The Curse of Crow Hollow (32 page)

Medric came back out jangling the keys to the garage, the tractor inside, and the cemetery. He made a crack about being thankful Hays hadn't stolen that chain along with the chain that held the key to the gate and said, “Let's get this over with.”

Hays ran the keys back up to the mayor and Briar. The sight of that old John Deere rolling down the road brought everybody close running to see what was going on. Angela was more than willing to fill them in.

At the gates, Medric bucked one last time. “What you all want is an abomination,” he said.

Briar smiled. “Medric, I reckon those keys in your hand will open the lock whether you're conscious or not, so you better shut your mouth and free that gate.”

Medric snapped off the locks and swung the gate open. He turned to everybody waiting and said, “Damn you all.”

Briar maneuvered the tractor through the rows, stopping at the plain stone marker where Stu Graves had been laid to rest. The people crowded in when he started to dig. By then, more folk had come. Shovels were brought up. Men stood close as women drew back.

Wilson started praying right about the time Briar hit the
top of the coffin. Bucky, Medric, and Landis crawled down into the hole to pop the sides and pry away the top.

I guess I don't need to say much more on that, friend. You look smart enough to know what come next. Everybody'd known for years Alvaretta had power, and that power held root in a rage over who had been taken from her. She'd told Bucky it was darkness and death that stalked Crow Holler, and she had not lied. No doubt remained of that, nor could there be doubt that both of those things had taken the form of one person. The casket lay empty, friend. As empty as their hope.

-7-

Well, didn't take long before every soul in town heard of the empty casket that'd been dug up at the cemetery. Wilson could plead with everybody the rest of the day and all that night to keep quiet on it, wouldn't a done any good. And could you blame Angela and Landis and the rest, telling everyone they could that the demon who'd cursed them all was none other than Stu Graves raised up from the dead? News like that's got to be spread.

All the kids hung back from the cemetery gates and had themselves another meeting. Just like before, Hays led the whole thing. I'll leave it to you to decide how that boy came to take Scarlett's place as leader of their little group. I myself don't know, other than Hays was the only one among them who seemed to understand what was going on. Didn't much matter to Cordelia or Naomi if those ideas were truth or lies, neither. You get into the kind of spot them kids was in, even a false answer sounds like a good one.

Hays told them about Bucky checking Medric's tires and how the treads didn't match up. “And I don't care if they don't,”
he said, “Medric's still hiding something. He didn't want to dig that grave up, and I don't buy it was because of some undertakers' ethics. He knew nothing would be in there.”

“If it wasn't Medric at Alvaretta's,” Naomi asked, “then who was it? Does that mean there's more than one person helping her?”

“Vat's cazy,” Cordy said.

Hays said, “It's Medric. I know it is.”

Scarlett started writing:
Did Bucky say what the tire marks looked like?

“No, just that they weren't Medric's.”

You seem awful sure of yourself its Medric

They all read that, friend. Every single one. It was like that page on Scarlett's little pad was a magnet, and all those kids' eyes were made of lead.

“What are you trying to say, Scarlett?” Hays asked.

She turned the paper around and started scrawling. Fast, like it wasn't Scarlett writing at all. Like something had taken her over. And maybe it had, friend. But I won't put that one down to Alvaretta and her demon. I'll say it was just Scarlett's pent-up fear of losing the best friend she'd ever known to a boy she'd never really liked.

Big, looping words,
You didn't do anything to help us, you just stood there and let it happen
, that pen pressing onto the page so hard the paper began to tear and shred.
Your a freak everybody knows it even Cordy and now you're talking about freaking monsters????
And then, in a final flourish,
Did Bucky see your tires??

“Thtop it,” Cordy said. “Hayth ithn't
helping
her.”

Naomi was saying they couldn't start fighting, but it was too late. Fighting they were, friend, and loud enough to get Bucky's and Medric's attention. Briar and Chessie had hung around long enough to get Stu Graves's casket back in the ground (there'd been some discussion on that, whether it'd do
any good reburying an empty box, but Bucky had figured they might as well), but now it was just the sheriff and the undertaker left to tamp down the dirt.

“Things is gonna get bad, Buck.”

“Things is already bad, Medric.”

“Then they'll get worse.”

Bucky hollered at the kids, said they should all get home or at least lower their voices, this was a place of the dead. He looked back down to his shovel and spoke low, so only Medric could hear.

“You'd tell me if something was going on, wouldn't you, Medric? I mean, we always been friends. You get in a bind, you'd tell me, right?”

“Ain't nothing going on you need to mind, Buck.” Medric shoveled another scoop of dirt and mashed it with his boot. Bucky didn't see any crow feathers stuck to it. “Will say I'm scared of what's next, though.”

“Me too,” Bucky said.

X

David sees a shadow. Stu comes to town. A death in the Holler.

-1-

Reverend Ramsay made it back to church alone that Thursday morning, leaving the cemetery much the same as Medric had left the hospital the night the witch's curse struck. I'll say he didn't walk so much as run. He spent the rest of that afternoon locked inside the small office off the sanctuary. Prayer and fasting is what he'd tell you, but I'll say that man was too plain scared to come out.

He nearly screamed when a knock came awhile later—Belle, wanting to know if her husband was okay. David lied and answered he felt fine, all things considered. Belle said she, Landis, and a few others were going to bring chairs over from the council building. Word's getting out, she called through the door. They'd need all the seating they could get for that night's revival. The Reverend tried saying that sounded fine while keeping a tight grip on the panic that had overcome him. It all came out in a jerky, “Okay,” then he dared not open his mouth again. He watched the bottoms of Belle's tennis shoes in the long crack at the door's bottom until she finally left.

The old leather Bible that Belle had gifted him upon his ordination lay open on the desk. The brown cover had been worn to a silky tan, supple and faded from years of handling. Of providing comfort. The pages inside were underlined and noted, dates scribbled in the margins like signposts marking
the dark times in David Ramsay's past when a verse or passage had served as an oasis. He could've search through those then, looked back on all those times the Lord had comforted and guided him through the valley of the shadow of death. But the Reverend didn't. That Bible lay in front of him, but he didn't see it. His eyes kept to the crack at the bottom of his office door instead, to that thin strip of bluish-yellow air marking the boundary between himself and the world of witches and monsters outside.

We would look to him now. That's what Reverend Ramsay was thinking. The town would turn not to the mayor or the sheriff, but to him. That's how it had gone on plenty of times in the past—Crow Holler was once a peaceable place, friend, but that don't mean it was never calamitous—and in those times the Reverend had led them both and well. But this valley was different. Darker. And now that he and the town had set upon it, David Ramsay felt his faith begin to waver.

Stu.

It had been a single night those many years ago. Not even that, really. A single hour of that single night and a single moment of that hour. And though the Reverend had somehow justified everything that had happened after by saying it hadn't been
him
too drunk to drive or not
him
who had done it, and the only thing he could be guilty of was trying to protect his friend, he now understood the frailty of that logic. Because he had done enough harm that night. A lifetime's worth.

It was a power beyond his reckoning that could empty a grave of death. It was a power far greater that could breathe into that grave not life, but vengeance. Bucky said someone in town had turned traitor to neighbor and kin alike. That meant Alvaretta Graves had claimed both the living and the dead as her acolytes—an ally the Reverend thought could be most anyone, and a murdered husband. The only question left for David
was the same one I expect we all must ask at some point: Did he believe?

Mayhap he hadn't before, friend, back when the Reverend was no reverend yet, slumped over his desk at the university or the little table in him and Belle's apartment with a wailing John David nearby wanting his bottle or his diaper changed. And maybe he hadn't when the family returned to Crow Holler to stake their claim on the souls of this town—John David now out of those diapers and Naomi growing in Belle's womb. Alvaretta's memory (Stu's memory, to be more specific) still burned inside and always would, which was why even someone with as much faith as David Ramsay would X the windshield when his travels took him by the Graves place. But is there not a bit of night in even the brightest life? Is there not still a sinner's heart beating inside every saint? Yes. Yes, friend. Such was what that man had told himself all these years, all in order to put that single moment of that single hour in that single night behind him. And so did he believe that Alvaretta's fury still burned bright enough to bring forth what darkness she could from the mountain? Could she indeed summon an evil that would consume them all?

David Ramsay believed yes. He always had, deep down. Not simply because Alvaretta Graves had power, but because the Holler had none. Ours was a cursed place. Maybe always had been. Not because of the mines or the mountain, not even because of the witch, but because the people themselves had lived unclean. Reverend had told Bucky as much, days ago. It held truer now. Crow Holler needed the Lord, friend, and yet the Lord would never come to a place such as this. Not as long as those who called upon Him did so through lying lips and blackened hearts.

Outside, he heard the wooden doors of the church open and shut.

Sitting there behind a desk that had spawned sermons aplenty, our Reverend believed. Oh friend, he truly did. Not only because of his own sin, but because he had seen Stu Graves's empty plot with his own eyes and now saw the bottoms of two dirt-crusted boots in the crack at the bottom of his office door. They did not move from their place, those boots, only sank into the dark blue carpet as bits of dirt and mud fell from the sides. The Reverend found he could not swallow.

A soft rap on the wood.

He called in a weak voice from behind his desk, “Who's there?” And when no voice returned, “Leave this place in the name of the Lord.”

I know the preacher wondered if it was Stu Graves or Alvaretta's helper that knocked at his door—the hand of death or that of darkness. He couldn't know for sure without turning that knob, and that knob would never be turned. The town had let evil in, but David Ramsay would not. No, he would not ever. And so he remained there shaking behind that worn leather Bible, knowing not what sought him that lonely afternoon. Neither did the Reverend know what bade those two muddy boots to finally turn and leave, his prayers or his tears.

-2-

The only thing the mayor wanted to get clear with Scarlett was she couldn't be out of his sight now, not until everything was done. No more going alone, no more spending time with her friends. Scarlett didn't look to care much for that idea, as I'm sure you'd guess. She even went so far as to take out her little pen and scribble
Prisoner
on her pad. Wilson didn't care a whit what she wrote, that was the way things had to be.

“You were at the cemetery. That grave is
empty
. Don't you understand?”

She didn't. Any of it.

They were at the house by then. Wilson had locked all the doors and drawn the blinds. He peered out at the empty road from their living room window, watching the day begin to wane.

“This is what it comes to,” he muttered. “Spending the rest of my days hiding. She said she wouldn't rest. Nobody believed her. Wally died. Crops failed. Business left town. Nobody believed her. I didn't. Not even when your momma's cancer came.”

He snapped the blinds shut and looked at his daughter. Her brow had wrinkled.

“Never mind. You should go get dressed for church. I'll have to be there tonight. That means you're going too. We still don't know who it was that hurt you the other day, and I'm thinking it's whoever's thrown in with Alvaretta. They'll come for us first, Scarlett. Stu or the other. Alvaretta's gonna send them here.”

He was ready for Scarlett's protest, but not her tears. They came slow like a spring shower, drop by drop, curling around her plump cheeks. Then came a torrent that seemed to pour from the girl's very soul. She buckled and collapsed onto the wood floor, her mouth crying out
I don't understand
though she produced no sound.

Wilson told her it would all be okay even if he knew by then it wouldn't, because that's what good daddies tell their kids. They would figure a way through this. Faith and honesty, Wilson said, that's what they needed. Scarlett nodded against his chest.

They sat holding each other and rocking away their fears on that cold living room floor, seeking and (I believe) finding faith
enough to believe they'd be together always. But I guess the honesty part came harder for them both. Scarlett never wrote it was Tully Wiseman who'd attacked her, not in the name of the witch but for his ailing little girl. And Wilson never once said the reason Stu Graves would come for them first was because Wilson had been the one who killed him.