“Like what happened to your mommy and daddy?”
Stephen hung his head in a sulk.
“Tell me,” Robin said. “Tell me so that I can understand.”
Stephen upended the chessboard, scattering all the pieces onto the floor.
“Why are you so mean?” she asked.
“I’m not.” He heard his own voice ring loudly in his ears.
“Yes, you are.”
“I’m trying to protect everyone.” He looked at a blurred image of Robin.
“Don’t cry, Stephen. I don’t want to make you cry. I want to help.”
“I think my momma is doing bad things.” Stephen muttered the words, and Robin had to ask him to repeat.
He looked at her wondering whether she would believe or laugh at him. She had never made fun of him before, and maybe she could understand. At least she might not have the same doubts as the adults.
“My momma is back.”
“Back? From the dead?”
Stephen nodded.
“Why would she come back? Does she want to protect you?”
“She says she loves me, but her hugs and kisses are different. I used to feel warm in her arms, but no more. When she hugs me I feel colder. It’s like someone threw open the door in the middle of winter during a big snowstorm.”
“Maybe that’s because she’s dead.”
He looked at Robin and didn’t see her laugh. She intently listened.
“Yeah, maybe. But she’s not as nice as before. She’s angry.”
“At you?”
“No. At Daddy and Molly. And Molly died and Daddy is in the hospital and I don’t know when he’ll be coming home.”
“What if he doesn’t come home?” asked Robin.
“He can come home because I can take care of him. I can do everything the hospital is doing.”
He saw Robin make a face.
“You don’t believe me?”
“It’s just that I heard Mom say he isn’t in good shape. He doesn’t look the same, Stephen.”
“Have you seen him?”
“No, but Mom has, and so has Grandma.”
“They won’t take me to see him.”
“Hospitals don’t allow little boys.”
“I’m not little anymore. I can do things that adults can’t.”
“You mean the somersaults you do?” Robin smiled.
“Not dumb stuff like that.” Robin started to irritate him. He stood to leave the table where they both had been sitting.
“Don’t go, Stephen. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.” She shrugged. “I like it when you do somersaults, and I’ve never seen anyone who can do as many as you at one time.”
“I’ve increased the number. Dad counted them for me, and I can do at least six more than before.”
“Would you show me?” she asked shyly.
Stephen scratched his nose thinking about whether he should or not. He always made her laugh when he did the somersaults, and he liked it when she laughed. Her laughter was catching, like the flu, Dad used to say.
Stephen started to go into his tumbles when a scream sounded from the basement. Instantly Stephen jumped to his feet and beat his aunt down the stairs.
Grandma stood next to the table covered with a rainbow of wax. She held her hand to her heart and took deep breaths.
“Mom, what’s wrong?”
Rosemary pushed Stephen out of the way to reach her mother.
At first Grandma didn’t speak; she kept huffing for air. Finally she uttered one word. “Mice.”
“Oh, Mom, all that noise over a mouse.”
“There was more than one.”
“I don’t see any now.”
“They scurried behind the furnace. We have to get traps.”
“Not traps,” Stephen said. “The traps could hurt them.”
“We’ll get little mouse hotels and let them go outside the house,” Rosemary suggested.
“Hotels?” Mabel said, shocked at the idea.
“It traps them without killing them, Mom.”
“Who cares … ?” Mabel stopped when she looked into Stephen’s face. “Yes, we’ll get nice hotels for them. They’ll be very happy there, I’m sure.”
“You shouldn’t be down here. Why is everybody coming down here? This place belongs to Momma.”
“It did belong to your mother, Stephen, but now we have to clean up a bit. This table could be donated to charity once we clean it up. You could help me, Stephen.” Mabel attempted to draw him into the activity.
“Everything down here is Momma’s.” Stephen felt anger building inside him. If everyone left Momma’s things alone nothing bad would happen.
Rosemary squatted down in front of Stephen.
“Do you think your mother caused the bad accident that happened to your father?”
“We just want to be alone together,” he said, a hint of a quiver in his voice.
Rosemary hugged him and whispered in his ear.
“What did your mother do down here?”
Stephen broke free from her embrace.
“I don’t care about any of you. If you want to die, go ahead. Die, and Momma will still take care of me.” He ran up the stairs.
Chapter
53
“Oh, my God, Rosemary, what did Cathy expose him to?”
“Jacob thinks Cathy caused his accident.”
“You think he’s influenced the boy?” Mabel moved closer to her daughter, leaning lightly on Rosemary’s shoulder.
“Mom, you know Cathy practiced witchcraft.”
“Don’t tell me you think Cathy is a ghost willing awful things to happen. Next you’re going to tell me we should bring in an exorcist.”
“No, Mom, but Jacob thinks that somehow Cathy also caused Molly’s death, and no one has figured out what happened to her.”
“A stray animal. Maybe she took some rabid dog or something into her car. She may have felt sorry for the animal, but it turned on her.”
Rosemary took her mother’s arm and suggested they go upstairs.
“We have to clean this place up, Rosemary. Once all this stuff is gone Stephen will start healing. He comes down here, and all he sees is his mother’s paraphernalia. What the hell is a pentagram doing in a Christian house?” Mabel reached over to the table and picked up an oval inscribed with a pentacle. “This is a sin to have, Rosemary.”
“Mom, the pentacle isn’t a sin. It’s what a person uses the pentacle for that can be evil.”
“The damn thing doesn’t belong here.” Mabel broke the slim plaster cast in half. “Stephen doesn’t need to see pentacles sitting around. How could Jacob be so stupid as to leave it here? Perhaps it’s just as well the accident happened.”
“Mom!”
“He doesn’t know how to raise a child.” Mabel hesitated. “I’m not sounding very Christian now, am I?”
“You’re sounding scared.” Rosemary searched her mother’s face.
“There’s been one tragedy after another in this family. I don’t know how much more Stephen can take, but I’m certainly near the breaking point. Thank God you came to help.”
The two women embraced. The pentacle slipped from Mabel’s hand, hitting the floor and breaking into smaller pieces.
“I’ll clean it up, Mom. Go upstairs and lie down.”
“There has to be a key to that door,” Mabel said, glancing up at the basement door. “If not, we should get a new lock.”
“Maybe Stephen is right. We should only come down here when the furnace needs attention or a repair is needed.”
“Still, the door should be locked. I don’t want Stephen down here.”
Rosemary agreed and led her mother to the foot of the stairs.
“I don’t like leaving you down here alone, Rosemary.”
“I’m fine. It won’t take long to clean this up. I’ll just use a bit of cardboard, and there are several brushes in the corner. I’ll use one of them.”
“I could wait.�
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“Mom, you’re sounding more and more like you believe in witchcraft.”
“I know it’s nonsense,” Mabel huffed, taking the first step.
After her mother disappeared, Rosemary took one of the brushes and a stiff piece of cardboard. As she swept the pieces up, she became more curious about what Cathy had been up to and what she could have possibly left behind. She dropped the pentacle pieces into a trash can. She dropped the brush and cardboard onto the table and looked over at the tarp.
She remembered there had been nothing inside the box and thought it odd. Maybe her sister hadn’t liked the box and kept it under the tarp the whole time. She wondered whether she could sneak the box up to her room without Stephen seeing.
She walked over and lifted the tarp. The tarp shadowed the wood box. She reached down and picked the box up, turning it onto its side. A muffled cry escaped her lips and she dropped the box.
The plain wooden box now had carved figures all over it. Perhaps this was a different box. She shook out the tarp in hopes another box would fall out. None did. It had to be the same box. The color, shape, and size were all the same.
“Cathy, what is this?”
She looked around and waited, thinking she would suddenly hear her sister’s voice giving an innocent reason for the finding. Realizing how foolish she was, she clasped her hands in prayer.
Finally Rosemary decided Stephen must have played some trick on her. This couldn’t be the same box she had given to her sister. He must have exchanged the boxes to scare her away from the basement.
“No, Cathy, you’re gone. You don’t have anything to do with what’s been happening. Stephen needs his hide tanned.”
The furnace exploded into action, making Rosemary jump.
“Now Mom decides to turn up the heat.” Rosemary shook her head and climbed the stairs, leaving the box on the floor next to the tarp. She wouldn’t confront him tonight. She would speak to her daughter’s psychiatrist first. He’d be able to tell her how to deal with Stephen.
Chapter
54
“I need some sun,” declared Brandy.
“Sun? What for? You’ll only get burned.” The witch had just brought down Brandy’s lunch. “You’re much too pale for sunbathing. Besides, there is no sun today. It’s raining. Has been since early this morning.”
“It’s not going to rain forever,” said Brandy, hesitating in lifting the lid from his plate.
“Could rain for a long time. Eat, eat! Don’t be so finicky.” The witch whipped the cover off the dish.
Brandy couldn’t tell whether the smell of the food or the sight of the food made him sicker.
“Do you eat this stuff?” he asked.
“It’s for my guests.”
“Why can’t I eat what you eat?”
“I have an ulcer. My diet is limited.”
“I don’t mind a limited diet as long as the food is edible.”
The witch looked closer at the plate.
“That’s snails smothered in rats’ feet. Do you know how many rats I had to kill to get all those feet?”
“Please, ma’am, let the rats live. And the snails too, unless you put them in garlic butter.”
“You’ll get no dessert if you don’t eat what’s on your plate.”
“Dare I ask what’s for dessert?”
“Chilled bees covered in their own honey.” The witch smiled proudly. When she noticed he didn’t seem impressed, she said, “I pulled off the stingers.”
“I’m not hungry,” said Brandy, passing the plate back to the witch.
“Not hungry? You complain all the time that I starve you. Yet you hardly ever touch the food I bring.
“Your father never was like that.” The witch sashayed her way toward the stairs.
“Madame, I refuse to believe that you ever met my father.”
The witch paused, one foot lifted in the air, ready to settle on the bottom step of the stairway. She changed her mind and set her foot back on the cement floor of the basement and turned to face Brandy.
“Why can’t you recognize me?” “Because I never met you before I entered this house.” “Look under my sagging flesh, Brandy. Don’t my eyes hold some hint?”
“All I see is a mean old woman.” “Not as old as you think.” “Had a hard life, then?”
“Hard work being a witch. Must dedicate self. No one likes you.”
“If you did nice things people would like you.” “But I do nice things.” The witch’s voice sounded frustrated. “No one appreciates what I do. Look at your plate. Not a crumb eaten.”
“Why don’t you ask me what I’d like to eat?” “You don’t know what is good for you. You should follow what I say. Your father didn’t. See what happened to him?”
“Nothing has happened to him. Certainly you’ve never caused anything to happen to him.” “Think! Who am I? What do I want?” “If you don’t know, how should I?” Brandy dropped to the floor of his cage.
“You want to practice witchcraft but don’t want to learn the rules.”
“I just want to get out from under your roof,” Brandy said. “Maybe I could disappear with a special magic trick.” “Can’t. You will always be mine. You were mine before you even walked into this house. I will tell you what to do. Give me your hands.”
“What are you going to do with my hands? Are you still searching for that stupid wart that will never grow?”
“I need your hands to make things happen.”
“Good things or bad things?” Brandy asked.
“You wouldn’t understand. I must have the use of your hands.” The witch lunged forward and put her arms between the bars in an attempt to grasp Brandy’s hands. But she couldn’t come near to them.
Brandy sat on his hands.
“First tell me what you will do with my hands.”
The witch jumped up and down. Her full skirt ballooned around her. Her worn shoes split apart, leaving her bare-footed.
“Look what you’ve done, you fool,” she screamed.
“I haven’t done anything. You’re the one having a tantrum, not me. You look worse than me when I throw …” Brandy’s words slowed down. He didn’t throw tantrums, did he? His father would … What?
“Your father would tan your hide,” the witch said.
“But how do you know what I’m thinking? You’ve never read my mind before.”
“You and I are becoming one, sweety. Someday those hands …” the witch pointed to where he had hidden his hands, “will be mine.”
“I tell you I have no wart.”
“Wart? It’s not the wart I want.”
“You want the hands.”
“I want you,” the witch said, her eyes squinting into the darkness of his cage.
Chapter
55
Stephen woke in a damp bed. For the first time since he was a baby he wet the bed. Ashamed, he pushed the covers onto the floor and stood. Dawn peeked in at him as he quickly pulled the wet sheet off the bed.
The dream had caused him to wet his bed. The stupid witch dream. He wished he could forget Brandy and the witch. He wished his father had never told him the story.
He pulled down the bottom of his pajamas and stepped out of them. Grandma would be angry if he put them in the laundry and what would she say when she made the bed?
For the first time in his short life he wanted to make his own bed. He’d surprise Grandma when she got up and have the bed all tidied up. But how to dry the sheet? The clean sheets were kept in the hall closet. Would Grandma hear him if he tried to retrieve a new one?
“Daddy,” he called inside his lonely room.
He wanted his father home. He didn’t care what Daddy looked like. He’d take care of Daddy even better than the hospital could.
Stephen went to his bedroom door and holding his breath slowly opened it. The dimmed hall light showed no one else. He crept forward, hoping he could reach the shelf on which the sheets lay. The closet door stood ajar, and
he nudged it gently, opening it just enough so he could slip inside.
A whiny creak sounded in the hall.
“Oh, my Lord, you scared me, Stephen.” Grandma stood at her doorway, her right hand clutching her chest the way she had been when she saw the mice in the basement.
“What are you doing up so early?” Her hand went quickly to her mouth. “What are you doing running around half-naked?”
Ooops, in his hurry he had forgotten to pull on a pair of pants.
“I’m going to the bathroom.”
“That’s not the bathroom, child.”
Stephen peeked in the closet.
“Oh!” He acted surprised.
“Don’t tell me you don’t know where your own bathroom is.”
“I had a dream, Grandma.”
“You were sleepwalking?”
Stephen vigorously nodded his head.
Grandma moved forward and opened the bathroom door.
“Hurry, you don’t want Robin to see you like that.”
Stephen made a run for the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. Suddenly it hit him that Grandma might go into his bedroom to remake the bed. He opened the door and ran into his grandmother’s thighs.
“How could you be finished so quickly?”
“I really had to go.”
Grandma heaved a sigh.
“Come on, I’ll tuck you back in.”
“No!” He made a dash for his bedroom and slammed the door behind him.
Chapter
56
At breakfast Stephen proudly announced he made his own bed.
“Is this a first?” asked his grandmother.
“Yes.” His pride beamed out from his brown eyes.
Robin applauded, and he slyly gave her a small smile.
The doorbell rang, and Stephen quickly ate what was on his plate. Grannie Smith had an early doctor’s appointment and had volunteered to take him to school.
Mabel pushed a brown paper bag into his hand as Stephen ran out the door.
“Thank you, Mrs. Rosen.”
“No problem. Stephen and I have become great friends.”
“Grannie Smith cooks the best food. Can Robin and I come for dinner? I’ve been telling her about your pies.”
“Stephen, that’s rude,” Mabel said.
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