The Witch at Sparrow Creek: A Jim Falk Novel (36 page)

“Preacher,” she said, “the scripture you carry in your
sack, the memories in your head, the stories that you tell that people are beginning
to believe are only legends and tales. This is what she’s come to destroy, this
is what she’s called them for, for the destruction of the history of the
Waycraft.”

“It is as I feared, then,” Jim said and turned to the
little crowd of folk in the cave. “There’s a man in the North who’s in league
with the Evil One. The way I figure it, he’s got some kind of hold over Ruth
Mosely and who knows who all else in Sparrow. What they’re out to do is to stop
the followers of the Way. They want to destroy the writings and they want to
take over the churches. They want to reestablish the Evil One here.”

“The Evil One?” the preacher said. “What are you saying,
Falk?”

“There’s no time anymore to figure out riddles and mysteries.
We’ve got to go back to Sparrow and rid out the evil that’s come along with the
Mosely woman. We’ve got to get rid of Ruth Mosely and whoever else has fallen
under her spell.”

“This outlander speaks the truth,” Wylene said. “This
is only the beginning. Sparrow is only one of a hundred different settlements
that are likely under his attack now.”

“Other towns, other churches, other preachers,” the preacher
mumbled to himself.

May and Violet looked at the ground at the same time.
Violet thought about Bill, her husband, the wild things that had taken place
behind their home, in their home. She thought of a clear spring morning when
Bill Hill had brought home rabbits and the evening they’d spent putting together
the table that had sat for so long in the front room of their little house. The
way he’d looked at her with his eyes shining clear and full of life, the way
he’d worried over her when she seemed to be the only one in the little town of
Sparrow who was seeing creatures and having nightmares. The strange man who’d
come from the woods and given her something that he’d said would help her sleep,
and it did help her sleep. That green and yellow powder that she’d breathed and
smoked in cigarettes. Yes, it had helped her remain calm and quiet and pushed
the nightmares to the back of her mind when it seemed that she would split in
two with fear, but she was awake too, awake in her dreams, wandering through
the woods. Calling, calling out for help. She’d seen in her mind a man, a man
with a beat-up hat, a man with strange blue eyes, resting by a gnarled tree in
a gray forest. She’d seen this outlander in her dreams and called out to him
for help. Come down from the North, she’d called to him. Come down to Sparrow.
It wasn’t her that had brought this about exactly, she didn’t know what she’d
wanted, she’d only wanted an end to monsters and nightmares and madness—how did
that Stranger know? How did some strange man in the woods know that she was in
turmoil? Why hadn’t he stopped them from getting Bill? Why had this outlander
been called here only to bring an explosion of evil, demons, and burning
churches, and now in league with a witch and talking some nonsense about Ruth
Mosely trying to destroy some old legends?

Yet, when the outlander mentioned the man in the North,
an odd feeling had come over her. Something in the back of her mind seemed to
be suddenly looking at her, listening to her thoughts. There was something that
tingled there in her mind when that outsider was mentioned.

“Varney Mull,” Jim said and looked at Violet and the
group as if he’d heard Violet’s thoughts, “Varney Mull is the name of the man in
the North who’s in league. I came through Sparrow to hunt down the last of his
men. If you can call them men.”

“Then all the teachings are true?” the preacher asked.

“Strange question to be coming from the preacher,” Huck
said. “I’ve never heard of some Varney Mull. I’ve never believed in none of
those stories, but I can tell you this—something is happening here. I am not going
to leave my shop, my house, and everything I’ve ever worked for in the hands of
some woman who’s burned down Sparrow church and plans on taking over my
hometown.”

“She has the Evil One on her side now,” Jim said. “It’s
not just a question of wandering into town and asking to get the town back.
We’ll have to kill her. We’ll likely have to kill her and anyone who’s in league
with her. The kind of evil she spreads is worse than any kind of spell or hold
that a witch could put on someone. She’s spreading belief. They’ll be men and
women of Sparrow who believe she’s the one looking out for them. They’ll be
willing to put their lives on the line for her. Because the alternative she’s
presented them with is too frightening.”

“The doctor?” May said suddenly from the entrance of
the cave. Violet squeezed May’s shoulders again, “Where is the doctor? Jim Falk,
where is the doctor?”



Benjamin Straddler had been thinking hard at Huck’s bar.
It was all empty now and he was all by himself. Just the pictures on the wall
were there. Just the bottles of booze behind the counter. Just Benjamin Straddler
was there. There he was, sitting there with a bottle of booze in his hand. He
hadn’t drunk any of it, though. He was just looking at it. He was making a
choice. He’d been listening to the wolves again and he was making a choice.

Hattie Jones had gone out of there a while ago. He’d
said three days in a row that he and that boy of his, Samuel, were going to leave
Sparrow, leave Sparrow and never come back. Maybe that’s what he went to do.
Though he’d been saying that was what he was going to do three days in a row.
Hattie had managed to stick around to watch all the things happen—the church
burning down and everything else. Hattie was right about one thing, though.
That Mosely woman did seem to all of a sudden have a lot of people running to
and fro doing whatever it was she wanted done. Benjamin sat there and chewed on
his cigar and looked at the brown bottle of whisky in his hand. He thought
about Lane. He thought about Dandy, that little horse, he thought about his pa.
He knew that he would see his pa again. He thought about all the stories that
he’d heard in the church growing up. He felt something warm and far away, but
close too, in his chest. He could almost smell those old warm days sitting in
the wooden benches at the church. Listening to one of the men tell the story of
how a great leader would come one day to earth to rid out all the demons and
set people free from their slavery. Those were old stories, though, and who
knew if they were true or not? All Benjamin Straddler knew was that when he’d
picked that outlander off the ground and saw his face, it wasn’t the
outlander’s face. It was the face of his father, somehow reaching out to him,
reaching back from wherever he was, saying, “You will see me.”

Now he had a decision to make. What would he do about
this little town and about his wife and about the people who were so desperate
to hang on to life?



Dawn was coming. The wolves had stopped baying some hours
ago. Whatever happened in Sparrow that night, if the wolves had killed them
all, they would know soon enough.

Wylene looked from the mouth of the cave and down into
the valley below. As the dark turned gray with the rising sun, she could make
out the trail of smoke that still went up into the sky from the burned-down
church, but there was another. Too, there was a foul smell that blended in the
wind. What had become of this little town?

Wylene had seen them come and build this place. She
had watched from the trees and the caves and the riversides as the people of Sparrow
had moved in from the West. Watched them live and die and sing and fear. She’d
seen the way the killers moved in not long after they did. Indeed, she’d fought
alongside many of the Katakayish people when their numbers had been larger in
those early times, when they had fought together against the killers. Her hope
had always been to rid them entirely from this land and to let the Katakayish
people, the River People, grow strong again. And to let these new people grow
strong, these new people who had come so far because there was no place for
them in this world—wandering and superstitious men and women who built sturdy
houses and had laughing children.

But the evil was old and the evil was strong in the land.
When Ithacus Falk came here, to the West, he’d done much to rid many of the
evils along with the one they called Old Magic Woman, but they had not done enough.
While Wylene had been under the Wastrel spell of Ruth Mosely, it had grown up
again. What would become of this little town? What would become of the people
of Sparrow? Wylene knew of towns that had been completely wiped away by the
Evil One and the killers.

Jim Falk appeared beside her in the dim light.

“Have you buried him?” she asked.

From inside the cave, they could both hear May weeping
and Violet trying to comfort her.

“I can hardly call it a burial. When this is over, we’ll
do it proper,” Jim said and held up the doctor’s bag and jingled it a little. “Do
you know what to do with these?”

“I know very little about those kinds of medicines. I
do not know how to make specials and elixirs and I do not know how to use them
properly,” Wylene said in a flat voice.

“Neither do I,” Jim said. “There is a man in Hopestill
by the name of Spencer Barnhouse who may be able to help with them. If he’s
still alive. And there is another who may be able to help us, but I have not
seen her for many years and I do not know if she still lives.”

“She?” Wylene asked.

“Yes,” Jim said. “She was one of the magic women of the
River People. She taught my father the Waycraft and they both tried to teach it
to me too. But I was not a good student and she left me alone. She said that
she could not stand by a son who had so much fear that . . .” Jim spoke no
more, but looked over toward the piled-up rocks that marked where the doctor’s
body was.

“Perhaps this magic woman still lives, Jim Falk,” Wylene
said and turned her eyes away from him.

“What do you know of her?” Jim asked.

“I am not sure that I do, but I do not think that you
should give up hope,” Wylene said.

Jim nodded. “We’ve got to get back down to Sparrow and
see what’s been done. If it’s still there and we need to deal with Ruth Mosely.”

The preacher came out of the cave, followed by Violet
and May and Huck Marbo. The snow was still coming out of the sky. It sputtered
this way and that in the hard winds against the rocks and cold trees around
them. The sunlight was coming, but it was grayer than white. It was coming
slowly and May was rubbing her eyes. She could not stop sobbing.

“There, there, little one,” her pa said to her and pulled
her close to him again.

“There is too much death in life,” Huck said to Jim,
looking him in the eye and then looking back down at his daughter’s head and her
brown hair.

Jim looked down into the valley and nodded to Huck. “There
will be more and more death if we do not do something.”

“What will we do?” the preacher asked. “What about my
wife and my daughter?”

“We will see,” Jim said. “Huck, you might want to take
May and get her safe up in your house. Violet, you too, you may want to stay
safe with the preacher as well. Do you think that you can all make it to Huck’s
house?”

“I’ve only got a few more shots with this,” Huck said,
raising his shotgun.

Violet said, “I’ve got enough in here and in my pockets
to get us there. I’m a good shot.”

Jim reached into his pack and pulled his Dracon pistol
and loaded it and gave it to the preacher. “It’s only going to fire once,
Preach, but that will do the trick. You gotta wait until they get real close
and then pull the trigger. Wait until they’re right up on you and then aim
right at the face and pull this trigger. Aim at the face.”

The preacher held the gun and made a frown. He pointed
it out in front of him as if he were pointing it at an enemy and frowned again.
“Yessir.”

“If we head down along the southern trail and up toward
the back way,” Huck said, “we should be able to avoid anyone from the town
until we’re right up on the town and in back of our house. Stay close, Preacher,
Violet. Here we go.”

“Take this,” Jim said and handed over the doctor’s pack
of medicine, unctions, and specials to Huck. Huck looked at it and handed it to
Violet. Violet looked at it and handed it to May.

“May, you’ve used some of those before haven’t you?”
May nodded, but tears were splotched around her eyes. She clutched the bag.

They headed down the mountainside. Huck was in the front
and Violet was in the back. May looked over her shoulder at Jim Falk and the
witch until they were beyond the first ridge. May still couldn’t quit crying.
Her nose was red and her face was red. She thought about the doctor and squeezed
the bag, his hands, the way they moved so fast to help. She squeezed at the bag
in her arms and wondered if her hands could ever do the same.

After they were out of sight, Wylene looked at Jim Falk
and Jim Falk looked at Wylene. The two looked at each other for a long time.
Wylene lifted her veil and removed it from her head and walked over to the
large pile of stones beneath which lay the body of Dr. Isham Pritham. She put
the veil on the two sticks that Jim had drawn together to symbolize the meeting
of heaven and earth, the crossway, the splitway. She spread her veil across the
two crooked sticks like a web.

Then these two walked together down the crooked way that
wound along from the cave to Sparrow by way of Sparrow Creek as the sun rose.

The snow had fallen so heavily in the night that it had
come down through the trees and even piled up in big patches along the beaten
paths that led along the creek and back into Sparrow. Jim and Wylene made their
way as quickly as they could, but the snow was deep and cold and the wind cut
through the trees and many branches scratched at their faces. Too, the sun was
rising so bright and white that they were squinting and seeing orange and red
and huffing along. It was hard going.