The Witches of Worm

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  Sitting again on the couch in Mrs. Fortune’s living room, Jessica stared down at her hands clutching each other in her lap. Several times she raised her head and tried to begin, but each time she failed.

  At last Mrs. Fortune said. “What is it, Jessica? Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Yes,” Jessica said in a voice she hardly recognized as her own. “You can help me get rid of Worm. I have to get rid of him.”

  “Get rid of Worm,” Mrs. Fortune said. “Why must you do that?”

  “You probably won’t believe me,” Jessica said in the strange tense voice. “But I guess you would if anybody would. It’s because he isn’t a cat at all. He’s a demon. He talks to me and tells me to do terrible things.”

  Jessica would not have been surprised if Mrs. Fortune had reacted with horror, disbelief, or even amusement. But there was no sign of any such reaction. Instead the pale old eyes remained steady and intent.

  At last she said, “Worm is not a demon, Jessica. He is only a cat. If there is a demon in Worm, it is not of his own making. You must get rid of the demon, but not of Worm himself.”

  “But how? How can I do that?”

  “How?” Mrs. Fortune repeated. “Well, let me think.”

  She thought for a long time, so long that her old head began to nod and shake, and Jessica thought frantically, Oh no! She isn’t going to get forgetful and crazy again. Not now.

  But then, just as Jessica was beginning to despair, Mrs. Fortune got to her feet and went to the bookshelf at the other end of the room. She began to take down books, look at them, and put them back. At last she kept one and walked to her chair, holding it. It was a very old book with a scuffed and faded binding, the color of dry earth. Inside the small print had a cramped old-fashioned look.

  “There you are,” she said. “Page ninety-one. That will tell you exactly how it is done.”

  There was a title at the top of the page. The capital letters were so ornate that Jessica could barely make out the words Ceremonie for the Exorcism of Evil Spirits. Glancing down the page, it seemed to Jessica that the ceremony was very elaborate and complicated.

  “Will you do it for me?” she asked. “I could go up and get Worm and bring him down here.”

  Mrs. Fortune shook her head. “No,” she said. “I can’t do it for you. This is something you must do by yourself. We all invite our own devils, and we must exorcise our own. Read the instructions carefully and follow them as closely as possible. The ritual is very powerful. Ritual and ceremony have always been one of the greatest sources of power. But one thing is of even greater importance: the inner power of your own mind. If you know your mind—and what it is you want—the ceremony will be successful.”

  Jessica got back to her own apartment barely in time to get undressed and into bed before Joy returned from her movie. After Joy had gone to bed, Jessica sat up reading the instructions for the exorcism over and over again. She listed all the objects she would need and decided where she could get each one. Then she set herself to memorizing the chants and exhortations.

  It was very late when she turned out the lights, and it wasn’t until then, lying there in the dark, that she began to think again about Brandon and the trumpet. In the empty silence of the night, the thought grew, twisting and turning through her mind, so that sleep would not come. She tried to think of other things, but nothing worked until, in the midst of tossing and turning, she remembered something that Mrs. Fortune had said. The memory came suddenly and so clearly that Jessica could almost hear the creak and rasp of Mrs. Fortune’s voice. “The ritual is very powerful,” it said.

  “By fire and water I conjure thee——” Jessica began, and before she got even to the end of the verse, she had fallen asleep.

  • • •

  The next morning Jessica awoke late and hurried to school in a sleepy daze. The clouds of the day before still hung heavy in the sky, pressing their strange dark shapes even closer to the earth. And in Jessica’s mind strange shapes brooded, too, just beyond the horizon of consciousness. She sat in classes and stared at teachers, who seemed to move their mouths soundlessly while other words and phrases wove in and out through the heavy air.

  “We all invite our own devils—it would be best if you would tell him yourself—the demon is not of Worm’s making—a witch must be punished—you must know what it is you want—I won’t tell Brandon. I won’t—by fire and water I conjure thee.”

  The day seemed endless. Even the clocks seemed to tick more and more slowly in the thick breathless air. Not only Jessica, but everyone else seemed to be waiting uneasily for something to happen. But the calm held, and the clouds hung silent and heavy, until at last the school day was over. Jessica was on her way home when the first drops of rain began to fall—only a few at first, like great cold tears, leaving fat round blotches on the sidewalk.

  Just as she reached the apartment house, the wind arrived in an angry blast, whipping her hair and skirt and almost blinding her with flying dust and debris. Safely inside the hall, she rubbed her smarting eyes and pushed the hair back out of her face. Rain was breaking now in waves on the glass door, and the first dusty roar of wind had become a long wet whine. For several minutes, Jessica stood staring while the storm grew in force and intensity. It was as if the whole world were caught up in a fit of terrible anger—spiraling endlessly to some unthinkable climax. At last she turned away, shivering, and climbed the stairs. At the door of her own apartment, she paused briefly with her hand on the doorknob, then opened the door and went in.

  She looked for Worm first, moving cautiously and silently. She found him in one of his favorite places, curled into a ball on the floor of the kitchen broom closet. She barely managed to slam the door in his face as he tried to dash out into the room.

  “Stay there,” she said, “until I’m ready for you.”

  She hurried then, gathering the supplies she would need for the ceremony. Most of the things were easily available, but there were some problems—some places where substitutions would have to be made. The book called for a chalice and a thurible, the first filled with water and the second with earth. Judging by the illustrations, Jessica decided that chalices and thuribles were fancy metal bowls, so she substituted a silver candy dish and a steel mixing bowl. The earth was a problem because of the storm, until Jessica remembered the potted geranium on the kitchen windowsill.

  When everything was arranged in the middle of the floor, Jessica skimmed over the rules for the ritual one last time. Everything seemed to be ready. She had only to set fire to the lumps of charcoal arranged on the layer of earth in the second bowl and it would be time to bring in Worm. She lit the coals, but even after they were burning well, she went on kneeling in the middle of the floor.

  In a moment she would go and get Worm, and the ceremony would begin—but what then? Would the exorcism work? Would Worm become a normal cat, and would the voice be silent? Would the voice be silent even during the ceremony, or would it begin to speak—telling her to——

  Blazing, blinding light and then a heart-stopping smash of sound swept doubts and thoughts away. They left Jessica standing against the wall, staring toward the windows where the storm lashed and roared and then convulsed again in shattering light and sound.

  I’d better hurry, Jessica thought senselessly, before it’s too late. She turned toward the kitchen and the closet where Worm was waiting.

  When Jessica opened the door to the closet, Worm pressed himself back against the farthest wall. His eyes, dilated from the darkness, were pools of night ringed with narrow rims of gold. It had been a long time since Jessica had touched him except in anger. Now she hardly dared to try. Finally she shoved one foot forward, and as his eyes shifted to follow it, she bent quickly and grabbed him behind the neck. He screamed and fought, struggling to reach her hands with wicked slashes of his hind claws, as she carried him into the front room and dropped him in the middle of the floor.

  But the moment Worm hit the floor, h
e dashed away, disappearing from sight beneath the couch. Prodding him with a yardstick, Jessica caught him again and carried him to the middle of the floor, only to have him dash for the couch again the moment she turned him loose. After one last try and another escape, she finally hit on a solution. In the coat closet she found an old sweater, and after dragging Worm from under the couch one more time, she wrapped him tightly in the sweater, tying the arms around him like a straight jacket. She placed him then, bound like a mummy, in front of the bowls of earth and fire and water, where he remained, a mummy cat, helpless and motionless. Only his head seemed alive—ears back and quivering, hooded angry eyes darting to watch Jessica’s every move.

  Opening the old book to page ninety-one, Jessica propped it in front of her as she knelt before the chalice and thurible. It was almost dark in the room now, although it was not yet five o’clock. Outside the windows, the storm moaned and wailed, trying to get in. The glow from the burning coals was deepening, turning Worm’s eyes from gold to red.

  Jessica sprinkled a handful of salt across the water in the first bowl, and bending low, she breathed the first verse of the incantation across the surface.

  “Water and salt—where you are cast—no spell or adverse purpose last.”

  Worm yowled and spat and twisted against his bonds, rocking his body from side to side. Jessica took another handful of salt and threw it on the burning coals, where it burned brightly in a spatter of tiny sparks. As if in answer, a bolt of lightning burned across the sky.

  Jessica bent over the fire and chanted the second incantation: “Creature of fire—this charge I lay—no phantom in thy presence stay.”

  Worm struggled again more fiercely than before, and Jessica watched anxiously as, still wrapped and tied, he seemed for a moment to stand almost erect on his hind feet. At last he collapsed again and lay still. He did not move as Jessica sprinkled him with water and earth and repeated the third and last verse of the incantation.

  “By fire and water I conjure thee—all powers of adversity—banish hence—so might it be.”

  Jessica had barely finished saying the last word when the door of the apartment banged open and Joy burst into the room, wet and dripping.

  “Surprise, surprise, I’m home early,” she said. And then, “What on earth’s going——”

  Jessica’s shout of warning interrupted her, but she did not react in time to close the door before a gray shadow flashed by her ankles and out into the hall. Worm had broken loose from his bindings and was making his escape.

  Chapter Fifteen

  AS WORM DASHED PAST JOY AND OUT INTO THE hallway, Jessica jumped to her feet with a wail and ran after him. She was halfway down the first flight before Joy recovered enough to start shouting.

  “Jessica. Where are you going? Come back here and——”

  But by then Jessica was on the second flight, and the thudding of her own feet, blending with a drum roll of thunder, drowned the rest of it completely. Ahead of her she saw Worm reach the ground floor and pause for a moment, looking around. He turned to the right, toward the front hall and street entrance.

  Jessica was thinking, Ah, no cat door there. He’s trapped himself, when she heard a shout and a heavy metallic clatter. She rounded the corner at the foot of the stairs to see Brandon standing in the open doorway, his bicycle on the floor at his feet. He was trying to hold the door open against a torrent of wind and rain, and at the same time pick up his bicycle and get it into the hall. Jessica dashed to the door, and bracing herself, managed to push it back against the wind enough so that Brandon could untangle himself from his bicycle and pull it inside.

  “Was that your cat?” Brandon asked as soon as the closing door shut out the roar of the wind. “I was trying to get my bicycle in, and I saw him coming. I tried to grab him, but all I did was drop my bicycle and fall over it.”

  “Where did he go?” Jessica asked, opening the door enough to peer out into the blinding rain. “Did you see which way he went?”

  Brandon propped his bicycle against the wall and came back to help hold the door open. “No, I didn’t see,” he said. “After that one grab, I was too busy falling over my bicycle. But he got out the door. I know that much.”

  They peered out into rain that seemed to break against their faces in waves. A car passed, headlights on and windshield wipers flopping. A moment later, from halfway down the block, there was a squeal of brakes.

  “Oh, no,” Jessica said and ran, Brandon after her. When they reached the spot, the car was starting up again. The driver, who was just rolling up his window, saw them and rolled it back down.

  “Was that your cat?” he yelled. When Jessica nodded, he said, “Well you better catch him quick or he’s not going to last long—running out in front of cars like that.”

  They ran across the street and stopped, not knowing which way to turn, until a woman, struggling with her umbrella in a doorway, pointed to the right. They ran that way.

  They were running into the wind, blinded and almost drowning in the driving rain. Suddenly Brandon shouted.

  “There,” he yelled. “There he is. I saw him for just a second. He must have turned down the alley.”

  Water rushed like a shallow river on the pavement of the alley, but the high narrow walls offered some protection from the blowing rain. They ran down the alley, checking all possible hiding places, behind boxes and garbage pails and in doorways, finding nothing. Yet when they reached the dead end of the alley, there was no sign of Worm.

  “He must have gone over the fence,” Brandon said. He ran back for a packing box, put it against the fence, and jumped up on it.

  “There he is,” he yelled, and disappeared over the top of the fence.

  Jessica pushed back strands of soaking hair that a blast of wind had plastered across her eyes and struggled up onto the box. As her face cleared the top of the fence, it was suddenly exposed to the full force of the storm. It pounced like a living thing, beating and shaking her and lashing her face with whips of rain. She crouched back down behind the wall, cowering in sudden terror. She leaned against the fence, pressing her face against its rough wet surface.

  “Jes—ss—sic—caa!” The wind played with Brandon’s shout, stretching it like a rubber band and snapping it back together again.

  Bracing herself and wincing, Jessica jumped to her feet and scrambled over the fence, landing with a thud and a muddy slide that carried her down several feet below street level.

  The area on the other side of the fence was the construction site for a new apartment building. Excavation had been made for the basement, and scaffolding was in place around bare metal girders. Jessica skidded to a stop against foundation framing and worked her way along it to the corner.

  As she turned the corner, she saw Brandon part way up a scaffolding ladder.

  “He’s up here,” he yelled. “He climbed the scaffolding. I think I can——”

  He broke off, leaning around the ladder to look upward at something Jessica couldn’t see. He yelled something unintelligible that broke off sharply. After a moment, he began to climb down the ladder. Jessica met him at the bottom.

  “He fell,” Brandon said. “He was way up near the top, and he tried to jump from the scaffolding to a girder. His claws slipped on the metal, and he fell. It’s a long way, more than three stories. He must be dead.”

  Brandon hurried off, skidding along the steep slope that ended at the edge of the foundation, until he came to steps leading down into the basement area. But Jessica stayed where she was, stunned by a strange shocking pain. “Worm,” she whispered to herself. “Oh, Worm.”

  She was still standing, statuelike, when she realized that Brandon was scrambling toward her on the slope. He was making very little progress, stumbling clumsily and sliding backward almost as fast as he climbed. Finally he seemed to give up and stop trying. Straightening up, he called to her.

  “Come on, Jessica, let’s go this way. We’ll never get back up to the fence again.�
�� When Jessica still stood without moving, he yelled again, “Come on. I have him. I think he’s alive.” It wasn’t until then that Jessica realized that he was carrying something cradled in his arms.

  Worm didn’t look alive at all—not at first. He lay perfectly still, wet and limp, with hanging head and closed eyes. But as Jessica took him in her arms, he made a gasping sound, and she could feel that he was still warm.

  “He’d have been dead for sure,” Brandon said, “but the basement is flooded. There’s about a foot of water where he hit. It must have broken his fall. I think he’s just stunned, and nearly drowned. But I don’t think anything’s broken. Here, let’s see his legs.”

  As Jessica held Worm, Brandon felt his legs one by one and ran his fingers down his neck and back.

  “He feels okay,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get him home before we all drown.”

  Brandon remembered a gate in the high board fence on the left side, where there was no slippery hill to climb, and they made their way toward it slowly, slipping and sliding—shaking with cold.

  It wasn’t until then that Jessica realized that she was very, very cold. She had run out of the Regency without even a coat; the icy rain had long ago soaked through to what seemed to be the very center of her bones. Only one spot of living warmth remained, the place where Worm huddled soft and wet against her chest. Shaking so hard that her back ached and her legs trembled under her, she followed Brandon along the fence and around piles of pipes and lumber, slipping and stumbling in the near darkness. They reached the gate at last, only to find it closed and locked.