by Josh Kent
He picked out a leathern bit and placed it in her teeth quickly and moved his fingers away, trying to ignore the fact that her mouth was full of neat white points and fangs.
“Do you want me to hold your hand?” May asked her.
Wylene reached her clawed hand to May and the two held tight. May was surprised that she did not feel the pinch of the witch’s talons. May was waiting for the strange feelings and the visions to come again. May closed her eyes, but all she could hear was the witch trying to catch her breath.
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.
It was then that the thing came bounding from the edge of the wood and toward Violet. It was so slow and had so much trouble getting itself moving that it was almost comical to see it blundering along and hollering at Violet. Violet turned away from the witch with her gun.
“I think it’s trying to tell us something,” the witch said. “Nevertheless. Evil is evil.”
Violet’s gun exploded in the night and the thing toppled backwards. It dropped to the ground, but its head fell in a different place. Jim had lunged from behind it, his hatchet cutting clean through its neck in one blow. Then Wylene moved from the rock and made a waving motion with her hands, and the two separate pieces of the thing burst into green flames and spewed a black smoke into the air until there were only ashes and melted snow. Wylene panted.
They all looked at the pile of ashes, then they looked at the witch, and then they looked at Violet. She was looking at the pile of ashes too and her mouth quivered and her eyes were watery. The snow was coming down around her red hair and she was crouched on the ground, bunched up there, sobbing now.
“Violet,” Jim said, “I am sorry about your husband, about Bill.”
Violet waved her hand at them as if her hand would make them all disappear. She threw her gun into the snow. She turned and didn’t look at them. Picking up her skirts, she began trudging through the snow back in the direction of Sparrow.
Huck shouted after her: “Violet! Violet!” He looked at May with wide eyes.
Huck looked at Violet walking off and looked at May again and then ran into the woods after Violet. May took a few steps closer to Jim Falk and Jim looked down at her fac
e.
“What was that thing?” the doctor asked Jim.
“I don’t know,” Jim said.
“Why did it look like that? Like the chicken man?” the doctor asked.
The witch pulled her veil back down over her face and grasped at her side again and sat down. “That thing was very likely an eye.”
“An eye?” the doctor said.
“A way for them to watch us,” Wylene said.
Jim looked around but couldn’t see or sense anything at all. Even with the leaves, the last of the leaves running in him, he couldn’t sense a trace of the killers or even feel the slightest vibration of the jitters. He hadn’t felt much when the ‘eye’ had arrived, or now. He wasn’t sure how much use he was going to be against these things if they came in force.
“There’s nothing else here,” Jim said.
“No,” Wylene said, “but someone is watching us. Someone has likely been watching you since you came down here from the North. He will come soon.”
“He?” Jim asked wondering if Wylene knew anything of Varney Mull or anything of Hopestill.
“Yes. He will come to establish his ways in the little town,” she said.
The doctor looked down at his boots.
“James Falk, maybe it’s not my place, but my pa, Violet, you’re going after them, right?” May asked.
Jim didn’t answer, but kept looking into the woods as the wolves yipped and yipped here and there.
“Witch . . . Wylene,” Jim said, correcting himself, “take the preacher and May Marbo and get them back into the cave. Keep that fire going, but keep it small. We’ll go after those two.”
Wylene stood and the three started making their way up the hillside, May holding onto the preacher, the preacher with panic on his face. They were all looking this way and that, listening, waiting for something to lunge at them from the darkness.
