The Witch's Grave

by Phillip DePoy

  “About this perspective shift.”

  “What about it?” He appeared at the top of the stairs in his robe, drying his hair.

  “What if the events of Thursday night didn’t transpire the way we think they did, the way Skid outlined?”

  He stopped rubbing his hair, his voice weary. “In what way?”

  I turned the stereo down. “What if Harding Pinhurst wasn’t the victim?”

  Four

  “Christ, he’s the dead one,” Andrews insisted incredulously, lumbering down the stairs. “Of course he was the victim!”

  “We don’t know he’s the only one dead.” I lifted the needle, turned off the stereo. “Truevine’s missing; no one knows where Able is.”

  “But in this case the definition of victim—”

  “You know,” I said, “a hot shower does sound good. I hope you didn’t use all the water.”

  An expletive exploded from Andrews that made the house creak. He returned to his room.

  “Why couldn’t you look at it another way?” I said, climbing the stairs after him. “Harding was angry enough to attack Able, Able defended himself, Harding fell down the hill, hit his head, Able panicked, now the Deveroes are out for blood, so Able’s the victim.”

  “You’d panic, too,” he shouted from his room, “if the Deveroe boys were after you!”

  “They saved my life last year on the Devil’s Hearth.”

  “They didn’t mean to,” he corrected, showing his face in the doorway to his room as I hit the top of the stairs. “It was a coincidence they happened to be up there looking for snakes to sell Hek. And it still doesn’t make Able a victim. Yet.”

  “You’re right about the Deveroes,” I admitted. “I’d be nervous if they were after me.”

  “I shudder to think.” He disappeared again. “But Harding’s the victim here. And he was stripped naked. Damn.”

  A shower, a sweater, and a swig of apple brandy launched Andrews and me into my truck, on our way to the city graveyard.

  Our cemetery was a fair resort for the many members of the community who chose not to be buried in their own gardens. The city yard had begun as an attempt at respectability. The town would no longer be a crass colonial settlement; we would have a proper park for repose of our departed.

  The notion allowed larger families to purchase grand multiple plots, hoping to lead the way out of our dark past as superstitious hill people and into a shining future of sophisticated citizenship. Eighteenth-century Newcombs led the way buying acres of terraced solitude. June’s family, prominent in dry goods, had bought some of the last available parcels near the beginning of the twentieth century. The idea lost its luster after that, when so many families gave sons to world wars. A child lost so far from home was better buried near the house.

  Some of the older families clung to their plots, but the place was kept in business at the beginning of the twenty-first century primarily by people without families: orphans, childless spinsters, lost souls, criminals, non–church members, strangers, or blackbirds. Huge bats were the rumor, but aggressive ravens were more likely to swoop a visitor.

  The entrance was easy to miss. A once-impressive granite arch had been rendered invisible by poison ivy. The road past it, less traveled than any other in the county, was little more than tire ruts in wandering weeds. I had visited many times as a boy walking over the mountain and coming in the back way, but I couldn’t ever remember approaching it correctly and almost missed the gate.

  The sun was setting on the other side of the mountain; black shadows spread across the narrow road through the yard. Truck headlights did nothing to dispel the darkness, only disoriented the eyes. Low branches of ancient juniper swept the truck’s doors as we drove past, grasping at the handles, whispering to the windows.

  Wind clacked bare limbs of a dead oak ten feet from the road; a shudder of wings shook the air.

  “You’re certain those aren’t bats?” Andrews rolled up his window all the way.

  “Crows.” I watched them take to the higher branches of pine.

  “Whatever they are,” he muttered, taking a sip from his personal bottle of apple brandy, “they’re big enough to carry the truck off if they wanted to.”

  It was difficult to see tombstones; I thought there must be more deeper into the cemetery. Hek would have walked by the northern edge going home; I headed in that direction.

  “Keep an eye out,” I reminded Andrews, already a little lax from drink.

  Remembering his duty, he reared his head up, cast a sullied glance around. Without warning he grabbed my arm, sloshing his drink everywhere.

  “What the hell is that?” he gasped.

  High on the slope to our right was a flying woman. I hit the brakes; the truck skidded to a halt, slightly sideways.

  A second later, realizing she was frozen in the air, I let out my breath. “The Angel of Death. Biggest statue in the park.”

  “They don’t really call it that,” he whispered, shaking his head.

  “Ours is a happy little community, don’t you think?” I resumed driving north.

  “Seriously, that’s the name?”

  “The Angel of Death,” I assured him. “It was ordered from a company called Revelation Statuary, in South Carolina. A reminder God’s harvest is continuous; today you’re here on a visit; tomorrow you’ll be back as a resident. Now if you could manage to be a little more alert and a little less arm-grabbing, we might not end up in a ditch. Like to spend the night here?”

  “Christ.” He put the stopper back in the bottle and scoured the area with his eyes. “Don’t tell me anything more about this cemetery, all right?”

  We rolled past the statue, the road all but vanished. Only an ancient memory of sunlight lit the higher rises of the yard. Bending gnarled branches made the way more treacherous, and at last I was forced to surrender, stopping the truck.

  “What are you doing?” Andrews locked his door.

  “There’s no more road. I want to see the place where Hek passed by.” I opened my door, reached under my seat for the flashlight I always kept there. “I think it’s a short walk over that way.”

  “Why don’t we come back tomorrow?”

  “Because tomorrow,” I reminded him, “we visit the Deveroes.”

  He offered an unrepeatable remark, leaned against his door, sloshed out his side.

  The grass was tough despite the recent rain; my flashlight was no more successful illuminating our way than the truck’s headlights had been. Twilight in a cemetery will not be ruled. Artificial light is made for more defined darkness, not the vagaries of time between sunset and night.

  Blackberry brambles tore at our ankles. Fairy beggars, I had heard them called: they feel like thorns snagging the cuffs of your pants, but they could just as well be nature folk tugging, asking for a handout. Without the slightest genuine belief in such an idea, some old-timers still tossed a penny into a thorn thicket. Giving money to the fairies was not, they clearly advised, done for reward. The only benefit was that the fairies would consider leaving you alone. As much to impress Andrews as to indulge my heritage, I reached into my pocket and tossed a penny into the blackberry canes.

  “What was that?” He jumped.

  I explained; he drank; the wind picked up.

  We made our way up a small rise, pine filling the air.

  Night came on.

  A curtain dropped over the sky, it happened in an instant, and the flashlight bit into the blackness in front of us. The world was transformed. Every sound was amplified: crickets were deafening; tree frogs tore the fabric of night; shaking limbs above us rattled thunder. Every sound in darkness is more important than a prayer.

  The occasional white tombstone leered as we shuffled past, but that part of our graveyard was populated chiefly by night noise, drying weeds, a canopy of bare oak. As swiftly as the sun had gone, the moon came up over the mountain. The landscape was dusted silver, separated from its previous mien by time, not distance�
��the exact amount of time it took for day to exhale its last breath and die past the western horizon.

  Moonlight ran like water over the slope; we waded through it to the top. Below us on the other side of the slope was a dark valley scar, a place where nothing grew. Rocks and dead clay, a gash across the face of the earth, lay splayed in lunar autumn.

  “Christ.” Andrews stared down at the desolate patch. “Why is it so bare down there?”

  “Combination of red Georgia dirt and erosion,” I answered, shining light across the crags. “Some places get ruined, never come back to life.”

  “No wonder this spot was chosen for a graveyard.”

  “This was all Newcomb land,” I said. “Jeribald sold most of it when he moved his family away.”

  “The incest Newcombs? with The Newcomb Dwarf?” Andrews picked up his pace. “This keeps getting better. You don’t live in Blue Mountain; you live in Amityville.”

  “On the other side of those rocks is the far edge of the cemetery, where Hek saw his ghost.”

  “Truvy Deveroe.”

  “I believe so, yes.”

  We made our way over the boulders and the slipping gravel. A barbed wire fence ran the ridge, a worn path the other side of it. I moved the flashlight slowly over the undulating land: more boulders, moss, brown sticks once wildflowers. A corner of fencing bent where the property ended, cradled a number of grave markers, green in gray, the most we’d seen.

  Unknown Vagrant, died of hunger, 1858

  Eloise and Davy Deveroe, together once more

  My wife Sarah, gone to angels without me, 1803

  Russell Pike, good patriot, better father, killed a wild boar and seven Britash [sic] who meant to ruin this country. Died in bed, 1793

  Sally Pike, seven, lost 1818

  None had known care in the current century, possibly in the previous. Many were toppled and unreadable. In spring, under a certain sun, it might have been a pleasant spot, picking blackberries, looking down the mountain, smelling pine and cedar. After dark in the older part of the year, only melancholy existed, recollections of lives forgotten, thorns without fruit.

  “Who were they?” Andrews whispered. “What was it like to be them?”

  “I know,” I answered. “Gives you an intimation of what’s in store.”

  He swigged from his bottle. “Not to worry. I won’t forget you when you’re buried here.”

  “I see.” I switched off the flashlight; our eyes adjusted to the moonlight. “And what happens to my good name when you go?”

  “Not in my plans.”

  “You’re not dying.”

  “Don’t think so,” he said, offering me the bottle. “What’s your idea here? Wander about hoping to catch a glimpse of a girl who’s so adept at hiding that even her own brothers can’t find her?”

  “Good point,” I admitted, refusing the brandy. “But I thought we might find evidence of her.”

  “A rag, a bone,” he drawled, “a hank of hair.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Would you like to know what I think of your little excursion to this place tonight?” He waved his drink grandly.

  “Not even a little bit.”

  “I think,” he forged on, “that you are trying to give me what is commonly called the willies.”

  “Why would that be of the slightest interest to me?”

  “Because you’re bored, you have nothing to do up here, you long for your little mysteries so you can feel useful. Also, you have a genetic need to feel superior and you think I’m easily frightened, so it’s a bit of fun for you in the bargain.”

  “Aside from the fact that you look a little like Icabod Crane,” I began, “why would I imagine you’re easily frightened?”

  He was prevented from answering by a scream.

  It came from the woods beyond the fence. I snapped the flashlight back on, stabbed it in the direction of the sound.

  There was a blur of motion in the trees, a frantic rash of leaves, more shouting.

  “Help me!” Then a muffled groan.

  “That’s not a woman,” Andrews said, heading toward the noise without thinking.

  “Who’s there?” another voice shouted from inside the chaos.

  “Come on, then,” I told Andrews, headed for the fence.

  I used one of the posts to vault over the wire; Andrews got a better head of steam and cleared it with a light hurdle. We ran in the direction of the voices, now clearly several, flashlight leading the way as if it might protect us.

  A shot rang out, hit a tree yards away from us. Andrews splayed on the ground. I stopped running and turned off the light.

  “Sh,” I told him.

  We froze.

  “They’re over yonder, ignor’nt.” It was the voice of Donny Deveroe, I was certain.

  “Boys?” I called out. “Is that the Deveroes?”

  “What the hell are you doing?” Andrews rasped at me. Stage whisper.

  “Who is it?” another voice shouted.

  “Is that Dover?” I yelled back. “Stop shooting at us. It’s Fever Devilin.”

  There was a flurry of conversation we couldn’t make out.

  Silence.

  “Dr. Devilin?” Donny called innocently. “Is that you?”

  “Didn’t mean to startle you,” I said, walking their way, light still off. “I wanted to show Andrews the graveyard. You remember my friend Professor Andrews from—”

  Another shot spattered the clay inches from my right foot.

  “Sorry, Dr. Devilin,” Donny said, genuinely apologetic. “We’re kind of in the middle of something here and we would rather have our privacy.”

  “I understand.” I looked back at Andrews.

  He sat up, trying to make out who else was in the grove.

  “We heard someone yell for help,” he ventured from the ground.

  Another rustle of whispers.

  “Dover. He fell in a muskrat hole.”

  Silence. Cricket, frog, crow, wind, breath—all kept still.

  “Is he all right?” Andrews managed, coming to a stand.

  “Oh. Absolutely. Say something, Dover.”

  A thin, clear cloud slit the moon, moved on.

  “Ow.”

  Andrews came to my side.

  “We’ll go on back to the cemetery, then,” I said. “I was thinking of paying you a visit tomorrow; would that be okay?” I aimed the flashlight in the direction of the voices and switched it on.

  Bodies exploded in motion; I counted four before the next shot was fired, wrecking pine straw a foot to our left. Andrews did his best not to jump right.

  “Turn off that damn torch!”

  I did.

  “Sorry,” I told them. “I don’t know this part of the mountain very well and it’s hard to see.” I handed Andrews the flashlight. “Catching snakes?”

  Silence.

  “Yes.”

  I leaned close to Andrews’s ear. “Take the flashlight, shine it toward the cemetery, head back to the truck.”

  “What are you doing?” he whispered back harshly.

  “I’m going to find out what they’re up to. How many did you see?”

  “Four.”

  “And there are only three Deveroe brothers.”

  Before he could object I crouched low, lumbered to a nearby stump, waving him on his way.

  He took a second to consider his predicament, then turned away, switched on the light, and moved carefully back over the fence, into the knot of trees that hid my truck.

  Satisfied I had waited long enough, I moved, still low, toward the boys. They weren’t talking, but they made sufficient fuss cracking twigs, thudding the ground, tossing leaves, grunting. If I hadn’t known better, I might have considered they were wrestling swine.

  Their noise covered my movements; their activity distracted them. I was able to get within twenty yards, hiding behind the branches of a wild holly.

  The moon had difficulty breaking apart the shadows in the grove, bu
t here and there a shaft of silver cut the night and I could make out all three brothers, rifles in hand, surrounding a fourth man. He had a gunnysack over his head pulled to his mouth, where the edge of it had been made into a gag. His clothes were in shambles, torn, rubbed with mud. His hands were tied loosely behind his back. He staggered, trying to get away, muttering through the cloth.

  It wasn’t until they put the noose around his neck that I realized what they were doing. Dover held one end of a length of heavy twisted hemp and Donny put the other end over their captive’s head.

  My heart doubled, I took a step past the holly before I could consider the consequences. They didn’t see me.

  Dover hauled the rope over the lowest limb of an older pine; Donny tightened the knot. All three brothers set their guns against the trunk, grabbed high, and hauled their victim into the air.

  “No!” I crashed through the undergrowth, the whipping twigs, bent on tackling the Deveroes.

  They were startled, turned my way, but kept hold of the rope.

  The man in the air kicked and twisted like a fish on a hook, flailing almost sideways in the air.

  “Stop!” I huffed, five feet from them, diving to tackle.

  As Dover reached for his rifle there came a thunderous wooden crash like a house falling down. The limb cracked and fell on the boys.

  Some unseen part of it managed to catch the side of my skull. The victim, miraculously thrown to one side of the fallen branch, only took a heartbeat to realize what had happened. Adrenaline burst him free from his fetters. He got to his feet, ripped the bag from his head, took a single look around, and shot like a bullet into the night.

  When I saw who it was, I wanted to sprint after him, but my legs wouldn’t work and my temples were exploding.

  “Damn damn damn!” Dover struggled, swatting at the immovable limb, gasping for air.

  I touched my head. There was blood, but the cut wasn’t deep.

  I managed to stand, cracking smaller twigs away.

  “Who’s hurt?” I croaked.

  “You don’t sound too good, Doc!” Dover sang out, obviously smiling.