The Witches of Worm

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  Suddenly she jumped up, slamming her napkin down and almost knocking the chair over backwards. The fear was gone now, burned away in a blaze of anger. “He’d better not tell them to send me away,” she said out loud. “He’d just better not.”

  All the way to school, Jessica thought about the coming interview with Mr. Weaver. She wondered what it would be like. She felt fairly certain that she knew what to expect because she’d done such a lot of reading on the subject. All of Joy’s magazines were full of things about psychology. Jessica had read columns by marriage counselors and child psychologists, articles on family therapy, and dozens of surveys on everything from sex to thumb-sucking. She felt fairly certain that nothing that Mr. Weaver might ask her could come as too much of a surprise.

  By the time Jessica got to school, she was feeling much better; but the fear came back again briefly when, during second period, she was told to report to the office. As soon as she met Mr. Weaver, however, she began to feel more confident. Mr. Weaver was quite a young man with a warm nervous smile. When Jessica came into his office, he jumped up and held out his hand. “Well, Jessica,” he said, “I’m glad to meet you. My name is Roy Weaver. I’m glad we’re going to have a little chat today.”

  “Yes,” Jessica said, “I’m glad, too.” She sat down in the chair Mr. Weaver indicated, made her eyes wide and friendly, and waited.

  She waited for quite a long time. For several minutes she only had to nod and smile as Mr. Weaver made conversation about the school carnival, about how near it was to Christmas vacation, and other topics of general interest.

  “Well,” he said finally, “as I’m sure you know, your mother has been a bit concerned about you. She feels that something may be worrying you—your classes, perhaps, or a teacher, or even a classmate. I wonder if you feel the same way. Do you think you’ve been worrying about school lately?”

  Jessica nodded slowly. “I guess I have been worrying lately, but not about school. I’ve been worrying about some things I did at home.”

  “Umm,” Mr. Weaver said. “You mean forgetting about things that happened and——”

  “No,” Jessica said. She hung her head, looking down at her fingers twisting nervously in her lap. “I guess I didn’t really forget. At least not as much as they thought I did. It was just——” She raised her head, catching her breath and letting her chin quiver a little. “It’s just that my mother gets so terribly angry when I make a mistake like spoiling her new dress or not doing my work right. I didn’t mean to spoil her dress. It was just there, with all her other clothes that she’d told me to wash, and I didn’t know it would hurt it. But then when she was so angry, I was frightened——” She let her voice trail away and sat still with her head down.

  “And the other time,” Mr. Weaver prompted in a very quiet voice.

  “You mean the other time I—forgot? Did she tell you about that, too?”

  “Well, yes, she did mention it. She said she wasn’t there herself, but a friend told her about it.”

  Jessica sighed. “Mr. Weaver,” she said. “I guess you know about how some people have extra good imaginations?”

  “I certainly do,” Mr. Weaver said. “As a matter of fact, I used to be that kind of a kid myself.”

  “Me, too,” Jessica said. “And sometimes I imagine something so plain that—you know—I almost really think it’s there for a minute. Like that man in the back yard. See, Mrs. Post, she’s our landlady, is always telling me about murderers and how they’re everywhere these days, and how you have to be careful all the time, and I guess she just got me to thinking about them so hard that I thought I saw one. Then when she said she was going to tell my mother that I told a lie, I was so scared I guess I started acting a little funny.”

  “I see,” Mr. Weaver said. He sounded impressed and sympathetic, as if he could see how it wasn’t Jessica’s fault at all. She let her eyes slide up from where they were watching her fingers twining nervously in her lap. He looked impressed, too. “I see,” he said again, and then, “Jessica, I noticed on your records that you seem to do your best work in English classes. Is English your favorite subject?”

  Jessica looked thoughtful—as if she were trying to decide very carefully about favorite classes. Actually she was trying to decide what Mr. Weaver had in mind now—what he was leading up to. Obviously he wasn’t just asking out of general curiosity; the question about English must be setting things up for something else. She wondered if there was a particular subject that was usually picked by people who had to be sent away to a special school.

  “I like reading,” she said cautiously. “I read a lot.”

  “I see,” Mr. Weaver said. “How about writing? Most people who enjoy reading are pretty good writers. I’ll bet you write pretty good stories.” Before Jessica had time to decide on an answer, he went on, “I have a collection of interesting pictures here, and I was wondering if you’d like to pick one and write a little story about it. Now, which one do you think is most interesting?”

  Jessica held back a smile. She understood now. She’d read about things like that in Joy’s magazines. Pictures and toys and games and even inkblots were used to trick people into telling about their problems, and that showed the kinds of things that were really wrong with them. Knowing what she did, she felt sure she’d be able to write the kind of story that would keep Mr. Weaver from finding out anything at all.

  At first, for just a moment, she considered writing the truth, writing a story that would explain all about Worm: how he was a demon sent by a witch, and how he was to blame for everything that had happened. But she very quickly gave up that idea. In the first place, Mr. Weaver probably wouldn’t believe it; and in the second place, there was no suitable picture among those he had given her.

  It would be much safer and easier to write a story that had nothing whatever to do with herself and her problems. She would write a completely “made up” story that would have Mr. Weaver so confused he’d spend hours and hours trying to figure out what it was all about.

  The “making up” of the story was no problem. She picked out a picture of a lot of people in a city park. There were boys and girls on skates and tricycles, nursemaids and policemen, and an organ-grinder with a monkey. Near the middle of the picture there was a baby lying on the grass on a blanket. Jessica’s story began with a policeman coming up and chucking the baby under the chin and then smiling at a woman, who sat nearby under a tree, to let her see that he thought she had a cute baby. Then other people came up to the baby, kids and grown-ups both, and looked at it for a moment before they went away. Finally, one little kid asked the woman under the tree if she didn’t think her baby was getting hungry. The woman said it wasn’t her baby, and she thought it belonged to the old lady sitting on the bench. Then the organ-grinder came through the park with his monkey, and everyone got up and followed them. No one looked back to notice that the baby was left behind, all alone in the middle of the grass. Time passed, and no one came back for the baby. It began to get dark and cold. It got darker and colder until finally it was night, and the baby went on lying there alone because nobody wanted it, and nobody ever came back to get it.

  Jessica hadn’t been able to think of a very good way to end the story, so she copied something from a story she’d read once. In the last sentence she told how the leaves from the trees came down on the baby until it was all covered up.

  The story had been easy to write, and afterward Jessica felt pretty good about the way it had turned out. She thought she’d written it well, using plenty of big words. Mr. Weaver would see that she was smart and that there was nothing at all wrong with her brains. She felt good, too, that she’d written about something that would really keep Mr. Weaver guessing—something that had nothing to do with anything real at all.

  On the way home from school, Jessica thought over the whole interview with Mr. Weaver. The more she thought about it, the more certain she became that it had gone well. She felt quite confident that Mr. Weave
r had been favorably impressed and that he was not going to recommend that she be sent away to a special school or anywhere else.

  “So that takes care of Mr. Psychiatrist Weaver,” she told herself as she reached the front doors of the Regency Apartment House. “That takes care of him”—she jumped up three stairs at a time—“and special schools”—she jumped up three more stairs—“and Joy”—“and Mrs. Post”—“and——” She reached the apartment door, turned the key in the lock, and ran straight into Worm.

  Like a dark shadow he slid out from under the coffee table and stopped, facing her.

  “No,” she said. ‘No! Go away.” But it was too late. The howl was already there, distant and indistinct at first, but quickly becoming louder and more clear. Jessica covered her ears with her hands, but the sound only deepened and hollowed, as if it were drifting through an endless tunnel.

  “You heard,” it said. “You were told what to do, and you heard.”

  “No,” Jessica said. “I didn’t hear anything. You weren’t there. I knew what to do from reading.”

  There was no answer except a distant wordless moan, and Jessica began to move away, inching sideways across the room. She had almost reached the door when the moan grew and once more sharpened into words.

  “Wherever you are, when the time comes, you will hear,” it said.

  Jessica darted into her bedroom, slammed and locked the door. Throwing herself on the bed, she pulled the pillow over her head to shut out the sound.

  Chapter Eleven

  THAT DAY SOMETHING CHANGED. “WHEN THE TIME comes,” Worm had said; and Jessica knew for sure that day that the time would come again, and there was nothing she could do about it. She had tried to stay away from Worm and to tell herself that she did not have to listen to the things he said. But now she knew, with a cold and hopeless certainty, that she did have to listen. She knew that sooner or later, when the time came, the voice would speak again, and she would listen. There was no place she could go to escape; it was no longer any use to try.

  Christmas vacation began, and there were two long weeks of time. Two weeks with Joy away at work almost every day, and out with Alan several evenings, and no place and no one for Jessica except the empty apartment and Worm. She no longer even tried to stay away from him. With a strange numb feeling of resignation, she watched him and waited. He followed her around the apartment as he had always done; but long empty days passed, and he remained silent.

  Then, on the last day of the vacation, Joy insisted on taking Jessica visiting with her. Joy’s friends, the Lindleys, had children only a little younger than Jessica, and Joy insisted that Jessica would have a wonderful time if she went along. But Jessica had been to the Lindleys’ before; she knew better.

  She was right, of course. The boy, a fat sixth-grader named Patrick, ignored her, and his loud, giggly little sister whispered about her with a girl friend from across the street. Sitting on the front porch, Jessica watched the two little girls play hopscotch on the sidewalk, stopping now and then to look at Jessica and whisper and laugh. After a while Jessica realized that she was listening, waiting and listening, for the voice to begin. It was just beginning, the silence hollowing into a distant howl, when Joy and the Lindleys came out the front door.

  “We’re lucky, Jessie,” Joy said. “Margaret has to go downtown anyway, so she’s going to give us a ride home. We won’t have to wait for the bus. Isn’t that lucky?”

  Jessica nodded, still watching the giggly faces of the two girls on the sidewalk. They’re lucky, she thought. They’re the ones who are lucky.

  At last the vacation was over, and Jessica returned to school. She had never liked school; but this time she was glad to have it begin, to have it take her away from Worm and the empty apartment. With something to do, the days went much faster; it was already Wednesday afternoon when she met Mrs. Fortune outside the Regency’s front door. Pushing her shopping cart ahead of her, Mrs. Fortune was just starting out for the grocery store.

  “Jessica,” she said. “You’re just the person I’ve been wanting to see.”

  “Me?” Jessica said. “What did you want to see me about?”

  “Well, for several things, actually.” Mrs. Fortune stopped suddenly, looking up with her head cocked on one side. She motioned upwards toward the second floor. “Brandon,” she said. “And his trumpet.” She listened for a while, smiling and nodding her shaky old head in time to the music. “He plays very well, doesn’t he? It’s Brandon,” she said again, as if Jessica might possibly have some doubt.

  “I know,” Jessica said. She had been aware of the sound when she was still almost a block from the Regency. Then loudly, to bring Mrs. Fortune’s mind back to the subject, she said, “Why did you want to see me?”

  “See you?” Mrs. Fortune asked, blank-eyed.

  “You said you wanted to see me.”

  “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Fortune said. “For several reasons. I’ve been thinking a great deal since our last conversation, and I feel that there are some things we should discuss. I wonder if you could come to see me again soon.”

  Jessica looked at Mrs. Fortune sharply. She wished she knew just what Mrs. Fortune had in mind. If Mrs. Fortune had decided to tell more about what she knew, then Jessica would be glad to pay her another visit. But if Mrs. Fortune was going to ask a lot of questions and expect answers, then Jessica wasn’t so sure. She had had her fill of deep significant questions trying to masquerade as casual conversation. She had had her fill of questions no matter who was asking them, and somehow she was especially uneasy about the questions that Mrs. Fortune might ask.

  She didn’t know why that was true, but it was. If Mrs. Fortune was really just a poor half-crazy old lady, why should it matter what you told her? It shouldn’t matter at all, except that if you told her something you wanted her to know, she might be just crazy enough to twist it into something else. Into something, perhaps, that you didn’t want her to know at all.

  Jessica was still trying to find out what kind of a discussion Mrs. Fortune had in mind when someone swished by on a bicycle and skidded to a stop a few feet away. It was Kevin Mackey, one of Brandon’s close friends. Still straddling his bicycle, Kevin stood looking upwards. As soon as there was a momentary break in the blare of trumpet noise, he shouted at the window, “Hey, Brandon!”

  A moment later the window opened, and Brandon leaned out with his trumpet still in his hand.

  “Hey, I got it,” Kevin yelled, pointing to the large black case strapped to the rack of his bicycle. “Come down and see it.”

  “Hey,” Brandon yelled back. “Great!” It was the first time Jessica had heard his voice in a long time, and hearing it gave her a strange feeling. There was a sharp searing shock—but no pain, because anger took its place.

  “I’ll be right there,” Brandon shouted, and his head disappeared from the window. The trumpet stayed there on the sill, its gleaming golden bell projecting a little way beyond the ledge. In just a minute, Brandon came barreling out the front door of the apartment house, almost running into Jessica and Mrs. Fortune.

  “Look out!” he yelled, skidding and grabbing both of them to keep his balance. “Excuse me.” He backed off, grinning. “Hey, look who I ran into.” He turned away. “Hi, Kevin. Let’s see it. Is it the one you wanted?” The two of them bent over the case, entirely engrossed in the new horn.

  Mrs. Fortune smiled foolishly at Brandon for a long time before she turned back to Jessica and put out her shaky old hand. “So,” she said, “you will come again soon—to talk?”

  Looking down at the ugly bird-claw hand, Jessica jerked her arm away. “No!” she said, “I don’t think I can. I don’t have much time.” She walked slowly until she was inside the apartment house, and then she began to run—down the hall and up the stairs to her own apartment. Inside she dumped her books on the couch and went to the window. Three stories below, Brandon was showing Kevin’s trombone to Mrs. Fortune, pretending to play as he demonstrated the gleaming sli
de.

  She loves that, Jessica thought. Her dear little Brandon showing off for her. It’s a good thing I left, or she’d have missed it. He’d never have invited her to look while I was there—for fear I might have too. He’d never have risked that.

  Jessica was breathing hard with angry excitement. She turned away from the window and said it again, out loud this time to Worm. “He’d never have risked that.”

  From across the floor, Worm was watching her, as she had known he would be, sitting sleek and slim, wrapped in the curl of his long tail. “He is taking a risk, though,” the howl said. “He is taking a risk with his trumpet.”

  Even from across the room, Jessica could see the light flowing in the moss-gold eyes. Excitement throbbed in her head like pain, making her feel dizzy. She shuddered and shook her head to clear it. She could almost hear the sound of the trumpet, muted by doors and walls but clear and unmistakable, just as she heard it every day after school.

  The yowling voice blended with the sound of the trumpet. “It’s still there,” it said. “On the windowsill.”

  “But they’d guess I took it,” Jessica said.

  “You don’t have to take it,” Worm answered. “It will be Brandon’s fault—for leaving it on the window-sill. For leaving his trumpet on the windowsill where even a little wind might push it over.”

  Jessica nodded slowly. She went once more to the window and checked to be sure that Brandon was still on the sidewalk with Kevin. She knew his parents would still be at work, so his apartment would be empty; and having come out so fast, he would almost surely have left the door unlocked.

  The front door of the Doyles’ apartment was not only unlocked, it was standing open. From the doorway, Jessica could see the trumpet gleaming on the windowsill. She eased toward the window and peered out over the edge. The two boys were still standing near the bicycle. Brandon was calling to someone, probably Mrs. Fortune, though she was no longer in sight from where Jessica stood. She moved to the side of the window and then, crouching down, she reached out and touched the warm golden metal of the trumpet’s mouthpiece. For a moment she hesitated; then her hand moved ever so slightly, and the trumpet slid forward, teetered, and slid again—over the edge. Jessica waited only long enough to hear the crash before she ran from the room.