The Witch at Sparrow Creek: A Jim Falk Novel Read online

  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.

  He shut the door behind him and went in quietly. He walked down the hall before he removed his coat and looked in Emily’s room. She was asleep, curled under the blanket with a serious look on her face. He closed her door.

  Sitting down at his desk and lighting the oil lamp, Spencer walked to his fireplace and poured another glass of whisky and poked around in the fire. He paced, turned back to the fireplace, and, reaching out at an odd spot on the right-hand side, wiggled a stone and pulled it. He set the loose stone on the mantelpiece and reached into the wall. From the wall, he produced a black tin box.

  He sat at the table and pulled several rolled scrolls and a black, leather-bound codex from the tin box. Picking up a quill pen and putting it in his mouth, he got out an even smaller black book.

  With the quill pen, he wrote:

  Jim took these things to kill the killers

  The whole lot of specials

  The whole lot of simples

  The Dracon pepperbox and slugs

  The hex-hatchet of his father’s making

  The leaves

  The Longshooter (disassembled)

  Other
books and papers which I have not yet accounted for

  Maps of the southern river lands

  Chapter 2

  He walked in.

  Bill took a look at him and figured who he was from the looks of him. He’d wished his wife would have not told him many, many things.

  Bill nodded and adjusted his belt around his waist and said, “Well, she says there’s a spook in back a them woods.”

  “Where at?” he said.

  “Up, way up there,” Bill said, “and he comes down.”

  The room in Bill’s house was cold and brown. The sky coming in the windows was white.

  “When do you see him?” he asked.

  “He’s got a long, gray face, yellow eyes, like egg yolks.” Bill said. “I dunno, he comes down at different times.”

  Bill’s wife came in. “Oh, my . . .”

  She looked at the strange man in the hat, and her mouth moved as if to say something, but then she said, “We have company. You should tell me when we’ve got company. We have coffee.”

  “Ma’am,” he said and glanced at her quickly, but didn’t look at her, and then turned back to her husband. “I’m Jim Falk. I’m here to talk about the spook.”

  “Well,” she said and looked quickly at Bill, “you tell ’em. I’ll just get you some hot coffee.”

  “I’m tellin’ him,” Bill said.

  She went off. She was pretty, with red hair and high cheeks, and she was younger than her husband. Jim Falk didn’t look at her, but he wasn’t sure that he had to look at her to see her. It must be her.

  Jim said, “This spook—he comes down in winter or in summer?” Then Bill looked at Jim and opened his eyes a little wider, but not very much, and he pointed at the wood chairs and his square table in the room. Jim saw that Bill’s fingers were crooked from work with busted knuckles.

  They sat. There was a book with a leather binding on the table and a couple of candles. The candles were dirty. The book was a book of the scriptures.

  Bill went on, looking at the candles and the table. “He comes down every season, I suppose, maybe once a season, maybe more, but there’s no certain time.”

  “When does he come?”

  “He comes at night in summer.”

  “In fall?”

  “In the fall he comes at night, and in the spring.”

  “In the spring he comes at night too?”

  Bill nodded, but looked at the backs of his hands and not at Jim.

  “What about in the winter?”

  “In the winter he comes at night. He came during the bad blizzard, and it seemed like he came twice that winter and came during the day.”

  She brought out two white cups of dark, hot coffee. She set them down in front of Bill and Jim and then leaned in the doorway listening.

  “Twice in the winter?” Jim continued.

  “Yes. That’s how I remember it. Violet?”

  “Yes, Bill?”

  “Tell Jim Falk what you said when the spook came down out the woods during that bad winter.”

  “Well,” she started. She moved around, recrossed her arms, and stared at her feet in black shoes on the wood floor. “That winter was a bad one. That winter was about four years ago, and when that spook came down outta them woods, well . . .” She talked as if she was bored, arranging herself against the door frame. “Well, that’s when the baby Starkey went missing . . . and I think that spook got hold of that little baby.”

  “For what?” Jim asked.

  She blinked and looked at Jim sort of sideways and squinted, whispering, “I think that particular spook’s a baby eater.”

  Jim Falk looked at her. There she was. She leaned on the doorway with her pointy shoulders and her ruddy hair. Jim saw no lie in her eyes, but he caught something else there, playing. It was like a jewel or a sparkling thing. Jim looked away. He wondered if somehow or another she knew—if she knew that he had seen her, or someone that looked like her, in his mind.

  “That’s right,” her husband said, “that’s right.” He picked up his cup with a clink and blew off the steam. “A baby eater.”

  Jim Falk flipped open a little leather book to a blank page. Bill Hill watched the pages of black symbols go by, words he didn’t recognize. Violet shifted again.

  Jim asked, “Who is the baby Starkey?” and got out a little black stick that looked a little oily.

  Violet said right away, “That was Dan and Elsie Starkey’s baby. Their real baby together. They lived up the road.” She sneezed a short sneeze and looked at her husband. He looked down at his coffee.

  “That’s been a few years back now,” she said, pulling a small rag from somewhere in her shirt and wiping her nose. “Dan’s moved on.”

  “That’s right,” Bill said. “Dan’s supposed to have moved up north somewhere and Elsie lives with her other boy now, that Simon. It ain’t right by the scriptures, him leavin’ her alone like that, just walking away from her, leavin’ her with that boy. That boy, Simon, he takes care of her, they say I guess on account of she’s been sick.”

  “Except he ain’t her boy,” Violet said and went back fast into the kitchen.

  Bill looked at Jim and watched him write things in the book with the oily stick. He shook his head and said low, “That boy’s not from around here. He’s from some other place across the sea or some such place. Like them people from the Far East that they took out west to make ’em build the towns in the West. Them Starkeys raised him up from young. Guess they found him all alone.”

  “You mean you think he’s from the Far East?”

  “A foreigner of some kind. Maybe a one from the Far East.”

  Jim drank some coffee. Violet was off in the kitchen making noise, and the wind was blowing against the little house.

  They drank some more coffee. Jim closed his writing book and looked around the little house. It wasn’t too different from the one he grew up in. A wood-burning stove in the kitchen filled it with that fire and coffee smell he remembered from times long ago. He didn’t want to think about that. Jim glanced at the stack of firewood in the corner.

  “These woods are the woods the spook appears in right here in back of your house?” Jim finally asked.

  “Yes,” Bill said. “Yessir.”

  

  At the bar down in Sparrow, they were drinking beer—Hattie Jones, Benjamin Straddler, and Simon.

  Simon, the Starkey boy, was telling them about a trick with cards. The trick was called the moving hole. Hattie was laughing at the idea, and beer was jiggling out of his mug.

  Hattie said, “I need me one o’ those, a moving hole.” He looked down at the little boy, who was playing with some papers on the floor by his stool. “Show us!”

  Simon did the trick, and everyone was taken aback. He punched a hole in an ace of spades with a knife. Then he took the hole out of the ace and put the hole in his hand. He held up his hand and showed the hole all the way through. Then he took the hole from the middle of his hand and moved it to the king of hearts. He showed the ace again. It was okay. He showed his hand again. No hole.

  Hattie Jones just about swallowed his pipe.

  Benjamin Straddler was too serious to smile, but he said, “That is some trick.”

  Then, Jim Falk came in the front door.

  Everybody looked at him for a second or two, but he looked honest and plain enough. They looked back at their beers and their friends, but they listened close in a sideways way.

  Huck Marbo was the owner of this bar, and he had one leg and one daughter. Many years and many trials were upon his brow, but his smile was still bright and quick because of his daughter. May ran the table service for Huck, and though she was not generally thought of as pretty, she had a brighter, bigger smile than her father and her simple hands were quick to service.

  Jim Falk came and sat down at a table by the window, and Huck nodded for May to serve him.

  Jim felt good to sit down. All that afternoon, after talking to Violet and Bill Hill, he h
ad gone tramping in the woods. A gray light was on everything, a fog. The sky was white and cold and the trees stuck out over the loam black as hairs. Everything was dim and solid. The woods got colder and harder to see as he went up the mountain. His black boots crackled on the leaves.

  Even though the fog was thick, he focused his eyes on everything, and that wore him out. His mind and eyes got tired, but the pictures might stay forever—or at least if he couldn’t see them in his mind’s eye when he was awake, when he slept tonight the dreams might show him the details. Maybe he would see something he didn’t see. It happened.

  “We have beer and whisky and coffee,” May said and looked at the table when Jim looked up at her face. She didn’t talk loud either.

  “Beer,” Jim said and meant it.

  He looked past her and out the window. The night was black. It made him think. His mind rushed through the forest. There was a funny thing about this one tree that started fiddling in his head. There was some wiry shape, writhing. It faded out.

  The bar came back in his vision. It was a nice place; maybe it was even pretty. It wasn’t exactly a bar either. Jim Falk had stopped in many such places. Small settlements like this one usually had some spot that doubled or tripled as a store and a bar and whatever else. Some of them even had pianos. This one did not have a piano. There were some oil lamps, candles, and even a picture on the wall of a boat going down a river. There were other things that they were selling—rope, nails, mallets, marked bottles, and other such things on shelves.

  He saw this Simon Starkey kid, from the Far East (so Bill Hill supposed), doing card tricks for the men with hats and red faces. Then they laughed, and the kid from the Far East made a noise like a bird and flittered his hands around. Then they all laughed again and started to play poker for money.

  Just as the game started, Hattie Jones tapped his fiddle-bow four times on the wood table. His pipe blew smoke as a song began whining out of the fiddle, and a little boy with wide eyes stood up beside him and hummed exactly what the fiddle whined.