by Billy Coffey
There was little opportunity to arrange things as before. Hays stacked what he could against and beneath the grocery’s weakest points, starting in back and working his way forward. For the rest, he had time enough to shatter jars wherever he could.
He had reached the front of the store when the demon stepped through the broken windows. Hays saw it coming and unscrewed the last two jars in his hand, popping the lids so they hissed. He poured the moonshine over his head and body and spun the lighter’s wheel.
A voice spoke. “Hays?”
The demon stood just at the doors, dressed as Bucky but not Bucky at all. Its eyes were jaundiced and narrow, his face red, angled in rotting flesh and sores. It smiled rows upon rows of brown, jagged teeth.
“Hays? What are you doing?”
It tried stepping closer. Hays held the lighter to himself. The air inside the grocery had turned thick, sweet from the moonshine’s smell.
“You want to put that flame out, son?” the monster said. “It’s scaring me a little. Your momma and daddy’s outside. Cordelia too. Naomi. Everybody’s out there, Hays. They want to make sure you’re okay.”
“They’re not them anymore,” Hays said. “You’re not you.”
“I’m just Bucky. Things is a little mixed up right now is all. It’s the witch, Hays. Alvaretta did this.”
“Alvaretta saved me. She meant it for loss, but it was gain. I can see all of you now. What you are.”
“We’re the people you’ve always known, Hays.” Closer. “The people who care what happens here. Now you come on before your momma and daddy can’t take waiting anymore and decide to come in here too. I told them I didn’t want that. It was too dangerous. But we ain’t in no danger here, are we?”
Hays backed away toward the far aisle. The metal of the lighter grew hot in his hand. “You take one more step, I’ll burn this whole place down.”
“Let it burn, I don’t care. Kayann don’t. Your daddy. You’re what they care for, Hays. Cordy’s outside. She’s worried. We’re all worried.”
“She’s pregnant,” Hays said.
“I know. We’ll talk about that later. It’ll be fine.”
“Won’t be a later. Everything’s gone.”
“Everything’s not gone yet.”
The monster had pushed him all the way into the aisle now, where the frozen food had once been kept. The fire outside lent the color of dawn to the wreckage around them.
“Come out with me, Hays. We can fix this. I can help you.”
He shook his head. “It’s too late. The witch already has you. She’s made you like her demon.”
“That’s not true, son.” It reached out. “I look just the same. Just like you.”
“Get away from me. I mean it.”
Hays turned his head to measure the next step and screamed. Another demon had snuck in beside him, hemming Hays in on two sides. Its hand held fire. Hays shrunk away as the monster did the same, its shadowy body trembling. The fire at the Exxon reached the propane tank, bringing a sound of thunder and a flash of light that turned the inside of the grocery from night to noon. Bucky ducked in reflex, but both Hays and the other demon remained still and standing. And in that brief moment, the light allowed Hays to see the demon’s body beside him thicken and clear from shadow to a body closed in jeans and a T-shirt. Its face—warped with deep canyons of sores with a hooked nose—looked out from beneath a mop of black hair, and Hays saw there had been nothing beside him at all but his own reflection in a freezer door.
“No,” he cried.
The lighter fell from his hand. Bucky grabbed Hays by the arm and pulled as the flames caught fuel, spreading like a wave along the floor. They ran hunched together, Hays screaming No and No again as his mind fractured. Heat singed his hair and clothing. His legs gave way. Bucky picked him up and carried him as the fire spread to either side. The building moaned as it strained and began to give way.
John David, the Reverend, and Landis screamed for them to hurry. Bucky cleared the grocery as the last of the windows blew outward, showering them all in glass and flame. Kayann came running, along with Belle. Naomi struggled to hold Cordelia back. Landis and the others reached safety just as the grocery’s roof collapsed upon itself. Sparks and embers lit the sky like fireworks. Chessie and Briar stood guard over Hays as his parents set upon him with more hugs and kisses than that boy had received in all the years before. Angela and Cordelia tended to a shaken Bucky as Crow Holler burned.
The noise from the grocery and the Exxon was too great for anyone to hear Doc Sullivan’s shouting. He came up the road running, arms waving, calling to them all. Chessie turned her head and stood as the doctor neared. Briar and then John David too. Tears stained the doctor’s face, and he cared not who saw them. His chest heaved from the long run and the grief that engulfed him.
“Everybody come,” he said. “Wilson’s dead.”
-10-
Of Wilson Bickford, friend, I will speak but not dwell. To say too much would cheapen his life and cast a shadow over all he’d done for this town. In him beat the very heart of the Holler. He lived for this people and this land. In the end, he died for them as well. That’s why I can neither risk saying too little of what Scarlett and Doc Sullivan found when they walked into the council building searching for her daddy. Saying too little of Wilson’s death wouldn’t go far enough to describing the pain of it, and how Wilson’s final act led to Alvaretta’s undoing. So I will say what happened, and nothing more.
It was nearing nine o’clock that night when the Circle arrived at the church, right when the moon began to disappear. By the time Bucky rescued Hays from madness, nearly half the moon lay in shadow. It remained shrouded still when Bucky, the Reverend, and John David found Scarlett slumped under her daddy’s body. In her despair, she hadn’t even loosed Wilson from the lamp cord stretched between his neck and the light fixture in the high ceiling. A toppled chair lay nearby, along with a piece of paper. Scarlett wrapped herself around one of Wilson’s dangling legs, kissing the knee as she begged Forgive me through her tears and Please come back, mouthing it all in silence. John David and the Reverend went to her. Bucky could not bear the sight and so settled his eyes on the paper instead. He picked it up and studied the three words Wilson left behind.
Doc Sullivan and Briar tended to the body, wrapping Wilson in the curtain from his office before placing him in the back of Belle Ramsay’s Jeep. They would take the remains to the clinic, where Ruth Mitchell already lay. Briar stopped long enough to lay Medric’s and Raleigh’s bodies in the bed of his truck. The funeral home was gone by then, as was the Exxon and most of the grocery. Crow Holler lay in a fog of smoke and ash. No one called Mattingly or Camden. By the time fire trucks could get up the mountain, wouldn’t nothing be left anyway.
I don’t know what made John David speak some time later, whether he tried to find some blessing in the midst of all that destruction or he merely wished it so, but he looked at the others and said, “There may come a peace now.”
They were all huddled in front of the council building—Chessie, the Vests, the Reverend and Belle. Landis remained with them, though Kayann had taken Hays inside the church with Cordelia and Naomi. Chessie stood away from the rest, cradling Scarlett as though the girl was her own. Of the six there, only Angela had survived the night without wounds.
“Don’t get what you’re saying, John David,” Landis said.
“Alvaretta got what she wanted. Town’s gone, or at least the town we knew. The man who killed Stu”—he glanced at Scarlett, who hadn’t seemed to hear—“is gone. She hears of this, maybe she’ll live with the balance and let us do the same.”
Belle said, “One of the men who killed Stu is gone,” leaving the Reverend to dip his head.
Bucky stood with his back to them all, looking out to where smoke from the funeral home rose over the church. He said, “There won’t come a peace. Not ever.”
“Don’t say that, Bucky,” Angela said.
; Bucky reached into his pocket and unfolded the paper. He showed them all the three words written in the mayor’s hand:
Stu was here
“Found this with Wilson,” Bucky said. “I won’t ever believe he could do something so horrible as kill himself. Stu Graves did it, or what part of Stu that Alvaretta rose up. So there will come no peace, John David. Not until Alvaretta sees justice and Stu’s put back down and kept there. We don’t do that, all this will happen again. Sometime, somehow, Alvaretta will be back for more. Light and dark can’t mix, just like the Reverend said.”
“What are you saying, Buck?” the Reverend asked.
“I’m saying time’s come to end this, one way or the other. We’re going to the mountain. John David and me.” He looked at his constable. “If you’ve a mind, that is. You’re released from my care, John David. Consider your time served. You want to stay here, I’ve no ill will.”
John David shook his head. “You go up there, Bucky—”
“Wilson’s my friend.”
The Reverend looked at him. “We all got friends, Buck.”
“I don’t.”
“You do,” John David said. “I’ll go.”
“Briar and me as well,” Chessie said. “You’ll need people who know how to shoot, Buck. No tellin’ what the witch’s got waiting up there. I’ll get John David to drive me to the clinic. I expect Doc will need to come, too, assumin’ you can trust him. He knows the lay of that land, and he’s got skills we’ll need.”
David Ramsay kept silent. I don’t reckon anybody figured on him going along. Why would he, knowing Alvaretta would seek his death right along with Wilson’s? And yet it was not his own self the Reverend considered right then, but his boy. John David had gone off to war and come back a shadow of the man he’d been. Now he’d be off to fight another, and what would be left of him then?
He said, “I’ll meet the witch before she meets me. I will not live in fear.”
Chessie and John David left then, saying they would all meet at the end of Alvaretta’s lane. Landis and the Reverend walked to the church to tell their families. Angela pulled Bucky aside and gripped his arm.
“You kill her, Bucky,” she said. “Not Chessie or Briar or John David. Make sure it’s you.”
And then Angela smiled in a way that made Bucky tremble. He would return to Campbell’s Mountain, face the witch and her demon once more, and yet Angela held less for her husband than for the boasting she could make that her husband had felled the witch. Angela kissed his cheek and walked toward the church, saying she wanted to look in on Cordelia and Hays. The Reverend and Landis followed to say their goodbyes. Bucky stood alone, wanting to follow Angela but knowing he could not. He would not say good-bye to his daughter. He would wait until it was over, and then tell Cordelia hello. She would understand. She would have to.
He turned around to see Scarlett standing alone. She reached into a pocket and pulled out her little pad and a pen and held what she wrote to the pale moonlight.
Don’t go
“I have to. I’m tired of all this suffering, Scarlett. Yours, your daddy’s. Everybody’s. Witch hurt my Cordelia. Stole this town from us. Alvaretta’s got nothing left to hurt me with. She’s already done all she can.”
She’ll kill you
“She can’t,” Bucky said, “because I’m not saying bye to Cordelia.”
He walked to Scarlett and gave her the very sort of hug she would never again receive from a father. Then Bucky took the pen from her hand and scribbled something just beneath She’ll kill you.
“But just in case, you call this number if we don’t come back.”
XV
Blood moon. Scarlett calls Jake. To the mountain. The battle. Alvaretta’s end.
-1-
Bucky escorted Scarlett over to the church. He had his arm around her the whole way, kept telling her how bad he felt and sorry he was. She shuddered against him, silent but for her stumbling steps. They’d all descended upon Scarlett, you know. Once Bucky and John David had found her and everybody else had run down from the grocery, all they wanted to do was wrap Scarlett in their arms and tell her how sorry they were. It’s a horrible thing if you think about it. Scarlett Bickford was finally being seen, and she had her dead daddy to thank for it.
“He did it for you,” Bucky said. “Don’t you ever forget that. He thought that was the only way to rid us of Alvaretta Graves. Your daddy died trying to take away the sins of this town.”
But that made her grieve all the more.
He walked her up the steps, meaning to leave her there, but the sight of Scarlett’s torment wouldn’t allow Bucky that benefit. And there was this too: Chances were good Stu Graves had made it back to Campbell’s Mountain by then, but that didn’t mean things in Crow Holler were safe. There were demons other than Alvaretta’s loose that night, monsters of flesh and blood rather than spirit, and maybe not all of them had scurried home to hide their robes and hoods.
“You need to go on inside,” Bucky said. “Angela and Belle will care for you. Time I go on and try to set things right, Scarlett. Okay?”
A line of townfolk with pails and hoses worked to keep the fire at the funeral home from spreading. After a final hug, Bucky eased open the church doors just enough to let Scarlett through. It was enough for him to see Angela talking to Cordelia near the altar. A glimpse of his family, all Bucky would allow, because to dwell on the two of them standing there in embrace seemed to Bucky a token of doom that would spill over them all in the next hours. He stepped away in silence and took the steps back down, making that slow walk to a car that would drive him into what remained of his future.
He pulled away and cast one final look at the church. Cordelia stood at the top of the steps beside Scarlett. The flames from the funeral parlor lit upon her face, and Bucky could see his daughter’s anguish. They exchanged a small wave. It was the same one that they’d shared so many times before, when Bucky left for his work at the dump or Cordy left with Scarlett and Naomi for a Friday night football game at the high school. A flick of his fingers; a twist of her hand; an unspoken promise between them that said I’m leaving, but only for a bit.
But neither Bucky nor Cordelia thought that was true. Not this time, friend. Didn’t matter who Bucky took with him to face the witch one final time. Didn’t matter it was two hardened criminals and a father bent on revenge, a doctor, a holy man. Didn’t matter it was a man who’d seen the worst of war and so had lost the best of himself. None of them would return. Those leaving from the Holler to Campbell’s Mountain maybe had might and faith and the Lord on their side, but Alvaretta’s might was greater. All you’d need to understand that was to look out from where Cordelia and Scarlett stood at the top of those steps, seen those burning buildings, and heard the shouts of men and women scrambling to save what couldn’t be saved. You would’ve known Alvaretta’s power then. You would’ve felt that hopelessness.
Cordelia watched Bucky’s taillights fade in the distance. She turned her face to the sky. Sun and moon and earth fell into perfect line, leaving what looked like a bloody lantern hanging over the night, and all she could do was turn and walk back inside.
Scarlett let her go. She could hear the wailing inside the church. Belle and Naomi by the sound of it, reacting to where the Reverend had told them he would go. Cordelia cracked the door enough to see inside. The preacher stood in the middle of a family hug. Naomi begged him not to go with such feeling that it made her tremors even worse. She looked like a spring wound too tight and ready to pop. Scarlett could have told her friend that no amount of begging would work. It hadn’t with Bucky, it wouldn’t with David Ramsay. I don’t doubt begging wouldn’t’ve changed the mind of Landis Foster, neither. Kayann didn’t even try to talk him into staying, though that may have been because she was too busy keeping her son still and quiet in his pew. Hays kept speaking of how they were all monsters underneath and so was he, and I guess the only thing that kept somebody from telling him to shut up was
he’d fallen to whispering it. Kayann had never looked so stricken.
Landis walked out without even a good-bye and passed Scarlett as if she were a ghost. Bucky might’ve thought he’d almost lost his family since the witch lashed out, but friend, I’m here to say Landis Foster truly had lost his. He’d lost his wife and son all on the same night, and all that remained for him was the pound of flesh he would extract from Alvaretta Graves. The Reverend followed. His eyes were low to the ground as though in prayer, though Scarlett knew better. It was not the Lord that David Ramsay had given his soul over to, it was his own judgment.
The church doors closed. Scarlett turned on the steps. The dirt streets were crowded with people running from the funeral home to the Exxon, from the Exxon to the grocery. Scarlett raised her arms and began waving, trying to get someone’s attention. She stood in the middle of absolute chaos, friend, and yet that girl had never felt so alone. The witch had taken Cordelia’s beauty because beauty was all Cordy believed she had. She’d taken Naomi’s control over her own body because that’s what Naomi coveted. Alvaretta had given Hays what he most feared—the ability to see the monsters of this world. But I believe Scarlett understood then that the witch had stolen her voice for a different reason than she’d stolen from all the others. Alvaretta had silenced her for the simple reason that Scarlett had never found the strength to speak up and make herself known. The witch had simply taken what Scarlett had never used anyway. For that, I suppose you could say that girl had always been cursed, and by her own power.
She gripped the pad of paper with one hand and pulled her cell phone out with the other. The numbers were easy to read in the glow of all that firelight. Scarlett punched them one by one, slowing herself to dial right and summon the strength to speak. She held the phone to her ear as more men raced past. Someone screamed that the funeral home was about to cave in.
The line rang.
Scarlett could barely breathe, much less produce a sound.
