Jack kept going to the mirror to check himself, intent on making the best impression on her that evening. Unfortunately the witch of bad hair had flown through the window that afternoon: it looked as if he’d caught his head in a mixing bowl. To add to that, the witch of middle age was growing a crop of white hairs inside his ears, and the witch of septic tanks had performed unspeakable magic on his breath. “Bug off!” he shouted to the ceiling, and the witches of cobwebs, dust, and lost memory scattered to points unknown.
“Damn, I look terrible,” he said to the mirror, and the witch of gaunt reflection winked back. He shattered the glass with his fist, and bits of seven forgotten little witches tumbled to the tile floor, their eyes dull and inattentive.
The drive to Marsha’s apartment was short but nerve-wracking. He missed the turnoff and ran over the witch of road kill, drove around lost through a suburban tangle of ranch-style homes and the lairs of condominium witches for almost an hour. All the pedestrians he saw were women, or reasonable facsimiles, and all these women—he knew—were witches. So he refused to stop and ask any of them for directions. A few approached his car at an intersection—among them a witch of no visible means and a witch of immense proportions—but he stepped on the gas and rode away before they could grab the door handle.
In front of a church he counted four small witches-in-training in their school uniforms filing past with their leader staring menacingly at his car, daring him to run over just one. In fact, the idea would never have occurred to him: it was the small witches who filled him with the most painful mixture of pity and fear.
Marsha’s house was a split-level with a high hedge all around, no doubt to keep whatever particular rites she practiced a secret from male neighbors or arriving suitors.
“I’d pretty much decided you’d chickened out,” she said to him when she opened the door. “What’s the matter—the traffic witch cause you some trouble?”
He stepped back as if slapped. She knew of the witches! Of course, all the women knew—it was their birthright. But he had never had one admit this so readily before.
Marsha made him uneasy, and yet he was drawn to her irresistibly; she had become his witch of greatest appeal. Just as in the past he had fallen in love with no help for it for the witch of thighs and the witch of perfume, the witch of high breasts, and the witch of the perfect nose, or for Marsha’s previous, most threatening rival, the witch of sweet reassurances.
“You look like a man who’s been dating all the wrong women,” she said with a laugh and a wink. He couldn’t understand what she was talking about.
“I’ve never been too good with women,” Jack admitted, thinking back to the witch of broken dates and the witch of screaming tantrums. “I’ve never known quite what to say. I never know what they want.”
“I suspect it has more to do with what you want, Jack,” Marsha said, this witch of smiles.
She reached over and took him by the hand. She pulled him to the couch and with her higher power forced him to sit down. She stroked his hand and whispered reassurances. She told him, “Let go,” and “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” It was all too much. She was obviously some sort of witch of deception. He ran away—escaped—from her apartment and back to his own home. He ignored the witch of poverty panhandling in the street. He rudely brushed off the witch of opportunity who accosted him in the elevator.
“They don’t understand, not any of them,” he said to his empty four walls. And four witches of loneliness nodded. “I do my best, but I really don’t know how to please them.” Five witches of frustrated desire raked their claws across his clothes, exposing his cool flesh. “I’m so scared of them I don’t know what to do!” And three enormous witches of suicide began to open him with hammers and razors and knives.
“Open him! Open him! Open him!” they cried in unison, as his skin split and ribs parted. Then they reached inside him with their thin, wrinkled hands, to retrieve their sisters, the hundreds of witches who had always lived inside him, craving his attention.
BROOMS WELCOME THE DUST
There are many stories told about Halloween. Although this one all started before Halloween, it’s pretty much a story about the day after. I was twelve, my sister Myra thirteen.
Brooms know about plans gone bad, Grandma used to say.
Every year, beginning the week before Halloween, Myra and I would start our yearly fight over costumes.
“Ray guns aren’t supposed to have triggers on ’em,” she said in that little witchy, cracked voice of hers.
“Huh?” I’ve seen my face in its absolute bafflement mode—it’s somewhere between incontinent dog and cat-trapped-in-the-dryer. I must have looked pretty stupid to Myra. But what did she know about ray guns anyway?
“Ray guns don’t have triggers.” There, she said it again. But I still could not understand her.
“Why not?” I asked, unable to keep the little brother voice from escaping my mouth. “How else would you fire ’em?”
“Buttons. The pushin’ kind, not the fastenin’ kind.”
“Oh.” I tried to keep acknowledgement of her greater wisdom out of my tone. I did not think I had succeeded. I had to admit it made pretty good sense. Buttons were a lot neater. Buttons. Damn. “All I got is my old cowboy gun. Painted up metal blue and these red and white fishin’ ball things glued on to hold the atomic rays. I can’t break the trigger off, metal’s too hard.”
Myra wrinkled up her face into her smart thinking expression. She knew I knew she was smart, all right. Suddenly she raised her right forefinger the way she had seen someone do in a movie once. “I know! The attachments for Mom’s old vacuum cleaner are someplace in the garage. I bet one of those would make a neat-lookin’ ray gun!”
She was right, of course. I finally chose one of those narrow nozzle things for corners. After jamming a rubber ball into the back end (I still needed a storage unit for the atomic rays) and affixing an old clamp just in front of that for a handle, it made a nifty ray gun. Myra gave me one of her black checkers to glue on for a button. I would have much preferred a working button, but that was as good as we could manage.
Now that Myra had improved my spaceman’s costume a hundred percent (she had no comment to make about the metal plates tied to my head or the wide rubber tubing wrapped around my neck) I felt I owed her reciprocal aid. Since I was a little brother, that aid took the form of criticism, of course. “That broom’s not gonna work.”
Myra looked mad and started toward me. I backed away. “What do you mean? It’s a broom—all brooms are the same.”
“Not a witch’s broom. Witches’ brooms are special.”
Myra looked down at herself. It was that word “special” that had gotten her. Her witch’s costume was the best thing she had ever done—she knew it. She’d made it mostly out of old clothes and things she’d found in the attic. Blacks and grays. An old gray piece of curtain that looked a little like a net on her shoulders and pulled up over the back of her head. A woman’s black velvet dress that fit her almost perfectly—Mom just had to make it a little smaller in a few places. It had been a woman’s dress, all right, but so small I thought it must have been a dwarf woman’s or something. Black slippers on her feet—damp had discolored them here and there, making them look silvery in spots when the light hit just so. And this big black thing streaked with brown and green and gray over everything like a cloak or maybe a coat that had driven itself crazy—that was the best thing, the most brilliant thing about her costume. Mom said it used to be a chair cover a long time ago and after they threw it out Dad had retrieved it to put on the floor underneath where he was painting. It was an old thing, worn and full of dust and full of holes and with old fringe hanging down like it was rotting off and I never would have expected Myra to touch such a thing, much less wear it.
But Myra always had a sense for what worked, and didn’t hesitate to act. Grudgingly, I’d always admired her.
Now she was looking at the broom as if that sens
e had betrayed her somehow, let her down. “It’s too new-looking,” I said, although now that she’d really looked at the broom I knew she needed no explanation. “It’s even got the company’s name burnt into the handle. Witches’ brooms aren’t made in some factory.”
She looked up at me. “Grandma’s broom would work.”
I just stared at her. I knew which one she meant. Not the one Grandma used around most of her house—the front porch and the sidewalk and even that little wood-floored hallway that led from her kitchen to the living room. That was the broom Dad had bought her at Carter’s Hardware and it wasn’t much different from the one Myra was holding now.
Myra meant Grandma’s kitchen broom.
Brooms know all about bad feelings, Grandma used to say.
Grandma’s kitchen broom looked ancient, as if it had been left on a trash heap for decades, or hidden away in some corner of the garage, motor oil soaking into all its bristles (what Grandma called its “corn”), then finally, impossibly, drawn up the handle like water rising inside a plant. It had obviously been hand-made, and not all that well: its rough-cut stick not completely straight, its stitching uneven and too high up the handle so that the corn seemed loose in its socket. Dirt and grease held it together, and I’d always imagined it must have put more dirt down than it picked up. As long as I could remember it had sat in its corner near the stove and the back porch, dreaming in its dust.
“She’ll never let you borrow it,” I said, already feeling uneasy.
“She probably never even uses it. She’s got that new broom and I don’t think she even uses that one very much. Her house is filthy.”
“She doesn’t like kids much,” I said, wishing I hadn’t brought up the broom in the first place.
“She won’t even know it’s gone,” Myra said, heading toward the front door. She stopped and looked back. “You coming?”
I looked down at my poor excuse for a ray gun, and then sadly put it on the table. Even then I had a good sense of the inevitable.
Brooms know about children, Grandma used to say. Brooms know where they hide their secret toys, the ones grownups will never see.
Grandma’s house was near where they were building the new highway, surrounded by empty lots full of high weeds. Everybody else had to sell and leave, but not Grandma. I didn’t understand why at the time, but nobody was ever able to make Grandma do anything, not even the city. Even back before the new highway went in, people would complain about how her place was an eyesore, but nothing was ever done.
She wasn’t really our grandmother. I never knew exactly what she was. Our father had helped her immigrate, sponsored her in some way. And occasionally we’d have to visit, and it really did always seem like a have to case, even for Dad, not a want to. God knows never a want to. Grandma made us all uncomfortable.
Once or twice when he’d had too much to drink Dad would mumble something about how his family in the old country had “this debt to pay,” and somehow that involved the old woman. That was as much as I was ever able to get out of him.
Myra led me deeper and deeper into the tall weeds. This late in the year they were stiff and dry, and it hurt when they slapped you in the face. Soon I was near tears, but of course I couldn’t say anything. Myra paid no attention to me, intent on working her way along some path only she seemed to know about. I had no idea where we were going—if anything, we seemed to be going away from Grandma’s house. The weeds were too high for me to see over. I could feel rocks and bits of hard vegetation working their way into my shoes and inside my socks. My socks were covered with bristly seeds and my ankles ached. I felt like a fool.
Myra stopped and urged me forward. Reluctantly, I obeyed. I started to complain, but Myra put her hand over my mouth. “Shhhh.” Her hand was dirty from the weeds; it tasted salty.
We were at the back of Grandma’s house. At least I assumed that was what I was looking at. Several large metal drums, like the kind they use to contain industrial waste, were stacked near the rusted screen door. One of the drums was cracked near the bottom; a slightly luminescent blue powder had spilled out. Containers of all kinds were scattered over the brown grass and weeds: barrels and wash pans, enormous glass bottles and hundreds of Mason jars, crates and metal cans and old grass sacks. Here and there were rusted pieces of equipment I did not recognize. And furniture of all eras, antique to modern. I wondered where she’d gotten it all.
In the midst of all this junk were several planters filled with vegetation I had never seen before. Part of the crop bore huge, deformed-looking seedpods. Two ancient dress forms leaned precariously over the planters. They were draped in long flowing coats and necklaces of junk and small animal bones. Old clock radios had been placed on top for heads. Scarecrows.
I was so entranced by all this I hadn’t even noticed that Myra had taken me by the hand. Now she was leading me through the junk, past the scarecrows, past a moldering stack of National Geographics and three stuffed raccoons frozen in savage, threatening postures, until I was nose to nose with red, rusted screen. I was so anxious through all of this I continued to let her hold my hand.
“She’s at home, Myra,” I whispered. “She’s always at home.”
“She sleeps most of the time. Dad said.”
I knew she’d been sick. She’d been sick a long time. Myra and I hadn’t actually seen her for nearly a year.
The screen door drifted open. I looked at Myra: she seemed calm-as-you-please. Right then I could have almost hated her. She took me inside the back porch.
It was as bad as the yard. Moldering piles of magazines and newspapers, bottles half-filled with unrecognizable glop, boxes and crates stuffed with unimaginable junk, debris all over the floor. “What does she need a broom for?” Myra said, giggling. I punched her shoulder.
Before I could stop her, probably more stubborn because I’d punched her, Myra pushed open the door to the kitchen.
It was pitch-black inside. Grandma had all the curtains pulled. Somewhere there was a steady sound like a large clock, but muffled, hushed, as if it were under water. Somewhere else there was a soft, rhythmic squeal, like a mouse being tortured. An alternating sour and sweet smell played with my nostrils, then stung them. “Let’s get out of here,” I whispered to Myra. I couldn’t even see her.
Out of the darkness she punched me in the chest. “I can see the stove,” she whispered back. “Look to your right.”
I turned. My eyes strained until they felt as if they were growing stalks. After a moment I could see a whitish, blocky shape there. The stove. I tried to work my way around to the corner where I knew Grandma always kept her broom. That corner seemed even darker than the rest of the kitchen.
Something furry grabbed onto my ankles with tiny needles. I bit my lip and kicked. Something soft struck metal and skidded. “Get it and let’s get out of here,” Myra whispered behind me. For the first time I could hear fear in her voice.
As I reached into the dark by the stove, touching web and soft streamers, touching damp and something crumbling to powder over my hand, something crawling down my arm, and then finally touching something hard, something wood, I heard a rumbling toward the front of the house. I turned immediately, and knocked Myra down.
Steps boomed along the short hallway toward the kitchen. The all-too-short hallway. Myra had begun, softly, to cry. I helped her up with one hand, the other still clutching the greasy, gritty wood. I jerked the door open, my own breath like a series of explosions that spread up into my head, making it hard to hear. When I hit the rusty screen door, it fell apart around us, screen and wood and all. A piece grazed my forehead, and a finger of warm fluid slid down into my eye. Behind us I could hear a low moan building into a scream, a screech, a howl. I began to cry too. We knocked the scarecrow-forms over into a planter. One of the deformed fruits exploded, showering us with bright red seeds. We kicked bottles and boxes aside, racing for the weeds. The weeds had been raking my face for some time before the demented cries behind us began
to fade.
Myra was crying harder when we reached the road. I looked down at myself and started to shake. I dropped the broom and did a little St. Vitus’ dance, brushing frantically at the dozens of shiny black spiders scrambling over my chest.
Brooms know the quiet thoughts a spider weaves, Grandma used to say.
Halloween night Myra decided not to take Grandma’s broom. I wouldn’t hear of it. I cried and shook my fist at her. After all we’d been through, I couldn’t believe it. “I’ll tell,” I threatened. She stared at me sullenly. “I’ll tell about all we did. I’ll be in trouble, too, but at least you’ll get it. It was your idea!” I took the broom from the garage where we’d hidden it, wiped off the dust and webs, then shoved it into a bucket of warm water to soak some of the dark grease out of the bristles. After a little while it didn’t smell so bad anymore. Myra finally took possession of it, reluctantly, trying to hold it at least a foot away from her as we headed out on the sidewalk in full costume.
I have to admit I had a pretty good time that Halloween. Even better than usual. Maybe it was because of the bad scare I’d gotten at Grandma’s. All the silly costumes: goblins and ghosts, and maybe a dozen short, babyfat witches—which bugged Myra pretty bad, I guess—pulled the weight of that day right off me. I wanted to run and laugh, scatter my candy up and down the sidewalk, go soap some windows, scatter pumpkins from one end of town to the other. My ray gun turned out to be not such a good idea after all—the “button” came unglued and the clamp/handle kept slipping off, sending the vacuum cleaner nozzle flying through the air. Several times I had to stop and search people’s darkened yards for it. But I didn’t care. I felt free.
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