Blood Creek Witch Page 13

  He nodded. She was right, much as he’d wish otherwise. He looked to his left, at the forested mountains surrounding the town. He’d seen pictures of the Rockies and they looked far more impressive. He wanted to see them. Someday. “I always wanted to leave this place. I would, if I could convince my ma to go. She needs me, and she ain’t leaving. So I guess I won’t ever go very far.”

  “I lived in Georgia for a while,” Jessabelle said. “When I was little. Near Savannah, I think. I don’t remember much of it.”

  “Why did you move back?”

  “My dad was in the military. He died overseas, so my mom came back here to be with kin. Grandma Annabelle and Aunt Hattie were here to help us, and the Kings sold her the house cheap.”

  “Did you like it in Savannah?”

  “I think the place we lived was called Liberty or something like that. It was warmer in the wintertime, and not as hilly. Lots more people than around here, but that’s true just about everywhere.”

  “Monsters might outnumber people at this rate.” Jack stared into the wadded blanket of green that marked his horizons. “Where are they coming from? The monsters?”

  Jessabelle frowned. “Am I a monster? If so, I was born here. Maybe the monsters were born here too.”

  “You think you’re a monster just ‘cause you can turn into a cat? That’s dumb. You’re just like Hattie or Jenny or the some of the rest of your family—y’all got some abilities.”

  “You calling me dumb?” She scrunched her mouth to the side. Not quite teasing, but not totally serious either.

  “If you think you’re a monster, then yeah. I’m saying that’s dumb.”

  “Not sure how I feel ‘bout that, Jack.”

  Jack shrugged. He wasn’t going to rise to that bait any longer. “That’s all beside the point. Where did that ogre go? And that giant I saw years ago? This is a lot of land, but how long can they hide? The snallygaster had to come from somewhere. Maybe some mad scientist has a lab in the mountains somewhere where he makes these things.”

  Jessabelle broke a leaf off of the branch she sat on and twirled it by the stem. “My mom and me got back here before Grandma Annie disappeared. She used to talk about going ‘round the bend.’ Ma said that meant going crazy. I always thought it was a real place. Grandma would say, ‘one day I’m gonna go ‘round the bend!’ and I’d think, I wanna go, too!”

  Jack snorted. “That’s funny. But there you go changing the subject again!”

  “I ain’t though! Now you’re the one being dumb. Will you listen for a second?”

  Jack leaned against the trunk for stability and folded his arms. “Okay, I’m listening. Your grandma talked about going crazy before she died.”

  Jessabelle made an exaggerated sigh. “First off, they never found her body. She disappeared. Nobody knows for sure that she died. And second, what if she was talking about a real place? What if going ‘round the bend is going someplace that sounds crazy, not going crazy? And what if it goes both directions? The ogre and the snallygaster came from ‘Round the Bend?”

  Jack dropped his arms, grabbing his branch with one hand. “That’s kind of crazy-sounding, you know? Around-the-bend-sounding?”

  Jessabelle stuck out her chin. “You got a better idea for where monsters are coming from? Is there anything that doesn’t sound crazy?”

  “I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m just saying it sounds crazy.” He chewed on the idea in his head for a moment. “So you reckon there’s just a place in our woods where folks go ‘round the bend and back? Maybe on accident, and maybe on purpose. Kinda like a door or something.”

  “Maybe. Maybe that’s where grandma went off to. And maybe that’s why these critters ain’t stompin’ through Branton or something on their way here.”

  Jack scrambled down out of the tree so fast that his John Deer hat fell of his head, landing beside him. Jessabelle followed, no less swiftly, but with far more grace. “Hey, what are you doing?” she asked as her feet touched the ground.

  Jack replaced his hat. “I want to go find it.”

  “A minute ago you said it was crazy.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Now you’re the crazy one. We nearly got killed yesterday. Now you want to rush straight out there and find yourself a mess of trouble!”

  “Yeah. Pretty much.”

  “Right now?”

  “You know, I ought to change into my jeans first. I shouldn’t have been climbing a tree in my Sunday clothes.”

  She walked beside him in silence. As they neared the trailer where he and his mother lived, she finally spoke. “Hey, I’m gonna get a couple of things. Don’t leave without me, okay?”

  “I thought you said this was crazy.”

  “Yeah. It is. Crazy and stupid.”

  “So why do you want to come with me?”

  “Because someone’s got to tell your mom where to find your body. Just promise you won’t leave without me, okay?”

  “Okay. Just don’t take too long.”

  Getting home was easier than leaving. Jack’s mother wasn’t about to let him go before she gave him an earful about walking out in the middle of church service. He felt like a little child again, caught misbehaving.

  “And what about me? If you were just gonna walk out in the middle of everything, why did you bring me along? To humiliate me in front of our neighbors? And the preacher? What’s he going to think?”

  “He can think whatever he wants. It wasn’t like I planned it.”

  “Now everybody’s talking about us. My son’s a heathen, that’s what they are sayin’. And where did you go off to when you left the church, huh? Did you go off drinking with those friends of yours? Let me smell your breath.”

  “Momma, I did no such thing. I just needed to think.”

  “You should have done your thinking after the preacher was done!”

  “I wasn’t going to sit there and listen to him bad-mouth Miss Rose and Jenny like that!”

  His mother’s eyes gleamed like she’d just spotted prey. “Ah-hah! That’s it! You are sweet on that girl! She’s the one leading you astray, just like the preacher warned us about! Is she the one talked you into leaving in the middle of church? Is she the one poisoning your soul? You know, our troubles didn’t start ‘round here until she showed up!”

  “Mama, your troubles started a long time ago.”

  She went for the jugular. “My troubles started when I had you!”

  He stiffened. The sudden silence in the trailer was only broken by the oscillating whine of the poorly-functioning air conditioning unit in the window.

  His mother’s mouth dropped open. She clawed at the air with her meaty hands, as if trying to grab her words and stuff them back into her mouth. “Oh, my sweet baby, I didn’t mean that. I would never mean that. I was just so mad, I wasn’t thinking.”

  Jack turned around and walked back out the door.

  “Please don’t go!” his mother cried. “Jack, please come back. I didn’t mean it!”

  He ignored her and kept walking into the sweltering heat. He almost made it out of the cluster of homes that passed for a neighborhood when he remembered his promise to Jessabelle. He stood motionless while he debated what to do. He didn’t want to get any closer to his mother. He didn’t want her to see him coming back and get false hopes. But he’d made a promise to Jessabelle. Lyin’ Jack kept his promises. He turned and made his way toward her house. Before he got there, he ran into Mason and Alan coming his way. Alan still wore his Sunday best.

  On spotting Jack, Mason couldn’t conceal his grin even as he tried to act angry. “Why’d you run out on the preacher, Jack? What kinda sinning have you done lately?”

  Jack clenched his fists at his sides and kept walking. “Funny, I don’t recall seein’ you there, Mason.”

  “Maybe ‘cause I ain’t no lying hypocrite like you.”

  Jack ignored them and started to push past, but Mason jumped in front of him while Alan grabbed his arm. Mason sh
oved his face close enough that Jack could smell the alcohol on his breath. “Did you run out on Sam when he died, Jack? Just left him to die while you hid like a little chicken-shit?”

  Alan added, “Was that why you couldn’t sit through the sermon this morning? Too guilty from letting Sam die?”

  Jack had no interest in whatever Alan and Mason were talking about. He’d spent months defending himself and trying to set the record straight about the giant. He learned at that young age that when the rumors were juicy enough, there was no sense in trying to correct them.

  “Step away, Mason.” Jack felt his voice quivering. He wasn’t sure how much of it was rage, and how much was fear.

  “Or what?”

  Jack pushed forward, but Mason didn’t move and Alan’s grip didn’t lessen. Mason took the movement as provocation to throw a punch. It connected just to the left of Jack’s nose.

  Jack countered with an elbow into Alan’s ribs, breaking free of Alan’s grasp so he could properly defend himself. Then both young men were on him, punches flying as they battered him. Jack gave as good as he got, but with two against one, he faced losing odds from the get-go.

  In seconds, he found himself face-down on the dirt road, inhaling dust as Alan and Mason took turns kicking him. Jack curled into the fetal position, trying to protect his most vital areas. Through his bruised arms, Jack spared a look across the weed-covered field at one of the houses. Jessabelle crouched in the grass behind a rusty truck. She shrank as she watched him, dissolving into a black house-cat while nobody but Jack was looking. Jack closed his eyes as the blows slammed into him.

  An older voice, of one of the neighbors, rose up. “Stop that! What do you think you are doing?”

  The kicks stopped. “He started it!” Alan said. “We asked him why he ran out in the middle of church, and he just attacked us. We were defending ourselves!”

  “I think you boys done enough defending. Y’all go home or something, okay?”

  Mason and Alan backed away. “Careful, Walter. I think he’s just gone nuts. He may just be playin’ possum there.”

  “Dammit, I hope so,” the voice said, moving closer still.

  Walter lowered his cane and bent down to examine Jack as the other two fled. Walter was in his early fifties, wearing his usual uniform of overalls and a t-shirt that fit all but thirty pounds of him. He spoke slowly, half as fast as most people felt comfortable with. But anyone who assumed it reflected lower intelligence would be setting themselves up for an embarrassing surprise.

  “I don’t know if you threw the first punch or not, Jack, but you sure got the worst of it.”

  “They started it,” Jack said. It came out much more of a swollen mumble than he’d expected.

  “They pretty much finished it, too. Okay. I think you’re gonna have to go to the hospital. Can your momma take you?”

  “Hattie,” Jack croaked and coughed. “Call her.”

  “Hattie Rose? What, you want her to cook up some herbs for you? Look, kid, she’s good and all, but you still ought to see a doctor.”

  Jack nodded. “Yeah, I’ll get a ride. Could you have her check on Jessabelle, too? I was supposed to meet her.”

  Walter took him into the house and dialed Hattie. Jack sat on a stool and grew progressively more irritated as the pain throbbed through his whole body. Yesterday, he had slain a dragon. Maybe not a real dragon, but as close to one as anyone was likely to find. He had fought an ogre. But today, he’d had his clock cleaned by a couple of local bullies. How did that happen?

  He answered his own question, which didn’t make him feel better. Yesterday he’d been with a group of people with special abilities. His sole contribution was knowing how to use his old man’s shotgun. And the ogre had pretty much handed them their butts. It was luck they escaped with their lives, and more luck that granted them victory against the snallygaster.

  Walter came back into the room. “Hattie says she’s on her way. Can I get you something to drink? Water?”

  Jack shook his head. Slowly.

  “Okay.” Walter opened a drawer in the kitchen, and pulled out a badly stained, threadbare towel. He cracked open a tray of ice-cubes from the freezer, and dumped them into the towel. He rolled it up into a pouch and handed it to Jack. “Your left eye is swelling pretty good. So’s your lip. You ought to keep this on ‘em.”

  Jack mumbled thanks and accepted the towel.

  “You can return that towel whenever,” Walter said. “Or not. It might look it, but it ain’t exactly a family heirloom.”

  Jack smiled, but it hurt. He was spared further attempts at conversation by the sound of Hattie’s truck pulling up outside. Jack stood up, and nodded gingerly at Walter. “Thanks for the rescue,” he said.

  “No problem,” Walter responded. “We can all use a rescue every once in a while. I figure this whole town’s gonna need one soon, so we might as well get started.”

  Nope, not the berry,” Hattie said, correcting Jenny as she tried to imitate Hattie’s healing potion. “Not unless you want the juice to work overtime curing its own poison. Remember, the doll’s-eyes are poison, but the root is perfect for healing juice, especially if you want to make one to cure problems in the gut.”

  Jenny didn’t want to make one at all. But her aunt was pleased to teach her some of her skills, so Jenny played along. Besides, she owed Hattie big-time for coming to their rescue after the ogre. Not that she had any doubt Hattie would do it again, but it didn’t hurt to show some gratitude. It was something they could do together, and the closest thing to domestic peace Jenny had enjoyed since before her parent’s accident.

  Her resulting concoction, so far, smelled like wet, pungent weeds. She cut some bit of the root off of the doll’s-eye plant and chopped it into tiny chunks. Looking at Hattie again for approval, she dumped the bits into the teapot.

  “That ought to do,” Hattie said. “Now, I just boil it a bit, and put it in the jar, chunks and all. I find it keeps its potency longer that way, and it doesn’t really hurt the shelf-life much if you keep it refrigerated.”

  “Why don’t you use the same herbs every time, like a recipe?”

  “I could, but this is magic, not a cookbook. You can make this out of whatever is available when you need it, but some things just work better.”

  “If it doesn’t matter what you put into it, why use anything at all?”

  “Because neutral objects don’t hold onto magic very well at all, so anytime you want to put magic into something, you want it to be sympathetic to whatever you are doing. The other reason is that spells work best when they work with natural properties of the environment, instead of against them. The juice has natural healing properties, so the spell works well with that. Those of us with just a trickle of power need all the help we can get.”

  If she didn’t have the proof in her own shoulder, Jenny wouldn’t believe it. While it still ached, Hattie said the stab wound had almost completely healed and probably wouldn’t scar. It didn’t even need a bandage now.

  Hattie poured distilled water into the teapot, and they boiled it over the stove for a minute. After letting it cool, Jenny poured the resulting concoction into a Mason jar. It didn’t look like much. It was yellowish and still stank like weeds and grass.

  Hattie pulled a bottle from a cabinet. “And now the special ingredient,” she said. “A bit of alcohol. I prefer vodka. Not much. I just use it as a preservative.”

  “That explains why it burned a little on the way down.”

  “Yep. You’ll have to develop your own way of doing it.”

  No, Jenny decided. She wouldn’t. She’d happily help her aunt as long as necessary, but this was never going to be her thing. When the monsters were gone and things had returned to normal, she’d be more than happy to forget all of this.

  Although, it wasn’t just monsters that hurt people. She’d felt lucky Hattie’s juice had been on-hand when Hattie had been knocked unconscious. Could this be something she could do and keep secre
t from the world forever? If she’d been there with a jar of Hattie’s juice when her parents’ car crashed, could she have saved them?

  She shuddered and banished the regretful thought. She nearly dropped the Mason jar she cradled in an oven mitt.

  “Careful, it’s still hot,” Hattie said.

  Jenny nodded, making sure the jar was securely on top of the hot pad on the table. “So is that it?”

  “Oh, no. Right now it’s just a really nasty-tasting soup. You need to infuse it with magic.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “The same way you healed me on Friday, with that song.”

  “I didn’t even sing it right the first time.”

  Hattie gave her a look that would have been at home on Yoda’s face. “I wrote down the words for you this time. It’s the same idea as the herbs, though. The actual words don’t have the power; it’s the emotion and thoughts they invoke, and the story behind them. It helps a little if they have the weight of tradition, though.”

  Jenny looked at the jar and began reciting the poem, but Hattie stopped her. “No. That’s not what you did in the woods.”

  Jenny shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You weren’t casting a spell just then. You were just reading words.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Hattie sighed. After a few moments, she said, “Do what you did in the woods. Don’t think of this as a jar of juice. Think about what it represents. This is me, lying unconscious because that monster nearly broke my neck and cracked my head open. This is you, in pain on my mama’s couch. Maybe it’s your cousin, or Jack, or that boy who took off his shirt, all hurt or sick from something nasty, and they desperately need relief. They need you. They are hurting, Jenny. You can help them. Now recite it.”

  Jenny began to feel what she felt on the mountainside, seeing Hattie hurt and helpless, and read the words, focusing on the jar. To her astonishment, it began glowing, a white-blue of electricity or the bottom of a gas flame. She didn’t stop until she read the last line, “Sickness shall no more aggrieve you.”