Darkwater

by V. J. Banis

  Walter seemed not to notice. He splashed and frolicked with all the children, but when he discovered that Liza did not know how to swim, nothing would do but that he must give her instructions.

  I never realized that Liza was such a slow learner, Jennifer remarked to herself, observing the lack of progress as time went by. Peter and Mary had gone off to play by themselves and still Walter worked with Liza. She was fine when he held her, but whenever he let go of her she at once forgot what he had told her and splashed and kicked helplessly until he had to “save” her.

  Watching them, Jennifer felt more and more a coldness growing within her. Suddenly Liza did not look like a child at all but like a very lovely young woman.

  Walter’s back was to her, and Liza was in his arms. Briefly, Liza looked toward Jennifer and their eyes met.

  Sometimes a glance is enough for communication between two people. It had happened with Walter. Jennifer had looked into his eyes and knew that he loved her. And now it happened in reverse with Liza. Their eyes met and in that instant, Jennifer knew that Liza hated her and that in some dark way she could not yet understand, Bess had been right.

  She had been sitting on a hay-bale that Walter had placed for her. Now, as if stung by a bee, she stood. The movement caused Walter to look in her direction.

  “I...I think Liza was right,” she said. “There is not enough shade here. I am going back to the house.”

  Walter scrambled to his feet. “Wait, I’ll come with you,” he said.

  “No, don’t, please. I’d rather you stay and enjoy yourself with the children.” She emphasized the last word deliberately and saw out of the corner of her eye that it was not wasted on Liza.

  When she was out of sight of the swimmers, she ran the rest of the way to the house. Her heart was pounding, and not from the physical exertion alone. She did not even pause as she entered the house but ran directly up the stairs, straight to Liza’s room.

  A doll, Bess had said. She began to search the room. She went through the drawers of the dresser and through the big wardrobe in which Liza’s dresses hung. She found nothing.

  She was on her knees looking under the bed when she heard a noise and looked up to see Liza standing in the doorway.

  “Are you looking for something?” Liza asked, coming in and closing the door after herself.

  Jennifer stood up, brushing her skirt. “Yes,” she said, “I’m looking for a doll.”

  “I don’t have any dolls. I’m too old for dolls.”

  “I think you do have one. One made supposedly in my image.”

  Liza’s smile vanished. “That damn nigger. I’m going to make her sorry.”

  “So you do know what I’m talking about. I want that doll. Where is it?”

  For the first time Liza looked full at her without any pretense. “You’ll never find it,” she said.

  In the face of her naked hatred, Jennifer took a step back. “Liza,” she said, actually frightened, “You truly do hate me, don’t you? I never realized it before. But why?”

  “Because you married Walter. He should have waited for me. But I’ll fix you.”

  “I have had enough of this. If you will not show me that doll, I shall have Walter get it from you.”

  “He’ll think you’re crazy. Just like his first wife. I’ll say I know nothing about any doll. He’ll never believe you.”

  Jennifer stopped at the door. “You’re forgetting, Bess saw it.”

  “If I threaten her, she’ll deny she saw anything.”

  Jennifer knew she dared not back down or Liza would forever have an advantage over her.

  “We shall see,” she said. She found Walter in their bedroom, combing his hair before the mirror.

  “Walter,” she said, not even pausing to greet him, “I want Liza sent away.”

  He gave her a shocked look. “Why?”

  She could see already that he had withdrawn from her but fear and anger drove her on almost hysterically.

  “Because she is making me sick. She’s a witch.”

  “A witch? What on earth are you talking about?”

  Before Jennifer could say anything more, however, Liza herself ran into the room and threw herself into Walter’s arms, wet dress and all.

  “Oh, Walter, Walter,” she sobbed, crying against his chest, “It’s all so stupid. I had a rag doll I made, and I wanted to scare Bess, so I told her it had magic powers. And now Jennifer believes her.”

  Walter patted her shoulder and looked angrily past her at Jennifer. “I hope you realize how foolish all this sounds,” he said.

  “Perhaps to you. Not to me.” Jennifer’s cheeks burned because in truth she could see that it sounded more than a little foolish. “If there is nothing to it, then let her produce the doll. That’s all I asked of her.”

  “Well, little crybaby,” Walter said, holding Liza at arm’s length. “How about it? Let’s see this wicked invention of yours.”

  “But that’s the whole trouble,” she sobbed, breaking into another bout of weeping. “I don’t have it. I lost it ages ago.”

  Again Walter looked at Jennifer as if to say, you see.

  “Well, if she doesn’t have it, she could hardly be doing any mischief with it. If you honestly believe what you are saying, that is.”

  “If she really doesn’t have it.”

  “Are you accusing Liza of lying?”

  “Yes.”

  Again he held Liza at arm’s length. “Cricket, I want you to tell me once and for all, and no fibbing. Do you have some sort of doll?”

  “No, I lost it.”

  “Then that is that,” he said. “I hope we have no more of this.”

  Jennifer’s determination wavered in the face of his stern anger. She knew that Liza was lying, but without some evidence she would never convince Walter of it. She started from the room.

  “Don’t you think you owe Liza an apology?” Walter asked.

  “No,” was her reply.

  * * * * * * *

  That night she had another of her spells, this one the worst yet. She lay gasping for breath, her fingers instinctively clawing at her throat, and all she could think of was the doll she had seen before, of Alicia, with the ribbon tied tightly about its neck.

  “I’ve sent for the doctor,” Walter said wearily, coming to kneel beside the bed.

  “Walter, that girl, she’s a witch. Send her away, please,” she begged in a whisper.

  He looked down at her coldly. “You sound exactly like Alicia.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  By morning Jennifer knew what she must do. There was one person who could tell her if Liza possessed some sort of evil power—the person from whom she would have learned it.

  She had made up her mind to go see Mrs. Hodges. There, she would either confirm what her instinct increasingly argued was true, or disprove it once and for all.

  She was well enough in the morning to get out of bed and dress without help. She did not want anyone to know where she was going. Walter was in the fields and Bess and Helen were at work in the kitchen and she did not see Liza or the children, so she was able to steal from the house unobserved. Outside, she paused to get her breath.

  What if she hadn’t the strength for the walk through the swamp?

  Inside, she heard Liza’s voice, calling to one of the other children. It gave her a chill.

  “I must find the strength,” she said.

  Looking back on that time with Walter, Jennifer remembered Mrs. Hodges’ sardonic amusement. Had she known then what Liza’s return to Darkwater would mean for Jennifer? And how will she greet me this time, she wondered? With amusement? Or violently?

  She hurried on, ignoring the shortness of breath that ached in her chest and the tightness at her throat. She no longer dared let herself think of those things, for fear that her mind would snap altogether.

  She reached the shack—and standing before it, as if waiting for her, was Mrs. Hodges herself.

  “Why, dearie,
hello,” she said, giving Jennifer a toothy grin. “Look at who’s come to visit me. Are you out of breath? You look all tuckered out. Let me give you a hand. That’s it, up the steps. There, now, it’s cooler in here, isn’t it?”

  It was the first time Jennifer had been inside the shack, but the outside appearance had prepared her for what she would find inside. It was filthy and squalid, just as she would have expected, with litter and trash strewn everywhere and the smell of rot and decay. At Mrs. Hodges’ insistence, she seated herself in a battered stuffed chair. Dust rose in a little cloud as she sat, making her shudder with revulsion.

  “There, now, that’s better, isn’t it?” Mrs. Hodges crooned, all tender solicitude.

  “Thank you,” Jennifer gasped. For a moment she could only lay her head back and struggle for breath. She could see the cracks in the ceiling and thick cobwebs in the corners.

  “Here, dearie, drink this” Mrs. Hodges appeared at her side with a cup.

  “What is it?” Jennifer eyed the cup warily.

  “It’s an herb tea I brew. It’ll make you feel better. And I should know, shouldn’t I?”

  Mrs. Hodges thrust the cup under her nose and Jennifer sipped obediently. The tea was hot and had an odd, bittersweet taste, but it was not unpleasant. It seemed she could actually feel it restoring some of her wasted strength. She took another sip and managed to sit upright.

  “What is it?” she asked again.

  “I had it brewing for you,” Mrs. Hodges said, ignoring the question. “I knowed you was coming to see me.”

  “How...how did you know?”

  The woman gave her eerie chuckle. “I knowed, is all. I know everything. I knowed you was sick, and how and why. It was me told her what to do.”

  “You mean Liza? Your daughter?”

  The chuckle changed to a snort of scorn. “Daughter? She ain’t no daughter of mine. An ornery little whelp, came crawling in out of the swamp, wanting a place to sleep and something to eat. And I took her in, I did, took care of her, told everyone she was my own daughter. And now there she is up at that big fancy house and here I am sitting in this shack, me that taught her everything she knows.”

  It was only with an effort of will that Jennifer could look into those wildly gleaming eyes. “And it was you that taught her how...how to make me sick?”

  Again the face broke into that cruel grin, more frightening almost than her anger. “Yes, yes, it was me did that. She come running back here, crying about this man she loved, and she’d gotten rid of one wife and now he was taking another, and would I help her again? And I says to her, I says, when you went up there, you was gonna fix it so I could come and live there too, and then you forgot me after I helped. So I says, now you want me to help you again.”

  She broke off her narrative and thrust the cup of tea at Jennifer again. “Drink,” she commanded, and Jennifer drank obediently. The tea was making her feel oddly light headed and she was sorry now to drink it, but she was more afraid of interrupting the old woman’s story.

  “So she whined and sniveled,” Mrs. Hodges went on, “and said, she’d see I was comfortable this time, and I give her the things she wanted, and she brought the stuff down here and I made her the doll like she asked.”

  Here she broke off into another chuckle and thrust her face so close to Jennifer’s that her vile breath made Jennifer’s stomach give a warning turn.

  “That was a doll of you, sweetie.” She laughed loudly.

  “And the doll has some sort of power, is that right?”

  “Yes, that’s right. It has power. That’s how she’s been making you sick, and it’s all my doings, and now that I’ve helped her, I’m still sitting here in the swamp and she’s up in that fine house, and I haven’t seen her since. The ungrateful whelp.”

  She suddenly straightened and took the cup away, waddling toward the kitchen area.

  “And now you want my help too,” she said from the kitchen pump.

  “I only wanted to know....”

  “You only wanted to know,” Mrs. Hodges mimicked her in a high-pitched voice. “Fa de da, you wanted to be rid of that brat, that’s what you wanted. I knowed you was coming today, and I knowed what you was coming for. And I got it ready.”

  She came back to Jennifer and handed her a small bottle filled with a purplish liquid. “Here.”

  “What is it?”

  “A potion. You put that in your man’s drink, or his coffee, and it’ll make him come back to you. And it won’t harm him none, either.”

  Jennifer did not know what to say. On one hand she was frightened of the old woman and anything she might do, and on the other, the mere thought of reviving Walter’s love for her was a siren’s song that seemed to whisper in her ear, take it, take it, take it.

  “Never you fear, it’ll do what you want it to do. And here, here’s something else I fixed up for you.”

  She reached into a deep pocket of her dress and brought out an object. Jennifer started to reach for it and then brought her hand back.

  “It’s one of those dolls,” she said, horrified. The sight of that harmless looking rag doll was enough to set her trembling with fear.

  “It’s her, Liza,” Mrs. Hodges said. “In her image. Whatever you do to it, it will be done to her too. Take it.”

  She dropped it in Jennifer’s lap. Jennifer’s instinct was to cast it away, but at the same time she was fascinated. She picked it up. It was like any child’s rag doll, except that the hair was real, and she did not have to ask whose it was; and she recognized the rag dress as a scrap from one of Liza’s dresses.

  “Does it really have that sort of power?”

  “Whatever you do. If you took a pin, for instance, and stuck it through there, where the heart is....”

  Suiting action to words, she took the doll from Jennifer and, grabbing a huge pin from the nearby table, started to thrust it through the doll.

  “No,” Jennifer cried, grabbing the doll away. “It would kill her.” She knew then that, no matter what reason tried to tell her, she believed fully in the power of the dolls and their black magic.

  Mrs. Hodges laughed. “Take it. Keep it. Use it if you must.”

  Jennifer remembered then what Bess had told her, that the only way to truly remove the danger was to kill Mrs. Hodges, by burying that little bottle. But she couldn’t do that, or kill Liza, either. No matter what kind of magic it was, that was still murder, plain and simple.

  It suddenly seemed to her as if the filthy room were closing in on her. The smell of decay, Mrs. Hodges nasty breath, the dust, were all at once threatening to overpower her.

  “I must go.” She struggled to her feet. “I shall send someone with money to pay you.”

  “I don’t want your money, dearie, just your friendship. Never you fear, the tea will give you the strength to get back home.”

  Oddly enough, Jennifer found her strength had come back. At the door, she paused. Mrs. Hodges had not moved.

  “Yes, what did you forget?” she asked.

  “The doll, the one Liza has in my image. How can I stop its power? How can I prevent her from making me ill and perhaps...perhaps worse?”

  “Oh, that’s very simple.” Mrs. Hodges hobbled toward her. “I’ll show you.”

  She pointed at the doll in Jennifer’s hand. “You take that doll there, the one I just gave you of her, and you stick a pin through its heart, right here, and she won’t trouble you no more.”

  Jennifer gave a little gasp of horror and flung the doll on the floor. She turned and ran from the shack, down the broken steps and into the waiting swamp. Mrs. Hodges’ evil laugh echoed behind her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Not until she was almost back to Darkwater did Jennifer realize that she still clasped in her hand the tiny bottle of liquid Mrs. Hodges had given her. She stopped and lifted her hand, meaning to fling the bottle into the dark water near the path.

  Instead, she lowered her hand, staring at the bottle. What if it worked
? Mrs. Hodges’ tea had worked, hadn’t it? She had more strength than she’d had in days. Her progress going there had been a prolonged labor, but she had nearly run all the way home.

  And what would she not do to bring Walter back to her? What would she not try? Mrs. Hodges had said it was harmless—but could she be trusted?

  Slowly, Jennifer put the bottle into her pocket. She could always throw it away later, after all. Or, again, perhaps not. She would wait and see.

  She was surprised when she arrived back at the house to discover that she had already been missed and that her absence was the cause of some consternation.

  “Heavens, there you are,” Helen greeted her, rushing into the hall. “We’ve been frantic.”

  “I just wanted to go for a walk,” Jennifer said. Bess was standing behind Helen, and for a moment her eyes met Jennifer’s, and it was if some unspoken understanding passed between them. Bess nodded her head almost imperceptibly and Jennifer realized Bess knew where she had been, and that Mrs. Hodges had given her something. It seemed that Bess was telling her, yes, go ahead, use it.

  “A walk?” Helen looked incredulous.

  “Yes, I’m feeling much better today and I was tired of spending all my time in bed. Is Walter in?”

  “Liza suggested that perhaps in a delirium you had wandered into the swamp, and at her suggestion they went to look for you.”

  But not, Jennifer thought at once, by the usual path or I would have met them.

  “Well,” she said aloud, “I am home now and quite all right. I wonder if someone would bring some coffee up to my room, I think I would like some. And, Bess, send two cups. When Walter comes in I’ll ask him to have some with me.”

  Again, she had the impression that Bess understood more than had been said, but Bess only nodded and said, “I’ll bring some right up.”

  “You do look as if you’re feeling better,” Helen said in a puzzled tone of voice. “Do you want me to help you up the stairs?”