The Curse of Crow Hollow

by Billy Coffey

  Chelsea Mitchell. Tenth grade, Mrs. Heishman’s homeroom. A pretty little thing just like her momma, and well-mannered.

  Raleigh rubbed his eyes. “Then it’s starting. Little Joe got it?”

  Joseph Mitchell Jr. was four years younger than his sister and still at Crow Holler Elementary.

  “He’s fine so far,” Joe said, “but me and Ruth are keeping him away from Chelsea. Case it spreads by touchin or whatnot. You think that’s how it’s getting round, Raleigh?”

  “No. No, I don’t think it’s that at all.”

  Joe shook his head. “Well, want me to fill’r up?”

  “Don’t need gas this morning, Joe.”

  “This business, then?”

  “It is.”

  Joe’s weary grin faded.

  “You heard through the prayer chain?” Raleigh asked.

  “Tully Wiseman called me. Said he got it straight from you.”

  “And I got it from the Reverend hisself,” Raleigh said, “so you know it’s true. All of it.”

  “I don’t know, Raleigh. Alvaretta’s a strange one, but a demon?” He rubbed his beard again. “Stretches things, don’t it?”

  Raleigh put a hand to Joe’s shoulder. “I thought the same at first, but listen. Mayor called me just before the preacher did. He told me how the young’uns were doing and then told me to shut down the school next few days. Wanted me to test the water down to the reservoir. Like I even knew what to look for.”

  “The water?”

  “Told me it was either that or a flu. Ebola, maybe. You believe that? Didn’t utter a word of Alvaretta. Never said nothing about them kids being up to the mines or no footprints. Never mentioned nothing of a curse on the town.”

  “So somebody’s lying, then,” Joe said. “Reverend or the mayor.”

  “That’s my thought, and I think it’s the mayor. Ain’t nothing wrong with the water, Joe. That was the case, a lot more’d be sick. Same for any flu bug. David was torn last night when he called me. Said telling me to start the chain would probably get us both in trouble. I’m principal, Joe. I’m on the council. Wilson told anybody the truth, it should’ve been me. Makes me wonder what else he’s been hiding all these years.”

  Joe Mitchell shook his head slow. “Preacher woulda never called to start the chain, ain’t none of us would even know what’s going on. This something we should be keeping an eye on, Raleigh?”

  That sun, so warm. Raleigh bent his face to it again. Just down the road, he saw Medric’s car leaving the funeral home. Heading to the hospital, no doubt. Mr. Medric Johnston, Crow Holler’s keeper of both the dead and the mines.

  “I think so, Joey. I think that’s just the thing. Too early in the day to get everyone together, so why don’t you make some calls. Homer and Tully, all you can get hold of. What I been telling you all these years? Ruination’s coming. Starts with letting somebody like Medric gain a place in this town, then he poisons Hays Foster and Hays poisons all his friends. Now they gone and poked the witch, and we’ll all suffer for it. Time for us to stand up, Joey. Cut the head off the snake.” Raleigh smiled. “Yessir, let’s show Medric and them kids how appreciative we are for all they done to us.”

  -2-

  Joe and Ruth Mitchell weren’t the only ones who’d spent a restless night pondering the witch. All them who stayed up at the hospital did, too, tossing and turning and dreaming of Alvaretta Graves.

  Naomi twitched and shook even in the thin sleep afforded to her. Cordelia woke often in the night, not because of pain but because she kept turning her good cheek where the bad one had been and settling into a cold puddle of drool. Twice after that, she’d sat up in bed and pinched the dead side of her face, digging her fingernails into the skin like she was trying to jump-start feeling. You can imagine what went through Bucky’s and Angela’s minds that morning when they woke to find their daughter’s face streaked with drying blood. Took the nurses nearly half an hour to convince Angela that Alvaretta’s demon hadn’t snuck in during the night to hurt Cordy all over again.

  Mock that all you want, friend. You weren’t there. You didn’t see the way Naomi trembled like it was something else altogether controlling her. You didn’t see Scarlett straining with all her might to force even a whisper past her lips, only to collapse in silence. You didn’t see Cordelia’s poor, tortured face, and the way she stared toward a far-off place that existed only in her mind.

  You weren’t there before, neither, back years ago when Stu Graves lost control of his truck along the Ridge Road. You didn’t see Alvaretta alone in the cemetery three days following, shrouded in a veil so long and black that to look upon her was to feel like you were looking upon the angel of death. You weren’t there when she said Stu’d never had a drink in his life, it was the town that killed him and not the moonshine found with his body, and that a pall would be cast upon all of Crow Holler until those responsible came forward to judgment. So mock, friend, if that’s your mind. Cackle and shake your head like the enlightened person you are. Call us rednecks and hillbillies and mourn our ignorance, and then look around at this town. Look at what’s left, and hear me well: there is light in this world and there is dark, and in that dark lie things no man can bear knowing.

  Whatever hope the Vests and Ramsays and Bickfords had that the next day would bring healing was gone by the time Raleigh pulled into Mitchell’s Exxon. The girls was all awake by then, and they was all just as shaking and staring and slobbering and silent as they’d been the day before. Reverend excused himself just before breakfast. What he told Belle was he needed to go back to the chapel to call on the Lord, but I think he just couldn’t bear the pain of watching Naomi try to eat again. He paused in the hallway just outside Scarlett’s door and stood there like he was pondering whether to go on and tell Wilson about the prayer chain. He kept right on walking instead.

  I’ll let you make up your own mind on Reverend David Ramsay, but I’ll say that man truly did what he thought was right in getting Raleigh to spread the word. It was a war we was in, you remember. People needed to know the fight had come to Crow Holler, and it was time for every soul to choose a side. Here’s another thing too: it wasn’t lost on David that it had been Naomi and Scarlett that Alvaretta’s demon had hurt the most. David couldn’t tell Raleigh that (much less Belle), nor had he yet found the nerve to speak on it with the mayor. But that would have to come, and soon.

  Alvaretta must have known the kids would be up on the mountain that Saturday night. Maybe she’d even called forth the demon from the mines just to steal Cordelia’s bracelet, knowing the poor girl was so scared of Angela’s wrath that she’d convince her friends to go off chasing it. Weren’t enough for Alvaretta to mark David and Wilson. Alvaretta wanted Crow Holler to pain as much as she’d been pained.

  She wanted the children.

  -3-

  I wouldn’t say Angela Vest was embarrassed to have a husband handle trash for a living. It was, after all, a proper means to earn a wage, which spoke better of Bucky than many a man hereabouts. But just because Angela wasn’t embarrassed didn’t mean she was proud. Bucky didn’t have the business sense of Landis or a gifted tongue like Reverend Ramsay. He weren’t nowhere near smart enough to be a doctor like Danny Sullivan, nor did he come from old money like Mayor Bickford. Shoot, Bucky would be the first to say he never even had skill enough to do what Medric Johnston did, though he would often hold Medric up as an example to Angela of how things could be worse—he could be coming home every night stinking of moldy death instead of moldy trash. Angela would always answer that was true enough. Sometimes, if whatever discussion they were having had drifted into the realm of argument, she would add that at least there was enough money in stuffing bodies to get the heater fixed on the car.

  Didn’t none a them parents at the hospital have a harder time with everything that had happened than old Bucky. You take a couple like David and Belle Ramsay, them two could bear up under the weight of an ailing child. They had their faith, sure,
though my experience has been faith is something that blossoms and wilts in a life as easy as the corn in these fields. But the Ramsays had each other more, and that’s the thing. It’s always easier to bear up under your misery when the person beside you’s as crushed as you are.

  Same could be said for Landis and Kayann Foster, who had never truly been amorous but complemented each other well enough. And even though Wilson Bickford had been a widower for going on ten years by then, he had close enough friends in the Holler to never truly feel alone.

  But Bucky? He didn’t really have nobody like that, sad to say. In the back of his mind, I suspect he’d known all along the only reason Angela even agreed to marry him was she’d had no choice in the matter. Pretty girl like that, young and in the prime of her life, settling down with a chubby little backward boy like him? Shoot, everybody in the Holler knew what that was all about even before Angela’s belly had started to swell: it was either become Angela Vest or Angela the Whore, and while both paths had looked to her to lead to the same unhappy end, only one of them lay paved with shame.

  I won’t say Bucky ever minded that was the reason he got himself a wife—and a beautiful one at that, if only for a while. He loved Angela and promised she’d learn to love him back in time. He’d work hard and take care of her and their unborn child, and one day she would come to see that whatever earthly things a man like Landis Foster could buy would pale against the things that truly mattered. Things like family and joy and a good home.

  And Angela tried, friend, hard and to her own credit—but I don’t think that notion ever truly took root. Some part of that woman was always going to pine for Landis Foster. Angela had come to find peace in that and I think so had Bucky, both of them believing it wasn’t a sin so long as those feelings were kept unsaid and penned in the heart. The baby was born the following January. Bucky suggested Cordelia after Angela’s cherished grandmother, hoping the name would spark a love she had yet to feel for their child.

  It was a hard time. Bucky got his job at the dump and was gone all day and some of the night, stumbling back after dark stinking and tired and griping of how hard Homer Pruitt pushed him. As a favor to his friend, Wilson had convinced his father that Bucky could be a fair constable. Even that paltry bit of money helped. Angela clipped coupons and stayed up all night with a colicky Cordy, squeezing the baby hard and then harder as she walked from the living room to the dining room and back, feeling like a hot poker had been jabbed into her ear, crying and wanting away from the life she’d been handed as she fought the horrible thought of how easy it would be to just cover that barking mouth and snot-filled nose with a pillow and watch her baby go to sleep forever.

  Time passed. David Ramsay had returned from his time at preaching school and brought both John David and a pregnant Belle with him to take over the church. Naomi was born soon after. Wilson became a father and lost his own in the span of two months and took over the mayorship. Angela got her job at the grocery. Bucky didn’t much like that. Things were peaceable but rarely happy, and that’s okay. Peaceable is a good enough thing when that’s all you can get. You spend time enough on this earth, you realize it ain’t about getting ahead, it’s about getting by.

  All those thoughts must’ve gone through Bucky’s mind that night and morning. It must’ve seemed to him this was where everything had led—right back to a hospital room with their baby.

  The orderly wheeled in breakfast. Angela decided sitting beside Cordelia wasn’t good enough and took up residence beside her on the bed. Bucky watched from the chair like he was witnessing some kind of astronomical alignment that promised either the end of the world or a new dawn of prosperity. Angela brushed Cordelia’s hair. Angela smoothed Cordelia’s blankets. Angela got the food ready and wiped the sagging side of Cordelia’s face and asked if she’d been feeling any morning sickness yet, and Bucky just marveled at it all. He teared up some, too, knowing it’d taken their daughter getting cursed by the witch to part the thick bank of resentment that had hung over Angela’s world for good.

  She was feeding Cordelia scrambled eggs when the phone vibrated in Bucky’s pocket. He reached into his suit jacket and pulled it out, saw the number there.

  “It’s Doc,” he told them. “Probably wanting to check up. I’ll step out and leave y’all some time.”

  Bucky made for the door, flipped open the phone, and raised it partway to his ear when he saw David Ramsay standing there. He waved. The preacher turned and walked toward the elevators like he never even seen Bucky at all.

  “Hello?” the voice over the phone said.

  Bucky held the phone to his ear. “Hey, Doc.”

  “It’s actually Maris, Bucky. I’m afraid Danny can’t come to the phone right now.”

  Bucky stuck a finger in his other ear and bent his head low, trying to better hear. It wasn’t the noise in the hospital that was getting in the way, it was the racket on the other end.

  “Everything okay there, Maris?”

  “Bucky, we need you down here.”

  “What’s going on?”

  The voice in the background was a woman’s, though it came through so frantic and high-pitched that was all Bucky could tell. What came over the line was, “Maris, I don’t see anybody soon, I’m gonna start tearing stuff up.”

  It was like the world split in half when Bucky heard that, a sharp rent of the thin line between present and past. A bit of that old fear in him let loose, not at the voice that had shouted those words but the words themselves, tumbling over and over in Bucky’s mind—I’m gonna start tearing stuff up, I’m gonna start tearing stuff up, I’m gonna start tearing stuff up woman if you don’t give me what I want—turning Bucky from the man he’d become to the scared little boy he’d once been, the one who’d hidden behind the sofa the time the bad man got into the house.

  “Maris?” He gripped the phone harder. “What’s going on? Who is that?”

  Maris didn’t bother telling him. She shouted back, “Ruth, you sit down and shut up and wait your turn or so help me God I’ll brain you.”

  “Ruth?” Bucky asked. “Maris, is that Ruth Mitchell?”

  “Get over here now, Bucky,” Maris said. “There’s trouble. And don’t tell Wilson. Hear me? You keep the mayor away from here. People are riled. It ain’t safe.”

  -4-

  Not everybody in Crow Holler had it so bad that morning. Things was going as smooth as ever down at the Hodge farm.

  Now I say farm in the loosest sense. Briar Hodge’s place has land enough to be called that—hundred acres or so, suited for both crop and cattle. And it’s true he and Chessie keep a milking cow and some laying chickens, along with a few hogs to butcher. But the fact is Briar did no more farming than it took to till the garden every spring, and the only crop that come out those hundred acres was the moonshine he brewed and the weed he growed.

  He had quite the operation down there along the Ridge Road, though Briar’d be first to say most of it had been handed down by his daddy and prospered by Chessie. Let me tell you, friend, Chessie’s mind is a sharp one. Got a knack for managing things. It’s almost like that woman can see what’s gonna happen before it does, and in that’s a danger. Things was different, I’ve no doubt Chessie could be running some company in the big city and getting her picture taken for the papers. As it was, Lord seen fit to sink her in Crow Holler and pair her with a man whose family had drifted from the straight and narrow sometime around the Dark Ages.

  Briar was on the front porch of their little wooden ranch that morning, rocking in the chair as the sun eased its way over the trees. He’d gone through three pipes already. Some puffing and a little chewing on the stem of his meerschaum was usually enough to work out any problem. Briar knew as much as anyone Alvaretta Graves was not a woman to be crossed, and he’d been here long enough to know her power lay in something beyond fists and iron.

  You could hear Chessie talking on the phone inside. It’d rung all that morning—people wanting some bit of news and
to ask if what they’d heard from the prayer chain about hoofprints and a demon was true. Chessie wouldn’t say one way or the other and told them everything would be fine.

  Briar packed another pipe and struck a match. John David was already at work in the barn, feeding fire to the still and packing up crates for the next delivery. Good thing having that Ramsay boy around, he’d told Chessie. Knows how to handle hisself. Too bad what happened in the war.

  The screen door creaked open. Chessie shuffled out and let out a weary breath as she settled into the nearest rocker.

  “That was Wilson,” she said.

  “Scarlett better?”

  “The same. All ’em. Said Bucky got a call from Maris. Left in a hurry.”

  “What’s Maris need with the constable?” Briar asked.

  “Mayor didn’t know. Only reason he knew where Bucky’d gone at all was Angela told him.”

  Briar puffed and rocked. “What’s this mean?”

  “Means I don’t know,” Chessie said. “Somebody done run their mouth, and I’d lay money Reverend’s the one. Always been a prideful man, looking down his nose at us and holding out his hand at the same time. I knew that man’d talk. Knew it even as he sat there nodding when Wilson said all this had to be kept close.”

  “John David showed me his phone this morning,” Briar said. “Had a video on there Naomi made. Girl’s telling ever’body Alvaretta’s coming.”

  Chessie shook her head slow and cursed. “Kids’ll be the ruination of us all.”

  Down the lane came the sound of a car slowing to turn. John David walked out from the barn, wiping his hands with a dirty rag. The three of them watched a battered old Ford wind its way down the lane. Briar rocked back and held there, his hand on the butt of the pistol tucked into his jeans. Weren’t really a reason for him to do that—not a soul in Crow Holler dared such a stupid thing as threaten a Hodge, then or now—but such was Briar’s way. Sides, up to a couple days before, weren’t a soul in the Holler who’d dare such a stupid thing as crossing the witch, neither.