The Witch at Sparrow Creek: A Jim Falk Novel (31 page)

The doctor’s hands moved fast, but Wylene curled with
the pain of the healing; and with her teeth she sheared the leathern bit into
three pieces.

May and the doctor worked for a few minutes to bind up
her wounds while the witch seemed to doze, whether from the shock of the pain
or from the doctor’s medicine, May did not know. Very soon, though, she blinked
her black eyes and started up alert.

“You are a good doctor,” Wylene said, “and you’re probably
right about my special qualities.”

They looked over and noticed the group was staring at
them.

“We have to go back now,” the preacher said. “My wife,
my daughter.”

They all were looking outside of the cave now and into
the snowy night. Far off, they could still hear the animals in the darkness
crying out to one another. Were there more wolves nearby? What else was out
there in the night? Already the snow, even through the trees, had managed a
thick dusting of the ground.

“If we do go back, she can’t come with us,” Violet said,
pointing at the witch, Wylene. “She can’t come with us. They’ll just hang us up
and burn us.”

“Who will?” Jim asked, turning to Violet.

“It’s not everyone in town we need to fear,” the witch
who was not a witch said, standing up. “It’s this preacher’s brother’s wife.
The woman called Ruth Mosely. She means to kill you too, Jim Falk. Violet is
right. The people of Sparrow are scared, but some of them don’t believe in spooks
or demons quite as much as they believe in punishment and power.”

Wylene’s voice grew deeper and trembled when she spoke
the word “punishment.” Violet felt something inside her heart slide in the
witch’s direction. She looked at the witch’s hands and at the tips of the witch’s
fingers. The fingernails there were sharp and white and pointed, hooked something
like a bird’s toe. But where they grew out of the finger was soft and lined and
vulnerable-looking.

“Ruth Mosely was the one who took my thumb,” the witch
said. “Before she came to live in Sparrow. Before she married the preacher’s
brother. She came with”—the witch swallowed—“helpers, and they took my thumb
and they cursed me. They made me old and weak but kept me from death because
they feared my spirit being free in these woods even more than they did my
living body. And they were right to fear. But I am not a witch.”

The witch lifted her veil so they could see her black
eyes and her young, white face, and her mouth was filled with sharp teeth. “You
see,” she said, “Ruth Mosely is the one who is in league. She’s the one with
the old books and the powers. She’s the one that you might call a witch. Not
me. I was born like this, not because I am a witch, but because I am the
daughter of two very different parents. One parent from the earth and the other
from the sky. In the tongue of the River People, my name, Wylene, means . . .”

“Daughter of Earth and Sky,” Jim said suddenly, his mind
putting the syllables together for the first time, and when he said it his heart
jumped. He felt that warm and sweet feeling of the presence of Old Magic Woman.
He felt the nearness of his father and saw the sun rising over his old home. He
had heard Old Magic Woman speak the name of Daughter of Earth and Sky in her
stories. Jim’s chest got warm. What if he were closer than he thought to finding
his father? If the Daughter of Earth and Sky was
hollow
as she’d said to
the preacher, and if she had brought them through that strange, cold dark
tunnel, perhaps she had this power to walk between two worlds. He could hardly
believe what might be.

Jim looked away from the little circle of people in the
cave and remembered Spencer Barnhouse pulling him up off the floor of his home
so long ago. Spencer had pulled him out of the darkness and dreams of grief and
heavy drink and given him things to do with himself. But books and shelves
weren’t things that interested Falk much in those days. He’d wandered. He’d
wandered far off the path.

When the visions started, he’d come back to Barnhouse,
needed things again. He followed the strange call that came to him in the
vision he got from this woman, this Violet Hill, who stood now with the tiny
flakes of snow glittering on her cheeks. She stood there beside this Daughter
of Earth and Sky, Wylene. He looked at the doctor and the preacher and May and
Huck and wondered suddenly how it could be that all these people were here with
him. When Barnhouse found him that day so long ago, it seemed Falk was little
more than a ghost of himself, terrorized by the grief of losing his mother and
father, drowning in whisky and the special magic world of the leaves that he’d
eaten. Too many and too fast. Now he stood inside a cave near this town that
was about to be torn apart.

And all these people.

They had somehow been gathered together with him, and
now he had to help them. The evil that was here in Sparrow was something larger
and darker than he’d ever imagined. He closed his eyes and bowed his head,
searching in there for even the slightest hint of the jitters, anything he
could grasp onto, to help him know the future, to help him know where these things
were hiding, what their weaknesses were, or what they were planning. He was so
close. He looked at Wylene, the Daughter of Earth and Sky, and wondered, he
wondered by what power she had saved them all from the fire and where it had been
when they had walked through that strange, cold, and dark tunnel.
Hollow.

He knelt and opened his bag. He unrolled the little cloth
that held the two leaves that he had left. He picked them up and turned to the
little group of people. Jim put the leaves in his mouth and began to chew them.

“Are those leaves going to help us?” Violet asked him
and breathed a sigh.

“He’s going to try to pick up the trail of the things
that are in the woods other than the wolves,” the doctor said.

Jim took a few steps out into the night and, slowly,
each of them followed until the whole crew of them stood outside of the cave looking
this way and that, waiting. But for what they did not know. The snow fell.

“They’re gone, mostly,” Wylene said, rubbing the place
where the doctor and May had patched up the wound. “There is something, but
it’s weak and it’s hard to see.”

“The other side?” Violet’s eyes opened wide. “What are
we talking about? What are we talking about?”

“Violet,” Jim said, “you were right about that spook
and you were right to call me here, but I can’t rid these things out on my own.
What the witch”—Jim corrected himself again—“what Wylene is saying, is that these
things have a way to come between our world and the other world. Isn’t that
right?”

Wylene nodded.

Violet was not sure what to say next. “A way of traveling?
What are we talking about? So what do we do? Go back to Sparrow now? We go up
in there, where there’s a whole town of people waiting to kill a witch and hang
an outlander? We go back there to try and save them from some spook they don’t
even believe in? You can be guaranteed that Ruth Mosely’s got ’em all rounded
up somewhere. She’s explaining to them all about the witch, about you,” she
said, pointing at Wylene. “See? They believe in monsters, in real monsters and
evil, and witches, and we’re it! At least Ruth Mosely believes that! And Ruth
knows more than the rest of them. Apparently she knows some truth.”

“What truth?” Huck asked. “You yourself don’t even
know the truth.”

“And you do?” the preacher asked.

“Listen,” Jim shushed them, putting his hand out in front
of him. They stood quiet a moment and then they heard it too, a crackling like
sticks and a steady crunching noise. Something was moving and then stopped.

“It’s the snow,” the doctor said. “Look.”

Around them, the snow fell in sheets, already up to their
ankles.

The noise came again, crashing now.

“That’s not the snow,” the doctor said.

Jim searched his mind and squinted in the direction of
the sound, but he was blind to what it was, or what its intentions may be. The
couple of leaves that he’d chewed just didn’t work. He needed more and besides,
it was as if something was blocking his senses. He couldn’t pick up on the
jitters at all. In fact, he felt empty. Only Wylene glowed a faint green.

The doctor and Violet pulled their weapons, Jim pulled
his pepperbox with his left hand, and Wylene stepped slowly up onto the rock in
the center of the group, still nursing her side. They heard a moan. Then, they
saw it.

It stumbled out of the dark woods and swayed left and
right. It looked so pitiful that no one really knew what to do. So they stared.

Whatever it was, it may have once been a man, but it
looked torn apart and put back together again, and where the mouth should be was
a black tube of some kind that sucked at the air as if it were drowning.

“What is this?” Violet shouted, her pointed finger curling
up with the rest of her hand into a pink fist.

May hid behind Huck. The preacher gasped and said, “Oh
no.”

It moaned and extended an arm and pointed at Jim and
moaned again, a louder, high-pitched, rattling noise, and its eyes rolled this way
and that. It was something in the voice, possibly, or possibly something in the
wet flap of yellow hair that stuck out at the top of its head that made them
all realize that this thing that stumbled and leered in front of them had been,
at one time, the chicken man. It stood there dumbly.

Violet marched up to Jim, her finger stuck out at the
thing. “Is this what is happening to people? Are they turning into this? My husband
is dead!” Her face was in a knot. “Is this what happened? Is this what happened
to my husband? He was still alive and turned into what, a monster? Maybe that
monster we burned back in front of Pritham’s was my husband? A demon? I called
you into this town to rid out these things, to get rid of that thing that
looked in my window and to get rid of the fear that lived in the woods and in
the people. But what’s happened? There’s more and more! Look at that! What is
that? We killed something—was it the spook? Was it my husband? Is that what we
burned to smoke out in front of the doctor’s? I thought you’d already killed
the spook, James Falk! Out in the woods and you brought its head and dropped it
down in my lawn.”

The thing moaned again louder and gestured at Jim again.

Violet took in a deep breath and staggered a little.
She looked back at the thing. She looked at the doctor, whose face was wide and
whose eyes were glancing back and forth between Jim and Violet, his mouth open and
quivering as if at any moment he would start talking. The witch, of course, her
face hidden behind the veil, stood stiff and silent.

Violet steadied herself. The snow was filling up the
open spaces now, filtering down through the woods and turning everything white.
Why had she called Jim Falk? What were they going to do now—shoot demons? How can
you shoot a demon? These things are of the Evil One. She felt light-headed; a
dizziness came over her and a sudden thirst.

“What are you going to do about all this evil?” she heard
herself shriek at James Falk.

Violet looked at Wylene, the witch, or whatever it was.
“There is a witch standing right next to you and a demon swaying in the breeze,
but what are you doing? Chewing on leaves and staring at the snow!”

“Violet,” Huck said.

She locked her eyes on Huck Marbo. “I can’t go back to
that house. We can’t go back to Sparrow,” she said plainly.

“Then what?” Huck asked, slowly stepping toward her.
“Then what, Violet Hill? If we don’t have Sparrow, what will we do? Wander in the
woods with the leaf-eater, James Falk? What will we do? May and I? How will we
live?”

The thing let out a wet sigh and Jim moved in on it.
Its face slackened and something like worms swirled out of its tube-mouth and reached
toward Jim. Jim looked at its face, or what was supposed to be its face.

“They must use them, the bodies, and wear them like skin,”
Jim said and looked at the doctor and then at the witch.

“Why is this one so weak?” the doctor asked.

“Well, I don’t know,” Jim said. “Maybe something happened
and it’s starting to kill off all the evil. Maybe something happened when we
got rid of the big one down by your house. Sometimes it can happen that way.”

“Kill all the evil?” Violet pulled the silver pistol
from her side and pointed it at the witch. “You want to kill evil?”

“Violet, no,” Huck whispered.

“You want to kill evil?” Violet took a step toward Wylene
and leveled the gun at the witch’s face. The witch did not move.

“She probably used whatever powers she has to lead this
weird thing here to find us out and tell the others. James Falk, do you even
know what she does? A witch? Do you know what a witch does with the Evil One?
They bathe in the blood of babies and eat their hearts for power! Did you ask
her where the little baby Starkey is?”

At this, the preacher knelt down in the snow and clasped
his hands together and started to shake them in the direction of the sky.

Violet’s eyes moved from Jim to look at the witch. “If
you all can’t do anything about evil, I certainly can! Take off that veil,” Violet
said to the witch. “Take it off. I want to see the face of a woman who’s eaten
up a baby’s heart before I send you back to hell.”

Quietly, the witch reached up and pulled the veil back
from her face. Wylene did not smile, she kept her mouth shut, and her eyes were
closed and her head was bowed.

“Open your eyes. Let’s see if you can catch this bullet,”
Violet said, her hands shaking.

Wylene opened her eyes and Violet saw those eyes, black
and shining pools of oil in the witch’s white face. Violet squinted for a moment
and positioned her hand a bit, getting the aim right for the shot. Then she
looked down the barrel at the witch’s face. The witch was young, her skin was
not cracked and lined, and her nose was not crooked and weird. Violet had heard
tell, though, of these young witches too and what their powers were over men
and what they could do. The witch’s eyes were black, yes, but there was no denying
that there was a softness about them, a softness that even Violet couldn’t
quite put her finger on.