The Witch at Sparrow Creek: A Jim Falk Novel

by Josh Kent

  May looked at her feet and thought about what Jim Falk had told her as they walked along the path. She saw a dark, sparkling shape in the corner of her mind.

  “Well, Benjamin Straddler is a sick man, and he isn’t right in the head. He’s the one you need to stay away from, May. He’s got something awful in him.”

  May wiped her face and her nose. “Benjamin brought him back, though.”

  There was a quiet moment between the two of them.

  From the little room, they could hear Jim’s breathing coming steadier and deeper now. The town of Sparrow was very, very quiet outside.

  “Pa,” May whispered, “do you think that Benjamin really did all those things? Do you think he ate a wolf alive like he said?”

  “I believe that he did, May,” Huck said. “I believe that he did.”

  Chapter 9

  The men were hollering at each other in the fog.

  Vernon Mosely was with Doc Pritham down by the creek. They were sweeping the creek on the Sparrow side. Huck was up by the wood’s edge near the hill.

  Hattie Jones was spending a lot of time looking at the chicken man’s cart. Samuel sat in the mud beside him or twirled around in a circle looking at the white sky.

  The ground was dark and muddy all over and it was cold because it had, somewhere between evening and morning, frosted. There were marks in the ground all over, paw prints where wolves had been running around Sparrow all night. Here and there were darker places in the dark mud as well. These darker spots were caused by blood. There were strange marks too—long, deep ruts that weren’t caused by the wheels of any wagon.

  Chicken feathers flitted about in the foggy air. Save for the occasional shout of someone when they came across a ravaged chicken or more of the strange marks, hardly a noise could be heard.

  Hattie Jones’s boy, Samuel, looked to be enjoying himself, his face lit up, his smile wide as he looked into the sky. Around him the grim faces of the men of Sparrow, the frowning jowls and the crossed brows, appeared now and again in the fog. The boy smiled and smiled so that some of the men shook their heads when they caught sight of him. Even if some of the men wanted to smile at his sunny face, they didn’t.

  Everyone was looking in the fog.

  Bill Hill and Violet appeared, shambling out of the misty morning, and Hattie saw them and came up to them, pulling Samuel along. Hattie frowned a bit when he saw the sight. The sad thing about the Hills was that Violet was so pretty, but Bill had worn her out. Too many mornings started with Hattie seeing the two of them arguing here or arguing there; sometimes Violet would hide her face as she walked about. Hattie was sure he knew why, but he couldn’t figure out why such a tough and pretty lady would go on staying with a rude-tempered man like Bill, except that he had built up a lot of the town and probably had some money on him.

  “The chicken man’s disappeared. All his chickens too. And his horse,” Hattie said.

  “Horse,” Samuel said.

  Violet was holding on to Bill’s arm and wasn’t looking at anything in particular. Maybe she was staring at his belt buckle or his chest.

  “We just come in to get some things at Huck’s,” Bill said and looked at Hattie.

  “Well,” Hattie said, “everyone is looking. You should help us look. We’re all out here and we’re looking.”

  Bill Hill looked down at Violet and said, “Why don’t you go on to Huck’s and get the things that we talked about? Are you feeling well enough to do that?”

  Violet nodded her head and he let her go, but only after she looked and looked into his eyes and then he nodded his head to tell her to go on. She looked shaken, rickety. Bill coughed and patted his chest and rubbed his left arm with his right.

  “Violet hasn’t been feeling all too well. Now what’s happened here?” Bill asked Hattie and put his hand on his hips and looked around. He looked real tired. His eyes were red and his face unshaven. “The wolves have had their run of the town, it looks like to me.”

  “Well, Mr. Hill,” Hattie said and turned around in a circle. His little white beard flapped on the end of his pointed chin. “Not just the wolves.” He stopped in his turn and looked on up the east side of Sparrow. He squinted his eyes as though he could see through the fog and up into the dark woods on the east hill. He whispered, “There’s somethin’ evil been loosed on this town. Yessir. Some kind of evil spirit has passed right through here. There, look at this.”

  Hattie directed Bill’s face to a spot in the mud where there was a long mark, all crooked and long. “That’s where the thing’s long and crooked tail went draggin’ across the ground.”

  Bill didn’t look right at the mark. He looked near it and his eyes didn’t focus. Bill looked exhausted. When he bent to look, his weight brought him down on one knee into the cold, wet mud.

  He bent there for a minute glassy-eyed surveying the mud; tendrils of fog floated by his blank face.

  Hattie came up to him and put his hand on his shoulder. Hattie could see now on Bill’s back a bandage that had been wrapped tight around his chest and under his shirt. Blood was leaking through it down his back. Bill’s eyes were getting wide and distant.

  “Doctor!” Hattie screamed.

  “Doctor!” Samuel screamed. “Doctor!”

  “No.” Bill choked up some dark spit. “No doctor. I don’t have doctors and I won’t have them putting their hands on me.”

  “We’re getting the doctor!” Hattie hollered. “Come on, Sam, we’re getting the doctor!”

  Hattie pulled his son along behind him by the hand hollering into the fog. “Doctor! Pastor Mosely!”

  Bill winced and raised himself. He felt his stomach get sick as the blood ran thick down along his spine. His heart jumped a few beats and he fell face down on the muddy road into Sparrow.

  Soon Doc Pritham, Vernon Mosely, Hattie, and Samuel were dashing back through the fog, their feet slipping on the ground. The doc’s pack was banging on his thigh as he ran.

  They found Bill face down in the mud. The blood spread black across his back and shoulders under his blue shirt.

  “Turn him. Help me turn him!” Doc Pritham shouted.

  The men reached and grabbed him. “Gently now,” the doctor whispered. “He’s alive, roll him gently.”

  “His wife’s gone off to Huck’s,” Hattie said.

  “Don’t touch me,” Bill said. “Get your damn hands off of me.”

  “You will bleed to death if you don’t do as I say,” said the doctor. “Now that’s enough, men. Did the wolves do this? Have you been bitten by the wolves? Leave him on his side. You, Jones, get the stretcher, and you, Mosely, take this man’s hand and lead him in a prayer.”

  Mosely looked at the doctor and his mouth came open as if to say something, but he said nothing.

  The doctor took a knife and cut Bill’s shirt away. His chest and shoulders were wound tight with a thick bandage of cloth. It was soaked and crusted in blood. The wounds were terrible underneath.

  “The creek smelled funny to me. The water looked dark and rusty,” Mosely said to the doctor as he knelt down beside Bill. “There was a strange quiet down there all along the bank. Was that your experience?”

  Doc Pritham opened his bag. He snatched out a dark brown bottle and a glass funnel and blue bottle with one hand, and with his other hand he clutched Bill’s face and squeezed the lips open. “Yes, it was,” he finally replied to Mosely.

  Bill mumbled through his clutched mouth, “Stop touching me. Get your hands off of me, you. I don’t want no doctors.”

  “Who is this—is this that Violet Hill’s husband?” the doctor asked as he assembled with one hand the blue bottle against the brown with the little funnel between, poured, and then moved his right hand to Bill’s throat, causing Bill to say “Ahhh” and down went the mixture.

  Bill Hill choked, but he couldn’t help but to swallow.

  “It sure is. This is William Hill, from out at the end of New Road. He and his wife Violet live out there and
they were coming to church for years, but in recent years they stopped coming. As you can see, it was especially because of us starting to accept medicine along with prayer.” The pastor lifted Bill’s quivering hand into his own and began his prayer.

  The pastor’s hands were pink and white and the purple veins stood out.

  

  Down by Sparrow Creek it was dark. The sun was barely coming up over the mountain and it was cold from all the rain that had come through. The chicken man was running. The chicken man was running for his life.

  He’d been back up at Huck’s place a few hours ago and it felt like a long time ago now. He’d like to be back even there now. He’d like to be anywhere. He’d like to be hammering together a chicken crate or feeding his horse, Cousin.

  All that racket got kicked up outside Huck’s, and then there was all the howling and that shuddering loud noise and all his chickens went missing. And Cousin had galloped off. God knows what that was all about. Then that Benjamin Straddler went wild and went running off into the darkness of the woods. He was wild. His eyes had gone, all gone, and he took off with his shotgun.

  And then, there was that Simon kid, calm as a cow. His eyes were funny too. They were shiny—shiny as if a happiness was in them deep enough that nothing could get to the bottom of it. It was the kind of happiness that you see in the eyes of a gloated dog. Simon had been knocking back the whisky and not saying much at all. The chicken man was just eating apples and listening. Every time the wolves would howl or the wind would blow against Huck’s shop, Simon got this settled look in him, a look of satisfaction, really a look of peace.

  Who could that be chasing him? It wasn’t a wolf. It was too big to be a wolf. It wasn’t a bear, it was too sneaky to be a bear. No, this had to be a somebody. But if it were just a somebody, then why did the fear clutch at his heart and run up and down his back the way it did?

  The chicken man’s boots slid in the mud by the creek and his ankle turned funny and he toppled. Someone was chasing him hard. He started shouting in the cold, black air, “Whoever you are, I just want my horse. Just don’t take my horse!”

  He was yelling and pulling himself back to his feet. He wasn’t sure if he had hurt his ankle or not.

  The chicken man wasn’t sure what scared him so awful bad. He could sense something, though, about whoever was running after him. He felt dreamy about it, as if whoever it was, they were evil and wiry and they meant to do away with him, do away with him in some awful way, some way that made his knees shake.

  He kept running. The chicken man was completely out of breath, but he pushed on. He pushed on through loose rocks and over mossy banks. He pushed on through deep, thick mud that sucked at his boots in the dark. He pushed on, splashing his soaked feet through veins of ice water that ran into the creek. After a while, he’d cut himself on so many of the tall reeds and the whipping branches and the sand stones by the creek bed, his lungs felt as if they’d blow up, his vision blurred in the darkness. He had to stop.

  He stopped.

  He couldn’t hear anything but his own breathing. His breath came out in front of his face in little white smokes. He couldn’t hear anyone around. He was thirsty and his body, now settling still, began to burn and sting from all the cuts. He’d twisted up his right ankle a lot worse than he thought. He realized this and the feeling in his ankle joint was hot and sick.

  His mouth was parched. He sucked cold air.

  His eyes were wide in his thin little head.

  It was lucky that his legs were so strong from all the chicken runnin’. He coulda rode Cousin far and away from here, though. Where’d he gotten off to? If he hadn’t that horse, he couldn’t make a decent living. Of course, he might always find and buy another horse, but he’d raised Cousin up from a foal and he and Cousin were like cousins.

  It wasn’t right.

  Them wolves might have got to him too.

  But, now, who was this? Who was this following him?

  He got himself down by the creek side and scooped up a cold handful of water and slurped it. It felt good going down his throat. It was icy. He could barely see anything around him. He could hear now the trickling of the water licking the banks. He felt the stings of the cuts on his hands bright as fires.

  The moon was coming out from in between the clouds now, and the creek bed got lit up with blue and green lights from the sky and from the moon. The green moon played in the water.

  There was someone standing there. There they were right there, right there behind the big tree. For a flash he saw their shape and then they disappeared behind the tree. It was a big person, maybe hunched over.

  “Who is that?” the chicken man whispered into the thickening darkness. “Come out of there.”

  A feeling crawled up his spine, that same feeling from before.

  “Come out from behind that tree,” he said. “Come out here and let’s see who y’are! Causin’ an old chicken man to run like hell.” He paused and took a few steps forward and lowered his voice a little. “You’re giving me the jitters standing back there. And where’s my horse. Where’s Cousin?”

  There was no answer, though he thought that he might have heard a whisper.

  “What?” he called and stepped a little closer.

  Again no answer, but something in the wind that sounded like a whisper.

  He moved in closer still to the tree. It was a wide tree that looked as though it had twisted itself over a big, heavy stone. It’s funny how things can grow and live even in places where it seems they aren’t supposed to.

  He saw something.

  “Who is that?” he whispered.

  There was a crackling noise and something heavy shifted in the mud. “Get out here! You’re making me mad! Get out here and show yourself, or I am going to come back there and whop you one!”

  The chicken man hardly ever in his life had felt so angry. All that fear inside him had curled itself up in the back of his neck and he was ready for a fight.

  The moon came out from behind the cloud again and there it was.

  He could see now there was something behind the tree, it looked like an animal carrying another animal on his back or something like that. It reminded him of something he’d seen many years ago at the docks in Hopestill. Men had brought something in from deep out on the ocean, something with horned whips for arms, something alive that seemed that it shouldn’t be.

  He raised his fists and squinted up his eyes.

  But the chicken man hardly got a look when his legs went out from under him and the breath was knocked out of him. Soon he was upside down and his face was wet and hot and he tasted blood in his mouth. Then he was tired and he jerked back and forth. The world felt soft and far away. He thought he could see something looking at him in the dark. He thought he saw yellow eyes, like a cat’s, spinning around. Maybe it was a mountain lion had got a hold of him.

  He could feel something pushing into his neck and heard what must be the bones in his back cracking. He knew without a doubt at this moment that he was being eaten and that he was going to die.

  He had a feeling of relief, and an ease settled into his mind as his vision darkened and all went black.

  

  The doctor and Vernon Mosely took Bill Hill up on the stretcher and took him into the church. Hattie Jones tried to poke his head in the door, but the doctor shooed him out and started into dressing Bill Hill’s wounds. Bill’s back had been torn up pretty bad. It was a strange place for a wolf to bite at someone.

  “That’s a strange place for a wolf to bite at someone,” Vernon said. He took a seat beside the cot they had him on.

  The doctor had redressed all his wounds on his back and had him lying there on his stomach. He was asleep. Whatever that elixir the doctor gave him was, it was something that put him to sleep right away, and with a smile on his face. Medicine is a funny thing, and normally Vernon wouldn’t allow it so openly. He’d allowed it, though, and when some folk found out they’d left the church.
Just as the Hills did. Someone in his position could get into a lot of debate and even be put out of the church for allowing a hand other than God’s to touch the life of a person like this. Vernon let his own ears fall off to protect such a principle; but now, since he had been in Sparrow, there had been some changes in his mind about certain things. He knew too that the doc was a man who didn’t go around telling about things. He’d seen the old doc pretty close-mouthed about a lot of things.

  But this here—this here with Bill Hill, this was something else. The doctor hadn’t said much yet. He’d cleaned him up good and stopped the bleeding. They’d lifted him up and set him down on his stomach. Bill was smiling in his sleep. That was nice.

  Water had passed out of a cup and over Bill’s lips many times. No one had come in or out of the church. There was quiet all over the town. Bill breathed shallow breaths and his face was white.

  No words passed out of the doctor’s mouth and no words came out of Vernon. In his head he saw, over and over, a shadowy stack of wolves, their black gums and yellow teeth . . . five, six of them gnawing on Bill’s back bones.

  A crow cawed outside suddenly. It came to roost in the top of the small church there in the middle of town.

  There wasn’t too much to this church. A few wooden chairs were arranged neatly and looked clean. There was a wooden pulpit with the messiah’s symbol on the front, the arrow pointing down above the arrow pointing up. Then there was Bill Hill, lying there with a smile on his face and his eyes closed.

  “Wolves . . .” Doc Pritham started into the cold air.

  The crow went on. They both crooked their heads and listened.

  “Huh?” the preacher said when the bird quit. Vernon moved in his chair a little. The chair creaked. His mind had gone far away, turning over the things in his mind that had gone on. He was staring at the symbol on the pulpit, heaven touching the earth, wondering when the day would come, wondering when the promises would be answered, among other things. Where was the chicken man? Where was the chicken man’s horse? Where was the chicken man’s chicken? If the powers of darkness were moving again in the world, why did the writings say that they were all but gone? Were they all but gone? Did the writings say that? He put his face in his hands.