Two Girls, a Clock, and a Crooked House

by Michael Poore

  “Well,” said Mrs. Nyday, “we’re happy to have them, of course. Nevertheless, there are procedures—”

  “Procedures!” cried Tuba. “Equinox!”

  “Yes, procedures,” said Ms. Goolagong. “I hope that you will trust in me to register my butterfly, Amy McFoss Wood, and my lovely cow, Gertrude June Kopernikus, before they trouble you another day.”

  Whaaaaaat? said Amy. How—

  Your middle name is McFoss?

  It’s a family name. Shut up, June.

  How does she KNOW these things?

  Shut up, that’s how!

  “I would have been on the spot this very morning,” Ms. Goolagong was explaining, “if I had not been called to start early at my new job. I am the new chief sexton at Peaceful Hills Memorial Gardens, in Dayton, you see.”

  “The girls told us,” said Mrs. Nyday, “that you were a gravedigger.”

  “A gravedigger and a sexton are the very same thing,” answered Ms. Goolagong.

  Amy couldn’t help thinking that she had never seen anyone less likely to be a gravedigger than Ms. Elaine Goolagong.

  “If you will excuse us,” said the witch, “we are about a night hike, observing stars and insects.”

  “Pishposh!” said Tuba. “Out of clean underwear again.”

  Ms. Goolagong growled and gave her head a little jerk, provoking a peevish squawk.

  “Actually…,” began Mr. MacAfferty.

  But Ms. Goolagong had already turned and was striding away, her astonishing hands turning the girls, too, and pulling them along with gentle urgency.

  The headlights swooped off down a side street, vanishing behind houses.

  Amy was bursting with questions.

  “How did you know—”

  “My goodness!” exclaimed Ms. Goolagong to Amy. “On your head! A badger!”

  Amy swatted at her head, found nothing. “What?” she said, confused.

  Ms. Goolagong was suddenly quite serious and businesslike. “We have confused the good people from the school with information,” she said, “which is not at all the same as convincing them. The moment they can reach a phone, they will contact the police. I’m afraid our night hike in the open air must be at an end.”

  Was she leaving them? Oh no! Just when Amy thought they had found the friend they so needed!

  She was opening her mouth to protest when Ms. Goolagong bent at the waist—bent waaaaay down—and lifted a manhole cover out of the street as if it were a five-cent coin.

  “Down below,” she commanded, pointing, straightening up. “There’s nothing to follow up a night hike like a good old-fashioned tour of the sewers!”

  THE GIRLS COULDN’T HELP obeying. Ms. Goolagong’s voice was like that. If she told you that you were Yankee Doodle and that you must ride to Cincinnati on a purple wiener dog, you would believe her and you would do it.

  They could complain, though, and they did.

  “The sewers?” whined Amy, peering into the hole, making a face. A ladder ran down one side. At the bottom…well, she couldn’t actually see the bottom.

  But she did as Ms. Goolagong told her. Slowly, carefully, she knelt, lowered herself in, and started climbing down.

  It smells! whined Moo, climbing in after.

  “It smells!” Amy repeated aloud.

  “It doesn’t, actually,” argued Ms. Goolagong. “Not like a bathroom sewer, anyhow. This is merely a storm drain. Now, be brave, and try and go a bit faster. There’s a good girl.”

  “Good girl,” repeated Tuba.

  They descended.

  There were ghosts in the sewer, Amy discovered. The sewer had a story, after all—memories of storms and rushing water.

  As they climbed down out of the moonlight, it got dark.

  And then there was light again. Up above, Ms. Goolagong wielded a flashlight.

  It didn’t take long to reach the bottom. Amy’s foot splashed down (ew!) in something she hoped was water.

  “Gross,” she said.

  Moo and Ms. Goolagong joined her moments later, and the witch aimed her flashlight down a tunnel.

  “Now follow closely,” she said, “and keep up.”

  Off she went down the tunnel (it was like being inside a giant toilet paper tube, Amy thought), bent over at the shoulders to keep from damaging her hat. Tuba had tucked himself into her basket, which he rode like a motorcycle sidecar.

  “Mouthwash,” he said. “Olive oil. Red wine and shoestrings.”

  Great, Amy thought. Thirty years in the past, following a witch down a dark tunnel in the middle of the night, with a bird reciting grocery-list poetry.

  “Ms. Goolagong?” she said.

  “Yes, Amy Wood?”

  “You said you were taking us to your house….”

  “And so I am. This sewer line ends very near my home.”

  How far have we gone? Moo wondered. Are we still under your neighborhood, near the school? For all I know, we could be under my house.

  Amy shrugged. They had no way of knowing.

  “Ms. Goolagong?” she said. “What kind of witchy things, exactly, can a one percent witch do? How do you get to be a five percent witch? Can witches turn people into hamsters, and do curses, and fly and—”

  “I don’t know, dear. I’m not that kind of witch.”

  What kind is she? asked Moo. (Amy couldn’t help thinking, Hopefully not the kid-eating kind.)

  “What kind are you?” asked Amy.

  “The scientific kind.”

  “There are scientific witches?” (Moo poked her in the side and said, WE’RE scientific witches, dork! Deep Science! to which Amy replied, Oh yeah.)

  “Growing up in New Orleans,” said Ms. Goolagong, “I did so well in my science classes that I received a scholarship to a famous university, where I studied with Professor Hayden Gasfellow. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. He discovered the Seahorse Galaxy.”

  “No,” said Amy. “But maybe my parents have. They’re scientists, and they know—”

  “He also introduced me to my husband, Karora, and trained us to be radio astronomers. Radio astronomy, you see—”

  “I know!” shouted Amy (producing a deafening sequence of echoes). “There’s all kinds of energy washing around in space, getting sent out from stars and quasars and galaxies and things. Some of it is in a form we see with our eyes, which we call light, and then some of it is X-rays or infrared or radio waves. Scientists learn about space by keeping track of all of those things.”

  “Splendid!” crowed Ms. Goolagong (more deafening echoes).

  “Superglue!” answered Tuba, adding to the din.

  The witch sped up. They passed over something skeletal that might once have been a rat.

  Amy paused to acquire two stones (pieces of discolored concrete, really). She offered one to Moo.

  NO! protested Moo. Nasty!

  So Amy kept both.

  “Perhaps,” said Ms. Goolagong, “in regard to Karora, it would be best to backtrack somewhat. He began life not in a city or anything like it, but near Uluru, in the great Australian desert. Instead of television, his family had, for companionship, the moon and the sun and the stars. Imagine! With no cities nearby, no artificial light polluting the sky, Karora grew up under a night sky like infinity on fire! Stars by the billions! He took such an interest in outer space that his friends and family called him Avakasayatri, ‘the astronaut.’ They pooled money to send him to the university, to Professor Gasfellow.”

  “I think I’d like to study with Professor Gasfellow,” said Amy.

  “Well, you can’t,” said Ms. Goolagong. “He’s quite dead. Choked on a pea. Anyhow, after graduation Karora and I built our little house in the woods, and an immense radio dish in a big, huge open field. During the day, we taught classes at the
university. During the night, we listened for signals from other civilizations, far out in space. Our little house had a lot of computers and printers that made graphs, and oscilloscopes and fuzz-wahz and cyclometers and—”

  “What are fuzz-wahz and xylom-whatevers?” Amy interrupted.

  “Complicated machines that analyze and foozlize, vooglerize and spaghetticize,” answered Ms. Goolagong. “We were very good at using these machines. Together, Karora and I discovered the Rose Galaxy, the Peanut Galaxy, galaxy NGC HG3784698, the Ouroboros Ring, and the Birthday Cake Nebula.”

  Holy cats, whispered Moo, impressed.

  “Are you guys still married?” Amy asked. “Is he back at the house?”

  “What an excellent, nosy question. Very scientific! The answer is quite sad, I’m afraid. Tuba, dear? Perhaps you would feel better tucking your head under your wing awhile. I’m going to talk about the thing you don’t like to talk about.”

  Tuba buried his head in his feathers.

  “How sad is it?” asked Amy.

  “It’s sadder than a broken teapot,” answered Ms. Goolagong. “Sadder than someone playing a saxophone in the rain. One day, you see, Karora decided to send a message OUT into space, instead of just listening. Sort of a great, ten-thousand-watt, cosmic ‘HELLO!’ Tragically, lightning struck the vooglerizer just as he was sending, which caused him to broadcast himself into space as pure energy.”

  Amy’s jaw dropped. Wow, she thought, people don’t know half the things lightning can do!

  Jerk! said Moo. Say something sympathetic!

  “That’s awful, Ms. Goolagong. I’m so sorry to hear it.”

  “That’s kind of you, Amy Wood. It has been difficult. All I have left of him is Tuba, who Karora brought from Uluru as an egg. Some people have children; I have this rather inconvenient talking bird. Life is unpredictable.”

  They passed some mold that looked ready to reach out and grab them.

  “I’m afraid,” said the witch, “that I haven’t been back to the university since then. Mostly, I poke around looking for wild strawberries and nuts and mushrooms. Besides—”

  WHAM! Amy ran right into Ms. Goolagong’s behind. The tall woman had come to a stop quite suddenly.

  “Oof!” said Amy.

  Ms. Goolagong held up one hand, spider fingers outspread, saying, “Hush now!”

  She seemed to be listening. All Amy could see of her was a silhouette. Beyond her, the beam from the flashlight revealed dull concrete, darkened with wet splotches. Somewhere, water dripped.

  What’s wrong? asked Moo.

  I don’t know. Shhh.

  Even Tuba seemed to understand and was silent.

  And then she heard it. Heard what Ms. Goolagong had heard.

  Voices.

  Behind them. Faint, but echoing in an unmistakable voicelike way. And not just voices, but a scratchy, squawky, electronic sound that was familiar. Why was it familiar?

  A police radio! Speaking Police Spanish!

  “Ms. Goolagong—” Amy began, but before she could actually say anything, the witch did something surprising. She turned, reached back with her long, long arms, scooped up both girls, and carried them—lickety-split!—down the tunnel like a couple of footballs.

  “My apologies, girls!” she (loudly) whispered. “This must seem very rude, but I think that all three of us would rather avoid being detained by the police.”

  Amy and Moo looked at each other around Ms. Goolagong’s rear.

  Why does she want to avoid being detained by the police? they both wondered.

  Because she’s been eating kids like popcorn! they couldn’t help thinking.

  Shut up, shut up, shutupshutup! they told each other.

  Ms. Goolagong managed to shoot down the tunnel without scraping the girls against the walls very much, and also somehow kept hold of her long, tapering stick and her basket and her bird. The flashlight she had stuck between her teeth, and she kept it aimed straight ahead as if she had become the world’s strangest choo-choo train.

  Tuba poked his head up. “One advantage of living alone,” he said, “a lady can pick her nose all she likes, and no one’s the wiser.”

  “I’ll bet you taste just like chicken,” snapped Ms. Goolagong, and the bird vanished once again into his plumage.

  Ms. Goolagong’s feet skooooo­ooooo­shed like flying boats through a series of murky puddles.

  Amy realized that she no longer heard the police radio. “We haven’t actually done anything very wrong,” she said to the witch. “Have we?”

  Ms. Goolagong laughed. “Nevertheless,” she said, “it has been necessary for all three of us to tell a number of lies.”

  That’s true, said Moo.

  “And the good people at the school, together with their friends the police, certainly suspect these lies of being lies and will wish to question us on the matter.”

  Amy and Moo both agreed. They relaxed a little. This reason for running from the police was much less disturbing than the kid-eating theory.

  “If we were to be asked a lot of questions,” the witch continued (she wasn’t even out of breath!), “I imagine a couple of girls would have a great deal of difficulty explaining why they had no actual house that they lived in, and seemed, for all intents and purposes, to have fallen out of the sky.”

  Splash­splash­splash­splash­splash­splash­splash­splash­splash­splash­splash­splash!

  Moo was alarmed again.

  How does she KNOW we don’t have actual houses and things? Have we TOLD her this? Nooooooooo, we have not.

  “How do you know,” Amy asked the witch, “the things you know that you have no way of knowing?”

  “Well,” said Ms. Goolagong, “that is an interesting question, isn’t it? We shall have to discuss it sometime.”

  “I thought,” said Amy, “we were discussing it now.”

  “Did you hear about the girl who asked too many questions all at once and turned into a question mark?”

  “No,” said both girls.

  “Well, she did. Or a lobster. It was either a question mark or a lobster. Sometimes people turn into lobsters for no good reason at all.”

  Amy couldn’t help laughing. “No, they don’t!” she argued.

  “That’s right. They don’t. Now shush. You’re making me tired, and we still have seven furlongs to go.”

  Splashsplashsplash!

  “What’s a furlong?” asked Amy.

  “That’s it!” barked Ms. Goolagong. “You’re a lobster. Now be silent. Lobsters are silent.”

  They were silent.

  * * *

  —

  A YEAR WENT BY. Well, an hour, anyway. But it felt more like a year.

  At last, Ms. Goolagong came to a halt, set the girls down, and led them up a ladder into the big, starry world above. Tuba, glad to be under open sky once more, leaped from the basket and swooped around them in wide circles, crooning happily.

  They emerged well beyond the neighborhood, on something like a country road, with trees on both sides.

  Amy suddenly realized that the road and trees were familiar.

  “This is the witch woods!” she cried. “This is just down the road from your house, Moo!”

  Why, so it is! said Moo. Of course, it won’t actually BE my house for years and years and…

  As they talked, the darkness got deeper, because Ms. Goolagong, flashlight in hand, hadn’t stopped for conversation. She was off among the trees already, a shadow among shadows.

  “You may join me or not,” she called, “just as you like.”

  They joined her. Tuba took up his accustomed perch on her hat.

  They hadn’t gone very far when Moo mentally whispered: Amy!

  What?

  We’re going into the witch woods with
the actual witch!

  Amy said she was aware of this.

  Well, I just thought someone should mention it.

  Fine. You mentioned it. Do you have any better suggestions?

  Moo said that she did not.

  They stuck with Ms. Goolagong and took their chances.

  After a time, Ms. Goolagong stopped and said, “Here we are.”

  Ahead of them, occupying a small clearing and a pool of moonlight, was a little cabin.

  A familiar little cabin.

  Amy was only slightly surprised to see that it was the same cabin she and Moo had explored in their own time. The cabin in which they had found the chair and the clock. Except that this cabin had walls that were straight and windows that were whole, and didn’t have a tree wrapped around it.

  The door wasn’t locked. It opened without a creak, and their host ushered them in.

  The interior had a warm, sweet smell, the way Thanksgiving dinner smells, fresh out of the oven.

  These smells inhabited a darkness relieved only by a single shaft of filtered moonlight, glowing softly through the window. Ms. Goolagong lit a match and brought an old-fashioned lantern to life. A gentle butterscotch light filled the room.

  Like its future self, the cabin was filled with odds and ends. The same odds and ends, in fact, that the girls had already seen. Kettles, clock, dolls, pictures, buttons, radio, Egyptian cat goddess. Here, of course, they weren’t dusty or rusty or fallen down. One of the kettles seemed filled with something hot, in fact, and sat atop the stove breathing steam.

  Had Ms. Goolagong left the burner on while she went roaming? Amy puzzled about this. That seemed unsafe, and unlike Ms. Goolagong, who seemed so practical, in her superhuman way. Unless someone else was here, which no one was.

  A familiar-looking (if newer, shinier) birdcage hung from the ceiling, near the window. Tuba zoomed straight to it and perched contentedly inside. His emoji closed its eyes and hummed as if meditating.

  “Now,” said Ms. Goolagong, shutting the door and herding them toward a blanket-smothered couch, “I need for you girls to have a seat here and make ready for a surprise.”