by Josh Kent
She burst out at him, “You and I don’t know! Huck Marbo! You and I! There is no you and I!” She grabbed his face with her hand and whispered, “And we don’t know!”
“Pa!” May came running in the room.
“May! Everything is all right here.” Huck turned quick around to his daughter, who had come running from the back. Her hair looked messed up.
“No, Pa,” she said, “no, not you and Violet.” She suddenly shut up.
Violet sipped her water and her eyes looked around.
Huck stood there and May stood there with her eyes fixed on him. Violet continued sipping, looking back and forth between the two, darting her sparkling dark eyes.
“What, then?” he asked after that went on too long.
May cleared her throat. “Our guest,” she said, “is awake.”
Something made of glass fell and broke somewhere in the shop.
“Who’s your guest?” Violet shot the question quick and took a big sip from the brown mug.
“May?” the outlander’s voice came from the back of the shop. “May?”
Violet froze with the mug in front of her face.
A hole of some kind had opened up in Vernon’s mind. He felt empty. His head felt so empty and he felt alone. He put his hands on his belly. He put his hands on his face. He thought of his home and his fireplace. He thought of his wife. Something had left him, something important and vital, but he couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
The old woman’s eyes were blank, though there was a spark alive, twinkling as if her black pupils were filled with water. Her crooked and clawed hands stretched out in front of her at the fire, the palms wide open at the end of her strong, wiry arms under the brown cloak.
The house smelled bad. There was a sweetness to the stink, but it was the sick sweetness of rot. Vernon could almost get used to it, especially with the fire burning, but it was powerful and thick and the slightest disturbance of the air in the room opened the smell up fresh again.
“Some nights,” the old woman said, “the spirits are harder to get to. That’s just the way it is. Sometimes there is a great power on the other side which blocks them from coming through.”
Vernon felt a sick feeling. “Why can’t you just tell me?” he asked quietly.
“The power to tell is not in me, Preacher. The power to tell comes from the other side.” She craned her head up in his direction, her eyes glinted. “I am just the hollow. It comes through the hollow.”
The fire in the middle of the dirt floor swelled and crackled up to the ceiling. The witch’s eyes reflected the fire as her shadow went jerking up behind her.
Vernon felt a shudder up through his bones. Something crawled up inside him; something dark and cold as creek water spilled up into his neck and his back and his shoulders. The air in the room got somehow thicker and colder too, and there was a tingling in his skin. The hairs on his arms stood up.
The fire bloomed and curled and lit the room. Wylene’s face was bright with the firelight flickering in and out, the shadow of her pointed nose stretching and disappearing across the creases in her face. An arm of fire moved and licked toward Wylene’s outstretched and sharp nailed fingertips.
Another funnel of flame poured out from the fire and swayed toward Vernon.
The witch reached forward and let her fingers play in the flames. “You must do the same, Preacher. You must do the same.”
Vernon shut his eyes and reached out, feeling the tickling fire with his hand. It didn’t burn, but it didn’t feel right.
Vernon could hear a dark voice in his mind now. He couldn’t understand it. It came in like many voices at once, but one all the same, some whispering, some crying. There was one main voice, though—a strong, throbbing voice that stood clear from the rest of them. He couldn’t understand what it was saying at all, but at the same time he felt he’d heard this voice before somewhere. Somewhere in his life . . .
The voice took him wandering through his own memories—somewhere back into his mind. He was just a boy. He was just a boy and that night his mother was crying so hard somewhere in that little house on the hill. In the middle of the night, his mother was sobbing. Was there a voice then too? Was it this voice? That night he got up and went to the window and looked out over the field and saw, through the shadows of the field, a dark shape, something writhing its way to the little house, from out of the woods and to the house and for his mother. His little legs were locked and heavy. It came through the purple darkness, a wicked shadow, to consume him.
“Wylene!” Vernon found himself shouting. A terrible noise, loud as tornado wind, had started up in the room. He was shouting her name over the noise: “Witch!”
The old woman had fallen over on her back, flat out, her arms winged out on both sides in the brown cloak. Her eyes still wide open, her breathing quick and in a panic. Her sharp fingers clutching into the dirt floor of the house.
The fire sparked and shot up and went straight out, embers and all. The room went completely black and still. The noise hushed away. Now Vernon could only hear the quick raspy breath of the witch on the floor.
Then he heard a whispering in the corner of the room. There, in the pitch black and quiet of the house with no windows, in the night, he heard the whispering and saw something glitter there: two tiny pinhole sparks of light where the whispers were coming out of. Eyes.
Vernon prayed to God.
The witch, Wylene, said, “Beside the stool is flint and tinder. Light the fire! Light the fire, Preacher! Light the fire quick!”
Vernon snapped up the flint and tinder and clacked them together. The fire sprang up and he looked in the corner and yelped.
An image was there, burned into the wood of the wall. The image was broken, wild, and raggedy with claws at the end of each arm. It moved. Vernon turned his eyes to Wylene, who was sitting up now and staring in the direction of the weird image.
Vernon’s mind was in a whirl.
“Preacher,” the witch said and straightened herself up. Standing now, she stumbled and leaned against the wall. “There’s an evil here in this place. There’s an evil in the land of this place. It’s woke up. It’s woke up and it’s looking for something. Something that I cannot see. It’s waking up to find it. It’s old, Preacher. This evil thing is old, older even than these woods, or this mountain.” She paused and looked far away off into a distance somewhere beyond the walls of the dark house. “Older even than me.”
Vernon was at a loss. He sat down in the dirt and pulled out his book of the scriptures. Wylene looked at the strange bundle of papers in his hands.
“You may find a way in those writings,” she said and moved toward the stool. She plopped down on the stool, exhausted. “You may not.”
Vernon started to cry.
“Find the stranger, the outlander, and tell him what you saw here tonight. Tell no one else. No one. Not even the magician.”
Vernon screeched at the woman, “Can’t you do something?”
“Nothing,” she said and poked at the fire with a stick. She chuckled a little. “There’s nothing I can do. This thing, the evil thing, it will destroy us all. There is nothing I can do.”
She smiled a sad smile and put her right hand to her mouth to cover her smile. She had no thumb on that hand.
She ran in with a cup of coffee for him, shutting the door behind her. She could hear her pa talking quick and quiet to Violet Hill in the other room.
His right hand was wrapped up in the bandages, and another bandage was around his head. He was sitting up at the edge of the bed, and his shirt was dirty with mud and the blood was crusty on his bandages. She wanted a clean shirt for him.
His eyes were clear and deep and blue when he looked up at her and said, “May.”
“Yes,” she said and handed the white cup to him. “Pa wanted me to bring you a strong cup of coffee.”
Jim Falk took the cup with his left hand and before taking a
sip asked, “Who saved me?” He took a sip. It tasted good to him. “This tastes good,” he said. “Thank you. Who saved me?”
“Mr. Falk, Pa can tell you everything as soon as he’s in here,” she said.
“My hand,” Jim said and looked at his right hand—“who put the bandages on me?”
Jim tried to stand up, but there came up a dizziness in his head. He saw in his mind the canopy of the rainy forest again in the night and felt for a moment the hot breath of the wolf against his face. He sat back on the bed and looked around the room, his mind wandering over the events that occurred.
“Who was that?” He looked at May. She was there, sitting on a little stool by the bed stand. On the bed stand was a bottle. She looked clean. Her square face and her high cheekbones looked strong, her eyes were wide looking, thoughtful.
“Well,” May said, “the doctor who came to take care of you, his name is Doc Pritham, and he put the bandages on you and left with me specific instructions for your care. One of the main ones is that you shouldn’t go trying to stand up so fast right away like that.” She looked at him and couldn’t help but smile, but then she hid it fast. He was back to looking at this right hand with the bandages on it. Then he looked up at her again and they were both quiet for a bit.
“Pritham?” Jim said and blinked and looked down at the foot of the little bed.
It was late afternoon. Some birds outside were chirping in a gray and muted way. There were no windows in this little room and the light came in from the main hall and from the little oil lamp on the side table. There was a warm feeling in the room, a comfortable heat, and the smell of medicine was coming from the brown bottle on the side stand beside May. May’s eyes flicked between Jim’s and the bottle, and the oil lamp, and a little brown cup there with it.
“What’s in the bottle?” he asked, motioning toward it with his left hand.
Questions began burning up in the back of his mind. Where was his pack, his gear, the leaves? “Where are my things?”
She looked at the bottle and then back at him. “Your things? All your things are safe. We’ve got them here. Your gun and everything. Benjamin Straddler brought everything back with you.”
“Benjamin Straddler?”
“Mr. Falk,” May said and her big eyebrows came together, “Benjamin Straddler is the man who brought you out of the woods and down in to here. He brought you straight to us. He’s the one got the doctor along to get you all bandaged up.”
Jim blinked slowly, taking that in. “What’s in the bottle?” he asked again. A stinging pain had started in a gentle way in his right hand. He could tell that it was only going to get worse. Too, he was having troubles in his memory. He couldn’t remember certain things.
Just then, Huck Marbo appeared in the door. “Mr. Falk,” he whispered, “you should lie back down. You should be resting. Once you’ve had your coffee and taken your medicine, you should lie back down and I’ll fetch the doctor.”
“Where’s my gear?” Jim said loud.
Huck put his hands up as if to shush Jim and said, “Now don’t get excited, it’s not good for your condition, you’ve been attacked and had a hard fall. Your gear and things are safe and they’re here in the shop. I’ll have May fetch them for you, but please, for now, just lie back down and rest.”
“Huck!” a woman’s voice called from somewhere in the shop. “Huck! I don’t have any time to wait for you!”
It was clear that the woman was angry. Jim Falk looked sideways at May. The voice sounded like a voice that he thought he remembered from somewhere.
Huck Marbo shot a look at his daughter and off he went in the direction of the voice.
“He’s quick,” Jim said and smiled a little smile—something about that woman’s voice though, and he was tired now. May was looking at him. He should lie back down on the bed and rest his head. Violet, he thought—that was Violet Hill’s voice.
May stood up and quietly shut the door back closed.
“The doctor told me to tell you to stay on your back and to rest as much as possible.” She paused and rolled her eyes to the left, trying to remember. “And you have to drink a jigger of this medicine three times a day. The doctor said that if you have a prayer that you know, it would be a good idea to say it each time before you took the medicine.”
“A prayer?”
“Yes, he said that is important to the cure.”
“The cure?”
“That’s what he said.”
“That’s what he said?”
“That’s what he said.”
She poured the elixir into the tiny brown cup. She handed it to him and he sat up again and took it in his left hand.
“It’s good medicine,” she said and a smile appeared on her square face.
“I want to talk to this doctor.”
Jim smelled the medicine in the cup. It wasn’t pleasant, but somehow it smelled strong and safe. He’d heard of this Pritham, but he couldn’t remember where or when. His head was cloudy with dulled pain. Something of the smell reminded him of Old Magic Woman. Something of the smell touched his spirit. He took it in one swallow and looked at May.
Her eyes were so deep.
Violet saw Huck’s back in the door. He was gesturing, making some sort of quiet talk, but it looked like something important. Violet’s eyes narrowed and she tried to see through him into the room.
What lost her was how Bill and most everyone else in the town could be so blinded to the spook, the demon, whatever it was. She turned to her cup of warm whisky and took a drink. He was a good man and he was a smart man, but she couldn’t understand.
He’d seen it. He’d seen it for sure, and for that matter, so had some of the others. She thought of Jim Falk’s strong face—that light that was coming out of it as he rambled up the road with the spook’s head in the bag. He’d seen it. He said he’d killed it. Had he seen it?
Bill hadn’t seen it, even when it came at him, shuddering across the kitchen and taken him by the head and back.
“There’s a bear in here, Violet!” Bill shouted and blasted shot from his shotgun, shattering wood and glass in the little kitchen.
It was too much for her mind right now. She was pretty sure that it was him—that it was the outlander, Jim Falk, in the back. It was too much for her to think about right now, and she had to get these items back to Bill and she had to get back up to the house. She slid off the stool and steadied herself. She thought of the stranger in the woods who had given her the powders. “Take these that you might use them against the foe, to call the one who is to save you.”
She went back behind Huck’s bar and poured herself some more whisky. She drank it and swallowed it heavy and fast.
She staggered more. The color left her face and she coughed a bit.
She went down on her knees.
She clutched at a leather strap around her neck and pulled up the locket that she wore around her neck. She opened it. It was empty. Her hands suddenly trembled as she stuffed it back in her shirt, but not at once, and not without taking a serious look into it and licking it again to be sure. She was sure and it was empty.
“Huck!” she cried at his back. For a moment she choked quietly and then called stronger than before, “I don’t have any time to wait for you!”
Jim swallowed the medicine in a big gulp.
“That customer sounds impatient,” he said to May.
The doctor’s medicine warmed his stomach and his mind. He watched May getting up and smiling at him and getting ready to leave. There was something he wanted to say to her. He felt so grateful. The throbbing in his hand faded away and soon he found himself floating along a green sky, a cool wind breathing over his body, and then stars and smells of campfire. He was seated by Old Magic Woman’s warm fire outside her tent. She was telling him a story.
“My grandmother was Matrune and she told me of the Big Flood when I was just a girl. My grandmother was said to be misshapen by her past and frightening to look upon
. She wouldn’t come out of her little cave when she talked to me. She made me stand at the edge away from her. She made me burn sage all around me. She wanted to see me. She wanted to sing me her song. She wanted to sing to me her life song, to tell me before she faded from the world. She did not want me to see her, but she wanted to tell me her story. I stood with my back to her. She told me how the big water came crashing and how many were destroyed.”
Old Magic Woman’s hands and fingers waved and rippled out in front of her. “All of them killed by the big, running waters. There were two enemies, though, that came and protected her. It was hard for my grandmother to tell this story.” She stopped and looked deep into the fire, her eyes changed and lazily closed as though she nodded, as though the fire told her something, and continued.
She sang:
“When the morning stars were shining
Shining were the people’s faces
Shining faces by the River
Shining water in their eyes
When the Pishta came from Wydder
They who brought the dying hunger
They who made the brothers sickness
They who made the forest sickness
They, the Pishta from the Wydder
Weak we were the River People
When we called out to Sky Father
When we cried will no one save us
From the sickness of the Pishta.
“But when the water came, when the great one, the Father, sent the waters, Matrune was protected. She had special favor with the Sky Father. Those who protected her took her to a safe place and she slept for a long time in the darkness. She would wake in the dark where it was hot and they brought her food. She said the food was dead things and that it tasted of fear. ‘Matishne,’ she would say, ‘It was fear.’ Her voice was very old, but it was strong and sweet.”
She sang:
“The water rushed and crashed and pounded
Many Pishta drowned in waters
Crashed their bodies into nothing
Water monsters ate their insides
Yes, the water monsters ate them
Many Pishta drowned in waters
Many of the people died there
