The Curse of Crow Hollow (44 page)

“Tonight, friends, we turn. Tonight, those responsible for the curse upon us all will humble themselves.” David turned and pointed to what lay at Chessie's feet. “Tonight these three will confess their prideful ways, and their penance will be to wash the feet of all gathered.”

Friend, the silence that greeted David at those words could only be one of shock, nothing else. Chessie glared at the Reverend, but he did not turn. In the front pew, Cordelia's cell phone buzzed. She blushed and squeezed her purse.

“Let us go to the Word,” David said. “Thirteenth chapter of John, verses three through eleven.”

Cordy unzipped her purse as quiet as she could. Not even Angela's hard stare could stop her. She reached for her phone and hit the button to read the text. It was Hays:

MEET ME AT THE FIELD COME ALONE THEY'RE EVERYWHERE

“ ‘Jesus,' ” David began, “ ‘knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God; he riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself. After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded.' ”

Cordelia stared at her screen.

MEET ME AT THE FIELD

Hays wanting her.

Needing
her.

“ ‘Then cometh he to Simon Peter: and Peter saith unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet? Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter. Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet.' ”

COME ALONE

But could she? Could Cordelia do such a thing for a boy who was no longer the person she'd shared herself with? The boy who had been bruised somehow, the one who had once said he loved her but now said things like
It isn't safe anymore. Nowhere's safe
, because
they're everywhere
? You would think such an answer would require a measure of deliberation, but I'll tell you Cordelia did no such thing. Of course she would. She had to go, friend, and for the very reason girls her age did most anything—for love.

She let the screen drop long enough for Angela to see. Their eyes met, a daughter's pleading and a mother's fear. Bucky
couldn't come. He would have to stay here, make sure Medric and the rest got what they deserved, and so the two of them rose together and walked toward the doors. Bucky watched them go. Kayann watched them too. She did not look at Landis as she rose to follow them out.

David said, “ ‘Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me. Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. Jesus saith to him, He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all. For he knew who would betray him; therefore said he, Ye are not all clean.' ”

And that was the last thing Cordelia heard as she and Angela stepped out beneath a bright and full moon. Kayann remained farther back, picking her way through a tangle of arms and legs and ugly glares. The last thing she heard was David asking for witnesses to the evil deeds of the three gathered upon the stage. The last she saw was Chessie Hodge stand.

-2-

He stood in the middle of the field where a fire burned and the moon had already taken on a strange glow. Hays believed that high color a sign. Whether of the Lord or the witch, he did not know. I expect he had come to see them as one and the same.

He'd waited longer than it should've taken for Cordelia to get there. That had been more the fault of their two mommas wasting time on the church steps, arguing this was all Hays's fault and this was all Cordelia's, arguing about the past and the now and the future and the little child that connected all three. In the end Angela couldn't well refuse Kayann's insistence to come along. Hays was her boy, after all. Made for a pile of silence in Kayann's fancy car, you can believe that. None of
them said a word when they passed Raleigh Jennings and the four trucks with him, late for service and headed toward town.

Hays flicked his lighter one last time when he saw Cordelia walking out of the scrub of pines and spruces at the edge of the field. It had been a risk, texting her. It had been a bigger one asking her to meet him. He had no way of knowing how far Alvaretta's reach had grown through town, or how deep her evil had spread. But as Hays watched Cordy moving towards him, I do believe he felt thankful. I wouldn't say he loved Cordelia, least not the way Cordelia loved him. But really, what does that matter in the end? What child that age knows what love is? I'm an old man, friend; I've no idea myself. Sometimes I wonder if anybody does. But I think Hays had come to see the baby inside her as the only pure thing left in Crow Holler and the only person untouched by Alvaretta Graves.

He stepped away from the fire and craned his neck, wanting to make sure Cordy was still herself. “You came,” he said.

She smiled and kept the flames between them. “Vere have you been, Hayth?”

“I'm sorry. I left you, and I'm sorry. Scarlett was right. They were coming for me.”

“Whooth ‘they'?”

“The monsters. Alvaretta's monsters. They're everywhere, Cordy. I've seen them. Medric's one.”

“Medwic?” she asked. “How do you know about him?”

“How do—” he started, then closed his mouth. “How do
you
know about Medric?”

“Daddy bwought him in eawier, wif Chethie and Doc Thullivan. They're in church now. They helped the witch.”

Hays smiled for maybe the first time all week. “That's good,” he said. “But there's more of them, Cordy. They're everywhere. I tried getting out of town, but Raleigh got me. He took me in the woods with a bunch of men in hoods.”

She took a step around the fire, closer to him. “Vut men in hoods?”

“The monsters. They were after me, but I'm safe now. We have to leave. You and me and the baby, we have to go.”

Another step. Cordelia stopped close enough to touch him. Reach out and grab him. She winced at the heat of the flames. As she did, a piece of her forehead peeled away. It broke free of her skin and floated before the fire's current lifted it above her head, where it burned like an ember before winking away.

Hays stumbled back. “What's wrong with you?”

“Nuffing.” She came forward again as the tip of her chin bubbled and popped, revealing a patch of mottled black skin beneath.

“You're one of them,” he said. “Cordelia?”

“Thtop, Hayth. Let me help you. We'll make it okay. Juft tell me you wuv me.”

Her right cheek slipped free of her face, followed by an ear and a lock of her thick hair. Cordelia stood by the flames and had no idea her mask was falling away.

“Tell me you wuv me, Hayth,” she said, begging to hear those words. “Tell me you'll be wiff me alwayth, no matter vut.”

“Get away.”

He stumbled back as Cordelia moved away from the fire's heat, and at the far edge of the field came the others. Angela screamed his name. And there came Kayann, there came Hays's own mother, hollering for her boy and saying she loved him, and all Hays could think of was how horrible it would be once they all reached the fire and their masks burned away, too, and how that sight would snatch what remained of his sanity.

“Vey're here to help you,” the thing that had once been Cordelia said, but Hays wanted no such aid. He tore for the woods where he'd hidden Briar's old truck, and he did not turn to the calls begging him to turn back and join them.

You'll ask me, friend, if that's what Hays had truly seen—that piece of hell beneath Cordelia's pretty face and all them faces at the Circle. I'll tell you I don't know. Like I said, I don't know the whole of the story I'm telling you, but I can guess on the parts I don't. My guess as far as Hays Foster is concerned is that
he
thought that's what he saw, and that's the only thing that matters because it's the only thing that explains what he did next. He'd been inside the Circle's ring of fire when he'd seen the true faces of Raleigh's men. Medric Johnston had crossed by the lighter's flame when Hays had seen the undertaker's truth. That's what Hays had thought as he loaded up all that moonshine into the back of that truck. Now fire had exposed Cordy, too, and I guess that settled things. There was only one way for Hays to expose the rest of Alvaretta's demons that had overtaken Crow Holler, and that would be to burn the town.

Burn it all.

-3-

“I'll speak,” Chessie said. She kicked the chair she'd sat in away. The tumble sounded like thunder. “I'll tell you what I know.”

The Reverend said, “Chessie, you stand accused. The time for you to speak is done.”

“My time to speak is whenever I get the urge, David Ramsay. You got the nerve to shut me up, come over here and try.”

The Reverend looked at Wilson, who rose from his pew. It'd be tricky, getting Chessie to shut her mouth without Briar throwing the whole church into a riot, but I think that's what Wilson had decided to do.

And yet as he turned to speak to the congregation—tell them what a fool Chessie was for thinking she could do all that
sinning all those years and not have it all come back on them all in spades—his eyes went to the crowd huddled in the choir loft. Someone there stood. The figure was basked in shadow, moving from the back row up toward the front of the balcony with a slow ease that seemed impossible given how they'd all been packed in.

“You'll sit,” the Reverend told Chessie.

Wilson watched as the figure passed Helen Pruitt, then Helen's stricken child Maddie. On past the others, moving not around them but almost
through
them, easing its way to the wood railing that overlooked the sanctuary.

“I'll speak and I'll be heard,” Chessie said. “Stu Graves did not die by his own hand. He was murdered. And I know by whose hand.”

Doc Sullivan looked to have forgotten his migraine. Even Medric raised his head some.

Now not only standing but leaning over the rail, not so the figure could get a better look, but so the mayor could see clear the man who had haunted him since that night so long ago. Stu Graves curled a hand of skinless fingers over that railing and stared through two black holes where his eyes had rotted away. His face was little more than a thin layer of gray and mottled skin stretched taut over bone. A scream built in Wilson's throat, one that threatened to escape not simply because the man he had killed had come back to return the favor, but because no one else seemed aware of the danger around them.

Wilson did not hear Chessie say she would bear witness against him and the Reverend both. His mind was overcome by Stu's empty stare and Maddie Pruitt's sudden look of shock over what Chessie had just said. He didn't hear Chessie announce that Scarlett had told her all that Wilson had confessed only a short time ago, or the screaming the Reverend had started next, the
No
and
That's not true
. Wilson did not feel Scarlett's hand
upon him or see the scrap of paper with
I'm so sorry Daddy I love you
that she waved in his eyes. He did not even hear the congregation's gasp when Chessie said our mayor and preacher had killed Stu Graves along the Ridge Road that night. All of these things were unimportant to Mayor Wilson Bickford just then, inconsequential. Stu smiled through two rows of black and needled teeth. A worm fell from his mouth. It tumbled down from the choir loft and landed unseen and unnoticed atop Landis Foster's head, where it stretched and flopped as though dumped into water.

Three things happened then. That whole church started hollering. Stu Graves disappeared from his place beside Maddie Pruitt. And Wilson Bickford fainted dead away.

The Reverend shouted for Bucky to take Chessie out of there. Bucky remained in his seat, too stunned to move. Then the preacher tried to do it himself, even with Briar standing in front of him. He didn't get far. John David grabbed Scarlett from behind, getting her to safety, but there was no place to go. The crowd had rose up, shouting and cursing and wanting to know if it was true. There's not a doubt in my mind, friend, that our preacher and our mayor would've been torn apart right there. But that's when the front doors of the church flew open and the fire poured in.

-4-

The staff had been fashioned from a stout limb of oak, wrapped on one end with an old shop rag doused with a few cents of the Exxon's finest 87 octane, and the only reason it didn't strike anyone was they'd all moved to the front when Wilson fell. It tumbled end over end down the center aisle and landed with a clang against one of the metal chairs. Next came a soft
whoomp
as the fire took hold. It bloomed like a flower in the thick carpet. Doc Sullivan had already left his place on the stage to tend to Wilson. He paused now as the flames took hold and screamed
Fire.

Bodies collided as people scrambled to get out of the way. John David left Scarlett to care for her unconscious daddy. He charged through the crowd, ripping off his shirt to beat the flames. Bucky ran to join him. Reverend Ramsay stood behind the pulpit with a look of confusion, like he couldn't figure how there could be a fire because it hadn't been printed up in the bulletin.

John David grabbed the torch and ran it to the stage, where he shoved it inside the pitcher of water beside Chessie. The fire let out an angry hiss as it died. People clamored to the foyer. John David saw them and shouted, “No. Wait. Everybody wait.”

Didn't make no difference he said that, weren't nobody going to listen. All everybody wanted was get out of there and into open space. They all charged to the doors, and there's where they stopped. Not a one of them dared a step more. A silence fell over the room.

Briar rose to see what was outside. Chessie called his name and then shook her head, telling him to stay put. She sat back down in her chair on the stage and stared at the empty seat between herself and Medric. Doc stood with Maris in the middle of the sanctuary near where the torch had hit, asking if anyone was hurt. Briar nodded to his wife and returned to the front pew.