But You Scared Me the Most

by John Manderino

  Karen asked me what I thought of Mom’s new boyfriend.

  I told her I didn’t know. “What do you think?”

  “He has extremely clammy hands.”

  “How do you know that?”

  She acted it out: “‘Karen? This is Mr. Mackenzie.’” She put out her hand, like to shake hands. “‘How do you do, sir? It’s very nice to . . . meet you.’” She took her hand back, slow, and wiped it on her T-shirt.

  That was funny and I laughed and told her to do it again.

  She wouldn’t, though.

  “Come on.”

  “It won’t be nearly as humorous.”

  “Please?”

  She did it again. She was right, it wasn’t as funny.

  We went back to reading. I like Sergeant Rock, the way he wears his helmet tilted back with the straps hanging loose and the way he’s tough with his men but only because he cares about them.

  Karen gave a big sigh. “I despise this book.”

  “What is it?”

  “A play, for English. A group of young girls accuse various people in the village of being witches and they hang them.”

  “The girls?”

  “The witches. Except, supposedly they weren’t.”

  “Witches?”

  “According to the author, the girls were all lying.”

  “So this really happened?”

  “In Salem, Massachusetts, in the year . . . hold on.”

  I asked Karen if she thought there really are witches.

  “Sixteen ninety-two. Of course there are.”

  I asked her if she thought there was a witch living in Witch’s Woods. That’s the woods about a mile from here.

  “Why do you suppose it’s called Witch’s Woods, William?”

  “Because there’s really a witch in there?”

  “Obviously.”

  I wanted to hear about this. “What does she . . . how does she . . . I mean, is she . . . ? Tell me about her.”

  “You’ve never heard the story?”

  “Tell me.”

  Karen put the book in her lap and folded her hands over it. “All right. This was many years ago.”

  “Like sixteen-something?”

  “No, more like forty years ago. There was a wedding.”

  “At Saint Bart’s?” That’s our church, Saint Bartholomew’s.

  “I’m not certain. But the reception was held at the KC hall. You know where that is, I presume.”

  “Near the woods.”

  “Exactly. So. Anyway. These three drunks at the reception, these three intoxicated males, these three cretins—”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Morons. These three cretinous morons talked one of the bridesmaids into accompanying them on a little walk into the woods, saying they wanted to show her something, some exotic flowers that grew there.”

  “And she believed them?”

  “She was apparently quite intoxicated herself.”

  “Maybe they slipped something into her drink. I saw this movie the other night—”

  “Do you mind?”

  I told her go ahead.

  “So they took her into the woods,” she said, then tried to use this spooky voice on me: “Took her deep, deep into the woods, where it was very, very—”

  “Don’t do the voice.”

  “Too frightening?”

  “Too dumb.”

  She went on in her regular voice. “So anyway they tied her to a tree and left her there.”

  “Where’d they get the rope?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “They left her there overnight?”

  “She was found the next morning, still alive, but her hair . . . was completely . . .”

  “Gone,” I said.

  She got mad. “Don’t do that, will you? When I pause like that, don’t jump in with something, just wait.”

  “Sorry.” I wanted to hear this. “Her hair . . . ?” I said, and waited.

  “Had turned completely . . .”

  I waited.

  “White,” she said.

  “From fear?” I said.

  “Obviously.”

  I asked her what she saw, what was out there that made her hair turn white.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps nothing. But you try spending an entire night in the pitch-dark woods tied to a tree, see how you look in the morning.”

  “So . . . now she lives out there?”

  “In that old shed. You can just see it from the path.”

  I didn’t understand. “Why would she want to live out there if it scared her so much?”

  “To be away from the world,” she said. “Away from people. Away from men.”

  I asked Karen if she’d ever seen her out there.

  She nodded at me, slow.

  “No, really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “What did she look like?”

  She shrugged. “A crone.”

  “A crow?”

  “A crone.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A dried-up, wrinkled old woman.”

  “What was she wearing?”

  “A salmon-colored taffeta dress with a velveteen bolero jacket and matching heels,” she said, just like that.

  Then it hit me and I pointed at her. “From the wedding.”

  Karen gave another slow nod.

  That was creepy and sad about the dress. “Must be pretty raggedy by now,” I said.

  “Somewhat.”

  I wanted to know more. “So how does she get by? What does she eat?”

  “Mushrooms, bugs, and such.”

  “What about, you know, going to the bathroom?” I asked, because there wouldn’t be a toilet in that little shed.

  “She has the entire woods,” Karen pointed out.

  I didn’t like the picture in my head of this old woman squatting down, in that dress. “Does she ever wash herself?”

  “William . . .”

  “What.”

  “The woman . . . is a witch.”

  “They don’t wash?”

  “Are you being facetious?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means are you joking?”

  I wasn’t. And what made her a witch anyway? Just because she didn’t wash? I asked her about that.

  I had it backwards, Karen told me. “She’s not a witch because she doesn’t wash, she doesn’t wash because she’s a witch.”

  “Okay, but what makes her a witch instead of just this scary-looking, smelly old lady?”

  Karen explained, like a very patient teacher. “After someone has been alone like that, completely and utterly alone for a long, long time, especially if she happens to be a woman, she begins to develop certain . . . shall we say . . . powers.”

  I sat up. “Powers, what do you mean powers, what’re you talking about? Explain.”

  “I mean,” she said, “she has acquired certain magical skills, especially in the casting of spells.”

  “She can cast spells?”

  “That is correct.”

  “What kind?”

  “Apparently she’s very good at transformations.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The turning of things into other things.”

  “Turning what things? Into what?”

  “Turning boys, for example.”

  “Into what.”

  “Into girls.”

  “Get out.”

  Karen leaned forward. “That’s her revenge, do you see? On males. On the entire gender.”

  “You’re making this up.”

  She sat back. “Of course.” She took up her book again. “Of course I am,” she said, looking for her place.

  I went back to my comic book, to Sergeant Rock and the combat-happy joes of Easy Company. But I couldn’t concentrate. I tried but I couldn’t. “So,” I said, “do you know anyone? Who got . . . you know . . .”

  She looked at me over her book. “Changed? Do I know
anyone who got changed?”

  “Do you?” I was feeling clammier than Mom’s Mr. Mackenzie by now.

  Karen put her book down again. “I wasn’t ever going to tell you this, but perhaps I should. Perhaps this is something you should know.”

  “Is it scary? Another scary thing?” I wasn’t sure I had room.

  “Do you recall when I told you I had seen her?”

  “The witch?”

  “Do you recall?”

  It was only a couple of minutes ago. I said, “Yeah . . . ?”

  “Well, that was true. It was several years ago. You were a mere toddler. I did see her, but what I failed to mention, what I didn’t say . . .”

  I waited.

  “When I saw her . . .”

  I waited.

  “I was a little boy, William.”

  “Quit it.”

  “I was your older brother.”

  “Quit it, Karen. That’s not even funny.”

  “No,” she said, “you’re right.” Then she looked off. “It’s not,” she said. Then her face crumpled up. She looked down at her lap and started crying.

  With Karen though, you can never be sure. I leaned down trying to see her face. “Are you really crying?”

  She kept on. She was really crying. I didn’t know what to do. I got up and went over. I put my hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m still a boy,” she said. “It’s not . . . my . . . fault,” she said, and started crying even harder.

  I wasn’t exactly sure what she was talking about but I patted her shoulder and said, “I know . . . I know . . .”

  She looked at me, her face all red and wet and puffed up and ugly. “You don’t even know what I’m talking about, so don’t say you know, because you don’t. Nobody does.” She looked down and went back to crying. “Nobody,” she said.

  But then all of a sudden I kind of did know, and it popped out, “But I do know, Karen.”

  She stopped crying on a dime and looked at me. “What do you know?”

  I shrugged.

  “Tell me.”

  “I have to use the bathroom.”

  “Tell me, William.”

  So I told her: “You have a crush on Cynthia Kellogg.”

  She stared at me, bug-eyed. Then she said, real quiet, “You looked in my journal.” Her diary, she meant. “Didn’t you,” she said.

  I looked down at my feet, meaning yes.

  “Oh . . . my . . . God,” she said.

  It has a lock on it but also a tiny key at the end of a string. Mostly she writes about school, how she hates this, hates that, sometimes about our mom, the way she gets about every new boyfriend, how pathetic it is. Not much about me. She did mention me having my tonsils out last summer, just mentioned it. But there’s also, every now and then, a little report about Cynthia Kellogg, what she was wearing today, how pretty she looked in it, what a bonehead Cynthia’s boyfriend Gary was, sometimes whole pages about what a gigantic crush Karen has on her. She used the word “crush,” so that’s why I did.

  She was sitting there covering her face with her hands telling me to go away, to please go away right now and leave her alone.

  But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to leave her like that, feeling like that, all ashamed like that. I still had my hand on her shoulder and I kept it there and told her it was no big deal. I told her about Johnny, the way I felt about Johnny, that little hand with lipstick, on Ed Sullivan, the little Spanish boy with the bashful voice. I told Karen I had a crush on him, which wasn’t exactly true, I wouldn’t call it a crush exactly, but maybe it was, maybe that was the right word, I don’t know.

  She took her hands away from her face and looked at me. “Wait,” she said. “You’re saying . . . you have a crush . . . on that’s guy’s hand?”

  “I like the little voice,” I said. “The way he speaks.”

  With just her finger and thumb she took my hand off her shoulder, kind of slow and careful, like she didn’t want to hurt my feelings, but. “That’s pretty bizarre, William. Pretty peculiar, wouldn’t you say?”

  I gave a shrug, meaning what can you do?

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but that’s . . .” She gave a laugh. “That’s pretty weird.”

  I laughed too. Why not? It was pretty weird. Anyway, Karen didn’t feel so much like she had to be ashamed about having a crush on Cynthia Kellogg, not with me anyway, with someone who’s got a crush on a puppet, and not even an actual puppet, just some old guy’s painted-up hand.

  I went back to my side of the couch, Karen telling me if I ever looked in her journal again she would personally scoop out both of my eyes with a teaspoon. “I mean that sincerely.”

  I told her, “Okay.”

  She went back to her book.

  But I still had some questions. All that stuff about the witch—how much of it was true? Any of it? Was there even a witch out there? I asked her.

  She gave me the line she started with: If there wasn’t one, why would they call the place Witch’s Woods?

  “That’s it?” I said. “That’s all you’ve got?”

  “Sorry.”

  “So you never actually really saw her?”

  “Not literally.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Means no.”

  I sat back. I didn’t like hearing that. I didn’t want it to be all made up. I liked the idea of a witch out there. I wouldn’t want to go visit her, I wouldn’t want anything to do with her. But I liked having her out there. I wanted stuff like witches to be real. Otherwise, what have we got? Chinese acrobats.

  You know?