by Mike Ashley
Cory pulled on his shoes, grabbed his jacket, and slipped quietly down the stairs, frowning. Was Heather okay? Just out for a middle-of-the-night adventure?
He went out the back door, closing it quietly, then down the steps across the grass toward Heather. “Hey!” he called softly, not wanting to wake his parents.
When he got within a few feet of the perimeter of her circle, he realized the rider wasn’t Heather at all. He couldn’t understand how he’d thought it was – she wasn’t even wearing a nightgown, and she was an adult. That’s when he began to think it might be a dream.
The bicyclist skidded to a stop in front of him. He stepped away, afraid, because this was the woman he and Heather had seen earlier, the one who seemed somehow blended in with her bicycle.
“Hello, my darling boy,” she said, putting a funny emphasis on the last word.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “This is private property.”
“I’m here to help you. But if you want me to go . . .” She shrugged, and put her foot on the pedal.
“What do you mean?” He was cold despite his jacket, the night wind blowing straight through him. Would he be cold, if this was a dream?
“There’s a boy at your school,” she said. She didn’t put any particular emphasis on the word “boy” that time. “You call him Rocko, yes?”
Cory nodded. It had to be a dream, but that didn’t make it any more disturbing.
“He’s going to do something nasty to you tomorrow afternoon, my Boy. He hates you, but that’s not such a large thing – his kind is always full of hate, though he is rather more a monster than most bullies, I think. Today, though, he became jealous of you, too – he likes the Girl, the Girl who likes you. His jealousy is much more dangerous to you than his hatred. He’ll want to do something about his jealousy, something to humiliate you.”
“How do you know that? How do you know I call him Rocko?”
“Because I’m the good witch, my Boy, and I want you to defeat your Rival.” She smiled, and the bag in the basket behind her shifted with a clatter.
“What’s in that bag?” Cory asked.
She looked behind her, then back at him. “You’ll find out soon enough. Have patience. I do. You won’t need anything from that bag tomorrow. You’ll just need a little bit of magic, a tiny spell . . . a turnaround. I’ll teach you how to do it. It takes a little blood to start with, but that shouldn’t be hard – I bet there will be blood tomorrow afternoon, your own blood, if you’re not quick. After the blood is spilled, it’s just the matter of a gesture, and a word, and certain . . . patterns . . . of thought. I’ll show you how.” She reached out toward his face, and he flinched away. “Shh, be a good Boy.”
He wanted to turn and run, despite her claim to be a “good witch” – nothing about her reassured him, nothing made her seem good. He couldn’t believe she had any human feeling, any more than . . . than a bicycle would.
He couldn’t move, not a muscle, though, and oddly, he didn’t feel afraid. He thought frightened thoughts, but panic didn’t sing in his veins. The witch touched his face with her fingers, and with her chrome rings.
“You won’t remember any of this, my Boy. Not until tomorrow, when you need to.”
School the next day was the usual, everything pretty easy except for biology, where Cory struggled to understand what mitochondria did, and why on earth he should care. He’d agreed to meet Heather down by the office when she got done with classes. Earth Science was his last class, and thinking about seeing Heather again soon made it hard for him to think about “the ecology of the microcosm” that his earth science teacher kept talking about.
He didn’t think about Rocko all day, until he started reading after school. He sat on a bench near the office and read Good Omens, thinking it’d be pretty cool if he had the kind of powers the kid, Adam, had in that book. There were bullies in that story, but they were pretty harmless – you never got the sense the kids really worried about being beat within an inch of their lives by Greasy Johnson, like Cory feared Rocko and Curly and Angel. Maybe that was because Good Omens took place in England – maybe people just weren’t as violent on the other side of the sea.
Cory stuck the book in his bag and wandered down the hall toward the bathroom so he could pee before meeting Heather.
He stepped into the bathroom, and rough hands grabbed him, slamming him against the wall. Angel and Curly had him by the arms, and before he could even think of pulling away they stepped on his insteps, crushing his toes, pinning his feet so he couldn’t kick or thrash. “Hiya,” Curly said. “No girls with sticks here to save you today, huh?”
“We’re still not testing boundaries,” Angel said. “So don’t worry about that.”
Rocko sauntered out of a toilet stall. “I didn’t think you’d ever come to take a piss, kid,” Rocko said, zipping up his pants. “I figured the place to find a shit like you would be right here, in the toilet, but then you made me wait. I’m a busy guy. It’s not right, me having to wait for you.”
Cory thought about the old movies he’d seen, about Bogart’s effortless aplomb, the way he’d casually disarmed the gunsel from The Maltese Falcon. But even Bogart got beaten up sometimes, especially when two or three guys came for him at once. And Cory was no Bogart. He wanted to spit in Rocko’s face . . . but what if they just planned to scare him? Wouldn’t spitting make them do something much more nasty?
Curly ground his foot into Cory’s instep, and Cory bit back a shout of pain. He could try to keep from blubbering like a baby, at least.
Rocko looked at his watch. “Are you meeting your girlfriend this afternoon. dogshit?”
“Leave her alone,” Cory said, without thinking.
Curly and Angel laughed, one right into each of Cory’s ears.
“I think he’s in love,” Angel said.
“I think he just wants to screw her,” Curly said sagely.
“I thought that’s what you wanted to do,” Angel said.
“True,” Curly agreed.
“Does this make you feel tough, three against one?” Cory said.
“No,” Angel said. “But it’s more fun this way, and I usually feel pretty tough anyway. Do you think I couldn’t kick your ass on my own?” He ground down with his foot, and Cory couldn’t stop himself from yelping.
“Well, we don’t want you to keep you from meeting Miss hockey-sticks-and-sunshine,” Rocko said. “So we’ll get this over with and then let you go.” He paused. “Punch him in the bladder a couple of times, first, let’s see if we can make him wet himself.”
Cory clenched his teeth. Curly hit him just above the pelvic bone, and it made a sharp bolt of pain jolt through him, but he kept control of his bladder.
“That’s a little too close to his dick for me, man,” Angel said.
Curly scowled.
“Fair enough,” Rocko said. “I guess it doesn’t much matter, anyway. Bring him over.” Rocko walked to the far stall, the one that was always out of order, that didn’t flush properly. He pushed open the door, and a horrible stink wafted out. “We all took turns filling the pot,” Rocko said. “There’s some shit, and some piss, and some more shit.”
Cory started to struggle then, wrenching his arms as hard as he could. Curly and Angel grunted and held on tight, dragging Cory across the floor toward the stall. Knowing he couldn’t break free, Cory opened his mouth to scream –
—and Rocko shoved a wad of balled-up toilet paper in his mouth, making him gag. “Shut up,” Rocko said quietly. “I can keep you from screaming – you see that, right? So no one’s going to come help you. I’m going to take that toilet paper out of your mouth, and if you try to bite me, I’m going to do something a lot worse to you than I already have planned.” He grinned. “I want your mouth cleared out, so you can taste my shit and piss in there, but if I have to, I’ll keep you gagged. I’ll just swish the next wad of paper around in the toilet bowl first. Can you be quiet?”
Terrified, helpless
, Cory nodded. Rocko reached to pull out the paper.
Blood, Cory thought. The thought came with nothing else, no context, no mental referents, but he acted on it all the same, biting Rocko’s finger.
Rocko jerked his hand back with a hiss, and Cory saw the flecks of bright blood on his forefinger. “You shit!” he cried. “God damn you, I’m going to get you for that!”
Something welled up in Cory when he saw the blood – words to be said, certain movements to be made with his fingers, and a strange twisting in his mind. He didn’t know where the impulses came from, but he followed them, because he somehow knew his salvation lay that way.
Everything blurred. His vision dimmed, and he felt as if he’d been dropped down an elevator shaft, a sensation of things whipping past at high speed. Turnaround, he thought. An interval of time went by – he couldn’t be sure how long – but when he came back to his normal awareness, things had changed.
Rocko was kneeling before the filthy toilet, his head inside the bowl, and Cory had his foot pressed down on the back of Rocko’s neck. He stumbled back, horrified – what had he done? He’d only wanted to get away!
Curly and Angel were leaning against the wall, bleeding from split lips, looking groggy. “Fuck,” Angel said, his voice slurred. “That’s some kind of kung-fu shit.”
Rocko lifted his head, and turned to look at Cory. The things smeared on his face made Cory gag, and it didn’t help that they’d planned to shove his face into the toilet bowl; that didn’t make it any less horrible.
“Get him!” Rocko snarled. “Get him and kill him!”
“To hell with you!” Angel said. “Did you see what that motherfucker did? I’m not messing with him!”
Curly nodded his assent, and the two of them went stumbling out of the bathroom.
“How did you do that?” Rocko said softly, still kneeling on the floor. “You little bastard, that wasn’t kung-fu, that was fucking impossible.”
“Just leave me alone,” Cory said, his voice hoarse. He felt horribly on edge, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep from crying. He backed away. “Just stay away from me, I don’t want anything to do with you, leave me alone!”
He ran from the bathroom, stumbling toward the office. He slowed down and took deep breaths. Rocko wouldn’t be coming after him, not right away – he had to clean his face off first. What had happened back there? How had he done . . . whatever he’d done?
Turnaround, he thought. The thought came in a woman’s husky voice, but that didn’t make any sense, either.
“Cory?” Heather said. “Are you okay?”
She came hurrying down the hallway, hockey stick in hand.
Cory shook his head. “I . . . Rocko and his friends tried to mess with me again, in the bathroom.”
She scowled. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I got away.” He didn’t want to go into details, not least of all because he couldn’t remember the details. “I’m okay.”
She put her hand on his shoulder, and Cory realized he was shaking. “Take it easy. It’ll be okay. Let’s catch the bus.”
“Yeah. Okay. It just . . .”
“It’s adrenaline,” she said. “You’re still all jazzed-up from it. You’ll feel better soon. Come on.”
“You sure buggered that up, didn’t you?”
Rocko jerked his head up from the sink, where he’d been washing his face for the tenth time. He looked in the mirror, but didn’t see anyone behind him. He turned around, and there was the woman, the witch from yesterday. Standing – with her bicycle – by one of the toilet stalls.
Rocko wondered for a moment if he was going insane. Witches and their malevolent bicycles didn’t usually hang out in high school bathrooms. What would his psychiatrist say if Rocko told him about this?
“That piece of shit had some kind of trick.” Rocko said through clenched teeth.
“Looks like you’re the piece of shit, now.”
He took a step toward her threateningly, then stopped, remembering the pithed feeling from yesterday.
“It’s not too late, though,” she said. “You tried humiliation, and if failed . . . turned around on you, in fact – you were humiliated instead.”
“So what do you suggest?” he asked, trying to stay cool. “Your last advice didn’t help me much.”
“As I said, the will to kill is a wonderful thing. You shouldn’t do it here at school, though . . . we wouldn’t want you to get expelled.”
“So where?”
She shrugged. “An opportunity will present itself, Rocko. Opportunities always do.”
“And what should I kill him with?”
“This,” she said, and took the bag from the basket on her bike. She opened it so he could look inside.
“That’s a pretty weird suggestion,” he said after a moment.
“Not the sort of weapon a ninth grader would be expected to use, though, my little Rival. And you don’t own one, and it’s not something you can pick up in the hardware store, so it’s unlikely to be traced back to you. As long as you keep it clean of fingerprints and ditch it after you’re done.”
“What do you care? What’s in this for you?”
“I’m the good witch, and I’m a big believer in the power of true love. I think you and that Girl could be beautiful together, if we get the Boy out of the way.”
Rocko didn’t believe her for a moment, but it didn’t matter. He hadn’t wanted to kill Cory before, not really, but now, after what he’d done to him in the bathroom today . . . “Can you make me like I was yesterday? So that when I . . . when I do it . . . I don’t feel anything?”
“Oh, my little Rival,” she said. “I think that’s something you can learn to do on your own. Maybe you can even learn to enjoy the killing.”
He thought that over. She was right. And whether he enjoyed it, or felt nothing, or whatever, he could still do it. “I can’t carry that out of here,” he said, nodding toward the bag. “It’s not exactly inconspicuous.”
“Would you believe me if I told you it will be near to hand when you need it?”
He looked at her for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. From you, I believe it.”
Cory and Heather sat together again on the way home. “Do you have Mr. Troublestone?” she asked.
“Yeah, seventh period, for Earth Science.”
“Me too, but I’ve got him fifth. Do you have to do that micro-ecology thing?”
“Yeah. Seems like a pretty simple report.”
“Simple, but boring. I was thinking it would be fun to write the report about something in the real world.”
“Like what?”
“Like that stream in the woods behind my house. There’s flies and frogs and reeds and even little fish . . .” She shrugged. “I thought we could study that. You know how Mr. Troublestone’s always talking about old-time naturalists, drawing pictures of animals and flowers and stuff. I bet if we did something like that for the stream, learned about its ecology, we’d get a good grade. And it’s more fun than just reading about the stuff.”
“That sounds good. You should do that.”
“We should do it. I bet he’d let us work together, since we’d be doing more than just a report – we’d have drawings and an observation journal and stuff.” She shrugged, and didn’t look at him. “You know, if you want to.” She kept her voice neutral.
She’s afraid I’ll laugh! Cory realized. Afraid I’ll make fun of her, or think she’s a geek! It was a revelation, to realize that she could fear something like that from him, and it made him like her even more. “It sounds great,” he said. “I’d love to do that with you.”
She grinned. “Hope you don’t mind getting a little mud on your face.”
“I can think of worse things.”
They went down to the stream that afternoon and sat looking into the water. It would have been easier to do this project in the spring, when there’d be tadpoles and things, but they could still find interesting stuff to write about.
After a while they just sat, tossing stones into the water, already easy and peaceful together.
“I had a weird dream last night,” Heather said, leaning back on her elbows, looking at the leaves overhead. “About that woman we saw ride by on the bicycle yesterday. She had a measuring tape, and she kept walking around me, asking me to hold out my arms and stuff, and she took my measurements. She said she thought I’d be a good fit, and when I asked her if she was going to make a dress for me, she just laughed. She said I’d make one for her.” She frowned. “No . . . she said ‘You’ll make a good dress for me. You’ll fit like a glove.’ ” She shook her head. “Weird. It freaked me out a little, I don’t know why. Scared me bad enough to wake me up.”
Cory didn’t say anything, because now he began to remember his own dream – or had it been a dream at all? “I dreamed about her, too.”
Heather looked at him. “No. Really?”
“I think so,” he said, nodding. “I dreamed she was riding her bicycle around and around the tree in my backyard. Only it wasn’t her at first, the – the woman.” He’d almost said “the witch.” Had she called herself a witch, a good witch? He couldn’t quite recall.
“It wasn’t her? Who was it?”
“It . . . I thought it was you, first, and then it turned into her.” Saying those words chilled him, as if he’d dropped his heart into the autumn stream running at their feet. To begin as Heather, and turn into that witch, what a horrible idea!
But Heather was grinning at him. “You’re having dreams about me, huh?”
He blushed, then laughed, forgetting his fear. “Yeah, well, it was a bad dream, so don’t be too flattered.”
“I knew you were a charmer from the first moment I met you,” she said. “I should get going – it’s almost dinnertime. Want to come back here tomorrow, and start on this project for real?”
The next day was Saturday. “Sure. What time should I come over?”