The Witch at Sparrow Creek: A Jim Falk Novel (9 page)

The men were hollering at each other in the fog.

Vernon Mosely was with Doc Pritham down by the creek.
They were sweeping the creek on the Sparrow side. Huck was up by the wood’s
edge near the hill.

Hattie Jones was spending a lot of time looking at the
chicken man’s cart. Samuel sat in the mud beside him or twirled around in a circle
looking at the white sky.

The ground was dark and muddy all over and it was cold
because it had, somewhere between evening and morning, frosted. There were marks
in the ground all over, paw prints where wolves had been running around Sparrow
all night. Here and there were darker places in the dark mud as well. These
darker spots were caused by blood. There were strange marks too—long, deep ruts
that weren’t caused by the wheels of any wagon.

Chicken feathers flitted about in the foggy air. Save
for the occasional shout of someone when they came across a ravaged chicken or
more of the strange marks, hardly a noise could be heard.

Hattie Jones’s boy, Samuel, looked to be enjoying himself,
his face lit up, his smile wide as he looked into the sky. Around him the grim
faces of the men of Sparrow, the frowning jowls and the crossed brows, appeared
now and again in the fog. The boy smiled and smiled so that some of the men
shook their heads when they caught sight of him. Even if some of the men wanted
to smile at his sunny face, they didn’t.

Everyone was looking in the fog.

Bill Hill and Violet appeared, shambling out of the misty
morning, and Hattie saw them and came up to them, pulling Samuel along. Hattie
frowned a bit when he saw the sight. The sad thing about the Hills was that
Violet was so pretty, but Bill had worn her out. Too many mornings started with
Hattie seeing the two of them arguing here or arguing there; sometimes Violet
would hide her face as she walked about. Hattie was sure he knew why, but he
couldn’t figure out why such a tough and pretty lady would go on staying with a
rude-tempered man like Bill, except that he had built up a lot of the town and
probably had some money on him.

“The chicken man’s disappeared. All his chickens too.
And his horse,” Hattie said.

“Horse,” Samuel said.

Violet was holding on to Bill’s arm and wasn’t looking
at anything in particular. Maybe she was staring at his belt buckle or his chest.

“We just come in to get some things at Huck’s,” Bill
said and looked at Hattie.

“Well,” Hattie said, “everyone is looking. You should
help us look. We’re all out here and we’re looking.”

Bill Hill looked down at Violet and said, “Why don’t
you go on to Huck’s and get the things that we talked about? Are you feeling well
enough to do that?”

Violet nodded her head and he let her go, but only after
she looked and looked into his eyes and then he nodded his head to tell her to
go on. She looked shaken, rickety. Bill coughed and patted his chest and rubbed
his left arm with his right.

“Violet hasn’t been feeling all too well. Now what’s
happened here?” Bill asked Hattie and put his hand on his hips and looked around.
He looked real tired. His eyes were red and his face unshaven. “The wolves have
had their run of the town, it looks like to me.”

“Well, Mr. Hill,” Hattie said and turned around in a
circle. His little white beard flapped on the end of his pointed chin. “Not just
the wolves.” He stopped in his turn and looked on up the east side of Sparrow.
He squinted his eyes as though he could see through the fog and up into the
dark woods on the east hill. He whispered, “There’s somethin’ evil been loosed
on this town. Yessir. Some kind of evil spirit has passed right through here.
There, look at this.”

Hattie directed Bill’s face to a spot in the mud where
there was a long mark, all crooked and long. “That’s where the thing’s long and
crooked tail went draggin’ across the ground.”

Bill didn’t look right at the mark. He looked near it
and his eyes didn’t focus. Bill looked exhausted. When he bent to look, his weight
brought him down on one knee into the cold, wet mud.

He bent there for a minute glassy-eyed surveying the
mud; tendrils of fog floated by his blank face.

Hattie came up to him and put his hand on his shoulder.
Hattie could see now on Bill’s back a bandage that had been wrapped tight
around his chest and under his shirt. Blood was leaking through it down his
back. Bill’s eyes were getting wide and distant.

“Doctor!” Hattie screamed.

“Doctor!” Samuel screamed. “Doctor!”

“No.” Bill choked up some dark spit. “No doctor. I don’t
have doctors and I won’t have them putting their hands on me.”

“We’re getting the doctor!” Hattie hollered. “Come on,
Sam, we’re getting the doctor!”

Hattie pulled his son along behind him by the hand hollering
into the fog. “Doctor! Pastor Mosely!”

Bill winced and raised himself. He felt his stomach get
sick as the blood ran thick down along his spine. His heart jumped a few beats
and he fell face down on the muddy road into Sparrow.

Soon Doc Pritham, Vernon Mosely, Hattie, and Samuel were
dashing back through the fog, their feet slipping on the ground. The doc’s pack
was banging on his thigh as he ran.

They found Bill face down in the mud. The blood spread
black across his back and shoulders under his blue shirt.

“Turn him. Help me turn him!” Doc Pritham shouted.

The men reached and grabbed him. “Gently now,” the doctor
whispered. “He’s alive, roll him gently.”

“His wife’s gone off to Huck’s,” Hattie said.

“Don’t touch me,” Bill said. “Get your damn hands off
of me.”

“You will bleed to death if you don’t do as I say,” said
the doctor. “Now that’s enough, men. Did the wolves do this? Have you been bitten
by the wolves? Leave him on his side. You, Jones, get the stretcher, and you,
Mosely, take this man’s hand and lead him in a prayer.”

Mosely looked at the doctor and his mouth came open as
if to say something, but he said nothing.

The doctor took a knife and cut Bill’s shirt away. His
chest and shoulders were wound tight with a thick bandage of cloth. It was soaked
and crusted in blood. The wounds were terrible underneath.

“The creek smelled funny to me. The water looked dark
and rusty,” Mosely said to the doctor as he knelt down beside Bill. “There was
a strange quiet down there all along the bank. Was that your experience?”

Doc Pritham opened his bag. He snatched out a dark brown
bottle and a glass funnel and blue bottle with one hand, and with his other
hand he clutched Bill’s face and squeezed the lips open. “Yes, it was,” he
finally replied to Mosely.

Bill mumbled through his clutched mouth, “Stop touching
me. Get your hands off of me, you. I don’t want no doctors.”

“Who is this—is this that Violet Hill’s husband?” the
doctor asked as he assembled with one hand the blue bottle against the brown
with the little funnel between, poured, and then moved his right hand to Bill’s
throat, causing Bill to say “Ahhh” and down went the mixture.

Bill Hill choked, but he couldn’t help but to swallow.

“It sure is. This is William Hill, from out at the end
of New Road. He and his wife Violet live out there and they were coming to
church for years, but in recent years they stopped coming. As you can see, it
was especially because of us starting to accept medicine along with prayer.”
The pastor lifted Bill’s quivering hand into his own and began his prayer.

The pastor’s hands were pink and white and the purple
veins stood out.



Down by Sparrow Creek it was dark. The sun was barely
coming up over the mountain and it was cold from all the rain that had come
through. The chicken man was running. The chicken man was running for his life.

He’d been back up at Huck’s place a few hours ago and
it felt like a long time ago now. He’d like to be back even there now. He’d like
to be anywhere. He’d like to be hammering together a chicken crate or feeding
his horse, Cousin.

All that racket got kicked up outside Huck’s, and then
there was all the howling and that shuddering loud noise and all his chickens
went missing. And Cousin had galloped off. God knows what that was all about.
Then that Benjamin Straddler went wild and went running off into the darkness
of the woods. He was wild. His eyes had gone, all gone, and he took off with
his shotgun.

And then, there was that Simon kid, calm as a cow. His
eyes were funny too. They were shiny—shiny as if a happiness was in them deep
enough that nothing could get to the bottom of it. It was the kind of happiness
that you see in the eyes of a gloated dog. Simon had been knocking back the
whisky and not saying much at all. The chicken man was just eating apples and
listening. Every time the wolves would howl or the wind would blow against
Huck’s shop, Simon got this settled look in him, a look of satisfaction, really
a look of peace.

Who could that be chasing him? It wasn’t a wolf. It was
too big to be a wolf. It wasn’t a bear, it was too sneaky to be a bear. No, this
had to be a somebody. But if it were just a somebody, then why did the fear
clutch at his heart and run up and down his back the way it did?

The chicken man’s boots slid in the mud by the creek
and his ankle turned funny and he toppled. Someone was chasing him hard. He started
shouting in the cold, black air, “Whoever you are, I just want my horse. Just
don’t take my horse!”

He was yelling and pulling himself back to his feet.
He wasn’t sure if he had hurt his ankle or not.

The chicken man wasn’t sure what scared him so awful
bad. He could sense something, though, about whoever was running after him. He felt
dreamy about it, as if whoever it was, they were evil and wiry and they meant
to do away with him, do away with him in some awful way, some way that made his
knees shake.

He kept running. The chicken man was completely out of
breath, but he pushed on. He pushed on through loose rocks and over mossy banks.
He pushed on through deep, thick mud that sucked at his boots in the dark. He
pushed on, splashing his soaked feet through veins of ice water that ran into
the creek. After a while, he’d cut himself on so many of the tall reeds and the
whipping branches and the sand stones by the creek bed, his lungs felt as if
they’d blow up, his vision blurred in the darkness. He had to stop.

He stopped.

He couldn’t hear anything but his own breathing. His
breath came out in front of his face in little white smokes. He couldn’t hear anyone
around. He was thirsty and his body, now settling still, began to burn and
sting from all the cuts. He’d twisted up his right ankle a lot worse than he
thought. He realized this and the feeling in his ankle joint was hot and sick.

His mouth was parched. He sucked cold air.

His eyes were wide in his thin little head.

It was lucky that his legs were so strong from all the
chicken runnin’. He coulda rode Cousin far and away from here, though. Where’d
he gotten off to? If he hadn’t that horse, he couldn’t make a decent living. Of
course, he might always find and buy another horse, but he’d raised Cousin up
from a foal and he and Cousin were like cousins.

It wasn’t right.

Them wolves might have got to him too.

But, now, who was this? Who was this following him?

He got himself down by the creek side and scooped up
a cold handful of water and slurped it. It felt good going down his throat. It was
icy. He could barely see anything around him. He could hear now the trickling
of the water licking the banks. He felt the stings of the cuts on his hands
bright as fires.

The moon was coming out from in between the clouds now,
and the creek bed got lit up with blue and green lights from the sky and from
the moon. The green moon played in the water.

There was someone standing there. There they were right
there, right there behind the big tree. For a flash he saw their shape and then
they disappeared behind the tree. It was a big person, maybe hunched over.

“Who is that?” the chicken man whispered into the thickening
darkness. “Come out of there.”

A feeling crawled up his spine, that same feeling from
before.

“Come out from behind that tree,” he said. “Come out
here and let’s see who y’are! Causin’ an old chicken man to run like hell.” He paused
and took a few steps forward and lowered his voice a little. “You’re giving me
the jitters standing back there. And where’s my horse. Where’s Cousin?”

There was no answer, though he thought that he might
have heard a whisper.

“What?” he called and stepped a little closer.

Again no answer, but something in the wind that sounded
like a whisper.

He moved in closer still to the tree. It was a wide tree
that looked as though it had twisted itself over a big, heavy stone. It’s funny
how things can grow and live even in places where it seems they aren’t supposed
to.

He saw something.

“Who is that?” he whispered.

There was a crackling noise and something heavy shifted
in the mud. “Get out here! You’re making me mad! Get out here and show yourself,
or I am going to come back there and whop you one!”

The chicken man hardly ever in his life had felt so angry.
All that fear inside him had curled itself up in the back of his neck and he
was ready for a fight.

The moon came out from behind the cloud again and there
it was.

He could see now there was something behind the tree,
it looked like an animal carrying another animal on his back or something like
that. It reminded him of something he’d seen many years ago at the docks in
Hopestill. Men had brought something in from deep out on the ocean, something
with horned whips for arms, something alive that seemed that it shouldn’t be.

He raised his fists and squinted up his eyes.

But the chicken man hardly got a look when his legs went
out from under him and the breath was knocked out of him. Soon he was upside
down and his face was wet and hot and he tasted blood in his mouth. Then he was
tired and he jerked back and forth. The world felt soft and far away. He thought
he could see something looking at him in the dark. He thought he saw yellow
eyes, like a cat’s, spinning around. Maybe it was a mountain lion had got a
hold of him.