The Reign of the Departed

by Greg Keyes

  “You know better than this,” Billy said. “That’s why you tried to have the strangers do it. Then what were you going to do? Hang them?”

  The witch stirred again.

  “Kill her Rand,” he told one of the boys. “Kill the witch.”

  Billy shifted his pistol to a gangly, freckled boy.

  “You said we wouldn’t have to do it, Jobe,” Rand said.

  “Well, it looks like we have to now,” Jobe replied. “It’s our best chance. Sunday will be here soon, and after that she’ll be fit again.”

  “And tell the folks what you’ve done,” Billy said.

  “I’m about past caring what any of them think,” Jobe said.

  He suddenly drew his pistol and aimed it at Aster, throwing himself down as he did so. Aster was so startled she pulled the trigger. She stumbled back and almost fell. She thought she heard more shots, but couldn’t be sure for the ringing in her ears.

  Jobe was rolling on the ground, hugging his knee to his chest. Billy followed him with his pistol. But now all the other boys had drawn, and most were pointing at Billy.

  “Just do it, God’s sake,” Jobe howled.

  “We’ll have to shoot Billy first,” Rand said.

  “Well do that, goddamit,” Jobe said.

  “You oughtn’t,” Billy said.

  “And why is that?” one of the boys sneered.

  Billy just pointed with his index finger to the second group of boys who had just arrived. The new arrivals numbered a few more than Jobe’s bunch, and they were clearly on Billy’s side of things.

  “Anyway, it’s just about Sunday,” Billy said.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” she heard Errol ask.

  “All right,” Jobe said. He’d gotten to his feet with help. He didn’t seem all that injured. He looked around defiantly.

  “We’re walking out of here boys,” he said, and began hobbling backwards.

  “The deacons are going to have something to say about this,” Billy said.

  “I reckon they will,” Jobe said, “but I ain’t going to hear it now.”

  “They’ll just hide out until Sunday’s over,” one of the new arrivals hollered.

  “Let ‘em go,” Billy said. “We don’t want no one getting shot.”

  And so Jobe and his boys slunk off into the woods as noiselessly as they had come.

  Suddenly the witch cried out in agony, a sound that began like that of some animal but ended in a very human sort of whimper. And when Aster looked, the witch wasn’t there anymore; only an old woman covered in skins far too big for her.

  SEVEN

  SUNDAY

  Errol’s triumph at bringing down the Snatchwitch faded into one of helplessness and confusion as events unfolded that were literally too large for him to affect. So when the witch screamed, he did the one thing he knew he could do, and lifted the blade, intent on stabbing her foot again if that was what was needed.

  But he found himself eye-to-eye with an old lady who looked nothing like the witch. She was lying on her side, blinking a little, as if she had just wakened from a dream.

  “Hello there,” she said.

  The boy named Billy quickly knelt by her.

  “Mother, are you okay?” he asked.

  “My foot is awful sore,” she said, “but I’ll live.”

  Billy helped her to her feet, and now Errol was just at her ankle again. But Veronica hadn’t forgotten him, and a moment later he was back on her shoulder.

  The old lady gave them a peculiar look.

  “Here you are,” she said. “I reckon I expected you a little earlier, but here you are.”

  “What does that mean?” Errol asked. “You knew we were coming?”

  She grinned. “Well, when you have part of something,” she said, “you reckon the rest will be along directly. Needs tend to find one another.”

  “Are you really her?” Errol asked. “The Snatchwitch?”

  “Six days a week,” she said. “Today is my day off. Now, young man, where did we put your bigger self?”

  The body Aster had built for him didn’t feel the same exactly, and it wasn’t the shoots and leaves that persisted in places even after the old lady somehow withered off the parts that immobilized it. It felt somehow more alive, and he suspected it was, in a way—the wood he was made of was now green and full of sap.

  They marched through the remains of the night.

  The woman’s name was Hattie Williams, and she promised to explain once she was fully herself, whatever that meant.

  Just after dawn they reached the town of Caneshuck. There wasn’t a lot to it; two dozen houses, a church, and what looked like a general store.

  And for the first time since leaving the hospital, Errol saw more than one adult at the same time. Most were streaming into town from outside, most in rags, but some were well dressed. Shockingly, one of them was Dr. Shecky; four children of various ages were embracing him. It appeared to be a reunion.

  Similar meetings were happening all around the square, though some children notably hung back. All of them shifted their gazes when Errol and his companions came into view. Their expressions varied from embarrassed to unfriendly.

  Hattie and Billy hustled them into one of the houses.

  “This business isn’t for outsiders,” she said.

  Inside, the house was neat and spare. Billy led them to a long table with two benches and brought water, biscuits, butter, and jam while Hattie excused herself. Errol watched as Aster and Dusk ate like starving wolves.

  “Are you okay?” he asked Aster. “They were supposed to fix you up.”

  “You shouldn’t have left me, Errol,” she said. “You should have waited before running off on your little adventure.”

  The injustice of the remark stung Errol, and he bit back a response. Veronica, however, did not remain silent.

  “You’re being a real you-know-what,” she said. “They didn’t give Errol that choice. It was either kill the Snatchwitch or they were going to let you stay sick. Jobe said they might even help you on, a little, if we didn’t go.”

  Aster frowned, and looked ready to continue the argument, but then Billy put a hand on her shoulder.

  “They had to get it done before Sunday,” he said. “They wouldn’t have waited.”

  Aster pursed her lips and nodded.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay?” Veronica said. “How about ‘thanks you guys, for risking your lives against a horrible monster’?”

  “I’m not always such a horrible monster,” Hattie said, coming back into the room. She had plaited her hair and donned a dress of brown homespun.

  “Sorry,” Errol said. “We didn’t mean—”

  “Oh, don’t you apologize for me, Errol Greyson,” Veronica said.

  “It’s fine,” Hattie said. “I know this must all seem very confusing.”

  She glanced sidelong at Dusk. “Perhaps not as much so for you, my dear.”

  Dusk nodded. “No, I see now.”

  “You’re under some sort of curse, is that it?” Aster asked.

  “Yes,” Hattie replied. “But it isn’t just me.”

  “I saw Dr. Shecky,” he said.

  “They met Uncle Roger, too,” Billy added.

  “Uncle Roger?” Errol asked.

  “That snake-cat-thing on the trail,” Aster said. Then, to Hattie. “How many of you are cursed?”

  “All but the youngest,” she said. “Any man or woman of age to conceive a child fell under the curse. Six days of the week we are changed. Most are just animals, but those of us with the most shimmer, we become monsters. On God’s day we come to ourselves.”

  Errol could see Aster trying to hide something in her expression.

  “When did this happen?” she asked.

  “Eight years ago,” Hattie replied.

  “Eight,” Aster repeated. “Why? Who cursed you?”

  “We’ve no idea,” Hattie said.

  Aster ti
cked her index finger on the table. She had the fierce, focused look Errol knew so well.

  “Why did Jobe want us to kill you?” she asked.

  “Jobe is nearly grown,” Billy said, in his soft voice. “He’s sick of the elders showing up one day a week and telling him what to do. A lot of them are like that.”

  “Sometimes I think he’s right,” Hattie said. “The danger we pose—”

  “No, Mother,” Billy said. “We’ve all learned to be careful, to go quietly, to ward the houses and yards.”

  “Life would be easier without us,” Hattie said. “Jobe sees that.”

  “But why did he want us to do it?” Errol asked.

  “Wanted to make it look like strangers did it,” Billy said. “But then once everyone got the idea that one elder could be killed, it might convince them to go after the others, the most dangerous ones first.”

  “But eventually all of them,” Veronica said. “Sure. And easiest on Sunday, I would think.”

  “I can’t believe they would murder their own parents,” Aster said.

  “Some wouldn’t,” Billy replied. “Right now more than half wouldn’t. But it used to be that no one considered it.”

  Errol heard the door bang open and a moment later Shecky limped into the room. He heard Aster gasp.

  The man stood there for a moment, his eyes sorrowful behind his crooked nose.

  “Miss,” Shecky finally said. “I owe you my deepest apologies. I’m terribly sorry for the hurting I gave you.”

  Aster’s face had drained of blood but was otherwise utterly without expression.

  “Everything has been explained to me,” she said.

  “That may be,” Shecky replied. “But there is them that drink and do a thing, and claim the whisky done it. And maybe it did; maybe without the whisky he’d be a fine man. But I think it’s something in him the whisky brings out, and so he’s accountable. That’s how I feel about these things.”

  “We can remember what we do,” Hattie said. “Not always. And this kind of curse, it finds something in you. Maybe something little, and it twists it all up.”

  “I tried to take my hand to myself once,” Shecky said. “I couldn’t, and I’m ashamed.”

  “It’s the curse, Will,” Hattie said softly. And the way she said it made Errol think she knew that from experience.

  “Anyhow,” Shecky said, producing a squat glass jar. “This here is a liniment. It’s good for most scrapes and suchlike, and will draw out poison. I’d be obliged if you took it.”

  Aster regarded the proffered gift for a moment, then reached for it.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Is there anything we can do?” Errol asked. “Any way to break the curse?”

  “You are already on a quest, Errol,” Aster reminded him.

  “I’m not jumping ship, Aster,” Errol said. “But if we could do something for them, something that wouldn’t get in the way of what you want—why shouldn’t we?”

  He remembered what Hattie had said about needs finding one another.

  “You already seek the holy water,” Hattie said. “It might be that could benefit our situation.”

  Aster started. “Who told you that?”

  “I see things, child. I know things. You need one more companion, a rare sort of companion indeed.”

  “Yes,” Aster said.

  “It’s my sister you must speak to,” Hattie went on. “She knows more of these matters than I.”

  “Can you tell us the way?”

  “Billy will guide you,” she said.

  “Mama, no,” Billy protested.

  “Hush child. They need someone who knows the land and its dangers. And after yesterday, I would rather you were far from here. Jobe and his won’t take kindly to what you’ve done.”

  She took Billy in her arms. “You’ve been a good son to me, as true as any born of my blood. So mind me now; go with them. They might be able to find the cure for our curse.”

  Billy lowered his head and nodded.

  “Good,” Hattie said. “Now, I fear there is little time. You must leave while it is still Sunday. Shecky here will see you armed, mounted, and supplied.”

  She smiled. “Take them, Billy. I can’t stand a long farewell. God bless you all.”

  David was tired of walking, and his feet hurt. He still had on the dress shoes he’d worn to work that morning, and he could feel the blisters painfully squishing around in them.

  “Keep your pace,” the Sheriff said.

  Easy for you to say, David thought. You’re on the horse.

  But he did walk faster.

  “Where are we, anyway?” he asked. Aside from a couple of collapsed wooden buildings that probably dated from a hundred years before, he hadn’t seen any sign of human beings, unless one considered the pastures themselves, which often had terraces. He kept expecting that they would cross a highway. Northern Okatibee County was pretty rural, but he had been walking all day without encountering even a barbed wire fence.

  Or seeing an airplane go by overheard, or hearing a car in the distance.

  Maybe they had somehow slipped by Highway 33 and they were clear over in Hardy County, he thought.

  It was near sundown when the hounds sent up a noise, and the sheriff took them down a little path.

  “This doesn’t feel right,” David said.

  “They came through here,” the Sheriff replied.

  “Okay.”

  The trail brought them an old shotgun house that had a few rooms added on to it. Watching them arrive were a bunch of children, mostly girls. None of them were Aster. The girls wore long dresses and the boys wore overalls, and he wondered if they had wandered into some sort of snake-handling fundamentalist cult hidden away in the woods.

  The few boys were all pretty young. One—about thirteen—had eyes swollen nearly shut; it looked like bees had stung him in the face. He placed himself in front of the porch, as if to say he was in charge.

  “Hey there, mister,” he said.

  The Sheriff didn’t beat around the bush.

  “I’m looking for two young women,” he said. “And a thing built of wood that walks as a man. They were here.”

  “Yeah, they was,” the boy said. “That sick one give me this,” he said indicating his face.

  “Jake,” one of the girls said. “Them’s grown men.”

  “I know it,” Jake said.

  “But they came in past the wardings. So they ain’t . . .”

  “Where have they gone?” The Sheriff demanded.

  “They went to Ashy creek,” the boy said, “to kill the Snatchwitch. Well, three of them did. That hellhexer stayed here, on account of the deal, but she done this to me and lit out after ‘em. And now Jobe’s gone after her.” He shrugged. “That’s been a while. I hope they had to shoot her skinny self.”

  The horseman seemed to consider for a bit. Then he indicated David.

  “I’m the Sheriff of the Marches,” he said. “This is my deputy. I need a horse for him, or a mule.”

  “Jobe took all the horses,” Jake said.

  The sheriff looked at David, and he felt a searing contempt in his gaze that made his legs go weak.

  “Well, I don’t guess you can walk at night,” he said. “We’ll stay over here and set out in the morning.”

  “Mister,” Jake said. “It’s polite to ask if you want to stay someplace.”

  The horseman stared at Jake for a moment. Then he got down, drew a pistol, and before the boy could do much more than cower, clubbed him on the side of the head with it.

  “Please,” the Sheriff said, “might we stay here for the night?”

  Jake was holding his ear, elbows on the ground and back arched up. Blood leaked from between his fingers. He was crying.

  “Yes, sir,” he managed to whimper. “I reckon you can.”

  David sat on the porch, listening to the crickets and tree frogs, drinking cold water from a ceramic cup and soaking his feet in a small basi
n. A clump of girls sat further down the porch. Most of them were in long cotton shifts, now—presumably what they slept in. He was clearly the object of their attentions, because they kept giggling and pointing toward him.

  “Can I help you girls with something?” he asked.

  “We was just wondering how old you are,” one of them said, a pretty, moon-faced girl with frizzy dark hair and emerald green eyes. It was hard to guess in the moonlight but by the way her shift fell straight he thought she was probably eleven or so.

  “I’m twenty-five,” he said.

  “And it not even Sunday,” she said. “I’ve never heard of such.”

  “Well, he ain’t from around here, Nellie,” another said.

  “He must not be.”

  “What school do you girls go to?” he asked.

  “School?” Nellie said. “I don’t reckon we have a school no more. It got burnt a few years ago. We have our lessons in the Church, what ones we get.”

  “And what Church is that?” He asked.

  “The one in town,” Nellie said.

  “No, I meant—what denomination are you?”

  “I don’t know what that means,” Nellie said, “but it sounds sort of dirty.”

  The girls all giggled.

  “I mean Baptist, or Methodist, Presbyterian, or whatever.”

  “Well, I been Baptized,” she said. “I never heard of those other things.”

  The girls abruptly clustered together, whispering in a rush.

  “No you don’t do it, Sarah!” Nellie suddenly shouted.

  “Hey mister!” another girl said. “Nellie’s wondering if you’re looking to find a wife.”

  The world did a sort of half-turn, and David felt his cheeks burn.

  “I think maybe I’m a little too old for you,” he said.

  Nellie stopped slapping at her friend and looked suddenly deadly serious.

  “I’ll have you know I’ll be thirteen come July, same age as mama was when she got hitched. My daddy was right near forty at that time. Just because you’re the only growed man around don’t get big ideas. I got prospects.”

  “I didn’t—” he began, but then thought better to change the subject. “Where are your parents?”

  “Well, they ain’t around are they?” Nellie said. “Except on Sunday.”

  “Why only on Sunday?”