The Curse of Crow Hollow Read online

  Acclaim for Billy Coffey

  “With lyrical writing and a rich narrative voice, Billy Coffey effortlessly weaves a coming-of-age story into a suspenseful, page-turning novel. In the Heart of the Dark Wood is a beautiful journey that takes the reader down a road filled with Southern gothic characters and settings; perfectly balanced with redemption and triumph of the human spirit. Allie is a courageous character that is sure to capture any reader’s heart. In the Heart of the Dark Wood is not to be missed.”

  —MICHAEL MORRIS, AUTHOR OF SLOW WAY HOME AND MAN IN THE BLUE MOON

  “Coffey pens a coming-of-age story about the tribulations of the heart that is profoundly believable. The dialogues between characters are intensely rewarding to follow, and readers will anticipate the danger ahead; they will not pull away from the novel until it is finished. Suspense and mysteries of spirit make for a winning combination for any reader.”

  —RT BOOK REVIEWS, 4½ STARS ON IN THE HEART OF THE DARK WOOD

  “The Devil Walks in Mattingly . . . recalls Flannery O’Conner with its glimpses of the grotesque and supernatural.”

  —BOOKPAGE

  “[The Devil Walks in Mattingly is] a story that will hold your attention until the last page.”

  —JESSICA STRINGER, SOUTHERN LIVING

  “Billy Coffey is one of the most lyrical writers of our time. His latest work, The Devil Walks in Mattingly, is not a page-turner to be devoured in a one-night frenzy. Instead, it should be valued as a literary delicacy, with each savory syllable sipped slowly. By allowing ourselves to steep in this story, readers are treated to a delightful sensory escape one delicious word at a time. Even then, we leave his imaginary world hungry for more, eager for another serving of Coffey’s tremendous talent.”

  —JULIE CANTRELL, NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF INTO THE FREE AND WHEN MOUNTAINS MOVE

  “[A]n inspirational and atmospheric tale.”

  —LIBRARY JOURNAL STARRED REVIEW OF WHEN MOCKINGBIRDS SING

  “This intriguing read challenges mainstream religious ideas of how God might be revealed to both the devout and the doubtful.”

  —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW OF WHEN MOCKINGBIRDS SING

  “Readers will appreciate how slim the line is between belief and unbelief, faith and fiction, and love and hate as supplied through this telling story of the human heart always in need of rescue.”

  —CBA RETAILERS + RESOURCES REVIEW OF WHEN MOCKINGBIRDS SING

  “Billy Coffey is a minstrel who writes with intense depth of feeling and vibrant, rich description. The characters who live in this book face challenges that stretch the deepest fabric of their beings. You will remember When Mockingbirds Sing long after you finish it.”

  —ROBERT WHITLOW, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE CHOICE

  “When Mockingbirds Sing by Billy Coffey made me realize how often we think we know how God works, when in reality we don’t have a clue. God’s ways are so much more mysterious than we can imagine. Billy Coffey is an author we’re going to be hearing more about. I’ll be looking for his next book!”

  —COLLEEN COBLE, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF TIDEWATER INN AND THE ROCK HARBOR SERIES

  © 2015 by Billy Coffey

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

  Published in association with Books & Such Literary Management, 52 Mission Circle, Suite 122, PMB 170, Santa Rosa, California, 95409-5370, www.booksandsuch.com.

  Thomas Nelson titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version.

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-0-7180-2680-6 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Coffey, Billy.

  The curse of Crow Hollow / Billy Coffey.

  pages ; cm

  ISBN 978-0-7180-2677-6 (softcover)

  I. Title.

  PS3603.O3165C87 2015

  813'.6--dc23

  2015006826

  15 16 17 18 19 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Dad

  Contents

  I.

  Say There, Friend!

  II.

  Stealing the Bracelet. The Party. John David Arrives. Like Wood Over Stone.

  III.

  The Tracks. The Cabin.Alvaretta’s Curse.

  IV.

  The Curse Takes Hold. At the Hospital. The Prayer Chain.Naomi Makes a Video.

  V.

  Chessie Sells. At the Doc’s. The Girls Come Home.Trouble In Town.

  VI.

  Bucky Loses His Job. Chessie and Scarlett. Medric Has a Secret.Bucky to the Mines.

  VII.

  Tully Learns a Lesson. The Panic. Run On the Grocery.The Holler Has a Sheriff.

  VIII.

  Angela Quits. Crow Feathers. Revival.The Kids Meet.

  IX.

  Bucky On the Mountain. Alvaretta. The Demon.To the Cemetery.

  X.

  David Sees a Shadow. Stu Comes to Town.A Death In the Holler.

  XI.

  John David Arrested. Cold. A New Deputy.Alvaretta Prepares.

  XII.

  Alvaretta’s Spy. Scarlett Warns. No Escape. The Arrests.Chessie Surrenders.

  XIII.

  The Circle. Confessions. Wilson Tells His Secret.Hays Makes a Plan.

  XIV.

  The Service. The Circle Arrives. Monsters. Blood Flows In the Holler. Burn It All.Stu Comes for Wilson.

  XV.

  Blood Moon. Scarlett Calls Jake. To the Mountain. The Battle.Alvaretta’s End.

  XVI.

  The Demon

  Discussion Questions

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

  EXODUS 22:18

  I

  Say there, friend!

  Come on out that sun and tell me hello. Devilish out, ain’t it? Hard to believe only a few months back, me an everybody else’s pining for summer. Now here I sit, wishing the leaves’d hurry up and turn. Ain’t that just how folk are? They want all but what they got.

  Seen you driving up the road all slow, like you went and got yourself turned around. Don’t nobody ever come up this way on purpose. Was a time folks would. They’d take these back roads up from Mattingly and Camden every Sunday after filling their souls and bellies, stop here long enough to realize both the Exxon and the grocery was closed for Sabbath. Preacher Ramsay used to call it an abomination to have business on the Lord’s Day. He had a tight grip on this town back then, before the Trouble. The Reverend, I’m saying. Lord did, too, I suppose, though after the witch it was unsettled whether He did still. Some said God had gone out of this holler, never to return. Others say even in the blackest dark a light will burn, and there it will gather and build and drive that darkness away. You ask me which it is now, I can’t say. All I’ll tell you is this ain’t no place to be lost in, friend. Not a year ago, but especially not now.

  But hang on a minute, that don’t mean you got to leave. A body like this one gets
tired of seeing the same old faces and hearing the same old things. Be nice, having somebody new to visit with. We got this nice bench, got some shade. Come on and sit awhile, would you? Keep a tired old man company. Let me move my old cane out the way, clear you a spot. Won’t nobody bother you so long as you’re with me. Sides, ain’t many around these days. Guess that makes me town greeter, don’t it? All right, then:

  Welcome to Crow Holler.

  I know it ain’t much. Right here where these two clayed roads meet’s about the only things left. Got Foster’s Grocery down the way a piece; you can see the sun off the front glass. Just opened up again awhile back. Old one, it burned.

  Speaking of which, that charred mess on the corner from the church used to be Medric Johnston’s funeral home. There’s folk here who’d never want a black man to plow their fields or dig their wells, but they never minded old Medric burying their kin. Funeral home’s gone now. Medric too, long with that cross the Circle put in his front yard. You can ask Joe Mitchell about that. He runs the Exxon, right down from the grocery there? You go over, though, make sure you mind yourself. Joe ain’t been right since his old place got blown to heaven, same night as the grocery.

  You see that little blue car over there by the council building? That’s our sheriff’s car. Man who once owned that? Bucky Vest. Bucky was constable hereabouts before his daughter, Cordelia, and her friends crossed the witch. You’d be hard-pressed to find a soul in the Holler who’d call Bucky nothing but a good man, even if a little simple in the mind. Most of that comes from how he once worked up to the dump. Wasn’t nothing pleased him more than getting to work every morning and watching the sun peek up over a big heap of county trash, fire up that dozer, and settle in under the hum of all that machinery. Just him and open sky and the knowing that he’d spend his day moving, digging, and burying, part of his evening shooting rats to keep his gun-handling sharp, then some of the night keeping the Holler safe. You tell me there’s a man in the world don’t think that’s a fine way to spend his days, I’ll call you a liar. There’s a peace in life that comes when you know your place in it, and that was Bucky Vest.

  But then Alvaretta Graves come and the demon come with her, and that’s when life in Crow Holler turned. Bucky ain’t constable no more. What happened to him is something I’ll get to in time. Until then, I’ll ask you the question he once asked himself: Would you know evil if you looked it in the eyes? Would you truly?

  I don’t know how far I should get into things, you being from Away. But listen here, I got to tell somebody. I’m alone now, maybe we all are here, and loneliness is a hell all its own. So you take some pity on me, friend. Sit with me a spell, there’s time yet. Here in the mountains, time’s all there is. I’ll tell you of Alvaretta Graves and the manner of her death, and what she couldn’t keep hidden in her little two-room shack up on Campbell’s Mountain.

  I don’t know the whole story, but I know more’n most, and what I don’t know I can guess with a good degree of accuracy. That don’t mean to say I know where things went so wrong, but I can tell you it all began when Cordelia Vest stole her momma’s bracelet. A little thing, you could say. Nothing so different from what any other teenager might get a mind to do. And yet somehow that little thing grew into something so big that it would come to ruin many, even me.

  This holler’s home to me for as long as I’ll have it, and I mean to have it for a good long while. Let the rest scurry away if they want. I tell myself ain’t nothing gonna run me off, nosir. I say it every morning when the sun rises over these ridges and I say it again when the cold wind rolls down from the mountains at night, clawing at the windows and wanting me.

  I say I won’t leave, but I’ll tell you this: I’m scared. I ain’t got pride enough left to be wounded in saying that. I’m scared, friend. Scared because it ain’t over. I thought it was, but it ain’t. People ain’t never who they say they are, you ever noticed that? You think they’re one way and they turn out to be another, and that’s what’s happened here. And I’ll tell you something else that’s happening here too:

  Something’s coming. Something soon.

  I can feel it.

  II

  Stealing the bracelet. The party. John David arrives. Like wood over stone.

  -1-

  Like I told you, that bracelet’s where it started.

  It was a Saturday, one a those pretty ones in the spring when summer’s calling but winter’s still refusing to let go, and all Cordelia Vest wanted was to make that day a good one for her friend. Bucky was pulling some golden time at the dump. That suited his wife, Angela Vest, just fine, as she had the whole day off from Foster’s Grocery and a week’s worth of stories saved on the TV.

  Having Bucky gone suited Cordy too. It meant there’d be one less set of eyes to catch her sinning.

  Cordy’d spent all that morning and most of the afternoon taking care of the washing and straightening up so her momma could settle down in the La-Z-Boy and lose herself in a world of depravity and betrayal. Soon Angela had the volume up so loud Cordy could hear the cross on the living room wall vibrating against the Sheetrock. Once she got to talking to the people on the screen like they was real, Cordy decided now was the only time.

  She stepped out of her bedroom and snuck down the hallway of their little double-wide just as calm as could be, even if I’m sure that girl shook something fierce on the inside. Hearing her mother say Get outta there, Nikki, you just get your little fanny out of there right now as she hung a left into her parents’ bedroom, feeling her belly as she did, wanting to know what was going on in there. Opening the wood jewelry box that sat by the mirror on the dresser, lifting the blue velvet divider that halved the dull earrings and necklaces that Angela wore most days from the fancier jewelry she liked to keep for special occasions. Angela saying He’s gonna kill her Cordy he’s gonna kill Nikki oh Jesus and Mary get out and Cordy not bothering to reply, because she knew her momma wouldn’t hear her anyway. Lifting the diamond bracelet from its place in the box as Angela screamed No, slipping it into her pocket as Angela screamed Stop. Back down the hallway now, hugging the wall and running a finger along the plain wood molding that hung on by a few rusting nails.

  The living room had gone quiet but for the sound of mournful music and the rattle of a Doritos bag. Cordy ducked into her bedroom and eased the door shut, leaned against it until she fell into a position almost like sitting. She brushed her black hair away from her eyes and held her belly like it was fluttering. Then she pushed herself up and walked over to where her phone lay atop the sleeping bag on her bed.

  Cordy and her friends, they all had these smartphones with this thing called MeTime (and don’t that sound like the perfect name for this younger generation? Sums them up nice, I think). What them kids do is record little movies of themselves on this MeTime, and then somehow it gets sent out in the air for all their friends to ogle over.

  Cordy picked up the contraption and hit Record. She dug Angela’s bracelet out her pocket and held it to the camera. The diamonds glinted off a shaft of light coming in the window.

  “Hey, y’all,” she said. “Getting ready to leave. Bringing you a little party favor, Scarlett.” And then she smiled and added, “See everybody soon. Maybe.”

  Outside came the sound of tires over gravel. Cordy scooped the bracelet back into her pocket and grabbed her phone and sleeping bag. She made it to the living room just as a horn beeped twice from the driveway.

  On the big-screen TV that had cost Bucky a whole two months’ pay, the dead face of Nikki Whoever-it-was stared out in a look of frozen horror matched only by the one on Angela’s face. The fresh bag of Doritos she’d bought special sat half eaten on her wide lap. Yellow crumbs formed a trail from her lips to the lock of black hair she twirled. Was a time there weren’t a prettier girl in this whole holler than Angela Vest, but then life got hold of her. Her face had filled in over the years, her skin grown pale and flecked. Once-long fingernails had been reduced to gnawed nubs.
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  She looked up and said, “She’s gone, Cordy. I knew it would happen, I pulled the Digest off the rack the other day and read it and I knew it was coming. I just didn’t think it’d hurt this much.” She shook her head and sniffed. “Where you off to?”

  “Scarlett’s here,” Cordy said. “Her party, remember?”

  “Scarlett?” Angela hit Pause on the remote and kicked the footrest down. She stood, showering the carpet with corn chips. “That tonight? I thought maybe you’d sit awhile with me and watch this.”

  “I would, but it’s her birthday and I don’t want to be late. We have to be at Harper’s Field before everyone else.”

  “The field?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “For the whole night?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Daddy said I could.”

  Angela’s eyebrows shot up the way I expect every momma’s always do once their babies get grown, that expression of Well your daddy’s one thing, and I’m another.

  “Hays Foster be there?” she asked.

  Outside, the horn beeped again.

  “Yes’m, but it’s not like we’ll be alone. Lots of other people will be there. Everybody, really. Scarlett and Naomi, all the kids from school.”

  “Won’t you stay?” Angela asked. “We could have a girls’ night. I don’t like you with that boy, Cordelia. I know you don’t want me harping on it, but it puts me in an awful situation.”

  “I’m not with him,” Cordy said, even if she couldn’t look Angela in the eyes as she said it. Stealing was one thing. Now Cordelia Vest had added another sin to an already lengthy list—bearing false witness to her momma. Which, I don’t know, maybe could count as two. You’ll trust me when I say the girl had other secrets, ones a whole lot bigger. She bit her lip, probably hoping the pain would stanch the tears that had begun pooling in her eyes. “Please, Momma?”