The Curse of Crow Hollow

by Billy Coffey

  Jake sat, wincing at Bucky’s mangled knee. Doc had done all he could with that, wrapping it tight. Said Bucky would have to get to a hospital soon or else risk losing that leg from the knee down, but Bucky had refused to go.

  “You okay?” Jake asked.

  “See her hand, Jake?”

  Jake looked out into the yard. “I do.”

  “I think it moved a minute ago.”

  “Don’t think so, Bucky. She’s gone.”

  “Scarlett call you?”

  “She did.”

  He smiled a little. “She tell you the witch come for her? For us all?”

  “I talked to Chessie coming in. She told me most everything. Who got her, Buck? I need to know who it was.”

  Bucky looked over his shoulder to the men at Alvaretta’s table. “Gonna have to get them outta here soon,” Bucky said. “Take too long for the ambulance to get up here and then to Stanley. Belle and Maris, they’ll take ’em. I expect Kayann’ll want to stay with Hays. Chessie’s gonna have to get that arm looked at. That dog took a chunk—”

  “Bucky? I need to know what’s inside there.”

  “I don’t know, Jake.” He breathed deep, let it out slow. “Something. Once Alvaretta fell, her dogs scattered. Briar tended to the Reverend while Danny tried to get that bear trap off me. After that, we all went after Stu. John David and Chessie took these steps hard. Had to. If any of us would’ve slowed even a little, we mighta found out we were too scared to go on. Chessie started firing soon as she hit the door, just in case he was still by that window. Tore the whole place up. But he wasn’t there.

  “We got to looking around. There’s a door off from where we found her bedroom. Wasn’t no lock on it—I mean, why would the witch need to lock anything, you know? We heard something in there and crouched down. John David busted in. That’s where we found him. He’s still in there. Guess he’s gonna need help as much as Landis and the preacher.”

  John David came around the side of the house. His gun rested in a shaky hand, but that calmness still covered his face. He took the steps up and nodded to Jake, who nodded back. To Bucky, he said, “All clear.”

  “I’m gonna have to take Jake inside,” Bucky said. “Let him see. You sit out here, John David? Keep an eye on Alvaretta for me?”

  “How’s Daddy?”

  “Doc says he’ll be okay. Bullet went through.”

  “Then I’ll sit here.”

  Jake helped Bucky stand and then supported him as he limped inside. When they reached the door, John David said, “Buck? I ain’t cold no more.”

  Bucky turned to look at him. And even though he had no idea what John David meant by that and would only when Scarlett told him later of their talk on the back porch some nights before, he said, “That’s fine, John David. I’m glad you ain’t cold.”

  The inside of that cabin was tiny. Barely big enough for one, but I reckon that’s all the space Alvaretta ever needed. Jake spoke with Landis and David long enough to ask what they needed. Neither man answered. Shock, you see. Not just from what the night had brought, but from what they’d found in the after. Bucky took him to the far wall where Danny Sullivan waited by the shut door. He told Bucky again he’d have to call an ambulance. Bucky said wait and introduced Jake.

  “Anything?” Bucky asked.

  The doctor shook his head. “Not for a while now. Best thing, Sheriff Barnett, is to go slow and quiet. I don’t know what’s in his mind.”

  Jake thumbed the button on his holster as Bucky eased the door open.

  That room was probably no bigger’n the closet you keep your clothes in, friend. One plain bed without a sheet, one little table, nothing more. A lantern’s flame gave enough light to step inside. Jake stepped in and said, “Lord have mercy.”

  The walls were covered with the same markings Cordelia and her friends had found that first day, pictures and symbols that looked as some ancient language. More crows hung from string tied around nails hammered into the ceiling—five of them, Jake counted. On the table beside the lantern sat three pieces of chalk and a small pile of feathers.

  Bucky staggered in behind. His head leaned to the left as he peered at the dark space on the other side of the bed. He held his rifle tight and said, “Come out of there. Do it slow, and we won’t harm you.”

  Jake grabbed for his pistol as the demon raised a dirt-crusted hand atop the mattress. Another hand, this just as stained and leathered, came up beside it. The bed creaked as the thing behind it pushed itself up, revealing first a tangled mop of black hair; two wide and unblinking eyes; the patchwork of an unkempt beard; thin, weakened arms; a pair of overalls, faded and worn to the thickness of paper. He stood slow and kept his hands close to his chest.

  “Who is this, Bucky?” Jake asked. “What’s your name, son? Can you tell me that?”

  “He can’t understand you, Sheriff,” Danny said. “I’ve tried. He can speak so far as I can tell, but there’s something . . . wrong. Some sort of deficiency.”

  The boy—if I can call it that—looked near John David’s age. Younger or older, I couldn’t tell you.

  “I think he’s hers,” Bucky whispered. “I think that’s Alvaretta’s boy. She must’ve been in the family way when Stu died. Nobody ever knew it.” He shook his head and said again, “Nobody ever knew it.”

  Jake took his hand away from his gun and tried stepping forward. The boy lashed out a fist and backed against the wall. He looked as wild as Alvaretta’s dogs.

  “Those markings,” Bucky said, “the crows. They wasn’t Alvaretta’s dark magic, it was just her boy . . . I don’t know. Playing, I guess. Trying to make sense of his world. Alvaretta said we couldn’t have him. We were talking about Stu, but she thought we’d come for her boy. Jake, she thought we were gonna do to him what Wilson and David did to her husband.” He heaved a breath that caught on tears. “She was only protecting her child.”

  Jake looked at the doctor. “You didn’t know?”

  “Never saw him. I never brought anything here for a child, Sheriff. I give my word on that.”

  “You ever talk to her? Tell her of Wilson and David?”

  “We spoke, but never too much,” Danny said. “I had no idea of what Wilson and David had done until tonight.”

  “Then how did Alvaretta know they killed Stu? How’d she know their kids?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She had power,” Bucky said. “Maybe not the power we thought she had, but I don’t know how else. Danny didn’t tell her, that don’t mean nobody did. She told me a demon come by, and it hadn’t been the first.”

  The boy pushed away from the wall and made a shooing motion with his hands.

  “Any missing person reports you remember from twenty years or so ago, Buck?”

  Bucky shook his head. “Ain’t nobody missing, Jake. Ain’t nothing here. Just this cabin and a shed that’s burned down, bunch of footprints outside nobody can figure. And a grave in the woods out back. Briar found it. There’s a cross carved there. Says only Stuart.”

  XVI

  The demon

  There’s where I’ll leave things, friend. I’d say more, but we ain’t got the time. It’s getting dark out, and you best be leaving. Wasn’t long back the night was safe for me and mine. Things keep as they are, the day won’t be much better.

  Way I heard it, there wasn’t a sadder sight to see than Jake and the doc taking Alvaretta’s boy away from the only place he’d ever known. He had no idea what they were doing to him. Kept screaming the same nonsense word over and over that everybody there took as Momma, even if nobody knew for sure. At least John David had the presence of mind to move Alvaretta’s body before the boy saw it. No telling what would’ve happened then.

  Didn’t matter if Crow Holler wanted any outside law or not, they surely got plenty of it that night. Not just Jake, but all the staties he could muster out of Stanley too. They descended upon that little cabin on the mountain if for no other reason than to see what happened for
themselves. A car arrived past midnight to take the last remnant of the Graves family away. Bucky let him take the dead crow he clutched in his hand.

  I heard they put the boy in the hospital for a good while. They cleaned him up and got him fed, but he never said no more than nonsense. Doctors never did get a name. About eight months back, he run off. He was up to the nervous hospital in Stanley by then. I don’t know how he did that, but I know he broke one guard’s nose and another’s kneecap before he disappeared on the other side of that fence. Nobody ever did find him, and nobody knows where he’s gone. But I’ll say there’s a light on at night out at that old cabin again, and on a cold day you can see smoke rising from the chimney. Could be anybody in there, I guess. Don’t nobody go up there to make sure. Bucky says he better not catch anybody on the mountain, and he means it.

  Speaking of Bucky, he was among the little group of Chessie, Landis, and the Reverend who rode away from the mountain inside an ambulance. Bucky was also the only one handcuffed. That’s how he wanted it. He told Jake what he’d done turned was wrong—killing an old woman who was just trying to protect her son. Ol’ Jake didn’t see things that way, and not just because Briar and Landis looked ready to put a bullet in him when he took those cuffs out. But Jake went on and did what Bucky wanted, if only so he’d get on to the hospital and see to that mangled leg.

  By then everyone else had arrived—Angela and Cordelia, Naomi and Belle, Maris. Only Kayann remained behind to look after both Hays and a grieving Scarlett. Cordelia got to hug her daddy again. That alone let Bucky leave with a smile on his face, because it meant the trouble really was over. Angela, she was smiling too. She wears that smile still. And don’t you think that woman doesn’t take every opportunity to remind us all Bucky was the one to put down the witch, because she does. Guess that means Angela’s somebody now. More power to her’s what I say.

  That’s how the night of the blood moon ended, friend. But that’s not how everything ended. That’s what I been trying to tell you. What’s gone on here is still happening, and it’s worse. Bucky killed Alvaretta, that’s all I know. Then things were fine for a while, and then . . . I don’t know where it all went wrong after that. If it started when Doc and Maris Sullivan left this holler never to return, or when Bucky was let off on self-defense for shooting the witch, or when John David got elected sheriff. I don’t know. Some things you can’t see coming, even when they’re right on top of you.

  Now look there. Doors on the church just opened up. I . . .

  . . . just sit here a minute. Maybe . . .

  That’s the Reverend on the steps there.

  We have to . . . yeah, we gotta get going. I don’t think . . . wait, there’s Belle. Naomi too. You see the way she’s standing? Still as can be. Naomi, she got fixed somehow. They all did, all but Cordelia anyways. Few weeks after Alvaretta fell, that . . . that curse . . . just, I don’t know. Left. And let me tell you, that weren’t supposed to be.

  Here they come. Have mercy, friend, they’re here. Just you sit still, I don’t think they’ll see us right off. Long as they don’t see us, we’ll be okay. Most the cars come down from the grocery way now. Not many live out where the doc and Maris did anymore, that’s all deserted.

  Just . . . yeah, that’s good. They’re all parking over to the other side of the church. You thank your stars you parked here and not closer.

  There’s Bucky and Angela, getting out over near the steps. They gave up the Celebrity—sheriff’s car, remember?—and now they drive that beat-up old Chevy. Angela’s got to drive. They saved Bucky’s leg I guess, though I don’t know how much saving there can be when you got to spend the rest of your life getting around with a cane and a measure of sweat. Limps something awful. Homer Pruitt gave him a new job up to the dump, working the scales. Chessie didn’t give Homer a choice in the matter. It was either hire Bucky back or eat that hood and robe John David found stuffed under the Pruitts’ sofa the day after the Circle arrived at the church. There comes Cordelia out the backseat, carrying her little boy. Little Bucky, she calls him. You can say Danny Sullivan was right in his belief that the only curse in Crow Holler lived in them girls’ minds. Mass delusion, he called it. Maybe that’s true. All the girls in town did get healed up all about the same time. Still, I don’t guess some sort of mass delusion explains Cordelia’s face though, does it? Nosir, I don’t think it explains what happened to her at all.

  There come the Fosters. Most of them, leastways. Landis and Kayann still got Hays up in the same nervous hospital Alvaretta’s boy took off from. He’s seen the baby, but I don’t know where that’ll lead. You ask me, I’m glad that boy’s gone.

  Chessie and Briar are here. Have mercy, friend, I wish I wouldn’t see them tonight. And John David, coming out the council building in his jeans and shirt with that badge on, Scarlett coming out with him, talking his ever-loving ear off. I hear them two are an item now. I hear he ain’t cold no more. He ain’t cold, and that means trouble. Don’t you doubt it, friend. Trouble’s in that man’s heart.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way. You understand?

  Come on while they’re all busy getting inside. Let’s get you out that chair and walk you to your car. Road right there’ll take you back to Mattingly. Plenty folk around there’ll help you get where you need to go. I wouldn’t tell anybody you been up here, though. People’s funny that way.

  Just help me along some, hand me my cane. Can’t get around without it these days. Fancy thing, ain’t it? That piece of wood on the end? Won’t find nothing like that round here, friend, on that I can guarantee. You’d think it wouldn’t grip a thing, but it does. That’s it. Come on, then. Oh, these old bones creak. Nothing worse than having yourself wrapped up in such a frail body, but that’s what it’s come—

  Say, what you doing all the way back there? Come on, friend, I ain’t kidding. Wrong people catch us out here, there’s gonna be . . .

  Oh.

  Now wait, wait just a second, you just hang on. Nothing’s gonna happen here, so there ain’t no need to get all excited. Okay? Plenty things in this old dark world sound like my cane smacking the gravel. Don’t mean a thing, hear? Don’t mean noth—

  That . . . no . . . those ain’t what you think. Ain’t none of this what you think.

  Okay, sure. It’s true. There, I said it. It’s true, friend.

  But so what if it is? You think of that? So what if this here cane sounds like wood over stone every time I hobble? So what if these old boots don’t make a mark in the dirt like yours and I leave a hoof where you leave a shoe, what’s that mean in the end? I ain’t treated you nothing but good ever since you come up here. I sat here with you and told you all I could. Ain’t never once laid a hand to you. Ain’t never said a word untoward. I just needed someone to talk to. Can’t you understand that? And before you go an put the blame to me for all you’ve heard this day, you remember one thing well: all I did was pick up a gold bracelet I found on the ground and leave it on a doorknob. I didn’t do a thing but take a walk. That and nothing more. I strolled through Campbell’s Mountain on a Saturday night and took another through town the night Ruth Mitchell died, and that’s all I did because that’s all I had to do.

  That a crime? I ain’t broke no law.

  I didn’t have to lift a finger to gain this town. Everybody says a devil walked in Crow Holler, but nobody cares to admit they did the devil’s work. You call me a demon, fine. That’s what I am, and I won’t deny it. I am filth and evil and darkness. I am your nightmare. I am the storm that rolls over you and the shadow upon your horizon. I am the creature of hate and violence, but no more than you.

  No more than you.

  Hays Foster was right. They locked him up and called him crazy, but he was right. There’s a monster inside you all, and it’s a worse one than I could ever be.

  You know how long I been wandering? Ages. Ages. One corner of this sorry world to the next. I endured history before history was made, if you got to know. I watched kingdom
s rise and fall that you and no one ever heard of and seen wonders and horrors you can’t fathom. Only thing I wanted was a place to settle. To be left alone. And I thought the Holler was just the spot. A people tired and rotting and weary of the world. A people without a will and who would turn upon one another with the slightest nudge. That’s what happened. People kept to themselves. That old church went ruined from neglect like it was supposed to. And now look at them. They were broken, friend. Not by my hand but by their own.

  But then it all went wrong. I don’t know how. I don’t understand. All I know is every night now they all walk inside that church and hold each other’s hands and talk and pray and then . . . and then they . . .

  sing.

  They sing. How can they sing?

  Reverend says the time is near for them to take back this town. John David. Chessie. Briar. Don’t matter who it is, they all say the same. They’re one now, can’t you see that? Don’t you care? They’re one now and they say they’re coming for me, and I’m tired of hiding. I’m so tired. I’m done hiding. I been chased and I been cast out, but I ain’t never been afraid. Not until now. Oh yes, I fear them. Told you that at the start, and I’ll tell you at the end. I fear what they’ve become. But that don’t matter. You hear me? That don’t matter none, friend. Holler’s my home now, and I won’t leave easy. So let them come. Let Bucky bring his steel and Chessie her iron. Let John David and his daddy try to cast me down.

  They want a fight, I’ll give them one.

  Discussion Questions

  1. Early in the story the narrator makes an almost incidental aside that the problem with Christians is that “they see the devil everywhere.” Do you agree with this sentiment? Why or why not? Why do some in today’s culture see religion as harmful if its theology states the presence of something that personifies evil?

  2. Scarlett suggests prayer while she and Cordelia are huddled in the bathroom waiting for the results of Cordy’s pregnancy test. The result is positive, a sign that God has answered their prayer the same as He has seemingly answered every prayer that comes out of the Hollow—Sorry. How does this play into the ambivalence toward God displayed by many of the characters? How does this reasoning affect the story as a whole?