Time of the Witch

by Mary Downing Hahn

  "I thought it was supposed to be cool in the mountains," I said. "I thought that was one of the great things about being up here in the middle of nowhere—you got away from the heat."

  Aunt Grace shrugged. "This is awfully hot weather. I guess we're having a heat wave. At least it cools off at night. That's more than you can say for Washington."

  "Yeah, but we have air-conditioners there." I frowned at her, squinting in the hot sun. "How come you didn't tell me there was a girl my age living right down the road?"

  "Do you mean Wanda Orton?"

  I nodded. "We met her at the creek today."

  "She wrecked my castle," Jason said, "but then she helped me build it back up again."

  "To tell you the truth, I didn't think you'd like Wanda." Aunt Grace swatted a mosquito and went on picking peas.

  "Why not?"

  "Well, I'm sure she's quite different from the girls you know in Stoneleigh."

  "So? Just because she's different doesn't mean I wouldn't like her." It was true that I'd never known anyone like Wanda. I couldn't imagine her sitting on a bench in the mall with Kim and me, eating ice cream and watching the guys go by, or lying on a towel at the swimming pool listening to a portable radio, or experimenting with makeup samples at the drugstore. She just wouldn't fit into Stoneleigh at all.

  But it was different up here. I didn't have to worry about what Kim or Lisa or Shari would think. I could be friends with anyone, even a skinny girl in baggy overalls. Things that were important in Stoneleigh just didn't matter here.

  "Wanda's very nice," I said a little stiffly, surprised to realize that I wanted my aunt's approval. I didn't want her to think I was a shallow person, a little snob from the suburbs.

  "Well, I'm glad to hear that." Aunt Grace smiled at me. "Summer will be more fun for you now that you have' a friend. Have you met her family yet?"

  "No, but she told me all about her mother and father leaving her with her grandmother and never coming back. Isn't that awful? What kind of parents would do something like that?"

  Aunt Grace shook her head. "I don't know, Laura. Annabelle's a good woman, though, and she's done her best to provide a good home for those kids. She really loves them."

  "That's a funny name for a grandmother, Annabelle. It sounds too young or something."

  "Oh, it suits her, Laura. She's a real character." Aunt Grace smiled. "I really enjoy her, even though she's always giving me advice I don't take."

  "Like what?" I stared at her puzzled. It was hard to imagine anyone having the nerve to give Aunt Grace advice. She seemed less in need of it than anyone I'd ever known.

  "Oh, she thinks I should get out more, meet people, go places."

  "Don't you ever want to? I mean don't you get bored sometimes?"

  "Now you sound like your father. He's never understood why I left New York and came up here to live like a hermitess, as he puts it." She sat back on her heels and gazed into the distance, at the mountains and the sky beyond. "I love it here. The peace and quiet, the beauty of it. I had enough social life in New York. I'm happier here than I've ever been, Laura."

  I looked at the mountains too, wishing I could enjoy them the way she did, but they still looked like a wall to me. On the other side of them was Stoneleigh and that was where I wanted to be, not here sweating away in Aunt Grace's vegetable garden. I sighed. "Maybe I'm just not old enough yet, maybe I haven't had enough social life."

  Aunt Grace nodded. "You've got a point, Laura."

  "Wanda's got a sister named Charlene," Jason said abruptly. "She works at the Dairy Queen and she's got a baby named Tanya Marie and she ain't got no husband." He stuffed a pea in his mouth and grinned, oozing a little green through his teeth.

  Aunt Grace looked surprised. "She hasn't got a husband," she corrected him.

  "That's right. I guess they got a divorce too, just like Wanda's mommy and daddy. And just like our mommy and daddy."

  "I guess so." Aunt Grace got up. "I think we have enough peas. Why don't we go inside and see how the chicken's doing? You and Laura could probably use a tall glass of something cold to drink, and so could I."

  Before I went to bed that night, I turned out my light and went to the window. Although I looked in both directions, I didn't see or hear anyone on the road. Just moonlight and shadows and a mockingbird singing somewhere. No sign of Maude. To be sure, I stood at the window until the cool night air made me shiver.

  As I crawled into bed, thinking I was safe from her, I realized it was awfully early. Not even ten o'clock. Maybe after midnight, while I was sleeping, she would creep past the house again, staring at my window, waiting for me to come to her and ask her for help.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, I did wake up, but it was Jason who woke me, not Maude.

  "Laurie, Laurie," he whispered, plucking at the covers and trying to climb in next to me.

  "What's the matter? Did you have another bad dream?" I moved over, letting him curl up next to me.

  "It was about Maude. I dreamed she was chasing us in the woods. We ran and ran and I fell down. You just kept on running, Laurie, and I was trying to scream but I could only grunt and I tried to get up and run but I couldn't. Then she caught me and her fingernails were long and sharp and so were her teeth. She laughed and laughed and she picked me up and took me away. She put me in a cage and she told me I was hers forever and I couldn't move, I couldn't move at all. Mommy and Daddy were there too, but they were mad; they didn't want to be there in the cage with me. They thought it was all my fault."

  He was crying and shivering, so I put my arms around him and hugged him. "There, there, Jasie, it was just a dream, don't cry. Nothing like that could ever happen. I wouldn't let Maude hurt you, I'd save you, Jasie."

  "I'm so scared, Laurie, I'm so scared. I wish we were back home in Stoneleigh."

  "I wish that too, Jasie." I hugged him again. "Do you want to sleep in here?"

  "Yes." Jason pressed closer to me, snuffling in my ear. "You don't really think Maude is a witch, do you?"

  "Of course not. Like Aunt Grace says, she's just a harmless old crackpot. She can't hurt anybody." I tried hard to sound convincing, but the more I thought about it the more I believed that Maude really was a witch. Not the kind Jason had dreamed about, the wicked Baba Yaga sort of witch who ate little children, but a real witch who knew how to cast love spells and put hexes on people and tell the future and, most important, stop mothers and fathers from getting divorces.

  "Are you asleep, Jason?" I whispered.

  "No." He looked up at me, his face worried. "I was thinking about Wanda."

  "Wanda?"

  "Yes. I was remembering what she said about her father and mother. You don't think Mommy would just leave us here with Aunt Grace and never come back, do you?"

  "Of course not." But, the truth was, I'd been worrying about that ever since Wanda had mentioned it. Suppose Mom decided it was a lot easier to live by herself? No more of our messes to clean up, no more fights to break up, no more worrying about getting a baby-sitter every time she wanted to go somewhere. When I really thought about it, I wasn't sure she got much fun out of Jason's and my company.

  I smiled at Jason and stroked the inside of his arm with my fingertips, the way Mom used to. "She loves us too much, Jasie. And so does Daddy. You wait, things will work out okay."

  Hoping I was right, I caressed him till I felt his body relax. Then I lay there, gazing out the window at the moon, thinking to myself that I would definitely go to see Maude, no matter how scared I was. She said she would help me because of my grandmother and I knew I had to let her. There wasn't any other way.

  Chapter 7

  "Do you think that's Wanda's house?" Jason pointed at an old frame house perched on the hill above the road.

  "You can't expect the whole world to look like Stoneleigh," I said, quoting something Aunt Grace had said to me on our first trip into Blue Hollow.

  To tell the truth, I didn't like the looks of Wanda's house an
y more than Jason did, but I was trying to be open-minded. Wanda's grandmother was probably too old to do much work in the yard and maybe she couldn't afford to get the house painted or buy screens for the windows or fix the front steps. And the rusty truck without doors standing in the weeds like a half-sunk boat probably belonged to Billy or Duane.

  Anyway it was all in how you looked at things. Take an artist, for instance. He might think this shabby old house with the paint peeling off was the perfect subject for a painting.

  "Aunt Grace's house doesn't look like this," said Jason the Philistine.

  And of course he was right. Our great-great-grandfather had built Aunt Grace's house out of stones he cut himself and it was as perfect now as it was the day he built it. And the lawn surrounding it was as velvety green as any lawn in Stoneleigh.

  "Well, do you want to stand here all day thinking nasty things about Wanda's house or do you want to go see her?" I asked him.

  Jason looked ashamed. "I didn't mean anything bad about it. It just looks kind of tired."

  Without another word, he followed me up the deeply rutted driveway. When we reached the top of the hill, three of the meanest, most vicious looking dogs I'd ever seen came running out from under the porch, barking and growling as if they hadn't eaten for a week.

  "Don't run, Jason!" I screamed. "Stand absolutely still and don't let them know you're scared!"

  I grabbed for him, praying Wanda would appear and call the dogs off before it was too late, but Jason was too fast for me. Before I could move, one of the dogs grabbed his shirt and pulled him down. Picking up a stick, I ran toward the two of them, screaming for help. Just as I whacked the dog as hard as I could, I heard someone yelling behind me. Snarling, the dogs backed away from us and skulked in the weeds near the truck.

  "Are you all right?" I knelt down next to Jason and put my arms around him.

  He was crying too hard to answer. His shirt was torn and both knees were bleeding from his fall, but I couldn't see any teeth marks anywhere.

  "What are you kids doing? Where'd you come from?" A tall woman brushed me aside and examined Jason. "You're all right, boy. Chief didn't put a mark on you. Now you stop that crying, you hear? Just stop it right now and I'll take you up to the house and clean you up and fix you a nice cold glass of Kool-Aid. Would you like that?"

  "Are you Wanda's grandmother?" I stared at the woman. I hadn't given much thought to how she might look, but most grandmothers I knew had gray hair, with maybe a blue rinse on it. Just as Wanda said, this grandmother had bright red hair, done up in a solid mass of tight curls all over her head, and she was wearing purple eye shadow and black mascara and frosty pink lipstick. But she was smiling over Jason's head at me and her pale blue eyes were soft and kind.

  "I sure am. And you must be Laura, Grace Randall's niece." Wanda's grandmother smiled, revealing a gap as wide as Wanda's between her front teeth.

  I nodded. "And that's Jason."

  "Well, pleased to meet you both. Wanda told me all about you, but I clear forgot when those dogs started making such a fuss." She smiled again. "You can call me Annabelle, just like Wanda does. I don't like being called grandmother. Makes me feel old before my time and my time's coming soon enough, honey." She patted her curls and winked at me. "It ain't real no more, but it sure beats gray, don't you think?"

  I smiled. "It looks pretty," I said, wondering how on earth I could call someone old enough to be my grandmother by her first name.

  "Wanda's out in back somewheres working in the garden. Why don't you go find her while I take Jason inside and clean him up some?" Annabelle started up the drive, carrying Jason. "You don't need to worry about the dogs. They won't bother you now they know you."

  Keeping an eye on the truck I'd seen the dogs run under, I followed the drive around to the back of the house. Just as Annabelle had said, Wanda was squatting in the garden, her back to me, pulling up weeds. When she saw me, she wiped her hands on the seat of her shorts and grinned. "Why didn't you get here sooner? I'm just about done now. I could've used some help."

  "Don't you go running off somewhere, Wanda," Annabelle called from a window. "I want you to take Tanya Marie outside for a while."

  Wanda rolled her eyes up at the sky and sighed. "Sometimes I think I see more of that baby than Charlene does. If she was a baby duck, she'd think I was her mother for sure." Wanda pulled up a few more weeds and tossed them on the heap beside her. "Well, at least that's done for this week. You want to go in the house and get something to drink?"

  I followed Wanda up the sagging back steps and into the kitchen, glad to be out of the sun. Not that the kitchen was any cooler. If anything, it was hotter, but at least it was shady.

  "Be sure that screen door is shut!" Annabelle called from somewhere in the house.

  "It's shut," Wanda answered, though why it mattered I didn't know. The screen was so full of holes it looked as if someone had used it for target practice, and swarms of flies were crawling all over the dirty plates on the kitchen table.

  Trying not to notice the bowls crusty with dried cereal, the dirty cups and glasses, and the frying pan filled with half an inch of congealed grease, I watched Wanda open a cabinet and pull out two plastic tumblers. "You want Bugs Bunny or the Roadrunner?" She held up the glasses so I could see the pictures.

  "I don't care."

  "I'll have the Roadrunner then. It's my favorite." Opening the refrigerator, she got out a glass bottle and poured us each a grape Kool-Aid. "Charlene gets these glasses from the Dairy Queen. We got the whole set, but these are the only two clean right now."

  I nodded, not sure what to say.

  "Charlene says they're going to be collectors' items someday and we can have a yard sale and make a fortune on them. You think she's right?"

  I shrugged. "Who knows? My mom's always seeing things in antique stores that she gave to the Salvation Army years ago. She's still upset about giving her whole collection of dolls away when she was thirteen."

  "Guess you should just keep everything in case it's going to be valuable someday, only where would you put it all?"

  "Wanda?" Annabelle appeared in the doorway with Jason at her side. She was holding a little girl wearing nothing but a diaper and a big smile. "Guess who's ready to go for a little walk?"

  "Come on, Tanya Marie!" Wanda held out her arms and the baby launched herself into them. "Want to go bye-bye?"

  "Bye-bye! Bye-bye!" Tanya Marie bounced up and down and grabbed Wanda's hair. "Go bye-bye?"

  "Yes, please," Annabelle said. "I just got to get this kitchen cleaned up. Lord knows what Laura and Jason must be thinking. I was so busy doing the wash and changing the beds I forgot all about it." Annabelle began scooping up dishes and dumping them into the sink.

  "Come on, you all." Wanda shoved open the screen door and led us outside, leaving Annabelle singing along with the radio and running hot water into the sink.

  Just as we started down the back steps, a black Volkswagen painted all over with flowers pulled into the driveway.

  Wanda grinned and waved. "Hey, Annabelle, guess who's here?"

  "Well, I'll be!" Annabelle came down the steps faster than I would have thought possible. "Hi, Twyla. How are you, honey?"

  Out of the car stepped a woman shorter than I was. Dressed in a gauzy blouse and a long batik skirt, she wore her black hair in a thick braid down to her waist and she moved across the grass with the grace of a dancer. To my surprise, the dogs didn't bark; they just lay in the shade of the house, thumping their tails lazily as Twyla walked past them.

  Taking Tanya Marie from Wanda, she hugged her. "Look at you, you great big beautiful baby, how you've grown!"

  Tanya Marie laughed and grabbed at one of the silver hoops dangling from Twyla's ears.

  "No, no, you little imp." Twyla held the baby's hands and bounced her gently on her hip.

  "What brings you out here?" Annabelle asked.

  "Oh, it was just too hot in Harrisburg. I had to get away from the shop
for a while, so I thought I'd drive out here and see how you all were doing."

  "Well, you sure are a nice surprise, isn't she, Wanda?" Annabelle smiled.

  Wanda nodded, still grinning. "This here's my friend Laura Adams and her brother Jason. They're staying down at Miss Randall's house."

  Twyla smiled at me. "You must be Grace's niece. You can always tell a Randall by that red hair. Are you staying long?"

  "All summer," I said, as if it were a prison sentence.

  "You don't sound too happy about it." Twyla shifted the baby from one hip to the other, setting her bracelets jingling. "Are you homesick?"

  I shrugged. "Sort of."

  "Why don't you give the baby back to Wanda and come on inside?" Annabelle asked. "You look like you could use a nice cold glass of iced tea."

  Handing Tanya Marie to Wanda, Twyla said, "Nice meeting you, Laura and Jason. Be sure and say hello to Grace for me. Tell her I'll be happy to display some of her pictures in my shop if she's got any to sell. The last batch sold fast."

  She looked at me as if she were about to say something else, but she turned to Wanda instead. "Take good care of my favorite baby," she said. "Don't take her too deep into the woods."

  "Don't worry." Wanda swung Tanya Marie up and down till she squealed. "See how good I treat her?"

  As Wanda led us into the backyard, I thought I heard Twyla asking Annabelle about Maude. I turned around, hoping to hear more, but their voices were too low. For a second, though, Twyla's eyes met mine, and I had a feeling she was concerned about me. She actually looked worried and I thought she was going to call me back, but Annabelle took Twyla's arm and drew her up the steps into the house.

  Chapter 8

  Taking a path through the woods, Wanda led us down to the creek. She plopped Tanya Marie down on the sand, then waded out into the water. I splashed in behind her.