Time of the Witch

by Mary Downing Hahn

  I didn't say anything as we walked up the hill to the house. The thought of my parents dating was too awful for me to think about. Suppose one of them fell in love with somebody else? Then they'd never get back together and I'd have to put up with some weird person who did things like pull quarters out of my ears. It was a horrible thought.

  Jason was waiting for us on the front porch. "What's in that bag?" He tried to peep in the grocery bag Wanda was carrying.

  Wanda snatched it away. "Nothing for you to see!"

  "No potato chips or Fritos or anything?"

  "Nope. Just my underwear."

  Jason looked disappointed, but he opened the screen door and called, "Aunt Grace, she's here!"

  "Hello, Wanda." Aunt Grace came down the hall smiling. "I'm glad you could come."

  Wanda smiled, but I rushed past Aunt Grace, afraid of getting trapped in a long, boring conversation. "Come on," I said, "I'll show you where to put your stuff." I ran upstairs, with Wanda behind me.

  "You got a pretty room." Wanda walked over to the window and looked out at the darkening sky. "And a pretty view."

  "Sometimes I hate it." I stared out at the mountains lying like a dark wall against the sky. "I hate it when it's dark and I don't see any lights out there. Back home there was a streetlight right outside my window and my room never got really dark the way it does here. And there were houses all around with lighted windows and on rainy nights the sky would turn pink from all the neon lights in the shopping center."

  Wanda fidgeted with the ruffles on my curtain. "I guess you want to go back there pretty bad, don't you?"

  "Do you think I'd go to Maude if I didn't?" I gazed out at the moon hanging above the mountains like a shiny quarter. "Back home I go swimming every day and there's the mall and the skating rink and the park." My voice trailed off. "And there's my friends," I added softly. "I guess I miss them most of all."

  Wanda didn't say anything. She just stood there next to me staring out the window. Finally she looked at me. "If you weren't so interested in running after Maude, I could show you lots of good things to do here. There's a place in the creek where it's deep enough to swim and there's a big municipal pool in Harrisburg. There's even a skating rink and a bowling alley there and I don't know how many food places and stores."

  I looked down at the floor, embarrassed. Nothing here was like home. Nothing. I didn't want to go to a pool where I didn't know anybody or swim in a creek. I wanted to go back to Stoneleigh and I wanted my mother and father to live together and I wanted us all to be happy, a big happy normal family.

  Wanda picked at the dirt under her fingernails. "Annabelle keeps saying you're homesick, but sometimes I think you're just stuck-up."

  Nobody had ever called me stuck-up before and I stared at her, too angry to say anything. It wasn't true. I wasn't stuck-up, just homesick, as Annabelle said.

  "Hey." Jason stuck his head through the door and smiled at us. "You want some ice cream? Aunt Grace made some specially for you."

  Wanda and I were still glaring at each other. I certainly didn't want any ice cream, especially if I had to eat it with Wanda.

  Before I could say anything, Wanda smiled at Jason. "I'd like some. There's nothing I like better than ice cream."

  "It's homemade strawberry and it's yummy, yummy, yummy." Jason rubbed his stomach and smiled.

  "From the looks of you, I'm surprised there's any left." I followed Jason and Wanda out of the room, scowling at the ice cream sticking to Jason's hands, arms, legs and feet.

  Down in the kitchen. Aunt Grace was scooping up cones of strawberry ice cream. "Let's eat outside on the porch," she said. "It's much cooler out there." She handed us each a cone and we all followed her outside.

  "Eat it quickly before it melts," Aunt Grace said, sitting down next to us. Jason climbed onto her lap and we all sat quietly, watching the stars come out and eating our ice cream.

  After a while, Aunt Grace turned to Wanda. "I hear Charlene is getting married and going off to Wheeling. I suppose your grandmother will miss her and Tanya Marie."

  "She sure will." Wanda probed her cone with her tongue, sucking up the last of her ice cream. "But she's still got me and Mr. Evans. He's her boyfriend." Wanda shot me a look and added, "Do you know where she met him?"

  Aunt Grace shook her head.

  "At the Adam and Eve Club. You ever been there?"

  "I've heard of it, but I've never been there. It's in Harrisburg, isn't it?"

  Wanda nodded. "You meet people there, you know, other single people. If you like dancing, it's a good place to find a husband."

  Aunt Grace laughed. "Well, I guess I'm out of luck, Wanda. I haven't gone dancing since I was in college and from what I hear, dancing's changed a lot since then. I don't think the Adam and Eve Club is for me."

  "You could take dancing lessons. There's a place in Harrisburg that gives lessons. That's where Annabelle went. It cost her a whole lot of money, but she says it was worth every dime." Wanda laughed. "You should see her dance. Why, she's got Charlene beat when it comes to swinging her hips and stuff. She says you get better when you're older. She says Charlene's still worrying about making a fool of herself, but Annabelle's through with worrying about that. All she cares about now is having a good time."

  "Well, maybe I'll look into it, Wanda."

  "Annabelle will tell you all about it. She says no nice-looking woman ought to be spending all her time alone drawing pictures. Everybody owes it to their self to get out and have a good time once in a while at least. Nobody should waste their self."

  Aunt Grace gave Wanda a hug. "Tell Annabelle not to worry about me. I'm doing fine and I'm not wasting a thing."

  Wanda looked doubtful and I was afraid she was about to start all over again, so I gave her a little nudge. Then I yawned. "I don't know what's the matter with me, I'm just so tired." I said, trying to look as if I could barely keep my eyes open.

  Catching on quickly, Wanda yawned too. "It must be 'cause we helped carry all Charlene's stuff out to the truck," she said.

  "Well, maybe the two of you ought to go to bed early then," Aunt Grace said. "I don't want you falling asleep on the porch."

  Thanking Aunt Grace for the ice cream, we said good-night and went upstairs to my room. As soon as I shut the door, I turned to Wanda, ready to resume the argument.

  "I'm sorry I called you stuck-up," Wanda said, before I had a chance to open my mouth. "I was just kind of mad, I guess."

  "You haven't changed your mind about going to Maude's then?"

  Wanda shook her head. "I still think it's dumb, but I'll go with you. I said I would and I will."

  I smiled at her and she smiled back. Then I turned out the light and we lay down on the bed, pulling the sheet over us to hide our clothes. "See how dark it is in here?" I said.

  "No darker than my room." Wanda turned from her back to her side. "This bed sure is creaky."

  "I know. It's an antique. You know what gives me the creeps about sleeping in it? People have probably died in it."

  "So? People probably got born in it too." Wanda's voice sounded a little uncertain.

  "Maybe. But it scares me sometimes if I think about it in the middle of the night."

  "Then don't think about it. And don't talk about it either, okay?" Wanda propped herself up on one elbow and frowned at me. "It's bad enough I got to go see Maude without you talking about people dying in the bed I got to sleep in."

  "I'm sorry." I lay still for a few minutes, staring at the ceiling. When Wanda didn't say anything, I poked her in the ribs. "You asleep already?"

  "Not now I'm not," Wanda said.

  "Do you really think my mother and father would go out on dates?"

  "Huh?"

  "Suppose one of them fell in love with somebody. What would happen to Jason and me?"

  "Beats me." Wanda sounded sleepy. "What're your folks like anyway? How come you want your father back so bad?"

  "Well, he's, I don't know; he knows how to
make me laugh and he's as handsome as a movie star. I'll show you." Getting out of bed, I went to the dresser and found the things I was supposed to give Maude. Switching on my flashlight, I sat down on the bed and showed Wanda the snapshot of my parents. "See what I mean? He's a kind of a combination of Robert Redford and Paul Newman, don't you think?"

  Wanda squinted at the picture and nodded. "He sure is good-looking, but you know what they say about good-looking men."

  "What?"

  "You can't trust them, that's all. Not when they're really good-looking."

  "Well, not all of them maybe. But my father's wonderful. He just happens to be good-looking, too. He can't help his looks, can he?"

  Wanda drew back a little, as if she sensed I was getting mad, and shrugged her shoulders. "I'm just telling you what people say. I don't know about your father." She looked at the picture again. "Your mother's real pretty. They look like they're on their honeymoon or something, only I can see Jason behind them. How come they're getting a divorce?"

  "I don't know. It seems awfully complicated to me, but I think some of it was Jason's fault in a way, 'cause he never acted the way Daddy wanted him to. You know what a baby he is, how he cries about everything and gets scared, and he can't play any sports. Daddy used to get mad at him and then Mom would get mad at Daddy and before long they'd be in a fight. Then she wanted to go back to college and finish her degree and he didn't want her to and they fought a lot about that. Finally Daddy just couldn't take it anymore and he left. I think Mom could've stopped him, but she didn't, so I kind of blame her for a lot of it."

  "What makes you think they don't want a divorce?" Wanda looked at me, her face pale in the dim light from the flashlight.

  "I just know. Neither one of them is the type who should live alone, especially Mom. She needs Daddy to take care of her, but she's too proud to admit it. She wants to be like Aunt Grace, independent and self-sufficient and all that stuff, but she's really like Annabelle. She needs a man." I frowned at Mom's smiling face. If she were here right now, I'd tell her myself, I'd force her to see the truth about herself.

  "It must be nice to know so much," Wanda said in a huffy little voice. "Not many kids know more about life than their own parents do."

  I glared at her and snapped the flashlight off. "It's almost eleven-thirty," I said coldly. "We should leave in about fifteen minutes."

  For the next quarter of an hour, neither one of us said a word. We just lay on the bed, watching the numbers flip on my clock radio. At eleven-forty-five, we both got up and tiptoed to the door. The hall was dark, but as we crept past Jason's door, I saw him in the glow of his night-light, sleeping peacefully with his arms around his old teddy bear. There wasn't a sound downstairs except the tick tock tick of the grandfather's clock. I led the way down the steps, pausing each time a tread creaked under my feet. We passed Aunt Grace's door, shut tight with no crack of light shining under it.

  At the back door, I turned the knob slowly and stepped out onto the porch. Sitting down on the top step, we put on our shoes and ran across the lawn, taking the shortcut across the field.

  "Everything looks different in the moonlight," I whispered. "Even the shapes of things."

  "Wait till we get in the woods," Wanda said, looking ahead at the dark mass of trees.

  "That's why I brought the flashlight." I took it out of the pocket in my sweatshirt and clicked it on. Its beam made a small circle of light on one of the trees.

  "Don't do much, do it?" Wanda said.

  At the edge of the woods, we paused and shone the flashlight down the path ahead of us. Something rustled in the bushes and we clung to each other for a moment.

  "It was just a coon or a possum or something," Wanda said nervously.

  "Yeah," I said, looking behind me. "Well, come on."

  Following the tunnel of light cast by the flashlight, we crept into the woods like thieves entering a house, scarcely daring to make a sound. Without saying a word to each other, we climbed the path as it twisted uphill, curving around trees and boulders. By the time we reached the top, we were both out of breath.

  "That must be her house." Wanda pointed at a ramshackle cabin rising from an outcropping of boulders. From where we stood, it looked as if it had been put together room by room without any plan. Parts of it were log, parts of it were shingled and parts of it were bare planks. Spooky as it looked, it wasn't surrounded by a bone fence and there wasn't a crumb of gingerbread in sight.

  While we stood there staring, Maude emerged from the shadows on the porch and beckoned to us. "I'm so glad you've come, my dears." She crossed the clearing and seized our hands, as if she thought we might change our minds and run. "You didn't find the woods frightening, did you?" She smiled at us, her eyes hidden in shadows. "Come inside with me, my dears, come inside and sit by an old lady's fire."

  Wordlessly, we allowed Maude to lead us up her sagging steps and into a small, dark room. In the dim light cast by a fire flickering on the hearth, I saw bunches of dried herbs hanging from the rafters, a table heaped with books and papers, shelves crowded with bottles, jars, and more books. On the mantelpiece, a stuffed owl peered down at me, its glass eyes glittering in the firelight, and next to him Soot perched, twisting his head from side to side as he looked from Wanda to me and back again. "Krrrrk?" he asked. "Krrrrk?"

  The cabin was exactly as I had thought it would be, and I felt as if I'd stepped out of the real world and into a fairy tale. In the corners, the shadows thickened into inky darkness, and as Maude turned and smiled at me, her face masked with shadows, she seemed full of mystery and menace.

  "Yes, Soot, we have company tonight," Maude said. "Laura Adams is here. Shall I help her, my dear? Shall I do all I can in memory of Margaret?"

  The crow nodded its head and shifted about. Once more he turned his yellow eyes toward me and stared, unblinking, as if he could read every thought.

  Maude smiled and nodded. "Sit down, Laura Adams. And you too, Wanda." She led us to a semicircle of three chairs facing the huge stone fireplace. She chose the middle chair for herself, a tall armchair painted black and decorated with elaborate carvings of strange beasts. Wanda and I sat on either side of her, in smaller versions of the same chair.

  For a moment all was still. The fire sputtered and crackled, shooting sparks up the chimney, and a gust of wind set the pines moaning outside the cabin. The air was heavy with the musky sweet smell of incense. As the firelight played on the chairs, the carved beasts seemed to stretch and blink and peer about the room, their eyes gleaming with life. I shivered, wishing I'd taken Wanda's advice and stayed home.

  "And have you brought what I asked you to, Laura Adams?" Maude leaned toward me, her hand outstretched to receive the things I took from my pocket.

  The old woman smiled as she looked at the photograph. "How happy your parents look, how young and healthy. Were you at the ocean?"

  I nodded. "It was last year. Before Daddy left." I stared at the picture wishing my parents hadn't posed especially for the picture, wishing they really were happy together, wishing the photograph were true.

  "And this is your aunt's brush? What a fine artist she must be, what pleasure painting must give her." Putting the brush aside, Maude examined the little car. "And this must belong to Jason." She smiled at me and nodded her head. "You have done well, Laura, very well. These things will make my job very easy. You cannot imagine how grateful I am to you for giving me this opportunity to help Margaret's beloved ones."

  Getting up from her chair, Maude bent over a cauldron hanging above the fire. She picked up a ladle and began stirring the contents of the cauldron. As sweet fumes arose from the pot, Wanda and I stood up to watch. I had trouble concentrating on what Maude was doing, but I thought I saw her pass the things I'd given her back and forth through the flames, murmuring softly to herself.

  Leaning forward, I saw the photograph slowly curl and turn black at the corners. The smiling faces shrivelled and turned old and ugly. The paint on Jason's
car bubbled, the hairs on the brush burned, but before everything crumbled into ashes, Maude put the charred remains into a small box and closed the lid. She wrapped the box round and round with fine threads, still chanting and gesturing.

  The smoke from the cauldron grew denser, swirling around me like green fog and making it impossible for me to see anything clearly. I started feeling dizzy and light-headed, the shadows in the corners swayed, the room spun, and I felt as if I were about to fall. Terrified, I reached out for Wanda's hand, but grabbed Maude's hand instead.

  "Now, now, my dear, it's quite all right." Maude gripped my hand tightly, chilling me to the bone. "In a moment the air will clear and you'll feel fine."

  As Maude spoke, the smoke thinned and trailed up the chimney, leaving a sweet aroma behind. I stared at Wanda, noticing that Maude held her hand too. "Is that all?" I whispered, hoping that we were free to leave.

  "In such a hurry to rush off and leave me?" Maude smiled at me, her eyes reflecting the fire. "My, my, Laura Adams, you make it very clear that you come to me for business only, not for friendship." She chuckled and released my hand. "Yes, you may go now, both of you. By tomorrow night your parents will be here, united this time forever, Laura."

  "Thank you," I whispered, still feeling dizzy from the fumes. "Thank you very much."

  "Thank you, Laura Adams, for making something possible that I've dreamed about for years. Eh, Soot? Isn't it true that we've waited a long time, my lovely?"

  The old woman looked up at the crow, who stirred on his perch and nodded his head. "You see? Soot knows how much this means to me. Soon you will know, too, Laura Adams."

  I stared at her, no longer sure what she was talking about, and Wanda gave me a nudge toward the door.

  "Be sure and give Grace Randall my love," Maude called as we stepped outside. "Tell her she should have told you about me and Margaret. Tell her she has only herself to blame, my dear."

  Before I could ask what she meant by that, Maude, still chuckling, closed the door, leaving Wanda and me on the porch.