The Witch at Sparrow Creek: A Jim Falk Novel by Josh Kent Read Free Book Online

chair he pounded the table and shouted, “Tricks, only tricks!”
    Jim’s face was red and sad, and he took a very deep breath
which everyone could hear him take. The people all looked at him. He looked
around the room, pulling each person in with his eyes, and then he fixed those
sunken, whisky-drunk eyes on his beer mug. His blue eyes widened up their pupils.
    Nothing happened.
    Everybody standing around thought this outlander might
be frozen, maybe even dead. Then the room got so quiet that the outside noises
of the wind seemed to stop. Everybody watching felt a kind of pressure in their
heads that made them squint a bit, and then there was this whine, high and
quick, but barely audible.
    They looked at the mug that Jim Falk was glaring at.
There was a dull pop. The mug cracked up its side and beer flowed out. It cracked
right up the middle like split wood.
    Nobody talked while the beer ran on the table.
    Jim looked around at everyone. Everyone was amazed and
stunned. May was smiling with her mouth open.
    Jim about stunned himself. He staggered out of his chair
while the beer began to drip on the floor. He tipped his hat. “Good evening,”
he said and left out the front, left them all standing dumb.
    It all came back to him now, mostly. May was stepping
along beside him, stealing quick glances at his face here and there, but
looking forward mostly.
    “I forgot,” Jim said to May as they turned a slight bend.
“I forgot I did that trick.”
    “How did you do it?” May asked.
    “It’s just a trick, May, that’s all,” Jim said and began
scanning the close woods again. “Just a trick, like Simon turning the mouse
into rose petals.”
    “It seemed different,” she said. She was bashful around
Jim, but outside of the Hills, Bill and Violet, she had been the friendliest
one so far.
    They walked a way without talk. The trees in places grew
out into the path. “It doesn’t look like a lot of horses come up this path,”
Jim said.
    “No,” May said, “ain’t a lotta folk keep horses here.
In fact, nobody does anymore. They come into town sometimes on horses from
other places to bring stuff through.”
    The path then came to an upward slope that rose for about
ten feet. On the other side, it went clear down, about a half-mile, all the way
to the end where Jim could see the tiniest boxes of the houses in town.
    “Why not?” Jim was looking way down on the path now.
Ahead of them, he saw a figure in the road standing near to the woods.
    “Don’t know,” May said.
    Jim set his eyes way ahead on the figure and felt a tremor
that started in his gut and raised his hairs and still, something more than
that. He felt the jitters. Then he saw the figure move, and Jim’s breath quit.
It was a dark, crooked thing with long, curly spines. It was still quite far
off.
    He stopped walking and said, “May, stop, May.”
    She wasn’t scared until she looked at him and saw how
serious and faraway his eyes were.
    “What . . . ”
she started.
    “Shhh,” he whispered, “don’t talk. There’s a spook up
there on the road.”
    May got closer to him and started shaking. The jitters
were heavy and rolling along the path now. It was feeling around for them.
    “Stay close and don’t budge,” Jim said. “They can’t see
so good, but they can hear and feel things that men can’t.”
    Jim saw it cross back and forth, back and forth across
the road. It flickered at the left edge of the path and then disappeared into
the trees.
    “May,” Jim said, “I want you to stay close by me now.
We’re going to pass on into town, and once we get there I don’t want you to
tell anybody what we saw. I just want you to say that we walked into town together
and that I went off and you went about your business.”
    “Okay, Mr. Falk,” she said, but she never did see anything.
    They passed in silence along the road. May stuck close
by. Now he could feel the jitters constant. The jitters he’d first felt left a
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