The Witch's Grave: A Fever Devilin Mystery

by Phillip DePoy

  “You’re concerned about Truevine,” was my deliberate attempt to return us to the task at hand.

  “You know what a strange one she is,” Rud said quietly.

  “I think there’s more to her than a lot of people see,” I answered.

  I hadn’t meant it to hurt him, but his eyes winced, and he mistook my observation for something more personal. “Agreed,” he said, his voice barely audible above the crackle of the burning twigs. “Most don’t know her for what she is.”

  “She’s a kind of savant,” I offered, hoping to explain my perception of the girl.

  “The point is,” he said, stronger, “she’s off her kilter just a little at the moment and we need to set her straight.”

  “Off her kilter?” Andrews finally stood, came next to me. It seemed he, too, could hear the concern in Rud’s words.

  “Where is she?” I asked plainly.

  “She’s here,” he said. “Close.”

  “Let me talk to her,” I began.

  Rud shook his head. “She won’t see you.”

  “Can you be a little more specific about what’s wrong with her?” Andrews sneered. “Off her kilter isn’t exactly a medical term.”

  Maybe he wasn’t trying to sound snide, may just have been his accent.

  “I’d take care, Dr. Andrews.” The iron in Rud’s voice, coupled with the sudden fact of his knowing my friend’s name, took Andrews aback.

  “I was only asking,” he said hastily.

  “All right, then,” Rud answered, voice still hard, “I’ll tell you. Truevine is convinced that she’s dead.”

  Rud told us he’d been awakened by strange noises in the yard sometime Thursday night. The racket was not one of the ordinary sounds of the place and he sensed something wrong.

  He dressed, got his shotgun, braved the night. It hadn’t taken long to follow the noise to Truevine, sprawled on her parents’ grave, shaking.

  “I tried to speak with her,” he told us, “but she didn’t hear me. I knelt down to touch her, get her attention, and she shot up, hid behind the tombstone. She said, ‘Can you see me, Rudyard?’ She never called me that. I said, ‘What do you mean? Of course I can see you.’ She said, ‘Stay back. Noli me tangere.’” Rud turned to Andrews and snarled, “That’s Latin.”

  “Sort of,” Andrews returned, responding more to pronunciation than vocabulary.

  “It means ‘don’t touch me.’ It’s what Jesus said to Mary after He died.” Rud seemed eager to demonstrate his knowledge. “Jesus didn’t want her to see He was a ghost.”

  “You think Truevine said that because she was a ghost?” Andrews could not keep derision out of his voice.

  “She believes it,” Rud affirmed calmly. He turned to me. “That’s the problem.”

  “She thinks she’s dead,” I checked.

  “Won’t let a soul come near her,” May whispered. “That’s why Rud said she wouldn’t see you.”

  “Well, she’s upset,” I began, “no doubt because of the events of that night: it’s possible she got into a fight with her boyfriend; she may have been witness to a murder. But it’s quite a leap to say she thinks she’s dead. I mean, that’s not the most obvious conclusion.”

  “I can tell,” Rud said stubbornly.

  “Latin?” was all Andrews wanted to know.

  “It’s in the Bible,” Rud growled.

  “Let me just say this again: in Latin?” Andrews was tired; I could hear his stomach gurgle from where I was standing. He was prepared to escalate the argument indefinitely.

  “I think the most important thing,” I interrupted, “is to find her, calm her down, take her back home. Right?”

  I took silence for assent.

  “So,” I continued, “where is she now? Do we know?”

  Glances were exchanged.

  “I’ll take you,” the scarecrow said. “Dog likes me, and the girl gets riled if Rud comes too close.”

  He started toward the exit.

  “Hold it; hold it,” Andrews protested. “I’m not going anywhere until we get a few things straight. First: does that dog bite?”

  “Sure does.” The scarecrow grinned.

  “Don’t you want to go home?” I coaxed Andrews. “If we get the girl, our mission’s accomplished.”

  Andrews considered the options: spending the night in the crypt against braving the darkness with the hope of dinner and bed.

  “Keep that damned animal away from me.” He pulled the coat around himself tightly and jutted his chin in the direction of the exit.

  “All right, then,” I told Rud.

  “If you can get her to go,” he said slowly, “what then?”

  “I’ll see if she needs medical care, get her to her brothers,” I told him, “but then I have to notify the police.”

  “Skidmore.”

  “Right.”

  “I figured that,” Rud said tentatively, “but I meant more about …” He looked around at the small group huddled over the coals and didn’t finish his sentence.

  “Oh.” Every eye was turned my way. “I see. I don’t know what to say. I can’t lie to Skidmore; I’d have to tell him where I found her. And how it happened.”

  “You can tell him I found her,” Rud said, his voice rising. “He knows I’m up here.”

  “Skid knows you’re the caretaker?” My surprise was short-lived. Of course Skid would know; he patrolled the area regularly. And Rud’s secret would be safe with Officer Needle, a trait I greatly admired in my old friend.

  “You don’t need to mention anything else.” Rud’s voice calmed a little.

  “If Skid knows about you,” I said, volume lowered, “what makes you think he doesn’t at least suspect the rest?”

  “Because I’m a lightning rod,” he said. “If I make myself known, they can hide.” His face set itself, granite like the walls. “No one knows they’re here.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” I disagreed. “For one, you remember Hek Cotage? He’s seen things. He’s talked about them.”

  Once again the room fell into a silence that brimmed with tension.

  “Hezekiah talked to you about us?” May said slowly.

  She seemed to know him.

  “Not exactly,” I answered, turning to her.

  “Didn’t think so.” She settled back. “But you never can tell about a preacher.”

  If she was only passing through from Chicago, how did she know Hek and his occupation? I began to put together conversations the group might have had about townsfolk when Rud’s voice stopped me.

  “Reverend Cotage is a special case,” he said, a strange glint in his eye.

  “We know him,” May said before Rud could stop her. “He’s one of us.”

  Rud growled, clearly displeased that she had let it slip. She lowered her eyes instantly to the fire.

  “How do you know him, May?” I took a step closer to her. “What do you mean?”

  She recoiled slightly, and I stopped.

  “May,” I insisted.

  “The story is,” Rud announced from behind me, “that Hezekiah was once, for a very short while, a member of our Adele community.”

  The crackle of the kindling, the smoke that sifted straight upward, took up the silence.

  I turned back to him. “Hek? Lived up here?”

  “He was wounded in Vietnam,” May said softly. “They say.”

  Junie’s ghost story, the way I’d heard it a dozen times, came back to me. Hek had been wounded in the war, wandered, found his way home, married June—a kind of miracle.

  “He came here first, before he went home.”

  “I told you this community has been a part of a hobo network for a long time.” Rud’s pale smile frightened.

  If it was true that the idea had started with my great-grandmother, the gathering of travelers could well have a hundred-year history. Hek had come home from the war less than fifty years ago. It was possible that he’d stayed in the cemetery, gathering strength or
courage before going down to find his future. Maybe he’d kept up an association with the group, continued to visit these people. His ministry was certainly strange enough.

  Before I could completely put together a picture of Hek’s service to the homeless, May struggled to her feet. She opened her coat and pulled the scarf from around her neck. In the dim light I could make out a yard and a half of dirty, torn, peach-colored cloth. Tiny roses dotting the fabric, almost transparently thin in spots. Still, I remembered the pattern.

  May was wearing all that was left of Junie’s wedding dress.

  “I didn’t know Hek when he lived here, of course,” she said, almost to herself.

  “He didn’t live here,” the scarecrow said. “He only stayed a month, they say.”

  “But he comes back every so often,” she went on, as if she hadn’t heard her detractor. “Brings food sometimes, and clothes. Brought me a book to read once.”

  “He leaves everything with me,” Rud said. “Never says a word. Usually just sets it on my porch. About every other month or so. I don’t think anyone knows.”

  I was trying to adjust to the knowledge myself.

  “This was just a square of cloth in a trash bag Rud set in here,” May said dreamily. “But it spoke to me. I got a chance to ask Hezekiah about it one day. I waited on Rud’s porch, special.”

  “She sat there for three days and nights,” Rud explained.

  “He saw me and almost left, but I showed him I was wearing the cloth and he stopped.” May’s voice had turned inward on itself; she was clearly no longer in the room with us. “I asked him did he know what it was, I was in love with it so much. He told me it was the remnants of his wife’s favorite dress. She cried when she threw it away. Hezekiah told me he couldn’t bear to take it to the dump, so he thought someone might get some use out of it, still. And someone did.” She closed her eyes. “You can feel their happiness when you touch it.” She seemed to drift off.

  “Tell him the rest, May,” Rud prompted, his eyes piercing Andrews. “Tell Dr. Andrews what it reminds you of.”

  “In Chartres,” she went on, as if she hadn’t been encouraged, “they keep the Veil of the Virgin, the head wrap Mary wore when Jesus was born. They show it every once in a while, but they keep it hidden in a cave under the cathedral most days of the year. I saw it once. It was yellow, like this.”

  I realized then it must have been May who had given Hek a piece of that cloth a few days earlier, to ask for his help with Truevine. But he was frightened, didn’t know what to do. All he could think of was dropping strange hints to me in his kitchen. I would have to confront him about it. Did June know about his stay in the community? Had he really stayed at all, or was it a part of the legend of the place? The stuff of future research.

  “All right,” Andrews said. It was the only apology he would make, but Rud seemed to accept it. Andrews didn’t seem to know why he was apologizing.

  “I’m more interested in finding out about my great-grandmother,” I said to Rud, “but I wonder if there’s any way to do that.”

  “There is,” he said curtly, “but don’t you think the more immediate question at hand—”

  “Of course,” I interrupted. “Absolutely right.” I turned to the scarecrow. “Shall we?”

  “Wait,” Andrews protested. “That’s it? We’re just charging out into the night with a maniac and a mad dog?”

  “Who you calling a maniac?” the man bristled.

  “I only mean there’s a lot to be answered here,” Andrews insisted, more to me than to anyone else.

  “Agreed,” I said, “but Rud is correct. First things first. We have to find Truevine, help her if we can.”

  “Unless she’s right about herself,” May slipped in calmly, settling back, eyes mesmerized by the orange glow of the coals at her feet. “If that girl’s really dead, there’s not much you can do for her.”

  Ten

  The scarecrow, black dog at his side, took us out of the surreal comfort of Adele and into the darkness of the night. He pulled his heavy brown coat about him, black scarf flying behind him in the cold wind like a broken wing. Autumn sunset was fast and final; evening had fallen hard, still moonless.

  All around, bare tree limbs clattered, high wind slithered through the trees. Leaves dead on the ground were reanimated, danced upward yearning for the air. Bats clicked; dark wings beat the sky.

  Past a row of lurking granite boulders, in the opposite direction from the Angel of Death, our guide took us into a low hollow where the wind stilled and the air was damp. Spiders had spun moonbeams of their own, silver shadows of midnight light stretching from tombstone to statue, ruined wall to gate.

  “This is far enough,” the scarecrow said.

  The three of us stood in the center of a group of headstones, in a circle of old oaks, more protected from the night air. The branches overhead, ink patterns, made a dark vault. I scanned the stone, the fallen limbs, the broken wall twenty feet to our right—no one was there.

  “Where is she?” Andrews whispered.

  “She’ll come,” our guide answered.

  Long minutes passed, shivering. In the silence, every noise was a warning, every sudden movement a threat. An owl, a rat, a leaping toad.

  At last: a low whistle, and the black dog lunged forward.

  Andrews’s breathing increased; my shoulders tensed. I realized I had been grinding my teeth. My jaw hurt.

  A second later she was at the wall, barely twenty feet away. The dog planted himself in front of her, his hair bristling. She was wrapped in a shawl or a blanket that covered her head and shoulders, drooped around her. Underneath she wore a man’s flannel shirt that nearly covered her dress, the third layer. One hand clasped the shawl at her throat; the other held a heavy, gnarled walking stick, Contorted Hickory, a witch’s wand.

  She wouldn’t look at us. Even though my eyes had adjusted to the night, it was hard to make out her features. If I hadn’t been expecting Truevine, I wouldn’t have known who was standing there.

  “These are the ones been looking for you,” the scarecrow said. She nodded.

  “All right, then.” He turned and was gone back up the path.

  Andrews and I looked at each other, then back at the girl. She stood motionless, almost floating in the cold air.

  “Truevine?” I ventured.

  “Hello, Dr. Devilin,” she said softly, as if she were addressing a memory, not a visitor.

  “Can we talk awhile?” It’s what I always asked her when I came to her house to record stories or conversations. I was afraid she might bolt if I was too abrupt. There would be no running after her with the dog in our path.

  “I’d like that,” she answered, her voice still drifting.

  “I understand it’s the gestalt,” Andrews whispered in my ear, “but if I didn’t know better, I would believe that was a ghost.”

  The ether of her voice, the thick shawl, her walking stick: she was the image of a wraith, a wandering soul. Anyone would have thought so.

  “Can we come closer?” I offered.

  She stood mute.

  Stars began to blink between high clouds; the moon was making its first tentative appearance. Only two days past full, it would illuminate the whole mountain within a half hour’s time. We were in the valley between day and night, blacker than midnight, and the stars did little to lift the gathered gloom.

  Without warning Truevine bent, whispered something into the dog’s ear. It shot away like a cannonball. She took a step toward us, paused, sat demurely on the stone wall, still clutching her walking stick.

  “Stay where you are, if you don’t mind.” Her voice was a vapor. “But make yourselves comfortable. I have a tale to tell.”

  Andrews let out his breath, an irritated sound born mostly of hunger and the release of a bit of his tension, trudged over to a fallen branch, sat heavily. The branch complained but held.

  I moved a little to my left: a granite rock, cold, mossy, solid.


  “We’ve been looking for you,” I began, not looking at her, “for nearly a week now.”

  “I know.”

  The air around us sighed sympathetically, trembled the spiderwebs.

  “We’d like to take you home,” I went on, still matter-of-fact. “You know your brothers are worried about you, and the house is a mess.”

  “I’d like nothing better,” she said, her voice flooded with sorrow.

  “Well then,” Andrews said abruptly, slapped his knees with the palm of his hand, and shot up. “Let’s go.”

  The girl, startled, got to her feet and was behind the wall in a blur almost impossible to believe.

  “Damn it,” I said under my breath to Andrews. “Sh!”

  He froze, realizing he was about to chase her away.

  She was poised, ready to fly, glancing backward into the darkness where the dog had vanished.

  “You said you had a story to tell us,” I soothed. “I always enjoy when you tell me your thoughts. I’d like to hear what you have to say.”

  “You need to hear it,” she agreed hollowly. “But I don’t like to say.”

  “Say what?” I said, glancing to Andrews, willing him to sit.

  He sank slowly back to the tree branch, Truevine seemed to relax, though she held her ground behind the wall.

  “I have to tell you what I did,” she went on softly.

  “I wish I had my tape recorder.” The Wollenzak was in my truck. She loved to hear the sound of her voice on it. I was thinking she might be tempted.

  “I always sound so funny on that thing,” she said, and for an instant she was the girl I knew: a smile touched her lips; her tone warmed. There may have even been a blush peeking around the edge of her hood.

  “I have it just over that way.” I pointed in the direction of the truck.

  “No,” she said, her voice dark again. “I don’t think it would hear me now. And what I got to say, it’s not for everyone.”

  “I’ll keep your secret, if you like,” I promised. It was not an idle vow. Keeping secrets was a family pride and a town fetish.

  “I’ll tell you,” she announced.