The Curse of Crow Hollow

by Billy Coffey

  The boy showed no fear. There’d been plenty of that back at the roadblock, and I don’t think Hays cared much anymore that he hadn’t acted brave. I think he would’ve messed himself on purpose if he’d thought that would’ve gotten that gun pointed somewhere else other than at him. It’d been some quick thinking, him putting two and two together to figure Raleigh would want the murderer of the woman he’d loved more than he’d want Hays. Then again, maybe it was all the Lord’s doing. Hays probably thought that instead, him being born again now.

  Either way, didn’t take but a few seconds for Hays to go from Raleigh’s catch of the day to Raleigh’s best friend. He told the principal all about the curse of Alvaretta Graves, and how he’d seen Bucky and Medric running from the funeral home toward the council building the night before and then Medric running back alone a short time later. Hays told him Medric was a demon, and he swore to that truth upon his very salvation.

  Raleigh had taken all that in with surprising ease, like he’d suspected something of that about Medric Johnston for a long while. And then he’d asked Hays a curious thing—“How would you like to become part of a secret group of men, son? People like-minded as you and me in battling the demons of this world.”

  It was yes from Hays. It was Praise God, yes.

  Then came the drive and now the long walk through the woods, which was done in silence but for the occasional question of, “Are you sure it was Medric, son?” and “You ain’t gonna tell nobody this, are you?” Hays nodded or shook his head from behind the rag, depending on the answer. Raleigh guided him on.

  His eyes were covered, but Hays still had his ears and nose. He heard nothing of the forest itself, only their soft steps over the dirt and leaves, but it didn’t take long for him to catch a whiff of smoke and feel a comforting fire warm his skin. Raleigh stopped him. He said don’t move and don’t take off your blindfold, then backed away. Hays turned a bit to one side and then another, like he could feel the presence of others around him.

  “You all know this boy,” Raleigh said. “Mayor gave me Hays Foster’s name this morning from a list of those suspected of aiding the witch. This boy’s here because I say he’s innocent. He knows who killed Ruth, and that’s why Wilson Bickford wants him. I accuse Wilson Bickford of being in league with the witch, because power craves power.

  “Hays Foster says it was Medric Johnston killed Ruth. Says he seen Medric running back to his funeral shop alone after the shots was fired, and Medric wore a demon’s face. I accuse Medric Johnston of being in league with the witch, because of the hate in his heart for those unlike hisself.

  “The time has come for the good in Crow Holler to beat back the bad. Hays Foster, will you stand with us?”

  Hays said, “I will.”

  “Will you swear to the Almighty Yahweh that you will keep the secrets you see this day and never divulge them?”

  “I will.”

  “Will you swear to the blood of your kin to wage holy war on the lesser beasts and those who seek destruction upon our way of life?”

  “I will.”

  “Then Hays Foster, I say take off your mask.”

  Hays did it slow so as not to rile them. His right hand gripped the bottom of the rag around his eyes and lifted it off. He winced. The first fingers of evening had drifted over the woods, but there was light enough from the lowering sun and the wide circle of torches he stood in to make him shield his eyes. Gathered at the circle’s edges, fifteen cloaked and hooded men watched in silence.

  Raleigh spoke: “Welcome to the Brotherhood of the Circle.”

  The men removed their hoods one by one, nodding to Hays as they did. The fire now felt hotter somehow, and farther reaching. Hays began rubbing the thighs of his jeans with his hands, looking ahead and to his sides and the back, watching them close in. Raleigh said, “Greet brother Hays,” and Hays saw their hands outstretched not to shake his own but to grab him. He barreled past the two in his way before they could reach him, screaming as he sought the safety of the thick woods. The men took after him and then stopped when Raleigh called them back, saying there was no time, the boy had given them what they needed.

  Hays kept running and did not look back, too fearful of what he might see chasing him. He’d been a fool all along and had nearly paid for it with his life, though I expect his mind paused enough to appreciate the irony. In the end, he knew it had been Alvaretta’s curse that had saved him. That was the only way he could’ve seen the demon faces under all those masks.

  -2-

  John David went to talk to Medric, and Scarlett to tend to Chessie, but Wilson wanted to speak to his brother-in-law first. Danny was the important one.

  He let Maris stay. That wasn’t out of any love he had for his sister (of which there was plenty, don’t get me wrong), but because Wilson had decided Alvaretta’s plan to destroy his family would end there. He wanted Maris to hear it herself. He needed her to know.

  Bucky wanted to do the questioning. Wilson said fine. Wouldn’t look good to Maris if he did it himself, and why not let our sheriff enjoy this moment? He’d earned it. So much, in fact, that Wilson decided making that man sheriff had been one of the wisest things he’d ever done. He got the Reverend to join them, too, wanting both a witness to whatever Doc would say and someone to keep Maris calm should things get out of hand. I doubt even Bucky thought they would. The look on the doctor’s face when they all walked into the little meeting room could only be described as defeat. Danny was ready to talk.

  Maris went to the other side of the small table in the middle of the room where her husband sat and hugged him tight. She kissed his forehead and asked if he needed anything. Danny said all he needed was her forgiveness for all this trouble. Wilson, the Reverend, and Bucky took the other chairs. As he always did, David opened with prayer for a wisdom I believe all who gathered there never had.

  “Danny,” Bucky said, “just to start things out here, I want you to know it’s the truth we’re after. That’s all I want from you, okay? Now for the mayor’s and the Reverend’s benefit, I want to ask you again: you been up to Alvaretta’s?”

  “I have,” Danny said.

  “And was it your tire marks I seen up at her cabin on the mountain?”

  “I’m guessing so.”

  “Danny . . .”

  “Well, I don’t know, Bucky.” It was about as close as Bucky had ever seen Doc to getting mad. “I wasn’t there with you when you saw them. But the last time was the day before the kids went up to the mines. So, yeah, I guess. Those were my tire tracks you saw.”

  Bucky nodded and took a deep breath, moving on. “Did you kill Ruth Mitchell?”

  “Bucky,” Maris said.

  “I gotta ask, Maris.”

  “No,” Danny said. “I most certainly did not kill Ruth, nor would I even ponder such a horrible thing.”

  “How long you been going up to Alvaretta’s?”

  “I don’t know. Years.”

  “Years?” Wilson asked, and Maris nearly did the same.

  “Started not long after Maris and I moved back to Crow Hollow,” Danny said. “I was trying to build a practice. I had to gain people’s trust. Wilson, David, most of the people around here never even saw a doctor before I came. They’d get a cold or the flu, they were more likely to bury a mockingbird feather under a full moon than seek professional medical help.”

  “Don’t make fun of us, Danny,” the Reverend said.

  Danny waved him off. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. But I wasn’t trusted. Maris had grown up here, she had you for a brother, Wilson, but I was just the doctor from Away. It took awhile for people to come around, so I decided I’d go to them. Knock on their doors and introduce myself, ask if everyone’s okay and if there was anything I could do. You remember that, Maris. How it was.”

  Maris nodded.

  “Well, I got to know almost everyone that way. And people told me it was okay to go about people’s houses, but I’d better keep a dist
ance from Alvaretta Graves. I had no idea who she was.”

  “I remember you asking me,” Maris said.

  “I did, and you told me I never had to worry about Alvaretta Graves because she never came off the mountain. But can’t you see that was cause enough for me to worry? An old woman up there, living all alone? For all we knew, she could be up there dead.”

  “Be a blessing if she was,” Wilson told him.

  “I tried putting it out of my mind, I swear I did. Then one day I was by there going to see a patient, and I saw that turn to her lane. I took it. I didn’t even give myself time to ask what in the world I was doing, because I knew it was the right thing. I’m a doctor, don’t you understand that? It’s my job to care for people, no matter who they are.”

  “All them crows hanging from the trees didn’t turn you back?” Bucky asked.

  “I didn’t see any crows,” Danny said. “They didn’t start showing up until years later. I guess by then, the loneliness had got her.”

  “Loneliness,” the Reverend said. “You really think that’s what it was now? After all she’s done?”

  “I don’t think she’s done anything.”

  Bucky said, “Your niece would say otherwise, Danny. So would my Cordelia. Now you best get back to your story, before one of us loses our temper.”

  The doctor apologized again. And so as the Hodges waited in another meeting room down the hall and John David sat down in front of Medric next door, Danny Sullivan recounted to our preacher and mayor and sheriff (as well as his own wife) how he’d nearly befriended the witch of Crow Holler. How that first time he’d barely got out of his car before Alvaretta chased him off with a shotgun and a mouth fouler than any he’d ever heard. How he’d gone back the next week with a sack of groceries from Foster’s that he left in the yard without a word. How he’d come again the week after that with more and had finally gotten the chance to introduce himself. And that’s how it’d gone since. Not weekly now, more once every month or two, always with what provisions he thought she’d need and occasionally some medicine she’d requested the time before—aspirin and, once, a bottle of cough syrup. Danny had never gotten closer than five feet to the front porch. That’s where he’d park, just long enough to retrieve the groceries from the trunk and set them on the first step under Alvaretta’s watchful glare.

  “You ever see anybody else with her?” Bucky asked.

  “No. Never. But I always got the sense she’s protecting something. She always kept herself between me and the door, like she was afraid I’d try and go inside. And those crows. Some of them are hung up higher than she can reach.”

  “Maybe Medric did it,” the Reverend said.

  “Alvaretta never mentioned Medric to me. She never really talked at all, just accepted what I gave her.”

  “She never tried turning you against us?” Wilson said. “Never mentioned what’d happened to Stu?”

  “No. I swear she didn’t.”

  “You see?” Maris asked. “Danny didn’t do anything.”

  “Danny did plenty,” Wilson said, “and you know it. Taking groceries to the witch is aiding the witch, and that’s something we don’t do, Maris. She keeps to the mountain, we keep to town. That’s how it’s been and how it was supposed to stay.”

  “Well then, Danny wasn’t the only one to break that truce. Case you forgot, the girls did too.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Danny said. “Wilson, I know we haven’t always gotten along. And David, I know we’ve had our disagreements over religion and church and whatever else. But Bucky, I’ve known you over half your life and you’ve known me. You know I’d never do anything to hurt this town or anyone in it. Not willingly. All I did was try to give aid to an old woman.”

  “Ignorance is no excuse,” the Reverend said. “You always turned your nose up at us, Danny. Not so much in words, but in how you acted. You think us backward for our ways and never once considered our ways are for your own good.”

  “What are you gonna do?” Maris asked. “My husband might be guilty of idiocy, but he didn’t break a law, Buck.”

  Bucky knew that was right. “I don’t think Danny’s guilty,” he said.

  Reverend shook his head. “Maybe not of having a direct hand in what’s been going on, but Danny’s sure guilty of pride. He’ll stand before church tonight and confess what he did, right along with whatever Medric’s telling John David and whatever Chessie’ll say next. There has to be an atonement,” he said. “The man’s gotta learn humility.”

  -3-

  It was awful quiet in that little room next door to where Bucky and the rest argued. Medric had asked for some water. John David had done him one better and brought coffee from the pot in the mayor’s office. It sat between them in a Styrofoam cup, barely sipped. The steam rose up in thin clouds.

  “Medric,” John David said, “I ain’t ever questioned anybody on anything. Bucky just told me to come in here and try to talk to you, so that’s what I’m gonna do. All the mayor and my daddy got in mind is to get you and the doc and Chessie in front of the church tonight. Ain’t gonna be no violence. They just want . . . well, I don’t know what they want. I guess they think having somebody to blame will make everybody else feel better. But you need to talk to me. I’m here to help you, and Bucky is too. But you got to tell me what’s going on now, and what you meant when you said you helped Alvaretta.”

  Medric didn’t say nothing for a long while, just watched the steam rise up from his coffee through a pair of saddened eyes. John David allowed the silence. He’d said all he needed to, and wasn’t about to speak another word. Medric flicked the cup. Picked it up and took a sip. Then he let out a tired sigh.

  “Thought I got out these mountains, I’d be okay.” He grinned as though he found the notion funny. “I come up to the town line, there sits some men. Couldn’t see who they was because I was still a far ways off. Seen their guns, though. I knew they was looking for me. Circle always has been, I guess. Just biding their time, waiting for a good enough excuse.”

  “Ain’t no Circle, Medric,” John David said. “Those were just people Wilson got up for some stupid reason. Klan’s been gone from here for years.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Chessie think so?”

  “Chessie lives by a lot of facts that ain’t so, but that’s not one. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell her I said that, though.”

  “More’s gone on since you left here, John David. Holler’s dying. People need a reason why that’s other than themselfs. Gonna be me. Not just cause I’m colored, neither. For what I did.”

  “And what’d you do?”

  You’d think what Medric said next would’ve had a harder time coming out than it did, friend. I mean, something like that? Well, it’d get that man in more trouble than he was already in. Whole lot more. But as it was, those four words slipped out of his mouth like they’d been greased. Guess it just felt good, finally having that weight off his soul.

  “I took that body,” he said.

  “What body?”

  “Stu’s.”

  John David blinked. He could’ve heard Medric say just about anything and taken it all in stride. Wasn’t much that could shock that boy, not after all John David had been through. But that did, friend. That shocked John David something plenty and stole whatever words he’d been ready to say. He reached down for Medric’s cup of coffee and took a long sip himself. Wishing, probably, that he’d spiked it with some of Chessie’s moonshine first.

  Anguish burned across Medric’s face. “I didn’t have no choice,” he said. “I thought I’s doing right by it, John David. Town said Stu had to be buried here. Some stupid law the council or Wilson’s daddy come up with, I don’t know. And I didn’t care. All that woman wanted was to bury her husband’s bones on their farm. You know? The land he tended to and sweated over. She was heartbroken over it, raging against us all. So I buried him in the day and then dug him back up that night. Couldn’t take the casket because it was too
heavy for me to handle alone. Just wrapped him good and stowed him in the trunk. Alvaretta met me on the porch. Was all I could do to keep my wits. Was hell in her eyes, John David. Like a fire burning.”

  “I don’t believe this. You robbed a grave, Medric.”

  He pleaded now: “Tell me what you would’ve done, John David. That woman was hurting. Getting ready to spend the rest of her sad life all alone up there on the mountain? And people were already talking. You weren’t here, so you wouldn’t know. Even back then, people thought she was a witch. They were scared. I thought it’d be the end of things, delivering him back to her. But it wasn’t. I didn’t know she’d raise him up, John David. I swear I didn’t. Stu Graves come to town looking for me. Bucky all but told me so. And then Bucky dragged us both outside, trying to make me feel guilty enough to help, and then I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t mean to. You got to believe me, John David. I didn’t mean it.”

  “Didn’t mean to do what?”

  Medric shook his head.

  “Medric? What else did you do?”

  But Medric wouldn’t say. Funny how something so horrible as digging up Stu Graves had come out of that man so easy and something so tragic as shooting Ruth Mitchell wouldn’t. That had been an accident, there was no doubt about it in Medric’s mind and not in mine either, friend. But how could he say that now? Who would even believe him? And would it even matter in the end?

  “Went to your daddy yesterday,” Medric said. “After I dug up that casket. I wanted to tell him everything. He wouldn’t even open up his office door for me. Don’t matter what else I did now. I done enough. They’ll string me up, John David. Don’t you doubt it.” And then in a final statement that turned to prophecy, Medric said, “I won’t last the day.”

  -4-

  While Bucky took care of the doc and John David tried to console Medric, the Hodges were left to Scarlett. She made them as comfortable as she could (Briar needed nothing, though Chessie asked for some of that coffee she smelled) and wrote down that she was sorry.