The Curse of Crow Hollow (35 page)

-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 the 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.

When Maris said she was going to revival, Danny said fine. She had kin in Wilson and Scarlett, a history in the Holler, and that was something Danny didn't share but was grateful his wife could possess. But he wouldn't be going to church that week. It was the hypocrisy, yes, but it was also his belief that religion turns to something else when paired with fear and hate. By then, plenty of both had taken up residence in town.

He was sitting in front of the TV watching a rerun of
The Twilight Zone
when the gunfire started. He didn't hear it at first, or thought it was young'uns shooting off some firecrackers.

It'd been a long week. There'd been no new cases of what Danny had taken to calling Teenaged-Gotta-Fit-In-Disorder (privately, of course, and to Maris alone), but none of the girls were getting better either. The sickness had stopped spreading. That was good news worth spreading, but then all everybody wanted to talk about was Alvaretta Graves and, now, her dead husband, Stu. It was a mess, that's what Danny'd said to Maris. A sorry mess.

More shots. Not firecrackers.

He muted the TV and got up, wincing at the crick in his back, and flipped on the porch light before stepping outside. The sounds were coming from town. The first thing he thought was the only word he mumbled—

“Maris.”

He'd turned to go back inside for the car keys when he saw them—horseshoe marks burned into the ground. Coming straight off the road and up his gravel drive. Right to the porch, where they turned and went back.

Danny Sullivan let out a whimper. He ran a shaky hand through his white hair. There were other houses down that way, Wilson's and the Fosters', but they were all at revival. That was good, because the doctor had begun to panic.

“No,” he said. “No, no, nonono. Why did you do this, Alvaretta?”

Gunfire again. And now voices, coming from up the road.

Maris would have to wait. Danny hated the thought, but she couldn't find what had crept up to their door and neither could anyone else. He ran inside not for the keys to the car but the keys to the small garden shed in the backyard. A rake was all he could find. That would have to do. Danny only hoped he could cover the tracks before anyone saw.

XI

John David arrested. Cold. A new deputy. Alvaretta prepares.

-1-

By eleven that night, the only person who didn't know Alvaretta Graves had loosed her demon was creeping along an old service road that wound its way through miles of trees and river bottoms between the Holler and the little burg of Camden. Wasn't much of a run for John David that night. Half the bed of his truck had been empty when Chessie sent him off; he'd had to be careful the whole way down from the mountains to keep the jars from jostling. Wasn't even worth the gas money, taking that small a load out. Then again, John David knew it wasn't a run Chessie wanted. No, all that woman had in mind was getting him away. Away from the Holler. Away from his daddy. Just away. Which I guess speaks a lot on why John David had taken up with the Hodges after he come back from the war. Chessie and Briar might not've been what you'd call one of Christendom's bright lights, but she understood that boy. She understood that boy better'n anybody.

He drove without headlights, as Briar had always instructed. It was as dangerous as it was pointless (in all John David's trips back and forth to Camden, not once had he seen another living soul on that old service road), but he enjoyed being part of the night, blending into all that darkness. It gave him time to think.

Chessie had called that afternoon to say they'd dug up Stu Graves. It'd been a crazy notion to John David that Chessie
and the rest of the town (not to mention Medric) had agreed to do something like that. Crazier still that Stu's coffin had been empty. I wouldn't say John David believed all the stories of the witch, at least not right off. I wouldn't say he thought Alvaretta had even raised up her husband. But all the news of the day had done one thing, and that was to further convince John David of what he'd come to know as true—every time you say the world can't get darker, it finds a deeper shade of black.

I expect that was the thought on his mind when he slammed the brakes halfway to town and flipped the headlights on. Up ahead, just at the outer edges of his sight, something had walked across the road. Not a deer (unless there was a deer in these mountains who'd learned to walk on two legs). Not a man, neither. He crept forward and took his hand off the gearshift, reaching for the sawed-off on the passenger's seat.

Nothing. Nothing there.

Just the moon more than likely, nearly full and easing in and out of a bank of low clouds over the mountains. That didn't explain why John David's knee was twitching, though, or why the hand still on the steering wheel had begun to flex. He put the gear back into drive and switched off the lights. With no jars to worry of breaking in back, he stood the engine up to thirty and kept an eye on the rearview. Up ahead, the road curved and rolled over a small hill that led on into the Holler. And on the other side of that curve, a pair of headlights flashed on.

He rounded the turn, and there John David stopped. A heavy man stood basked in shadow between the headlights, waiting. A shotgun rested on his right hip. The barrel pointed high and out.

The man hollered, “Take what you got and put it through the back window.”

John David reached onto the seat beside him and eased the shotgun through the little square of open glass behind him. It
clunked into the bed. The pistol tucked under the driver's seat stayed put.

“That it?” the man yelled.

“All I got.”

“You promise?”

John David wrinkled his forehead at such a question. Almost like it'd come from a child. “Pinky swear,” he called.

The man moved away slow and easy, like he expected an ambush. John David strained to see who it was. He didn't recognize the face until Bucky stuck his head through the window.

“Say, John David.”

I don't know whether John David wanted to laugh or reach under the seat and shoot Bucky where he stood for scaring him so bad. “What you doing out here, Sheriff?”

“About to ask you the same thing. How's things in Camden?”

“Didn't go to Camden.”

“Sure you did. Camden's the only place this old road goes. What? You think all of Chessie's secrets are hers?”

John David cocked his head. “What you doing with Chessie's shotgun, Bucky?”

“That don't matter right now. John David, I'm placing you under arrest.”

He tried grinning. “You serious? What's the charge?”

“I'll think of something,” Bucky said.

“You can't do that. Chessie's got an agreement.”

“With the mayor, not with me. Things has happened in the Holler. I expect Chessie and Briar are both plenty busy at the moment.”

“Heard about y'all's little trip to the cemetery.”

“And what we found?”

John David nodded.

“Well, more's happened since you been out . . . riding around. Stu came to town, John David. During revival. Left
his mark all over the place, and it's the same tracks Cordy and her friends found. There was a fight. Ruth Mitchell got shot. She's gone.”

John David leaned back into the seat. “Ruth's dead?”

“She is, and ain't nobody gonna know who did it. People's shooting at anything that moved, saying Stu was everywhere. So come on, you're under arrest.”

“Bucky, none of this makes sense.”

“You'll follow me. I'll give you that mercy rather than taking you in the car. Stinks in there anyway. But you get a notion to take off, you'll have more than me to answer to. I'm tired, John David. I'm tired, and I'm scared. So don't give me no trouble. Please.”

John David could only look at him. “Where we going?”

“Jail, I guess.”

“Bucky, we ain't got no jail.”

The sheriff tapped on the door. He turned and started walking back to the Celebrity.

“I'll think of something,” he said.

-2-

Wasn't a doubt in anybody's mind Stu Graves walked through town that night. Never mind how impossible it seemed, or how he'd managed to grow horse feet in death when regular feet was all he'd had in life. When all you got is the impossible, that's what you believe. Then was this: There were too many hoofprints covering the area between the grocery and the church and on to Doc Sullivan's house. Too many for only one demon to make, anyway. That meant either Stu'd been walking around the Holler a good long while as everybody sought the Lord inside the church, or he'd brought some friends along from the
grave. You can bet Bucky thought it was that second one, else he wouldn't have left family and friends to go after John David.

But such things didn't matter to those still in town. What mattered was Stu had been
seen
. Not just by Landis and the Reverend but by others as well, and they'd all swear to it on a Bible. After all the shooting was done and the demon (or demons—I'll leave that for you to decide, friend) was gone, people found some of those tracks led straight to the cemetery. Right to Stu Graves's empty plot. I know that myself, and I'll tell you it bothered Reverend Ramsay something awful. It was almost like Stu'd been dragged back to this world against his own will, and now he was pining for the death he once had. Reverend told Belle later he couldn't shake the feeling that by raising Stu up, Alvaretta had cursed her husband right along with everybody else.

I'll tell you another feeling nobody could shake that night—the only reason Stu disappeared agin was because he'd accomplished what Alvaretta wanted. Someone had died. The first shot in the war between the witch and the Holler had been fired, and the bullet had struck one of our own.