by Billy Coffey
“Alvaretta come out on the steps. I told her who I was and stated my business. She’s still got the bracelet. I didn’t see it, but she said it was hers. Payment for what was done.”
“What was done?” Raleigh asked.
Bucky took another breath. “Seems Scarlett struck her.”
Wilson’s jaw fell open. He turned to Scarlett, pleading: “You struck Alvaretta?”
“She was defending her friends,” Chessie said. “Nothing more, Wilson.”
“You knew?” he asked Chessie, and then, to his daughter, “You told Chessie of this but not your own daddy?”
Scarlett started shaking. It was a strange sight, looking like she was about to split herself in half. Chessie got to shouting at Wilson and Wilson got to shouting back, and all that did was draw in the rest to one side or the other until Bucky raised his hands and screamed at them all to shut up and remember they was in a church.
“We ain’t got time to sit here arguing,” he said. “There’s other stuff I got to say. Kids was right about more than birds and dogs. I saw those tracks they followed, and I’ll say they’re from no beast. I saw other tracks, too, and that’s one thing we got to be concerned about. They was from tires.”
“Tires?” Briar asked.
Bucky nodded. “Stu’s truck ain’t been run in years, from the look of it. That leaves only one thing it can be. Somebody’s been out there. I think someone from town’s been aiding the witch.”
Hays looked at Cordelia, who looked at Scarlett and Naomi. You can bet only one name filled their minds.
“That’s not possible,” Belle said. “Nobody would do that, Bucky.”
“I can only tell you what I saw, Belle. Tracks went clear up close to the porch, like whoever it was dropped off something. Makes sense. We always thought Alvaretta just got by on her own grit and meanness, and maybe she did for years. Some do, least that’s the stories we’ve heard. Backwoods folk who leave off everything and aren’t seen again. But an old woman like that couldn’t get by for long without help.”
“Alvaretta’s got a spy,” Raleigh said. The words came out slow, like even he couldn’t believe one of his neighbors could do such a thing.
Nor could the Reverend. “We have to find out who it is,” he said. “Maybe then we can put a stop to this.”
“That ain’t all,” Bucky said. “That ain’t even the worst. What I got to say next, I don’t even know how to put to words.”
Chessie spoke in a soft and kindly way that looked to chill Bucky to the bone. “You go on, Sheriff. Was a good thing you did, going out there. You just take your time and say it plain.”
“Alvaretta said it’d only be when bodies are buried that we’d suffer as she. We’re cursed by the hands of darkness and death. There’s no stopping it.”
Angela started to cry then. Belle too.
“She called forth the thing she’s keeping. It was inside her cabin. I didn’t see all of it and I thank the Lord for that, else I’d of given up my ghost right there. But I seen enough. I seen a hand and a boot. They was filthy and covered with earth.”
“Did it speak?” Naomi asked.
“No, and it didn’t have to, child. I know what the witch has conjured. Not demon and not man, but some of both.” Bucky shook his head again, too afraid to speak it but more afraid to not. “It’s Stu Graves. Alvaretta’s done raised her husband.”
-6-
You take a man telling something like that, saying a witch had used her dark magic to breathe life into dusty old bones and saying it all in church? Well, I expect that man would be met with howls and whoops and then escorted to the nearest padded room. But that didn’t happen with Bucky, friend. Only silence greeted him.
Some like Naomi and her momma, Belle, looked ready to jump up and run as far from the Holler as they could get. But all of them looked to be thinking the same—that such a thing was possible. Even Bucky, who believed the spirits had been gone from Crow Holler ever since his kin chased off the Indians. Even Hays, who’d never believed in anything beyond his monsters.
Wilson said outright, “That ain’t possible,” though I believe that was because he was too afraid to consider otherwise. “Stu’s been in the ground since we was kids. Once you’re gone, you’re gone. This ain’t Bible times.”
He looked at the others, people who were not just friends now but friends on the night Stu Graves ran his truck off the road. The Reverend couldn’t meet his eyes.
“You sure on this, Bucky?” Briar asked.
Bucky didn’t say right off. Not because he wasn’t sure, but because Briar’s voice sounded so strange and scared.
“I’m sure, Briar.”
Raleigh shook his head slow. My, but that man’d have a story to tell all his secret friends that night. “She always said Stu wouldn’t rest until he got justice.”
“Shut up, Raleigh,” Wilson said. “You’re scaring the kids.”
Briar stood up. “We can put this to rest right now. Ain’t but a minute over to the cemetery. We get Medric’s key to the storage garage, run the tractor up there.”
“You want to dig Stu up?” Angela asked. She wasn’t as shocked by the idea as she was excited. Don’t get me wrong, friend, that woman was scared. But this promised to be something straight out of her stories on the TV.
“Don’t know how else to settle things,” Briar said. “We gotta know either way. Right?”
They all looked at the mayor, who fiddled with his hands.
“We’ll do it,” Bucky finally said. “I’ll knock on Medric’s door, tell him what we need.”
The meeting broke. Briar and the mayor left for the big garage out back of the council building. Hays slipped out, following Bucky across the street. The rest tried their best to saunter the half mile to the town cemetery without drawing too much attention. That’s the cemetery down there, past the Exxon. Can’t see it too good because it’s on the other side of them trees, but it’s there. Full too. Wasn’t on the day Wilson and David led all a them down there to make sure Stu was still in the ground, but it is now.
Bucky slowed down so Hays could catch up. “What you doing out here, Hays?”
“It’ll be easier if I come too,” he said. “I know him. Medric’s my friend. Or was.”
They stepped onto the curb. “Gonna need to sit down and have a good long talk with you once this is all over,” Bucky said. “Gonna have to do the same with your parents.”
“About what?”
“Your future with my daughter.” He held up a finger when Hays opened his mouth. “Let’s just leave it there. I’m a little worked up as it is right now. Don’t got the time to have you spoutin’ off at the mouth.”
It took Bucky five minutes’ worth of knocking to get Medric to finally answer the door, then another three to convince him there was no trouble. Medric listened and pronounced Bucky a liar, because it sure sounded like trouble to him.
“You think I’d ever desecrate the resting so you can satisfy your fears?” he asked. “No way, Buck. Keys are inside. Inside’s where they stay.”
Hays kept a fair distance back, remembering Medric’s shotgun. I don’t think he cared much to listen in on Bucky’s conversation as much as he wanted to study Medric, the way he acted and talked. What Hays came away with was that man was guilty. For what, he didn’t know, but it was surely something.
Only thing that changed Medric’s mind was Bucky saying there really wasn’t a choice in the matter. It had been a town decision, what they were going to do, and not going along with it would only make everybody more suspicious of our undertaker than they already were. That’s what Bucky said—“People been telling me something’s going on with you, Medric”—and even if it all had to do with that raccoon nailed on his door, it was high time our undertaker started acting like he was part of the town.
“We’re all scared,” Bucky told him. “Not just you, Medric. Fear ain’t got a color, and sometimes it makes people do awful things.”
No way Me
dric thought Bucky right about fear and color—deep down, he’d always thought Bucky as simple as they come—but the sheriff been right about something. There wasn’t a choice. He shut the door to get the keys, refusing to let them inside.
Hays took that opportunity to tell Bucky everything about his visit to the funeral home. The part about Medric being gone most of a day and coming home with crow feathers stuck to his boots was what got Bucky nervous. He went over to Medric’s car and checked the tires. The tread was nothing close to what he’d seen at Alvaretta’s.
“That doesn’t mean anything, Sheriff,” Hays said. “He’s still acting weird.”
“Witch has got us all, Hays. Everybody’s acting weird.”
Medric came back out jangling the keys to the garage, the tractor inside, and the cemetery. He made a crack about being thankful Hays hadn’t stolen that chain along with the chain that held the key to the gate and said, “Let’s get this over with.”
Hays ran the keys back up to the mayor and Briar. The sight of that old John Deere rolling down the road brought everybody close running to see what was going on. Angela was more than willing to fill them in.
At the gates, Medric bucked one last time. “What you all want is an abomination,” he said.
Briar smiled. “Medric, I reckon those keys in your hand will open the lock whether you’re conscious or not, so you better shut your mouth and free that gate.”
Medric snapped off the locks and swung the gate open. He turned to everybody waiting and said, “Damn you all.”
Briar maneuvered the tractor through the rows, stopping at the plain stone marker where Stu Graves had been laid to rest. The people crowded in when he started to dig. By then, more folk had come. Shovels were brought up. Men stood close as women drew back.
Wilson started praying right about the time Briar hit the top of the coffin. Bucky, Medric, and Landis crawled down into the hole to pop the sides and pry away the top.
I guess I don’t need to say much more on that, friend. You look smart enough to know what come next. Everybody’d known for years Alvaretta had power, and that power held root in a rage over who had been taken from her. She’d told Bucky it was darkness and death that stalked Crow Holler, and she had not lied. No doubt remained of that, nor could there be doubt that both of those things had taken the form of one person. The casket lay empty, friend. As empty as their hope.
-7-
Well, didn’t take long before every soul in town heard of the empty casket that’d been dug up at the cemetery. Wilson could plead with everybody the rest of the day and all that night to keep quiet on it, wouldn’t a done any good. And could you blame Angela and Landis and the rest, telling everyone they could that the demon who’d cursed them all was none other than Stu Graves raised up from the dead? News like that’s got to be spread.
All the kids hung back from the cemetery gates and had themselves another meeting. Just like before, Hays led the whole thing. I’ll leave it to you to decide how that boy came to take Scarlett’s place as leader of their little group. I myself don’t know, other than Hays was the only one among them who seemed to understand what was going on. Didn’t much matter to Cordelia or Naomi if those ideas were truth or lies, neither. You get into the kind of spot them kids was in, even a false answer sounds like a good one.
Hays told them about Bucky checking Medric’s tires and how the treads didn’t match up. “And I don’t care if they don’t,” he said, “Medric’s still hiding something. He didn’t want to dig that grave up, and I don’t buy it was because of some undertakers’ ethics. He knew nothing would be in there.”
“If it wasn’t Medric at Alvaretta’s,” Naomi asked, “then who was it? Does that mean there’s more than one person helping her?”
“Vat’s cazy,” Cordy said.
Hays said, “It’s Medric. I know it is.”
Scarlett started writing: Did Bucky say what the tire marks looked like?
“No, just that they weren’t Medric’s.”
You seem awful sure of yourself its Medric
They all read that, friend. Every single one. It was like that page on Scarlett’s little pad was a magnet, and all those kids’ eyes were made of lead.
“What are you trying to say, Scarlett?” Hays asked.
She turned the paper around and started scrawling. Fast, like it wasn’t Scarlett writing at all. Like something had taken her over. And maybe it had, friend. But I won’t put that one down to Alvaretta and her demon. I’ll say it was just Scarlett’s pent-up fear of losing the best friend she’d ever known to a boy she’d never really liked.
Big, looping words, You didn’t do anything to help us, you just stood there and let it happen, that pen pressing onto the page so hard the paper began to tear and shred. Your a freak everybody knows it even Cordy and now you’re talking about freaking monsters???? And then, in a final flourish, Did Bucky see your tires??
“Thtop it,” Cordy said. “Hayth ithn’t helping her.”
Naomi was saying they couldn’t start fighting, but it was too late. Fighting they were, friend, and loud enough to get Bucky’s and Medric’s attention. Briar and Chessie had hung around long enough to get Stu Graves’s casket back in the ground (there’d been some discussion on that, whether it’d do any good reburying an empty box, but Bucky had figured they might as well), but now it was just the sheriff and the undertaker left to tamp down the dirt.
“Things is gonna get bad, Buck.”
“Things is already bad, Medric.”
“Then they’ll get worse.”
Bucky hollered at the kids, said they should all get home or at least lower their voices, this was a place of the dead. He looked back down to his shovel and spoke low, so only Medric could hear.
“You’d tell me if something was going on, wouldn’t you, Medric? I mean, we always been friends. You get in a bind, you’d tell me, right?”
“Ain’t nothing going on you need to mind, Buck.” Medric shoveled another scoop of dirt and mashed it with his boot. Bucky didn’t see any crow feathers stuck to it. “Will say I’m scared of what’s next, though.”
“Me too,” Bucky said.
X
David sees a shadow. Stu comes to town. A death in the Holler.
-1-
Reverend Ramsay made it back to church alone that Thursday morning, leaving the cemetery much the same as Medric had left the hospital the night the witch’s curse struck. I’ll say he didn’t walk so much as run. He spent the rest of that afternoon locked inside the small office off the sanctuary. Prayer and fasting is what he’d tell you, but I’ll say that man was too plain scared to come out.
He nearly screamed when a knock came awhile later—Belle, wanting to know if her husband was okay. David lied and answered he felt fine, all things considered. Belle said she, Landis, and a few others were going to bring chairs over from the council building. Word’s getting out, she called through the door. They’d need all the seating they could get for that night’s revival. The Reverend tried saying that sounded fine while keeping a tight grip on the panic that had overcome him. It all came out in a jerky, “Okay,” then he dared not open his mouth again. He watched the bottoms of Belle’s tennis shoes in the long crack at the door’s bottom until she finally left.
The old leather Bible that Belle had gifted him upon his ordination lay open on the desk. The brown cover had been worn to a silky tan, supple and faded from years of handling. Of providing comfort. The pages inside were underlined and noted, dates scribbled in the margins like signposts marking the dark times in David Ramsay’s past when a verse or passage had served as an oasis. He could’ve search through those then, looked back on all those times the Lord had comforted and guided him through the valley of the shadow of death. But the Reverend didn’t. That Bible lay in front of him, but he didn’t see it. His eyes kept to the crack at the bottom of his office door instead, to that thin strip of bluish-yellow air marking the boundary between himself and the world of witches and mo
nsters outside.
We would look to him now. That’s what Reverend Ramsay was thinking. The town would turn not to the mayor or the sheriff, but to him. That’s how it had gone on plenty of times in the past—Crow Holler was once a peaceable place, friend, but that don’t mean it was never calamitous—and in those times the Reverend had led them both and well. But this valley was different. Darker. And now that he and the town had set upon it, David Ramsay felt his faith begin to waver.
Stu.
It had been a single night those many years ago. Not even that, really. A single hour of that single night and a single moment of that hour. And though the Reverend had somehow justified everything that had happened after by saying it hadn’t been him too drunk to drive or not him who had done it, and the only thing he could be guilty of was trying to protect his friend, he now understood the frailty of that logic. Because he had done enough harm that night. A lifetime’s worth.
It was a power beyond his reckoning that could empty a grave of death. It was a power far greater that could breathe into that grave not life, but vengeance. Bucky said someone in town had turned traitor to neighbor and kin alike. That meant Alvaretta Graves had claimed both the living and the dead as her acolytes—an ally the Reverend thought could be most anyone, and a murdered husband. The only question left for David was the same one I expect we all must ask at some point: Did he believe?
Mayhap he hadn’t before, friend, back when the Reverend was no reverend yet, slumped over his desk at the university or the little table in him and Belle’s apartment with a wailing John David nearby wanting his bottle or his diaper changed. And maybe he hadn’t when the family returned to Crow Holler to stake their claim on the souls of this town—John David now out of those diapers and Naomi growing in Belle’s womb. Alvaretta’s memory (Stu’s memory, to be more specific) still burned inside and always would, which was why even someone with as much faith as David Ramsay would X the windshield when his travels took him by the Graves place. But is there not a bit of night in even the brightest life? Is there not still a sinner’s heart beating inside every saint? Yes. Yes, friend. Such was what that man had told himself all these years, all in order to put that single moment of that single hour in that single night behind him. And so did he believe that Alvaretta’s fury still burned bright enough to bring forth what darkness she could from the mountain? Could she indeed summon an evil that would consume them all?
