Safely back in her own apartment, Jessica locked the door and leaned against it, breathing hard. It had been a new trumpet, much more golden and shiny than the one Brandon had begun on over a year and a half ago.
“It was a brand-new one,” she whispered.
She looked around quickly for Worm, but he had disappeared. The voice was still there, though. It moved in Jessica’s mind, thick and slurred, like an enormous sluggish purr.
“It wasn’t new for long,” the voice gloated.
Jessica shivered. “He’ll probably be able to get it fixed,” she said loudly.
She saw Worm then, sitting on the windowsill, almost hidden behind the drapes.
“It can probably be fixed,” she said again loudly, but there was no answer. Worm sat silently, looking away from Jessica out the window.
At last she turned away, and gathering her books from the couch, she took them into her room and shut the door. She pulled her chair near the window, and choosing a book, she sat down to read.
Outside the window, the pale winter sun had given way to swiftly flowing clouds. They came thicker and faster, until the sky was full of them, twisting and turning, shading from thunderous gray to bloody red where the last rays of sun slipped through. Staring out at the tortured surface of the sky, Jessica began to see pictures that grew and faded with the shifting clouds.
Something fell, from high in the cloudy mountains, down, down, until at last it disappeared beyond the horizon. A human form appeared, strong and stocky, holding something at arm’s length—a trumpet, perhaps—until it grew and drifted into—a gingerbread man.
The gingerbread men! That had been at least three years ago. There had been two of them, and they had been given to Jessica and Brandon by the lady who ran the bakery on Spencer Street. They had been a part of her Christmas window decoration, and they were over two feet tall and elaborately decorated with frosting and Christmas candy. But one of the gingerbread men had no head. Someone in the bakery had broken it off. If the gingerbread men had been for eating, it wouldn’t have mattered much, but they were too big, and much too stale to be used for that purpose. They were only good as decorations or playthings; so the broken head mattered—a lot. Without much of a fight, Brandon had let Jessica keep the perfect one.
He’d been that way about some things. When it came to the best and the biggest and the most, where other people would care fiercely, Brandon often didn’t seem to care at all. He’d shrug and give in, time after time, until she’d begin to think he’d give in about anything; and then just when she least expected it, his temper would explode and—look out! When that happened, Jessica had sometimes given in herself, or else she had run and thrown something from a safe distance. But whichever she had done, no matter whether she had run or fought or thrown things, it was never very long until everything was just the same as before. The next day would come, and it was all as if nothing had happened. That was the way it had been. But it wasn’t that way anymore.
Jessica was still sitting in her chair, staring out at the clouds, when the phone rang. She put down her book and went to answer it.
“Jessica, is that you?” The voice sounded unreal, as cracked and creaky as an ancient record. Then Jessica realized who it must be.
“Mrs. Fortune?” she said. “Is that you?”
“Yes. Yes, it is Mrs. Fortune. Could you come down to my apartment for a moment, Jessica. I want to talk to you.”
“No,” Jessica said abruptly. “I can’t. Not right now.”
“But this is important. Of the greatest importance.”
“What is it?” Jessica asked. “Why can’t you tell me on the phone?”
There was a pause, and then the voice returned, even more quavering and scratchy than before. “Jessica,” it said, “I know about Brandon’s trumpet. I must talk to you about it.”
Chapter Twelve
JESSICA MADE NO PLANS AS SHE WALKED DOWN THE stairs to Mrs. Fortune’s apartment. She was good at planning, particularly when she was in trouble, but this time her mind refused to work.
“I know about Brandon’s trumpet,” Mrs. Fortune had said on the phone, but she had refused to say anything more until Jessica came down to her apartment.
“She can’t know,” Jessica whispered to herself. “How could she know? How could she?”
The door opened quickly to Jessica’s knock, and Mrs. Fortune led her to the living-room couch, instead of to the kitchen and hot chocolate. They were both seated for what seemed like a terribly long time before anyone spoke. Jessica searched Mrs. Fortune’s face for a hint of what to expect, but she saw only the dim eyes and the constant wrinkled smile. Jessica felt her own face changing from a cold numbness to a hot and painful searing.
At last, Mrs. Fortune spoke. “Jessica,” she said, “this is very hard for me, for both of us. But I’ve thought it over and decided what must be done. I’ve decided that someone must tell Brandon what happened to his trumpet. It would be best if you would do it.”
“Tell Brandon? Tell Brandon what?” Jessica said.
“That you pushed his trumpet out of the window.”
Although Jessica had expected them, the words seemed to explode in her head, sending shock waves crashing into an empty hollow below her ribs.
“I was turning back to wave,” Mrs. Fortune went on, “when I saw you in the window. Why did you do it, Jessica?”
“Why?” Jessica repeated, and speaking seemed to unlock her frozen and useless mind. She remembered suddenly a way that had worked before. At once, she put her hands up in front of her face, palms outward.
“I can’t remember,” she said in a slow stumbling voice. “I can’t remember what happened. Everything is blurry in my mind.”
From behind her hands, Jessica’s sliding glance told her that Mrs. Fortune did not seem as startled and upset as the others had been. “It—it happens to me sometimes lately,” she went on. “I get these strange spells—when I do strange things, and afterwards I can’t remember.”
Mrs. Fortune’s pale old eyes remained on Jessica steadily, too steadily for a person who had just heard something so strange and horrible. She just went on smiling and nodding as if what Jessica had just told her was a perfectly ordinary thing.
“Then that is what you should tell Brandon, perhaps,” she said at last. “That you pushed his trumpet out of the window because a strange spell that——”
“Tell Brandon that!” Jessica almost shouted. She jumped to her feet. “No! I won’t tell him that. I won’t tell him anything. Why should I have to tell him? I couldn’t help what happened. It wasn’t my fault.”
“My dear child,” Mrs. Fortune said, “fault is an empty word. It is a coin with only one side. It is not a reason or an excuse.”
“What does that mean?” Jessica’s voice was shaking with anger. “That doesn’t make any sense. I don’t see why anyone has to tell Brandon anything. It won’t fix his old trumpet. And besides, it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault.”
Jessica was at the door when Mrs. Fortune called after her. “Wait! I’ll not do anything until you have time to think about it. I won’t tell anyone until tomorrow night. I hope you’ll decide to tell Brandon yourself.”
Jessica slammed the door behind her and ran for the stairs. “I won’t tell him,” she told herself as she ran. “I won’t. I don’t want him to know.”
Anger climbed with her as she climbed, until suddenly, on the first landing, she slowed almost to a stop. If she went on up now, to her apartment—and Worm—what would happen? Worm was there, waiting for her. Waiting for her to ask what could be done. What could be done to keep Mrs. Fortune from telling on her. What could be done to—to Mrs. Fortune——
Jessica walked more and more slowly as a strange crawling fear began to creep from under the anger and excitement that filled her mind. A fear deeper and more deadly than the nightmare terror of the dream of the empty house. But just then Jessica’s feet, trained from long years of habit, stopped by themse
lves, outside the door of the Doyles’ apartment. Stopped in the very spot where they had stopped for years, while Jessica waited for Brandon to come out. Standing there, knowing that Brandon was only a few feet away, Jessica could see exactly what it would be like.
“No,” she whispered with fierce determination. “No, I can’t.” She turned, and climbing quickly and certainly, went on up the stairs to the apartment.
As soon as the door to the apartment closed behind her, she began to look for Worm. She did not call him. Worm never came when he was called. Instead she walked swiftly from room to room, looking in all his favorite lairs and sleeping places.
It was when she was looking on the windowsill, behind the drapes, that she noticed the change in the sky. The clouds were still there—thick bloated shapes of dirty gray—but now they were no longer racing across the sky. Instead they hung heavy and motionless, bank on bank, frozen into weirdly twisted and contorted shapes. The air was still and breathless, as if the whole world was waiting for some enormous inevitable catastrophe. Turning away, Jessica continued her search.
She came on him at last in the kitchen, where she had looked carefully, only moments before. He stood just inside the door, poised and wary, ready to jump away. As Jessica lunged at him, he leaped aside, arched and spitting. She stopped and came back. Cornering him against the stove, she pounced, seized him, and carried him, fighting and clawing, into the living room.
Dropping him in the middle of the floor, she stepped back and watched as he whirled to face her—a menacing demon—flat-eared and evil-eyed.
“All right, witch’s cat,” she whispered. “The time has come.”
Chapter Thirteen
“THE TIME HAS COME,” JESSICA SAID, AND immediately the answer began. The silence deepened, thickening into a distant roar like the sound of an ocean in a seashell. Then the roar grew and sharpened into a howl. But the howl was formless, without words or meaning.
“Tell me what to do,” Jessica said. “She can’t make me tell. She shouldn’t try to make me, and she shouldn’t tell him herself either, because what happened wasn’t my fault. She knows it wasn’t my fault.” The howl was changing into word sounds, but words without form or meaning.
“She knows it wasn’t my fault,” Jessica repeated. “She knows about you, too, even if she won’t admit it. She’s ugly and horrible, with her stinking old cats, and she knows all sorts of things that she has no right to know. She knows everything because she’s a witch. She’s an ugly old witch, and she knows too much. She sent you here to torment me, and it’s all her fault, all of it.”
“A witch.” At last the voice became words. “She is a witch,” it said.
Jessica leaned forward, shuddering with angry joy. “Yes,” she said. “Mrs. Fortune is a witch, and we’ve got to make her leave me alone.”
“She must be punished,” the voice crooned. “Witches must be punished.
“But how? How can we do it?”
“In the old ways,” Worm answered. “In the old days, witches were punished by water or by fire.”
“But how?”
“Downstairs,” the voice was dwindling so that Jessica strained to hear it. “Downstairs. Water and fire. You will know.”
When Jessica left the apartment, she did not know where she was going. At least she didn’t think she knew, but something led her without hesitation to the laundry room in the downstairs hall. At the door to the laundry room Jessica stopped and looked back for a moment. Across the narrow hall stood the only door to Mrs. Fortune’s apartment.
In the laundry room, piles of dry clothes sat in baskets and on the folding table. There was water, dripping from a leaky faucet, and in the corner, the flame that burned beneath the water heater cast a reddish glow. In the cupboard, where Mr. Post kept his cleaning supplies, were large cans of cleaning solution marked Caution and Highly Inflammable.
If the cleaning solution spilled and ran out the door and across the hall—and if it happened tomorrow during the noon hour, when nearly everyone in the apartment was away, and when Mrs. Fortune always took a midday nap——
“Well, Jessica.”
Terror, striking like lightning, spun Jessica to face the quavering voice. Mrs. Fortune was standing in the doorway of the laundry room.
“Well, Jessica,” Mrs. Fortune said again, smiling as always. “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”
“N—no,” Jessica managed. “I—didn’t—expect-either——”
Mrs. Fortune shuffled around Jessica to the clothes dryer. “I just remembered that I left my towels in the dryer,” she said.
She bent slowly and painfully over the dryer and pulled out several towels. She had carefully wrapped them into a bundle before she turned again to Jessica, who still stood stricken into a statue of guilty fear. For a moment she returned Jessica’s gaze, a sharp, clear steady look, before it faded into her creased and constant smile.
“Good night, my dear,” she said, and shuffled past, but halfway across the hall she stopped. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I keep forgetting to tell you. I think I found a book of yours the other day.”
“A book?” Jessica said. “What book?”
“The library book—about the Salem trials. It must have been months ago that you asked me if I’d seen it. And then, just the other day, when Mrs. Post came in to help with the cleaning, we came across it. It must have slipped down——”
“Oh, yes,” Jessica said. “That was the book I lost the night I found Worm.”
“If you’ll wait for just a moment——” Mrs. Fortune disappeared into her apartment and returned with a book.
“Here you are,” she said, handing the book to Jessica. “I’m afraid the fine must be very high by now.”
“I’ve already paid for the book,” Jessica said. “They said I had to pay for it because I couldn’t find it.”
“Well, now that is too bad. Perhaps they’ll give you the money back if you return it. You can blame it on an old lady’s poor housekeeping. You can say it was my fault——”
Jessica turned and ran; she went blindly and in terror.
Turning into the main hall, she almost ran into Joy. Joy stared at Jessica in amazement.
“Jessica,” she said. “What on earth!”
“Hello,” Jessica said, trying to shape a smile. “Are-are you just getting home?”
“Well, yes,” Joy said. “But what on earth were you doing?”
“Just hurrying,” Jessica said. “I’d been—downstairs—and I was hurrying to get home, so you wouldn’t worry.”
“Well,” Joy said. “How nice. How nice that you’re suddenly becoming so considerate.” Her smile said she was amused at the obviousness of Jessica’s lie.
They walked together up the stairs to their apartment while Joy complained about the weather and her aching head.
“I don’t understand it,” she said. “I never have headaches. It must be this crazy weather. It has everyone nervous and on edge. Those awful clouds—and the air is like the inside of a tomb. I just wish that whatever it’s going to do, it would do it and get it over with.”
At dinner, Joy announced that she and Alan were going to a movie. She looked carefully at Jessica. “You’ve been awfully funny tonight,” she said. “Like you were a million miles away. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m all right,” Jessica said. “I’m fine.”
“You’re sure? I wouldn’t go out, but this terrible weather has really got me down and I need something to take my mind off it. I won’t go, though, if you need me. Do you have something to do.”
“Yes,” Jessica said. “I have something to do. I have a book to read.”
Once Joy was gone, Jessica went to her room, locked the door, and began to read. She skimmed quickly over the first few chapters, the ones she had read before. She remembered parts of them very well. Especially about Ann, the twelve-year-old girl who had become famous. Further into the book, Jessica read some things she didn’t remem
ber quite so well. They seemed familiar only in the way strange places suddenly seem familiar—as if you have seen them before. This part of the book told how Ann had been tormented by demons, demons she said were sent by the witches, and how she had accused the witches in the trials before all the people of the community. Afterward, for a long time, Ann had been pitied and honored and feared by everyone.
Then came a part that Jessica had not read before, a part where the witches were condemned to die—old women and young, a man, and even a little girl.
At last Jessica came to the final chapter. It told about a day in August, many years later, when a pale and sickly Ann, now a young woman, stood up before the people of her community and confessed. The demons who had tormented her in her unhappy childhood, she said, had not been sent by the people who had been accused and executed.
Jessica sat staring at the last page of the book. Her eyes were wide, but they no longer saw the printed words or even the book itself. What they did see made her face crumple as if in pain and her head shake slowly from side to side. Her lips moved, from time to time, in a soundless whisper.
At last she dropped the book and lay down across the bed with her face buried in her arms. She lay without moving for a long time.
Chapter Fourteen
IT WAS ALMOST TEN O’CLOCK WHEN JESSICA LIFTED her head from her arms and looked around. She got up, went into the bathroom, and washed her face in cold water. Then she went out of the apartment and down the stairs.
In the downstairs hall, she went directly to the door of Mrs. Fortune’s apartment. Because she knew that Mrs. Fortune might already have gone to bed, she knocked as loudly as she could. But almost immediately she heard, from inside the apartment, the sound of movement. A moment later the door opened. Mrs. Fortune was not ready for bed, and in the strange way she had of knowing things, she seemed to be expecting Jessica’s arrival. Leading Jessica into the living room, she made no comment of surprise.
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