The Curse of Crow Hollow (11 page)

The line went quiet.

“Raleigh?”

“Yeah, I'm here. What's going on, Reverend?”

“Raleigh, you do something for me? And before you say yes, you better know it could get us both in trouble. Lord knows I don't want it this way, but people need to know what's happening. I need you to make some calls. Start a prayer chain.”

“Sure. What'm I supposed to say?”

The Reverend turned to take another look. Through the
small oval window, a nurse moved from the rack of desks in the center of the room toward Scarlett's door. She carried a clipboard in her hand. The door to Cordelia's room cracked open. Bucky walked out in search of a cup of coffee. I think it was the look on the constable's face that clinched it for David Ramsay just then, that expression of worry and fear that besets the utterly overwhelmed. That would be everybody soon, if what Naomi said was true.

“David?” Raleigh asked. “What should I say?”

He told Raleigh everything.

-9-

By the time David Ramsay was doing exactly what he shouldn't, Naomi sat in bed ready to do the same. She'd gone near twelve hours by then without talking to Cordy or Scarlett, having to rely on Hays for news of how they fared. Being cut off from her best friends like that was a source of anguish just as awful as the tremors and the memory of Alvaretta's demon shouting the language of hell. She had only feigned rest, knowing it would be the only way her momma and daddy would entertain the same. With no witnesses in the room, Naomi reached under her covers and pulled out her phone.

Belle had snuck it to her after supper, but made Naomi promise not to take it out around the nurses (and certainly not around her father). She knew it would be the one thing that might make her daughter feel better. Naomi brought it out now, scrolling through the dozens of texts from young folk wanting to know what had happened. She ignored them all and pressed the little picture that said MeTime. Her face twitched on the screen and wobbled in her shaky hands. She propped the phone against her knees and hit Record.

“Hey, y'all,” she whispered. Belle rustled in the chair beside her. When she settled again, Naomi saw her momma's hands still clasped in prayer. “I'm so sorry. Scarlett wanted to go to the mines for her birthday. We shouldn't have done that. The witch got us, that's all I have time to say. I can't stop shaking. Scarlett can't talk. And Cordy . . .” She swallowed a sob. Lordy, it's hard to imagine a body could hold so many tears. “We're all sick. I think a lot more people are gonna get sick too. I'm so scared. Please pray for us. Pray for everybody.”

Naomi wasn't awake to see her video sent out into that MeTime air. She began to drift soon after and barely summoned the energy to place her phone beneath the pillow. By the time the Reverend got back, his daughter was full asleep. Not five minutes more passed before thirty of the town's young gave her shout-outs. That number climbed north of a hundred within the hour.

Children they were, children all, from the lowliest eighth grader to the lowliest high school senior, all the ones who'd sat in church that morning and seen the whole thing. They may have thought themselves grown and mature in the calm and tedious days that was life in Crow Holler, where the world's always felt in shadow, but at least shrunken and predictable. But not a one knew the danger that lurked just beyond their sight. They knew not Reverend Ramsay's war between light and dark that raged unseen and unfelt around them.

They watched Naomi's message on their little phones and watched it again. Their parents paced worn living room floors or sat at chipped kitchen tables and felt a heavy silence of dread press in. Fathers stared from windows and ran calloused hands through hair that felt thinner and looked grayer than it had that morning. Mothers held their telephones tight against their ears, taking information and giving it back, sifting every word
and speculation through the fearful notion that everything may well turn out all right but likely would not.

“Went to the mines, they did. Got the key from Medric.”

“The Bickford one and the Vest one and even the Reverend's daughter.”

“I heard they summoned a demon from the mountain.”

“Footprints.”

“The cloven hooves.”

“Wild dogs, dozens of them, all in a rage.”

“Spellbound.”

“She knows our names.”

“Demon.”

“The witch cursed them girls.”

“Cursed us all.”

“Them girls' fault.”

“The girls.”

Ain't a much more reliable service to get out bad news than a prayer chain. This person calls that one, that one calls two more, and pretty soon what you got is a long set of fragile links made up of what-I-thinks and what-I-heards. By morning there wasn't a single person in town, young or old, who hadn't heard that something evil had befallen Naomi and her friends. There wasn't anyone who didn't know that evil was coming for us all.

-10-

She spent that whole day cleaning up, first herself and then the shed, patching the boards that had gotten kicked away as best she could with scraps from the pile in back. Weren't easy, carrying those boards in arms that had gone stiff and sore from being thrown to the ground. From being
molested
. Fastening
the nails with hands swollen and arthritic. Feeling the beat of her heart in the cut on her lip. And yet now that chore was done, fueled by a rage that had long simmered in the black places of the witch's heart, wailing her curses as the hammer rained down, driving those nails more by the sheer force of her will than her own strength. Screaming at the body next to her, cursing that only a fool would do something so ill-considered as refuse to remain unseen and unheard by the four trespassers from town. And now they knew. She had let them leave and now they knew, now everyone would know, and what would become of Alvaretta Graves now? What would become of the thing she kept hidden?

Those questions had preyed upon her all that day, so much that Alvaretta had kept what she'd hidden even further from sight. She could hear the wailing even now, booming out from both the barred wooden door inside and the heavier one that led out onto the porch, where she stood staring at the flowering moon rising over the woods. Somewhere close, her children barked and bayed and stood guard should the trespassers return.

No matter. The curse would fell them, mayhap had felled them already. Alvaretta had seen the fear in the children's eyes, the chubby blond one especially. Bickford. Had nearly felt the very life drain from the little whore as she'd screamed at the bloodstained finger riding down the bridge of her plump little nose. Power. That was her weapon, and one Alvaretta wielded whether she herself was present or not. Her specter hung over all of Crow Holler, not just Campbell's Mountain. If the curse did not silence them, the fear would.

V

Chessie sells. At the doc's. The girls come home. Trouble in town.

-1-

Wasn't nobody at Mitchell's Exxon when Raleigh Jennings came by the next morning. He eased his wheezing Cadillac off the dirt road and crossed the two strips in front of the pumps, setting off the bell somewhere inside, then stepped out and lifted his head to the blood-red sun.

There's a magic to spring in the Blue Ridge. Every other season will melt from one to the next, easing in and out so slow that you hardly even notice. But spring, friend? That one explodes. One day everything looks dead and gone. The next, all those bare branches and brown grass get colored in a green so deep you think it can't be real. The sky turns blue like the mountains. Flowers rise from the frozen ground like miracles, sprouting reds and yellows and violets, and with them come scents that take you to better times long past, back when the world held promise. You want to run a finger over it all, touch it like frosting on a cake. And all of that change, every bit, happens in the turn of a single day. I swear it's so.

Raleigh looked to be trying to feel that same magic then, his face all bent up toward that sun, trying to draw on its strength. In the end, all he looked to get was hot. He'd made the decision to rededicate both his work and his faith the night before. Like springtime in Appalachia, the change in Raleigh had come in an instant. Faster than that, even—I'd say just as long as it took
the Reverend to say good-bye the night before and the line to go dead. Raleigh knelt beside his battered sofa and prayed maybe the hardest he'd ever done in his life, harder even than when Eugenia left. Because he understood what was coming to Crow Holler, now and finally. Ruin. He could see it galloping toward them all like the black rider of death, and that rider had come as a hate-filled and frightful old woman. Alvaretta Graves.

No one stirred from inside the small gas station, though someone had propped open the wood screen door with a case of Mountain Dew. Raleigh looked toward the back, where the Exxon's big propane tank sat. Nobody there either. He reached back into the car and laid on the horn twice.

“Joe?” he hollered. “You here?”

A voice echoed through the door—“Hang on.” Raleigh waved no hurry to the air even though he didn't mean it. Hurry would be the order of the day.

The road through town lay quiet that morning. The grocery was open. (Raleigh had seen Landis out front when he'd drove by, sweeping the lot.) No buses, as both the Holler's schools had been closed by order of the mayor. Not for the proper reason, though. That's what brought Raleigh out to the Exxon.

Joe Mitchell walked into the morning light and wiped the sweat from his face with a red bandanna he pulled from the back pocket of his jeans and tried to smile. He rubbed a patchy beard that held more boy than man.

“Sorry you had to wait, Raleigh. Ruth was on the phone.”

He paused here, like he was testing the words in his head first to make sure saying them wouldn't crack his voice. Raleigh held in a grin. Family trouble, I bet he thought. Well, that's what Joe Mitchell got for letting his wife stray as she had.

But his grin got swallowed when Joe said, “Chelsea's got the sickness, Raleigh. Woke us up last night with it. Thought it was just her muscles jumping at first. But we can't stop it, no matter
what we do. Ruth's getting her to Doc's. I'm fixing to close up and meet'm there.”

Chelsea Mitchell. Tenth grade, Mrs. Heishman's homeroom. A pretty little thing just like her momma, and well-mannered.

Raleigh rubbed his eyes. “Then it's starting. Little Joe got it?”

Joseph Mitchell Jr. was four years younger than his sister and still at Crow Holler Elementary.

“He's fine so far,” Joe said, “but me and Ruth are keeping him away from Chelsea. Case it spreads by touchin or whatnot. You think that's how it's getting round, Raleigh?”

“No. No, I don't think it's that at all.”

Joe shook his head. “Well, want me to fill'r up?”

“Don't need gas this morning, Joe.”

“This business, then?”

“It is.”

Joe's weary grin faded.

“You heard through the prayer chain?” Raleigh asked.

“Tully Wiseman called me. Said he got it straight from you.”

“And I got it from the Reverend hisself,” Raleigh said, “so you know it's true. All of it.”

“I don't know, Raleigh. Alvaretta's a strange one, but a demon?” He rubbed his beard again. “Stretches things, don't it?”

Raleigh put a hand to Joe's shoulder. “I thought the same at first, but listen. Mayor called me just before the preacher did. He told me how the young'uns were doing and then told me to shut down the school next few days. Wanted me to test the water down to the reservoir. Like I even knew what to look for.”

“The water?”

“Told me it was either that or a flu. Ebola, maybe. You believe that? Didn't utter a word of Alvaretta. Never said nothing about them kids being up to the mines or no footprints. Never mentioned nothing of a curse on the town.”

“So somebody's lying, then,” Joe said. “Reverend or the mayor.”

“That's my thought, and I think it's the mayor. Ain't nothing wrong with the water, Joe. That was the case, a lot more'd be sick. Same for any flu bug. David was torn last night when he called me. Said telling me to start the chain would probably get us both in trouble. I'm principal, Joe. I'm on the council. Wilson told anybody the truth, it should've been me. Makes me wonder what else he's been hiding all these years.”

Joe Mitchell shook his head slow. “Preacher woulda never called to start the chain, ain't none of us would even know what's going on. This something we should be keeping an eye on, Raleigh?”

That sun, so warm. Raleigh bent his face to it again. Just down the road, he saw Medric's car leaving the funeral home. Heading to the hospital, no doubt. Mr. Medric Johnston, Crow Holler's keeper of both the dead and the mines.

“I think so, Joey. I think that's just the thing. Too early in the day to get everyone together, so why don't you make some calls. Homer and Tully, all you can get hold of. What I been telling you all these years? Ruination's coming. Starts with letting somebody like Medric gain a place in this town, then he poisons Hays Foster and Hays poisons all his friends. Now they gone and poked the witch, and we'll all suffer for it. Time for us to stand up, Joey. Cut the head off the snake.” Raleigh smiled. “Yessir, let's show Medric and them kids how appreciative we are for all they done to us.”

-2-

Joe and Ruth Mitchell weren't the only ones who'd spent a restless night pondering the witch. All them who stayed up at the hospital did, too, tossing and turning and dreaming of Alvaretta Graves.

Naomi twitched and shook even in the thin sleep afforded to her. Cordelia woke often in the night, not because of pain but because she kept turning her good cheek where the bad one had been and settling into a cold puddle of drool. Twice after that, she'd sat up in bed and pinched the dead side of her face, digging her fingernails into the skin like she was trying to jump-start feeling. You can imagine what went through Bucky's and Angela's minds that morning when they woke to find their daughter's face streaked with drying blood. Took the nurses nearly half an hour to convince Angela that Alvaretta's demon hadn't snuck in during the night to hurt Cordy all over again.