The Witch at Sparrow Creek: A Jim Falk Novel (37 page)

Since Wylene had taken the veil away and put it on the
grave of the doctor, Jim could see her face in the sunlight. Each time he had
looked over at it, it seemed to be a little brighter, fuller, younger. She looked
as if she was healing and growing young right before his eyes in the sun and
snow.

“What was that medicine that the doctor gave you?” Jim
huffed at her.

“I do not know,” she said. “If you saw the big wolf and
the way the other wolves followed the big wolf, as I am sure you did, you know
that the doctor may have feared that the bite of a wolf such as that could turn
someone.”

Jim said, “That doesn’t happen anymore, does it?”

Wylene said, “Well, at least not to you and not to me.”

They pushed on through the snow, and time and again Jim
wondered how the preacher and Huck and Violet and May might be getting on, if they
had the same difficulty getting up and around on that side of Sparrow. Jim
thought they might be better off in that part of the wood where the pines were
thicker and the paths were less brambled.

After many slips and cuts and twists, the two found themselves
at the treeline where they could see the pile of wood and ashes that still
glowed where the church once sat. The place they crouched down in was a low dip
where some logs and broken trees had fallen. Here and there were dark holes
where the snow didn’t fall and the sun didn’t reach. It was still here, and the
snapping and crackling of the burning church was the only sound that penetrated
the trees.

The fire had not gone completely out even now, and a
blue and black smoke went up from the center of it looking like a wide rope twirling
into the clouds. They both looked at each other. It might have stopped snowing,
but there was so much snow that the wind was blowing around that they couldn’t
really tell for sure.

Wylene said, “I am still very tired. Very weak from the
healing that is happening and from opening the tunnel.”

“Yeah,” Jim said. “the tunnel. You’re going to have to
tell me about that when all this is over.”

Wylene smiled. It was genuinely pretty, even with her
sharp teeth. “Over?”

Then they heard a shout. Then they heard a snort and
a yammer and a yipe. Then more shouting. There was another fire burning somewhere,
and the yammering that they heard was of wolves. Jim got out his rifle fast and
laid it out on a bare log there and unrolled it from its case. He put it
together quick and slick and loaded it with silverlode.

Then there was another noise beside them, like a whisper,
and the killers sprang up from somewhere in the bank of snow. Jim quickly
counted four of them, but they looked like messy brown shadows in the light and
there could be more. Without the special power that the Leaves gave him, he was
at a loss to be able to see or feel them. He wished he were more like his
father, who could feel the jitters without the Leaves. He wished he had
listened to them.

Jim fired his long gun at the head of one; the rifle
snuffed and the killer dropped fast into the snow and rolled down the hill. He didn’t
want to lose too much ammo in a fight he might be able to fight with his hatchet,
so he slung his gun and pulled his ax and then saw the black cloaks of Wylene
flying down the embankment toward the group of others who were rushing at her.
Wylene was rushing straight for them, with a growl.

He jumped a couple of logs and rushed in beside her,
taking them on the flank side. His ax was quick to and fro, but Wylene’s claws were
faster and heads and limbs went whirling into the snowy banks and dark blood
splashed and steamed in the snow. All was quiet again.

Wylene’s breath came out in a white cloud and she looked
around with her black eyes. When she was satisfied, she crouched down and
cleaned her hands in the sparkling snow.

“I can see why they kept you weak,” Jim said.

Wylene smiled again and flexed her arm. “I am still not
completely healed.”

Jim smiled back at her.

It stayed quiet and they lurked toward the church and
looked around. The church was completely burned to a pile. There was no way anyone
was going to be able to fix it.

“How did you get us out of this?” Jim asked.

Then they heard shots coming from down over the hill
where the doctor’s house was.

They ran along the edge of the hill and could see that
Ruth Mosely was standing in the field where Jim had killed one of the spooks in
front of the doctor’s house. Below them lay the steep, rocky bank that led down
toward the doctor’s house. Some of the rocks were so big that they still poked
through all the snow.

Beyond this, in the white clearing, Ruth was not alone.
The wolves pattered this way and that way around her, barking now and again.
And dotted all about them were the black splotches and paw prints. The wolves
snorted and growled, not at Ruth, but at the doctor’s house. Then they saw the
big wolf come from somewhere in the trees along with two killers at either side
of him, looking something like wildmen in the sunlight. Jim saw that the big
wolf had something on its head that glittered like black jewels.

He whispered to Wylene, “What’s on its head?”

“Many eyes,” Wylene said.

“Come out!” Ruth shouted, and the boom of another shotgun
shot came from the doctor’s house.

“You stay away, you old witch!” Jim recognized the voice
of Benjamin Straddler. “You won’t take Sparrow for the Evil One’s work! I’ll
see your brains in the snow!”

Jim wondered what to do and who was in the doctor’s old
house with him.

Now he could see that there were dead wolves on the porch,
three of them splayed and curled. There was even a dead wolf up on the roof.
Benjamin had been busy.

“The big one is very strong,” Wylene said. “He is from
the Wydder, from the other side, and will not die, even with the silverlode in
your gun. Even your specials won’t kill him. Even if we cut off his head and
try to burn him, it will not kill him. What he truly is, that part will go back
to the Wydder.”

There was the word again. Jim knew exactly what she
was talking about because this was the thing that his father had talked about
and had written about in his journals, but that no one believed. Now, here was
this Wylene, who was not a witch, talking about it plain as day. And she had
brought them through that strange, cold tunnel to come out in the woods to
safety. Had she made a hole through the Wydder? It was too much for Jim to take
in now.

“What about her?” Jim asked, meaning Ruth Mosely.

“She is just an old woman who thinks that the Evil One
is going to make her live forever and give her power. If you can get a shot from
here, you can put a hole in her head.”

Jim didn’t like this idea too very much. It was one thing
to lop the head off a bad killer or to rip off a demon’s head. Even killing
John Mosely seemed something of a wrong move. Still, it was a whole other thing
to ask a man to kill a woman. What had this woman gotten herself into anyhow?
Trying to take over towns for the Evil One. He thought of Doc Pritham and the
evil book that he’d handed over. Jim wished he’d destroyed the book back at the
cave, while he’d had time. But it sat, wrapped in the woven blanket, in his
satchel.

Jim looked at Wylene and remembered what she had said
about Ruth and her posse coming in the nighttime and beating her and cutting off
her thumb. He wondered if he could have done the same thing to her if he had
thought it were true, that Wylene was a witch. Could he have done the same thing?
Too, he wondered if somehow Ruth Mosely didn’t think that what she was doing
was somehow in the right, but how could she? Here she was destroying this whole
town just because there were people in it who believed that there was hope in
the future, people who believed in the Way and that there would come a day when
heaven and earth would meet. But there she stood, surrounded by dirty wolves
and killers, and whatever the wolf-thing was that had come from the Wydder.

There she was, shouting back at Benjamin Straddler: “Come
out of there! Come out and we’ll let you live! Come out and be with us!”

Wylene nudged him and whispered, “Now! Now!”

Jim raised the rifle and put her head in the thin crosshairs.

“Where did the big one go?” Wylene asked.

Jim saw the white of Ruth’s face through his crosshairs
as it suddenly turned toward him and he pulled the trigger, but something
slammed against his body just as the bullet left the muzzle. His side felt
burst and he rolled down a steep bank as his coat grew hot with blood. As he
rolled he saw the huge black shape of the wolf-thing bristling and whirling in
the snow. It was fighting Wylene. He heard his rifle go clattering away along
the snow and rocks below them, and his head felt light as he rolled and rolled
again.

He could hear shouting below him and shouting above him
and the barking and growling all around. He tried to pull himself up, but found
his arms were weak. He saw Wylene go tumbling as well. Down, down, down.

He felt the hot breath of the animals around him and
when he looked up, he saw Ruth’s face with them, her face among the wicked faces
of the starving wolves.

“They are hungry for you, outlander,” Ruth said and she
started laughing. Her laugh was high and broken and reminded Jim of the sound
of cracking ice on a frozen lake. He tried to get up again, but his vision was
getting dim and he felt something grab him and his body began sliding.

When he woke up, his head hurt and it was dark and very
cold. He heard someone cracking something nearby, but could not see because it
was so dark. The animal smell of the wolves was still strong in his nose, but
there was another smell of wood and something strong and rancid.

When he breathed, his chest ached, his sides ached, and
his hands were twisted in back of him. In a moment, his eyes adjusted to the scene.
He realized that he was strapped to a post and that shadowy figures were
stacking firewood at his legs. He glanced over and saw Wylene in the same situation.
Were they to be burned alive? What of Benjamin Straddler?

The sky was clear and purple and the half-moon shone
clear and bright into the little valley where the doctor’s house was. The snow had
stopped and the stars twinkled.

“Wylene . . .” he tried to call out, but he was so weak,
his voice was so dry, that he couldn’t make a noise. On the other side of her,
he could see orange light jumping. Then he realized that the hillside sloped
downward to the doctor’s house, which was surrounded by people carrying torches.
Ruth Mosely, he supposed, had decided to mount them up on the hill and burn
them as a threat to try to get Straddler and whoever else of Sparrow that was
in there with them to come out. Why she didn’t just burn the place to the ground,
he didn’t know. Maybe she was looking for the book that Jim had in his pack,
but that was gone now too.

Jim thought of the old story as they stacked the kindling
about him. He thought about Old Magic Woman’s tale of Eyabé and that, before
Eyabé came to the mountain to fight Kitaman, he had to pass through the Fire
Door. Anger burned within him. If he died in flames here on this hill in this
little town, he would never see his father. All because of this old witch Ruth’s
false beliefs in the promises of the Evil One. Ruth did not yet know it, but
she too would burn one day at his hands and he and the killers would feast on
her bones.

He pulled again at the ropes, but they were strong and
he was weak. He tried again to call out for Wylene, but his voice was too hoarse.
He could see her head moving, but she was not looking his way, she was looking
down toward the doctor’s house.

Now he could hear Benjamin yelling, “Instead of burning
them two, why don’t you come on in here, you old bitch! I’ve got something
you’ll like!”

If it weren’t for the pain coursing in his chest, Jim
would have laughed. He thought of May Marbo and wondered what had become of her
and the others during the time that he’d been knocked out by that wolf creature.
He tugged at the ropes again.

“Wylene!” his voice finally came clear. “Wylene, can
you hear me?”

She didn’t react, she looked to have fallen asleep again.

Then he saw the beast and Ruth coming up the hill together.
Ruth’s mouth was moving and the beast’s head was swaying toward her as if it
were listening to her words. There were some wolves coming too, and the killers
came along with the rest of them. In the half-moonlight, it was clear what they
were. They barely looked like men at all—their noses gone, the black teeth
shining, strange antlers poking this way and that from their backs. They were
the killers for sure and they had come to kill. Jim pulled again. If the fire
started and the ropes weren’t thick enough, he may be able to pull away, but by
that time his legs might be completely burned to stumps.

“Wylene!” he shouted again. Maybe if she could wake up,
if she was even still alive, maybe she was strong enough to open another tunnel,
to do whatever it was that she did before that had let them all escape into the
woods. He thought again of his father, of Ithacus. What would his pa do? He
wriggled despite the pain.

“Falk!” Ruth was suddenly shouting in his face. “I will
let you go if you can tell me which one of these wretched people has those false
scriptures. Which one of you is hiding the damned writings?”

The false scriptures? Did she not have the book that
had been in his satchel? He remembered the papers that Barnhouse and the
preacher had stowed away. Was she talking about those papers? His father’s
journal? He wasn’t in for this game.

“If you’re going to kill me, Ruth Mosely, just kill me.
I wouldn’t tell you a thing, even if I did know. He’ll kill you too, you know.”

“Who, who will kill me?” Ruth asked.

“The Evil One, or whoever he’s working through. They
will not let you live. They have no promises. They have no hope.”