Witch, p.7
Witch, page 7
She was undressing, and humming the theme of the Mozart piano concerto Norman had played. There was no preliminary flicker of light or movement; suddenly it was there, distinct and sharp-edged.
When Ellen recovered her wits several seconds later, she was crouching against the wall, with the nightgown she had been about to put on clutched to her chest. From the foot of the bed Ishtar stared curiously at her. The cat’s expression conveyed well-bred surprise.
This time it took Ellen’s thudding heart longer to resume a normal beat. Ridiculously, she turned her back upon the room before slipping the gown over her head. When she turned, the low-roofed, shadowy chamber met her with the welcoming grace it had always showed. Ishtar was purring. The breeze from the open window was as warm as a caress.
“I’ve got to have my eyes checked,” Ellen said aloud.
When she turned out the light, the darkness held no threat. One does not see shadows in the dark.
Chapter 5
BY THE END OF THE WEEK ELLEN HAD ALMOST FORGOTTEN about her optical illusion. It could hardly have been anything else, for it lacked all the attributes of a supernatural apparition. Ellen was familiar with the literature of the subject. She enjoyed a ghost story as much as anyone else, and since several of her friends had been interested in the occult, she had visited fortune-tellers and even participated in a séance or two. Her family had kidded her about her prophetic talents, which usually took the form of warnings to procrastinating youth: “If you don’t put that bike away, someone is going to steal it!” As Jack had pointed out, it was this kind of reasonable anticipation that built a fortune-teller’s reputation.
Ellen’s attitude toward prophecy, palmists, and spiritualism had always been one of open skepticism. She did not consider herself suggestible; surely, she argued, any tendency toward mysticism would have blossomed rampantly in Mary Baumgartner’s house. Instead the house seemed cozier every day. And when Ellen thought of the former tenant, as she sometimes did, it was with pity and curiosity, not with fear.
Since the weather continued to be fine, she got a lot of outside work done. Once, as she dug poison ivy from under the massive oak in the front yard, she found herself staring at a slight depression between two of the great roots. She stopped digging for a moment, the trowel motionless in her gloved hands. Poison ivy is hard to dig up. The established roots are long and thick. If she dug deeply enough…
The idea held no terrors. The story was vague, the yard was large—and it had been a long time. If she did, by a wild coincidence, come upon some scrap of mortality, it would really not disturb her. For a while she dug a little more slowly, that was all. By the time she had the root up, she had forgotten the whole thing.
She thought of Mary again later in the week, when she explored the cellar. It was a hot morning, and the idea of working in the cooler part of the house had appealed to her, but after a few hours she was ready to quit. The cellar was too damp for comfort. At least, Ellen thought, pushing back her hair, I won’t have to worry about the fire hazards of old papers and rubbish. The papers weren’t old enough to be valuable, but she hated to throw them out; the kids would find headlines of the forties and fifties interesting. She emptied two trunks of rotting clothes, however. Judging from the refurbished gowns she had seen for sale in expensive Georgetown shops, old clothes were “in,” but these were too far gone. Ellen’s nose lifted fastidiously as she bundled cloche hats and mildewed calico aprons into a plastic garbage bag.
Phil had been right about the mysterious door. There were a good many doors in the cellar; it had been subdivided and enlarged over the centuries. But there was no doubt about the door Phil meant.
It stood in a corner of the lowest part of the cellar, a reeking little black room at the bottom of a flight of steep stone stairs. The stairs were what reminded Ellen of the witch; they looked old enough to have been built by Mary’s husband. She swept her flashlight around the room. The electricity had not been brought into this section, and with reason; the place was unsuited for storage or for any other function. The rough stone walls were green with moss. The material of the door was hard to see, for that structure had been completely boarded up, not once, but several times, as the wood had rotted in the damp air.
Ishtar had refused to accompany her mistress into the subcellar. She stalked back and forth at the top of the stairs emitting lugubrious Siamese complaints. A susceptible person might have viewed this behavior as significant, but Ellen knew better; Ishtar hated nasty wet places and she was never reticent about expressing her opinion. Ignoring the cat’s howls, Ellen stood still, waiting to see if any supernatural residue would trouble her sixth sense.
That sense remained quiescent, but others objected, particularly her sense of smell. The place stank. With a shrug Ellen turned to retrace her steps, and was welcomed by a scolding cat. She worked in the yard for the rest of the day.
She had occasion the following day to consult Ed Salling about a minor flaw in the plumbing repairs, and asked him about the door. Ed looked disgusted.
“Why, it is the witch’s tunnel,” he said sarcastically. “That is the way by which Mary Baumgartner reached the woods where she held her assignations with the Devil. Does that reassure you, Mrs. March?”
“I just wanted to make sure nobody could get into the house,” Ellen said meekly.
“If there ever was a tunnel, which I doubt, it has probably collapsed.”
“If there was a tunnel,” Ellen said, “it was probably an escape route. If I had Mary’s reputation, I’d want one.”
Ed looked interested, but refused to demean himself by pursuing such an irrational subject, so Ellen left. The plumber appeared that very afternoon and repaired the leak. Ed might be irritating, but he was certainly conscientious.
If anything bothered Ellen during her week of work and rest, it was not her witch, but the neighborhood delinquent. The first time she set off for a walk in the woods she was a trifle uneasy; it would be demoralizing to have Tim’s large and hostile form pop out at her unexpectedly. She was even more concerned about Ishtar, but to her relief the cat stuck close to home. An unfortunate encounter with a skunk, at the beginning of the week, taught Ishtar that the woods might harbor foes even a Siamese cat couldn’t overcome. After her meeting with the skunk Ishtar spent three days in the woodshed, howling like a chained eighteenth-century maniac. Thereafter she confined herself to the yard and found much there to interest her. A mighty hunter, despite her mere eight pounds, she kept presenting Ellen with gifts of moles and field mice.
Ellen did not meet Tim in the woods, and it was not long before her nervousness wore off and her walks became a great source of pleasure. The forest was formidable; Ellen never went into it without boots and heavy gloves, no matter how hot the day. There were the normal hazards of brambles and poison ivy, not to mention the probability of snakes. The underbrush was as hard to penetrate as a tangle of barbed wire. Ellen knew the biting strength of the deceptively thin strands of honeysuckle, and took to carrying a knife. She also carried a compass when she went far afield. The hilly slopes were broken by streams and ravines, and it was very easy to lose one’s sense of direction.
Yet the rewards made the effort worthwhile. Sitting on a fallen log in a tiny clearing dappled with sunshine, she saw families of black-headed quail march past, all in a line like old-fashioned schoolchildren out for a walk. She counted birds she had never seen—hairy woodpeckers and wood thrushes, barn swallows and ruffled grouse. She found small trails which human feet had never made; and once, following one of these animal highways, she met a fox trotting home with dinner for its cubs. The wind betrayed the hunter; the fox did not sense her presence until it saw her, rounding a turn in the path. A shaft of sunlight striking through the trees turned the animal into a brilliant copper-red statue as it froze, eyeing Ellen with steady appraisal before it finally turned and disappeared into the bushes.
Ellen, shaken, let out a long breath. Some of her friends belonged to suburban hunts; the sport was traditional in Virginia. She had never approved of the sport, which depended for its thrills on the terror and pain of a hunted animal; now, watching the shaken foliage where the fox had passed, she herself was shaken by an unaccountable fury of grief and anger. It was as if she had entered the hunted animal’s mind, had experienced the laboring lungs and aching limbs…. And felt, simultaneously, a wholly human awareness of injustice. Foxes hunted only for food. When they killed, they killed quickly.
As she started back toward the house, Ellen decided she would post signs forbidding hunting of any sort on her property. It would be a fitting gesture, carrying on a tradition begun by Mary Baumgartner, two centuries before. Ellen smiled faintly. The impact of that strange moment of identity was fading. Now she was getting sentimental, thinking of Mary as hunted and beleaguered, sympathetic to the wild creatures of the woods because, like her, they were the victims of human cruelty.
Next day Ellen drove into Smithville to buy “No Hunting” signs and visit a library—an amenity Chew’s Corners did not boast. It took her the rest of the day and part of the following morning to post the signs; the farther boundaries of her property were high in the hills and attainable only on foot.
She returned from the final expedition in time to see the mail truck pull away, and hurried eagerly to the mailbox. Her family were excellent correspondents; she had already received notes from the boys and from Penny, and this morning she found a real prize—a thin envelope with Jack’s familiar scrawl.
His writing was typical of him, she thought, savoring the very feel of the envelope. It was a rapid scrawl—he did everything quickly—but it was surprisingly legible. She made herself a cup of coffee before she opened the letter, and sat on her shady porch to read it.
“Want to hear something funny?” it began, with characteristic abruptness. “I’m homesick. It’s not fair. The kids who are thrown out of the nest are the ones who are supposed to suffer. Near as I can tell, not one of them felt a qualm. I’m the one that sits here staring at family pictures and wishing I’d never left home….
“To add insult to injury, I can’t assume you are missing us. I’ll bet you’re having the time of your life. I picture you in your Ideal House, smugly sipping tea with Ishtar on your lap, or wrestling with weeds while your hair comes loose and curls around your ears, using language a lady isn’t supposed to know—language you learned from my rotten sons—and thanking God daily you rid yourself of your contentious brood at last. I don’t know whether I ever told you, Ellen, how much I appreciate what you’ve done for us. I’ve tried; probably I never succeeded because the words don’t mean enough. But if ever a woman was entitled to some peace and quiet, you are. You earned it.”
Ellen’s eyes were too blurred to read further. She put her hand on the back of the cat, who was sleeping in her lap. Jack knew her so well; his picture was only too accurate. A tear fell on the cat’s furry face and Ishtar swiped irritably at it before she curled up and slept again.
Ellen almost wished Jack had not written. She had thought she was progressing in her effort to forget him, but the letter brought him back so vividly that she could picture him in her mind. The shape of his hands, the funny hazel-green of his eyes, the very, very high forehead about which Jack was slightly sensitive…. At least he didn’t comb pathetic strands of hair across his bald spot, as some men did; he was too honest to kid himself about that any more than he did about more important things.
Such as his feelings for her. He couldn’t have expressed himself so warmly, so openly if those feelings had been other than those of a brother toward a beloved sister.
Ishtar was sitting on Ellen’s handkerchief. Ellen wiped her eyes on the back of her hand and went on reading.
The rest of the letter was impersonal, full of funny but discreet comments about Jack’s activities. His sense of humor extended to his own profession, and that, Ellen knew, was a rare attribute. Many people can laugh at everything except themselves. Ellen laughed aloud over his description of a diplomatic reception, and the people who had attended it.
The letter went into a particular little box on Ellen’s dressing table, but that was as far as she would let herself go. “No blue ribbons,” she announced, staring at her reflection in the mirror. In fact, it was high time she got out of the house and saw people. She was getting too introspective and too imaginative.
Coming to a sudden decision, she took off her faded hiking jeans and reached for a dress—something light and cool, it was going to be a hot day. She would drive into town and stop at the store for the chocolate chips and coconut and condensed milk needed for a very rich cookie recipe. Then, when she got back, she would bake the very rich cookies and eat them. All that hiking justified a few additional calories. Then she would sit down and write Jack a nice cheery letter about the quaint homely charm of Chew’s Corners.
Her spirits rose as she turned onto the road and headed for town. She had seen very little of Chew’s Corners and was looking forward to patronizing Mrs. Grapow’s general store. Originally she had stocked her larder lavishly from the supermarket in the busy town twenty miles away, but from now on she would make use of local products and merchants. There must be an orchard in the area, and fields where she could pick her own strawberries.
Chew’s Corners was built around a crossroads. Both roads were small county highways, so there was not much traffic. The town was only a few blocks square, but Ellen had caught glimpses of several interesting old houses.
She parked the car on a side street, and saw a curtain move in a front window.
Smiling, she got out of the car. She did not lock it; that would be a churlish gesture toward her new town, especially with one of the inhabitants watching her. She walked down the street, away from the highway.
It was late in the morning and the sun struck warmly on Ellen’s bare arms. It didn’t take more than half an hour to cover the entire town, and it had less of interest than she had thought. Some of the houses were old; she spotted a handsome sunburst fanlight and a wonderful old gazebo in full Greek Revival style, complete with pilasters, architrave, and cornice. But the overall effect was subtly depressing. The evidences of decay were not obtrusive, yet the town was dying. Many houses were boarded up. One had been a handsome old Georgian mansion. Little boys had broken all its windows and the house stared sadly out across an expanse of weedy lawn.
Ellen hoped for better things from the church, but she was disappointed. It was severe in style, a simple box of white-painted wood with a stubby, graceless steeple. The windows were of clear glass; inside, Ellen caught a glimpse of straight wooden pews and plain white walls. With a shudder of aesthetic distaste she turned from the cold austerity of the church to the cemetery beside it.
By contrast, the worn gray stones and green grass looked warm and friendly. Gradually, however, Ellen realized that under the kindly facade of nature the cemetery was as austere as the church. She had hoped to find additions to her casual collection of bizarre tombstone art and quaint epitaphs; and, though she scarcely admitted it to herself, she was rather hoping to find a stone with Mary’s name. Proper burial in consecrated ground is supposed to quiet any potential ghost. However, there were no old stones to be seen. Certain neglected weedy areas might have been the sites of centuries-old graves, but she fancied the town might not like nosy strangers digging around the remains of their ancestors.
The recent headstones were plain blocks giving a name and two pertinent dates. There was an occasional biblical quotation; as she read these, Ellen wondered about the faith that chose epitaphs so lacking in hope. “All flesh is as the grass” and “There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” were two of the mildest. Nowhere could she find any mention of the resurrection.
Ellen turned with relief to the world of the living. She approached the general store with great curiosity and some trepidation. A woman dressed in a cotton housedress had nodded to her and a child had given her a smile before hiding behind a bush in its front yard. The town did not seem unfriendly. But the idea of facing the row of loungers on the porch of the store daunted her. She mounted the wooden steps and saw that she must pass six men before she reached the door.
They were all elderly men; with inner amusement Ellen deduced that the porch was the local substitute for golf course and country club—the Senior Citizens’ Association of Chew’s Corners. The faces that turned toward her were angular and leathery brown, and curiously alike.
She was not greeted with a round of applause, but the reception was affable; a few of the men said “Morning,” and the others nodded. Ellen beamed back at them, relieved to find them so amiable.
The store was shady and dark after the bright sunshine without. As Ellen’s eyes adjusted, a wave of nostalgia swept over her, bringing memories of small-town stores half a lifetime away.
There was a candy counter, with trays inside and big glass bottles of colored sweets on top. Names like “jawbreakers” and “licorice whips” came into Ellen’s mind. At the back of the store a brown, highly varnished wooden grille bore a sign reading “U.S. Post Office.” The shelves to the right carried bolts of fabric, shirts and overalls, and boxes discreetly labeled “Ladies’ Undergarments.”
Other shelves held groceries in bottles and cans and packages. There was one small freezer. The cracker barrel has vanished into the American past, but this store had plenty of barrels; they contained seeds and feed of various kinds. The room was large and it was cunningly arranged to hold the absolute maximum; a bundle of brooms, looking like a weird modern flower arrangement, hung from a beam. There was even a magazine rack to the left of the door.
