The Witch at Sparrow Creek: A Jim Falk Novel (2 page)

Spencer Barnhouse pushed his glasses back up his nose and wiped
his forehead. He knew Jim Falk had got him into a place that he was probably
not going to get out of alive.

Maybe if someday he saw Jim on the other side, maybe
at the very end, or maybe in the Straightway . . . maybe they’d let old Spencer
Barnhouse give this boy a good one in the jaw. That would make him happy. He’d owed
many things to this boy’s father, but now that his father had disappeared, what
was he doing?

Spencer rolled the barrel of powder slowly and quietly
into the shadows of a storehouse and waited among some left-around crates. He
was sure someone was watching him from the far end of the docks, but if he kept
quiet long enough, maybe they’d go off. Or maybe they’d figure he wasn’t up to
much but drinking and wandering about looking for trouble. Especially if he
acted none too worried about watchers and concentrated on a flask and a smoke.
He did just that. Sitting on top of the barrel in the dark, he rolled some
tobacco in paper and lit it up. He took long slow puffs and then produced a
silver flask from his coat and pulled a long drink from it, screwed the cap
back on, and stuffed it back into his breast pocket. He shifted a few times in
the moonlight, making sure to keep his eyes out over the black water and away
from where he sensed his watcher stood. Then Spencer stood and stepped slowly
out to the edge of the dock where the ship was. He leaned on a post and smoked,
making sure not even to glance in the direction of whoever it might be that was
eyeing him.

Moments ago, Jim Falk had grabbed a mess of special weapons
and other items off this boat and stolen off into the dark corners of Hopestill,
just as they’d planned. Now Spencer hoped to explode the little cargo boat into
pieces: maybe they’d think it was done by good, common thieves and that the
weapons had been lost in the blast, not stolen. Maybe.

But who was this watching him? Jim Falk had finally got
Spencer in a spot. Sure, there were plenty of others around who might take up
the task of exploding one of Varney Mull’s ships in the dock, out of spite or
even for sport. To some folk in Hopestill, Varney was just another villain in
power—a man who gave out work and money, but a man whose generosity was thin compared
to his greed. There was a high price for any favors granted, and Mull had no
issue with collecting his tolls.

Spencer sucked on the glowing little roll of paper between
his fingers. It was then he figured one of Varney’s men had stepped out of some
hiding place at the far end of the docks and begun to walk not too quietly in
Spencer’s direction. He was coming straight at him. Spencer was going to have
to acknowledge him, look up and make some greeting, and that was just what the
man needed. He wanted to see Spencer’s face so if he ran into him on some other
night and in connection with some other slightly questionable events . . . some
other night when there’d be more than just this one man against Spencer.

He’d hurried to get it done. He could have thought this
through and been long gone before the boat exploded, he could have done so many
other things, but Falk appeared out of nowhere and was in such a damned hurry.
Spencer cursed his luck and cursed Jim Falk. He’d hurried to get this thing
done for Jim. It was weapons Falk needed and right away, but these were Varney
Mull’s weapons he’d stolen.

“Why can’t you make it a business of forging your own,
Falk? You’ve got time on your hands. Learn a trade, for the love of your father
. . .” Spencer spoke in a plain, calm way even when he was irritated.

“No time, Barnhouse, no time,” the outlander said. “No
time now. No time before. Especially not now. There’s not time enough in the
world to do all the things. You do the things you must while you have time.”

“You seem to know just how to twist the words of your
father to fit your design,” Spencer said and finished the bottle of whisky they’d
been sharing. Falk had said “no time,” but Spencer knew there was a lack of
ability and an utter lack of patience and discipline that was more than likely
behind Jim’s helplessness and urgency. There was something else too.

“You know what’s at stake here,” Jim said and peered
with his strange blue eyes deep into Spencer’s own pale ones.

“Do I now? Better question yet, do you?” Spencer asked.
He stood, pulled another bottle from the shelf, and poured a full glass for
himself. “Jim, it’s been so long since I’ve talked of any of these things—these
things we’re talking about. Sometimes I doubt if I ever saw them in the first
place. If it wasn’t for your father and, well, what he’s left us . . . Now
you’re having visions of red-headed women and ghosts and birds.” Spencer
laughed, but not very much and not very hard. “Maybe I think you’ve chewed too
many of those green leaves of the Katakayish people, Jim. Maybe you spent too
much time with old women in the woods. Maybe your father was more of a
storyteller than we think.” Spencer again tried to laugh, but couldn’t. Even as
the words left his mouth, he knew that he did not mean any of them. In a way he
wished it were true that he didn’t believe. He wished that he didn’t believe in
spooks or witches. He wished that he didn’t know there was that certain darkness
that Varney Mull used to control the ports and pubs of Hopestill. But Spencer
Barnhouse had more than belief. He knew. He knew because he had seen
.
He knew, but he wished he could be like those who didn’t
know and only believed. If he only believed, maybe there might come a day when
he forgot, or when he doubted enough to forget. But for the memory of Ithacus
Falk . . . and here was little James Falk, not so little anymore. Here was Jim
Falk and not for the first time. Here was Jim Falk asking some fool favor.
Asking Spencer to put his life in danger.
He wasn’t
sure why he didn’t just turn this fool out into the night.

Spencer gulped the whisky and smashed the glass into
the fire. He spat and shook his head, leaning forward with his left hand out touching
the portrait of Ysabel Barnhouse. He looked at her picture, her black hair and
half-smile, and the cold pain of her loss churned inside him.

Jim sat there watching the old bookkeeper walk about
in the dirty library office. He tried to keep his head up on his shoulders and his
eyes open and reached slowly for the whisky Barnhouse had poured for him. He
took a sip and then downed the rest, worrying a bit that he might slip into that
place where his memory went out entirely, but he was really not too worried
about that.

Barnhouse turned to Jim. “How many of them are left?”

Jim said, “I don’t know. I told you I don’t know. I can’t
remember everything all the time like you. These visions I’ve been having don’t
allow for a lot of exact measuring. Also, they’re not exactly about them. They’re
focused on this redhead woman and a church on fire. Last I can think though and
remember, there were more than enough that my pa knew about. He’d catalogued
them somehow. But those things are supposed to be all lost, now aren’t they?”

When he said that, Spencer moved forward waving his hands
a little, as if to silence him.

Jim kept on. “It’s harder and harder to remember or see
since I can’t find the old woman. Can’t find her. My pa’s voice is fading from
my head too
,
especially without the leaves. But
they can’t exactly reproduce as I remember, and as they say, the Evil One can’t
create, so they gotta go around eating life to live
,
isn’t that the things?
But there wouldn’t be
any more of
them. Making life somehow. I don’t
know if that’s a thing they’re able to accomplish. Right?”

“You’ll kill them all, then, you alone?” Spencer said
and unwrapped the long green leaves from their wax paper wrapping. He started
counting them out.

“I
don’t know. You could
come with me
.
We might do better.”

“There’s too much keeping me here. If I leave with you,
there’ll be no one to keep an eye on Mull and keep an account from Hopestill.”

Jim Falk scratched his cheek with his thumb. “Emily might
be safer somewhere else too.”

Spencer’s face was stone. He wandered back to his desk
and pulled out a parcel, wagging it in the air. “It takes a long, long time for
me to grow these. You’ll have to go
through
them more slowly. Or find your old woman again.”

Jim nodded and took the roll of bright green blades from
Spencer’s hands and leaned back in his chair, “How old is she, Emily?”

“I can’t believe it, Jim, but she’s fifteen years old.”

“If I come back, you and I together can rid out Hopestill,
make it safe again.”

“If you come back.”

“If I come back.”

Spencer smiled, and his teeth and glasses caught the
firelight in the dirty room. “If you come back, Jim Falk, you and I will rid the
earth.”

Spencer looked out over the black water and then down
at the planks of the dock. The man who’d been watching him was taking his time,
the lazy steps of someone with nothing but time and no cares. He was coming up
on Spencer now, but Spencer kept his head bowed low, sucked down the last good
puff of his smoke, and, turning away from the dark figure who’d approached him,
flicked the tiny spark into the black water and said, “Evening.”

The man said nothing as Spencer casually leaned his elbows
on the railing that separated the walk from the water and Varney Mull’s weird
little boat. For a moment, Spencer Barnhouse thought that maybe the man was
just a passerby and hadn’t noticed him. Maybe Spencer shouldn’t have said anything
at all.

But then the footsteps stopped and the figure came slowly
up alongside and settled into leaning on the railing right beside Spencer, who
stared straight ahead into the water.

A raspy, whistle-toothed whisper from beside him asked,
“What’s he looking at? Is he looking out into the dark water? There’s no moon
out tonight, so he’s not looking at the pretty moon. Maybe he’s looking at this
boat. Here’s a boat docked all alone on a cold night, so near to winter. What a
funny little boat. Is that what he’s looking at?”

Spencer was quiet, then reached in his coat and started
rolling another smoke. “You want one?” he asked the stranger.

“How courteous,” the rasping voice came back. “I don’t
care for it.”

Spencer rolled it quick, popped it to his lips, and lit
it up with a match.

Spencer told the stranger, “Ten years ago, my wife was
killed. Murdered. Viciously. I loved her. I don’t know who did it.” Spencer tilted
his head a little to see if there was a reaction from the dark form beside him.
“There was no moon that night either.”

Spencer Barnhouse set a knife about the size of his forearm
out on the railing. He just set it there lengthwise, and it glittered dimly in
the starlight and the dim lights of Hopestill.

Spencer took a slow, deep breath and listened close for
that first rustle of movement that would mean the stranger’s strike, but instead
he heard the soft boots of the stranger retreat slow and then quicken.

He put his big knife away and turned to walk home. He
left the barrel of powder among the crates and junk around on the docks. Maybe,
if he could, he’d try to retrieve it during the day when he’d be more likely
obscured by the obviousness of his activity and other commotions on the docks,
and maybe a different hat.

Spencer Barnhouse went to his empty home in the middle
of the night. He’d picked out a place for himself and Ysabel right among the
bustling shops and markets of Hopestill. When they’d bought the place with the
money he’d inherited, Hopestill had been a bright and new hub with shiny stone
streets and smiling vendors and street performers. They’d stolen even the stones
off the street to build the walls that Varney Mull required around this town.
At this late hour, coming home through the muddy walkways of Hopestill was
treacherous.

Spencer spent time looking back over his shoulder for
the raspy-voiced figure. The drizzling rain that had started up muffled the noises
in the dirt streets, and time and again he whirled about to the sound of footfalls
or whispering only to see rain-splattered streets and the leaning walls of
uninhabited homes.

Yes, he’d helped Ithacus Falk before. He’d helped Falk
do some less obvious things. Turn up some books, or find some old maps, get a
translator of the old tongues or Katakayish and Ahmen tongues that had been
needed by Falk. He’d helped Ithacus Falk read the books and taught him some
reading and writing too. Ithacus Falk was good at the older ways of writing.
His son, though, was something else altogether. Jim Falk’s mind blurred when
Barnhouse tried to teach him, and he became forgetful when presented with newer
vocabulary no matter how simple. It was as if, somewhere along the line, Jim
Falk’s mind had become full and it was hard to pack anything else inside.

Spencer pulled his coat tight about him. He missed Ysabel
fiercely, but at times like this, knowing that Varney’s men couldn’t get to her
was comforting to him. The worst was over for her and she waited for him somewhere.

These weapons that Jim was after were something special,
though. Jim made it seem as if even Varney wasn’t sure of their worth. They’d
been fashioned far off, and Jim said that what Varney didn’t know was that
they’d been made for killing demons.

“Varney doesn’t know what you and I know,” Jim said.
“He doesn’t know what it is exactly that he’s dealing with. He looks at everything
as though they’re just things. He’s taken these weapons because he senses
there’s something special to them, but he doesn’t know about any of it beyond
money. He thinks he can sell them to the right buyer and make money. And maybe
it is that he can, but I’m not going to pay money for them.”

Spencer was glad, though. Glad to take from Mull who’d
ruined his hometown. And glad to help Jim get on with finding and ridding the
world of these things. He’d wished he could go along with Jim. He’d wished for
a way to get revenge, but if not vengeance, he wished for some way to remove
from his heart the sick fear that he felt in place of peace.