I don't, but I know now that we're dealing with a blood-born witch here and I'm not sure if we can stop her," James said. His voice was no longer the voice of a teenage boy. It was the voice of a man.
"Do you understand now, about the girl? You see that I would never do anything like that to your mother, don't you?" Seph's stomach tightened waiting for James' answer.
James' face softened a little. "I understand. If I'm right about this thing, then you wouldn't have had much choice in the matter."
Even though it was on past noon now, on a bright sunny day, the two men sitting at the kitchen table heard the crow of a rooster. Seph looked at James. He seemed to be listening again. His face looked pale. "What's it mean, James?" Seph asked, not knowing what to expect anymore.
"We're going to have to hurry. The crow of a rooster in the middle of the day means there will be another death soon."
"Where's Fern?" Seph asked, fear making his heart do a little dance.
"I took her down to Ms. Creager's so that she could watch over her. Ms. Creager couldn't come down here 'cause she had her grandkids, so I had to haul Fern down there. She was still pretty spaced out this morning and--"
The phone rang, cutting James off.
Seph jumped from his chair and grabbed the phone.
"Hello?"
"Seph Mayhew! You're home," Ms. Creager said.
"I'm better. Is there something wrong?" Seph mouthed the words 'Ms. Creager' at James. James' face went one more shade paler.
"Well, Fernie ain't feeling too well. She's come down with a fever. I was calling to ask James if he knew if I could give her something," Ms. Creager said.