“Only as a last resort.” The phrase repeated itself ominously in Jessica’s mind. What was it they were planning—as a last resort? She thought perhaps she knew. Perhaps the last resort would be to send her away to school—perhaps to a school for crazy people, with barred windows and high fences and locked doors. That was something she hadn’t counted on. That would be the worst punishment of all, and it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair because it wasn’t her fault. None of it had been her fault.
“They can’t,” Jessica told herself. “They couldn’t send me to a place like that, because there’s nothing wrong with me. I was just pretending, to make them forget about being angry.”
She had only wanted to make them wonder, to give them something to think about. And she had done too good a job. She had pretended too well. She’d always been very good at pretending. Brandon had always said so, and it was because of him that she’d had so much practice at it. If she were sent away and locked up somewhere, it would be his fault. Brandon’s fault, and of course, Worm’s.
There was only one thing to do. She must get up, get dressed, and go out and let Joy see that there was nothing wrong with her. She’d say she’d been sick and feverish yesterday, but now she was better. She’d heard that people could get funny in the head, delirious, when they had a fever. She’d just say she must have been delirious yesterday, but that now she was herself again. She jumped out of bed and ran to the closet for her clothing.
As she gathered up her clothes, she whispered to herself, “I’ll show them. I’ll show them there’s nothing wrong with me.” She was still whispering when she noticed the eyes. There, in the darkest corner of the closet, two eyes looked up at her—Worm’s eyes, diamonds lit by cold golden fire.
“Get out,” she whispered, kicking in the direction of the eyes. “Get out of there. Get away from me.”
But the eyes did not move. Turning on the closet light, she pushed aside the hanging clothing, and there he was—in the midst of a messy nest of shoes and sweaters. He glared up at her, flat-eared and quivering, his face an angry evil threat. With no warning, with not even the familiar rush of sharp excitement, the voice was there.
“There is nothing wrong with you.” The words throbbed through her head like the beat of an enormous drum.
“Go away,” Jessica whispered. “Go away. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t have to talk to you.”
“No,” the voice said. “You don’t have to talk to me. But you have to listen.”
“Why? Why do I have to listen? Who sent you?”
There was no answer.
“Whoever sent you, she can’t make me listen,” Jessica said. “I won’t listen anymore.”
“Nooo,” the voice howled. “It is too late.” The sound of the voice drifted, swelling and fading, but the meaning was clear. “Too late,” it said. “You must listen. When the time comes, you will hear.”
Jessica grabbed her clothes and ran out of the room.
• • •
Time passed, and the weekend crept slowly by. Worm had said that the time would come; and with a cold unyielding certainty, Jessica knew that what he said was true. But hours passed, and then a day, and the voice was silent. Jessica was very careful. She was careful to stay away from Worm, and careful to act extremely normal and happy when she was around Joy; and she was around Joy almost all weekend. Alan had gone alone to see his parents, and Joy had stayed at home with Jessica. It was the most time they had spent together for almost as long as Jessica could remember. It should have been wonderful. Joy played cards with Jessica on Saturday night; on Sunday, Joy helped her comb her hair in a different style and took her to a movie matinee. But it wasn’t right.
None of it was right. Nothing more was said about the red dress—nothing at all. Once when Jessica had lost ten dollars on the way to the grocery store, Joy had raved for a week. But now, with eighty dollars wasted, she acted as if nothing had happened. She was only pretending. Jessica knew Joy was pretending about the red dress and about everything else—trying to act as if she weren’t following Jessica’s every move, memorizing everything she said. As the hours went by, Jessica felt herself getting more and more nervous and irritable; it became harder and harder to act cheerful and normal. By Sunday evening, Joy’s suspicious spying had made her so jumpy that she found herself wishing something she had never wished before—that Joy would go out and leave her alone.
She was actually almost glad when Joy finally said, “I think I’ll just drop over to see Betty Moore for a few minutes. You remember Betty, don’t you? She had the desk next to mine at the office until last summer. Her baby was born in October, and I’ve been promising for weeks to get over to see him. You don’t mind do you, Baby? This is your favorite TV night, so I know you won’t be bored.”
Because she was working so hard at acting cheerful, Jessica said, “Sure, go ahead,” before it occurred to her that her normal reaction would have been quite different. Normally she would have shrugged resentfully and maybe said that it had been years since she been interested in the Sunday evening kiddie shows—a fact that Joy might have noticed if she ever stayed at home.
Joy was into her coat and out the door very quickly. She was gone before Jessica had time to remember one very important reason why she should have stayed at home. The reason was Worm. With Joy at home, he had been out of sight all weekend; but now she was gone, and Worm would be coming out.
Jessica sat very still and listened. It was quiet in the apartment. Too quiet. Carefully she got up from the couch and started toward her room, but in the hallway she stopped. The door to her room had been left open. He might be in there, under the bed or in the closet. She turned and ran back across the living room and out the front door into the hall.
She was outside the door before she stopped to think about where she was going. There was the secret cave, but it was a very cold night and her coat was in the closet in her bedroom. She would have to stay in the apartment house, and the only person she could, or would, visit was Mrs. Fortune. She had already decided on a visit to Mrs. Fortune, when suddenly she remembered the first words she had heard Worm say. On that first day Worm had said, “Mrs. Fortune knows more than she tells.”
Mrs. Fortune would know. Jessica had felt that all along. And suddenly she was no longer afraid to find out exactly how much Mrs. Fortune knew—how much she knew about demons and possession and witches—and about Worm.
When the door opened, Mrs. Fortune, as always, seemed overjoyed. “Well, well,” she said. “This is a pleasant surprise. Isn’t this is a pleasant surprise, Lucasta?” she repeated to one of the fat white cats who had followed her to the door. Lucasta sniffed at Jessica and backed away, dipping her ears and wincing as if she didn’t find Jessica’s presence pleasant at all.
Jessica laughed nervously. “I don’t think she agrees with you,” she said. “She never did like me much.”
“Nonsense, my dear.” Mrs. Fortune moved with maddening slowness as she led the way to the kitchen. “I think it’s just that she smells Worm on you. They always react badly to the smell of a strange cat.”
Jessica had planned to lead up to the subject gradually, but Mrs. Fortune had given her such a perfect opening she plunged ahead.
“That’s why I came,” she said. “I mean that’s one of the things I came to talk to you about,” she said. “About Worm, I mean. About him being—such a strange cat.”
Mrs. Fortune was putting some milk on to heat for cocoa and getting out the jar of molasses cookies. She put the jar in front of Jessica and lowered herself carefully into the chair at the other end of the table. For at least a minute she only smoothed the tablecloth with her warped old hands and nodded musingly. It was impossible to tell if she were nodding in agreement or only from old age. At last she said, “Yes, he is a strange one, my dear.” She looked up from the tablecloth, smiling. “I think I mentioned that he looks as if he might be related to a very ancient——”
“I remember,” Jessica
interrupted. “You said he might be an Abyssinian, or something like that. But that’s not what I mean. I’m not just talking about the way he looks. What I mean is—well, do you remember that you said once you thought he’d lived before? That you thought cats really do have nine lives.”
“Ah, yes, at least—at least nine,” Mrs. Fortune said. She bent over to pick up Lucasta—or one of the others—Jessica could never tell the fat white cats apart. She put the cat in her lap and crooned over it, seeming almost to forget, for a moment, that Jessica was there.
“Mrs. Fortune.” Jessica used the tone of voice teachers used on her when she daydreamed in class. She waited until the cloudy blue cleared from the old woman’s faded eyes, and then she went on, “Mrs. Fortune. What do you think about witches? I mean—do you think there is such a thing? Or at least that there might have been once?”
Jessica watched Mrs. Fortune carefully, looking for what might lie behind the wrinkled smile and the dream-dimmed eyes. “I guess not many people believe in such things nowadays,” she continued. “But do you think there could have been—in the olden days?”
Mrs. Fortune lifted her head sharply. “Ahh,” she said. “The milk.” She got shakily to her feet, went to the stove, and began to prepare the cocoa. As she moved about, she made sharp little noises to herself from time to time—a kind of ancient coughing or chuckling sound. When she came back to the table with two cups of hot cocoa, Jessica thought she had probably forgotten what they’d been talking about.
But after Mrs. Fortune had lifted the cat out of the chair and sat down with it in her lap, she finally said, “Witches—about believing in witches—it’s not a question I’d care to answer for just anyone who might ask. But I can see you have reason for wanting to know. So, I’ll tell you this. Belief in mysteries—all manner of mysteries—is the only lasting luxury in life.” She stopped for a while and nodded as if agreeing with what she had just said. Then she went on, “Yes, my dear. I’m quite prepared to say that I believe in witches.” Her face crinkled into the cozy expression she used when she talked to her white cats. “I believe in the witches of yesterday and today—and in all shapes and sizes.”
Jessica pulled her hand away from where Mrs. Fortune’s wrinkled claw of a hand had reached out to pat it. She was beginning to feel as if she were being talked down to—made fun of, perhaps, in a very subtle way. She didn’t intend to be teased or laughed at like a kid who’d been reading too many fairy stories.
She let her eyes go narrow and leaned forward sharply. “And what about possession?” she asked. “Do you think witches can send their demons to possess other people and make them do what they want them to?”
She had intended to shock—to make Mrs. Fortune take her questions more seriously—but the effect was greater than she had counted on. The old woman sat suddenly more erect; her smile disappeared, and her eyes grew steady and searching. She sat silent, moment after moment, until at last Jessica went on herself.
“There are books that tell about it,” she said. “About how demons can be sent in the shape of people or animals to torment people and make them do things. Do you think that can really happen? What do you think, Mrs. Fortune?”
At last, Mrs. Fortune nodded slowly. “Many books and many religions have taught about possession,” she said. “Many people have believed in it.”
“I know,” Jessica said. “I’ve read about that, too. I just wanted to know about you. I mean—I wanted to know what you thought about it.”
Mrs. Fortune flinched suddenly and then chuckled, leaning over to look down at her feet. “Bad boy, Simeon,” she said. She leaned farther and gently shoved another of the white cats away from her ankle. “He’s jealous because Lucasta has been on my lap for so long. He’s always been quite wicked about using his claws to get his way. He’s the youngest of my little family, and I’m afraid he’s a bit spoiled. He’s Sabrina’s last kitten you know. The only one in her last litter, and he has always been a pampered baby.”
She pulled the huge white monster of a cat up onto her lap beside Lucasta and, almost hidden by cats, she began to pet and talk to them in a voice as private and inward as a purr. She seemed to completely forget about Jessica for several minutes. When she did remember, she struggled to her feet, depositing both cats on her chair.
“But, my dear,” she said, “you’ve finished your cocoa, and there’s lots more here waiting for you. You must have another cup.”
She poured the cocoa into Jessica’s cup and then fussed around the kitchen, wiping up crumbs and putting out fresh water for the cats. Coming back to the table, she pointed under Jessica’s chair and said, “Look, my dear.”
Jessica looked and picked up an old hand-carved wooden top. It was one of the toys from the Treasure Chest.
“Simeon fished it out of the box the other day and has been chasing it around the floor. Behaving almost as if he were a kitten again,” Mrs. Fortune said. Reaching for the top, she cradled it in her two hands and inspected it carefully.
“Just as it was,” she murmured. “Just as it was the day old Grindstone carved it for me from the root of the oak tree.”
Jessica knew the story. When she and Brandon were small, it was one of their favorites. It concerned a strange old recluse who had lived on the side of a hill near the village where Mrs. Fortune had lived as a child. He had carved her the top after she had helped him put out a fire in his tiny cabin. He had told her that the top was made of magic wood and that it would bring her three adventures. The story of the adventures was very exciting and took a long time to tell. Jessica tried to say that she had heard the story, but it was too late. Once Mrs. Fortune was into a story, there was no use trying to change the subject.
The story went on and on, with more twists and turnings and long drawn-out suspense than Jessica remembered. She could not keep herself from being halfway caught up in the story; yet she did wonder if someone so old and childish—crazy maybe—could be tricky enough to use a long story to stall for time. It didn’t really seem possible but perhaps it was because before the story was finished there was a loud knock on the door.
It was Joy. She had not stayed very long at her friends house and, on arriving home, had not been able to find Jessica. She had tried the Doyles’ apartment and the Posts’ and then had come to Mrs. Fortune’s. She was obviously upset, and she hurried Jessica off, barely giving her time to say good-by.
All the way upstairs, Joy fussed and scolded about the scare Jessica had given her. She didn’t seem to remember that Jessica had often been away before when Joy came home, without causing anyone any concern at all. Jessica didn’t say so, however, because it didn’t need saying. They both knew it was only the other strange things that Jessica had done that made Joy afraid of what she might do next. They were almost to the door of their apartment when Joy suddenly interrupted her lecture to ask, “What? What did you say?”
“Say?” Jessica said. “When? I didn’t say anything.”
“Yes, you did. I heard you. Something about Mrs. Fortune.”
“Oh, yes,” Jessica said. “I just said that Mrs. Fortune has been asking me to come and visit her for a long time. But I’m sorry I didn’t think to leave you a note.”
Actually, the only thing Jessica had said was something she hadn’t intended to say out loud at all. Halfway up the stairs, in the middle of Joy’s talk on thoughtfulness and responsibility, she had found herself repeating, “Mrs. Fortune knows more than she tells.”
Chapter Ten
ON TUESDAY MORNING WHEN JESSICA CAME INTO THE kitchen, she found Joy not only up, but with her hair combed, her eyelashes curled, and all dressed for work. Obviously she’d been up for a long time. And she actually sat down with Jessica to drink her coffee and orange juice.
She was unusually chatty, too. As Jessica ate, Joy jabbered away about nothing in particular for quite a while then finally, with elaborate casualness, she mentioned that she’d made an appointment for Jessica to talk to the school psychologist�
��only Joy called him the counselor.
“Oh, by the way,” she said. “You may be excused from one of your classes today to have a talk with the school counselor. I just thought you——”
“Counselor?” Jessica interrupted. “I never heard of any counselor. What’s his name?”
“Weaver, I think. Yes, that’s it. Mr. Weaver.”
Jessica nodded, narrow-eyed, firming her face against the pang of fear that shivered beneath the surface. “Oh, him,” she said. “I’ve heard of him. Everybody calls him the shrink. That means he’s a psychiatrist, doesn’t it?”
“No,” Joy said quickly. “Not a psychiatrist. He probably has a degree in psychology, but I’m sure that, in a junior high school, he would just be called a counselor. Anyway, as I started to say, I just thought it might be helpful for you to talk over some things with someone outside the family. Not that I think you have any serious problems, because I don’t. At least not any more than are normal for a girl your age. But we all need someone to tell our troubles to sometimes. I’ve thought, lots of times, about going to a psychiatrist myself. And I would have, too, if it weren’t so expensive. Lots of my friends are doing it. Half the people Alan and I know go around talking about what ‘my psychiatrist’ says about this or that. It’s quite the in thing to do.” Joy stopped to catch her breath and smile a bright unreal smile. “You’ll be right in style, Baby,” she said.
Jessica shrugged, dropping her eyes in case the fear might be showing through. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, I’ll talk to him.”
Joy left then, for work, and Jessica went on sitting at the table, staring at a spatter of light the crystal sugar bowl made from the sunshine that slanted through the window. But she wasn’t thinking about sunshine. Instead she was thinking about the fear and where it had come from, and why? She knew it wasn’t Mr. Weaver she was afraid of. She’d never been afraid of anybody like that. In fact, she’d never really been afraid of anything much—except the dream. And now, sometimes, of Worm.
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