They had to go on then all the way to the other side of the block, where there was another gate that Brandon was sure would be open.
“Or at least there’ll be someone there to let us out. The watchman’s shack is right beside the gate, and there’s always someone in it.”
Jessica nodded, but by then she was so cold and exhausted she’d given up believing they were ever going to get out. Feeling certain she would never again be safe and dry and warm, she trudged and stumbled and shook the driving rain out of her mouth and eyes. Somewhere between the two gates, she began to cry.
She cried steadily as they made their way down the west side of the block, around piles of building materials and over muddy mounds of earth. She went on crying while they roused the watchman—listened to his shocked and indignant sermon about “the dangers of playing in construction sites, and in such weather”—and continued to cry the remaining three blocks back to the Regency. She cried wildly, steadily, as if to make up for all the years that she had not cried at all. But her hot tears were lost in the cold tears of the storm, and the wind out-howled her loudest sobs. No one knew that she was crying at all, except perhaps Worm, lying limp and quiet in the shelter of her arms.
When they reached the Regency, Brandon suggested they go in the back way and clean up in the laundry room before they got to the front hall with its wall-to-wall carpeting.
“Mrs. Post would really wring our necks,” he said, “if we tracked up her precious rugs.”
Following him around the building and in through the back door, Jessica managed to still her sobs and stop the flow of her tears. But when they stood facing each other in two widening mud puddles in the middle of the laundry-room floor, she was completely unable to speak.
Brandon wiped the rain out of his eyes and looked at her and down at himself. “Wow,” he said ruefully, shaking his head, “talk about drowned rats. How’s the cat?”
They both looked at Worm. He was stirring a little, lifting his head and opening his eyes.
“He’s coming to,” Brandon said. “Here, let me hold him while you clean up.” He reached out to take Worm from Jessica’s arms.
But Jessica backed away, and the tears began again, burning down her cheeks.
“No,” she almost shouted. “No! I smashed your trumpet. I pushed it out the window.”
Brandon looked dumfounded. “What are you talking about?” he said. “What’s the matter with you?”
Jessica laughed—and cried at the same time. “What’s the matter with me? I’m a witch—that’s what’s the matter with me. Didn’t you know?” And she turned and ran down the hall and up the stairs.
Chapter Sixteen
WHEN JESSICA AWOKE, THE SILENCE THAT COMES TO the city only in the early hours of morning told her the night was almost over. Consciousness came slowly and evenly, a smooth and easy floating upward from the depths of sleep. Fully awake at last, she lay very still.
She knew she was awake because she was aware of the silence and of the warm familiar comfort of her bed. She was also perfectly aware of what had happened. All the events of the night before were clear and ordered in her mind. It all came back without trying to remember and, more strangely, without trying—as she had so often done before—not to remember. She had only to lie perfectly still, limp and empty, and let it all happen over again in her mind.
She had still been laughing and crying at the same time, when she got back to the apartment with Worm; and Joy, who was already terribly upset, had immediately become hysterical and sent for a doctor. The doctor hadn’t wanted to come out in the storm, but Joy had been so frantic, crying and insisting that Jessica was completely hysterical, that at last he had agreed.
By the time the doctor arrived, Jessica was better, and she was able to tell him fairly calmly about the chase through the storm after Worm and about Worm’s accident. After he had examined Jessica, the doctor told Joy that it was mostly a case of exhaustion and exposure, and that anyone would be a little hysterical after being out in such a terrible storm. But Joy had wanted Jessica to have a tranquilizer or a sleeping pill, and at last the doctor had agreed—if Joy would take one, too. Before he left, the doctor examined Worm.
Worm, still very damp, bedraggled, and limp, was lying in a padded box beside Jessica’s bed. She knew he was still far from well when he let the doctor prod and poke him without a fight. But the doctor said he could find no sign of serious injury.
“He’s probably only very bruised and sore from the fall,” the doctor said. “He should be showing signs of recovery soon. If he isn’t up and eating by tomorrow, I’d certainly take him to a vet.”
The doctor left, and a short time later Jessica had another visitor. This time it was Brandon. If Joy had asked Jessica whether or not she wanted to see Brandon, she would have said no. But Joy hadn’t asked. She had simply come into the room with Brandon and pulled up a chair for him near Jessica’s bed.
“Now don’t stay too long,” she’d told him. “She’s had a sleeping pill, and she’s very tired.” Then Joy went out and left Jessica trapped and helpless. She knew she was never going to be able to speak to Brandon ever again, so she turned her face to the wall and waited for him to leave.
“Hey,” Brandon said as soon as Joy had gone. “What a night. I haven’t had so much excitement since——” Brandon’s voice trailed off, and Jessica could feel him looking at her, but she went on staring at the wall.
After a while, Brandon began again. “You know where I’ve been for the last hour? I’ve been down talking to Mrs. Fortune. I was really going crazy with curiosity about the things you said—in the laundry. So I called up, but your mother said the doctor was coming and everything, so then I thought about Mrs. Fortune. You know how she knows just about everything, and something told me she’d know something about whatever it was you were talking about. So I went down, and we’ve been talking until just now.”
Before she could stop herself, Jessica burst out, “What did she say about me? What did she tell you?”
“Well, I told her what you’d said about the trumpet, and she told me a little about that.”
Jessica turned her face away again. “I’ll pay for it,” she said. “I’ll save some money and pay for it.”
“Well, that’s okay,” Brandon said. “The guy at the shop said he could fix it. And Dad thinks our insurance will cover it. No problem. The only thing is—why? I mean, why did you do it? Mrs. Fortune said something about your being angry, but she wasn’t too clear about it.” From the sound of Brandon’s voice, Jessica guessed he was smiling—the way he always did about Mrs. Fortune and other things he liked. “She was in one of her more mysterious moods,” he said. “I couldn’t figure it out exactly. I mean—what were you angry about?”
That was too much. Jessica whirled around and faced Brandon. “What have I got to be angry about? Nothing at all! Just that after we’d been friends for years and years, you found somebody new and you told me to get out.” Jessica’s voice was shaking, and her skin felt tight and hot across her cheekbones.
Just as he had done in all their fights, except for the rare times when he was the angry one, Brandon only nodded with a maddeningly peaceful smile. “Just like old times,” he said, which was so close to what Jessica was thinking that it momentarily destroyed the full force of her anger.
“Okay,” Brandon said. “I did tell you to get out, and it was a crummy thing to do. But afterward I tried to tell you about it, and you wouldn’t listen. I tried to tell you that I’d just met Kevin and Jay, and I’d been wanting to get to know them, and all the way home that day they’d been talking about football and stuff like that and what a pain girls were. Then we got to the apartment, and there you were waiting in the hall with all those spears and helmets and stuff for—whatever play we were going to do that day——”
“Alexander the Great,” Jessica said. “We were doing the second act.”
“Yeah,” Brandon said. “Anyway, I didn’t mean for you to g
et out for good.”
“And that’s supposed to make everything just fine,” Jessica said. “I’m supposed to be absolutely overjoyed that all you meant was that I was supposed to stay out of sight when your important school friends came around.”
“I know. No excuse. Except that you were the one that always said the plays were stupid baby games and that everyone would laugh at us if they knew about them.”
“I didn’t mean it,” Jessica said. “I only said that when I was mad.”
“And the next day I tried to talk to you and tell you I was sorry, and you said you weren’t ever going to speak to me again.”
“I didn’t mean that either. Don’t you have enough sense to know that people don’t mean it when they say things like that?”
“People ought not to say things they don’t mean,” Brandon said.
“But everyone does,” Jessica said, “nearly everyone.” She turned back toward the wall, and for a long minute there was a strained uncomfortable silence; yet Jessica knew, as she had often known with Brandon, that they were thinking about the same thing. There was something else to be explained.
They both started at once. “Why did you say——” Brandon began just as Jessica started, “About being a witch——” They both stopped and looked at each other for a moment before Jessica looked away. Staring down at the bedspread, she said, “I really think I am one. I must be.”
“Why?”
Jessica shook her head. “It’s too crazy. It’s too—awful.”
“Look,” Brandon said, “I know quite a bit about witches. I mean, I’ve done some reading about them.”
“It started a long time ago,” Jessica said. “With Worm—it started with Worm.”
She told Brandon about all of it from the very beginning when she had found Worm in the cave. She left nothing out, not even the smashed trumpet, and the thing she had almost done—the thing that was so terrible it still made her scared and sick even to think about it.
Brandon listened without saying a word, only nodding his head at times, and now and then leaning over to look at Worm where he still lay limp and motionless in the padded box. When she was finished, he was silent for a long time before he said, “I still don’t see why you think you’re the witch.”
“It must be me,” Jessica said. “Last night—it seems like years ago, but it was only last night—after I finished reading the book about the Salem witches, I decided that I must be one. All of a sudden I saw how none of the people who were accused were really guilty. It was just that Ann and the other girls found out how much power they could have by making people believe that nothing they did was their fault. So then I thought that Ann and the others were the real witches—and all of a sudden I knew I was, too. And if Worm was a demon, I must have been the one who made him that.”
Brandon leaned over again to look at Worm. “I wonder if it worked. The exorcism, I mean.”
Jessica leaned over the box, too. “I don’t know. I’d just barely finished, and I don’t know if I even did it right. Mrs. Fortune said the most important thing was to be sure of what you wanted to happen, and I was sure of that. But I wasn’t at all sure about the rest of it.”
Brandon reached into the box and put his hand on Worm’s side where the steady beat of his heart could be seen under the soft gray fur. He nodded knowingly, like a doctor making a diagnosis. “I think it worked,” he said. “At least partly. These things usually take some time.”
“Oh yeah?” Jessica said. “What do you know about it?”
“A lot. I told you I’d been doing some reading on the subject of witches and demons and all kinds of stuff like that. I’ve had a lot of books out of the library.”
“So that’s where they all were,” Jessica said, but Brandon wasn’t listening. His eyes were glazed over with concentration, the way they’d always been when he was getting an idea for a play.
“But there’s a lot I haven’t read. We’ll check out everything we can find on the subject, and we’ll set up a re-training schedule. A rehabilitation program—for ex-demons.”
“How?” Jessica asked skeptically. “How are you going to do it?”
Worm lifted his head, and flattening his ears threateningly, he struggled to get away from Brandon’s hand. Brandon took his hand out of the box.
“I’m not sure yet. Not entirely. But I think the first step will be to get him to trust us. That’s always the first step. We’ll set up a kind of clinic with daily treatments. We’ll make a list of them and keep track of the results. You can be in charge of that. Maybe we’ll get some other patients, too. My aunt just got this Pomeranian that could probably use a little therapy, too.”
Jessica had been very quiet, and at last Brandon stopped planning and looked at her. “Do you want to try it?” he asked.
Jessica nodded. Her throat felt strange, so tight and painful that she didn’t dare try to speak.
Just before he went out, Brandon said, “Oh, yeah, there’s one more thing—about your being a witch. I don’t think you could be. At least not anymore.”
“Why not?” Jessica managed to ask.
“Well, haven’t you ever read that witches can’t cry?”
“No,” Jessica said. “But I didn’t know you knew—that I was crying.”
“I thought you were. Anyway that proves you’re not a witch. At least not now. Maybe you were one and the exorcism sort of backfired. Maybe you exorcised yourself, too.”
After Brandon left, Jessica had gone to sleep immediately, with no time to think or decide about anything. She had slept deeply, beyond dreams, and then floated up slowly into consciousness in the dark silence that comes just before dawn.
She lay quietly in the darkness and thought it all through as peacefully as if it had all happened to someone else—without trying to change or forget any part of it. It was a strange way to feel. There was a difference, and she wondered about it. Was it real, would it last?
The crying had been different, too. She wondered if Brandon had really read about witches and crying, or if he had only made it up for the occasion. He was good at things like that.
Dawn was beginning to arrive, and the sky outside the window was a pale pure gray—scrubbed and clean, but still too weary to be blue. Jessica rolled to the side of the bed and looked down at Worm. He was still asleep, but curled now, more normally, in a sleek gray coil.
“Worm,” she said, and then she remembered a difference that seemed the most important of all. She remembered the strong real pain she had felt when Brandon said that Worm was dead.
“Worm,” she said again, and he sat up quickly, watching her with his long moss-gold eyes. She put her hand out slowly and cautiously and touched his head, and although his ears flickered, he sat still.
“Worm,” she said. “I was really sorry you were dead.”
is the author of The Egypt Game, The Headless Cupid, and The Witches of Worm, all Newbery Honor Books, and most recently, The Treasures of Weatherby, The Bronze Pen, and William S. and the Great Escape. She was nominated for an Edgar Award for her book The Unseen, which was a School Library Journal Best Book and a Parents’ Choice Silver Honor winner. Zilpha lives in Mill Valley, California. Visit her at zksnyder.com.
Jacket design by Michael McCartney
Jacket illustrations copyright © 2009 by David Frankland
ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
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Also by
ZILPHA KEATLEY SNYDER
And Condors Danced
Black and Blue Magic
Blair’s Nightmare
The Bronze Pen
Cat Running
The Changeling
The Egypt Game
The Famous Stanley Kidnapping Case
Fool’s Gold
The Ghosts of Rathburn Park
Gib and the Gray G
host
Gib Rides Home
The Gypsy Game
The Headless Cupid
Janie’s Private Eyes
Libby on Wednesday
The Magic Nation Thing
The Runaways
Season of Ponies
Song of the Gargoyle
Squeak Saves the Day
The Treasures of Weatherby
The Trespassers
The Truth About Stone Hollow
The Unseen
The Velvet Room
ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
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Copyright © 1972 by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
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This Atheneum hardcover edition September 2009
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009903671
ISBN 978-1-4169-9531-9
ISBN 978-1-4169-9541-8
The Witches of Worm Page 12
